A main result in this paper is that for a Hopfield-type neural circuit with a symmetric connection matrix T, the negative semidenfiniteness of T is a necessary and sufficient condition for absolute exponential stability. While this result extends one of absolute stability in Forti, et al. [1], its proof given in this paper is simpler, which is completed by an approach different from one used in Forti et al. [1]. The most significant consequence is that the class of neural networks with negative semidefinite matrices T is the largest class of symmetric networks that can be employed for embedding and solving optimization problem with global exponential rate of convergence to the optimal solution and without the risk of spurious responses.

In the usual optical flow detection, the gradient constraint, which expresses the relationship between the gradient of the image intensity and its motion, is combined with the least-squares criterion. This criterion means assuming that only the time derivative of the image intensity contains noise. In this paper, we assume that all image derivatives contain noise and derive a new optical flow detection technique. Since this method requires the knowledge about the covariance matrix of the noise, we also discuss a method for its estimation. Our experiments show that the proposed method can compute optical flow more accurately than the conventional method.

Video services such as video-on-demand are expected to be a motivation for deploying multimedia services in residential areas. These services should increase customer demand for video channels as customer demands become more sophisticated and diverse in the future. Therefore, it is important to determine how network configurations (i.e. network transition scenarios) should evolve in response to changes in access network demand. This paper proposes economical deployment of access networks based on transition scenarios. We conclude that transition scenarios offer more economical deployment than single-network configurations. Two transition scenarios, from passive double-star to fiber single-star, and from hybrid fiber-coax to fiber single-star, are evaluated as examples. These transition scenarios are economical even when customer demand changes. The transition starting time affects the present worth of annual charges (PWAC) of access networks more than the transition period does.

A CATV network which has a switched double star configuration, fiber to the home (FTTH) and full digital transmission has been tested to see the feasibility with one Head-End (HE), one Central Office (CO), one Distribution Center (DC), and 25 subscribers. Also POTS and NISDN services have been provided to 5 subscribers. Single mode optical fibers are fully deployed from a HE to subscribers. A PON with TDM/polling scheme has been implemented considering the economic issue. Also in the outside plant, we tried to use the existing facility including the in-house duct. This paper deals with the results of the trial and some issues on the operational view.

The paper deals with the evaluation of performance of current cellular systems which are required to accommodate in an already operating system a wide range of new services, with different quality requirements (on delays, retransmission rates, etc.), and often characterised by a high burstiness (i. e. with relatively short traffic bursts, interleaved by comparatively long silence periods). To this end, an extension of packet communications is appealing for its inherent flexibility; standardisation of packet protocols for data transmission over idle GSM channels is in progress, and a similar service exploiting AMPS radio and network resources is already specified as Cellular Digital Packet Data. In both cases voice traffic retains a higher priority. The paper focuses on the evaluation of the effect of this additional traffic on existing voice traffic in a GSM Phase 2+ system. Although voice calls experience the same channel availability, their performance are worsened by the higher co-channel interference due to the higher average channel occupancy. This impairment cannot be tackled, as a matter of course, by increasing the re-use distance as this would affect the overall system capacity. The paper suggests the use of smart planning strategies capable to ease control of interference levels with a negligible impact on system complexity and signalling load.

In packet radio networks with TDMA, the throughput performance of network should be degraded due to the unequal traffic of each user. To overcome this problem, Mini-Slotted Alternating Priorities (MSAP) and TDMA with Parallel Transmission (TDMA/PT) were proposed. Especially, TDMA/PT can attain the thorughput performance more than one, even under unequal traffic. However, TDMA/PT cannot be used for mobile networks, because each terminal should know the location of every other terminal. In this paper, we propose an entirely new protocol named Slot Reservation TDMA with Parallel Transmissino: SR-TDMA/PT," which is suitable for mobile networks because a central station is able to locate every terminal easily. The central station also reserves time slots for each terminal so as to transmit packets in parallel as much as possible. Therefore, the throughput performance of SR-TDMA/PT is higher than TDMA/PT. We describe SR-TDMA/PT in detail and evaluate the performance of this protocol by simulation under various conditions.

A simple algorithm is proposed for representing nonseparable functions by equivalent separable functions. In this algorithm, functions are first represented by computational graphs, which are directed graphs representing the computational process of the functions. Then, the vertices of the computational graphs are searched in preorder or postorder, and the transformation to separable forms is performed at the places where it is necessary. By this repetition of the transformation, nonseparable functions are represented by separable functions automatically. The proposed algorithm will be useful in various fields of science and engineering because funcutions of one variable are easy to deal with.

A new multi-functional card with a display, sounder and input keys, and related communication equipment, including a microwave base station and a contactless surface reader/writer, have been developed to perform the functions of positioning, paging, returning a message and identity certification. We confirmed that a prototype subsystem was capable of providing a simple and automatic call forwarding service. The multi-functional card as an ID card and a personal data terminal, and its subsystem can provide new personal services for a multimedia office.

This paper describes communication traffic characteristics in cellular systems employing the concept of reuse partitioning and Dynamic Channel Assignment. Such systems hava a problem of the spatial unbalance of blocking probability. The objective of this paper is overcoming this problem. To accomplish this objective, we use a method for analyzing communication traffic characteristics. We also show results on traffic characteristics in the systems.

This paper describes the concept of the regional community network system. The system provides PC connectionless communication services to residential customers and a platform on which customers can construct closed user groups. The proposed system is superior to conventional dial-up PC communications from the viewpoint of quick response and communication charge. A new mechanism of group management using the MAC addresses of the interface cards embedded in the ONU and PC terminals is proposed. Conventional telecommunication services, multi-channel video distribution services, and connectionless computer communication services can be provided simultaneously by utilizing the fiber-optic access system. The regional community network system is promising for the construction of a regional information platform and would be one of the forces driving FTTH.

In this paper, we show that the conventional BCH codes can be better than the AG codes when the number of check symbols is relatively small. More precisely, we consider an AG code on Cab whose number of check symbols is less than min {g+a, n-g}, where n and g denote the code length and the genus of the curve, respectively. It is shown that there always exists an extended BCH code, (i) which has the same designed distance as the Feng-Rao designed distance of the AG code and the code length and the rate greater than those of the AG code, or (ii) which has the same number of check symbols as that of the AG code, the designed distance not less than that of the AG code and the code length longer than that of the AG code.

In order to produce high quality multimedia contents efficiently, DTPP -desktop program production system- has been proposed. The DTPP is capable of supporting all the necessary procedures of program production, from planning to broadcasting, by molding each process into the desktop environment of program producers. The DTPP system consists of multimedia terminals, a media server, a computing server, and network system. In the DTPP, new technological concepts such as cooperative program production, indexing and utilization of attribute information of images, and video components and spatio-temporal editing will be installed.

A verification is made on the accuracy of Radar-AMeDAS precipitation, which represents hourly precipitation over the Japanese Islands and the surrounding sea area with a spatial resolution of 5km using data from 5cm conventional radars, 10cm Fujisan Radar, and Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System (AMeDAS) raingauge network. By comparing with data from a very dense raingauge network of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, it is found that 1) Radar-AMeDAS precipitation shows good agreement if a positioning error of one pixel of 5km square is allowed 2) Radar-AMeDAS precipitation represents almost the average of raingauge measurements in the 5km square for most of the precipitation caused by a large scale disturbance, and 3) Radar-AMeDAS precipitation is close to the maximum raingauge measurement in the pixel when precipitation is extremely localized such as thunderstorms or showers. Radar-AMeDAS precipitations are compared also with AMeDAS measurements statistically with respect to the appearance rates, that is (total number of pixels where specific intensity is observed) / (total number of all pixels), for different precipitation intensities. The rate of Radar- AMeDAS precipitation shows excellent agreement with that of AMeDAS if radar echoes are observed at the altitude lower than 2km. Since Radar- AMeDAS precipitation on land sometimes represents the maximum of precipitation in a pixel for the purpose of unfailingly detecting extremely localized severe precipitation, it shows a high appearance rate at high precipitation intensity than AMeDAS, which is considered to represent statistically the average of a pixel. As a result, in estimating areal rainfall amounts, Radar- AMeDAS precipitation overestimates AMeDAS measurement by 8% at 5mm/h and by 12% at 40mm/h. Radar- AMeDAS precipitation over the sea, with no local calibration by AMeDAS and with little influence of orography, is 2% weaker in intensity than AMeDAS at 10mm/h, and 12% at 40mm/h.

A maximum diameter (Dmax) of raindrop should be assumed when rainfall rate (R) is estimates from the differential reflectivity (ZDR) and the horizontal reflectivity (ZH) measured with dual-polarization radar. If the assumed Dmax is different from actual Dmax, the estimated R contains errors. Using distrometer data, it was found that ZDR correlates with Dmax, and it was verified that when Dmax is adaptively determined by an empirical relationship between ZDR and Dmax, errors in estimated R can be reduced.

Here we investigate the unique advantages of our proposed Virtual Space Teleconferencing System (VST) in the area of multimedia teleconferencing, with emphasis to facial emotion transmission and recognition. Specially, we show that this concept can be used in a unique way of communication in which the emotions of the local participant are transmitted to the remote party with higher recognition rate by enhancing the emotions using some intelligence processing in between the local and the remote participants. In other words, we can show that this kind of emotion enhanced teleconferencing systems can supersede face to face meetings, by effectively alleviating the barriers in recognizing emotions between different nations. Also in this paper we show that it is better alternative to the blurred or mosaiced facial images that one can find in some television interviews with people who are not willing to be exposed in public.

Several major aircraft accidents have been attributed to low-altitude wind shears, which are normally caused by microbursts or gust fronts. Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) systems are being installed near major airports for the detection of low-altitude wind shears. In order to develop a TDWR system further, low-altitude wind shears were numerically simulated in this study. The basic equations, which contain prognostic equations for air velocity, pressure, temperature, water vapor, and rainwater, were solved using a finite difference scheme. A terrain-following coordinate transformation was employed to simulate terrain effects. The simulation results are presented in this paper.

In this paper we propose a new medical image processing system called Virtualized Endoscope System (VES)", which can examine the inside of a virtualized human body. The virtualized human body is a 3-D digital image which is taken by such as X-ray CT scanner or MRI scanner. VES consists of three modules; (1) imaging, (2) segmentation and reconstruction and (3) interactive operation. The interactive operation module has following thee major functions; (a) display of, (b) measurement from, and (c) manipulation to the virtualized human body. The user of the system can observe freely both the inside and the outside of a target organ from any point and any direction freely, and can perform necessary measurement interactively concerning angle and length at any time during observation. VES enables to observe repeatedly an area where the real endoscope can not enter without pain from any direction which the real endoscope can not. We applied this system to real 3-D X-ray CT images and obtained good result.

Time-critical-communication, which should guarantee a time limit of a communication service is getting important in multimedia and factory automation fields. This paper proposes an IP-based protocol, Network Protocol with Performance (NPP) to provide the advanced best-effort service which takes a time constraint into account for real-time applications on the Internet. NPP uses the packet-scheduling function to make an effort to guarantee time constraints. Packet-scheduling algorithm chooses a packet in a NPP queue by a precedent level and a time constraint of each packet. We also discuss an application of NPP to multimedia communication system, and investigate performance of NPP by simulation.

This paper describes the results obtained of a prototype system, VeriProc/1, based on an algorithm we first presented in [13] which can prove the correctness of pipelined processors automatically without pipeline invariant, human interaction, or additional information. No timing relations such as an abstract function or β-relation is required. The only information required is to specify the location of the selectors in the design. The performance is independent of not only data width but also memory size. Detailed analysis of CPU time is presented. Further, don't-care forcing using additional data easily prepared by the user can improve performance.

This paper is concerned with bandwidth reservation for circuit groups which handle calls requesting asymmetric forward and backward multi-connections. A model of circuit group with sub-group configuration is treated, and two types of the bandwidth reservation schemes for the model are studied in this paper. One is a global scheme with monitoring the whole circuit group, and the other is a local scheme with monitoring each sub-group independently. The problems of optimizing the reservation parameters are formulated, and optimization methods for the problems are proposed. Numerical example are presented, and effectiveness of the reservation schemes with using the optimized parameters is numerically examined.