For a CBR (Constant Bit Rate) connection in an ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) network, we determine the CDV (Cell Delay Variation) tolerance for the mapping of ATM cells from the ATM Layer onto the Physical Layer. Our result will be useful to properly allocate resources to connections and to accurately enforce the contract governing the user's cell traffic by UPC (Usage Parameter Control).

We are studying a novel concept of the on-line hospital system using a virtual environment called Hyper Hospital," the Hyper Hospital" is a medical care system which is constructed in a distributed manner to the electronic information network using virtual reality (VR) as a human interface. In the present report, we studied the physiological and psychological responses of healthy subjects induced by the usage of the VR in terms of fatigue. Twenty healthy young male subjects were exposed to the virtual reality system and they performed some psychological tasks with a virtual nurse for 30 minutes. Several parameters of physiological, psychological, and subjective fatigue were measured. None of the physiological or psychological parameters such as urinary catecholamine release, ECG, etc. showed significant fatigue induced by our VR system. However, by using a standard questionnaire, some kinds of subjective fatigue were noted and they were thought to be indicating a direction of improvement for our VR system.

A queueing model suitable for multimedia packets with Poisson and batch Poisson arrivals is studied. In the queueing model, priority is given to the packets with batch Poisson arrival, and the packets with Poisson arrival, accumulated in a buffer, are routed by utilizing intervals of the packets with priority. The queueing performance of the proposed model is evaluated by the mean system delay. We also consider the effect of batch size and the ratio of the traffic with batch Poisson arrival and the one with Poisson arrival on the mean system delay. It is found that the proposed queueing model is useful to reduce the mean system delay of the packets with Poisson arrival, while maintaining the means system delay of the packets with batch Poisson arrival.

In the future satellite broadcasting system in 21GHz band, the rainfall attenuation is a most significant problem. To solve this problem, the hierarchical transmission systems have been studied. This paper analyzes the performance of the hierarchical modulation scheme from the view point of power assignment in the presence of the rainfall attenuation. This paper shows an optimum power assignment ratio to maximize the spectral efficiency and the signal-to-noise ratio of received image, and these optimum ratio is varied with the measure of system performance.

This paper focuses on Mixed Reality (MR) visual displays, a particular subset of Virtual Reality (VR) related technologies that involve the merging of real and virtual worlds somewhere along the virtuality continuum" which connects completely real environments to completely virtual ones. Probably the best known of these is Augmented Reality (AR), which refers to all cases in which the display of an otherwise real environment is augmented by means of virtual (computer graphic) objects. The converse case on the virtuality continuum is therefore Augmented Virtuality (AV). Six classes of hybrid MR display environments are identified. However, an attempt to distinguish these classes on the basis of whether they are primarily video or computer graphics based, whether the real world is viewed directly or via some electronic display medium, whether the viewer is intended to feel part of the world or on the outside looking in, and whether or not the scale of the display is intended to map orthoscopically onto the real world leads to quite different groupings among the six identified classes, thereby demonstrating the need for an efficient taxonomy, or classification framework, according to which essential differences can be identified. The obvious' distinction between the terms real" and virtual" is shown to have a number of different aspects, depending on whether one is dealing with real or virtual objects, real or virtual images, and direct or non-direct viewing of these. An (approximately) three dimensional taxonomy is proposed, comprising the following dimensions: Extent of World Knowledge (how much do we know about the world being displayed?"), Reproduction Fidelity (how realistically' are we able to display it?"), and Extent of Presence Metaphor (what is the extent of the illusion that the observer is present within that world?").

In general, message passing multiprocessors suffer from communication overhead and shared memory multiprocessors suffer from memory contention. Also, data I/O overhead limits performance. In particular, computer vision tasks that require massive computation are strongly affected by these disadvantages. This paper proposes new parallel architectures for computer vision, a Flexibly (Tightly/Loosely) Coupled Multiprocessor (FCM) and a Flexibly Coupled Hypercube Multiprocessor (FCHM) to alleviate these problems. FCM and FCHM have a variable address space memory in which a set of neighboring memory modules can be merged into a shared memory by a dynamically partitionable topology. FCM and FCHM are based on two different topologies: reconfigurable bus and hypercube. The proposed architectures are quantitatively analyzed using computational models and parallel vision algorithms are simulated on FCM and FCHM using the Intel's Personal SuperComputer (iPSC), a hypercube multiprocessor, showing significant performance improvements over that of iPSC.

We have classified parenchymal echo patterns of cirrhotic liver into 3 types, according to the size of hypoechoic nodular lesions. We have been studying an ultrasonic image diagnosis system using the three–layer back–propagation neural network. In this paper, we will describe the applications of the neural network techniques for recognizing and classifying chronic liver disease, which use the nodular lesions in the Proton density and T2–weighed magnetic resonance images on the gray level of the pixels in the region of interest.

The problem of electromagnetic scattering by inductive discontinuities located in rectangular waveguides, in particular when dealing with discontinuous conductors of finite thickness, is analyzed using the modified residue-calculus method, and form of the equation suitable for a numerical calculation is derived. The incident wave is taken to be the dominant mode, and reflection and transmission properties of an asymmetric inductive iris are discussed. After the modal representation of the filed, the modal matching is apply to satisfy the boundary conditions at the discontinuity. And using the modified residue-calculus method, simultaneous infinite equations, which are concerned with the scattered mode coefficients, are derived. Then they are approximated at the thick diaphragm. The solutions obtained take on the form of an infinite product, and a numerical solution based on the method of successive approximations is presented as a technique for concretely determining the reflection coefficients. As confirmation, experiments are also carried out in the X-band and close agreement is shown between the calculated and experimental values.

A novel optoelectronic mesoscopic neural device is proposed. This device operates in a neural manner, involving the electron interference and the laser threshold characteristics. The optical output is a 2–dimensional image, and can also be colored, if the light emitting elements are fabricated to form the picture elements in 3–colors, i.e. R, G, and B. The electron waveguiding in the proposed device is analyzed, on the basis of the analogy between the Schrödinger's equation and the Maxwell's wave equation. The nonlinear neural connection is achieved, as a result of the superposition an the interferences among electron waves transported through different waveguides. The sizes of the critical elements of this device are estimated to be within the reach of the present day technology. This device exceeds the conventional VLSI neurochips by many orders of magnitude, in the number of neurons per unit area, as well as in the speed of operation.

Telecommunication services are becoming more and more personalized, integrated, and refined. Advanced personal and mobile telecommunication services, intelligent networks, and network management operations require cooperative network-wide distributed processing on a very large scale. Telecommunication programs must support these services with great flexibility, efficiency, and reliability. This paper proposes a new call processing model that improves the availability and flexibility of telecommunication programs. It first points out requirements, outlines the distributed processing platform PLATINA, and discusses several approaches to the enhanced call processing model. Then it explains the call processing program structure, and gives illustrations of mobile and multi- party service control as typical examples. The Caller-Callee decomposition reduces the complexity of the call processing program and enhances the call model; the separation of call and bearer enhances service flexibility and integration; distributed object-oriented techniques meet software evolution requirements. A prototype program has been implemented and has proved the effectiveness of this approach.

A stepwise refinement method of communications service specifications is proposed to generate communications software that can conform to any network architecture. This method uses a two-layered language; one layer is a service specification description language (STR), and the other layer is a supplementary specification description language for implementing STR description on a communications system (STR/D). STR specifies terminal behaviors that can be recognized from a perspective outside of the communications systems. With STR, a communications service is defined by a set of rules that can be described without detailed knowledge of communications systems or communications network architectures. Each STR rule describes a global state transition of terminals. Supplementary specifications, such as terminal control and network control, are needed to implement communications services specified by STR rules. These supplementary specifications are described by STR/D rules. Communications services, such as UPT (Universal Personal Telecommunication), are standardized so that they can be provided on a given functional model consisting of functional entities. Specifications for each functional entity in a network are obtained from the two kinds of initially described specifications mentioned above. The obtained specifications are described by STR(L) and STR/D(L) rules, which specify local specifications of a functional entity. These specifications for functional entities are then transformed into software specifications, and finally communications software is generated from these software specifications. This stepwise refinement method makes it possible to generate communications software that can conform to any functional model from service specifications.

Recently actual use of the OSI standardized protocols has begun on client-server systems of LANs, and reduction of OSI protocol overheads in high-speed networks has become more important. We studied a parallel-processing architecture for Message Handling System (MHS), which requires a large amount of protocol processing and is expected to be used widely. We implemented a prototype MHS server with performance scalable to number of CPUs, by porting an existing MHS software with minimum modification. This paper reports on the parallel processing scheme, hardware and software architecture of the prototype, as well as evaluation of the scheme based on measurement and simulation.

A method is presented for reconstructing the surface profile of a perfectly conducting rough surface boundary from the measurements of the scattered far-field. The proposed inversion algorithm is based on the use of the Kirchhoff approximation and in order to determine the surface profile, the Fletcher-Powell optimization procedure is applied. A number of numerical results illustrating the method are presented.

This paper presents a new numerical procedure for solving the scattering wave by the moving surface. Recently, the author and her colleagues have proposed a novel numerical procedure of grid generation having a coordinate line coincident with an arbitrarily shaped moving boundary. The time dependent curvilinear coordinate system which coincides with a contour of moving boundary in a physical region is transformed into fixed rectangular coordinate system. The simple form for the transformation is made possible to choose the function between the physical region and the rectangular computational region. The FD-TD algorithm is exactly solved in this fixed rectangular coordinate system. In this paper, for the application of the FD-TD algorithm to the body fitted grid generation with moving boundary, the stability criterion of FD-TD algorithm for the body fitted grid generation with moving boundary in three dimensions is derived. The stability criterion is shown an upper bound for time step assuring stable numerical solutions. The study of scattering of electromagnetic and acoustic wave from a moving or a rotating body is very important for electromagnetic probing of moving body. The problem has been investigated in the past by numerous authors. One of them is solved by FD-TD method, where the linear interpolation is introduced for the movement. By using the presented transformation technique where time component is added to the grid generation, the time depending coordinate system can be transformed into fixed rectangular coordinate system. Then the problems are directly solved by FD-TD method in the transformed coordinate system. To verify this numemical technique, scattered field is evaluated in the case when a plane wave is normally incident on a moving perfectly conducting flat plate. The numerical results are compared with the exact ones and excellent agreement between them is obtained.

In this paper, we present a digital scheme for fast VLSI range imaging sensor, which is a modification of the analog scheme of existing sensor implemented by T. Kanade. Instead of reading timing information in analog manner, we use a digital scheme which has several advantages over the analog scheme, including area saving, insusceptibility to noise and other undesirable effects. We have implemented a prototype to test feasibility and present its experimental result.

The mechanical impedance of silicone–gel model or chest surface has been measured and the viscoelasticity and effective vibrating radius have been obtained from the impedance. They depend on the distance between the internal block of the silicone–gel/ribs of right chest and the gel surface/skin surface. The 3–D image of internal structure is reconstructed, based on the relation between the distance from the surface and the effective vibrating radius.

Numerical simulations for the (3+1)-dimensional optical-field dynamics of nonstationary pulsed beams that propagate down Kerr-like nonlinear channel waveguides are carried out for what is to our knowledge the first time. Time-resolved intrapulse switching due to spontaneous symmetry breaking of optical fields from a quasilinear symmetric field to a nonlinear asymmetric field is analyzed. A novel instability phenomenon triggered by the symmetry breakdown is found.

An efficient full–wave spectral domain moment method is developed to compute the current distribution and the radiation associated with microstrip discontinuities. Two techniques are used to increase the efficiency of the method of moments algorithm so that a transmission line of moderate electrical size can be analyzed in reasonable time.

In this paper, we propose the architecture of BALANCE (Better Adaptive Load-balancing through Acquiring kNowledge of Characteristic of an Environment) in which users can submit their jobs without acquiring either a status of an environment or characteristics of jobs and servers even in a widely connected heterogeneous network. The architecture of BALANCE includes three types of information bases and two types of daemons. Information bases, namely job, resource, and environment information base, manage the knowledge of job characteristics, available resources for CPUs, and status of the environment, respectively, as a proxy for users. The dispatching daemon selects an adequate server for each job using knowledge stored in the information bases. A service daemon executes each job. On completing each job, a service daemon gets a statistic of the job and returns it to the dispatching daemon where the job came from so that the statistic will be available at the next dispatching time. BALANCE enables an environment (1) to balance the load, (2) to share software functions as well as hardware facilities, and (3) to learn a user's job characteristics. We have implemented a prototype with more than 50 heterogeneous UNIX workstations connected by different networks. Two simple experiments on this prototype are presented. These experiments show a load balancing scheme that takes the characteristics of each job into account.

A new algorithm, which is incorporated into the waveform relaxation analysis, for efficiently simulating the transient response of single lossy transmission lines or lossy coupled multiconductor transmission lines, terminated with arbitrary networks will be presented. This method exploits the inherent delay present in a transmission line for achieving simulation efficiency equivalent to obtaining converged waveforms with a single iteration by the conventional iterative waveform relaxation approach. To this end we propose 'line delay window partitioning' algorithm in which the simulation interval is divided into sequential windows of duration equal to the transmission line delay. This window scheme enables the computation of the reflected voltage waveforms accurately, ahead of simulation, in each window. It should be noted that the present window partitioning scheme is different from the existing window techniques which are aimed at exploiting the non–uniform convergence in different windows. In contrast, the present window technique is equivalent to achieving uniform convergence in all the windows with a single iteration. In addition our method eliminates the need to simulate the transmission line delay by the application of Branin's classical method of characteristics. Further, we describe a simple and efficient method to compute the attenuated waveforms using a particular form of lumped element model of attenuation function. Simulation examples of both single and coupled lines terminated with linear and nonlinear elements will be presented. Comparison indicates that the present method is several times faster than the previous waveform relaxation method and its accuracy is verified by the circuit simulator PSpice.