For two decades, our colleagues and we have been developing our multiple learning environments in mathematical education for upper secondary school learners, and have been reporting our learner-centered system in the latest four WCCE Conferences (WCCE/1981/1985/1990/1995). In our latest learning multimedia system, individual learners have to meet a complex network structure in which objectives are arranged in the form of non-linear linking and to proceed actively to their own goals. In order to support their exploring learning, we developed several instructional navigation tools from an instructional view point. This paper presents our instructional navigation technology and its tools. The feature of our present system is to provide a supportive environment where individual learners can set up their own goals, create their own paths for their goals through instructional materials, and construct their own instructional structure based on instructional strategies. This feature is remarkably different from a traditional CAI system in which learners are only directed through the courseware via a linear selection of menus. Also this feature fundamentally differs from general navigation technologies by which a user is able to traverse a series of nodes among non-linear network structure, because our navigation must present individual learners with some easily learnable sequences of objectives based on their object and interest. For this purpose, this system has three chracteristic technologies, i.e. focusing, sequencing and clustering ones. These are very useful for them to make their decisions in order to reach their own goals. This paper consists of (1) ideas of instructional navigation, (2) map technology and (3) navigation technology.

The present paper describes a novel approach to interconnecting and assembling components of MEMS at room temperature. The main drawback of the conventional bonding methods is their rather high process temperatures. The new method, which is referred as the surface activated bonding (SAB), utilizes the phenomena of the adhesion between two atomically clean solid surfaces to enable the bonding at lower temperature or even at room temperature. In the bonding procedure, the surfaces to be bonded are merely brought into contact after sputter-cleaning by Ar fast atom in ultrahigh vacuum conditions. TEM observations of the bonded interfaces show that a direct bonding in atomic scale is achieved in the interface between the micro-components. Based on the concept of this new bonding technology, a micro-assembly system was developed. The micro-assembly system is operated by means of a virtual manipulation system in which 3D model of the micro-components are manipulated virtually in a computer graphics constructed in the world wide web (WWW) scheme. The micro-assembly system will provide a new design tool of three dimensional MEMS by combining the possibility of the flexible assembly and the intuitive operations.

This letter presents a realization of active current-mode resonator with complex coefficients using CCIIs. The resonator can be used for cascade or leapfrog configuration of high-order bandpass filters with complex coefficients. For realizing the resonators, only the grounded capacitors and the grounded resistors as passive elements are required, therfore the resonator is suitable for the integrated circuit realization. The letter shows that the response error of the proposed circuit caused by nonideality of active components is more easily compensated than that of voltage-mode counterpart. Experimental result is used for verifying the feasibility of the proposed resonator.

As current-voltage characteristics of GaAs MESFET differ from those of BJT and MOSFET and n-channel FET is only practically in use, the development of GaAs MESFET analog integrated circuits is left behind. In this paper, two circuit techniques to improve the performance of GaAs MESFET analog circuits are provided. The one is to realize a high impedance active load circuit which dose not need CMFB (Common Mode Feed Back) to achieve stable DC biasing point. The other is to cancel the harmonic destortion caused by nonlinear characteristics of GaAs MESFETs. As an application example of the proposed circuits, biquad low-pass and band-pass filters are realized and simulated by HSPICE to verify the validity of the proposed method.

A method is proposed for forming hillock-free aluminum-based alloy bus lines for active-matrix liquid-crystal displays (LCDs). Aluminum (Al)-based alloy films are deposited using an Al target containing boron (B) or nickel (Ni) in a sputtering ambient containing nitrogen. The Al-Ni films deposited using an Al target containing Ni showed excellent hillock resistance: virtually no hillock formation after thermal treatment at around 400 and no significant increase in resistivity. These films also showed good patternability with a simple wet etching: a smooth line edge and a gently tapered profile. These films are thus suitable for the bus lines of active matrices.

A new magnetostrictive thin-film cantilever actuator and a new thin-film walking mechanism were developed. The actuators were made of magnetostrictive amorphous Tb-Fe and Sm-Fe thin films, deposited on the opposite sides of a polyimide film substrate. These actuators need not power supply cables because they were remotely driven by external magnetic fields. The static deflection of a 3-mm-long cantilever actuator was as large as 100 µm at 300 Oe field. Moreover the application of ac resonant frequency field of the same intensity yielded deflection of above 500 µm. The walking mechanism ran as fast as in the order of cm/s. The forward and backward running were possible depending on the frequency of applied magnetic field. Such unique characteristics suggest that magnetostrictive thin-film actuators are useful in MEMS applications.

Recently, torque-transmission one-way tip articulated fiberscopes with a working channel have been developed. With this type of scopes, force is transmitted from the operator's hands to the tip of the fiberscope to obtain an adequate field of view. Micro actuators are expected to increasingly replace the operator's hands. Shape memory alloy (SMA) coil spring actuators are well suited to this purpose because of their large displacement compared with conventional actuators. In the fabrication of SMA coil springs, we examined fabrication conditions such as the tension and pitch of the SMA wire. As a result, we have successfully fabricated coil springs with a minimum outer diameter of 76 µm. SMA wire 25 µm in diameter and stainless steel wire 30 µm in diameter were used. As an application using SMA actuators, an active fiberscope (using an image guide fiber with 4200 pixels and light guide fibers) 2 mm in outer diameter with SMA actuators was designed and fabricated. We investigated the mechanical properties of the bending part in designing the SMA actuators. The specifications of the SMA coil springs are determined by the displacement and the force required of the pull wire. The relationship between the displacement of the pull wire and the number of windings of the SMA coil spring was calculated. The effective number of windings of SMA coil spring was found to be seventeen when using wire of 0.3 mm in diameter. The tip of the fiberscope was bent approximately 60 degrees and returned to the straight position when a current was applied to each of the SMA coil springs. A clear picture of the fiberscope which followed the tip bending operation could be received on the monitor. This SMA actuator can be easily extended for bending in many directions by configuring several of these mechanisms.

We propose a modification of the perfect shuffle connectivity graph used in optical networks, which ensures the balance of the traffic load on the WDM channels. When applied to the simple but popular case of 8 nodes, connected through a shortest path routing algorithm, it allows to increase the aggregate capacity of more than 14%.

The valid region for the application of the conventional Improved Circuit Theory (ICT) in the analysis of wire antennas is established. To further extend the application of ICT to the analysis of much longer antennas, Tai's trial function is used to derive new formulas for the impedance matrix. Unlike the conventional ICT trial function, Tai's trial functions lead to input impedances which are finite irrespective of antenna length. Results of the new ICT impedance formulas are comparable in accuracy with the general method of moments. Moreover, since all the elements of the new formula have been expressed in closed-form, the resulting ICT algorithm is still superior in terms of computer running time with lesser storage requirement compared to other conventional methods like method of moments. This would enhance ICT applications in CAD/CAE systems.

Photovoltaic devices capable of generating more than 200 volts with an area of 1 cm2 have been developed for directly driving microactuators such as piezoelectric or electrostatic actuators. The micro-devices interconnect 285 micro cells (unit cell size: about 0.5 mm 2.0 mm) in series, and have an open circuit voltage (Voc) of 207 volts, a short circuit current (Isc) of 36.6 µA, a maximum output power (Pmax) of 4.65 mW and a fill factor (F.F.) of 0.615 under AM (Air Mass) 1.5 and 100 mW/cm2 illumination. This voltage is the highest in the world for the area of 1 cm2. The series connection is precisely processed by a focused laser beam, thereby significantly reducing the area needed for device connections. It has been confirmed that a piezoelectric polymer can be directly driven by the electrical output in evaluating the potential of the devices to be used as a microactuator's power source.

Effective collaboration in ComputerSupported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) environments is nowadays an important research topic. It deals with two main problems: the configuration of an appropriate learning group and the intelligent task distribution in the practice of domain knowledge. In order to have effective collaboration in a CSCL environment, we have proposed a set of software agents that assist the learners to select their learning tasks, according to their capabilities and the possibilities of collaboration between them. In this paper the cooperation among software agents is presented as the key point for effective collaboration in CSCL environments. In this kind of environments the learner must have enough collaboration and learning possibilities, being motivated with the experience of social knowledge construction. We have been working on the problem of effective collaboration in CSCL environments, based on the cooperation between software agents developed for GRACILE, our Japanese Grammar CSCL environment. Before, we have proposed intelligent agents that assist the learners. Our next step has been the design of the cooperation between agents in order to create possibilities of effective collaboration in a virtual community of practice. In order to evaluate the performance of our agents we made several simulations. The results obtained from these simulations of diverse types of learning groups provided us with guidelines for the configuration of groups in CSCL environments, where effective collaboration is possible.

In this letter, we propose a blind adaptation method for the decision feedback equalizer (DFE). In the proposed scheme, a DFE is divided into two parts: a front-end linear equalizer (LE), and a prediction error filter (PEF) followed by a feedback part. The coefficients of the filters in each part are updated using constant modulus algorithm and decision feedback prediction algorithm, respectively. The front-end LE removes intersymbol interference ISI, and the PEF with feedback part whitens the noise to reduce noise power enhanced by the LE. Pre-processing by the LE enables the DFE to equalize nonminimum phase channels. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme provides reliable convergence, and the resulting symbol error rate is much less than that of the conventional LE and very close to that of the DFE using a training sequence.

As a low-cost optical transceiver for access network systems, we propose a new monolithic transceiver photonic integrated circuit (PIC) fabricated by bandgap energy controlled selective metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE). In the PIC, all optical components are monolithically integrated. Thus, the number of optical alignment points is significantly reduced and the assembly costs of the module is decreased compared to those of hybrid modules, that use silica waveguides. Moreover, by using selective MOVPE, extremely low-loss buried heterostructure waveguides can be fabricated without any etching. In-plane bandgap energy control is also possible, allowing the formation of active and passive core layers simultaneously without complicated fabrication. The transceiver PIC showed fiber-coupled output power of more than 1 mW and receiver bandwidth of 7 GHz. Modulation and detection operations at 500 Mb/s were also demonstrated. As a cost effective fabrication technique for monolithic PICs, bandgap energy controlled selective MOVPE is a promising candidate.

This paper presents a method of multiple fault diagnosis in sequential circuits by input-sequence pairs having sensitizing input pairs. We, first, introduce an input-sequence pair having sensitizing input pairs to diagnose multiple faults in a sequential circuit represented by a combinational array model. We call such input-sequence pair the sensitizing sequence pair in this paper. Next, we describe a diagnostic method for multiple faults in sequential circuits by the sensitizing sequence pair. From a relation between a sensitizing path generated by a sensitizing sequence pair and a subcircuit, the proposed method deduces the suspected faults for the subcircuits, one by one, based on the responses observed at primary outputs without probing any internal line. Experimental results show that our diagnostic method identifies fault locations within small numbers of suspected faults.

A novel CDMA multi-user detection scheme, orthogonal decision-feedback detector (ODFD), is proposed for a synchronous CDMA system in this paper. It is robust for its near-far resistance and high multi-user detection efficiency with a performance similar to that of decorrelating decision-feedback detector (DDFD) but with a reduced complexity. The ODFD scheme employs a match-filter bank that matches a set of ortho-normal sequences. The ortho-normal sequences are generated by the Gram-Schmidt orthogonalisation procedure based on the spreading codes. The ODFD algorithm involves only with the ortho-normal coefficient-matrix which requires no frequent recalculations even when system parameters change. Successive decision-feedback detection is carried out immediately at the output of the ODFD match-filter bank without matrix inversion operations, resulting in a much simplified structure.

Hankel's asymptotic expansions are frequently used for numerical calculation of cylindrical functions of complex order. We beforehand need to estimate the precisions of the cylindrical functions calculated with Hankel's asymptotic expansions in order to use these expansions. This letter presents comparatively simple expressions for rough estimations of the errors of the cylindrical functions calculated with the asymptotic expansions, and features of the errors are discussed.

In this paper we discuss the limiting behavior of the search direction of the steepest descent method in minimizing the Rayleigh quotient. This minimization problem is equivalent to finding the smallest eigenvalue of a matrix. It is shown that the search direction asymptotically alternates between two directions represented by linear combinations of two eigenvectors of the matrix. This is similar to the phenomenon in minimizing the quadratic form. We also show that these eigenvectors correspond to the largest and second-smallest eigenvalues, unlike in the case of the quadratic form.

In-line transceiver chip emitting at 1.3 µm and receiving at 1.55 µm is described regarding the crosstalk occurring between the 1.3-µm laser and the 1.55-µm integrated photodiode. Contribution of optical and electrical crosstalk to the overall crosstalk is measured and discussed. Techniques to overcome the crosstalk are proposed and demonstrated by showing the feasibility of system compatible diplex sensitivities.

A wavelength tunable DBR laser monolithically integrated with an EA-modulator as a WDM system light source was fabricated by selective area MOVPE growth. The lasing wavelength and band-gap energy were simultaneously controlled on the same epitaxial wafer by using a modulated grown thickness of InGaAsP/InGaAsP MQW layers. A wavelength tuning range of 3.5 nm, an output power of 3 mW, and an extinction ratio of 14 dB for 3 V were achieved. The measured 3 dB frequency bandwidth was 2 GHz. No significant change in modulation characteristics were observed when wavelength tuning by injecting the current into the DBR.

Roundoff error due to iterative computation with finite wordlength degrades the quality of decoded images in fractal image coding that employs a deterministic iterated function system. This paper presents a state-space approach to roundoff error analysis of fractal image coding for grey-scale images. The output noise variance matrix and the noise matrix are derived for the measures of error and the output noise variance is newly defined as the pixel mean of diagonal elements of the output noise matrix. A quantitative comparison of experimental roundoff error with analytical result is made for the output noise variance. The result shows that our analysis method is valid for the fractal image coding. Our analysis method is useful to design a real-time and low-cost decoding hardware with finite wordlength for fractal image coding.