The presence of a new surface-wave-like mode on CPWs of infinite width produces a complex transition region at the onset of leakage, involving the unusual simultaneous combination of a coupling region and a spectral gap. An examination of this region leads to a clear physical explanation of why sharp minima occur in the leakage behavior.

Adaptive maximum likelihood differential detection implemented by a reduced state-transition Viterbi algorithm (called adaptive 3-state RSTVDD) is presented for adaptive reception of M-ary differential phase shift keying (DPSK) signals transmitted over additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and frequency-nonselective Rayleigh fading channels. The adaptive 3-state RSTVDD comprises 1DD, a differential encoder, and reverse modulator, followed by reduced-state (3-state) Viterbi DD (RSVDD) with adaptive phase reference estimation. The adaptive 3-state RSVDD detector estimates the sequence of phase errors of the 1DD output. The phase reference estimator is an adaptive least mean square (LMS) filter with a step-size that adapts to changing channel conditions. The final detected symbol sequence is the modulo-2π sum of the 1DD output phase sequence and the detected phase error sequence. The bit error rate (BER) performance of M-ary DPSK, M=4, 8, and 16, in the AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels is evaluated by computer simulation to show that adaptive 3-state RSTVDD can achieve almost the same BER performance as the previously developed adaptive M-state RSVDD. Since the number of trellis states is reduced to three irrespective of M, the adaptive 3-state RSTVDD has lower computation complexity and it is particularly useful for M-ary DPSK with M8.

In order to exploit fully the frequency diversity benefits of multicarrier modulation (MCM), and the very nature of the frequency selective radio channel, we investigate an erasure decoded π/4 QDPSK MCM (ED-MCM) by employing simple Hamming (block) code. We propose the threshold-free criteria, i. e. relative minimum receive power test (RMRPT) and relative maximum decision error test (RMDET) for erasure generation and evaluate ED-MCM's performance by applying these tests to average received power, average decision error, instantaneous symbol/bit decision errors. At a normalized delay spread of 1/64, computer simulation results indicate a coding gains of 6.0 - 7.0 dB with ED-MCM at a BER of 10-3. RMDET/RMRPT based erasure decoding yields a 1.5 - 2.5 dB improvement over the conventional forward error correction (FEC) decoding at a BER of 10-5. The simulation results at other normalized delay spreads, i. e. , 1/32, 1/16 are also obtained. The erasure criteria (RMRPT and RMDET) applied to average values of received power/decision error yield consistently better performance over error only decoding. The results indicate that the erasure decoding based on relative (threshold-free) measures clearly promises an improved performance of the MCM system.

we evaluate the effect of express lots on production dispatching rule scheduling and cost in VLSI manufacturing final test process. In the assignment of express lots, we make comparisons of two rules, First In First Out (FIFO) rule which is widely used and WEIGHT+RPM rule which considers the time required for jig and temperature exchanges, the remaining processing time of the machine in use and the lot waiting time in queue. When using FIFO rule, the test efficiency begins to deteriorate and the test cost per chip begins to increase, if the content of express lots exceeds 15%. Furthermore, for 30% of express lots' content, the number of total processed lots decreases by 19% and the test cost per chip increases by 22% in comparison to the cases including no express lots. For WEIGHT+RPM rule, however, the test efficiency does not deteriorate and the test cost per chip does not increase even if the content of express lots is increased up to 50%. When we use WEIGHT+RPM rule, Express Lots Tolerances (ELTs), defined as the maximum content of express lots which permits the deterioration of the system characteristics by 5%, are about three times as high as ones when using FIFO rule. It is also found that WEIGHT+RPM rule maintains higher ELTs against the changes in the numbers of planned chips and prepared jigs as compared with FIFO rule.

Peculiar patterns of SiO2 contamination around the periphery of the contact trace caused by silicone vapor under switching at the boundary of 1.6 W were confirmed. For micro relays, the electrical power conditions are restricted to lower level. Therefore, it is important to ascertain the upper limit of the electrical power conditions for normal operation. The peculiar pattern is important as it is recognized as the first stage of the origination of contact failure. Causes of this pattern were discussed from the viewpoints of temperature distribution in the contact trace, molten metallic bridge, micro arc discharge, and supply of silicone vapor with oxygen. It is proposed that during the closing contacts, as maximum Joule heating occurs at the periphery of the true contact area and silicone vapor with oxygen is easily supplied at the periphery, SiO2 grows around the contact trace. For the opening contacts, as the bridge or micro arc appears, silicone vapor with oxygen is supplied only outside of the contacts. Thus SiO2 is formed mainly around the periphery of the trace. Moreover, SiO2 was scattered radially depending on the sputtering of molten metal under rupture of the bridge. Therefore, the peculiar pattern forms as a result.

In a DC 50 V/3.3 A circuit, the spatial distributions of the spectral intensities of breaking arcs near the cathode for silver contacts were measured on the contact surfaces of three different shapes: flat and spherical (1 mm radius and 2 mm radius) and the arc temperature and the metal-vapor quantity were calculated from the spectral intensities. The influence of the contact shape on the arc temperature and the metal-vapor quantity were also examined, as well as the arc tracks on the contact surfaces and the gain and loss of the contacts. Findings show the distributions of spectral intensities are non-symmetrical from the beginning to the extinction of the breaking arc for the flat contact: However, they are symmetrical in the latter half of the breaking in spite of the number of breaking arcs and the shape of contact surface for the spherical contact. The relationship between the area of the arc tracks on the cathode and the shape of contact surface is the same as the relationship between the existent areas of measured spectra and the shape of the contact surface. For the spherical contacts, the arc temperature and the metal-vapor quantity are affected a little by the radius of the curved of contact surface and the number of breaking arcs. However, the longer the arc duration, the higher the metal-vapor quantity is in the latter period of the breaking arc. For the flat contacts, the metal-vapor quantity is lower than those for the spherical contacts. The gain and loss of the contacts are less and the arc duration is shorter for the flat contact than for the spherical contact.

Simple expressions for constriction resistance of multitude conducting spots were analytically formulated by Greenwood. These expressions, however, include some approximations. Nakamura presented that the constriction resistance of one circular spot computed using the BEM is closed to Maxwell's exact value. This relative error is only e=0. 00162 [%]. In this study, the constriction resistances of two, five and ten conducting spots are computed using the boundary element method (BEM), and compared with those obtained using Greenwood's expressions. As the conducting spots move close to each other, the numerical deviations between constriction resistances computed using Greenwood's expressions and the BEM increase. As a result, mutual resistance computed by the BEM is larger than that obtained from Greenwood's expressions. The numerical deviations between the total resistances computed by Greenwood's expressions and that by the BEM are small. Hence, Greenwood's expressions are valid for the total constriction resistance calculation and can be applied to problems where only the total resistance of two contact surfaces, such as a relay and a switch, is required. However, the numerical deviations between the partial resistances computed by Greenwood's expression and that by the BEM are very large. The partial resistance calculations of multitude conducting spots are beyond the applicable range of Greenwood's expression, since Greenwood's expression for constriction resistance of two conducting spots is obtained by assuming that the conducting spots are equal size. In particular, the deviation between resistances of conducting spots, which are close to each other, is very large. In the case of partial resistances which are significant in semiconductor devices, Greenwood's expressions cannot be used with high precision.

The authors observed the correlation between electromagnetic noise and trace of discharge on surface for various surface areas of Cu in opening copper (Cu)-carbon (C) electrodes. In the case of Cu (anode)-C (cathode), the duration of sporadic burst noise generated by discharge becomes longer when Cu surface area is increased, and trace of discharge (melting area) distribute widely on electrodes. Also the forms of the burst noise in the start of arc are classified, and the traces of discharge correspond to each forms. The forms of the burst noise depend on the pattern which the trace of discharge are formed. As these results, the authors showed the correlation between form of burst noise and trace of discharge on electrode surface.

Excitation of magnetostatic surface waves by coplanar waveguide transducers is analyzed by using the integral kernel expansion method. The Fourier integral for the current density is derived in terms of an unknown normal component of the magnetic flux density on slot region of a coplanar waveguide. The integral kernel is expanded into a series of Legendre polynomials and then applying Galerkin's method to the unknown field reduces the Fourier integral to a system of linear equations for the unknown coefficients. In this process, we should take into account the edge conditions which show nonreciprocal characteristics depending on frequency. The present method shows excellent agreement with experiments.

Page-based DSM systems suffer from false sharing since they use a large page as a coherence unit. The optimal page size is dynamically affected by application characteristics. Therefore, a fixed-size page cannot satisfy various applications even if it is small as a cache line size. In this paper we present a software-only coherence protocol called BCP (Buddy Coherence Protocol) to support multiple page sizes that vary adaptively according to the behavior of each application during run time. In BCP, the address of a remote access and the address of the most recent local access is compared. If they are to the different halves of a page, BCP considers it as false sharing and demotes the page to two subpages of equal size. If two contiguous pages belong to the same node, BCP promotes two pages to a superpage to reduce the number of the following coherence activities. We also suggest a mechanism to detect data sharing patterns to optimize the protocol. It detects and keeps the sharing pattern for each page by a state transition mechanism. By referring to those patterns, BCP selectively demotes the page and increases the effectiveness of a demotion. Self-invalidation of the migratorily shared page is also employed to reduce the number of invalidations. Our simulations show that the optimized BCP outperforms almost all the best cases of the write-invalidate protocols using fixed-size pages. BCP improves performance by 42.2% for some applications when compared against the case of the fixed-size page.

Since manufacturing processes inherently fluctuate, LSI chips which are produced from the same design have different propagation delays. However, the difference in delays caused by the process fluctuation has rarely been considered in most of existing high-level synthesis systems. This paper presents a new approach to module selection in high-level synthesis, which exploits the difference in functional unit delays. First, a module library model which assumes the probabilistic nature of functional unit delays is presented. Then, we propose a module selection problem and an algorithm which minimizes the cost per faultless chip. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm finds optimal module selections which would not have been explored without manufacturing information.

The equivalence between Aperture Field Integration Method (AFIM) and Physical Optical (PO) is discussed for polyhedron surfaces in this paper. The necessary conditions for the equivalence are summarized which demand complete equivalent surface currents and complete apertures. The importance of the exact expressions for both incident and reflected fields in constructing equivalent surface currents is emphasized and demonstrated numerically. The fields from reflected components on additional surface which lies on the Geometrical Optics (GO) reflection boundary are evaluated asymptotically. The analytical expression enhances the computational efficiency of the complete AFIM. The equivalent edge currents (EECs) for AFIM (AFIMEECs) are used to extract the mechanism of this equivalence between AFIM and PO.

A factorization, which provides a factored form, is an extremely important part of multi-level logic synthesis. The number of literals in a factored form is a good estimate of the complexity of a logic function, and can be translated directly into the number of transistors required for implementation. Factored forms are described as either algebraic or Boolean, according to the trade-off between run-time and optimization. A Boolean factored form contains fewer number of literals than an algebraic factored form. In this paper, we present a new method for a Boolean factorization. The key idea is to build an extended Boolean matrix using cokernel/kernel pairs and kernel/kernel pairs together. The extended Boolean matrix makes it possible to yield a Boolean factored form. We also propose a heuristic method for covering of the extended Boolean matrix. Experimental results on various benchmark circuits show the improvements in literal counts over the algebraic factorization based on Brayton's Boolean matrix.

This paper experimentally confirms the throughput characteristics of TCP and Network Direct Memory Access (Network DMA), our proposed data transfer protocol, over a large delay-band-width link. The experiments clarify that the various problems of TCP over large delay-bandwidth links include limited window size, data retransmission mechanism, and protocol processing overhead. The test results suggest that we must improve not only protocol itself but also the protocol processing architecture to realize Gbit/s class throughput over such links. To avoid these problems, Network DMA realizes high speed memory copy across a network by labeling each packet with its memory address without host CPU intervention; protocol processing is done by firmware on the network interface card. Moreover, it realizes selective retransmission by using the memory addresses. Test results show that Network DMA achieves the sustained throughput of 535Mbit/s over a 10,000km 622Mbit/s ATM link and over 400Mbit/s effective throughput even when the cell loss ratio is 10-4.

In this paper, millimeter-wave radar cross section (RCS) characteristics for rough surface is investigated by means of an approximation method of the magnetic field integral equation and the feasibility of road condition sensing is discussed. The RCS measurement at 94 GHz is carried out in order to verify the numerical result, thereby the numerical results are in good agreement with the measured RCS. The dependence of RCS on the radar incidence angle and surface roughness is investigated where the cross-polarized RCS characteristic is also considered.

In recent years, several global network systems using non-stationary satellites have been proposed. Some of them are announced to start services within years. We also have several experimental systems with stratospheric aircrafts. In the future, the radio communication system using stratospheric aircrafts will be one of the promising media for personal communications. The question of how to establish the optimal communication under such circumstance seems to be still open. In this paper, performance evaluations of wireless communication systems using LEO satellites and stratospheric aircrafts are proposed. We will show some proper communication parameters to improve competence of mobile communication in the such systems as well.

Network traffic contains many symptoms of various network faults. Symptoms of faults aggregate and are manifested in the aggregate traffic characteristics generally observed by a traffic monitor. It is very difficult for a manager or an NMS (Network Management Station) to isolate the symptoms manifested in the aggregate traffic characteristics. Especially, transit networks, like a backbone network, deal with many types of traffic. So, symptom isolation must be efficient. In this paper, we propose a powerful algorithm for symptom isolation. This algorithm is based on the popular SNMP-based RMON technology. Using dynamically constructed aggregate, fresh symptoms can be isolated efficiently. We apply the algorithm to two operational transit networks which connects some LANs and WANs, and evaluate it using trace data collected from these networks. The results show a significant improvement in the fault management capability and accuracy. Furthermore, the characteristics of fault symptoms and the various factors for effective system configuration are discussed.

Conventional approach for frequency estimation usually assume a single tone without data modulation. In many applications such an assumption, realized by using either a separate pilot beacon or synchronization preamble is not feasible. This paper deals with frequency estimation of phase-modulated carriers in the absence of timing information and known data pattern. We introduce new frequency estimators that are based on the generalized maximum likelihood principle. The communication channels under consideration include both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels and correlated Rician fading channels. For the latter class, we distinguish between the case when the fading (amplitude) process is tracked and that when it is not tracked.

This paper introduces a new kind of false path, which is sensitizable but does not affect the decision of the maximum clock frequency. Such false paths exist in multi-clock operations controlled by waiting states, and the delay time of these paths can be greater than the clock period. This paper proposes a method to detect these waiting false paths based on the symbolic state traversal. In this method, the maximum allowable clock cycle of each path is computed using update cycles of each register.

Network survivability against various unexpected failures is one of indispensable technologies for the B-ISDN infrastructure. Self-healing algorithm is the technique to automatically restore the failed VP's (virtual paths) in the backbone ATM network. Since the B-ISDN transports various kinds of traffic with various levels of priority (Grade of Service: GoS), the effective self-healing algorithm should orderly restore the failed VP's based on the priority of their traversing traffic. This paper proposes the priority based restoring self-healing algorithm, which realizes the priority based restoring function by the two-timer mechanisms and a simple capacity reserving protocol. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can schedule the restoration process so that the failed VP's with higher priority are restored before the others with lower priority. In addition, the significant improvement in restoration speed for the highest priority traffic class has been achieved.