A new high-performance fault-tolerant ATM switching network is proposed. This network contains the baseline network and has many redundant switching elements to enhance the fault tolerance and throughput of the conventional multistage interconnection networks. The presented routing algorithm is very simple and can support a very huge number of paths between each input-output pair. The paths can be used to route cells when internal cell contentions occur in switching elements. The redundant switching elements at the last stage offer two access points to the output ports to resolve the output conflict. Performance analysis and simulation results show that this network has better maximum throughput even for faulty conditions. Among various networks, it has the largest number of redundant paths, and the greatest unit node contribution and unit edge contribution.

An automatic transistor-level performance fault tracing method is proposed which is applicable to the case where only CAD layout data is available in the CAD-linked electron beam test system. The technique uses an integrated algorithm that combines a previously proposed transistor-level fault tracing algorithm and a successive circuit extraction from CAD layout data. An expansion of the algorithm to the fault tracing in a combined focused ion beam and electron beam test system which enables us to measure signals on the interconnections in the lower layers is also described. An application of the technique to a CMOS model layout with about 100 transistors shows its validity.

Ba ferrite films were deposited epitaxially on ZnO underlayer from targets with composition of BaO-6.5Fe2O3 at substrate temperature of 600 using the facing targets sputtering apparatus. The gas mixture of Ar and Xe of 0.18 Pa and O2 of 0.02 Pa was used as the sputtering gas and the dependences of crystallographic and magnetic characteristics on the partial Xe pressure PXe(0.0-0.18 Pa) were investigated. Films deposited at various PXe were composed of BaM ferrite and spinel crystallites, and the minimum centerline average roughness Ra of 8.3 nm was obtained at PXe of 0.10 Pa. Since saturation 4πMs of 5.1 kG and perpendicular anisotropy constant Ku1 of 4.23105 Jm-3 were larger than those of bulk BaM ferrite of 4.8 kG and 3.30105 Jm-3, respectively, these films appeared promising for use as perpendicular recording media.

This paper discusses a coding-based selection approach to a communication aid for the severely motor disabled. Several approaches including row-column scanning are briefly described, then we propose a new selection scheme based on the theory of adaptive coding. They are compared each other with respect to average switch activations in generating some text samples.

We present basic strategies for memory-restricted forgetting mechanisms of cases and propose a forgetting strategy which is a combination of the basic strategies. The effectivness of the proposed strategy for improving the performance of case-based reasoning systems is demonstrated through simulations in the electric power systems.

The radiation and scattering characteristics of a metal-strip grating of finite extent printed on the surface of a dielectric waveguide are analyzed within a two-dimensional model. The diffraction properties are obtained from a solution to the problem of surface mode scattering by a finite number of metal strips, taking into account their mutual couplings. The analysis is based on the electromotive force technique which does not require a grating to be periodic. Obtained results concern the antenna applications of radiating gratings excited by the dominant TE or TM surface mode of the wavegude. The proposed approach can be applied not only to the design of radiators but also filters based on periodic strip gratings.

In practical applications of the artificial boundary surfaces, such as corrugation and strips on a grounded dielectric slab, the surfaces have finite sizes. The diffraction fields from anisotropic surface of this kind can not be calculated using conventional diffraction coefficients. In this paper, uniform diffraction coefficients for the strips on a grounded dielectric slab are given in the sense of physical optics, as functions of incident angle, polarization and structural parameters of the surface. Firstly, the incident plane wave is decomposed into the two special polarization directions. Then uniform diffraction coefficients originally derived for isotropic surfaces with arbitrary impedance can be applied for each polarization component. Finally, expressions for the diffraction coefficients from the anisotropic surface are given as the sum of those for two polarization components. The validity of the diffraction coefficients is verified theoretically and experimentally.

In the paper a problem of wave scattering from a local penetrable inhomogeneity inside a planar dielectric waveguide is studied. The surface potentials method is applied for the problem and the set of systems of BIE is obtained and analyzed from the view-point of their numerical solution. The effective numerical algorithm based on the Nyström method is proposed. The equations for a scattering diagram and mode conversion coefficients are derived.

The rapid progress in semiconductor technology and chip mounting technology has made it possible to produce portable computes with high performance, such as notebook computers and PDAs. Portable computes can be used anytime and anywhere. By using the features of mobility, some cooperative works anywhere with multiple portable computers have been realized. However, present networks such as a wireless LAN or a public wireless network are too limited to permit portable computers to cooperate with each other. As the result, a new networking technology for portable computers has been highly requested. In this paper, we propose a novel network technology suitable for face-to-face communication, which we call "Wireless DAN" (Desk Area Network). Here, face-to-face communication is a communication between people who can directly see faces and hear voices with each other. In Wireless DAN, computers independently recognize the network configuration around them. Although present computer networks assume permanence and all computers must be registered before the system can be used, Wireless DAN enables a computer to communicate with computers nearby at any place the user goes without any complicated procedures or dedicated network equipment such as a base station. We also present a new support system for face-to-face cooperative work, which makes it possible to join or leave a meeting while it is in progress. We have developed an experimental system of Wireless DAN and the support system, which is comprised of notebook personal computers with an existing peer-to-peer infrared LAN card. The support system has been implemented using the functions provided by Wireless DAN and thus the system has been simplified. With the experimental system, we confirmed that Wireless DAN operates effectively for face-to-face communication.

Portable terminals have the potential of providing information and communication services not only to computer experts at their offices but also to many users being in a variety of daily life situations. The current user interfaces (UIs) of portable terminals are not suitable for a novice user of computers; they require some knowledge on computers from a user. To overcome this problem, the authors tried to implement their knowledge on the daily life in the design of a UI for novice users. As a result, two UI mechanisms, called Novice Interface and Graphical Metaphor Interface, which provide operations, expressions, and data structures in a way similar to those usually used in daily life are proposed. Novice Interface is to provide easy to use environment. It adopts a direct manipulation device with three buttons and a model of data structures, called Small World Model, that limits the number of functions and the depth of hierarchical menu. Graphical Metaphor Interface, being an extension of Novice Interface, is to provide services with a display screen that makes them well-understandable for any user. The proposed UI mechanisms were implemented in a prototype terminal and its software platform. The former offers several applications of the information services (like teleshopping, home banking, or database retrieval) and the communication services (like pen-based image mail, software fax, or telewriting); the latter enables those application programs to provide a consistent UI.

This paper presents a new learning method to improve noise tolerance in Fuzzy ART. The two weight vectors: the top-down weight vector and the bottom-up weight vector are differently updated by a weighted sum and a fuzzy AND operation. This method effectively resolves the category proliferation problem without increasing the training epochs in noisy environments.

The integration of both real-time systems and fault-tolerant systems has been emerged as one of the greatest challenges of this decade. It is called a responsive system, which has the objective to optimeze both timeliness and reliability. The performance measure in responsive systems is responsiveness that tells how probable a system executes correctly on time with faults occurred. While there have been some achievements in communication protocols and specification, we believe that scheduling problems in responsive systems are not understood deeply and sufficiently, yet. In this paper, we discuss the scheduling problem in responsive systems. At first, we investigate the issues in the scheduling and propose the precise definition of the responsiveness. We also suggest a scheduling algorithm called Responsive Earliest Deadline First (REDF) for preemptive aperiodic tasks in a uniprocessor system. We show that REDF is optimal to obtain the maximum responsiveness, and the time complexity is analyzed to be (N 2N). By illustrating a contradictory example, it is shown that REDF can be enhanced if a constraint on tasks is released.

Empirical studies confirm that the received radio signals in certain cellular systems are well modelled by Nakagami statistics. Therefore, performing relevant systems studies can be potentially useful to a system designer. A very useful statistical measure for characterizing the performance of a mobile radio system is the probability of outage, which describes the fraction of time that the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) drops below some threshold. A more refined criterion for the outage is the failure to simultaneously obtain a sufficient SIR and a minimum power level for the desired signal. Thus, we derive new expressions for the probability of outage where a mobile unit receives a Nakagami desired signal and multiple, independent, cochannel Nakagami interferers. A salient feature of our results is that, unlike some previous studies, the outage expressions do not restrict the Nakagami fading parameter, m, to strictly integer values. Furthermore, since the received signals in mobile radio also experience log-normal shadowing, we analyze the case where the received signals are modelled by a composite of Nakagami and log-normal distributions. Outage probabilities are computed and graphically presented for several cases. The effect of specifying a minimum signal requirement for adequate reception is found to introduce a floor on the outage probability. It is also found that shadowing in macrocellular systems severely degrades the desired quality of service by increasing the reuse distance necessary for a given outage level.

Silver is a fundamental material for electrical contact application. In spite of high electrical conductivity and economical advantage, silver surface is corroded easily by environment contained sulfide. A corrosion product as Ag2S deteriorates the property of contact reliability. In order to examine contact reliability, the acceleration tests have been accepted widely in industries. In the present study, the acceleration factor of the contact reliability for the sulfide film on the surface of silver contact which was subject to the tarnish acceleration test was clarified in comparison with the film grown in a normal office environment. The accelerated environment based on the Japan Electric Industry Development Association (JEIDA) standard No.25 was adopted. This environment is consisted of air contained 3 ppm H2S gas under 40, 85-95% RH. The growth rate of the sulfide film (Ag2S) was evaluated by applying the ellipsometry analysis. In the results, it was found that growth of Ag2S film of 500 in thickness in the normal office environment required corrosion time of 3103 h. This thickness of 500 caused increase in contact resistance of 0.1-1.0 (Ω). However, in the accelerated environment, corrosion time decreased to 1.7 h for same thickness. Therefore, the acceleration factor was obtained by comparison of these time as 1.8103 for the standard test of JEIDA.

We study all-to-all broadcasting in hypercubes with randomly distributed Byzantine faults. We construct an efficient broadcasting scheme BC1-n-cube running on the n-dimensional hypercube (n-cube for short) in 2n rounds, where for communication by each node of the n-cube, only one of its links is used in each round. The scheme BC1-n-cube can tolerate (n-1)/2 Byzantine faults of nodes and/or links in the worst case. If there are exactly f Byzantine faulty nodes randomly distributed in the n-cabe, BC1-n-cube succeeds with a probability higher than 1(64nf/2n) n/2. In other words, if 1/(64nk) of all the nodes(i.e., 2n/(64nk) nodes) fail in Byzantine manner randomly in the n-cube, then the scheme succeeds with a probability higher than 1kn/2. We also consider the case where all nodes are faultless but links may fail randomly in the n-cube. Broadcasting by BC1-n-cube is successful with a probability hig her than 1kn/2 provided that not more than 1/(64(n1)k) of all the links in the n-cube fail in Byzantine manner randomly. For the case where only links may fail, we give another broadcasting scheme BC2-n-cube which runs in 2n2 rounds. Broadcasting by BC2-n-cube is successful with a high probability if the number of Byzantine faulty links randomly distributed in the n-cube is not more than a constant fraction of the total number of links. That is, it succeeds with a probability higher than 1nkn/2 if 1/(48k) of all the links in the n-cube fail randomly in Byzantine manner.

Mesa structures have been investigated to optimize a buried-heterostructure (BH) for a GaInAsP/InP surface-emitting (SE) laser regrown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), and it has been found that a square mesa top pattern of which the sides are at an angle of 45 to the 011 orientation is suitable. A 1.3-µm GaInAsP/InP square buried heterostructure (SBH) SE laser with this mesa structure has been demonstrated and low-threshold CW oscillation (threshold current Ith=0.45 mA) at 77 K and low-threshold room-temperature pulsed oscillation (Ith=12 mA) have been obtained.

The buried oxide nonintegrities, represented as the equivalent fixed oxide charge and interface trap densities at both the upper and lower interface of buried oxide, are evaluated for low-dose and high-dose SIMOX wafers, and their effects on device characteristics are investigated. The equivalent fixied oxide charge and trap densities at the lower interface, which are measured with buried oxide capacitors, are negligibly small in as-fabricated SIMOX wafers. This result enables us to make an analytical model of the parasitic drain/source-to-substrate capacitance in an SOI MOSFET, in which the effect of the depletion layer under the buried oxide is considered. The influence of thinner buried oxide and process-induced fixed oxide charge on the parasitic capacitance is explored with this model. The equivalent fixed oxide charge and trap densities at the upper interface are evaluated by the threshold voltage measurement in an SOI NMOSFET. The principle of this evaluation as well as the experimental technique are described in detail. The oxide charge and trap densities at the upper interface are higher than those at the lower interface for both SIMOX wafers. With a new model of the subthreshold slope based on a two-dimensional potential analysis the influence of the trap at the upper interface is discussed.

In this paper face feature detection and tracking are discussed, using methods called edge pixel counting and deformable circular template matching. Instead of utilizing color or gray scale information of the facial image, the proposed edge pixel counting method utilizes the edge information to estimate the face feature positions such as eyes, nose and mouth, using a variable size face feature template, the initial size of which is predetermined by using a facial image database. The method is robust in the sense that the detection is possible with facial images with different skin color and different facial orientations. Subsequently, by using a deformable circular template matching two iris positions of the face are determined and are used in the edge pixel counting, to track the features in the next frame. Although feature tracking using gray scale template matching often fails when inter frame correlation around the feature areas are very low due to facial expression change (such as, talking, smiling, eye blinking etc.), feature tracking using edge pixel counting can track facial features reliably. Some experimental results are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

In this paper, we study the following node-to-node fault tolerant routing problem: In the presence of up to n-1 faulty nodes, find a fault-free path which connects any two non-faulty nodes s and t in an n-connected graph. For node-to-node fault tolerant routing in n-dimensional hypercubes Hn, we give an algorithm which finds a fault-free path s t of length at most in O(n) time, where d(s, t) is the distance between s and t. We also show that a fault-free path s t in Hn of length at most d(s, t)2i, 1i, can be found in time. For node-to-node fault tolerant routing in n-dimensional star graphs Gn, we give an algorithm which finds a fault-free path s t of length at most min{d(Gn)3, d(s, t)6} in O(n) time, where is the diameter of Gn. It is previously known that, in Hn, a fault-free path s t of length at most d(s, t) for d(s, t)n and at most d(s, t)2 for d(s, t)n can be found in O(d(s, t)n) time, and in Gn, a fault-free path s t of length at most min{d(Gn)1, d(s, t)4}can be found in O(d(s, t)n) time. When the time efficiency of finding the routing path is more important than the length of the path, the algorithms in this paper are better than the previous ones.

In this work, we present an 8-state trellis code for bit interleaved 16-QAM and the BER performance on Rayleigh fading channel is evaluated. We analyze the BER and show that the effective code length and minimum productive distance are also important criterion for code design on bit interleaved system. We design the code by considering not only minimum Hamming distance but also the effective code length and minimum productive distance. As a result, we found that the scheme employing the code achieves good BER performance on Rayleigh fading channel even with the finite interleaving size.