An ad hoc wireless network is a collection of mobile hosts that self-forming a temporary network without any required intervention of centralized system. In such environment, mobile hosts, which are not within transmission range from each other, require some other intermediate hosts to forward their packets to form a multi-hop communication. In this paper, an ad hoc network is modeled as a graph. Two nodes within the transmission range of each other are connected by an edge. Given a finite set of mobile nodes, a finite set of edges and a new multicast request, the wireless multicast tree problem (WMTP) is to find a multicast tree for the request so that the multicast loss probability is minimized. We prove the WMTP is NP-complete and a heuristic algorithm, called Degree-Based Multicast Routing Algorithm (DBMRA), is proposed. Based on the DBMRA, one algorithm was proposed to establish backup nodes for the multicast tree to improve the reliability. A node is needed to be backup only when it has a high probability to disconnect the multicast tree seriously. The qualification of a node to be backup is subject to a computed threshold, which is determined by a statistic analysis. The theoretical and experimental analyses are presented to characterize the performance of our algorithms.

A 14. 4-in. diagonal EL display with 640128 pixels has been developed in red/green multicolor structures by using a new phosphor layer consisting of Zn1-xMgxS:Mn and ZnS:Mn. The display is designed for 240 Hz-frame rate, enabling the luminance to be improved by a factor of two. In addition, the contrast ratio is strongly enhanced by optimizing the black background structure and color filters. Improved characteristics make it possible for the EL panel to meet the requirements for the public information display taking advantages of high-reliability, crisp image and wide-viewing angle. Furthermore, the possibility of full-color EL displays will be described on the basis of "color by white" approach.

A highly reliable and highly efficient fuel-cell energy system is being developed that can run on various fuels and is suitable for a cogeneration system for telecommunications facilities. In this system, electrical power supplants the mains power and heat energy is used for air conditioning. Using this fuel-cell power plant as an emergency generator and ensuring the reliability of telecommunications requires the use of alternate fuels. This plant can run on liquefied petroleum gas(LPG)if the pipeline gas supply stops. Fuel substitution characteristics, and DC and AC interconnection characteristics have been experimentally demonstrated for connections by using a 200-kW phosphoric acid fuel cell and a 150-kW engine generator.

This paper proposes a protocol to support mobility in the Internet with a new encapsulation technique. IP-squared (IP2). A basic idea to support mobility is as follows; 1) to define two IP addresses for each mobile host that indicate the host itself and its geographical location (logical and geographical identifiers), 2) to maintain an association of the logical identifier with the geographical identifier and 3) to continue communications between hosts by converting their logical identifiers to the corresponding geographical identifiers dynamically wherever they migrate. The association is called mobility binding. A goal of IP2 is to propose a mobility support feature which can simultaneously realize efficient routing paths to mobile hosts and less control traffics to maintain the mobility bindings into the current Internet Protocol without any modifications to both the conventional protocols and nodes. IP2 forms the efficient routing paths by enabling intermediate nodes to process the encapsulated datagrams. The key technique for this feature is a new header detection algorithm based on CRC checksum calculation and an effective usage of a header structure. Percentage of efficient routing paths can be adaptively controlled, depending on dispositions of the nodes which can en -and de capsulate datagrams appropriately based on the detection algorithm and the mobility bindings. The mobility binding must be updated whenever a mobile host migrates to another network. IP2 adopts an updating scheme combining self refreshment and on demand updating modes with taking a mechanism to form the efficient routing paths into considerations. It is shown that IP2 can acheive both an efficient routing path formation and a low traffic for mobility binding maintenance through analytical evaluations.

In a (k,n) threshold digital signature scheme, k out of n signers must cooperate to issue a signature. In this paper, we show an efncient (k,n) threshold EIGamal type digital signature scheme with no trusted center. We first present a variant of EIGamal type digital signature scheme which requires only a linear combination of two shared secrets when applied to the (k,n)-threshold scenario. More precisely, it is a variant of Digital Signature Standard (DSS) which was recommended by the U.S. National Institute ofStandard and Technology (NIST). We consider that it is meaningful to develop an efficient (k,n)-threshold digital signature scheme for DSS. The proposed (k,n)-threshold digital signature scheme is proved to be as secure as the proposed variant of DSS against chosen message attack.

In the course of the development of the "Hyper Hospital," a novel medical care system constructed in the computerized information network using virtual reality as its human interface, we devised a virtual reality world creating system which allows users to con figure the world interactively. The re-configuration of the virtual world was designed to be carried out without interruptions of activity and the world can continue to exist during the reconfiguration process. This facility comprises an important part of our Hyper Hospital system because one of our major goals of this proposal of the Hyper Hospital is to restore maximum freedom for patients in the medical care system. Discussion was given in the present study with respect to the basic requirements of the system to be realized, including discussions on the permission given to the participants of different levels, and means by which to modify the structure of the virtual world. A preliminary implementation was described following this general consideration. The developed prototype was shown to be practically suitable to the test of our virtual environment applied to realistic medical scenes.

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.

We have developed a Virtual Playground," which allows various activities such as virtual playground and virtual visiting areas for hospitalized children who can not usually go outside. A Virtual Playground system is composed of TV monitors, joysticks, cameras, video transmission devices, and a graphics workstation. In a Virtual Playground environment, children can experience what is impossible or difficult during their stay in a hospital. We have completed a couple of experiments already and discussed its effects.* In our recent work, we also introduced a simple version of the Cave display to the Virtual Playground system.

The Hyper Hospital" is a novel medical care system which will be constructed on an electronic information network. The human interface of the Hyper Hospital based on the modern virtual reality technology is expected to enhance patients' ability to heal by providing computer-supported on-line visual consultations. In order to investigate the effects and features of on-line visual consultations in the Hyper Hospital, we conducted an experiment to clarify the influence of electronic interviews on the talking behavior of interviewees in the context of simulated doctor-patient interactions. Four types of distant-confrontation interviews were made with voluntary subjects and their verbal and non-verbal responses were analyzed from the behavioral point of view. The types of interviews included three types of electronic media-mediated interviews and one of a live face to face interview. There was a tendency in the media-mediated interviews that both the latency and the duration of interviewees' utterances in answering questions increased when they were compared with those of live face to face interviews. These results suggest that the interviewee became more verbose or talkative in the media-mediated interviews than in the live interviews. However, the interviewee's psychological tension was generally augmented in the media-mediated interviews, which was suggested by the delay of the initiation of conversations as compared to the conventional face-to-face interviews. We also discuss the applicability of media-mediated interviews by an electronic doctor which we are studying as a functional unit of our Hyper Hospital, a network based virtual reality space for medical care.

In the modern hospital, the physical or chemical therapeutic procedure is regarded as paramount and psychological or spiritual care is quite frequently put aside. The goal of the Hyper Hospital" is to correct this. The Hyper Hospital is constructed in the computer based electronic network using an alternate reality system, such as the virtual reality system, as the human-machine-human interface. The nodes of the Hyper Hospital belong to a patient and also to a variety of medical care facilities; for example, the out patient office, the nursing care center, the medical examination unit, the operating theater, etc. The Hyper Hospital space consists of various kind of spaces including the alternate reality space owned and exclusively controlled by the patient himself or herself, and even the real space as well. Most of the physical contact, such as the visit to the out patient office by the patient, is actualized by the electronic connection of the patient private space and the public space of the hospital system. Prescription drugs, special care, and even the admission to the ward will be integrated into the distributed electronic network. To realize such a system, we need to solve many problems, such as the research on the network oriented architecture of the alternate reality, the development of human-machine interface particularly fitted to various disabilites, the study of the behavior of normal and diseased people, etc. The concept of the Hyper Hospital we are proposing is believed to be a new paradigm of the next generation of medical care.

Recently, high-dose implantation and low temperature annealing have become one of the key techniques in shallow junction formation. To fabricate shallow junction in quarter-micron CMOS VLSIs, it is well known being important to evaluate the transient enhanced diffusion (TED) of implanted dopants at low temperature furnace annealing, which is caused by the damages of implantation. We have newly studied the TED phenomena by a compact empirical method. This approach has merits of simplicity and better physical intuition, because we can use only minimal parameters to describe the TED phenomena. The other purpose of this work is to evaluate two-dimensional transient enhanced diffusion focusing on phosphorus implant and furnace annealing. Firstly, we defined effective diffusivity of the TED and determined extraction procedure of the model parameters. Number of the TED model parameters is minimized to two, which describe effective enhanced diffusivity and its activation energy. The parameters have been extracted from SIMS profile data obtained from samples which range 1013-31015 cm-2 and 850-950 for phosphorus implanted dose and annealing temperature, respectively. Simulation results with the extracted transient enhanced diffusion parameters show good agreements well with the SIMS data within 2% RMS-error. Critical doses for phosphorus enhanced diffusion have been determined in 950 annealing condition. No transient enhanced diffusion is observed at 950 under the implant dose of 11013 cm-2. Also the transient enhanced diffusivity is leveled off over the dose of 11014 cm-2. It is seen that the critical dose in TED phenomena might be temperature dependent to a certain extent. We have also verified that two-dimensional effect of the TED phenomena experimentally. Two-dimensional phosphorus n- layer is chosen to verify the simulation. It was concluded that the TED has isotropic nature in phosphorus n- diffusion formation.

We have calssified parenchymal echo patterns of cirrhotic liver into four types, according to the size of hypoechoic nodular lesions. Neural network technique has been applied to the characterization of hepatic parenchymal diseases in ultrasonic B-scan texture. We employed a multi-layer feedforward neural network utilizing the back-propagation algorithm. We carried out four kinds of pre-processings for liver parenchymal pattern in the images. We describe the examination of each performance by these pre-processing techniques. We show four results using (1) only magnitudes of FFT pre-processing, (2) both magnitudes and phase angles, (3) data normalized by the maximum value in the dataset, and (4) data normalized by variance of the dataset. Among the 4 pre-processing data treatments studied, the process combining FFT phase angles and magnitudes of FFT is found to be the most efficient.

Phosphorus-doped amorphous or polycrystalline silicon can yield a conformal, low resistance, thermallystable plug for the high-aspect-ratio, sub-half-micron contactholes found in current development prototypes of future 64 and 256 Mega-bit DRAMs. When directly contacted to a silicide layer, however, such as WSix found in polycide gate or bit line metallization/contact structures, the outdiffusion of phosphorus from the doped-silicon layer into the silicide can occur, resulting in an increase in resistance. The characteristics of both the doped-silicon and WSix layers influence the outdiffusion. The grain size of the doped silicon appears to control diffusion at the WSix/doped-silicon interface while the transition of WSix from an as-deposited amorphous to a post-annealed polycrystalline state appears to help cause uniform phosphorus diffusion throughout the silicide film. The results of phosphorus pre-doping of the silicide to reduce the effects of outdiffusion are dependent upon the relative material volumes and interfacial areas of the layers. Due to the effectiveness of the TiN barrier layer/Ti contact layer structure used in Al-based contacts, Ti and TiN were evaluated on their ability to prevent phosphorus outdiffusion. Ti reacts easily with doped silicon and to some extent with WSix, thereby allowing phosphorus to outdiffuse through the TiSix into the overlying WSix. TiN, however, is very effective in preventing phosphorus outdiffusion and preserving polycide interface smoothness. A WSix/TiN/Ti metallization layer on an in situ-doped (ISD) silicon layer with ISD silicon-plugged contactholes yields contact resistances comparable to P+-implanted or non-implanted WSix layers on similar ISD layers/plugs for contact sizes greater than approximately 0.5 µm but for contacts of 0.4 µm or below the trend in contact resistance is lowest for the polycide with TiN barrier/Ti contact interlayers. A 20 nm-thick TiN film retains its barrier characteristics even after a 4-hour 850 anneal and is applicable to the silicide-on-doped-silicon structures of future DRAM and other ULSI devices.

Diffusion of phosphorus impurities from a polycrystalline silicon films into a silicon substrate was investigated as a function of the mean concentration of phosphorus in a polycrystalline silicon film at the first diffusion stage. We presented that good control of the redistribution of implanted phosphorus impurities was possible by optimizing the normalized dose, which is the value: [the total dose of phosphorus impurities]/[the polycrystalline silicon film thickness], in the case of samples both with and without an arsenic doped layers. In the range where the normalized dose was less than 1.52.51020 cm-3, deeper junctions were formed in samples with an arsenic doped layer. In the range where the normalized dose was more than 1.52.51020 cm-3, however, deeper junctions were formed in samples without any arsenic doped layer rather than in samples with an arsenic doped layer. These results mean that formation of the junction in the device structure where a high concentration phosphorus doped polysilicon layer is stacked on to the high concentration arsenic layer embeded at the surface of the substrate can be restricted by optimizing the normalized dose. Moreover, a trade-off relationship between suppressing phosphorus diffusion and maintaining low contact resistance against normalized doses was also observed.