For each positive integer r 1, a nondeterministic machine M is r path-bounded if for any input word x, there are r computation paths of M on x. This paper investigates the accepting powers of path-bounded one-way (simple) multihead nondeterministic finite automata. It is shown that for each k 2 and r 1, there is a language accepted by an (r + 1) path-bounded one-way nondeterministic k head finite automaton, but not accepted by any r path-bounded one-way nondeterministic k head finite automaton whether or not simple.

This paper presents an attempt to make rational active adversary passive using mechanism design. We propose a secure Generalized Vickrey Auction (GVA) scheme where the procedure executed by a bidder affects neither the prices nor the allocation of the bidder. Therefore, a bidder does not have an incentive to be an active adversary.

Sliding mode control (SMC) is known to be robust with respect to matched uncertainties. However, it does not guarantee stability of systems with mismatched uncertainties. In this paper, we propose a new method to design a sliding surface for linear systems with mismatched uncertainties. The proposed sliding surface provides a new stability criterion of the reduced-order system origin with respect to mismatched uncertainties. A numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Isogeny for elliptic curve cryptosystems was initially used for efficient improvement of order counting methods. Recently, Smart proposed a countermeasure using isogeny for resisting a refined differential power analysis by Goubin (Goubin's attack). In this paper, we examine a countermeasure using isogeny against zero-value point (ZVP) attack that is generalization of Goubin's attack. We show that some curves require higher order of isogeny to prevent ZVP attack. Moreover, we prove that the class of curves that satisfies (-3/p) = 1 and whose order is odd cannot be mapped by isogeny to curves with a = -3 and secure against ZVP attack. We point out that three SECG curves are in this class. In the addition, we compare some efficient algorithms that are secure against both Goubin's attack and ZVP attack, and present the most efficient method of computing a scalar multiplication for each curve from SECG. Finally, we discuss another improvement for an efficient scalar multiplication, namely the usage of a point (0,y) for a base point of curve parameters. We are able to improve about 11% for double-and-add-always method, when the point (0,y) exists in an underlying curve or its isogeny.

A double surface light emission backlight that uses single light-guide plate, has been developed for illumination of two liquid-crystal displays (LCD) on its front and rear, to be used in a cellular phone. The light-guide plate has a trapezoid cross-section with arrays of optical micro deflector and micro prism on the front and the rear surfaces, respectively. Propagated light, forward and backward, inside the light-guide plate are controlled and directed toward LCDs using only two prism sheets with internal reflection characteristic, each for the front and the rear. Only three optical components and four light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are used in the new structure compared with ten components and six LEDs of the current type. Comparing with the current type, the thickness and power consumption of the new backlight are reduced by a factor of 0.59 and 0.67, respectively.

Active replication is a common approach to building highly available and reliable distributed software applications. The redundant nested invocation (RNI) problem arises when servers in a replicated group issues nested invocations to other server groups in response to a client invocation. Automatic suppression of RNI is always a desirable solution, yet it is usually a difficult design issue. If the system has multithreading support, the difficulties of implementation increase dramatically. Intuitively, to design a deterministic thread execution control mechanism is a possible approach. Unfortunately, some modern operating systems implement thread on kernel level for execution fairness. For the kernel thread case, modification on thread control implies modifying the operating system kernel. This approach loses system portability which is one of the important requirements of CORBA or middleware. In this work, we propose a mechanism to perform the auto-suppression of redundant nested invocation in an active replication fault-tolerant (FT) CORBA system. Besides the mechanism design, we discuss the design correctness semantic and the correctness proof of our design.

This paper examines the effect of segmentation mismatch on audio-video transmission by Bluetooth. We focus on the segmentation mismatch caused by the difference between the RFCOMM Maximum Frame Size and the baseband packet payload size. By experiment, we assessed the maximum throughput and media synchronization quality for various types of ACL packets. In the experiment, a media server transferred stored video and audio streams to a single terminal with point-to-point communication; we supposed no fading environment and added white noise by which interference from DSSS systems is modeled. The experiment showed that the effect of segmentation mismatch is large especially when the total bit rate of the two streams is near the channel transmission rate. We also observed that the media synchronization control is effective in compensating for the disturbance by the segmentation mismatch in noisy environments.

Dynamic non-linearities are of more importance in highly-linear high-speed applications such as software radios. In this paper, a fully-analytical approach to estimate the statistics of dynamic non-linearity parameters of pipeline analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) in the presence of circuit non-idealities is presented. These imperfections include the capacitor mismatches and the non-idealities in the operational amplifiers (op-amps). The most two important ADC dynamic non-linearity parameters, the spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) and the signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR) are quantified here and closed-form formulas are presented. These formulas are useful for design automation as well as hand calculations of highly-linear pipeline ADCs. Behavioral simulations are presented to show the accuracy of the proposed equations.

A low cost printed omni-directional spiral-mode mono-pole antenna for wireless communication applications has been designed. This antenna has an integrated open-stub to adjust impedance matching. The 10 dB bandwidth is 336 MHz that achieved 13.7 and radiating characteristics are presented.

In the emerging networks, routing may be performed at various levels of the TCP/IP stack, such as datagram, TCP stream or application level, with possibly different message forwarding modes. We formulate an abstract quickest path problem for the transmission of a message of size σ from a source to a destination with the minimum end-to-end delay over a network with bandwidth and delay constraints on the links. We consider six modes for the message forwarding at the nodes reflecting the mechanisms such as circuit switching, store and forward, and their combinations. For each of first five modes, we present O( m2 + mn log n ) time algorithms to compute the quickest path for a given message size σ. For the last mode, the quickest path can be computed in O(m + n log n ) time.

Classical studies of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) switching elements and in particular the buffer behavior of the Shared Buffer Memory (SBM), assume that all read and write operations of cells to, respectively from, the SBM are executed simultaneously. However, in a real switching element, the inlets (outlets) are scanned sequentially for arriving (departing) cells during the so-called input (output) cycle. Furthermore, the input and output cycles are intermingled, each read operation being followed by a write operation. This is referred to as the Timeslot Interchange Mechanism (TIM). In this paper, we present the analysis of a queueing model that includes the TIM. We model the cell arrival processes on the inlets of the switching element as independent Bernoulli arrival processes. Moreover, we assume that cells are routed from the inlets to the outlets of the switching element according to an independent and uniform process, i.e., the destinations of consecutive cell arrivals on any given inlet are independent and for a given cell all destinations are equiprobable. Under these assumptions, we will derive expressions for the probability generating functions of the queue length in an individual routing group (a logical queue that contains all cells scheduled for the same destination), the (total) queue length in the SBM, and the cell waiting time. From these results, expressions for the mean values and the tail distributions of these quantities are calculated, and the influence of the TIM on the buffer behavior is studied through comparison with a model where all read and write operations occur simultaneously.

A compact wide-band antennas design for the 2.4 GHz/5.8 GHz dual ISM-band application is introduced by combing a single-feed and single-layer microstrip antenna in the form of a T-type strip with an edge perturbation. Good impedance bandwidth performance for the dual-band is observed. The advantage of the design suggested in this paper is its simplicity of manufacturing and low cost.

In this paper, we propose a preemptive test scheduling technique (a test can be interrupted and later resumed) for core-based systems with the objective to minimize the test application time. We make use of reconfigurable core test wrappers in order to increase the flexibility in the scheduling process. The advantage with such a wrapper is that it is not limited to a single TAM (test access mechanism) bandwidth (wrapper chain configuration) at each core. We model the scheduling problem as a Bin-packing problem, and we discuss the transformation: number of TAM wires (wrapper-chains) versus test time in combination with preemption, as well as the possibilities and the limitations to achieve an optimal solution in respect to test application time. We have implemented the proposed preemptive test scheduling algorithm, and we have through experiments demonstrated its efficiency.

We theoretically investigated the resolution of the photonic crystal (PC) K-vector superprism, which utilized the wavelength-dependent refraction of light at an angled output end as a narrow band filter at 1.55 µm wavelength range. Similarly to the case of the conventional S-vector prism, we defined the equi-incident-angle curve against the dispersion surface, and calculated the beam collimation, wavelength sensitivity and resolution parameters for light propagation in the PC. We estimated that the resolution of the K-vector prism is the same as or higher than that of the S-vector prism and the PC can be significantly miniaturized. In addition, we clarified the relation of the S-vector prism phenomenon and the position of the output end in the K-vector prism, and different results for the reduced and repeated zone schemes, which are important for the detailed design. We also confirmed that the light propagation simulated by the FDTD method well agreed with the results of the dispersion surface analysis.

This paper proposes an SoC test architecture generation framework. It contains a database, which stores the test cost information of several DFTs for every core, and a DFT selection part which performs DFT selection for minimizing the test application time using this database in the early phase of the design flow. Moreover, the DFT selection problem is formulated and the algorithm that solves this problem is proposed. Experimental results show that bottlenecks in test application time when using a single DFT method for all cores in an SoC is reduced by performing DFT selection from two types of DFTs. As a result, the whole test application time is drastically shortened.

We show a geometric method to compute the Van der Waals factor 1/r7 between the assemblies of amino acid molecules of the subunits of acetyl choline (abbreviated by Ach: a kind of neuro chemical transmitter) sensitive channel on the post synaptic membrane of the neural system. We induced a analytical geometric formula for the distances between helically arranged ten assemblies of the point amino acid molecules on two interacting membrane perforating poly peptides, M2 helices during channel opening deformation. Detailed geometric parameters have been utilized from reported biophysical measurements. The computed Van der Waals factor decreased rapidly as the slope of the first M2 helix along the central axis of the channel pore has increased. The Van der Waals factor also decreased by an increase in rising angle of the helically arranged amino acids on the M2 helices. The Van der Waals factor increased significantly as the first M2 helix has rotated around the central axis of the channel pore to take an opening position. We discussed the time dependent molecular structural changes of the Ach sensitive channel opening in conjunction with the Allosteric properties of the bio molecules. The molecular mechanism of Ach sensitive channel opening in terms of the Allosteric property may derive from the characteristic helical constitutional nature of the membrane perforating part (M2 helix) of the subunits of the channel molecule.

In this paper, we propose a fault-tolerance mechanism for microprocessors, which detects transient faults and recovers from them. The investigation of fault-tolerance techniques for microprocessors is driven by two issues: One regards deep submicron fabrication technologies. Future semiconductor technologies could become more susceptible to alpha particles and other cosmic radiation. The other is the increasing popularity of mobile platforms. Cellular telephones are currently used for applications which are critical to our financial security, such as mobile banking, mobile trading, and making airline ticket reservations. Such applications demand that computer systems work correctly. In light of this, we propose a mechanism which is based on an instruction reissue technique for incorrect data speculation recovery and utilizes time redundancy, and evaluate our proposal using a timing simulator.

We present a new approach to the loop scheduling problem, which excels previous solutions in two important aspects: The resource constraints are formulated using flow graphs, and the initiation interval λ is treated as a rational variable. The approach supports heterogeneous processor architectures and pipelined functional units, and the Integer Linear Programming implementation produces an optimum loop schedule, whereby a minimum λ is achieved. Our flow graph model facilitates the cyclic binding of loop operations to functional units. Compared to previous research results, the solution can provide faster loop schedules and a significant reduction of the problem complexity and solution time.

It is still an open question whether software agents should be personified in the interface. In order to study the effects of faces and facial expressions in the interface, a series of experiments was conducted to compare subjects' responses to and evaluation of different faces and facial expressions. The experimental results obtained demonstrate that: 1) personified interfaces help users engage in a task, and are well suited for an entertainment domain; 2) people's impressions of a face in a task are different from ones of the face in isolation. Perceived intelligence of a face is determined not by the agent's appearance but by its competence; 3) there is a dichotomy between user groups which have opposite opinions about personification. Thus, agent-based interfaces should be flexible to support the diversity of users' preferences and the nature of tasks.

The autocorrelation peak reduction due to wavelength mismatches between an encoder and a decoder in wavelength hopping-time spreading (WH-TS) two-dimensional optical CDMA systems is analyzed and verified by experiments. The tolerance of the wavelength mismatch is then obtained through the analysis of the system bit error rate (BER) performance. The results show that no significant BER performance is degraded only by the wavelength mismatches less than 0.1 nm which corresponds to 25 percent of the typical fiber Bragg gratings' spectral width.