In this work, distributed dynamic channel assignment strategies with violation to the reuse pattern using vehicular mobility information for highway microcellular environments are proposed. It is shown that, when vehicular mobility information is included in the acquisition channel policy, the outage probability degradation because of the use of channels with one violation to the reuse pattern is negligible. Also, it is shown that, using different moving direction strategies it is possible to control the tradeoff between capacity and quality of service. The local packing algorithm (LP), was modified to allow the use of two different moving direction strategies with violation to the reuse pattern, resulting the VDLP1 and VDLP2 algorithms. The characteristics of user mobility are considered and a free-flowing vehicular traffic is assumed. Simulation results show that the use of vehicular mobility information in the distributed dynamic channel algorithms with violation to the reuse pattern, produce a considerable increase in the system capacity at the expense of an insignificant degradation of the quality of service. For a grade of service (GOS) of 0.1, the VDLP1 and VDLP2 carry 4% and 1.5% more traffic than the maximum packing algorithm, respectively. For the same GOS, the VDLP1 and VDLP2 carry 68% and 64% more traffic than the fixed channel assignment algorithm, respectively.

Recent development of compact and powerful portable computers and mobile phones and proliferation of the Internet will enable mobile multimedia communications. From the viewpoint of implementing multimedia services into mobile communications, it allows us to predict that traffic characteristics of mobile networks change. For planning, designing, and operating mobile multimedia networks, it is important to investigate traffic models which take the effect of multimedia services into consideration. This paper investigates population of active users in a micro-cell and proposes a traffic model for mobile multimedia networks. This model describes a population process of active users in a micro-cell in diffusion model, and its characteristics include self-similarity and activity of mobility. We also made an evaluation of network performance by using simulation, in order to show that characteristics of the proposed traffic model have impact on planning and designing networks.

When a mobile station with a call in progress moves across cell boundary in a cellular mobile communications system, the system must switch the circuit to the base station in the destination cell to enable uninterrupted communications in a process called "handoff. " However, if a circuit to the destination base station cannot be secured when a handoff is attempted, the call is forcibly terminated. Studies have therefore been performed on methods of decreasing the percentage of forcibly terminated calls by giving handoff calls priority. With the aim of simplifying system design, we propose a system for automatically setting the number of circuits reserved for handoff based on the handoff block rate. In this paper, we describe this system and evaluate static traffic characteristics taking into account reattempt calls, the occurrence of which can have a major effect on system performance. We also consider the effects of the proposed system on service quality since giving priority to handoff calls and decreasing the rate of forced terminations results in a tradeoff with the blocking rate of new call attempts. Finally, we evaluate the traffic characteristics associated with the number of control requests, an important element in estimating the processing capacity required by control equipment at the time of system design.

This paper proposes a fast target cell search algorithm used during intermittent reception in the idle mode of a mobile station (MS) for inter-cell asynchronous W-CDMA mobile radio. In the proposed scheme, since the base station (BS) informs a MS of the relative average received timing differences between the scrambling code of its BS and those of the surrounding BSs in addition to the scrambling codes, the MS only has to search over the restricted timing duration for the informed scrambling codes. Therefore, the target cell search (i.e., in which the number of candidate cells is limited) can be achieved as fast as in inter-cell synchronous systems. A computer simulation demonstrates that the target cell search time per one super frame (= 720 msec) at the cell detection probability of 95% is accomplished within 5.9 msec (this corresponds to the intermittent time ratio required for the target cell search to become 0.82%), when the transmit power ratios of the common pilot channel (CPICH) and common control physical channel (CCPCH) required for cell search to a dedicated traffic channel (DTCH) are 3 and 6 dB, respectively. In this simulation, the average power delay profile was generated by averaging the instantaneous ones (it was coherently accumulated pilot signal over a 512-chip duration (= 125 µsec) using 4 correlators) over a period of three super frames for 19 target cell-site candidates using the search window with a 10-chip duration (= 2.4 µsec).

This paper experimentally demonstrates the possibility of 2-Mbps data transmission using a 5-MHz bandwidth (chip rate of 4.096 Mcps) wideband DS-CDMA (W-CDMA) mobile radio link in frequency-selective multipath fading environments. To reduce the mobile station transceiver complexity, three-orthogonal code multiplexing with the spreading factor (SF) of 4 is employed. In such a small SF transmission, the increased multipath interference (MPI) significantly degrades the transmission performance. We consider two-branch antenna diversity reception and fast transmit power control (TPC) as well as channel coding to mitigate the influence of MPI. Laboratory experimental results show that the use of antenna diversity reception is significant and that the fast TPC improves the transmission performance. Furthermore, the impact of the fading maximum Doppler frequency, fD, and that of the channel coding interleaving size, Tint, on the achievable BER performance are also investigated.

Since mobile communication systems using optical rays (optical mobile communication systems) do not radiate radio waves from the mobile terminals, they are expected to be used in environments containing sensitive electronic equipment. However, the placement and direction of the optical receivers must be suitably determined for mobile communication because light has high directivity. In optical mobile communication systems, the communication quality varies with the direction of the mobile terminal. Therefore, we examined the angle over which communication is possible at various measurement points and defined it as the communication angle. The mean opinion score (MOS) was obtained to assess the communication quality using the communication angle as a parameter. In this paper, the two situations, walking and sitting down, was considered the way optical mobile communication systems actually used. We found that for walking, when the communication angle was over 180 degrees, the MOS was over 3 and over 50% of users could communicate usefully. When used sitting down, the communication quality did not depend on the communication angle, but only on whether or not the user could communicate in the direction he/she was facing. Thus, if the communication angle in the service area is over 180 degrees, it is possible to communicate in practical situations, even while walking.

Patterns exist in many contexts and can be considered the useful information for decision making. However, many patterns are not directly visible without careful presentation. Here, we describe an interactive visualization approach for browsing patterns in a history of interacting with a computer system. While a user is carrying out his/her business using computers, activities with respect to time and location are captured to determine the situational interactions. We first integrate the timeline and geographical map to create a structure to visualize spatiotemporal events in the interaction history. The spiral-based interactive visualization technique, presented in this paper, is then used to derive patterns according to the user-specified different spatial viewpoints on the map. In this study, we demonstrate how patterns can be used as visual statements for the analysis of a spatiotemporal data set in the information visualization.

An ultra low-noise and highly selective, experimental 2-GHz band cryogenic receiver front end (CRFE) has been newly developed for cellular base stations. It utilizes a high-Q superconducting filter, a very low noise cryogenic amplifier, and a highly reliable cooler that is very compact. Fundamental design of the CRFE is investigated. First, the equivalent noise temperature of the CRFE and the effect of improving CRFE sensitivity on base station reception are discussed. Next, essential technologies and fundamental characteristics of each component are described. Finally, influence of antenna noise, such as ground noise and man-made noise, is estimated through field tests both in urban and suburban areas.

Mobile radio and Internet communications services are penetrating our society at an exponential rate of growth. The Internet is the most important driving force towards establishing a multimedia society. Mobile communication systems add an important capability to our communications society, i. e. , mobility. The third generation mobile communications system called IMT-2000 is expected to play an important role in this soon-to- arrive multimedia society. Wideband mobile services based on IMT-2000 will soon become a reality (early 2001). First, we look at the trends of wireless access technologies, centering on IMT-2000. Wideband direct sequence code division multiple access (W-CDMA) will be a major component of a global IMT-2000 standard. Then, we address advanced wireless techniques, i. e. , interference cancellation and employing an adaptive antenna array, which can enhance W-CDMA at a later date. Finally, requirements are discussed for future wireless techniques that will support a fully mobile multimedia communications society.

This paper presents upper bounds on the average bit error rate (BER) of coherent detection of PSK and differential detection of DPSK with adaptive arrays in fading environments. A model where a line of sight (LOS) component and Rayleigh distributed scattering components arrive at a receiver with specific arrival angles is used considering the correlation of signal between multiple antennas. The upper bounds are expressed in a simple matrix form using signal and interference-plus-noise correlation matrices. Examples for the case of 4-element adaptive arrays are given to illustrate the tightness and the application of this upper bounds.

To implement soft handoff in cellular communication systems that employ code division multiple access (CDMA), it is necessary to establish communication lines between the switch and multiple base stations and distribute the communication data via these multi-connections to the base stations simultaneously. This means that, when soft handoff is performed with the same amount of communication line resources as hard handoff, the blocking probability is higher than for hard handoff, and service quality is thus worse. Furthermore, handoffs occur more frequently as the size of cells becomes smaller, and this increases the probability of forced terminations. Switches must be endowed with greater processing capacity to accommodate the more frequent handoffs. The use of the queuing handoff method can be expected, in general, to mitigate forced termination probability compared with the immediate handoff method. In this regard, we propose a prioritized queuing handoff method that gives priority to fast-moving mobile stations (MSs) as a way to mitigate forced terminations even more than the non-priority queuing method without appreciably increasing the processing load. We then compare the traffic characteristics of our proposed method with these of three other methods in micro cell systems--immediate method, non-priority queuing method, and conventional hard handoff method without multi-connections--by computer simulation. Here, considering that the proposed method gives priority to fast-moving calls, traffic characteristics for these methods were evaluated separately for slow- and fast-moving MSs. The results reveal that proposed method can reduce the forced termination probability and total call failure probability more than non-priority queuing method without having an appreciable impact on slow-moving calls.

Path loss and delay profile characteristics of the 3-GHz band are measured and compared for line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) paths in a suburban residential area. For the LOS path, the path loss increases as a function of distance squared; and hence the propagation is considered as the free space propagation. For the NLOS paths, it is found that corner losses occur ranging from 28 to 40 dB, and subsequent losses increase as a function of distance squared, but in case of there are open spaces, spaces between the rows of houses or roads intersecting LOS road, the increase was small. The delay spread for the LOS path increased in proportion to power of the distance; and the exponents ranging from 1.9 to 2.9 is found smaller than in urban areas. The delay spreads for the NLOS paths were several times greater than that for the LOS path, and the rate of delay spread increase with distance was found to be several orders of magnitude greater for NLOS paths than the LOS path.

In a multihop network, radio packets are often relayed through inter-mediate stations (repeaters) in order to transfer a radio packet from a source to its destination. We consider a scheduling problem in a multihop network using a graphtheoretical model. Let D=(V,A) be the digraph with a vertex set V and an arc set A. Let f be a labeling of positive integers on the arcs of A. The value of f(u,v) means a frequency band assigned on the link from u to v. We call f antitransitive if f(u,v)f(v,w) for any adjacent arcs (u,v) and (v,w) of D. The minimum antitransitive-labeling problem is the problem of finding a minimum antitransitive-labeling such that the number of integers assigned in an antitransitive labeling is minimum. In this paper, we prove that this problem is NP-hard, and we propose a simple distributed approximation algorithm for it.

This paper reports the prehistory of software defined radio (SDR) studies in Japan. In 1999, a boom in the field of SDR started in Japan, and this year an ARIB study group completed its final report on SDR. SDR is a recently proposed technology concept and has attracted the attention of many communication engineering researchers. SDR will become one of the most important technologies in advanced communication, broadcasting and intelligent transportation systems on the 21st century. Although SDR has several attractive features, there are also many design issues to be solved. In this work we have examined these issues and discussed a new design methodology for wireless receivers in the SDR era.

In this paper, we propose an architecture for environmental information services that make it possible for applications to adapt in dynamically changing environments. These services provide information necessary for applications to adapt to its environment. Unlike other information services, the information provided includes not only raw information but also abstract or policy-applied information. The variety of information enables applications to choose suitable level of information. A simple adaptive application can use highly abstract information instead of detailed raw information required by complicated adaptive applications. The policy-applied information enables adaptive applications to share decisions by the user and cooperate among them. Applications can efficiently adapt to changes in the environment since our architecture provides notification of these changes. This notification does not disturb applications since the conditions for the notification are controlled by each application. We apply the proposed architecture to a mobile internetworking environment and present a prototype implementation of environmental information services called CM1. We also discuss our primary evaluation of CM1 with the Personal File System, which is a network file system with dynamic adaptation features, for mobile internetworking environments.

The Mobile Agent technology helps in the development of applications in open, distributed and heterogeneous environments such as the Internet and the Web, but it has to answer to the requirements of security and interoperability to achieve wide acceptance. The paper focuses on security and interoperability, and describes a Secure and Open Mobile Agent (SOMA) programming environment where both requirements are main design objectives. On the one hand, SOMA is based on a thorough security model and provides a wide range of mechanisms and tools to build and enforce flexible security policies. On the other hand, the SOMA framework permits to interoperate with different application components designed with different programming styles. SOMA grants interoperability by closely considering compliance with the OMG CORBA and MASIF standards. SOMA has already shown the feasibility and effectiveness of the approach for the development of flexible and adaptive applications in several areas, particularly in network and systems management.

This paper presents a novel technique for analyzing and designing local communication systems for distributed mobile robotic systems (DMRS). Our goal is to provide an analysis-base guideline for designing local communication systems to efficiently transmit task information to the appropriate robots. In this paper, we propose a layered methodology, i. e. , design from spatial and temporal aspects based on analysis of information diffusion by local communication between robots. The task environment is classified so that each analysis and design is applied in a systematic way. The spatial design gives the optimal communication area for minimizing transmission time for various cooperative tasks. In the temporal design, we derive the information announcing time to avoid excessive information diffusion. The designed local communication is evaluated in comparison with global communication. Finally, we performed simulations and experiments to demonstrate that the analysis and design technique is effective for constructing an efficient local communication system.

Standard client-server workflow management systems have an intrinsic scalability limitation, the central server, which represents a bottleneck for large-scale applications. This server is also a single failure point that may disable the whole system. We propose a fully distributed architecture for workflow management systems. It is based on the idea that the case (an instance of the process) migrates from host to host, following a process plan, while the case activities are executed. This basic architecture is improved so that other requirements for Workflow Management Systems, besides scalability, are also contemplated. A CORBA-based implementation of such architecture is discussed, with its limitations, advantages and project decisions described.

This paper describes a transaction model for open environments based on mobile agents. Mobile agent-based transactions combine mobility and the execution of control flows with transactional semantics. The model presented represents an approach for providing reliability and correctness of the execution of distributed activities, which fulfills important requirements of applications in Open Environments. The presented transaction model is based on a protocol for providing fault tolerance when executing mobile agent-based activities. This protocol is outlined in this paper. With this protocol, if an agent executing an activity at an agency (logical "place" in a distributed agent environment) becomes unreachable for a long time, the execution of the activity can be recovered and continue at another agency. The fault tolerance approach supports "multi-agent activities," i. e. , activities where some of its parts are spawned to execute and migrate asynchronously in relation to other parts. The described transaction model, called the basic (agent-based) transaction model, is an open nested transaction model. By being based on the presented fault tolerance mechanism, subtransactions can be executed asynchronously in relation to their parent transactions and agent-based transactions can explore alternatives in the event of agent unavailability. The model fulfills requirements for supporting the autonomy of organizations in a distributed agent environment.

A narrow-band digital land mobile system has been developed that operates in the frequency bands of 150 and 400 MHz, which are commonly used by transportation-related companies, local government, and public-sector organizations--and are therefore very congested. The number of users that can be accommodated in these bands is almost doubled by reducing the channel separation to 6.25 kHz, about half that of a conventional FM system. A carrier bit rate of 9.6 kbps is achieved by using π/4 shift QPSK modulation with a roll-off factor of 0.2. Laboratory and field testing showed that: (1) Without propagation delay spread, a BER of 10-2 was obtained without using space diversity. (2) With a propagation delay spread of 10 µs, a BER of 610-3 was obtained without space diversity. These measurements confirmed the technical feasibility of this narrow-band system. Its widespread implementation will help mitigate the congestion in private radio systems.