In the beginning of the new century, many information appliance (IA) products will replace traditional electronic appliances to help people in smart, efficient, and low-cost ways. These successful products must be capable of communicating multimedia information, which is embedded into the electronic appliances with high integration, innovation, and power-throughput tradeoff. In this paper, we develop a codesign procedure to analyze, compare, and emulate the multimedia communication applications to find the candidate implementations under different criteria. The experimental results demonstrate that in general, memory technology dominates the optimal tradeoff and ALU improvements impact greatly on particular applications. The results also show that the proposed procedure is effective and quite efficient.

We investigated the dependence of the desired echo return loss on frequency for various hands-free telecommunication conditions by subjective assessment. The desired echo return loss as a function of frequency (DERLf) is an important factor in the design and performance evaluation of a subband echo canceller, and it is a measure of what is considered an acceptable echo caused by electrical loss in the transmission line. The DERLf during single-talk was obtained as attenuated band-limited echo levels that subjects did not find objectionable when listening to the near-end speech and its band-limited echo under various hands-free telecommunication conditions. When we investigated the DERLf during double-talk, subjects also heard the speech in the far-end room from a loudspeaker. The echo was limited to a 250-Hz bandwidth assuming the use of a subband echo canceller. The test results showed that: (1) when the transmission delay was short (30 ms), the echo component around 2 to 3 kHz was the most objectionable to listeners; (2) as the transmission delay rose to 300 ms, the echo component around 1 kHz became the most objectionable; (3) when the room reverberation time was relatively long (about 500 ms), the echo component around 1 kHz was the most objectionable, even if the transmission delay was short; and (4) the DERLf during double-talk was about 5 to 10 dB lower than that during single-talk. Use of these DERLf values will enable the design of more efficient subband echo cancellers.

Frequency-selective fading due to multipath propagation is serious hindrance in high-speed TDMA mobile communications. An adaptive antenna has been proposed to reduce the frequency-selective fading and realize path-diversity. This paper presents a criterion which selects multipath signals and weighting factors for combining them. First, we describe a selection criterion which chooses the multipath signals for the path-diversity. We propose a ratio of signal power to error power for the criterion. Furthermore, we propose weighting factors which realize approximately the maximal ratio combining. Computer simulation results show that the proposed selection criterion and weighting factors reveal excellent performance.

To achieve high link availability at Ka-band geosynchronous satellite communication systems, an adaptive CDMA scheme as a rain fade countermeasure is proposed. The proposed adaptive CDMA scheme reserves and shares orthogonal sequences to countermeasure a rain fade. In the adaptive CDMA scheme, the base station allocates a set of orthogonal sequences to each user, and the number of sequences in a set is determined by the amount of rain attenuation. A symbol repetition technique is also used to compensate signal energy loss due to the rain fade. Our results show that when the base station has 64 free orthogonal codes, the adaptive CDMA scheme can save on its power by 4.2 dB compared to conventional CDMA scheme. The occupation rate of codes also shows that the adaptive CDMA can support multiple users simultaneously in even severe rain fade condition.

When a single-mode LD is subjected to distant reflection, relative intensity noise and the width of the optical spectrum are drastically increased. This phenomenon is known as 'coherence collapse. ' This letter demonstrates that penalty-free operation is possible at 2.5 Gbit/s even when a DFB-LD is in a state of coherence collapse. In addition, an LD in a state of coherence collapse is applied to a situation where signal light suffers from interferometric crosstalk. The results show that the LD reduces the influence of interferometric noise because of its wide spectral width.

If the direction of arrival (DOA) of a source is perturbed due to some reasons in a statistical way as in the environment of wireless mobile communications, a new model appropriate for such environment should be used instead of the point source model. In this paper, an angle-perturbed source model is proposed and an estimation method based on the eigen-decomposition technique is investigated under the model. The asymptotic distribution of the estimation errors is obtained to see the statistical properties.

This paper investigates the influence of the number of antennas, the angle difference between the direction of arrival (DOA) of the desired signal and those of interfering signals, and the antenna arrangement on the BER performance of the coherent adaptive antenna array diversity (CAAAD) receiver in the wideband DS-CDMA (W-CDMA) reverse link. Experiments assuming high-rate interfering users were conducted in a radio anechoic room using a three-sectored antenna with a 120-degree beam (maximum number of antennas was six). The experimental results showed that the degree to which the interference was suppressed from high-rate users of the CAAAD receiver was significantly increased by increasing the number of antennas, especially when the number of interfering users was larger than degree of freedom of the CAAAD. It was also verified that although the BER performance of the CAAAD receiver significantly improved compared to a single sectored antenna, the improvement remarkably decreased when the DOA difference between the desired signal and interfering signals was within approximately 10-15 degrees irrespective of the number of antennas. Finally, we show that the BER performance difference between the linear and conformal arrangements was small when using the three-sectored antenna.

In computer science, concepts of resource such as data consumption and of time such as execution time are very important. Logical systems which can treat them have been applied in that field. Linear logic has been called a resource conscious logic. The expressive power is enough to describe a dynamic change in process environments. However, linear logic is not enough to treat a dynamic change in environments with the passage of time since it does not include a concept of time directly. A typical example is the relation between linear logic and Petri nets. It is well known that the reachability problem for Petri nets is equivalent to the provability for the corresponding sequent of linear logic. But linear logic cannot naturally represent timed Petri nets which are extensions of ordinary Petri nets with respect to time concept. So we extend linear logic with respect to time concept in order to introduce a resource-conscious and time-dependent logical system, that is, temporal linear logic. This system has some temporal operators "" which means a resource usable only once at the next time, "" which means a resource usable only once at anytime, and a modal storage operator "!" which means a resource usable any times at anytime. We can show that the reachability problem for timed Petri nets is equivalent to the provability for the corresponding sequent of temporal linear logic. In this paper, we also represent the description of synchronous communication model by temporal linear logic. The expressive power of temporal linear logic will be applicable to various fields of computer science.

The Internet is a heterogeneous and rapidly evolving environment. New information services have been added, modified, and diversified, while legacy services have been abandoned. Users' requirements for services are also changing very quickly. It is becoming very difficult to find required information services from extremely huge amount of information in the Internet. It is necessary to design information service system, which can meet user's heterogeneous requirements for services, adaptability of services to cope with ever-changing situation and to provide assurance. Faded information field architecture and Push/Pull Mobile Agent (MA) technologies are proposed as basic components of autonomous information service system to achieve these goals. The system is proposed from users' and providers' point of view, therefore we present a technique for balancing users' and providers' communication cost based on `through rate' for faded information field realization. On the basis of this technique, autonomous information allocation algorithm is proposed, in which each node may determine information amount based on push/pull cost. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is shown through simulation.

A 50-Gbit/s demultiplexer IC module that uses 0.1-µm InAlAs/InGaAs/InP HEMTs is reported. The maximum error-free operation bit-rate of a fabricated module is 50 Gbit/s, and a wide phase margin of 170 degrees is obtained at 43 Gbit/s. 50-Gbit/s demultiplexing is the fastest performance of all packaged demultiplexer ICs yet reported.

This paper presents the bit error rate (BER) upper bounds for trellis coded asymmetric 8PSK (TC-A8PSK) system using the Ka-band satellite in the rain fading environment. The probability density function (PDF) for the rain fading random variable can be theoretically derived by assuming that the rain attenuation can be approximated to a log-normal distribution and the rain fading parameters are calculated by using the rain precipitation data from the Crane global model. Furthermore, we analyze the BER upper bounds of TC-A8PSK system according to the number of states in the trellis diagram and the availability of channel state information (CSI). In the past, Divsalar and Simon has analyzed the BER upper bounds of 2-state TCM system in Rician fading channels; however, this paper is the first to analyze the BER upper bounds of TCM system in the rain fading channels. Finally, we summarize the dominant six factors which are closely related to the BER upper bounds of TC-A8PSK satellite system in the rain fading channel as follows: (1) frequency band, (2) rain intensity, (3) elevation angle, (4) bit energy to noise ratio, (5) asymmetric angle, and (6) availability of CSI.

We propose an agent-based grocery shopping system, which automates grocery shopping process. Agents gather grocery information from several store server agents and compare it with user's preferences of groceries and stores. The agents could adapt to user's up-to-date preferences by learning from his/her evaluation of previous shopping results. The proposed agent-based grocery shopping system is composed of three role agents: a user agent, an information management agent, and a store server agent. These role agents cooperate to buy the best groceries of user preference. A role agent is formed by an organization agent. The organization agent is responsible for organizing primitive agents and coordinating message delivery. A primitive agent executes a specific task/function using the accumulated knowledge to achieve user's goal. We have designed four agent communication protocols to facilitate cooperation between the user agent, the information management agent, and the store server agent. In this paper we focus on the protocols which support the user agent. By implementing a prototype of the agent-based grocery shopping system, we have verified that it is instrumental in purchasing the best groceries of user preference from several grocery stores. We have found that, (1) our agent-based grocery shopping system reduces the user's effort to buy groceries; (2) it saves user's time to buy groceries at a store; (3) it covers functional requirements of grocery shopping system from the user's viewpoint; (4) it supports the five stages of consumer buying behavior model.

In DS-CDMA (including W-CDMA), a received signal can be resolved into multiple paths to be Rake combined. An important design problem of the Rake receiver is how to accurately search the paths with a sufficiently large signal-to-interference plus background noise power ratio (SIR). This paper investigates the performance of a coherent Rake receiver using pilot symbol-assisted channel estimation with fast transmit power control, and thereby optimizes three key parameters: the total averaging period, Tavg, consisting of a combination of coherent summation and power summation; each period of the summations for measuring the average power delay profile; and path-selection threshold M from the generated power delay profile. We used a path search algorithm, which searches the paths that have M times greater average signal power than the interference plus background noise power measured in the average power delay profile generated using time-multiplexed pilot symbols. It was clarified by both simulation and laboratory experiments that when M = 4, Tavg = 50-100 msec, and the number of slots for coherent accumulation R = 2, the required average transmit Eb/N0 for obtaining the average BER of 10-3 is almost minimized with and without antenna diversity for both ITU-R Vehicular-B and average equal power L-path delay profile model, in which each path suffered independent Rayleigh fading. The paper also shows that based on the field experiments, the path search algorithm with optimized path-selection parameters is robust against actual dynamic changes in the power delay profile shape.

We described short time span idiotype immune network reactions by rigorous mathematical equations. For each idiotype, we described the temporal changes in concentration of (1) single bound antibody, one of its two Fab arms has bound to the complemental receptor site on the B cell. (2) double bound antibody, both of its two Fab arms have bound to the complemental receptor sites on the B cell and (3) an immune complex which is a product of reaction among the antibodies. Stimulation and secretion processes of an antibody in the idiotype network were described by non linear differential equations characterized by the magnitude of cross-linking of the complemental antibody and B cell receptor. The affinity between the mutually complemental antibody and receptor was described by an weighted affinity matrix. The activating process was expressed by an exponential function with threshold. The rate constant for the linkage of the second Fab arm of an antibody was induced from the molecular diffusion process that was modified by the Coulomb repulsive force. By using reported experimental data, we integrated 60 non linear differential equations for the idiotype immune network to obtain the temporal behavior of concentrations of the species in hour span. The concentrations of the idiotype antibody and immune complex changed synchronously. The influence of a change in one rate constant extended to all the members of the idiotype network. The concentrations of the single bound antibody, double bound antibody and immune complex oscillated as functions of the concentration of the free antibody particularly at its low concentration. By comparing to the reported experimental data, the present computational approach seems to realize biological immune network reactions.

A fully balanced (FB) transconductor using two multi-input single-ended (SE) CMOS transconductors is proposed, where the transconductors use MOS transitors operating in a triode region for achieving a wide linear input-range. SE circuits are easier to design than differential circuits and inherently reject common-mode (CM) signals. The multi-input structure is used to make a CM feedback loop and to determine an output CM voltage. A high-output-resistance current mirror is used in converting a differential signal to a single-ended signal in order to achieve a high common-mode rejection ratio (CMRR) and a high output-resistance of the transconductor. The FB transconductor achieves a 2-Vpp linear input range at a 2.5-V power supply and consumes 1.74 mA. The output resistance of the FB transconductor is 2 MΩ. It operates at 2 V with a linear input-range of 1.2 Vpp and at 1.6 V with a linear input-range of 0.9 Vpp. A 2.5-V 2.5-MHz FB Gm-C filter using the FB transconductors achieved a CMRR of 45 dB and a passband IIP3 of 32 dBm.

A hybrid system in which mobile terminals (MTs) themselves select whether to communicate directly or via base stations (BSs) from communication conditions, "cellularad-hoc united communication system," has been proposed by the authors. It has been confirmed to have effective channel usage and battery consumption, especially for MTs which tend to communicate with partners which are close together, such as operational mobile robots. In this paper, the hybrid system is examined with respect to handoff rate. This hybrid system uses two modes, a cellular mode and an ad-hoc mode. The former mode is for communication using BSs and the latter is for direct communication. Thus, there will be two kinds of handoffs. One is the ordinary one between BSs and the other is between the two modes. Such a system may suffer from frequent handoffs. Thus the handoff rate of the system was examined. However, by the addition of a simple hysteresis characteristic, the handoff rate was held down closer to that of a pure cellular system in a multipath environment.

An SCFL-compatible 40-Gbit/s selector circuit using resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs) and high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) is presented. The circuit comprises two monostable-bistable transition elements (MOBILEs) using RTDs, a HEMT NOR circuit, and a HEMT output buffer based on source-coupled-FET logic (SCFL). The circuit is fabricated by monolithically integrating RTDs and 0.1-µm HEMTs on an InP substrate. The fabricated circuit exhibits clear eye-opening at 40 Gbit/s with an output swing of 800 mVp-p, which is close to the conventional high-speed logic IC interface called SCFL.

Multi-user uniquely decodable (UD) k-ary coding for the multiple-access adder channel is investigated. It is shown that a Tf+g+1-user UD k-ary affine code with code length f+g+1 can be obtained from two Tf-user and Tg-user UD k-ary affine codes. This leads to construct recursively a Tn-user UD k-ary affine code with arbitrary code length n. The total rate of the code tends to be higher than those of all the multi-user UD k-ary codes reported previously as the number of users increases.

High-capacity multiwavelength ring networks with bidirectional WDM add/drop multiplexer (WADM) having built-in EDFAs is analyzed and demonstrated. All WDM channels can be added/dropped independently in each direction. The capacity of a bidirectional ring is found to be approximately twice that of an unidirectional ring. An eight-wavelength WADM is demonstrated for a data rate of 10 Gb/s per channel, providing an overall capacity of 80 Gb/s. The performance of the add/drop multiplexer is not degraded by backward backscattering light. The same WADM is also demonstrated to be able to serve as a bidirectional in-line optical amplifier.

The encoding procedure that allows one to represent integers by binary vectors (codewords) in such a way that addition is replaced with the OR operation applied to these vectors is described. The codeword of the sum is constructed using the decoding algorithm. As a result, many of the transformations can be realized using parallel processing, and the method can be considered as a competitor to existing computer arithmetic.