In the hardware synthesis from a high-level language such as C, the bit length of variables is one of the key issues for the area and speed optimization. Usually, designers are required to optimize the bit-length of each variable manually using the time-consuming simulation on huge-data. In this paper, we propose an optimization method of the fractional bit length in the conversion from floating-point variables to fixed-point variables. The method is based on error propagation and the backward propagation of the accuracy limitation. The method is fully analytical and fast compared to simulation based methods.

Data compression is popularly applied to computer systems and communication systems. Especially, lossless compression is applied to text compression. Since compressed data are very sensitive to errors, several error control methods for data compression using probability model, such as for arithmetic coding, have been proposed. This paper proposes to apply an unequal error protection, or a UEP, scheme to LZ77 coding and LZW coding. This investigates a structure of the compressed data and clarifies a part which is more sensitive to errors than the other by using theoretical analysis and computer simulation. The UEP scheme protects the error-sensitive part from errors more strongly than the others. Computer simulation says that the proposed scheme can recover from errors in the compressed data more effectively than the conventional methods.

This paper proposes a test generation method using several partly compacted test plan tables for RTL data paths. Combinational modules in data paths are tested using several partly compacted test plan tables. Each partly compacted test plan table is generated from each grouped test plan set and is used to test combinational modules corresponding to the grouped test plans. The values of control signals in a partly compacted test plan table are supplied by a test controller. This paper also proposes the architecture of a test controller which can be synthesized in a reasonable amount of time, and proposes a test plan grouping method to shorten test length for data paths under a test controller area constraint. Experimental results for benchmarks show that the test lengths are shortened by 4 to 36% with -9 to 8% additional test controller area compared with the test generation method using test plans.

In this paper, we propose a new predictive location management strategy that reduces the update cost while restricting the paging load optimized for mobiles roaming with traceable patterns. Enhanced with directional predictive capabilities offered by Kalman filtering, new update boundaries are assigned to better reflect the movement patterns of individual mobiles upon location registration. Thus, while complying with the required delay constraints, QoS measures such as throughput will not need to be sacrificed as a result of increasing update threshold. The contribution of this paper is two-fold: (1) to propose a distribution model that is capable of describing a wide range of movement patterns with varying correlation between traveling directions and (2) to show the capabilities (in terms of reliable performances) of the Kalman filter in predicting future movement patterns. Simulation results have successfully demonstrated the ability of the Kalman filter in assigning update boundaries capable of reflecting a mobile's roaming characteristics. The performance gains achieved mainly through a significant reduction in the number of updates indicate its potential for promoting better bandwidth conservation.

Finding a nonnegative integer solution x for Ax = b (A Zmn, b Zm1) in Petri nets is NP-complete. Being NP-complete, even algorithms with theoretically bad worst case and with average complexity can be useful for a special class of problems, hence deserve investigation. Then a Grobner basis approach to integer programming problems was proposed in 1991 and some symbolic computation systems became to have useful tools for ideals, varieties, and algorithms for algebraic geometry. In this letter, Grobner basis approach is applied to three typical problems with respect to state equation in P/T Petri nets. In other words, after Grobner bases are derived by the tool Maple 7, we consider how to derive the T-invariants and particular solutions of the Petri nets by using them in this letter.

Genetic algorithm (GA) is a widely used numerical technique to simplify some analytical solutions in electromagnetic theory. Genetic algorithms can be combined with the geometric optics method to tackle electromagnetic scattering problems. This paper presents an extrapolation procedure, which derived, as a first step, a functional representation of the radar cross section (RCS) of three different dielectric objects that was computed via the Mie solution or the method of moments (MOM). An algorithm was employed to fit the scattering characteristics of dielectric objects at high frequencies.

This paper presents a framework for building mobile agent-based components. The framework introduces the notion of agent hierarchy and inter-agent migration and thus allows a group of mobile agents to be dynamically assembled into a single mobile agent. It provides a powerful method of constructing complex, large-scale mobile agent-based applications. To demonstrate how to exploit our framework, we construct an extensible and portable mobile agent system for executing and migrating hierarchical mobile agents. The system itself is also implemented as a collection of mobile agents and can thus dynamically change and adapt its functions through migrating agents that offer the functions. Mobile agent-based applications running on the system can naturally inherit the extensibility and adaptability of the system.

Files of 3D mesh models are often large and hence time-consuming to retrieve from a storage device or to download through the network. Most 3D viewing applications need to obtain the entire file of a 3D model in order to display the model, even when the user is interested only in a small part, or a low-resolution version, of the model. Therefore, coding that enables multiresolution and ROI (Region Of Interest) transmission of 3D models is desired. In this paper, we propose a coding algorithm of 3D models based on partitioning schemes. The algorithm actually partitions the 3D meshes into some small sub-meshes according to some geometric criteria (such as curvatures), and then codes each small sub-meshes separately to transmit it progressively to users on demand. The key idea of this paper lies in the mesh partitioning procedure prior to its LOD control, which enables good compression ratio of the mesh data as well as some other good capable properties through network transmission such as ROI coding, view-adaptive transmission, error resilient coding, etc.

The auction is a popular way of trading. Despite of the popularity of the auction, only a small number of papers have addressed the protocol which realize the double auction. In this paper, we propose a new method of double auction which improves the algorithm of the existing double auction protocol. Our new method is based on the idea of number comparison which is realized by homomorphic encryption. The new method solves the problem of the privacy of losing bids found in the existing algorithm. The buyers and the sellers can embed a random number in their bidding information by the use of the homomorphic encryption. The players in an auction cannot get anyone else's bidding information. The new method is more efficient than the existing ones. Our new method satisfies the criteria for the auction protocol.

For High Performance Computing (HPC) of electromagnetic microwave simulations, the authors present concept for a microwave simulation dedicated computer, FDTD/FIT data flow machine. By constructing a dedicated computer customized to the data flow of the FDTD or FIT scheme, we can obtain maximum performance from the FDTD/FIT simulations and achieve T FLOPS performance computing by using much smaller size computer system than conventional supercomputers. In addition to the basic idea, this paper identifies with solution to some other factors which are needed to execute practical simulations (e.g., boundary condition setting, power input, simulation result data upload to PC, etc.). Moreover, the VHDL design and logical simulation of the 2D data flow machine are also shown as the first step of development of the FDTD/FIT data flow machine.

We have developed a three-dimensional eye movement simulator that simulates eye movement. The simulator allows us to extract the instantaneous eye movement rotation axes from clinical data sequences. It calculates the plane formed by rotation axes and displays it on an eyeball with rotation axes. It also extracts the innervations for eye muscles. The developed simulator is mainly programmed by a CG programming language, OpenGL. First, the simulator was applied to saccadic eye movement data in order to show the so-called Listing's plane on which all hypothetical rotation axes lie. Next, it was applied to clinical data sequences of two patients with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV). Instantaneous actual rotation axes and innervations for eye muscle extracted from data sequences have special characteristics. These results are useful for the elucidation of the mechanism of vestibular symptoms, particularly vertigo.

Recently six conjectures on linear complexities (LC) of some Kronecker sequences of two or three component sequences are proposed by Karkkainen. In, the LC of Kronecker sequences of two component sequences were studied by Uehara and Imamura, their results are true except in the case when eb 2 or when ea = eb = 1. In this paper the LC for Kronecker sequences of two component sequences are determined completely, and it is shown that all the six conjectures are true except in some special cases, which are listed and corrected.

The objective of this paper is to study the relationship between a visual stimulus and the amplitude and phase of the alpha wave as a first step to investigating a change in the background wave after a sensory stimulus and an evoked potential. We examined the effect of a single visual stimulus on the amplitude and phase of alpha waves using the complex demodulation method. The visual stimuli were generated by an LED mounted in goggles with the eyes-closed condition. The amplitude of the alpha wave decreased gradually after the stimulus, until it reached a minimum at around 300 ms after the stimulus. The alpha wave continued to increase, showing some rebound, and returning again to the pre-stimulus level. The phase variation after the stimulus tends to be considerably larger than that before the stimulus. Moreover, the average phase returned to the same slope as the pre-stimulus by 2550 ms after the stimulus. The visual stimulus has an effect on the alpha wave until about 2500 ms after the stimulus. The phase variation difference before and after stimulus is significant from 112 ms to 678 ms after the stimulus. This finding suggests there is a partially pararell time course between the change in VEPs plus ERP complex and the alpha wave.

This letter presents a lower bound and approximation for the coverage probability of the pilot channel that can be used for a CDMA downlink design. The approximation of a compound truncated Poisson distribution is used to obtain a closed form equation for the coverage probability of the pilot channel. Computer simulations show that our lower bound curve is truly less than the empirical curve, and our proposed approximation agrees well with the empirical result.

The first practical approach to 100-Gigabit Ethernet, i.e., Ethernet with a throughput of 100-Gb/s, is proposed for use in the next generation of LANs for GRID computing and large-capacity data centers. New structures, including a coding architecture, de-skewing method and high-speed packaging techniques, are introduced to the PHY layer to obtain the required data rate. Our form of 100-Gigabit Ethernet uses 10-Gb/s 10-channel CWDM or parallel-optical links. The coding architecture is formed of 64B/66B codes, modified for the CWDM and parallel links. In the de-skewing of the parallel signals, specially designed IDLE characters are used to compensate for skewing of data in the respective signal lanes. Advanced packaging techniques, which suppress the propagation loss and reflection of the 10-Gb/s lanes to obtain high-speed, good integrity and low-noise signaling, are proposed and evaluated. The proposed architectural features make this 100-Gigabit Ethernet concept practical for next-generation LANs.

In this paper, a non-adaptive optimal transform (NAOT) coding system is proposed. Note that the energy-invariant property in an orthogonal transformation and that the mean squared error (MSE) of a reconstructed image is proportional to the total energy of transform coefficients discarded in the coding process. The NAOT coding system is developed and proved optimal in the sense of minimum average energy loss. Basically, the proposed coding system consists of the following steps. First, obtain the average energy image block from transform image blocks. Second, sort the average energy image block in the descending order by energy where the sorted indices are recorded. Third, specify the number of coefficients, M, to be retained in the coding process. Fourth, the first M sorted indices form a set denoted as SM through which the problem of optimal feature selection in transform coding is solved. Fifth, find a fixed mask AM from set SM which is then used to select M significant transform coefficients in image blocks. Finally, the M selected coefficients are quantized and coded by the order as in SM. To verify the NAOT coding system, simulations are performed on several examples. In the simulation, the optimality and the optimal feature selection in the NAOT coding system are justified. Also, the effectiveness of the proposed SM-based selection approach is compared with the zigzag scan used in the JPEG. For fair comparison, the JPEG is modified to code only M transform coefficients. Simulation results indicate that the performance of SM-based selection approach is superior or identical to the zigzag scan in terms of PSNR. Finally, the performance comparison between the NAOT coding system and the JPEG is made. It suggests that the proposed NAOT coding system is able to trade very little PSNR for significant bit rate reduction when compared with the JPEG. Or it can be said that the JPEG wastes much bit rate to improve very little PSNR on the reconstructed image, when compared with the NAOT coding system.

RHiNET-3/SW is the third-generation switch used in the RHiNET-3 system. It provides both low-latency processing and flexible connection due to its use of a credit-based flow-control mechanism, topology-free routing, and deadlock-free routing. The aggregate throughput of RHiNET-3/SW is 80 Gbps, and the latency is 140 ns. RHiNET-3/SW also provides a hop-by-hop retransmission mechanism. Simulation demonstrated that the effective throughput at a node in a 64-node torus RHiNET-3 system is equivalent to the effective throughput of a 64-bit 33-MHz PCI bus and that the performance of RHiNET-3/SW almost equals or exceeds the best performance of RHiNET-2/SW, the second-generation switch. Although credit-based flow control requires 26% more gates than rate-based flow control to manage the virtual channels (VCs), it requires less VC memory than rate-based flow control. Moreover, its use in a network system reduces latency and increases the maximum throughput compared to rate-based flow control.

Broadcast disks are suited for disseminating information to a large number of clients in mobile computing environments. In broadcast disks, the server continuously and repeatedly broadcasts all data items in the database to clients without specific requests. The clients monitor the broadcast channel and read data items as they arrive on the broadcast channel. The broadcast channel then becomes a disk from which clients can read data items. In this paper, we propose a cache conscious concurrency control (C4) algorithm to preserve the consistency of read-only client transactions, when the values of broadcast data items are updated at the server. The C4 algorithm is novel in the sense that it can reduce the response time of client transactions with minimal control information to be broadcast from the server. This is achieved by the judicious caching strategy of the client and by adjusting the currency of data items read by the client.

A source code for N symbols can be represented by a codeword length sequence (1,2,,N). A binary code is compact if it satisfies = 1. Also we may assume that 1 1 2 N. In this paper, we show that these two constraints can be replaced by max i for 1 i N - 1. Using the latter characterization, we construct a tree T N representing all binary compact codes. In fact every leaf of T N represents a compact code and vice versa. This technique can also be used to generate all compact codes for a given (1,2,,k), k < N.

The Earth Simulator (ES), developed by the Japanese government's initiative "Earth Simulator project," is a highly parallel vector supercomputer system. In May 2002, the ES was proven to be the most powerful computer in the world by achieving 35.86 teraflops on the LINPACK benchmark and 26.58 teraflops for a global atmospheric circulation model with the spectral method. Three architectural features enabled these great achievements; vector processor, shared-memory and high-bandwidth non-blocking interconnection crossbar network. In this paper, an overview of the ES, the three architectural features and the result of performance evaluation are described particularly with its hardware realization of the interconnection among 640 processor nodes.