Mirroring of network servers has been considered to be effective for load balancing. However, the cost of setting up new mirror servers is enormously high. In this paper, we propose a dynamic file allocation model with a simple mirroring function for handling significant changes of network traffic in the Internet. According to the load fluctuation, we can dynamically reallocate files using this model. We show that our model accomplishes satisfactory performance and reduces cost by adding a simple mirroring function to all existent servers instead of setting up mirror servers afresh.

This letter presents a Monte-Carlo FDTD technique to determine the scattered field from a perfectly conducting fractal surface from which the useful information on the incoherent pattern tendency could be observed. A one-dimensional fractal surface was generated by the bandlimited Weierstrass function. In order to verify the numerical results by this technique, these results are compared with those of Kirchhoff approximations, which show a good match between them. To investigate the incoherent pattern tendency involved, the dependence of the fitting curve slope on the different D and is discussed for the bistatic and back scattering case, respectively.

The main purpose of our method is to obtain realistic worst-case delay in statistical timing analyses. This paper proposes a method of statistical delay calculation based on measured intra-chip and inter-chip variabilities. We present a modeling and extracting method of transistor characteristics for the intra-chip variability and the inter-chip variability. In the modeling of the intra-chip variability, it is important to consider a gate-size dependence by which the amount of intra-chip variation is affected. This effect is not captured in a statistical delay analysis reported so far. Our method proposes a method for modeling of the device variability and statistical delay calculation with consideration of the size dependence, and uses a response surface method (RSM) to calculate a delay variation with low processing cost. We evaluate the accuracy of our method, and we show some experimental results the variation of a circuit delay characterized by the measured variances of transistor currents.

The alternative c-means algorithm has recently been presented by Wu and Yang for robust clustering of data. In this letter, we analyze the convergence of this algorithm by transforming it into an equivalent form with the Legendre transform. It is shown that this algorithm converges to a local optimal solution from any starting point.

The present paper addresses the design of manufacturing systems. A resource planning and task allocation problem is proposed, and a multi-agent system for this problem is discussed. In the multi-agent system, an agent exists for each resource and for each operation. The proposed multi-agent system improves the quality of resulting plans by the learning of these agents.

In recent years, information devices with network communication ability have become very popular, and many people actually own such kind of devices. Those information devices, however, do not share users' data in spite of their communication ability. This paper proposes "OCEAN: Object Communication Environment for Arbitrary Network" architecture, which provides liaison of objects stored in each device according to their profiles and situations. It eliminates redundant user operation on information devices, and enables novel communication scheme among users by sharing common objects in those devices. Furthermore, it maximizes the effective use of each device's limitation according to each environment. Finally, in this paper, we discuss our prototype of OCEAN.

In wavelength division multiplexed networks, shared path protection provides the same level of protection against a single fiber-link failure as dedicated path protection with potentially higher network utilization. The shared path protection is more complex to provision and maintain. In this paper, we introduce a parameter, the degree of sharing, which refers to the number of protection paths that a wavelength can be assigned to on a link. We propose methods for calculating the maximum degree of sharing. We consider on-line routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) of protection paths that are established for incremental traffic using the maximum degree of sharing. Establishment of protection paths using the maximum degree of sharing can simplify the algorithm. We compare the results on the decreased calculation time with accepted connection requests for a given number of wavelengths, assuming that wavelengths are assigned according to the First-Fit policy for working paths and Last-Fit policy for protection paths. The more wavelengths are used, the more calculation time can be reduced. When the load increases, the decreasing rate of calculation time also increases.

In this paper, we investigate the electron-hole energy states and energy gap in three-dimensional (3D) InAs/GaAs quantum rings and dots with different shapes under external magnetic fields. Our realistic model formulation includes: (i) the effective mass Hamiltonian in non-parabolic approximation for electrons, (ii) the effective mass Hamiltonian in parabolic approximation for holes, (iii) the position- and energy-dependent quasi-particle effective mass approximation for electrons, (iv) the finite hard wall confinement potential, and (v) the Ben Daniel-Duke boundary conditions. To solve the 3D nonlinear problem without any fitting parameters, we have applied the nonlinear iterative method to obtain self-consistent solutions. Due to the penetration of applied magnetic fields into torus ring region, for ellipsoidal- and rectangular-shaped quantum rings we find nonperiodical oscillations of the energy gap between the lowest electron and hole states as a function of external magnetic fields. The nonperiodical oscillation is different from 1D periodical argument and strongly dependent on structure shape and size. The result is useful to study magneto-optical properties of the nanoscale quantum rings and dots.

We have developed a fiber physical contact (FPC) connector for the high-density connection of optical fibers. This connector individually aligns multiple bare fibers in micro-holes without ferrules and realizes physical contact by using the buckling force of the fibers themselves. The fiber endfaces must be tapered to allow the fibers to be inserted into the micro-holes. The endfaces must also be polished so that they realize physical contact (PC) with excellent optical performance. For each process, we examined the required shape and processing condition of the fiber endface for the FPC connector. As regards tapering, we determined the processing condition for achieving a target tapering angle and developed a non-breaking process with the optical fibers bent. In terms of polishing, we revealed that it is important for the fiber endface angle error to be less than 0.7 degrees if we are to achieve excellent optical performance. These results allowed us to fabricate an FPC connector that exhibited excellent levels of optical performance.

In this paper, a grey filtering approach based on GM(1,1) model is proposed. Then the grey filtering is applied to speech enhancement. The fundamental idea in the proposed grey filtering is to relate estimation error of GM(1,1) model to additive noise. The simulation results indicate that the additive noise can be estimated accurately by the proposed grey filtering approach with an appropriate scaling factor. Note that the spectral subtraction approach to speech enhancement is heavily dependent on the accuracy of statistics of additive noise and that the grey filtering is able to estimate additive noise appropriately. A magnitude spectral subtraction (MSS) approach for speech enhancement is proposed where the mechanism to determine the non-speech and speech portions is not required. Two examples are provided to justify the proposed MSS approach based on grey filtering. The simulation results show that the objective of speech enhancement has been achieved by the proposed MSS approach. Besides, the proposed MSS approach is compared with HFR-based approach in [4] and ZP approach in [5]. Simulation results indicate that in most of cases HFR-based and ZP approaches outperform the proposed MSS approach in SNRimp. However, the proposed MSS approach has better subjective listening quality than HFR-based and ZP approaches.

A brief review is given on a crossover in transport between quantum and classical regimes due to the presence of inelastic scattering destroying the phase coherence. In the integer quantum Hall effect, the quantum regime corresponds to the edge-current picture and the classical to the bulk Hall current picture. The crossover between two regimes occurs through inelastic scattering. In a metallic carbon nanotube, there is a perfectly transmitting channel independent of energy for conventional scatterers having potential range larger than the lattice constant, making the nanotube a perfect conductor. When several bands coexist at the Fermi level, such a perfect channel is destroyed by inelastic scattering.

One of fundamental issues on the F0 contour is modeling relationship between F0 parameters and linguistic information of a sentence. This paper proposes a stochastic F0 model which probabilistically models the relationship between the F0 contour and the linguistic information. For the application of speech synthesis, an F0 generator selects the most probable F0 contour from candidates given by a probabilistic F0 model. An F0 contour of a Japanese sentence is represented by concatenation of F0 patterns of a Japanese syntactic unit, bunsetsu. A bunsetsu F0 pattern is composed of an F0 average and an F0 shape. The F0 average is independently predicted for each bunsetsu by a quantification theory from linguistic features of the bunsetsu. The most probable sequence of bunsetsu F0 shapes for a sentence is found in the F0 shape database based on a probabilistic measure. The probability that an F0 contour is observed for a sentence is defined by two kinds of probabilities, the F0 shape production and the F0 shape bigram. The latter is a probability of adjacent occurrence of two F0 shapes, which is similar to a word bigram in speech recognition. Several typical bunsetsu F0 shapes are extracted by clustering of training data and stored in the F0 shape database. The probability of the F0 shape production is computed for each bunsetsu based on distribution of values for the linguistic feature in a cluster. The RMS prediction errors of the F0 contour are 0.26[octave].

A software module for the three-dimensional simulation of etching processes has been developed. It works on multilayer structures given as triangulated surface meshes. The mesh is moved nodewise according to rates which, in this work, have been determined from isotropic and anisotropic components. An important feature of the algorithm is the automatic detection of triple lines along mask edges and the refinement of triangles at these triple lines. This allows for the simulation of underetching. The capabilities of the algorithm are demonstrated by several examples such as the simulation of glass etching for the fabrication of a phase shift mask for optical lithography and the etching of an STI trench structure. Moreover, etch profiles of a silicon substrate covered by an oxide mask are shown for different parameters of the etch components. Spacer etching has also been performed. Furthermore, a specific algorithm for the simulation of purely isotropic etching is described and demonstrated.

In the last three decades of the 20th Century, research in speech recognition has been intensively carried out worldwide, spurred on by advances in signal processing, algorithms, architectures, and hardware. Recognition systems have been developed for a wide variety of applications, ranging from small vocabulary keyword recognition over dial-up telephone lines, to medium size vocabulary voice interactive command and control systems for business automation, to large vocabulary speech dictation, spontaneous speech understanding, and limited-domain speech translation. Although we have witnessed many new technological promises, we have also encountered a number of practical limitations that hinder a widespread deployment of applications and services. On one hand, fast progress was observed in statistical speech and language modeling. On the other hand only spotty successes have been reported in applying knowledge sources in acoustics, speech and language science to improving speech recognition performance and robustness to adverse conditions. In this paper we review some key advances in several areas of speech recognition. A bottom-up detection framework is also proposed to facilitate worldwide research collaboration for incorporating technology advances in both statistical modeling and knowledge integration into going beyond the current speech recognition limitations and benefiting the society in the 21st century.

This paper describes a new context clustering technique for average voice model, which is a set of speaker independent speech synthesis units. In the technique, we first train speaker dependent models using multi-speaker speech database, and then construct a decision tree common to these speaker dependent models for context clustering. When a node of the decision tree is split, only the context related questions which are applicable to all speaker dependent models are adopted. As a result, every node of the decision tree always has training data of all speakers. After construction of the decision tree, all speaker dependent models are clustered using the common decision tree and a speaker independent model, i.e., an average voice model is obtained by combining speaker dependent models. From the results of subjective tests, we show that the average voice models trained using the proposed technique can generate more natural sounding speech than the conventional average voice models.

This paper evaluates an on-line incremental speaker adaptation method for co-channel conversation including multiple speakers with the assumption that the speaker is unknown and changes frequently. After performing the speaker clustering treatment based on the Vector Quantization (VQ) distortion for every utterance, acoustic models for each cluster are adapted by Maximum Likelihood Linear Regression (MLLR) or Maximum A Posteriori probability (MAP). The performance of continuous speech recognition could be improved. In this paper, to prove the efficiency of the speaker clustering method for improving the performance of continuous speech recognition, the continuous speech recognition experiments with supervised and unsupervised cluster adaptation were conducted, respectively. Finally, evaluation experiments based on other prepared test data were performed on continuous syllable recognition and large vocabulary continuous speech recognition (LVCSR). The efficiency of the speaker adaptation and clustering methods presented in this paper was supported strongly by the experimental results.

Antennas for Japanese terrestrial microwave relay links have been developed since the1950's and put into commercial use up to now in Japan. In particular, the path-length lens antennas developed in 1953 represents a monumental achievement for terrestrial microwave relay links, and the offset antenna for 256 QAM radio relay links developed in 1989 has the best electrical performance in the world. This paper reviews the antennas for Japanese terrestrial microwave relay links that have historical significance and describes the antenna design technologies developed in Japan.

We use the Monte Carlo method to simulate electron transport in a zig-zag single-walled carbon nanotube with a wrapping index of n=10. Results show large low-field mobility, negative differential mobility, and large peaks in the drift velocity reaching 3.5107 cm/s.

This paper reviews the historical development of adaptive antennas in Japan. First of all, we watch basic adaptive algorithms. In 1980s, particularly, the following issues were a matter of considerable concern to us; (a) behavior to the coherent interference like multipath waves or radar clutters, (b) signal degradation in case that the direction of arrival (DOA) of desired signal is different from the DOA specified beforehand in the adaptive antennas with the DOA of the desired signal as a prior knowledge, and (c) performance of adaptive antennas when the desired signal and interference are broadband. Although there are a lot of development and modification of adaptive algorithms in Japan, we refer in this paper only to the above-mentioned topics. Secondly, our attention is paid to implementation of adaptive antennas and advanced technologies. A large number of researches on the subjects have been carried out in Japan. Particularly, we focus on the initiative studies in Japan toward mobile communication application. They include researches of mobile radio propagation for adaptive antennas, calibration methods, and adaptive antenna for mobile terminals. As a matter of course, we also refer to adaptive antenna technologies for advanced communication schemes such as CDMA, SDMA, OFDM and so on. Finally, we take notice of some pilot products which were developed to verify the effect of the adaptive antenna in the practical environments. As the initiative ones, a couple of equipments are introduced in this paper.

As use of the Internet continues to spread rapidly, Traffic Engineering (TE) is needed to optimize IP network resource utilization. In particular, load balancing with TE can prevent traffic concentration on a single path between ingress and egress routers. To apply TE, we have constructed an MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) network with TE capability in the JGN (Japan Gigabit Network), and evaluated dynamic load balancing behavior in it from the viewpoint of control stability. We confirmed that with this method, setting appropriate control parameter values enables traffic to be equally distributed over two or more routes in an actual large-scale network. In addition, we verified the method's effectiveness by using a digital cinema application as input traffic.