The OMG have made the trading service one of the basic CORBA services. A specification has been drawn up (OMG RPF5) but seems to have some problems in terms of scalability and complexity. This paper introduces an architecture called Contextual Clustering Using Service Properties (CCUSP) that deals with issues of scalability. It uses a contextual approach to clustering object service offers based on property commonalities. It also handles issues of scalability of trader federation. An ontological approach is to be used, however not covered in this paper. An implementation of the specialisation graph context model is detailed.

Although threshold key-recovery systems for the discrete log based cryptosystems such as the ElGamal scheme have been proposed by Feldman and Pedersen , no (practical) threshold key-recovery system for the factoring based cryptosystems such as the RSA scheme has been proposed. This paper proposes the first (practical) threshold key-recovery systems for the factoring based cryptosystems including the RSA and Rabin schemes. Almost all of the proposed systems are unconditionally secure, since the systems utilize unconditionally secure bit-commitment protocols and unconditionally secure VSS.

Informally, private information retrieval for k 1 databases (k-PIR) is an interactive scheme that enables a user to make access to (separated) k replicated copies of a database and privately retrieve any single bit out of the n bits of data stored in the database. In this model, "privacy" implies that the user retrieves the bit he is interested in but releases to each database nothing about which bit he really tries to get. Chor et. al. proposed 2-PIR with communication complexity 12 n1/32 that is based on the covering codes. Then Ambainis recursively extended the scheme by Chor et. al. and showed that for each k 2, there exists k-PIR with communication complexity at most ckn1/(2k-1) some constant ck > 0. In this paper, we relax the condition for the covering codes and present time-efficient 2-PIR with communication complexity 12 n1/3. In addition, we generally formulate the recursive scheme by Ambainis and show that for each k 4, there exists k-PIR with communication complexity at most ck' n1/(2k-1) for some constant ck' << ck.

we evaluate the effect of express lots on production dispatching rule scheduling and cost in VLSI manufacturing final test process. In the assignment of express lots, we make comparisons of two rules, First In First Out (FIFO) rule which is widely used and WEIGHT+RPM rule which considers the time required for jig and temperature exchanges, the remaining processing time of the machine in use and the lot waiting time in queue. When using FIFO rule, the test efficiency begins to deteriorate and the test cost per chip begins to increase, if the content of express lots exceeds 15%. Furthermore, for 30% of express lots' content, the number of total processed lots decreases by 19% and the test cost per chip increases by 22% in comparison to the cases including no express lots. For WEIGHT+RPM rule, however, the test efficiency does not deteriorate and the test cost per chip does not increase even if the content of express lots is increased up to 50%. When we use WEIGHT+RPM rule, Express Lots Tolerances (ELTs), defined as the maximum content of express lots which permits the deterioration of the system characteristics by 5%, are about three times as high as ones when using FIFO rule. It is also found that WEIGHT+RPM rule maintains higher ELTs against the changes in the numbers of planned chips and prepared jigs as compared with FIFO rule.

We present a method for power and delay optimization by input reordering. We observe that the reordering has a significant effect on the power dissipation of the gate which drives the reordered gate. This is because the input capacitance depends on the signal values of other inputs. This property, however, has not been utilized for power reduction. Previous approaches focus on the reduction of the power dissipated by internal capacitances of the reordered gate. We propose a heuristic algorithm considering the total power consumed in the driving gate and the reordered gate. Experimental results using 30 benchmark circuits show that our method reduces the power dissipation in all the circuits by 5.9% on average. There is a possibility that power dissipation is reduced by 22.5% maximum. In the case of delay and power optimization, our method reduces delay by 6.7% and power dissipation by 5.3% on average.

In this paper we have introduced a new method for signature pattern recognition, taking advantage of some image moment transformations combined with fuzzy logic approach. For this purpose first we tried to model the noise embedded in signature patterns inherently and separate it from environmental effects. Based on the first step results, we have performed a mapping into the unit circle using the error least mean square (LMS) error criterion, to get ride of the variations caused by shifting or scaling. Then we derived some orientation invariant moments introduced in former reports and studied their statistical properties in our special input space. Later we defined a fuzzy complex space and also a fuzzy complex similarity measure in this space and constructed a new training algorithm based on fuzzy learning vector quantization (FLVQ) method. A comparison method has also been proposed so that any input pattern could be compared to the learned prototypes through the pre-defined fuzzy similarity measure. Each set of the above image moments were used by the fuzzy classifier separately and the mis-classifications were detected as a measure of error magnitude. The efficiency of the proposed FLVQ model has been numerically shown compared to the conventional FLVQs reported so far. Finally some satisfactory results are derived and also a comparison is made between the above considered image transformations.

A factorization, which provides a factored form, is an extremely important part of multi-level logic synthesis. The number of literals in a factored form is a good estimate of the complexity of a logic function, and can be translated directly into the number of transistors required for implementation. Factored forms are described as either algebraic or Boolean, according to the trade-off between run-time and optimization. A Boolean factored form contains fewer number of literals than an algebraic factored form. In this paper, we present a new method for a Boolean factorization. The key idea is to build an extended Boolean matrix using cokernel/kernel pairs and kernel/kernel pairs together. The extended Boolean matrix makes it possible to yield a Boolean factored form. We also propose a heuristic method for covering of the extended Boolean matrix. Experimental results on various benchmark circuits show the improvements in literal counts over the algebraic factorization based on Brayton's Boolean matrix.

With the introduction of ATM technology, service providers around the world have actively engaged in offering high bandwidth services. Currently, services, such as T1/E1, T3/E3 circuit emulation, are made available to large-volume account users. However, more advanced services, such as multimedia applications, have demanded not just high bandwidth but also flexible rate adaptation with quality-of-service (QoS) guarantee. To support the above service requirements, sophisticated network planning and engineering procedures should be taken. In the past few years, we have conducted various researches on developing the engineering strategies for resource control and management to support multi-rate service offering. We have also looked into the design details of connection control and management for achieving the QoS requirement. We considered the service quality of the underlying transport in regard with the QoS management. In this paper, we will outline those results and give an overview description about the proposed framework.

In this paper, the surface impedance boundary condition (SIBC) for a dispersive lossy medium backed by a perfect conductor is implemented in computation of electromagnetic (EM) scattering using the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. The dispersion of the surface impedance is incorporated into FDTD update equations by using the piecewise linear recursive convolution (PLRC) approach. The validity of the proposed method is confirmed numerically.

Page-based DSM systems suffer from false sharing since they use a large page as a coherence unit. The optimal page size is dynamically affected by application characteristics. Therefore, a fixed-size page cannot satisfy various applications even if it is small as a cache line size. In this paper we present a software-only coherence protocol called BCP (Buddy Coherence Protocol) to support multiple page sizes that vary adaptively according to the behavior of each application during run time. In BCP, the address of a remote access and the address of the most recent local access is compared. If they are to the different halves of a page, BCP considers it as false sharing and demotes the page to two subpages of equal size. If two contiguous pages belong to the same node, BCP promotes two pages to a superpage to reduce the number of the following coherence activities. We also suggest a mechanism to detect data sharing patterns to optimize the protocol. It detects and keeps the sharing pattern for each page by a state transition mechanism. By referring to those patterns, BCP selectively demotes the page and increases the effectiveness of a demotion. Self-invalidation of the migratorily shared page is also employed to reduce the number of invalidations. Our simulations show that the optimized BCP outperforms almost all the best cases of the write-invalidate protocols using fixed-size pages. BCP improves performance by 42.2% for some applications when compared against the case of the fixed-size page.

A fuel cell energy system is under development for supply of generated electrical energy to telecommunications equipment. It is a cogeneration system; the heat energy recovered is used to cool the telecommunications equipment. For this system, a method is described for controlling a new DC interconnection converter. Its DC interconnection characteristics are also discussed. The new converter controls its input current to the fuel cell rated current at maximum and can operate stably even when the fuel cell voltage decreases. This allows good DC interconnection characteristics to be obtained in both the steady state and the transient state.

Call tracking data contains a calling address, called address, service type, and other useful attributes to predict a customer's calling activity. Call tracking data is becoming a target of data mining for telecommunication carriers. Conventional data-mining programs control the number of association rules found with two types of thresholds (minimum confidence and minimum support), however, often they generate too many association rules because of the wide variety of patterns found in call tracking data. This paper proposes a new method to reduce the number of generated rules. The method proposed tests each generated rule based on Akaike Information Criteria (AIC) without using conventional thresholds. Experiments with artificial call tracking data show the high performance of the proposed method.

In this paper, we analyze the inverse scattering problem by a new deterministic method called "Source and Radiation Field Solution," which has the merit that both the source and the radiation field can be treated at the same time, the effect of which has already shown in ordinary scattering problems.

The software requirements specification process consists of three steps; requirements capture and analysis, requirements definition and specification, and requirements validation. At the beginning of the second step which this paper focuses on, there have been several types of massive documents generated in the first step. Since the developers and the clients/users of the new software system may not have common knowledge in the field which the system deals with, it is difficult for the developers to produce correct requirements specification by using these documents. There has been few research work to solve this problem. The authors have developed a support tool to produce correct requirements specification by arranging and restructuring those documents into clearly understandable forms. In the second step, the developers must specify the functions and their constraints of the new system from those documents. Analyzing the developers' real activities for designing the support tool, the authors propose a model of this step as the following four activities. To specify the functions of the new system, the developers must collect the sentences which may suggest the functions scattering those documents. To define the details of each function, the developers must gather the paragraphs including the descriptions of the functions. To verify the correctness of each function, the developers must survey all related documents. To perform above activities successfully, the developers must manage various versions of those documents correctly. According to these four types of activities, the authors propose the effective ways to support the developers by arranging those documents. This paper shows algorithms based on this model by using the structures of the documents and keywords which may suggest the functions or constraints. To examine the feasibility of their proposal, the authors implemented a prototype tool. Their tool extracts complete information scattering those documents. The effectiveness of their proposal is demonstrated by their experiments.

This paper presents scattering characteristics of a TE electromagnetic plane wave by a photo-induced plasma strip grating in a semiconductor slab at millimeter wave frequencies. The characteristics are analyzed by using the moment method and estimated numerically over a frequency band from 30-50 GHz. It is shown that the resonance anomaly in the grating can be controlled by changing not only the periodic light illumination pattern but also the plasma density.

An automatic defect classification system (ADC) for use in visual inspection of semiconductor wafers is introduced. The methods of extracting the defect features based on the human experts' knowledge, with their correlations with the defect classes are elucidated. As for the classifier, Hyperellipsoid Clustering Network (HCN) which is a layered network model employing second order discrimination borders in the feature space, is introduced. In the experiments using a collection of defect images, the HCNs are compared with the conventional multilayer perceptron networks. There, it is shown that the HCN's adaptive hyperellipsoidal discrimination borders are more suited for the problem. Also, the cluster encapsulation by the hyperellipsoidal border enables to determine rejection classes, which is also desirable when the system will be in actual use. The HCN with rejection achieves, an overall classification rate of 75% with an error rate of 18%, which can be considered equivalent to those of the human experts.

A partial buffer sharing scheme is proposed as loss-priority control for a finite buffer with batch inputs. A partial batch acceptance strategy is used for a batch arriving at a finite buffer. Customer loss probabilities for high- and low-priority customers are derived under this batch acceptance strategy, using a supplementary variable method that is a standard tool for queueing analysis. A comparison of the partial buffer sharing scheme and a system without loss-priority control is made in terms of admissible offered load.

A unified theory for the characteristics of dual modes in a circular resonator is elucidated in simple analytical expressions. First, a circular resonator is considered as a ring transmission line which allows two oppositely traveling waves. The essential quantities that characterize a transmission line, i. e. , the propagation constant and characteristic impedance are obtained theoretically and/or experimentally. Secondly, any circular resonator is described by a ring resonator model which can be treated analytically, and the resonant frequencies are obtained when perturbations are added along the periphery of a circular resonator. A two stage BPF is created by adding I/O ports to the perturbed circular resonator. Its center frequency and bandwidth is calculated based on the ring resonator model. The circuit condition for obtaining two attenuation poles at both sides of the passband is given together with the method for their control.

We propose and demonstrate a simple polarization-independent construction of a local node for optical WDM ring networks using a centralized multiwavelength light source (MWLS). The node is simply composed of a 4-port optical circulator, an add/drop multiplexing (ADM) filter, a reflective modulator, and a drop fiber Bragg grating (FBG). A Faraday rotator mirror (FRM) is used to enable an LiNbO3 intensity modulator to operate in the polarization-independent mode. We examine three ADM filters, an interference filter, a fiber Fabry-Perot (FP) filter, and a set of FBG's. An optical WDM system experiment is performed to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed node construction.

We have proposed a highly scattering optical transmission (HSOT) polymer for use as a high efficiency light source medium. This polymer contains specified internal microscopic heterogeneous structures for controlling light-transmission properties. An LCD backlighting system having a new light pipe made of this polymer has twice the brightness of the conventional one. A light scattering phenomenon inside the HSOT polymer was quantitatively analyzed by a ray tracing simulation based on the Mie scattering theory and the Monte Carlo method. The illumination of the backlight which is optimized by using the simulation program has enough uniformity of intensity and color because of specified multiple light scattering phenomena inside the HSOT polymer. We propose the new backlighting system having fewer components and twice efficiency of the conventional one.