In Optimistic Two-Phase Locking (O2PL), when a transaction requests a commit, the transaction can not be committed until all requested locks are obtained. By this reason, O2PL leads to unnecessary waits and operations even though it adopts an optimistic approach. This paper suggests an efficient optimistic cache consistency protocol that provides serializability of committed transactions. Our cache consistency scheme, called PCP (Preemptive Cache Protocol), decides whether to commit or abort without waiting when transactions request commits. In PCP, some transactions that read stale data items can not be aborted, because it adopts a re-ordering scheme to enhance the performance. In addition, for re-ordering, PCP stores only one version of each data item. This paper presents a simulation-based analysis on the performance of PCP with other protocols such as O2PL, Optimistic Concurrency Control and Caching Two-Phase Locking. The simulation experiments show that PCP performs as well as or better than other schemes with low overhead.

Gaudry has described a new algorithm (Gaudry's variant) for the discrete logarithm problem (DLP) in hyperelliptic curves. For a hyperelliptic curve of a small genus on a finite field GF(q), Gaudry's variant solves for the DLP in time O(q2+ε). This paper shows that Cab curves can be attacked with a modified form of Gaudry's variant and presents the timing results of such attack. However, Gaudry's variant cannot be effective in all of the Cab curve cryptosystems. This paper also provides an example of a Cab curve that is unassailable by Gaudry's variant.

This paper presents an application of Complex-Valued Associative Memory Model(CAMM) for image processing. An image association system applying CAMM, combined with a 2-dimensional discrete Fourier transform (2-D DFT) process is proposed. Discussed are how a gray level image can be expressed using CAMM, and the image association that can be performed by CAMM. In the proposed system, input images are transformed to phase matrices and the image association can be performed by making use of the phase information. Practical examples are also presented.

This paper describes an individual effect of soil moisture (mg) and surface roughness (hrms) of bare soil on the back scattering coefficient (σ0) at the X-band frequency. The study contributes to the design of an efficient microwave sensor. For this purpose, experimentally observed data was utilized to provide a composite σ0 equation model accounting for individual effect in regression analysis. The experimental data are compared with Small Perturbation Method. It is observed that the X-band gives better agreement up to incidence angle 50 for HH-polarization and 60 for VV-polarization as compared to the C-band. The lower angles of incidence give better results than the higher angles for observing mg at the X-band. The multiple and partial regression analyses have also carried out for predicting the dependence of scattering coefficient (σ0) on mg and hrms more accurately. The analyses suggest that the dependence of dielectric constant (i.e., mg) is much more significant in comparison to surface roughness at lower angles of incidence for both like polarizations. The results propose the suitable angle of incidence for observing bare surface roughness and soil moisture at the X-band. All these data can be used as a reference for satellite or spaceborne sensors.

We study how to generalize a key agreement and password authentication protocol on the basis of the well known hard problems such as a discrete logarithm problem and a Diffie-Hellman problem. The key agreement and password authentication protocol is necessary for networked or internetworked environments to provide the user knowledge-based authentication and to establish a new cryptographic key for the further secure session. The generalized protocol implies in this paper to require only weak constraints and to be generalized easily in any other cyclic groups which preserve two hard problems. The low entropy of password has made it difficult to design such a protocol and to prove its security soundness. In this paper, we devise a protocol which is easy to be generalized and show its security soundness in the random oracle model. The proposed protocol reduces the constraints extremely only to avoiding a smooth prime modulus. Our main contribution is in solving the password's low entropy problem in the multiplicative group for the generalization.

Traditional process schedulers in operating systems control the sharing of the processor resources among processes using a fixed scheduling policy based on the utilization of a computer system such as a real-time or a timesharing system. Since the control over processor allocation is based on a fixed policy, not based on contents or behavior of processes, this can hinder an effective use of a processor or can extend the processing time of a process unnecessarily in some cases. We have already proposed a process scheduling policy, which responds to the behavior of multiple processes of a WWW server, in order to improve the response time of a WWW server. This policy gives any process of a WWW server that is predicted to be a WWW server process handling a text data request from a browser priority over all other processes by moving it to the head of the ready queue where processes waiting for the processor to become available are placed. In this paper, we present the experimental evaluation of our proposed process scheduling policy with regard to the number of simultaneous accesses from browsers and the processor load of the server machine, and explain the results we obtained.

This paper presents a Path Bandwidth Management (PBM) model for large-scale networks that leads to an almost optimal PB allocation, under constraints posed by the installed bandwidth in the transmission links of the network. The PB allocation procedure is driven from a traffic demand matrix and consists of three phases. In the first phase, a suitable decomposition of the whole network takes place, where the large-scale network is split to a set of one-level sub-networks. In the second phase, the optimization algorithm developed for one-level telecommunication networks is applied to each sub-network in order to define the optimal PB allocation. The criterion for optimization is to minimize the worst Call Blocking Probability (CBP) of all switching pairs of the sub-network. In the third phase, composition of the sub-networks takes place in a successive way, which leads to the final PB allocation of the large-scale network. As the large-scale network is built up from optimized sub-networks, an almost optimal PB allocation is anticipated. For evaluation, the worst resultant CBP of the proposed scheme is compared with that obtained by the optimal PB allocation procedure in order to prove its optimality and efficiency. We choose a set of large-scale networks whose size is not very large so that we can apply the optimization algorithm developed for one-level telecom networks for defining its optimal bandwidth allocation. Extensive evaluation of the PBM model has showed that the worst resultant CBP is about 2% above the optimal value, which is a satisfactory result. The proposed PBM scheme is explained by means of an application example.

Shared memory multiprocessors are frequently used as compute servers with multiple parallel programs executing at the same time. In such environments, an operating system switches the contexts of multiple processes. When the operating system switches contexts, in addition to the cost of saving the context of the process being swapped out and that of bringing in the context of the new process to be run, the cache performance of processors also can be affected. The blocked algorithm improves cache performance by increasing the locality of memory references. In a blocked program using this algorithm, program performance can be significantly affected by the reuse of a block loaded into a cache memory. If frequent context switching replaces the block before it is completely reused, the cache locality in a blocked program cannot be successfully exploited. To address this problem, we propose a preemption-safe policy to utilize the cache locality of blocked programs in a multiprogrammed system. The proposed policy delays context switching until a block is fully reused within a program, but also compensates for the monopolized processor time on processor scheduling mechanisms. Our simulation results show that in a situation where blocked programs are run on multiprogrammed shared-memory multiprocessors, the proposed policy improves the performance of these programs due to a decrease in cache misses. In such situations, it also has a beneficial impact on the overall system performance due to the enhanced processor utilization.

In this paper, we describe a method of determining meat quality using the concepts of "marbling score" and texture analysis. The marbling score is a measure of the density distribution of fat in the rib-eye region. Based on the results of an investigation carried out by handing out questionnaires to graders, we consider the marbling of meat to be a texture pattern and propose a method for the implementation of a grading system using a texture feature. In this system, we use a gray level co-occurrence matrix as the texture feature, which is a typical second-order statistic of gray levels of a texture image, and determine standard texture-feature vectors for each grade based on it. The grade of an unevaluated image is determined by comparing the texture-feature vector of this unevaluated image with the standard texture-feature vectors. Experimental results show the proposed method to be effective.

Natural language interface systems can accept more unrestricted queries from users than other systems, however it is impossible to understand erroneous sentences which include the syntax errors, unknown words and misspelling. In order to realize the superior natural language interface, the automatic error correction for erroneous sentences is one of problems to be solved. The method to apply the LR parsing strategies is one of the famous approaches as the robust error recovery scheme. This method is able to obtain a high correction accuracy, however it takes a great deal of time to parse the sentence, such that it becomes a very important task to improve the time-cost. In this paper, we propose the method to improve the time efficiency, keeping the correction accuracy of the traditional method. This method makes use of a new parsing table that denotes the states to be transited after accepting each symbol. By using this table, the symbol which is allocated just after the error position can be utilized for selecting correction symbols, as a result, the number of candidates produced on the correction process is reduced, and fast system can be realized. The experiment results, using 1,050 sentences including error characters, show that this method can correct error points 69 times faster than the traditional method, also keep the same correction accuracy as the traditional method.

Recently the applications of MEMS (micro electro mechanical systems) have made remarkable progress in many filelds. The optical application of MEMS is one of the most promising because it provides micro mechano optical devices, the key components for high-perfromance systems in optical communication networks and data storage devices. This paper disucces the impacts of MEMS techologies on optical systems. Furthermore, state-of-the-art exmaples of micro optical switches, pig-tailed tunable filters and two-dimensional MEMS optical scanners are described.

Even in today's industries that are predominated by solid-state switching devices, electromechanical devices with electrical contacts are still widely used for switching and/or conveying electrical signals and power. In this paper, some interesting topics in the investigation of electrical contacts, which were selected mainly from those presented at recently held international conferences or submitted to the related Transactions of IEEE and IEICE, are introduced. Specifically, some topics related to investigation regarding contact materials, new techniques for evaluating electrical contact phenomena, new understanding of the contact phenomena, and new applications of electrical contacts are briefly explained.

In this paper, the distributions of two spectral intensities along the axis of an arc column of the breaking arc are measured by using a combination of a CCD color camera and an additional filter, and arc temperature and metal-vapor quantity are calculated, when copper electrodes interrupt circuits of dc 50 V/3.3 A and 5.0 A. As results; The spectral intensities of excited copper atoms are the strongest near the cathode and become weaker with distance from the cathode in the small number of breaking arcs. The spectral intensities become strong near the anode in the large number of breaking arcs. The average arc temperature in the cross-section of an arc column is high near both the cathode and the anode, and the temperature distribution in the cross-section of the arc column is high at the axis of the arc column, and the arc temperature along the axis of the arc column is high near both the cathode and the anode. The metal-vapor quantity is low near both the cathode and the anode, and it is much at the center of the arc column.

We investigate traffic performance of CBWL schemes with multimedia services on non-homogeneous cellular network in which cut-off priority is given to handoff calls. Two generic routing schemes are analyzed: one is the randomized routing and the other is the least loaded routing. The performance measures that we focus on are the new call blocking probabilities and the handoff failure probabilities. To evaluate blocking probabilities of interest, we construct a generalized access network whose blocking probabilities are same as ones for CBWL systems. For analysis of generalized access network, we apply the reduced load approximation. The computational complexity and memory requirements of proposed algorithm are linear so that we can use this algorithm to approximate blocking probabilities of CBWL systems of large size. The proposed approximations are tested on a number of simple examples. Numerical results for 12 cells and 36 cells networks are given. The comparison between approximation and simulation results shows that the proposed approximation method is quite accurate.

This paper describes how to generate, analyze and design a novel current-mode filter model using tunable multiple-output operational transconductance amplifiers and grounded capacitors (MO-OTA-Cs) for synthesizing both transmission poles and zeros. Transfer functions of low-order, high-order, general type, and special type are realized based on the filter model. The theory focuses mainly on establishing a relationship between the cascaded MO-OTA-Cs and the multiple-loop feedback matrix, which makes the structural generation and design formulas. Adopting the theory allows us to systematically generate many interesting new configurations along with some known structures. All the filter architectures contain only grounded capacitors, which can absorb parasitic capacitances and require smaller chip areas than floating ones. The paper also presents numerical design examples and simulation results to confirm the theoretical analysis.

In this letter, we remark a well-known nonlinear filtering technique realize immediate effect to suppress the influence of the additive measurement noise in the input to a set theoretic linear blind deconvolution scheme. Numerical examples show ε-separating nonlinear pre-filtering techniques work suitably to this noisy blind deconvolution problem.

This paper newly proposes radio-over-fiber systems using cascaded radio-to-optic direct conversion (ROC) scheme. The ROC system can convert a radio signal into an optical signal with the same signal format. The received carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) performance of the radio-over-fiber systems using the ROC/heterodyne detection (HD) scheme and the ROC/self-heterodyne detection (SHD) scheme are theoretically analyzed. The optimization of an optical modulation index (OMI) in each radio base station (RBS) is also presented. By using the proposed OMI optimization method, the ROC/HD and the ROC/SHD schemes are shown to provide approximately 16 dB and 14 dB improvement over the intensity modulation/direct detection scheme when the number of RBS is 20 and the radio-frequency (RF) signal bandwidth is 150 MHz, respectively. The ROC/SHD scheme enables a receiver structure to become simple while still achieving high received CNR.

In this paper, we present our work on the design of a new FPGA architecture targeted for high-performance bit-serial pipeline datapath. Bit-parallel systems require large amount of routing resource which is especially critical in using FPGAs. Their device utilization and operation frequency become low because of large routing penalty. Whereas bit-serial circuits are very efficient in routing, therefore are able to achieve a very high logic utilization. Our proposed FPGA architecture is designed taking into account the structure of bit-serial circuits to optimize the logic and routing architecture. Our FPGA guarantees near 100% logic utilization with a straightforward place and route tool due to high routability of bit-serial circuits and simple routing interconnect architecture. The FPGA chip core which we designed consists of around 200k transistors on 3.5 mm square substrate using 0.5 µm 2-metal CMOS process technology.

In this paper, the effective uses of Gerschgorin radii of the similar transformed covariance matrix for source number estimation are introduced. A heuristic approach is used for developing the detection criteria. The heuristic approach applying the visual Gerschgorin disk method (VGD), developed from the projection concept, overcomes the problems in cases of small data samples, an unknown noise model, and data dependency. Furthermore, Gerschgorin disks can be formed into two distinct, non-overlapping collections; one for signals and the other for noises. The number of sources can be visually determined by counting the number of Gerschgorin disks for signals. The proposed method is based on the sample correlation coefficient to normalize the signal Gerschgorin radii for source number detection. The performance of VGD shows improved detection capabilities over Gerschgorin Disk Estimator (GDE) in Gaussian white noise process and was used successfully in measured experimental data.

Efficient radio resource utilization and fairness are important goals that must be achieved since wireless ATM systems support various services with different traffic characteristics such as CBR and UBR. This paper proposes a novel delay-and-queuing data size-based MAC protocol for broadband wireless ATM. The proposed MAC protocol relies on a new resource scheduling algorithm that decides the priority of channel assignment based on both the queuing delay and the queuing data size in the transmission buffer. Simulation results confirm that the proposed MAC protocol is able to provide throughput fairness and to achieve excellent throughput performance for ATM services that experience dynamic traffic fluctuations.