A new CMOS analogue transconductor is proposed and simulated. This transconductor is based on the operation of MOS transistors in the linear region and has a good linearity. The simulation result shows that less than 1% distortion can be obtained for the differential input signal of 6.4 Vp-p with IB=80µA and supply voltage of 5V.

Video services such as video-on-demand are expected to be a motivation for deploying multimedia services in residential areas. These services should increase customer demand for video channels as customer demands become more sophisticated and diverse in the future. Therefore, it is important to determine how network configurations (i.e. network transition scenarios) should evolve in response to changes in access network demand. This paper proposes economical deployment of access networks based on transition scenarios. We conclude that transition scenarios offer more economical deployment than single-network configurations. Two transition scenarios, from passive double-star to fiber single-star, and from hybrid fiber-coax to fiber single-star, are evaluated as examples. These transition scenarios are economical even when customer demand changes. The transition starting time affects the present worth of annual charges (PWAC) of access networks more than the transition period does.

To improve the efficiency for the threshold schemes, the major problem is that the secret shadows cannot be reused after renewing or recovering the shared secret. However, if the secret shadows cannot be reused, the established threshold scheme is limited to be used only once. It is inefficient to reconstruct the whole secret sharing system. Therefore, we introduce an efficient dynamic threshold scheme. In the new scheme, the shadowholders can reuse the secret shadows no matter that the shared secret is renewed or recovered. In addition, the new scheme provides a way by which the dealer can renew the shared secret or reconstruct the secret sharing system, efficiently. Therefore, this scheme is good for maintaining the important secrets.

In this paper, we propose an approach for railway scheduling based on iterative repair, a technique that starts with a complete but possibly flawed schedule and searches through the space of possible repairs. The search is guided by an earliest-conflict-first heuristic that attempts to repair the earliest constraint violation while minimizing the value of objective function. Since cycles may exist among a sequence of repairs during the repair process, a cycle detection and resolution scheme is proposed to prevent infinite loops. Experimental results show that the efficiency of the repair algorithm improves significantly when cycle detection is incorporated.

Precise direct mounting of laser diode (LD) and photodiode (PD) chips on silica planar lightwave circuits (PLCs) has been investigated for application to transceiver modules. To achieve submicron optical alignment, self-aligned index marks on the PLCs and LDs were directly detected by transmission infrared light. The repeatability of the positioning was measured to be within 0.125 µm. The output power of the resultant module was 0.2 mW at 80 mA. A waveguide-type PD was also mounted in the same way, and module sensitivity of 0.25 A/W was demonstrated.

Discrete-time chaotic circuits realizing a tent map and a Bernoulli map are synthesized using switched-current (SI) techniques. For these proposed circuits, simulations are performed concerning the return maps and bifurcation trees. The theoretical analysis is carried out to predict the bifurcation tree under the existence of the nonidealities in the return map. This analysis has been done by assuming the return maps to be piecewise linear. The proposed circuits are built with commerciallyavailable IC's. And their return maps and bifurcation trees are measured in the experiment. The design formulas are obtained for the bifurcation trees and they are confirmed by the simulation results. The proposed circuits are integrable by a standard BiCMOS technology.

We have fabricated a new analog memory for integrated artificial neural networks. Several attempts have been made to develop a linear characteristics of floating-gate analog memorys with feedback circuits. The learning chip has to have a large number of learning control circuit. In this paper, we propose a new analog memory SDAM with three cascaded TFTs. The new analog memory has a simple design, a small area occupancy, a fast switching speed and an accurate linearity. To improve accurate linearity, we propose a new chargetransfer process. The device has a tunnel junction (poly-Si/poly-Si oxide/poly-Si sandwich structure), a thin-film transistor, two capacitors, and a floating-gate MOSFET. The diffusion of the charges injected through the tunnel junction are controlled by a source follower operation of a thin film transistor (TFT). The proposed operation is possible that the amounts of transferred charges are constant independent of the charges in storage capacitor.

Storage system in a multimedia server must satisfy two contradicting requirements: real-timeliness and large number of parallel user requests. Efficient algorithms for data placement, disk head scheduling, and request admission control schemes are needed to support the requirements. In this paper, we propose efficient schemes to maximize system resource utilization and service availability: cyclic placement scheme, subgroup retrieval scheme, and measurement-based request admission control scheme. Performance analysis through simulation revealed that the amount of system buffers required can be reduced by 70% approximately.

Neural network hardware using time-shared bus and integer representation architecture has already been fabricated and reported from the design viewpoint. However, nothing related to performance evaluation of hardware has yet been presented. Computation-speed, scalability and learning accuracy of hardware are evaluated theoretically and experimentally using a Back Propagation (BP) algorithm. In addition, a mirror-weight assignment technique is proposed for high-speed computation in the BP. NETTalk, an English-pronunciation-reasoning task, has been chosen as the target application for the BP. In the experiment, recently-developed neuro-hardware based on the above architecture and its parallel programming language are used. An outline of the language is described along with BP programming. Mirror-weight assignment allows maximum speed at 55.0 MCUPS (Million Connections Updated Per Second) using 256 neurons in the hidden-layer (numbers of neurons in input-and output-layers are fixed at 203 and 26 respectively in NETTalk). In addition, if scalability is defined as a function of the number of neurons in the hidden-layer, the machine retains high scalability at 0.5 if such a maximum speed needs to be used. No degradation in learning accuracy occurs when experimental results computed using the neuro-hardware are compared with those obtained by floating-point representation architecture (workstation). The experiment indicates that the present integer representational design of the neuro-hardware is sufficient for NETTalk. Performance has been evaluated theoretically. For evaluation purposes, it is assumed that most of the total execution-time is taken up by bus cycles. On the basis of this assumption, an analytical model of computation-speed and scalability is proposed. Analytical predictions agreed well with experimental results.

Time-critical-communication, which should guarantee a time limit of a communication service is getting important in multimedia and factory automation fields. This paper proposes an IP-based protocol, Network Protocol with Performance (NPP) to provide the advanced best-effort service which takes a time constraint into account for real-time applications on the Internet. NPP uses the packet-scheduling function to make an effort to guarantee time constraints. Packet-scheduling algorithm chooses a packet in a NPP queue by a precedent level and a time constraint of each packet. We also discuss an application of NPP to multimedia communication system, and investigate performance of NPP by simulation.

In this paper, the real-time scheduling mechanism which could support multimedia retrieval services more efficiently is investigated. In order to support multimedia service, the MEDF (modified earliest deadline first) algorithm that takes advantage of the priority queue and the virtual deadline mechanism is proposed. Additionally, its performance is analyzed and compared with conventional RR (round robin), FCFS (first come first serve), SS (sporadic server), MRF (minimum remained-time first), and EDF (earliest deadline first) algorithms. According to the simulation results, the proposed MEDF algorithm shows better performance than other scheduling algorithms in the multimedia environments.

In order to produce high quality multimedia contents efficiently, DTPP -desktop program production system- has been proposed. The DTPP is capable of supporting all the necessary procedures of program production, from planning to broadcasting, by molding each process into the desktop environment of program producers. The DTPP system consists of multimedia terminals, a media server, a computing server, and network system. In the DTPP, new technological concepts such as cooperative program production, indexing and utilization of attribute information of images, and video components and spatio-temporal editing will be installed.

In this paper we propose a new medical image processing system called Virtualized Endoscope System (VES)", which can examine the inside of a virtualized human body. The virtualized human body is a 3-D digital image which is taken by such as X-ray CT scanner or MRI scanner. VES consists of three modules; (1) imaging, (2) segmentation and reconstruction and (3) interactive operation. The interactive operation module has following thee major functions; (a) display of, (b) measurement from, and (c) manipulation to the virtualized human body. The user of the system can observe freely both the inside and the outside of a target organ from any point and any direction freely, and can perform necessary measurement interactively concerning angle and length at any time during observation. VES enables to observe repeatedly an area where the real endoscope can not enter without pain from any direction which the real endoscope can not. We applied this system to real 3-D X-ray CT images and obtained good result.

In this paper, a super-resolution method based on the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) is proposed for a signal with some frequency damage. If the damage process can be modeled as linear convolutoin with a type 1 linear phase FIR filter, it is shown that some DCT coefficients of the damaged signal are the same as those of the original signal except for the DCT coefficients corresponding to the frequency damage. From this investigation, the proposed method is provided for the DCTs with four types as expanding the super-resolution method based on the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT). In addition,two magnification approaches based on the proposed method are described to improve the conventional approach.

The problem of TM-wave scattering and radiation from a finite number of thick slits in a parallel plate waveguide is solved. The Fourier transform and the mode matching are used to obtain simultaneous equations for the field inside the slits. The simultaneous equations are solved to obtain a series solution which is amenable to numerical computation. The numerical computations are performed to illustrate the behaviors of scattering, transmission, and reflection in terms of incident angle, slit size and operating frequency. The presented solution is computationally very efficient and useful for slotted-waveguide leaky-wave antenna applications.

Several major aircraft accidents have been attributed to low-altitude wind shears, which are normally caused by microbursts or gust fronts. Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) systems are being installed near major airports for the detection of low-altitude wind shears. In order to develop a TDWR system further, low-altitude wind shears were numerically simulated in this study. The basic equations, which contain prognostic equations for air velocity, pressure, temperature, water vapor, and rainwater, were solved using a finite difference scheme. A terrain-following coordinate transformation was employed to simulate terrain effects. The simulation results are presented in this paper.

Intricate Speech Communication Mode (I-SC Mode) is observed in verbal interaction during ISDN-TV conferencing. It is characterized by conflicts and multiple interactions of speech. I-SC Mode might cause mental stress to participants and be obstacles for smooth communication. However, the reasons of I-SC Mode on the environment of information transmission are hitherto unknown. Furthermore, analyses on the talks inside a conference site (LT: local talk or a talk inside a local site) and between remote sites (MT: media talk or a talk between remote sites) are originally conceived on assumed differences in cognitive distance and media intimacy. This study deals with communication effects/barriers and cognitive distance/intimacy of media correlated with audio-video transmission signals and speech modes or talk types and response delay in human speech interactions by using an innovated conference model (decision-making transaction model: DT-Model) in synchronous ISDN-TV conference systems (SYN) and asynchronous ones (ASYN). The effects of intricate communication can be predicted to a certain extent and in some ways. In I-SC Mode, because a timely answer can not be received from recipients (or partner), response time delay and response rate are analyzed. These factors are thus analyzed with an innovated dynamic model, where the recognizable acceptance of delay is evaluated. The nonlinear model shows that the larger the response time delay, the lower the response rate becomes. Comparing the response rate between SYN and ASYN, the latter is notably lower than the former. This indicates that the communication efficiency is lower in ASYN. An I-SC Mode is the main mode that occurs during ASYN conferences, and this in turn causes psychological stress. Statistics show the prevalence of a high incidence of complicated plural talks and a low response rate exists as the main factors preventing smooth human-to-human communication. Furthermore, comparing the response delays in face-to-face LT (Tf) and machine-mediated MT (Tm), human communication delay is significantly extended by the effects of initial mechanical delays. Therefore, cognitive intimacy of media is clearly affected by the existence of physical distance.

A region-based adaptive perceptual quantization technique is proposed for video sequence coding, and applied to the MPEG coder. The visibility of coding artifacts in a macroblock (MB) is affected by perceptual characteristics of neighboring MBs as well as the MB itself. Therefore spacial and temporal activities of the MB and its surroundings are used to decide the quantization scaling factor. In comparison with the adaptive scheme in the encoding algorithm specified in MPEG-2 Test Model 5 (TM5), the proposed scheme is proven to improve perceptual quality further in video coding.

Through comparing the results of two successive IPTP Character Recognition Competitions which focused on 3-digit handprinted postal codes, we herein analyze the methodologies of the submitted algorithms along with the substituted or rejected patterns of these algorithms. Regarding their methodologies, lesser diversity was apparent specifically concerning the contour-chain code based on local stroke directions and statistical discriminant functions for feature extraction and discrimination. Analysis of the patterns demonstrated that the misrecognized patterns being most often improved were categorized as a decrease in peculiarly shaped handwritten characters or heavy-handed and disconnected strokes. However, most of the remaining misrecognitions were still classed as peculiarly shaped handwriting as commonly shared between the best three algorithms. From these analyses, we could delineate a direction to be taken for developing more effective methodologies and clarify the remaining problems to be overcome by the subsequent intensive research. Furthermore, we evaluate in this article our multi-expert recognition system for achieving higher recognition performances by means of combining complementary recognition algorithms. We performed a subsequent investigation of the Candidate Appearance Likelihood Method using novel experimental conditions and a new examination of the application of the neural network as the combining method for accumulating the broader candidate appearances. The results obtained confirm that combining through the neural network constitutes one of the most effective ways of making the multi-expert recognition system a reality.

This paper is described on the realization of simulated inductance cercuit with parallel negative conductance and its application for an oscillator. The design's condition for realizing the circuit needs stability, narrow expance of elements, larger dynamic-range and lower sensitivity. A new floating simulated inductance circuit with parallel nagative conductance with two operational amplifiers, four resistors, and four capacitors is created by using the design's algorithm. And the elements sensitivity of the simulated circuit is superior to that of the conventional circuits. By experimenting with a resonance circuit, the author tested the sinusoidal oscillator's circuit of a parallel -GLC as an application in order to confirm the operation of the simulated inductance circuit with parallel negative conductance.