In this letter, a new output feedback tracking control using a fuzzy disturbance observer (FDO) is proposed and its application to control of a nonlinear system in the presence of the internal parameter perturbation and external disturbance is presented. An FDO using a filtered signal is developed and the high gain observer (HGO) is employed to implement the output feedback tracking control. It is shown in a rigorous manner that all the errors involved can be kept arbitrarily small. Finally, the effectiveness and the feasibility of the suggested method is demonstrated by computer simulation.

Distributed execution of a service often means that various places compete for the right to progress. If they exchange the right by explicit communication, there is a continuous flow of protocol messages. If the maximum transit delay of the communication medium is short, a better solution is to restrict progress of places to their individual time windows. The paper describes how to derive such time-sharing-based multi-party protocols for well-formed services specified in LOTOS/T+. The method is compositional with respect to the structure of the given service specification, supporting alternative, sequential, interrupt and parallel composition of services.

In this paper, we present an output feedback controller using a fuzzy controller and observer for nonlinear systems with unknown time-delay. Recently, Cao et al. proposed a stabilization method for the nonlinear time-delay systems using a fuzzy controller when the time-delay is known. In general, however, it is impossible to know or measure this time-varying delay. The proposed method requires only the upper bound of the derivative of the time-delay. We represent the nonlinear system with the unknown time-delay by Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model and design the fuzzy controller and observer for the systems using the parallel distributed compensation (PDC) scheme. In addition, we derive the sufficient condition for the asymptotic stability of the equilibrium point by applying Lyapunov-Krasovskii theorem to the closed-loop system and solve the condition in the formulation of LMI. Finally, computer simulations are included to demonstrate the effectiveness of the suggested method.

This very useful optical sampling system uses a passively mode-locked fiber laser as an optical sampling pulse source and is based on sum-frequency generation. The optical pulse had a sufficiently short pulse width, and its peak power was very high. In addition, it had a very low timing jitter. We could observe optical signals that were jitter-free in terms of single scanning. The sum-frequency generation conversion efficiency was 1.0 10-4 W-1, and the temporal resolution was 700 fs, when we used a 5-mm-thick KTP crystal. A 320-Gbit/s optical signal could be clearly observed. We have also developed a polarization-insensitive optical sampling system with a two-path configuration based on sum-frequency generation using the type-II phase matching condition in a KTP crystal. The polarization dependency was less than 3.5% (0.15 dB) in the wavelength range from 1520 to 1620 nm.

A low complexity multi-user receiver with blind channel estimation and multiple access interference (MAI) suppression is proposed for a CDMA system under multipath fading and frequency offset. The design of the receiver involves the following procedure. First, a method of joint MAI suppression and channel estimation is developed based on the generalized sidelobe canceller (GSC) technique. In particular, channel estimates are obtained blindly in the form of the effective composite signature vectors (CSV) of the users. Second, a low-complexity partially adaptive (PA) realization of the receiver is proposed which incorporates reduced-rank processing based on the information of multi-user CSV's. By a judiciously designed decorrelating procedure, a new PA receiver is obtained with a much lower complexity. Finally, pilot symbols assisted frequency offset estimation and channel gain compensation give the estimate of users' symbols. Further performance enhancement is achieved by a decision aided scheme in which the signal is reconstructed and subtracted from the receiver input data, leading to significantly faster convergence. The proposed receiver is shown to be robust to multipath fading and frequency offset, and achieves nearly the same performance of the optimal maximum SINR and MMSE receivers with a much lower overhead for pilot symbols.

In wireless mobile environments, data requests based on the location of mobile clients (MCs) have increased. The requested data, called location-dependent data (LDD), may be uncertain if MCs use terms of general distance like "near". Fuzzy theory allows us to represent uncertainty without sharp boundaries. In this paper we quantify the fuzziness and propose a method for constructing the data region of LDD by the degree of the distance between LDDs' and MCs' locations. In simulation studies, we evaluate the LDD regions (LDRs) in various situations: MCs' extensive and intensive queried pattern in data regions of two "near" senses and civilized regions with regional features. Our performance evaluation shows that the number of database accesses in proposed LDRs can be reduced in each case.

A unified linear multiuser receiver that minimizes a weighted sum of the multiple access interference (MAI) and the background noise is introduced. The proposed receiver includes the three popular linear receivers, namely the matched-filter, the decorrelating and the minimum mean-square-error receivers as special cases. Furthermore, by tuning a single weighting factor, it is possible to improve the performance of the proposed receiver over that of any of the above mentioned linear receivers.

The radio wave intensity time series of the quasar is observed with the radio wave interferometer on the earth. External noise may superimpose with the radio wave on the path of wave propagation over the cosmological distance. In this paper, the effects of the superimposed noise on the radio wave intensity time series are discussed assuming nonlinear dynamics to apply on the time series. A convolution method is applied to the original observed radio wave intensity time series. Both the original and the convolution time series are analyzed by the Grassberger-Procaccia (GP) method with correlation integration and compared the results to estimate the presence and the effects of superimposed subtle noise. In addition, surrogate and Judd methods are applied to the radio wave intensity time series to increase the credibility of the results of the GP method. The effects of added random noise in Lorenz model are also analyzed with the GP method to estimate the above results.

In this letter, we present groupwise successive interference cancellation (GSIC) receiver with adaptive minimum mean squared error (MMSE) detection and extended GSIC (EGSIC) receiver with adaptive MMSE detection for dual-rate DS-CDMA system. The receivers are GSIC receiver and EGSIC receiver combined with adaptive MMSE detection which is introduced to make initial bit detection more reliable. Furthermore, a multi-user detection scheme is introduced to mitigate the effect of multiple access interference (MAI) between users in a group which is usually ignored in conventional GSIC receiver and EGSIC receiver. Specifically, parallel interference cancellation (PIC) is adopted as a multi-user detection scheme within a group. It is shown that performance of the GSIC receiver and EGSIC receiver is significantly improved by employing adaptive MMSE detection. It is also shown that the performance of the receivers can be improved further by using PIC within a group.

Multiple access interference and near-far effect cause the performance of the conventional single user detector in DS/CDMA systems to degrade. Due to high complexity of the optimum multiuser detector, suboptimal multiuser detectors with less complexity and reasonable performance have received considerable attention. In this paper we apply the classic and a new modified genetic algorithm for multiuser detection of DS/CDMA signals. It is shown that the classic genetic algorithm (GA) reaches an error floor at high signal to noise ratios (SNR) while the performance of proposed modified GA is much better than the classic one and is comparable to the optimum detector with much less complexity. The results hold true for AWGN and fading channels. We also describe another GA called as meta GA to find the optimum parameters of the modified GA. We compare the performance of proposed method with the other detectors used in CDMA.

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in employing animated agents for tasks that are typically performed by humans. They serve as communicative partners in a variety of applications, such as tutoring systems, sales, or entertainment. This paper first discusses design principles for animated agents to enhance their effectiveness as tutors, sales persons, or actors, among other roles. It is argued that agents should support their perception as social actors by displaying human-like social cues such as affect and gestures. An architecture for emotion-based agents will be described and a simplified version of the model will be illustrated by two interaction scenarios that feature cartoon-style characters and can be run in a web browser. The second focus of this paper is an empirical evaluation of the effect of an affective agent on users' emotional state which is derived from physiological signals of the user. Our findings suggest that an agent with affective behavior may significantly decrease user frustration.

This paper proposes a method to integrate computer specifications retrieved from multiple Web sites, to extract characteristic-data of each computer based on integrated information, and to present products suitable for a user's request. The specifications written in HTML are converted into normal forms called table structure. The quantitative attributes such as speed, capacity and dimensions are extracted by comparing them with the mean or mode of all sample data, and the qualitative ones such as kind of processor and graphics chip are extracted using knowledge provided manually. The recommended products are dynamically determined from the extracted data by a user's request and relevance feedback. Experimental results show the effectiveness of our method.

In this paper, we propose a scalable Extended Differentiated-Services (EDS) architecture to guarantee edge-to-edge explicit rate allocation. In presence of flows with explicit rate allocation, to share bandwidth fairly, a new fairness definition is proposed. Based on EDS and the proposed fairness definition, a scalable fair Edge-to-Edge Congestion Control Algorithm with Explicit Rate Allocation (ECC-ERA) is presented to solve the bandwidth assurance problem facing Differentiated Service architecture, where EDS uses congestion control packets to carry the flow-related states and congestion control information. By designing efficiency control and fairness control separately, the ECC-ERA can achieve good scalability to link capacity, round-trip time and number of flows. It will be shown that EDS plus ECC-ERA outperforms the general Diff-Serv bandwidth guarantee approaches. The main advantages of EDS+ECC-ERA are as follows: (1) it not only can guarantee explicit rate allocation, but also can guarantee near-zero packet loss in core routers, high utilization, lower and smoother queueing delay, better fairness and better protection from unresponsive traffic. (2) Neither resource pre-reservation nor sophisticated scheduling mechanisms are required. The simple FIFO at core routers is enough. (3) EDS plus EC-ERA is very efficient and can be used as end-to-end QoS building block.

This paper considers a transaction-based multi-server system with rejuvenation, and derive the optimal software rejuvenation policies under some system dependability measures; the steady-state availability, the probability of transaction loss and the upper bound of mean response time on transactions. We compare the system configuration based on a single-server with that based on a multi-server in terms of the software rejuvenation scheme. In numerical examples, we calculate the optimal software rejuvenation timing and its associated dependability measure, and refer to the effect of preventive maintenance in the transaction-based multi-server software systems.

The file sizes of on going flows are fairly disparate on the current network. In this letter, we propose an "age-based" packet discard scheme in the Traffic Conditioner (TC) of a gateway to improve the performance of file transmission. The on going flows will be grouped to three classes of priority according to their "age" as network congestion occurs and the simulation results show that the proposed model can work efficiently in most of the congestion conditions.

This Letter proposes a way of resolving spreading code mismatch in blind multiuser detection with subspace-based technique. It has been shown that subspace-based (SSB) blind multiuser detectors demonstrate the advantages of fast convergence speed and less sensitivity to spreading code mismatch over constrained mean output energy (CMOE) detectors. With a corrected scheme of the desired user code, the proposed method offers more robust capabilities over existing SSB techniques. Numerical results show that the effectiveness of the proposed technique.

It is still an open question whether software agents should be personified in the interface. In order to study the effects of faces and facial expressions in the interface, a series of experiments was conducted to compare subjects' responses to and evaluation of different faces and facial expressions. The experimental results obtained demonstrate that: 1) personified interfaces help users engage in a task, and are well suited for an entertainment domain; 2) people's impressions of a face in a task are different from ones of the face in isolation. Perceived intelligence of a face is determined not by the agent's appearance but by its competence; 3) there is a dichotomy between user groups which have opposite opinions about personification. Thus, agent-based interfaces should be flexible to support the diversity of users' preferences and the nature of tasks.

In this letter, we take advantage of both types of Interactive and Batch services by considering a hybrid multimedia-on-demand (MOD) system which provides both services. Also, we propose two serving methods with an incentive charging scheme to optimize the coexistence of both services. Numerical results show that the proposed hybrid system outperforms both individual systems. In particular, the system provider receives more revenue by serving more users concurrently, while the users have a better viewing experience due to higher availability of contents.

For suppressing inter symbol interference, the support vector machine mutliuser detector (SVM-MUD) was adopted as a nonlinear method in direct sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) signals transmitted through multipath channels. To solve the problems of the complexity of SVM-MUD model and the number of support vectors, based on recursive least squares support vector machine (RLS-SVM) and Riemannian geometry, a new algorithm for nonlinear multiuser detector is proposed. The algorithm introduces the forgetting factor to get the support vectors at the first training samples, then, uses Riemannian geometry to train the support vectors again and gets less improved support vectors. Simulation results illustrated that the algorithm simplifies SVM-MUD model at the cost of only a little more bit error rate and decreases the computational complexity. At the same time, the algorithm has an excellent effect on suppressing multipath interference.

Adaptive arrays have been recognized as an attractive mean for overcoming multipath fading and interference rejection in the field of mobile communications. In, an adaptive array applicable to single-user spread spectrum (SS) systems has been proposed. In this system, any a priori information concerning incoming signal, even the spreading code and synchronization, is not necessary while it achieves equalizing, beamforming and despreading of a received signal, simultaneously. In this paper, we propose a multistage blind adaptive array antenna based on the above-mentioned adaptive algorithm in order to realize blind signal processing that is applicable to multi-user SS systems. Behavior and performance of the proposed multistage system are examined through computer simulations.