Measurement of the viscosity of liquid using a piezoelectric disk is described. Experiments with a radial expansion mode of a piezoceramic disk were carried out for water-glycerin mixture samples. Resonant resistance has linearity to the square root of the product of density and viscosity of a liquid around 113 kHz.

The arrangement graph An,k is not only a generalization of star graph (n-k=1), but also more flexible. Designing efficient broadcasting algorithm on a regular interconnection network is a fundamental issue for the parallel processing techniques. Two contributions are proposed in this paper. Initially, we elucidate a first result to construct n-k edge-disjoint spanning trees in an An,k. Second, we present efficient (one/all)-to-all broadcasting algorithms by using constructed n-k spanning trees, where height of each spanning tree is 2k-1. The arrangement graph is assumed to use one-port and all-port communication models and packet-switching (or store-and-forward) technique. Using n-k spanning trees allows us to present efficient broadcasting algorithm in the arrangement graphs and outperforms previous results. This is justified by our performance analysis.

A hierarchical structure of the statistical models involving the parametric, state space, generalized state space, and self-organizing state space models is explained. It is shown that by considering higher level modeling, it is possible to develop models quite freely and then to extract essential information from data which has been difficult to obtain due to the use of restricted models. It is also shown that by rising the level of the model, the model selection procedure which has been realized with human expertise can be performed automatically and thus the automatic processing of huge time series data becomes realistic. In other words, the hierarchical statistical modeling facilitates both automatic processing of massive time series data and a new method for knowledge discovery.

This paper reviews design aspects of computational discovery systems through the analysis of some successful discovery systems. We first review the concept of viewscope/view on data which provides an interpretation of raw data in a specific domain. Then we relate this concept to the KDD process described by Fayyad et al. (1996) and the developer's role in computational discovery due to Langley (1998). We emphasize that integration of human experts and discovery systems is a crucial problem in designing discovery systems and claim together with the analysis of discovery systems that the concept of viewscope/view gives a way for approaching this problem.

We address the problem of computing various types of expressive tests for decision trees and regression trees. Using expressive tests is promising, because it may improve the prediction accuracy of trees, and it may also provide us some hints on scientific discovery. The drawback is that computing an optimal test could be costly. We present a unified framework to approach this problem, and we revisit the design of efficient algorithms for computing important special cases. We also prove that it is intractable to compute an optimal conjunction or disjunction.

We report on progress in the development of high current density NbN/AlN/NbN tunnel junctions for application as submillimeter wave SIS mixers. A ultra-high current density up to 120 kA/cm2, roughly two orders of magnitude larger than any reported results for all-NbN tunnel junctions, was achieved in the junctions. The magnetic field dependence and temperature dependence of critical supercurrents were measured to investigate the Josephson tunneling behaviour of critical supercurrents in the high-Jc junctions. We have developed a low-noise quasi-optical SIS mixer with the high-current density NbN/AlN/NbN junctions and two-junction tuning circuits which employ Al/SiO/NbN microstriplines. The tuning characteristics of the mixer were investigated by measuring the response in the direct detection mode by using the Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) and measuring the response in the heterodyne detection mode with the standard Y-factor method at frequencies from 670 to 1082 GHz. An uncorrected double sideband receiver noise temperature of 457 K (12hν/kB) was obtained at 783 GHz.

In future multimedia mobile communication systems, heterogeneous users will require very different and time-varying transmission rates. Thus, they should be supported with a novel approach that can accommodate the fluctuating data rates in wireless channels. In this paper, a simple method that is used to admit the rates successfully is proposed. The method is also distributed in a sense that it can be implemented at each mobile without any interaction with other mobiles. The method consists of power control with a higher SIR (signal to interference ratio) target and periodic adjustment of the data rate. We prove a good rate admission property of the proposed method and verify its performance with numerical investigation.

In this paper, a token-controlled network with exhaustive service strategy is analyzed. The mean and variance of service time of a station, and the mean token rotation time on the network are derived under the condition that the buffer capacity of each station is individually finite. For analysis, an extended stochastic Petri-net model of a station is presented. Then, by analyzing the model, the mean service time of a station and the mean token rotation time are derived, as functions of the given network parameters such as the total number of stations on the network, the arrival rate of frames, the transmission rate of frames, and the buffer capacity. The variance of service time of a station is also derived. By examining derived results, it is shown that they exactly describe the actual operations of the network. In addition, computer simulations with sufficient confidence intervals help to validate the results.

One way of accommodating multimedia traffic having various transmission rates is to use multicode transmission in CDMA cellular systems. A multicode user, however, corresponds to locally concentrated single-code users, and the simultaneous transmission of multiple signals causes non-uniform traffic on cellular systems. We evaluate the performance of multicode transmission in CDMA systems in terms of call blocking and communications quality. We also estimate the number of receivers and searchers needed in a base station. Our previously proposed dynamic cell configuration (DCC) scheme reduces the adverse effects of non-uniform traffic in CDMA systems. In the present study, we found that the use of DCC for voice/data integrated traffic using multicode transmission reduces call blocking and improves communications quality for both voice and data users.

Multi-path propagation structure in the urban mobile communication environment of 25 GHz band has been measured by means of newly developed "multi-path propagation parameter measurement equipment," which is capable of estimating coupled DOA (Direction Of Arrival), TOA (Time Of Arrival) and relative field strength by super resolution techniques. Before measurement, basic performance of the equipment has been evaluated in the anechoic chamber in order to ascertain limitation on measurement. For practice and verification of outdoor propagation characteristics, basic data have been collected in a works where accurate buildings and road layout is known. Sub-sequently, data have been collected in the urban mobile communication environment and following characteristics have been confirmed. 1) DOA and TOA of wave reflected by the side of building almost follow the ray-trace. 2) Street trees make 25 GHz band wave attenuate. 3) There are such unusual cases that it is possible to communicate in spite of out of line-of-sight by multi-path propagation. 4) Narrow streets have very complicated propagation structures. Finally, technologies that should be developed for the high-speed digital mobile communication are proposed based on the measurement results.

This paper describes a method of predicting transmission performance to be obtained by applying RAKE reception and parallel transmission in realistic urban multipath environments. Delay profiles measured in metropolitan Tokyo at microwave frequencies were used to obtain the impulse responses of radio channels, and the closed-form equations corresponding to the performance of these anti-multipath techniques were derived, by means of the characteristic function method, under the assumption that the phases of the impulse responses are uniformly distributed. Results show that RAKE reception provides bit error rates 100 times lower than bare transmission does, whereas the improvement obtained by using parallel transmission should be especially valuable in broadband communication systems, such as those operating at data rates above 10 Mb/s.

This paper proposes an associative memory neural network whose limiting state is the nearest point in a polyhedron from a given input. Two implementations of the proposed associative memory network are presented based on Dykstra's algorithm and a fixed point theorem for nonexpansive mappings. By these implementations, the set of all correctable errors by the network is characterized as a dual cone of the polyhedron at each pattern to be memorized, which leads to a simple amplifying technique to improve the error correction capability. It is shown by numerical examples that the proposed associative memory realizes much better error correction performance than the conventional one based on POCS at the expense of the increase of necessary number of iterations in the recalling stage.

This paper proposes a novel spread spectrum (SS) modem for random access satellite communication systems that employs digital matched filters. The proposed modem employs a parallel structure to ensure detection of packet arrival. Code timing detection with a combination of a coarse detector and a fractional error detector reduces the sampling rate while maintaining the BER performance. An in-symbol pilot multiplexing scheme is also proposed for fast and stable carrier synchronization with a simple hardware. A performance evaluation shows that the proposed modem achieves the UW miss-detection probability of 10-4 at the Eb/No of 0 dB. The overall BER performance achieved in experiments well agrees simulation.

To improve frequency efficiency or user capacity in multi-path fading environments, we introduce and investigate an orthogonal multi-carrier frequency hopping-code division multiple access (FH-CDMA). These improvements are achieved by combining the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and FH-CDMA schemes. The basic idea has been previously proposed by the authors. The aim of study in this paper is to evaluate the performance of this scheme in various environments. The theoretical analysis of bit error rate (BER) performance in this paper includes the effects of frequency selective fading in land mobile communications and of nonlinear amplification in satellite communications. A modified scheme of controlling transmission power to be controlled according to the number of simultaneously accessing users is also discussed. This modified scheme improves BER performance for frequency selective fading when the number of simultaneously accessing users in a cellular zone is small. Furthermore, an error-correcting code and its erasure decoding are applied in order to reduce errors due to hits in asynchronous FH/CDMA for reverse link as well as errors due to fading and noise.

In this paper, a type of multi-carrier direct sequence code division multiple access (MC-DS-CDMA) system which uses frequency spread coding is proposed and investigated for the down-link. An MC-DS-CDMA system is a combined system of CDMA and multi-carrier modulation. This system is often categorized as a "serial to parallel (S/P) type" system because serial to parallel converted data symbols are transmitted. They use different sub-carriers which are narrow-band DS waveforms. In this system, benefits of path or frequency diversity can not be obtained because of the narrow-band transmission of each data symbol. In order to benefit from the diversity, we propose to adopt frequency spread coding in an MC-DS-CDMA system. The proposed system exploits frequency diversity without additional redundancy, i. e. , no frequency or time redundancy is required to improve the performance. Computer simulation is carried out in a frequency selective fading channel and the results show its effectiveness in terms of average bit error rate (BER). Furthermore, the proposed system is compared with a multi-carrier (MC-) CDMA system which is often categorized as a "copy type" system and a single-carrier (SC-) DS-CDMA system using a RAKE receiver.

Adaptability evaluation of software systems is one of the key concerns in both software engineering and requirements engineering. In this paper, we present a formal and systematic approach to evaluate adaptability of software systems to requirements in enterprise business applications. Our approach consists of three major parts, that is, the common modeling method for both business realms and software realms, functional adaptability evaluation between the models with Σ algebra and behavioral adaptability evaluation with process algebra. By our approach, one can rigorously and uniquely determine whether a software system is adaptable to the requirements, either totally or partially. A sample application from an order processing is illustrated to show how this approach is effective in solving the adaptability evolution problem.

In this paper, we show two process allocation schemes to tolerate multiple faults when the primary-backup replication method is used. The first scheme, called multiple backup scheme, is running multiple backup processes for each process to tolerate multiple faults. The second scheme, called regenerative backup scheme, is running only one backup process for each process, but re-generates backup processes for processes that do not have a backup process after a fault occurrence to keep the primary-backup process pair available. In both schemes, we propose heuristic process allocation methods for balancing loads in spite of the occurrence of faults. Then we evaluate and compare the performance of the proposed heuristic process allocation methods using simulation. Next, we analyze the reliability of two schemes based on their fault-tolerance capability. For the analysis of fault-tolerance capability, we find the degree of fault tolerance for each scheme. Then we find the reliability of each scheme using Markov chains. The comparison results of two schemes indicate that the regenerative single backup process allocation scheme is more suitable than the multiple backup allocation scheme.

We propose precise write-time compensation for nonlinear transition shift in magnetic tape recording using d=1 runlength-limited (RLL) code as a channel modulation. In this write-time compensation approach, the write current transitions having a transition within 3 bits earlier are shifted so as to minimize the transition shift of the readback signal. First, we precisely measured the nonlinear transition shift using a VCR. Next, based on this measurement, we simulated the effects of the write-time compensation, verifying them in recording experiments with a VCR. The results show that when the optimum read equalization is applied to the readback signal, this write-time compensation approach increases the eye height and eye width while improving the byte error rate by about two orders.

This paper examines fairness of service in the up-link of CDMA cellular slotted-ALOHA packet communication systems with site diversity reception. Site diversity rescues the packets originating mainly from near the edge of the cells, whereas packets originating near the base stations can not obtain the benefits of diversity reception. This situation causes an unfairness in packet reception that depends on location of the mobile station. Two transmission control schemes for reducing this unfairness are proposed. In the first scheme, mobile stations control the target received power for the open-loop power control based on the reception level of the pilot signals of the surrounding base stations. In the second, mobile stations control transmit permission probability. Successful packet reception rate, fairness coefficient and throughput performance are evaluated in fading environments with imperfect power control. Computer simulation shows that both schemes improve service fairness for all mobile stations and throughput performances. A performance comparison between the two schemes concludes that transmission power control outperforms transmit permission probability control as a simple technique for maintaining fairness of services.

This paper proposes a new vector error measurement scheme for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems that is used to define transmit modulation accuracy. The transmit modulation accuracy is defined to guarantee inter-operability among wireless terminals. In OFDM systems, the transmit modulation accuracy measured by the conventional vector error measurement scheme can not guarantee inter-operability due to the effect of phase noise. To overcome this problem, the proposed vector error measurement scheme utilizes pilot signals in multiple OFDM symbols to compensate the phase rotation caused by the phase noise. Computer simulation results show that the vector error measured by the proposed scheme uniquely corresponds to the C/N degradation in packet error rate even if phase noise exists in the OFDM signals. This means that the proposed vector error measurement scheme makes it possible to define the transmit modulation accuracy and so guarantee inter-operability among wireless terminals.