While mobile networks have been enhanced to support a variety of mobile multimedia services such as video telephony and rich data content delivery, a new challenge is being created by the remarkable development of micro-device technologies such as micro processor-chips, sensors, and RF tags. These developments suggest the rapid emergence of the ubiquitous computing environment; computers supporting human life without imposing any stress on the users. The combination of broadband global networks and ubiquitous computing environment will lead to an entirely new class of services, which we call ubiquitous networking services. This paper discusses how to create ubiquitous service environments comparing global networking approaches which are based on fixed and mobile networks. It is shown that the mobile approach is better from service applicability and reliability viewpoints. Networking architecture is proposed which expand 4G mobile cellular networks to real space via gateways on the edges of the mobile network (i.e. mobile terminals). A new set of technical requirements will emerge via this approach, which may accelerate the paradigm shift from the current mobile network architecture and even from the Internet of today.

This paper proposes a novel boundary scan test scheme for intellectual property (IP) core identification via watermarking. The core concept is embedding a watermark identification circuit (WIC) and a test circuit into the IP core at the behavior design level. The procedure depends on current IP-based design flow. This scheme can detect the identification of the IP provider without the need to examine the microphotograph after the chip has been manufactured and packaged. This scheme can successfully survive synthesis, placement, and routing and identify the IP core at various design levels. Experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed approach has the potential to solve the IP identification problem.

Future broadband mobile communication systems are necessary to achieve the bit rates of 100 Mbit/s. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) transmission is an attractive technology because it can remove the influence of frequency selective fading in broadband transmission by adding a suitable guard interval to each OFDM symbol. However, peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) is very large in OFDM transmission. In this paper, we propose a new PAPR reduction method which can be applied even when unusable bands are inside the system band. In the proposed method, peak reduction signals are generated by iterative signal processing only in the usable frequency band, and filtering to remove out-of-band components of the peak reduction signals is incorporated into the iterative signal processing. The results of computer simulation show that the proposed method can effectively reduce peak power without expanding the spectrum both outside the system band and into unusable bands inside the system band. By using the proposed method, the broadband mobile communication system with low peak power and high flexibility of frequency band use can be realized.

Digital Terrestrial Television (DTV) services began in Japan in December 2003. This paper proposes a novel on-glass antenna for mobile reception of terrestrial television. The gain of the proposed antenna is 4.7 dB higher than commercial monopole antennas when installed on a vehicle. Other merits of this antenna are a broad input impedance bandwidth across the UHF band (470-710 MHz), and the fact that it does not spoil vehicle appearance. Field experiments have confirmed that a diversity system using four of the proposed antennas is capable of mobile DTV reception.

One of the main issues of Mobile IPv6 is handover latency that causes service disruption time. Although plenty of proposals significantly reduce the service disruption time, they suffer from redundant routing that causes packet misordering and bandwidth consumption during the process of inter-domain handover. In this paper, we propose a new scheme that minimizes the redundant routing during the process of inter-domain handover by utilizing forwarding routers for each correspondent node. Our proposed scheme consists of forwarding router discovery and proactive handover. We evaluate our proposed scheme in the view of packet misordering and bandwidth consumption, and clarify the efficiency of our proposed scheme. We also evaluate the impact of the forwarding routers' capacity since routers have limited resources. By strategically locating forwarding routers, e.g. next to the router that has peering to another domain, the redundant routing caused by inter-domain handover will be efficiently suppressed.

This paper describes two way satellite system environments on geostationary orbit (GEO) and performance enhancement mechanisms which reduces round trip time (RTT) and supports real-time services. We use performance enhancing proxy (PEP) for reducing round trip time and user-level real-time scheduler for reducing deadline violation tasks. The user-level real-time scheduling method classifies priority of user process into four types and those are reflected in kernel. With these dual performance enhancement mechanisms, we can improve quality of service (QoS) of end-user who connects to the DVB-RCS system.

This paper presents a highly parallel architecture for deblocking filter in H.264/AVC. We adopt various parallel schemes in memory sub-system and datapath. A 2-dimensional parallel memory scheme is employed to support efficient parallel access in both horizontal and vertical directions in order to speed up the whole filtering process. This parallel memory also eliminates the need for a transpose circuit. In the datapath, an algorithm optimization is performed to implement parallel filtering with hardware reuse. Pipeline techniques are also adopted to improve the throughput of filtering operations. Our design is implemented under TSMC 0.18 µm technology. Results show that the core size is 0.821.13 mm2 when the maximum frequency is 230 MHz. Compared to other existing architectures, our design has advantages in both speed and area.

This paper presents a cascode-pair distributed amplifier design approach using 0.25 µm GaAs-based PHEMT MMIC technology, which covers 2-32 GHz. Electromagnetic simulation results show that this amplifier achieves 18 dB gain from 2 to 32 GHz and 0.5 dB gain flatness over the band. The reflected coefficients at the input and output ports are below -10 dB up to 27 GHz. The output power at 1 dB compression is greater than 24 dBm at 20 GHz. An appropriate feedback resistance can be utilized to improve P1 dB for about 6 dBm. The DOE (design of experiment) approach is carried out by a simulation tool for better performance and tolerance of the devices is also analyzed. The circuit configuration is capable of operating over ultra-broad band amplification.

A technique to control the radiation pattern of an NRD-guide-compatible pyramidal horn antenna, which consists of a tapered dielectric rod inserted into the horn, was developed for multiple access LAN applications at 60 GHz. By using this simple technique, the half-power beamwidth can be controlled from 11to 40.

With reference to video motion estimation in the framework of the new H.264/AVC video coding standard, this paper presents algorithmic and architectural solutions for the implementation of context-aware coprocessors in real-time, low-power embedded systems. A low-complexity context-aware controller is added to a conventional Full Search (FS) motion estimation engine. While the FS coprocessor is working, the context-aware controller extracts from the intermediate processing results information related to the input signal statistics in order to automatically configure the coprocessor itself in terms of search area size and number of reference frames; thus unnecessary computations and memory accesses can be avoided. The achieved complexity saving factor ranges from 2.2 to 25 depending on the input signal while keeping unaltered performance in terms of motion estimation accuracy. The increased efficiency is exploited both for (i) processing time reduction in case of software implementation on a programmable platform; (ii) power consumption reduction in case of dedicated hardware implementation in CMOS technology.

The authors realize a 50% length reduction of short-slot couplers in a post-wall dielectric substrate by two techniques. One is to introduce hollow rectangular holes near the side walls of the coupled region. The difference of phase constant between the TE10 and TE20 propagating modes increases and the required length to realize a desired dividing ratio is reduced. Another is to remove two reflection-suppressing posts in the coupled region. The length of the coupled region is determined to cancel the reflections at both ends of the coupled region. The total length of a 4-way Butler matrix can be reduced to 48% in comparison with the conventional one and the couplers still maintain good dividing characteristics; the dividing ratio of the hybrid is less than 0.1 dB and the isolations of the couplers are more than 20 dB.

Mobile multimedia services such as TV-call or video streaming are gradually becoming popular in the 3rd generation mobile network (IMT-2000). Multimedia traffic is expected to continue increasing into the coming years, and IP technology is considered to be capable of efficiently transporting such huge volumes of multimedia traffic. Aimed at ALL-IP mobile networks, we are proposing the IP-based IMT Network Platform (IP2), which represents an evolution from IMT-2000. In this paper, we propose the Edge Intelligent Mobility Management Protocol (EIM) to enable IP mobility in future ALL-IP mobile networks to meet mobile operators' requirements. EIM employs the so-called network-controlled mobility management approach and conceals IP mobility from mobile nodes by processing user packet and mobility control at the edge node, access router. To verify feasibility and scalability, we have implemented EIM on our experimental system and conducted a series of tests. The results showed that processing delays for basic mobility operations are considerably small. It was also confirmed that the EIM is scalable regarding the increase of the number of mobile nodes and correspondent nodes.

In recent years, the Internet has come to be able to be used at higher speed and more cheaply everywhere as the broadband service and the wireless LAN service have been provided by various ISPs. In such a ubiquitous environment, a demand for mobile computing environments in the intranet and easy access from remote sites has been increasing greatly as well as the Internet. To meet this requirement, we have proposed a Logical Office service, which is a kind of the mobile VLAN, and enables terminal plug and play, layer two tunneling, and ubiquitous communication. This paper newly proposes that the offer of the IP mobility to not only the movement of the terminal but also existing network services be possible the Logical Office service which we developed. As a result, it was verified to operate existing network services such as wirelesses LAN on the Logical Office service, and for newly existing network services to able to have the IP mobility.

This paper deals with the decomposition of surface data into several fractal signal based on the parameter estimation by the Mean Likelihood and Importance Sampling (IS) based on the Monte Carlo simulations. The method is applied to the feature extraction of surface data. Assuming the stochastic models for generating the surface, the likelihood function is defined by using wavelet coefficients and the parameter are estimated based on the mean likelihood by using the IS. The approximation of the wavelet coefficients is used for estimation as well as the statistics defined for the variances of wavelet coefficients, and the likelihood function is modified by the approximation. After completing the decomposition of underlying surface data into several fractal surface, the prediction method for the fractal signal is employed based on the scale expansion based on the self-similarity of fractal geometry. After discussing the effect of additive noise, the method is applied to the feature extraction of real distribution of surface data such as the cloud and earthquakes.

We propose an iterative tuning process of blind/group-blind detector based on constant modulus property of digitally modulated signal. By adopting the iterative tuning process after applying blind/group-blind detectors, significant gains are attained compared to the original blind/group-blind detectors. The signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR) approaches to ideal MMSE detector even with reasonably small number of data samples.

This paper compared the approaches concerning the pinball routing problem that occurs in the nested network in network mobility environment and developed the analytic framework to model. Each model was evaluated of transmission latency, memory usage, and BU's occurrence number at routing optimization process. The estimation result showed that the optimization mechanism achievement overhead existed in each model, and the full optimization of the specific model was not attained because of it. Therefore, the most appropriate approach for routing optimization in nested NEMO can be determined only after a careful evaluation, and the proposals must consider using it in combination with other approaches. The modeling framework presented in this paper is intended to quantity the relative merits and demerits of the various approaches.

A rotator graph was proposed as a topology for interconnection networks of parallel computers, and it is promising because of its small diameter and small degree. However, a rotator graph is a directed graph that sometimes behaves harmfully when it is applied to actual problems. A bi-rotator graph is obtained by making each edge of a rotator graph bi-directional. In a bi-rotator graph, average distance is improved against a rotator graph with the same number of nodes. In this paper, we give an algorithm for the container problem in bi-rotator graphs with its evaluation results. The solution achieves some fault tolerance such as file distribution based information dispersal technique. The algorithm is of polynomial order of n for an n-bi-rotator graph. It is based on recursion and divided into two cases according to the position of the destination node. The time complexity of the algorithm and the maximum length of paths obtained are estimated to be O(n3) and 4n-5, respectively. Average performance of the algorithm is also evaluated by computer experiments.

The present paper introduces a new construction of a class of binary sequence set having a zero-correlation zone (hereafter binary zcz sequence set). The cross-correlation function and the side-lobe of the auto-correlation function of the proposed sequence set is zero for the phase shifts within the zero-correlation zone. The present paper shows that such a construction generates a binary zcz sequence set by using a primitive linear recursion over GF(2), the finite field of integers modulo 2.

A new microstrip compatible phase shifter circuit is introduced. The phase shifter uses a strip-type electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) substrate in place of the solid metal ground plane. Such EBG substrates, when made of ferroelectric materials, can produce variable phase constants useful for phase shifter applications. Test models using two different EBG substrates with dielectric constants of 9.2 and 10.2 showed 44.5 degrees of phase difference with 1.7 dB of added insertion loss at 10 GHz from a line originally 504 degrees long.

According to the proliferation of ubiquitous computing, various products which contain large-size embedded software have been developed. One of most typical features of embedded software is concurrency of software and hardware factors. That is, software has connected deeply into hardware devices. The existence of various hardware make quality assurance of embedded software more difficult. In order to assure quality of embedded software more effectively, this paper discusses features of embedded software and an effective method for quality assurance for embedded software. In this paper, we first analyze a failure distribution of embedded software and discuss the effects of hardware devices on quality of embedded software. Currently, in order to reduce hardware related faults, huge effort for testing with large number of test items is required. Thus, one of the most important issues for quality assurance of embedded software is how to reduce the cost and effort of software testing. Next, focusing on hardware constraints as well as software specifications in embedded software, we propose an evaluation metrics for determinating important functions for quality of embedded software. Furthermore, by referring to the metrics, undesirable behaviors of important functions are identified as root nodes of fault tree analysis. From the result of case study applying the proposed method to actual project data, we confirmed that test items considering the property of embedded software are constructed. We also confirmed that the constructed test items are appropriate to detect hardware related faults in embedded systems.