This paper proposes dynamic distributed unicast and multicast routing algorithms for multiple classes of QoS guaranteed networks. Each link in such a network is assumed to be able to provide multiple classes of QoS guarantee by reserving various amounts of resource. A distributed unicast routing algorithm, DCSP (Distributed Constrained Shortest Path), for finding a QoS constrained least cost path between each O-D (Originating-Destination) pair, is proposed first. Two class reduction schemes, the linear and logarithmic policies, are develpoed to prevent exponential growth of the number of end-to-end QoS classes. Based on DCSP, two distributed multicast routing algorithms, DCSPT (Distributed Constrained Shortest Path Tree) and DTM (Distributed Takahashi and Mutsuyama), are proposed to find QoS constrained minimum cost trees. Numerical results indicate that DCSP strongly outperforms previously proposed centralized algorithms and it works better with the linear class reduction method. For the multicast routing algorithms, the DCSPT with linear class reduction method yields the best performance of all multicast routing algorithms.

Recently, dielectric lens antennas are paid attentions in ITS applications. Many lens shape designing methods were already developed. And electrical performances were estimated through a ray tracing method. Here, arbitral lens shapes were expressed by a system of power series. In the case of ray tracing, time-consuming three-coordinate root-finder programs were needed to find intersection points of rays on the lens surfaces. In order to calculate complicated structures such as zoned lenses and complicated rays such as multiple reflections between lens surfaces, simple ray tracing methods are requested. In this paper, a simple ray tracing method that utilizes directly designed discrete points of lens surfaces is developed. In this method, a refracted ray is automatically determined for a given incident ray. As for an intersecting point of a lens surface for an outgoing ray, the nearest point to the refracted vector is found out by employing a simple searching procedure. This method is time-saving compared to the previous three-coordinate root-finding program. Through calculated results of focal points and radiation patterns in wide angle beam steering, effectiveness of a developed method is ensured. Application of the developed ray tracing method of complicated multiple reflections are studied. Reflecting points are found out speedily by the same searching procedure. A calculated example of doubly reflected rays is obtained. Through comparing calculated and measured results of wide angle radiation patterns, effectiveness of a developed method is ensured.

Research in smart antenna technology has progressed over the past few years and is gradually reaching the phase of practical use. We have developed a smart antenna test bed for wireless local area network (LAN) that is based on the IEEE802.11b. The objective is to improve anti-multipath fading performance and expand communication distance. Using this test bed, we carried out field tests in two environment. One environment is an office in an non line of sight (NLOS), and another environment is an outdoor in a line of sight (LOS). In this paper, we explain the outline of the test bed, the measurement method, and present the results of the field tests. In the office environment, we measured the performance of each set with a different number of antenna elements. The results show that the dead-spots where communication becomes impossible disappear if the number of antenna elements is more than or equal to two. In addition, a greater number of elements indicates better performance. The total average throughput is 1.6 times as efficient when two elements are used, and 1.9 times when four elements are used. Cold spots where the throughput is slower than 1 Mbps are reduced by 80-90%. In the outdoor LOS environment field test, it is shown that by using four-element smart antenna for both transmitter and receiver, the communication distance reached 1km with an average throughput of 4 Mbps. These results prove that the smart antenna drastically improves the performance of a wireless LAN system, i.e. the IEEE802.11b.

In this paper, we present Neighbor Community Finder (NCF, for short), a tool for finding Web communities related to given URLs. While existing link-based methods of finding communities, such as HITS, trawling, and Companion, use algorithms running on a Web graph whose vertices are pages and edges are links on the Web, NCF uses an algorithm running on an inter-site graph whose vertices are sites and edges are global-links (links between sites). Since the phrase "Web site" is used ambiguously in our daily life and has no unique definition, NCF uses directory-based sites proposed by the authors as a model of Web sites. NCF receives URLs interested in by a user and constructs an inter-site graph containing neighbor sites of the given URLs by using a method of identifying directory-based sites from URL and link data obtained from the actual Web on demand. By computational experiments, we show that NCF achieves higher quality than Google's "Similar Pages" service for finding pages related to given URLs corresponding to various topics selected from among the directories of Yahoo! Japan.

Scattering of the two dimensional electromagnetic waves is studied by the infinite sequences of zeros arising on the complex plane, which just correspond to the null points of the far field pattern given as a function of the azimuthal angle θ. The convergent sequences of zeros around the point of infinity are evaluated when the scattering objects are assumed to be N-polygonal cylinders. Every edge condition can be satisfied if the locations of zeros are determined appropriately. The parameters, which allow us to calculate the exact positions of zeros, are given by the asymptotic analysis. It is also shown that there are N-directions of convergence, which tend to infinity. An illustrative example is presented.

We report a flexible and lightweight wearable microstrip antenna that can be sewn into clothing and hats. This antenna is composed of felt and a conductive woven fabric. Experimental results clearly show that this antenna operates normally as a conventional microstrip antenna, and is practical and feasible for personal satellite communications.

The three major failures of electrical contacts for automotive relay applications are: contact welding (or contact sticking), high contact resistance and severe contact erosion due to switching arcing. With the demand of high power and multiple functions of automotive vehicles, the switching current has be dramatically increased, it results in higher failing rate, in particular for contact welding. On the other hand, the miniaturization of electromechanical relays has lead to the reduction of mechanical spring force. This not only results in the earlier contact welding but also makes the relay more susceptible to the contact resistance and arc erosion failures. This paper is a review of most recent studies on these three failure aspects. It describes the progress in the understanding of contact welding caused by short arcing and high contact resistance due to contamination of particles and films in relay manufacturing process and also it review the material transfer due to switching arcing. At the end, the brief considerations of electromechanical relays used in 42 volts have also been given.

A single solid-state magnetic sensor can be used to measure a current by sensing the field near the conductor in a non-contact way. In order to improve the accuracy of the measuring system, magnetic sensor arrays have been introduced in the current measurement around the conductor. An analytical algorithm based on Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) is presented in this paper, which can separate the effects of the field generated by the current under measurement from the interference fields. A general mathematical model of the interference analysis is set up, which can be used for both DC and AC current measurement and has no restriction on the shape and number of the current conductors. Numerical simulations associated with preliminary experimental results confirm the validity of the approach.

Development of new sliding contact, usable under sever conditions such as high-temperature, extremely low-temperature or high vacuum, has recently become an urgent necessity. This research mainly examined the contact resistance and coefficient of friction of 3 kinds of self-lubricant composite materials with electrical conductivity and mechanical stiffness. The result showed that a composite material (CMML-1) containing the least quantity of solid lubricants [WS2, Gr.(Graphite)] among them was low in both contact resistance and coefficient of friction and less in fluctuation. By EPMA analysis, contribution of Sn to electrical conductivity was suggested.

This paper describes the design of a programmable QAM transceiver for VDSL applications. A 12-b DAC with 64-dB spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) at 75-MS/s and an 11-b ADC with 72.3-dB SFDR at 70-MS/s are integrated in this complete physical layer IC. A digital IIR notch filter is included in order to not interrupt existing amateur radio bands. The proposed dual loop AGC adjusts the gain of a variable gain amplifier (VGA) to obtain maximum SNR while avoiding saturation. Using several low power techniques, the total power consumption is reduced to 300-mW at 1.8-V core and 3.3-V I/O supplies. The transceiver is fabricated in a 0.18-µm CMOS process and the chip size is 5-mm 5-mm. This VDSL transceiver supports 13-Mbps data rate over a 9000-ft channel with a BER < 10-7.

The purpose of this paper is to present a rapid prototyping flow for the development of a wireless LAN system. The proposed system flow that was used for the development of the prototype is based on the use of UML (Unified Modeling Language). The UML and its real-time extensions are used to help the development phases of the prototype, mainly in the specification, co-simulation and validation of the design. The target of the development that was carried out with the application of the UML-based methodology is the implementation of an access point for a HIPERLAN/2 wireless network. Apart from the presentation of the UML-based system design methodology the paper also presents the application of the methodology for the implementation of the system prototype, the detailed software development and the results of the development.

This paper discusses the orbital motion and elevation properties of a quasi-zenith satellite system using circular orbits. The satellites are deployed on inclined geosynchronous orbits with identical sub-satellite loci on earth. The satellites trace the locus at even intervals. This satellite system can provide mobile satellite communications and navigation services at very high elevations to middle-latitude regions. In general, the orbital parameters of the satellite system are determined by numerical simulation to maximize the minimum elevation angle in areas where satellite services are to be provided. However, an understanding of the properties of the orbit and consequent elevation properties are important for efficient constellation design. This paper formulates the orbital motion of inclined geosynchronous circular orbits, including the relative motion to the rotating earth. Although elliptical orbit constellations are also possible and can gain higher elevation, only circular orbits, which can be accurately formulated without using an analytically unsolvable Kepler's equation, are discussed in this paper. Elevation properties are evaluated using the geocentric angle between the sub-satellite point and an arbitrary point in the intended service area. This angle is a typical parameter that can be derived as a single-valued function of the elevation at a specific point. Optimum orbital parameters for an intended service area can be easily estimated without numerical simulation using the results of the evaluation described in this paper. These results can also be used to infer whether a circular-orbit constellation is applicable to an intended service area.

The current paper presents the design, analysis, and implementation of a low-profile resonant dc-to-dc converter that utilizes a coreless printed circuit board transformer as a substitute for the conventional magnetic core-based transformer. A prototype series resonant converter, fabricated in a 40 mm80 mm area with a 4 mm thickness while achieving the maximum efficiency of 85% at a 58 W output power, is used as an example to address the theoretical and practical issues involved in the design, analysis, and implementation of a PCB transformer-based low-profile dc-to-dc converter.

Performance of three binding schemes for memory local to a node is evaluated. Since a large number of cache misses can occur in a large (relative to the cache size) working set, binding at a page fault time alone cannot efficiently utilize locality of reference at the local memory. In a small working set, the address bound to the local memory at a node miss time is not effective due to low cache miss rates. Our simulation shows that binding at a cache miss time achieves up to 3.1 times and 2.4 times performance of the schemes of binding at a page fault time and at a node miss time respectively.

Arrival of the packet data is acknowledged by detecting the preambles of the received bursty packets. To increase system throughput and reduce transmission latency, a simple and robust signal detection algorithm is required. Furthermore, the threshold for signal detection must be set adaptively for different channel conditions. In this paper, we design and compare three signal detection algorithms for bursty packet systems.

Many algorithms have been introduced to obtain giga-bit routing performance by reducing searching time. As most of them, however, have not considered the importance of update time and memory requirement seriously, they couldn't work well in real networks. We propose a flexible and fast IP lookup algorithm, named FFILA, considering these factors and compare the performance of our scheme with that of the conventional scheme of Patricia trie.

Active replication is a common approach to building highly available and reliable distributed software applications. The redundant nested invocation (RNI) problem arises when servers in a replicated group issues nested invocations to other server groups in response to a client invocation. Automatic suppression of RNI is always a desirable solution, yet it is usually a difficult design issue. If the system has multithreading support, the difficulties of implementation increase dramatically. Intuitively, to design a deterministic thread execution control mechanism is a possible approach. Unfortunately, some modern operating systems implement thread on kernel level for execution fairness. For the kernel thread case, modification on thread control implies modifying the operating system kernel. This approach loses system portability which is one of the important requirements of CORBA or middleware. In this work, we propose a mechanism to perform the auto-suppression of redundant nested invocation in an active replication fault-tolerant (FT) CORBA system. Besides the mechanism design, we discuss the design correctness semantic and the correctness proof of our design.

By modelling the quantization error as additive white noise in the transform domain, Wiener filter is used to reduce quantization noise for DCT coded images in DCT domain. Instead of deriving the spectrum of the transform coefficient, a DPCM loop is used to whiten the quantized DCT coefficients. The DPCM loop predicts the mean for each coefficient. By subtracting the mean, the quantized DCT coefficient is converted into the sum of prediction error and quantization noise. After the DPCM loop, the prediction error can be assumed uncorrelated to make the design of the subsequent Wiener filter easy. The Wiener filter is applied to remove the quantization noise to restore the prediction error. The original coefficient is reconstructed by adding the DPCM predicted mean with the restored prediction error. To increase the prediction accuracy, the decimated DCT coefficients in each subband are interpolated from the overlapped blocks.

Cutoff rate of m-ary PPM is derived for an avalanche photodiode (APD) based receiver. The cutoff rate is compared among m=8-256 under the condition of the same total signal energy in 256 slots, where the effects of the timing jitter and atmospheric turbulence are included. Numerical results are shown for the illustrative examples of the cutoff rate.

We attempt to achieve corporative behavior of autonomous decentralized agents constructed via Q-Learning, which is a type of reinforcement learning. As such, in the present paper, we examine the piano mover's problem including a find-path problem. We propose a multi-agent architecture that has an external agent and internal agents. Internal agents are homogenous and can communicate with each other. The movement of the external agent depends on the composition of the actions of the internal agents. By learning how to move through the internal agents, avoidance of obstacles by the object is expected. We simulate the proposed method in a two-dimensional continuous world. Results obtained in the present investigation reveal the effectiveness of the proposed method.