In this paper we present a new, two-centered electronic voting scheme that is capable of preserving privacy, universal verifiability, and robustness. An interesting property of our scheme is the use of double encryption with additive homomorphic encryption functions. In the two-centered scheme, the first center decrypts the ballots, checks the eligibility of the voters, and multiplies each eligible vote, which is still encrypted in the cryptosystem of the second center. After the deadline is reached, the second center obtains the final tally by decrypting the accumulated votes. As such, both centers cannot know the content of any individual vote, as each vote is hidden in the accumulated result, therefore the privacy of the voters is preserved. Our protocols, together with some existing protocols, allow everyone to verify that all valid votes are correctly counted. We apply the r-th residue cryptosystem as the homomorphic encryption function. Although decryption in the r-th residue cryptosystem requires an exhaustive search for all possible values, based on experiments we show that it is possible to achieve desirable performance for large-scale elections.

In this paper, a Compensatory Neuro-Fuzzy Network (CNFN) for nonlinear system control is proposed. The compensatory fuzzy reasoning method is using adaptive fuzzy operations of neural fuzzy network that can make the fuzzy logic system more adaptive and effective. An on-line learning algorithm is proposed to automatically construct the CNFN. They are created and adapted as on-line learning proceeds via simultaneous structure and parameter learning. The structure learning is based on the fuzzy similarity measure and the parameter learning is based on backpropagation algorithm. The advantages of the proposed learning algorithm are that it converges quickly and the obtained fuzzy rules are more precise. The performance of CNFN compares excellently with other various exiting model.

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 paper proposes a new approach to fuzzy inference system for modeling nonlinear systems based on measured input and output data. In the suggested fuzzy inference system, the number of fuzzy rules and parameter values of membership functions are automatically decided by using the extended kernel method. The extended kernel method individually performs linear transformation and kernel mapping. Linear transformation projects input space into linearly transformed input space. Kernel mapping projects linearly transformed input space into high dimensional feature space. Especially, the process of linear transformation is needed in order to solve difficulty determining the type of kernel function which presents the nonlinear mapping in according to nonlinear system. The structure of the proposed fuzzy inference system is equal to a Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model whose input variables are weighted linear combinations of input variables. In addition, the number of fuzzy rules can be reduced under the condition of optimizing a given criterion by adjusting linear transformation matrix and parameter values of kernel functions using the gradient descent method. Once a structure is selected, coefficients in consequent part are determined by the least square method. Simulated results of the proposed technique are illustrated by examples involving benchmark nonlinear systems.

We propose an interference-canceller-aided (ICA) code timing acquisition scheme, code acquisition in short subsequently, for initial synchronization of direct sequence-code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems with interference cancellation (IC). The scheme removes completely or partially multiple access interference (MAI) due to the already-synchronized users from the received signal prior to code acquisition of a desired user. Code acquisition is then performed using the MAI-reduced signal. We compare the ICA code acquisition scheme with the conventional non-ICA scheme in terms of the probability of correct acquisition and the code timing accuracy. Simulation results shows that the proposed scheme can accommodate many more users than the conventional one and provide reliable code timing estimates even under many more interfering users.

This paper proposes the evaluation methods for measuring retrieval effectiveness of Web search engine systems, attempting to make them suitable for real Web environment. With this objective, we constructed 100-gigabyte and 10-gigabyte document sets that were mainly gathered from the '.jp' domain, and conducted an evaluation workshop at the third NTCIR Workshop from 2001 to 2002, where we assessed the retrieval effectiveness of a certain number of Web search engine systems using the common data set. Conventional evaluation workshops assessed the relevance of the retrieved documents, which were submitted by the workshop participants, by considering the contents of individual pages. On the other hand, we assessed the relevance of the retrieved pages by considering the relationship between the pages referenced by hyperlinks.

A reactive sputtering method using an Electron-Cyclotron-Resonance (ECR) microwave plasma was used to deposit Ni-Zn ferrite thin-films for a soft magnetic backlayer of Co-containing spinel ferrite thin-film perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) media. The Ni-Zn spinel ferrite thin-films with a preferential orientation of (100) and a relatively low coercivity of 15 Oe were obtained at a high deposition rate of 14 nm/min and at a temperature below 200 degrees C. Although post-annealing treatment in air at 200 degrees C was effective to decrease the coercivity of the Ni-Zn ferrite thin-films, the saturation magnetization and initial permeability decreased and the surface smoothness was deteriorated simultaneously. The Ni-Zn ferrite thin-films prepared by ECR sputtering are promising as the backlayer of the perpendicular magnetic recording medium, but further improvement is required in terms of the soft magnetic properties, the grain size and the surface roughness.

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 propose a delayed feedback guaranteed cost controller design method for uncertain linear systems with delays in states. Based on the Lyapunov method, an LMI optimization problem is formulated to design a delayed feedback controller which minimizes the upper bound of a given quadratic cost function. Numerical examples show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Many cooperated web cache systems and protocols have been proposed. These systems, however, require expensive resources, such as external bandwidth and CPU power or storage of a proxy, while inducing hefty administrative costs to achieve adequate client population growth. Moreover, a scalability problem in the cache server management still exists. This paper suggests peer-to-peer client-clustering. The client-cluster provides a proxy cache with backup storage which is comprised of the residual resources of the clients. We use DHT based peer-to-peer lookup protocol to manage the client-cluster. With the natural characteristics of this protocol, the client-cluster is self-organizing, fault-tolerant, well-balanced and scalable. Additionally, we propose the Backward ICP which is used to communicate between the proxy cache and the client-cluster, to reduce the overhead of the object replication and to use the resources more efficiently. We examine the performance of the client-cluster via a trace driven simulation and demonstrate effective enhancement of the proxy cache performance.

Described here is an automatic text summarization system for Japanese newspaper articles on sassho-jiken (murders and bodily harms). We extract the pieces of information from a text, inter-connect them to represent the scenes and participants involved in the sassho-jiken, and finally produce a summary by generating sentences from the information extracted. An experiment and its evaluation show that, while a limitation being imposed on the domain, our method works well in depicting important information from the newspaper articles and the summaries produced are better in adequacy and readability than those obtained by extracting sentences.

A new type of compact one dimension (1-D) microstrip photonic bandgap (PBG) structure for filter is presented. A miniature semiconductor-based structure band-stop filter with four cells is simulated, fabricated, and measured. Agreement between the experimental and simulation results has been achieved. The filter with four proposed PBG structure exhibits deep (about -60 dB) and steep (about 40 dB/GHz) stop-band characteristics. It also has less loss and ripples in the pass-band. The period of the PBG lattice is about 0.2 λe (λe, guiding wavelength at the center frequency of stop-band), or 0.068 λ0 (λ0 wavelength in air), and the filter is very compact and much easier for fabrication and realization in MIC and MMIC.

An ultra-high-sensitivity HDTV color camcorder (camera with VTR) has been developed featuring image intensifiers with GaAsP photocathodes, which provide very high quantum efficiency. To achieve superior performance and a compact camera body, we combined three 1-inch image intensifiers with a 2/3-inch taking lens and three 2/3-inch CCDs by means of a new optical system capable of enlarging and reducing images. The camcorder provides excellent color reproducibility even under low light level conditions (0.2 lx) at an iris setting of f/2, with a signal-to-noise ratio of 55 dB at pedestal level. Its sensitivity is about 400 times greater than that of current HDTV CCD camcorders, making it particularly well suited for capturing images of faint objects in space, aurora, etc., filming the nocturnal activities of animals in their natural settings, and reporting breaking news at night.

This paper proposes a novel CMOS built-in current sensor (BICS) for on-line current testing. Proposed BICS detects abnormal current in circuit under test (CUT) and makes a Pass/Fail signal through comparison between the CUT current and the duplicated inverter current. This circuit consists of two current-to-voltage conversion transistors, a full swing generator, a voltage comparator, and an inverter block. It requires 16 transistors. Since this BICS does not require the extra clock, the added extra pin is only one output pin. Furthermore, the BICS does not require test mode selection. Therefore the BICS can be applied to on-line current testing. The validity and effectiveness are verified through the HSPICE simulation of circuits with defects. When the CUT is an 8 8 parallel multiplier, the area overhead of the BICS is about 4.34%.

A framework is described for a peer-to-peer information exchange system, and a collaborative information retrieval (IR) scheme for the system is proposed. The aims of the system include smooth knowledge and information management to activate organizations or communities. Conventional server-centric systems are weak because they create information-providing bottlenecks. Accordingly, the proposed framework targets the collaborative inter-working of personal repositories that accumulate per-user information, and accept and service requests. Issues concerning the framework are addressed. One issue is the retrieval of information from another's personal repository; the retrieval criteria of a system are tightly personalized for its user. The system is assumed to employ a vector space model with a concept-base as its IR mechanism. The vector space on one system is very different from that on another system. Another issue is the automated control of the information-providing criteria. This paper presents solutions to the first problem. To achieve IR that provides satisfactory results to a user requiring information from another's personal repository, we need vector space equalization to compensate for the differences in the vector spaces of the personal repositories. The paper presents a vector space equalization scheme, the automated relevance feedback scheme, that compensates the differences in the vector spaces of the personal repositories. We implement the scheme as a system and evaluate its performance using documents on the Internet.

Mechanisms used for results merging are very important for distributed search systems. They are to select the most relevant documents retrieved by different servers and put them on the top of the list returned to the end user. There are several approaches to solve key problems of this task such as eliminating duplicates and ranking results combined. But it is still not clear how to achieve this. We use the clustering technique to divide retrieved results into several groups and a metric on the base of the vector space model to arrange items inside each group. Preliminary tests were conducted using the OASIS system and several collections of real Internet data. They showed relatively superior results when compared to the neural network clustering and LSI calculation. Proposed mechanisms can be applied to metasearch systems and to distributed search systems as well because such mechanisms do not require any special information except standard de facto data received from servers.

We present a new approach to the loop scheduling problem, which excels previous solutions in two important aspects: The resource constraints are formulated using flow graphs, and the initiation interval λ is treated as a rational variable. The approach supports heterogeneous processor architectures and pipelined functional units, and the Integer Linear Programming implementation produces an optimum loop schedule, whereby a minimum λ is achieved. Our flow graph model facilitates the cyclic binding of loop operations to functional units. Compared to previous research results, the solution can provide faster loop schedules and a significant reduction of the problem complexity and solution time.

Wireless networks are quickly becoming an integral part of the Internet. But, the TCP does not work well in wireless networks. Considerable research has tried to improve TCP performance in wireless networks, especially in the face of the wireless link loss problem. However, TCP performance is also deeply influenced by channel conditions, and the performance in variable channel conditions has not been studied widely. In this paper, we observe the behavior of the traditional standard TCP performance in the face of variable channel conditions. Then, we propose a new simple TCP flow control scheme. The traditional standard TCP performs poorly because it does not reflect current channel conditions. Our adaptive TCP receiver window control scheme, however, performs well on variable channel conditions. Our scheme efficiently improves TCP performance with minimum modification of TCP module on the wireless terminal. It adaptively adjusts the TCP receiver window size depending on the dynamic channel conditions. Thus, our scheme maintains network conditions properly and has good TCP performance over all wireless channel conditions. In addition, since our scheme is simple and the only the TCP receiver module on the wireless terminal needs to be changed, it is feasible. Through the simulation and analysis, we found that our scheme has good TCP throughput and short end-to-end delay over all variable channel conditions.

We show that the necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a balanced bowtie decomposition of the complete multigraph λKn is n 5 and λ(n-1) 0 (mod 12). Decomposition algorithms are also given.

In this paper, we evaluate the performance of pilot channel-aided channel estimation for multicarrier direct-sequence (DS) code division multiple access (CDMA) communication system as proposed by Kondo and Milstein . We consider a multicarrier DS-CDMA system with different number of pilot and data channels. We investigate the optimum number of pilot channels for various coherence bandwidths and different number of subchannels. Keeping the total transmit bandwidth fixed, an optimum number of total subchannels and pilot channels exists under specific channel environment and transmitted energy. As the number of pilot channels increases, more accurate channel estimation is possible but the number of data channels decreases resulting a smaller diversity gain. We show that there is a tradeoff between the number of pilot channels and data subchannels, thereby requiring differing numbers of optimum pilot channels according to channel conditions.