The unidirectional transmission links such as broadcast satellite links and cable links are strongly demanding type of link to provide high bandwidth and ubiquitous Internet connectivity with lower cost. In order to provide an internet connectivity, the UDLs, unidirectional links, should be available for the IP service. However, since the current Internet routing and upper layer protocols assume the bi-directional link, the UDLs have been considered as unavailable links for the IP service. This paper proposes an architecture and a mechanism for the IP service over the UDL. The proposed system emulates the bi-directional connectivity between all nodes on the UDL, in order to use the dynamic routing protocol, the TCP/IP protocol, on the UDL system. Receiver uses a link layer tunneling mechanism to forward the IP datagrams to the Feed over an IP cloud, that is not directly connected to the UDL. This proposed architecture enables the dynamic routing capability for UDLs, as well as user applications, without any software modification.

Negative differential conductance based on lateral interband tunnel effect is demonstrated in a planar degenerate p+-n+ diode (Esaki tunnel diode). The device is fabricated with the current silicon ultralarge scale integration (Si ULSI) process, paying attention to the processing damage so as to reduce an excess tunnel current that flows over some intermediate states in the tunnel junction. I-V characteristics at a low temperature clearly show an intrinsic electron transport, indicating phonon-assisted tunneling in Si as in the case of the previous Esaki diodes fabricated by the alloying method. In addition, a simple circuit function of bistable operation is demonstrated by connecting the planar Esaki diode with conventional Si metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs). The planar Esaki diode will be a promising device element in the functional library for enhancing the total system performance for the coming system-on-a-chip (SoC) era.

In the past, a number of scheduling algorithms that approximate GPS, such as WFQ, have been proposed and have received much attention. This class of algorithms provides per-flow QoS guarantees in terms of the bounded delay and minimum bandwidth guarantee. However, with O(log N) computational cost for each new arrival scheduling, where N is the number of backlogged flows, these algorithms are expensive to implement (e.g., in terms of scalability). Moreover, none of them addresses the issues of delay distribution and jitter. In this paper, we propose a new traffic scheduling discipline called Jitter Control Frame-based Queueing (JCFQ) that provides an upper bound for delay jitter in the case of rate-controlled connections, such as packet video streams and IP telephony, while guaranteeing bounded delay and worst-case fair weighted fairness, such as in the WF2Q algorithm, but with O(1) complexity in selecting the next packet to serve, assuming that the number of flows is fixed. Three different algorithms for slot or service order assignment between flows are proposed: Earliest Jitter Deadline First (EJDF), Rate Monotonic (RM) and Maximum Jitter First (MJF). In these algorithms, delay jitter is formulated into the virtual finish time calculation. We compare the fairness, delay and jitter performance of the JCFQ with that of the MJF algorithm with WF2Q via simulation. The results show that with proper choice of the slot size, JCFQ can achieve better flow isolation in delay distribution than can WF2Q.

This paper investigates the stochastic property of the packet destinations and proposes an address generation algorithm which is applicable for describing various Internet access patterns. We assume that a stochastic process of Internet access satisfies the stationary condition and derive the fundamental structure of the address generation algorithm. Pseudo IP-address sequence generated from our algorithm gives dependable cache performance and reproduces the results obtained from trace-driven simulation. The proposed algorithm is applicable not only to the destination IP address but also to the destination URLs of packets, and is useful for simulation studies of Internet performance, Web caching, DNS, and so on.

The (cinema) caption processing that adds descriptive text on a sequence of frames is an important video manipulation function that a video editor should support. This paper proposes an efficient MC-DCT compressed domain approach to insert the caption into the MPEG compressed video stream. It basically adds the DCT blocks of the caption image to the corresponding DCT blocks of the input frames one by one in the MC-DCT domain as in [6]. However, the strength of the caption image is adjusted in the DCT domain to prevent the resulting DCT coefficients from exceeding the maximum value allowed in MPEG. In order to adjust the strength of the caption image adaptively we need to know the exact pixel value of the input image. This is a difficult task in DCT domain. We propose an approximation scheme for the pixel values in which the DC value of a block is used as the expected pixel value for all pixels in that block. Although this approximation may lead to some errors in the caption area, it still provides a relatively high image quality in the non-caption area, whereas the processing time is about 4.9 times faster than the decode-captioning-reencode method.

A new approach to design variable IIR digital filters by using a cascade of N identical individual filters of any order n is proposed in this paper. First, the approximation method for lowpass filter specifications is outlined, then the general limitations of the new method are investigated and a compact formula is derived. Next, the limitations for the main canonic approximations (Butterworth, Chebyshev and Elliptic) are investigated and compared and convenient expressions for design and evaluation are obtained. New first- and second-order filter sections, permitting very easy tuning of the cutoff frequency by recalculating and reprogramming of a single multiplier coefficient value, are developed and the design and tuning strategies for highpass, bandpass and bandstop filters are proposed. Finally design examples are given and the sound superiority of the new method compared to other known is demonstrated experimentally.

As Information Technology progresses, our daily lives are getting "connected" more and more. At the same time, however, problems are appearing. The center of these problems can be captured as the "Communication Overflow. " To cope with such problems, we propose an approach that tries to provide a communication environment that assists users in managing their communication activities. The key notion of this approach is to enhance the "Awareness of Connectedness. " Here, agents which are suggestive of awareness of connectedness play an important role. In this paper, we describe the key notion and introduce a brief road-map towards the environment for the awareness of connectedness. Two candidate tools for the environment are described. The first one is a visualization tool for communication media that provides feedback of users' communication activities. Its purpose is to enhance the awareness for communication. The second tool is a simple, intuitive interactive media that exchanges the statuses of users. It is an alternative network communication media that might be suitable for very light-weight, almost-acknowledge-only communication mode. Some results on an experiment of these two tools are also reported.

This paper presents a digital reaction-diffusion system (DRDS)--a model of a discrete-time discrete-space reaction-diffusion dynamical system--for designing new image processing algorithms inspired by biological pattern formation phenomena. The original idea is based on the Turing's model of pattern formation which is widely known in mathematical biology. We first show that the Turing's morphogenesis can be understood by analyzing the pattern forming property of the DRDS within the framework of multidimensional digital signal processing theory. This paper also describes the design of an adaptive DRDS for image processing tasks, such as enhancement and restoration of fingerprint images.

Iterative decoding is a key feature of turbo code and each decoding results in additional power consumption of the decoder and decoding delay. In this letter, we propose an effective stop criterion based on the Gaussian assumption at the decoder output. Simulation results show that the proposed method can dynamically stop the iterative process with a negligible degradation of the error performance.

This paper explores how to extend the dependency pair technique for proving termination of higher-order rewrite systems. We show that the termination property of higher-order rewrite systems can be checked by the non-existence of an infinite R-chain, which is an extension of Arts' and Giesl's result for the first-order case. It is clarified that the subterm property of the quasi-ordering, used for proving termination automatically, is indispensable.

The design and implementation of a novel English writing environment is described. The system integrates modern computer and networking technologies with analytical tools from linguistics and language pedagogy to construct an advanced English writing environment. The system is not only suitable for students in learning English, but also of benefit to teachers in making comments and detecting learners' common difficulties. Furthermore, the collected essays from students and comments from teachers constitute a useful learner corpus. This is also of benefit to researchers in analyzing learners' persistent errors. In order to allow global access from the Internet, the system is web-based. Users, for example, students, teachers, and researchers, may access the system through web browsers. The system was developed in a cooperative effort of Computers And Networking (CAN) laboratory and the Research in English Acquisition and Pedagogy (REAP) Group at Tamkang University. The system has been piloted by six English faculty members at Tamkang University and is currently being used in five high schools in Taiwan. The learner corpus currently consists of over 800,000 word tokens of learners' writing.

Large-scale effects of locally interacting agents are called emergent properties of the system. Emergent properties are often surprising because they can be hard to anticipate the full consequences of even simple forms of interaction. In this paper we address the following questions: how do heterogeneous agents generate emergent coordination, and how do they manage and self-organize macroscopic orders from bottom up without any central authority? These questions will depend crucially on how they interact and adapt their behavior. Agents myopically evolve their behavior based on the threshold rules, which are obtained as the functions of the collective behavior and their idiosyncratic utilities. We obtain the micro-macro dynamics that relate the aggregate behavior with the underlying individual behavior. We show agents' rational behavior combined with the behavior of others produce stable macro behavior, and sometimes unanticipated cyclic behavior. We also consider the roles of conformists and nonconformists to manage emergent macro behavior. As a specific example, we address an emergent and evolutionary approach for designing the efficient network routings.

The linearity of the GaAs Field Effect Transistor (FET) power amplifier is greatly influenced by the nonlinear characteristics of gate-source capacitance (Cgs) and drain-source current (Ids) for the FETs. However, previously suggested analysis methods of GaAs FET non-linearity are mainly focused on the investigations by each individual non-linear component (Cgs or Ids) without considering both non-linear effects. We analyze more accurately the non-linearity of GaAs FETs by considering non-linear effects of Cgs and Ids simultaneously. We also investigate the third-order intermodulation distortion (IMD3) of the GaAs FET in relation to source and load impedances that minimize FET non-linearities. From the simulation results by Volterra-series technique, we show that the least IMD3 is found at the minimum source resistance (RS) and maximum load resistance (RL) in the equivalent output power (Pout) contour. Simulated results are compared with the load and source pull data, with good agreement.

This paper describes a switched-capacitor type DC-DC up converter with high efficiency and low-ripple voltage. Identical charge pumps operating sequentially in the proposed DC-DC converter reduce the magnitude of the ripple voltage to 20% of the conventional converters. A new charge pump adopting PMOS switches near the output stage improves the power efficiency of the DC-DC converter by 10%. The proposed DC-DC converter is applied, as a test vehicle, to a phase-locked loop circuit which is sensitive to power supply noise. All circuits are fabricated and measured in a 0.65-µm CMOS process.

Recognition of specified wave patterns in one-dimensional signals is an important task in many application areas such as computer science, medical science, and geophysics. Many researchers have tried to automate this task with various techniques, recently the soft computing algorithms. This paper proposes a new neuro-fuzzy recognition system for detecting one-dimensional wave patterns using wavelet coefficients as features of the signals and evolution strategy as the training algorithm of the system. The neuro-fuzzy recognition system first trains the wavelet coefficients of the training wave patterns and then evaluates the degree of matching between test wave patterns and the training wave patterns. This system was applied to picking first arrival events in seismic data. Experimental results with three seismic data showed that the system was very successful in terms of learning speed and performances.

Large amounts of color-printed documents are published now everyday. Some OCR approaches of color-printed document images are provided, but they cannot normally work if the input images skew. In the past years, many algorithms are provided to detect the skew of monochrome document images but none of them process color-printed document images. All of these methods assume that text is printed in black on a white background and cannot be applied to detect skew in color-printed document images. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to detect the skew angle of a color-printed document image and reconstruct it. Our approach first determines variation of color-transition count at each angle (from -45 to +45) and the angle of maximal variation is regarded as the skew angle. Then, a scanning-line model reconstructs the image. We test 100 color-printed document images of various kinds and get good results (93 succeed and 7 fail). The average processing time of A4 size image is 2.76 seconds and the reconstruction time is 3.97 seconds on a Pentium III 733 PC.

In this paper, a novel adaptive digital watermarking approach based upon human visual system model and fuzzy clustering technique is proposed. The human visual system model is utilized to guarantee that the watermarked image is imperceptible. The fuzzy clustering approach has been employed to obtain the different strength of watermark by the local characters of image. In our experiments, this scheme allows us to provide a more robust and transparent watermark.

This paper presents a new network architecture called LINA that provides node mobility. The basic concept of LINA is separation of the node identifier and the interface locator. Although there are several protocols based on such a concept, they do not address issues that arise when dealing with an entire network architecture. LINA is a holistic architecture covering the network layer to the application layer in order to support node mobility. Overhead incurred by separation of the node identifier and the interface locator is minimized in LINA by introducing the embedded addressing model. This paper also presents a new protocol called LIN6 that supports IPv6 mobility. LIN6 is an application of LINA to IPv6 and is fully compatible with IPv6. It has several advantages in comparison to Mobile IPv6, e.g. less protocol overhead. Our prototype implementation of LIN6 shows minimal overhead compared to a conventional IPv6 implementation.

New equivalent characterizations are derived for Schur stability property of real polynomials. They involve a single scalar parameter, which can be regarded as a freedom incorporated in the given polynomials so long as the stability is concerned. Possible applications of the expressions are suggested to the latest results for stability robustness analysis in parameter space. Further, an extension of the characterizations is made to the matrix case, yielding one-parameter expressions of Schur matrices.

An uplink synchronised CDMA system through transmission timing control at mobile users has been proposed to improve the uplink capacity. This Letter mathematically investigates its capacity, considering perfect fast TPC and two antenna diversity reception in a single cell environment and compares it with that of a conventional CDMA system.