In inter-vehicle communication (IVC) expectation for spread spectrum techniques is high. However, in a decentralized network environment, power control is difficult and until now perfect power control has been assumed. In this paper the use of sector antennas are proposed as a solution to the problems of power control in inter-vehicle communication. Results are shown for an IVC protocol in both no power control and imperfect power control environments in a realistic fading channel. Omni-directional, uniform sector antennas and non-uniform sector antennas are examined by computer simulation. Non-uniform sector antennas are shown to be the best solution and to have high packet reception rates even for no power control environments.

The transmission quality in mobile wireless communications is affected by not only the thermal noise but also the multipass fading which changes drastically an amplitude and a phase of received signal. The paper proposes the theoretical and approximate methods for deriving an average bit error rate in DS-CDMA systems under the Rician fading environment on the assumption of the frequency non-selective fading, as parameters of the number of simultaneous access stations, the maximum Doppler frequency and so on. It is confirmed from the coincidence of theoretical and approximate results with simulation ones that the proposed approach is applicable to a variety of system parameters.

This paper describes the effects of traffic distributions on uplink and downlink communications qualities in CDMA cellular systems. Many researches have been done from the viewpoint of the system capacity under ideal conditions in both uplink and downlink. However, there are few studies regarding traffic distributions that concurrently affect the uplink and downlink quality. The characteristics in both links are different even in a spatially uniform traffic distribution because the system structures are not symmetric between both links. When non-uniform radio environments are assumed, both link qualities become very different from each other. It is therefore important to design systems in consideration of link-specific characteristics in whole service area. This paper clarifies the difference in both link characteristics in CDMA systems regarding traffic distributions.

This paper discusses the employment of adaptive array antennas at the base station of a Multi Processing Gain (MPG) CDMA system. It is shown that the adaptive array antenna with the weight control scheme based on the signal before despreading procedure does not increase but even decreases the performance than that with an omni-directional antenna, and the cause of this serious performance degradation is revealed. Then it is shown that the performance with the weight control scheme based on the signal after despreading procedure is always better than that with an omni-directional antenna. Furthermore, the possibilities of performance improvement by the combination of adaptive array antenna and interference cancellation techniques are mentioned.

In this paper, system capacity of the reverse link of a wireless multimedia CDMA system with transmission power control is analysed for receivers with and without CCI cancellers. For N classes of users, system capacity is represented by a point in an N-dimensional space. It is shown that system capacity is improved considerably with CCI cancellers, that system capacity region is non-convex in general, and that its boundary is well approximated with a unique hyper plane when CCI cancellers are fully employed.

An integrated slider-suspension system was designed and prototyped. The structure of this system has a full flying air-bearing surface in the leading part with a contamination-resistant feature, and it accommodates a slider with a 5-15 nm head-disk spacing at the trailing part. Performance analysis and simulation were conducted to validate the high performances of the design. Two key issues, the rigid motions (vibrations) and the elastic motions of the slider, were investigated systematically. For the rigid motions, it was found that the natural frequencies of the slider system are dependent on the disk contact stiffness and that the slider vibrations under excitation exhibit various nonlinear resonance. For the elastic motions, the average elastic response of the slider body under the random interaction of the interface was derived and characterized.

A method of evaluating the gas viscous friction force acting on head/disk interface has been developed. In the past, the effect of the gas viscous friction force has been almost negligible, due to its small value compared with the contact friction force. Recently the gas viscous friction force has tended to increase with the decrease in spacing and the increase in relative speed between the slider and the disk, therefore it is becoming necessary to consider its effect on motor load or slider posture. Few experimental studies of the gas viscous friction force, however, have been performed. In this study, the measurement of the gas viscous friction force has been realized by developing a sensitive friction force sensor. Furthermore a method of evaluating the gas viscous and contact friction forces separately has been also established.

The effect of surface roughness is crucial for contact recording and proximity recording. In this paper a probability model is developed for investigation of the influence of surface roughness on flying performance and the contact force of the slider. Simulations are conducted for both the contact recording slider and the proximity recording slider, and the results are well coordinated with the reported experimental results and the self-conducted experimental results. Studies are further extended to the characterization of the roughness of the air bearing surface and the disk surface that may support head/disk spacing between 5 nm and 15 nm.

A head-disk spacing tester that includes the effect of lubricant will be necessary if the slider-disk interaction is to be considered. The interaction and interaction induced spacing variation can be quantitatively characterized by optical method and by replacing the functional disk media with a glass disk covered with a carbon layer and a lubricant layer of the same materials and the same layer thickness as the functional disk media. This paper reports a tester configuration based on that concept. Experimental investigations into the nanometer spaced head-disk interface with such a setup are presented also. Results indicate that the lubricant plays an important role in slider-disk interaction and the vibration of the slider-disk interface. Two types of interface vibration were noticed: contact vibration and bouncing vibration. For the bouncing case, the natural frequency of air-bearing and its fold frequencies will be excited and air-bearing plays more important role in the determination of the slider vibration, comparing with the contact-vibration case.

Both frequency- and time-domain analyses of glide signals from a PZT glide-slider flying over a laser zone-textured (LZT) thin film disk medium were used to determine the slider vibration at a small disk-slider clearance. Slider vibration was found to be particularly dependent on the uniformly placed laser bump and the effects due to the air-bearing stiffness over the LZT medium. We found that a high density of small, pointed laser bumps (10X) has a more distinct impact on airflow than large, jagged-rim craterlike laser bumps (1X) on the slider. We therefore investigated the effect of laser bump density on the slider vibration, and found that marginally higher laser bump density (3X versus 2X) results in higher slider vibration. While resonant vibration has been a major glide problem, the effects of laser bump density have also recently become important in the face of ultralow glide height, 0.5 µ" (12 nm). Its influence can be clearly observed when the disk-slider clearance becomes very small. At such an ultrasmall disk-slider clearance, even minimal slider vibration can be detrimental to the head-disk interface. Taking into account the various contributions of slider vibration and considering possible damage to the head-disk interface, it is clear that the optimization of laser bump design should go beyond just the glide height and coefficient of stiction. It should take into account the effects of laser bump height, density and spatial distribution on vibration-induced flying height variation while maintaining a low glide height and coefficient of stiction. An ideal LZT medium should therefore have low bump height to enable low glide height, i. e. , 0.5 µ" (12 nm), but specific bump shapes and sufficient density to achieve low stiction. Laser bump density should, however, be controlled to moderate its effect on slider vibration and possibly disk-slider collision (297 words).

Thermal stability of anisotropic and isotropic Co alloy thin-film media is investigated. The orientation ratio of CoCrTa(Pt)/Cr media was controlled by the mechanical texture of the NiP/Al substrates. Bulk magnetic properties, delta M curves and time decay of magnetization in the circumferential and radial directions were measured. The maximum magnetic viscosity coefficient calculated from the time decay of magnetization in the circumferential direction was higher than that in the radial direction for a mechanically textured sample, while it was similar in both directions for a non-textured sample. The magnetic viscosity coefficient in the circumferential direction is smaller than that in the radial direction when the reverse field is in the range of the demagnetization field for thin-film recording media. This implies that an anisotropic sample (namely, a sample with a high orientation ratio) will be more thermally stable when it is not exposed to a large external magnetic field.

Guided Scrambling (GS) is used for control of the runlength within code blocks, such as d or k, as well as for DC component suppression. A code designed by the GS technique, called a weakly constrained code, does not strictly guarantee the imposed k-constraint, but rather generates code blocks that violate the prescribed constraint with very low probability. In this case, the code rate and efficiency become very high, compared with typical RLL codes using a small constrained length. In this paper, weakly constrained codes based on the convolutional GS and GF-addition GS generate the weakly k-constraint sequences. The probability that a code block violates the k-constraint is measured. To show the superior performance of the GS, the occurrence probability of each runlength is also investigated and compared with the 24/25(0, 8) block code which has a high code rate and adheres to channel constraints. We also compare it with the runlength distribution of a maxentropic RLL sequence and show that the statistical property of the GS-encoded sequences is similar to that of the maxentropic RLL sequence on runlength distribution.

This paper describes the design and implementation of a multi-threaded Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) system, called Cohesion, which provides high programming flexibility and latency masking, and supports load balancing. Cohesion offers a parallel programming environment which is very similar to that on a multiprocessors system. Threads could be created recursively in this environment, and users are not required to handle the locations of the threads. Instead of supporting a shared variable model, Cohesion provides a global shared address space among all nodes in the system. The space is further divided into three regions, i. e. , release, conventional, and object-based memory, each is applied with different consistency protocol. In this paper, the design issues in an ordinary thread system, such as thread management, load balancing, and synchronization, have been reconsidered with the memory management provided by the DSM system. Several real applications have been used to evaluate the performance of the system. The results show that multi-threading usually has better performance than single-threading because the network latency can be masked by overlapping communication and computation. However, the gain depends on program behavior and the number of threads executed on each node in the system.

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.

An efficient procedure is presented to determine the implicit exact solution of an arbitrary nonuniform transmission line (NTL), and its first order approximation (F. O. A. ) as an explicit expression. The method of the solution is based on the steplines approximation of the nonuniform transmission lines and quasi-TEM assumptions. Using steplines approximation the NTL is subdivided into a large number of uniform line segments (steps). Using time-domain approach and invoking the boundary conditions at the discontinuities of the adjacent steps, each step is modeled as continuous time domain linear filter characterized by a transfer function. The frequency domain transfer function of this filter is then obtained for linear termination networks. For very large number of steplines this transfer function approaches transfer function of the NTL. In the next step a F. O. A. , as an explicit expression of the exact response will be obtained. This F. O. A. is more suitable for very short transmission lines which is often the case in integrated circuits and some of printed circuit boards. Then, the F. O. A. of the ABCD matrix will be obtained.

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.

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 simple adaptive channel estimation scheme for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) in order to realize high-rate wireless local area networks (LANs). The proposed estimator consists of simple frequency-domain FIR filters, which are adaptively selected according to the difference vector between adjacent subcarriers and channel amplitude of the subcarrier. No precomputation or matrix signal processing is required in the derivation of these characteristics. Computer simulations show that the packet error rate performance of the proposed scheme is superior to that of the least-squares scheme by 1.1 dB in terms of required Eb/N0 at PER=0.1 in AWGN channels. They also show, for the same criterion, a 0.7 dB improvement in a frequency selective fading channel with delay spread values of 100 ns.

As VLSI technology has developed, the interest in implementing an entire or significant part of a parallel computer system using wafer scale integration is growing. The major problem for the case is the possibility of drastically low yield and/or reliability of the system if there is no strategy for coping with such situations. Various strategies to restructure the faulty physical system into the fault-free target logical system are described in the literature [1]-[5]. In this paper, we propose an efficient approximate method which can reconstruct the 1 1/2 track-switch mesh arrays with faulty PEs using hardware as well as software. A logical circuit added to each PE and a network connecting the circuits are used to decide spare PEs which compensate for faulty PEs. The hardware compexity of each circuit is much less than that of a PE where the size of each additional circuit is independent of array sizes and constant. By using the exclusive hardware scheme, a built-in self-reconfigurable system without using a host computer is realizable and the time for reconfiguring arrays becomes very short. The simulation result of the performance of the method shows that the reconstructing efficiency of our algorithm is a little less than those of the exaustive and Shigei's ones [6] and [7], but much better than that of the neural one [3]. We also compare the time complexities of reconstructions by hardware as well as software, and the hardware complexity in terms of the number of gates in the logical circuit added to each PE among the other methods.

Future cellular communication systems will be called upon to provide multimedia services (voice, data, and video) for various user platforms (pedestrians, cars, and trains) that have a variety of mobility characteristics. Knowledge of mobility characteristics is essential for planning, designing and operating communication networks. The position data of selected vehicles (taxis) have been measured by using the Global Positioning System at 1-s intervals. Those data are used for evaluating mobility characteristics, such as probabilistic distributions of speed, cell dwell time, and cell crossover rate of vehicles, assuming that cells are hypothetically laid over the loci of the vehicles. The cell dwell time of vehicles is found to follow a lognormal distribution, rather than a conventionally-presumed negative exponential distribution. When the holding time distribution and random origination of calls along the loci are assumed, the properties of the cell dwell time and the handoff rate of terminals communicating in the hypothetical cellular systems are also estimated from the measured data.