According to the wide spread of mobile computer terminals, it is required to connect them to remote networks and to allow them to communicate with home computers and Internet servers. There are some mechanisms studied on the IP terminal mobility, including DHCP which assigns IP addresses dynamically and Mobile-IP which supports seemless mobility. However, there are some problems identified for those methods on compatibility with existing IP terminals, route optimization and compatibility with firewall systems. So we have proposed a virtual subnetwork system which can accommodate existing IP routers and terminals without any modifications, and which selects an optimal route for the communication with networks other than the home network. This paper describes the mechanism and the results of implementation of our system.

The intermediate language (IL) modularizes a compiler into target processor independent and dependent parts, called the front-end and the back-end. By adding a new back-end, it is possible to port existing software from one processor to another. This paper presents a new efficient approach to achieve multiple targeting to quite different architectures using different processors as well, by translating from one IL into other existing ILs. This approach makes it possible to reuse existing back-ends. It has been successfully applied to a commercial-scale project for porting public switching system software. Since the target ILs were not predictable in advance, we provided an abstract syntax tree (AST) with attributes accessible by abstract data type (ADT) interface to convey the source language information from our front-end to back-ends. It was translated into several ILs that were developed independently. These translations made the compiler available in a very short time for different cross-target platforms and on several workstations we needed. The structure of this AST and the mapping to these ILs are presented, and retargeting cost is evaluated.

A content-based image retrieval scheme based on scale-space theory is proposed. Instead of considering all scales for image retrieval, the proposed algorithm utilizes a modified histogram intersection method to compute the relative scale between a query image and a candidate image. The proposed method has been applied to various images and the performance improvement has been verified.

Future cellular systems are envisioned to support mixed traffic, and ultimately multimedia services. However, a mixture of voice and data requires novel service mechanisms that can guarantee quality of service. In order to transfer high-speed data, multislot channel allocation is seen as a favoured solution to the present systems with the least compromise to circuit- switched services. This paper evaluates the performance of narrowband voice calls and multislot data packet transmission in such integrated systems by using a matrix-analytic approach. This method achieves quadratic convergence compared to the conventional spectral methods. Mobility is also considered in a prioritized cellular environment where frequent handoff has the potential of degrading data performance. The voice call distribution, data packets throughput, delay and waiting time distribution are derived. Moreover, a new multiple priority-based distributed control algorithm and a voice rate control scheme are enforced to mitigate the queuing congestion of data packets. The numerical results derived from this study show that larger data packets incur longer latency and the use of these flexible schemes can improve the overall performance.

This paper outlines the modeling requirements of integrated circuit (IC) fabrication processes that have lead to and sustained the development of computer-aided design of technology (i. e. TCAD). Over a period spanning more than two decades the importance of TCAD modeling and the complexity of required models has grown steadily. The paper also illustrates typical applications where TCAD has been powerful and strategic to IC scaling of processes. Finally, the future issues of atomic-scale modeling and the need for an hierarchical approach to capture and use such detailed information at higher levels of simulation are discussed.

In this paper, we investigate the bit error rate (BER) performance of Direct Sequence-Code Division Multiple Access (DS-CDMA) systems under impulsive radio noise environments, and propose a novel DS-CDMA receiver which is designed to be robust against impulsive noise. At first, employing the Middleton's Class-A impulsive noise model as a typical model of impulsive radio noise, we discuss the statistical characteristics of impulsive radio noise and demonstrate that the quadrature components of impulsive noise are statistically dependent. Next, based on the computer simulation, we evaluate the BER performance of a conventional DS-CDMA system under a Class-A impulsive noise environment, and illustrate that the performance of the conventional DS-CDMA system is drastically degraded by the effects of the impulsive noise. To deal with this problem, motivated by the statistical dependence between the quadrature components of impulsive radio noise, we propose a new DS-CDMA receiver which can eliminate the effects of the channel impulsive noise. The numerical result shows that the performance of the DS-CDMA system under the impulsive noise environment is significantly improved by using this proposed receiver. Finally, to confirm the effectiveness of this proposed receiver against actual impulsive radio noise, we evaluate the BER performance of the DS-CDMA system employing the proposed receiver under a microwave oven (MWO) noise environment and discuss the robustness of the proposed receiver against MWO noise.

To design and develop user-oriented, flexible and distributed applications which can deal with various users' requirements, new technologies to manage, control and utilize the services of communication networks have to be provided. In this paper, the current challenges faced by large-scale distributed applications are discussed and a framework for the next generation network operation and management is presented on the basis of agent-based computing technologies. Examples of flexible distributed applications are presented to clarify the role of application-centric flexible network operation and management.

This paper proposes a new distributed connection establishment scheme involving several competing network providers in a multimedia telecommunications environment. This connection establishment scheme, which is based on the concept of open competitive bidding, enables mutual selection by users and network providers. By employing this proposed scheme, both network providers and users can pursue their own objectives, according to their own bidding and awarding strategies. In this paper, a simple bidding strategy for network providers is presented, and the effectiveness of this strategy is evaluated by means of computer simulation. It is shown that each network provider can improve its profit by adopting this strategy. In this paper, an example of utility functions for users is presented, and the effectiveness of the mechanism with which users can select a network provider is also evaluated by means of computer simulation. Each user can improve his/her utility by selecting an appropriate network provider based on this utility function.

Recently, it is required to transfer continuous media over networks without QoS guarantee. In these networks, network congestion will cause transmission delay variance which degrades the quality of continuous media itself. This paper proposes a new protocol using a congestion control with two level rate control in the data transfer level and the coding level. It introduces a TCP-like congestion control mechanism to the rate control of data transfer level, which can detect the QoS change quickly, and adjust the coding rate of continuous media with time interval long enough for its quality. The performance evaluation through software simulation with multiplexing continuous media traffics and TCP traffics shows that the proposed protocol works effectively in the case of network congestion.

In a distributed network management environment, a NMS (Network Management Station) interacts with several agents in different sub-networks. In the network fault management context, the NMS detects symptoms that indicate some abnormality e. g. a surge in ICMP traffic, which may be caused by some network malfunction or misuse. The occurrence of a symptom is an event. Large number of events may be detected by an NMS. The sheer number of these events makes it difficult, if not impossible, for an NMS to diagnose these events. Generally, a fault may have a cascading effect which may, in turn, give rise to a very large number of events. The sequence of events and their correlation play an important role in fault management and diagnosis. In the distributed environment of todays networks, the absence of any uniform time for reference makes this a challenging task. In the present network management framework of SNMP, a Manager maintains a notion of the clock of the agent it interacts with. But this mechanism is inadequate to determine the sequence of events and their correlation, more so, in a distributed environment which may involve several managers. In this paper we propose a mechanism for ordering and correlating events detected in large-scale network which is managed in a distributed manner within the SNMP framework. Our algorithm uses the concept of a Network Management Clock (NMC). The NMC is a virtual clock maintained by a manager based on sysUpTime readings from each SNMP agent. In this paper, the algorithm, its implementation and evaluation will be discussed.

This paper discusses the classification of targets buried in the underground by radar polarimetry. The subsurface radar is used for the detection of objects buried beneath the ground surface, such as gas pipes, cables and cavities, or in archeological exploration operation. In addition to target echo, the subsurface radar receives various other echoes, because the underground is inhomogeneous medium. Therefore, the subsurface radar needs to distinguish these echoes. In order to enhance the discrimination capability, we first applied the polarization anisotropy coefficient to distinguish echoes from isotropic targets (plate, sphere) versus anisotropic targets (wire, pipe). It is straightforward to find the man-made target buried in the underground using the polarization anisotropy coefficient. Second, we tried to classify targets using the polarimetric signature approach, in which the characteristic polarization state provides the orientation angle of an anisotropic target. All of these values contribute to the classification of a target. Field experiments using an ultra-wideband (250 MHz to 1 GHz) FM-CW polarimetric radar system were carried out to show the usefulness of radar polarimetry. In this paper, several detection and classification results are demonstrated. It is shown that these techniques improve the detection capability of buried target considerably.

The ATM Forum specifies several fairness criteria, thus the scheduling mechanisms should allocate enough bandwidth to each connection to achieve one of such fairness criteria. However, two fairness criteria (MCR plus equal share, maximum of MCR or Max-Min share) cannot be achieved by conventional scheduling mechanisms. In this letter, we have developed new scheduling mechanisms that achieve these fairness criteria. We also present simulation results to show that our mechanisms can allocate bandwidth fairly.

The current Internet does not offer any quality of service guarantees or support to Internet multimedia applications such as Internet telephony and video-conferencing, due to the best-effort nature of the Internet. Their performance may be adversely affected by network congestion. Also, since these applications commonly employ the UDP transport protocol, which lacks congestion control mechanisms, they may severely overload the network and starve other applications. We present an overview of recent research efforts in developing adaptive delivery models for Internet multimedia applications, which dynamically adjust the transmission rate according to network conditions. We classify the approaches used to develop adaptive delivery models with brief descriptions of representative research work. We then evaluate the approaches based on important design issues and performance criteria, such as the scalability of the control mechanism, responsiveness in detecting and reacting to congestion, and ability to accommodate receiver heterogeniety. Some conclusions are developed regarding the suitability of particular design choices under various conditions.

A new design hierarchy in TCAD is discussed with emphasis on a design of IC interconnects and gate patterns. Two design methodologies for gate patterns at a CMOS cell level and multilevel interconnect scheme at a chip level are proposed. This approach generates the layout design rules of gate patterns, considering the fabrication process and pattern layout dependency, and allows a design of multilevel interconnect scheme at the initial phase of technology development.

A new IC interconnect transmission line parameter determination methodology and a novel fast simulation technique for non-uniform transmission lines are presented and verified. The capacitance parameter is a strong function of a shielding effect between the layers, while silicon substrate has a substantial effect on inductance parameter. Thus, they are taken into account to determine the parameters. Then the virtual straight-line-based per unit length parameters are determined in order to perform the fast transient simulation of the non-uniform transmission lines. It was shown that not only the inductance effect due to a silicon substrate but also the shielding effect between the layers are too significant to be neglected. Further, a model order reduction technique is integrated into Berkeley SPICE in order to demonstrate that the virtual straight-line-based per-unit-length parameters can be efficiently employed for the fast transient response simulation of the complicated multi-layer interconnect structures. Since the methodology is very efficient as well as accurate, it can be usefully employed for IC CAD tools of high-performance VLSI circuit design.

In this paper, we propose methods for testing the usability of graphical user interface (GUI) applications based on log files of user interactions. Log analysis by existing methods is not efficient because evaluators analyze a single log file or log files of the same user and then manually compare results. The methods proposed here solve this problem; the methods enable evaluators to analyze the log files of multiple users together by detecting interaction patterns that commonly appear in the log files. To achieve the methods, we first clarify usability attributes that can be evaluated by a log-based usability testing method and user interaction patterns that have to be detected for the evaluation. Based on an investigation on the information that can be obtained from the log files, we extract the attributes of clarity, safety, simplicity, and continuity. For the evaluations of clarity and safety, the interaction patterns that have to be detected include those from user errors. We then propose our methods for detecting interaction patterns from the log files of multiple users. Patterns that commonly appear in the log files are detected by utilizing a repeating pattern detection algorithm. By regarding an operation sequence recorded in a log file as a string and concatenating strings, common patterns are able to be detected as repeating patterns in the concatenated string. We next describe the implementation of the methods in a computer tool for log-based usability testing. The tool, GUITESTER, records user-application interactions into log files, generates usability analysis data from the log files by applying the proposed methods, and visualizes the generated usability analysis data. To show the effectiveness of GUITESTER in finding usability problems, we report an example of a usability test. In this test, evaluators could find 14 problems in a tested GUI application. We finally discuss the ability of the proposed methods in terms of its log analysis efficiency, by comparing the analysis/sequence time (AT/ST) ratio of GUITESTER with those of other methods and tools. The ratio of GUITESTER is found to be smaller. This indicates the methods make log analysis more efficient.

A distributed computing system consists of processing elements, communication links, memory units, data files, and programs. These resources are interconnected via a communication network and controlled by a distributed operating system. The distributed program reliability (DPR) in a distributed computing system is the probability that a program which runs on multiple processing elements and needs to retrieve data files from other processing elements will be executed successfully. This reliability varies according to 1) the topology of the distributed computing system, 2) the reliability of the communication edges, 3) the data files and programs distribution among processing elements, and 4) the data files required to execute a program. In this paper, we show that computing the distributed program reliability on a star distributed computing system is #P-complete. A polynomially solvable case is developed for computing the distributed program reliability when some additional file distribution is restricted on the star topology. We also propose a polynomial time algorithm for computing the distributed program reliability with approximate solutions when the star topology has no the additional file distribution.

A service control node in the Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) allocates data for customers among multiple modules and performs distributed processing of multiple transactions. In such a node, load can vary among the modules due to dispersion in the amount of traffic for each customer. It is therefore important to balance out this load variation and raise the utilization of each module in order to achieve an efficient distributed processing system. We first propose a method for balancing the load among modules by dynamically transferring customer data in units of records from high-load modules to low-load modules. Then, based on this method, a method for selecting records to be transferred between modules is also proposed. And we clarify the processor overhead for transferring records. The effect of the reduction of number of modules by load balancing is also evaluated. Based on the these results, it is shown that dynamic transferring of records is an effective scheme for balancing load among modules in a service control node of the AIN.

This paper describes a new model of multiple-valued immune network based on biological immune response network. The model of multiple-valued immune network is formulated based on the analogy with the interaction between B cells and T cells in immune system. The model has a property that resembles immune response quite well. The immunity of the network is simulated and makes several experimentally testable predictions. Simulation results are given to a letter recognition application of the network and compared with binary ones. The simulations show that, beside the advantages of less categories, improved memory pattern and good memory capacity, the multiple-valued immune network produces a stronger noise immunity than binary one.

The programming circuit of SRAM-based FPGAs consists of two shift registers, a control circuit and a configuration memory (SRAM) cell array. Because the configuration memory cell array can be easily tested by conventional test methods for RAMs, we focus on testing for the shift registers. We first derive test procedures for the shift registers, which can be done by using only the faculties of the programming circuit, without using additional hardware. Next, we show the validness of the test procedures. Finally, we show an application of the test procedures to test Xilinx XC4025.