Though causal order of message delivery simplifies the design and development of distributed applications, the overhead of enforcing it is not negligible. We claim that a causal order algorithm which does not send any redundant information is efficient in the sense of communication overhead. We characterize and classify the redundant information into four categories: information regarding just delivered, already delivered, just replaced, and already replaced messages. We propose an efficient causal multicast algorithm which prevents propagation of these redundant information. Our algorithm sends less amount of control information needed to ensure causal order than other existing algorithms and can also be applied to systems whose communication channels are not FIFO. Since our algorithm's communication overhead increases relatively slowly as the number of processes increases, it shows good scalability feature. The potential of our algorithm is shown by simulation study.

Area-restricted illumination of light onto a voltage-biased single-electron tunnel junction array is modeled by reduced resistance of junctions, and its effects on current-voltage characteristics, charge distributions and potential profiles are calculated by a Monte Carlo method. The results show that photocurrent nearly proportional to the applied voltage is generated above a threshold voltage determined by Coulomb blockade effect. The photocurrent increases with increasing irradiated area, which is ascribed to reduction in total resistance of the circuit. Under irradiation, a characteristic charge distribution is formed, i. e. , negative and positive charge bumps are formed in the nodes at the dark and bright boundaries. The charge bumps serve to screen the electric field formed by the bias voltage and create almost a flat potential in the irradiated area. Furthermore, time-response of the charge distribution to a pulse irradiation is also studied. For high dark resistance, the charge bumps are sustained for a long period working as a memory of light. These results suggest feasibility of single-electron photonic devices such as photodetectors and photomemories.

We propose a new method for verifying synchronous circuits using the Boyer-Moore Theorem Prover (BMTP) based on an efficient use of induction. The method contains two techniques. The one is the representation method of signals. Each signal is represented not as a waveform, but as a time parameterized function. The other is the mechanical transformation of the circuit description. A simple description of the logical connection of the components of a circuit is transformed into such a form that is not only acceptable as a definition of BMTP but also adequate for applying induction. We formalize the method and show that it realizes an efficient proof.

This paper focuses on competitive learning algorithms for WTA (winner-take-all) networks which perform rotation invariant pattern classification. Although WTA networks may theoretically be possible to achieve rotation invariant pattern classification with infinite memory capacities, actual networks cannot memorize all input data. To effectively memorize input patterns or the vectors to be classified, we present two algorithms for learning vectors in classes (LVC1 and LVC2), where the cells in the network memorize not only weight vectors but also their firing numbers as statistical values of the vectors. The LVC1 algorithm uses simple and ordinary competitive learning functions, but it incorporates the firing number into a coefficient of the weight change equation. In addition to all the functions of the LVC1, the LVC2 algorithm has a function to utilize under-utilized weight vectors. From theoretical analysis, the LVC2 algorithm works to minimize the energy of all weight vectors to form an effective memory. From computer simulation with two-dimensional rotated patterns, the LVC2 is shown to be better than the LVC1 in learning and generalization abilities, and both are better than the conventional Kohonen self-organizing feature map (SOFM) and the learning vector quantization (LVQ1). Furthermore, the incorporation of the firing number into the weight change equation is shown to be efficient for both the LVC1 and the LVC2 to achieve higher learning and generalization abilities. The theoretical analysis given here is not only for rotation invariant pattern classification, but it is also applicable to other WTA networks for learning vector quantization.

This paper presents the results of the best differential characteristic search of FEAL. The search algorithm for the best differential characteristic (best linear expression) was already presented by Matsui, and improvements on this algorithm were presented by Moriai et al. We further improve the speed of the search algorithm. For example, the search time for the 7-round best differential characteristic of FEAL is reduced to about 10 minutes (Pentium/166 MHz), which is about 212. 6 times faster than Matsui's algorithm. Moreover, we determine all the best differential characteristics of FEAL for up to 32 rounds assuming all S-boxes are independent. As a result, we confirm that the N-round (7N32) best differential characteristic probability of FEAL is 2-2N, which was found by Biham. For N=6, we find 6-round differential characteristics with a greater probability, 2-11, than that previously discovered, 2-12.

This paper applies linear cryptanalysis to FEAL and describes the experimental results of attacking FEAL-8 by linear cryptanalysis. The following points are important in linear cryptanalysis to reduce the processing amount and memory size in the attack: 1) to find linear expressions with as high a deviation as possible, and 2) to reduce the number of effective key bits and effective text bits. We have succeeded in attacking FEAL-8 in about 1 hour on a low-end workstation (SPARCstation 10 Model 30). We have confirmed that the entire set of subkeys of FEAL-8 can be derived from 225 known plaintexts with a success rate of over 70%, and from 226 known plaintexts with a success rate of almost 100%.

S-boxes (vector output Boolean functions) should satisfy cryptographic criteria even if some input bits (say, k bits) are kept constant. However, this kind of security has been studied only for scalar output Boolean functions. SAC (k) is a criterion for scalar output Boolean functions of this type. This paper studies a generalization of SAC (k) to vector output Boolean functions as the first step toward the security of block ciphers against attacks which keep some input bits constant. We first show a close relationship between such Boolean functions and linear error correcting codes. Then we show the existence, bounds and enumeration of vector Boolean functions which satisfy the generalized SAC (k). A design method and examples are also presented.

In Asiacrypt '96, Bleichenbacher et al. showed the upper limit of the efficiency of one-time digital signature scheme using a directed graph of tree structure as its base. They also claimed that there exists more effective signature scheme on general directed graphs, and showed an example of a method to construct more effective signature schemes as a witness. Unfortunately, their example does not achieve the efficiency as they claimed. This paper shows the upper limit of the efficiency of the signature scheme on general directed graphs by showing no signature scheme is more effective than the optimal signature scheme on trees (or forests). Further, we introduce another signature scheme named pseudo k-time signature scheme. This signature scheme allows signers to sign k-time which is no less efficient than the one time signature scheme.

In the circumstances we want to deal with, transmission channel is limited and global motion can happen by camera movement, and also there exists a region-of-interest (ROI) which is more important than background. So very low bit rate coding algorithm is required and processing of global motion must be considered. Also ROI must be reconstructed with required quality after decoding because of its importance. But the existing methods such as H. 261, H. 263 are not suitable for such situations because they do not compensate global motion, which needs large amount of transmission bits in motion information and degrades image quality. And also they can not reconstruct ROI's with high quality because they do not consider the fact that ROI's are more important than background. So a new coding scheme is proposed that describes a method for encoding image sequences distinguishing bits between ROI and background. Simulations show that the suggested algorithm performs well especially in the circumstances where background changes and the area of ROI is small enough compared with that of background.

This paper presents a proportional-share CPU scheduler which can support multimedia applications in a general-purpose workstation environment. For this purpose, we have extended the stride scheduler which is designed originally for conventional tasks. New scheduling parameters are introduced to specify timing requirements of multimedia applications. Through the use of the rate regulator, the accuracy error of the scheduling is reduced to 0 (1). Separate task groups are proposed to represent both relative shares and absolute shares. The proposed scheduler is evaluated using a simulation study. The results show that the proposed scheduler achieves improved accuracy and adaptability as well as flexibility.

A wireless communications system with a transmission rate of 10 Mbit/s using Japanese ISM band (2471-2497 MHz) is presented. This system employs a novel spread spectrum multiple access method named "CFO-SS (Carrier Frequency Offset-Spread Spectrum)" method. In the CFO-SS system, a single PN code is commonly assigned to all the multiple carriers, and the frequency offset between the carriers is determined by the information symbol rate, which is small as compared with the spread bandwidth of the signal. Bit error rate performance of the proposed CFO-SS system under multipath environments is investigated by computer simulation, and the performance of the CFO-SS method is confirmed for wireless LAN systems using the 2.4 GHz ISM band.

This paper presents a distributed power control scheme for next-generation multiservices CDMA systems. CDMA has inherent capability to control the quality-of-service (QoS) requirements by assigning different power levels to each traffic type. Toward this, optimum power control schemes have been investigated. The main drawback of the previously proposed algorithms is that they would require all users' transmission state necessiating a complicated control process or peak-rate badnwidth allocation. To overcome this, we exploit the Markovian property to obtain the statistics of the traffic. The statistical formulation is presented for allocating power distributedly so as to keep the "collision" probability below a predefined probability. Numerical examples show that the distributed power control scheme allows better utilization of wireless resources through statistical multiplexing than peak-rate bandwidth assignment, and it does not require a complicated control process while keeping total transmitted power at slightly greater than optimum power control.

This paper proposes a novel synchronous acquisition method with an adaptive filter in asynchronous direct sequence/code division multiple access (DS/CDMA) communication systems. An adaptive filter is used in a single-user receiver, in complete synchronization of desired user's signal, the tap coefficients of the filter are controlled to orthogonalize to all other user's spreading sequences without knowledge of the sequences, amplitude and time delays of the signals. While, in the proposed system for synchronous acquisition, the tap coefficients are controlled to orthogonalize to all user's sequences including desired user's signal. The synchronous acquisition can be achieved by using the difference of cross-correlation function value between desired user's sequence of inphase and the tap coefficients for each phase. The principle and performance evaluation for the proposed method are shown. As a result, compared to an acquisition method of conventional sliding correlator, considerable improvement of the average acquisition time can be achieved in large power multiple access interference environment.

A novel voltage-tunable linear 3-input CMOS Operational Transconductance Amplifier (OTA) suitable for onchip integration of advanced monolithic systems is proposed. When a 3-input OTA is needed, a conventional 3-input OTA uses two 2-input OTA's and either grounds one of the 4 input terminals or ties two terminals. This paper presents a method to reduce the number of MOS transistors and to save chip area by designing a 3-input OTA directly. A CMOS pair technique is introduced s a solution to minimize a matching problem for control voltage sources. Simulation results show that the active chip area of the proposed 3-input OTA is reduced by 25% compared to that of a conventional one. The proposed 3-input OTA is applied to a realization of an OTA-C filter to verify the effectiveness.

We have developed an efficient recursive algorithm based on the interacting multiple model (IMM) for enhancing speech degraded by additive white noise. The clean speech is modeled by the hidden filter model (HFM). The simulation results shows that the proposed method offers performance gains relative to the previous one with slightly increased complexity.

This paper proposes a 6.4-kbit/s extension to G.729 (conjugate structure algebraic code excited linear prediction: CS-ACELP). Each G.729 module was investigated to determine which bits could be removed without hurting the speech quality, then two coders that have different bit allocations were designed. They have two different algebraic codebooks (a 10-bit algebraic codebook that has two pulses and an 11-bit algebraic codebook that has two or three pulses). This paper also proposes a conditional orthogonalized search for a fixed codebook to improve the speech quality. The conditional orthogonalized search chooses, one of two search methods (orthogonalized or non-orthogonalized) based on the optimum pitch gain. The quality of the two coders was evaluated using objective measurements (SNR and segmental SNR) and subjective ones (mean opinion score: MOS and a pair-comparison test). The selected coder was evaluated under practical conditions. Subjective test results have indicated that the quality of the proposed coder (10-ms frame length) is equivalent to that of the 6.3-kbit/s G.723.1 coder, which has a 30-ms frame length.

From the standpoint of reducing the electromagnetic (EM) absorption in the human head for portable telephones, a ferrite sheet is proposed to use as a protection attachment between the antenna and the head. By using an anatomically based head model and a realistic portable telephone model, the effects of the ferrite sheet on both the reduction of EM absorption and antenna radiation pattern are numerically analyzed by the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The results show that a ferrite sheet can result in a reduction over 13% for the spatial peak SAR averaged over one gram of tissue relative to a degradation below 0.6 dB for the antenna radiation pattern.

The proposed high-power-factor converter is constructed with a flyback converter, and locates the energy-storage capacitor on the secondary side of the transformer. A high power-factor can be obtained without needing to detect any current, and the ZVS operation can be achieved without auxiliary switches. To make the best use of these advantages in the converter, ZVS operations and power-factor characteristics in the converter were analyzed. From the analytical results, the effective control method for achieving ZVS was examined. Using a bread-board circuit controlled by this method, a power-factor of 0.99 and a conversion efficiency of 88% were measured.

The bit error rate (BER) performance against average Eb/No (signal energy per bit-to-noise power spectral density ratio) and the capacity of the pilot symbol-assisted coherent orthogonal filter (PSA-COF) based Rake receiver with fast transmit power control (TPC) are evaluated in DS-CDMA reverse link under multipath Rayleigh fading. Fast TPC, which controls all signals transmitted from users in the same cell or sector such that they are received with equal power at the cell site under fast Rayleigh fading, is essential for the PSA-COF based Rake receiver in the reverse link in order to improve the performance degradation experienced when the received signal level drops due to fading as the transmit power is limited in practical systems. Signal-to interference plus noise power ratio (SINR) based fast transmit power control (TPC) is assumed here. By using the fast TPC in reverse link and applying the PSA-COF based Rake receiver to base station (BS), the transmit power of each mobile station (MS) can be significantly reduced, thus increasing link capacity. It is demonstrated that the capacity of the PSA-COF based Rake receiver is about 1.5 times higher than that of the conventional matched filter (MF) receiver in interference-limited channels.

In this paper, a simple frame synchronization method for the SS-CSC syytem is proposed, and the synchronization performance is analyzed. There have been growing interests in the M-ary/SS communication system and the bi-orthogonal modulation system because these systems can achieve the high frequency utilization efficiency. However, the frame synchronization is difficult. We proposed the SS-CSC system, and evaluated the bit error rate (BER) performance of the SS-CSC system under the completed synchronization. The BER performance of the SS-CSC system is much the same as that of the bi-orthogonal modulation system. In this paper, a frame synchronization method using the differential detector and racing counters is proposed. In particular, the lose lock time, the recovery time and the BER performance considering the synchronizing performance are analyzed. In consequence, the BER performance considering the synchronization performance can approach the lower bound of the SS-CSC system by tuning the number of the stages in racing counters.