In this paper, an iterative decoding algorithm for channels with additive linear dynamical noise is presented. The proposed algorithm is based on the tightly coupled two inference algorithms: the sum-product algorithm which infers the information symbols of an low density parity check (LDPC) code and the Kalman smoothing algorithm which infers the channel states. The linear dynamical noise are the noise generated from a linear dynamical system. We often encounter such noise (i.e., additive colored noise) in practical communication and storage systems. The conventional iterative decoding algorithms such as the sum-product algorithm cannot derive full potential of turbo codes nor LDPC codes over such a channel because the conventional algorithms are designed under the independence assumption on the noise. Several simulations have been performed to assess the performance of the proposed algorithm. From the simulation results, it can be concluded that the Kalman smoothing algorithm deserves to be implemented in a decoder when the linear dynamical part of the linear dynamical noise is dominant rather than the white Gaussian noise part. In such a case, the performance of the proposed algorithm is far superior to that of the conventional algorithm.

A distributor of digital contents desires to collect users' attributes. On the other hand, the users do not desire to offer the attributes owing to the privacy protection. Previously, an anonymous survey system for attributes statistics is proposed. In this system, asking trusted third parties' helps, a distributor can obtain the correct statistics of users' attributes, such as gender and age, while no information beyond the statistics is revealed. However, the system suffers from the inefficiency of a protocol to generate the statistics, since the cost depends on the number of all the users registering this survey system. This paper proposes an anonymous survey system, where this cost is independent from the number of all the registering users. In this accomplishment, a group signature scheme with attribute tracing is also proposed. A conventional group signature scheme allows a group member to anonymously sign a message on behalf of the group, while only a designated party can identify the signer. The proposed scheme further enables the party to trace signer's attribute.

A rectangular-to-radial waveguide transformer through a crossed slot is proposed as a feeder of a radial line slot antenna (RLSA) for use in a system of solar power satellite (SPS). The transformer is analyzed and designed by using the MoM with numerical eigenmode basis functions. The measured ripple of the amplitude is 3.0 dB in the φ-direction and a 7.0% frequency bandwidth for rotating mode with the ripple below 6 dB is obtained. This bandwidth is wider than that of conventional ring slot or cavity resonator with a coaxial feeder. The antenna measurements at 5.8 GHz show reasonable rotational symmetry both in the near-field distribution and the far field radiation patterns. The reflection is -27.7 dB at the design frequency and below -15 dB in the 7.0% bandwidth. The gain of the antenna with the diameter of 300 mm is 22.7 dBi and the efficiency is 56%.

Suica is our contact-less IC card's nickname: Super Urban Intelligent CArd. There are two types of IC Card: One for Suica IO (SF) Card and the other for Suica Commuter Pass, which has a function of stored fare card and commuter pass. There are 6.54 million Suica holders (about 3.33 million Suica Season Pass holders and 3.21 million Suica IO Card holders) as of 16, June 2003.

Hetero-interface properties of SiO2/4H-SiC on (0001), (11-20), and (03-38) crystal orientations are presented. Epitaxial growth on new crystal orientations, (11-20) and (03-38), is described by comparing with the growth on (0001). Using thermal oxidation with wet oxygen, metal-oxide-SiC (MOS) structure was fabricated. From high-frequency capacitance-voltage characteristics measured at 300 K and 100 K, the interface properties were characterized semi-quantitatively. The interface state density was precisely determined using the conductance method for the MOS structure at 300 K. The new crystal orientations have the lower interface state density near the conduction band edge than (0001). From the characteristics of inversion-type planar MOSFETs, higher channel mobilities were obtained on (03-38) and (11-20) than on (0001). The cause of the difference in the channel mobility is speculated by the difference bond configuration of the three crystal orientations.

In this paper, we focus on the problem of secure multicast in dynamic groups. In this problem, a group of users communicate using a shared group key. Due to the dynamic nature of these groups, to preserve secrecy, it is necessary to change the group key whenever the group membership changes. While the group key is being changed, the group communication needs to be interrupted until the rekeying is complete. This interruption is especially necessary if the rekeying is done because a user has left (or is removed). We split the rekeying cost into two parts: the cost of the critical path--where each user receives the new group key, and the cost of the non-critical path--where each user receives any other keys that it needs to obtain. We present a family of algorithms that show the tradeoff between the cost of the critical path and the cost of the non-critical path. Our solutions allow the group controller to choose the appropriate algorithm for key distribution by considering the requirements on critical and non-critical cost. In our solutions, the group controller can dynamically change the algorithm for key distribution to adapt to changing application requirements. Moreover, we argue that our solutions allow the group controller to effectively manage heterogeneous groups where users have different requirements/capabilities.

The software rejuvenation is a proactive fault management technique for operational software systems which age due to the error conditions that accrue with time and/or load, and is important for high assurance systems design. In this paper, fine-grained shock models are developed to determine the optimal rejuvenation policies which maximize the system availability. We introduce three kinds of rejuvenation schemes and calculate the optimal software rejuvenation schedules maximizing the system availability for respective schemes. The stochastic models with three rejuvenation policies are extentions of Bobbio et al. (1998, 2001) and represent the failure phenomenon due to the exhaustion of the software resources caused by the memory leak, the fragmentation, etc. Numerical examples are devoted to compare three control schemes quantitatively.

The virtual memory functions in real-time operating systems have been used in embedded systems. Recent RISC processors provide virtual memory supports through software-managed Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) in software. In real-time aspects of the embedded systems, managing TLB entries is the most important because overhead at TLB miss time gives a great effect to overall performance of the system. In this paper, we propose several TLB management algorithms in MIPS processors. In the algorithms, a replaced TLB entry is randomly chosen or managed. We analyze the algorithms by comparing overheads at task switching times and TLB miss times.

Recently, in wired networks, a hierarchical structure has been introduced to improve management and routing. In ad hoc networks, we introduce a hierarchical structure to achieve the same goal. However, it is difficult to introduce the hierarchical structure because all mobile hosts are always moving around the network. So, we proposed the clustering scheme to construct the hierarchical structure before. In this paper, we propose a new hierarchical routing protocol called Hi-TORA based on the clustering scheme. And we show the experimental evaluation of Hi-TORA with respect to the number of control packets, accuracy of packet delivery and hop counts in comparison with TORA.

In video conference systems over the Internet, audio and video data are often lost due to UDP packet losses, resulting in degradation of assurance. In this paper we describe a high-assurance video conference system applying the following two techniques: (1) packet loss recovery using convolutional codes, which improves the assurance of communication; and (2) Xcast, a multicast scheme that is designed for relatively small groups, reducing the bandwidth required for a multi-point conference. We added these functions to a GateKeeper (GK), a device used in conventional conference systems. Encoding/decoding and Xcast routing were then implemented as the upper layer for the UDP. We examined the functions of the system over the Internet in a multi-point conference between three sites around Tokyo, as well as a conference between Tokyo and Korea. We also investigated the effectiveness of the proposed system in experiments using an Internet simulator. Experimental results showed that the quality of received picture was improved in comparison with the case where no encoding schemes were applied.

Field Configurable Self-assembly is a novel programmable force field based heterogeneous integration technology. Herein, we demonstrate application of the method to rapid, parallel assembly of similar and dissimilar sub-200 µm GaAs-based light emitting diodes at silicon chip substrates. We also show that the method is compatible with post-process collective wiring techniques for fully planar hybrid integration of active devices.

Information service provision and utilization is an important infrastructure in the high-assurance distributed information service system. In order to cope with the rapidly evolving situations of providers' and users' heterogeneous requirements, one autonomous information service system has been proposed, called Faded Information Field (FIF). FIF is a distributed information service system architecture, sustained by push/pull mobile agents, through a recursive demand-oriented provision of the most popular information closer to the users to make a tradeoff between the cost of service allocation and access. In this system, users' requests are autonomously driven by pull mobile agents in charge of finding the relevant service. In the case of a mono-service request, the system is designed to reduce the time needed for users to access the information and to preserve the consistency of the replicas. However, when the user requests joint selection of multiple services, synchronization of atomic actions and timeliness have to be assured by the system. In this paper, the relationship that exists among the contents, properties and access ratios of information services is clarified. Based on these factors, the ratio of correlation and degree of satisfaction are defined and the autonomous integration and optimal allocation of information services for heterogeneous FIFs to provide one-stop service for users' multi-service requirements are proposed. The effectiveness of the proposed technology is shown through evaluation and the results show that the integrated services can reduce the total users access time and increase services consumption compared with separate systems.

The recent real time systems have the needs of system expandability with heterogeneous functions and operations. High assurance system is very important for such systems. In order to realize the high assurance system, we research the autonomous step-by-step construction technique based on assurance evaluation. In this paper we propose the average functional reliability as the best index to indicate the assurance performance for system construction. We also propose the autonomous step-by-step construction technique to decide the construction sequence to maximize the assurance performance.

The imprecise computation model is one of the flexible computation models used to construct real-time systems. It is especially useful when the worst case execution times are difficult to estimate or the execution times vary widely. Although there are several ways to implement this model, they have not attained much attentions of real-world application programmers to date due to their unrealistic assumptions and high dependency on the execution environment. In this paper, we present an integrated approach for implementing the imprecise computation model. In particular, our research covers three aspects. First, we present a new imprecise computation model which consists of a mandatory part, an optional part, and another mandatory part called wind-up part. This wind-up part allows application programmers to explicitly incorporate into their programs the exact operations needed for safe degradation of performance when there is a shortage in resources. Second, we describe a scheduling algorithm called Mandatory-First with Wind-up Part (M-FWP) which is based on the Earliest Deadline First strategy. This algorithm, unlike scheduling algorithms developed for the classical imprecise computation model, is capable of scheduling a mandatory portion after an optional portion. Third, we present a dynamic priority server method for an efficient implementation of the M-FWP algorithm. We also show that the number of the proposed server at most needed per node is one. In order to estimate the performance of the proposed approach, we have implemented a real-time operating system called RT-Frontier. The experimental analyses have proven its ability to implement tasks based on the imprecise computation model without requiring any knowledge on the execution time of the optional part. Moreover, it also showed performance gain over the traditional checkpointing technique.

In order for the agent-based applications to be truly autonomous and decentralized, heterogeneous multi-agent systems themselves must communicate and interoperate with each other. To solve the problem, we take a two-step approach. First, message-level interoperability is realized by a gateway agent that interconnects heterogeneous multi-agent systems. Second, higher-level interoperation of conversations, which consist of bi-directional streams of messages, is achieved by dynamically negotiating the interaction protocols. We demonstrate the concept, technique and implementation of integrating multi-agent systems and show how the method improves the assurance of real-world applications in autonomous decentralized systems.

Handovers are occasionally required for LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellite systems, since the satellites are always moving. Handovers, however, generally cause some degradation of communication quality. Some LEO systems have a feature of two types of satellites in terms of the direction of their orbits and the handover between satellites of different types may lead to a large change in the path between the service satellites used for the communication. Thus, the degradation can be generally large especially in the case of handovers between different type satellites. As such, best handover plan should be derived so that the number of handovers should be made smallest to minimize the degradation of the communication quality. In this paper, such optimization problems are formulated in relation to the handovers and their solutions are proposed to actualize the optimization of handover plans for LEO satellite systems with two types of satellites.

Digital rights management in client-server environments requires the establishment of client integrity, in order to protect sensitive (secret) information from loss or misuse. Clients are vulnerable to powerful man-in-the-middle attacks through malicious software (viruses, etc.), which is undetectable by conventional anti-virus technology. We present such powerful viruses and demonstrate their ability to compromise clients. Furthermore, we introduce a defense against all viruses, which is based on simple hardware devices that execute specialized protocols to establish client integrity and protect against sensitive data loss.

Software certification is a notoriously difficult problem. From software reliability engineering perspective, certification process must provide evidence that the program meets or exceeds the required level of reliability. When certifying the reliability of a high assurance system very few, if any, failures are observed by testing. In statistical estimation theory the probability of an event is estimated by determining the proportion of the times it occurs in a fixed number of trials. In absence of failures, the number of required certification tests becomes impractically large. We suggest that subjective reliability estimation from the development lifecycle, based on observed behavior or the reflection of one's belief in the system quality, be included in certification. In statistical terms, we hypothesize that a system failure occurs with the hypothesized probability. Presumed reliability needs to be corroborated by statistical testing during the reliability certification phase. As evidence relevant to the hypothesis increases, we change the degree of belief in the hypothesis. Depending on the corroboration evidence, the system is either certified or rejected. The advantage of the proposed theory is an economically acceptable number of required system certification tests, even for high assurance systems so far considered impossible to certify.

In a fixed-channel-allocation (FCA) cellular network, a fixed number of channels are assigned to each cell. However, under this scheme, the channel usage may not be efficient because of the variability in the offered traffic. Different approaches such as channel borrowing (CB) and dynamic channel allocation (DCA) have been proposed to accommodate variable traffic. Our work expands on the CB scheme and proposes a new channel-allocation scheme--called mobile-assisted connection-admission (MACA) algorithm--to achieve load balancing in a cellular network, so as to assure network communication. In this scheme, some special channels are used to directly connect mobile units from different cells; thus, a mobile unit, which is unable to connect to its own base station because it is in a heavily-loaded "hot" cell, may be able to get connected to its neighboring lightly-loaded cold cell's base station through a two-hop link. Research results show that MACA can greatly improve the performance of a cellular network by reducing blocking probabilities.

REX is a reconfigurable experimental system for evaluating and developing parallel computer systems. It consists of large-scale FPGAs, and enables the systems to be reconfigured from their processors to the network topology in order to support their evaluation and development. We evaluated REX using several implementations of parallel computer systems, and showed that it had enough scalability of gates, memory throughput and network throughput. We also showed that REX was an effective tool because of its emulation speed and reconfigurability to develop systems.