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.

Software and its systems are more complicated than a decade ago, and the systems are used for mission critical business, flight control and so on which often require high assurance systems. In this circumstance, we often use black-box testing. The question now arises that black-box testing does not generate numerical value of testing result but empirical. Thus, in this research, we develop and enhance FSM (Finite State Machine) testing method which can produce code coverage rate as numerical value. Our developed FSM testing by code coverage focuses on not only software system behavior but also data. We found higher code coverage rate, which indicates quality of system, by this method than existing black box testing method.

Conventional worms and super-worms focus on the infection of end-systems. They exploit network vulnerabilities and use the network resources only to route their processes appropriately. We describe a new class of super-worms which target to infect network resources and utilizes routing information to effectively partition the address space of Internet.

Affine arithmetic is a kind of interval arithmetic defined by Stolfi et al. In affine arithmetic, it is difficult to realize the efficient nonlinear binomial operations. The purpose of this letter is to propose a new dividing method which is able to supply more suitable evaluation than the old dividing method. And this letter also shows the efficiency of the new dividing method by numerical examples.

This paper describes how four-wave mixing (FWM) noise within multifiber linear-lightwave WDM ring networks is reduced due to their thin wavelength density. Preliminary numerical analysis for a full-mesh connection pattern shows that a simple wavelength insertion technique can improve FWM noise performance as high as about 10 dB.

The objective of this study was to explore suitable spatial filters for inverse estimation of cortical potentials from the scalp electroencephalogram. The effect of incorporating noise covariance into inverse procedures was examined by computer simulations. The parametric projection filter, which allows inverse estimation with the presence of information on the noise covariance, was applied to an inhomogeneous three-concentric-sphere model under various noise conditions in order to estimate the cortical potentials from the scalp potentials. The present simulation results suggest that incorporation of information on the noise covariance allows better estimation of cortical potentials, than inverse solutions without knowledge about the noise covariance, when the correlation between the signal and noise is low. The method for determining the optimum regularization parameter, which can be applied for parametric inverse techniques, is also discussed.

The array-enhanced coherence resonance (AECR) in the diffusively coupled active rotators is investigated and its analysis with the nonlinear Fokker-Planck equation is presented. By considering the nonlinear Fokker-Planck equation of the rotators, it is found that the time-periodic solution exists in some parameter range. By solving the equation of a rotator and the Fokker-Planck equation simultaneously, the behavior of a rotator in the system with infinite number of rotators is considered, and it is found that AECR also takes place in this infinite system. Thus it is concluded that AECR is caused by the time-periodic solution of the probability density induced by noise.

This paper proposes a new approach to fuzzy inference system for modeling nonlinear systems based on measured input and output data. In the suggested fuzzy inference system, the number of fuzzy rules and parameter values of membership functions are automatically decided by using the extended kernel method. The extended kernel method individually performs linear transformation and kernel mapping. Linear transformation projects input space into linearly transformed input space. Kernel mapping projects linearly transformed input space into high dimensional feature space. Especially, the process of linear transformation is needed in order to solve difficulty determining the type of kernel function which presents the nonlinear mapping in according to nonlinear system. The structure of the proposed fuzzy inference system is equal to a Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model whose input variables are weighted linear combinations of input variables. In addition, the number of fuzzy rules can be reduced under the condition of optimizing a given criterion by adjusting linear transformation matrix and parameter values of kernel functions using the gradient descent method. Once a structure is selected, coefficients in consequent part are determined by the least square method. Simulated results of the proposed technique are illustrated by examples involving benchmark nonlinear systems.

This letter investigates the peak-to-average power ratio (PAR) reduction scheme employing a simple symbol transform in OFDM-CDMA systems. This approach is very simple because of no additional complexity and works with arbitrary numbers of subcarriers and without restriction on the allocation of spreading code, maintaining an original transmission efficiency. Simulation results show that the investigated scheme gives the PAR reduction gain of 2-3 dB compared to the original OFDM and OFDM-CDMA signals, and can provide the further PAR reduction by combing the partial transmit sequence (PTS) scheme, which is less complex compared to the ordinary PTS approach.

In this letter, we present groupwise successive interference cancellation (GSIC) receiver with adaptive minimum mean squared error (MMSE) detection and extended GSIC (EGSIC) receiver with adaptive MMSE detection for dual-rate DS-CDMA system. The receivers are GSIC receiver and EGSIC receiver combined with adaptive MMSE detection which is introduced to make initial bit detection more reliable. Furthermore, a multi-user detection scheme is introduced to mitigate the effect of multiple access interference (MAI) between users in a group which is usually ignored in conventional GSIC receiver and EGSIC receiver. Specifically, parallel interference cancellation (PIC) is adopted as a multi-user detection scheme within a group. It is shown that performance of the GSIC receiver and EGSIC receiver is significantly improved by employing adaptive MMSE detection. It is also shown that the performance of the receivers can be improved further by using PIC within a group.

Probabilistic encryption becomes more and more important since its ability to against chosen-ciphertext attack. Applications like online voting schemes and one-show credentials are based on probabilistic encryption. Research on good probabilistic encryptions are on going, while many good deterministic encryption schemes are already well implemented and available in many systems. To convert any deterministic encryption scheme into a probabilistic encryption scheme, a randomized media is needed to apply on the message and carry the message over as an randomized input. In this paper, nonlinear codes obtained by certain mapping from linear error-correcting codes are considered to serve as such carrying media. Binary nonlinear codes obtained by Gray mapping from 4-linear codes are discussed as example for a such scheme.

It is shown that bounded impulse action can be combined with usual bang-bang control input to minimize the performance index. Especially for unstable oscillators, the size of controllable region can be increased. We present results on how to minimize the performance index using both ordinary bang-bang control and impulse actions with a recharge constraint on impulse firing. Following the maximum principle and necessary conditions induced from usual perturbation arguments, the mixed control input (bang-bang and impulse actions) is represented in adjoint state and then state variable feedback form. Simulation results show how the switch curves can be used to determine the optimal control value.

The radio wave intensity time series of the quasar is observed with the radio wave interferometer on the earth. External noise may superimpose with the radio wave on the path of wave propagation over the cosmological distance. In this paper, the effects of the superimposed noise on the radio wave intensity time series are discussed assuming nonlinear dynamics to apply on the time series. A convolution method is applied to the original observed radio wave intensity time series. Both the original and the convolution time series are analyzed by the Grassberger-Procaccia (GP) method with correlation integration and compared the results to estimate the presence and the effects of superimposed subtle noise. In addition, surrogate and Judd methods are applied to the radio wave intensity time series to increase the credibility of the results of the GP method. The effects of added random noise in Lorenz model are also analyzed with the GP method to estimate the above results.

In this paper our recently introduced method called output distributional influence function (ODIF) is used for the evaluation of the robustness properties of the nonlinear filter class of morphological filters. Several examples of the ODIFs for the dilation, closing and clos-opening are given and explained carefully. For each of these morphological filters the effect of filter length is examined by using the ODIFs for the expectation and variance. The robustness properties of the filters are also compared to each other and the effect of the distribution of the contamination is investigated for the closing as an example of realistic filtering conditions.

In wireless mobile environments, data requests based on the location of mobile clients (MCs) have increased. The requested data, called location-dependent data (LDD), may be uncertain if MCs use terms of general distance like "near". Fuzzy theory allows us to represent uncertainty without sharp boundaries. In this paper we quantify the fuzziness and propose a method for constructing the data region of LDD by the degree of the distance between LDDs' and MCs' locations. In simulation studies, we evaluate the LDD regions (LDRs) in various situations: MCs' extensive and intensive queried pattern in data regions of two "near" senses and civilized regions with regional features. Our performance evaluation shows that the number of database accesses in proposed LDRs can be reduced in each case.

A unified linear multiuser receiver that minimizes a weighted sum of the multiple access interference (MAI) and the background noise is introduced. The proposed receiver includes the three popular linear receivers, namely the matched-filter, the decorrelating and the minimum mean-square-error receivers as special cases. Furthermore, by tuning a single weighting factor, it is possible to improve the performance of the proposed receiver over that of any of the above mentioned linear receivers.

This very useful optical sampling system uses a passively mode-locked fiber laser as an optical sampling pulse source and is based on sum-frequency generation. The optical pulse had a sufficiently short pulse width, and its peak power was very high. In addition, it had a very low timing jitter. We could observe optical signals that were jitter-free in terms of single scanning. The sum-frequency generation conversion efficiency was 1.0 10-4 W-1, and the temporal resolution was 700 fs, when we used a 5-mm-thick KTP crystal. A 320-Gbit/s optical signal could be clearly observed. We have also developed a polarization-insensitive optical sampling system with a two-path configuration based on sum-frequency generation using the type-II phase matching condition in a KTP crystal. The polarization dependency was less than 3.5% (0.15 dB) in the wavelength range from 1520 to 1620 nm.

Power Line Communication (PLC) is very attractive for achieving high-rate in-home networks. Noise in power lines is modeled as a cyclostationary Gaussian process. In order to achieve reliable communication using power lines, effective measures including error control techniques need to be taken against this particular noise. This paper focuses its attention on an effect of turbo codes on PLC. We adopt two noise environments for examining the effect in terms of BER performance. The result of the examination provides that turbo codes have enough capability to limit the effect of the noise. It also provides that the effect depends on size of a channel interleaver. Since an effective SNR estimation scheme should be required to apply turbo codes to PLC, we also examine the effect of two SNR estimation schemes in terms of BER performance.

In this paper we present a new, two-centered electronic voting scheme that is capable of preserving privacy, universal verifiability, and robustness. An interesting property of our scheme is the use of double encryption with additive homomorphic encryption functions. In the two-centered scheme, the first center decrypts the ballots, checks the eligibility of the voters, and multiplies each eligible vote, which is still encrypted in the cryptosystem of the second center. After the deadline is reached, the second center obtains the final tally by decrypting the accumulated votes. As such, both centers cannot know the content of any individual vote, as each vote is hidden in the accumulated result, therefore the privacy of the voters is preserved. Our protocols, together with some existing protocols, allow everyone to verify that all valid votes are correctly counted. We apply the r-th residue cryptosystem as the homomorphic encryption function. Although decryption in the r-th residue cryptosystem requires an exhaustive search for all possible values, based on experiments we show that it is possible to achieve desirable performance for large-scale elections.

Forked checkpointing scheme is proposed to achieve low checkpoint overhead. When a process wants to take a checkpoint in the forked checkpointing scheme, it creates a child process and continues its normal computation. Two recovery models can be used for forked checkpointing when the parent process fails before the child process establishes the checkpoint. One is the pessimistic recovery model where the recovery process rolls back to the previous checkpoint state. The other is the optimistic recovery model where a recovery process waits for the checkpoint to be established by the child process. In this paper, we present the recovery models for forked checkpointing by deriving the expected execution time of a process with and without checkpointing and also show that the expected recovery time of the optimistic recovery model is smaller than that of the pessimistic recovery model.