Most of current codesign tools or methodologies only support validation in the form of cosimulation and testing of design alternatives. The results of hardware-software codesign of a distributed system are often not verified, because they are not easily verifiable. In this paper, we propose a new formal coverification approach based on linear hybrid automata, and an algorithm for automatically converting codesign results to the linear hybrid automata framework. Our coverification approach allows automatic verification of real-time constraints such as hard deadlines. Another advantage is that the proposed approach is suitable for verifying distributed systems with arbitrary communication patterns and system architecture. The feasibility of our approach is demonstrated through several application examples. The proposed approach has also been successfully used in verifying deadline violations when there are inter-task communications between tasks with different period lengths.

Recently the applications of MEMS (micro electro mechanical systems) have made remarkable progress in many filelds. The optical application of MEMS is one of the most promising because it provides micro mechano optical devices, the key components for high-perfromance systems in optical communication networks and data storage devices. This paper disucces the impacts of MEMS techologies on optical systems. Furthermore, state-of-the-art exmaples of micro optical switches, pig-tailed tunable filters and two-dimensional MEMS optical scanners are described.

Sticking is one of dominant characteristics of reliability in relays for medium current loads from several amperes to several dozen amperes, which are used for relays for automobiles, industrial control units or power supplies of household electrical appliances. Correlations between the release failures due to sticking and contact characteristics such as arc discharges, material parameters and design factors in relays have never been always made clear. This puts difficulty in the way of reasonable development of contact materials and rational design of relays. So, dependence of electrical load conditions on sticking characteristics are investigated, using the Ag-CdO contacts which have had high practical use to relays for medium current loads. Furthermore, relationship among the sticking characteristics, arc discharge characteristics and contact surface properties after operations are studied. Mechanism of sticking is considered on the basis of those data. The results are as follows: (1) Sticking phenomenon occurs intermittently from initial operations and lasts to the end. (2) The µ + 2 σ value (the sum of the mean value and the integral multiple of the standard deviation of sticking force) increases in proportion to the circuit current. On the other hand, it has the maximum value at a circuit voltage, slightly less than the minimum arc voltage. (3) Factors causing the sticking are considered to be divided into direct factors and its root factors. It is considered that a dominant direct factor is welding, and that its root factor is bridge or welding by Joule's heat. On the other hand, the sticking force becomes rather lower as the circuit voltage increases, in the circuit voltage range where regular arc discharge occurs.

The constriction resistance of an electric contact has frequently been obtained using a model of only one circular contact spot of radius a. However, cases of a single contact spot are extremely rare as the interface of the electrical contact actually consists of numerous micro-contact spots. A contact is therefore regarded as the aggregate of several micro-contact spots, which are referred to collectively as a cluster. The constriction resistance of the cluster can be calculated as the sum of the self-resistance and mutual resistance of individual micro-contact spots. In the present study, this model is expanded slightly for practical application by normalizing a previous theoretical formula. In order to obtain the constriction resistance for contacts between composite materials and mating metals, EPMA analysis is applied so as to determine real micro-contact spots. Theoretical calculations of the constriction resistance of multiple contact spots is shown to be reasonably consistent with experimental results. In addition, the contact of a composite material and a mating metal is shown to be made up of multispots. The current was recognized experimentally to flow more easily at micro-contact spots in the cluster periphery. These experimental findings coincide with simulation results obtained by theoretical calculations.

Shared memory multiprocessors are frequently used as compute servers with multiple parallel programs executing at the same time. In such environments, an operating system switches the contexts of multiple processes. When the operating system switches contexts, in addition to the cost of saving the context of the process being swapped out and that of bringing in the context of the new process to be run, the cache performance of processors also can be affected. The blocked algorithm improves cache performance by increasing the locality of memory references. In a blocked program using this algorithm, program performance can be significantly affected by the reuse of a block loaded into a cache memory. If frequent context switching replaces the block before it is completely reused, the cache locality in a blocked program cannot be successfully exploited. To address this problem, we propose a preemption-safe policy to utilize the cache locality of blocked programs in a multiprogrammed system. The proposed policy delays context switching until a block is fully reused within a program, but also compensates for the monopolized processor time on processor scheduling mechanisms. Our simulation results show that in a situation where blocked programs are run on multiprogrammed shared-memory multiprocessors, the proposed policy improves the performance of these programs due to a decrease in cache misses. In such situations, it also has a beneficial impact on the overall system performance due to the enhanced processor utilization.

This paper focuses on a single BSA (Basic Service Area) in an infrastructure network and studies the performance of the IEEE 802.11 standard MAC protocol by means of simulation. The MAC protocol supports DCF (Distributed Coordination Function) and PCF (Point Coordination Function). The simulation model includes both data transmission with the DCF and H.263 video transmission with the PCF. In the simulation we assume that the channel transmission rate is 2 Mbps and use the system parameters specified in the standard for the DSSS (Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum) physical layer. We evaluate the performance of this protocol in terms of throughput and MPDU (MAC Protocol Data Unit) delay for various values of the CFP (Contention Free Period) repetition interval and the CFP maximum duration. Numerical results show that if the CFP repetition interval is set too long, video MPDU delay becomes very large periodically; therefore, average video MPDU delay deteriorates. We also find that as the CFP maximum duration decreases, the number of video terminals that can be accommodated in the system decreases. Furthermore, how channel transmission errors affect the performance of the protocol is examined. A two-state continuous-time Markov model is used as a burst error model. As a result, we see that for a small number of video terminals, the average video-MPDU-delay performance does not deteriorate drastically for larger values of bit error rate.

This paper first examines the issues related to scheduling loop applications on a software distributed shared memory (DSM) system. Then, a dynamic scheduling scheme is developed based on the examined issues to enhance the performance of loop applications on DSM. Compared with previous works, the proposed scheme has several specialties. The first is that the workload of processors can be effectively balanced even when the computational capabilities of processors and the computational needs of threads are not identical. The second is it divides thread mapping into two phases, each with one consideration, i.e., load balance or communication cost, and adopts thread migration and exchange in the two phases, respectively. The third is the exploitation of data sharing among threads to reduce data-consistency communication, and the last is to attack the negative effect of the unnecessary inter-node sharing caused by thread re-mapping. The proposed scheme has been implemented on a page-based DSM system called Cohesion. Our experiments show that the proposed scheme is more effective to improve the performance of the test programs than related schemes.

This paper presents a Path Bandwidth Management (PBM) model for large-scale networks that leads to an almost optimal PB allocation, under constraints posed by the installed bandwidth in the transmission links of the network. The PB allocation procedure is driven from a traffic demand matrix and consists of three phases. In the first phase, a suitable decomposition of the whole network takes place, where the large-scale network is split to a set of one-level sub-networks. In the second phase, the optimization algorithm developed for one-level telecommunication networks is applied to each sub-network in order to define the optimal PB allocation. The criterion for optimization is to minimize the worst Call Blocking Probability (CBP) of all switching pairs of the sub-network. In the third phase, composition of the sub-networks takes place in a successive way, which leads to the final PB allocation of the large-scale network. As the large-scale network is built up from optimized sub-networks, an almost optimal PB allocation is anticipated. For evaluation, the worst resultant CBP of the proposed scheme is compared with that obtained by the optimal PB allocation procedure in order to prove its optimality and efficiency. We choose a set of large-scale networks whose size is not very large so that we can apply the optimization algorithm developed for one-level telecom networks for defining its optimal bandwidth allocation. Extensive evaluation of the PBM model has showed that the worst resultant CBP is about 2% above the optimal value, which is a satisfactory result. The proposed PBM scheme is explained by means of an application example.

The purpose of this letter is to modify the correlation least mean squares algorithm using a sum of the lagged squared errors as the cost function and extend the modified CLMS algorithm to two-dimensional domain. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is shown by the computer simulation.

A Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar using only in-phase channel is advantageous for automotive applications. In this radar, it is necessary to search the pairs of beat frequencies in an up-chirp mode and a down-chirp mode to measure the distances and the velocity of multiple targets similarly to a FMCW radar with both of in-phase and quadrature-phase channel. However the number of combinations to search the pairs is larger than that for the FMCW radar with both of in-phase and quadrature-phase channel. Therefore, false targets by mistaking the combination of these pairs increase. In this paper, we propose a novel measurement algorithm to reduce the false targets. We extract only the beat frequencies of the relatively moving targets using the differential frequency power spectrum of the up-chirp mode and the down-chirp mode. We can reduce the number of selected incorrect pairs by separating the stationary targets and the moving targets. We have conducted some simulations to confirm the capability of the proposed measurement algorithm. It was shown that the false target appearance probability is reduced without significant deterioration of the target detection probability.

This paper presents a three-dimensional polarimetric detection result of targets buried in snowpack by synthetic aperture FM-CW radar system. Since the FM-CW radar is suitable for short range sensing and can be equipped with fully polarimetric capability, we further extended it to a polarimetric three-dimensional SAR system. A field experiment was carried out to image and detect targets in a natural snowpack of 280 cm deep. The polarimetric detection and identification schemes are the polarimetric filtering, three-component decomposition, and the power polarization anisotropy coefficient. These approaches to acquired data show the usefulness of three-dimensional polarimetric FM-CW SAR system.

This paper investigates an obstructed radio channel by foliage for LMDS (local multipoint distribution services) where a relative evaluation of attenuation characteristics of foliage at 29.5 and 5 GHz is performed. Results show that the attenuation in dB should be treated statistically as Rician distribution. It is also found that swaying foliage in wind causes a significant channel fading at 29.5 GHz, ranging over 10 dB, while the fading depth at 5 GHz is approximately 2 dB.

This paper presents an application of Complex-Valued Associative Memory Model(CAMM) for image processing. An image association system applying CAMM, combined with a 2-dimensional discrete Fourier transform (2-D DFT) process is proposed. Discussed are how a gray level image can be expressed using CAMM, and the image association that can be performed by CAMM. In the proposed system, input images are transformed to phase matrices and the image association can be performed by making use of the phase information. Practical examples are also presented.

This paper presents an efficient graph-based evolutionary optimization technique called Evolutionary Graph Generation (EGG), and its application to the design of fast constant-coefficient multipliers using parallel counter-tree architecture. An important feature of EGG is its capability to handle the general graph structures directly in evolution process instead of encoding the graph structures into indirect representations, such as bit strings and trees. This paper also addresses the major problem of EGG regarding the significant computation time required for verifying the function of generated circuits. To solve this problem, a new functional verification technique for arithmetic circuits is proposed. It is demonstrated that the EGG system can create efficient multiplier structures which are comparable or superior to the known conventional designs.

This paper proposes a new parallel high speed mobile radio transmission scheme using cyclic-shifted-codes generated from a modified M-sequence. The modified M-sequence is biased with constant direct current (dc) on an M-sequence and is inserted the guard chips before and after this biased M-sequence. The proposed system has the following features: i) Orthogonality of the codes is kept not only between direct waves of each parallel channels but also between direct and delayed waves within the guard chips; ii) It is possible to reduce the number of kinds of codes allocated to one user; and iii) It is easy to recover both code and chip timings. In this paper, moreover, the performance of the proposed system was evaluated in terms of bit error rate (BER) under additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), non-selective one path Rayleigh fading and double-spike Rayleigh fading channels. As a result, the proposed transmission scheme can transmit several Mbps in a high-speed double-spike Rayleigh fading channel with better quality in comparison with a conventional multicode CDM transmission scheme based on M-sequences.

An airborne X- and L-band synthetic aperture radar system was developed by the Communications Research Laboratory and the National Space Development Agency of Japan in their joint project from 1993 to 1996. It is installed in the airplane, Gulfstream II. In both the azimuth and range directions, the resolution is 1.5 m for the X-band and 3 m for the L-band. Both SARs can make fully polarimetric observations. The X-band SAR has a cross-track interferometric function. In this paper we describe the SAR system, its ground processing system, and its performance. We also discuss motion compensation and interferogram quality.

Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) provides wireless data communication services to mobile users by sharing unused RF channels with AMPS on a non-interfering basis. To prevent interference on the voice activities, CDPD makes forced hop to a channel stream when a voice request is about to use the RF channel occupied by the channel stream. The number of forced hops is affected by the voice channel selection policy. We propose analytic models to investigate the CDPD channel holding time for the the least-idle and random voice channel selection policies. Under various system parameters and voice channel selection policies, we provide guidelines to reduce the number of forced hops.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a powerful and non-invasive technique for measuring human brain activity with a high temporal resolution. The motivation for studying MEG data analysis is to extract the essential features from measured data and represent them corresponding to the human brain functions. In this paper, a novel MEG data analysis method based on independent component analysis (ICA) approach with pre-processing and post-processing multistage procedures is proposed. Moreover, several kinds of ICA algorithms are investigated for analyzing MEG single-trial data which is recorded in the experiment of phantom. The analyzed results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness and high performance both in source decomposition by ICA approaches and source localization by equivalent current dipoles fitting method.

Recently, cerebral disease is being a serious problem in an aging society. But, rank evaluation of cerebral disease is not developed and therefore rehabilitation is hard. In this study, we try to assess slight cerebral disease by taking notice of recognition mechanism of face and realizing face image synthesis using computer technology. If we can find a slight cerebral disease and rank evaluation, we can apply to rehabilitation, and a load of medical doctor and patient decreases. We have obtained a result by the experiment, so we report it.

An optimization of the smoothing preprocessing for the correlated signal parameter estimation was considered. Although the smoothing factor (the number of subarrays) is a free parameter in the smoothing preprocessing, a useful strategy to determine it has not yet been established. In this paper, we investigated thoroughly about the smoothing factor and also proposed a new scheme to optimize it. The proposed method, using the smoothed equivalent diversity profile (SED profile), is able to evaluate the effect of smoothing preprocessing without any a priori information. Therefore, this method is applicable in the real multipath parameter estimation.