In the future, more and more network providers will be established through the introduction of an open telecommunications market. At this time, it is necessary to guarantee the fair competition between these network providers. In this paper, a negotiation protocol for connection establishment is proposed. This negotiation protocol is based on the concept of open, competitive bidding and can guarantee fair competition between the network providers. In this negotiation protocol, each network providers objective is to maximize its profit. Conversely, each users objective is to select a network provider which will supply as much capacity as required. Employing this negotiation protocol, the users and the network providers can select each other based on their objectives. In this paper, adaptation strategies which network providers and users can adopt under the proposed negotiation protocol framework are also discussed. A network provider which adopts this strategy can obtain enough profit even when the number of connection requests is small relative to the idle bandwidth capacity. Moreover, a user who adopts this strategy can be sure to obtain bandwidth even when the idle bandwidth capacity is small relative to the number of connection requests.

This paper introduces an error controlled decision feedback (ECDF) multiuser receiver, which integrates a successive canceller with linear block channel coding to mitigate decision error propagation. In particular, it uses a switching successive cancellation feedback loop, which can be open if excessive bit errors occur to prevent decision error propagation. The results of computer simulation show that the ECDF receiver possesses advantages in terms of near-far resistance and BER over many reported schemes.

We present techniques to implement fair-sharing on both link bandwidth and buffer space in a switch or router. Together they possess the following merits: 1. solving the counter-overflow problem; 2. avoiding the "credit" accumulation issue; 3. integrating bandwidth allocation with buffer management. The simplicity of this method makes it a viable candidate for implementational use on switches and routers.

This paper presents an efficient bandwidth allocation method for the two-layer video coding of different spatial resolution. We first find a model of distortion-bitrate relationship for the MPEG-2 spatial scalable coding in a fixed total bitrate system. Then we propose an adaptive bitrate allocation method for a constant distortion ratio between two layers with the given total bandwidth. In the proposed method, approximated model parameters are used for simple implementation. The validity of the approximation is proven in terms of the convergence to the desired distortion ratio. It is shown by simulation that the proposed bitrate allocation method can keep almost a constant distortion ratio between two layers in comparison to a fixed bitrate allocation method.

Weighted Round Robin (WRR) scheduling is an extension of round robin scheduling. Because of its simplicity and bandwidth guarantee, WRR cell scheduling is commonly used in ATM switches. However, since cells in individual queues are sent cyclically, the delay bounds in WRR scheduling grow as the number of queues increases. Thus, static priority scheduling is often used with WRR to improve the delay bounds of real-time queues. In this paper, we show that the burstiness generated in the network is an even greater factor affecting the degradation of delay bounds. In ATM switches with per-class queueing, a number of connections are multiplexed into one class-queue. The multiplexed traffic will have a burstiness even if each connection has no burstiness, and when the multiplexed traffic is separated at the down stream switches, the separated traffic will have a burstiness even if the multiplexed traffic has been shaped in the upstream switches. In this paper, we propose a new WRR scheme, namely, WRR with Save and Borrow (WRR/SB), that helps improving the delay bound performance of WRR by taking into account the burstiness generated in the network. We analyze these cell scheduling methods to discuss their delay characteristics. Through some numerical examples, we show that delay bounds in WRR are mainly dominated by the burstiness of input traffic and, thus WRR/SP, which is a combination of WRR and static priority scheduling, is less effective in improving delay bounds. We show that WRR/SB can provide better delay bounds than WRR and that it can achieve the same target delay bound with a smaller extra bandwidth, while large extra bandwidth must be allocated for WRR.

The classical max-min policy has been suggested by the ATM Forum to support the available bit rate (ABR) service class. However, there are several drawbacks in adopting the max-min rate allocation policy. In particular, the max-min policy is not able to support the minimum cell rate (MCR) requirement and the peak cell rate (PCR) constraint for each ABR connection. Furthermore, the max-min policy does not offer flexible options for network providers wishing to establish a usage-based pricing criterion. In this paper, we present a generic weight-based rate allocation policy, which generalizes the classical max-min policy by supporting the MCR/PCR for each connection. Our rate allocation policy offers a flexible usage-based pricing strategy to network providers. A centralized algorithm is presented to compute network-wide bandwidth allocation to achieve this policy. Furthermore, a simple switch algorithm using ABR flow control protocol is developed with the aim of achieving our rate allocation policy in a distributed networking environment. The effectiveness of our distributed algorithm in a local area environment is substantiated by simulation results based on the benchmark network configurations suggested by the ATM Forum.

Bursts from a number of variable bit rate sources allocated to a virtual path with a given capacity can inundate the channel. Buffers used to take care of such bursts can fill up rapidly. The buffer size limits its burst handling capability. With large bursts or a number of consecutive bursts, the buffers fill up and this leads to high cell losses. Channel reconfiguration with dynamic allocation of spare capacities is one of the methods used to alleviate such cell losses. In reconfigurable networks, spare capacity allocation can increase the channel rates for short durations, to cope with the excess loads from the bursts. The dynamic capacity allocations are adaptable to the loads and have fast response times. We propose heuristic rules for spare capacity assignments in ATM networks. By monitoring buffer occupancy, triggers which anticipate excess traffic can be used to assign spare capacities to reduce the cell loss probabilities in the network.

In this paper an ATM call level model, where service classes with QoS guarantees (CBR/VBR) as well as elastic (best effort) services (ABR/UBR) coexist, is proposed and a number of simulations have been carried out on three different network topologies. Elastic traffic gives on the network level rise to new challenging problems since for a given elastic connection the bottleneck link determines the available bandwidth and thereby put constraints on bandwidth at other links. Thereby bandwidth allocation at call arrivals but also bandwidth reallocation at call departure becomes, together with routing, an important issue for investigation. Two series of simulations have been carried out where three different routing schemes have been evaluated together with two bandwidth allocation algorithms. The results indicate that the choice of routing algorithm is load dependent and in a large range the shortest path algorithm properly adopted to the mixed CBR/ABR environment performs very well.

One of the important challenges in the design of ATM networks is how to provide quality-of-service (QoS) while maintaining high network resource utilization. In this paper, we discuss the role of real-time traffic characterization in QoS control for ATM networks and review several approaches to the problem of resource allocation. We then describe a particular framework for QoS control in which real-time measurements of a connection stream are used to determine appropriate parameters for usage parameter control (UPC). Connection admission control (CAC) is based on the characterization of the aggregate stream in terms of the individual stream UPC descriptors, together with real-time measurements.

In live multimedia applications with multiple videos, it is necessary to develop an efficient mechanism of multiplexing several MPEG video streams into a single stream and transmitting it over network without wasting excessive bandwidth. In this paper, we present an efficient multiplexing and traffic smoothing scheme for multiple variable bit rate (VBR) MPEG video streams in live video applications with finite buffer sizes. First, we describe the constraints imposed by the allowable delay bound for each elementary stream and by the multiplexer/receiver buffer sizes. Based on these constraints, a new multiplexing and traffic smoothing scheme is designed in such a way as to smooth maximally the multiplexed transmission rate by exploiting temporal and spatial averaging effects, while avoiding the buffer overflow and underflow. Through computer experiments based on an MPEG-coded video trace of Star-wars, it is shown that the proposed scheme significantly reduces the peak rate, coefficient of variation, and effective bandwidth of the multiplexed transmission rate.

Let G = (A, B, E) be a bipartite graph with bipartition (A:B) of vertex set and edge set E. For each vertex v, Γ(v) denotes the set of adjacent vertices to v. G is said to be t-convex on the vertex set A if there is a tree and a one-to-one correspondence between vertices in A and edges of the tree such that for each vertex b B the edges of the tree corresponding to vertices in Γ(b) form a path on the tree. G is doubly t-convex if it is convex both on vertex set A and on B. In this paper, we show that, the class of doubly t-convex graphs is exactly the class of bipartite circle graphs.

In indoor optical channels, intersymbol interference (ISI) due to multipath propagation prevents high data rate transmission. In this paper, a new Optical Multi-Wavelength Modulation technique has been investigated for improving the quality of transmission. In this technique, parallel transmission is used, which lowers the data rate per channel and thus reduces the effects of ISI. Furthermore, parallel coding is used in predetermined parallel branches, so that coding can correct errors without changing the system data rate. Simulation results show that a combination of these methods can achieve high quality transmission without reduction of the total data rate.

A computational model for security verification of cryptographic protocols is proposed. Until most recently, security verification of cryptographic protocols was left to the protocol designers' experience and heuristics. Though some formal verification methods have been proposed for this purpose, they are still insufficient for the verification of practical real-time cryptographic protocols. In this paper we propose a new formalism based on a term rewriting system approach that we have developed. In this model, what and when the saboteur can obtain is expressed by a first-order term of a special form, and time-related concepts such as the passage of time and the causality relation are specified by conditional term rewriting systems. By using our model, a cryptographic protocol which was shown to be secure by the BAN-logic is shown to be insecure.

In many applications, information retrieval is a very important research field. In several key strategies, the binary trie is famous as a fast access method able to retrieve keys in order. Especially, a Patricia trie gives the shallowest trie by eliminating all nodes which have only one arc, and it requires the smallest storage among the other trie structures. If trie structures are implemented, however, the greater the number of the registered keys, the larger storage is required. In order to solve this problem, Jonge et al. proposed a method to change the normal binary trie into a compact bit stream. This paper proposes the improved trie representation for the Patricia trie, as well as the methods for searching and inserting the key on it. The theoretical and experimental results, using 50,000 Japanese nouns and 50,000 English words, show that this method generates 25-39 percent shorter bit streams than the traditional method. This method, thus, enables us to provide more compact storage and faster access than the traditional method.

Segmenting the images obtained from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an important process for visualization of the human soft tissues. For the application of MR, we often have to introduce a reasonable segmentation technique. Neural networks may provide us with superior solutions for the pattern classification of medical images than the conventional methods. For image segmentation with the aid of neural networks of a reasonable size, it is important to select the most effective combination of secondary indices to be used for the classification. In this paper, we introduce a vector quantized class entropy (VQCCE) criterion to evaluate which indices are effective for pattern classification, without testing on the actual classifiers. We have exploited a newly developed neural tree classifier for accomplishing the segmentation task. This network effectively partitions the feature space into subregions and each final subregion is assigned a class label according to the data routed to it. As the tree grows on, the number of training data for each node decreases, which results in less weight update epochs and decreases the time consumption. The partitioning of the feature space at each node is done by a simple neural network; the appropriateness of which is measured by newly proposed estimation criterion, i. e. the measure for assessment of neuron (MAN). It facilitates the obtaining of a neuron with maximum correlation between a unit's value and the residual error at a given output. The application of this criterion guarantees adopting the best-fit neuron to split the feature space. The proposed neural classifier has achieved 95% correct classification rate on average for the white/gray matter segmentation problem. The performance of the proposed method is compared to that of a multilayered perceptron (MLP), the latter being widely exploited network in the field of image processing and pattern recognition. The experiments show the superiority of the introduced method in terms of less iterations and weight up dates necessary to train the neural network, i. e. lower computational complexity; as well as higher correct classification rate.

This paper describes an automatic region segmentation method which is detectable nuclei regions from hematoxylin and eosin (HE)-stained breast tumor images using artificial organisms. In this model, the stained images are treated as virtual environments which consist of nuclei, interstitial tissue and background regions. The movement characteristics of each organism are controlled by the gene and the adaptive behavior of each organism is evaluated by calculating the similarities of the texture features before and after the movement. In the nuclei regions, the artificial organisms can survive, obtain energy and produce offspring. Organisms in other regions lose energy by the movement and die during searching. As a result, nuclei regions are detected by the collective behavior of artificial organisms. The method developed was applied to 9 cases of breast tumor images and detection of nuclei regions by the artificial organisms was successful in all cases. The proposed method has the following advantages: (1) the criteria of each organism's texture feature values (supervised values) for the evaluation of nuclei regions are decided automatically at the learning stage in every input image; (2) the proposed algorithm requires only the similarity ratio as the threshold value when each organism evaluates the environment; (3) this model can successfully detect the nuclei regions without affecting the variance of color tones in stained images which depends on the tissue condition and the degree of malignancy in each breast tumor case.

Pb(ZrxTi1-x)O3 (PZT) thin films were prepared on various electrodes. When Ir system materials were used as electrodes, fatigue properties of PZT thin films were improved. Moreover, in the case of the PZT thin film on an Ir/IrO2 electrode, not only fatigue but imprint properties were clearly improved. We could find these improvements were caused by good barrier effect of IrO2 from secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) analysis. By applying these Ir system electrodes, we fabricated stacked capacitors on polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) plugs. In spite of high temperature thermal processing, we found poly-Si plugs were ohmically connected with the bottom electrodes of the capacitors from hysteresis measurements and I-V characteristics, and could greatly expect them for practical use.

We have applied hot-carrier circuit-level simulation to memory peripheral circuits of a few thousand to over 12K transistors using a simple but accurate degradation model for reliability verification of actual memory products. By applying simulation to entire circuits, it was found that the location of maximum degradation depended greatly upon circuit configuration and device technology. A design curve has been developed to quickly relate device-level DC lifetime to circuit-level performance lifetime. Using these results in conjunction with a methodology that has been developed to predict hot-carrier degradation early in the design cycle before TEG fabrication, accurate total-circuit simulation is applied early in the design process, making reliability simulation a crucial design tool rather than a verification tool as technology advances into the deep sub-micron high clock rate regime.

The crystallization process of Sr0. 7Bi2. 3Ta2O9 (SBT) ferroelectric thin films with different crystal orientations formed by chemical liquid deposition using an alkoxide precursor was investigated. One film showed strong c-axis orientation (a-type film), while another shows scarcely any c-axis orientation (b-type film). We report that the crystallization process was the same even when crystal orientation differed. Thin films first change from amorphous to fluorite fine grains; the fluorite grains then change to bismuth layer-structure grains. The different orientation of the SBT films is not caused by different crystallization process. Both SBT films with different crystal orientations consist of fine fluorite grains after 650 heat-treatment. Their leakage current density characteristics differ, however. The leakage current density of the a-type film was independent of the electric field, and showed a low value of 10-8 A/cm2. The leakage current density of the b-type film, however, was dependent on the electric field, and increased continuously with the increasing electric field. After 700 heat-treatment, both films consist of large grains with bismuth layer-structure and fine fluorite grains. The matrix of both films contains large grains with bismuth layer-structure that determines the leakage current density characteristics. Since the fluorite grain size after a 700 heat-treatment is the same as that after 650 heat-treatment, nucleation is predominant at the structural phase boundary from amorphous to fluorite. The bismuth layer-structure grains are large and single-crystal grains after both a 700 and 800 heat-treatment. Increased grain size predominates at the structural phase boundary from fluorite to bismuth layer-structure grains. Clearly, ferroelectric SBT films with bismuth layer-structure are crystallized in two steps, each having a different predominant crystal growth mechanism.

An improved numerical computation model is presented to calculate the metal-ferroelectric-semiconductor field effect transistor (MFSFET) characteristics with a sufficiently large gate area which can be applied for large drain voltages. In the presented model, the polarization of the ferroelectric gate insulator is inhomogeneous and treated as a variable along the channel. We have calculated electrical properties of SrBi2Ta2O9/Si MFSFETs and demonstrate that the conventional model, in which the polarization of the ferroelectric gate insulator (Pd) is treated as a constant, overestimate the drain current when the drain voltage is large. In addition, effects of the ratio of remanent polarization to spontaneous polarization (Pr/Ps ratio) of the ferroelectric film on the transistor characteristics are discussed.