The link properties of double-layered constellation composed of inclined orbits for an advanced global satellite communications network connected by optical inter-satellite links (ISLs) have been evaluated. The constellation consists of lower layer satellites for mobile and personal satellite communications, and upper layer satellites for large-capacity fixed satellite communications and feeder links. Optical inter-satellite links, which can perform high-capacity communications with small terminals, are used for all inter-satellite data transmission. Although a satellite constellation using polar orbits in both layers offers the merit of simplicity in network configurations, it has disadvantages caused by the satellite consentration above high latitudes. The inclined orbit constellation offers the potential for reducing the required number of satellites improving ling properties, and enhancing the coverage in middle and low latitudes, by selecting the optimum orbital inclinations. The link properties between the satellites and terminals on the ground, optical ISL properties, and required number of satellites were evaluated for constellations using inclined orbits, and compared with those of a polar orbit constellation. Three kinds of inclined orbit constellations achieving continuous double coverage, which is a minimum requirement for future advanced satellite communications applying satellite diversity, were assumed for each layer.

In a conventional client-server system using the satellite communications, the responsibility of the system to the client user is considerably degraded by the long transmission time between the satellite and the ground terminal as well as the relatively low data transmission rate in comparison with the ground transmission line as the Ethernet. In this paper, a new client-server control, VEEC, is proposed to solve the problem. As a result of the experimental performance studies, it is clarified that the responsibility in the client is remarkably improved when the pre-fetching mechanism of VEEC works efficiently.

A novel CDMA multi-user detection scheme, orthogonal decision-feedback detector (ODFD), is proposed for a synchronous CDMA system in this paper. It is robust for its near-far resistance and high multi-user detection efficiency with a performance similar to that of decorrelating decision-feedback detector (DDFD) but with a reduced complexity. The ODFD scheme employs a match-filter bank that matches a set of ortho-normal sequences. The ortho-normal sequences are generated by the Gram-Schmidt orthogonalisation procedure based on the spreading codes. The ODFD algorithm involves only with the ortho-normal coefficient-matrix which requires no frequent recalculations even when system parameters change. Successive decision-feedback detection is carried out immediately at the output of the ODFD match-filter bank without matrix inversion operations, resulting in a much simplified structure.

We have investigated the BER performance of TC 8PSK with 2 branch SC and MRC diversities on spatially correlated Rayleigh fading channel. The upper bounds using the transfer function bounding technique are derived several numerical results are shown. Although the correlation between branches causes signal-to-noise (SNR) loss (relative to uncorrelated fading case) for SC and MRC diversities, the diversity can lead to achieve the diversity gain compared to the system without diversity. It is found that the diversity gain of 4-state TC 8PSK is larger than 8-state TC 8PSK. It is also shown that the BER performance of TC 8PSK is decreased as the antenna separation is decreased.

Hankel's asymptotic expansions are frequently used for numerical calculation of cylindrical functions of complex order. We beforehand need to estimate the precisions of the cylindrical functions calculated with Hankel's asymptotic expansions in order to use these expansions. This letter presents comparatively simple expressions for rough estimations of the errors of the cylindrical functions calculated with the asymptotic expansions, and features of the errors are discussed.

In this paper, we propose a new transaction numbering scheme and a new validation scheme for controlling transactions optimistically in client-server architectural mobile distributed database systems (MDDBSs). In the system, mobile units (MUs) request transaction-related services, e.g., concurrency control, commit process, then the mobile support stations (MSSs) provide the required services. The mobile computing environment makes it very difficult for each MU to assign unique transaction number to transactions since it is allowed to move in communication disconnected states. Besides, validating transactions numbered by the previous transaction numbering scheme could wait indefinitely in the case of data transfer delay. Thus, we propose a new transaction numbering scheme called datatransfer time oriented transaction numbering scheme (DATTO) ,in which we can remove waiting time for validation by determining validation-start time with data-transfer completion time. However, if the previous validation scheme for the static environment is directly applied transactions numbered by DATTO, undesirable results could occur in abnormal cases due to latency on the wireless communication. Thus, we also propose a new validation scheme, called commit-order oriented validation (COOV) ,which is always able to produce correct results by applying backward validation to the abnormal cases.

Optical access networks will be key infrastructures to realize the multimedia society in the near future. Usually, in the case of trunk line, optical cables are installed under the ground. But optical fiber cables approach to offices and homes for optical access networks, the cables often take forms of aerial cables. Some issues must be considered in the optical cable splicing of aerial routes. This paper discusses some subjects; for example, a spare length of the fiber in a cable closure should be short and the splicer should be light weight and compact size to ensure easy operation in the aerial site. This paper also proposes two types of fusion splicers and a useful operation table for aerial optical cable splicing.

Recently two interesting conjectures on the linear complexity of binary complementary sequences of length 2nN0 were given by Karkkainen and Leppanen when those sequences are considered as periodic sequences with period 2nN0, where those sequences are constructed by successive concatenations or successive interleavings from a pair of kernel complementary sequences of length N0. Their conjectures were derived from numerical examples and suggest that those sequences have very large linear complexities. In this paper we give the exact formula of characteristic polynomials for those complementary sequences and show that their conjectures are true.

This paper proposes a time-dependent gateway earth station (GES) assignment method for a user terminal in non-geostationary orbiting satellite systems. Time-dependent nature of the GES service area is first discussed for an example intermediate circular orbit system. Then, the time-dependent GES assignment method is proposed. Finally, the advantage of the proposed method is shown by several calculation results.

We introduce a new type of optical microconnector named "put-in microconnector-" using a planar microlens. The connector part is composed by a lens jack and fiber plug, where the lens jack is a hollow formed on a planar microlens surface, and the fiber plug is a protuberance formed on the core of an optical fiber. This concept can realize an alignment-free single mode fiber coupling. In this paper, we describe the structure and fabrication process, the optical coupling characteristics of the fabricated device, and finally, the basic analysis of optical coupling module. For the optical coupling characteristics, we measured the coupling loss and the return loss. The optical coupling loss of about 4 dB and the return loss of about 49 dB were obtained at wavelength of λ = 0.633 µm. Moreover, we have confirmed that the insertion loss of such a structure does not increase so much in comparison with that of the butt jointing. For the purpose of characterizing the optical property, the theoretical analysis was performed. We have made a software tool to estimate the optical coupling loss due to the position error. For this type of structure, the tolerance of about 15 µm for the distance between the laser and the planar microlens and 150 µm for the distance between the planar microlens and the optical fiber were estimated. Since the put-in microconnector does not require any precise alignment, it is appropriate for mass production.

Recurrent neural networks have the potential of performing parallel computation for associative memory and optimization, which is realized by the electronic implementation of neural networks in VLSI technology. Since the time delays in real electronic implementation of neural networks are unavoidably encountered and they can cause systems to oscillate, it is thus practically important to investigate the qualitative properties of neural networks with time delays. In this paper, a class of sufficient conditions is obtained, under which neural networks are globally asymptotically stable independent of time delays.

Weakness of a block cipher, which has provable immunity against linear cryptanalysis, is investigated. To this end, the round transformation used in MISTY, which is a data encryption algorithm recently proposed by M. Matsui from Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, is compared to the round transformation of DES from the point of view of pseudrandom generation. An important property of the MISTY cipher is that, in terms of theoretically provable resistance against linear and differential cryptanalysis, which are the most powerful cryptanalytic attacks known to date, it is more robust than the Data Encryption Standard or DES. This property can be attributed to the application of a new round transform in the MISTY cipher, which is obtained by changing the location of the basic round-function in a transform used in DES. Cryptograohic roles of the transform used in the MISTY cipher are the main focus of this paper. Our research reveals that when used for constructiong pseudorandom permutations, the transform employed by the MISTY cipher is inferior to the transform in DES, though the former is superior to the latter in terms of strength against linear and differential attacks. More specifically, we show that a 3-round (4-round, respectively) concatenation of transforms used in the MISTY cipher is not a pseudorandom (super pseudorandom, respectively) permutation.

With the scale-down of VLSI chip size and the reduction of switching time of logic gates, crosstalk faults become an important problem in testing of VLSI. For synchronous sequential circuits, the crosstalk pulses on data lines will be considered to be harmless, because they can be invalidated by a clocking phase. However, crosstalk pulses generated on clock lines or reset lines will cause an erroneous operation. In this work, we have analyzed a crosstalk fault scheme, and developed a fault simulator based on the scheme. Throughout this work, we considered the crosstalk fault as unexpected strong capacitive coupling between one data line and one clock line. Since we must consider timing in addition to a logic value, the unit delay model is used in our fault simulation. Our experiments on some benchmark circuits show that fault activation rates and fault detection rates vary widely depending on circuit characteristics. Fault detection rates of up to 80% are obtained from our simulation with test vectors generated at random.

A fault in multi-processing system arbitration circuits result in incorrect arbitration or abnormal operation of the system. A highly reliable system requires dependable arbitration in order to operate properly. Previously, we proposed alternate competing arbitration suitable for highly reliable systems. In this paper, we propose a method for improvement of fault detection and location using additional checkers. This method is effective to maintain reliability of the system.

A Reed-Solomon coded Type-I Hybrid ARQ scheme based on a Selective-Repeat (SR) ARQ with multicopy retransmission is proposed for mobile/personal satellite communication systems of a transmitter and a receiver both with the finite buffer. The performance of the proposed scheme on fading channels is analyzed. The basic idea of the strategy is the use of two modes; the SR mode and the multicopy mode. In the latter mode, erroneous blocks stored in the transmitter buffer are alternatively retransmitted multiple times when ν consecutive retransmissions in the SR mode are received in error. Numerical and simulation results for ν1 show that the proposed scheme presents better performance than the conventional SR+ST scheme 2 of the 2N block buffer by Miller and Lin.

This paper evaluate the performance of a PN (pseudonoise) code acquisition for a direct-sequence/code-division-multiple-access (DS/CDMA) system in a mobile satellite environment. The acquisition scheme considered consists of a parallel matched-filter and a FFT processor. The uplink of mobile satellite channel is modeled as shadowed Rayleigh fading channel. The effects of power control error and shadowing are considered in the analysis of acquisition performance. It is shown that the power control error causes acquisition to be slower than the case of perfect power control, and for high SNR/chip, the effect of power control error becomes less significant. It is also shown that the case with heavy shadowing takes longer time to achieve acquisition than that with light shadowing. For the subinterval-based PN code search, the parallel MF scheme is thought to be more appropriate than the serial MF scheme at the cost of complexity. The analysis in the paper can be applied to the uplink of a DS/CDMA system for packet-type services in a mobile satellite channel.

This paper describes the design, characteristics, and applications of newly developed latching-type 1 2 and 1 8 single-mode fiber switches. These switches have been successfully fabricated using micromachine technology. To reduce insertion loss and light reflection, an index-matching oil is injected into the switches. The fabricated 1 2 switches exhibit a low insertion loss of 0.31 dB, high return loss of 51 dB, relatively fast switching speed of 2 ms, and low driving power of 9 mw. Switching operation is stable over 108 switching times. A practical 1 8 single-mode fiber switch was also constructed using seven 1 2 switches cascaded in three stages. The fabricated 1 2 and 1 8 switches have been applied to an NTT multichannel video distribution FTTH system to enhance system reliability.

This paper describes a novel quasi-transmission-line variable-reactance circuit that extends the variable-phase range of phase shifters. It consists of a transmission line and two shunt varactors. By appropriately choosing the characteristic impedance and electrical length of the transmission line, the variable-phase range can be significantly increased. Since the proposed circuit can be fabricated by the conventional MESFET process, a phase shifter can be integrated with other functional circuits. This enables fully monolithic integration of RF circuits as a one-chip multi-functional MMIC in radio communication systems. The variable-phase range of the prototype X-band monolithic phase shifter is 208 degrees, which is approximately four times as large as that of conventional one.

A network with input and output buffer is proposed. It consists of several switching stages composed of 33 basic switching elements which are connected with perfect shuffle and horizontal connections. The proposed network reduces the required number of stages, and increases the fault tolerance due to its highly regular connection scheme. Its performance was evaluated with computer simulation under bursty traffic environment. For a 128128 switch with 11 switching stages, packet loss ratio of 10-6 was obtained when the input load is 0.8 and the burstiness is 10.

Micromachined sensors and actuators applied with electrostatic fields are getting widely developed. At the same time, "electrets," which are dielectrics carrying non-equilibrium permanent space charges or polarization distribution, are in demand because they improve the transducer characteristics. In this paper, we have reported on our successful fabrication of silicon dioxide electrets with extremely superior long-term charge stability by plasma chemical vapor deposition (PCVD). We have also reported on the correlation between the deposition conditions, the long-term charge stability and thermally stimulated current (TSC). Finally, the characterization of the long-term stable electrets will be described and discussed.