Leaky Bucket based traffic parameters are widely used for traffic declaration and enforcing in an ATM network. In this paper, we investigate the characteristics of the system that every traffic source is policed by a dual leaky bucket before entering the network. In addition to mean cell rate, peak cell rate of traffic is also taken into consideration. We find the worst output pattern from the dual leaky bucket and derive the performance bound of maximum cell loss ratio encountered in the multiplexer. It is obtained as every source transmits cells according to the criteria for extreme synchronous transmission in a coincident token-generating condition.

Time-critical-communication, which should guarantee a time limit of a communication service is getting important in multimedia and factory automation fields. This paper proposes an IP-based protocol, Network Protocol with Performance (NPP) to provide the advanced best-effort service which takes a time constraint into account for real-time applications on the Internet. NPP uses the packet-scheduling function to make an effort to guarantee time constraints. Packet-scheduling algorithm chooses a packet in a NPP queue by a precedent level and a time constraint of each packet. We also discuss an application of NPP to multimedia communication system, and investigate performance of NPP by simulation.

A maximum diameter (Dmax) of raindrop should be assumed when rainfall rate (R) is estimates from the differential reflectivity (ZDR) and the horizontal reflectivity (ZH) measured with dual-polarization radar. If the assumed Dmax is different from actual Dmax, the estimated R contains errors. Using distrometer data, it was found that ZDR correlates with Dmax, and it was verified that when Dmax is adaptively determined by an empirical relationship between ZDR and Dmax, errors in estimated R can be reduced.

Winter thundercloud on the coast of the Sea of Japan is difficult for the detection and forecast. This paper reports the new method of thundercloud detection using C-Band weather radar data and meteorological data from rawin sonde. This method includes the thunderclouds echo tracking and chronological evaluation of thundercloud life-cycle stages. The detection probability of critical area for cloud-to-ground lightning is over 90% on winter cloud echo data. This method is workable on realtime processing in work-station computer.

A verification is made on the accuracy of Radar-AMeDAS precipitation, which represents hourly precipitation over the Japanese Islands and the surrounding sea area with a spatial resolution of 5km using data from 5cm conventional radars, 10cm Fujisan Radar, and Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System (AMeDAS) raingauge network. By comparing with data from a very dense raingauge network of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, it is found that 1) Radar-AMeDAS precipitation shows good agreement if a positioning error of one pixel of 5km square is allowed 2) Radar-AMeDAS precipitation represents almost the average of raingauge measurements in the 5km square for most of the precipitation caused by a large scale disturbance, and 3) Radar-AMeDAS precipitation is close to the maximum raingauge measurement in the pixel when precipitation is extremely localized such as thunderstorms or showers. Radar-AMeDAS precipitations are compared also with AMeDAS measurements statistically with respect to the appearance rates, that is (total number of pixels where specific intensity is observed) / (total number of all pixels), for different precipitation intensities. The rate of Radar- AMeDAS precipitation shows excellent agreement with that of AMeDAS if radar echoes are observed at the altitude lower than 2km. Since Radar- AMeDAS precipitation on land sometimes represents the maximum of precipitation in a pixel for the purpose of unfailingly detecting extremely localized severe precipitation, it shows a high appearance rate at high precipitation intensity than AMeDAS, which is considered to represent statistically the average of a pixel. As a result, in estimating areal rainfall amounts, Radar- AMeDAS precipitation overestimates AMeDAS measurement by 8% at 5mm/h and by 12% at 40mm/h. Radar- AMeDAS precipitation over the sea, with no local calibration by AMeDAS and with little influence of orography, is 2% weaker in intensity than AMeDAS at 10mm/h, and 12% at 40mm/h.

A new airborne rain radar named CAMPR (CRL Airborne Multiparameter precipitation Radar) has been developed for the major purpose of calibrating PR (Precipitation Radar) onboard TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission; scheduled to be launched in 1997) in orbit by observing the same rain with both CAMPR and TRMM satellite. CAMPR operates as a coherent radar at 13.8 GHz, the same frequency as TRMM-PR, and has polarimetric and Doppler capabilities. It is installed on a relatively small aircraft and can scan the antenna over a wide angle range, from the nadir to the near-horizon. These functions have been verified to work well and it is shown that the radar system is accurately calibrated. Examples of measurement data show CAMPR's high capability to extract various quantities relating to precipitation and cloud physics. Before the TRMM launch, CAMPR is being used to obtain TRMM-PR simulation data to help its algorithm development as well as to obtain data concerning precipitation and cloud physics.

In this paper, the real-time scheduling mechanism which could support multimedia retrieval services more efficiently is investigated. In order to support multimedia service, the MEDF (modified earliest deadline first) algorithm that takes advantage of the priority queue and the virtual deadline mechanism is proposed. Additionally, its performance is analyzed and compared with conventional RR (round robin), FCFS (first come first serve), SS (sporadic server), MRF (minimum remained-time first), and EDF (earliest deadline first) algorithms. According to the simulation results, the proposed MEDF algorithm shows better performance than other scheduling algorithms in the multimedia environments.

Signal Transition Graphs (STG'S) [1] are Petrinets [2], which were introduced to represent a behavior of asynchronous circuits. To derive logic functions from an STG, the reachability graph should be constructed. In the verification of STG's some method based on Occurrence nets (OCN) and its prefix, called unfollding, has been proposed [3], [4]. OCN's can represent both causality and concurrency between two nodes by net stryctyre. In this paper, we propose an efficient algorithm to derive a logic function by generating sub-state space of a given STG using the structural properties of OCN. The proposed algorithm can be seem as a parallel algorithm for deriving a logic function.

Pitchmatching algorithms are widely used in layout environments where no grid constraints are imposed. However, realistic layouts include multiple grid constraints which facilitate the applications of automatic routing. Hence, pitchmatching algorithms should be extended to those realistic layouts. This paper formulates a pitchmatching problem with multiple grid constraints. An algorithm for solving this problem is constructed as an extension of conventional pitchmatching algorithms. The computational complexity is also discussed in comparison with a conventional naive algorithm. Finally, examples and application results to realistic layouts are presented.

A data-flow program net is a graph representation of data-flow programs consisting of three types of nodes, AND-node, OR-node and SWITCH-node, which represent arithmetic/logical, data merge and context switch operations respectively. Token self-cleanness is an important property of a data-flow program and is such that if date-flow programs satisfy the property then a date-flow computer can efficiently withdraw copies from given programs during executions. In this paper, we classify program nets into SWITCH-less, OR-less and general nets, and analyse structures of data-flow program nets to propose verification methods of token self-cleanness by investigating token numbers appearing on the edges. As a result, a necessary and sufficient condition is proposed for SWITCH-less data-flow program nets and sufficient conditions are given for OR-less and general data-flow program nets.

When we use a telephone-handset, the frequency response of the telephone-earphone becomes degraded because of the leak through the slit between the ear and the earphone. Consequently, it is very important to establish the design method of the telephone-handset which reduces the effect of leak. No one has tried to design the telephone-handset to reduce the effect. We are the only ones to have proposed an automatic design method by nonlinear optimization techniques. However, this method gives only one set of the acoustic parameters aiming at a certain specific target frequency response, and therefore lacks flexibility in the actual design problem. On the other hand, the design method proposed in this paper, which uses Monte-Carlo method, gives an infinite number of sets of acoustic parameters that realize infinite frequency responses within the target allowable region. As these infinite number of sets become directly the design ranges of acoustic parameters, the proposed method has the flexibility that any set of the acoustic parameters belonging to the design ranges guarantees the corresponding response to be within the target allowable region, and at the same time reduces the effect of leak. This flexibility is advantageous to the actual design problem.

We present a systematic theory for the optimum sub-band interpolation using a given analysis or synthesis filter bank with the prescribed coefficient bit length. Recently, similar treatment is presented by Kida and quantization for decimated sample values is contained partly in this discussion [13]. However, in his previous treatment, measures of error are defined abstractly and no discussion for concrete functional forms of measures of error is provided. Further, in the previous discussion, quantization is neglected in the proof of the reciprocal theorem. In this paper, linear quantization for decimated sample values is included also and, under some conditions, we will present concrete functional forms of worst case measures of error or a pair of upper bound and lower limit of those measures of error in the variable domain. These measures of error are defined in Rn, although the measure of error in the literature [13] is more general but must be defined in each limited block separately. Based on a concrete expression of measure of error, we will present similar reciprocal theorem for a filter bank nevertheless the quantization for the decimated sample values is contained in the discussion. Examples are given for QMF banks and cosine-modulated FIR filter banks. It will be shown that favorable linear phase FIR filter banks are easily realized from cosine-modulated FIR filter banks by using reciprocal relation and new transformation called cosine-sine modulation in the design of filter banks.

Full-search block-matching motion estimation is a popular method to reduce temporal redundancies in video sequence. Due to its excessive computational load, parallel processing architectures are often required for real-time processing. One of the architectures is Hsieh's architecture based on systolic array processor and shift register arrays. Serial input characteristic of his scheme can reduce the number of pixel inputs to one, at the expense of significantly increasing the initialization time. This paper presents a modified and generalized Hsieh's architecture to reduce the initialization time. The proposed architecture can easily control data flows by rearranging shift register arrays and input-pin counts by using multiplexers on input stage, while retaining good properties of Hsieh's. The proposed architecture has the following advantages: (1) it allows controllable data inputs to save the pin counts, (2) it is flexible to the dimensional change of the search area via simple control, (3) it can operate in real time for video conference applications, and (4) it has simple and modular structure which is quite suitable for VLSI implementation. For verification of the proposed architecture, VHDL simulations are performed and some results are given.

In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a hypermedia system that has the following characteristics. First, being designed according to the Dexter hypertext reference model, it has a layered architecture and thus maintains commonality with other hypermedia systems based on the Dextermodel. Second, being designed based on the MHEG standard, it has data structures that are inherently suitable for data interchange and synchronization. Third, adopting the MIME protocol, it provides multimedia mail services. Finally, being built on top of an object-oriented DBMS, it makes it easy to represent Dexter and MHEG models and also provides efficient storage and search capabilities. The contribution of this paper is combining these characteristics to build an integrated hypermedia system reflecting reference architectures and international standard efforts.

The effects of α-particle-induced parasitic bipolar current on soft errors in submicron 6-transistor SOI SRAMs were numericaly studied. It was shown that the bipolar current induces soft errors and that there exists a critical quantity which determines the soft error occurrence in the SOI SRAMs. Simulated soft error rates were in the same order as those for bulk SRAMs.

This paper presents a design of an MPEG-2 layer 2 audio decoder that decodes signals of 5 channels (left, right, center, left surround, and right surround). It is backwards compatible with MPEG-1 decoder and its left/right channel coding supports stereo, dual channel, and single channel modes. The joint stereo mode supports four extension modes including Dolby Prologic decoding. Besides, the proposed system supports channel switching, dynamic crosstalk, and phantom coding modes to recover multichannel signal, and supports most options described in ISO/IEC 13818-3. The system has been implemented using FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Array) which is easily mappable in ASIC, and proved to work as an excellent MPEG-2 multichannel audio decoder.

Low-power, high-speed match-detection circuits for a content addressable memory(CAM) are proposed and evaluated. The circuits consist a current supply to a match-line, a differential amplifier, and 9-MOSFET CAM cells. The implementation of these circuits made it possible to realize a 16-entry, 32-bit data-compare CAM TEG of 1.2-ns matchdetection time with 5-mW power dissipation in 10-ns cycle-time.

Discrete-time chaotic circuits realizing a tent map and a Bernoulli map are synthesized using switched-current (SI) techniques. For these proposed circuits, simulations are performed concerning the return maps and bifurcation trees. The theoretical analysis is carried out to predict the bifurcation tree under the existence of the nonidealities in the return map. This analysis has been done by assuming the return maps to be piecewise linear. The proposed circuits are built with commerciallyavailable IC's. And their return maps and bifurcation trees are measured in the experiment. The design formulas are obtained for the bifurcation trees and they are confirmed by the simulation results. The proposed circuits are integrable by a standard BiCMOS technology.

This paper describes methods in which natural language is used to describe video contents, knowledge of which is needed for intelligent video manipulation. The content encoded by natural language is extracted by a language analyzer in the form of subject-centered dependency structures which is a language-oriented structure, and is combined in an incremental way into a single structure called a multi-path index tree. Content descriptors and their inter-relations are extracted from the index tree in order to provide a high speed retrieval and flexibility. The content-based video index is represented in a two-dimensional structure where in the descriptors are mapped onto a component axis and temporal references (i.e., video segments aligned to the descriptors) are mapped onto a time axis. We implemented an experimental image retrieval systems to illustrate the proposed index structure 1) has superior retrieval capabilities compare to those used in conventional methods, 2) can be generated by an automated procedure, and 3) has a compact and flexible structure that is easily expandable, making an integration with vision processing possible.

A structural active-object system (SAOS) is a transition-based object-oriented system suitable for rapid development of hardware logic simulators. A SAOS consists of a collection of interacting structural active objects (SAOs), whose behaviors are determined by the transition statements provided in their class definitions. Furthermore, SAOs can be structurally and hierarchically composed from their component SAOs like hardware components. These features allow SAOs to model components for circuit simulation more naturally than passive objects used in ordinary object-oriented programming. Also, we can easily create new kinds of components by using the inheritance mechanism. Executions of transition statements may be event-and/or time-driven, and hence digital, analog, and mixed-mode simulation is possible. Prototype simulation programs with graphical user interfaces have been developed as SAOS programs for digital, analog, and mixed-mode circuit simulation.