The rapid progress in semiconductor technology and chip mounting technology has made it possible to produce portable computes with high performance, such as notebook computers and PDAs. Portable computes can be used anytime and anywhere. By using the features of mobility, some cooperative works anywhere with multiple portable computers have been realized. However, present networks such as a wireless LAN or a public wireless network are too limited to permit portable computers to cooperate with each other. As the result, a new networking technology for portable computers has been highly requested. In this paper, we propose a novel network technology suitable for face-to-face communication, which we call "Wireless DAN" (Desk Area Network). Here, face-to-face communication is a communication between people who can directly see faces and hear voices with each other. In Wireless DAN, computers independently recognize the network configuration around them. Although present computer networks assume permanence and all computers must be registered before the system can be used, Wireless DAN enables a computer to communicate with computers nearby at any place the user goes without any complicated procedures or dedicated network equipment such as a base station. We also present a new support system for face-to-face cooperative work, which makes it possible to join or leave a meeting while it is in progress. We have developed an experimental system of Wireless DAN and the support system, which is comprised of notebook personal computers with an existing peer-to-peer infrared LAN card. The support system has been implemented using the functions provided by Wireless DAN and thus the system has been simplified. With the experimental system, we confirmed that Wireless DAN operates effectively for face-to-face communication.

Portable terminals have the potential of providing information and communication services not only to computer experts at their offices but also to many users being in a variety of daily life situations. The current user interfaces (UIs) of portable terminals are not suitable for a novice user of computers; they require some knowledge on computers from a user. To overcome this problem, the authors tried to implement their knowledge on the daily life in the design of a UI for novice users. As a result, two UI mechanisms, called Novice Interface and Graphical Metaphor Interface, which provide operations, expressions, and data structures in a way similar to those usually used in daily life are proposed. Novice Interface is to provide easy to use environment. It adopts a direct manipulation device with three buttons and a model of data structures, called Small World Model, that limits the number of functions and the depth of hierarchical menu. Graphical Metaphor Interface, being an extension of Novice Interface, is to provide services with a display screen that makes them well-understandable for any user. The proposed UI mechanisms were implemented in a prototype terminal and its software platform. The former offers several applications of the information services (like teleshopping, home banking, or database retrieval) and the communication services (like pen-based image mail, software fax, or telewriting); the latter enables those application programs to provide a consistent UI.

This paper proposes a new multistage switch architecture for large-scale multicast ATM switching. The proposed architecture uses routing schemes both at the connection level and the cell level. This results in the reduction of the memory capacity required in the trunk number translators of the copy network modules. If Connection Splitting algorithm is used, a nonblocking switch can be constructed under the same nonblocking condition as that of point-to-point Clos network. It is shown that the memory requirements in the new switching network are less than the previous architectures.

This paper presents a new learning method to improve noise tolerance in Fuzzy ART. The two weight vectors: the top-down weight vector and the bottom-up weight vector are differently updated by a weighted sum and a fuzzy AND operation. This method effectively resolves the category proliferation problem without increasing the training epochs in noisy environments.

We believe that virtual world communication will subsume BBS and visual communication. Accordingly, we proposed the networked virtual world "Interspace" for visual communication. If we are to achieve education and training in this world, techniques to receive and transmit information without any special training are necessary. The traditional "easy" ways of transmitting information are talking and drawing. In Interspace, users can already talk each other. In this paper we focus on drawing. In daily life we communicate through drawings in various situations. At this time it is important to recognize who is drawing and where the participants are watching. It is difficult to realize these functions using conventional media, but it is possible to realize them in virtual space. In virtual space, the system can clearly represent who is drawing and where participants are watching; expressing topics in virtual space frees us from many physical restrictions. In this paper we discuss the process of drawing when many participants share topics in virtual space; the necessary conditions for our system are considered. We design a system that offers functions to make drawing sheets, to display the view fields of participants, and to share visual fields. Furthermore, we propose the mode of InterSheet called "InterMirror" which shows mirror images of partners and their drawings. We make a prototype and evaluate it. The results indicate the synergistic effect of drawing with voice and the usefulness of drawing for communication in virtual space.

Secure communications via chaotic synchronization is experimentally demonstrated using 3-pieces of commercial integrated circuit phase-locked loops, MC14046. Different from the conventional chaotic synchronization secure communication systems where one channel is used, our system uses two channels to send one signal to be concealed. Namely, one channel is used to send a synchronizing chaotic signal. The other channel is used to send the informational signal superimposed on the chaotic masking signal at transmitter side. The synchronizing chaotic signal is applied as a common input to two identical PLL's located at both transmitter and receiver sides. It has been shown previously by us that the VCO inputs of almost identical two PLL's driven by a common chaotic signal become chaotic, and synchronized with each other. This synchronization is only possible for those who knows exact internal configuration and exact parameter values of the PLL at transmitter side. Therefore, we can use the synchronized VCO input signal as a masking signal which can be used as a key for secure communications. The advantage of this method compared to the previous one channel method is that informational signal frequency range does not affect the quality of recovered signal. Our experiments demonstrate good masking and recovery characteristics for sinusoidal, triangular, and square waves.

The radiation and scattering characteristics of a metal-strip grating of finite extent printed on the surface of a dielectric waveguide are analyzed within a two-dimensional model. The diffraction properties are obtained from a solution to the problem of surface mode scattering by a finite number of metal strips, taking into account their mutual couplings. The analysis is based on the electromotive force technique which does not require a grating to be periodic. Obtained results concern the antenna applications of radiating gratings excited by the dominant TE or TM surface mode of the wavegude. The proposed approach can be applied not only to the design of radiators but also filters based on periodic strip gratings.

Considered is the theory of several dielectric waveguide phenomena for which the vector nature of the electromagnetic field is essential. These phenomena are the following rotation of the plane of polarization in chiral and twisted waveguides, Bragg's reflection in a twisted waveguide in a narrow frequency band, and excitation of a waveguide at a near-cutoff frequency.

A numerical scheme to analyze a three-dimensional perfectly conducting body that has edges and corners is presented. The geometry of the body can be arbitrary. A new formulation using boundary element method has been developed. This formulation allows that a scatterer has edges and corners, where the behavior of the electromagnetic fields become singular.

In this paper, we present for the first time two three-dimensional analytical electrostatic Green's functions for shielded and open arbitrarily multilayered medium structures. The analytical formulas for the Green's functions are simply expressed in the form of Fourier series and integrals, and are applicable to the arbitrary number of dielectric layers. In combination with the complex image charge method, we demonstrate an efficient application to analyze microstrip discontinuities in a three-layered dielectric structure. Numerical results for the capacitance associated with on open-end discontinuity show good agreement with those from a previous paper and the effectiveness of using the analytical Green's functions to analyze three-dimensional electrostatic problems.

Coherent and incoherent electromagnetic (EM) waves scattered by many particles are approximately expressed as solutions of integral equations by unconventional multiple scattering method. The particles are randomly displaced from a uniformly ordered distribution, and hence the distribution of particles can change from total uniformity to complete randomness. The approximate expressions of the EM waves are systematically given, independent of the distributions of particles, on the following assumptions. First the particles are identical in material, shape, size and orientation. Second each random displacement of particles from the ordered positions is statistically independent of each other and homogeneous in space. These assumptions may be extended to more general ones but have been used here to make clear the derivation process of the coherent and incoherent EM waves. The approximate expressions of the EM waves are reduced to known ones for both limiting cases: a periodic distribution and a very sparse random distribution. The effective dielectric constant of a random medium containing randomly distributed dielectric spheres can be calculated from the coherent EM wave and compared with those given by conventional methods such as the quasi-crystalline approximation, using the previous results. The comparison indicates the advantage of the method presented here. The present method is expected to be useful for the study of interaction of EM waves with many particles.

In the paper a problem of wave scattering from a local penetrable inhomogeneity inside a planar dielectric waveguide is studied. The surface potentials method is applied for the problem and the set of systems of BIE is obtained and analyzed from the view-point of their numerical solution. The effective numerical algorithm based on the Nyström method is proposed. The equations for a scattering diagram and mode conversion coefficients are derived.

The pendulum equation with a periodic impulsive force is investigated. This model described by a second order differential equation is also derived from dynamics of the stepping motor. In this paper, firstly, we analyze bifurcation phenomena of periodic solutions observed in a generalized pendulum equation with a periodic impulsive force. There exist two topologically different kinds of solution which can be chaotic by changing system parameters. We try to stabilize an unstable periodic orbit embedded in the chaotic attractor by small perturbations for the parameters. Secondly, we investigate the intermittent drive characteristics of two-phase hybrid stepping motor. We suggest that the unstable operations called pull-out are caused by bifurcations. Finally, we proposed a control method to avoid the pull-out by changing the repetitive frequency and stepping rate.

In this paper a priori estimation method is presented for calculating solution of convex optimization problems (COP) with some equality and/or inequality constraints by so-called Newton type homotopy method. The homotopy method is known as an efficient algorithm which can always calculate solution of nonlinear equations under a certain mild condition. Although, in general, it is difficult to estimate a priori computational complexity of calculating solution by the homotopy method. In the presented papers, a sufficient condition is considered for linear homotopy, under which an upper bound of the complexity can be estimated a priori. For the condition it is seen that Urabe type convergence theorem plays an important role. In this paper, by introducing the results, it is shown that under a certain condition a global minimum of COP can be always calculated, and that computational complexity of the calculation can be a priori estimated. Suitability of the estimation for analysing COP is also discussed.

An exact solution of the propagation constant of a cylindrical waveguide has been obtained in the event of the conductivity of the waveguide-composing conductor being finite. The said analysis has been reduced to a problem to solve a transcendental equation concerning an eigenvalue of the individual modes of the in-guide electromagnetic wave, and calculation of Jn-1(z)/Jn(z) by using of Bessel function becomes necessary. With a large conductivity the absolute value of the complex number z becomes excessively large, and none of calculation method with high accuracy has been found with the aid of a computer. This paper has solved the problem by using a continued fraction for the calculation with regard to which a recurrence formula is utilized. With the TE01 wave that has conventionally been used as a millimeter-wave guide, it is cleared that it is sufficient to select the number of the calculation terms of the continued fraction to the extent of approximately 1000 in the accuracy in accordance with this calculation method. It is also cleared that the approximation solution obtained by a method of perturbation coincides with the exact solution for the conductivity σ 102 [S/m].

In this paper, a new optimum input encoding algorithm with m-out-of-2m code which is called Half-Hot Code is presented. By applying Half-Hot Code to the input encoding in PLA-based digital system, the logic functions of the system turn out to be unate functions, thus, the number of bit-lines of PLA may be reduced. The proposed method further reduces the number of product-lines of PLA optimally. In this code assignment procedure, computed Boolean subspaces satisfying suggeset two conditions are assigned to each partitioned subset of digital input variables which are obtained by disjoint minimization or other techniques. As an experiment to evaluate the method, the state assignment for finite state machines of two-lavel implementation is considered. Specifically, the proposed Half-Hot Code assignment is compared with arbitrary Half-Hot Code assignment. The results show that the optimum encoding is superior to an arbitrary assignment up to about 24% in the number of product-lines of PLA.

Empirical studies confirm that the received radio signals in certain cellular systems are well modelled by Nakagami statistics. Therefore, performing relevant systems studies can be potentially useful to a system designer. A very useful statistical measure for characterizing the performance of a mobile radio system is the probability of outage, which describes the fraction of time that the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) drops below some threshold. A more refined criterion for the outage is the failure to simultaneously obtain a sufficient SIR and a minimum power level for the desired signal. Thus, we derive new expressions for the probability of outage where a mobile unit receives a Nakagami desired signal and multiple, independent, cochannel Nakagami interferers. A salient feature of our results is that, unlike some previous studies, the outage expressions do not restrict the Nakagami fading parameter, m, to strictly integer values. Furthermore, since the received signals in mobile radio also experience log-normal shadowing, we analyze the case where the received signals are modelled by a composite of Nakagami and log-normal distributions. Outage probabilities are computed and graphically presented for several cases. The effect of specifying a minimum signal requirement for adequate reception is found to introduce a floor on the outage probability. It is also found that shadowing in macrocellular systems severely degrades the desired quality of service by increasing the reuse distance necessary for a given outage level.

The integration of both real-time systems and fault-tolerant systems has been emerged as one of the greatest challenges of this decade. It is called a responsive system, which has the objective to optimeze both timeliness and reliability. The performance measure in responsive systems is responsiveness that tells how probable a system executes correctly on time with faults occurred. While there have been some achievements in communication protocols and specification, we believe that scheduling problems in responsive systems are not understood deeply and sufficiently, yet. In this paper, we discuss the scheduling problem in responsive systems. At first, we investigate the issues in the scheduling and propose the precise definition of the responsiveness. We also suggest a scheduling algorithm called Responsive Earliest Deadline First (REDF) for preemptive aperiodic tasks in a uniprocessor system. We show that REDF is optimal to obtain the maximum responsiveness, and the time complexity is analyzed to be (N 2N). By illustrating a contradictory example, it is shown that REDF can be enhanced if a constraint on tasks is released.

In this work, a statistical analysis is performed for a simple constrained high-order Yule-Walker (YW) tone frequency estimator obtained from the first equation of the constrained high-order YW equations. Explicit expressions for its estimation bias and variance are efficiently derived by virtue of a Taylor series expansion technique. Especially, being explicit in terms of frequency, data length and Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) value, the resulting bias expression can not be obtained by using the asymptotic analyses used for the parameter estimation methods. The obtained expressions are compared with their counterparts of the Pisarenko tone frequency estimator. Simulations are performed to support the theoretical results.

The concept of a new visual communication environment is proposed. The proposed system is a shared and interactive multi-user virtual space that consists of a CG-based virtual space structure and video-based objects. Human interface design issues are discussed from the view point of creating a new reality for enhanced communication.