Most of current real time video retrieval systems use video transfer protocols such that servers simply transmit video packets in the same rate as clients play them. If any packets are corrupted during transmission, they will be lost and cannot be recovered by retransmission. In video retrieval systems, however, teh video data are stored in servers and clients can prefetch them prior to playing. So, it might be possible for the video retrieval systems to make corrupted video packets retransmitted before the play-out dead line. But the application of existing reliable protocols causes problems such that, if a packet does not arrive before the dead line due to retransmission, the packets following it will not be delivered to the upper layer even if they have already arrived. In this paper, we discuss how to apply reliable protocols to real time video retrieval systems and propose an new real time video transfer protocol over ATM network, which provides the video data prefetch, the flow control for video buffer, the selective retransmission with skipping function for video packets late for the play-out dead line, and the resynchronization function for video buffer. We have implemented an experimental system using our protocol and evaluated the performance. The results of performance evaluation shows that the proposed protocol decreases the number of unplayed video data largely when transmission errors are inserted in an ATM network.

This paper presents a novel way of evaluating architecture of embedded custom DSPs which helps designers optimizing the datapath configuration and the instruction set. Given a datapath structure, it evaluates the performance in terms of the estimated number of steps to execute the target program on the datapath. A concept of "parallel constraint" is newly introduced, which enables evaluation of the impact of instruction format design on the performance without explicity specifying the instruction format. The number of execution steps is estimated by a combination of static analysis and dynamic analysis. It enables fast and precise estimation of actual performance in the early design stage. We have developed an architecture evaluation system based on the presented method and applied it to some actual design of signal processors. We demonstrate the accuracy of estimation and the usefulness of the method through its applications.

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA's) are important devices for rapid system prototyping. Roth-Karp decomposition is one of the most popular decomposition techniques for Look-Up Table (LUT) -based FPGA technology mapping. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm based on Binary Decision Diagrams (BDD's) for selecting good lambda set variables in Roth-Karp decomposition to minimize the number of consumed configurable logic blocks (CLB's) in FPGA's. The experimental results on a set of benchmarks show that our algorithm can produce much better results than the similar works of the previous approaches.

Nonuniform transmission lines are crucial in integrated circuits and printed circuit boards, because these circuits have complex geometries and layout between the multi layers, and most of the transmission lines possess nonuniform characteristics. In this article, an efficient numerical method for analyzing nonuniform transmission lines has been presented by using the Chebyshev expansion method and moment techniques. Efficiency on computational cost is demonstrated by numerical example.

We investigate performance of TCP protocol over ATM networks by using a simulation technique. As the ATM layer, we consider (1) rate-based control of the ABR service class and (2) an EPD (Early Packet Discard) technique applied to the UBR service class and (3) and EPD with per-VC accounting for fairness enhancement applied to the UBR service class. In comparison, we adopt a multi-hop network model where the multiple ATM switches are interconnected. In such a network, unfairness among connections is a possible cause of the problem due to differences of the number of hops and/or the round trip times among connections. Simulation results show that the rate-based control method of ABR achieves highest throughput and best fairness in most circumstances. However, the performance of TCP over ABR is degraded once the cell loss takes place due to the inappropriate control parameter setting. To avoid this performance degradation, we investigate the appropriate parameter set suitable to TCP on ABR service. As a result, parameter tuning can improve the performance of TCP over ABR, but limited. We therefore consider TCP over ABR with EPD enhancement where the EPD technique is incorporated into ABR. We last consider the multimedia network environment, where the VBR traffic exists in the network in addition to the ABR/UBR traffic. By this, we investigate an applicability of the above observations to a more generic model. Through simulation experiments, we find that the similar results can be obtained, but it is also shown that parameters of the rate-based congestion control must be chosen carefully by taking into account the existence of VBR traffic. For this, we discuss the method to determine the appropriate control parameters.

Distributed multimedia applications are often sensitive to the Quality of Service (QoS) provided by the communication network. They usually require guaranteed QoS service, so that real-time communication is possible. However, searching a route with multiple QoS constraints is known to be a NP-complete problem. In this paper, we propose a new simple and efficient distributed QoS routing algorithm, called "DQoSR," for supporting real-time communication in high-speed networks. It searches a route that could guarantee bandwidth, delay, and delay jitter requirements. Routing decision is based only on the modified cost, hop and delay vectors stored in the routing table at each node and its directly connected neighbors. Moreover, DQoSR is proved to construct loop-free routes. Its worst case message complexity is O(|V|2), where |V| is the number of nodes in the network. Thus DQoSR is fast and scales well to large networks. Finally, extensive simulations show that average rate of establishing successful connection of DQoSR is very near to optimum (the difference is less than 0.4%).

High-Tc SQUID was applied to the detection of magnetized fine particle moving at high speed. Two types of SQUIDs were used. One was a large washer type and the other was a flux transformer type. Their Josephson junctions were step edge type. The iron particle was attached on a nylon wire and scanned under the SQUID. High-Tc SQUID detected an iron particle of 50 µm diameter running at 800 m/min. It was shown that the magnetic field measured by the SQUID was proportional to the volumer of the particle and is inversely proportional to the distance between the SQUID and the particle. This technique using high-Tc SQUID is hopeful not only to wire production line but also for the processing of food and medicine, etc.

This paper presents an exact minimization algorithm for AND-OR-EXOR three-level networks, where a single two-input exclusive-OR (EXOR) gate is used. The network realizes an EXOR of two sum-of-products expressions (EX-SOP), where the two sum-of-products expressions (SOP) can share products. The objective is to minimize the total number of different products in the two SOPs. An algorithm for the exact minimization of EX-SOPs with up to five variables are shown. Up to five variables, EX-SOPs for all the representative functions of NP-equivalence classes were minimized. For five-variable functions, we confirmed that minimum EX-SOPs require up to 9 products. For n-variable functions, minimum EX-SOPs require at most 92n-5 (n6) products.

In this paper, we derive the mean message waiting times in a local area network that uses the Demand-Priority Access Method. We model the system as a two-priority M/G/1 queue with switchover time between service periods. This switchover time accounts for the polling and port selection performed by the repeater after each message transmission. The service discipline is non-preemptive and the length of the switchover time is dependent upon the priority class of the preceding message served as well as that of the message to be served next. The dependency in the switchover times is motivated by the polling and port selection operation of the protocol and it makes the analysis much more involved. In order to avoid the complexities of an exact analysis, we make some independence assumptions and thus obtain an approximate solution. Laplace-Stieltjes transforms of the stationary probability distribution functions for the waiting time of high- and normal-priority messages are derived, and subsequently, the expressions for the mean message waiting times. Numerical results computed using these expressions are verified using simulations which model the actual protocol. These numerical results which are shown to be accurate can be easily computed with widely available mathematical software.

This paper reports the thermal stability of particulate media, which include Co-Fe oxide, CrO2, and thick and thin MP tapes. By measuring the time decay of magnetization at room temperature, fluctuation fields were obtained as a function of reverse applied field. It was clarified that the fluctuation field has a constant and minimum value when the reverse applied field is equal to coercivity. Minimum fluctuation fields for the four particulate tapes were measured at several environmental temperatures ranging from -75 to +100. It was also clarified that the fluctuation field normalized by remanence coercivity increases as the environmental temperature increases for all tapes, indicating that it is a good measure of thermal stability. Activation volumes were also deduced as a function of temperature.

In this paper, we discuss an emergent behavior of a multi-elevator system. The system includes multiple elevators in an office building and the Poisson arrival of passengers as its input. Elevators move up and down to serve calls and carry passengers according to given working rules. The system is a representative discrete event dynamic system, and is a nonlinear complex system. When people leave a building at the closing time, the down-peak traffic of passengers occurs. We show numerically that (1) this causes a jamming effect, which reduces the transportation efficiency, (2) there exists a threshold in the arrival rate of passengers, at which the traffic rate starts decreasing, and (3) this jamming effect is due to the synchronization of elevators. Then we propose a dispatching control that prevents elevators from synchronizing. This control is applied to each elevator as an anxiliary working rule. We can remove the jamming effect and recover the transportation efficiency by the control.

This paper describes a method to distinguish phase noise and amplitude noise from total oscillator noise in circuit simulation, and derives general relationships between periodic time-varying transfer functions for oscillators and phase and amplitude noises.

In this paper, a new trial for the signal processing is proposed along the same line as a previous study on the extended regression analysis based on the Bayes' theorem. This method enables us to estimate a response probability property of complicated systems in an actual case when observation values of the output response are roughly observed due to the quantization mechanism of measuring equipment. More concretely, the main purpose of this research is to find the statistics of the joint probability density function before a level quantization operation which reflects every proper correlation informations between the system input and the output fluctuations. Then, the output probability distribution for another kind of input is predicted by using the estimated regression relationship. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is experimentally confirmed by applying it to the actually observed input-output data of the acoustic system.

This paper presents a new method for constructing orthonormal wavelet bases with vanishing moments based on general IIR filters. It is well-known that orthonormal wavelet bases can be generated by paraunitary filter banks. Then, synthesis of orthonormal wavelet bases can be reduced to design of paraunitary filter banks. From the orthonormality and regularity of wavelets, we derive some constraints to IIR filter banks, and investigate relations between the constrained filter coefficients and its zeros and poles. According to these relations, we can apply Remez exchange algorithm in stopband directly, and formulate the design problem in the form of an eigenvalue problem. Therefore, a set of filter coefficients can be easily computed by solving the eigenvalue problem, and the optimal filter coefficients with an equiripple response can be obtained after applying an iteration procedure. The proposed procedure is computationally efficient, and the number of vanishing moments can be arbitrarily specified.

Within the framework of a previously proposed vision system, a new part-segmentation algorithm, that breaks an object defined by its contour into its constituent parts, is presented. The contour is assumed to be obtained using an edge detector. This decomposition is achieved in two stages. The first stage is a preprocessing step which consists of extracting the convex dominant points (CDPs) of the contour. For this aim, we present a new technique which relaxes the compromise that exists in most classical methods for the selection of the width of the Gaussian filter. In the subsequent stage, the extracted CDPs are used to break the object into convex parts. This is performed as follows: among all the points of the contour only the CDPs are moved along their normals nutil they touch another moving CDP or a point on the contour. The results show that this part-segmentation algorithm is invariant to transformations such as rotation, scaling and shift in position of the object, which is very important for object recognition. The algorithm has been tested on many object contours, with and without noise and the advantages of the algorithm are listed in this paper. Our results are visually similar to a human intuitive decomposition of objects into their parts.

Electroluminescent (EL) devices with mixed single layer that consist of fluorescent dyes, distylylbiphenyl derivative (DPVBi) and triphenylamine derivative (TPD), are studied. Blue light emission was observed from the device with DPVBi and TPD. White emission over 2,500 cd/m2 was observed from the devices with mixed single layer of DPVBi, TPD and dicyanomethylene derivative (DCM).

This paper discusses a design method for two-dimensional (2-D) periodically time-variant digital filters (PTVDFs) whose filter coefficients vary periodically. First, 2-D periodicities for a variation of filter cefficients are considered, from which two and four-phase variations of coefficients are shown to be suitable for practical applications. Then, the input-output relation (transfer function) for 2-D separable-denominator (SD) PTV DFs is derived, which results in a linear combination of the baseband input signal and its modulated versions. Finally, in order ro approximate given filter specifications, the structure for 2-D SD PTV DFs is given and a design method is proposed. It is shown that, compared with the 2-D SD time-invariant DFs, approximation error can be reduced with the proposed SD PTV DFs.

A new cost function based on multi-band decomposition of the estimation error and application of a different step-size for each band is used in connection with the least-mean-square criterion to improve the fidelity of estimates as compared to those obtained with conventional least-mean-square adaptive algorithms. The basic new idea is to trade off time and frequency resolutions of the adaptive algorithm along the frequency domain by using different step-sizes in the analysis of distinct frequencies in accordance with the frequency-localized statistical behavior of the imput signal. The mathematical background for a stochatic approach to the multi-band decomposition-based scheme is presented and algorithms with fixed and variable step-sizes are derived. Computer experiments compare the performance of multiband and conventional least-mean-square methods when applied to system identification.

New functional surface tunnel transistors (STTs) with multiple interband-tunnel-junctions in a symmetric source-to-drain structure are proposed to reduce the number of fabrication steps and to increase functionality. These devices have p+/n+ interband tunnel junctions in series between a p+ source and a p+ drain through n+ channels. We successfully fabricated GaAs-based multiple-junction STTs (MJ-STTs) using molecular-beam epitaxy regrowth. This fabrication method eliminates the need for two of the photo-masks in the conventional process for asymmetric planar STTs. In the preliminary experiments using multiple-junction p+/n+ diodes, we found that the peak-voltage increment in negative-differential-resistance (NDR) characteristics due to the reverse-biased tunnel junction in negligible, while the first-peak voltage is roughly proportional to the number of forward-biased tunnel junctions. Moreover, the number of NDR characteristics are completely determined by the number of tunnel junctions. The fabricated STTs with multiple junctions, up to eight junctions, exhibited clear transistor operation with multiple NDR characteristics, which were symmetric with the drain bias. These results indicate that any number of gate-controlled NDR characteristics can be realized in MJ-STTs by using an appropriate number of tunnel junctions in series. In addition, as an example of a functional circuit using MJ-STTs, we implemented a tri-stable circuit with a four-junction STT and a load resistor connected in series. The tri-stable operation was confirmed by applying a combination of a reset pulse and a set pulse for each stable point.

The key concept of Physical Optics (PO), originally developed for a perfectly electric conductor (PEC), consists in that the high frequency fields on the scatterer surface are approximated by those which would exist on the infinite flat surface tangent to the scatterer. The scattered fields at arbitrary observation points are then calculated by integrating these fields on the scatterer. This general concept can be extended to arbitrary impedance surfaces. The asymptotic evaluation of this surface integration in terms of diffraction coefficients gives us the fields in analytical forms. In this paper, uniform PO diffraction coefficients for the impedance surfaces are presented and their high accuracy is verified numerically. These coefficients are providing us with the tool for the mechanism extraction of various high frequency methods such as aperture field integration method and Kirchhoff's method.