A very simple but general scheme has been developed to calculate burst error occurrences due to cycle slip in clock recovery on frequency-selective Nakagami-Rice fading channels. The scheme, which we call the "Equivalent Transmission-Path Model," plays a role in connecting "wave propagation" with "digital transmission characteristics" in a general manner. First computer simulations assuming various types of delay profiles identify the "key parameters in Nakagami-Rice fading" that principally dominate the occurrence of cycle slips. Following this a simple method is developed to calculate the occurrence frequency of cycle slips utilizing the nature of the key parameters. Then, the accuracy of the scheme is confirmed through comparison between calculated values and simulation results. Finally, based on the scheme, calculated results on cycleslip occurrences are presented in line-of-sight fading environments.

One of the functions that should be provided in ATM LANs is multicast communication. For multicast communication on ATM LANs, the architecture of switch fabric and protocols for signaling have been studied. However, when data communication using a multicast connection such as LAN emulation service is provided, ABR service on a multicast connection (Multicast ABR) is also required. ABR service has been actively discussed in the ATM forum. Unfortunately, the study on flow control mechanism for Multicast ABR is not enough. This paper discusses the suitable flow control mechanism for Multicast ABR and shows its performance.

Most of the existing analytical models for multistage ATM switching fabric are not accurate in the presence of a non-uniform traffic at the input of the switch. In this paper, we discuss the issues in modeling a multistage ATM switching fabric, and investigate the effect of independence assumptions in two previous analytical models. A highly accurate 4-state Markov chain model for evaluating the performance of ATM switching fabrics based on multistage switches with 22 finite output-buffered SEs is proposed. The proposed model correctly reflects the correlation of cell movements between two subsequent cycles and states of the buffers of two adjacent stages. By comparing the results obtained from the oroposed model, existing models and simulations, it has been shown that the proposed model is much more accurate than existing models in the presence of a non-uniform traffic in the switch. The results from the existing models are unsatisfactory in the presence of an increased blocking in the switch arising from a non-uniform traffic in the switch. On the contrary, the proposed model is very robust even under severe blocking in the switch.

The paper deals with Kleenean functions defined as fuzzy logic functions with constants. Kleenean functions provide a means of handling conditions of indeterminate truth value (ambiguous states) which ordinary classical logic (binary logic) cannot cope with. This paper clarifies a necessary and sufficient condition for a function to be a Kleenean function. The condition is provided with a set of two conditions, and it will be shown that they are independent of each other.

This letter proposes a map-matching method for automotive navigation systems. The proposed method utilizes the innovation of the Kalman filter algorithm and can achieve more accurate positioning than the correlation method which is generally used for the navigation systems. In this letter, the performance of the proposed algorithm is verified by some simulations.

A high-frequency approximate method for calculating the diffraction by a smooth convex surface is presented. The advantage of this method is the validity of it in the caustic region of the creeping rays where the Geometrical Theory of Diffraction (GTD) becomes invalid. The concept used in this method is based on the Method of Equivalent Edge Currents (EEC), and the equivalent line currents for creeping rays which are derived from the diffraction coefficients of the GTD are used. By evaluating the radiation integral of these equivalent line currents, the creeping ray contribution which is valid within the caustic region is obtained. In order to check the accuracy and the validity of the method, the diffraction problem by a perfectly conducting sphere of radius a is solved by applying the method, and the obtained results are compared with the exact and the GTD solutions. It is confirmed from the comparison that the failure of the GTD near the caustic is removed in this method and accurate solution is obtained in this area for high-frequency (ka8). Furthermore, it is also found that this method is valid in the backward region (0θ90, θ is an observation angle mesuered from an incident direction), whereas not in the forward region (90θ180).

Moving-picture transmission through narrow band and high bit error rate communication channels, such as a mobile communication channel, requires improved compression rate and enhanced error resilience. Variable-length codes are one of the essential techniques of compressing digital video information. This technique is used in various video coding schemes although a bit error in the channel impairs the synchronization of variable-length codewords, resulting in propagation of the error. With a hybrid video coding method in particular, which combines motion-compensation and transform coding, once an error is detected in the coded data, subsequent data cannot be decoded. Consequently, even an error-free portion of any data received must be discarded. To minimize the influence of an error in a channel on coded video data, this paper proposes a new video coding syntax which makes the best use of the self synchronizing characteristic of variable-length Huffman codes. Owing to the Huffman code's characteristic, the proposed coding syntax enables a decoder to decode the data portion that cannot be decoded, due to an error, by the conventional syntax without adding any redundancy. Computer simulation has verified the effectiveness of this proposed syntax in video coding with a very low bitrate and erroneous communication channel.

While high compression ratio has been achieved using recently developed image coding algorithm, the noise removal technique is considered as an important subject. This still holds for very low bitrate video coding, that is, MPEG-4 has defined it as a core experiment which is mainly concerned with block based discrete cosine transform (DCT) coding such as H.263 and MPEG-1. This paper describes a novel and practical technique which attempts to accomplish both noise suppression and detail preservation at the same time. Some of the conventional adaptive filters are designed to search a homogeneous region among the predetermined polygonal subregions, then to apply a smoothing operation within the selected subregion. It shall be, however noted that sometimes the predetermined subregion finally selected may still be hererogeneous. This fact leads us to a novel idea; instead of examining the predetermined regions, define a lot more flexible region likely to be homogeneous. In order to achieve this, we introduce the binary index. each pixel is classified into either the lower intensity group or higher intensity group based on a local statistics. Then a smoothing operation is applied within the pixels having the same group index as the pixel to be processed. Thus our scheme can search a homogeneous region appropriately. The adaptive smoothing adopted in the proposed scheme is also designed to be consistent with an important property of human visual system, i.e., the spatial masking. noise visibility decreases at spatial details such as edges and textures. Another advantage is that it can be realized with significantly low computations. The simulation results show that his approach can suppress the visible artifacts while retaining the fine details such as edge and texture.

The two variational principles, the Maupertuis' and the Hamilton's principle, are discussed in conjunction with the Fermat's principle. These two principles are shown to describe two different aspects of waves, thus resulting in the different geometry of wave propagation, the treatment of which is thus called the stationary optics or the dynamical optics, respectively. Comparisons for the results obtained from these geometrical optics are given. Another new variational principle valid for the dynamical waves reflected/refracted at the inter-faces, which has not yet been discovered so far, is also derived.

In order to improve the sensitivity of micromachined sensors applied with electrostatic fields and increase their actuated force of electrostatic micromachined actuators, "electrets," which are dielectrics carrying non equilibrium permanent space charges of polarization distribution, are very important. In this paper, positively corona charged silicon dioxide electrets, which are deposited by Plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition (PCVD) and thermally oxidized, are investigated. Physical studies will be described, in which the charge stability is correlated to Thermally Stimulated Current (TSC) measurements and to Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) analysis. Some intrinsic differences have been observed between materials. The electrets with superior long-term charge stability contain 10,000 times as much E' center (Si3 as the ones with inferior long-term charge stability. Finally, some investigations on the long-term charge storage mechanism of the positively charged silicon dioxide electret will be described.

We propose a novel segmentation algorithm which combines an image segmentation method into small regions with chaotic neurodynamics that has already been clarified to be effective for solving some combinatorial optimization problems. The basic algorithm of an image segmentation is the variable-shape-bloch-segmentation (VB) which searches an opti-mal state of the segmentation by moving the vertices of quadran-gular regions. However, since the algorithm for moving vertices is based upon steepest descent dynamics, this segmentation method has a local minimum problem that the algorithm gets stuck at undesirable local minima. In order to treat such a problem of the VB and improve its performance, we introduce chaotic neurodynamics for optimization. The results of our novel method are compared with those of conventional stochastic dynamics for escaping from undesirable local minima. As a result, the better results are obtained with the chaotic neurodynamical image segmentation.

The electromagnetic force of evanescent field acting on dielectric slab is studied with the use of Maxwell stress tensor. The results show that dielectrics slab may receive always an attractive force when the incident wave is evanescent field while a pressure or an attractive force when the wave is propagating one. The magnitude of the attractive force by evanescent field is much larger than that of the propagating wave. And here some numerical examples are given.

In this paper, we discuss problems in design and fault masking of multiple-valued cellular arrays where basic cells having simple switch functions are arranged iteratively. The stuck-at faults of switch cells are assumed to be fault models. First, we introduce a universal single-level array and derive the ratio of the number of single faults whose influence can be masked to the total number of single faults. Next, we propose a universal two-level array that outputs correct values even if single faults occur in it and derive the ratio of the number of double faults whose influence can be masked compared to the total number of double faults. By evaluating the universal single-level array and the universal two-level array from the viewpoints of design and fault masking, we show that the latter is superior to the former. Finally, we compare our universal two-level array with formerly presented arrays in order to demonstrate the advantages of our universal two-level array.

This paper presents an improved pragmatic approach to coded modulation design which provides higher coding gains especially for very noisy channels including those with Rayleigh fading. The signal constellation using four equally utilized dimensions implemented with two correlative carrier frequencies is adopted to enhance the performance of the pragmatic approach previously proposed by Viterbi et al.. The proposed scheme is shown to perform much better by analysis of system performance parameters and extensive computer simulation for practical channel conditions. The bandwidth and power efficiencies are also analyzed and discussed to provide more design flexibility for different communications environments.

In this paper, we propose a new design method to construct the highly reliable ATM network based on the virtual path (VP) concept. Through our method, we can guarantee a network survivability, by which we mean that connectivity between every pair of two end nodes is assured even after the failure, and that quality of service (QoS) requirements of each VC connection are still satisfied. For achieving a reliable network, every VP connection between two end nodes is equipped with a secondary VP connection such that routes of primary and secondary VPs are established on completely disjoint physical paths. Our primary objective of the current paper is that the construction cost of the VP-based network with such a survivability is minimized while the QoS requirement of traffic sources in fulfilled. For this purpose, after all the routes of VPs are temporarily established by means of the shortest paths, we try to minimize the network cost through (1) the alternation of VP route and (2) the separation of a single VP into several VPs, and optionally through (3) the introduction of VCX nodes. Through numerical examples, we show how the increased cost for the reliable network can be sustained by using our design method.

It is shown that most of the binary images of generalized algebraic-geometric codes meet the Varshamov-Gilbert bound from the viewpoint of the average binary weight enumerator.

C1 class smooth interpolation by a fuzzy reasoning for a small data set is proposed. The drafting technique of a human expert is implemented by using a set of fuzzy rules. The effectiveness of the present method is verified by computer simulations and by applications to the practical interpolation problem in a power system.

In this paper we propose a class of byte-error-correcting codes derived from algebraic curves which is a generalization on the Reed-Solomon codes, and present their fast parallel decoding algorithm. Our algorithm can correct up to (m + b -θ)/2b byte-errors for the byte length b, where m + b -θ + 1dG for the Goppa designed distance dG. This decoding algorithm can be parallelized. In this algorithm, for our code over the finite field GF (q), the total complexity for finding byte-error locations is O (bt(t + q - 1)) with time complexity O (t(t + q - 1)) and space complexity O(b), and the total complexity for finding error values is O (bt(b + q - 1)) with time complexity O (b(b + q - 1)) and space complexity O (t), where t(m + b -θ)/2b. Our byte-error-correcting algorithm is superior to the conventional fast decoding algorithm for randomerrors in regard to the number of correcting byte-errors in several cases.

This paper proposes robust algorithms for linebased pose enumeration from a single view, and it reports on their evaluations by simulations. The proposed algorithms incorporate two major refinements into the algorithms originally proposed by Shakunaga [1]. The first refinement, introduction of zone-crossing detection to the 1-d search remarkably decreases the rate of overlooking a correct pose. The second refinement, adaptive selection of a PAT pair considerably reduces the average estimation error. Simulation results show that pose estimation precision depends primarily on the precision of line detection. Although the refinements are widely effective, they are more effective for more precise line detection. For 99% of rigid body samples, the algorithm can estimate rotation with an error of less than 2 degrees, and for 99.9% of the samples, the error is less than 10 degrees. Simulation experiments for articulated objects show similar results by using the second algorithm. The effectiveness of the algorithms is verified in an alignment approach by simulations.

Introducing a mathematical model of image noise, we formalize the problem of fitting a line to point data as statistical estimation. It is shown that the reliability of the fitted line can be evaluated quantitatively in the form of the covariance matrix of the parameters. We present a numerical scheme called renormalization for computing an optimal fit and at the same time evaluating its reliability. We also present a scheme for visualizing the reliability of the fit by means of the primary deviation pair and derive an analytical expression for the reliability of a line fitted to an edge segment by using an asymptotic approximation. Our method is illustrated by showing simulations and real-image examples.