This paper discusses a formulation of a basic theory of the information systems, where information is not only transmitted, but is also processed and memorized during the transmission. A deterministic procedure applied by an information system is defined as a logical work, and two measurements with information X, information quantity I(X) and information vitality T(X), are introduced. A system with the ability of transmitting, processing and memorizing information is called an information engine. A system of interconnected information engines is called an information network. The power of an information engine is defined as the maximum capacity of the logical works performed by the engine, and important properties of total power of information network are derived. Response time characteristics and cost minimizing problems of an information network are also discussed.

In this paper we propose a new timing optimization technique for multi-level networks by restructuring multiple nodes simultaneously. Multi-output subcircuits on critical paths are extracted and resynthesized so that the delays of the paths are reduced. The complete design space of the subcircuits is captured by Boolean relations, which allow us to perform more powerful resynthesis than previous approaches using don't cares. Experimental results are reported to show the effectiveness of the proposed technique.

We consider an asymptotically sparsely encoded associative memory. Patterns are encoded by n-dimensional vectors of 1 and 1 generated randomly by a sequence of biased Bernoulli trials and stored in the network according to Hebbian rule. Using a heuristic argument we derive the following capacities:c(n)ne/4k log n'C(n)ne/4k(1e)log n'where, 0e1 controls the degree of sparsity of the encoding scheme and k is a constant. Here c(n) is the capacity of the network such that any stored pattern is a fixed point with high probability, whereas C(n) is the capacity of the network such that all stored patterns are fixed points with high probability. The main contribution of this technical paper is a theoretical verification of the above results using the Poisson limit theorems of exchangeable events.

Broadband ISDN, using asynchronous transfer mode, are expected to carry traffic of different classes, each with its own set of traffic characteristics and performance requirements. To achieve the quality of service in ATM networks, a suitable buffer management scheme is needed. In this paper, we propose a buffer management scheme using a priority service discipline to improve the delay time of delay-sensitive class and the packet loss ratio of loss-sensitive class. The proposed priority scheme requires simple buffer management logic and minor processing overhead. We also analyze the delay time and the packet loss ratio for each class of service. The results indicate that the required buffer size of the proposed priority scheme is reduced and the delay time of each class of service is controlled by a parameter. If the control parameter is appropriately chosen, the quality of service of each class is improved.

We examine the characteristics of the past successful m-valued I2L and ROMs that have been designed and we discuss the reasons of their success and withdraw. We look at the problems associated with scaling of m-valued CMOS current mode circuits. Then we discuss the tolerance issue, the respective propagation delays of binary and m-valued ICs and the interconnection issue. We conclude with the challenges for m-valued circuits in the competition with the exponential performance increase of binary circuits.

The current telecommunication network is structured in two layers: The intelligent layer that includes Intelligent Network (IN) nodes and Operation, Administration and Maintenance (OAM) nodes, and the transport layer that includes Network Elements (NEs). The transport layer carries user Information (Iu) from end-users as well as control and OAM Information (Ic&o) from IN/OAM nodes. The quick deployment of new IN services and OAM capabilities that will need (a) flexibility and easy management, and (b) an effective handling method for searching the huge amount of data among distributed databases, will be two requirements to be satisfied. Integrating various types of Ic&o into a unique Ic&o transport network and using ATM technique as a transport technique satisfies partly the requirement (a). To completely meet both requirements, this paper proposes the following solutions:(a) Intelligent layer connections and transport layer connections should be managed independently: The necessary mapping between the Logical Destination Address (LDA) that represents the logical address of the physical entity where data are routed, combined with the Quality Of Service (QOS) type, and the ATM connection IDentifier (ID), that is to say the Virtual Channel Identifier/ Virtual Path Identifier (VCI/VPI), is provided by specific nodes (the Ic&o network Management Nodes (Ic&o MNs)) belonging to an intermediate layer, i.e., the Ic&o network management layer.(b) The widely distributed aspect of the databases also needs a very effective data handling method. This paper proposes to implement a Distributed Directory System (DDS) into both intelligent nodes and Ic&o MNs.In order to apply the DDS function to 2 functional levels, the following items are studied: First, the possible mapping of DDS functions into the intelligent node functions is proposed. Second, this paper gives an interaction scenario between intelligent nodes and Ic&o MNs, to translate the LDA/QOS type into VPI/VCI. Finally, the analysis of the mapping of LDA/QOS type into VCI/VPI at the ATM level shows that the Ic&o network based on VP backbone offers the best compromise between flexibility, complexity and cost.

A new class of the universal representation for the positive integers is proposed. The positive integers are divided into infinite groups, and each positive integer n is represented by a pair of integers (p,q), which means that n is the q-th number in the p-th group. It is shown that the new class includes the message length strategy as a special case, and the asymptotically optimal representation can easily be realized. Furthermore, a new asymptotically and practically efficient representation scheme is proposed, which preserves the numerical, lexicographical, and length orders.

Future broadband ATM networks are expected to accommodate various kinds of multi-media services with different traffic characteristics and quality of service (QOS) requirements. However, it is very difficult to control traffic by conventional mechanisms in this complex traffic environment. As an alternative approach, a multilayer perceptron neural network model is proposed as an intelligent control mechanism like "a traffic control policeman" in order to perform ATM connection admission control. This proposed neural control model is analyzed by computer simulations in a homogeneous and heterogeneous traffic environment and the result shows the effectiveness of this intelligent control mechanism, compared with that of an analytical method.

Responses in the Nagumo neural circuit to pulse-train stimulation are studied using the time sequence, phase diagram, Poincare section, return map, firing rate, Lyapunov number and bifurcation diagram. For the mono-stable neuron with an equilibrium point deeper than the maximal point of a tunnel diode curve, main responses are periodic or all-or-none and chaotic responses are rarely observed. For the neuron with an equilibrium point located near the maximal point, the response to one input pulse oscillates after the undershoot and responses to pulse-trains make complex bifurcation structure in the threshold diagram. The ranges of periodic responses are stratified in the diagram. There exist broad regions of chaotic responses and chaos is not a special response of the Nagumo circuit, but it often comes out. The results are different from those obtained from Hodgkin-Huxley equations and the BVP model.

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is an information transport technique that well supports Broadband ISDN (B-ISDN). One unsolved problem to the perfection of ATM networks is to provide a testing environment that conforms to some standardized network management scheme. From this point of view, remotely controlled virtual path testing is considered in this paper. Remotely controlled virtual path testing should be executed through the standardized Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) model, which employs the OSI systems management concept as the basis of information exchange. Thus, this paper addresses the two issues that arise when OSI systems management standards are applied to virtual path testing. One issue is to define relevant information models. The other issue is to provide test resources with a concurrency control mechanism that guarantees a consistent test environment without causing deadlocks. To resolve these issues, technical requirements are clarified for the remote control of test resources. Next, alternatives to the concurrency control mechanism are shown and compared through computer simulations. A method of defining information models is then proposed. The proposed method ensures the easy storage and retrieval of intermediate test results as well as permitting the effective provision of concurrency control for test resources. An application scenario is also derived. The scenario shows that tests can be executed by using standardized communication services. These results confirm that virtual path testing can be successfully achieved in conformance with the OSI systems management standards.

In conventional trellis coded modulation (TCM), a bit rate of m/m+1 convolutional encoder is employed for n information bits (mn), where 2n+1 signal points are required. In this paper, we propose a novel TCM system using totally overlapped signal sets (TO-TCM), i.e., each signal point is used twice. Thus, TO-TCM can realize only half signal points (2n) comparing with those of a conventional TCM system (2n+1), and it is possible to implement a coded modulation system without doubling the signal points by an insertion of redundant bits. The cases of the proposed schemes which have a process to extend the minimum free distances between the signal points can achieve a considerable coding gain in comparison to the traditional uncoded systems with 2n signal points. Moreover, as the proposed scheme needs only half signal points (2n) of those of conventional TCM, the average power is lower and it is less sensitive to the carrier phase offset.

The problem of two-dimensional scattering of electromagnetic waves by a grating with several strips arbitrarily oriented in one period is analyzed by means of the Wiener-Hopf technique together with the formulation using the concept of the mutual field. A formulation for the analysis of multiple scattering from the grating is based on the representation of the scattered field by a grating composed of one strip in one period. The Wiener-Hopf equations and a representation of the scattered wave are obtained. The characteristic of the sampling function is used to expand the unknown function associated with the field on the strip into a series, and then the Wiener-Hopf equations are reduced to a set of simultaneous equations. For evaluation of the convergence and the errors in the numerical results, the relative error with respect to the extrapolated value and the square error for satisfaction of the boundary condition are computed. From numerical comparison of the present method with other various methods, it is found that the present method provides us accurate results. Some numerical examples of the reflection coefficients are presented for the reflection grating and transmission gratings.

This paper describes a new technique for isolated word recognition that uses both pitch information and spectral information. In conventional methods, words with similar phoneme features tend to be misrecognized even if their phonemes are accented differently because these methods use only spectral information. It is possible to improve recognition accuracy by considering pitch patterns of words. Many phonetically-similar Japanese words are classified by pitch patterns. In this technique, a pitch pattern template is produced by averaging pitch patterns obtained from a set of words which have the same accent pattern. A measure for word recognition is proposed. This measure based on a combination of the phoneme likelihood and the pitch pattern distance which is the distance between a pitch pattern of an input speech and pitch pattern templates. Speaker-dependent word recognition experiments were carried out using 216 Japanese words uttered by five male and five female speakers. The proposed technique reduces the recognition error rate by 40% compared with the conventional method using only phoneme likelihood.

This paper proposes the laser diode receiving mixer which utilizes the laser diode nonlinearity. The laser diode receiving mixer can make the bidirectional fiber optic link simple and cost-effective. These laser diodes are applied to configure the LD-LD MIX link which consists of two laser diodes, two local oscillators, two microwave switches and one fiber cable. The LD-LD MIX link configuration is extended to introduce novel two fiber optic links, i.e. the local suppression link and the image cancellation link. These links utilize the combination of microwave circuits and optical devices. These configurations are experimentally investigated at microwave frequencies and the QPSK signal transmission is successfully demonstrated.

We apply Fahlman and Lebiere's (FL) algorithm to network synthesis and incremental learning by making use of already-trained networks, each performing a specified task, to design a system that performs a global or extended task without destroying the information gained by the previously trained nets. Investigation shows that the synthesized or expanded FL networks have generalization ability superior to Back propagation (BP) networks in which the number of newly added hidden units must be pre-specified.

This paper analyzes the performance of the capacity controlled radio system under a frequency selective fading environment. This system controls the number of modulation levels according to the number of active subscribers. In the analysis, we consider the capacity controlled system either with or without adaptive equalizer. As the results of analysis, it is clarified that the system is superior to the conventional fixed capacity system, and can be considered as a good countermeasure for multi-path fading. And it is found that there exists a synergistic effect due to capacity controlling and adaptive equalizing.

This paper theoretically evaluates the external electro-optic (EO) sampling of high-speed electrical signals using poled polymers as materials for a proximity electric-field sensor. Based on the derivation of the half-wave voltage and the analysis of a static electric field coupled to the polymeric media placed over IC interconnections, invasiveness, voltage sensitivity, and spatial resolution have been discussed. The polymeric sensors have shown to be used in contact with the IC interconnections with negligibly small invasiveness, thus making polymeric sensors provide higher sensitivity and spatial resolution than inorganic crystals such as GaAs and KD*P.

Research in optical microwave interaction, at its earlier stages, was spured by the desire to make an optically fed and controlled phased array antenna with monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) transmit/receive (T/R) modules. In the first part of this paper experimental results are presented demonstrating an optically fed phased array antenna operating at C-band in the 5.5 to 5.8 GHz frequency range. The present system consists of two optically fed 14 subarrays with MMIC based active T/R modules. Custom designed fiber optic links have been employed to provide distribution of data and frequency reference signals to phased array antenna. One of the challenges of the future is the development of better interfaces between electronic (microwave) and optical components, including the chip level merging of photonic and electronic components on III-V compounds. This aspect of the research is covered in the second half of the paper.

A simple inequality that guarantees stability of perturbed linear state space models is proposed. It is shown that the result is superior to some existing result in sharpness and possesses some advantageous aspects.

A coplanar-type TW electrode is analyzed for the use within a Ti:LiNbO3 optical modulator. The quasistatic analysis is developed based on the variational principle and the incremental inductance formula. The anisotropy of the LiNbO3, the effect of the SiO2 buffer layer, the overlaid conductor and the electrode thickness can be taken into consideration easily by using the extended spectral domain approach (ESDA) as the formulation procedure. It is shown numerically that the TW electrodes thickness, t, and the overlay spacing, p, are as dominant as the buffer layer thickness d, i.e., the microwave effective index and the product ΔfL is affected significantly by the electrodes thickness t and the overlay spacing, whereas the product VπL is insensitive. Therefore, the introduction of the overlaid conductor and the use of thicker electrodes can be utilized effectively to achieve higher values of the figure of merit Δf/Vπ.