The purpose of this study is to maintain efficient backup routes for reconstructing overlay trees quickly. In most conventional methods, after a node leaves the trees, its child nodes start searching for the new parents. In this reactive approach, it takes a lot of time to find a new parent. In this paper, we propose a proactive approach to finding a next parent as the backup route node over the overlay tree before the current parent leaves. A proactive approach allows a node to find its new parent node immediately and switch to the backup route node smoothly. In our proposal, the structure of the overlay tree using a redundant degree can decide a backup route node without so much overhead. Simulations demonstrate our proactive approach can recover from node departures 2 times faster than reactive approaches, and can construct overlay trees with lower overheads than another proactive method. Additionally we carried out experiments over actual networks and their results support the effectiveness of our approach. We confirmed that our proposal achieved better streaming quality than conventional approaches.

In the design of an active integrated antenna, it is necessary to analyze problems such as unwanted emissions or mutual coupling between elements. In this paper, we clarify the problems in implementing S-parameters for an FDTD analysis. Cubic spline interpolation is suitable for the construction of the S-parameter data. The implementation methods of terminal resistors and vias are examined. The proposed FDTD analysis becomes stable after correcting the discrete time lag in the formation of the incident wave. The validity of the proposed method is verified in its application to the low pass filter and the frequency tunable band pass filter.

Several active queue management schemes have been proposed to provide fairness among flows. In particular, BLACK has the best performance among them with respect to simplicity and fairness. However, it can provoke the UDP throughput to fluctuate and worsen the fairness. In this paper, we propose a new active queue management scheme to modify BLACK for better performance. Simulation results illustrate that the performance of our proposal is better than that of BLACK in terms of the fairness and the smooth UDP throughput.

Active Queue Management (AQM) based on nonlinear difference equations is proposed to solve the end-to-end TCP network congestion problem. The proposed AQM scheme can guarantee the stability of the multiple bottleneck network by nonlinear control of dropping probability of the routers by imposing some restrictions on the AQM parameter. Nonlinear control often relies on some heuristics and network traffic controllers that appear to be highly correlated with the multiple bottleneck network status. Based on the proposed nonlinear difference equations for TCP flows control across the network, this paper reveals the reasons of congestion of multiple bottleneck AQM, and provides a theorem for avoiding network congestion. Moreover, we give simulations to verify the results for nonlinear control of the multiple bottleneck network congestion.

The notion of correlation intractable function ensembles (CIFEs) was introduced in an attempt to capture the "unpredictability" property of random oracles [12]: If O is a random oracle then it is infeasible to find an input x such that the input-output pair (x,O(x)) has some desired property. In this paper, we observe relationships between zero-knowledge protocols and CIFEs. Specifically, we show that, in the non-uniform model, the existence of CIFEs implies that 3-round auxiliary-input zero-knowledge (AIZK) AM interactive proofs exist only for BPP languages. In the uniform model, we show that 3-round AIZK AM interactive proofs with perfect completeness exist only for easy-to-approximate languages. These conditional triviality results extend to constant-round AIZK AM interactive proofs assuming the existence of multi-input CIFEs, where "multi-input" means that the correlation intractability is satisfied with respect to multiple input-output pairs. Also, as a corollary, we show that any construction of uniform multi-input CIFEs from uniform one-way functions proves unconditionally that constant-round AIZK AM interactive proofs with perfect completeness only for easy-to-approximate languages.

A novel purely distributed two-dimensional (2D) planar structure with a negative refractive index (NRI) is proposed. The structure consists of a 2D periodic array of unit cells with metal patterns on the both sides of a substrate. The unit cell with the dimension of 55 mm2 is designed at an operation frequency of about 5 GHz by full-wave finite element method simulations. Numerical simulations on the dispersion characteristics are carried out and NRI property of the structure is confirmed. A equivalent circuit taking into account the mutual capacitance between the adjacent ports in the unit cell is introduced, and theoretical investigations based on the equivalent circuit reveals that the anisotropy can be controlled by the mutual capacitance. A 1020 unit-cell NRI material is fabricated and the NRI property has been confirmed experimentally in excellent agreement with Snell's law.

A framework for deploying application-specific overlay networking is presented. It enables network protocols for transmitting data and agents to be naturally facilitated as mobile agents. It can also implement the deployment of mobile agent-based protocols within mobile agents. It can customize the deployment of network protocols as well as data transmission by migrating and replacing corresponding mobile agent-based protocols. It provides a self-deployment mechanism for the overlay network. This paper describes the system and its prototype implementation, which uses Java as both the implementation language and the protocol development language.

An effective human-robot interaction is essential for wide penetration of service robots into the market. Such robot needs a vision system to recognize objects. It is, however, difficult to realize vision systems that can work in various conditions. More robust techniques of object recognition and image segmentation are essential. Thus, we have proposed to use the human user's assistance for objects recognition through speech. This paper presents a system that recognizes objects in occlusion and/or multicolor cases using geometric and photometric analysis of images. Based on the analysis results, the system makes a hypothesis of the scene. Then, it asks the user for confirmation by describing the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is not correct, the system generates another hypothesis until it correctly understands the scene. Through experiments on a real mobile robot, we have confirmed the usefulness of the system.

One of the challenging issues in affective computing is to give a machine the ability to recognize the affective states with intensity of a person. Few studies are directed toward this goal by categorizing affective behavior of the person into a set of discrete categories. But still two problems exist: gesture is not yet a concern as a channel of affective communication in interactive technology, and existing systems only model discrete categories but not affective dimensions, e.g., intensity. Modeling the intensity of emotion has been well addressed in synthetic autonomous agent and virtual environment literature, but there is an evident lack of attention in other important research areas such as affective computing, machine vision, and robotic. In this work, we propose an affective gesture recognition system that can recognize the emotion of a child and the intensity of the emotion states in a scenario of game playing. We used levels of cognitive and non-cognitive appraisal factors to estimate intensity of emotion. System has an intelligent agent (called Mix) that takes these factors into consideration and adapt the game state to create a more positive interactive environment for the child.

Active Shape Model (ASM) has been shown to be a powerful tool to aid the interpretation of images, especially in face alignment. ASM local appearance model parameter estimation is based on the assumption that residuals between model fit and data have a Gaussian distribution. Moreover, to generate an allowable face shape, ASM truncates coefficients of shape principal components into the bounds determined by eigenvalues. In this paper, an algorithm of modeling local appearances, called AdaBoosted ASM, and a shape parameter optimization method are proposed. In the algorithm of modeling the local appearances, we describe our novel modeling method by using AdaBoosted histogram classifiers, in which the assumption of the Gaussian distribution is not necessary. In the shape parameter optimization, we describe that there is an inadequacy on controlling shape parameters in ASM, and our novel method on how to solve it. Experimental results demonstrate that the AdaBoosted histogram classifiers improve robustness of landmark displacement greatly, and the shape parameter optimization solves the inadequacy problem of ASM on shape constraint effectively.

For hybrid Multimedia-on-Demand (MoD) systems which support broadcast, batch and interactive services, the charging scheme employed plays an important role in the delivery of good service quality to users, while also determining the revenue generated for the service provider. In this letter a new charging scheme is proposed. This scheme provides the same quality of service to the users as previous charging schemes while providing higher revenue. Numerical results are presented to evaluate the performance of the new charging scheme in comparison with previous schemes.

Usually an FIR filter is used to model the physical paths in an active noise control system. However, the order of the filter to be modeled is a key factor for determining the computational load for the adaptive algorithms associated with active noise control (ANC), particularly for multi-channel algorithms. In this letter, the relationships among the filter's order, the plant modeling error and the location of poles for the transfer functions of the physical paths in an ANC system are theoretically examined and numerical examples are given to verify the theoretical results.

A new simply implemented collusion-attack free identity-based non-interactive key sharing scheme (ID-NIKS) has been proposed. A common-key can be shared by executing only once a modular exponentiation which is equivalent to RSA deciphering, and the security depends on the difficulty of factoring and the discrete logarithm problem. Each user's secret information can be generated by solving two simple discrete logarithm problems and synthsizing their solutions by linear combination. The detail comparison with the Maurer-Yacobi's scheme including its modified versions shows that the computational complexity to generate each user's secret information is much smaller and the freedom to select system parameters is much greater than that of the Maurer-Yacobi's scheme. Then our proposed scheme can be implemented very easily and hence it is suitable for practical use.

A novel first order voltage-mode non-inverting and inverting output of all-pass filter using an inverting type current conveyor (ICCII) is given. It is a first announced about a first-order voltage-mode non-inverting and inverting output of all-pass filter at the same configuration in the literature. The proposed circuit is verified using HSPICE simulation with attractive results.

In this paper, we propose an interactive instruction system named IMPRESSION, which allows performance of interactive presentations using multimedia educational materials in class. In recent years, although many practices of educational methodology with information technology and presentation tools using multimedia resources as educational materials have come into common use, instructors can only present such materials in a slide-sheet form through the use of such presentation tools in class. Therefore, instructors can neither do formative evaluations nor can they present suitable materials according to students' reactions in class. Our proposed methodology employs a scenario-based approach in a double loop instructional design process to overcome such problems. Instructors design an instructional plan as a scenario, and subsequently implement and modify the plan through formative evaluation during the class. They then conduct a summative evaluation based on planned and implemented instructions for redesign. To realize our methodology, in this paper we propose and design an instruction system that provides functions to select and present multimedia materials interactively provided on the Internet during the class; we then record these instructions. After implementing it, we confirmed that we can conduct the class flexibly based on our methodology through its practical use in an actual classroom environment.

To detect lung area, this paper proposes curve stopping function that is based on CT coefficient of area of lung parenchyma instead of existing edge indication function. The proposed method was compared numerically using various measures and this method can detect better lung parenchyma region than existing methods. In addition, detecting procedure of the area of lung parenchyma was visually verified in lung images.

Since congestion is very likely to happen in the Internet, locating congested areas (path segments) along a congested path is vital to appropriate actions by Internet Service Providers to mitigate or prevent network performance degradation. We propose a practical method to locate congested segments by actively measuring one-way end-to-end packet losses on appropriate paths from multiple origins to multiple destinations, using a network tomographic approach. Then we conduct a long-term experiment measuring packet losses on multiple paths over the Japanese commercial Internet. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method is able to precisely locate congested segments. Some findings on congestion over the Japan Internet are also given based on the experiment.

In this paper, based on Equivalent Active Flow, we propose a novel technique called Approximate Fairness Dropping, which is able to approximate fairness by containing misbehaving flows' access queue opportunity with low time/space complexity. Unlike most of the existing Active Queue Management schemes (e.g., RED, BLUE, CHOKE), Approximate Fairness Dropping does not drop the packets whose arriving rate is within the maximum admitted rate, so it protects the well-behaving flows against misbehaving ones, moreover, improves the throughput and decreases the queuing delay. Our simulations and analyses demonstrate that this new technique outperforms the existing schemes and closely approximates the "ideal" case, where full state information is needed.

A simultaneous equations method is one of active noise control algorithms without estimating an error path. This algorithm requires identification of a transfer function from a reference microphone to an error microphone containing the effect of a noise control filter. It is achieved by system identification of an auxiliary filter. However, the introduction of the auxiliary filter requires more number of samples to obtain the noise control filter and brings a requirement of some undesirable assumption in the multiple channel case. In this paper, a new simultaneous equations method without the identification of the auxiliary filter is proposed. By storing a small number of input signals and error signals, we avoid this identification. Therefore, we can reduce the number of samples to obtain the noise control filters and can avoid the undesirable assumption. From simulation examples, it is verified that the merits of the ordinary method is also retained in the proposed method.

This paper demonstrates a feedforward active substrate noise cancelling technique using a power supply di/dt detector. Since the substrate is usually tied with the ground line with a low impedance, the substrate noise is closely related to the ground bounce which is proportional to the di/dt when inductance is dominant on the ground line impedance. Our active cancelling detects the di/dt of the power supply, and injects an anti-phase current into the substrate so that the di/dt-proportional substrate noise is cancelled out. Our first trial shows that 34% substrate noise reduction is achieved on our test circuit, and the theoretical analysis shows that the optimized canceller design will enhance the substrate noise suppression ratio up to 56%.