In distributed network systems, it is one of the most important problems how to assign the files to servers in view of cost and delay. It is obvious that there is a trading-off relationship between costs and delays in these systems. In order to evaluate the optimization that the total cost is minimized subject to the total delay, we have presented the Optimal File Allocation Model as 0-1 integer programming, and have investigated the general characteristics in distributed systems. In this model, we have introduced many cost and delay parameters to evaluate the total cost and delay in the system more exactly. In constructing practical systems, it is necessary to investigate the weight and the contribution of each parameter to the total cost. It is very useful to show how to estimate cost and delay parameters on the basis of this analysis. In this paper, we analyze the sensitivity of these parameters and make clear the influence between principal parameters.

In this paper, we propose a new filesystem named Ad-hoc Filesystem which targets ad-hoc wireless networks. Ad-hoc Filesystem is a serverless filesystem which automatically generates temporary shared space among multiple mobile machines when they gather in a communicable range. The generated space is freely available for participating machines and can be used for any temporary work there. The design of Ad-hoc Filesystem is strongly motivated by the recent wireless network technologies and advances of ad-hoc network techniques. However, targeting such an unstable network forces us a completely different design from existing filesystems. We have designed an initial prototype of Ad-hoc Filesystem and have evaluated the simulation results. Our design is strongly based on an assumption such that people who wish to work together would form a stable group in a range, and replicating data on two different machines would be enough to provide a proper level of availability. Hence, Ad-hoc Filesystem distributes files among multiple machines and duplicates them, in order to keep the files available even if some of participating machines arbitrarily leave the communication range. The directory entries are kept as a soft-state mechanism maintained by exchanging broadcast packets. The simulation results show that using broadcast to maintain system state hardly affects the overall system performance, and optimizations such that delaying replies with broadcast and sensing other packets promiscuously during the delay reduce the overhead significantly. Also the result indicates that our strategy that keeps two replicas for each data is promising to provide availability. Although further investigation based on real implementation remains important work, we believe that the prototype has a contribution to realize the possibility of ad-hoc filesystem by synthesizing number of previous works in areas such as network filesystems, server replication and ad-hoc wireless networks.

A method for determination of the location, shape, and material properties of a 3D object from measurements of the scattered field, when the object is successively illuminated by a number of incident fields is presented. This work extends the method previously developed for reconstructions of 2D permittivity and conductivity from electromagnetic measurements to the more complicated full-vector 3D electromagnetic inversion. Furthermore, a frequency hopping strategy to improve the resolution of the unknown objects when the frequency is raised, is underlined. Results of numerical experiments are presented to illustrate both strengths and weaknesses of the method.

An optimization of the smoothing preprocessing for the correlated signal parameter estimation was considered. Although the smoothing factor (the number of subarrays) is a free parameter in the smoothing preprocessing, a useful strategy to determine it has not yet been established. In this paper, we investigated thoroughly about the smoothing factor and also proposed a new scheme to optimize it. The proposed method, using the smoothed equivalent diversity profile (SED profile), is able to evaluate the effect of smoothing preprocessing without any a priori information. Therefore, this method is applicable in the real multipath parameter estimation.

A constraint resolution scheme in the Hopfield-type neural network named "Neuron Filter" is presented for efficiently solving combinatorial optimization problems. The neuron filter produces an output that satisfies the constraints of the problem as best as possible according to both neuron inputs and outputs. This paper defines the neuron filter and shows its introduction into existing neural networks for N-queens problems and FPGA board-level routing problems. The performance is evaluated through simulations where the results show that our neuron filter improves the searching capability of the neural network with the shorter computation time.

Topographical changes induced by optical near-field around photo-irradiated nanoparticles were attained using a pulsed laser with a large peak power as a light source. The arrayed structure of nanoparticles was transcribed on urethane-urea azo copolymer film as dent structure. The experiments by the pulsed laser of different wavelength showed that the topographical change was caused by the light absorption. The dent diameter and the dent depth changed depending on the diameter of nanoparticles.

A problem of obtaining an optimal file transfer on a file transmission net N is to consider how to transmit, with a minimum total cost, copies of a certain file of information from some vertices to others on N by the respective vertices' copy demand numbers. This problem is NP-hard for a general file transmission net. So far, some class of N on which polynomial time algorithms for obtaining an optimal file transfer are designed has been known. In addition, if we deal with restricted file transfers, i. e. , forest-type file transfers, we can obtain an optimal 'forest-type' file transfer on more general class of N. This paper proves that for such general nets it suffices to consider forest-type file transfers in order to obtain an optimal file transfer.

This paper proposes a scheme which combines the conventional technique with a multi-level structure of Thai sentences for detection and segmentation for touching Thai printed characters. The proposed scheme solves problems of both horizontally and vertically touching characters. The complexity of a multi-level structure is employed to classify characters into three zones. The edge detection technique is applied to separate overlapping characters. Then, the horizontal touching characters are determined by using a statistical width of characters. The segmentation point of horizontal touching characters is determined using vertical projection combined with a statistical width of characters. The vertical touching characters are determined by considering the overlapping area of character boundary between zones. The height of line is used to separate the segment of vertical touching characters. Ambiguities are handle by using distinctive features of Thai characters. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is tested with data from both newspapers and printed documents. The accuracy of 97 and 98 percents are obtained for newspaper and printed documents respectively.

File system buffers provide memory space for data being transferred to and from disk and act as caches for the recently used blocks, and the buffer manager usually reads ahead data blocks to minimize the number of disk accesses. However, if several multimedia files with different consumption rates are accessed simultaneously from the file system in which LRU buffer replacement strategy is used, the read-ahead blocks of the low rate file are unloaded from memory to be used for loading a data block of a high data rate file, therefore they should be reloaded again into memory from disk when these blocks are actually referenced. This paper proposes and implements a new buffer cache management scheme for a multimedia file system and analyzes the performance of the proposed scheme by modifying the file system kernel of FreeBSD. In this proposed scheme, initially, some buffers are allocated to each opened multimedia file, privately, then these buffers are reused for other data blocks of that file when they are loaded from the disk. Moreover, the number of private buffers allocated for the file is dynamically adjusted according to its data rate. An admission control scheme is also proposed to prevent opening of a new file which may cause overloads in the file system. Experimental results comparing proposed scheme with the original FreeBSD and a simple CTL-based model show that the proposed buffer management scheme could support the realtime play back of several multimedia files with various data rates concurrently without helps of a realtime CPU and disk scheduling.

The requirements to integrate the heterogeneous application system are rapidly emerging. When integrating heterogeneous systems, it is necessary not to violate their respective characteristics, and also the complex works related to the integration should be reduced. The on-line property of the autonomous decentralized system (ADS) provides the on-line expansion, or the on-line maintenance of the systems, and the recursive model of ADS makes it easy to integrate heterogeneous systems without violating each other. In the heterogeneous systems, the conventional reliability is not applicable, because each system has different characteristics. When a transaction is processed not only by one system, but also by the integrated heterogeneous systems, it is more guaranteed from the different points of view. The new measurement, assurance, is new proposed. The atomicity of the transaction processing in the heterogeneous systems is also defined in three levels, that is, the Global Atomic Action, the Semi-global Atomic Action and the Local Atomic Action. It is proposed to evaluate the effect of the integration of the heterogeneous systems by the non-assured risk, which represent how degree the transaction is additionally assured by the application objects from different points of view. The realization and design techniques for these atomic actions are also proposed, and the design guidance for the Global Atomic Action has been shown from the simulation results how to balance the non-assured risk and the transaction response time.

In digital signal processing, bit width of intermediate variables should be longer than that of input and output variables in order to execute intermediate operations with high precision. Then a processor core for digital signal processing is required to have two types of register files, one of which is used by input and output variables and the other one is used by intermediate variables. This paper proposes a hardware/software cosynthesis system for digital signal processor cores with two types of register files. Given an application program and its data, the system synthesizes a hardware description of a processor core, an object code running on the processor core, and software environments. A synthesized processor core can be composed of a processor kernel, multiple data memory buses, hardware loop units, addressing units, and multiple functional units. Furthermore it can have two types of register files RF1 and RF2. The bit width and number of registers in RF1 or RF2 will be determined based on a given application program. Thus a synthesized processor core will have small area with keeping high precision of intermediate operations compared with a processor core with only one register file. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system.

Measuring the cross-track profiles of a microtrack created by DC erasing both sides of a recorded track, the linear recording density dependence of the written track fringe width and that of the read track fringe width were successfully separated, both of which are usually observed in combination. It was clarified that when a thin-film head is used for reading, the read track fringe width increases as the linear recording density decreases, whereas it remains almost constant when an MR head with wide shielding layers is used. It was also clarified that the record head fringe width for a thin-film inductive head is less dependent on the linear recording density. The effects of several heads with different pole shapes on track edge phenomena were also evaluated, by partially DC erasing a written track from the track edge and measuring the change in the residual track output. It was found that the fringe field width of a record head changes depending on the pole shape, and the trimming of record head poles is very effective in reducing head field fringe effects.

Recent attractive high-speed networks require network file servers with high-speed read performance to deliver huge multimedia files, like voice or movie files. This paper proposes new design and implementation techniques that yield high-speed file servers based on UNIX. The techniques are request reduction, in which contiguous blocks on UNIX file system (UFS) are gathered for reducing the number of command requests from the file system to the device driver, and a direct access method for cutting through the buffer cache mechanism. A file server prototype based on a general-purpose personal computer (PC) is constructed and its performance is evaluated. The preliminary results show that the prototype achieves high-speed file read performance in excess of 100 Mbytes/s even on an OpenBSD PC-UNIX system with 3 RAID controllers and 9 hard drives in RAID level 0 configuration.

A selectively grown Si1-xGex base heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) was fabricated, and effects of Ge and B profiles on the device performance were investigated. Since no obvious leakage current was observed, it is shown that good crystallinity of Si1-xGex was achieved by using a UHV/CVD system with high-pressure H2 pre-cleaning of the substrate. Very high current gain of 29,000 was obtained in an HBT with a uniform Ge profile by both increasing electron injection from the emitter to the base and reducing band gap energy in the base. Since the Early voltage is affected by the grading of Ge content in the base, the HBT with the graded Ge profile provides very high Early voltage. However, the breakdown voltage is degraded by increasing Ge content because of reducing bandgap energy and changing dopant profile. To increase the cutoff frequency, dopant diffusion must be suppressed, and carrier acceleration by the internal drift field with the graded Ge profile has an additional effect. By doing them, an extremely high cutoff frequency of 130 GHz was obtained in HBT with graded Ge profiles.

This paper presents a prediction of the millimeter-wave multipath propagation characteristics in the typical urban environment. To analyze the propagation in an outdoor environment, the three dimensional model based on the geometrical optics and the uniform geometrical theory of diffraction is employed. Prediction by the three dimensional ray tracing method needs a detailed map, which records locations and shapes of obstacles surrounding a transmitter and a receiver. It is usually difficult to create a complete map because tremendous data is necessary to describe the area structure. We propose, in this report, a three dimensional propagation model to predict the millimeter wave propagation characteristics by using the information available from only a map on the market. This approach gives us much convenience in the actual design. The modeled results are demonstrated and furthermore comparison are made between the simulated results and the experimental data.

There is currently a need for development of a new frequency band to enable creation of next-generation mobile communication systems. Of the potential bands, the 3 GHz and over microwave band holds the greatest promise. Experimental studies on the delay characteristics of multipath propagation must be conducted in order to achieve high-speed transmission in the microwave band. We have developed a system for measuring the microwave broadband propagation delay profile over 100 MHz spread bandwidths in the 3, 8 and 15 GHz bands. Our experiments confirmed system performances of 20-ns resolution, 40-µs maximum measurable delay, relative amplitude error of within 3 dB and dynamic range of over 60 dB. We used our system to measure delay profiles on an urban area with line of sight, particularly, in terms of the effects of mobile antenna height. Typical examples are presented. Analysis showed that delay spreads increased with transmit/receive distance and decreased with the higher antenna height.

Design concepts and backgrounds of a 3-dimensional semiconductor process simulator are presented. It is designed to become a basis of developing semiconductor process models. An input language is designed to realize flexibly controlling simulation sequence, and its interpreter program is designed to accept external software to be controlled and to be integrated into a system. To realize data-exchanges between the process simulator and other software, a self-describing data-file format is designed and related program libraries are developed. A C++ class for solving drift-diffusion type partial-differential-equation in a three-dimensional space is developed.

In this paper, we propose methods for testing the usability of graphical user interface (GUI) applications based on log files of user interactions. Log analysis by existing methods is not efficient because evaluators analyze a single log file or log files of the same user and then manually compare results. The methods proposed here solve this problem; the methods enable evaluators to analyze the log files of multiple users together by detecting interaction patterns that commonly appear in the log files. To achieve the methods, we first clarify usability attributes that can be evaluated by a log-based usability testing method and user interaction patterns that have to be detected for the evaluation. Based on an investigation on the information that can be obtained from the log files, we extract the attributes of clarity, safety, simplicity, and continuity. For the evaluations of clarity and safety, the interaction patterns that have to be detected include those from user errors. We then propose our methods for detecting interaction patterns from the log files of multiple users. Patterns that commonly appear in the log files are detected by utilizing a repeating pattern detection algorithm. By regarding an operation sequence recorded in a log file as a string and concatenating strings, common patterns are able to be detected as repeating patterns in the concatenated string. We next describe the implementation of the methods in a computer tool for log-based usability testing. The tool, GUITESTER, records user-application interactions into log files, generates usability analysis data from the log files by applying the proposed methods, and visualizes the generated usability analysis data. To show the effectiveness of GUITESTER in finding usability problems, we report an example of a usability test. In this test, evaluators could find 14 problems in a tested GUI application. We finally discuss the ability of the proposed methods in terms of its log analysis efficiency, by comparing the analysis/sequence time (AT/ST) ratio of GUITESTER with those of other methods and tools. The ratio of GUITESTER is found to be smaller. This indicates the methods make log analysis more efficient.

We propose a new inverse modeling method to extract 2D channel dopant profile in an MOSFET. The profile is extracted from threshold voltage (Vth) of MOSFETs with a series of gate lengths. The uniqueness of the extracted channel and drain profile is confirmed through test simulations. The extracted profile of actual 0.1 µm nMOSFETs explains reverse short channel effects (RSCE) of threshold voltage dependent on gate length including substrate bias dependence.

In universal personal telecommunication (UPT) environments, UPT networks retain information related to incall/outcall registration in UPT user service profiles in order to provide incoming UPT calls for UPT users in any location who have registered at a terminal. As UPT networks support incall registration, terminal users can be different from terminal owners, and several UPT users can register for incoming calls on a single terminal. Therefore, appropriate third-party protection procedures are needed to protect the rights of terminal owners. A terminal profile database can be used to store information regarding terminal states and incall UPT users registered on a terminal in order to enable third-party protection procedures. In order to manage information within both the terminal profile and the service profile, we propose a request-based scheme for incall registration/deregistration of UPT users and incall registration resets of terminal owners. We evaluate the performance of the scheme in terms of; 1) total cost and, 2) the number of terminal profile accesses per unit time for a terminal.