The performance of TCP/IP over ATM over an asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) was investigated. Because the bandwidth of an ADSL link can vary over time due to changes in the link's physical conditions, which degrades TCP performance, we performed simulations for various ATM traffic controls, including available bit rate (ABR) and generic flow control, used to handle variations in the ADSL bandwidth. This analysis showed that using an ABR control is effective under various traffic conditions. An ABR switch algorithm that can achieve good performance under any condition was investigated.

This paper presents a robust and nonblocking group membership protocol for large-scale distributed systems. This protocol uses the causal relation between membership-updating messages (i. e. , those specifying the adding and deleting of members) and allows the messages to be executed in a nonblocking manner. It differs from conventional group membership protocols in the following points: (1) neither global locking nor global synchronization is required; (2) membership-updating messages can be issued without being synchronized with each other, and they can be executed immediately after their arrival. The proposed protocol therefore is highly scalable, and is more tolerant to node and network failures and to network partitions than are the conventional protocols. This paper proves that the proposed protocol works properly as long as messages can eventually be received by their destinations. This paper also discusses some design issues, such as multicast communication of the regular messages, fault tolerance and application to reliable communication protocols (e. g. , TCP/IP).

Speech can be modeled as short bursts of vocal energy separated by silence gaps. During typical conversation, talkspurts comprise only 40% of each party's speech and remaining 60% is silence. Communication systems can achieve spectral gain by disconnecting the users from the spectral resource during silence periods. This letter develops a simple and efficient Voice Activity Detection (VAD) algorithm to work in a mobile environment exhibiting dynamically varying background noise. The VAD uses a classification method involving the full-band energy, ratio of low-band energy to full-band energy, zero-crossing rate, and peakiness measure.

In this paper, we describe our superconducting digital technology that uses Nb/AlOx/Nb Josephson junctions. Superconducting devices have intrinsically superior characteristics than those of semiconductor devices, and Nb/AlOx/Nb junctions have ideal current-voltage characteristics for digital applications. Superconducting devices that use Nb/AlOx/Nb junctions have being actively developed because of their high speed and low power characteristics. Presently, we can fabricate more than twenty thousand junctions on one chip. Using niobium technology, a superconducting 4-kbit RAM has been already successfully developed. We have demonstrated the operation of a network system with a superconducting network chip. Some problems, such as difficulty in high-speed testing, disturbance from trapped magnetic flux and so on, have been overcome by techniques such as a clock-driven testing method, moat structures and so on. The developed technologies, such as the fabrication technology, the design technology for moat structures and so on, must become the basic keys for the development of digital applications based on a single flux quantum device, which will be a promising component for ultra-high speed systems in the twenty-first century.

The abilities of fuzzy inference methods in modeling of complicated systems are implemented to electromagnetics for the first time. The very popular and well known monopole antenna is chosen as a general example and a fast, simple and accurate fuzzy model for its input impedance is made by introducing a new point of view to impedance basic parameters. It is established that a surprisingly little number of input data points is sufficient to make a full model and also the system behavior (dominant rules) are saved as simple membership functions. The validity of the derived rules is confirmed through applying them to the case of thin-angled monopole antenna and comparing the results with the measured. Finally using the spatial membership function context, input impedance of thick-angled monopole antenna is predicted and a novel view point to conventional electromagnetic parameters is discussed to generalize the modeling method.

In this paper, we present an access scheme for packet-typed wireless networks, called DQRUMA/PAR (Distributed-Queueing Request Update Multiple Access with Periodically Automatic Reservation), which can transmit multimedia traffic efficiently. Here, we deal with three kinds of traffic i. e. voice, data and still picture. DQRUMA/PAR introduces the transmission scheme that mobile stations for voice communications reserve the transmission capacity periodically during their talkspurts. The transmission control process of DQRUMA/PAR will become easier than the one of DQRUMA, and the delay characteristic of voice is improved. Furthermore, we study two enforced protocols on DQRUMA/PAR. One is the more enforced protocol for voice communications. We call this as Voice Enforced mode (VE mode) on DQRUMA/PAR. The other is the more enforced protocol for data communications. We call this as Data Enforced mode (DE mode) on DQRUMA/PAR. The transmission delay of voice will become reduced significantly by introducing VE mode. On the other hand, the transmission delay characteristic of data will be improved by introducing DE mode. We carry out the performance comparisons of pure DQRUMA/PAR with PRMA and DQRUMA and show the considerable improvement of the protocol numerically. Next we make the performance comparisons between pure DQRUMA/PAR and two enforced modes on DQRUMA/PAR and show the considerable improvements of these enforced protocols, respectively.

This paper describes the effects of traffic distributions on uplink and downlink communications qualities in CDMA cellular systems. Many researches have been done from the viewpoint of the system capacity under ideal conditions in both uplink and downlink. However, there are few studies regarding traffic distributions that concurrently affect the uplink and downlink quality. The characteristics in both links are different even in a spatially uniform traffic distribution because the system structures are not symmetric between both links. When non-uniform radio environments are assumed, both link qualities become very different from each other. It is therefore important to design systems in consideration of link-specific characteristics in whole service area. This paper clarifies the difference in both link characteristics in CDMA systems regarding traffic distributions.

The explicit formula for the coefficients of maximally linear digital differentiators is derived by the use of Taylor series. A modification in the formula is proposed to extend the effective passband of the differentiator with the same number of coefficients.

I would like to draw the attention of the editorial board of IEICE Transactions on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences and its readers to a recent paper, Tianruo Yang, "The integrated scheduling and allocation of high-level test synthesis," vol. E82-A, no. 1, January 1999, pp. 145-158. (Here we call this paper the Yang's paper. ) Yang did not give the correct information about the originality of the paper. I will point out that the writings (and the idea accordingly) of section 6 of Yang's paper came from papers [1] and [2].

As many research works are based on some previous results, my paper, namely The Integrated Scheduling and Allocation of High-Level Test Synthesis, makes use of some techniques by T. Kim. However, I did not state explicitly that some parts of my work are based on Kim's approach although I have referred to his paper. I would like to express my deep apology to Kim for not having emphasized Kim's contribution to my work. But my intention was not to steal Kim's ideas. I would like to emphasize the following difference.

Future cellular communication systems will be called upon to provide multimedia services (voice, data, and video) for various user platforms (pedestrians, cars, and trains) that have a variety of mobility characteristics. Knowledge of mobility characteristics is essential for planning, designing and operating communication networks. The position data of selected vehicles (taxis) have been measured by using the Global Positioning System at 1-s intervals. Those data are used for evaluating mobility characteristics, such as probabilistic distributions of speed, cell dwell time, and cell crossover rate of vehicles, assuming that cells are hypothetically laid over the loci of the vehicles. The cell dwell time of vehicles is found to follow a lognormal distribution, rather than a conventionally-presumed negative exponential distribution. When the holding time distribution and random origination of calls along the loci are assumed, the properties of the cell dwell time and the handoff rate of terminals communicating in the hypothetical cellular systems are also estimated from the measured data.

The paper argues that a radical shift in the market for communications services is emerging, driven by the mass availability of cheap bandwidth, computing and global mobility combined with the pervasive rise of Internet based data services. At the same time, the Operation Support Systems (OSS's*) that are essential in order to create business value from these technologies are lagging behind market need. The authors argue for a re-think of the humble management system into a complete software wrap-around of the network to deliver a value creation platform - as different from yesterday's OSS as the bakelite telephone is from today's tri-band mobile handsets. This software will be based on product standards, not paper ones and will require a major shift of gears from the position of today. This value creation platform will be built from advanced, component based software delivered through a very different market model to that of today. Much of this technology exists; we simply need critical mass behind a common approach. The discussion in this paper represents the personal views of the authors and does not necessarily represent the views of any organisation.

We have developed an active Q adaptor (AQA) to achieve integration of multiple management protocols and dynamic modification of managed object (MO) definitions. To achieve dynamic modification, we introduce a new MO framework, called dynamic-MO, which has the ability of modifying its own definition. A dynamic-MO is composed of meta-data and some behavior programs. Meta-data lists attributes of a dynamic-MO in a text format and a behavior program describes actions of a dynamic-MO in scripting language such as Java, Tcl, etc. In our AQA architecture, modules which manage individual components of a dynamic-MO communicate among themselves via an object request broker (ORB) in order to achieve system scalability with high performance. To realize the functionality of a dynamic-MO, we propose interfaces among these modules that are independent of dynamic-MO definitions and an update mechanism of behavior programs. We define the interfaces based on the common management information protocol (CMIP) operations to avoid re-defining the interfaces when dynamic-MO definitions are modified. Furthermore, to execute modified behavior programs without any negative influence on the workings of the other behavior programs, we employ a Java class-loader which has its own specific naming-space on a Java virtual machine (Java VM). With all of these features, our AQA is extremely promising for developing programmable network management systems for end-to-end management of heterogeneous telecommunication networks.

Simple approximate formulas are obtained for the mutual impedance and admittance by using a product of radiation patterns of antennas. The formulas come from a stationary expression of the reaction integral between two antennas where far-field approximations are employed. The theory deals with antennas in free space as well as under the presence of a wedge. Two applications are given for microstrip antennas with experimental verifications.

In this paper, we focus on regularity and set-valued functions. Regularity was first introduced by S. C. Kleene in the propositional operations of his ternary logic. Then, M. Mukaidono investigated some properties of ternary functions, which can be represented by regular operations. He called such ternary functions "regular ternary logic functions". Regular ternary logic functions are useful for representing and analyzing ambiguities such as transient states or initial states in binary logic circuits that Boolean functions cannot cope with. Furthermore, they are also applied to studies of fail-safe systems for binary logic circuits. In this paper, we will discuss an extension of regular ternary logic functions into r-valued set-valued functions, which are defined as mappings on a set of nonempty subsets of the r-valued set {0, 1, . . . , r-1}. First, the paper will show a method by which operations on the r-valued set {0, 1, . . . , r-1} can be expanded into operations on the set of nonempty subsets of {0, 1, . . . , r-1}. These operations will be called regular since this method is identical with the way that Kleene expanded operations of binary logic into his ternary logic. Finally, explicit expressions of set-valued functions monotonic in subset will be presented.

In this paper, we consider sufficient conditions for ruling out some useless iteration steps in a class of soft-decision iterative decoding algorithms for binary block codes used over the AWGN channel using BPSK signaling. Sufficient conditions for ruling out the next single decoding step, called ruling-out conditions and those for ruling out all the subsequent iteration steps, called early termination conditions, are formulated in a unified way without degradation of error performance. These conditions are shown to be a type of integer programming problems. Several techniques for reducing such an integer programming problem to a set of subprograms with smaller computational complexities are presented. As an example, an early termination condition for Chase-type decoding algorithm is presented. Simulation results for the (64, 42, 8) Reed-Muller code and (64, 45, 8) extended BCH code show that the early termination condition combined with a ruling-out condition proposed previously is considerably effective in reducing the number of test error patterns, especially as the total number of test error patterns concerned grows.

Multimedia communications over mobile networks suffer from fluctuating channel degradation. Conventional error handling schemes consist of the first stage error correction decoding in wireless interface and the second stage error correction decoding in multimedia demultiplexer, where the second stage decoding result is not used to improve the first stage decoding performance. To meet the requirements of more powerful error protection, we propose iterative soft-input/soft-output error correction decoding in multimedia communications, where the likelihood output generated by the error correction decoding in multimedia demultiplexer is fed back to the decoding in wireless interface and the decoding procedure is iterated. The performances were evaluated by MPEG-4 video transmission simulation over mobile channels.

Experiment is reported of enhanced backscattering of light in binary and ternary suspensions of rutile and/or alumina particles. With a conventional CCD camera system for observing the phenomena, the angular line shape and the enhancement factor were agreed with the theoretically predicted curve and value. Observation of the angular distribution scattered at the backscattered direction supported the hypothesis proposed by Pine et al. , in which the transport mean free path of the polydisperse mixture can be expressed in terms of summing its reciprocal values weighted over the particle sizes.

Feature interaction detection determines whether interactions occur or not between the new and existing telecommunication services. Most of conventional detection methods on state transition model utilize an exhaustive search. The exhaustive search is fundamentally very powerful in the sense that all interactions are exactly detected. However, it may suffer from the state explosion problem due to the exponential growth of the number of states in the model when the number of users and the number of features increase. In order to cope with this problem, we propose a new detection method using a state reduction technique. By means of a symmetric relation, called permutation symmetry, we succeed in reducing the size of the model while preserving the necessary information for the interaction detection. Experimental evaluation shows that, for practical interaction detection with three users, the proposed method achieves about 80% reduction in space and time, and is more scalable than the conventional ones especially for the increase of the number of users in the service.

The minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) linear detector has been proposed to successfully suppress the multiple access interference and mitigate the near-far problem in direct-sequence code-division multiple access communication systems. In the presence of unknown or time-varying channel parameters, the MMSE linear detector can be implemented by the blind Griffiths' algorithm, which uses the desired signal vector instead of a training sequence of symbols for initial adaptation. In this paper, a variable step-size (VSS) Griffiths' algorithm is proposed for accelerating the convergence speed, especially in the presence of strong interference. Numerical results show that the convergence properties of the VSS Griffiths' algorithm are robust against the wide eigenvalue-spread problem of the correlation matrix associated with the received signal vector compared to the Griffiths' algorithm using a fixed step-size.