In the commonsense reasoning, priorities among rules are often required to be found out in order to derive the desired conclusion as a theorem of the reasoning. In this paper, first we present the bottom-up and top-down abduction procedures to compute skeptical explanations and secondly show that priorities of circumscription to infer a desired theorem can be abduced as a skeptical explanation in abduction. In our approach, the required priorities can be computed based on the procedure to compute skeptical explanations provided in this paper as well as Wakaki and Satoh's method of compiling circumscription into extended logic programs. The method, for example, enables us to automatically find the adequate priority w. r. t. the Yale Shooting Problem to express a human natural reasoning in the framework of circumscription.

Many object-oriented database systems have used the notion of implicit authorization to avoid the overhead caused by explicitly storing all authorizations for each object. In implicit authorization, it is very important to detect efficiently conflicts between existing authorizations and new authorizations to be added. In this article we propose a conflict detection mechanism in the OODBMSs using implicit authorization with the notion of intention type authorization. When we grant an authorization on a node n in the database granularity hierarchy, the existing method is inefficient in determining the conflicts since it needs to examine all authorizations on the descendants of the node n. In contrast, our mechanism has the advantage of detecting the conflicts at the node n where an explicit authorization is to be granted without examining any authorizations below the node n. Thus, the proposed mechanism can detect a conflict with the average time complexity of O(d), which is smaller than O(md) of existing methods, where m is the number of children nodes at an arbitrary level and d is the difference of levels between the node with an existing explicit authorization and the higher node where an explicit authorization is to be granted. We also show that the additional storage overhead of storing all authorizations is negligible when compared with the total number of all explicit authorizations.

Distributed web caching reduces retrieval latency of World Wide Web (WWW) objects such as text and graphics. Conventional distributed web caching methods, however, require many query messages among cache servers, which limits their scalability and reliability. To overcome these problems, we propose a query caching method in which each cache server caches not only WWW objects but also a query history. This method of finding cached objects can reduce the number of query messages among cache servers, making it possible to construct a large-scale distributed web cache server. We also propose an algorithm for constructing efficient query relationships among cache servers.

The development of saturation diving in civil and defense applications has enabled man to work in the sea at great depths and for long periods of time. This advance has resulted, in part, as a consequence of the substitution of helium for nitrogen in breathing gas mixtures. However, utilization of HeO2 breathing mixture at high ambient pressures has caused problems in speech communication; in turn, helium speech enhancement systems have been developed to improve diver communication. These speech unscramblers attempt to process variously the grossly unintelligible speech resulting from the effect of breathing mixtures and ambient pressure, and to reconstruct such signals in order to provide adequate voice communication. It is known that the glottal excitation is quasi-periodic and the vocal tract filter is quasi-stationary. Hence, it is possible to use an auto regressive modelisation to restore speech intelligibility in hyperbaric conditions. Corrections are made on the vocal tract transfer function, either in the frequency domain, or directly on the autocorrelation function. A spectral subtraction or noise reduction may be added to improve speech quality. A new VAD enhanced helium speech unscrambler is proposed for use in adverse conditions or in speech recognition. This system, implementable on single chip DSP of current technology, is capable to work in real time.

In order to demodulate a Differential Chaos Shift Keying (DCSK) signal, the energy carried by the received chaotic signal must be determined. Since a chaotic signal is not periodic, the energy per bit carried by the chaotic signal can only be estimated, even in the noise-free case. This estimation has a non-zero variance that limits the attainable data rate. In this paper the DCSK technique is combined with frequency modulation in order to overcome the estimation problem and to improve the data rate of DCSK modulation.

An optical communications technology roadmap leading up to the second decade of the 21st century has been investigated to provide a future vision of the optoelectronic technology in 15 to 20 years. The process whereby technology may progress toward the realization of the vision is indicated. A transmission rate of 100 Mbps for homes and a rate of 5 Tbps for the backbone network will be required in the first decade of the 21 century. Two technology roadmaps for public and business communications networks are discussed. It is concluded both WDM and TDM technology will be required to realize such an ultra-high capacity transmission. Technical tasks for various optical devices are investigated in detail.

Recent technologies of organic film devices are reviewed. New technologies of fabrication and characterization of organic thin films, electro-mechanical conversion materials, and applications for electrical and optical devices are discussed. In this review paper, especially organic light emitting diodes, tunneling junctions using polyimide Langmuir-Blodgett films, tunneling spectroscopy and high-density recording, plastic actuators using conducting polymers, molecular self-assembly process for fabricating organic thin film devices are reviewed.

MTDMA (Multimedia, Multimode TDMA) system has been developed for the 3rd generation mobile communications. An adaptive modulation technique is employed, which select 16 QAM or QPSK modulations fit for the O (Indoor Office)/P (Outdoor to Indoor and Pedestrian) communication environments. The maximum user rate of 4 Mbps is realized. Basic specification is described for O, P and V environments.

One-dimensional Cellular Automata (CA's) are considered as potential pseudorandom pattern generators to generate highly random parallel patterns with simple hardware configurations. A class of linear, binary, and of nearest neighbor (radius = 1) CA's is referred to here as elementary ones. This paper investigates operations of such CA's with fixed boundary conditions when non-null boundary values are applied to them. By modifying transition matrices of elementary CA's to include the influence of boundary values, structures of state transition diagrams are determined.

This paper describes methods used in the design of a high speed burst modem applied for mobile communication systems. The modem has burst mode operations including burst mode AGC (automatic gain control), burst mode BTR (bit timing recovery), adaptive equalization, and diversity based on a selection algorithm to achieve a higher performance in multipath fading channels. Moreover, the performance of the burst modem, which is developed using analog signal processing devices, DSPs (digital signal processors), and FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), is analyzed experimentally. Results show that the modem can suppress irreducible BER values below 1. 0e-6 and attains a 2 dB implicit diversity gain over multipath fading channels modeled by a two-ray impulse response system with independent Rayleigh fading.

Wideband wireless access based on direct sequence code division multiple access, called coherent multi-rate W-CDMA in this paper, designed for next generation mobile communications systems is introduced. It employs inter-cell asynchronous operation with a fast cell search algorithm, orthogonal multi-spreading factor (SF) forward links, and pilot symbol assisted coherent reverse and forward links. Inter-cell asynchronous cell site operation facilitates the continuous deployment of the system from outdoors to indoors. An orthogonal multi-SF forward link allows flexible offering of different multi-rate services to users without losing orthogonality. Gains in the radio link capacity and coverage are obtained from the use of coherent Rake combining and fast transmit power control (TPC) in both forward and reverse links. Computer simulation and field experiment results of the coherent multi-rate W-CDMA radio link performance are presented. Also presented are interference cancellation and adaptive antenna array techniques that can significantly improve the link capacity and coverage.

An efficient algorithm is proposed for finding all solutions of bipolar transistor circuits. This algorithm is based on a simple test that checks the nonexistence of a solution using linear programming. In this test, right-angled triangles are used for surrounding exponential functions of the Ebers-Moll model, by which the number of inequality constraints decreases and the test becomes efficient and powerful.

The following, which is related to the design of the microwave filters, is mainly presented: (1) certain useful approximation which can be obtained by double-resistive- terminated 2-ports consisting of a cascade of two 1-variable 2-ports in different variables, and (2) an approach for filter design from 2-variable viewpoint. Approximations presented provide useful magnitude responses in 2-D domain. Hence it is discussed that how the provided 2-D responses can be used for the design of the microwave filters. Furthermore, properties of the 2-variable transfer functions resulting in such circuits are given.

This paper presents some fundamental properties of multiple-valued logic functions monotonic in a partial-ordering relation which is introduced in the set of truth values and does not necessarily have the greatest or least element. Two kinds of necessary and sufficient conditions for monotonic p-valued functions are given with the proofs. Their logic formulas using unary operators defined in the partial-ordering relation and a simplification method for those logic formulas are also given. These results include as their special cases our former results for p-valued functions monotonic in the ambiguity relation which is a partial-ordering relation with the greatest element.

We demonstrate that the frequency modulated video signals in the subcarrier multiple access optical network can be satisfactorily transmitted using our proposed method, that broadens an optical spectrum by multiplying the subcarrier signals by an additional signal and that reduces optical beat interference, even if the wavelengths of four Fabry-Perot laser diodes are very close each other.

We propose a set of new algorithms for linear programming. These algorithms are derived by accelerating the method of averaged convex projections for linear inequalities. We provide strict proofs for the convergence of our algorithms. The algorithms are so simple that they can be calculated by super-parallel processing. To this effect, we propose networks for implementing the algorithms. Furthermore, we provide illustrative examples to demonstrate the capability of our algorithms.

A system combining multicarrier modulation and adaptive modulation in which a suitable level of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is selected for each subcarrier and time-slot, is proposed for high-bit-rate and high-quality digital land mobile communications. The advantages of the system are a mode in which information cannot be transmitted under adverse propagation conditions and a buffer memory to limit a transmission delay time. If the allowable delay time is small, such as in voice and video transmissions, the system tends to have a poor bit error rate (BER) because of the forcible QAM-level selection. Our new selection scheme improves the BER for small transmission delay time. Suitable distribution of the delay time among subcarriers is obtained by using the scheme where the QAM-level of each subcarrier is chosen collectively using the number of data bits stored in memory. Computer simulation of the systems BER performance showed that the system could provide a noticeable BER improvement over frequency-selective fading channels as well as flat Rayleigh fading channels. The QAM-level selection scheme was also effective for a low maximum Doppler frequency and a small memory size. The system could thus attain about 25-fold improvement in BER at Es/N030 dB compared to the multicarrier/16QAM system. It also attained about 60-fold and 3. 5-fold improvement in BER at fd=10Hz compared with the system with multicarrier/16QAM and without the QAM-level selection scheme, respectively.

Multimedia communications often require intramedia synchronization for video data to prevent potential playout discontinuity while still retaining satisfactory playout throughput. In this paper, we propose a novel intra-video synchronization mechanism, called the Video Smoother, particularly suitable for low-end multimedia applications, such as video conferencing. Generally, the Video Smoother dynamically adopts various playout rates according to the number of frames in the playout buffer in an attempt to compensate for the delay jitter introduced from networks. In essence, if the number of frames in the buffer exceeds a given threshold (TH), the Smoother employs a maximum playout rate. Otherwise, the Smoother employs linearly or exponentially reduced rates to eliminate playout pauses resulting from the emptiness of the playout buffer. To determine optimal THs achieving a minimum of playout discontinuity and a maximum of playout throughput under various bursty traffic, we propose an analytic model assuming incoming traffic following an Interrupted Bernoulli arrival Process (IBP). As a result, optimal THs can be analytically determined resulting in superior playout quality under various arrivals and loads of networks. Finally, we display simulation results which demonstrate that, compared to the playout without intra-video synchronization (instant playout), the Video Smoother achieves superior smooth playout and compatible throughput.

Despite the fact that the necessity of FDT (formal description techniques) had been emphasized, many approaches to verifying feature interactions were insufficient. This paper proposes formal definitions for feature interactions which can occur when telecommunication services specified independently are operated in parallel. Seven types of feature interactions are defined formally.

A formal necessary and sufficient condition on the general Petri net reachability problem is presented by eliminating all spurious solutions among known nonnegative integer solutions of state equation and unifying all the causes of those spurious solutions into a maximal-strongly-connected and siphon-and-trap subnet Nw. This result is based on the decomposition of a given net (N, Mo) with Md and the concepts of "no immature siphon at the reduced initial marking Mwo" and "no immature trap at the reduced end marking Mwd" on Nw which are both extended from "no token-free siphon at the initial marking Mo" and "no token-free trap at the end marking Md" on N, respectively, which have been both effectively, explicitly or implicitly, used in the well-known fundamental and simple subclasses.