The use of locating arrays is motivated by the use of generating software test suites to locate interaction faults in component-based systems. In this paper, we introduce a new combinatorial configuration, with which a general combinatorial description of $(ar{1},t)$-locating arrays is presented. Based on this characterization, a number of locating arrays by means of SSOA and difference covering arrays with prescribed properties are constructed effectively. As a consequence, upper bounds on the size of locating arrays with small number of factors are then obtained.

With the increasing number of crimes and accidents in which children are becoming involved, there is a growing demand for devices to safeguard children's security by detecting their locations on their way to and from school. This paper proposes a system that uses an IEEE802.15.4-standard network to detect children's locations. To overcome the susceptibility of radio interference from nearby wireless LANs, frequency division multiplexing is applied to this IEEE802.15.4-based network, toward improving data acquisition from terminal units. The effectiveness of the system was field-tested with elementary school students who used about 400 IEEE 802.15.4-compliant terminal units. An experiment verified that the use of frequency division multiplexing in an environment where radio interference by wireless LANs is strong allowed the network to double the success rate of information communication from terminal units relative to that without frequency division multiplexing. In the experiment for detecting elementary schoolers' arrival at and departure from school, the terminal detection rate was 99% and the terminal detection rate on the designated school routes was 90%. These results prove the effectiveness of the system in detecting locations.

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.

A method for locating underground pipes from a pulse radar image is presented. The method employs the Laplacian of Gaussian filter to extract edges and employs the Hough transform to determine the depth of the pipes. A preliminary experiment showed its ability to detect deeply buried pipes with weak signal echoes.

Error locating codes were first presented in 1963 by J.K. Wolf and B.Elspas. Since then several code design methods have been proposed. However, their algebraic structure has not yet been clarified. It is apparent that necessary and sufficient conditions for error correcting/detecting codes can be expressed by Hamming distance, but, on the other hand, those for error locating codes cannot always be expressed only by Hamming distance. This paper presents necessary and sufficient conditions for error locating codes by using a newly defined metric and a function. The function represents the number of bytes where Hamming distance between corresponding bytes of two codewords has a certain integer range. These conditions show that an error locating code having special code parameters is an error correcting/detecting code. This concludes that error locating codes include existing bit/byte error correcting/detecting codes in their special cases.

This paper proposes a new class of error locating codes which corrects random single-bit errors and indicates a location of an erroneous b-bit byte which includes e-bit errors, where 2 e b, called SECSe/bEL codes. This type of codes is very suitable for an application to memory systems constructed from byte-organized memory chips because this corrects random single-bit errors induced by soft-errors and also indicates the position of the faulty memory chips. This paper also gives a construction method of the proposed codes using tensor product of the two codes, i.e., the single b-bit byte error correcting codes and the single-bit error correcting and e-bit error detecting codes. This clarifies lower bounds and error control capabilities of the proposed codes.

This paper proposes a new class of unidirectional byte error locating codes, called single symmetric bit error correcting and single unidirectional byte error locating codes, or SEC–SUbEL codes. Here, "byte" denotes a cluster of b bits, where b2. First, the necessary and sufficient conditions of the codes are clarified, and then code construction method is demonstrated. The lower bound on check bit length of the SEC–SUbEL codes is derived. Based on this, the proposed codes are shown to be very efficient in some range of the information length. The code design concept presented for the SEC–SUbEL codes induces the generalized unidirectional byte error locating codes with single symmetric bit error correction capability.

This papter proposes a new type of unidirectional error control codes which indicates the location of unidirectional errors clustered in b-bit length, i.e., unidirectional byte error in b (b2) bits. Single unidirectional b-bit byte error locating codes, called SUbEL codes, are first clarified using necessary and sufficient conditions, and then code construction algorithm is demonstrated. The lower bound on check bit length of the SUbEL codes is derived. Based on this, the proposed codes are shown to be very efficient. Using the code design concept presented for the SUbEL codes, it is demonstrated that generalized unidirectional byte error locating codes are easily constructed.

The byte error locating codes specify the byte location in which errors are occurred without indicating the precise location of erroneous bit positions. This type of codes is considered to be useful for fault isolation and reconfiguration in the fault-tolerant computer systems. In this paper, difference between the code function of error-location and that of error-correction/error-detection is clarified. With using the concepts of unidirectional byte distance, unordered byte number and ordered byte number, the necessary and sufficient conditions of the unidirectional byte error locating codes are demonstrated.