In this paper, the ATM Mini-Bar System (AMBS) which is a future information providing service infrastructure is proposed. The purpose of AMBS is to provide a multi-media environment in which a user can (1) select and get quickly any needed information, in low cost, at any time, among very large amount of different media information provided by a variety of providers, (2) be charged only for the information which is selected and used, (3) edit or process informations into users' individually requested style or format before using them. The basic concept and configurations of AMBS are also addressed. This system is basically a center-end oriented one-way information providing system. The information center broadcasts its contents to all user equipments based on a user request forecast, and every user equipment stores the delivered contents in its large storage. A user can select one's needed informations from the storage, and may edit or process them within the user equipment. The charge is only on the read informations from the storage, not on all contents in it. The key points of this system are the following three. (A) Introduction of a broadcast (or multicast) media for economical information delivery (exactly speaking, it is a predelivery which means a delivery before request) to user equipments. (B) Introduction of a 1 to 1 communication network for selective charging and control of each user equipments. (C) Introduction of the user equipment storage for Quick response to user information request in most cases with the broadcast (or multicast) information delivery media described above, Separation of information delivery speed and replay speed to increase system flexibility, Local user information processing or editing. As an example of technical solutions, a memory architecture, which is based on hierarchical architecture, is described. AMBS is expected to give some impacts to information industries because it can integrate many kinds of services into the same platform, but some standerdization items are needed to realize it.

Over the last decade, the Internet has been extremely successful by distinguishing between overlaying applications and underlying networking technologies. This approach allows rapid and independent improvement in both networking and application technologies. The internetworking layer that divides applications and the network enables the Internet to function as a general and evolving infrastructures for data communications. The current Internet architecture offers only best-effort data delivery. However, recent emerging computer and networking technologies, demand the Internet guaranteed performance. In particular, audio and video applications have more rigid delay requirement than those applications which the current Internet supports. To offer guaranteed services in addition to best-effort services, both a new service model and a new architecture are necessary in the Internet architecture. The paper surveys researches and experiments conducted in the Internet community to accommodate a wide variety of qualities of services.

In this paper, we propose the media scheduler employing an adaptive estimator, which uses a posteriori information of data traffic characteristics to facilitate scheduling, when available, to provide on-line scheduling of dynamic scene change based on its statistical characteristics. Especially, a new adaptive scheduling scheme showed good persistent to the arrival message with bursty characteristics. And we confirmed the performance through the computer simulation when QOS requirements are given.

The analysis of the shielding properties of chiral materials slabs is here presented, first deriving the spectral representation of the shielded fields, then getting the asymptotic expression of the transmission matrix in the higher frequencies. The time response of the shielded field for the NEMP incidence is finally deduced in a closed form.

The analysis of the shielding properties of a planar wire-mesh shield embedded in a general isotropic--chirality is included--or anisotropic stratified media is here presented. A suitable model of the grating has been introduced in order to consider the occuring phenomena, in fact through a spectral technique the electromagnetic problem is translated into the equivalent circuit network model that allows to express the time response of the shielded field for the NEMP incidence in a closed form.

Telecommunications management is essentially an aggregation of a wide range of activities, including operations and management (O & M) of telecommunications services and customers as well as the network and network elements. During the period of rapid growth in telecommunications, the highest priority was to meet increasing market demand and to construct a telecommunications network infrastructure. Therefore, research and development in telecommunications management were subordinated to the evolution of telecommunications services and systems. Recently, customers have been demanding higher quality services, as a variety of new, advanced services have been introduced. This has led to the need to integrate telecommunications services and O & M services. This paper first reviews the history of the development of telecommunications O & M in parallel with the progress of telecommunications in Japan and clarifies specific features in each step of this progress. This analysis identifies urgent problems and their solutions. The results suggests that telecommunications O & M and O & M services should be considered as a key to making future services possible and to the value of those services in a multi-media telecommunications services environment. Based on these studies, the future direction of O & M is then shown, focusing on cooperative O & M involving the customer in the multi-media, multidomain telecommunications environment.

The Hyper Hospital" is a novel medical care system which will be constructed on an electronic information network. The human interface of the Hyper Hospital based on the modern virtual reality technology is expected to enhance patients' ability to heal by providing computer-supported on-line visual consultations. In order to investigate the effects and features of on-line visual consultations in the Hyper Hospital, we conducted an experiment to clarify the influence of electronic interviews on the talking behavior of interviewees in the context of simulated doctor-patient interactions. Four types of distant-confrontation interviews were made with voluntary subjects and their verbal and non-verbal responses were analyzed from the behavioral point of view. The types of interviews included three types of electronic media-mediated interviews and one of a live face to face interview. There was a tendency in the media-mediated interviews that both the latency and the duration of interviewees' utterances in answering questions increased when they were compared with those of live face to face interviews. These results suggest that the interviewee became more verbose or talkative in the media-mediated interviews than in the live interviews. However, the interviewee's psychological tension was generally augmented in the media-mediated interviews, which was suggested by the delay of the initiation of conversations as compared to the conventional face-to-face interviews. We also discuss the applicability of media-mediated interviews by an electronic doctor which we are studying as a functional unit of our Hyper Hospital, a network based virtual reality space for medical care.

Video compression technologies such as MPEG have enabled the efficient use of video data in the computer environment. However, the compressed video information still has a huge amount of data compared with the other media such as text, audio, and graphics. Therefore, it is very important to handle the video information in a networked database for the efficient use of resources like storage media. Furthermore, in the networked database, its retrieval methods including search and delivery become the key issues especially for the video information which requires a large network bandwidth. In this paper, a video browsing method using an automatic fast scene cut detection for networked video database access is described. The scene cut is defined as the scene change frame and is detected by temporal change in interframe luminance difference and chrominance correlation which are obtained from spatio-temporally scaled image directly extracted from the MPEG compressed video without any complex processing of video decoding. The detected scene change frames are further investigated to exploit the relationship between the scene cuts and are classified in order to make a hierarchical indexing. These results of detection are stored as an scene index file using the MPEG format. The simulation results are also presented for several test video sequences to show that these methods have enabled the efficient video database construction and accessing.

A single-chip architecture for three-dimensional (3-D) computer graphics (CG) is discussed assuming portable equipment with a 3-D CG interface. Based on a discussion of chip requirements, an architecture utilizing DRAM technology is proposed. A 31-Mbit, on-chip DRAM cell array allows a full-color, 480640-pixel frame with two 3-D frame buffers for double buffering and one 2-D frame buffer for superimposed or background images. The on-chip pixel generator produces R, G, B, and Z data in a triangular polygon with a zigzag-scan interpolation algorithm. The on-chip frame synthesizer combines data from one of the 3-D buffers with that from the 2-D buffer to produce superimposed or background 2-D images within a 3-D CG image. Parallel alpha-blending and Z-comparison circuits attached to the DRAM cell array provide a high data I/O rate. Estimation of the chip performance assuming the 0.35-µm CMOS design rule shows the chip size, the drawing speed, on-chip data I/O rate, and power dissipation would be 1413.5-mm, 0.25 million polygons/s, 1 gigabyte/s, and 590 mW at a voltage of 3.3 V, respectively. Based on circuit simulations, the chip can run on a 1.5-V dry cell with a drawing speed of 0.125 million polygons/s and a power dissipation of 61 mW. A scaled-down version of the chip which has an 1-kbit DRAM cell array with an attached alpha-blending circuit is being fabricated for evaluation.

When a new digital broadcasting system is introduced for the viewers, it is important to be able to include new services and system aspects. That is to give the viewers new experiences and meet the demands they might have in the future. To fulfil the viewers expectations, is a key for success for the introduction of new service and product. It is equally important to look at the long term perspective and have the possibility to gradually develop the digital broadcasting systems we establish today. A fully integrated multimedia system is a hybrid of different media services, distribution paths and display object. The pros and cons of each of them must be examined and each of them used where best suited. This will probably give a more complex media world with fuzzy borders between what is broadcasting, packaged media and what is the on-line information society. In order to balance this, any new digital multimedia system needs to be developed with an open architecture, based on generally agreed standards and possibly follow a non-proprietary approach. IDUN, a prototype system for multimedia broadcasting, is on its way to fulfil these requirements. IDUN combines the powerful point to multi-point emission, domestic data storage and computer processing with the telecommunication network. It is feasible to introduce it in the analogue world of today but could better be utilised in a fully digital future. Some possible services are further proposed. Some of them with a tight relation to what a broadcaster already produces, which could give an evolutionary transfer to the new digital world.

In real life, our sence of social reality is supported by the institutional basis, group/interpersonal basis, and belief/schema basis. In networked life, in contrast, these natural and ordinary bases are not always warranted because of a lack of institutional backup, the fragility of the group or interpersonal environment, and the noncommonality of our common sense. In order to compensate for these incomplete bases, networkers ar seeking adaptive communication styles. In this process, there emerge three types of communication cultures. One is the name-card exchange" type. This type is realized by communicating our demographic attributes verbally, which is useful for reality construction of the institutional basis. The second is the ideographization" type. In this type, the content of customary nonverbal communication is creatively transformed into various pseudo nonverbal or para-linguistic expressions, which strengthen fragile interpersonal relationships. The last type is the verbalian" type. This type never depends on the interpersonal or institutional basis. The networked reality is constructed solely in the attempt for common sense development among members. By analyzing the content of messages exchanged in four public groups called Forums," the author found that patterns of communication are transformed in a manner adaptive to each Forum's reality. Thier adaptation modes are different and depend on the types of communication culture every Forum pursues. This is contrarty to the psychologists' tendency to assume that there must be common characteristics or rules valid throughout all of the electronic communication situations.

When we design a human interface of a computer-mediated communication (CMC) system, it is important to take a socio-behavioral approach for understanding the nature of the human communication. From this point of view, we conducted experimental observations and post-experimental questionnaires to investigate communicative characteristics in a teleconference using Fujitsu Habitat" visual telecommunication software. We experimentally held the following three kinds of small-group conferences consisting of five geographically distributed participants: (a) teleconference using a visual telecommunication system (Fujitsu Habitat"), (b) teleconference using a real-time keyboard telecommunication system of NIFTY-Serve and (c) live face to face physical conference. Analyses were made on (1) effects of the media on utterance behaviors of conference members, and (2) satisfaction of conference members with communicative functions of the media. Satisfaction was measured by a seven-level rating scale. We found that participants in a telconference held by using Habitat showed significant differences in contents of utterances and the rating of satisfaction with nine communicative functions compared with those of conferences held by using a real-time keyboard telecommunication system and a live face-to-face conference. These results suggest some features that could facilitate multi-participant on-line electronic conferences and conversations.

Customers' requirements for telecommunications services have been changing from simple point-to-point and single-medium communications to multiple-point and multiple-media, as well as changes in bandwidth requirements. In addition, customers' end stations (ES) will not be homogeneous, from POTS-like terminal to sophisticated multimedia workstation that handles various kind of media. This paper discusses communications management architectures that provide multimedia multipoint communications in a heterogeneous ESs environment. It summarizes existing communications management architectures, and discusses advanced architectures that provide multimedia communications, multipoint communications and heterogeneity handling capabilities in a flexible and efficient manner. The objectives of this architecture are to integrate multimedia multipoint communications capabilities into the network, and provide customers with versatile communications service request interface which can handle from plain single-medium point-to-point communications to multimedia multipoint communications. This paper especially focuses on the management functionalities for multimedia multipoint service fabrics (MMSF) which may be owned by the network provider, the third-party service provider, or the customer. It discusses variations of MMSF management protocol implementations in the case that the MMSF is owned by either of the three. It also discusses implementation of customers' various operations requests to the MMSF in the communication phase.

In this paper, we developed the analytical method for the radiation field from a line current source placed in a stratified slab waveguide. This method is applicable to the analysis of excitation problem of inhomogeneous slab waveguide by increasing the number of layers. The numerical results are given for the cases of five layers, such as W and M type waveguides, and the inhomogeneous slab waveguide. The influence of guided and leaky modes on the radiation field are studied.

Development of a large-scale mobile communications network (IMN: Intelligent Mobile communications Network), as an infrastructure integrating multimedia functions, is indispensable for the support of future mobile communication services aiming toward "personalization," "intelligence," and "multimedia services." This paper discusses the aims of mobile communications and the outline of network technology aspects of PDC (Personal Digital Cellular) network which is currently in service. In addition, the future prospect of mobile communication technologies is discussed with special focuses on the support of universal mobility, network architecture including mobile communications platform, and multimedia technologies in the transport and access systems.

One of the most important topics of recent years is use of multimedia technology in radio systems for video, voice and data transmission. On the other hand, a major problem in such systems is the occurrence of errors due to multipath or interference noise. Forward error correction (FEC) is commonly used as a means of eliminating these errors. When employing the FEC technique, it is important to ensure that coding rate and coding gain requirements are met. In multimedia systems, however, the requirements differ with the type of media involved such as real-time voice, real-time video and data transmission. This paper proposes a variable-rate FEC method for multimedia systems as a means of overcoming this problem. The paper begins by presenting an information box and an ATM wireless LAN as examples of multimedia radio communication, and describes how the proposed variable-rate FEC method can be applied to these systems. Next, it shows in some detail how the ATM cells used in the variable-rate FEC are constructed. Then, it analyzes the effects of variable-rate FEC by employing a parameter called the Information Transmission Rate (ITR), which is defined as the product of the throughput rate and the coding rate. Finally, it shows the effects which the variable-rate FEC has on a typical quantity of traffic.

This paper describes the architecture and new circuit technologies of a proposed Pixel (bit) -Aligned Triple-port DRAM (PATDRAM). The PATDRAM has a 270 K word 16 b Random Access Memory (RAM), a 512 word 8 b Serial Access Memory-(a) (SAMa) and a 1024 word 4 b Serial Access Memory-(b) (SAMb). The random port, serial-a and serial-b port can be operated by three independent synchronous clocks. In these three ports, word data can be aligned to the location of an arbitrary bit position. Data transfer from SAMb to RAM can be individually masked by transfer mask data. The RAM operates by 33 MHz synchronous clock and two SAMs operate by 40 MHz clocks. Novel architecture of the PATDRAM accelerates graphics performance and simplifies in multimedia systems which manage both realtime video and computer graphics data, and also accelerates graphics performance in both two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) graphics systems. PATDRAM was designed using a 0.6 µ double metal, triple poly, stacked capacitor, CMOS process technology in a 10.98 mm9.88 mm die area integrated 4.4 Mb RAM, 8 Kb SAM, 4 Kb transfer mask register and 5 Kgate logic.

An analog circuit is devised which selects and outputs the kth largest element among n input voltages. The circuit is composed of n basic transconductance amplifiers connected mutually with an O(n) length wire, thus the complexity of the circuit is O(n). The circuit becomes particularly simple for the case of the selection of the median of inputs.

This paper presents a new line extraction method to capture vectors based on contours and skeletons from line drawing raster images in which the lines are touched by characters or other lines. Conventionally, two line extraction methods have generally been used. One is a thinning method. The other is a medial line extraction method based on parallel pairs of contours. The thinning method tends to distort the extracted lines, especially at intersections and corners. On the other hand, the medial line extraction method has a poor capability as regards capturing correct lines at intersections. Contours are able to maintain edge shapes well, while skeletons preserve topological features; thus, a combination of these features effectively leads to the best fitting line. In the proposed method, the line which best fits the original image is selected from among various candidate lines. The candidates are created from several merged short skeleton fragments located between pairs of short contour fragments. The method is also extended to circular arc fitting. Experimental results show that the proposed line fitting method is effective.

Optical amplifier structures suitable for a 622Mbit/s repeater in an optical communication system containing one in-line amplifier have been investigated. Two wavelengths of 1.533µm and 1.549µm are considered for two cases, i.e., single-channel transmission and two-channel wavelength division multiplexing transmission. The basic amplifier structure is of a two-stage type where forward pumped and backward pumped erbium-doped fibers are connected with each other through intermediate optical filters and an optical isolator. First, the effect of the intermediate optical filters was clarified in optical gain and bit error rate characteristics. Then, the erbium-doped fiber length was optimized on the basis of the allowable optical loss of the optical system which was operated at a bit error rate of 10-9. As a result, the appropriate length of the forward pumped erbium-doped fiber was found to be about 20m for both cases of single-channel and two-channel wavelength multiplexing amplifiers. With the designed amplifier used in the system, the calculated allowable optical line loss was more than 90dB for both the cases.