Designing a software architecture that satisfies multiple quality requirements is a difficult undertaking. This is mainly due to the fact that architects must be able to explore a broad range of architectural choices and analyze tradeoffs among them in light of multiple quality requirements. As the size and complexity of the system increase, architectural design space to be explored and analyzed becomes more complex. In order to systematically manage the complexity, this paper proposes a method that guides architects to explore and analyze architectural decisions in a top-down manner. In the method, architectural decisions that have global impacts on given quality requirements are first explored and analyzed and those that have local impacts are then taken into account in the context of the decisions made in the previous step. This approach can cope with the complexity of large-scale architectural design systematically, as architectural decisions are analyzed and made following the abstraction hierarchy of quality requirements. To illustrate the concepts and applicability of the proposed method, we have applied this method to the architectural design of the computer used for the continuous casting process by an iron and steel manufacturer.

An adaptive service framework is expected to support real-time multimedia services in wirless/mobile cellular networks with various classes of traffic and diverse bandwidth requirements. Quality of service (QoS) provisioning in an adaptive framework is another challenging consideration, such as quantifying the level of bandwidth degradation of an ongoing calls and guaranteeing stable QoS levels. Considering both the period and the depth of degradation, the degradation area ratio (DAR) represents the average ratio of a call's degradation and is one of the meaningful measures for adaptive service in call level analysis. In this paper, analytical models for estimating the DAR and finding the optimal control parameters are presented in multi-class traffic call management situations. In complete partitioning capacity based threshold-type call admission control (CAC), a one-dimensional Markov chain with an absorbing state is proposed for estimating the DAR in each traffic class. We formulate a two-leveled optimization problem minimizing the total blocking probabilities subject to QoS requirements and present the procedures required in finding the optimal capacities and threshold values by using modified dynamic programming. In complete sharing capacity based threshold-type CAC, the multidimensional Markov model is approximately reduced to a one-dimensional model in order to reduce complexity and hence calculation time. The reduced model is compared with multidimensional Markov model in numerical examples. The optimization problem is formulated minimizing the total blocking probabilities subject to QoS requirements and the optimal threshold parameters are found by using a genetic algorithm. Performance of two adopted admission policies in adaptive framework situations is illustrated by numerical results.

IP-over-optical multilayer networks are capable of flexibly dealing with traffic increases and fluctuations because they support both high-speed transmission using lightpaths and scalable IP hop-by-hop transmission. This paper introduces an architecture for quality of service (QoS) control in such networks, based on the differentiated services (DiffServ) concept. The architecture supports both class-based queues and class-based lightpaths to efficiently handle multiple-QoS-class traffic. QoS schemes based on the proposed architecture are categorized into four types according to their traffic-differentiation and transmission mechanisms. Through simulation, the schemes are evaluated in terms of measures that largely determines network costs. Finally, the conditions under which each scheme is feasible are clarified in terms of the traffic volume and the cost of class-based queues for DiffServ.

In this paper we present a network layer based admission control and simple class based service differentiation model to support QoS in mobile ad hoc network. Our distributed admission control procedure works along with the route finding phase of reactive routing protocols for mobile ad hoc network (AODV, DSR etc). We also propose a simple class based distributed service differentiation system to support QoS once a traffic is admitted by our admission control mechanism. The proposed service differentiation is based on DiffServ model and includes modifications like configuration of each node with edge and core functionality, dynamic selection of edge/core functionality, use of minimal and simple classes. Simulation results show that our system allows seven times more real time traffic in the network than the proposed QoS for AODV model while satisfying the demanded end-to-end delay and providing low jitter.

To guarantee QoS for multicast transmission, admission control for multicast sessions is expected. Probe-based multicast admission control (PBMAC) scheme is a scalable and simple approach. However, PBMAC suffers from the subsequent request problem which can significantly reduce the maximum number of multicast sessions that a network can admit. In this letter, we describe the subsequent request problem and propose an enhanced PBMAC scheme to solve this problem. The enhanced scheme makes use of complementary probing and remarking which require only minor modification to the original scheme. By using a fluid-based analytical model, we are able to prove that the enhanced scheme can always admit a higher number of multicast sessions. Furthermore, we present validation of the analytical model using packet based simulation.

Traditional network-level Quality of Service (QoS) techniques are efficient from a network perspective, but they have not provided end-to-end QoS that is satisfactory to users. In this letter, a Coordinated Packet Discard scheme for the distribution of end-to-end QoS requirements into local loss constraints, as well as provision of local loss assurance is proposed. Experiments demonstrate its advantages on increasing QoS-satisfied user ratio and improving network efficiency.

In an empowered Internet with end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) facilities, it is essential for content servers to minimize reserved network resources to achieve a reduction in transmission cost for the use of QoS. Resource reservation usage charging forces customers to efficiently use network resources. In this paper, we analyze a model that optimizes the total cost when semi-elastic traffic flows are delivered in a client-server scenario. The client uses the proposed analytical model to easily control its buffer occupancy and to determine at any time if it is needed to utilize resource reservation or best-effort transmission mode.

When video data are transmitted via the network, the quality of video data must be carefully chosen to be best under the condition that the transmission is not influenced by other internet services. They often use the simulcast type, which uses independent streams that are stored and transmitted for the quality, considering implementation, when they select the video quality. On the other hand, we had already proposed the scalable structure, which consists of base and enhancement data, but when they require the high quality video, these data are combined using the transcoding methods. In this paper, we propose the video contents delivery methods with scalable transcoding, in which users can update the quality of video data even after the transmission by base data and differential data. In order to reduce the total time of not only users' access time, but also watching time, we compare simulcast method with proposed methods in the total content utilization time using a video contents access model, and evaluate required transcoding time to reduce the waiting time of users.

Recently, software development projects have been required to produce highly reliable systems within a short period and with low cost. In such situation, software quality prediction helps to confirm that the software product satisfies required quality expectations. In this paper, by using a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN), we try to construct a prediction model based on relationships elicited from the embedded software development process. On the one hand, according to a characteristic of embedded software development, we especially propose to classify test and debug activities into two distinct activities on software and hardware. Then we call the proposed model "the BBN for an embedded software development process". On the other hand, we define "the BBN for a general software development process" to be a model which does not consider this classification of activity, but rather, merges them into a single activity. Finally, we conducted experimental evaluations by applying these two BBNs to actual project data. As the results of our experiments show, the BBN for the embedded software development process is superior to the BBN for the general development process and is applicable effectively for effective practical use.

This paper proposes a quantization-based image-quality guaranteed watermarking (IQGW) method using a nonorthogonal discrete wavelet transformation. An IQGW method generates watermarked images of a desired image quality for any image, neither with trial and error nor with image-dependent parameters. To guarantee the image-quality, the proposed method adjusts the energy of the watermark sequence to be embedded based on the relationship between a nonorthogonally transformed domain and the spatial domain for the signal energy. This proposed method extracts the embedded watermark by quantization of watermarked coefficients, no reference image, thus, is required. In addition, it is capable of controlling the objective and subjective image-quality of a watermarked image independently. With features mentioned above, the proposed method is suitable for real-time embedding of Motion JPEG 2000 videos. Moreover, it is able to fuse quantization- and correlation-based watermarking.

Among recent trends in Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning in the Internet is the Differentiated Services Architecture, termed DiffServ. The successful deployment of Diffserv to provide a premium QoS guarantees to network traffic requires an effective admission control mechanism, which needs to be scalable and relatively simple to implement. In this paper we present a QoS network framework with novel and effective measurement-based resource management and admission control mechanisms. The mechanism is based on the characteristics of measured arrival and departure traffic. Those characteristics are captured via a passive monitoring. We implement the mechanism at the edge routers of a DiffServ Domain. The admission control mechanism is only executed at the edge routers and doesn't require any signaling between inner routers. The mechanism does not depend on the underlying network topology or any specifications of the cross traffic present in the domain. Therefore the mechanism is scalable. In addition, the proposed approach does not require any traffic policing mechanism at the entrance of the network. This approach can provide the statistical QoS guarantees to a variety of service classes within a DiffServ domain. We show that the proposed framework can provide a high degree of network resource sharing among multiple traffic classes while satisfying their QoS requirements. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed framework, we perform a set of simulations on a number of bursty video traffic sources.

The recent burst growth of the Internet use overloads networking systems and degrades the quality of communications, e.g., bandwidth loss, packet drops, delay of responses, etc. To overcome such degradation of the communication quality, the notion of Quality of Service (QoS) has received attention in practice. In general, QoS switches have several queues and each queue has several slots to store arriving packets. Since network traffic changes frequently, QoS switches need to control arriving packets to maximize the total priorities of transmitted packets, where the priorities are given by nonnegative values and correspond to the quality of service required for each packet. In this paper, we derive lower bounds for the competitive ratio of deterministic multi-queue nonpreemptive QoS problem of priorities 1 and α 1: 1 + /α ln if α α*; 1/(1 - e-τ0) if 1 α < α*, where α* 1.657 and τ0 is a root of the equality that e-τ(1/α + τ)=1 - e-τ. As an immediate result, this shows a lower bound 1.466 for the competitive ratio of deterministic multi-queue nonpreemptive QoS problem of single priority, which slightly improves the best known lower bound 1.366.

The frequent and time-independent packet loss due to signal noise in the wireless network has been a major obstacle in providing a persistent end-to-end bandwidth in the integrated environment of wired and wireless networks. One approach to cope with this is to develop an efficient transport mechanism which appropriately adapts to the dynamics of the wireless part of the network so that the end-to-end throughput is maximised. The success of new transport mechanisms depends on the quality of information obtained, in particular, from the wireless network. This paper presents a novel mechanism to assess accurately the transmission quality of the wireless part of the integrated CDMA2000 1X networks using the NAK rate obtained from the underlying RLP protocol stack. The experiment results show that the proposed mechanism correctly measures the wireless transmission quality of the CDMA2000 1X network.

Optical Burst Switching (OBS) has been developed as an efficient switching technique to exploit the capacity provided by Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) transmission technology for the next generation optical Internet. One critical design issue in OBS is how to provide Quality-of-Service (QoS) on optical networks. In order to provide the service differentiation, we propose in this paper a buffer allocation algorithm to schedule bursts at the edge OBS nodes, a bandwidth allocation algorithm and a Fiber Delay Line (FDL) allocation algorithm to schedule bursts at the core OBS nodes. We also introduce a new burst assembly technique in which the burst is generated either when the sum of the collected packet sizes reaches the maximum threshold or when the burst assembling time reaches the timeout limit. Our simulation results show that the proposed algorithms achieve the controllable burst loss probability for different service classes. The bandwidth allocation algorithm performs very well at the core OBS nodes in terms of the low loss probability.

Recently, wideband speech communication using 7 kHz-wideband speech coding, as described in ITU-T Recommendations G.722, G.722.1, and G.722.2, has become increasingly necessary for use in advanced IP telephony using PCs, since, for this application, hands-free communication using separate microphones and loudspeakers is indispensable, and in this situation wideband speech is particularly helpful in enhancing the naturalness of communication. An objective quality measurement methodology for wideband-speech coding has been studied, its essential components being an objective quality measure and an input test signal. This paper describes Wideband-PESQ conforming to the draft Annex to ITU-T Recommendation P.862, "Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ)," as the objective quality measure, by evaluating the consistency between the subjectively evaluated MOS (Mean Opinion Score) and objectively estimated MOS. This paper also describes the verification of artificial voice conforming to Recommendation P.50 "Artificial Voices," as the input test signal for such measurements, by evaluating the consistency between the objectively estimated MOS using a real voice and that obtained using an artificial voice.

In this study, we propose an object-based multimedia model for specifying the QoS (quality of service) requirements, such as the maximum data-dropping rate or the maximum data-delay rate. We also present a resource allocation model, called the net-profit model, in which the satisfaction of user's QoS requirements is measured by the benefit earned by the system. Based on the net-profit model, the system is rewarded if it can allocate enough resources to a multimedia delivery request and fulfill the QoS requirements specified by the user. At the same time, the system is penalized if it cannot allocate enough resources to a multimedia delivery request. We first investigate the problem of how to allocate resources efficiently, so that the QoS satisfaction is maximized. However, the net-profit may be distributed unevenly among the multimedia delivery requests. Thus, the second problem discusses how to allocate the resource efficiently so that the net-profit difference is minimized between any two multimedia requests. A dynamic programming based algorithm is proposed to find such an optimal solution with the minimum net-profit differences.

It is important to predict serious deterioration of telecommunication quality. This paper investigates predicting such serious events by analyzing only a "short" period (i.e., a "small" amount) of teletraffic data. To achieve this end, this paper presents a method for analyzing the tail distributions of teletraffic state variables, because tail distributions are suitable for representing serious events. This method is based on Extreme Value Theory (EVT), which provides a firm theoretical foundation for the analysis. To be more precise, in this paper, we use throughput data measured on an actual network during daily busy hours for 15 minutes, and use its first 10 seconds (known data) to analyze the tail distribution. Then, we evaluate how well the obtained tail distribution can predict the tail distribution of the remaining 890 seconds (unknown data). The results indicate that the obtained tail distribution based on EVT by analyzing the small amount of known data can predict the tail distribution of unknown data much better than methods based on empirical or log-normal distributions. Furthermore, we apply the obtained tail distribution to predict the peak throughput in unknown data. The results of this paper enable us to predict serious deterioration events with lower measurement cost.

The notion of effective bandwidth provides an elegant and powerful mathematical basis for the provision of QoS-assured services over IP networks. In this paper, we propose a semi-parametric estimator of effective bandwidth, called Gaussian estimator using buffer masurement, for superposition of sources in IP networks. In contrast to most existing proposals concerning the effective bandwidth estimator, our proposal works based on a small set of measurements of the workload in the buffer of a router. We analytically show the property of the proposed estimator with respect to the dependence on the service rate. We provide numerical results to show that our proposed estimator is more accurate than estimators that rely only on the amount of traffic from sources.

This paper presents a fuzzy model-based approach for synchronization of time-delay chaotic system with input saturation. Time-delay chaotic drive and response system is respectively represented by Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model. Specially, the response system contains input saturation. Using the unidirectional linear error feedback and the parallel distributed compensation (PDC) scheme, we design fuzzy chaotic synchronization system and analyze local stability for synchronization error dynamics. Since time-delay in the transmission channel always exists, we also take it into consideration. The sufficient condition for the local stability of the fuzzy synchronization system with input saturation and channel time-delay is derived by applying Lyapunov-Krasovskii theory and solving linear matrix inequalities (LMI's) problem. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the validity of the proposed approach.

Overall picture quality of a liquid crystal display (LCD) is changed by viewing conditions. An evaluation method of overall picture quality was proposed for LCDs. However, the estimation values calculated by the evaluation method differed from the subjective evaluation values, when viewing angle changed in the vertical direction. In this study, the coefficients of impairment in the evaluation equation were obtained by the multiple regression analysis using subjectively evaluated data. The evaluation method of overall picture quality was improved by weighting factors using these coefficients. As the result, the good estimation accuracy was obtained even if the viewing angle was changed both in the horizontal and vertical directions individually.