Related with accuracy, computational complexity and so on, quality of computing for the so-called homotopy method has been discussed recently. In this paper, we shall propose an estimation method with interval analysis of region in which unique solution path of the homotopy equation is guaranteed to exist, when it is applied to a certain class of uniquely solvable nonlinear equations. By the estimation, we can estimate the region a posteriori, and estimate a priori an upper bound of the region.

In the design of nonlinear reliable controllers, one major issue is to solve for the solutions of the Hamilton-Jacobi inequality. In general, it is hard to obtain a closed form solutions due to the nonlinear nature of the inequality. In this paper, we seek for the existence conditions of quadratic type positive semidefinite solutions of Hamilton-Jacobi inequality. This is achieved by taking Taylor's series expansion of system dynamics and investigating the negative definiteness of the associated Hamilton up to fourth order. An algorithm is proposed to seek for possible solutions. The candidate of solution is firstly determined from the associated algebraic Riccati inequality. The solution is then obtained from the candidate which makes the truncated fourth order polynomial of the inequality to be locally negative definite. Existence conditions of the solution are explicitly attained for the cases of which system linearization possesses one uncontrollable zero eigenvalue and a pair of pure imaginary uncontrollable eigenvalues. An example is given to demonstrate the application to reliable control design problem.

Quality of service requirements are satisfied conjointly by the service model, which determines how resources are shared and by network engineering, which determines how much capacity is provided. In this paper we consider the impact of the adopted charging scheme on the feasibility of fulfilling QoS requirements. We identify three categories of charging scheme based respectively on flat rate pricing, congestion pricing and transaction pricing.

Cell delay variation (CDV) has been considered as an important performance measure due to the stringent timing requirement for video and multimedia services. In this paper we address the problem of CDV performance guarantee in virtual path (VP)-based ATM multiplexing. We propose a rate-based and non-work-conserving scheduling algorithm, called interleaved round robin (IRR), for serving traffic streams among VPs into the outgoing link. Through our performance analysis, the proposed scheme is capable of providing upper and lower bounds on the inter-visit time (IVT) for each VP, where the difference between the upper bound and the lower bound is simply dependent upon the number of multiplexed VPs. The distribution of VP IVT scheduled by an IRR server can also be well approximated using a random incidence technique. In addition to the VP-level CDV performance, we further examine the virtual connection (VC)-level CDV incurred within a multi-stage network through simulation study. The simulation results show that the IRR server can provide traffic regulation and smoothness at each network node. Moreover, the CDV distribution of a tagged VC is insensitive to the source traffic characteristic, node location, and the hop count traversed in the network.

One of the important challenges in the design of ATM networks is how to provide quality-of-service (QoS) while maintaining high network resource utilization. In this paper, we discuss the role of real-time traffic characterization in QoS control for ATM networks and review several approaches to the problem of resource allocation. We then describe a particular framework for QoS control in which real-time measurements of a connection stream are used to determine appropriate parameters for usage parameter control (UPC). Connection admission control (CAC) is based on the characterization of the aggregate stream in terms of the individual stream UPC descriptors, together with real-time measurements.

We present techniques to implement fair-sharing on both link bandwidth and buffer space in a switch or router. Together they possess the following merits: 1. solving the counter-overflow problem; 2. avoiding the "credit" accumulation issue; 3. integrating bandwidth allocation with buffer management. The simplicity of this method makes it a viable candidate for implementational use on switches and routers.

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks are expected to support a diverse mix of traffic sources requiring different Quality Of Service (QOS) guarantees. This paper initially examines several existing scheduling disciplines which offer delay guarantees in ATM switches. Among them, the Earliest-Due-Date (EDD) discipline has been regarded as one of the most promising scheduling disciplines. The EDD discipline schedules the departure of a cell belonging to a call based on the delay priority assigned for that call during the call set-up. Supporting n delay-based service classes through the use of n respective urgency numbers D0 to Dn-1 (D0D1 Dn-1), EDD allows a class-i cell to precede any class-j (j>i) cell arriving not prior to (Dj-Di)-slot time. The main goal of the paper is to determine the urgency numbers (Dis), based on an in-depth queueing analysis, in an attempt to offer ninety-nine percentile delay guarantees for higher priority calls under various traffic loads. In the analysis, we derive system-time distributions for both high- and low-priority cells based on a discrete-time, single-server queueing model assuming renewal and non-renewal arrival processes. The validity of the analysis is justified via simulation. With the urgency numbers (Dis) determined, we further propose a feasible efficient VLSI implementation architecture for the EDD scheduling discipline, furnishing the realization of QOS guarantees in ATM switches.

In this paper, a design concept that offers ATM-VP connections with different protection levels is presented. The users have the choice to select the protection level they wish, the network transport service they need, and the worst cell loss they can tolerate at call set up time, and pay accordingly. Besides, an advanced adaptive traffic control scheme that simplifies call and cell processing is also presented. Many important functions such as call admission, VC-bandwidth reservation, cell-level congestion control, etc. are efficiently performed at the boundary of the backbone network. In this way is given a suitable answer to the important question: "How can future telecommunication networks based on ATM provide services with customized availability ?" A platform that outlines the potential interaction between restoration methods and congestion avoidance schemes is also obtained.

In the circumstances we want to deal with, transmission channel is limited and global motion can happen by camera movement, and also there exists a region-of-interest (ROI) which is more important than background. So very low bit rate coding algorithm is required and processing of global motion must be considered. Also ROI must be reconstructed with required quality after decoding because of its importance. But the existing methods such as H. 261, H. 263 are not suitable for such situations because they do not compensate global motion, which needs large amount of transmission bits in motion information and degrades image quality. And also they can not reconstruct ROI's with high quality because they do not consider the fact that ROI's are more important than background. So a new coding scheme is proposed that describes a method for encoding image sequences distinguishing bits between ROI and background. Simulations show that the suggested algorithm performs well especially in the circumstances where background changes and the area of ROI is small enough compared with that of background.

This paper first proposes a new approach to designing high-quality, low-diameter, small mean-internode-distance (MID), k-subcubic-connected cyclic networks. The approach is a modification of the k-cubic-connected cyclic (k-ccc) network in which there are N=k2k-1 instead of N=k2k nodes in the k-ccc network. The special features of this network are: (1) It fills the gap between the number of nodes in k-ccc and (k+1)-ccc networks, but retains a constant number of link (3) per node in the network, (2) it allows higher quality, smaller diameters and mean internode distances hypercube networks with the same numbers of nodes. A second novel approach consists of a k+-sccc network with the same number of nodes as the k-ccc but with smaller diameters and mean internode distances. A generalized k-ccc network formed by nodes N=k2m is introduced for n-cube and k-ccc (modified or normal) networks that allows minimum network quality to be obtained where m may or may not equal to k. A routing algorithm for 4-sccc is also presented.

When moving images are displayed on color PDPs, motional artifacts such as disturbances of gray scales and colors are often observed. Reduction of the disturbances is essential in achieving PDPs with acceptable picture quality for TV use. The moving picture quality has been improved by using a modified-binary-coded light-emission-period scheme and a 3dimensional (2D in space and 1D in time) scattering technique. In the 10-sub-field modified-binary-code scheme for 256 gray level expression, sub-field B (of period equivalent to 64) and C (128) of conventional 8-sub-field binary-coded scheme are added and then re-distributed into four sub-fields D (48). The modifiedbinary-coded scheme therefore has the light-emitting-period ratio 1:2:4:8:16:32:48:48:48:48. The maximum period, 128 of the conventional, is reduced to 48. By using the modified-binary-coded scheme, the motional artifacts are reduced significantly, but still perceptible because they appear in forms of continuous lines. In order to make the disturbance less conspicuous, a 3D scattering technique is introduced. The technique has been made possible because of the redundancies of the modified-binary-coded scheme: namely, (1) the position of sub-field-block A (63) can be placed at one of the five positions among four sub-fields D (48), (2) there are various choices when newly assigning one of the four sub-fields D, (3) one can arbitrarily choose whether or not to assign a new sub-field D between the gray levels 48-63, 96-111, 144-160, and 192-207. By randomly selecting one of these emission patterns, the disturbances change their forms from continuous lines to scattered dots. The randomization can be performed at each horizontal line of the display, at each vertical line, at each pixel, of at each TV field. An appreciable improvement of moving picture quality has been realized without influencing the still image.

This paper compares three cell transfer quality control schemes, namely HPS, DAS and ORS, which integrate a preventive congestion control and a reactive congestion control in ATM switch. Simulation results showed that ORS achieves the largest network utilization, and HPS provides enough large throughput compared with DAS only when many VBR connections are multiplexed.

A new GSM data protocol called high speed circuit switched data (HSCSD) have been developed by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) for high speed file transfer and mobile video applications. HSCSD increases data rate by using multiple TDMA time slots (up to 8) instead of one time slot in the current GSM implementation. The problem of multiple time slot assignment is that blocking rate of the system will increase. This problem can be solved by flexible resource assignment where the service specifies the maximum and the minimum capacity. Based on the current available capacity of a base station, a user will be assigned any rate between the maximum and the minimum capacities. This article describes HSCSD protocol and presents four radio resource allocation strategies for HSCSD: always allocates maximum, always allocates minimum, allocates maximum unless available resources are not enough, and allocates resources according to the current blocking statistics of the base station. A simulation model is proposed to investigate the performance of these algorithms. The blocking probability, the call completion probability, and the quality of service are used to evaluate the effects of algorithms in different system behaviors.

The up and coming multimedia services are based on real-time high-speed networks. For efficient operation of such services, real-time and precise network management is essential. In this paper, we show that presently available MIB designs are severely inadequate to support real-time network management. We point out and analyze the management constraints and bottlenecks. The concept of quality of management of management information is introduced and its importance in practical network management is discussed. We have proposed a new MIB architecture that will raise the quality of management information to meet the requirements of managing high-speed networks and multimedia services. Experimental results from a prototype implementation of the new MIB architecture are presented.

The transform coding scheme is often used for data compression of images, but the blocking effects peculiar to the scheme appear more clearly in reproduced images as a coding rate (bits/pixel) decreases. These effects can sometimes be viewed as a periodical square-grid overlaying the images. In this paper,we propose a new method for selectively measuring the above blocking effects among several types of image degradation by means of the techniques of nonlinear signal processing for spectral infomation (cepstral techniques), in order to compare the amount of blocking effects for the different coding images. First a two-component model which consists of DC and AC images, is discussed from a viewpoint of subimage-by-subimage coding, and some basic properties of cepstral information for the model are investigated. Then we show a procedure to compute the cepstral information for two-dimensional image signals taking the horizontal and vertical directions ioto account, and introduce a cepstral mean square error (CMSE) as a new measure to estimate the amount of blocking effects. The computer simulation results for some test images using different coding schemes show that the amount of blocking effects in each image can be easily measured and estimated by this method even when the blocking effects appear slightly.

The benefits of ATM techniques have been widely recognized and many organizations envisage the introduction of ATM techniques into their telecommunication networks. The ATM benefits can, however, be fully exploited only after effective network resource management techniques have been developed. This paper focuses on CBR-VP management techniques. The ATM transport network architecture and VP roles are summarized. Next, the issues of VP accommodation design are described. The point is how to create a design that accommodates cell loss and cell delay jitter, both of which depend on various network parameters and conditions. For this purpose, analytical procedures based on an M/D/1 queueing model are adopted. The approximation method is shown to be very effective in practical use through computer analysis. The method guarantees conservative QOSs. Finally, the proposed method is applied to several design examples to illustrate VP management issues. The proposed method will enable ATM techniques to be introduced to our telecommunication networks by the mid-1990's.

This paper proposes an adaptive modulation system with a punctured convolutional code for land mobile communications to achieve high quality, high bit rate, and high spectral efficient data transmission in multipath fading environments. The proposed system adaptively controls the coding rate of the punctured convolutional code, symbol rate, and modulation level according to the instantaneous fading channel conditions. During good channel conditions, the modulation parameters are selected to increase the transmission rate as much as possible with satisfying a certain transmission quality. As channel conditions become worse, lower rate modulation parameters are applied or transmission is stopped. The performances in fading environments are evaluated theoretically and by computer simulations. The results show that the proposed system can realize higher quality transmission without the degradation in average bit rate compared to conventional adaptive modulation systems.

A trained sparse conjugate codebook is proposed for improving the speech quality of CELP-based coding in a noisy environment. Although CELP coding provides high quality at a low bit rate in a silent environment (creating clean speech), it cannot provide a satisfactory quality in a noisy environment because the conventional fixed codebook is designed to be suitable for clean speech. The proposed codebook consists of two sub-codebooks; each sub-codebook consists of a random component and a trained component. Each component has excitation vectors consisting of a few pulses. In the random component, pulse position and amplitude are determined randomly. Since the radom component does not depend on the speech characteristics, it handles noise better than the trained one. The trained component maintains high quality for clean speech. Since excitation vector is the sum of the two sub-excitation vectors, this codebook handles various speech conditions by selecting a sub-vector from each component. This codebook also reduces the computational complexity of a fixed codebook search and memory requirements compared with the conventional codebook. Subjective testing (absolute category rating (ACR) and degradation category rating (DCR)) indicated that this codebook improves speech quality compared with the conventional trained codebook for noisy speech. The ACR test showed that the quality of the 8 kbit/s CELP coder with this codebook is equivalent to that of the 32 kbit/s ADPCM for clean speech.

This paper discusses the reliability of the Modified EBU method compared with the EBU and DSCQS methods where the small and different levels of impairments exist in the coded HDTV sequences. The subjective evaluation tests are carried out in the full and limited impairment ranges. And it is shown that the Modified EBU method is most reliable for both ranges.

There are three viewpoints involved in software project management: process management, quality management and cost management. Software projects must be managed on the basis of these three viewpoints. However, in many cases process management, quality management and cost management systems are built separately as individual systems respectively. Construction of software project management systems which these three functions are integrated has been rare. Therefore, in order to construct a system integrating these functions, the authors clarify the significance of integration of application systems. And then the authors unveil the structure of a software project management system that process management system, quality management system and cost management system are integrated by using an object oriented database.