This paper proposes novel optical path accommodation design algorithms for networks wherein the number of wavelengths multiplexed into a fiber is restricted. This algorithm optimizes both optical path route and wavelength assignment in VWP/WP networks. It minimizes optical path cross-connect (OPXC) system scale in terms of incoming/outgoing fiber port numbers. A comparison in terms of required OPXC system scale between the WP and VWP schemes is demonstrated for the first time.

Information systems to support cooperative work among people should be first designed to help humam communication. However, there are few systems based on the analysis of human communication. Standing on this situation, we propose a meeting support system for the participants' understandings by indicating the suitable information about the topic of the scene". Our system provides only useful information by monitoring each statement without complex methods. To show something useful multi-media information for members, we propose the following structure of the meeting on the basis of the analysis of communication. Each statement is classified into two levels, either; a statement about the progress" of the meeting (context-level utterances) or, a statement about objects" (content-level utterances). Further, content-level utterances are classified into two types, position utterances and argument utterances. Using this classification of statements, the proceeding of the meeting is represented as the tree model which is called a context-tree". If the structure of meetings is fixed, it is possible to select only useful information from all shared information for members by analyzing each content-level utterance. The system introduced in this paper shows appropriate multi-media information about the topic of the scene" by using the above model. We have implemented a prototype system based on the above ideas. Moreover, we have mode some experiments to show the effectiveness of this system. Those results show that our method is effective to improve the productivity" of meetings.

The background concepts and methodologies of the knowledge-based program understander ALPUS is discussed. ALPUS understands user's buggy Pascal programs using four kinds of programming knowledge: the knowledge on algorithms, programming techniques, the Pascal language, and logical bugs. The knowledge on algorithms, the key knowledge, is represented in a form of hierarchical data structure called Hierarchical Procedure Graph (HPG). In HPG each node represents a chunk of operations called process," which is consisted of sub-processes. The other knowledge is maintained as independent knowledge bases and linked to associated processes of the HPG. The knowledge about bugs acquired by cognitive experiment is grouped into three categories: bugs on algorithms, programming techniques, and the Pascal language, and connected to associated elements of programming knowledge respectively. ALPUS tries to understand user's buggy programs, detects logical bugs, infers user's intentions, and gives advices for fixing bugs. Program understanding is achieved by three steps: normalization, variable identification, and process and technique identification. Normalization results in improving flexibility of understanding. Variable, process and technique identifications are achieved by knowledge-based pattern matching. Intentions are inferred by means of information attached to buggy patterns. The result of comprehension is reported to a user (i.e., student). Experimental results using Quicksort programs written by students show that the HPG formalism is quite powerful in understanding algorithm-oriented programs. The ALPUS's way of program comprehension is useful in the situation of programming education in an intermediate class of an engineering school. The ALPUS system is a subsystem of the intelligent programming environment INTELLITUTOR for learning programming, which was implemented in the frame-based knowledge engineering environment ZERO on a UNIX workstation.

This paper discusses the performance of non-coherent reception for M-ary spread-spectrum (M-ary/SS) signals in the presence of carrier frequency offset. In general, the M-ary/SS scheme is expected to be of higher spectral efficiency than the conventional DS/SS schemes, but its performance may be degraded by the carrier frequency offset. We, therefore, analyze the effect of carrier frequency offset on the performance of the non-coherent M-ary/SS system with orthogonal modulation using a set of sequences generated by the Hadamard matrix. As a result of the analysis, it has been found that the carrier frequency offset may cause a great deal of degradation in the performance, and that its effect has a distinctive property which is due to the characteristic of Hadamard matrix, at the same time. Making use of this property, we propose two schemes that can mitigate the effect of carrier frequency offset: one is based on choise of the code sequences, the other is on the error correcting code. The effectiveness of the schemes is evaluated in the terms of symbol-error-rates through analysis and computer simulation.

This paper describes, from a system architectural viewpoint, how knowledge-based technologies have been utilized in developing EXLOG (an LSI circuit synthesis system) and SOFTEX (a software synthesis system) inside the authors' projects. Although the system architectures for EXLOG and SOFTEX started from the same production systems, consisting of transformation rules in the middle of the 1980's, both branched off in different directions in the 1990's. Based on experiences with EXLOG and SOFTEX, the differences between LSI and software design models are discussed, and the future directions are indicated for the knowledge-based design system architectures.

The influence of cochannel, adjacent channel and intermodulation constraints on the capacity of the frequency band in the dynamic channel allocation problem is estimated. Algorithms including a backtracking phase with partial reassignment of currently assigned requirements are proposed. Numerical examples show a strong possibility of a 20% capacity improvement compared to the conventional strategies.

The use of existing metallic local line facilities is being studied for providing "video on demand (VOD)" services to residential subscribers across asymmetric digital subscriber lines (ADSL). ADSL carries a high-rate channel in the downstream direction from a central office (CO) to the subscriber, and a low-rate channel in both directions on an existing 2-wire pair. Audio and video signals are compressed by the moving picture experts group's standardized algorithms (MPEG 1 and MPEG 2), and delivered to the subscriber in the high-rate channel. Control (demand and response) signals are transceived in the low-rate channel. This paper presents the line length coverage of ADSL systems given the environment of NTT's local networks. The bit rates in the downstream and upstream directions are assumed to be 1.6-9.2Mbit/s and 24kbit/s, respectively. Two types of ADSL systems are considered: transceiving ADSL signals using the plain old telephone service (POTS) line or the basic rate access (BRA; 320 kbaud ping-pong transmission system) line on the same 2-wire pair. 16-QAM, 32-QAM and 64-QAM are compared as transmission schemes. Intra-system crosstalk interference (interference between identical transmission systems) and inter-system crosstalk interference (interference between different transmission systems) with the existing digital subscriber lines (DSL) are estimated. It is shown that the inter-system crosstalk interference with BRA is most stringent, and ADSL with 16-QAM yields the best performance in NTT's local networks. This paper concludes that realizing ADSL with 16-QAM can achieve channel capacities of up to 9.2Mbit/s for fiber-in-the-feeder (FITF) access systems, but the possibility of applying ADSL to direct access systems is remote except for a restricted short haul use. Some comparisons regarding American local networks are also described.

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) represents a wide class of computer based tutoring systems, designed with an extensive use of the technology of modern Artificial Intelligence. Successful applications of various expert systems and other knowledge based systems of AI gave rise to a new wave of interests to ITS. Yet, many authors conclude that practically valuable achievements of ITS are rather modest despite the relatively long history of attempts to use knowledge based systems for tutoring. It is advocated in this paper that some basic obstacles for designing really successful ITS are due to the lack of well understood and sound models of the education process. The paper proposes to overcome these problems by borrowing the required models from AI and adjacent fields. In particular, the concept of Learning Levels from AI might be very useful both for giving a valuable retrospective analysis of computer based tutoring and for suggestion of some perspective directions in the field of ITS.

We consider the identification of a class of systems which are both time-varying and nonlinear. Time-varying nonlinear systems are often encountered in practice, but tend to be avoided due to the difficulties that arise in modelling and estimation. We study a particular time-varying polynomial model, which is a member of the class of time-varying Wiener models. The model can characterise both time-variation and nonlinearity in a straightforward manner, without requiring an excessively large number of coefficients. We formulate a procedure to find least-squares estimates of the model coefficients. An advantage of the approach is that systems with rapidly changing dynamics can be characterised. In addition, we do not require that the input is stationary or Gaussian. The approach is validated with an application to an automobile modelling problem, where a time-varying nonlinear model is seen to more accurately characterise the system than a time-invariant nonlinear one.

A bottleneck identification methodology is proposed for the performance-oriented design of shared-bus multiprocessors, which are composed of several major subsystems (e.g. off-chip cache, bus, memory, I/O). A subsystem with the longest access time per instruction is the one that limits processor performance and creates a bottleneck to the system. The methodology also facilitates further refined analysis on the access time of the bottleneck subsystem to help identify the causes of the bottleneck. Example performance model of a particular shared-bus multiprocessor architecture with separate address bus and data bus is developed to illustrate the key idea of the bottleneck identification methodology. Accessing conflicts in subsystems and DMA transfers are also considered in the model.

This paper deals with the method of integration of voice and data in wireless communication systems. By applying the DSV (Data Steal into Voice) technique to D-TDMA (Dynamic Time Division Multiple Access) systems, this paper presents an MAC (Media Access Control) method of integration of voice and data for the systems such as cellular radios and cordless phones. After a brief review of the D-TDMA scheme and the DSV technique, the protocol called D-TDMA/DSV is described. Then, a static analysis to derive the channel capacity and a dynamic analysis to evaluate the throughput and delay performance are presented. An extension of TFA (Transient Fluid Approximation) analysis is employed in the dynamic analysis. With the same system parameters, the capacity of D-TDMA/DSV is compared with that of the traditional D-TDMA. Under the limitation of the blocking probability required for cellular radios, some numerical examples of dynamic analysis are given to show the throughput and delay performance of the system.

A new variable step size Least Mean Square (LMS) FIR adaptive filter algorithm (VSS-CC) is proposed. In the VSS-CC algorithm the step size adjustment (α) is controlled by using the correlation between the output error (e(n)) and the adaptive filter output ((n)). At small times, e(n) and (n) are correlated which will cause a large α providing faster tracking. When the algorithm converges, the correlation will result in a small size α to yield smaller misadjustments. Computer simulations show that the proposed VSS-CC algori thm achieves a better Echo Return Loss Enhancemen (ERLE) than a conventional NLMS Algorithm. The VSS-CC algorithm was also compared with another variable step algorithm, achieving the VSS-CC a better ERLE when the additive noise is incremented.

Data flow is a paradigm for concurrent computations in which a collection of parallel processes communicate asynchronously. For nondeterministic data flow networks many semantic models have been defined, however, it is complex to reason about the semantics of a network. In this paper, we introduce a transformation between data flow networks and the LOTOS specification language to make available theories and tools developed for process algebras for the semantic analysis based on traces of the networks. The transformation does not establish a one-to-one mapping between the traces of a data flow network and the LOTOS specification, but maps each network in a specification which usually contains more traces. The obtained system specification has the same set of traces as the corresponding network if they are finite, otherwise also non fair traces are included. Formal analysis and verification methods can still be applied to prove properties of the original data flow network, allowing in case of networks with finite traces to prove also network equivalence.

This paper discusses advanced wireless communication technologies for achieving future high-speed mobile radios. Mainly, five technical fields are considered, that is, multi-level modulation for transmitting high-capacity information signal, advanced adaptive wireless system flexibly changing modulation level, symbol rate and traffic according to fading conditions, adaptive multicarrier system transmitting multimedia signals by changing the number of carrier according to the capacity of the signals, new CDMA techniques for mapping different bit rate services onto the same allocated bandwidth at the same time, and optical-linked microcellular communication system with millimeter wave air interface.

This paper presents an improved neural network for channel assignment problems in cellular mobile communication systems in the new co-channel interference model. Sengoku et al. first proposed the neural network for the same problem, which can find solutions only in small size cellular systems with up to 40 cells in our simulations. For the practical use in the next generation's cellular systems, the performance of our improved neural network is verified by large size cellular systems with up to 500 cells. The newly defined energy function and the motion equation with two heuristics in our neural network achieve the goal of finding optimum or near-optimum solutions in a nearly constant time.

CDMA cellular land network (CCLN) consists of base stations connected to selector bank subsystem. In the case of considering only the voice traffics, CCLN can be designed based on E1/T1 physical line and HDLC protocol with fixed or variable length. However, it is necessary to support not only voice but also data traffics in CDMA cellular system. Thus, it is needed to use physical lines efficiently to increase bandwidth efficiency and transmission speed. However, the conventional CCLN has some problems that the bandwidth is wasted because each BTS has its own private line. In this paper, the method using Distributed Queue Dual Bus (DQDB) Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) as a CDMA interconnect subsystem (CIS) is considered, and the performances of conventional and proposed methods constructing CIS are analyzed by computer simulation. According to the simulation results, if the traffics from all mobile stations are uniformly distributed among all BTSs, the performances of both conventional and proposed methodology have turned out to be almost equal. However, the performance of methodology using the DQDB MAN is much better than that of conventional method, in the case that the traffics from all mobile stations are nonuniformly distributed.

To support high bit rate and high quality indoor radio communication systems, we have to solve intersymbol interference (ISI) problem caused by frequency-selective fading. Recently multi-carrier modulation technique is considered to be one of the effective methods for this problem. In this paper we propose Partial Frequency ARQ (Automatic Repeat reQuest) system which can achieve effective ARQ scheme for multi-carrier packet communication. This system operates partial retransmission of erroneous power faded packets, and it is superior to the traditional ARQ systems. Furthermore two different protocols are examined for this system: Static Carrier Assignment (SCA) and Dynamic Carrier Assignment (DCA). By computer simulation we found that DCA method can achieve better performance than SCA in terms of both throughput and packet transmission delay.

This paper presents an analytical study and computer-based model of radio wave polarization propagating through a microcell. It covers the following topics: the influence of random orientation of a handset terminal on the performance of communication systems using either a linearly or circularly polarized base-station antenna; an analysis of the computer-based simulation of the power response on different polarizations in a street-canyon microcell.

An adaptive joint-process IIR filter with generalized lattice structure is constructed. This filter can borrow both FIR and IIR features and simultaneously holds the well-known merits of lattice structure.

Ever increasing demand for higher bandwidth memories, which is fueled by multimedia and 3D graphics, seems to be somewhat satisfied with various emerging memory solutions. This paper gives a review of these emerging DRAM architectures and a performance comparison based on a condition to let the readers have some perspectives of the future and optimized graphics systems.