This paper summarizes recent reports on the internet's energy consumption and the internet's benefits on climate actions. It discusses energy-efficiency and the need for a common standard for evaluating the climate impact of future communication technologies and suggests a model that can be adapted to different internet applications such as streaming, online reading and downloading. The two main approaches today are based on how much data is transmitted or how much time the data is under way. The paper concludes that there is a need for a standardized method to estimate energy consumption and CO2 emission related to internet services. This standard should include a method for energy-optimizing future networks, where every Wh will be scrutinized.

Various optical fiber connectors have been developed during the 40 years since optical fiber communications systems were first put into practical use. This paper describes the key technologies for optical connectors and recent technical issues.

This paper reports the results of a new test on what types of failure cause falls in the stock prices of telecommunication service providers. This analysis of stock price is complementary to our previous one on market share. A clear result of our new test is that the type of failure causing falls in stock price is different from the type causing decline in market share. Specifically, the previous study identified frequent failures as causes of decline in market share, while the current study indicates large failures affecting many users as causes of falls in stock price. Together, these analyses give important information for reliability designs of telecommunications networks.

As a result of large-scale and complicated of ICT (Information and Communication Technology), the technologies of operations and management of ICT infrastructure and systems are changing to adopt the variation and diversity of usage and communication characteristics. In retrospect, operations and management technologies cover widely from the support of telecommunications operations and remote monitoring for maintaining network equipments, to an integrated network management framework for configuration, monitoring, testing and controls. Recently, the spread of network virtualization technologies enable agility, integrity, and resilience to ICT services. Operations and management technologies will be more important in future, for the support of integrated management of ICT infrastructure including computing resource, and automation of service operations. In this paper, we review research activities of the Technical Committee on Information and Communications Management (ICM) with discussions of individual research category. We then describe the state-of-the-art topics and future directions in the area of ICM.

In emergency situations, telecommunication networks become congested due to large numbers of call requests. Also, some infrastructure breaks down, so undamaged communication resources must be utilized more efficiently. Therefore, several lines in telephone exchanges are generally reserved for emergency calls whose users communicate crucial information. The number of lines reserved for emergency calls is determined by a threshold, on a trunk reservation control method. To accept both required emergency calls and more general calls, the traffic intensity of arriving emergency calls should be estimated in advance, and a threshold should be configured so that the number of reserved lines becomes lower than the estimation. Moreover, we propose that the holding time for general calls should be positively limited. By guaranteeing the holding time sufficient for communicating essential information, holding time limitation reduces long-period calls so more general calls are accepted. In this paper, we propose a new CAC method to utilize undamaged communication resources more efficiently during emergencies. Our proposed method accepts more general calls by collaboratively relaxing the threshold of trunk reservation and limiting holding time of general calls. This method is targeted at not only the telephone exchange but also various systems on networks, e.g. base stations of the wireless network or SIP servers. With our method, the threshold is configured in consideration of the ratio of traffic intensities estimated in advance. We modeled the telephone exchange as a queueing loss system and calculated call-blocking rates of both emergency and general calls by using computer simulation. The comparison with the conventional holding time limitation method showed that our proposed method accepts the required number of emergency calls by appropriately relaxing the threshold, while suppressing the increase in call-blocking of general calls.

Cognitive radio is an emerging technology to further improve the efficiency of spectrum use. Due to the nature of the technology, it has many facets, including its enabling technologies, its implementation issues and its regulatory implications. In ITU-R (International Telecommunications Union – Radiocommunication sector), cognitive radio systems are currently being studied so that ITU-R can have a clear picture on this new technology and its potential regulatory implications, from a viewpoint of global spectrum management. This paper introduces the recent results of the ITU-R studies on cognitive radio on both regulatory and technical aspects. This paper represents a personal opinion of the author, but not an official view of the ITU-R.

Monolithic integration of various kinds of optical components on a silicon wafer is the key to making silicon (Si) photonics practical technology. Applying silicon photonics to telecommunications further requires low insertion loss and polarization independence. We propose an integration concept for telecommunications based on Si and related materials and demonstrate monolithic integration of passive and dynamic functional components. This article shows the great potential of Si photonics technology for telecommunications.

Due to the discontinuity of packet based traffic, the user terminals in next generation mobile telecommunications systems will be equipped with sleep mode operation functions for power saving purpose. The sleep mode parameters should be appropriately configured so that power consumption can be sufficiently decreased while packet queue length and packet delay are restricted within a demanded level. This paper proposes an adaptive sleep mode parameter configuration scheme which is able to jointly optimize the inactivity timer and sleep period in response to the variation of user traffic arrival pattern. The optimization target of this scheme is to minimize mobile terminal power consumption while ensuring that the mean downlink packet queue length do not exceed a certain threshold. Results of computer simulations prove that, the presented approach perfectly manages packet queue length restriction, packet delay control and power saving in a wide range of user packet inter-arrival rates both in single- and dual-service scenarios.

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.

Displaying a 3D geometric model of a user in real time is an advantage for a telecommunication system because depth information is useful for nonverbal communication such as finger-pointing and gesturing that contain 3D information. However, the range image acquired by a rangefinder suffers from errors due to image noises and distortions in depth measurement. On the other hand, a 2D image is free from such errors. In this paper, we propose a new method for a shared space communication system that combines the advantages of both 2D and 3D representations. A user is represented as a 3D geometric model in order to exchange nonverbal communication cues. A background is displayed as a 2D image to give the user adequate information about the environment of the remote site. Additionally, a high-resolution texture taken by a video camera is projected onto the 3D geometric model of the user. This is done because the low resolution of the image acquired by the rangefinder makes it difficult to exchange facial expressions. Furthermore, to fill in the data occluded by the user, old pixel values are used for the user area in the 2D background image. We have constructed a prototype of a high presence shared space communication system based on our method. Through a number of experiments, we have found that our method is more effective for telecommunication than a method with only a 2D or 3D representation.

Software rejuvenation is a proactive fault management technique that has been extensively studied in the recent literature. In this paper, we focus on an example for a telecommunication billing application considered in Huang et al. (1995) and develop the discrete-time stochastic models to estimate the optimal software rejuvenation schedule. More precisely, two software availability models with rejuvenation are formulated via the discrete semi-Markov processes, and the optimal software rejuvenation schedules which maximize the steady-state availabilities are derived analytically. Further, we develop statistically non-parametric algorithms to estimate the optimal software rejuvenation schedules, provided that the complete sample data of failure times are given. Then, a new statistical device, called the discrete total time on test statistics, is introduced. Finally, we examine asymptotic properties for the statistical estimation algorithms proposed in this paper through a simulation experiment.

During TCP/IP communications, MobileIP routing optimization functions causes out-of-order TCP packet sequences. To solve this problem, we propose a dynamic delayed ACK control scheme in which the wireless link-state management part notifies the upper TCP/IP layer of base-station hand-over, and at this time the TCP/IP layer sends dynamic delayed ACKs in response by using two-level-timer (i.e., hard-timer and soft-timer) processing. Simulation results confirm that applying dynamic delayed ACK control to MobileIP networks improves average throughput.

This paper presents an intelligent routing algorithm, called Q-Agents, which bases its actions only on the agent-environment interaction. This algorithm combines properties of three learning strategies (Q-learning, dual reinforcement learning and learning based on ant colony behavior), adding to them two further mechanisms to improve its adaptability. Hence, the proposed algorithm is composed of a set of agents, moving through the network independently and concurrently, searching for the best routes. The agents share knowledge about the quality of the paths traversed through indirect communication. Information about the network and traffic status is updated by using Q-learning and dual reinforcement updating rules. Q-Agents were applied to a model of an AT&T circuit-switched network. Experiments were carried out on the performance of the algorithm under variations of traffic patterns, load level and topology, and with addition of noise in the information used to route calls. Q-Agents suffered a lower number of lost calls than two algorithms based entirely on ant colony behavior.

A timer-based scheme is proposed to manage information within terminal and service profiles for both incall registration/deregistration of UPT users and incall registration resets of terminal owners. In the timer-based scheme, information related to incall registration for a UPT user in a terminal profile is deleted due to a timer expiration without accessing the terminal profile. The performance of the timer-based scheme is compared with the previously proposed request-based scheme in terms of; 1) total cost and, 2) the number of terminal profile accesses per unit time for a terminal. Even though provision of the timer-based scheme requires the modification of incoming call delivery procedure, the timer-based scheme can reduce both the total cost and the number of terminal profile accesses compared to the previously proposed request-based scheme.

Method of measuring disturbances at telecommunication ports has been published by IEC/CISPR. A method using both disturbance voltage and current probes is useful because it does not require any impedance stabilization networks (ISNs). In this paper, the values measured using this method are theoretically and experimentally compared with those measured using ISNs. An experiment using a simple circuit model presents that the value obtained by using this method is lower than that by using ISNs in some cases. A theoretical analysis however derives that the estimated value by adding the margin to the measured value is always guaranteed to be large compared with the value measured by ISNs. The analysis also indicates that the margin is dependent on the deviation of phase angle of ISN and can be calculated by a simple equation. The experiment using actual equipment shows that the estimated results including the margin is always larger than those measured by ISNs. The results of the study show that the method using both disturbance voltage and current probes can be used for measuring the disturbances by taking the margin into account, and this margin can be reduced by improving the phase angle characteristics of the common mode impedance of ISNs.

We investigated the dependence of the desired echo return loss on frequency for various hands-free telecommunication conditions by subjective assessment. The desired echo return loss as a function of frequency (DERLf) is an important factor in the design and performance evaluation of a subband echo canceller, and it is a measure of what is considered an acceptable echo caused by electrical loss in the transmission line. The DERLf during single-talk was obtained as attenuated band-limited echo levels that subjects did not find objectionable when listening to the near-end speech and its band-limited echo under various hands-free telecommunication conditions. When we investigated the DERLf during double-talk, subjects also heard the speech in the far-end room from a loudspeaker. The echo was limited to a 250-Hz bandwidth assuming the use of a subband echo canceller. The test results showed that: (1) when the transmission delay was short (30 ms), the echo component around 2 to 3 kHz was the most objectionable to listeners; (2) as the transmission delay rose to 300 ms, the echo component around 1 kHz became the most objectionable; (3) when the room reverberation time was relatively long (about 500 ms), the echo component around 1 kHz was the most objectionable, even if the transmission delay was short; and (4) the DERLf during double-talk was about 5 to 10 dB lower than that during single-talk. Use of these DERLf values will enable the design of more efficient subband echo cancellers.

Mobile communication services have become popular due to the rapid popularization of cellular mobile telephones. In order to offer services to an increasing number of users and to upgrade services, the development of Third-Generation Mobile Telecommunication is required. Our proposed system utilizing W-CDMA enables high-speed variable data communications, uninterrupted hand-over between communication zones, doubling of subscriber capacity and reduction of operation costs. Various actions are being taken internationally toward the establishment of a global standard for the Third-Generation Mobile Telecommunication System, aiming at its practical application around AD 2000. The W-CDMA system has been adopted as the standard for Japan. We are developing experimental W-CDMA system equipment. For this development, many Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices and Digital Signal Processors (DSP) have been used to meet the changes of equipment specifications and system evaluation parameters. By developing customized Large-scale Integrated circuit (LSI) devices and high-speed DSP, a small-size portable phone and a compact visual phone have been realized. Also, high-density mounting of the signal processing parts has been done in the Base Transceiver Station (BTS). In the development of a Mobile Communication Controller Simulator (MCC-SIM), the developmental period has been shortened by using our ATM switching system (AD8700) and generic-use PBX (Pana EXA) in the proposed system. In this paper, the features of the W-CDMA system and the outline of the newly developed experimental equipment have been described.

Feature interaction detection determines whether interactions occur or not between the new and existing telecommunication services. Most of conventional detection methods on state transition model utilize an exhaustive search. The exhaustive search is fundamentally very powerful in the sense that all interactions are exactly detected. However, it may suffer from the state explosion problem due to the exponential growth of the number of states in the model when the number of users and the number of features increase. In order to cope with this problem, we propose a new detection method using a state reduction technique. By means of a symmetric relation, called permutation symmetry, we succeed in reducing the size of the model while preserving the necessary information for the interaction detection. Experimental evaluation shows that, for practical interaction detection with three users, the proposed method achieves about 80% reduction in space and time, and is more scalable than the conventional ones especially for the increase of the number of users in the service.

This paper clarifies the appropriate traffic domains for combination between two database schemes (i. e. , HLR database scheme and VLR database scheme) and two call routing schemes (i. e. , Redirection Routing scheme and Look-a-head Routing scheme) in the Global Mobility Network (GLOMONET), which is able to provide global roaming service for the personal telecommunication user. The appropriate domains for combination between each scheme are shown to depend on user's mobility (i. e. the frequency of a user's access to a network where the user stays, the length of the period during which the user stays in the same network). Whether the appropriate domains for the HLR database scheme exist depends only on the frequency of the user's access to the network. When there are appropriate domains for the HLR database scheme, increasing the frequency of the user's access to the network, decreasing the length of the period the user stays in the user's home network, or increasing the length of the period the user stays in a network that isn't the user's home network widens the domains where the VLR database scheme is appropriate.

The intermediate language (IL) modularizes a compiler into target processor independent and dependent parts, called the front-end and the back-end. By adding a new back-end, it is possible to port existing software from one processor to another. This paper presents a new efficient approach to achieve multiple targeting to quite different architectures using different processors as well, by translating from one IL into other existing ILs. This approach makes it possible to reuse existing back-ends. It has been successfully applied to a commercial-scale project for porting public switching system software. Since the target ILs were not predictable in advance, we provided an abstract syntax tree (AST) with attributes accessible by abstract data type (ADT) interface to convey the source language information from our front-end to back-ends. It was translated into several ILs that were developed independently. These translations made the compiler available in a very short time for different cross-target platforms and on several workstations we needed. The structure of this AST and the mapping to these ILs are presented, and retargeting cost is evaluated.