Significant traffic variations occur in telecommunication networks. This paper focuses on hour-to-hour traffic variations during 24 hours and investigates the possibility of using idle periods effectively by introducing non-realtime service at a discount rate. In order to provide non-realtime service, memory is placed at each telecom center. When immediate service is not available, messages of non-realtime calls are stored in the memory and served later when network resources are available. Realtime calls are served with preference. A basic model and a method of dimensioning the memory capacity are presented. The basic model is extended to the network model, and methods of designing a minimum cost network and pricing and profit issues are presented. The results for a basic model are verified by traffic simulation. Numerical examples are given to show the effectiveness of non-realtime service.

Verification of timed bisimulation equivalence is generally difficult because of the state explosion caused by concrete time values. In this paper, we propose a verification method to verify timed bisimulation equivalence of two timed processes using a symbolic technique similar to [1]. We first propose a new model of timed processes, Alternating Timed Symbolic Labelled Transition System (A-TSLTS). In an A-TSLTS, each state has some parameter variables, whose values determine its behaviour. Each transition in an A-TSLTS has a quard predicate. The transition is executable if and only if its guard predicate is true underspecified parameter values. In the proposed method, we can obtain the weakest condition for a state-pair in a finite A-TSLTS, which the parameter values in the weakest condition must satisfy to make the state-pair be timed bisimulation equivalent.

Key aspects and technologies of future satellite communications are discussed toward multimedia era. Onboard processing called the switchboard in the sky and networking taking full advantage of features peculiar to satellite communications are pointed out as essential technologies to overcome a variety of big challenges for realizing future satellite communications. Several experimental and commercial systems are introduced as the first step toward multimedia era.

Various approaches to reduce access network cost are discussed with emphasis on system and component technologies. On-going access network opticalization subjects are discussed with respect to PDS-based access systems.

This paper proposes a new AFC (automatic frequency control) circuit employing a double-product type frequency discriminator to enable fast acquisition in very-low CNR (carrier to noise power ratio) environments. The frequency step responses of the proposed AFC circuit are theoretically analyzed. In addition this paper evaluates the performance of the proposed AFC circuit by computer simulation in very-low CNR environments. The simulation results confirm that click noise at the frequency discriminator causes large frequency tracking error and that this error can be improved by increasing the delay time of the double-product type frequency discriminator. The frequency error can be also reduced by introducing the proposed frequency discriminator to modify the frequency error detection performance. The acquisition time of the proposed AFC circuit can be reduced by about 100 symbols compared to the conventional cross-product type AFC circuit.

This paper proposes a time-dependent gateway earth station (GES) assignment method for a user terminal in non-geostationary orbiting satellite systems. Time-dependent nature of the GES service area is first discussed for an example intermediate circular orbit system. Then, the time-dependent GES assignment method is proposed. Finally, the advantage of the proposed method is shown by several calculation results.

This letter shows an architectural approach for analyzing real-time aspects of distributed multimedia processing systems. The results of this letter are 1) to propose the concept real-time supporting environments which consist of real-time traffic management/control environment and real-time application environment and 2) to analyze the real-time requirements of such environments.

A low dark current CCD linear image sensor with pixels consisting of a photodiode and a storage area has been developed. In order to suppress the dark current, the wafer process has been improved. An impurity profile of a photodiode was modified to minimize depletion width, which was monitored by the photodiode potential. Surface states under the storage gate were decreased by hydrogen annealing with plasma-deposited silicon nitride as an inter metal dielectric film. As the isolation dose decreased, the dark current both in the photodiode and in the storage region were effectively suppressed. Finally, low dark currents of 5 pA/cm2 at photodiode and 120 pA/cm2 at storage area were obtained.

Recently, computer communications, especially Internet services, have become popular and as a result, high-speed network access circuits are now desired. NTT has developed an economical and high-speed multimedia computer network, combining satellite and terrestrial circuits. The satellite circuit transmission rate is approximately 30-Mbit/s. To select IP packets from such high-speed satellite circuits, this system employs the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) in the satellite section and we have developed a new economical satellite circuit receive adapter (SRA) for the satellite section. This paper describes the system configurations and the key network control technologies for multi-link routing, high speed processing and broadcasting.

A mechanism of an integrated switching system architecture where PS, CS, and ATM switching functions are integrated based on a hierarchical memory system concept is discussed. A packet buffering control mechanism, and practical random time-slot assignment mechanism for CS traffic, which are composed of multiple bearer rate data traffic are then described. The feasibility of the random time-slot assignment mechanism is also confirmed by a practical experimental system using VLSI technology, particularly, content addressable memory (CAM) technology. The required queuing delay between the nodes for the corresponding call set up procedure is also shown and its application is clarified. For practical digital networks that provide various types of data communications including voice, data, and video services, it is highly desirable to evaluate the transmission efficiency of integrating packet switching (PS) type non-real time traffic and circuit switching (CS) type real time traffic. Transmission line utilization improvement is expected when the random time-slot assignment and the movable boundary scheme on a TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) data frame are adopted. The corresponding control procedure by signaling between switching nodes is also examined.

In this paper, a new spectral subtraction technique with two microphone inputs is proposed. In conventional spectral subtraction using a single microphone, the averaged noise spectrum is subtracted from the observed short-time input spectrum. This results in reduction of mean value of noise spectrum only, the component varying around the mean value remaining intact. In the method proposed in this paper, the short-time noise spectrum excluding the speech component is estimated by introducing the blocking matrix used in the Griffiths-Jim-type adaptive beamformer with two microphone inputs, combined with the spectral compensation technique. By subtracting the estimated short-time noise spectrum from the input spectrum, not only the mean value of the noise spectrum but also the component varying around the mean value can be reduced. This method can be interpreted as a partial construction of the adaptive beamformer where only the amplitude of the short-time noise spectrum is estimated, while the adaptive beamformer is equivalent to the estimator of the complex short-time noise spectrum. By limiting the estimation to the amplitude spectrum, the proposed system achieves better performance than the adaptive beamformer in the case when the number of sound sources exceeds the number of microphones.

The Time-Slicing paradigm is a newly developed method for the training of neural networks for speech recognition. The neural net is trained to spot the syllables in a continuous stream of speech. It generates a transcription of the utterance, be it a word, a phrase, etc. Combined with a simple error recovery method the desired units (words or phrases) can be retrieved. This paradigm uses a recurrent neural network trained in a modular fashion with natural connectionist glue. It processes the input signal sequentially regardless of the input's length and immediately extracts the syllables spotted in the speech stream. As an example, this character string is then compared to a set of possible words, picking out the five closest candidates. In this paper we describe the time-slicing paradigm and the training of the recurrent neural network together with details about the training samples. It also introduces the concept of natural connectionist glue and the recurrent neural network's architecture used for this purpose. Additionally we explain the errors found in the output and the process to reduce them and recover the correct words. The recognition rates of the network and the recovery rates for the words are also shown. The presented examples and recognition rates demonstrate the potential of the time-slicing method for continuous speech recognition.

New interference cancellation technique using time division reference signal is proposed for optical synchronous code-division multiple-access (CDMA) systems with modified prime sequence codes. In the proposed system one user in each group is not allowed to access the network at each time, and this unallowable user's channel is used as a reference signal for other users in the same group at the time. The performance of the proposed system using an avalanche photodiode (APD) is analyzed where the Gaussian approximation of the APD output is employed and the effects of APD noise, thermal noise, and interference for the receiver are included. The proposed cancellation techniqus is shown to be effective to improve the bit error probability performance and to alleviate the error floor when the number of users and the received optical power are not appreciably small.

A siphon (or alternatively a structutal deadlock) of a Petri net is defined as a set S of places such that existence of any edge from a transition t to a place of S implies that there is an edge from some place of S to t. A minimal siphon is a siphon such that any proper subset is not a siphon. The results of the paper are as follows. (1) The problem of deciding whether or not a given Petri net has a minimum siphon (i.e., a minimum-cardinality minimal siphon) is NP-complete. (2) A polynomial-time algorithm to find, if any, a minimal siphon or even a maximal calss of mutually disjoint minimal siphons of a general Petri net is proposed.

Time-domain characteristics of the signal of an open-loop fiber optic gyroscope were analyzed. The waveform moments of the gyroscope signal were dependent upon the rotation-induced Sagnac phase, just as the signal frequency spectra are. The peak positions of the time signal also varied with the supplied rotation, and the Sagnac phase could be read out, with optimum sensitivity, from the intervals between peaks. To demonstrate the time-domain measurement technique, the gyroscope signal was transferred to lower frequencies and the signal period was lengthened. This equivalent-time scheme lowered the operational speed requirement on the signal processing electronics and improved measurement resolution.

A subclass of context-free languages, called pure context-free languages, which is generated by context-free grammar with only one type of symbol (i.e., terminals and nonterminals are not distinguished), is introduced and the problem of identifying from positive data a restricted class of monogenic pure context-free languages (mono-PCF languages, in short) is investigated. The class of mono-PCF languages is incomparable to the class of regular languages. In this paper we show that the class of mono-PCF languages is polynomial time identifiable from positive data. That is, there is an algorithm that, given a mono-PCF language L, identifies from positive data, a grammar generating L, called a monogenic pure context-free grammar (mono-PCF grammar, in short) satisfying the property that the time for updating a conjecture is bounded by O(N3), where N is the sum of lengths of all positive data provided. This is in contrast with another result in this paper that the class of PCF languages is not identifiable in the limit from positive data.

This paper concerns a Petri-net-based model for describing reactive and concurrent systems. Although many high-level Petri nets have been proposed, they are insufficiently practical to describe reactive and concurrent systems in the detail modeling, design and implementation phases. They are mainly intended to describe concurrent systems in the rough modeling phase and lack in several important features (e.g., concurrent tasks, task communication/synchronization, I/O interface, task scheduling) which the most actual implementations of reactive and concurrent systems have. Therefore it is impossible to simulate and analyze the systems accurately without explicitly modeling these features. On the other hand, programming languages based on Petri nets are deeply dependent on their execution environments and not sophisticated as modeling and specification languages. This paper proposes MENDEL net which is a high-level Petri net extended by incorporating concurrent tasks, task communication/synchronization, I/O interface, and task scheduling in a sophisticated manner. MENDEL nets are a wide-spectrum modeling language, that is, they are suitable for not only modeling but also designing and implementing reactive and concurrent systems.

The join operation is one of the most expensive operations in relational database systems. So far many researchers have proposed several hash-based algorithms for the join operation. In a hash-based algorithm, a large relation is first partitioned into several clusters. When clusters overflow, that is, when the size of the cluster exceeds the size of main memory, the performance of hash-based algorithms degrade substantially. Previously we proposed the GN hash algorithm which is robust in the presence of overflown clusters. The GN hash join algorithm combines the Grace hash join and hash-based nested-loop join algorithms. We analyze the performance of the GN hash join algorithm when applied to relations with a non-uniform Zipf-like data distribution. The performance is compared with other hash-based join algorithms: Grace, Hybrid, nested-loop, and simple hash join. The GN hash join algorithm is found to have higher performance on non-uniformly distributed relations. In this paper, the robustness of the GN hash algorithm from the point of choosing a run time method is verified. In the GN hash algorithm, the criterion for selecting a run time method from the two algorithm is determined by using the value calculated from the I/O cost formula of the two algorithms. This criterion cannot be guaranteed to be optimal under every data distribution, that is, the optimal criterion may change depending on the data distribution. When the data distribution is unknown, all data has to be repartitioned in order to get an accurate optimal criterion. However, from the view of choosing a method at run time, it is necessary for the GN hash algorithm to determine an appropriate criterion regardless of the data distribution. Thus, we inspect the criterion adopted in our algorithm under a simulation environment. From simulation results, we find that the range of the criterion is very wide under any data distribution and assure that the criterion determined with the assumption of a uniform data distribution can be used even when the data is highly skewed. Consequently, we can conclude that the GN hash algorithm which dynamically selects the nested-loop and Grace hash algorithms provides good performance in the presence of data skew and its performance is not sensitive to the criterion.

A minimal siphon (or alternatively a structural deadlock) of a Petri net is defined as a minimal set S of places such that existence of any edge from a transition t to a place of S implies that there is an edge from some place of S to t. The subject of the paper is to find a minimal siphon containing a given set of specified places of a general Petri net.

This paper presents a new Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) demodulation method using the Short Time-Discrete Fourier Transform (ST-DFT) analysis to combat large frequency offset with time variation in low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications systems. This demodulation method can demodulate the received signal only by searching for the instantaneous spectrum energy peaks without complicated carrier recovery. In addition, it is insensitive to the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) degradation caused by the excessively wide bandwidth of the receiver front-end band pass filter. Furthermore, the ST-DFT analysis combined with a differential encoding scheme gives FSK demodulation method a potential robustness against large and fast time-varying frequency offset.