In this paper, we propose a test methodology for core-based system LSIs. Our test methodology aims to decrease testing time for core-based system LSIs. In our method, every core is supplied with several sets of test vectors. Every set of test vectors guarantees sufficient fault coverage. Each set of test vectors consists of two parts. One is based on built-in self-test (BIST) and the other is based on external testing. These sets of test vectors are designed to have different ratio of BIST to external testing each other for every core. We can minimize testing time for core-based system LSIs by selecting from the given sets of test vectors for each core. The main contributions of this paper are summarized as follows. (i) BIST is efficiently combined with external testing to relax the limitation of the external primary inputs and outputs. (ii) External testing for one of cores and BISTs for the others are performed in parallel to reduce the total testing time. (iii) The testing time minimization problem for core-based system LSIs is formulated as a combinatorial optimization problem to select the optimal set of test vectors from given sets of test vectors for each core.

The problem of electromagnetic scattering caused by inductive discontinuities locate in parallel-plate waveguides, in particular when dealing with discontinuous conductors of finite thickness, is analyzed using the modified residue-calculus method, the equations suitable for a numerical calculation are derived. The incident wave is taken to be the dominant mode, and the reflection and transmission properties of a symmetrical inductive iris are discussed.

This paper explores virtual destination (VD)/virtual source (VS)-based available bit rate (ABR) flow control performance, targeting wireless asynchronous transfer mode (WATM) application that can incur long link-delays because of employing radio-medium sharing and/or radio-specific data link control schemes. As this paper reveals, the conventional VD/VS scheme has difficulty in sustaining satisfactory ABR performance, when it is applied to long-delay-causing WATM; it suffers from significant increase in the necessary buffer capacity. To ensure the ABR performance in WATM, this paper proposes a new VD/VS coupling scheme using a feed-forward congestion indication. The proposed scheme controls the allowed cell rate of a source end system in a feed-forward manner by predicting the queue length at the time the WATM-associated-round-trip ahead. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme exhibits excellent ABR performance with a long delay of the divided loop on the radio-link side. It is also verified that the proposed scheme is rather robust against uncertainty and/or time-variation regarding the predetermined radio link delay.

This paper presents a new routing method that takes into account neighboring-wire-capacitance (inter-layer and intra-layer) constraints. Intermediate routing (IR) assigns each H/V wire segment to the detailed routing (DR) grid using global routing (GR) results, considering the neighboring-wire constraints (NWC) for critical nets. In DR, the results of IR for constrained nets and their neighboring wires are preserved, and violations that occur in IR are corrected. A simple method for setting NWC that satisfy the initial wire capacitance given in a set-wire-load (SWL) file is also presented. The routing method enables more accurate delay evaluation by considering inter-wire capacitance before DR, and avoids long and costly turnaround in deepsubmicron layout design. Experimental results using MCNC benchmark test data shows that the errors between the maximum delay from IR and that from DR for each net were less than 5% for long (long delay) nets.

Voice activity detection (VAD) is to determine whether a short time speech frame is voice or silence. VAD is useful in reducing the mean speech coding rate by suppressing transmission during silence periods, and is effective in transmitting speech and other data simultaneously. This letter describes a VAD system that uses a neural network. The neural network gets several parameters by analyzing slices of the speech wave form, and outputs only one scalar value related to voice activity. This output is compared to a threshold to determine whether the slice is voice or silence. The mean code transfer rate can be reduced to less than 50% by using the proposed VAD system.

A method is proposed for deriving a traffic characteristics model that can be used to forecast the traffic volume for intelligent telecommunication services. A sort of regression analysis with dummy variables is used to represent the service quantitatively and to construct the traffic characteristics model. Recursive least squares estimation, which is a special case of the Kalman filter, is applied to the traffic characteristics model to forecast the traffic volume. In the proposed modeling and forecasting, qualitative factors representing a certain service attribute are selected and using an information criterion, the model with the best fit is identified as the most suitable forecasting model. Numerical results using practical observation data showed that the proposed method produces an accurate forecast and is thus effective for practical use.

This paper presents a timing-driven global routing algorithm based on coarse pin assignment, block reshaping, and positioning for VLSI building block layout. As opposed to conventional approaches, we combine pin assignment and global routing problems into one problem. The proposed algorithm determines global routes, coarse pin assignments, and block shapes and positions so as to minimize the chip area and total wire length of nets under the given timing constraints. It is based on an iterative improvement paradigm and performs rip-up and rerouting, block reshaping, and positioning in the manner of simulated evolution taking shapes of soft blocks and routing congestion into consideration until the solution is not further improved. The Elmore delay model is adopted for the interconnection delay model. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

This paper reports on an Intelligent CASE tool, applicable in a structured programming phase, or from detailed design to coding. This is automation of the bottom level in the hierarchical design process of detailed design and coding, where the largest man-hours are consumed. The main idea is that human designers use a CASE tool for the initial design of a software system, and the design knowledge is automatically acquired from the structured charts and stored in the knowledge base. The acquired design knowledge may be reused in designs. By reusing it, a similar software system may be designed automatically. It has been shown that knowledge acquired in this way has a Logarithmic Learning Effect. Based on this, a quantitative evaluation of productivity is made. By accumulating design experiences (e. g. 10 times), more than 80% of the detailing designs are performed automatically, and productivity increases by up to 4 times. This tool features universality, an essentially zero start-up cost for automatic design, and a substantial increase in software productivity after enough experiences have been accumulated. This paper proposes a new basic idea and its implementation, a quantitative evaluation applying techniques from Industrial Engineering, which proves the effectiveness of the proposed system.

We consider a finite-capacity single-server queue with constant service and vacation times, which is seen in the time division multiple access (TDMA) scheme. First we derive the probability that j customers remain in the queue when a test customer arrives. Using this probability we then evaluate the probability that the test customer who arrives during the vacation or service time has to wait in the queue for longer than a given time. From these results, we obtain the waiting time distribution for the customer arriving at an arbitrary time. We also show a practical application to wireless TDMA communications systems.

An associative memory model with a forgetting process a la Mezard et al. is investigated for a piecewise nonmonotonic output function by the SCSNA proposed by Shiino and Fukai. Similar to the formal monotonic two-state model analyzed by Mezard et al. , the discussed nonmonotonic model is also free from a catastrophic deterioration of memory due to overloading. We theoretically obtain a relationship between the storage capacity and the forgetting rate, and find that there is an optimal value of forgetting rate, at which the storage capacity is maximized for the given nonmonotonicity. The maximal storage capacity and capacity ratio (a ratio of the storage capacity for the conventional correlation learning rule to the maximal storage capacity) increase with nonmonotonicity, whereas the optimal forgetting rate decreases with nonmonotonicity.

Telecommunication technologies are making relentless progress. In this circumstance, network cost must be evaluated to assess the effectiveness of emerging technologies. To do such an evaluation efficiently, it is necessary to develop a software tool that can calculate the network cost independent of the employed technologies. This paper describes computational techniques used in developing such a software tool. First, the functional requirements are identified to establish a flexible tool that is applicable to a wide range of technologies. One of the required functions is the function that computes the resource amount and the network cost from the given conditions such as traffic demands, a cable duct network, multiplex hierarchy and the specifications of network elements employed. As this computing function, the paper proposes an appropriate path classification scheme that enables us to evaluate the resource amount correctly when a service protection technique is applied to the target network. Namely, the proposed scheme yields evaluations that isolate the primary path route from the backup path route. This isolation is not always provided without classification. In addition, a classification of network elements is also derived for valid estimation of the necessary interface board number, which is a basis of estimating the required network element amount. This classification allows us to identify the exact points of path cross-connection and termination, which affects the number of interface boards. This paper presents the computing procedures that realize path grouping and an estimation of network elements using these classification schemes. Finally, the paper describes a prototype of the tool to confirm the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed schemes.

The performance of AC plasma displays has been improved in the area of brightness and contrast, while significant advances in image quality are still required for the HDTV quality. In particular, in full color motion video, motion artifacts and lack of color depth are still visible in some situations. These motional artifacts are mitigated as the number of the subfields increases, usually at the cost of losing brightness or increasing driving circuitry. Therefore, it is still one of our great concerns to find out the optimized subfield configuration through weighting and order of each subfield, and their coding of combination. For evaluation and improvement of motion picture disturbance, we have established a procedure that fully simulates the image quality of displays which utilize the subfield driving scheme. The simulation features virtually located sensor pixels on human retina, eye-tracking sensor windows, and a built-in spatial low pass filter. The model pixelizes the observers retina like a sensor chip in a CCD camera. An eye-tracking sensor window is assigned to every light emission from the display, to calculate the emissions from one to four adjoining pixels along the trajectory of motion. Through this model, a scene from original motion picture without disturbance is transformed into the still image with simulated disturbance. The integration of the light emission from adjoining pixels through the window, also functions as a built-in spatial low pass filter to secure the robust output, considering the MTF of the human eye. Both simulation and actual 42-in-diagonal PDPs showed close results under various conditions, showing that the model is simple, but reasonable. Through the simulation, general properties of the subfield driving scheme for gray scale have been elucidated. For example, a PWM-like coding offers a better performance than an MSB-split coding in many cases. The simulation also exemplifies the motion picture disturbance as a non-linear filter process caused by the dislocation of bit weightings, suggesting that tradeoffs between disturbance and resolution in motion area are mandatory.

When multiple flows including continuous media streams are simultaneously sent from a computer, allocation and management of both processor capacity and network bandwidth need to be considered. We propose a framework of Quality of Service (QoS) management inside a sending host that controls execution of sending threads in consideration of utilization of processor capacity and network bandwidth. To distinguish from flows which require only best-effort service, we call a flow which requires a specific rate of service "reserved flow. " To guarantee QoS of such reserved flow both in processor- and network-intensive cases in a sending host, processor capacity reserve is allocated such that the rate of each reserved flow is attained and non-conforming data are policed before they are transmitted. Processor Capacity Manager and the network device driver exchange information in a cooperative manner to support the rate adaptive allocation of processor capacity reserve. In this paper, we describe design and implementation of our framework on RT-Mach. The results of performance evaluations demonstrate that our scheme performs well for full-duplex Ethernet.

A new type of a linear decorrelating receiver, named Pseudo-Decorrelator, for asynchronous code division multiple access systems over an additive white Gaussian noise channel is presented in this paper. Starting with the analyis of the multiple access components of the decision statistics, the outputs of a bank of matched filters, the (K 3K) cross-correlation matrix for each bit is obtained. The non-square cross-correlation matrix is then inverted using the concept of Penrose's generalized inverse of a matrix. In this receiver, the detection process can be started before the whole sequence is received at the receiver, and computing the inverse of a (KN KN) cross-correlation matrix, generally required for linear decorrelating receivers, can be avoided because it is enough to compute only the generalized inverse of a (K 3K) cross-correlation matrix for each data bit. Here, K is the number of users and N is the length of input data sequence. Simulation results are also presented for K-user systems over an additive white Gaussian noise channel.

This paper explores a relationship between parameters for the context tree weighting and weights for a general model weighting technique. In particular, an algorithm is proposed that approximately computes the parameters from the weights, and a condition under which no error for the approximation occurs is derived.

We have proposed a highly scattering optical transmission (HSOT) polymer for use as a high efficiency light source medium. This polymer contains specified internal microscopic heterogeneous structures for controlling light-transmission properties. An LCD backlighting system having a new light pipe made of this polymer has twice the brightness of the conventional one. A light scattering phenomenon inside the HSOT polymer was quantitatively analyzed by a ray tracing simulation based on the Mie scattering theory and the Monte Carlo method. The illumination of the backlight which is optimized by using the simulation program has enough uniformity of intensity and color because of specified multiple light scattering phenomena inside the HSOT polymer. We propose the new backlighting system having fewer components and twice efficiency of the conventional one.

An efficient finite element-integral equation method is presented for calculating scattered fields from conducting objects. By combining the integral equation solution with the finite element method, this formulation allows a finite element computational domain terminated very closely to the scatterer and thus results in the decrease of the resultant matrix size. Furthermore, we employ a new integral approach to establish the boundary condition on the finite element terminating surface. The expansion of the fields on the integration contour is not related to the fields on the terminating surface, hence we obtain an explicit expression of the boundary condition on the terminating surface. Using this explicit boundary condition with the finite element solution, our method substantially improves the computational efficiency and relaxes the computer memory requirements. Only one matrix inversion is needed through our formulation and the generation and storing of a full matrix is not necessary as compared with the conventional hybrid finite element methods. The validity and accuracy of the formulation are checked by some numerical solutions of scattering from two-dimensional metallic cylinders, which are compared with the results of other methods and/or measured data.

Millimeter- and submillimeter-wave low-noise superconducting receivers, such as superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixers, hot-electron bolometer (HEB) mixers, and superconducting direct detectors, are addressed in this paper. Some general topics on the development of SIS mixers, including SIS junction and integrated tuning circuitry, mixing circuitry, and mixer-performance simulation, are extensively discussed. A tuneless waveguide SIS mixer developed at Nobeyama Radio Observatory (NRO) and its performance are presented. The fundamental mechanisms of diffusion- and phonon-cooled HEB mixers and recent advances in HEB mixers are briefly reviewed. Finally, incoherent detectors with superconducting tunnel junctions are discussed. Results for a direct detecting experiment at 500 GHz are given.

We propose a novel soft-decision decoding algorithm for cyclic codes based on energy minimization principle. The well-known soft-decision decoding algorithms for block codes perform algebraic (hard-decision) decoding several times in order to generate candidate codewords using the reliability of received symbols. In contrast, the proposed method defines energy as the Euclidean distance between the received signal and a codeword and alters the values of information symbols so as to decrease the energy in order to seek the codeword of minimum energy, which is the most likely codeword. We let initial positions be the information parts of signals obtained by cyclically shifting a received signal and look for the point, which represents a codeword, of minimum energy by moving each point from several initial positions. This paper presents and investigates reducing complexity of the soft-decision decoding algorithm. We rank initial positions in order of reliability and reduce the number of initial positions in decoding. Computer simulation results show that this method reduces decoding complexity.

Recently, Garcia and Stichtenoth proposed sequences of algebraic function fields with finite constant fields such that their sequences attain the Drinfeld-Vl bound. In the sequences, the third algebraic function fields are Artin-Schreier extensions of Hermitian function fields. On the other hand, Miura presented powerful tools to construct one-point algebraic geometric (AG) codes from algebraic function fields. In this paper, we clarify rational functions of the third algebraic function fields which correspond to generators of semigroup of nongaps at a specific place of degree one. Consequently, we show generator matrices of the one-point AG codes with respect to the third algebraic function fields for any dimension by using rational functions of monomial type and rational points.