To design and develop user-oriented, flexible and distributed applications which can deal with various users' requirements, new technologies to manage, control and utilize the services of communication networks have to be provided. In this paper, the current challenges faced by large-scale distributed applications are discussed and a framework for the next generation network operation and management is presented on the basis of agent-based computing technologies. Examples of flexible distributed applications are presented to clarify the role of application-centric flexible network operation and management.

The current Internet does not offer any quality of service guarantees or support to Internet multimedia applications such as Internet telephony and video-conferencing, due to the best-effort nature of the Internet. Their performance may be adversely affected by network congestion. Also, since these applications commonly employ the UDP transport protocol, which lacks congestion control mechanisms, they may severely overload the network and starve other applications. We present an overview of recent research efforts in developing adaptive delivery models for Internet multimedia applications, which dynamically adjust the transmission rate according to network conditions. We classify the approaches used to develop adaptive delivery models with brief descriptions of representative research work. We then evaluate the approaches based on important design issues and performance criteria, such as the scalability of the control mechanism, responsiveness in detecting and reacting to congestion, and ability to accommodate receiver heterogeniety. Some conclusions are developed regarding the suitability of particular design choices under various conditions.

This paper proposes a new distributed connection establishment scheme involving several competing network providers in a multimedia telecommunications environment. This connection establishment scheme, which is based on the concept of open competitive bidding, enables mutual selection by users and network providers. By employing this proposed scheme, both network providers and users can pursue their own objectives, according to their own bidding and awarding strategies. In this paper, a simple bidding strategy for network providers is presented, and the effectiveness of this strategy is evaluated by means of computer simulation. It is shown that each network provider can improve its profit by adopting this strategy. In this paper, an example of utility functions for users is presented, and the effectiveness of the mechanism with which users can select a network provider is also evaluated by means of computer simulation. Each user can improve his/her utility by selecting an appropriate network provider based on this utility function.

Recently, it is required to transfer continuous media over networks without QoS guarantee. In these networks, network congestion will cause transmission delay variance which degrades the quality of continuous media itself. This paper proposes a new protocol using a congestion control with two level rate control in the data transfer level and the coding level. It introduces a TCP-like congestion control mechanism to the rate control of data transfer level, which can detect the QoS change quickly, and adjust the coding rate of continuous media with time interval long enough for its quality. The performance evaluation through software simulation with multiplexing continuous media traffics and TCP traffics shows that the proposed protocol works effectively in the case of network congestion.

Future cellular systems are envisioned to support mixed traffic, and ultimately multimedia services. However, a mixture of voice and data requires novel service mechanisms that can guarantee quality of service. In order to transfer high-speed data, multislot channel allocation is seen as a favoured solution to the present systems with the least compromise to circuit- switched services. This paper evaluates the performance of narrowband voice calls and multislot data packet transmission in such integrated systems by using a matrix-analytic approach. This method achieves quadratic convergence compared to the conventional spectral methods. Mobility is also considered in a prioritized cellular environment where frequent handoff has the potential of degrading data performance. The voice call distribution, data packets throughput, delay and waiting time distribution are derived. Moreover, a new multiple priority-based distributed control algorithm and a voice rate control scheme are enforced to mitigate the queuing congestion of data packets. The numerical results derived from this study show that larger data packets incur longer latency and the use of these flexible schemes can improve the overall performance.

From our previous studies, we derived the worst case cell delay within an ATM switch and thus can find the worst case end-to-end delay for a set of real-time connections. We observed that these delays are sensitive to the priority assignment of the connections. With a better priority assignment scheme within the switch, the worst case delay can be reduced and provide a better network performance. We extend our previous work on the closed form analysis to conduct more experimental study of how different priority assignments and system parameters may affect the performance. Furthermore, from our worst case delay analysis on a regulated ATM switch, network traffic can be smoothed by a leaky bucket at the output controller for each connection. With the appropriate setting on the leaky bucket parameter, the burstiness of the network traffic can be reduced without increasing the delay in the switch. Therefore, fewer buffers will be required for each active connection within the switch. In this paper, our experimental results have shown that the buffer requirement can be reduced up to 5.75% for each connection, which could be significant, when hundreds of connections are passing through the switches within a regulated ATM network.

In this paper we present a distributed routing protocol for finding two node-disjoint paths between each pair of nodes in a computer network. In the proposed protocol, each node in the network has the same procedure, which is driven by local information with respect to the network topology, such as adjacent nodes on a spanning tree in the network. Thus, the execution of the protocol can continue after changes of the network topology and load. Then, a spanning tree-based kernel construction is introduced to synchronize procedures under the distributed control of the protocol. Additionally, the routing scheme based on the protocol possesses the enhanced capabilities of alternate routes and load splitting, which cope with failures and load variations in the network. Thus, even if topology changes damage the obtained disjoint paths, the paths themselves can be updated efficiently.

In a distributed network management environment, a NMS (Network Management Station) interacts with several agents in different sub-networks. In the network fault management context, the NMS detects symptoms that indicate some abnormality e. g. a surge in ICMP traffic, which may be caused by some network malfunction or misuse. The occurrence of a symptom is an event. Large number of events may be detected by an NMS. The sheer number of these events makes it difficult, if not impossible, for an NMS to diagnose these events. Generally, a fault may have a cascading effect which may, in turn, give rise to a very large number of events. The sequence of events and their correlation play an important role in fault management and diagnosis. In the distributed environment of todays networks, the absence of any uniform time for reference makes this a challenging task. In the present network management framework of SNMP, a Manager maintains a notion of the clock of the agent it interacts with. But this mechanism is inadequate to determine the sequence of events and their correlation, more so, in a distributed environment which may involve several managers. In this paper we propose a mechanism for ordering and correlating events detected in large-scale network which is managed in a distributed manner within the SNMP framework. Our algorithm uses the concept of a Network Management Clock (NMC). The NMC is a virtual clock maintained by a manager based on sysUpTime readings from each SNMP agent. In this paper, the algorithm, its implementation and evaluation will be discussed.

Network monitoring is one of the most significant functions in network management to understand the state of a network in real-time. In SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), polling is used for this purpose. If the time interval for two consecutive polling requests is too long, then we cannot understand the state of the network in real-time. Conversely, if it is too short, then the polling message traffic increases and imposes a heavy load on the network. Many dynamic polling algorithms have been proposed for controlling the increase in the polling message traffic. However, they cannot keep track of the time variations of management information values, since their main objectives are to check whether or not a network node is active and the next polling interval is determined being independent of the time variations of the values. The existing polling algorithms are thereby not applicable to the case where monitoring the time variation of management information values is critical. This paper proposes a new dynamic polling algorithm which, by making use of Discrete Fourier Transformation, enables not only to control the increase in the polling message traffic but also to keep track of the time variations of network management information values. We show the availability of the proposed algorithm by evaluating it through both simulations and experiments in actual network environment.

A service control node in the Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) allocates data for customers among multiple modules and performs distributed processing of multiple transactions. In such a node, load can vary among the modules due to dispersion in the amount of traffic for each customer. It is therefore important to balance out this load variation and raise the utilization of each module in order to achieve an efficient distributed processing system. We first propose a method for balancing the load among modules by dynamically transferring customer data in units of records from high-load modules to low-load modules. Then, based on this method, a method for selecting records to be transferred between modules is also proposed. And we clarify the processor overhead for transferring records. The effect of the reduction of number of modules by load balancing is also evaluated. Based on the these results, it is shown that dynamic transferring of records is an effective scheme for balancing load among modules in a service control node of the AIN.

This paper discusses the implementation and cost- and performance- evaluations of a distributed processing network, called DONA-α, which is one of the possible physical networks mainly implementing connection-oriented public switched network functions corresponding to OSI layers 1 to 3. The first feature of the DONA-α network is that it separates a switching subsystem and a control subsystem of a conventional switching system and independently allocates them over distributed nodes as a switching node and a control node. Each DONA-α switching node is given a much smaller switching capacity than the switching subsystem of the conventional switching system and is located near subscribers. In contrast, each DONA-α control node has much higher performance than the control subsystem of the conventional switching system. This allows a large number of switching nodes to share the same control node, which controls their connection setups. This separation provides the network with greater flexibility and allows more effective utilization of network resources, such as control processors, switching fabrics, and transmission links, than ever before. The second feature of DONA-α is that it provides a network with network-wide distribution transparency. This allows network resources including software such as databases and application programs to be shared and therefore to be utilized in the network more easily and more efficiently. The results of a network performance simulation and cost calculation confirm the viability of the DONA-α network.

According to the wide spread of mobile computer terminals, it is required to connect them to remote networks and to allow them to communicate with home computers and Internet servers. There are some mechanisms studied on the IP terminal mobility, including DHCP which assigns IP addresses dynamically and Mobile-IP which supports seemless mobility. However, there are some problems identified for those methods on compatibility with existing IP terminals, route optimization and compatibility with firewall systems. So we have proposed a virtual subnetwork system which can accommodate existing IP routers and terminals without any modifications, and which selects an optimal route for the communication with networks other than the home network. This paper describes the mechanism and the results of implementation of our system.

Distributed Web caching allows multiple clients to quickly access a pool of popular Web pages. Conventional distributed Web caching schemes, e. g. , the Internet cache protocol and hash routing, require the sending of many query messages among cache servers and/or impose a large load on the cache servers when they are widely dispersed. To overcome these problems, we propose a hash-based query caching method using both a hash function and a query caching method. This method can find cached objects among several cache servers by using only one query message, enabling the construction of an efficient large-scale distributed Web cache server. Compared to conventional methods, this method reduces cache server overhead and object retrieval latency.

Multicasting functionality is an important criterion in judging the powerfulness and extendibility of ATM switches. Recently many multicast ATM switches have been proposed. They are mostly modified from unicasting switches. For such switches to support multicasting, they often need some additional components, e. g. , copy network, and numerous modifications on the original unicasting network. Although the multicasting is supported, the method is often inefficient and the architecture is complicated and costly. In this paper, we propose a new multicast ATM switch. In the proposed architecture, the nonblocking unicast network will not be modified. All that need is a simple external nonblocking multicast module. The external nonblocking multicast module will not delay the original nonblocking unicast network module, and the cost in hardware complexity for the external nonblocking multicasting module will be O(NK log K), where N is the switch size and K is the number of broadcast buses used in the multicast module.

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.

In this paper, we investigate the bit error rate (BER) performance of Direct Sequence-Code Division Multiple Access (DS-CDMA) systems under impulsive radio noise environments, and propose a novel DS-CDMA receiver which is designed to be robust against impulsive noise. At first, employing the Middleton's Class-A impulsive noise model as a typical model of impulsive radio noise, we discuss the statistical characteristics of impulsive radio noise and demonstrate that the quadrature components of impulsive noise are statistically dependent. Next, based on the computer simulation, we evaluate the BER performance of a conventional DS-CDMA system under a Class-A impulsive noise environment, and illustrate that the performance of the conventional DS-CDMA system is drastically degraded by the effects of the impulsive noise. To deal with this problem, motivated by the statistical dependence between the quadrature components of impulsive radio noise, we propose a new DS-CDMA receiver which can eliminate the effects of the channel impulsive noise. The numerical result shows that the performance of the DS-CDMA system under the impulsive noise environment is significantly improved by using this proposed receiver. Finally, to confirm the effectiveness of this proposed receiver against actual impulsive radio noise, we evaluate the BER performance of the DS-CDMA system employing the proposed receiver under a microwave oven (MWO) noise environment and discuss the robustness of the proposed receiver against MWO noise.

This paper develops a deterministic model for evaluating the influence of building windows upon the outdoor-to-indoor propagation path in cellular systems. This prediction model is based on the Aperture-field method of Huygens-Fresnel wave theory. Penetration losses and indoor signal characteristics are analyzed. It is found that the window frames of the building play an important role in determining the indoor field intensities. In order to verify this model's accuracy, numerical results are compared with measurement values. The calculations agree well with the measurements.

This paper discusses the classification of targets buried in the underground by radar polarimetry. The subsurface radar is used for the detection of objects buried beneath the ground surface, such as gas pipes, cables and cavities, or in archeological exploration operation. In addition to target echo, the subsurface radar receives various other echoes, because the underground is inhomogeneous medium. Therefore, the subsurface radar needs to distinguish these echoes. In order to enhance the discrimination capability, we first applied the polarization anisotropy coefficient to distinguish echoes from isotropic targets (plate, sphere) versus anisotropic targets (wire, pipe). It is straightforward to find the man-made target buried in the underground using the polarization anisotropy coefficient. Second, we tried to classify targets using the polarimetric signature approach, in which the characteristic polarization state provides the orientation angle of an anisotropic target. All of these values contribute to the classification of a target. Field experiments using an ultra-wideband (250 MHz to 1 GHz) FM-CW polarimetric radar system were carried out to show the usefulness of radar polarimetry. In this paper, several detection and classification results are demonstrated. It is shown that these techniques improve the detection capability of buried target considerably.

Even though information in ATM networks is handled as fixed-sized packets (cells), packet-based scheduling is still needed in ATM networks. This letter proposes a packet-based scheduling mechanism that is based on comparison between a packet-based queue and a virtual queue that represents the queue length provided by a cell-based scheduling mechanism. Simulation results showed that this proposed scheduling allocates the bandwidth fairly to each connection.

The ATM Forum specifies several fairness criteria, thus the scheduling mechanisms should allocate enough bandwidth to each connection to achieve one of such fairness criteria. However, two fairness criteria (MCR plus equal share, maximum of MCR or Max-Min share) cannot be achieved by conventional scheduling mechanisms. In this letter, we have developed new scheduling mechanisms that achieve these fairness criteria. We also present simulation results to show that our mechanisms can allocate bandwidth fairly.

A new practical coherent detection scheme for biorthogonal signals, which uses multi-symbol observation interval, is proposed and its performances are analyzed and simulated. The technique jointly estimates both the demodulated data and the channel from received signal only while reducing computation complexity by an approximate maximum-likelihood sequence estimation rather than symbol-by-symbol detection as in previous noncoherent detection. The scheme achieves performance close to that of ideal coherent detection with perfect channel estimates when select the appropriate observation symbol interval N in the given symbol alphabet size M. What is particularly interesting is that the required average signal-to-noise ratio per bit γ_b can be reduced by as much as 1.4 dB and the capacity can be increased by as much as 38% when we use this system in the CDMA cellular reverse link.

The characteristics of the decision feedback carrier recovery loop (DFL) for conventional QPSK signaling is evaluated experimentally through measurements of the carrier-to-noise ratio of the regenerated carrier, lock range, acquisition waveforms and bit error rates. The results show that the DFL hardly exhibits inferiority to the ideal synchronization by designing the loop natural frequency adequately small. The DFL is shown superb in carrier tracking.

A dynamic pre-allocated connection (DPC) scheme is proposed to support fast handoff and to effectively utilize wireline links. Since the proposed scheme uses pre-allocated switched virtual connections (PSVCs), handoff can be quickly executed in real-time with reduced connection overhead. This dynamic resource management scheme increases utilization of wireline links due to statistical multiplexing effects. For a heterogeneous traffic environment the probabilities of new call blocking, handoff call blocking, and fast handoff failure due to a lack of PSVCs are analyzed using a birth-death approximation.