In this paper, the effects of visual information on associated auditory information were investigated when presented simultaneously under dynamic conditions on a wide screen. Experiments of an auditory-visual stimulus presentation using a computer graphics movie of a moving patrol car and its siren sound, which were combined in various locations, were performed in 19 subjects. The experimental results showed the following: the visual stimulus at the beginning of the presentation captured the sound image stronger than that at the end (i.e., beginning effect), the sound image separated from the visual image even when both stimulus locations were exactly at the same place and then when both stimuli moved in opposite directions from each other, the visual stimulus tended to capture the sound image stronger in the peripheral visual field than in the central visual field, and the visual stimulus moving toward the sound source captured the sound image stronger than that moving away from the sound source.

This study compares the performances of waveband protection and wavelength path protection in survivable hierarchical optical path networks. Network costs and the number of switching operations necessary are evaluated for different ratios of protected demand. Numerical results demonstrate that waveband protection can drastically decrease the number of switching operations in the case of failure, while both waveband and wavelength path protection effectively reduce the network resources needed compared to single layer optical path networks.

This paper proposes optical node architectures for the single-layer optical cross-connect (OXC) and hierarchical OXC (HOXC) that utilize dedicated add/drop switches for originating/terminating traffic at a node. For both single-layer OXC and HOXC, three architectures with different restrictions on add/drop capabilities are presented. The performance of the proposed architectures is compared through numerical experiments. The architectures significantly reduce total switch scale and minimize necessary switch size while attaining colorless, directionless and contentionless capabilities.

A novel coarse and fine hybrid granular routing network architecture is proposed. Virtual direct links (VDLs) defined by the coarse granular routing to bridge distant node pairs, and routing via VDL mitigate the spectrum narrowing caused by optical filtering at wavelength-selective switches in ROADM (Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexing) nodes. The impairment mitigation yields denser channel accommodation in the frequency domain, which substantially increases fiber spectral efficiency. The proposed network simultaneously utilizes fine granular optical path level routing so that optical paths can be effectively accommodated in VDLs. The newly developed network design algorithm presented in this paper effectively implements routing and spectrum assignment to paths in addition to optimizing VDL establishment and path accommodation to VDLs. The effectiveness of the proposed architecture is demonstrated through both numerical and experimental evaluations; the number of fibers necessary in a network, and the spectrum bandwidth and hop count product are, respectively, reduced by up to 18% and increased by up to 111%.

We propose a compact matrix-switch-based hierarchical optical cross-connect (HOXC) architecture that effectively handles the colorless waveband add/drop ratio restriction so as to realize switch scale reduction. In order to implement the colorless waveband add/drop function, we develop a wavelength MUX/DMUX that can be commonly used by different wavebands. We prove that the switch scale of the proposed HOXC is much smaller than that of conventional single-layer optical cross-connects (OXCs) and a typical HOXC. Furthermore, we introduce a prototype system based on the proposed architecture that utilizes integrated novel wavelength MUXs/DMUXs. Transmission experiments prove its technical feasibility.

In this paper, we propose a method of linear time-varying filtering of discrete time signals. The objective of this method is to derive a component, of an input signal, whose alias-free generalized discrete time-frequency distribution [Jeong & Williams 1992] concentrates on a specific region of a time-frequency plane. The method is essentially realized by computing an orthogonal projection of an input onto a subspace that is spanned by orthonormal signals, whose distributions concentrate on the region. We show that such orthonormal signals can be derived as eigenvectors of a matrix whose components are explicitly expressed by using the kernel of the distribution and the regions. This result shows that we can design such a filter prior to processing of the input if the specific region is given as a priori. This result is a generalization of [Hlawatsch & Kozek 1994], that is originally derived for the continuous Wigner distributions, to the discrete distributions.

In this paper, we propose a novel higher order time-frequency distribution (GDH) for a discrete time signal. This distribution is defined over the original discrete time-frequency grids through a delicate discretization of an equivalent expression of a higher order distribution, for a continuous time signal, in [4]. We also present a constructive design method, for the kernel of the GDH, by which the distribution satisfies (i) the alias free condition as well as (ii) the marginal conditions. Numerical examples show that the proposed distributions reasonably suppress the artifacts which are observed severely in the Wigner distribution and its simple higher order generalization.

The spectral efficiency of photonic networks can be enhanced by the use of higher modulation orders and narrower channel bandwidth. Unfortunately, these solutions are precluded by the margins required to offset uncertainties in system performance. Furthermore, as recently highlighted, the disaggregation of optical transport systems increases the required margin. We propose here highly spectrally efficient networks, whose margins are minimized by transmission-quality-aware adaptive modulation-order/channel-bandwidth assignment enabled by optical performance monitoring (OPM). Their effectiveness is confirmed by experiments on 400-Gbps dual-polarization quadrature phase shift keying (DP-QPSK) and 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (DP-16QAM) signals with the application of recently developed Q-factor-based OPM. Four-subcarrier 32-Gbaud DP-QPSK signals within 150/162.5/175GHz and two-subcarrier 32-Gbaud DP-16QAM signals within 75/87.5/100GHz are experimentally analyzed. Numerical network simulations in conjunction with the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can drastically improve network spectral efficiency.

We propose a novel dynamic hierarchical optical path network architecture that achieves efficient optical fast circuit switching. In order to complete wavelength path setup/teardown efficiently, the proposed network adaptively manages waveband paths and bundles of optical paths, which provide virtual mesh connectivity between node pairs for wavelength paths. Numerical experiments show that operational and facility costs are significantly reduced by employing the adaptive virtual waveband connections.

We analyze the cost of networks consisting of optical cross-connect nodes with different architectures for realizing the next generation large bandwidth networks. The node architectures include wavelength granular and fiber granular optical routing cross-connects. The network cost, capital expenditure (CapEx), involves link cost and node cost, both of which are evaluated for different scale networks under various traffic volumes. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the subsystem modular architecture with wavelength granular routing yields the highest cost effectiveness over a wide range of parameter values.

We propose optical path routing and frequency slot assignment algorithms that can make the best use of elastic optical paths and the capabilities of distance adaptive modulation. Due to the computational difficulty of the assignment problem, we develop algorithms for 1+1 dedicated/1:1 shared protected ring networks and unprotected mesh networks to that fully utilize the characteristics of the topologies. Numerical experiments elucidate that the introduction of path elasticity and distance adaptive modulation significantly reduce the occupied bandwidth.

We investigate the possibility of reducing router power consumption through dynamic router performance control. The proposed algorithm employs a typical low pass filter and, therefore, is simple enough to implement in each related element in a router. Numerical experiments using several real Internet traffic data sets show the degree of reduction in power consumption that can be achieved by using the proposed dynamic performance control algorithm. Detailed analysis clarifies the relationships among various parameter values that include packet loss ratios and the degree of power savings. We also propose a simple method based on the leaky bucket model, which can instantaneously estimate the packet loss ratio. It is shown that this simple method yields a good approximation of the results obtained by exact packet-by-packet simulation. The simple method easily enables us to derive appropriate parameter values for the control algorithm for given traffic that may differ in different segments of the Internet.

In this paper, we propose a method that recovers a smooth high-resolution image from several blurred and roughly quantized low-resolution images. For compensation of the quantization effect we introduce measurements of smoothness, Huber function that is originally used for suppression of block noises in a JPEG compressed image [Schultz & Stevenson '94] and a smoothed version of total variation. With a simple operator that approximates the convex projection onto constraint set defined for each quantized image [Hasegawa et al. '05], we propose a method that minimizes these cost functions, which are smooth convex functions, over the intersection of all constraint sets, i.e. the set of all images satisfying all quantization constraints simultaneously, by using hybrid steepest descent method [Yamada & Ogura '04]. Finally in the numerical example we compare images derived by the proposed method, Projections Onto Convex Sets (POCS) based conventinal method, and generalized proposed method minimizing energy of output of Laplacian.

In this paper, we propose a simple method to find the optimal rational function, with a fixed denominator, which minimizes an integral of polynomially weighted squared error to given analytic function. Firstly, we present a generalization of the Walsh's theorem. By using the knowledge on the zeros of the fixed denominator, this theorem characterizes the optimal rational function with a system of linear equations on the coefficients of its numerator polynomial. Moreover when the analytic function is specially given as a polynomial, we show that the optimal numerator can be derived without using any numerical integration or any root finding technique. Numerical examples demonstrate the practical applicability of the proposed method.

This paper presents a novel “virtual fiber” network service that exploits wavebands. This service provides virtual direct tunnels that directly convey wavelength paths to connect customer facilities. To improve the resource utilization efficiency of the service, a network design algorithm is developed that can allow intermediate path grooming at limited nodes and can determine the best node location. Numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed service architecture.

This paper proposes new switch architectures for hierarchical optical path cross-connect (HOXC) systems. The architectures allow incremental expansion of system scale in terms of the number of input/output fiber ports, wavebands, and optical paths per waveband. These features assure the cost-effective introduction of HOXCs even at the outset when traffic volume is not so large. Furthermore the effectiveness of the proposed switch architectures is demonstrated in a comparison with single-layer OXCs (conventional OXCs). The results provide useful criteria for the introduction of HOXCs in terms of hardware scale.

For people with serious disability, it is most significant to be able to use the same communication methods, for instance a telephone and an electronic mail system (e-mail), as ordinary people do in order to get a normal life and communicate with other people for leading a social life. In particular, having communications access to an e-mail is a very effective method of communication that enables them to convey their intention to other people directly while at the same time keep their privacy. However, it takes them much time and effort to input an e-mail text on the computer. They also need much support by their attendants. From this point of view, we propose a multi-modal communication system that is composed of a voice recognizer, a pointing device, and a text composer. This system intend to improve the man-machine interface for people with physical disability. In this system, our voice recognition technology plays a key role in providing a good interface between disabled people and the personal computer. When generating e-mail contents, users access the database containing user keywords, and the guidance menu from which they select the appropriate word by voice. Our experimental results suggest that this communication system improves not only the time efficiency of text composition but also the readiness of disabled people to communicate with other people. In addition, our disabled subject on this paper is not able to move his body, legs and hands due to suffer from muscular dystrophy. And he is able to move only his fingers and speak command words with the assistance of a respirator.

We propose a new extension to reconfiguration algorithms used to address wavelength defragmentation to enhance the path accommodation efficiency in optical transparent wavelength division multiplexing networks. The proposed algorithm suppresses the number of fibers employed to search for a reconfigurable wavelength channel by combining routes between the target path and the existing path in a reconfigured wavelength channel. This paper targets three main phases in reconfiguration: i) the reconfiguration trigger; ii) redesign of the wavelength path; and iii) migrating the wavelength paths. The proposed and conventional algorithms are analyzed from the viewpoints of the number of fibers, accommodation rate and the number of migrating sequences. Numerical evaluations show that the number of fibers is suppressed by 9%, and that the accommodation efficiency is increased by approximately 5%-8% compared to when reconfiguration is not performed.

Multi-layer transport networks that utilize sub-lambda paths over a wavelength path have been shown to be effective in accommodating traffic with various levels of granularity. For different service requirements, a virtualized network was proposed where the infrastructure is virtually sliced to accommodate different levels of reliability. On the other hand, network reconfiguration is a promising candidate for quasi-dynamic and multi-granular traffic. Reconfiguration, however, incurs some risks such as service disruption and fluctuations in delay. There has not yet been any study on accommodating and reconfiguring paths according to different service classes in multi-layer transport networks. In this paper, we propose differentiated reconfiguration to address the trade-off relationship between accommodation efficiency and disruption risk in virtualized multi-layer transport networks that considers service classes defined as a combination of including or excluding a secondary path and allowing or not allowing reconfiguration. To implement the proposed network, we propose a multi-layer redundant path accommodation design and reconfiguration algorithm. A reliability evaluation algorithm is also introduced. Numerical evaluations show that when all classes are divided equally, equipment cost can be reduced approximately by 6%. The proposed reconfigurable networks are shown to be a cost effective solution that maintains reliability.

A novel resilient coarse granularity optical routing network architecture that adopts finely granular protection and finely granular add/drop is presented. The routing scheme defines optical pipes such that multiple optical paths can be carried by each pipe and can be dropped or added at any node on the route of a pipe. The routing scheme also makes it possible to enhance frequency utilization within pipes, by denser path packing in the frequency domain, as we recently verified. We develop a static network design algorithm that simultaneously realizes the independence of working and backup paths and pipe location optimization to efficiently carry these paths. The design algorithm first sequentially accommodates optical paths into the network, then tries to eliminate sparsely utilized fibers and iteratively optimizes frequency slot/wavelength assignment in each coarse granular pipe so as to limit the impairment caused by dropping the optical paths adjacent in the frequency domain. Numerical experiments elucidate that the number of fibers in a network can be reduced by up to 20% for 400Gbps channels without any modification in hardware.