Computer Engineering Commons^™

Script-Based Qos Specifications For Multimedia Presentations, Richard Staehli, Jonathan Walpole

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Multimedia presentations can convey information not only by the sequence of events but by their timing. The correctness of such presentations thus depends on the timing of events as well as their sequence and content. This paper introduces a formal specification language for playback of real-time presentations. The main contribution of this language is a quality of service (QOS) specification that relaxes resolution and synchronization requirements for playback. Our definitions give a precise meaning to the correctness of a presentation. This specification language will form the basis for a QOS interface for reservation of operating system resources.

Simple High-Quality Lossy Image Coding Scheme, Shaolin Bi, Khalid Sayood

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

A simple yet efficient image data compression method is presented. This method is based on coding only those segments of the image that are perceptually significant to the reconstruction of the image. Sequences of image pixels whose gray-level differences from the pixels of the previous row exceed two prespecified thresholds are considered significant. These pixels are coded using a differential pulse code modulation scheme that uses a 15-level recursively indexed nonuniform quantizer for the first pixel in a segment and a 7-level recursively indexed nonuniform quantizer for all other pixels in the segment. The quantizer outputs are Huffman coded. Simulation …

Declarative Representations Of Multiagent Systems, Munindar P. Singh, Michael N. Huhns, Larry M. Stevens

Faculty Publications

This paper explores the specification and semantics of multiagent problem-solving systems, focusing on the representations that agents have of each other. It provides a declarative representation for such systems. Several procedural solutions to a well-known test-bed problem are considered, and the requirements they impose on different agents are identified. A study of these requirements yields a representational scheme based on temporal logic for specifying the acting, perceiving, communicating, and reasoning abilities of computational agents. A formal semantics is provided for this scheme. The resulting representation is highly declarative, and useful for describing systems of agents solving problems reactively.

Gyroless Line-Of-Sight Stabilization For Pointing And Tracking Systems, Marcelo C. Aigrain

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

A new platform stabilization approach is described where miature, low-cost, linear accelerometers are used (instead of gyroscopes) for line-of-sight (LOS) stabilization. This is accomplished by placing the accelerometers at strategic locations and combining their outputs so that angular motion is determined from linear acceleration measurements. The control system uses the sensed angular accelerations to generate movement commands for the gimbal servomotors in the stabilization platform. This counterrotates the imaging device to stabilize its LOS. The use of accelerometers allows the servo system to operate in an acceleration control mode, which is more desirable than position or velocity control modes, typical …

Electronic Simulation Of The Temporal Characteristics Of Photon Memory Echoes And Some Related Applications, Yuwen Kuo, Monish Ranjan Chatterjee

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The characteristics of nonlinear photon memory echoes are investigated by means of SPICE simulations using equivalent resonator ensembles. By developing implicit nonlinear circuit models in the memory echo domain, the triple product formalism of electronic holography, involving correlation and convolution, is tested for the storage and recall of arbitrary signals and/or data bit streams in both time-inverted and nontime-inverted modes. Furthermore, a few specific optical data processing applications are also simulated in which the mixed binary multiplication of two or more binary bit streams is achieved.

Higher order products, optical pattern recognition, and other possible applications are also discussed. It …

Networking Your Cd-Roms: A Texas Tale, Margaret Sylvia

Faculty Publications

Installation of a CD-ROM network at St. Mary's University Academic Library created a revolution in the way students and faculty do research.

Variable Structure End Point Control Of A Flexible Manipulator, Shailaja Chenumalla, Sahjendra N. Singh

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

We treat the question of control and stabilization of the elastic multibody system developed in the Phillips Laboratory, Edwards Air Force Base, California. The controlled output is judiciously chosen such that the zero dynamics are stable or almost stable. A variable structure control (VSC) law is derived for the end point trajectory control. Although, the VSC law accomplishes precise end point tracking, elastic modes are excited during the maneuver of the arm. A Linear stabilizer is designed for the final capture of the terminal state.

Three Points Of Great Height On Elliptic Curves, Andrew Bremner, Duncan A. Buell

Faculty Publications

We give three elliptic curves whose generators have great height, demonstrating along the way a moderately efficient method for finding such points.

Fault Tolerant And Integrated Token Ring Network, Thomas Christopher Gilbar

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a study of communication protocols (token ring, FDDI, and ISDN), microcontrollers (68HC 1EVB), and fault tolerance schemes. One of the major weaknesses of the token ring network is that if a single station fails, the entire system fails. A scheme involving a combination of hardware and timer interrupts in the software has been designed and implemented which deals with this risk. Software and protocols have been designed and applied to the network to reduce the chance of bit faults in communications. ISDN frame format proved to be exceptional in its capacity to carry echoed data and a …

Tolerance Specification Of Robot Kinematic Parameters Using An Experimental Design Technique, Y.H. Andrew Liou, Paul P. Lin, Richard R. Lindeke, Hsiang-Dih Chiang

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper presents the tolerance specification of robot kinematic parameters using the Taguchi method. The concept of employing inner and outer orthogonal arrays to identify the significant parameters and select the optimal tolerance range for each parameter is proposed. The performance measure based on signal-to-noise ratios (S/N) using the Taguchi method is validated by Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, a step-by-step tolerance specification methodology is developed and illustrated with a planar two-link manipulator and a five-degree-of-freedom Rhino robot.

Building A Gateway For The Cd-Rom Network: A Step Toward The Virtual Library With The Virtual Microsystems V-Server, Margaret Sylvia

Faculty Publications

Describes one college library's experience with a gateway for dial-in access to its CD-ROM network to increase access to automated index searching for students off-campus. Hardware and software choices are discussed in terms of access, reliability, affordability, and ease of use. Installation problems are discussed, and an appendix lists product information.

The Application Of Neural Networks To Optimal Robot Trajectory Planning, Daniel J. Simon

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Interpolation of minimum jerk robot joint trajectories through an arbitrary number of knots is realized using a hardwired neural network. Minimum jerk joint trajectories are desirable for their similarity to human joint movements and their amenability to accurate tracking. The resultant trajectories are numerical rather than analytic functions of time. This application formulates the interpolation problem as a constrained quadratic minimization problem over a continuous joint angle domain and a discrete time domain. Time is discretized according to the robot controller rate. The neuron outputs define the joint angles (one neuron for each discrete value of time) and the Lagrange …

Suboptimal Robot Joint Interpolation Within User-Specified Knot Tolerances, Daniel J. Simon, Can Isik

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Approximation of a desired robot path can be accomplished by interpolating a curve through a sequence of joint-space knots. A smooth interpolated trajectory can be realized by using trigonometric splines. But, sometimes the joint trajectory is not required to exactly pass through the given knots. The knots may rather be centers of tolerances near which the trajectory is required to pass. In this article, we optimize trigonometric splines through a given set of knots subject to user-specified knot tolerances. The contribution of this article is the straightforward way in which intermediate constraints (i.e., knot angles) are incorporated into the parameter …

Ua66/3/3 Acm/Upe Awards Banquet, Association For Computing Machinery, Upsilon Pi Epsilon

Student Organizations

ACM/UPE awards and initiation banquet program.

A Systolic Simulation And Transformation System, Ronald I. Greenberg, H.-C. Oh

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper presents a CAD tool, SystSim, to ease the design of systolic systems. Given a high-level, functional description of processors, and a high-level description of their interconnection, SystSim will perform simulations and provide graphical output. SystSim will also perform transformations such as retiming, which eases use of the methodology of Leiserson and Saxe of designing a system with broadcasting and then obtaining a systolic system through retiming.

A Sign-To-Speech Translation System, Koka Veera Raghava Rao

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis describes sign-to-speech translation using neural networks. Sign language translation is an interesting but difficult problem for which neural network techniques seem promising because of their ability to adjust to the user's hand movements, which is not possible to do by most other techniques. However, even using neural networks and artificial sign languages, the translation is hard, and the best-known system, that of Fels & Hinton (1993), is capable of translating only 66 root words and 203 words including their conjugations. This research improves their results to 790 root signs and 2718 words including their conjugations while preserving a …

Doctor Of Education Specialization In Computing And Information Technology, Nova Southeastern University

College of Engineering and Computing Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Doctoral Program Computing Technology In Education 1993-1994, Nova Southeastern University

College of Engineering and Computing Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Efficiently Computing {Phi}-Nodes On-The-Fly, Ron K. Cytron, Jeanne Ferrante

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Recently, Static Single Assignment Form and Sparse Evaluation Graphs have been advanced for the efficient solution of program optimization problems. Each method is provided with an initial set of flow graph nodes that inherently affect a problem's solution. Other relevant nodes are those where potentially disparate solutions must combine. Previously, these so-called {phi}-nodes were found by computing the iterated dominance frontiers of the initial set of nodes, a process that could take worst case quadratic time with respect to the input flow graph. In this paper we present an almost-linear algorithm for detemining exactly the same set of {phi}-nodes.

Dynamic Reconfiguration With I/O Abstraction, Bala Swaminathan, Kenneth J. Goldman

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Dynamic reconfiguration is explored in the context of I/O abstraction, a new programming model that defines the communication structure of a system in terms of connections among well-defined data interfaces for the modules in the system. The properties of I/O abstraction, particularly the clear separation of computation from communication and the availability of a module's state information, help simplify the reconfiguration strategy. Both logical and physical reconfiguration are discussed, with an emphasis on a new module migration mechanism that (1) takes advantage of the underlying I/O abstraction model, (2) avoids the expense and complication of state extraction techniques, (3) minimizes …

Approximation Algorithms For Configuring Hierarchical Nonblocking Communication Networks, J. Andrew Fingerhut

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

A framework is given for specifying nonblocking traffic limits in a connection-oriented communications network. In this framework, connections may be point-to-point or mutlipoint, and the data rates may vary from one connection to another. The traffic limits may be "flat", or they may also be hierarchical, representing communities of interest within the network that have higher traffic among themselves than with the rest of the network. The communication networks are constructed from switches (or nodes) and trunks, which connect pairs of switches. This framework is intended to model Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks and traffic. We present a way of …

Segmentation/Recognition Of Hand-Written Numeral Characters, Khalid Sherdil

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This thesis describes a number of techniques for segmenting non-cursive handwritten digits into individual characters. It strongly emphasizes on a recognition-segmentation algorithm, which uses the linear regression method to recognize those strokes which consist of one or more straight-lined parts. A new method of sampling the pen data according to the pen speed, hence giving a more uniform points concentratino distribution, is also introduced. It is shown how several of our segmenting techniques, such as relative stroke lengths, relative stroke positions, order of stroke entry, stroke direction, stroke intersection, etc. can be combined to yield success results of about 95%.

Symphony: A Hardware, Operating System, And Protocol Processing Architecture For Distributed Multimedia Applications, Andreas D. Bovopoulos, R. Gopalakrishnan, Saied Hosseini

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This paper explores the architectural requirements for computers to be able to process multimedia data streams such as video and audio. The I/O subsystem is shown to be a bottleneck, and a network backplane approach is suggested to alleviate this. The need to provide end-to-end performance guarantees requires predictable performance of intra-machine communication, and a schedulable bus with reservation is proposed to achieve this. In addition this requires operating system (OS) mechanisms to negotiate and enforce QoS requirements of applications. A real-time microkernel executive is proposed for each autonomous unit. Requirements for real-time microkernel exeutive is proposed for each autonomous …

Clothespins On Timelines: Utilities And The Interval Representation Of Time, R. P. Loui, Jersey Chen

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

We discuss the problem of representing utility in planning systems that are based on Allen's [83] popular ontology for planning, which represents actions and events as time intervals. We identify a small number of primitive functions on time intervals which may be helpful in representing preference and also in eliminating dominated actions. Assuming that utility can be decomposed to take advantage of these primitives, these functions provide one solution to the problem of specifying utility in such expressive planning languages. We identify a restricted class of utility expressions that generate linear programming problems. The contribution is not deep, but is …

Design And Implementation Of Fuzzy Logic Controllers. Thesis Final Report, 27 July 1992 - 1 January 1993, Osama A. Abihana, Oscar R. Gonzalez

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The main objectives of our research are to present a self-contained overview of fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic, develop a methodology for control system design using fuzzy logic controllers, and to design and implement a fuzzy logic controller for a real system. We first present the fundamental concepts of fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic. Fuzzy sets and basic fuzzy operations are defined. In addition, for control systems, it is important to understand the concepts of linguistic values, term sets, fuzzy rule base, inference methods, and defuzzification methods. Second, we introduce a four-step fuzzy logic control system design procedure. The design …

Intel Nx To Pvm 3.2 Message Passing Conversion Library, Trey Arthur, Michael L. Nelson

Computer Science Faculty Publications

NASA Langley Research Center has developed a library that allows Intel NX message passing codes to be executed under the more popular and widely supported Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) message passing library. PVM was developed at Oak Ridge National Labs and has become the defacto standard for message passing. This library will allow the many programs that were developed on the Intel iPSC/860 or Intel Paragon in a Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD) design to be ported to the numerous architectures that PVM (version 3.2) supports. Also, the library adds global operations capability to PVM. A familiarity with Intel NX …

A Comparison Of Queueing, Cluster And Distributed Computing Systems, Joseph A. Kaplan, Michael L. Nelson

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Using workstation clusters for distributed computing has become popular with the proliferation of inexpensive, powerful workstations. Workstation clusters offer both a cost effective alternative to batch processing and an easy entry into parallel computing. However, a number of workstations on a network does not constitute a cluster. Cluster management software is necessary to harness the collective computing power. A variety of cluster management and queuing systems are compared: Distributed Queueing Systems (DQS), Condor, Load Leveler, Load Balancer, Load Sharing Facility (LSF - formerly Utopia), Distributed Job Manager (DJM), Computing in Distributed Networked Environments (CODINE), and NQS/Exec. The systems differ in …

Learning Unions Of Boxes With Membership And Equivalence Queries, Paul W. Goldberg, Sally A. Goldman, H. David Matthias

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

We present two algorithms that use membership and equivalence queries to exactly identify the concepts given by the union of s discretized axis-parallel boxes in d-dimensional discretized Euclidean space where each coordinate can have n discrete values. The first algorithm receives at most s*d counterexamples and uses time and membership queries polynomial in s and logn for d any constant. Further, all equivalence queries made can be formulated as the union of O(s*d*log(s)) axis-parallel boxes. Next, we introduce a new complexity measure that better captures the complexity of a union of boxes than simply the number of boxes and dimensions. …

Real-Time Admission Control Algorithms With Delay And Loss Guarantees In Atm Networks, Apostolos Dailianas, Andreas D. Bovopoulos

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

A multimedia ATM network is shared by media streams with different performance requirements. For media streams such as file transfers, the preservation of bursts and the provision of guarantees for loss probability at the burst level is of primary importance, while, for media streams such as voice, loss guarantees at the cell level are sufficient. Continuous media have stringent delay jitter requirements. Finally, some applications require loss-free transmission. In this paper, the first complete traffic management scheme for multimedia ATM networks is introduced. The traffic management scheme supports four different classes of traffic, each of which has different performance requirements …

An Optimal Nonblocking Multicast Virtual Circuit Switch, Jonathan S. Turner

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This paper describes an architecture for a multicast virtual circuit switch using cell recycling. This is the first nonblocking switch architecture that is optimal in both the switching network complexity and the amount of memory required for multicast address translation. Furthermore, it is optimal in the amount of effort required for multicast connection modification. This architecture makes it both technically and economically feasible to construct the large switching systems that will ultimately be needed for wide scale deployment of Broadband ISDN to residential users. In particular, we estimate that systems with tens of thousands of 620 Mb/s ports can be …