A large portion of the embedded system development process involves the integration of hardware and software. Unfortunately, communication across the hardware/software boundary is tedious and error-prone to create. This paper presents an automatic hardware/software interface generation system. As the front-end of hardware/software co-design frameworks, a system designer defines XML specifications for hardware functions. Our system generates hardware/software interfaces including Device Driver, Driver API, and Device Controller from these specifications. Embedded software designers can easily use hardware just like system libraries. Our system reduces the mistakes and errors that can be occurred when a software programmer directly connects software to hardware, and supports balancing labors between hardware developers and software programmers. Moreover, this system can be used as the back-end for a hardware/software co-design framework.

We have designed an embedded controller for the control of a diesel generator using an embedded system. The generator is monitored and controlled remotely via the internet in real-time. The proposed digital controller is designed to handle precisely the distortions and noises of the signals emanating from the diesel generator, and enables abnormal operation of the diesel generator to be notified to the remote manager using the Short Message Service (SMS) of the Internet, which enables the appropriate personnel to take action by remote control according to the incoming messages.

NAND flash memory-based embedded systems are becoming increasingly common. These embedded systems have to provide a fast boot time. In this paper, we have designed and proposed a flash file system for embedded systems that require fast booting. By using a Flash Image Area, which keeps the latest flash memory information such as types and status of all blocks, the file system mounting time can be reduced significantly. We have shown by experiments that our file system outperforms YAFFS and RFFS.

In this paper, we propose an image interpolator for low computational complexity. The proposed image interpolator supports the image scaling using a modified cubic convolution interpolation between the input and output resolutions for a full screen display. In order to reduce the computational complexity, we use the difference in value of the adjacent pixels for selecting interpolation methods and linear function of the cubic convolution. The proposed image interpolator is compared with the conventional one for the computational complexity and image quality. The proposed image interpolator has been designed and verified by Verilog HDL(Hardware Description Language). It has been synthesized using the Xilinx VirtexE FPGA, and implemented using an FPGA-based prototype board.

Wireless LANs are becoming more widespread because of the rapid advance of wireless technologies and mobile computers. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a system to help mobile users to select the most competent AP. By monitoring the network traffic of APs within the local LAN in real time, this system offers the mobile user the network utilizations, locations, and signal strengths of APs online. Based on the information, the user can select a competent AP with a high wireless bandwidth. Finally, we verified the accuracy of monitoring and calculating with regard to the utilizations of APs through real experiments.

So far, little research has been conducted into developing a QAPM (Quality Assurance Process Model) for telecommunications applications on the basis of TMN. This is the first trial of the design of TMN-based QAPM on fault management with UML. A key attribute of the QAPM is that it can easily identify current deficiencies in a legacy system on the basis of TMN architecture. Using an empirical comparison with the legacy systems of a common carrier validates the QAPM as the framework for a future mode of the operation process. The results indicate that this paper can be used to build ERP(Enterprise Resource Planning)for a telecommunications fault management solution that is one of the network management application building blocks. The future work of this paper will involve applying the QAPM to build ERP for RTE (Real Time Enterprise) fault management solution and more research on ERP design will be necessary to accomplish software reuse.

Recently, RFID technology has attracted considerable attention in many industry fields. The RFID environment requires a standard architecture for the smooth exchange of data between heterogeneous networks. The architecture should offer an efficient standard environment, such as a communication environment based on Web Services, PKI or Kerberos-based security, and abstract business processes which could be used in the diverse domains. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an Enterprise Application Framework (EAF) which includes a standard communication protocol, security functions, and abstract level business processes. The suggested architecture is expected to provide a more secure and flexible security management in the dynamic RFID application environments, and is expected to provide an abstract business event for the development of business processes which could apply RFID technology to the existing systems.

Children exhibit different behaviors, skills, and motivations. The main aim of this research was to investigate children¡¯s sensibility factors for icons, and to look for the best typeface for application to Web-Based Instruction (WBI) for e-Learning. Three types of icons were used to assess children¡¯s sensibilities toward metaphors: text-image, representational, and spatial mapping. Through the factor analysis, we found that children exhibited more diverse reactions to the text-image and representational types of icons than to the spatial mapping type of icons. Children commonly showed higher sensibilities to the aesthetic-factor than to the familiarity-factor or the brevity-factor. In addition, we propose a collaborative-typeface system, which recommends the best typeface for children regarding the readability and aesthetic factor in WBI. Based on these results, we venture some suggestions on icon design and typeface selection for e-Learning.

A RMON agent system, which locates on a subnet, collects the network traffic information for management by retrieving and analyzing all of the packets on the subnet. The RMON agent system can miss some packets due to the high packet analyzing overhead when the number of packets on the subnet is huge. In this paper, we have developed a light-weight RMON agent system that can handle a large amount of packets without packet loss. Our RMON agent system has also been designed such that its functionality can be added dynamically when needed. To demonstrate the dynamic reconfiguration capability of our RMON agent system, a simple port scanning attack detection module is added to the RMON agent system. We have also evaluated the performance of our RMON agent system on a large network that has a huge traffic. The test result has shown our RMON agent system can analyze the network packets without packet loss.

In this study we propose an automatic reading system for diagnostic DNA chips. We define a general specification for an automatic reading system and propose a possible implementation method. The proposed system performs the whole reading process automatically without any user intervention, covering image acquisition, image analysis, and report generation. We applied the system for the automatic report generation of a commercialized DNA chip for cervical cancer detection. The fluorescence image of the hybridization result was acquired with a GenePixTM scanner using its library running in HTML pages. The processing of the acquired image and the report generation were executed by a component object module programmed with Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0. To generate the report document, we made an HWP 2002 document template with marker strings that were supposed to be searched and replaced with the corresponding information such as patient information and diagnosis results. The proposed system generates the report document by reading the template and changing the marker strings with the resultant contents. The system is expected to facilitate the usage of a diagnostic DNA chip for mass screening by the automation of a conventional manual reading process, shortening its processing time, and quantifying the reading criteria.