Generation and selection of likely interpretations during plan recognition in task-oriented consultation systems

This paper presents a mechanism which infers a user's plans from his/her utterances by directing the inference process towards the more likely interpretations of a speaker's statements among many possible interpretations. Our mechanism uses Bayesian theory of probability to assess the likelihood of an interpretation, and it complements this assessment by taking into consideration two aspects of an interpretation: its coherence and its information content. The coherence of an interpretation is determined by the relationships between the different statements in the discourse. The information content of an interpretation is a measure of how well defined the interpretation is in terms of the actions to be performed on the basis of this interpretation. This measure is used to guide the inference process towards interpretations with higher information content. The information content of an interpretation depends on the specificity and the certainty of the inferences in it, where the certainty of an inference depends on the knowledge on which the inference is based. Our mechanism has been developed for use in task-oriented consultation systems. The particular domain that we have chosen for exploration is that of travel booking.     

On teletraffic applications to OBS

We provide teletraffic models for loss probability evaluation of optical burst switching (OBS). We show that the popular Engset formula is not exact for OBS modeling and demonstrate that in certain cases it is not appropriate. A new exact model is provided. The various models are compared using numerical results for various OBS alternatives with and without burst segmentation.     

Bandwidth allocation for bursty isochronous traffic in a hybridswitching system

Consideration is given to a hybrid switch which provides integrated packet and circuit switching. The statistical characteristics of the bandwidth utilized by bursty isochronous traffic are derived. The derivation takes into consideration the waste inherent in the framing structure. Bursty traffic due to circuit allocation requests is modeled by a switched Poisson process. The analysis is performed for two circuit allocation policies, namely, repacking and first-fit with static numbering. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the effect of traffic burstiness on the capacity utilized by the isochronous traffic     

A framework for optical burst switching network design

We analyze optical burst switching (OBS) systems. The analysis leads to a framework which provides guidelines for OBS design. We identify conditions for OBS feasibility and the relationship between burst size, or equivalently burst assembly delay, and throughput, taking into consideration control packet processing and the number of available wavelengths per fiber     

MaxNet: a congestion control architecture

On the Internet all the bottlenecked links of a source to destination path contribute to the aggregate congestion signal that controls the source rate. We introduce an architecture, MaxNet, in which only one link, the most severely bottlenecked link on the end-to-end path, controls the source rate. We prove that MaxNet results in MaxMin fairness for sources with general homogenous utility functions and the current architecture may not. MaxNet is distributed and requires no global information or per-flow state in the link.     

Automatic laser shutdown implications for all optical data networks

Generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS), optical packet, and burst-switched networks in which the synchronous digital hierarchy/synchronous optical network (SDH/SONET) layer is removed may be rendered nonfunctional because the current standard for triggering Automatic Power Reduction (APR) cannot distinguish between a fiber that has been de-energized and a fiber failure. If this standard is applied, without modification, the likelihood of unnecessary amplifier shutdown in optical networks is significant. These shutdown events may impact large regions of the network and render optical links inoperable. To avoid unnecessary amplifier shutdown, amendments to the current operation of APR are suggested.     

An enhanced handoff control scheme for multimedia traffic in cellular networks

This letter presents an enhanced handoff control scheme allowing dynamic bandwidth sharing between different types of traffic for improving bandwidth utilization in multimedia mobile cellular networks. Performance results for the proposed scheme are obtained analytically and by simulation. The results demonstrate superior efficiency achieved by the proposed scheme.