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In this paper, we consider the development of algorithms for the automatic detection of buried threats using ground penetrating radar (GPR) measurements. GPR is one of the most studied and successful modalities for automatic buried threat detection (BTD), and a large variety of BTD algorithms have been proposed for it. Despite this, large-scale comparisons of GPR-based BTD algorithms are rare in the literature. In this paper, we report the results of a multi-institutional effort to develop advanced BTD algorithms for a real-world GPR BTD system. The effort involved five institutions with substantial experience with the development of GPR-based BTD algorithms. In this paper, we report the technical details of the advanced algorithms submitted by each institution, representing their latest technical advances, and many state-of-the-art GPR-based BTD algorithms. We also report the results of evaluating the algorithms from each institution on the large experimental data set used for development. The experimental data set comprised 120 000 m2 of GPR data using surface area, from 13 different lanes across two U.S. test sites. The data were collected using a vehicle-mounted GPR system, the variants of which have supplied data for numerous publications. Using these results, we identify the most successful and common processing strategies among the submitted algorithms, and make recommendations for GPR-based BTD algorithm design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current spatial database systems offer limited querying capabilities beyond binary topological relations. This paper introduces a model for projective relations between regions to support other qualitative spatial queries. The relations are ternary because they are based on the collinearity invariant of three points under projective geometry. The model is built on a partition of the plane into separate zones that are obtained from projective properties of two reference objects: Then, by considering the empty/nonempty intersections of a primary object with these zones, the model is able to distinguish between 34 different projective relations. Then, the paper proposes original algorithms for computing the relations under the assumption that regions of the plane are stored as vector polygons in a spatial database. These algorithms run in optimal O(n log n) time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reverse link capacity of a direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) system in a multicell environment has been studied recently, and significant capacity improvements due to the use of beamforming have been observed. However, system performance with beamforming will be affected by several impairments, such as direction of arrival estimation errors, array perturbations, mutual coupling, and signal spatial spreads. In this paper, reverse link performance of CDMA systems with beamforming under these impairments (imperfect beamforming) is investigated. A simplified beamforming model is developed to evaluate the system performance in terms of user capacity, bit-error rates (BER), and outage probabilities. Both signal-to-interference-ratio-based power control and strength-based power control are considered in this paper. The capacity and BER degradations due to different impairments are shown, and outage probabilities under different power control schemes are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the authors study the performance of scheduling algorithms exploiting the multiuser selection diversity. Schedulers with affordable-rate transmission and adaptive transmission based on the absolute signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the normalized SNR are considered. In contrast to previous studies on the multiuser-diversity systems, the channel dynamics is taken into consideration in this paper by a novel formulation based on the level crossing analysis of stochastic processes. Then, the authors make the connection between the Doppler frequency shift, which indicates the channel temporal correlation, and the average (channel) access time, the average waiting time (AWT) between accesses, and the average access rate (AAR) of active users. These properties are important for the scheduler design, especially for applications where delay is a concern. In addition, analytical expressions for the system throughput and the degree of fairness (DOF) when users have nonidentical average channel conditions are presented. These expressions quantify the effect of disparateness in users' average channel conditions on the system performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the application of a novel multiobjective self-adaptive differential evolution (MOSADE) algorithm for the simultaneous optimization of component sizing and control strategy in parallel hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). Based on an electric assist control strategy, the HEV optimal design problem is formulated as a nonlinear constrained multiobjective problem with competing and noncommensurable objectives of fuel consumption and emissions. The driving performance requirements are considered constraints. The proposed MOSADE approach adopts an external elitist archive to retain nondominated solutions that are found during the evolutionary process. To preserve the diversity of Pareto optimal solutions, a progressive comparison truncation operator based on the normalized nearest neighbor distance is proposed. Moreover, a fuzzy set theory is employed to extract the best compromise solution. Finally, the optimization is performed over the following three typical driving cycles that are currently used in the U.S. and European communities: 1) the file transfer protocol; 2) ECE +EUDC; and 3) Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule. The results demonstrate the capability of the proposed approach to generate well-distributed Pareto optimal solutions of the HEV multiobjective optimization design problem. The comparison with the reported results of genetic-algorithm-based weighting sum approaches and Nondominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II reveals the superiority of the proposed approach and confirms its potential for optimal HEV design. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A new algorithm of matrix spectral factorization is proposed which can be applied to compute an approximate spectral factor of any positive definite matrix function which satisfies the Paley-Wiener condition. ref refid="fnote1"/ id="fnote1" asterisk="no"paraThis paper includes the detailed proofs for an innovative method for matrix spectral factorization that can be used in numerous applications, including filtering, data compression, and wireless communications. A U.S. patent application has been submitted for this innovation through the Technology Commercialization Center, University of Maryland.para [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Validation is an important and particularly challenging task for remote sensing of soil moisture. A key issue in the validation of soil moisture products is the disparity in spatial scales between satellite and in situ observations. Conventional measurements of soil moisture are made at a point, whereas satellite sensors provide an integrated area/volume value for a much larger spatial extent. In this paper, four soil moisture networks were developed and used as part of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer–Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) validation program. Each network is located in a different climatic region of the U.S., and provides estimates of the average soil moisture over highly instrumented experimental watersheds and surrounding areas that approximate the size of the AMSR-E footprint. Soil moisture measurements have been made at these validation sites on a continuous basis since 2002, which provided a seven-year period of record for this analysis. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) standard soil moisture products were compared to the network observations, along with two alternative soil moisture products developed using the single-channel algorithm (SCA) and the land parameter retrieval model (LPRM). The metric used for validation is the root-mean-square error (rmse) of the soil moisture estimate as compared to the in situ data. The mission requirement for accuracy defined by the space agencies is 0.06 \m^3/\m^3. The statistical results indicate that each algorithm performs differently at each site. Neither the NASA nor the JAXA standard products provide reliable estimates for all the conditions represented by the four watershed sites. The JAXA algorithm performs better than the NASA algorithm under light-vegetation conditions, but the NASA algorithm is more reliable for moderate vegetation. However, both algorithms have a moderate to large bias in all cases. The SCA had the lowest overall rmse with a small bias. The LPRM had a very large overestimation bias and retrieval errors. When site-specific corrections were applied, all algorithms had approximately the same error level and correlation. These results clearly show that there is much room for improvement in the algorithms currently in use by JAXA and NASA. They also illustrate the potential pitfalls in using the products without a careful evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US National High Magnetic Field Laboratory constructed and tested a stand-alone 80 T prototype magnet. The activity was in support of the insert magnet development project for the US-DOE-NSF 100 Tesla Multi-Pulse Magnet Program. The 80 T magnet assembly was developed to simulate the physical conditions an insert magnet would encounter during peak field operations at 105 T… The design incorporated further improvements to the engineering template developed from the 65 T and 75 T pulsed magnets now in use at the NHMFL Pulsed Field Facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Two coaxially nested solenoid coils comprised the 80 T prototype magnet design. The windings are in series electrically. The inner coil is constructed with materials & techniques identical to those in use for the 100 T insert program. The outer coil is a conventional winding. The prototype was successfully trained to a peak field of ~80.4 T. 80 T pulsed operations were repeated until the coil assembly faulted after 10 full-field pulses. Post-fault inspection of the magnet assembly indicated that the outer magnet winding failed structurally. This paper will present an overview of the 80 T prototype's design, construction, and performance. A review of the magnets failure mode will be presented. Additionally, we will discuss new design criteria for stand alone high-field pulsed magnet based upon the 80 T prototype experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ice concentration retrieved from spaceborne passive-microwave observations is a prime input to operational sea-ice-monitoring programs, numerical weather prediction models, and global climate models. Atmospheric Environment Service (AES)-York and the Enhanced National Aeronautics and Space Administration Team (NT2) are two algorithms that calculate ice concentration from Special Sensor Microwave/Imager observations. This paper furnishes a comparison between ice concentrations (total, thin, and thick types) output from NT2 and AES-York algorithms against the corresponding estimates from the operational analysis of Radarsat images in the Canadian Ice Service (CIS). A new data fusion technique, which incorporates the actual sensor's footprint, was developed to facilitate this study. Results have shown that the NT2 and AES-York algorithms underestimate total ice concentration by 18.35% and 9.66% concentration counts on average, with 16.8% and 15.35% standard deviation, respectively. However, the retrieved concentrations of thin and thick ice are in much more discrepancy with the operational CIS estimates when either one of these two types dominates the viewing area. This is more likely to occur when the total ice concentration approaches 100 %. If thin and thick ice types coexist in comparable concentrations, the algorithms' estimates agree with CIS's estimates. In terms of ice concentration retrieval, thin ice is more problematic than thick ice. The concept of using a single tie point to represent a thin ice surface is not realistic and provides the largest error source for retrieval accuracy. While AES-York provides total ice concentration in slightly more agreement with CIS's estimates, NT2 provides better agreement in retrieving thin and thick ice concentrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incorporating constraints into frequent itemset mining not only improves data mining efficiency, but also leads to concise and meaningful results. In this paper, a framework for closed constrained gradient itemset mining in retail databases is proposed by introducing the concept of gradient constraint into closed itemset mining. A tailored version of CLOSET+, LCLOSET, is first briefly introduced, which is designed for efficient closed itemset mining from sparse databases. Then, a newly proposed weaker but antimonotone measure, top-X average measure, is proposed and can be adopted to prune search space effectively. Experiments show that a combination of LCLOSET and the top-X average pruning provides an efficient approach to mining frequent closed gradient itemsets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relational databases are the most popular repository for structured data, and is thus one of the richest sources of knowledge in the world. In a relational database, multiple relations are linked together via entity-relationship links. Multirelational classification is the procedure of building a classifier based on information stored in multiple relations and making predictions with it. Existing approaches of Inductive Logic Programming (recently, also known as Relational Mining) have proven effective with high accuracy in multirelational classification. Unfortunately, most of them suffer from scalability problems with regard to the number of relations in databases. In this paper, we propose a new approach, called CrossMine, which includes a set of novel and powerful methods for multirelational classification, including 1) tuple ID propagation, an efficient and flexible method for virtually joining relations, which enables convenient search among different relations, 2) new definitions for predicates and decision-tree nodes, which involve aggregated information to provide essential statistics for classification, and 3) a selective sampling method for improving scalability with regard to the number of tuples. Based on these techniques, we propose two scalable and accurate methods for multirelational classification: CrossMine-Rule, a rule-based method and CrossMine-Tree, a decision-tree-based method. Our comprehensive experiments on both real and synthetic data sets demonstrate the high scalability and accuracy of the CrossMine approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Support Vector Machines (SVMs) have been adopted by many data mining and information-retrieval applications for learning a mining or query concept, and then retrieving the ‘top-k’ best matches to the concept. However, when the data set is large, naively scanning the entire data set to find the top matches is not scalable. In this work, we propose a kernel indexing strategy to substantially prune the search space and, thus, improve the performance of top-k queries. Our kernel indexer (KDX) takes advantage of the underlying geometric properties and quickly converges on an approximate set of top-k instances of interest. More importantly, once the kernel (e.g., Gaussian kernel) has been selected and the indexer has been constructed, the indexer can work with different kernel-parameter settings (e.g., γ and σ) without performance compromise. Through theoretical analysis and empirical studies on a wide variety of data sets, we demonstrate KDX to be very effective. An earlier version of this paper appeared in the 2005 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining [24]. This version differs from the previous submission in providing a detailed cost analysis under different scenarios, specifically designed to meet the varying needs of accuracy, speed, and space requirements, developing an approach for insertion and deletion of instances, presenting the specific computations as well as the geometric properties used in performing the same, and providing detailed algorithms for each of the operations necessary to create and use the index structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) is one of four instruments onboard the Earth Observing System Aura satellite. The TES Science Investigator-led Processing System (SIPS) Facility performs production processing of all TES science data. When the TES project was proposed in 1988, its science algorithms were still evolving, but it was already understood to be at least two orders of magnitude more complex than its NASA predecessor, the Atmospheric Trace Molecule Spectroscopy (ATMOS) instrument. In addition, the expected data volume of the TES instrument would be more than 1000 times greater than that of ATMOS. Development of the TES SIPS faced a number of technical challenges. It also would have been impractical and prohibitively costly to develop the TES SIPS facility without carefully deploying the computing technologies that have recently become available. This paper describes how the challenges were met in the development of the facility by making use of evolving hardware technology and software refinement. The process revealed that the architecture of the hardware implemented was highly dependent upon the processing algorithm, and a stable algorithm was needed early in the hardware development process for performance analysis and benchmarking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on EOS/Aura offers unprecedented spatial and spectral resolution, coupled with global coverage, for space-based UV measurements of sulfur dioxide (SO2). This paper describes an OMI SO2 algorithm (the band residual difference) that uses calibrated residuals at SO2 absorption band centers produced by the NASA operational ozone algorithm (OMTO3). By using optimum wavelengths for retrieval of SO2, the retrieval sensitivity is improved over NASA predecessor Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) by factors of 10 to 20, depending on location. The ground footprint of OMI is eight times smaller than TOMS. These factors produce two orders of magnitude improvement in the minimum detectable mass of SO2. Thus, the diffuse boundaries of volcanic clouds can be imaged better and the clouds can be tracked longer. More significantly, the improved sensitivity now permits daily global measurement of passive volcanic degassing of SO2 and of heavy anthropogenic SO2 pollution to provide new information on the relative importance of these sources for climate studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Earth Observing System (EOS) Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) is an atmospheric remote sensing experiment led by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology. The objectives of the EOS MLS are to learn more about stratospheric chemistry and causes of ozone changes, processes affecting climate variability, and pollution in the upper troposphere. The EOS MLS is one of four instruments on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) EOS Aura spacecraft launched on July 15, 2004, with an operational period extending at least 5 years after launch. This paper describes the architecture and capabilities of the Science Data Processing System (SDPS) for the EOS MLS. The SDPS consists of two major component—the Science Computing Facility and the Science Investigator-led Processing System. The Science Computing Facility provides the facilities for the EOS MLS Science Team to perform the functions of scientific algorithm development, processing software development, quality control of data products, and scientific analyses. The Science Investigator-led Processing System processes and reprocesses the science data for the entire mission and delivers the data products to the Science Computing Facility and to the Goddard Space Flight Center Earth Science Distributed Active Archive Center, which archives and distributes the standard science products. The Science Investigator-led Processing System is developed and operated by Raytheon Information Technology and Scientific Services of Pasadena under contract with Jet Propulsion Laboratory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an approach to improve turbo code performance on the space time transmit diversity (STTD) code-division multiple-access (CDMA) forward link through better estimation of the channel state information (CSI) required by the mobile turbo decoder. An improved CSI estimation scheme that accounts for the unique nature of CDMA STTD intracell interference is presented. It is compared to a standard CSI estimation scheme that assumes all STTD interference and noise can be represented as additive white Gaussian noise at the mobile receiver input. An STTD CDMA forward link simulation shows that link performance is significantly improved when the mobile turbo decoder uses the more accurate CSI provided by improved estimation. However, the degree of improvement depends on the turbo decoding algorithm, mobile velocity, and whether the base station is using STTD or single-antenna transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Privacy is becoming a major issue in ad hoc networks. In this paper, using pseudonimity for achieving communication anonymity in networks that apply geographic-routing algorithms is explored. An Anonymous Receiver-Contention POsitioning (ARCPO) routing algorithm is proposed. Node identities (IDs) are kept anonymous. Pseudonyms, i.e., the positions of destinations, are used for data-packet delivery. The anonymity for a destination relies on the difficulty of matching its position to its ID by any observer. Position servers that provide node position information act as trusted third parties and handle identity management. Node mobility makes the use of the pseudonym momentary, and therefore can further improve privacy. The anonymity for the source and intermediate nodes in the path is also achieved because they are not required to reveal any identity information. A receiver-contention mechanism is proposed so that a next hop can be generated without local position information exchange, which otherwise may lead to severe privacy degradation. Analysis and simulation show that while ARCPO guarantees anonymous communication in ad hoc networks, its routing performance degrades moderately compared with other position routing algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new multicarrier system, termed multisymbol encapsulated orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MSE-OFDM), is proposed, in which one cyclic prefix (CP) is used for multiple OFDM symbols. The original motivation for the MSE-OFDM proposal is to reduce the redundancy due to the CP in static-channel environments. The authors then found that an alternative implementation of the system can be used to improve the robustness to frequency offset and reduce the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). Equalization and demodulation algorithms for the MSE-OFDM system are proposed. A new preamble and the corresponding frequency-offset and channel estimation techniques are studied for the MSE-OFDM system. Using the proposed MSE-OFDM preamble, the joint maximum likelihood (ML) estimation of the frequency offset and the channel impulse response (CIR) is investigated in this paper. Possible ways to reduce the joint estimation complexity, including exploitation of the preamble structure, approximation of the joint ML estimator, and fast Fourier transform (FFT) pruning, are discussed. The performance of the proposed MSE-OFDM systems and channel estimators are analyzed and verified through numerical simulations. An analysis on the bandwidth efficiency, the performance with frequency offset, and the PAPR of the MSE-OFDM system are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the problem of quality-of-service group communications in a heterogeneous network, which consists of multiple mobile ad hoc networks attached to the backbone Internet. A heuristic multicast algorithm named delay and delay variation multicast algorithm (DDVMA) is proposed. DDVMA is designed for solving the delay- and delay-variation-bounded multicast tree problem, which has been proved to be NP-complete. It can find a multicast tree satisfying the multicast end-to-end delay constraint and minimizing the multicast delay variation. Two concepts, which can help the DDVMA achieve better performance in terms of multicast delay variation than the delay and delay variation constraint algorithm that is known to be the most efficient so far, are proposed, namely, 1) the proprietary second shortest path and 2) the partially proprietary second shortest path. An analysis is given to show the correctness of DDVMA, and simulations are conducted to demonstrate the performance improvement of DDVMA in terms of multicast delay variation. It is also shown that the strategy employed by DDVMA is also applicable to handling the mobility of mobile hosts in a heterogeneous network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy-efficient routing is a critical problem in multihop wireless networks due to the severe power constraint of wireless nodes. Despite its importance and many research efforts toward it, a distributed routing algorithm that maximizes network lifetime is still missing. To address this problem, this paper proposes a novel utility-based nonlinear optimization formulation to the maximum lifetime routing problem. Based on this formulation, a fully distributed localized routing algorithm is further presented, which is proved to converge at the optimal point, where the network lifetime is maximized. Solid theoretical analysis and simulation results are presented to validate the proposed solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy constraints have a significant impact on the design and operation of wireless sensor networks. This paper investigates the base station (BS) selection (or anycast) problem in wireless sensor networks. A wireless sensor network having multiple BSs (data sink nodes) is considered. Each source node must send all its locally generated data to only one of the BSs. To maximize network lifetime, it is essential to optimally match each source node to a particular BS and find an optimal routing solution. A polynomial time heuristic is proposed for optimal BS selection and anycast via a sequential fixing procedure. Through extensive simulation results, it is shown that this algorithm has excellent performance behavior and provides a near-optimal solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joint scheduling and power control schemes have previously been proposed to reduce power dissipation in wireless ad hoc networks. However, instead of power consumption, throughput is a more important performance concern for some emerging multihop wireless networks, such as wireless mesh networks. This paper examines joint link scheduling and power control with the objective of throughput improvement. The MAximum THroughput link Scheduling with Power Control (MATH-SPC) problem is first formulated and then a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) formulation is presented to provide optimal solutions. However, simply maximizing the throughput may lead to a severe bias on bandwidth allocation among links. To achieve a good tradeoff between throughput and fairness, a new parameter called the demand satisfaction factor (DSF) to characterize the fairness of bandwidth allocation and formulate the MAximum Throughput fAir link Scheduling with Power Control (MATA-SPC) problem is defined. An MILP formulation and an effective polynomial-time heuristic algorithm, namely, the serial linear programming rounding (SLPR) heuristic, to solve the MATA-SPC problem are also presented. Numerical results show that bandwidth can be fairly allocated among all links/flows by solving the MILP formulation or by using the heuristic algorithm at the cost of a minor reduction of network throughput. In addition, extensions to end-to-end throughput and fairness and multiradio wireless multihop networks are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A network of sensors can be used to obtain state-based data from the area in which they are deployed. To reduce costs, the data, sent via intermediate sensors to a sink, are often aggregated (or compressed). This compression is done by a subset of the sensors called ‘aggregators.’ Inasmuch as sensors are usually equipped with small and unreplenishable energy reserves, a critical issue is to strategically deploy an appropriate number of aggregators so as to minimize the amount of energy consumed by transporting and aggregating the data. In this paper, the authors first study single-level aggregation and propose an Energy-Efficient Protocol for Aggregator Selection (EPAS) protocol. Then, they generalize it to an aggregation hierarchy and extend EPAS to Hierarchical EPAS. The optimal number of aggregators with generalized compression and power-consumption models was derived, and fully distributed algorithms for aggregator selection were presented. Simulation results show that the algorithms significantly reduce the energy consumption for data collection in wireless sensor networks. Moreover, the algorithms do not rely on particular routing protocols and are thus applicable to a broad spectrum of application environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epilepsy is the most prevalent neurological disorder affecting both adults and children. Over two-and-one-half million individuals in the United States have epilepsy and 25% of them do not respond to drugs. A significant focus of current research efforts is the development of a fully implantable device for real-time seizure detection and automated warning and blockage of seizures. The purpose of this paper is to describe and demonstrate the feasibility of incorporating a novel tool, the percentile tracking filter into a successful, validated seizure detection algorithm to create an analog seizure detection device. We demonstrate, in a small-scale study, that the performance of this analog implementation is statistically similar to a digital implementation of a previously described and successfully validated seizure digital algorithm. This analog implementation can be realized into an application specific integrated circuit that is suitable for a fully implantable device for seizure monitoring, warning and treatment, which is likely to consume very little power, a feature of practical value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce new methods for increasing the performance of multiprogram digital audio broadcast systems, e.g., satellite digital audio broadcasting. Joint multiprogram encoding is an attractive possibility for parallel broadcasting of a large number of programs. Joint coding extended over multiple audio frames in time give further improvements. The benefits of this kind of statistical multiplexing yield improved audio quality and/or higher capacity in terms of number of programs. We describe the new Joint Multiple Program Encoding Technique in the context of the perceptual audio coding (PAC) type of algorithms. We also describe methods for multi-program transmission including Equal Error Protection (EEP) as well as Unequal Error Protection (UEP) and improved error concealment for multiple program transmission. Some of the techniques described in this paper, are currently being used in satellite digital audio broadcasting in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes methods for automatically analyzing formal, state-based requirements specifications for some aspects of completeness and consistency. The approach uses a low-level functional formalism, simplifying the analysis process. State-space explosion problems are eliminated by applying the analysis at a high level of abstraction; i.e., instead of generating a reachability graph for analysis, the analysis is performed directly on the model. The method scales up to large systems by decomposing the specification into smaller, analyzable parts and then using functional composition rules to ensure that verified properties hold for the entire specification. The analysis algorithms and tools have been validated on TCAS II, a complex, airborne, collision-avoidance system required on all commercial aircraft with more than 30 passengers that fly in U.S. airspace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides information about extended versions of four of the best papers presented at the Eleventh Annual Conference on Computer Assurance, with the theme of "Industrial Strength Research," held at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, in June 1996. These papers address the issue of how to apply the theory of high assurance computing to system and software development. The first paper, "An Industrial-Strength Theorem Prover for a Logic Based on Common Lisp" describes a computational logic for Applicative Common Lisp (ACL2), a reimplemented, extended version of the Boyer-Moore theorem prover. In the second paper, titled, "Comparing Verification Systems: Interactive Consistency in ACL2," researchers have developed a multitude of formal techniques for specifying and verifying computer systems. The benchmark problem exists in this type of specification is the Oral Messages algorithm, a generalization of the Byzantine Generals problem. The third paper, "Using a Protean Language to Enhance Expressiveness in Specification," introduces a Protean specification language, a generalization of process algebras that allows the user to invent his own domain-specific operators to improve abstraction and readability.