Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) is a computing para-digm which utilizes human-centric systems and applications. With the widespread use of information appliances, robots and sensors, the ubicomp paradigm is expected to become a reality in the near future. Because close interaction between a person and the computing environment is required for ubicomp, autonomous decentralized control will play an important role. In this paper, we discuss autonomous decentralized control in ubicomp from the viewpoint of typical ubicomp applications, smart environments and context-awareness.

Currently, many efforts are underway to design wideband mobile communication system. The system is one of alternative of Future Public Land Mobile Telecommunication Systems (FPLMTS). In this paper, we clarify received signal level characteristics for wideband mobile radio channels in line-of-sight (LOS) microcells. The results from urban-area field experiments, where received signal levels for various receiver bandwidths and power delay profiles were measured, show that the depth of fading of the-received signal decreases as normalized RMS delay spread, defined as the product of receiver bandwidth and RMS delay spread, increases. These results are useful in designing wideband microcell systems for urban areas.

The location information of ubiquitous objects is one of the key issues for context-aware systems. Therefore, several positioning systems to obtain precise location information have been researched. However, they have scalability and flexibility problems because they need completely configured space with a large number of sensors. To avoid the problems, we proposed a self-organizing location estimation method that uses ad hoc networks and Self-Organizing Maps and needs no prepared space with a large number of sensors. But, as in other similar precise localization methods, the proposed method needs advanced distance measurements unavailable to conventional wireless communication systems. In this paper, the self-organizing location estimation method's modification for distance measurement that uses received signal strength available to conventional wireless communication systems but which fluctuates uncertainly, is described and location estimation accuracy with the modified method is shown.

This paper presents study results regarding the analytical method for performance characteristics and application scheme, which cover a feature detection scheme using a Cyclic Prefix (CP) that is attached to an OFDM signal. The detection scheme is especially important when used as a sensing technology in advanced systems such as Device-to-Device (D-to-D) or Internet of Things (IoT). Herein, we present several basic performance characteristics of the signal processing involved in feature detection, namely, the Output S/N (Signal-to-Noise power ratio) and probability density functions of the OFDM signal and the noise measured at the output of the feature detector. The Output S/Nis described by an analytical expression and is also examined by conducting a software simulation. An analytical approach is investigated by modeling the spectral density of the OFDM signal and input noise and by executing the mathematical operations such as convolutional integration on the combination of OFDM signal and noise. The analytical results coincide closely with the simulation results. As for the applications to mobile communication system, some methods of the feature detection schemes are addressed. These are an estimation method for the Input C/N (Carrier-to-Noise power ratio) and a system discrimination scheme, especially under the assumption that two OFDM systems using different CP lengths are simultaneously operated in the same frequency. Furthermore, under the condition that two OFDM signals are transmitted in an asynchronous manner, a scheme to estimate their timing offset and signal power ratio is also described.

To meet the bandwidth requirements of multimedia services, multipath transmission is a promising solution. In this paper, we consider multi-access networks, where WiMAX and WiFi links are set up at the same time. Multipath transmission suffers from the intrinsic problem of out-of-order packet delivery. This has an adverse impact on TCP and even UDP-based delay sensitive applications. However, multimedia streaming services allow some tolerance to transmission delay. Motivated by this observation, we investigate how to split multimedia flows over heterogeneous links. Wireless link capacity varies widely over time due to dynamic radio conditions. The capacity variations should be promptly reflected in traffic splitting in order to accomplish an equal load-balance. A practical prototype system has been implemented. We have performed extensive measurements from a prototype system. Through practical experimental results, we could verify two major research goals. One is that multimedia splitting can improve the overall network performance (e.g., the permitted multimedia sessions or the aggregated bandwidth) while still keeping an acceptable media quality. The other is an adaptation capability to varying link quality. It has been widely investigated under various radio conditions and different monitoring intervals. It is shown that the adaptive technique is effective under dynamic radio environments.

The millimeter-wave band suffers strong attenuation due to rain. While calculating the link budget for a wireless system using this frequency band, the behavior of rain, attenuation due to rain, and the amount of degradation must be accurately understood. This paper presents an evaluation of the influence of rain and its attenuation on link performance in a Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) millimeter-wave model mesh network. Conventional statistical analyses including cumulative rain rate distribution and specific rain attenuation constants are performed on data collected from 2009 onwards. The unique effects arising due to the highly localized behaviors of strong rainfalls have become clear and are characterized in terms of variograms rather than correlation coefficients. Spatial separation even in the small network here with links of less than 1 km provides effective diversity branches for better availability performance.

This paper proposes a novel mobile communications system of integrating microcell and macrocell for future land mobile communications which allows the user to enjoy mobile communications services by using one terminal regardless of his terminal speed. Current and developing digital land mobile communications systems are classified into two categories according to their differences in cell size, operating environments, service requirements and terminal speeds. One is a microcell system offering cordless telephone services for the user moving at low speeds and the other is a macrocell system offering vehicle telephone services for the user moving at high speeds. In order to access these two systems, the user needs to have two different terminals and to use an appropriate one according to the operating environments, service requirements and terminal speeds. In this paper, we propose a land mobile communications system in which the user can place a call without any of the inconvenienced described above. The proposed system consists of multi layered composite microcell system with no handover areas, each layer being composed of a number of microcells. This paper presents the detailed structure of this system and evaluates the performances of the channel capacity and the frequency of handovers during a call based on computer simulation results.

Many efforts are currently underway to design wideband mobile communication systems. In this letter, we clarify the received signal level characteristics for wideband mobile radio channels in line-of-sight (LOS) microcells. We conduct several urban-area field experiments to measure the received signal levels for various receiver bandwidths from 300 kHz to 30 MHz and the power delay profile. The experimental results show that the fading depth of the received signal decreases as the normalized rms delay spread, defined as the product of receiver bandwidth and rms delay spread, increases. These results are useful in designing wideband microcell systems for urban areas.

From the viewpoint of service availability, which is an important evaluation factor in communication quality, we analytically study the performance improvement of heterogeneous radio networks that cooperatively select one system from among multiple communication systems. It is supposed herein that the heterogeneous network selects one system with the larger throughput or with the smaller time delay. To this end, we firstly derive analytical methods using the probability density function of the performance characteristics of the communication systems consisting of the heterogeneous radio network. The analytical method described here is comparatively general and enables the handling of cases where complete cooperation can and cannot be achieved in the heterogeneous network. As for the performance characteristics, we conduct an experiment using the wireless LAN to establish the probability distribution models of the throughput and time delay in the communication system. Using the analytical method and the experimental model obtained, we calculate the performance improvement by cooperative operation in the heterogeneous network. The equational expression to obtain the theoretical performance improvement limit is also investigated through the analytical equations.

A novel adder-free architecture for realizing a small-size π/4-shift QPSK signal generator IC is presented. In order to realize an adder function, analog current-mode addition is utilized instead of digital adders. Impulse responses of a roll-off filter are stored in a ROM as a Δ-Σ modulated one-bit data stream. This can greatly reduce the die size to 0.8mm 0.8mm while maintaining high modulation accuracy. The test chip was fabricated by using the standard 0.8µm CMOS technology, and the chip achieved 1.8% vector modulation error with a 2.7V power supply.

The expansion and diversification of wireless systems are proceeding rapidly, and the wireless communication environment will become a hybrid environment composed of multiple wireless systems. On the other hand, the resources of wireless systems are finite. Therefore, there is increasing concern that the growing use ofwireless systems will exhaust the finite wireless resources. Cognitive radio has been proposed as a solution to this problem. Cognitive radio aims to optimize the utilization of wireless resources by combining multiple wireless interfaces. Therefore, the future wireless access networks will be composed of multiple wireless systems. In this paper, we propose a packet distribution for communications using multiple IEEE802.11 wireless interfaces. The proposed method optimizes the utilization efficiency of multiple IEEE802.11 wireless interfaces based on a link cost which shows the load of the wireless link, and it improves delay and throughput in the access network. Furthermore, we show its impact on TCP.

The aggregation of Wi-Fi links has been identified as one way of taking advantage of available channels to achieve higher speed data transmission in future cognitive radio networks. However variations in link quality make it difficult to achieve stable performance from aggregated Wi-Fi links. In this paper we present a method for controlling aggregation of Wi-Fi links based on monitoring of link status. We first discuss the requirements for detecting bad-links which degrade the performance of aggregated Wi-Fi links. We then describe the implementation of an enhanced link-status detection algorithm based on monitoring of signal strength and number of retransmissions. In particular, we address the problems of monitoring and recovering links after they have been dropped from use, and adjusting decision thresholds to adapt to changing wireless conditions. Finally, we report the results of tests which demonstrate the effectiveness for attaining efficient aggregation of Wi-Fi links for high throughput under varying wireless conditions.