This paper concerns resource planning in a VLSI assembly facility. The facility can process more than 100 sorts of WIPs (Works-In-Process) simultaneously. Specifically it performs product-mix production. An old resource estimation system, which gave a good estimation for a memory VLSI production facility, went wrong for an assembly facility. To adjust the estimation of required machinery resources of the assembly facility, a new parameter--the tuning value for the service time--is introduced. The tuning value expresses the reduction in machine utilization in the processing steps due to the product-mix. The value is empirically determined and the machinery resources can be estimated in good accuracy. Also the waiting time for processing in the incoming buffer is successfully considered in the estimation of turnaround time. However the tuning value is not enough in estimating human resources. A novel algorithm to estimate the resources for machine adjustments is proposed. The algorithm is based on a periodic assignment of multiple sorts of WIPs in a single machine, where the adjustments of machines for the product-mix are considered. The adjustments are additional operator's jobs in the product-mix. It estimates the operator request rate and machine utilization rate when multiple sorts of WIPs with different arrival rates are processed in a single machine. Finally, this resource estimation system considers the operator allocated not only to the preprocessing and postprocessing but also to the adjustments of machines for the product-mix. The estimated machinery, human resources, and turnaround time were evaluated in a real facility, and the proposed method is confirmed to be applicable in the weekly or monthly resource planning for the facility.

This paper presents a realization of a simple antenna system for land vehicle satellite communication that is tested in experiments conducted on the Engineering Test Satellite-VIII (ETS-VIII). The developed antenna system which was mounted onto a vehicle roof is compact, light weight with simple satellite-tracking operation. In order to realize compact antennas, an onboard-power divider and switching circuit for antenna feeding control are mounted under the array antenna. A Global Positioning System (GPS) module is used to provide accurate information on the vehicle's position and bearing during travelling. A personal computer (PC) is used as the control unit and data logger, which was specifically designed for this application, allow the switching circuit control as well as the retrieving of the received power levels and error rate. The field tests reported in this paper mainly address the tracking performance of the proposed antenna system. Satisfactory results were obtained. Good received power levels and bit error rate (BER) for tracking the ETS-VIII satellite were confirmed. Furthermore, in order to grasp the environmental factors that impact the quality of land vehicle communications, we carefully captured data at obstacles such as buildings, foliages, utility poles and highway overpasses. The results showed blockage and shadowing was confirmed. Additionally, when the antenna was tested at the inclined-road for simple propagation characteristics in elevation direction, stable reception of the satellite signals was realized.

Hyperthermia is one of the modalities for cancer treatment, utilizing the difference of thermal sensitivity between tumor and normal tissue. Interstitial microwave hyperthermia is one of the heating schemes and it is applied to a localized tumor. In the treatments, heating pattern control around antennas are important, especially for the treatment in and around critical organs. This paper introduces a coaxial-dipole antenna, which is one of the thin microwave antennas and can generate a controllable heating pattern. Moreover, generations of an arbitrary shape heating patterns by an array applicator composed of four coaxial-dipole antennas are described.

Transcatheter renal denervation (RDN) is a novel treatment to reduce blood pressure in patients with resistant hypertension using an energy-based catheter, mostly radio frequency (RF) current, by eliminating renal sympathetic nerve. However, several inconsistent RDN treatments were reported, mainly due to RF current narrow heating area, and the inability to confirm a successful nerve ablation in a deep area. We proposed microwave energy as an alternative for creating a wider ablation area. However, confirming a successful ablation is still a problem. In this paper, we designed a prediction method for deep renal nerve ablation sites using hybrid numerical calculation-driven machine learning (ML) in combination with a microwave catheter. This work is a first-step investigation to check the hybrid ML prediction capability in a real-world situation. A catheter with a single-slot coaxial antenna at 2.45 GHz with a balloon catheter, combined with a thin thermometer probe on the balloon surface, is proposed. Lumen temperature measured by the probe is used as an ML input to predict the temperature rise at the ablation site. Heating experiments using 6 and 8 mm hole phantom with a 41.3 W excited power, and 8 mm with 36.4 W excited power, were done eight times each to check the feasibility and accuracy of the ML algorithm. In addition, the temperature on the ablation site is measured for reference. Prediction by ML algorithm agrees well with the reference, with a maximum difference of 6°C and 3°C in 6 and 8 mm (both power), respectively. Overall, the proposed ML algorithm is capable of predicting the ablation site temperature rise with high accuracy.

In recent years, microwave wireless power transfer (WPT) has attracted considerable attention due to the increasing demand for various sensors and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Microwave WPT requires technology that can detect and avoid human bodies in the transmission path. Using a phantom is essential for developing such technology in terms of standardization and human body protection from electromagnetic radiation. In this study, a simple and lightweight phantom was developed focusing on its radar cross-section (RCS) to evaluate human body avoidance technology for use in microwave WPT systems. The developed phantom's RCS is comparable to that of the human body.

In this study, to obtain a more accurate analysis of the temperature in microwave coagulation therapy (MCT) for liver cancer, the water content ratios of dehydrated liver tissue and the dependencies of the dielectric and thermal constants of the tissue on the water content ratios were investigated in tissue heated at 2.45GHz. Swine liver tissues were heated and dehydrated under various conditions, and the water content ratios and dielectric and thermal constants were measured. The results indicated that the water content ratio of the tissue depended on the heating temperature and that the dielectric constants (relative permittivity and electrical conductivity) and thermal constants (specific heat and thermal conductivity) of the dehydrated tissues strongly depended on the water content ratio. Based on these results, numerical analyses of the electromagnetic field and temperature inside the liver tissue heated with a coaxial-slot antenna were conducted. Incorporating information on the water content ratio improved the accuracy of temperature calculations in MCT.

Recently, wearable wireless devices or terminals have become hot a topic not only in research but also in business. Implantable wireless devices can temporarily be utilized to monitor a patient's condition in an emergency situation or to identify people in highly secured places. Unlike conventional wireless devices, wearable or implantable devices are used on or in the human body. In this sense, body-centric wireless communications (BCWCs) have become a very active area of research. Radio-frequency or microwave medical devices used for cancer treatment systems and surgical operation have completely different functions, but they are used on or in the human body. In terms of research techniques, such medical devices have a lot of similarities to BCWCs. The antennas to be used in the vicinity of the human body should be safe, small and robust. Also, their interaction with the human body should be well considered. This review paper describes some of the wearable antennas as well as implantable antennas that have been studied in our laboratory.

Although the effect of electromagnetic interference on an implanted cardiac pacemaker due to a nearby mobile phone has been investigated, there have been few studies on the enhancement of the specific absorption rate (SAR) around an implanted cardiac pacemaker due to a nearby mobile phone. In this study, the SAR distribution around a pacemaker model embedded in a parallelepiped torso phantom when a mobile phone was nearby was numerically calculated and experimentally measured. The results of both investigations showed a characteristic SAR distribution. The system presented can be used to estimate the effects of electromagnetic interference on implanted electric circuits and thus could lead to the development of guidelines for the safe use of mobile radio terminals near people with medical implants.

This paper presents the computational electromagnetic dosimetry inside an anatomically based pregnant woman models exposed to electromagnetic wave during magnetic resonance imaging. The two types of pregnant woman models corresponding to early gestation and 26 weeks gestation were used for this study. The specific absorption rate (SAR) in and around a fetus were calculated by radiated electromagnetic wave from highpass and lowpass birdcage coil. Numerical calculation results showed that high SAR region is observed at the body in the vicinity of gaps of the coil, and is related to concentrated electric field in the gaps of human body such as armpit and thigh. Moreover, it has confirmed that the SAR in the fetus is less than International Electrotechnical Commission limit of 10 W/kg, when whole-body average SARs are 2 W/kg and 4 W/kg, which are the normal operating mode and first level controlled operating mode, respectively.

This paper presents a numerical study of the wireless channel characteristics of liver implants in a frequency range of 4.5-6.5GHz, considering different digital human phantoms by employing two inhomogeneous male and female models. Path loss data for in-body to on-body and in-body to off-body communication scenarios are provided. The influence of respiration-induced organ movement on signal attenuation is demonstrated. A narrower range of attenuation deviation is observed in the female model as compared to the male model. The path loss data in the female body is between 40-80dB which is around 5-10dB lower than the male model. Path loss data for the in-body to off-body scenario in both models suggest that in-body propagation is the main component of total path loss in the channel. The results demonstrate that channel characteristics are subject dependent, and thus indicate the need to take subject dependencies into consideration when investigating in-body communication channels.

Hyperthermia is one of the modalities for cancer treatment, utilizing the difference of thermal sensitivity between tumor and normal tissue. In this treatment, the tumor or target cancer cell is heated up to the therapeutic temperature between 42 and 45 without overheating the surrounding normal tissues. Particularly, the authors have been studying the coaxial-slot antenna for interstitial microwave hyperthermia. At that time, we analyzed the heating characteristics of the coaxial-slot antenna under the assumption that the human body is a homogeneous medium. In this paper, we analyzed the heating characteristics of the coaxial-slot antenna inside an actual neck tumor by using numerical calculations. The models of calculations consist of MRI tomograms of an actual patient. As a result of the calculations, we observed almost uniform temperature distributions inside the human body including the actual neck tumor, which are similar to the results obtained for a homogeneous medium.

As the electromagnetic (EM) environment is becoming increasingly diverse, it is essential to estimate specific absorption rates (SARs) and temperature elevations of pregnant females and their fetuses under various exposure situations. This study presents calculated SARs and temperature elevations in a fetus exposed to EM waves. The calculations involved numerical models for the anatomical structures of a pregnant Japanese woman at gestational stages of 13, 18, and 26 weeks; the EM source was a wireless portable terminal placed close to the abdomen of the pregnant female model. The results indicate that fetal SARs and temperature elevations are closely related to the position of the fetus relative to the EM source. We also found that, although the fetal SAR caused by a half-wavelength dipole antenna is sometimes comparable to or slightly more than the International Commission Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection guidelines, it is lower than the guideline level in more realistic situations, such as when a planar inverted-F antenna is used. Furthermore, temperature elevations were significantly below the threshold set to prevent the child from being born with developmental disabilities.

The miniaturization of electronic devices is leading to the creation of body-centric wireless communications, in which wireless devices are attached to human body. However, the human body environment is often uninviting for wireless signals owing to the mutual influence between the human body and wireless devices' antennas, namely wearable antennas. Therefore, wearable antennas need to be carefully designed. In this paper, a small wearable antenna with folded ground at 2.4 GHz is proposed. The folded ground has two effects: one is to improve efficiency and the other is to enhance bandwidth. When the antenna is very close to human body, it has an efficiency of 50.7% and a wide operation bandwidth of 130 MHz.

Physical channels of the intra-body communications, in which communications are performed by exciting electric field around the human body, have been treated as a capacitive circuit from the beginning of the development. Although the circuit-like understanding of the channels are helpful to design devices and systems, there is a problem that the results may be invalid if the circuit parameters are incorrectly estimated. In the present study, the values of the circuit parameters are properly derived by solving a boundary value problem of electric potentials of the conductors. Furthermore, approximate models which are appropriate for cases that some of the conductors are grounded are investigated.

The research on body-centric wireless communications (BCWCs) is becoming very hot because of numerous applications, especially the application of E-health systems. Therefore, a small multi-band and low-profile planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) with tuning function is presented for BCWCs in this paper. In order to achieve multi-band operation, there are two branches in the antenna: the longer branch low frequency band (950–956 MHz), and the shorter branch with a varactor diode embedded for high frequency bands. By supplying different DC voltages, the capacitance of the varactor diode varies, so the resonant frequency can be tuned without changing the dimension of the antenna. While the bias is set at 6 V and 14 V, WiMAX and ISM bands can be covered, respectively. From the radiation patterns, at 950 MHz, the proposed antenna is suitable for on-body communications, and in WiMAX and ISM bands, they are suitable for both on-body and off-body communications.

This paper concerns optimized facility design for VLSI production. The methods proposed are applicable in planning LSI production facilities with a good balance between the number of machines and the number of operators. The sequence in each processing step is analyzed in detail. A new algorithm based on the queueing model is developed for estimating the simultaneous requirements for the two kinds of resources, machines and operators. This estimation system can be applied to complicated fabrication schemes, such as batch processing, continuous processing, and mixed technologies. This methodology yields guidelines for ASIC LSI production system design.

In recent years, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems that operate up to under 3T are being used in clinical practice in Japan. In order to achieve the requirements of higher image quality and shorter imaging times, devices that utilize high magnetic fields (> 3T) and high power electromagnetic (EM) wave pulses have been developed. The rise of the static magnetic field is proportional to the increase of the EM wave frequency which raises the issue of variation in capacitance used in the radio frequency (RF) coil for MRI system. In addition, increasing power causes problems of withstanding voltage and these approaches leads to generation of non-uniform magnetic field inside the RF coil. Therefore, we proposed a birdcage coil without the use of lumped circuit elements for MRI systems in previous study. However, it is difficult to fabricate this birdcage coil. Hence, simply-structured birdcage coil with no lumped circuit elements is desired. In this paper, we propose a simply-structured birdcage coil with no lumped circuit elements for a 4T MRI system. In addition, the authors investigated the input impedance and magnetic field distribution of the proposed coil by FDTD calculations and measurements. The results confirm that the proposed birdcage coil matches the performance of the conventional birdcage coil which includes several capacitors.

In this paper, the electrical constants of a biological tissue-equivalent agar-based solid phantom from 3.0 to 6.0 GHz are described. The developed phantom can reproduce the electrical constants of biological tissues from 3.0 to 6.0 GHz, and it is not necessary to change the phantom for each frequency band in the range of 3.0 to 6.0 GHz during the measurements. Moreover, adjustments to the dielectric constants of the phantom at 3.0, 3.8, 5.2, and 5.8 GHz are presented. The constants of this phantom can be adjusted mainly by using polyethylene powder and sodium chloride. The phantom can be used to evaluate the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) as well as the antenna characteristics in the range of 3.0 to 6.0 GHz. Furthermore, the effect of the electrical constants of the phantom on the SAR is investigated. The investigation of SAR measurements is performed on the phantom at 5.2 GHz using the thermographic method. Calculations using the FD-TD method and the finite difference method based on the heat conduction equation are carried out in order to evaluate the thermal diffusion in the measurements using the thermographic method. The measured and calculated results are in good agreement. There is evidence that the thermal diffusion influences the SAR estimation at 5.2 GHz more than in a lower frequency range even though this method basically does not depend on the frequency.

This paper presents a simple antenna system for land vehicle communication aimed at Engineering Test Satellite-VIII (ETS-VIII) applications. The developed antenna system which designed for mounting in a vehicle is compact, light weight and offers simple satellite-tracking operation. This system uses a microstrip patch array antenna, which includes onboard-power divider and switching circuit for antenna feeding control, due to its low profile. A Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver is constructed to provide accurate information on the vehicle's position and bearing during traveling. The personal computer (PC) interfaces as the control unit and data acquisition, which were specifically designed for this application, allow the switching circuit control as well as the retrieving of the received power levels. In this research, the antenna system was firstly examined in an anechoic chamber for S parameter, axial ratio, and radiation characteristics. Satisfactory characteristics were obtained. As for beam-tracking of antenna, it was examined in the anechoic chamber with the gain above 5 dBic and the axial ratio below 3 dB. Moreover, good received power levels for tracking the ETS-VIII satellite in outdoor measurement, were confirmed.

In recent years, there has been rapid developments in radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems, and their industrial applications include logistics management, automatic object identification, access and parking management, etc. Moreover, RFID systems have also been introduced for the management of medical instruments in medical applications to improve the quality of medical services. In recent years, the combination of such a system with a biological monitoring system through permanent implantation in the human body has been suggested to reduce malpractice events and ameliorate the patient suffering. This paper presents an implantable RFID tag antenna design that can match the conjugate impedance of most integrated circuit (IC) chips (9.3-j55.2Ω at 2.45GHz. The proposed antenna can be injected into the human body through a biological syringe, owing to its compact size of 9.3mm × 1.0mm × 1.0mm. The input impedance, transmission coefficient, and received power are simulated by a finite element method (FEM). A three-layered phantom is used to confirm antenna performance.