In this paper, we performed six human movement simulation by a commercial software (Poser7). We performed FDTD simulations for body area network propagation with one transmitter and six receivers. Received amplitudes were calculated for every time frame of 1/30 s interval. We also demonstrated a polarization diversity effectiveness for dynamic wearable body area network propagation.

This paper introduces a state-of-art on an ultra-wideband (UWB) technology in intelligent transport systems (ITS). To examine the detection performance of a UWB short-range radar for vehicular applications, we developed a 26-GHz band short-range UWB radar system with an embedded compact MMIC-based RF module. In this paper, we briefly comment on the current regulatory environment for UWB radar systems by outlining the structure of an international organization involved in examining the regulatory status of these systems. We then describe the principles of detection and system design for impulse radar, the radar system that we developed, and a MMIC-based RF module as well as the performance of these devices. We measured their performance in a series of laboratory experiments and also measured UWB radar cross sections of an automobile. The results of our experiments suggest that our radar system is capable of detecting targets with a range resolution of around 9 cm.

Several papers have been shown equalization in the reception side. However, equalization in transmission side that is partial response signaling (PRS) or precoding is also possible in a two-way interactive communication such as time or frequency division duplex (TDD of FDD). This paper proposes and investigates a system which includes a transmission equalization and reception equalization based on an array antenna. This system is the extension in spatial and temporal domains. The channel capacity can be improved in the super channel which includes the transmitter and receiver array antenna.

In this paper we present a novel method for improving RAKE receiver reception in UWB systems. Due to the fact that practical pulses that can be produced for UWB-IR (Ultra Wideband-Impulse Radio) may occupy a longer time than the typical multipath resolution of the actual UWB channel, multiple channel components may arrive within this typical pulse width. Performance degradation may occur due to the resulting intrapulse (overlapping received pulses) interference. We here propose an adaptive, pilot aided RAKE receiver for UWB communications in the multipath environment. The proposed system estimates the actual received signal with intrapulse interference in each RAKE finger using projections onto a Hadamard-Hermite subspace. By exploiting the orthogonality of this subspace it is possible to decompose the received signal so as to better match the template waveform and reduce the effects of intrapulse interference. By using the projections onto this subspace, the dimension of the received signal is effectively increased allowing for adaptive correlator template outputs. RAKE receivers based on this proposal are designed which show significant performance improvement and require less fingers to achieve required performance than their conventional counterparts.

We propose a new approach associated with the use of some selected sets of Walsh Hadamard codes for joint estimation of channels and the number of transmit antennas by employing only one OFDM pilot symbol. This allows transmit antenna diversity to be applied in systems which have a limited number of training symbols (preambles), e.g. HIPERLAN/2. The proposed approach does not require any a priori knowledge about the number of transmit antennas, providing flexibility in the number of antennas to be used. In addition, adaptive scheme associated with the proposed approach provides more accurate estimations of the channels. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is evaluated through simulation. Results show that the proposed scheme provides significant improvement over previous channel estimation schemes and has almost the same performance as the ideal system with the full knowledge of the channel state information.

This paper proposes and investigates an adaptive equalizer with diversity-combining over a multipath fading channel. It consists of two space-diversity antennas and a Ts/2-spaced decision-feedback-equalizer (DFE). Received signals from the two antennas are alternatively switched and fed into the feed forward-filter of DFE. We call this structure a Switched Input Combining Equalizer with diversity-combining (SICE). By using an SICE, the receiver structure for combining diversity equalization can be simplified, because it needs only two receiver sections up to IF BPF. The bit error rate (BER) performance of SICE was evaluated by both computer simulation and experiment over a multipath fading channel. We experimentally confirmed the excellent BER performance, around 1% of BER over a multipath fading channel at 160Hz of maximum doppler fading frequency. Therefore, the proposed SICE is applicable to highly reliable transmission in the 1.5-GHz-band mobile radio.

Under current radio regulations, it is illegal to change the configuration of a radio after its type approval has been acquired. However, the reconfigurability of a Software Defined Radio (SDR) terminal, which is one of its benefits, is possible by changing its software in the field. This contradicts current radio regulations. Therefore, a new authorization procedure is necessary for system reconfiguration using SDR. It is necessary to satisfy the radio regulation. In other words, a new authorization procedure requires techniques to prevent the operation out of the allowed limits of SDR in the field. In this paper, we propose a novel mechanism, called Automatic Certification System (ACS), as a solution to these regulatory issues for SDR. The ACS is a system which gives type approval automatically to the software which affects the output power, central frequency, frequency band, modulation type and which controls analog circuits on an SDR terminal. We also propose the ACS based framework which aims to distribute the burden of the software manufacturer, hardware manufacturer, and governmental authority. After that, we describe the inspection method and discuss the case of a modulation scheme which can be Phase Shift Keying (PSK) or Minimum Shift Keying (MSK) schemes. Our simulations confirm that the ACS is able to certify the modulation software at the terminal.

Spread spectrum theory and techniques have been studied and developed for commercial applications in Japan, rather than for military use as in USA. Main purpose of the study and development is not to prevent jamming or intentional interference, but to carry out more efficient utilization of available frequency spectra. This paper introduces some spread spectrum theory and techniques which have been studied for the past several years in Japan for improving capacity of transmission. Co-channel interference in code-division multiple access (CDMA) based on spread spectrum technique is the most dominant factor in the limitation of capacity. Various classes of pseudo-noise (PN) sequences or spreading sequences have been proposed in order to reduce co-channel interference or achieve fast acquisition and high security. On the other hand, co-channel interference can be eliminated by digital signal processing approaches, such as adaptive digital filtering and beam-forming. This paper gives an overview of these PN sequences and interference cancellation techniques which appear to be most promising for use in commercial spread spectrum systems.

This paper discusses a design methodology suitable for the development of software defined radio platforms. A flexible digital receiver was designed and implemented using a multi-port direct converter and an FPGA-based platform. The design starts with a hardware-oriented top-level system model. The model is built based on basic signal processing blocks connected together in a graphical tool. Carrier symbol timing recovery is implemented in the discrete-time (digital) domain with an interpolator-based synchronizer. Carrier phase and frequency are recovered using a feedback synchronization algorithm (a second-order type-II digital PLL). Experimental results of the platform and its simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design methodology.

Ultra-wideband (UWB) communications is used for medical information communication technology (MICT) as a dependable and safe communication technology in recent years. On the other hand, there are existing various UWB systems that are not used for MICT. Generally, these UWB systems use almost the same frequency band. Therefore, they interfere to each other in general transmission channel environment. In our previous work, a novel UWB pulse shape modulation using modified Hermite pulse is proposed as a multiple user access scheme. In this paper, we propose a mitigation method for inter-user interference and inter-system interference using combination of orthogonal pulse shape modulation and orthogonal matched filter (OMF) detector. The purposes of our system are to detect all signals of users in the same UWB system and to reduce the unknown interference from other UWB systems at the same time. This paper provides performance evaluation results based on both of analytical and numerical evaluation. Simulation results show that the proposed system can detect the signals that were transmitted from the same UWB system using orthogonal pulse set, while the proposed system can reduce the interference from unknown UWB systems at the same time. The theoretical analysis is expected that noise tolerance of our proposal will be deteriorated in the additive Gaussian noise channel in comparison with the conventional matched filter. It is confirmed that the numerical evaluation illustrates such noise tolerance equivalent to the theoretical analysis result.

Although individual segments of a natural language such as words have different importance on human interpretation of the meaning, every segment has been uniformly protected by an error-correcting code. If the importance of individual segments is defined by considering their meaning in the sentence, we can adaptively control the level of error-protection for each segment according to its importance in order to reduce errors on human interpretation of the meaning. In this paper, we propose an error-control scheme based on the varying importance of each word. We first introduce a method which determines the importance of each word and then propose an error-control scheme in which several error-correcting codes are alternately used to protect each word according to its importance. Probablity of semantic errors, that is, errors on human interpretation of the meaning, is defined and used as a criterion in mapping error-correcting codes to words possessing different importance. We theoretically formalize the problem of obtaining an optimum mapping which minimizes the probability of semantic errors under some constraint. Given a certain probability distribution of the importance of words and set of error-correcting codes, we can derive the optimum mapping. The proposed error-controlling scheme is theoretically evaluated by comparing its probability of semantic errors with that of a conventional scheme in which every word is uniformly protected by a single error-correcting code. Results show that the proposed scheme can considerably raduce the probability of semantic errors while retaining the same average transmission rate or redundancy.

The purpose of our research is to get further improvement in the performance of order statistic filters. The basic idea found in our research is the use of a robust median estimator to obtain median differential order information which the classes of order statistic filter required in order to sort the input signal in the filter window. In order to give the motivation for using a median estimator in the classes of order statistic filters, we derive theorems characterizing the median filters and prove them theoretically using the characteristic that the order statistic filter has the performance for a monotonic signal equivalent with the FIR linear filter. As an application of median operation, we propose and investigate the Median Differential Order Statistic Filter to reduce impulsive noise as well as Gaussian noise and regard it as a subclass of the Order Statistic Filter. Moreover, we introduce the piecewise linear function in the Median Differential Order Statistic Filter to improve performance in terms of edge preservation. We call it the Piecewise Linear Median Differential Order Statistic Filter. The effectiveness of proposed filters is verified theoretically by computing the output Mean Square Error of the filters in parts of edge signals, impulsive noise, small amplitude noise and their combination. Computer simulations also show that the proposed filter can improve the performance in both noise (small-amplitude Gaussian noise and impulsive noise) reduction and edge preservation for one-dimensional signals.

This paper shows activities of the ultra wideband (UWB) research and development consortium organized by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT). Fully CMOS monolithic microwave integrate circuits (MMICs) are designed and fabricated both for the multiband OFDM and the impulse radio. UWB transceivers are constructed with the MMICs as their front-end devices and evaluated by some measurements such as time domain waveform, spectrum, error vector magnitude, and so on. To show the application capabilities of the UWB transceivers, two kinds of video transmission system are constructed and demonstrated.

Industrial radio control systems require a high degree of safety and reliability even in operating environments where harsh interference conditions exist. In order to implement Spread Spectrum (SS) modulation techniques in industrial radio control systems, a hybrid Direct Sequence/Frequency Hopping (DS/FH) system with high speed synchronization capability was designed, implemented and evaluated. In this system, a digital matched filter was utilized for despreading the DS signal. By manipulating the despread signal and sensing the correlation peak, the frequency hopping circuit can operate without a special synchronizing circuit. The focus of this report is on an engineering sample created for the 900MHz band available as an ISM band in the U.S. In this sample, error correction code was integrated with the hybrid DS/FH which gives the system excellent narrow-band interference rejection properties and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) capabilities.

The worldwide availability of the Industrial Scientific and Medical (ISM) bands has prompted the proposal of several communication systems for indoor application at the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. Although adaptive array antennas have been thoroughly investigated for various outdoor scenarios, their application to indoor communications has been overlooked. Experimental results indicating that conventional array antenna techniques exhibit poor performance when implemented indoors have recently been published. An important peculiarity of the indoor channel is the coexistence of both near-field and far-field propagating waves. Therefore, algorithms that can indifferently cope with both near-field and far-field wavefronts for source location and beamforming are desirable. In this paper, the following are presented. First, a mathematical analysis of the performance of array antennas in the indoor environment is taken up. Second, a new, simple, cost-effective and statistically coherent scheme, the Adaptive Sampling algorithm, is proposed for location estimation of sources anywhere from near field to far field. It is shown that the proposed algorithm achieves ubiquitous source location, allowing for symmetric uplink/downlink beamforming with seamless performance. Finally, the performance of the proposed Adaptively Sampled Array Antenna is performance analyzed via computer simulations under the specifications of the IEEE802.11b DS Wireless Local Area Network (W-LAN).

This paper investigates the improvement of the radiation pattern design of transmitting array antenna beamforming and transmission power control (TPC) for forward link of DS-CDMA/FDD system. Optimum transmission beamforming and TPC can be derived from the information of the propagation channel for the forward link, in terms of outage probability minimization. It is assumed that the channel is static and then all mobile stations (MS's) report channel characteristics measured in the forward link to a base station (BS) that can control signal to interference plus noise ratios (SINR's) received by individual MS's using that measured information. Then, for the multi-user environment of a single cell, goal programming (GP) is applied to derive an optimum weight vector of the transmitting array antenna and optimum TPC such that outage probability can be minimized.

This paper presents an overview of research, development, standardization and regulation activities on ultra wideband (UWB) technologies in National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT). NICT started a project on UWB technologies since 2002, and organized UWB consortium in cooperation with more than 20 companies and 7 universities in Japan. Up to now, we have been conducting numerous UWB R&D including the following main works: i) key technology development such as MMIC chips, antennas and other devices, ii) measurement and channel modeling for UWB signal propagation, iii) standardization in international activities of IEEE 802.15, ITU-R TG1/8 as well as in a national regulatory committee of Ministry of Internal Affair and Communications (MIC). The UWB systems we have studied occupy frequency bands range from microwave band (3-5 GHz) to quasi-millimeter wave band (24-29 GHz). Various prototype UWB systems including multi-functional terminals have been developed. The output of NICT has been succeeded by industrial parties with with national and international standardization and regulation.

PSK coherent demodulation has difficulty in achieving high speed carrier extraction and symbol synchronization when implementing to slow FH-SS radio system. On the other hand, implementation to FPGA has the requirement of a small gate size to design because of FPGA cost issue. We developed a QPSK coherent demodulation digital modem for FH-SS radio systems using FPGA by solving problems. The designed modem performs symbol synchronization with no carrier extractions, under the limitation of the small gate size requirement. The modem employs shift arithmetic operation and a comb digital BPF to achieve very good synchronization lock-up performance with small gate size. In this paper, the symbol synchronization and the carrier tracking scheme are mainly discussed. Analysis of its performance and stability are also explained. The achievement of its very good performance is presented by experimental measurement.

This paper proposes and investigates an intelligent error-controlling scheme according to different importance of segmental information. In particular, the scheme is designed for facial images encoded by model-based coding that is a kind of intelligent compression coding. Intelligent communication systems regard the contents of information to be transmitted with extremely high compression and reliability. After highly efficient information compression by model-beaed coding, errors in the compressed information lead to severe semantic errors. The proposed scheme reduces semantic errors of information for the receiver. In this paper, we consider Action Unit (AU) as a segment of model-based coded facial image of human being and define the importance for each AU. According to the importance, an AU is encoded by an appropriated code among codes with different error-correcting capabilities. For encoding with different error controlling codes, we use three kinds of constructions to obtain unequal error protection (UEP) codes in this paper. One of them is the direct sum construction and the others are the proposed constructions which are based on joint and double coding. These UEP codes can have higher coderate than other UEP codes when minimum Hamming distance is small. By using these UEP codes, the proposed intelligent error-controlling scheme can protect information in segment in order to reduce semantic errors over a conventional error-controlling scheme in which information is uniformly protected by an error-correcting code.

This paper proposes and investigates optimum modulation assignment and band allocation scheme according to subband channel status for BST-OFDM system. The proposed system can adaptively optimize modulation assignment and band allocation according to the conditional parameter under independently fading subband channels. Specifically, in this paper only two optimization problems are treated in terms of modulation assignment. At first, an optimization criterion is a total Bit Error Rate (BER) subject to the constraint conditions of a desired total information bit rate under a fixed effective bandwidth. Another optimization problem is the maximization of a total information bit rate to satisfy a desired BER under a fixed effective bandwidth. Knowledge of the subband channel status is assumed to be updated by the feedback information from a receiver. This paper shows that the proposed system can overperform the conventional system in which all subbands employ the same modulation schemes in terms of BER. In addition, it is shown that the proposed system improves the overall information bit rate, which is not accomplishable in the conventional system.