This paper presents the results of an investigation on the effect of a thin low-dielectric material (phantom shell) on measuring the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) in the frequency range of 3 to 6 GHz. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has started to develop a SAR measurement procedure in order to cover such frequencies. In the procedure, the SAR is measured in a liquid phantom, which is a shell filled with tissue-equivalent liquid. Although the shell is thin and has low-dielectric properties, the influence of the phantom shell is thought to increase at higher frequencies. Therefore, an investigation using the transmission line model and the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FD-TD) method was conducted. To verify the FD-TD results, measurements were also carried out. The calculation results using the FD-TD method agree well with the measurement results. If the frequency is higher, the SAR is affected by the shell even though the shell is thinner and has much lower dielectric properties than those of the tissue-equivalent liquid. Specifically, the SAR with the shell is approximately 1.3 times higher than without the shell at 5.2 GHz for the maximum case. The deviations in the loss and the thickness for the shell do not affect the SAR more than the relative permittivity.

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 describes voice communication connection controls in digital public land mobile networks (D-PLMNs). Voice communications in the D-PLMNs are carried at about 10 kbit/s over narrow-band TDMA channels with highly efficient cellular voice encoding schemes. Extensive research is being carried on half-rate voice encoding schemes that will effectively double radio resources. We first outline the configuration of voice communication connection between a cellular phone in the D-PLMN and a telephone in a fixed network, and we describe the optimum position for the CODECs that transform cellular voice codes to the conventional voice codes used in the fixed network, and vice versa. Then we propose a CODEC-bypassed communication control scheme that improves the quality of voice communication between cellular phones. And we propose a cellular voice code negotiation scheme in the D-PLMN which supports different cellular voice encoding schemes. We also propose an efficient channel reassignment scheme for effectively assigning TDMA channels to voice calls with two different bitrates (full-rate and half-rate), and we analyze this scheme's traffic capability. Finally, we describe a dual-tone multiple-frequency (DTMF) signal transmission scheme and estimate the number of DTMF signal senders required in the D-PLMN.

This paper proposes a method for estimating the complex permittivity of a small quantity of a sample such as a biological membrane. The feature of this method is that a material with an unknown complex permittivity is mixed with a material with a known complex permittivity in a number of volume ratios. The unknown complex permittivity is estimated by measuring the effective permittivity of the mixtures and by using the mixing formula, which is applied to the composite material. The validity of this estimation method is evaluated using a phospholipid, which is the primary constituent of a biological membrane, in the frequency range from 0.8 GHz to 6 GHz. We confirm that the measured effective permittivity of the phospholipid mixtures, which comprise the phospholipid and Ringer's solution in a number of volume ratios, corresponds to that of the Lichtenecker formula. Additionally, by preparing a number of samples with varying volume ratios the estimation error can be decreased. This estimation method is considered to be effective in the measurement of the complex permittivity for a biological membrane.

In this study we have employed an effective technique for dosimetric analyses of base station antennas in an underground environment. The technique combines a ray-tracing method and the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method to calculate the specific absorption rate (SAR) in the human body. The ray-tracing method was applied to evaluate the incident fields in relation to the exposed subject in a three-dimensional space, while the FDTD method was used to calculate the detailed SAR distributions in the human body. A scenario under an underground passage with the installation of a top-loaded monopole antenna was analyzed to investigate the relationship between the actual antenna exposure and a plane-wave exposure. The results show that the plane-wave exposure overestimated the whole-body average SAR in most cases, although this was not always true for peak SAR. The finding implies not only the usefulness of the present uniform-exposure-based reference level for the whole-body average SAR evaluation but also the necessity of modeling actual underground environment for high-precision local peak SAR evaluation.

This paper proposes a non-destructive dielectric measurement method for a solid lossy dielectric material with sufficiently large dimensions compared to the wavelength. The proposed non-destructive measurement method employs an open-ended waveguide infilled with a low-loss dielectric material at the end of the waveguide. A numerical model of the open-ended waveguide attached to the surface of a solid dielectric material is simulated using the FDTD method. The reflection coefficient is calculated while the complex permittivity of the solid lossy dielectric material is varied. A permittivity estimation chart representing the relationship between the complex permittivity and the reflection coefficient is derived at 2 GHz. The measured reflection coefficient is plotted on the permittivity estimation chart. The chart indicates that the reflection coefficient varies drastically according to the variation in the complex permittivity of the solid dielectric material if a low-loss dielectric material is used. As a result, it became possible to estimate the complex permittivity of the solid lossy dielectric material by measuring the reflective coefficient. The estimated complex permittivity using the proposed method is comparable to the measured complex permittivity using the S-parameter method employing a coaxial line.

The next generation mobile communications systems must support multimedia communications services as well as conventional voice service. DS-CDMA is regarded as the most promising candidate, because it is indispensable to cope with multimedia. The system capacity of DS-CDMA system is limited by the total interference level. As a result, in DS-CDMA systems many users suffer very poor communication quality if the total interference level exceeds this limit. Therefore, this paper considers smoothing interference fluctuation using the difference between voice and data in a type of QoS (quality of service). In other words, voice communication is suitable for a loss system because the quality of voice communication is delay-sensitive. On the other hand, data communication is suitable for a waiting system because the quality of data communication is non-delay-sensitive. This paper focuses on a system that applies a circuit switching method for voice traffic and a reservation type packet switching method for data traffic and proposes a data traffic control method. In this proposed data traffic control method, a base station controls data transmission from a mobile station to utilize unused voice traffic resources. As a result, the proposed method achieves highly efficient use of the radio spectra by smoothing interference fluctuation in DS-CDMA systems. This paper evaluates the performance level of the proposed method from a system capacity standpoint. It is shown that the proposed method achieves higher system capacity in voice/data integrated transmission.