Hironobu YAMAMOTO Jian ZHOU Takehiko KOBAYASHI
Ultra wideband (UWB) technologies are expected to be used in ultra-high-speed wireless personal area networks (WPAN) and wireless body area networks (WBAN). UWB human electromagnetic phantoms are useful for performance evaluation of antennas mounted in the vicinity of a human body and channel assessment when a human body blocks a propagation path. Publications on UWB phantoms, however, have been limited so far. This paper describes the development of liquid UWB phantom material (aqueous solution of sucrose) and UWB arm and torso phantoms. The UWB phantoms are not intended to evaluate a specific absorption rate (SAR) in a human body, because UWB devices are supposed to transmit at very low power and thus should pose no human hazard.
Huan-Bang LI Kunio YATA Kenichi TAKIZAWA Noriaki MIYAZAKI Takashi OKADA Kohei OHNO Takuji MOCHIZUKI Eishin NAKAGAWA Takehiko KOBAYASHI
An ultra-wideband (UWB) system usually occupies a large frequency band, which may overlap with the spectrum of a narrow band system. The latter is referred to as a victim system. To effectively use frequency, a UWB system may create a notch in its spectrum to accommodate the victim signal for interference avoidance. Parameters of the notch such as the depth and the width of a notch need to be decided in accordance to victim systems. In this paper, we investigate the effective UWB avoidance by examining the suitable notch based on experimental evaluation. In the experiments, 3GPP LTE, Mobile WiMAX, as well as an IMT Advanced Test-bed are respectively employed to represent different types of victim systems. The UWB system is set up based on WiMedia specifications and operates at the UWB low band of 3.1–4.8 GHz. A notch is fabricated by nullifying the related subcarriers of the UWB signal. In addition, a filter or a window function is formed and employed to further smooth the notch. Bit error rate (BER) or packet error rate (PER) performances of victim systems are measured and used to evaluate the UWB interference. Our results show that when a notch is properly formed, the interference level introduced by UWB can be below the permitted level by regulations.
Koichi TAKAHASHI Hironari MASUI Satoshi TAKAHASHI Kouzou KAGE Takehiko KOBAYASHI
A model that combines free-space loss (proportional to the square of distance d) and excess loss has been known to assess the microwave line-of-sight (LOS) path loss in street microcell environments. The excess loss represents the effects of shadowing obstacles. We measure the path loss at the 3.35, 8.45, and 15.75 GHz frequencies in an urban environment, and analyze the distance characteristics of the pass loss for mobile antenna heights of 2.7, 1.6, and 0.5 m. Results show that using a new model that bases on a dα formula instead of d2 in the conventional model produced a better fit to the measured data. They also show that lowering the mobile antenna to a height of 0. 5 m made it possible to virtually ignore the excess loss factor and, instead, use the dα formula to assess the path loss characteristics.
Masaya NISHIO Noriteru SHINAGAWA Takehiko KOBAYASHI
Cell loss is one of the most important metrics of quality of service in ATM mobile communication systems. This loss can be suppressed by introducing buffer memories in the network, but that sacrifices delay. This paper proposes a lossless handover scheme for ATM mobile communication networks that can suppress delay fluctuations, and presents a subjective evaluation of MPEG2 images with various buffer memory sizes.
Kazuo MORI Takehiko KOBAYASHI Takaya YAMAZATO Akira OGAWA
This paper examines fairness of service in the up-link of CDMA cellular slotted-ALOHA packet communication systems with site diversity reception. Site diversity rescues the packets originating mainly from near the edge of the cells, whereas packets originating near the base stations can not obtain the benefits of diversity reception. This situation causes an unfairness in packet reception that depends on location of the mobile station. Two transmission control schemes for reducing this unfairness are proposed. In the first scheme, mobile stations control the target received power for the open-loop power control based on the reception level of the pilot signals of the surrounding base stations. In the second, mobile stations control transmit permission probability. Successful packet reception rate, fairness coefficient and throughput performance are evaluated in fading environments with imperfect power control. Computer simulation shows that both schemes improve service fairness for all mobile stations and throughput performances. A performance comparison between the two schemes concludes that transmission power control outperforms transmit permission probability control as a simple technique for maintaining fairness of services.
Takehiko KOBAYASHI Noriteru SHINAGAWA Yoneo WATANABE
Future cellular communication systems will be called upon to provide multimedia services (voice, data, and video) for various user platforms (pedestrians, cars, and trains) that have a variety of mobility characteristics. Knowledge of mobility characteristics is essential for planning, designing and operating communication networks. The position data of selected vehicles (taxis) have been measured by using the Global Positioning System at 1-s intervals. Those data are used for evaluating mobility characteristics, such as probabilistic distributions of speed, cell dwell time, and cell crossover rate of vehicles, assuming that cells are hypothetically laid over the loci of the vehicles. The cell dwell time of vehicles is found to follow a lognormal distribution, rather than a conventionally-presumed negative exponential distribution. When the holding time distribution and random origination of calls along the loci are assumed, the properties of the cell dwell time and the handoff rate of terminals communicating in the hypothetical cellular systems are also estimated from the measured data.
Kenichi TAKIZAWA Hirotaka YAMANE Huan-Bang LI Feng LU Kohei OHNO Takuji MOCHIZUKI Takashi OKADA Kunio YATA Hisashi NISHIKAWA Takehiko KOBAYASHI
The paper presents capability of signal detection for realizing coexistence between broadband wireless access (BWA) systems and ultra wideband (UWB) devices. The capability is experimentally evaluated for baseband signals of downlink (DL) in both mobile WiMAX and 3GPP LTE. An UWB receiver based on fast Fourier transform (FFT) compliant with MB-OFDM standard is implemented as a detector of the BWA signals. The capability is evaluated in terms of elapsed time required to achieve signal detection with probability of 99% by the implemented FFT-based UWB receiver at different conditions of the receiver. Decisions on the signal detection are made by the simplest method which is by setting a threshold which is determined by noise floor of the receiver as reference. The experiments have been conducted though baseband signals for both AWGN and multipath fading channels without any synchronization between the DL signals and UWB receiver. In AWGN environment, results show that the elapsed time depends on the duty ratio of the DL signal to be detected, however, the correlation between the required time and duty ratio is not linear since their envelopes of the DL signals are not constant. In multipath fading environments based on channel models commonly employed as mobile radio environments, the required time for the signal detection becomes as 17 times longer than that in AWGN due to its signal attenuation. For robust signal detection in multipath fading environments, it has been revealed that the number of quantization bits at ADC is crucial through the experiments.
Shinichiro HAMADA Atsushi TOMIKI Tomoaki TODA Takehiko KOBAYASHI
A use of ultra wideband (UWB) technology within spacecrafts has been proposed with a view to partially replacing wired interface buses with wireless connections. Adoption of wireless technologies within the spacecrafts could contribute to reduction in cable weight (and launching cost as a result), reduction in the cost of manufacture, more flexibility in layout of spacecraft subsystems, and reliable connections at rotary, moving, and sliding joints. However, multipath propagation in semi-closed conductive enclosures, such as spacecrafts, restricts the link performance. In this paper, UWB and narrowband propagation were measured in a UWB frequency band (from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz, the full-band UWB approved in the United States) within a small spacecrafts and a shield box of the same size. While narrowband propagation resulted in considerable spatial variations in propagation gain due to interferences caused by multipath environments, UWB yielded none. This implies that the UWB systems have an advantage over narrowband from a viewpoint of reducing fading margins. Throughputs exceeding 80 Mb/s were obtained by means of commercially-available UWB devices in the spacecraft. Path gains and throughputs were also measured for various antenna settings and polarizations. Polarization configurations were found to produce almost no effect on average power delay profiles and substantially small effects on the throughputs. Significantly long delay spreads and thus limited link performance are caused by a conductive enclosure (the shield box) without apertures on the surfaces. Even in such an environment, it was found that delay spreads can be suppressed by partially paneling a radio absorber on the inner surfaces. More than 96 Mb/s throughputs were attained when the absorber panel covered typically 4% of the total inner surface area.
Hiroyuki SHIMIZU Hironari MASUI Masanori ISHII Kozo SAKAWA Takehiko KOBAYASHI Makoto ABO Chikao NAGASAWA
We investigate the relationship between microwave path-loss characteristics and line-of-sight (LOS) blocking in an urban environment with a low base-station antenna using LOS-blocking measurement equipment that we have developed. Changes in path loss, traffic conditions, and LOS-blocking caused by vehicles were measured simultaneously. It was found that path loss exhibits a Rayleigh distribution even in a LOS environment if the amount of traffic is such that LOS- blocking occurs for 80% of the time or more, but the other case path loss exhibits a Nakagami-Rice distribution. It was also found that ratio of coherent wave level to envelope level (c/r) depends heavily on rate of road traffic flow.
Noriteru SHINAGAWA Takehiko KOBAYASHI Keisuke NAKANO Masakazu SENGOKU
When a mobile station with a call in progress moves across cell boundary in a cellular mobile communications system, the system must switch the circuit to the base station in the destination cell to enable uninterrupted communications in a process called "handoff. " However, if a circuit to the destination base station cannot be secured when a handoff is attempted, the call is forcibly terminated. Studies have therefore been performed on methods of decreasing the percentage of forcibly terminated calls by giving handoff calls priority. With the aim of simplifying system design, we propose a system for automatically setting the number of circuits reserved for handoff based on the handoff block rate. In this paper, we describe this system and evaluate static traffic characteristics taking into account reattempt calls, the occurrence of which can have a major effect on system performance. We also consider the effects of the proposed system on service quality since giving priority to handoff calls and decreasing the rate of forced terminations results in a tradeoff with the blocking rate of new call attempts. Finally, we evaluate the traffic characteristics associated with the number of control requests, an important element in estimating the processing capacity required by control equipment at the time of system design.
Shin'ichiro SHINOMIYA Masaki AIDA Kazuyoshi SAITOH Noriteru SHINAGAWA Takehiko KOBAYASHI
Recent development of compact and powerful portable computers and mobile phones and proliferation of the Internet will enable mobile multimedia communications. From the viewpoint of implementing multimedia services into mobile communications, it allows us to predict that traffic characteristics of mobile networks change. For planning, designing, and operating mobile multimedia networks, it is important to investigate traffic models which take the effect of multimedia services into consideration. This paper investigates population of active users in a micro-cell and proposes a traffic model for mobile multimedia networks. This model describes a population process of active users in a micro-cell in diffusion model, and its characteristics include self-similarity and activity of mobility. We also made an evaluation of network performance by using simulation, in order to show that characteristics of the proposed traffic model have impact on planning and designing networks.
Hironari MASUI Koichi TAKAHASHI Satoshi TAKAHASHI Kouzou KAGE Takehiko KOBAYASHI
Measurements of delay spread were performed at microwave frequencies of 3.35, 8.45 and 15.75 GHz along quasi line-of-sight streets in metropolitan Tokyo. It is found that the delay spreads increase with the measurement distance and reach around 600 ns up to 1 km. It is also confirmed that a cumulative probability of the delay spreads follows a log-normal distribution. The gradients of delay spreads against the distance are greater for a lower mobile antenna height hm = 1.6 m than for hm = 2.7 m in these measurements because of blocking effect by the traffic of vehicles and pedestrians on the road. When the mobile antenna height is 2.7 m, the delay spreads within the range before the break points are observed relatively small: 90 ns (3.35 GHz), 140 ns (8.45 GHz) and 150 ns (15.75 GHz) at the cumulative probability of 90%. The gradients of delay spreads against the distance are greater for wider streets in our measurements.
Takehiko KOBAYASHI Miyuki HIROSE
The authors have focused on wideband, including ultra-wideband (UWB, 3.1 to 10.6GHz) radio propagation in various environments, such as a small space-craft and a passenger car, moreover on-body radio propagation measurements have been conducted. Many studies have been reported about indoor propagation for narrowband and wideband. However previous study has not been examined characteristics between 10-MHz and 1-GHz frequencies. In our previous study, UWB and narrowband propagation were measured in a UWB frequency band within closed/semi-closed spaces (e.g. a spacecraft, a passenger car, and a metal desk equipped with a metal partition). While narrowband propagation resulted in considerable spatial variations in propagation gain due to interferences caused by multipath environments, UWB yielded none. This implies that the UWB systems have an advantage over narrowband from a viewpoint of reducing fading margins. Thus, a use of UWB technology within spacecrafts has been proposed with a view to partially replacing wired interface buses with wireless connections. Adoption of wireless technologies within the spacecrafts could contribute to reduction in cable weight (and launching cost as a result), reduction in the cost of manufacture, more flexibility in layout of spacecraft subsystems, and reliable connections at rotary, moving, and sliding joints. Path gains and throughputs were also measured for various antenna settings and polarizations in the small spacecraft. Polarization configurations were found to produce almost no effect on average power delay profiles and substantially small effects on the throughputs. Furthermore, statistical channel models were proposed. Also UWB technologies have been considered for use in wireless body area networks (WBAN) because of their possible low power consumption and anti-multipath capabilities. A series of propagation measurements were carried out between on-body antennas in five different rooms. A new path loss and statistical models considering room volume had been proposed. In this paper, we evaluated propagation characteristics in heavy multipath environments, especially examined the channels at 10-MHz to 1-GHz frequencies.
Kazuyoshi SAITOH Hirotoshi HIDAKA Noriteru SHINAGAWA Takehiko KOBAYASHI
Understanding traffic characteristics in mobile communications is invaluable for planning, designing, and operating cellular networks, and various mobility models have therefore come to be developed to predict traffic characteristics. In this paper, cell-dwell-time distribution and transition probability in a virtual cellular system are first estimated from the results of measuring taxi motion using the Global Positioning System (GPS) for large-city and small-city ranges of motion. Then, on the basis of simulations using these estimations, traffic characteristics like handoff rate and channel blocking probability in a cellular system are evaluated. It was found that a difference between large and small cities could be observed in speed distribution and direction-of-travel probability, but only a slight difference in cell-dwell-time distribution.
Kazuo MORI Takehiko KOBAYASHI Takaya YAMAZATO Akira OGAWA
Site diversity causes unfairness in packet reception that depends on the location of the mobile stations in the up-link of CDMA cellular packet communication systems. This paper proposes an adaptive transmit permission probability control scheme that reduces this unfairness in CDMA cellular slotted-ALOHA systems with site diversity. The proposed scheme adaptively controls the transmit permission probability according to the offered load and the location of the mobile stations. Successful packet reception rate, fairness coefficient and throughput performance are evaluated in fading environments with imperfect power control. Computer simulation shows that adaptive transmit permission probability control improves fairness of service for all mobile stations and throughput performance across all channel loads compared with the conventional scheme.
Ultra wideband (UWB) signal propagation was measured and characterized in comparison with narrowband in a passenger-car compartment, to accommodate the design of new wireless devices for the safety and comfort of passengers. Spatial distributions of UWB and narrowband path gain, delay profiles, and delay spreads within the compartment were derived from frequency-domain responses (from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz) measured with a vector network analyzer. Whereas narrowband channels resulted in a number of dead spots (deep fading points), UWB yielded none, though some frequency dispersion was inevitable. Fading depth versus occupied bandwidth was also derived, which indicated superiority of UWB over narrowband systems from the viewpoint of link budget. Comparison with two other environments was also made in the received energy contained in a given number of multipath components.
Kiyoshi HAMAGUCHI Hiroyo OGAWA Takehiko KOBAYASHI Ryuji KOHNO
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.
Hideki SATOH Masahiro ISHIBA Takehiko KOBAYASHI
We previously developed a novel transmission power control method for code-division multiple access (CDMA) wireless systems that is suitable for the transmission control protocol (TCP) and constant bit rate (CBR) connections. It allows each mobile terminal to send packets to arbitrary slots without negotiation or the use of the ALOHA protocol. It results in high bandwidth utilization for TCP connections without the need to modify the TCP protocol or use a snoop agent. In this paper, we improve our previously developed power control method so as to adapt itself to distance variations and instantaneous fluctuations in the received power due to fading. We show that the developed method enables efficient bandwidth utilization compared with the conventional power control technique under various conditions.
Hironari MASUI Koichi TAKAHASHI Satoshi TAKAHASHI Kouzou KAGE Takehiko KOBAYASHI
This paper discusses microwave path-loss characteristics as a function of mobile antenna height in an urban line-of-sight environment. Measurements were made in metropolitan Tokyo with high-density buildings, using base station antenna heights of 4 and 8 m. We describe the path-loss characteristics of vehicle-mounted mode (mobile antenna height is 2.7 m) and portable mode (mobile antenna heights are 1.6 and 0.5 m). Dependence of path loss on the distance between base and mobile stations was analyzed. This reveals that the break points shift to the near side in the vehicle-mounted mode. This phenomenon can be interpreted by the existence of an effective height h of the road. The typical value of h was found approximately 1.4 m. In the portable mode, on the other hand, break points were not observed. The mobile antenna heights (1.6 and 0.5 m) in this mode are close to or less than the average height (1-2 m) of pedestrians on the sidewalk; and the received waves at the mobile station are often disturbed by pedestrians. This explains the nonexistence of break points in portable mode. The average attenuation coefficients is observed 3.2 in this mode. The attenuation coefficients tend to be larger at lower base station antenna heights and narrower road widths.