An experimental SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) estimation system based upon the thermograph method using a thermograph camera and newly developed homogeneous dry-phantom human models are presented. Experiments are conducted using this system and UHF fields to obtain SAR distributions in the human head irradiated by hand-held portable radios. Experiment results show that the estimated peak SAR's due to the radiation waves from radios of 1W transmitting power are lower than 2W/kg and so conform to the recommendations of the radio-frequency radiation safety guidelines. The developed system enables the surface SAR distributions on the phantom model to be precisely estimated; a function not available with the original system. System parameters required for providing precise estimations are discussed first, and then experiments are conducted to estimate SAR's in the human head exposed to a UHF hand-held portable radio's near field. Finally, estimated data are examined from the viewpoint of radio-frequency exposure safety guidelines.

This paper proposes new techniques to simulate a MIMO propagation channel using the ray-tracing method for the purpose of decreasing the computational complexity. These techniques simulate a MIMO propagation channel by substituting the propagation path between a particular combination of transmitter and receiver antennas for all combinations of transmitter and receiver antennas. The estimation accuracy calculated using the proposed techniques is evaluated based on comparison to the results calculated using imaging algorithms. The results show that the proposed techniques simulate a MIMO propagation channel with low computational complexity, and a high level of estimation accuracy is achieved using the proposed Vector-Rotation Approximation technique compared to that for the imaging algorithm.

This paper presents an experimental investigation on the RF characteristics of a 3W-class cryogenically-cooled receiver amplifier employing a gallium-nitride high electron mobility transistor (GaN HEMT) with a blue light for mobile base stations. In general, a cryogenically-cooled receiver amplifier using a GaN HEMT exhibits unstable DC characteristics similar to those found in the current collapse phenomenon because the GaN HEMT loses thermal energy at cryogenic temperatures. The fabricated cryogenically-cooled receiver amplifier achieves stable DC characteristics by injecting blue light into the GaN HEMT instead of thermal energy. Experimental results show that the amplifier achieves fine stable DC characteristics for deviation in the drain-source current from 42% to 5% and RF characteristics for a maximum power added efficiency from 58% to 68% without and with the blue light at 60,K. The fabricated amplifier is effective in reducing the power consumption at cryogenic temperatures. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first report regarding RF characteristics of a cryogenically-cooled receiver amplifier using a blue light for mobile base stations.

This paper describes a numerical assessment methodology of pacemaker EMI triggered by HF-band wireless power transfer system. By using three dimensional full-wave numerical simulation based on finite element method, interference voltage induced at the connector of the pacemaker inside the phantom that is used for in-vitro EMI assessment is obtained. Simulated example includes different exposure scenarios in order to estimate the maximum interference voltage.

The purpose of this study is to establish a whole-body averaged specific absorption rate (WB-SAR) estimation method using the power absorbed by humans; a cylindrical-external field scanning technique is used to measure the radiated RF (radio-frequency) power. This technique is adopted with the goal of simplifying the estimation of the exposure dosimetry of humans who have different postures and/or sizes. In this paper, to validate the proposed measurement method, we subject numerical human phantom models and cylindrical scanning conditions to FDTD analysis. We design a radiation system that uses a dielectric lens to achieve plane-wave irradiation of tested human phantoms in order to develop an experimental WB-SAR measurement system for UHF far-field exposure condition. In addition, we use a constructed SAR measurement system to confirm absorbed power estimations of simple geometrical phantoms and so estimate measurement error of the measurement system. Finally, we discuss the measurement results of WB-SARs for male adult and child human phantom models.

This paper proposes the test phantom for the cochlear implant to estimate electromagnetic interference (EMI) from a cellular phone. This test phantom is constructed from a square tank filled with saline solution. The use of a flat phantom provides a level of consistency in duplicating the exposure conditions in the EMI tests. The measurement and calculation results show that there is no difference in the E-field strength near the surface of the phantom when comparing flat and head-shaped phantoms and that the flat phantom is sufficiently thick to disregard the influence of reflective waves near the surface of the phantom. The calculation results also indicate the appropriateness of using physiological saline (0.18 g/l) up to 3 GHz when comparing the E-field strength inside a phantom comprising physiological saline and in a 2/3 muscle model. The results of actual EMI testing of a cochlear implant show that there is no difference in the maximum interference distance when using either the flat or head-shaped phantom. Based on these results, this paper presents the validity of using the flat phantom in EMI tests from cellular phone for the cochlear implant.

High efficiency amplifier construction techniques are investigated focusing on UHF band transmitting power amplifiers intended for cellular portable telephones and the state of the art amplifiers are presented. First, it is shown that high efficiency amplifiers are indispensable to attain pocket sized portable units through a theoretical analysis using a simple model. When about 1 W of transmitting power is required, it is desirable for the amplifier to operate with an efficiency of over 40%. Secondly, the switching mode scheme is described as the most effective technical means to achieve high amplifier efficiency. State of the art switching mode amplifiers, the Harmonic Reaction Amplifier (HRA) and the Linearized Saturation Amplifier with Bidirectional Control (LSA-BC), are presented as examples of nonlinear and linear amplifiers respectively. Basic operation mechanisms are shown. Experimental HRA and LSA-BC are constructed to determine their practically attainable efficiencies. Power-added efficiencies of 75% and 40% are recorded from a 1.7 GHz band 3 W HRA for CW and a 1.5 GHz band 1 W LSA-BC for π/4 QPSK respectively. These values indicate that these types of amplifier can be applied to pocket sized portable radio units.

The electromagnetic field (EMF) distributions created inside a train carriage by the cellular radios of the passengers are analyzed and the impact their electromagnetic interference (EMI) on the implantable cardiac pacemakers is evaluated based upon the analysis results. Both computer simulations and experiments using 800 MHz and 2 GHz transmitters in an actual train carriage confirm that excessively high EMF, high enough to affect the normal functions of the pacemaker, does not occur inside the carriage provided the safe distance of 22 cm specified for pacemaker users is kept. A simplified histogram estimation method for electric field strength is newly developed to deal with the complicated EMF distributions. It allows the EMI risk to pacemakers by cellular radio transmission to be quantitatively evaluated. Methodologies are described first. Typical results of FDTD analysis and actual measurement data are then shown. Finally, considerations and conclusions are made.

The Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) technique is presented in this paper as an estimation method for radio propagation prediction in large and complex wireless local area network (WLAN) environments. Its validity is shown by comparing measurements and Ray-trace method with FDTD data. The 2 GHz (802.11b/g) and 5 GHz (802.11a) frequency bands are used in both the calculations and experiments. The electric field (E-field) strength distribution has been illustrated in the form of histograms and cumulative ratio graphs. By using the FDTD method to vary the number of human bodies in the environment, the effects on E-field distribution due to human body absorption are also observed for 5 GHz WLAN design.

Recent cellular systems have excellent performances, such as high quality, compactness, low power consumption and low cost, owing not only to digital technologies but also to various RF device technologies, especially amplifier technologies. This paper describes base station RF technologies that contributed for the improvement of base station equipment. Future mobile system will provide much higher bitrate services in the higher frequency band. Requirements and new technologies that are expected for RF equipment of the future base stations are also discussed.

A new structure of a low-loss high temperature superconducting (HTS) filter is proposed by using quarter-wavelength coplanar waveguide (CPW) resonators. A 4-pole Chebyshev band-pass filter with the center frequency 5.0 GHz and the 0.01 dB-ripple fractional bandwidth 3.2% is designed based on the theory of direct-coupled resonator filters using K- and J-inverters. This filter is fabricated by using a high-Tc superconductive YBCO film deposited on a MgO dielectric substrate. The frequency response of the filter measured at 60 K agrees very well with the theoretical one. The insertion loss is 0.22 dB. The insertion loss of this filter is the lowest in HTS-CPW filters presented so far.

Recently, a lot of UWB antennas have been reported by many research groups. Most of the reported antennas have omnidirectional radiation characteristics. The disadvantage of using omnidirectional antennas is that the antenna performance can be degraded by adjacent walls or metals. If unidirectional UWB antennas are utilized, the degradation on the antenna performance due to omnidirectionality can be avoided. Another important topic in UWB antennas is the waveform distortion caused by antennas' transmission characteristics. In impulse-based UWB communications, waveform distortions of transmitted and received pulses caused by antennas deteriorate the communication performance. Therefore, the development of UWB antennas having small waveform distortions is highly desirable. In this paper, we propose a novel bowtie antenna using leaf-shaped radiating elements and a flat reflector. This antenna has unidirectional radiation patterns over the frequency range of 3.0 to 10.5 GHz. The actual gain in the maximum radiation direction is 6.0-9.0 dBi in the frequency range of 4.5-9.4 GHz (relative bandwidth of 71%). The cross-correlations between source pulse and received pulse waveforms are 0.89-0.94, and hence the waveform distortion caused by this antenna is relatively small. As a result, the proposed antenna is useful for impulse-based UWB communication systems using correlation detection.

Fundamental microwave key devices used in achieving compact mobile/portable telephones (raidio units) are discussed. The historical development flow of the systems and radio units are introduced, with respect to the 800-/900-MHz and 1.5-GHz Japanese cellular radio systems. The design concept of the developed radio units is briefly described. Tehnical requirements for RF circuits are reviewed and the developed key devices are practically applied to the circuits. Key factors in the requirements are also shown. Finally. future trends fro the key devices are surveyed from the stand point of achieving a smaller and more light weight pocket radio unit.

We propose a new band selective stop filter construction to decrease the out of band intermodulation distortion (IMD) noise generated in the transmitting power amplifier. Suppression of IMD noise directly improves the adjacent channel leakage power ratio (ACLR). A high-temperature superconducting (HTS) device with extremely high-Q performance with very small hybrid IC pattern would make it possible to implement the proposed filter construction as a practical device. To confirm the effectiveness of the HTS reaction-type filter (HTS-RTF) in improving ACLR, investigations based on both experiments and numerical analyses are carried out. The structure of a 5-GHz split open-ring resonator is investigated; its targets include high-unload Q-factor, low current densities, and low radiation. A designed 5-GHz HTS-RTF with 4 MHz suppression bandwidth and more than 40 dB MHz-1 sharp skirt is fabricated and experimentally investigated. The measured ACLR values are improved by a maximum of 12.8 dB and are constant up to the passband signal power of 40 dBm. In addition, to examine the power efficiency improvement offered by noise suppression of the HTS-RTF, numerical analyses based on measured results of gallium nitride HEMT power amplifier characteristics are conducted. The analyzed results shows the drain efficiency of the amplifier can be improved to 44.2% of the amplifier with the filter from the 15.7% of the without filter.

This paper proposes a new multi-port amplifier configuration that employs feed-forward techniques. In general, a multi-port amplifier is used as a transponder in a satellite transmitter. A multi-port amplifier comprises an N-in N-out input-side matrix network, N amplifiers, and an N-in N-out output-side matrix network. Based on this configuration, other undesired ports leak power to the desired port in a multi-port amplifier. If the power amplifier of a cellular base station uses a multi-port amplifier, the power leakage from the other ports causes degradation in the error vector magnitude. The proposed configuration employs N-parallel feed-forward amplifiers with a multi-port amplifier as the main amplifier. The proposed configuration drastically reduces the power leakage using the employed feed-forward techniques. An experimental 2-GHz band four-in four-out multi-port amplifier is constructed and tested. It achieves the leakage power level of -58 dB, a gain deviation of less than 0.05 dB, and a phase deviation of less than 0.45 deg. with the maximum power of 35 dBm over a 20-MHz bandwidth with the center frequency 2.14 GHz at room temperature. The experimental multi-port amplifier reduces the leakage power level by approximately 30 dB compared to that for a multi-port amplifier without the feed-forward techniques. The proposed configuration can be applied to power amplifiers in cellular base stations.

The purpose of this study is to estimate the possible effect of cellular radio on implantable cardiac pacemakers in elevators. We previously investigated pacemaker EMI in elevator by examining the E-field distribution of horizontal plane at the height of expected for implanted pacemakers inside elevators. In this paper, we introduce our method for estimating EMI impact to implantable cardiac pacemakers using EMF distributions inside the region of the human body in which pacemakers are implanted. Simulations of a human phantom in an elevator are performed and histograms are derived from the resulting EMF distributions. The computed results of field strengths are compared with a certain reference level determined from experimentally obtained maximum interference distance of implantable cardiac pacemakers. This enables us to carry out a quantitative evaluation of the EMI impact to pacemakers by cellular radio transmission. This paper uses a numerical phantom model developed based on an European adult male. The simulations evaluate EMI on implantable cardiac pacemakers in three frequency bands. As a result, calculated E-field strengths are sufficiently low to cause the pacemaker to malfunction in the region examined.

An image NRD guide-fed dielectric rod antenna, which is suitable for use at millimeter-wave frequencies, is presented in this paper. The antenna is composed of a linearly tapered dielectric rod connected to the image NRD guide. First, radiation characteristics of the dielectric rod antenna directly protruded from the end of the image NRD guide are investigated by FDTD analysis and measurements at 30 GHz band. For this case, the degradation of the radiation pattern and the decrease of the gain, which are due to the strong radiation from the guide-to-antenna discontinuity, are observed. In order to minimize this radiation and to realize reasonable radiation characteristics, a transition from the image NRD guide-to-rod antenna is proposed. A simple procedure to determine the optimum dimensions of the transition is described. This procedure is based on parametric study of the transition's dimensions, and is performed using FDTD analysis. Based on the results, the dielectric rod antenna having a length of 10 λ0 is designed, and its performance is analyzed and measured. The results show that radiation patterns with the half power beamwidth of 22, sidelobe level of -21 dB and reasonable gain of 18.5 dBi can be realized by employing the transition having the optimum dimensions.

An estimation method for efficiently calculating the field intensity in the Fresnel region of broadside colinear array antennas is developed, and its performance is experimentally verified. The calculation utilizes only the antenna design data, and is readily applicable to arbitrary array antennas. This method can provide a safety protection zone in the proximity of array antennas, in order to protect radio communication personnel and general public from the potentially hazardous radiofrequency exposure.