Future digital land mobile communication, for a moving picture, requires more transmission speed and less bit error rate than the existing system does for speech. In the system, the intersymbol interference may not be ignored, because of higher transmission speed. An adaptive equalizer is necessary to cancel intersymbol interference. To achieve low bit error rate performance on the mobile radio channel, trellis-coded modulation with interleaving is necessary. This paper proposes an interleaved trellis-coded modulation scheme combined with a decision feedback type adaptive equalizer of high performance. The reliable symbol reconstructed in the trellis decoder is used as the feedback signal. To make equalizer be free from decoding delay, deinterleaving is effectively utilized. The branch metric, for trellis-coded modulation decoding, is calculated as terms of squared errors between a received signal and an expected signal by taking the reconstructed symbol and the impulse response estimated by the recursive least squares algorithm into account. The metric is constructed to have good discrimination performance to incorrect symbols even in non-minimum phase and to realize path diversity effect in a frequency selective fading channel. Computer simulation results are shown for several channel models. On a frequency selective fading channel, average bit error rate is less than 1/100 of that of the RLS-MLSE equalizer for fdTs=1/1000 at average Eb/N0 beyond 15dB. Performance degradation due to equalization error is less than 1.8dB. Performance is greatly improved by the effect of the reconstructed symbol feedback.

The authors have been investigating degradation process of Au plated slip ring and Ag-Pd-Cu brush system. In almost all cases the lifetime of the sliding system ends, when Au plating layer is worn out, the ring surface is oxidized to be black in color and contact resistance becomes very high. Further, the lifetime is very short without lubricant. So, the lubricant is very effective to make the lifetime longer. However, even with lubricant the lifetime is varied from about 1000 hours to almost 7000 hours in the past experiments. It is an important issue how the lubricant works on the lifetime of the system. In this paper the effect of lubricant on the degradation process of contact resistance is focused on. In the past tests the lubricant is supplied only once before the test. In this test the lubricant is regularly supplied almost every 900 operation hours. Consequently, the operation more than 8000 hours is realized, which is the longest among tests so far. In addition the contact voltage drop increase gradually until 2600 hours and after that it stays almost constant around 70 mV. According to the Element Analysis after the test the Ni base plating layer is totally exposed in many tracks. It means that the Au plating layer is gradually worn out probably at the stage of increasing voltage drop. In the previous tests the lifetime ended even when the Ni plating layer remained. So, the reason of long operation in this test is guessed to be that the lubricant not only decreases wear of ring and brush, but also suppresses oxidation of the Ni layer.

Research on wireless power transmission technology is being actively conducted, and studies on spatial transmission methods such as SSPS are currently underway for applications such as power transfer to the upper part of steel towers and power transfer to flying objects such as drones. To enable such applications, it is necessary to examine the configuration of the power-transfer and power-receiving antennas and to improve the RF-DC conversion efficiency (hereinafter referred to as conversion efficiency) of the rectifier circuit on the power-receiving antenna. To improve the conversion efficiency, various methods that utilize full-wave rectification rather than half-wave rectification have been proposed. However, these come with problems such as a complicated circuit structure, the need for additional capacitors, the selection of components at high frequencies, and a reduction in mounting yield. In this paper, we propose a method to improve the conversion efficiency by loading a high-impedance microstrip line as a feedback line in part of the rectifier circuit. We analyzed a class-F rectifier circuit using circuit analysis software and found that the conversion efficiency of the conventional configuration was 54.2%, but the proposed configuration was 69.3%. We also analyzed a measuring circuit made with a discrete configuration in the 5.8-GHz band and found that the conversion efficiency was 74.7% at 24dBm input.

In this paper, we consider a parallel ring-line rat-race circuit realized by replacing some parts of the ring-lines with composite right-/left-handed transmission lines (CRLH-TLs). For a conventional rat-race circuit, the minimum coupling factor is limited by the highest impedance of the ring-lines that can be manufactured by general printed circuit board (PCB) technologies. However, the coupling factor of the parallel ring-line type rat-race circuit proposed in this paper is determined by the difference between the admittances of the parallel ring-lines. As a result of designing parallel ring-line rat-race circuits having coupling factors of $-20$ and $-30$,dB for an operation frequency of 4,GHz, the proposed rat-race circuit realizes broadband characteristics of about 35.5% according to the numerical results for the $-20$,dB circuit. Furthermore, broadband characteristics including reflection, isolation, and couplings can be maintained for the fabricated $-20$,dB rat-race circuit up to an input power of 40,dBm.

An ultra low-noise and highly selective, experimental 2-GHz band cryogenic receiver front end (CRFE) has been newly developed for cellular base stations. It utilizes a high-Q superconducting filter, a very low noise cryogenic amplifier, and a highly reliable cooler that is very compact. Fundamental design of the CRFE is investigated. First, the equivalent noise temperature of the CRFE and the effect of improving CRFE sensitivity on base station reception are discussed. Next, essential technologies and fundamental characteristics of each component are described. Finally, influence of antenna noise, such as ground noise and man-made noise, is estimated through field tests both in urban and suburban areas.

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 presents linearization technologies for high efficiency power amplifiers of cellular base stations. These technologies are important to actualizing highly efficient power amplifiers that reduce power consumption of the base station equipment and to achieving a sufficient non-linear distortion compensation level. It is well known that it is very difficult for a power amplifier using linearization technologies to achieve simultaneously high efficiency and a sufficient non-linear distortion compensation level. This paper presents two approaches toward addressing this technical issue. The first approach is a feed-forward power amplifier using the Doherty amplifier as the main amplifier. The second approach is a digital predistortion linearizer that compensates for frequency dependent intermodulation distortion components. Experimental results validate these approaches as effective for providing power amplification for base stations.

This invited paper is dedicated to introduce recent activities of Japanese microwave industries. 7 topics are introduced from major microwave companies in Japan. All topics are from invited talks in 2014 Asia-Pacific microwave conference (APMC2014) held in Sendai, November, 2014.

This paper presents analysis results of the intermodulation distortion (IMD) components compensation conditions for dual-band feed-forward power amplifier (FFPA) when inputting dual-band signals simultaneously. The signal cancellation loop and distortion cancellation loop of the dual-band FFPA have frequency selective adjustment paths which consist of filter and vector regulator. The filter selects the desired frequency component and suppresses the undesired frequency component in the desired frequency selective adjustment path. The vector regulators repeatedly adjust the amplitude and phase values of the composite components for the desired and suppressed undesired frequency components. In this configuration, the cancellation levels of the signal cancellation loop and distortion cancellation loop are depending on the amplitude and phase errors of the vector regulator. The analysis results show that the amplitude and phase errors of the desired frequency component almost become independent that of the undesired frequency component in a weak non-linearity condition, when the isolation between the desired band and the undesired band given by the filter is more than 40 dB. The amplitude errors of the desired frequency component are dependent on that of the undesired frequency component in a strong non-linear conditions when the isolation level sets as above. A 1-W-class signal cancellation loop and 20-W-class FFPA are fabricated for 1.7-GHz and 2.1-GHz bands simultaneous operation. The experimental results show that the analysis results are suitable in the experimental conditions. From these investigations, the analysis results can provide a commercially available dual-band FFPA. To our best knowledge, this is first analysis results for the dual-band FFPA.

This paper presents an extremely low-profile front-end configuration for a base station at quasi-millimeter wave band. It consists of integrated modules of patch antennas and substrate integrated waveguide filters using two printed circuit boards, and transmitter modules using compact GaAs pHEMT three-dimensional monolithic millimeter-wave integrated circuits. The transmitter modules are located around the integrated modules. This is because the proposed front-end configuration can attain extremely low profile, and band-pass filtering performance at quasi-millimeter wave band. As a demonstration of the proposed configuration, 26-GHz-band 4-by-4 elements front-end module is fabricated and tested. The fabricated module has the thickness of about 1 cm, while that offers the attenuation of more than 30 dB with 2 GHz offset from 26 GHz. The proposed configuration can provide base station that can be effective in offering sub-millimeter wave and millimeter-wave bands broadband services for 5G mobile communications systems.

This paper proposes a method for reducing the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) at the output signal of a digital predistortion linearizer (DPDL) that compensates for frequency dependent intermodulation distortion (IMD) components. The proposed method controls the amplitude and phase values of the frequency components corresponding to the transmission bandwidth of the output signal. A DPDL employing the proposed method simultaneously provides IMD component cancellation of out-of-band components and PAPR reduction at the output signal. This paper identifies the amplitude and phase conditions to minimize the PAPR. Experimental results based on a 2-GHz band 1-W class power amplifier show that the proposed method improves the drain efficiency of the power amplifier when degradation is allowed in the error vector magnitude. To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first PAPR reduction method for DPDL that reduces the PAPR while simultaneously compensating for IMD components.

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.