Inspired by the framework of algorithm unrolling, we propose a scalable network architecture that computes layer patterns for light field displays, enabling control of the trade-off between the display quality and the computational cost on a single pre-trained network.

A sub-Terahertz band is envisioned to play a great role in 6G to achieve extreme high data-rate communication. In addition to very wide band transmission, we need spatial multiplexing using a hybrid MIMO system. A recently presented paper, however, reveals that the number of observed multipath components in a sub-Terahertz band is very few in indoor environments. A channel with few multipath components is called sparse. The number of layers (streams), i.e. multiplexing gain in a MIMO system does not exceed the number of multipaths. The sparsity may restrict the spatial multiplexing gain of sub-Terahertz systems, and the poor multiplexing gain may limit the data rate of communication systems. This paper describes fundamental considerations on sub-Terahertz MIMO spatial multiplexing in indoor environments. We examined how we should steer analog beams to multipath components to achieve higher channel capacity. Furthermore, for different beam allocation schemes, we investigated eigenvalue distributions of a channel Gram matrix, power allocation to each layer, and correlations between analog beams. Through simulation results, we have revealed that the analog beams should be steered to all the multipath components to lower correlations and to achieve higher channel capacity.

5G service has been launched in various countries, and research for the beyond 5G is already underway actively around the world. In beyond 5G, it is expected to expand the various capabilities of communication technologies to cover further wide use cases from 5G. As a candidate elemental technology, cell free massive MIMO has been widely researched and shown its potential to enhance the capabilities from various aspects. However, for deploying this technology in reality, there are still many technical issues such as a cost of distributing antenna and installing fronthaul, and also the scalability aspects. This paper surveys research trends of cell free massive MIMO, especially focusing on the deployment challenges with an introduction to our specific related research activities including some numerical examples.

Regional Short Message Communication (RSMC) service of BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) has been widely used in various fields. BDS-3 officially started to provide service in 2020, and the performance of RSMC service was greatly improved, which offers an opportunity for large-scale applications of RSMC in consumer electronic products. Due to the complex application scenarios, the low-cost and low-power of RSMC terminals, a better coding scheme is needed to improve performance. In this paper, we propose a new polar encoding scheme with low code rate and variable code length, which adopts Polarization Weight (PW) to generate the reliability sequence of Polar codes and use a Nested Rate Adaptation Sequence (NRAS) to realize rate adaption for the BDS-3 RSMC. The performance of encoding gain and decoding complexity is analyzed by simulation and experiments. The results validate the effective of this scheme. Compared with Turbo codes, the proposed polar codes scheme achieves about 0.5dB gain with about 50% decoding complexity when the information length including CRC is 128 and code rate is 1/2. The proposed polar codes scheme provides a good reference for further applications in BDS.

The expansion of the communication area is expected for Beyond-5G/6G networks using the High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS), Internet of Things (IoT), and sensor devices. Beyond-5G/6G networks constitute the vast amounts of devices that require the latest power utilization system. We expect Microwave Power Transfer (MPT) plays a role in the wireless power supply to HAPS, IoT, and sensors in this network. This work discusses the link design and techniques of MPT for the newest power utilization system required on Beyond-5G/6G networks.

Fine-grained image analysis, such as pixel-level approaches, improves threat detection in x-ray security images. In the practical setting, the cost of obtaining complete pixel-level annotations increases significantly, which can be reduced by partially labeling the dataset. However, handling partially labeled datasets can lead to training complicated multi-stage networks. In this paper, we propose a new end-to-end object separation framework that trains a single network on a partially labeled dataset while also alleviating the inherent class imbalance at the data and object proposal level. Empirical results demonstrate significant improvement over existing approaches.

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) assisted by digital twins (DTs) integrate sensing-actuation loops over communication networks in various infrastructure services and applications. This study overviews the concept, methodology, and applications of the integrated communication quality estimation and control for the DT-assisted CPSs from both communications and control perspectives. The DT-assisted CPSs can be considered as networked control systems (NCSs) with virtual dynamic models of physical entities. A communication quality estimation observer (CQEO), which is an extended version of the communication disturbance observer (CDOB) utilized for time-delay compensation in NCSs, is proposed to estimate the integrated effects of the quality of services (QoS) and cyberattacks on the NCS applications. A path diversity technique with the CQEO is also proposed to achieve reliable NCSs. The proposed technique is applied to two kinds of NCSs: remote motor control and haptic communication systems. Moreover, results of the simulation on a haptic communication system show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. In the end, future research directions of the CQEO-based scheme are presented.

Multibeam massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) configuration has been proposed that selects high-power beams in an analog part and uses a blind algorithm, such as the constant-modulus algorithm (CMA), in the digital part. The CMA does not require channel state information. However, when least-squares CMA (LS-CMA) is applied to a quadrature amplitude modulation signal whose amplitude changes, the interference cancellation effect decreases as the modulation order increases. In this paper, a variable-step-size-based CMA (VS-CMA), which modifies the step size of the steepest-descent CMA, is proposed as a blind adaptive algorithm to replace LS-CMA. The basic performance of VS-CMA, its success in cancelling interference, and its effectiveness in multibeam massive MIMO transmission are verified via simulation and compared with other blind algorithms such as independent component analysis, particularly when the data smoothing size is small.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) allows several users to multiplex in the power-domain to improve spectral efficiency. To further improve its performance, it is desirable to reduce inter-user interference (IUI). In this paper, we propose a downlink asynchronous NOMA (ANOMA) scheme applicable to frequency-selective channels. The proposed scheme introduces an intentional symbol offset between the multiplexed signals to reduce IUI, and it employs cyclic-prefixed single-carrier transmission with frequency-domain equalization (FDE) to reduce inter-symbol interference. We show that the mean square error for the FDE of the proposed ANOMA scheme is smaller than that of a conventional NOMA scheme. Simulation results show that the proposed ANOMA with appropriate power allocation achieves a better sum rate compared to the conventional NOMA.

Millimeter wave (mmWave) massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems generally adopt hybrid precoding combining digital and analog precoder as an alternative to full digital precoding to reduce RF chains and energy consumption. In order to balance the relationship between spectral efficiency, energy efficiency and hardware complexity, the hybrid-connected system structure should be adopted, and then the solution process of hybrid precoding can be simplified by decomposing the total achievable rate into several sub-rates. However, the singular value decomposition (SVD) incurs high complexity in calculating the optimal unconstrained hybrid precoder for each sub-rate. Therefore, this paper proposes PAST, a low complexity hybrid precoding algorithm based on projection approximate subspace tracking. The optimal unconstrained hybrid precoder of each sub-rate is estimated with the PAST algorithm, which avoids the high complexity process of calculating the left and right singular vectors and singular value matrix by SVD. Simulations demonstrate that PAST matches the spectral efficiency of SVD-based hybrid precoding in full-connected (FC), hybrid-connected (HC) and sub-connected (SC) system structure. Moreover, the superiority of PAST over SVD-based hybrid precoding in terms of complexity and increases with the number of transmitting antennas.

We proposed a new method for evaluating the deterioration of messenger wires by using terahertz waves. We use terahertz time-domain spectroscopy to measure several twisted wire samples with different levels of deterioration. We find that each twisted wire sample had a different distribution of reflection intensity which was due to the wires' twist structure. We show that it is possible to assess the degradation from the straight lines present in the reflection intensity distribution image. Furthermore, it was confirmed that our method can be applied to wire covered with resin.

High-Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) provides communication services from an altitude of 20km via a stratospheric platform such as a balloon, solar-powered airship, or other aircraft, and is attracting much attention as a new mobile communication platform for ultra-wide coverage areas and disaster-resilient networks. HAPS can provide mobile communication services directly to the existing smartphones commonly used in terrestrial mobile communication networks such as Fourth Generation Long Term Evolution (4G LTE), and in the near future, Fifth Generation New Radio (5G NR). In order to design efficient HAPS-based cell configurations, we need a radio wave propagation model that takes into consideration factors such as terrain, vegetation, urban areas, suburban areas, and building entry loss. In this paper, we propose a new vegetation loss model for Recommendation ITU-R P.833-9 that can take transmission frequency and seasonal characteristics into consideration. It is based on measurements and analyses of the vegetation loss of deciduous trees in different seasons in Japan. Also, we carried out actual stratospheric measurements in the 700MHz band in Kenya to extend the lower frequency limit. Because the measured results show good agreement with the results predicted by the new vegetation loss model, the model is sufficiently valid in various areas including actual HAPS usage.

In recent years, High-Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) has become the most interesting topic for next generation mobile communication systems, because platforms such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), balloons, airships can provide ultra-wide coverage, up to 200km in diameter, from altitudes of around 20 km. It also offers resiliency to damage caused by disasters and so ensures the stability and reliability of mobile communications. In order to further integrate HAPS with existing terrestrial mobile communication networks in providing mobile services to users, radio wave propagation models such as terrain, vegetation loss, human shielding loss, building entry loss, urban/suburban areas must be taken into consideration when designing HAPS-based cell configurations. This paper proposes a human body shielding propagation loss model that considers the basic signal attenuation by the human body at high elevation angles. It also analyzes the effect of changes in actual urban/suburban environments due to the arrival of multipath radio waves for HAPS communications in the frequency range of 0.7 to 3.3GHz. Measurements in actual urban/rural environments in Japan and actual stratospheric base station measurements in Kenya are carried out to confirm the validity of the proposed model. Since the measured results agree well with the results predicted by the proposed model, the model is good enough to provide estimates of human loss in various environments.

In this paper, we propose a non-orthogonal multiple access with adaptive resource allocation. The proposed non-orthogonal multiple access assigns multiple frequency resources for each device to send packets. Even if the number of devices is more than that of the available frequency resources, the proposed non-orthogonal access allows all the devices to transmit their packets simultaneously for high capacity massive machine-type communications (mMTC). Furthermore, this paper proposes adaptive resource allocation algorithms based on factor graphs that adaptively allocate the frequency resources to the devices for improvement of the transmission performances. This paper proposes two allocation algorithms for the proposed non-orthogonal multiple access. This paper shows that the proposed non-orthogonal multiple access achieves superior transmission performance when the number of the devices is 50% greater than the amount of the resource, i.e., the overloading ratio of 1.5, even without the adaptive resource allocation. The adaptive resource allocation enables the proposed non-orthogonal access to attain a gain of about 5dB at the BER of 10-4.

In this paper, a non-linear precoding algorithm with low out-of-band (OOB) radiation is proposed for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Massive MIMO sets more than one hundred antennas at each base station to achieve higher spectral efficiency and throughput. Full digital massive MIMO may constrain the resolution of digital-to-analog converters (DACs) since each DAC consumes a large amount of power. In massive MIMO systems with low resolution DACs, designing methods of DAC output signals by nonlinear processing are being investigated. The conventional scheme focuses only on a sum rate or errors in the received signals and so triggers large OOB radiation. This paper proposes an optimization criterion that takes OOB radiation power into account. Gibbs sampling is used as an algorithm to find sub-optimal solutions given this criterion. Numerical results obtained through computer simulation show that the proposed criterion reduces mean OOB radiation power by a factor of 10 as compared with the conventional criterion. The proposed criterion also reduces OOB radiation while increasing the average sum rate by optimizing the weight factor for the OOB radiation. As a result, the proposed criterion achieves approximately 1.3 times higher average sum rates than an error-based criterion. On the other hand, as compared with a sum rate based criterion, the throughput on each subcarrier shows less variation which reduces the number of link adaptation options needed although the average sum rate of the proposed criterion is smaller.

Mobile phone systems continue to evolve from the 2nd generation, which began in the early 1990s, to the 5th generation, which is now in service. Along with this evolution, the power amplifier (PA) is also evolved. The characteristics required for PA are changing with each generation. In this paper, we will give an overview of the evolution of PAs from the 2nd generation mobile phones such as GSM (global system for mobile communications) to the 5th generation mobile phones that is often called NR (new radio), in particular, the circuit system. Specifically, the following five items will be described. (1) Ramp-up and ramp-down power control circuit corresponding to GSM, (2) Self-bias circuit technology for improving linearity that becomes important after W-CDMA (wideband code division multiple access), (3) Power mode switching methods for improving efficiency at low output power, (4) Power combining methods that have become important since LTE (long term evolution), and (5) Backoff efficiency improvement methods represented by ET (envelop tracking) and Doherty PA.

This paper presents a class-E power amplifier (PA) with a novel harmonic tuning circuit (HTC) based on composite right-/left-handed transmission lines (CRLH TLs). One of the issues of conventional harmonically tuned PAs is the limited PAE bandwidth. It is shown by simulation that class-E amplifiers have potential of maintaining high PAE over a wider frequency range than for example class-F amplifiers. To make full use of class-E amplifiers with the superior characteristics, an HTC using double CRLH TL stub structure is proposed. The HTC is not only compact but also enhances the inherently wide operation frequency range of class-E amplifier. A 2-GHz 6W GaN-HEMT class-E PA using the proposed HTC demonstrated a PAE bandwidth (≥65%) of 380MHz with maximum drain efficiency and PAE of 78.5% and 74.0%, respectively.

A detailed investigation of DC and RF performance of AlGaN/GaN HEMT on 3C-SiC/low resistive silicon (LR-Si) substrate by introducing a thick GaN layer is reported in this paper. The hetero-epitaxial growth is achieved by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) on a commercially prepared 6-inch LR-Si substrate via a 3C-SiC intermediate layer. The reported HEMT exhibited very low RF loss and thermally stable amplifier characteristics with the introduction of a thick GaN layer. The temperature-dependent small-signal and large-signal characteristics verified the effectiveness of the thick GaN layer on LR-Si, especially in reduction of RF loss even at high temperatures. In summary, a high potential of the reported device is confirmed for microwave applications.

In this study, AM-PM compensation of the cross-coupled capacitance neutralization technique is discussed. Cgd neutralization leads to AM-PM compensation of a power amplifier with negligible change of AM-AM characteristics. AM-PM compensation was confirmed via circuit analysis and measurements. The formulation analysis showed that AM-PM compensation can be derived via gm variation against input power with capacitance neutralization. A differential power amplifier with capacitance neutralization was fabricated with GaN high-electron-mobility transistors. The AM-PM characteristic of the fabricated differential power amplifier was measured at 17.7 GHz. It showed AM-PM reduction of 22° at compared to a single-phase power amplifier without capacitance neutralization at output power of 35 dBm.