This letter proposes a high-performance single-sided horn-shaped tapered bowtie antenna which is compact and covers more than the whole UWB frequency band. This design implements a bowtie radiating element and tapered strip-line feeder element on a single-sided dielectric substrate, which offers a measured return loss of less than -10 dB over the whole UWB frequency band of 3.0-10.8 GHz. The measured radiation pattern is bi-directional with consistent gain over the above frequency band. This compact-size design shows much enhanced performance, compared to the previously reported antenna, which is useful for UWB radar and communication applications.

In this paper, we study the capacity and performance of nonorthogonal pulse position modulation (NPPM) for Ultra-Wideband (UWB) communication systems over both AWGN and IEEE802.15.3a channels. The channel capacity of NPPM is determined for a time-hopping multiple access UWB communication system. The error probability and performance bounds are derived for a multiuser environment. It is shown that with proper selection of the pulse waveform and modulation index, NPPM can achieve a higher capacity than orthogonal PPM, and also provide better performance than orthogonal PPM with the same throughput.

Several scheduling algorithms have been proposed for the downlink of a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) system with High Data Rate (HDR). Modified Largest Weighted Delay First (M-LWDF) scheduling algorithm selects a user according to the user current channel condition, user head-of-line packet delay and user Quality of Service (QoS) requirement. Proportional Fair (PF) scheduling algorithm has also been proposed for CDMA/HDR system and it selects a user according to the ratio of the user current channel rate and the user average channel rate, which provides good performance in terms of fairness. However, when variable bit rate (VBR) traffic is considered under different channel conditions for each user, both schedulers' performance decrease. M-LWDF scheduler can not guarantee the QoS requirement to be achieved and PF scheduler can not achieve a good fairness among the users. In this work, we propose a new scheduling algorithm to enhance M-LWDF and PF schedulers performance. Proposed scheduler selects a user according to the user input traffic characteristic, user current channel condition and user QoS requirement, which consists of a delay value with a maximum violation probability. We consider the well-known effective bandwidth expression, which takes into account the user QoS requirement and the user input traffic characteristics, to select a user to be scheduled. Properties of the proposed scheduling algorithm are investigated through simulations with constant bit rate (CBR) and VBR flows and performance comparisons with M-LWDF and PF schedulers. The results show a better performance of the proposed scheduler compared with M-LWDF and PF schedulers.

This paper presents a planar monopole antenna with slits and a stub for multi-band operation in vehicles. The proposed antenna is at least 55% smaller than the regular rectangular monopole antenna and covers eight wireless application bands. Slits cut into the rectangular monopole alter the surface current paths so that the band coverage is expanded. A long bent-stub is also added to cover the lowest service band.

The very fast transients of micro-gap discharges driven by low voltage electrostatic discharging (ESDs) are investigated in the time domain. We previously developed a 12 GHz wideband measurement setup consisting of a distributed constant line system, however the observed transients due to micro-gap discharges had very fast rise times of 34 ps or less, which reached the limitation on our system. In this paper, we proposed a method for estimating wideband transients beyond the measurement limit by using the transmission loss of a high performance coaxial transmission line. The proposed method is validated by estimating an impulsive voltage waveform with rise/fall time of 16 ps from the waveform measured through a semi-rigid coaxial cable with a length of 10 m.

To build a stable power distribution network for high-speed digital systems, simultaneous switching noise (SSN) should be sufficiently suppressed in multi-layer PCBs and packages. In this paper, a novel hybrid uni-planar compact electromagnetic bandgap (UC-EBG) with two triangular-type unit cells designed on power/ground planes is proposed for the ultra-broadband suppression of SSN. The SSN suppression performance of the proposed structure is validated both numerically and experimentally. A -35 dB suppression bandwidth for SSN is achieved, starting at 800 MHz and extending to 15 GHz and beyond, thereby covering almost the entire noise band.

A novel DC-to-960 MHz impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) transceiver based on threshold detection technique is developed. It features a digital pulse-shaping transmitter, a DC power-free pulse discriminator and an error-recovery phase-frequency detector. The developed transceiver in 90 nm CMOS achieves the lowest energy consumption of 2.2 pJ/bit transmitter and 1.9 pJ/bit receiver at 100 Mbps in the UWB transceivers.

Cognitive radio (CR) is an adaptive spectrum sharing paradigm targeted to provide opportunistic spectrum access to secondary users for whom the frequency bands have not been licensed. The key tasks in a CR are to sense the spectral environment over a wide frequency band and allow unlicensed secondary users (CR users) to dynamically transmit/receive data over frequency bands unutilized by licensed primary users. Thus the CR transceiver should dynamically adapt its channel (frequency band) in response to the time-varying frequencies of wideband signal for seamless communication. In this paper, we present a low complexity reconfigurable filter architecture based on multi-band filtering and frequency masking techniques for dynamic channel adaptation in CR terminal. The proposed multi-standard architecture is capable of adapting to channels having different bandwidths corresponding to the channel spacing of time-varying channels. Design examples show that proposed architecture offers 12.2% power reduction and 26.5% average gate count reduction over conventional Per-Channel based architecture.

Recently, the security scheme, proposed by Kempf and Koodli, has been adopted as a security standard for Fast handover for Mobile IPv6. But, it does not prevent denial of service attacks while resulting in high computation cost. More importantly, we find that it is still vulnerable to redirection attacks because it fails to secure the Unsolicited Neighbor Advertisement messages. In this paper, Kempf-Koodli's scheme is formally analyzed through BAN-logic and its weaknesses are demonstrated.

This paper presents the optimum physical random access channel (PRACH) structure in terms of the number of control signaling bits accommodated and the transmission bandwidth based on the link budget in order to satisfy the coverage requirement for the single-carrier (SC)-FDMA based E-UTRA uplink. First, we present the design concept of the PRACH structure considering the purposes of the random access procedure in the E-UTRA. Simulation evaluations including a system-level simulation show that a PRACH comprising a 0.5-msec preamble sequence can convey a 6-bit control signal at the cell edge when the inter-site distance (ISD) is 500 m under full channel load conditions with one-cell frequency reuse. It is also shown, however, that a PRACH longer than one-sub-frame, e.g., 1.0 msec, is necessary to support the ISD of 1732 m assuming the same conditions. We also show that the best transmission bandwidth for the PRACH is approximately 1.08-4.5 MHz from the viewpoint of the misdetection probability, and a 1.08-MHz transmission bandwidth is suitable considering other aspects such as flexible resource assignment in the time domain and a small number of options in the transmission bandwidth.

In a low dropout (LDO) linear regulator whose reference voltage is supplied by a bandgap reference, double stacked diodes increase the effective junction area ratio in the bandgap reference, which significantly lowers the output spectral noise of the LDO. A low noise LDO with the area-efficient bandgap reference is implemented in 0.18 µm CMOS. An effective diode area ratio of 105 is obtained while the actual silicon area is saved by a factor of 4.77. As a result, a remarkably low output noise of 186 nV/sqrt(Hz) is achieved at 1 kHz. Moreover, the dropout voltage, line regulation, and load regulation of the LDO are measured to be 0.3 V, 0.04%/V, and 0.46%, respectively.

This paper presents experimental evaluations of the effect of time diversity obtained by hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) with soft combining in space and path diversity schemes on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based packet radio access in a downlink broadband multipath fading channel. The effect of HARQ is analyzed through laboratory experiments employing fading simulators and field experiments conducted in downtown Yokosuka near Tokyo. After confirming the validity of experimental results based on numerical analysis of the time diversity gain in HARQ, we show by the experimental results that, for a fixed modulation and channel coding scheme (MCS), time diversity obtained by HARQ is effective in reducing the required received signal-to-interference plus noise power ratio (SINR) according to an increase in the number of transmissions, K, up to 10, even when the diversity effects are obtained through two-branch antenna diversity reception and path diversity using a number of multipaths greater than 12 observed in a real fading channel. Meanwhile, in combined use with the adaptive modulation and channel coding (AMC) scheme associated with space and path diversity, we clarify that the gain obtained by time diversity is almost saturated at the maximum number of transmissions in HARQ, K ' = 4 in Chase combining and K ' = 2 in Incremental redundancy, since the improvement in the residual packet error rate (PER) obtained through time diversity becomes small owing to the low PER in the initial packet transmission arising from appropriately selecting the optimum MCS in AMC. However, the experimental results elucidate that the time diversity in HARQ with soft combining associated with antenna diversity reception is effective in improving the throughput even in a broadband multipath channel with sufficient path diversity.

A dual band 0.18 µm CMOS LC-tank injection locked frequency divider (ILFD) is proposed. The ILFD circuit is realized with a cross-coupled pMOS LC-tank oscillator with an inductor switch for frequency band selection. The self-oscillating VCO is injection-locked by nth-harmonic input to obtain the division factor of n. The division ratio of 1, 2, and 3 has been found for the proposed ILFD. Measurement results show that at the supply voltage of 1.1 V, the free-running frequency is from 2.28(3.09) GHz to 2.78(3.72) GHz for the low- (high-) frequency band. The power consumption of the ILFD core is 3.7 mW (6.2 mW) at low (high) band. The total area including the output buffer and the pads is 0.8410.764 mm2.

The ability of a modified bow-tie dipole antenna, which has an asymmetric-feed structure to operate at UHF-band (470-862 MHz) and dual ISM-band (2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz) is demonstrated. Experimental results indicate that the VSWR 2:1 bandwidths achieved were 125.7%, 8.2% and 23.6% at 660 MHz, 2.45 GHz and 5.5 GHz. The proposed modified bow-tie dipole exhibits a nearly omni-directional radiation pattern with very easy to fabricate structure, and so is suitable for various commercial wideband applications.

This paper proposes a software-controllable variable line-size (SC-VLS) cache architecture for low power embedded systems. High bandwidth between logic and a DRAM is realized by means of advanced integrated technology. System-in-Silicon is one of the architectural frameworks to realize the high bandwidth. An ASIC and a specific SRAM are mounted onto a silicon interposer. Each chip is connected to the silicon interposer by eutectic solder bumps. In the framework, it is important to reduce the DRAM energy consumption. The specific DRAM needs a small cache memory to improve the performance. We exploit the cache to reduce the DRAM energy consumption. During application program executions, an adequate cache line size which produces the lowest cache miss ratio is varied because the amount of spatial locality of memory references changes. If we employ a large cache line size, we can expect the effect of prefetching. However, the DRAM energy consumption is larger than a small line size because of the huge number of banks are accessed. The SC-VLS cache is able to change a line size to an adequate one at runtime with a small area and power overheads. We analyze the adequate line size and insert line size change instructions at the beginning of each function of a target program before executing the program. In our evaluation, it is observed that the SC-VLS cache reduces the DRAM energy consumption up to 88%, compared to a conventional cache with fixed 256 B lines.

In this paper, we propose a distance-based howling canceller with high speech quality. We have developed a distance-based howling canceller that uses only distance information by noticing the property that howling occurs according to the distance between a loudspeaker and a microphone. This method estimates the distance by transmitting a pilot signal from the loudspeaker to the microphone. Multiple frequency candidates for each howling are computed from the estimated distance and eliminated by cascading notch filters that have nulls at them. However degradation of speech quality occurs at the howling canceller output. The first cause is a shot noise occurrence at the beginning and end of the pilot signal transmission due to the discontinuous change of the amplitude. We thus develop a new pilot signal that is robust against ambient noises. We can then reduce the shot noise effect by taking the amplitude small. The second one is a speech degradation caused from overlapped stopbands of the notch filters. We thus derive a condition on the bandwidths so that stopbands do not overlap, and propose an adaptive bandwidth scheme which changes the bandwidth according to the distance.

Recent research on overlay networks has revealed that user-perceived network performance, such as end-to-end delay performance, could be improved by an overlay routing mechanism. However, these studies consider only end-to-end delay, and few studies have focused on bandwidth-related information, such as available bandwidth and TCP throughput, which are important performance metrics especially for long-lived data transmission. In the present paper, we investigate the effect of overlay routing both delay and bandwidth-related information, based on the measurement results of network paths between PlanetLab nodes. We consider three metrics for selecting the overlay route: end-to-end delay, available bandwidth, and TCP throughput. We then show that the available bandwidth-based overlay routing provides significant gain, as compared with delay-based routing. We further reveal the correlation between the latency and available bandwidth of the overlay paths and propose several guidelines for selecting an overlay path.

Complex bandpass ΔΣAD modulators can provide superior performance to a pair of real bandpass ΔΣAD modulators of the same order. They process just input I and Q signals, not image signals, and AD conversion can be realized with low power dissipation, so that they are desirable for such low-IF receiver applications. This paper proposes a new architecture for complex bandpass Δ ΣAD modulators with cross-noise-coupled topology, which effectively raises the order of the complex modulator and achieves higher SQNDR (Signal to Quantization Noise and Distortion Ratio) with low power dissipation. By providing the cross-coupled quantization noise injection to internal I and Q paths, noise coupling between two quantizers can be realized in complex form, which enhances the order of noise shaping in complex domain, and provides a higher-order NTF using a lower-order loop filter in the complex ΔΣAD modulator. Proposed higher-order modulator can be realized just by adding some passive capacitors and switches, the additional integrator circuit composed of an operational amplifier is not necessary, and the performance of the complex modulator can be effectively raised without more power dissipation. We have performed simulation with MATLAB to verify the effectiveness of the proposed architecture. The simulation results show that the proposed architecture can achieve the realization of higher-order enhancement, and improve SQNDR of the complex bandpass ΔΣAD modulator.

It is essential, as bandwidths of wireless communications get wider, to evaluate the imbalances among quadrature mixer ports, in terms of carrier phase offset, IQ gain imbalance, and IQ skew. Because it is time consuming to separate skew, gain imbalance and carrier phase offset evaluation during test is often performed using a composite value, without separation of the imbalance factors. This paper describes an algorithm for enabling separation among quadrature mixer gain imbalance, carrier phase offset, and skew. Since the test time is reduced by the proposed method, it can be applied during high volume production testing.

Although wavelength division multiplexing-passive optical network (WDM-PON) is known as a high-speed transfer, it creates high channel costs per subscriber and low bandwidth utilization due to the fact that a wavelength is dedicated to each subscriber. Thus, it is imperative to reduce channel costs per subscriber and improve the bandwidth utilization. To achieve these, we first adopt a existing WDM-PON, which uses the bidirectional transmission with a single source for cost-efficiency by employing a gain-saturated reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA). Secondly, based on the existing WDM-PON, we propose an enhanced hybrid WDM/TDM-PON, which can extend the number of subscribers supported in each wavelength with splitters in the physical layer and a shared-time division duplex (TDD) frame format in the media access control (MAC) layer. Moreover, it can adaptively control the bandwidth through a dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) scheme according to the volume of traffic. Compared to the non TDD-based hybrid WDM/TDM-PON, it can reduce channel costs per subscriber from the extended number of subscribers supported in each wavelength. Furthermore, due to the DBA, it can improve the total queueing delay and throughput, and thus increase the bandwidth utilization.