Research on the propagation characteristics in the microwave band aiming at broadband mobile services is attracting much attention. Typical examples are the Unlicensed-NII (U-NII) band in the U.S. and HIPER-LAN band in Europe, i.e. 5.2 GHz. An efficient approach to revealing the propagation characteristics in the 5-GHz band is to utilize the existing propagation data accumulated by many researchers on the 2-GHz band. This paper presents the differences in path loss between the 5.2-GHz and 2.2-GHz bands in a residential area by using a 5.2-GHz/2.2-GHz dual band antenna. This antenna enables a direct comparison of 5.2 GHz and 2.2 GHz in terms of the propagation characteristics. We found that the difference in path loss between the 2.2-GHz and 5.2-GHz bands depends on only the base/mobile station antenna height. Based on this, we formulate the relationship between the heights of the base/mobile station antennas and the difference in path loss between the 2.2-GHz and 5.2-GHz bands.

A 3 to 5-GHz Si-bipolar quadrature modulator and demodulator are described. Both feature a wideband frequency-doubling 90-degree phase shifter that has a mechanism for self-correction of phase errors caused by an original 90-degree phase-shift network at the half frequency of the carrier. Therefore, the phase shifter produces accurate quadrature carrier signals with doubled frequency. The quadrature modulator and demodulator in 30-GHz Si bipolar technology dissipate 80 mA at a 3-V supply. Image rejection of the modulator is more than 40 dB between 3.2 to 5.2 GHz. The phase and amplitude errors of the demodulator are less than 1.5 degrees and less than 0.15 dB, respectively, between 3.5 to 5.2 GHz. Therefore, both are suitable for either direct conversion or image-rejection transceivers for 5-GHz applications.

2.4-GHz-band mid-speed (1- to 2-Mbit/sec) wireless LAN systems are being widely used in offices and factories. Electromagnetic interference can occur between these systems because they use the same frequency range. In this paper, we investigate the characteristics of the interference between wireless LAN systems that use direct-sequence (DS) systems and frequency-hopping (FH) systems. The interference characteristics were measured for three DS systems and one FH system that meet the IEEE 802.11 and RCR standards and that use different modulation methods. Our results indicate that throughput depends on the system and the modulation method. We have also developed a model that can be used to calculate the interference characteristics between DS and FH systems by considering the bandwidth of their transmission signals, the dwell time of the FH system, and the time that the DS system needs to transmit a data frame. We used this model to calculate the bit error rate (BER) characteristics of the systems used in our experiment, and the results indicate that BER characteristics depend on the modulation method. The throughput characteristics of the systems used in our experiment were also calculated, and agreed with the experiment results within +/- 5 dB. The throughput characteristics of wireless LAN systems based on IEEE 802.11 were also calculated when the signal level was higher than the receiver noise level. The results show that FH systems require a D/U ratio about 7 or 8 dB higher than the ratio required in DS systems because the parameters in the standard differ between FH and DS systems.

Method of measuring disturbances at telecommunication ports has been published by IEC/CISPR. A method using both disturbance voltage and current probes is useful because it does not require any impedance stabilization networks (ISNs). In this paper, the values measured using this method are theoretically and experimentally compared with those measured using ISNs. An experiment using a simple circuit model presents that the value obtained by using this method is lower than that by using ISNs in some cases. A theoretical analysis however derives that the estimated value by adding the margin to the measured value is always guaranteed to be large compared with the value measured by ISNs. The analysis also indicates that the margin is dependent on the deviation of phase angle of ISN and can be calculated by a simple equation. The experiment using actual equipment shows that the estimated results including the margin is always larger than those measured by ISNs. The results of the study show that the method using both disturbance voltage and current probes can be used for measuring the disturbances by taking the margin into account, and this margin can be reduced by improving the phase angle characteristics of the common mode impedance of ISNs.

In this paper, we investigate the performance of Fast Reservation Protocols (FRP) for burst-level bandwidth allocation in ATM networks. FRP schemes can be classified into delayed transmission (DT) and immediate transmission (IT) methods according to reservation procedure. Moreover, according to the responsibility for negative acknowledgment (NAK) cell generations when burst blocking occurs, FRP schemes can be further classified into blocking node NAK (BNAK) and destination node NAK (DNAK) schemes. We analize the FRP schemes with different reservation and NAK methods for single node and multihop network models, respectively. We then discuss the dependence of performance for each FRP scheme on propagation delay, peak rate, and the number of hops.

The features of the negative resistance in common source and common gate FET configurations for wideband VCO are studied. They are also explained by the simplified three-capacitor model. A design procedure is then developed. The results are applied to a design of wide band oscillator at the several gigahertz region.

An aspect of the diverse developments of digital signal processing (DSP) over the last decade are summarized. The current progress of some core fields from the widespread fields are treated in this paper. The selected fields are filter design, wavelet theory and filter bank, adaptive signal processing, nonlinear filters, multidimensional signal processing, intelligent signal processing, and digital signal processor. Through the overview of recent research activities, the interdisciplinary character of the DSP should be proved. Some challenging research direction is described in the last section.

A new approach for bandwidth allocation of heterogeneous regulated traffics is proposed for cases of lossless multiplexing and statistical multiplexing under the constraint of maximum delay. Minimum bandwidth required for lossless multiplexing can be expressed as 1-dimensional unconstrained-optimization problem. The corresponding optimality condition gives an optimal bandwidth and buffer requirements. This optimality condition is extended to the case of statistical multiplexing. In case of statistical multiplexing with independent, periodic on-off fluid sources, two random variables representing stochastic worst cases for the amount of traffics generated in an arbitrary time interval are introduced and these are combined optimally. This combined model guarantees the worst case bound for the regulated traffics. Using the proposed approach, bandwidth and buffer requirements of each virtual circuit are obtained simultaneously. As these values are sensitive to multiplexing environments, an effective bandwidth considering trade-off between bandwidth and buffer requirements is introduced. The proposed effective bandwidth can be matched directly with the boundary of the acceptance region, which is less sensitive to mutiplexing environments.

This paper proposes an algorithm that adaptively estimates time-varying noise variance used in Kalman filtering for real-time speech signal enhancement. In the speech signal contaminated by white noise, the spectral components except dominant ones in high frequency band are expected to reflect the noise energy. Our approach is first to find the dominant energy bands over speech spectrum using LPC. We then calculate the average value of the actual spectral components over the high frequency region excluding the dominant energy bands and use it as the noise variance. The resulting noise variance estimate is then applied to Kalman filtering to suppress the background noise. Experimental results indicate that the proposed approach achieves a significant improvement in terms of speech enhancement over those of the conventional Kalman filtering that uses the average noise power over silence interval only. As a refinement of our results, we employ multiple-Kalman filtering with multiple noise models and improve the intelligibility.

We investigated the dependence of the desired echo return loss on frequency for various hands-free telecommunication conditions by subjective assessment. The desired echo return loss as a function of frequency (DERLf) is an important factor in the design and performance evaluation of a subband echo canceller, and it is a measure of what is considered an acceptable echo caused by electrical loss in the transmission line. The DERLf during single-talk was obtained as attenuated band-limited echo levels that subjects did not find objectionable when listening to the near-end speech and its band-limited echo under various hands-free telecommunication conditions. When we investigated the DERLf during double-talk, subjects also heard the speech in the far-end room from a loudspeaker. The echo was limited to a 250-Hz bandwidth assuming the use of a subband echo canceller. The test results showed that: (1) when the transmission delay was short (30 ms), the echo component around 2 to 3 kHz was the most objectionable to listeners; (2) as the transmission delay rose to 300 ms, the echo component around 1 kHz became the most objectionable; (3) when the room reverberation time was relatively long (about 500 ms), the echo component around 1 kHz was the most objectionable, even if the transmission delay was short; and (4) the DERLf during double-talk was about 5 to 10 dB lower than that during single-talk. Use of these DERLf values will enable the design of more efficient subband echo cancellers.

Multicast ATM switch is in great demand for the future communication network. We have proposed the Batcher banyan network with cell copy preparation stages as a transit switch. It performs cell replication with small hardware increase. On the trunkline, multicast traffic is quite little, thus hardware for cell copy can be sustained small. In those previous works, the effect of the external blocking was omitted. In this paper, we propose a multicast switching network which adopts the incomplete copy network that we have proposed, and examine several strategies to prevent the external blocking for this switching network. Namely, the input buffer method with an arbitration network is applied. For multicast usage, we propose two modifications. One is to arbitrate after cell replication for the sake of simple control and small hardware. The other is to annex a cell distribution network for smoothing biased cell arrival. Biased cell arrival occurs because the output of the incomplete copy network is not uniform. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

To achieve high link availability at Ka-band geosynchronous satellite communication systems, an adaptive CDMA scheme as a rain fade countermeasure is proposed. The proposed adaptive CDMA scheme reserves and shares orthogonal sequences to countermeasure a rain fade. In the adaptive CDMA scheme, the base station allocates a set of orthogonal sequences to each user, and the number of sequences in a set is determined by the amount of rain attenuation. A symbol repetition technique is also used to compensate signal energy loss due to the rain fade. Our results show that when the base station has 64 free orthogonal codes, the adaptive CDMA scheme can save on its power by 4.2 dB compared to conventional CDMA scheme. The occupation rate of codes also shows that the adaptive CDMA can support multiple users simultaneously in even severe rain fade condition.

This paper presents the bit error rate (BER) upper bounds for trellis coded asymmetric 8PSK (TC-A8PSK) system using the Ka-band satellite in the rain fading environment. The probability density function (PDF) for the rain fading random variable can be theoretically derived by assuming that the rain attenuation can be approximated to a log-normal distribution and the rain fading parameters are calculated by using the rain precipitation data from the Crane global model. Furthermore, we analyze the BER upper bounds of TC-A8PSK system according to the number of states in the trellis diagram and the availability of channel state information (CSI). In the past, Divsalar and Simon has analyzed the BER upper bounds of 2-state TCM system in Rician fading channels; however, this paper is the first to analyze the BER upper bounds of TCM system in the rain fading channels. Finally, we summarize the dominant six factors which are closely related to the BER upper bounds of TC-A8PSK satellite system in the rain fading channel as follows: (1) frequency band, (2) rain intensity, (3) elevation angle, (4) bit energy to noise ratio, (5) asymmetric angle, and (6) availability of CSI.

The aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of various open-ended resonators. According to the required filter responses, the application to microwave filters based on presented open-ended resonators is systematically examined as well. First, the resonance property of the basic open-ended resonator is discussed based on even-and odd-mode analysis. The intrinsic property of a tapped open-ended resonator is also discussed here. Second, the basic properties of a stepped impedance resonator (SIR) and a loaded-element resonator are examined theoretically for improvement of spurious responses and the dual-passband response. The basic operations of these resonators are also explained based on even- and odd-mode analysis. Examples for filter applications based on presented resonators are also provided. We found that the intrinsic properties of the open-ended resonators are very useful for practical filter responses.

This paper presents a new design of spread spectrum signals with the minimally sufficient dimension from the view point of frequency diversity. Letting the signature signal duration and the bandwidth be denoted by T and B, respectively, we can nominally represent a signature signal of either Direct Sequence (DS) or MultiCarrier (MC) spread spectrum system as the sum of N=BT sinusoidal signal units with their frequencies separated by 1/T or its multiples. In our design,assuming the maximum expected channel delay spread σd « T as usual, one signature signal viewed in the frequency domain is made up of the minimum number K 2πσdB of sinusoidal signal units which are arranged so as there is placed at least one unit in coherence bandwidth 1/(2πσd) in which the fading channel transfer function has strong correlation. Although the signature signal does not make use of all the units in the given frequency domain as in the ordinary spread spectrum systems, but uses only skipped units, it can be shown that almost the same frequency diversity effect is attained. And it is also shown that the immunity to the external interfering signals is by no means inferior. If every L=N/K T/(2πσd) consecutive sinusoidal signal units are assigned to the K signal units of a signature signal, L different signature signals are simultaneously available mutually orthogonal when the synchronous demodulation is performed in the same T period. We call each of the orthogonal sinusoidal signal sets a Frequency Devision (FD) signal set. Now, CDMA can be independently realized on each of the L FD signal sets provided the operation is synchronous or quasi-synchronous with respect to the symbol demodulation (or signature) period. Partitioning the simultaneous users among the FD sets, it is possible to decrease the number of CDMA users to be processed, retaining the total number of simultaneous users. Owing to this effect, the multiple access performance for the FD/CDMA system is shown to be superior to that of the ordinary DS or MC/CDMA system, assuming matched filter reception based on the complete estimation of the channel characteristics for the both cases. The decrease of the number of CDMA users per FD set makes it practical for the receiver to employ multiple access interference cancellation and even the maximum likelihood detection. Curiously, any FD signal set can be represented in the time domain as L repetition of a sequence with its period equal to K in the number of 1/B duration time chips.

A constant amplitude transmission scheme for multicode wideband CDMA systems is proposed. Multicode wideband CDMA systems result in large amplitude fluctuation because the multicode signal is the sum of constituent code channel signals. This large amplitude fluctuation brings out large non-linear distortion and then, if unaccounted, can significantly degrade the bit error rate (BER) performance. Constant amplitude transmission, achieved by using a Walsh code and parity generator, is proposed to combat the large amplitude fluctuation and reduce the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). Unlike other constant amplitude transmission scheme, the proposed scheme does not use a redundant code channel. Computer simulation results show that the proposed scheme improves BER performance significantly and that the proposed scheme is extremely effective to the non-linear distortion of high power amplifier (HPA).

This paper investigates the effectiveness of a network that uses unspecified bit rate (UBR) for a virtual channel (VC) accommodating AAL2 connections. AAL2 is a new ATM adaptation layer that has recently been standardized. Since it is designed to carry low-bit-rate voice signals efficiently, it should be used in the ATM backbone for mobile networks, especially in the IMT-2000 network (International Mobile Telecommunication in the Year 2000 network). Normally, constant-bit-rate (CBR) VCs or variable-bit-rate (VBR) VCs are used to accommodate AAL2 connections. In our previous work, however, we showed that using UBR VCs (equivalent to no VC-level bandwidth management) to accommodate AAL2 connections needs much less VP bandwidth than using CBR or VBR VCs. In this paper, the previous results are extended to the network and the network bandwidth reduction is shown to be larger than that of the virtual path. In addition, the bandwidth reduction achieved by using UBR VCs is comparable with that achieved by introducing AAL2 switching nodes. Based on these results, the core network of the IMT-2000 is discussed.

This paper proposes an on-chip memory-path architecture employing the dynamically variable line-size (D-VLS) cache for high performance and low energy consumption. The D-VLS cache exploits the high on-chip memory bandwidth attainable on merged DRAM/logic LSIs by replacing a whole large cache line in one cycle. At the same time, it attempts to avoid frequent evictions by decreasing the cache-line size when programs have poor spatial locality. Activating only on-chip DRAM subarrays corresponding to a replaced cache-line size produces a significant energy reduction. In our simulation, it is observed that our proposed on-chip memory-path architecture, which employs a direct-mapped D-VLS cache, improves the ED (Energy Delay) product by more than 75% over a conventional memory-path model.

This work presents a frame-structure, referred to as CATM (CATV ATM), to serve as a wireless network infrastructure. The widespread CATV (Community Antenna TV) networks are attractive infrastructures for next generation wireless networks. Providing interactive broadband services over CATV networks is a major trend in communication and ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) networks with broadband communication features well fitted to be the backbone of CATV networks. Based on the proposed network architecture, this work addresses and investigates the problems of call setup and handoff handling. This work also proposes a wireless signaling protocol for establishing mobile connections over the CATM-based wireless networks. To enhance bandwidth utilization, the proposed scheme attempts to keep the path resulting after handoff as short as possible. The protocol also evolves a seamless handoff scheme (denoted as SHSW-CATM), that can preserve data continuity, is transparent to other mobile terminals, and produces a shorter path. Analytical results reveal that the SHSW-CATM has a high probability of obtaining an optimal path (that is, a non-elongated path) following mobility.

We present novel semiconductor technologies of ZnO epitaxial films with using laser molecular-beam epitaxy method. Exciting optical properties such as room temperature lasing in ZnO nanocrystalline films and quantum size effects in ZnO/MgxZn1-xO superlattices were observed. By developing crystalline quality with using lattice-matched substrates, we could control resistivity of the doped ZnO films from 10-3 Ωcm to 104 Ωcm. These results would provide us an opportunity to construct a monolithic array consisted of light emitting devices and field effect transistors towards a possible flat panel display.