Transmitter diversity is a powerful technique to improve the transmission quality of downlink in microcellular mobile communications systems. Under cochannel interference (CCI) at the base station (BS), the transmitter diversity is not necessarily effective, because the desired-plus-interference signal power used as a criterion of downlink branch selection is not always relative to the downlink propagation condition. This paper proposes the theoretical derivation of bit error rate (BER) performance in the transmitter diversity under CCI occurring at BS, as parameters of average SIR at BS, normalized Doppler frequency, and so on. It is confirmed from the correspondence of theoretical results with simulation results that the proposed theoretical approach is applicable to the CCI environments at BS.

We describe the width conversion of an optical signal by using an erbium-doped fiber and an asymmetric optical circuit. The width of an optical signal was measured to be a respective 350 nsec and 200 nsec for a 70 m and 40 m fiber (Lf). The width of the pumping pulse was 5 nsec and the length of erbium-doped fiber was 3 m. We also extended the optical signals to a respective 300 nsec and 150 nsec wide at a pumping pulse 10 nsec by inserting a 60 m and a 30 m fiber (Lf) inside a circuit.

We introduce PC Linux cluster computing techniques to an Evolutionary Graph Generation (EGG) system, and successfully implement the parallel version of the EGG system, called PEGG. Our survey satisfactorily shows that the parallel evolutionary approach meets our expectation that the final solutions obtained from PEGG will be as good as or better than those obtained from EGG, and that PEGG can ultimately improve the speed of evolution.

In this paper, we propose an activity-based estimation scheme to determine the received signal power disparity, that enhances the BER performance of the SIC scheme in a DS/CDMA system considering a practical voice activity factor, and compare BER performance with those of other schemes with or without estimation. Numerical analysis results show that the SIC scheme with the proposed activity-based estimation improves the BER performance compared with that without considering voice activity, and it approaches to that of the ideal estimation as the total number of concurrent users increases. In addition, the higher becomes the maximum attainable SNR, the better becomes the BER performance of the proposed activity-based estimation scheme.

The effectiveness of Aeff enlarged positive dispersion fiber (EE-PDF) and hybrid amplification configuration with erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and fiber Raman amplifier for reducing the fiber nonlinearity and improving the transmission performance in long distance 40 Gbit/s-based WDM transmission was investigated. We have confirmed that the use of EE-PDF in modified dispersion map for 40 Gbit/s transmission is quite effective to increase the transmissible distance and have successfully demonstrated 16 40 Gbit/s WDM transmission over 2000 km with proper dispersion management. We have also confirmed that the use of distributed Raman amplification is quite effective to extend the repeater spacing. By adding the optimum Raman amplification, almost the same transmission performance was obtained with a doubled repeater spacing in long distance 40 Gbit/s-based WDM transmission.

It has been shown that virtual output queuing (VOQ) and a sophisticated scheduling algorithm enable an input-queued switch to achieve 100% throughput for independent arrival process. Several of the scheduling algorithms that have been proposed can be classified as either iterative scheduling algorithms or symmetric crossbar arbitration algorithms. i-OCF (oldest-cell-first) and TSA (two step arbiter) are well-known examples of iterative scheduling algorithms and symmetric crossbar arbitration algorithms, respectively. However, there are drawbacks in using these algorithms. i-OCF takes long time to find completely a conflict-free match between input ports and output ports because it requires multiple iterations. If i-OCF cannot find a conflict-free match completely, the switch throughput falls. TSA has the possibility that it finds a conflict-free match faster than i-OCF because it does not need any iterations. However, TSA suffers from the starvation problem. In this paper, we propose a new scheduling algorithm. It uses two schedulers, which we call scheduler 1 and scheduler 2, in parallel. After cells were transmitted, the information that input port i granted the offer from output port j in scheduler 2 is mapped to scheduler 1 if and only if input port i has at least one cell destined for output port j. If the information is moved, input port i and output port j are matched in scheduler 1 at the beginning of the next time slot. Our proposed algorithm uses one scheduler based on TSA and the other scheduler based on i-OCF. Numerical results show that the proposed scheduling algorithm does not require multiple iterations to find a conflict-free match completely and suffer from the starvation problem for both uniform and bursty traffic.

A 1.6-Tb/s dense WDM signal was successfully transmitted over 480 km using the carrier-suppressed return-to-zero (CS-RZ) modulation format. The CS-RZ format was chosen because it exhibited better transmission performance over a wide fiber-input power window than the NRZ and RZ formats in a 40-Gb/s-based WDM transmission experiment with 100-GHz channel spacing, confirming its nonlinearity-insensitive nature in dense WDM systems. With the wide power window of CS-RZ, we achieved stable transmission of 4040-Gb/s WDM signals over a 480-km (680 km) standard SMF line with only the C-band, in which a spectral ripple remained during transmission. Distributed Raman amplification and forward error correction were not used, providing a margin for already installed transmission lines.

A novel optical transmission line consisted of fibers characterized by positive and negative medial dispersion of NZ-DSF and SMF was designed and fabricated. Both P-MDF and N-MDF have achieved the medial dispersion and low non-linearity simultaneously. Total characteristics were confirmed to be suitable for the future high-bit-rate transmission.

We have developed optical encoding devices for processing femtosecond pulses. These devices are based on spectral separation devices and light modulators with fiber gratings. Experiments were made to encode a light pulse in the spectral domain. These experiments utilize the characteristics that a femtosecond light pulse has a very broad spectrum. An input femtosecond light pulse is decomposed into a series of wavelength components. Each wavelength component with narrow spectra <1 nm width is successfully extracted into a single mode fiber. Light modulators corresponding to wavelength components are assigned to the 1st bit, the 2nd bit, the 3rd bit, , the nth bit, respectively. All of the encoded wavelength components are again recombined into a single time-varying signal and transmitted through an optical fiber. Decoding at receiving site is made by the reverse operation. Encoding and decoding for 2-bit and 4-bit signals were demonstrated for 200 fs input light pulse with about 40 nm spectral width.

In Vivo Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DT-MRI) can now be used to elucidate and investigate major nerve pathways in the brain. Nerve pathways are constructed by a) calculating a continuous diffusion tensor field from the discrete, noisy, measured DT-MRI data and then b) solving an equation describing the evolution of a fiber tract, in which the local direction vector of the trajectory is identified with the direction of maximum apparent diffusivity. This approach has been validated previously using synthesized, noisy DT-MRI data. Presently, it is possible to reconstruct large white matter structures in the brain, such as the corpus callosum and the pyramidal tracts. Several problems, however, still affect the method's reliability. Its accuracy degrades where the fiber-tract directional distribution is non-uniform, and background noise in diffusion weighted MRIs can cause computed trajectories to jump to different tracts. Nonetheless, this method can provide quantitative information with which to visualize and study connectivity and continuity of neural pathways in the central and peripheral nervous systems in vivo, and holds promise for elucidating architectural features in other fibrous tissues and ordered media.

We review recent progresses in our studies on the fiber-optic soliton compression and related subjects with special emphasis on dispersion-flattened fibers (DFFs). As for the ultimately short pulse generation, it has been demonstrated to compress 5 ps laser diode pulses down to 20 fs with a 15.1 m-long single-stage step-like dispersion profiled fiber employed. The compression was brought about through a series of the higher order soliton processes in conjunction with a single and ordinary erbium-doped fiber preamplifier, and DFFs contained at its end played a major role. We have performed intensive investigations on the DFF compression mechanisms in the 100-20 fs range. A fairly reliable model was developed for the higher order soliton propagation along a DFF in the temporal range from 100 down to 30 fs by taking into consideration the higher order nonlinear and dispersion effects as well as incident pulse shape dependence. Through the simulation, parametric spectrum generation originating from the modulation instability gain was pointed out at frequencies apart from the pump wave frequency, which agrees with the experimental observation. Its possible application is also discussed.

We will discuss a novel non-contact removal technique of optical fiber coating in continuous and uninterrupted manner with hot air stream. We observed little degradation of the tensile strength of the optical fiber after removing the protective polymer coating and the mean breaking tensile strength of the stripped optical fiber using non-contact removal method was 5.1 GPa.

Fiber-optic MEMS which is fabricated by combining direct photo-lithography of optical fiber and silicon micro-machining is proposed. Preliminary results of micro-machining of optical fiber and variable telecommunication devices are presented.

Transmission and distribution systems are investigated for application in future fiber optic super-broadband and super-multi-channel subscriber loops. Gradual upgrading is considered so that future systems can keep compatibility with existing systems. First, time frame and strategies for subscriber loop upgrade are overviewed and assumptions for evolution of broadband multimedia distribution systems are discussed. It is suggested that upgrading to super-high definition (SHD) quality multimedia is desirable. Next, some examples of extra-auxiliary picture (EAP) formats are discussed to show the possibility of improving upgradability and compatibility by using extra-channels. Then multiplexing and channel selecting systems are investigated for economical realization of super-multi-channel distribution and flexible channel selection, and hybrid multiplexing (HMUX) and a trans-selector (T-SEL) are proposed. Finally, the efficiencies of HMUX and T-SEL are discussed by using numerical examples. Although broadband down streams are mainly considered, other streams such as IP traffics can be accommodated in the distribution systems investigated in this paper.

In this letter, we describe the conditions for measuring the nonlinear refractive index n2 when using the self-phase modulation-based cw dual-frequency method. We clarify the appropriate measurement conditions for dispersion-shifted and conventional single-mode fibers both numerically and experimentally. We also show experimentally that the evaluated n2 values for conventional single-mode fiber depend on the signal wavelength separation.

We summarize recent studies on performance improvement in the correlation-based continuous-wave technique for optical fiber distributed strain measurement using Brillouin scattering, that had been proposed previously. The correlation-based technique enables the spatial resolution of 1 cm, which is difficult for conventional sensing techniques using Brillouin scattering to achieve. Though the correlation-based technique left a problem with measurement range, we have proposed methods to overcome it with keeping high spatial resolution. In addition, we verified usefulness of the technique for smart materials by measuring strain distribution along surface of a ring structure.

In this paper, we propose a unified high-radix division algorithm for high-speed signal and data processing applications, and present the design and evaluation of high-radix parallel dividers based on the proposed algorithm. By prescaling the input operands and converting some significant digits of a partial remainder into non-redundant representation, the quotient digit can be obtained directly from the partial remainder without using quotient digit selection tables. Performance evaluation shows that the proposed radix-4 and radix-8 divider architectures achieve faster computation with the same level of hardware complexity than the binary counterparts. We also show an experimental fabrication of a radix-4 divider chip in 0.35 µm CMOS technology.

Topological sorting is, given with a directed acyclic graph G=(V,E), to find a total ordering of the vertices such that if (u,v)E then u is ordered before v. Instead of topological sorting, we are interested in how many total orderings exist in a given directed acyclic graph. We call such a total ordering as legal sequence and the problem of finding total number of legal sequences as legal sequence number problem. In this paper, we firstly give necessary definitions and known results obtained in our previous research. Then we give a method how to obtain legal sequence number for a class of directed acyclic graphs, extended 2-b-SPGs. Finally we discuss the complexity of legal sequence number problem for extended 2-b-SPGs.

A novel in vivo exposure setup has been developed for testing the possible promoting effects of 1.5 GHz digital cellular phones on mouse skin carcinogenesis. The exposure setup has two main features: one is the employment of an electrically short monopole antenna with capacitive-loading, which supplies the ability to realize a highly localized peak SAR above 2 W/kg without any thermal stress for a mouse; the other is the use of a transparent absorber to allow real-time observation of both the exposure process as well as mouse activities during the exposure. Dosimetric analyses for the exposure setup have been carried out both numerically and experimentally. Good agreement was confirmed between the numerical and experimental results, thereby demonstrating the validity of the novel exposure setup.

In an optical fiber ring topology network such as FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface) rings and SONET (Synchronous Optical Network) rings, the number of consecutively bypassed failed stations is limited by the optical power loss constraint. In recent years, this situation was represented as a consecutive k-out-of-n:F system and the two-terminal reliability was presented in the literature, but K-terminal reliability has not been presented. In this paper, we obtain K-terminal reliability expressions for dual-counter rotating networks (DR's) that use both self-heal and station-bypass switches in which all components (stations, links and bypass switches) can fail. The results are useful in evaluating the reliabilities of FDDI ring networks parametrically and making reliability comparisons. This method can be used to obtain a closed-form reliability expression in a more general ring-network such as 'ring of trees. '