Waveguide characteristics of beam-expanders integrated with laser diodes were numerically analyzed by the beam propagation method (BPM) or the finite-difference time-domain (FD-TD) method. It was demonstrated that the vertically and horizontally hybrid tapered structure or an optimized refractive index in the cladding layer improve the trade-off relationship between fiber coupling efficiency and lasing characteristics. It was also demonstrated that exponentially tapering stripe width can reduce device length without sacrificing device properties.

A three-dimensional beam propagation method based on a finite element scheme is described for the analysis of second harmonic generation devices. For the wide-angle beam propagation analysis, the Pade approximation is applied to the differential operator along the propagation direction. In order to avoid spurious reflection from the computational windows edges, the transparent boundary condition is introduced. Numerical results are shown for quasi-phase matched second harmonic generation devices using periodically domain-inverted LiNbO3 and LiTaO3 waveguides. The influences of the shape of domain-inverted regions and the inversion width on the conversion efficiencies are investigated in detail.

This paper describes an improved complementary beamforming microphone array based on the new noise adaptation algorithm. Complementary beamforming is based on two types of beamformers designed to obtain complementary directivity patterns with respect to each other. In this system, during a pause in the target speech, two directivity patterns of the beamformers are adapted to the noise directions of arrival so that the expectation values of each noise power spectrum are minimized in the array output. Using this technique, we can realize the directional nulls for each noise even when the number of sound sources exceeds that of microphones. To evaluate the effectiveness, speech enhancement experiments and speech recognition experiments are performed based on computer simulations with a two-element array and three sound sources under various noise conditions. In comparison with the conventional adaptive beamformer and the conventional spectral subtraction method cascaded with the adaptive beamformer, it is shown that (1) the proposed array improves the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of degraded speech by more than 6 dB when the interfering noise is two speakers with the input SNR of below 0 dB, (2) the proposed array improves the SNR by about 2 dB when the interfering noise is bubble noise, and (3) an improvement in the recognition rate of more than 18% is obtained when the interfering noise is two speakers or two overlapped signals of some speakers under the condition that the input SNR is 10 dB.

In this paper, we present a new approach for the design of partially adaptive broadband beamformers with the generalized sidelobe canceller (GSC) as an underlying structure. The approach designs the blocking matrix involved by utilizing a set of P-regular, M-band wavelet filters, whose vanishing moment property is shown to meet the requirement of a blocking matrix in the GSC structure. Furthermore, basing on the subband decomposition property of these wavelet filters, we introduce a new dynamic subband selection scheme succeeding the blocking matrix. The scheme only retains the principal subband components of the blocking matrix outputs based on a prescribed statistical hypothesis test and thus further reduces the dimension of weights in adaptive processing. As such, the overall computational complexity, which is mainly dictated by the dimension of adaptive weights, is substantially reduced. The furnished simulations show that this new approach offers comparable performance as the existing fully adaptive beamformers but with reduced computations.

Biological object could be trapped by a single laser beam from an optical fiber end inserted at an angle to a sample chamber. Separation/coupling of an individual biological cell was easily achieved using plural optical fibers. From these experimental results, we verify that fiber optic trapping technology can provide new and novel tools for the manipulation of microorganisms and cells without physical contact.

This paper describes a nonblind digital beamformer for SDMA (space division multiple access) systems used when channels are power-limited. An array antenna with many elements is usually required to obtain high antenna gain for the reception of a low-level desired signal and the degree of freedom for the spatial discrimination of many users using the same frequency. The proposed beamformer is designed for such array antennas by employing the combination of a multibeam former and a maximal-ratio-combining (MRC) technique. The MRC technique is extended to a nonblind combiner that uses a training sequence contained in the desired signal. Basic analysis and numerical simulations of its performance, under the power-limited condition and with fixed user terminals, show that the speed and robustness of desired-signal acquisition and undesired-signal suppression may outperform recursive-least-squares (RLS) beamformer with less computation, when it is applied to an array antenna with many elements.

Carbon-doped base InP/InGaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) technology for millimeter-wave application is presented. Ultra-high carbon doping of InGaAs layers lattice-matched to InP with hole concentrations in excess of 1 1020 /cm3 has been achieved using a chemical beam epitaxy (CBE). Heavily carbon-doped base InP/InGaAs HBT epi structures were grown and small area, self-aligned HBTs with 1.5 µm emitter finger width were fabricated using triple mesa etching and polyimide planarization techniques. The fabricated small area transistors showed a common-emitter current gain cut-off frequency (fT) as high as 200 GHz. Preliminary device reliability test results showed the potential of the heavily carbon-doped base InP/InGaAs HBT for high performance microwave and millimeter-wave applications. Applications of the InP/InGaAs single heterojunction bipolar transistor (SHBT) and double heterojunction bipolar transistor (DHBT) to a direct-coupled feedback amplifier and a power transistor, respectively, are presented.

The applications of reactance-loaded beam tilting dipole antennas have been reported by many researchers. The reactance elements loaded on the applications reported up to date have been used only for the purpose of beam tilting. This paper presents the basic characteristics of the beam tilting dipole antenna element in which one reactance element is used for the impedance matching at the feed point. The radiation pattern is tilted by the properly determined driving point position, and the loading reactance is used to obtain forced resonance without great changes in tilt angle. The numerical results demonstrate that the reactance element should be loaded in the region where the driving point is placed to obtain forced resonance of the antenna with little changes in beam tilt angle. In case the proposed forced resonant beam tilting antenna with 0.8λ length is driven at 0.2λ from the center, the main beam tilt angle of 57.7 degrees, the highest power gain of 8.6 dB, and VSWR=2.2 are obtained.

The MC-CDMA (multi-carrier code division multiple access) technique is known to be appropriate for high data-rate wireless communications such as mobile multimedia communication due to its robustness to multipath fading and its capability of handling high data rates with a simple one-tap equalizer. In this paper, the performance of an MC-CDMA system employing antenna array at the base station in a fading channel is presented. Following the discussion of optimal beamformer not requiring explicit DOA (direction of arrival) or training signals, it is shown that the interference from other users within a cell can be significantly reduced for both reverse link (mobile to base station) and forward link (base station to mobile) using an MC-CDMA with antenna array, thus increasing the system's user-capacity. Computer simulations that demonstrate user-capacity improvement of the proposed approach are discussed.

This paper describes a spatial spectral subtraction method by using the complementary beamforming microphone array to enhance noisy speech signals for speech recognition. The complementary beamforming is based on two types of beamformers designed to obtain complementary directivity patterns with respect to each other. In this paper, it is shown that the nonlinear subtraction processing with complementary beamforming can result in a kind of the spectral subtraction without the need for speech pause detection. In addition, the optimization algorithm for the directivity pattern is also described. To evaluate the effectiveness, speech enhancement experiments and speech recognition experiments are performed based on computer simulations under both stationary and nonstationary noise conditions. In comparison with the optimized conventional delay-and-sum (DS) array, it is shown that: (1) the proposed array improves the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of degraded speech by about 2 dB and performs more than 20% better in word recognition rates under the conditions that the white Gaussian noise with the input SNR of -5 or -10 dB is used, (2) the proposed array performs more than 5% better in word recognition rates under the nonstationary noise conditions. Also, it is shown that these improvements of the proposed array are same as or superior to those of the conventional spectral subtraction method cascaded with the DS array.

Two classes of nonlinear feedforward logic (NLFFL) pseudonoise (PN) code generators based on the use of AND and majority logic (ML) gates are compared. Cross-correlation and code-division multiple-access (CDMA) properties of properly designed NLFFL sequences are found to be comparable with the properties of well-known linear PN codes. It is determined that code design employing ML gates with an odd number of inputs is easier compared with designing with AND gates. This is especially true when the degree of nonlinearity is large, since the nonbalance problem, e. g. , at the output of an AND gate, can be avoided. ML type sequences are less vulnerable to correlation attack and jamming by the m-sequence of an NLFFL generator

The onboard antenna beam forming network (BFN) of the next-generation communication satellites must offer multiple beam forming and beam steering. The conventional BFN, which directly controls the array elements, is not suitable for a large-scale array antenna because of the difficulty of BFN control. This paper proposes a new BFN configuration that consists of three/four-way variable power dividers and a Butler matrix (FFT circuit). This BFN can offer continuous beam steering with fewer variable components. By introducing new techniques based upon excluding FFT periods and power evaluations by definite integration, the deviation in beamwidth is reduced by 75% or more and the maximum sidelobe level is improved by 10 dB or more.

This paper presents a novel four-sector shaped-beam antenna suitable for base station antennas in 60-GHz wireless local area networks (LANs). The antenna has a plateau configuration, whose four side walls have four linearly arranged microstrip antennas. Each trapezoidal facet excites a shaped beam in the elevation plane in order to meet link-budget requirement between base station and remote terminal, taking account of directional patters of remote terminal antennas. Low-loss curved microstrip-line is applied to connect the three-dimensional antennas with active circuits mounted on a flat carrier plate. This antenna has been adopted as the base station antenna in 60-GHz wireless LANs. The first-stage transmission experiment confirms the usefulness of shaped-beam antennas in the 60-GHz band.

In this paper, outlines of the derivation of two recently developed finite difference beam propagation methods based on the higher-order Pad approximations are given to simulate the optical field propagation of tilted and turning waveguides. In order to investigate the accuracy and limitation for a propagation angle of these approaches, numerical results are presented for two benchmark tests. The present algorithms will offer, to our knowledge, the new beam propagation methods in optics.

This paper describes a multibeam antenna which uses switched parasitic and switched active elements to obtain multiple simultaneous directional beams that can be steered in azimuth. A 13 element monopole multibeam array has been optimised for gain and front to back ratio. Results from numerical simulation and measurements in an anechoic chamber are presented. The 13 element array can achieve up to three beams simultaneously with a minimum gain over 360 azimuthal coverage of 1.2 dB less than the maximum gain. Located on a ground plane with diameter of 2λ at 1.5 GHz, the maximum elevation angle was 20.2 with -3 dB vertical beamwidth of 88.

60 GHz band conical beam radial line slot antennas (RLSA's) are designed and fabricated. Antennas are made of PTFE substrate with copper for high accuracy and mass producibility in millimeter wave frequency. The radiation pattern such as directivity and beam direction can be controlled by changing the excitation of slots. The measured radiation pattern is in reasonable agreement with the predicted one in main beam direction. The measured gain is about 2.5 dB smaller than the predicted gain.

This paper presents the radiation characteristics of a circularly polarized conical beam spherical slot array antenna for applying to the mobile satellite communication subscriber. The structure of the antenna is easy to fabricate i. e. , a ring of perpendicular slot pairs cut on an outer surface of a concentric conducting spherical cavity enclosed by the conducting conical surface with the simple feeding structure, and a linear electric probe excited at the center of the inner surface of the cavity. Radiation fields of a spherical slot array antenna are calculated by superposing the patterns of all the slots. From the numerical results of the radiation pattern, in both elevational and azimuthal planes, it is obvious that the conical beam is realized. The elevational beam direction is low, which is suitable for installing in the land mobile subscriber unit located far from the equator. The tracking system is not necessary because the azimuthal pattern is omnidirectional. Directivity of the antenna for various spherical radii and angles of slot positions are illustrated as the guidelines for the design. Experimental results are in good agreement with the predictions.

In coupled oscillator arrays, it is possible to control the inter-element phase shift up to 180 by free-running frequency distribution based on injection-locking phenomenon. In this paper, a new technique to control the inter-element phase shift electronically up to the maximum extent of 360 is reported. Oscillators are unilaterally coupled to the preceding oscillator through one of the two paths, which differ from each other 180 in electrical length and each includes an amplifier. Turning on the desired amplifier one can control the phase shift either -180 to 0 or 0 to 180. The technique was applied in a three-element oscillator array each coupled to a patch antenna via a round aperture. The radiation beam of the array could be scanned 47 in total.

Active frequency-tuning beam-scanning leaky-mode antenna arrays have been demonstrated in this paper. These antennas integrated one or several microstrip leaky-wave antenna elements with a single varactor-tuned HEMT VCO as an active source. Noted that the measured scan angles of the 11 and 14 antennas were approximately 24 and the scanning range of the 12 antenna was 20. Furthermore, reflected wave due to the open end of each leaky-wave antenna element has been suppressed by the symmetric configuration of this antenna array and the antenna efficiency increases. When comparing with the measured radiation pattern of the single element antenna, we found that the 12 and 14 antenna arrays can effectively suppress the reflected power by more than 5.5 dB and 10.5 dB, respectively, at 10.2 GHz. The power gain are more than 2 dB and 3.16 dB higher than the single element antenna with a measured EIRP of 18.67 dBm.

In this paper, a new multicast routing method for layered streams is proposed. This method is an extension of the weighted greedy algorithm (WGA) and uses two kinds of weight values to refine the link distance. It can cope with dynamic change in the group members without multicast tree re-construction. The method is compatible with the RSVP and can be utilized in existing shared tree type routing protocols such as CBT and PIM sparse mode. The network resources can be utilized efficiently; furthermore, the loss rate of member's requests to receive more layers can be reduced by this routing method when a sufficient number of nodes have the packet filtering function and a sufficient number of hops is permitted.