This letter presents an adaptive H∞ array beamforming scheme based on a generalized sidelobe canceller with lower computational load. It is shown that the adaptive H∞-based beamformer offers the advantages of faster convergence speed, insensitivity to dynamic estimation modeling error, and less sensitivity to pointing error over the conventional adaptive H∞ algorithm. Simulations confirm that the proposed technique achieves similar array performance of the adaptive H∞-based algorithm [4].

In this paper, two new clustering algorithms are proposed for the data with some errors. In any of these algorithms, the error is interpreted as one of decision variables -- called "tolerance" -- of a certain optimization problem like the previously proposed algorithm, but the tolerance is determined based on the opposite criterion to its corresponding previously proposed one. Applying our each algorithm together with its corresponding previously proposed one, a reliability of the clustering result is discussed. Through some numerical experiments, the validity of this paper is discussed.

This paper proposes a new type of compact waveguide directional coupler, which is constructed from two crossed E-plane rectangular waveguide with two metallic posts in the square junction and one metallic post at each port. The metallic posts in the square junction are set symmetrically along a diagonal line to obtain the directivity properties. The metallic post inserted at each input/output waveguide port can realize a matched state. Tight-coupling properties 0.79-6 dB are realized by optimizing the dimension of the junction and the positions/radii of the posts. The design results are verified by an em-simulator (Ansoft HFSS) and experiments.

Application of microwave and millimeter-wave circuit technologies to InGaP-HBT ICs for 40-Gbps optical-transmission systems is demonstrated from two aspects. First, ICs for various important functions -- amplification of data signals, amplification, frequency doubling, and phase control of clock signals -- are successfully developed based on microwave and millimeter-wave circuit configurations mainly composed of distributed elements. A distributed amplifier exhibits ≥164-GHz gain-bandwidth product with low power consumption (PC) of 71.2 mW. A 20/40-GHz-band frequency doubler achieves wideband performance (40%) with low PC (26 mW) by integrating a high-pass filter and a buffer amplifier (as a low-pass filter). A compact 40-GHz analog phase shifter, 20- and 40-GHz-band clock amplifiers with low PC are also realized. Second, a familiar concept in microwave-circuit design is applied to a high-speed digital circuit. A new approach -- inserting impedance-transformer circuits -- to enable 'impedance matching' in digital ICs is successfully applied to a 40-Gbps decision circuit to prevent unwanted gain peaking and jitter increase caused by transmission lines without sacrificing chip size.

We introduce a novel configuration for a multi-user Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) system in mobile communication over fast fading channels using space-time block coding (STBC) and adaptive array. The proposed scheme adopts the simultaneous transmission of data and pilot signals which reduces control errors caused by delay of obtaining channel state information (CSI). Data and pilot signals are then encoded using a space-time block code and are transmitted from two transmit antennas. In order to overcome the fast fading problem, implementation of adaptive array using recursive least squares (RLS) algorithms is considered at the base station. Through computer simulation, it is shown that the proposed scheme in this way can overcome Doppler spread in higher frequencies and suppress co-channel interference up to N-1 users for N receiving antennas.

Audio applications for mobile phone and portable devices are increasingly popular. To attract consumer interest, a multi-standard design on a single device is the trend of current audio decoder development. This paper presents a configurable common filterbank processor (CCFP) for AC-3, MP3 and AAC audio decoder. It is used as an accelerator for general purpose processors to improve performance. All the filterbank transforms are derived to even- or odd-point IFFT flows. In the architecture, a fully pipelined approach is developed which can be configured for different operation modes. This design is synthesized using UMC 0.18 µm library and takes about 26.7 K gates. By the fast algorithm and fully pipelined architecture, the operation cycles are greatly reduced. Therefore, it can be executed at a very low operation frequency with the range of 1.3 to 3.6 MHz. Besides, the power consumption is only 0.9 mW, 3.2 mW and 1 mW for AC-3, MP3 and AAC respectively. We further port our design on an ARM Integrator platform to make a real play system. On average, over 50% ARM performance loading can be saved and used for handling other applications.

This paper presents a novel stereophonic acoustic echo canceling scheme without preprocessing. To accurately estimate echo path keeping the high level of performance in echo erasing, this scheme uses two filters, of which one filter is utilized as a guideline which does not erases echo but helps updating of the other filter, which actually erases echo. In addition, we propose a new filter dividing technique to apply to the filter divide scheme, and utilize this as the guideline. Numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed scheme improves the convergence behavior compared to conventional methods both in system mismatch (i.e., normalized coefficients error) and Echo Return Loss Enhancement (ERLE).

This paper considers reduction of the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of M-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. It is known that a 16-QAM or 64-QAM constellation can be written as the vector sum of two or three QPSK constellations respectively. We can then use the Golay complementary sequences over Z4 to construct 16-QAM or 64-QAM OFDM sequences with low PAPR. In this paper, we further examine the squared Euclidean distance of these M-QAM sequences and their variations. Our goal here is to combine the block coded modulation (BCM) and Golay complementary sequences to trade off the PAPR, the code rate, and the squared Euclidean distance of M-QAM OFDM signals. In particular, some 16-QAM and 64-QAM OFDM sequences with low PAPR and large squared Euclidean distance are presented.

A communication means is presented for patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in totally locked-in state who are completely unable to move any part of the body and have no usual communication means. The method utilizes changes in cerebral blood volume accompanied with changes in brain activity. When a patient is asked a question and the answer to it is 'yes', the patient makes his or her brain active. The change in blood volume at the frontal lobe is detected with near-infrared light. The instantaneous amplitude and phase of the change are calculated, and the maximum amplitude and phase change are obtained. The answer 'yes' or 'no' of the patient is detected using a discriminant analysis with these two quantities as variables. The rate of correct detection is 80% on average.

To evaluate heat and fire phenomena caused by accumulated microslide motion on an imperfectly connected electrical terminal, an acceleration test method using vibrator was developed. The process from the generation of CuO to that of Cu2O has been reproduced. The influence of current is investigated, and it is found that as current increases, CuO generation time T1 and Cu2O generation time T2 decrease for pure copper, however when current exceeds 3 A, we could not produce CuO or Cu2O. The contact resistances of a Cu terminal and wire, compared with the terminal material were investigated in terms of the effects of current and ambient temperature.

We propose a simple and scalable scheduler called Elapsing Time-based Priority (ETP) scheduler for the optical burst switch (OBS) control channel; it eliminates the requirements of global synchronization and core-state information. This scheduler reduces edge-to-edge delays of burst control packets and total latencies of data bursts.

This paper presents a new Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) having the ability to support rational-powered membership functions. These functions are extended forms of triangular/trapezoidal membership functions, and also those functions which are generated by applying linguistic hedges. A two-input, single-output, nine-rule Takagi-Sugeno-Kang (TSK) type FLC is designed in 0.35 µm standard CMOS technology. This controller can also be used as a standard (Mamdani) type FLC having singleton output membership functions, as well as a Linguistic Hedge FLC (LHFLC). Mixed analog/digital realization of the circuit makes the design programmable and extendable, while having relatively low power consumption. Current mode realization of the circuits leads to simple and intuitive configurations. For a particular set of programming parameters, simulation results of the controller using HSPICE simulator and level 49 parameters (BSIM3v3), show an average power consumption of 5 mW, and an RMS error of 1.32% compared to ideal results obtained from MATLAB software.

The dry etching resistance of ArF resist patterns was improved by irradiating vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) light with a wavelength of 172 nm to ArF resist patterns in N2 atmosphere. The density of C=O bonds of the resists is decreased, and the dry etching rate of resist is also decreased after VUV irradiation. The line width shrinkage by the electron beam irradiation of CD-SEM was greatly improved from 9 nm to 2 nm, and LER (Line Edge Roughness) of resist patterns was approximately 2 nm improved from 8.4 nm to 6.5 nm under VUV irradiation. Using VUV cure, the dry etching pattern of a SiN film showed a rectangle-like cross-sectional view, and indicated almost the same LER value as the resist mask pattern. The VUV cure technique is an attractive method of fine resist pattern fabrication by ArF lithography.

This paper proposes a simple and feasible decision-feedback channel tracking scheme for multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) systems designed for wireless local area networks (LANs). In the proposed scheme, the channel state matrix for each subcarrier is tentatively estimated from a replica matrix of the transmitted signals. The estimated channel matrices, each derived at a different timing, are combined, and the previously estimated channel matrices are replaced with the latest ones. Unlike conventional channel tracking schemes based on a Kalman filter, the proposed scheme needs no statistical information about a MIMO channel, which makes the receiver structure quite simple. The packet error rate (PER) performances for the proposed scheme are evaluated on computer simulations. When there are three transmit and receive antennas, the subcarrier modulation scheme is 64 QAM, and the coding rate is 3/4, the proposed scheme keeps the SNR degradation at PER of 1e-2 less than 0.1 dB when the velocity of receiver is 3 km/h in an indoor office environment at 5 GHz band. In addition, compared to the conventional channel tracking scheme based on known pilot symbols, the proposed scheme improves throughput performance by 13.8% because it does not need pilot symbols. These results demonstrate that the proposed channel tracking scheme is simple and feasible for implementation in MIMO-OFDM systems based on wireless LANs.

We propose a dipole array antenna assisted Doppler spread compensator with maximum ratio combining (MRC) diversity for mobile reception by a digital television terrestrial broadcasting receiver. Although OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing), used for the physical layer standard of digital terrestrial television broadcasting (DTTB), is robust to multi-path delay spreading thanks to its long symbol interval, it is sensitive to Doppler spread. OFDM itself cannot mitigate the performance degradation due to fading unless error correction coding is also used. Furthermore, although a Doppler spread compensator based on a linear array antenna has already been proposed, it has problems concerning the mutual coupling effect and polarization mismatch between the transmitter and receiver antennas. The proposed dipole antenna array assisted Doppler spread compensator is not only capable of mitigating both Doppler and fading phenomena, but also of efficiently receiving horizontally polarized radio waves. Computer simulation results showed that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional monopole array assisted Doppler spread compensator.

This paper proposes a new efficient method of characterizing a memory compiler in order to reduce the computation time and remove human error. The new features that make our method greatly efficient are the following three points: (1) high-speed circuit simulation of the whole memory module using a hierarchical LPE (Layout Parasitic Extractor) and a hierarchical circuit simulator, (2) automatic generation of circuit simulation input data from corresponding parameterized description termed the template file, and (3) carefully selected environmental conditions of circuit level simulator and minimizing the number of runs of it. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method by application to the single-port SRAM generators using 90 nm CMOS technology.

We propose a gradient-limited affine projection algorithm (GL-APA), which can achieve fast and double-talk-robust convergence in acoustic echo cancellation. GL-APA is derived from the M-estimation-based nonlinear cost function extended for evaluating multiple error signals dealt with in the affine projection algorithm (APA). By considering the nonlinearity of the gradient, we carefully formulate an update equation consistent with multiple input-output relationships, which the conventional APA inherently satisfies to achieve fast convergence. We also newly introduce a scaling rule for the nonlinearity, so we can easily implement GL-APA by using a predetermined primary function as a basis of scaling with any projection order. This guarantees a linkage between GL-APA and the gradient-limited normalized least-mean-squares algorithm (GL-NLMS), which is a conventional algorithm that corresponds to the GL-APA of the first order. The performance of GL-APA is demonstrated with simulation results.

This paper reviews our progress on the high-Tc superconducting (HTS) sampler development, covering from the circuit design to the latest experimental data in the sinusoidal and pulse waveform measurements. A computer simulation has revealed that our sampler circuit with an improved design enables waveform measurement with the bandwidth over 100 GHz even with the thermal noise at around 40 K. Using the HTS sampler circuits fabricated employing an improved layout, we demonstrated waveform measurements for sinusoidal signals with frequencies of up to 50 GHz, the upper limit of the signal generator we used, both in the voltage-input-type system with a high-frequency input line and in the current-input-type one with a superconducting pickup coil. In the pulse measurement using an on-chip sampler, we succeeded in observing pico-second-order-wide single flux quantum (SFQ) current pulses, suggesting the potential bandwidth of our HTS sampler of more than 125 GHz.

Local weight distribution is the weight distribution of minimal codewords in a linear code. We give the local weight distribution of the (256, 93) third-order binary Reed-Muller code. For the computation, a coset partitioning algorithm is modified by using a binary shift invariance property. This reduces the time complexity by about 1/256 for the code. A necessary and sufficient condition for minimality in Reed-Muller codes is also presented.

An iterative reconstruction algorithm of accelerating the estimation of the complex relative permittivity of a cylindrical dielectric object based on the multigrid optimization method (MGOM) is presented. A cost functional is defined by the norm of a difference between the scattered electric fields measured and calculated for an estimated contrast function, which is expressed as a function of the complex relative permittivity of the object. Then the electromagnetic inverse scattering problem can be treated as an optimization problem where the contrast function is determined by minimizing the cost functional. We apply the conjugate gradient method (CGM) and the frequency-hopping technique (FHT) to the minimization of the cost functional, and also employ the multigrid method (MGM) with a V-cycle to accelerate the rate of convergence for getting the reconstructed profile. The reconstruction scheme is called the multigrid optimization method. Computer simulations are performed for lossy and inhomogeneous dielectric circular cylinders by using single-frequency or multifrequency scattering data. The numerical results demonstrate that the rate of convergence of the proposed metod is much faster than that of the conventional CGM for both noise-free and noisy cases.