To generalize characteristics of a received signal level distribution from narrow- to wide-bands in a mobile radio channel, a new propagation parameter called equivalent received bandwidth (2ΔfΔLmax) has been proposed. The distributions are discussed mainly with computer simulation results. The simulation results shows the level distribution depends on 2ΔfΔLmax and power ratio a of direct to indirect waves, and the value of 2ΔfΔLmax classifies the radio channel as narrow- or wide-bands transmission. To confirm these simulated results, a field test was performed with a 3.35 GHz radio wave. This paper describes that the field test demonstrated the simulation results. It is concluded that the equation representing received signal level in the computer simulation is valid. And the fading depth depends directly on 2ΔfΔLmax, and the 2ΔfΔLmax is effective for generalizing the received signal level distribution. Furthermore, a method for calculating the power ratio was found to be better for a peak level model.

Several subband array methods have been proposed as useful means to perform joint spatio-temporal equalization in digital mobile communications. These methods can be applied to mitigate problems caused by the inter-symbol interference (ISI) and co-channel interference (CCI). The subband array methods proposed so far can be classified into two major schemes: (1) a centralized feedback scheme and (2) a localized feedback scheme. In this paper, we propose subband arrays with partial feedback scheme, which generalize the above two feedback schemes. The main contribution of this paper is to derive the steady-state mean square error (MSE) performance of subband arrays implementing these three different feedback schemes. Unlike the centralized feedback scheme which can be designed to provide the optimum equalization performance, the subband arrays with localized and partial feedback schemes are in general suboptimal. The performance of these two suboptimal feedback schemes depends on the channel characteristics, the filter banks employed, and the number of subbands.

The field of mobile communications has continued to spread with astonishing speed in recent years. The expansion of mobile communications and the Internet has not only brought changes to communications services but also exerted huge effects on the economy and daily life. IMT-2000, International Mobile Telecommunications, is the next generation system for mobile communications systems currently being implemented. Standardization and development of IMT-2000 are in much progress under international frameworks to start commercial service by around the year 2001. This paper focuses in particular on radio transmission technology, giving an overall view of IMT-2000 standardization and technological status, as well as future technical directions extending beyond IMT-2000.

A general tracking control problem for mobile robots is proposed and solved using the backstepping technique. A global result is given for the kinematic steering system to make the tracking error approaching to zero asymptotically. Based on our efforts, the proposed controller can solve both the tracking problem and the regulation problem of mobile robots. In particular, mobile robots can now globally follow any differentiable with bounded velocities path such as a straight line, a circle and the path approaching to the origin using the proposed controller. Moreover, the problem of back-into-garage parking is also solved by our approach. Some interesting simulation results are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed tracking control laws.

In this paper we describe a multicast routing algorithm, which builds upon mobile multicast agents of an ad-hoc network. Mobile multicast agents (MMAs) form a virtual backbone of an ad-hoc network and they provide multicast tree discovery, multicast tree maintenance and datagram delivery. First, we construct a cluster-spine hierarchy structure for an ad-hoc network. Second, we propose a multicast routing algorithm, which is inspired by Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol. The results show that the MMA multicast algorithm can simplify the multicast tree discovery, reduce control overhead of the network, and increase the total network throughput, in comparison with general AODV multicast operation. We also overcome the deficiency of CBRP multicast routing, which places much burden on cluster heads.

Layering architecture of the Internet Protocol provides independent processing for each layer by concealing state information from each layer. Application Program Interface (API) is based on the idea of layering model. However, the idea disturbs efficient processing of applications requiring adaptation to network environment, such as context-aware applications in mobile computing. To address this need, this paper proposes MIBsocket designed as an integrated control and management system for general network information. Any variable information related to network is shared between each applications and operating system. MIBsocket detects and informs changes in network resources to applications. MIBsocket functions such as Get, Set, and Trap used in the application adapts dynamically to any environments. MIBsocket provides portability and facility for applications: it only requires a few modification to the operating system and its API has the same programmable interfaces as usual API's. MIBsocket does not interfere the current layering architecture, but it achieves remarkable improvement on the current model. We have measured costs of MIBsocket, and applied MIBsocket to the application named interface switching system which enables a mobile host to connect to the Internet anytime by switching interface depending on network environment. As a result, the costs of MIBsocket was found acceptable. The application shows that MIBsocket is useful for movement detection and reconfiguration of network resources in the mobile computing.

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a characterized by multi-hop wireless links, absence of any cellular infrastructure, and frequent host mobility. Existing MANET routing protocols are divided into location-aware and non-location-aware routing protocols. In a location-aware routing protocol, location information can be exploited to facilitate routing. Our protocol, namely multi-eye spiral-hopping (MESH) routing protocol, is a location-aware routing protocol. Most promising routing protocols are constructed by the route-discovery, route-reply, and route-maintenance phases. Our MESH protocol utilizes the location-information to confine the blind-flooding region in the route-discovery phase, minimize route-reply packets in the route-reply phase, and promote the routing robustness in the route-maintenance phase. Two major contributions of this paper are introduced: (1) a multi-eye scheme is presented to confine route-discovery region for reducing redundant packets, and (2) a special multi-path scheme, called as spiral-hopping scheme, is introduced to provide on-line route-recovery capability. Extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the protocol.

We propose the Geographical Location Information (GLI) system that maps a mobile entity on the Internet to a geographical position. Users can look up the latest geographical location information of registered mobile entities (forward-lookup) and can also search for mobile entities within a specified area (reverse-lookup). The GLI system consists of home and area servers. The home server maintains latest geographical location information of the mobile entities and processes forward-lookup requests. The area server maintains the latest geographical location information of the mobile entities in the area that it manages and processes reverse-lookup requests. To provide a highly scalable system, home and area servers are managed in a distributed manner based on a hierarchical server structure and delegation of authority to servers that manage lower layers. To reduce the amount of traffic due to distributed management, the delegation information of authority is cached by the servers. In our performance evaluation of the GLI system, the prototype implementation can handle 4,500-8,000 requests/sec for location lookup and location registration. We found that 52 home servers and 33 area servers are enough to handle all cars in Japan under some assumed parameters through the performance evaluation.

This letter introduces an alternative adaptive beamforming with the total computational load of about O(3N) where N denotes the number of antenna elements. The proposed technique finds a weight vector that maximizes the received signal power at the array output by searching for the suboptimal phase of each weight in a multipath fading CDMA mobile communication environment.

This paper presents a new network architecture called LINA that provides node mobility. The basic concept of LINA is separation of the node identifier and the interface locator. Although there are several protocols based on such a concept, they do not address issues that arise when dealing with an entire network architecture. LINA is a holistic architecture covering the network layer to the application layer in order to support node mobility. Overhead incurred by separation of the node identifier and the interface locator is minimized in LINA by introducing the embedded addressing model. This paper also presents a new protocol called LIN6 that supports IPv6 mobility. LIN6 is an application of LINA to IPv6 and is fully compatible with IPv6. It has several advantages in comparison to Mobile IPv6, e.g. less protocol overhead. Our prototype implementation of LIN6 shows minimal overhead compared to a conventional IPv6 implementation.

The number of studies on adaptive antennas has greately increased in resent years in Japan. Most of these studies have sought to enhance the capacity and suppress multipath signals in wireless mobile communications. Adaptive antennas are expected to play an important role in future mobile radio systems. In this paper, we review the history and trends of adaptive antenna studies in Japan. We describe typical adaptive processing algorithms and contributions by Japanese researchers. We then introduce some applications of adaptive antennas for mobile communications. Furthermore, we discuss multi-dimensional signal processing, which is an extended version of the adaptive antenna.

This letter shows the results of a series of link level simulations conducted to evaluate the performances of spatial and temporal equalizers (S/T-equalizers) using field measurement data. The configuration of the spatial and temporal equalizer discussed in this letter can be expressed as a cascade of an adaptive array antenna and maximum likelihood sequence estimator (MLSE): each of the adaptive array antenna elements has a fractionally spaced tapped delay line (FTDL), and the MLSE has taps covering a portion of channel delay profile. Bit error rate (BER) performances of the S/T-equalizers are presented, and performance sensitivity to symbol timing offset is investigated.

This paper proposes a beam and null simultaneous steering Space-Time Equalizer (S/T-Equalizer). The proposed S/T-Equalizer performs separated S/T-signal processing in order to reduce computational complexity to a practical level. For spatial signal processing, a new Adaptive Array Antenna algorithm is used that combines the beam and null steering concepts. For temporal signal processing, a conventional delayed decision feedback sequence estimation equalizer may be used. The proposed S/T-Equalizer was prototyped, and a series of field tests was conducted using a 5 GHz frequency band to evaluate transmission performances of the proposed system. Results show that the proposed S/T-Equalizer can reduce inter-symbol interference effects while maintaining reasonable signal strength, thereby improving BER performance.

Conventional adaptive array antenna processing must access signals on all of the array antenna elements. However, because the low-cost electronically steerable passive array radiator (ESPAR) antenna only has a single-port output, all of the signals on the antenna elements cannot be observed. In this paper, a technique for adaptively controlling the loaded reactances on the passive radiators, thus forming both beam and nulls, is presented for the ESPAR antenna. The adaptive algorithm is based on the steepest gradient theory, where the reactances are sequentially perturbed to determine the gradient vector. Simulations show that the ESPAR antenna can be adaptive. The statistical performance of the output SIR of the ESPAR antenna is also given.

In wideband direct sequence code division multiple access (W-CDMA), employing an adaptive antenna array is a very promising technique to reduce severe multiple access interference (MAI) especially from high rate users. This paper proposes a fast and accurate two-step beam tracking algorithm implemented in a pilot symbol-assisted coherent adaptive antenna array diversity (CAAAD) receiver and evaluates its performance both by computer simulation and laboratory experiments. In the proposed scheme, the receiver antenna weights are updated by using both the signal-to-interference power ratio (SIR) measurements employing multiple sets of antenna weights (MSAW) and an adaptive algorithm based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion, in which other sets except for a original set of antenna weights are simply generated by a original set. Computer simulation results show that antenna weights of a four-antenna CAAAD receiver using the proposed beam tracking algorithm tracks changes in the direction of arrival (DOA) of the desired user at up to 34.3 degrees/sec, which corresponds to 215 km/h at 100 m from a base station. We also confirm based on the experiments in a radio anechoic room that the generated antenna weights track the DOA changes up to 12.3 degrees/sec.

Providing results of a series of link-level simulations for a class of spatial and temporal equalizer (S/T-equalizer) is the primary objective of this letter, which is supplemental to this letter's companion article. The S/T-equalizers discussed in this letter have a configuration that can be expressed as the cascaded connection of adaptive array antenna and maximum likelihood sequence estimator (MLSE): each of the adaptive array antenna elements has a fractionally spaced tapped delay line (FTDL), and the MLSE has taps covering a portion of the channel delay profile. Both the desired and interference signals suffer from severe inter-symbol interference (ISI). A major difference of this article from its companion letter is that account is taken of the presence of co-channel interference (CCI). Bit error rate (BER) performance of the S/T-equalizer is presented as a result of the link-level simulations that use field measurement data.

This paper elucidates the most appropriate hybrid automatic-repeat-request (ARQ) scheme, i.e., which can achieve the highest throughput, for high-speed packet transmission in the W-CDMA forward link by comparing the throughput performance of three types of hybrid ARQ schemes: type-I hybrid ARQ with packet combining (PC), type-II hybrid ARQ, and basic type-I hybrid ARQ as a reference. Moreover, from the viewpoint of maximum throughput, the respective optimum roles of ARQ and channel coding in hybrid ARQ are also clarified, such as the optimum coding rate and the packet length related to the interleaving effect. The simulation results reveal that the type-II scheme exhibits the best throughput performance, and the required received signal energy per chip-to-background noise spectral density ratio (Ec/N0) at the throughput efficiency of 0.2/0.4/0.6 is improved by 0.7/0.3/0.1 dB and 3.9/1.8/0.5 dB, respectively, compared to the type-I scheme with and without PC in a 2-path Rayleigh fading channel with the average equal power at the maximum Doppler frequency of 5 Hz and the packet length of 4 slots (= 0.667 4 = 2.667 msec). However, the improvement of the type-II scheme compared to the type-I scheme with PC is small or the achievable throughput is almost identical in the high-received Ec/N0 region. On the other hand, the type-I scheme with PC is much less complex and thus preferable, while maintaining almost the same throughput performance or allowing very minor degradation compared to that with type-II. The results also elucidate that, while the optimum coding rate depends on the required throughput in the basic type-I and type-I with PC schemes, it is around between 3/4 and 8/9 in type-II, resulting in a higher throughput efficiency. In addition, for high-speed packet transmission employing a hybrid ARQ scheme, a shorter retransmission unit size is preferable such as 1 slot, and the fast transmit power control is effective only under conditions such as a low maximum Doppler frequency and a high transmit Ec/N0 region.

This paper proposes an outer loop control method of fast transmit power control (TPC) for high-quality data transmission such as that with the average bit error rate (BER) of 10-6 in serial concatenated channel coding combining convolutional (inner) and Reed-Solomon (outer) codings for DS-CDMA mobile radio. In the proposed method, the outer loop control is performed based on the measured intermediate block error rate (BLER) value after inner-channel decoding. Since the number of block errors after inner-channel decoding is much greater than that of the final output after outer channel decoding, fast tracking performance of the sudden changes in the propagation conditions such as the number of multipaths and fading Doppler frequency, i.e., moving speed of the mobile station, is achieved. The experimental results clarify that the measured BLER after outer channel decoding is accurately controlled to almost a constant value from the low to high fading maximum Doppler frequency of up to 480 Hz, and that the measured BER after outer channel decoding is within the range of one-order of magnitude of the antenna diversity reception (meanwhile, the target SIR value after Rake combining varied with the range of 2.5 dB).

In a mobile computing environment, the characteristics of wireless communication and host mobility are important considerations in providing an efficient payment service. Currently, most payment systems were not intended for use in a mobile environment, and as such they inherently possess some inefficient properties. In this paper, we propose a new micropayment system (AMPS), designed for use in a mobile computing environment. AMPS reduces the computational load of mobile hosts by directing operations normally performed by the client to the static portion of the network. With AMPS, a client's request for goods goes to a TTP server, called the AMPS server, using only one message. The client can also be disconnected while the AMPS server deals with the merchant, reducing communication costs and power consumption. User privacy is protected by hiding the details of the payment to the AMPS server. The AMPS server can also provide client anonymity to merchants. Another advantage of AMPS is the provision of transaction atomicity by checking goods and money before forwarding to clients or merchants, and preserving all necessary information for any possible future disputes.

Signal path loss and propagation delay spread were measured at microwave frequencies of 3.35, 8.45, and 15.75 GHz along a straight quasi line-of-sight (LOS) street in an urban environment under different traffic conditions: daytime and nighttime. Comparison between daytime and nighttime measurements reveals that the break points shift toward the base station because of the increase in the effective heights of the road and sidewalk; break points were not seen during the daytime at a mobile antenna height (hm) of 1.6 m. According to the cumulative probabilities of the delay spreads during the nighttime, frequency dependence is not clearly observed and the delay spreads for hm = 1.6 m were clearly larger than those for hm = 2.7 m. This is because a lower hm results in stronger blocking of the LOS wave, as was also observed during the daytime. The plot of path losses versus delay spreads is confirmed to be represented by an exponential curve. The exponential coefficients during the daytime were observed to be greater than those during the nighttime. This indicates that a LOS wave is more likely to be blocked during the daytime.