This paper presents a test generation method for sequential circuits under IDDQ testing environment and the identification of untestable faults based on the information of illegal states. We consider a short between two signal lines, a short within one gate and a short between two nodes in different gates. The proposed test generation method consists of two techniques. First technique is to use weighted random vectors, and second technique is to use test generator for stuck-at faults. By using the two techniques together, high fault coverage and short computational time can be achieved. Finally experimental results for ISCAS89 benchmark circuits are presented.

This paper presents a new methodology for diagnosing transistor leakage faults in a CMOS circuit by using both IDDQ and logic value information. A hierarchical procedure is used to identify and delete impossible fault candidates efficiently and a procedure is employed to generate diagnostic tests for improving diagnostic resolution. A novel approach for handling the intermediate output voltage of a faulty gate is used in new methods for fault simulation and diagnostic test generation based on primary output values. Experimental results on ISCAS85 circuits show the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

We present a high-level synthesis scheme that considers weak testability of generated register-transfer level (RTL) data paths, as well as their area and performance. The weak testability, proposed in our previous work, is a testability measure of RTL data paths for non-scan design. In our scheme, we first extract a condition on resource sharing sufficient for weak testability from a data flow graph before synthesis, and treat the condition as design objectives in the following synthesis tasks. We propose heuristic synthesis algorithms which optimize area and the design objectives under the performance constraint.

For mobile telecommunication systems, it is important to accurately predict the propagation-path loss in terms of the estimation of the radiowave coverage area. The propagation-path loss has been estimated in a median obtained spatially from many received amplitudes (envelopes) within a region of several tens times as long as the wavelength, rather than in the envelopes themselves. Although ray tracing can obtain the envelopes and their median that reflect the site-dependent characteristics, the estimated median sometimes does not agree with the measured one. Therefore, the accuracy improvement has been expected. In this paper, an accuracy improvement is achieved by substituting a median with random phases for the median obtained spatially from many envelopes. The characteristic function method is used to obtain the cumulative distribution function and the median analytically where the phases are randomized. In a multipath environment, the phase-estimation error accompanying the location error of the ray tracing input influences the spatially obtained median. The phase-randomizing operation reduces the effects of the phase-estimation error on the median prediction. According to our estimation, improvements in accuracy of 4. 9 dB for the maximum prediction error and 2. 9 dB for the RMS prediction error were achieved. In addition, a probability-based cell-design method that takes the radiowave arrival probability and the interference probability into consideration is possible by using the percentiles obtained by the characteristic function method and the cell-design examples are shown in this paper.

Low-profile, miniaturized and highly efficient power inverters are required to light up backlights, which include cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs), in color liquid crystal displays (LCDs), replacing conventional power inverters with electromagnetic transformers. The object of this study is to actualize a power inverter to which a novel multilayered piezoelectric ceramic transformer operating in the third order longitudinal mode is applied. The piezoelectric transformer has a symmetrical structure in the lengthwise direction and its generating part operates in a piezoelectric stiffened mode in order to increase both energy conversion efficiency and power density. This transformer has great advantages. Namely, all the electronic terminals in this transformer can be connected at the vibration nodes of the transformer, which contributes to the guarantee of stable transformer performances at high power operation, and this transformer is superior in impedance matching against the backlight load at steady state, because the output impedance of this transformer is much lower than that of conventional Rosen type transformers. Then a power inverter with the transformer was fabricated. In this power inverter, a separately excited oscillation circuit was adopted to drive the transformer with high efficiency, and the transformer drive frequency was controlled by detecting the backlight current in order to adjust the backlight luminance properly. As a result, the fabricated power inverter exhibited more than 90% overall efficiency and 4. 5-W output power, which is enough power to light up a 9. 4 inch color LCD, including the stray capacitance loss resulting from CCFL mounting. The luminance value on a light transmission plate of the backlight was more than 2000 cd/m2.

A deterministic simulation method is investigated for rate 3/4 trellis-coded (TC) 16PSK, TC-16QAM and TC partially overlapped (PO) 12QAM schemes. The BER performance of these schemes are evaluated on realistic channels with the same transmisson parameters, and are compared with BER values obtained from a distance spectrum expression. The results of this study show that the BER values obtained by the deterministic simulation coincide well with those from the distance spectrum method, and that TC-16PSK is superior to both TC-16QAM and TC-PO-12QAM in terms of BER performance over linear and nonlinear channels. The BER degradation caused by a nonlinear amplifier and the BER difference between two mapping methods ( Gray code and natural binary code mapping) are also clarified.

We have developed a new type of phase interpolation DDS with a digitally controlled delay generator. The new DDS is similar to a sine output DDS in that it produces low spurious signals, but it does not require a sine look-up table. Periodic jitter in the MSB of the DDS accumulator is reduced with the digitally controlled delay generator. Experimental results confirm successful frequency synthesizer operation in which the spurious signal level is successfully reduced to less than that the MSB of the accumulator.

This paper presents a novel classified vector quantizer (CVQ) design algorithm which can control the rate and storage size for applications of image coding. In the algorithm, the classification of image blocks is based on the edge orientation of each block in the wavelet domain. The algorithm allocates the rate and storage size available to each class of the CVQ optimally so that the average distortion is minimized. To reduce the arithmetic complexity of the CVQ, we employ a partial distance codeword search algorithm in the wavelet domain. Simulation results show that the CVQ enjoys low average distortion, low encoding complexity, high visual perception quality, and is well-suited for very low bit rate image coding.

This paper proposes a bit-stream-arranged weighted modulation scheme to improve voice quality in low delay spread frequency selective fading channels. The proposed modulation scheme employs an input bit stream arrangement method that changes the bit stream order for significant bits so that they are not adjacent to each other over time; a mapping method that controls the amplitude of the modulation signals according to the importance of the bits; and modified differential encoding to prevent the error propagation from insignificant to significant bits. Computer simulations clarify that the proposed bit-stream-arranged weighted modulation scheme shows a S/N improvement of 8 dB in an 8-bit linear pulse code modulation (PCM) voice signal compared with the conventional non-weighted π/4-shift quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation scheme. The proposed scheme also shows 3. 5 dB improvement in a 4-bit adaptive differential pulse code modulation (ADPCM) voice signal. In this case, occurence of 'click noise' in recovered voice signal is halved. Although the proposed scheme increases the peak power of the modulated signals, the non-linearity of the power amplifier is not fatal.

To enhance the anti-fading technique of direct sequence code division multiple access (DS/CDMA) schemes in land mobile radio communication systems, a two-dimensional RAKE reception (2D-RAKE) scheme in beam space digital beam forming (BS-DBF) antenna configuration is proposed. The proposed scheme is applied to cellular base stations where the received signals in the reverse link are relieved from multipath fading by means of enhanced RAKE combining in spacial and temporal domains. Fundamental performance in the reverse link under multipath fading environments is investigated by computer simulation applying a wideband propagation channel model.

This paper presents a novel transmission diversity scheme for code division multiple access system. Conventional diversity receivers in mobile stations require space and complicated circuits, however, the proposed diversity schemes present significant diversity effect without any diversity equipment at the mobile station. It is possible to use the transmitter diversity at the base station by using the feature of time division duplex (TDD) which has strongly correlated fading patterns in both forward and reverse link. Computer simulation is performed to evaluate the performance of the proposed systems for single user environment. The performance of the system 1, which select best situated antenna, is analyzed and the BER performance for multiple access is presented.

This paper gives laboratory as well as the results of field experiment and describes the implementation of a system developed to evaluate and demonstrate multimedia multimode time division multiple access (MTDMA). The equipment has been developed with the radio transmission technology for future public land mobile telecommunication systems (FPLMTS/IMT-2000) in mind. To meet FPLMTS/IMT-2000 requirements the system employs the following techniques: a hybrid multiplex modulation system consisting of quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) and 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM), a high data transmission bit rate of 2 Mbit/sec for QPSK, 4 Mbit/sec for 16QAM, and diversity combining and adaptive equalization technique. For the diversity adaptive equalization technique, we used a decision feedback equalizer (DFE) consisting of one feedback (FB) transversal filter and two feed-forward transversal (FF) filters. The output signals from two branches of space diversity reception antennas are then fed to the two FF filters of the DFE. For middle-speed mobile radio communication for a micro-cellular pedestrian environment, a QPSK modulation system is selected to obtain wide coverage, while for a pico-cellular indoor office environment, the delay spread is small, and a 16QAM modulation system is selected to achieve a high bit rate. The results given here of laboratory and field experiments show the technical feasibility of MTDMA for future public land mobile telecommunication systems.

A slow frequency-hopping/16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (slow-FH/16QAM) system based on time-division-multiple-access (TDMA) is appropriate for third-generation land mobile cellular communications because of its high immunity to interference. The system uses 16QAM for high spectral efficiency and slow-FH and forward-error-correction (FEC) for high-quality transmission. To reduce sensitivity to interference, the system uses an improved decoding scheme based on a minimum Euclidean-distance which is effective when the interference level is dispersed by FH. The bit error rate (BER) of the system due to interference has been evaluated in a previous study, both theoretically and by computer simulation. Although computer-simulated results showed that the system improved the BER, the hardware feasibility was not considered. This paper presents a hardware implementation of the system and the results of experimental transmission using equipment we developed to verify the system and to confirm the BER performance. The laboratory experimental results indicated that the system could provide high-quality transmission over a channel that has frequency-selective fading and co-channel interference. This system provided an Eb/N0 of 9 dB with space diversity and one of 15 dB without it, when BER=10-3 and fd=120 Hz. Field experiments were also conducted in a suburban area of Tokyo to demonstrate the BER performance. The results meant that the system could lower sensitivity to vehicle velocity more than a system without FH and that the BER performance of the system was improved notably against that of a system without FH, especially at low vehicle velocity.

We developed a measuring system that measures both capacitance and transmittance of a liquid crystal (LC) cell simultaneously. We then studied the dynamic orientation process of nematic LC molecules between two-photochromic command surfaces. The command surfaces consist of a polymer monolayer bearing azobenzene side chains and they are deposited on glass substrate coated with indium-tin-oxide by using the Langmuir-Blodgett technique. The capacitance of LC cells increased and decreased alternately due to orientation transition in LC molecules by irradiating ultraviolet (UV) and visible light, respectively. Similarly, with the alternating irradiation of UV and visible lights, the transmittance of the LC cell changed periodically. Mean tilt angles of LC molecules under irradiation of UV and visible lights were evaluated from the results of capacitance and transmittance. It was found that the transient transmittance response was delayed to the transient capacitance under the UV irradiation. This result corresponds to that the LC molecules in homeotropic mode tend to remain the optical alignment.

Since the development of odor sensing system is required in many fields, we have been developing the system using QCM (Quartz Crystal Microbalance, 10 MHz AT-cut) array and neural-network pattern recognition. Since it is important to obtain stable sensor responses, a sensing film of lipid blended with PVC (polyvinyl chloride) was studied here. First, we studied the stability of various sensing films e. g. , phospholipids, GC liquid stationary phase materials and others in odor sensing system. It was found that most of lipids were stable, while PEG 200, octadecane and DBP were not stable materials. Second, we studied to obtain a stable QCM sensor using a sensing film blended with PVC. 4 plasticizers blended with PVC were systematically characterized, analyzing the pattern of QCM sensor responses by multivariate analysis. It was found that the pattern of DOPP was very different from that of PVC. Thus, we adopted DOPP as plasticizer and the stable sensor response was obtained using a lipid film blended with both PVC and DOPP. Finally, we studied the influence of sensing film materials on the stability of QCM sensors. It was found that the loss of sensing film mass after many vapor exposures depended upon the molecular weight.

IDDQ testing, or current testing, is a powerful method which detects a large class of defects which cause abnormal quiescent current, by measuring the power supply current. One of the problems on IDDQ testing which prevent its full practical use in manufacturing is that the testing speed is slow owing to time-consuming IDDQ measurement. One of the solutions to this problem is test pattern compaction. This paper presents an efficient method for generating a compact test set for IDDQ testing of bridging faults in combinational CMOS circuits. Our method is based on the iterative improvement method. Each of random primary input patterns is iteratively improved through changing its values pin by pin selected orderly, so as to increase the number of newly detected faults in the current yet undetected fault set. While our method is simple and easy to implement, it is efficient. Experimental results for large ISCAS benchmark circuits demonstrate its efficiency in comparison with results of previous methods.

An equivalent circuit for designing a coherent power combiner using a quasi-optical resonator has been developed. In the resonator, large numbers of devices (HEMT, HBT, etc. ) are arrayed two dimensionally and mounted on a surface of a metal grooved-mirror. A newly developed equivalent circuit for the resonator has been constructed using a transmission-line model. Experiments performed at Ku-band have shown that oscillation frequencies in a 33 HEMT array oscillator can be predicted with errors of less than 1% by using this equivalent circuit.

Properties of a quarter-wavelength coplanar waveguide resonator such as resonant frequency, external quality factor (Qe) are characterized by a theoretical approach and verified by the experiment. The unloaded quality factor (Q0) of the resonator is also examined experimentally. After new types of combline bandpass filter (BPF) made of these resonators are realized, their transmission and reflection characteristics are examined theoretically and experimentally. A new combline BPF having attenuation poles are also realized. A simple method to produce two-port equivalent circuit of these BPF is presented in this paper. The transmission characteristics including such as the control of attenuation poles of these filters are explained by the created equivalent circuit with the concept of even and odd modes. A new method of describing attenuation poles is established.

We present a realization of the transparent wave absorber effective for the use at V-band frequency. First, we propose a structure of the transparent wave absorber consisting of spacer (polycarbonate) and two transparent resistive sheet (polyethylene terephtalate deposited with Indium Tin Oxide) used as a reflection film and an absorption film. Second, a design chart for this type of wave absorber is shown. Third, a design method and manufacturing process of the transparent wave absorber are described particularly for V-band frequency. As a result, the measurement of reflection loss of the absorber indicate that a peak absorption of 32-38 dB is attained at a target frequency of 60 GHz.

This paper is concerned with Wiener-Hopf solutions to the electromagnetic wave scattering by a conducting finite thin plate when the incident wave is not a plane wave. The incident wave is approximated in terms of a piece-wise plane wave on a divided small section of the conducting plate. The final expressions are given in an analytically compact form and the results are accurate as long as the plate width is greater than the wavelength and the divided section is so small that we can expand the incident wave by a piece-wise plane wave. A criterion for the ray tracing method is also proposed.