The electric field mill in our underground observation room detected a co-seismic electromagnetic signal in the vertical electrostatic field ca. 8 s after the origin time of the Niigataken Chuetsu-oki Earthquake in 2007, but ca. 30 s before the arrival time of the P-waves.

This paper presents a restoration method using several degraded observed images obtained through a technique known as microscanning. It is shown that microscanning provides sufficient spatial information for image restoration with minimal information about the original image and without knowing the interference function that causes degradation.

A broadband microstrip comb-line antenna using a corporate feeding system was developed. The antenna was composed of four colinearly-arranged comb-line antennas with traveling-wave excitation fed by a parallel-feeding circuit of tournament configuration. The total phase deviation due to frequency change became one fourth of the ordinary series feeding from the end of the antenna. Furthermore, the terminations of the inner two comb-lines were connected at the overall center of the developed antenna. Therefore, the narrowband matching elements are not necessary and the amplitude deviation of the aperture distribution for input from one side due to frequency change is compensated by deviation for input from the other side. Broad bandwidth can be expected by using the proposed configuration. The proposed antenna was designed at 76.5 GHz. The effect of the proposed feeding-circuit for broadband operation was confirmed by comparing the measured performances of the antennas fed by other feeding circuits; the end feeding, the center feeding and the ordinary corporate feeding. The bandwidth of the proposed corporate feeding antenna with the center connecting was approximately 14% and 7% wider than the antennas of the center feeding and of the ordinary corporate feeding, respectively.

We present a new power supply control method, which achieves constant flow Rate control for the thrust of a 20 mN-class Hall thruster. First, we present observations of a 20 mN-class Hall thruster with oscillation-mode-map. We make a theoretical study of the thrust and experiments on electrical characteristics of the Hall thruster, and conclude that thrust, thrust efficiency and low frequency oscillation are clearly determined by the external control parameters, anode voltage, gas flow rate, and magnetic flux density. Second, we discuss how to control the power supplies to suppress the power consumption, especially when the operation or thruster conditions change temporarily during use. The new method will be a very important guideline for Hall thruster system design and operation, in particular making it easy to manage the power consumption in a satellite by controlling the thrust resources. As a result of performance experiments for a 20 mN-class Hall thruster, over 36% thrust efficiency of the Hall thruster was found to be sensitive to the anode voltage and applied magnetic flux density. The new power control method achieves constant flow rate control method of the thrust. The benefits are light weight and low cost.

Ridge optical waveguides (OWGs) of fluorinated polyimides were deposited on a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM), and a hybrid sensor employing the OWG spectroscopy and the QCM technique was prepared. A polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) film with CoCl2 was deposited on the OWG, and humidity sensing characteristics were investigated. White light was entered into the waveguide and the output light spectra was observed. The output light intensity markedly changed because of the chromism of CoCl2 by humidity sorption. During the output light measurement, the QCM frequency was monitored simultaneously. The humidity dependences of the QCM frequency and output light were also investigated in a range from 10% to 70%. Furthermore, the response to hydrofluoroether (HFE) was observed, and the change in the output light was hardly observed because CoCl2 does not exhibit chromism in HFE sorption.

In spectrum sensing, if the primary user (PU) signal and the channel noise both follow Gaussian distribution and neither of their probability distribution functions (PDFs) are known, the traditional approaches based on entropy or Likelihood Ratio Test (LRT) etc., become infeasible. To address this problem, we propose a spectrum sensing method that exploits the similarity of PDFs of two time-adjacent detected data sets with cross entropy, while accounting for achieving the detection performance of LRT which is Neyman-Pearson optimal in detecting the primary user. We show that the detection performance of the proposed method asymptotically approximates that of LRT in detecting the PU. The simulation results confirm our analysis.

Certain irregularities in the utterances of words or phrases often occur in English spoken by Japanese native subject, referred to in this article as Japanese English. Japanese English is linguistically presumed to reflect the phonetic characteristics of Japanese. We consider the prosodic feature patterns as one of the most common causes of irregularities in Japanese English, and that Japanese English would have better prosodic patterns if its particular characteristics were modified. This study investigates prosodic differences between Japanese English and English speakers' English, and shows the quantitative results of a statistical analysis of pitch. The analysis leads to rules that show how to modify Japanese English to have pitch patterns closer to those of English speakers. On the basis of these rules, the pitch patterns of test speech samples of Japanese English are modified, and then re-synthesized. The modified speech is evaluated in a listening experiment by native English subjects. The result of the experiment shows that on average, over three-fold of the English subjects support the proposed modification against original speech. Therefore, the results of the experiments indicate practical verification of validity of the rules. Additionally, the results suggest that irregularities of prominence lie in Japanese English sentences. This can be explained by the prosodic transfer of first language prosodic characteristics on second language prosodic patterns.

Polymer multimode optical waveguides were fabricated from optically-sensitive hybrid silicone using the ultraviolet laser drawing method. The waveguide loss values were measured as 0.069 dB/cm with a laser diode, 0.069 dB/cm with a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser, and 0.128 dB/cm with a light-emitting diode. The cross waveguide on a curved waveguide was drawn by overlapped direct laser drawing. The crosstalk and excess loss at the cross angle of 50 in the cross waveguide were measured as 47 dB and 0.5 dB, respectively.

A novel algorithm is presented for estimating the 3-D location (azimuth angle, elevation angle, and range) of multiple sources with a uniform circular array (UCA). Based on its centrosymmetric property, a UCA is divided into two subarrays. The steering vectors for these subarrays then yield a 2-D direction of arrival (DOA)-related rotational invariance property in the signal subspace, which enables 2-D DOA estimations using a generalized-ESPRIT algorithm. Based on the estimated 2-D DOAs, a range estimation can then be obtained for each source by defining the 1-D MUSIC spectrum. Despite its low computational complexity, the proposed algorithm can almost match the performance of the benchmark estimator 3-D MUSIC.

Solution-based organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) with low parasitic capacitance have been fabricated using a self-aligned method. The self-aligned processes using a cross-linking polymer gate insulator allow fabricating electrically stable polymer OFETs with small overlap area between the source-drain electrodes and the gate electrode, whose frequency characteristics have been investigated by impedance spectroscopy (IS). The IS of polymer OFETs with self-aligned electrodes reveals frequency-dependent channel formation process and the frequency response in FET structure.

Providing seamless QoS guarantees for multimedia services is one of the most critical requirements in the mobile Internet. However, the effects of host mobility make it difficult to provide such services. The next steps in signaling (NSIS) was proposed by the IETF as a new signaling protocol, but it fails to address some mobility issues. This paper proposes a new QoS NSIS signaling layer protocol (QoS NSLP) using a cross-layer design that supports mobility. Our approach is based on the advance discovery of a crossover node (CRN) located at the crossing point between a current and a new signaling path. The CRN then proactively reserves network resources along the new path that will be used after handoff. This proactive reservation significantly reduces the session reestablishment delay and resolves the related mobility issues in NSIS. Only a few amendments to the current NSIS protocol are needed to realize our approach. The experimental results and simulation study demonstrate that our approach considerably enhances the current NSIS in terms of QoS performance factors and network resource usage.

This paper proposes a novel waveguide intersection separating two H-plane waveguide systems from each other. If a four-port network in a four-fold rotational symmetry is completely matched, it has necessarily intersection properties. The proposed waveguide intersection consists of a square H-plane waveguide planar circuit connected four input/output waveguide ports in a four-fold rotational symmetry, and several metallic posts inserted at the junction without destroying the symmetry to realize a perfect matching. By optimizing the circuit parameters, high isolation properties are obtained in a relatively wide frequency band of about 8.6% for return loss and isolation better than 20 and 30 dB, respectively, for a circuit designed at 10 GHz. The proposed waveguide intersection can be analyzed by H-plane planar circuit approach, and possess advantages of compactness, simplicity, and high-power handling capability. Furthermore, an SIW intersection is designed by applying H-plane planar circuit approach to a waveguide circuit filled with dielectric material, and high isolation properties similar to H-plane waveguide intersection can be realized. The validity of these design concepts is confirmed by em-simulations and experiments.

In this paper, we propose a novel feeding structure for a coaxial-excited compact waveguide filter, which is composed of planar resonators called frequency-selective surfaces (FSSs). In our proposed feeding structure, new FSSs located at the input and output ports are directly excited by the coaxial line. By using the FSSs, the transition from the TEM mode to the TE10 mode is realized by the resonance of the FSSs. Therefore, the backshort length from the coaxial probe to the shorted waveguide end can be made much shorter than one-quarter of the guided wavelength. Additionally, the coaxial-excited FSS provides one transmission zero at each stopband. As a design example, a three-stage bandpass filter with 4% bandwidth at the X band is demonstrated. The designed filter has a very compact size of one cavity and has high skirt selectivity with six transmission zeros. The effectiveness of the design is confirmed by the comparison of frequency characteristics obtained by the simulation and measurement.

In this letter, a novel design of a switchable microstrip antenna is proposed for circular polarization diversity. The proposed antenna has a simple construction of inner and outer corner-truncated radiating circular patches for switchable circular polarization. By controlling the state of two PIN diodes, left- and right-hand circular polarizations are easily alternated. The results of experiments show excellent switching radiation performances at the resonant frequency and good agreements with the simulated ones.

We review recently obtained results for CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) imaging devices used in biomedical applications. The topics include dish type image sensors, deep-brain implantation devices for small animals, and retinal prosthesis devices. Fundamental device structures and their characteristics are described, and the results of in vivo experiments are presented.

Using a self-developed ASTM test system of contact material electrical properties under low voltage (LV), small-capacity, the current-frequency variable and a photoelectric analytical balance, the electric performance comparison experiments and material weighing of silver-based electrical contact materials, such as silver/tungsten and silver/cadmium oxide contact materials, are completed under LV, pure resistive load and small current at 400 Hz/50 Hz. The surface profiles and constituents of silver/tungsten contact material were observed and analyzed by SEM and EDAX. Researches indicate that the form of the contact material arc burnout at 400 Hz is stasis, not an eddy flow style at 50 Hz; meanwhile, the area of the contact burnout at 400 Hz is less than that of 50 Hz, and the local ablation on the surface layer at 400 Hz is more serious. Comparing the capacities of the silver-based contact materials with different second element such as CAgW50, CAgNi10, CAgC4 and CAgCdO15 at 400 Hz, no matter what the performances of arc erosion resistance or welding resistance, it can be found that the capacities of the silver/tungsten material is the best.

Break arcs are rotated with the radial magnetic field formed by a magnet embedded in the fixed contact. They are generated in a DC42 V resistive circuit. The circuit current when the contacts are closed varies from 5 A to 21 A. The strength of a radial magnetic field for rotating break arcs changes. Arc duration is investigated. Then rotational frequency, arc length and Lorentz force when the periodic rotation of break arcs starts are analyzed to investigate the conditions required to rotate break arcs. The following results are obtained. The arc length L when the rotational motion of the break arc starts is almost constant at a constant magnetic flux density with an increase in circuit current. The arc length L decreases with an increase in the magnetic flux density of the radial magnetic field. The rotational motion of break arcs starts when the arc length L reaches a certain value determined by magnetic flux density. Rotational frequency and Lorentz force increase linearly with an increase in circuit current.

In this paper, we present a sequentially rotated array antenna with a rectangular patch MSA fed by an L-probe. Since it's important to decrease couplings between patch elements in order to suppress the cross-polarization level, rectangular patches with aspect ratio of k are adopted. We investigate the cross-polarization level of the sequential array and discuss the relationship between the cross-polarization level and the mutual coupling. As a result, the bandwdith of the antenna element is obtained 14.6% when its VSWR is less than 1.5, and the directivity and cross-polarization level of a 4-patch sequential array are 10.8 dBic and 1.7 dBic, respectively, where k=0.6 and the patch spacing of d=0.5 wave length. These characteristics are 5.6 dB and 5.8 dB better than the corresponding values of a square patch sequential array antenna.

In this brief paper, both static and dynamic behaviors of an electrostatic-actuated MEMS mirror are modeled and studied. To overcome the intrinsic pull-in problem and the dynamic disadvantages in the open-loop controlled actuation, a novel closed-loop feedback control method is proposed assuming the mirror tilt angle can be measured. First, a fixed voltage slightly higher than the pull-in voltage is applied when the mirror tilt angle is small. Then Proportional-Derivative (PD) control is used when the mirror is approaching the target position. Simulink simulation results show that this combined PD closed-loop control can overcome the pull-in problem and improve the dynamic behavior; furthermore, it can also enhance the robustness of the mirror actuation system to overcome environmental disturbances.

The aim of this study is to realize a simplified gait analysis system using wearable sensors. In this paper, a joint angle measurement method using Kalman filter to correct gyroscope signals from accelerometer signals was examined in measurement of hip, knee and ankle joint angles with a wireless wearable sensor system, in which the sensors were attached on the body without exact positioning. The lower limb joint angles of three healthy subjects were measured during gait with the developed sensor system and a 3D motion measurement system in order to evaluate the measurement accuracy. Then, 10 m walking measurement was performed under different walking speeds with a healthy subject in order to find the usefulness of the system as a simplified gait analysis system. The joint angles were measured with reasonable accuracy, and the system showed joint angle changes that were similar to those shown in a previous report as walking speed changed. It would be necessary to examine the influence of sensor attachment position and method for more stable measurement, and also to study other parameters for gait evaluation.