This paper presents a novel cross-layer approach to explore selection diversity for distributed clustering based wireless sensor networks (WSNs) by selecting a proper cluster-head. We develop and analyze an instantaneous channel state information (CSI) based cluster-head selection algorithm for a distributed, dynamic and randomized clustering based WSN. The proposed cluster-head selection scheme is also random and capable to distribute the energy uses among the nodes in the network. We present an analytical approach to evaluate the energy efficiency and system lifetime of our proposal. Analysis shows that the proposed scheme outperforms the performance of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel under Rayleigh fading environment. This proposal also outperforms the existing cooperative diversity protocols in terms of system lifetime and implementation complexity.

A novel modal signal decoupling algorithm for multi-coupled transmission lines is developed. Since the proposed method exploits a set of basis vectors associated with the characteristic impedances of the transmission line system, these multi-coupled signals can be efficiently decoupled regardless of dielectric media and conductors. Thus, compact forms of the signal integrity verification CAD models for multi-coupled transmission lines can be readily determined. It is shown that the analytical models are in excellent agreement with those obtained with SPICE simulation and its computation time is much faster than the conventional macro model (W-model) in the order of two.

Estimating the conditional mean of an input-output relation is the goal of regression. However, regression analysis is not sufficiently informative if the conditional distribution has multi-modality, is highly asymmetric, or contains heteroscedastic noise. In such scenarios, estimating the conditional distribution itself would be more useful. In this paper, we propose a novel method of conditional density estimation that is suitable for multi-dimensional continuous variables. The basic idea of the proposed method is to express the conditional density in terms of the density ratio and the ratio is directly estimated without going through density estimation. Experiments using benchmark and robot transition datasets illustrate the usefulness of the proposed approach.

This paper presents an ultra-low-power single-chip sensor-node VLSI for wireless-sensor-network applications. A communication centric design approach has been introduced to reduce the power consumption of the RF circuits and the entire sensor network system, through a vertical cooperative design among circuits, architecture, and communication protocols. The sensor-node LSI features a synchronous media access control (MAC) protocol and integrates a transceiver, i8051 microcontroller, and dedicated MAC processor. The test chip occupies 33 mm2 in a 180-nm CMOS process, including 1.38 M transistors. It dissipates 58.0 µW under a network environment.

Phase information on wave scattering is not unique and greatly depends on a choice of the origin of coordinates in the measurement system. The present paper argues that the center of scattering for polygonal cylinders should not be a geometrical center of the obstacle such as a center of gravity but be a position that acts as a balance to the electrostatic field effects from edge points. The position is exactly determined in terms of edge positions, edge parameters and lengths of side of polygons. A few examples are given to illustrate a difference from the center of geometry.

A rigorous semi-analytical approach for the scalar field in a microstructured optical fiber, which is formed of layered cylindrical arrays of circular rods symmetrically distributed on each concentric cylindrical layer, is presented. The method uses the T-matrix of a circular rod in isolation and the generalized reflection and transmission matrices of cylindrical arrays. Numerical examples of the mode index for three-layered hexagonal structure of circular air holes are demonstrated and compared with those obtained by a variational method.

The theoretical studies conducted mainly by the author are reviewed on (1) derivation of arbitrary order moment equations and solutions of some equations, (2) scattering by many particles and the effective medium constant of random medium, (3) scattering by a conducting body in random media and (4) spatially partially-coherent wave scattering, with application to satellite communications, artificial material development, and sensing and radar technology. The leading research results are described with many references; and also unsolved subjects in the above four studies are touched.

A new construction method for polyphase sequences with two-valued periodic auto- and crosscorrelation functions is proposed. This method gives L families of polyphase sequences for each prime length L which is bigger than three. For each family of sequences, the out-of-phase auto- and crosscorrelation functions are proved to be constant and asymptotically reach the Sarwate bound. Furthermore, it is shown that sequences of each family are mutually orthogonal.

This paper presents a simple antenna system for land vehicle communication aimed at Engineering Test Satellite-VIII (ETS-VIII) applications. The developed antenna system which designed for mounting in a vehicle is compact, light weight and offers simple satellite-tracking operation. This system uses a microstrip patch array antenna, which includes onboard-power divider and switching circuit for antenna feeding control, due to its low profile. A Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver is constructed to provide accurate information on the vehicle's position and bearing during traveling. The personal computer (PC) interfaces as the control unit and data acquisition, which were specifically designed for this application, allow the switching circuit control as well as the retrieving of the received power levels. In this research, the antenna system was firstly examined in an anechoic chamber for S parameter, axial ratio, and radiation characteristics. Satisfactory characteristics were obtained. As for beam-tracking of antenna, it was examined in the anechoic chamber with the gain above 5 dBic and the axial ratio below 3 dB. Moreover, good received power levels for tracking the ETS-VIII satellite in outdoor measurement, were confirmed.

In this paper, an indoor repeater antenna with high isolation for WCDMA application is proposed. The designed repeater has very small separation of 20 mm between the donor and server antennas. The antenna has two resonance frequencies to cover the WCDMA band from 1.92 GHz to 2.17 GHz. The fabricated antenna has VSWR below 1.5, gain over 8 dBi, and isolation between server and donor antennas less than -80 dB in the WCDMA band.

The synthesis of single- and double-wall carbon nanotubes by gas flow-modified, catalyst-supported chemical vapor deposition (CCVD) is reported. We have investigated the gas flow condition dependence on the synthesis of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by placing blocks in the CCVD reactor. Carbon nanotubes having large diameters are preferentially grown under turbulent flow conditions. This indicates that the diameter distribution of CNTs can be controlled by modification of the gas flow condition in the CCVD.

A novel bandpass filter (BPF) for an ultra-wideband (UWB) system is proposed in this letter. The BPF consists of four coplanar stripline (CPS)-to-microstrip transitions. Each transition is employed for broad electromagnetic (EM) coupling between a short-circuited CPS and an open-circuited microstrip line. The equivalent circuit model of the proposed geometry is derived and utilized in the impedance and mode matching analysis. Measured results show good agreement with the analysis and simulated ones.

The final goal of the present project is to develop a ship detection and identification system by integrating spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR), ground-based maritime radar and automatic identification system (AIS); and this article presents the results of the first phase experiments and current status toward achieving this goal. The data acquired by the Phased Array L-band SAR (PALSAR) on board of the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) were used as SAR data, and X-band maritime radar including AIS were used as a ground-based system. The work is divided into two experimental phases. The first phase is to examine the ability of PALSAR to detect ships whose sizes are comparable with the SAR resolution cells, and the second is to incorporate the PALSAR data with those acquired by the ground-based radar with AIS. For the experiments in the first phase, we deployed three small fishing boats whose lengths ranged from approximately 8 m to 15 m in the Tosa Bay in Kochi, Japan in 2006. The experiments were carried out for four observation PALSAR modes: FBS (Fine Beam Single) 34.3, FBS 21.5, FBD (Fine Beam Double) 41.5, and PLR (PoLaRimetric) 20.5, where the numbers in each modes represent the off-nadir angles. For extracting the boats from the PALSAR images, five algorithms were considered, including amplitude-based, CFAR (Constant False Alarm Rate), MLCC (Multi-Look Cross-Correlation), CCF (Cross-Correlation Function) of HH- and HV-polarization amplitudes, and polarimetric analyses. This paper summarizes the results of the first phase experiments; the summary of the integrated system in the second phase will be reported in the near future.

We carried out degradation analysis of a blue phosphorescent organic light emitting diode by both impedance spectroscopy and transient electroluminescence (EL) spectroscopy. The number of semicircles observed in the Cole-Cole plot of the modulus became three to two after the device was operated for 567 hours. Considering the effective layer thickness of the initial and degraded devices did not change by degradation and combining the analysis of the Bode-plot of the imaginary part of the modulus, the relaxation times of emission layer and hole-blocking with electron transport layers changed to nearly the same value by the increase of the resistance of emission layer. Decay time of transient EL of the initial device was coincident with that of the degraded one. These phenomena suggest that no phosphorescence quenching sites are generated in the degraded device, but the number of the emission sites decrease by degradation.

In this paper, throughput and error performance analysis is conducted on the proposed space-time resource management (STRM) scheme to realize a multi-Gbps millimeter-wave wireless personal area network (WPAN) system. The proposed STRM allows multiple peer-to-peer communication links to occupy the same time-division-multiple-access (TDMA) time slot, in contrary to the conventional TDMA system that allocates only one time slot to one communication link. Theoretical analysis is performed to investigate the achievable system throughput in the presence of co-channel interference (CCI) generated by communication links co-sharing the same time slot. To increase accuracy, the analysis results are validated by Monte Carlo simulations. Firstly, it is found that the upper bound of the achievable throughput increases linearly with the number of communication links sharing the same time slot. However, optimum throughput exists corresponding to the CCI present in the system. Secondly, by manipulating a parameter that controls the allowable CCI in the network, the system throughput can be optimized. Lastly, it is also found that in a millimeter-wave band system, a victim system with transmitter-receiver separation of 1-meter can achieve bit error rate (BER) of 10-6 provided that the interferer is at least 6-meters away.

This paper proposes a frequency asynchronous cross-polarization interference canceller for Vertical/Horizontal (V/H) polarization multiplexing satellite communications. In satellite communications, V/H polarization signals are likely to experience different frequency fluctuations, and so the cross-polarization undergoes two different frequency fluctuations. To cancel this cross-polarization interference, a new frequency asynchronous cross-polarization interference canceller that removes interference and frequency offsets is proposed. Computer simulations are carried out to evaluate its fundamental performance. The results show that the proposed canceller can remove the cross-polarization interference created by the two different frequency offsets, simultaneously.

Using frictional force microscopy (FFM), the friction surface characteristics were compared between twisted nematic (TN) mode and vertical alignment (VA) mode alignment films (AFs). The friction asymmetry was detected depending on temperature conditions on TN mode AF, but not on VA mode AF. The difference between two modes was explained by leaning intermolecular repulsion caused by the pre-tilt angle uniformity and the density of side chain. No level difference according to temperature conditions appeared when the pre-tilt angle were measured after liquid crystal (LC) injection.

Being different from other networks, the load and direction of data traffic for wireless sensor networks are rather predictable. The relationships between nodes are cooperative rather than competitive. These features allow the design approach of a protocol stack to be able to use the cross-layer interactive way instead of a hierarchical structure. The proposed cross-layer protocol CLWSN optimizes the channel allocation in the MAC layer using the information from the routing tables, reduces the conflicting set, and improves the throughput. Simulations revealed that it outperforms SMAC and MINA in terms of delay and energy consumption.

This letter proposes a new hybrid EM wave absorber with the crossed-wedge shape, which can be applied to 3 m semi anechoic chambers. In this study, we designed a new hybrid EM wave absorber with the crossed-wedge shape, which consisted of the inorganic and organic thin corrugated dielectric lossy sheet containing organic conductive fibers. Then the 3 m semi anechoic chamber is constructed in the size of 9.0 m6.0 m5.7 m (LWH) using these absorbers, and also the normalized site attenuation (NSA) is measured according to ANSI C63.4 in the frequency range of 30 MHz to 1 GHz. As a result, the measured NSA is obtained within 3 dB of the theoretical one.

In this paper, for systematically evaluating estimation methods of node characteristics, we first propose a social network generation model called LRE (Linkage with Relative Evaluation). LRE is a network generation model, which aims to reproduce the characteristics of a social network. LRE utilizes the fact that people generally build relationships with others based on relative evaluation, rather than absolute evaluation. We then extensively evaluate the accuracy of the estimation method called SSI (Structural Superiority Index). We reveal that SSI is effective for finding good nodes (e.g., top 10% nodes), but cannot be used for finding excellent nodes (e.g., top 1% nodes). For alleviating the problems of SSI, we propose a novel scheme for enhancing existing estimation methods called RENC (Recursive Estimation of Node Characteristic). RENC reduces the effect of noise by recursively estimating node characteristics. By investigating the estimation accuracy with RENC, we show that RENC is quite effective for improving the estimation accuracy in practical situations.