Pitch frequency is a basic characteristic of human voice, and pitch extraction is one of the most important studies for speech recognition. This paper describes a simple but effective technique to obtain correct pitch frequency from candidates (pitch candidates) extracted by the short-range autocorrelation function. The correction is performed by a neural network in consideration of the time coutinuation that is realized by referring to pitch candidates at previous frames. Since the neural network is trained by the back-propagation algorithm with training data, it adapts to any speaker and obtains good correction without sensitive adjustment and tuning. The pitch extraction was performed for 3 male and 3 female announcers, and the proposed method improves the percentage of correct pitch from 58.65% to 89.19%.

An improvement of Q evaluation is discussed. The Resonance Curve Area method was confirmed to give a deviation in the order of 6104. The result was three times more accurate than the widely known Q evaluating method which utilizes the cursor function installed in a network analyzer. A discussion is also made on the physical validity of the RCA method. It is shown that the application of the RCA method improves the accuracy of the cavity perturbation method. Actual measurements have shown that the deviation of dielectric constant is less than 1% and that of the loss tangent is less than 3%, in the order of 104. The accuracy of the RCA method was estimated to be three times that of the conventional cavity perturbation technique. The consistency of the perturbation with other methods has also confirmed. The accuracy comparison to more accurate formulae derived from a rigorous solution have shown that the difference is sufficiently small.

A novel analysis method of the intermodulation (IM) and the noise power ratio (NPR) of multiple-carrier amplifiers is descrided. This method, based on Discrete Fourier Transform, allows an accurate calculation of IM and NPR of the amplifier having multiple carriers by directly using measured single-carrier amplitude and phase characteristics. This method has an outstanding feature in that it can be applied to the general case of n carriers having an arbitrary power level as long as frequency-dependence of amplitude and phase characteristics is negligibly small. Applying this method to the linearized amplifier, a good agreement between measured and calculated results for IM3, IM5, and NPR has been obtained for operation from linear up to saturation, which shows this method would be a good candidate for calculating IM and NPR of multiple-carrier amplifiers.

A simple adapter de-embedding method is presented in a six-port calibration process using only one sliding load and one standard short. Adapter de-embedding is performed to extract the S-parameters of the adapter from the six-port system parameters. The concept of this method is based on the relations between the S-parameters and the Fourier coefficients of the periodic return loss of the adapter. To complete the de-embedding procedure, there are two measurement steps: one is return loss measurement with the sliding load, and the other, sidearm power measurement with the standard short. Using these measured values, unique solutions of the S-parameters are determined. A computer-controlled six-port with 2.4 mm coaxial-type connector was designed for calibration using a waveguide-type sliding load over the frequency range of 8.5-12.0 GHz. Through experiments, the adapter for joining two unlike connector types was measured. Then the reflection coefficients of the adapter with the sliding load measured by the calibrated six-port and those calculated from the S-parameters were compared with each other. As a result, an overall good agreement with standard deviation of less than 0.1% was found at all setting frequencies. One of the main features of the method is that the S-prameters of a two-port as well as the system parameters of a six-port can be determined by means of simple scalar measurement.

This paper describes a nondestructive measurement method for complex permittivity of dielectric material at pseudo microwave frequencies. The resonator used in this study has a cylindrical cavity filled with a sapphire material of a well known complex permittivity. The resonator is divided into two parts at the center. A dielectric substrate specimen is clamped with these halves. Relative permittivity εand loss tangent tan δ of the specimen are obtained at 3 GHz using the TE011 resonance mode. The accuracy of the present method is evaluated through the comparison of the measured values by the new method with those at around 10 GHz by the conventional empty cavity resonator method. The errors of measurements are smaller than 1% and 1105 for εand tan δ, respectively.

It is important to obtain a low coefficient sensitivity digital filter. This paper presents a new low coefficient sensitivity network structure that consists of a second order digital filter and a feedback path. This network structure is based on the effectiveness of the feedback path in an analog system. The coefficient sensitivity of the proposed digital filter can be control with the coefficient of the feedback path. Using this property, the digital filter with the low coefficient sensitivity is obtained. To add the feedback path makes the frequency response deviate from the characteristic of the original second order digital filter, but the deviation can be compensated with the other coefficients. A nonlinear optimization technique is employed to determine the coefficients of the digital filter. The proposed method is not effective only to narrow-band low-pass but wide-band low-pass filters.

We developed an automatic data processing algorithm for a ground-probing radar which is essential in analyzing a large amount of data by a non-expert. Its aim is to obtain an optimum result that the conventional technique can give, without the assistance of an experienced operator. The algorithm is general except that it postulates the existence of at least one isolated target in the radar image. The raw images of underground objects are compressed in the vertical and the horizontal directions by using a pulse-compression filter and the aperture synthesis technique, respectively. The test function needed to configure the compression filter is automatically selected from the given image. The sensitivity of the compression filter is adjusted to minimize the magnitude of spurious responses. The propagation velocity needed to perform the aperture synthesis is determined by fitting a hyperbola to the selected echo trace. We verified the algorithm by applying it to the data obtained at two test sites with different magnitude of clutter echoes.

We describe a new water sensing system for optical fiber cable networks. This system consists of optical fibers, water sensors and an OTDR (Optical Time Domain Reflectometer). The water sensor contains material which swells on contact with water and bends the optical fiber. The OTDR monitors the optical loss increase caused by this fiber bending and determines its location. In this system it is very important to determine the loss increase caused by the water sensor in terms of the OTDR performance. Therefore, we clarified the relationship between the water sensor structure and the increase in loss. Based on this study, we fabricated a sensor which causes a 5dB loss increase. The measured value is very close to the calculated value.

The studies on the biological effects of ELF electric fields conducted in Japan are reviewed. Among international studies, they are characterized as the studies from the viewpoint of bioengineering. In early studies, the safety standard of high voltage transmission lines was determined by a distinct biological effect, i.e., the sensation of the spark discharge caused by electrostatic induction. In numerical analysis, the field coupling to both animal and human bodies became well understood. Some new measurement techniques were developed which enabled us to evaluate the field exposure on a human body. A system was developed to realize the chronic exposure of an electric field on mice and cats. An optical telemetry technique was developed to measure the physiological response of an animal when it was exposed to an electric field. An ion-current shuttle box was developed to investigate the behavioral change of a rat when it was exposed to an ion-current as well as an electric field. In animal experiments, a mechanism of sensing the field was investigated. The cause of the seasonal change of field sensitivity was found. In cases of chronic exposure, suppression of growth was suspected. In shuttle box studies, an avoidance behavior from an ion-current was quantified. To find whether there are any adverse or beneficial effects of the field exposure on human beings, further study is required to clarify the mechanisms of the biological effects.

The biological effects of power frequency electric and magnetic fields have been a source of concern for the past many years, especially since 1979 when an epidemiological study report suggested a positive relationship between childhood cancer and exposure to power frequency electromagnetic fields from residential overhead power lines. The extensive studies of dosimetry and biological effects have since been carried out. It is believed that power frequency electromagnetic fields does induce biological effects (no serious threat to human health). The clear explanations for the possible interaction mechanisms remain to be identified. The problem with the study on dosimetry has been lack of theory that applies to the physical interaction of power frequency electric and magnetic fields with humans. At present, it seems to be widely accepted that the density of induced currents in the human body can be used as the decisive parameter in evaluating human exposure to these fields. In order to predict the distribution of induced current density inside a human body exposed to electric fields, magnetic fields, or electric and magnetic fields that coexist, the precise measurements of electromagnetic environments are necessary. According to necessity, the fields have to be characterized in terms of strength, orientation and phase angle. This paper presents: (1) Measurements of power frequency electromagnetic environments in 187kV substation yard and in the vicinity of the ground under 187 kV line using laboratory-made instruments; (2) Development of magnetic field exposure monitor; and (3) Review of state of the art of theoretical dosimetry for electric fields, magnetic fields and combined electric and magnetic fields, and evaluation method of human exposure for the future research.

A noninvasive method for measuring complex permittivity of biological tissues is proposed. The noninvasive method is based on an inverse scattering technique which employs an iterative procedure. The iterative procedure consists of solving an electric field integral equation using the method of moments and minimizing the square difference between calculated and measured scattered fields. Implementation of the noninvasive method requires the knowledge of the target shape, the incident and measured scattered fields. Based on the noninvasive method, a measuring system of complex permittivity is developed and its reliability is verified.

Transmission characteristics of CPW bends having various curvatures and a fixed bend angle were measured. It was found that the transmission level shows dips at some particular frequencies, and that the dips are less pronounced as the radius of curvature becomes larger.

This paper presents a mathematical formulation of a data path allocation and floorplanning problem using the mixed integer linear programming, and shows some experimental results. We assume that a data flow graph and the scheduled result are given in advance. The chip area and total wire length are used for the quality measures of the solution for the problem. This method is applied to some examples, and compared with the other method reported previously in the points of the solution and computation time.

This paper proposes a digitalized quadrature modulator for burst-by-burst carrier frequency hopping in TDMA-TDD systems. It employs digital frequency synthesis and a multiplexing modulation scheme to give the frequency offset to the modulated IF signal. Moreover, to reduce the frequency settling time of the RF synthesizer below the guard time duration, a phase and frequency preset (PFP) PLL synthesizer is employed. By employing the digital modulation scheme, the proposed modulator needs only one D/A converter, as a result, the complexity of adjusting the DC offset and amplitude between analog signals of the in-phase and the quadrature phase is eliminated. The performance of the proposed modulator is analyzed theoretically and simulated by computers. Theoretical analyses show that the frequency settling time with 15MHz hopping width in the 1900MHz band is reduced by more than 75% from that of the conventional synthesizer. The settling time is less than 40µs which is shorter than the typical guard time of the burst signal format. The analyses also show that the power consumption of the proposed modulator is lower than that of the conventional modulator employing a full band digital frequency converter. Furthermore, the computer simulation confirms that the power spectra and the constellations of the proposed modulator for the coherent and the π/4-shift QPSK modulation schemes can be successfully generated.

Myoelectric (ME) signals during dynamic movement suffer from motion arifact noise caused by mechanical friction between electrodes and the skin. It is difficult to reject artifact noises using linear filters, because the frequency components of the artifact noise include those of ME signals. This paper describes a nonlinear method of eliminating artifacts. It consists of an inverse autoregressive (AR) filter, a nonlinear filter, and an AR filter. To deal with ME signals during dynamic movement, we introduce an adaptive procedure and fuzzy rules that improve the performance of the nonlinear filter for local features. The result is the best ever reported elimination performance. This fuzzy rule based adaptive nonlinear artifact elimination filter will be useful in measurement of ME signals during dynamic movement.

In order to realize a continuous-time system model in digital computers, we must construct a discrete-time system model simulating the continuous-time processes in some characteristic aspect. Though many discretization methods have been proposed, they do not necessarily provide a discrete-time system in which input, state and output are identical with the sampled values of the original continuous-time system. The isomorphism discretization that all of the input, state and output of a continuous-time system can be recovered from the corresponding discrete-time system is crucial for our analysis. This paper aims at guaranteeing the isomorphism between a continuous- and a discrete-time system models (fluency system model) which were proposed by the authors. The isomorphism of input space had been already shown in the previous works by one of the authors. In this paper, by showing the isomorphism of the state function and output spaces, the aim will be achieved.

This letter proposes a high speed multifiber connector assembly method, which uses UV-curable adhesive and which does not require a polishing process, thus reducing the connector assembly time. It is confirmed that the assembly time can be reduced to less than half the time required with the conventional assembly method. The multifiber connectors assembled using this method have a low connection loss and stable mechanical characteristics.

This paper describes the general conditions for perfect signal reconstruction in adaptive blocksize MDCT. MDCT, or modified Discrete Cosine Transform, is a method in which blocks are laid to overlap each other. Because of block overlapping, some consideration must be paid to reconstructing the signals perfectly in adaptive blocksize schemes. The perfect reconstruction conditions are derived by considering the reconstruction signals, on a segment by segment basis. These conditions restrict the analysis/synthesis windows in the MDCT formula. Finally, this paper evaluates two examples of window sets, including windows used in the ISO MPEG audio coding standard.

This paper describes the performance analysis of a distributed antenna system which includes space and path diversity with radio channel estimation. This system is used for CDMA personal communication systems. In this paper, the performance of a diversity system is analyzed precisely considering multipath and inter-antenna interference. In a diversity system, the adaptive RAKE receiver which estimates the characteristics of a radio channel adaptively has been used for diversity combining. In the adaptive RAKE, the time-variant characteristic has been approximated by a time function. In this paper, the estimation performance of the adaptive RAKE is analyzed in cases of time functions of 0-th, first and second degrees. The performances are evaluated and compared with the differential RAKE. The adaptive RAKE is found to improve the signal quality of more than 2dB in comparison with the differential RAKE. It is also found that the optimum parameter design can be achieved flexibly for radio channel estimation by using higher degree time functions.

A receiving system suitable for multipath fading channels with co-channel interference is described. This system is equipped with both an M-sectored directional antenna and an adaptive equalizer to mitigate the influence due to multipath propagation and co-channel interference. By using directional antennas, this receiving system can separate desirable signals from undesirable signals, such as multipath signals with longer delay time and co-channel interference. It accepts multipath signals which can be equalized by maximum likelihood sequence estimation, and rejects both multipath signals with longer delay time and co-channel interference. Based on computer simulation results, the performance of the proposed receiving system is analyzed assuming simple propagation models with Rayleigh-distributed multipath signals and co-channel interference.