Contact resistance of nickel hardened gold electroplate (NiHG) deposited on nickel-underplated phosphor bronze disk coupons (substrate) after thermal aging was measured with a hard gold-plated beryllium copper alloy pin probe by means of a four-point probe technique, compared to that of cobalt-hardened gold electroplate (CoHG). Surface of NiHG plated coupons after aging was analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) to investigate the influence of the oxide film formation during thermal aging on contact resistance of NiHG electroplate, compared to that of CoHG. Initial contact resistance of the NiHG coupons was less than 10 mΩ at a contact forces more than 0.05 N, increased to 10 mΩ at a contact force of 0.05 N after 100 hours aging at 200. In contrast, contact resistance of the CoHG coupons progressively increased with increase in aging time, reached 1000 mΩ even at a contact force of 0.05 N after 52 hours aging. XPS analysis for the NiHG coupons demonstrated that nickel oxide film was formed on the NiHG surface in conformity with parabolic growth kinetics, as cobalt oxide film formed on CoHG surface. However, a thickness of the latter film was approximately 4-fold larger than that of former after 100 hours aging at 200. The small increase in contact resistance of NiHG coupons after aging suggested to be due to inhibitory of nickel oxide film growth on the surface. The cause of relatively low and steady contact resistance of NiHG during thermal aging was discussed.

The distributions of a spectral intensity of the breaking arc between silver contacts in DC 45-66 V/2.5-5.0 A circuits have been measured using a high-speed color video. As a result, a cathode brightening spot, which has a high spectral intensity, exists near the cathode surface. The cathode brightening spot expands with the increase of the contact gap, but its length expands until about 18µm. When the contact gap spreads over about 180 µm, a dark positive column appears and grows between the cathode brightening spot and the anode surface. The higher the interrupted current is, the larger the diameter of the cathode brightening spot will be. The maximum diameter of cathode brightening spot is 500 µm under these experiments.

In a DC 50 V/3.3 A circuit, the spatial distributions of the spectral intensities of breaking arcs near the cathode for silver contacts were measured on the contact surfaces of three different shapes: flat and spherical (1 mm radius and 2 mm radius) and the arc temperature and the metal-vapor quantity were calculated from the spectral intensities. The influence of the contact shape on the arc temperature and the metal-vapor quantity were also examined, as well as the arc tracks on the contact surfaces and the gain and loss of the contacts. Findings show the distributions of spectral intensities are non-symmetrical from the beginning to the extinction of the breaking arc for the flat contact: However, they are symmetrical in the latter half of the breaking in spite of the number of breaking arcs and the shape of contact surface for the spherical contact. The relationship between the area of the arc tracks on the cathode and the shape of contact surface is the same as the relationship between the existent areas of measured spectra and the shape of the contact surface. For the spherical contacts, the arc temperature and the metal-vapor quantity are affected a little by the radius of the curved of contact surface and the number of breaking arcs. However, the longer the arc duration, the higher the metal-vapor quantity is in the latter period of the breaking arc. For the flat contacts, the metal-vapor quantity is lower than those for the spherical contacts. The gain and loss of the contacts are less and the arc duration is shorter for the flat contact than for the spherical contact.

This paper presents a variant of the "Third-Order Recursion (TOR)" method for bispectral estimation of transfer-function parameters of a non-minimum-phase all-poles system. The modification is based on the segmentation of system-output data into coupled records, instead of independent records. It consists of considering the available data at the left and the right of each record as not null and taking them as the data corresponding to the preceding and succeeding record respectively. The proposed variant can also be interpreted as a "Constrained Third-Order Mean (CTOM)" method with a new segmentation in overlap records. Simulation results show that this new segmentation procedure gives more precise system parameters than the TOR and CTOM methods, to be obtained. Finally, in order to justify the use of bispectral techniques, the influence of added white and colored Gaussian noise on the parameter estimation is also considered.

M-ary/SS systems are compared with DS/SS systems applied the multicarrier systems and the RAKE receiver in the presence of AWGN, frequency selective Rayleigh fading and partial-band interference. In particular, the BER performance and SSMA capability are evaluated. Consequently, the M-ary/SSMA system using the multicarrier techniques is subject to the M-ary/SSMA system with the RAKE receiver in the presence of partial-band interference. The BER performance of the M-ary/SSMA system is better than that of the DS/SSMA system when the number of users is smaller than 20. And the spectral efficiency of the multicarrier M-ary/SSMA system is best in the four systems when JSR=20 [dB] and BER=10-3.

In mobile communications, power is a very important factor and nonlinear amplification of power amplifiers cannot be avoided due to their high power efficiency. This article presents the performance of π/2-shift BPSK modulation scheme used in DS/SS/CDMA wireless communications over multipath Rayleigh fading channel and compares the performance with the performance of conventional BPSK and offset QPSK CDMA systems. The performance parameters: Out-of-Band power, average Bit Error Rate (BER) and Spectral Efficiency have been evaluated. In order to obtain improved performance on fading channels, a RAKE receiver has been employed. Finally it is shown that π/2-shift BPSK outperforms conventional BPSK and offset QPSK in the presence of nonlinear amplification.

In this paper, the bit error rate (BER) performance of the Spread Spectrum communication with Constrained Spreading Code system is studied under the synchronous CDMA system. Particularly, BER considering the tracking error is derived by theoretical analysis. The synchronizing spreading sequence is employed to track the signals in the receiver. As the result, the BER performance is degraded by increasing the number of users. However, the BER performance can be improved by canceling the co-channel interference and by suppressing the cross-correlation value between the information spreading sequence and the synchronizing spreading sequence.

In this paper, we discuss the initial acquisition of the code division multiplexed DS/SS down-link signals at a user terminal of multiple LEO mobile satellite communication systems. In LEO systems, a receiver generally receives signals from plural satellites for soft hand-off and for satellite diversity as a countermeasure to shadowing. In this situation, the signal from each satellite becomes the interference to the signals from other satellites. In addition to this inter-satellite interference, we have to consider the intra-satellite interference from user channels to a pilot channel because of the loss of orthogonality of channels at initial acquisition stage especially under frequency offsets due to Doppler effect. Thus in this paper, we analytically evaluate the performance of an initial acquisition scheme, taking the intra/inter-satellite interference under Doppler shift into account.

In this paper, to obtain higher spectral efficiency than a conventional M-ary/Spread Spectrum (SS) communication system using an orthogonal code, we propose Double M-ary/SS communication systems in which transmitting sequences are produced by multiplying two sequences obtained from different M-ary/SS systems. First, we estimate the system performance of a Double M-ary/SS in which transmitting sequences are composed of two kinds of sequences which have the same chip duration and the same sequence length in AWGN environment by theoretical analysis and computer simulations using random sequences. And we show that the bit error rate (BER) of the system can be improved, compared to that of the conventional M-ary/SS. Next, we propose two concrete examples of the Double M-ary/SS systems. We investigate the performance of these systems in AWGN environment by computer simulations, and show that the BER and spectral efficiency can be improved by the two systems compared to those of the conventional M-ary/SS. Further, we consider a modified method of the demodulation for one of the examples of Double M-ary/SS systems, and show that we can reduce quantity of calculations by the method.

Recent progress in neural network research has demonstrated the usefulness of neural networks in a variety of areas. In this work, its application in the spatial resolution improvement of a remotely sensed low resolution thermal infrared image using high spatial resolution of visible and near-infrared images from Landsat TM sensor is described. The same work is done by an algebraic method. The tests developed are explained and examples of the results obtained in each test are shown and compared with each other. The error analysis is also carried out. Future improvements of these methods are evaluated.

The Heart Rate Variability (HRV) analysis has become vigorous these days. One reason for this is that the HRV analysis investigates the dynamics of the autonomic nervous system activities which control the HRV. The Integral Pulse Frequency Modulation (IPFM) model is a pulse generating mechanism model in the nervous system, that is one of the models which connects the HRV to the autonomic nervous system activities. The IPFM model is a single frequency component model; however, the real HRV has multiple frequency components. Moreover, there are refractory periods after generating action potentials are initiated. Nevertheless, the IPFM model does not consider refractory periods. In order to make sure of the accuracy and the effectiveness of the integral function (IF) method applied to the real data, we consider the absolute refractory periods and two frequency components. In this investigation, the simulated HRV was made with a single and double frequency component using the IPFM model with and without absolute refractory periods. The original generating function of the IPFM model was demodulated by using the instantaneous heart rate tachogram. The power of the instantaneous pulse rate per minute was analyzed by the direct FFT method, the IF FFT method without the absolute refractory periods, and the IF FFT method with the absolute refractory periods. It was concluded that the IF FFT method can demodulate the original generating function accurately.

This paper describes a classification method for rotated and scaled textured images using invariant parameters based on spectral-moments. Although it is well known that rotation invariants can be derived from moments of grey-level images, the use is limited to binary images because of its computational unstableness. In order to overcome this drawback, we use power spectrum instead of the grey levels to compute moments and adjust the integral region of moment evaluation to the change of scale. Rotation and scale invariants are obtained as the ratios of the different rotation invariants on the basis of a spectral-moment property with respect to scale. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated through experiments on natural textures from the Brodatz album. In addition, the stability of the invariants with respect to the change of scale is discussed theoretically and confirmed experimentally.

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.

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.

For two-tier cellular network design, resource management between tiers is an important issue to be studied. In this paper, in order to use the network resources preciously, we considered sharing of the available spectrum between the tiers. We evaluate this sharing for two network architectures. In the first architecture, called System I, DS-CDMA is deployed in both tiers. In the second architecture, called System II, TDMA is deployed for users in the microcell tier and CDMA for macrocell users. Using analytically evaluated intercell interference for a two-tier cellular system, we will show the performance and the allowable system capacity for the above systems.

Recent technologies of organic film devices are reviewed. New technologies of fabrication and characterization of organic thin films, electro-mechanical conversion materials, and applications for electrical and optical devices are discussed. In this review paper, especially organic light emitting diodes, tunneling junctions using polyimide Langmuir-Blodgett films, tunneling spectroscopy and high-density recording, plastic actuators using conducting polymers, molecular self-assembly process for fabricating organic thin film devices are reviewed.

In this study the spectral intensities of a breaking arc were measured near the cathode and the anode between separating Pd contacts in a DC 50 V/5 A circuit, and arc temperature and metal-vapor quantity and density were calculated. Results show the radial distribution of temperature in the cross section of an arc column was constant both near the cathode and the anode from the beginning to the extinction of the breaking arc. Near the cathode the arc temperature in the position of the peak value of spectral intensity rose to about 6000 K at the beginning and remained constant, but near the anode it rose to about 6000 K at the beginning and then decreased towards the extinction of the arc. Both near the cathode and the anode metal-vapor quantity and density rose suddenly at the beginning. Afterwards, they fell near the cathode until extinction. But they became constant approaching extinction near the anode. And the metal-vapor quantity was greater and the density higher near the cathode than near the anode.

In this paper we derive the expressions of the spectra of waveform relaxation operators for linear differential-algebraic equations which stem from circuit simulation. These expressions suggest ways to split the matrices of the circuit equations such that waveform relaxation will converge. Numerical experimental results are given.

We have developed a half-duplex spread spectrum-direct sequence (SS-DS) 2. 4 GHz band transceiver (T/R) unit having a smaller size and lower power consumption. A highly efficient elastic SAW convolver with chirp interdigital transducers (IDTs) has been used in the correlation circuit of receiver unit. The code shift keying (CSK) modulation is used in the T/R unit. The size of T/R unit is 90 50 11 mm and the weight is 75 grams. The power consumption of T/R unit is 1. 4 watts. We found that the bit error rate (BER) was less than 10-6 over the range of 0-150 m outdoors and 0-80 m indoors without a digital error detection and correction method. In this case, the data rate was 102 kbps and the transmit RF power was 2. 5 mW/MHz. The electrical characteristics, anti-interference and anti-multipath fading were also evaluated.

This paper proposes a frequency diversity transmission scheme that obtains a frequency diversity gain and does not degrade spectrum efficiency; it utilizes multiple carrier frequencies alternately, not simultaneously. This scheme improves the bit error rate (BER) of significant information bits by sacrificing that of insignificant bits in fading channels. Simulation results show that the error floor of significant information bits is reduced to less than 1/5 while that of insignificant bits is doubled. They also show that the proposed scheme improves the received 4-bit ADPCM voice signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by approximately 4 dB even when the frequency correlation is 0. 5.