This letter proposes and investigates a method of estimating the direction of arrival (DOA) of wideband signals such as spread spectrum signals, in a multipath channel. The DOA estimation method can reduce the effect of signal distortion due to bandwidth of signals by creating a spatial spectrum wihch satisfies the sampling theory in the time domain. The DOA estimate calculated from this spatial spectrum is robust against signal distortion due to multipath. Computer simulations numerically evaluate the proposed method. In comparison with conventional MUSIC algorithm, the proposed method achieves superior performance in a multipath channel.

We propose a spread-spectrum power line communication system considering the cyclic features of the noise in the lines. For this purpose, we model the noise as the sum of a time-invariant stationary process and two cyclostationary proceses, i.e., cyclic continuous noise and cyclic impulsive noise. The proposed system employs two different countermeasures to each of these two classes of cyclic noise. For the cyclic continuous noise, it uses multiple-processing-gain spread spectrum technique: the smaller processing gains are assigned for the periods with lower instantaneous noise power and the larger ones for the periods of higher noise power. Considering the cyclic impulsive noise, convolutional coding with interleaving is applied. In order to analyze the performance improvement due to the employment of multiple processing gains, we introduce a simple model of the continuous noise. The overall performance is evaluated by computer simulation with the actual noise wave-form measured in power lines.

A wireless communications system with a transmission rate of 10 Mbit/s using Japanese ISM band (2471-2497 MHz) is presented. This system employs a novel spread spectrum multiple access method named "CFO-SS (Carrier Frequency Offset-Spread Spectrum)" method. In the CFO-SS system, a single PN code is commonly assigned to all the multiple carriers, and the frequency offset between the carriers is determined by the information symbol rate, which is small as compared with the spread bandwidth of the signal. Bit error rate performance of the proposed CFO-SS system under multipath environments is investigated by computer simulation, and the performance of the CFO-SS method is confirmed for wireless LAN systems using the 2.4 GHz ISM band.

In addition to additive thermal noise, a received direct-sequence spread spectrum (DS/SS) signal may suffer from intersymbol interference (ISI) and interference caused by cochannel narrowband users or other narrowband radio frequency interference (RFI). This paper presents a workable solution for removing narrowband interference (NBI) and reducing ISI or inter-chip interference (ICI) when the communication channel can be modeled as an FIR filter and the NBI comes from multiple CW tones, an AR-modeled Gaussian process, or a BPSK signal. Unlike earlier solutions, the proposed scheme is capable of performing the functions of NBI-rejection, ISI/ICI suppression and data detection (code despreading) simultaneously. It is easy to implement and, more importantly, it yields lower bit error rate (BER) and smaller mean squared error (MSE).

The transmission performance of DS-CDMA forward link with orthogonal spreading and Rake combining is evaluated under multipath fading environments. A simple-to-use expression for the conditional instantaneous signal-to-interference plus background noise power ratio (SIR) is derived, assuming an M-finger Rake combiner. Using the derived expression, the forward link SIRs of either orthogonal spreading or random spreading can be conveniently computed. The link performance in terms of the average bit error rate (BER) and capacity (the maximum number of allowable users) is evaluated by a Monte Carlo simulation assuming ideal BPSK data modulation. In frequency selective multipath fading, the orthogonality of the forward link is destroyed to some extent and link performance approaches that of random spreading. The extent of orthogonality destruction depends on the multipath channel power delay profile shape and number of resolved paths (for an exponential profile, it is defined as the number of stronger resolved paths that capture 90% of the total received power); so their influences on the link performance are discussed. Also simulated is the distribution of the BERs in a radio coverage area taking into account the path loss and shadowing to evaluate the link capacity at a certain outage probability.

Recently, the low earth orbit satellite communications has been attracting much attention. These communications have many strong features, however, the communication performances are influenced by carrier frequency offset (CFO) and, particularly, it is hard to acquire the synchronization. A large number of publications have so far been made on the synchronization acquisition of DS/SS systems under CFO and most of them make use of the maximum likelihood decision in finding the maximum values of Fourier transform outputs. However, the implementations of Fourier transforms usually require high cost and large space. In this paper, we propose a new simple acquisition scheme using half-symbol differential decoding technique for DS/SS systems under CFO. This scheme makes use of the addition and subtraction of baseband signals and their delayed versions, (omitting Fourier transforms), together with integrations by recursive integrators, and thus resulting in much simpler implementation. In general, it is shown that the proposed scheme can acquire the code synchronization under carrier frequency offset with much smaller computational complexities and the sacrifice of longer acquisition time.

In this paper we discuss the binary spreading sequences whose spectral distributions are DC free and spectral distribution's shapes can be easily controlled by a certain parameter denoted by δ. The newly developed sequences, referred to as modified antisymmetric M-sequences, are modified-versions of the conventional antisymmetric (AS)M-sequences. The proposed sequences are designed to increase the varieties of spectral distribution's shapes and improve the correlation properties when compared to those of the FM coded M-sequences which have already proposed by Tsuzuki et al. Some typical line coded M-sequences, i.e. the (differential) Manchester coded M-sequences and the FM coded M-sequences, and the conventional AS M-sequences are included in the set of proposed sequences. The improvement of the average BER (bit error rate) performance for asynchronous DS/SSMA (direct sequence/spread spectrum multiple access) systems using the proposed sequences in comparison to the system using the conventional AO/LSE (auto-optimal phase with least sidelobe energy) M-sequences is also shown.

This paper proposes a new multiuser detector, quasi-decorrelating detector (QDD), for a synchronous CDMA system. The QDD has the same complexity as that of decorrelator detector (DD) although it uses feedback loops, the number of which is adjustable to balance the near-far resistance and noise enhancement. The results show that the QDD outperforms the DD under various operational conditions. The impact of different spreading codes on the performance of the QDD is studied. It is shown that the Gold code is the best spreading code suitable for the QDD.

For mobile communication systems with code division multiple access (CDMA), a new modulation scheme, π/2-shift BPSK, is proposed. The performance has been evaluated in terms of relative out-of-band power, bit-error rate (BER), and spectral efficiency. As the result, it is shown that the proposed scheme has an advantage over conventional BPSK, conventional QPSK, and π/4-shift QPSK under nonlinear amplification.

This paper investigates the error rate performance of parallel combinatorial spread spectrum (PC/SS) communicaion systems that use coherent and differential multiphase modulation: multiphase parallel combinatorial spread spectrum (MPC/SS) communication systems. The PC/SS systems are multicode SS systems based on orthogonal pseudo-noise (PN) sequences. Data is transmitted by delivering a combination of multiple PN sequences among a set of pre-assigned PN sequences. In the MPC/SS systems, every PN sequence on transmission is modulated by q-ary coherent or differential phase shift keying (PSK). Symbol error rate (SER) and average bit error rate (BER) in coherent and differential MPC/SS systems are investigated. The BER comparison between the MPC/SS systems and simple multicode SS systems with q-ary coherent and differential PSK is also presented. Numerical results show that the MPC/SS systems are superior to the conventional q-ary PSK systems, if they have equal spectral efficiency.

A 2.4 GHz band direct sequence (DS) spread spectrum (SS) radio frequency modem with a wide bandwidth of 26 MHz in half-duplex system has been newly developed using the small size (832 mm) and highly-efficient (-57 dBm) elastic type of surface acoustic wave (SAW) convolver. The size of SS modem is 905011 mm and the weight is 75 g. The power consumption of SS modem is 1.5 W and data rate is 206 kbps with 63 chips of PN code. Electrical characteristics measurements were made to evaluate the SS modem performance.

Many efforts are currently underway to design wideband mobile communication systems. In this letter, we clarify the received signal level characteristics for wideband mobile radio channels in line-of-sight (LOS) microcells. We conduct several urban-area field experiments to measure the received signal levels for various receiver bandwidths from 300 kHz to 30 MHz and the power delay profile. The experimental results show that the fading depth of the received signal decreases as the normalized rms delay spread, defined as the product of receiver bandwidth and rms delay spread, increases. These results are useful in designing wideband microcell systems for urban areas.

Recently, torque-transmission one-way tip articulated fiberscopes with a working channel have been developed. With this type of scopes, force is transmitted from the operator's hands to the tip of the fiberscope to obtain an adequate field of view. Micro actuators are expected to increasingly replace the operator's hands. Shape memory alloy (SMA) coil spring actuators are well suited to this purpose because of their large displacement compared with conventional actuators. In the fabrication of SMA coil springs, we examined fabrication conditions such as the tension and pitch of the SMA wire. As a result, we have successfully fabricated coil springs with a minimum outer diameter of 76 µm. SMA wire 25 µm in diameter and stainless steel wire 30 µm in diameter were used. As an application using SMA actuators, an active fiberscope (using an image guide fiber with 4200 pixels and light guide fibers) 2 mm in outer diameter with SMA actuators was designed and fabricated. We investigated the mechanical properties of the bending part in designing the SMA actuators. The specifications of the SMA coil springs are determined by the displacement and the force required of the pull wire. The relationship between the displacement of the pull wire and the number of windings of the SMA coil spring was calculated. The effective number of windings of SMA coil spring was found to be seventeen when using wire of 0.3 mm in diameter. The tip of the fiberscope was bent approximately 60 degrees and returned to the straight position when a current was applied to each of the SMA coil springs. A clear picture of the fiberscope which followed the tip bending operation could be received on the monitor. This SMA actuator can be easily extended for bending in many directions by configuring several of these mechanisms.

In this paper, we analyze the multiple access interference of a variable processing gain DS/CDMA system and define discrete partial crosscorrelation functions. We also evaluate the bit error rate of the system using Gaussian approximation and bounding technique. Three kinds of spreading codes (long, short, and random codes) are considered in the analysis of the system. It is shown that the bit error rate of a user is not relevant to the processing gain of interfering users: it is relevant only to the processing gain of the user, transmitted powers, PN sequences, and spreading codes. The performance of short codes turns out to be better than that of long and random codes as in other systems.

A quantitative study is made on performance of neutron penumbral imaging with a toroidal-segment aperture, and it focused on isoplanaticity of aperture point spread function and effect of the non-isoplanaticity on the reconstructed images. The results show that the aperture point spread function is satisfactorily isoplanatic for a small field of view, while for a large field of view the point spread function is not satisfactorily isoplanatic resulting in some distortion in the reconstructed image and reduction of resolution.

This study proposes an amplitude limiting type spread spectrum communication to be applied to extremely low power radio wave communicaion and evaluates capability of the code division multiplex. First, changes in output from the correlation device, maximum power, and in allowable noise power are compared by computer simulation for the case where the number of multiplex channels is increased. Second, possible relationship between noise intensity and error rate is measured by actual loading experiments using a device developed for trial purpose. Third, majority decision logic is proposed for the said device to realize amplitude limiting type code division multiplex easily. When the amplitude is limited, the maximum power can be controlled at about 2 dB, and channels with more than half of the number of spread sign can be used. It is revealed that, in the spread spectrum, alteration of the number of multiplex channels is made easy by application of this method.

A network with input and output buffer is proposed. It consists of several switching stages composed of 33 basic switching elements which are connected with perfect shuffle and horizontal connections. The proposed network reduces the required number of stages, and increases the fault tolerance due to its highly regular connection scheme. Its performance was evaluated with computer simulation under bursty traffic environment. For a 128128 switch with 11 switching stages, packet loss ratio of 10-6 was obtained when the input load is 0.8 and the burstiness is 10.

In this paper, the bit error rate (BER) performance of the Spread Spectrum communication system with Constrained Spreading Codes (SS-CSC) is analyzed. The BER of the SS-CSC system is the same as that of the Bi-orthogonal system. Moreover, the frequency utilization efficiency of the SS-CSC system is better than that of the Bi-orthogonal system when K 10 and N = 3.

In this paper, a multiuser receiver using a Hopfield network (Hopfield network receiver) for asynchronous codedivision multiple-access systems is proposed. We derive a novel likelihood function for the optimum demodulation of a data subsequence whose length is far shorter than that of the entire transmitted data sequence. It is shown that a novel Hopfield network receiver can be derived by exploiting the likelihood function, and the derived receiver leads to a low complexity receiver. The structure of the proposed receiver consists of a bank of correlators and a Hopfield network where the number of units is proportional to both the number of users and the length of a data sequence demodulated at a time. Computer simulation results are presented to compare the performance of the proposed receiver with those of the conventional multiuser detectors. It is shown that the proposed receiver significantly outperforms the correlation receiver, decorrelating detector and multistage detector, and provides suboptimum performnace.

This paper deals with performance evaluation of CDMA based on DS/SS/GMSK signaling with the differential detection over multipath Rayleigh fading channels. To demodulate DS/SS/GMSK signals, we consider differential detection, which does not need a carrier recovery. The bit-error-rate performance is evaluated in the presence of thermal noise and multipleaccess interferences under the multipath Rayleigh fading environment. To improve the performance, we also consider adoption of a RAKE receiver.