We investigate the design of an interpolation filter of a multi-frequency time division multiple access (MF-TDMA) demodulator which is applied to digital video broadcasting-return channel system via satellite (DVB-RCS). We propose two interpolation filters for symbol timing recovery in a digital receiver where the input analog to digital conversion sampling clock is not synchronized to the transmitter symbol clock. The two proposed interpolation filters are designed by the least mean-square-error at the output of the receiver. Simulation results show that a performance improvement is achieved by employing the proposed interpolation filter.

An efficient performance enhancement scheme using the rotation of signal subspace (RSS) and Toeplitz matrix approximation (TMA) methods to enhance the performance of an adaptive antenna array in DS/CDMA systems is proposed. The basis of RSS is to find a transformation matrix in order to recover the desired complex array covariance matrix from a sampled complex array covariance matrix which is contaminated by an interference-plus-noise component. Also, the objective of TMA is to change the output matrix of RSS into a matrix having the theoretical properties such as Toeplitz structure matrix or a positive semidefinite matrix. Consequently, the proposed scheme using RSS and TMA methods can greatly improve the performance of an adaptive antenna array by reducing the interference-plus-noise effect from the sampled complex array covariance matrix of the pre-correlation received signal vector that is used to calculate a weight vector of an adaptive antenna array. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

This paper deals with a design problem of a robust controller which achieves not only robust stability but also a performance robustness for linear systems with structured uncertainties satisfying matching condition. The performance robustness means that comparing the transient behavior of the uncertain system with a desired one generated by the nominal system, the deterioration of control performance is suppressed. In this approach, the control law consists of a state feedback with the fixed gain designed by using the nominal system, a state feedback with an adaptive gain determined by a parameter adjustment law and a compensation input for the purpose of keeping transient behavior as closely as possible to the desirable one. We show the parameter adjustment law in order to guarantee robust stability and that the condition for the existence of the compensation input is equivalent to the Riccati equation for the standard linear quadratic control problem. Finally, numerical examples are presented.

Wireless LAN (WLAN) systems transmit and receive via a common frequency band. In this band, signals of other wireless applications operate on a WLAN beamformer as interferences, and so the problem in adaptive antenna is increasing the canceling performance in the presence of moving interference sources. The performance of conventional adaptive beamformer is severely degraded and the robust adaptive beamformer must be equipped with additional sensors to obtain desired performances. Therefore, in order to avoid having to install additional sensors, an efficient algorithm is necessary. In this paper, we introduce a fast adaptive algorithm with variable forgetting factor, which does not require any further additional modifications. Through computer simulations, we can obtain better performances than those of other techniques under a variety of operating conditions.

This letter introduces a chaotic circuit consisting of one linear 2-port VCCS, one hysteresis 2-port VCCS, and two capacitors. The circuit has double screw attractors, quad screw attractors and co-existence states of them. Since the system is piecewise linear, attractors existence condition can be described using exact piecewise solutions. Using a simple test circuit, typical phenomena are verified in the laboratory.

A linear-in-dB VGA of the current-divider type is fabricated in 0.25 µm CMOS technology. Two gain compensation techniques are proposed in order to compensate the gain deviations due to a MOSFET which has a square-law characteristic or an exponential-law characteristic determined by its current density. Temperature compensation techniques are also proposed. Measure results obtained at 380 MHz are a gain range of 80 dB, a gain error of 3 dB, and an NF of 11 dB.

Various optical fiber connectors have been developed during the 20 years since optical fiber communications systems were first put into practical use. As the domain of optical fiber communication systems expanded from trunk lines to subscriber lines and customer premises the main focus changed from performance improvement to miniaturization and cost reduction. This paper describes the technical background, recent trends in standard optical connectors, and recent issues related to photonic connection technologies.

This paper describes a design of a Carry Propagation Free Adder/Subtracter (CPFA/S) VLSI using the Adiabatic Dynamic CMOS Logic (ADCL) circuit technology. Using a PSPICE simulator, energy dissipation of the ADCL 1 bit CPFA/S is compared with that of the CMOS 1 bit CPFA/S. As a result, energy dissipation of the proposed ADCL circuits is about 1/3 as high as that of the CMOS circuits. The transistors count, propagation-delay time and energy dissipation of the ADCL 4 bit CPFA/S are compared with those of the ADCL 4 bit Ripple Carry Adder/Subtracter (RCA/S). The transistors count and propagation-delay time are found to be reduced by 7.02% and 57.1%, respectively. Also, energy dissipation is found to be reduced by 78.4%. Circuit operation and performance are evaluated using a chain of the ADCL 1 bit CPFA/S fabricated in a 1.2 µm CMOS process. The experimental results show that addition and subtraction are operated with clock frequencies up to about 1 MHz. In addition, the total power dissipation of the ADCL 1 bit CPFA/S is 28.7 µW including the power supply.

This paper describes two methods to construct fuzzy inference rules by the simplified fuzzy reasoning. The present methods have a construction mechanism of the rule unit that is applicable in two parameters: the central value and the width of the membership function in the antecedent part. The first approach is to create a rule unit near the selected rule which has the nearest position from the central input space for the central value. The second is to create a rule unit near the selected rule which has the minimum width for the width. Experimental results are presented in order to show that the proposed methods are effective in difference on the inference error and the number of learning iterations.

Fully embedded spiral inductors in a low loss dielectric multi-layer were designed and fabricated using a low temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC) technology for RF SIP (system in package) integrations. The line width/space and the number of spiral layers were optimized within five layers of LTCC dielectric for high Q-factor, high self-resonant frequency (SRF), process easiness, and compact size. The embedded multi-layer spiral inductors reveal better performance in terms of Q-factor, SRF and the effective inductance Leff than planar spiral inductors of the same dimension and number of turns. The optimized multi-layer spiral inductor shows maximum Q of 56, Leff of 6.6 nH at Qmax and SRF of 3.6 GHz while planar spiral inductors have maximum Q of 49, Leff of 5.8 nH at Qmax and SRF of 3.0 GHz.

Gallium nitride (GaN) is one of the wurtzite-type materials and has semiconducting properties. Crystallinities of GaN thin films are usually poor when they are directly grown on polycrystalline metal-foils which are expected as substrates for realizing novel giant microelectronic devices. Improvements of crystal orientations of GaN thin films grown on such polycrystalline metal-foils are tried by using several kinds of intermediate layers. Aluminum nitride (AlN), GaN, silicon dioxide (SiO2) and Si are chosen as materials for the intermediate layers. The crystal orientations of GaN thin films grown by inserting the SiO2 and Si intermediate layers with adequate thicknesses are markedly improved, while those grown on the AlN or GaN intermediate layers are not improved. These differences are not caused by the kinds of the materials used for the intermediate layers but by differences in their crystallinities.

In the study, we build a system called Adaptive Visual Attentive Tracker (AVAT) for the purpose of developing a non-verbal communication channel between the system and an operator who presents intended movements. In the system, we constructed an HMM (Hidden Markov Models)-based TD (Temporal Difference) learning algorithm to track and zoom in on an operator's behavioral sequence which represents his/her intention. AVAT extracts human intended movements from ordinary walking behavior based on the following two algorithms: the first is to model the movements of human body parts using HMMs algorithm, and the second is to learn the model of the tracker's action using a model-based TD learning algorithm. In the paper, we describe the integrated algorithm of the above two methods: whose linkage is established by assigning the state transition probability in HMM as a reward in TD learning. Experimental results of extracting an operator's hand sign action sequence during her natural walking motion are shown which demonstrates the function of AVAT as it is developed within the framework of perceptual organization. Identification of the sign gesture context through wavelet analysis autonomously provides a reward value for optimizing AVAT's action patterns.

Telecom- and Signal Relays with gastight plastic sealed housings enables the usage of inert and highly insulating gases. Although plastic sealed housings are used, optimized designs can keep the gas during the entire life of more than 25 years. The application of this technology allows the application of highly insulting gases like SF6 and result in a significant reduction of the relay size as reduced physical dimensions can be applied. With unchanged distances a significantly better dielectric performance can be achieved, without a relevant cost increase. Furthermore the inert switching atmosphere increases the switching characteristics or reduces the consumption of precious metals for the contacts. Even the usage of less precious metals like tungsten or ruthenium might be possible for switching typical telecommunication signals.

In this letter, we evaluate the performance of several adaptive and non-adaptive AQM schemes for congestion control in a dynamic network environment with variable bandwidth links. The AQM schemes examined are RED, BLUE, Adaptive RED, REM, AVQ and PI controller. We compare their queueing performance and show that none of them can derive stable queue length and low packet drop rate simultaneously in networks where both input traffic and available output bandwidth are time varying. Adaptive and efficient algorithms should be designed and applied in order to improve the adaptiveness and robustness of congestion control in dynamic networks such as Internet.

This paper discusses formal modeling and performance evaluation for a type of dynamic change of workflow, called Migrate. Workflow means the flow of work and is designed to process similar instances, called cases. Companies need to continuously refine their current workflow in order to adapt them to various requirements. The change of a current workflow is called dynamic change of the workflow. Before changing a workflow, there exist cases in the workflow. If these cases are ignored or fall into deadlock, the changed workflow would become inconsistent. Since Ellis et al. proposed three change types, Flush, Abort, and Synthetic Cut-Over that keep consistency of workflows in 1995, various change types have been proposed, in which there is a promising change type called Migrate that is proposed by Sadiq et al. Sadiq et al. proposed the concept of Migrate, but did not give a formal model of Migrate. Meanwhile, we have proposed a measure, called change time, in order to evaluate dynamic change of workflows, and used this measure to evaluate the performance on change time for Ellis et al. 's three change types. However, the performance evaluation on change time for Migrate has not been done. In this paper, we first give a Petri-nets-based model of Migrate. Then we present a method of computing change time based on the net model. Finally, we apply the method to 270 examples and show the comparison results between Migrate and Ellis et al. 's three change types.

An exact and an approximated reliabilities of a 2-dimensional consecutive k-out-of-n:F system are discussed. Although analysis to obtain exact reliability requires many calculation resources for a system with a large number of components, the proposed method obtains the reliability lower bound by using a combinatorial equation that does not depend on the system size. The method has an assumption on the maximum number of failed components in an operable system. The reliability is exact when the total number of failed components is less than the assumed maximum number. The accuracy of the method is confirmed by numerical examples.

High-speed streaming services are considered to be among the most promising services for the broadband Internet of the next generation. A contents delivery network (CDN) that allows effective and scalable content delivery will be required in this role. However, the actual requirements for the CDN, such as quality of service (QoS), the service deployment strategy and technical issues are not yet to be defined. In this paper, the bandwidth requirement of the CDN is derived through QoS evaluation. On the basis of this requirement, we propose two feasible CDN configurations: an IP technology based configuration and an optical video distribution technology based configuration. Finally, we make lists of technical issues for the configurations and discuss some of the possible solutions.

This paper describes the design, fabrication, and measurement of a sequential-rotation microstrip-array antenna for Electronic Toll Collection System (ETCS). The ETCS is made possible by using roadside equipment with a radiation pattern that can accurately pinpoint the designated communication area, without interference from other lanes. The sequential-rotation microstrip-array antenna is designed and an absorber attached to the antenna is considered to reduce the side lobe level (SLL) for the antenna of ETCS. Results show that the antenna yields a return loss at a center frequency of -20.675 dB, an axial ratio of 1.15 dB, and a gain of 20.26 dBi.

A three-mode switched-LNA has been developed using a 0.25 µm SiGe BiCMOS technology. The LNA features low noise figure (NF) performance, while achieving both low dissipation power and low distortion characteristics. The proposed MOSFET switch incorporating a newly developed switch circuit with a triple-well structure, which changes the LNA's mode, provides a parasitic capacitance of just 0.52 times that of a conventional MOSFET switch. This results in a significant NF improvement, by 0.16-0.33 dB, for the three-mode switched-LNA compared to a conventional LNA. Extensive studies of the MOSFET switch with regard to the structural parameters and the doping profiles are reported. Experimental results and the overall performance of a trial IC incorporating the three-mode switched-LNA are also given.

In this paper, we propose a new multistage (iterative) structure where Kalman channel estimation and parallel interference cancellation multiuser detection are conducted in every stage (iteration). The proposed scheme avoids the complexity of the decorrelator in front of Kalman channel estimator, and has better performance than the previous scheme.