An adaptive array antenna for the suppression of high-power interference in direct-sequence code-division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems is presented. Although DS-CDMA has sufficient flexibility to support a variety of services, from voice to moving-pictures, with high levels of quality, multiple access interference (MAI) is a problem. This is particularly so of the high-power interference which accompanies high-speed transmission in DS-CDMA. While the application of adaptive array antennas is an effective way of improving signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), problems with this approach include large levels of power consumption and the high costs of hardware and of implementing the antennas. Therefore, our main purpose is to realize a simple configuration for an adaptive array system. In order to reduce the required amounts of processing, a common beam provides suppression of high-power interference for the low-bit-rate users; this makes per-user preparation of weights unnecessary. This approach also reduces the consumption of power by the system. Interference is cancelled by minimization of the array output power (i.e., the application of a power inversion algorithm) before despreading. The approach also allows us to improve the implementation of the antenna elements by using small auxiliary antennas. The basic performance of the system is confirmed through numerical calculation and computer simulation. Furthermore, a real-time processing unit has been developed and the effectiveness of the approach is confirmed by an experiment in a radio-anechoic chamber.

In this study, we introduce a method for estimating the syntactic structure of Japanese speech from F0 contour and pause duration. We defined a prosodic unit (PU) which is divided by the local minimal point of an F0 contour or pause. Combining PUs repeatedly (a pair of PUs is combined into one PU), a tree structure is gradually generated. Which pair of PUs in a sequence of three PUs should be combined is decided by a discriminant function based on the discriminant analysis of a corpus of speech data. We applied the method to the ATR Phonetically Balanced Sentences read by four Japanese speakers. We found that with this method, the correct rate of judgement for each sequence of three PUs is 79% and the estimation accuracy of the entire syntactic structure for each sentence is 26%. We consider this result to demonstrate a good degree of accuracy for the difficult task of estimating syntactic structure only from prosody.

Based on a Quantum-inspired Evolutionary Algorithm (QEA), a new disk allocation method is proposed for distributing buckets of a binary cartesian product file among unrestricted number of disks to maximize concurrent disk I/O. It manages the probability distribution matrix to represent the qualities of the genes. Determining the excellent genes quickly makes the proposed method have faster convergence than DAGA. It gives better solutions and 3.2 - 11.3 times faster convergence than DAGA.

An atomistic model for annealing simulation is presented. To well simulate both BED (Boron Enhanced Diffusion) and TED (Transient Enhanced Diffusion), the surface emission model, which describes the emission of point defects from surface during annealing, is implemented. The simulation is carried out for RTA annealing (1000 or 1050) after B implantation. The implantation energy varies from 0.5 keV to 13 keV. Agreements between simulation and SIMS data are achieved. Both BED and TED phenomena are characterized. The Enhancement of diffusion is discussed. The surface emission model is studied by simulation. The results shows that the surface emission has little effect on annealing of B 10 keV implantation while obvious effect on annealing of B 0.5 keV implantation. It indicates that the surface emission is much more necessary to simulate BED than TED.

Though, high dielectric constant material is a possible near future solution in order to suppress gate current densities of MOSFETs, the barrier height generally decreases with an increasing dielectric constant. In this paper, the injection current through gate stacks has been calculated while taking into account the electron temperature using the W.K.B. method to understand the impact of the injection current from the drain edge.

RF noise in quarter-micron nMOSFETs is analysed on the device level based on Shockley's impedance field method. The impact of different transport models and physical parameters is discussed in detail. Well-calibrated drift-diffusion and energy-balance models give very similar results for noise current spectral densities and noise figures. We show by numerical simulations with the general-purpose device simulator DESSIS_ISE that the hot-electron effect on RF noise is unimportant under normal operating conditions and that thermal substrate noise is dominant below 0.5 GHz. The contribution of energy-current fluctuations to the terminal noise is found to be negligible. Application of noise sources generated in bulk full-band Monte Carlo simulations changes the noise figures considerably, which underlines the importance of proper noise source models for far-from-equilibrium conditions.

A high power dissipation density in today's miniature electronic/mechanical systems makes on-chip thermal management very important. In order to achieve quick to evaluate, yet accurate electro-thermal models, needed for the thermal management of microsystems, a model order reduction is necessary. In this paper, we present an automatic, Krylov-subspace-based order reduction of a electro-thermal model, which we illustrate by a novel type of micropropulsion device. Numerical simulation results of the full finite element model and the reduced order model, that describes the transient electro-thermal behavior, are presented. A comparison between Krylov-subspace-based order reduction, order reduction using control theoretical approaches and commercially available reduced order modeling has been performed. A Single-Input-Single-Output setup for the Arnoldi reduction algorithm was proved to be sufficient to accurately represent the complete time-dependent temperature distribution of the device.

A brief review is given on a crossover in transport between quantum and classical regimes due to the presence of inelastic scattering destroying the phase coherence. In the integer quantum Hall effect, the quantum regime corresponds to the edge-current picture and the classical to the bulk Hall current picture. The crossover between two regimes occurs through inelastic scattering. In a metallic carbon nanotube, there is a perfectly transmitting channel independent of energy for conventional scatterers having potential range larger than the lattice constant, making the nanotube a perfect conductor. When several bands coexist at the Fermi level, such a perfect channel is destroyed by inelastic scattering.

The implant-anneal cycle for B doping during Si device fabrication causes transient enhanced diffusion (TED) of B and the formation of small immobile B-interstitial clusters (BICs) which deactivate the B. Additionally, since modern ultrashallow devices put most of the B in immediate proximity of the Si/SiO2 interface, interface-dopant interactions like segregation become increasingly important. In this work, we use density-functional theory calculations to study TED, clustering, and segregation of B during annealing and discuss a continuum model which combines the TED and clustering results.

Recently, a new approach was presented to determine the high-frequency response of on-chip passives and interconnects. The method solves the electric scalar and magnetic vector potentials in a prescribed gauge. The latter one is included by introducing an additional independent scalar field, whose field equation needs to be solved. This additional field is a mathematical aid that allows for the construction of a gauge-conditioned, regular matrix representation of the curl-curl operator acting on edge elements. This paper reports on the convergence properties of the new method and shows the first results of this new calculation scheme for VLSI-based structures at high frequencies. The high-frequent behavior of the substrate current, the skin effect and current crowding is evaluated.

The validity and capability of an iterative coupling scheme between single-particle frozen-field Monte Carlo simulations and nonlinear Poisson solutions for achieving self-consistency is investigated. For this purpose, a realistic 0.1 µm lightly-doped-drain (LDD) n-MOSFET with a maximum doping level of about 2.5 1020 cm-3 is simulated. It is found that taking the drift-diffusion (DD) or the hydrodynamic (HD) model as initial simulation leads to the same Monte Carlo result for the drain current. This shows that different electron densities taken either from a DD or a HD simulation in the bulk region, which is never visited by Monte Carlo electrons, have a negligible influence on the solution of the Poisson equation. For the device investigated about ten iterations are necessary to reach the stationary state after which gathering of cumulative averages can begin. Together with the absence of stability problems at high doping levels this makes the self-consistent single-particle approach (SPARTA) a robust and efficient method for the simulation of nanoscale MOSFETs where quasi-ballistic transport is crucial for the on-current.

Impact ionization and thermionic tunnelling as two possible breakdown mechanisms in scaled pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistors (PHEMTs) are investigated by Monte Carlo (MC) device simulations. Impact ionization is included in MC simulation as an additional scattering mechanism whereas thermionic tunnelling is treated in the WKB approximation during each time step in self-consistent MC simulation. Thermionic tunnelling starts at very low drain voltages but then quickly saturates. Therefore, it should not drastically affect the performance of scaled devices. Impact ionization threshold occurs at greater drain voltages which should assure a reasonable operation voltage scale for all scaled PHEMTs.

Monte Carlo simulation of the low field electron mobility of strained Si and SiGe active layers on Si and SiGe substrates is considered. The Ge mole fractions of both the active layer and the substrate are varied in a wide range. The linear deformation potential theory is used to calculate the shifts of the conduction band minima due to uniaxial strain along [001]. The energy shifts and the effective masses are assumed to be functions of the Ge mole fraction. It is shown that in spite of the fact that the L-valleys remain degenerate under strain conditions considered here, they play an important role at very high Ge compositions especially when SiGe as substrate is used. We found that in this case the repopulation effects of the X-valleys affect electron mobility much stronger than the alloy scattering. We also generalize the ionized impurity scattering rate to include strain effects for doped materials and show that some of the important parameters such as effective density of states, inverse screening length, and the screening function are split due to strain and must be properly modified. Finally, we perform several simulations for undoped and doped materials using Si and SiGe substrates.

The density gradient (DG) model is tested for its ability to describe tunneling currents through thin insulating barriers. Simulations of single barriers (MOS diodes, MOSFETs) and double barriers (RTDs) show the limitations of the DG model. For comparison, direct tunneling currents are calculated with the Schrodinger-Bardeen method and used as benchmark. The negative differential resistance (NDR) observed in simulating tunneling currents with the DG model turns out to be an artifact related to large density differences in the semiconductor regions. Such spurious NDR occurs both for single and double barriers and vanishes, if all semiconductor regions are equally doped.

The potential drop and the self-heating due to the contact resistance at the interface between silicide and silicon are incorporated in the device simulation for ESD protection devices. A transition region is provided at the interface and the resistivity is calculated by scaling the contact resistance by the length of the region. The power density used in the heat conductive equation is calculated by using the potential drop and the contact resistance in the transition region. The validity of the present approach is checked by the Monte Carlo simulations. Using the technique, influence of the contact resistance on self-heating in an ESD protection device with the grounded gate MOSFET structure is simulated.

A new analysis method for random dopant induced threshold voltage fluctuations by using Monte Carlo ion implantation were presented. The method was applied to investigate Vt fluctuations due to statistical variation of pocket dopant profile in 0.1µm MOSFET's by 3D process-device simulation system. This method is very useful to analyze a statistical fluctuation in sub-100 nm MOSFET's efficiently.

This paper presents a new hierarchical scheduling method for a large-scale manufacturing system based on the hybrid Petri-net model, which consists of CPN (Continuous Petri Net) and TPN (Timed Petri Net). The study focuses on an automobile production system, a typical large-scale manufacturing system. At a high level, CPN is used to represent continuous flow in the production process of an entire system, and LP (Linear Programming) is applied to find the optimal flow. At a low level, TPN is used to represent the manufacturing environment of each sub-production line in a decentralized manner, and the MCT algorithm is applied to find feasible semi-optimal process sequences for each sub-production line. Our proposed scheduling method can schedule macroscopically the flow of an entire system while considering microscopically any physical constraints that arise on an actual shop floor.

Changing vehicle structures and backgrounds makes it very difficult to correctly extract a license plate region from a vehicle image. In this paper, we propose a simple method to extract the license plate region using edge properties of wavelet subband. The High Frequency Subband (HFS) of an image has edge information for each direction. Edge information is concentrated in each direction of the Headlight-Radiator-Headlight (H-R-H) and the license plate region compared to other regions in the vehicle image. This paper shows a license plate region extraction method using these edge properties and our experimental results with various vehicle images.

The design criteria for space-time trellis codes (STTC's) in fast fading channels have been proposed: the Distance Criterion and the Product Criterion. The design criteria in [1] are based on optimizing the pairwise error probability (PWEP). However, the frame error rate (FER) of STTC's depends on the distance spectrum. In this paper, we propose a new design criterion for STTC's based on the distance spectrum in fast fading channels. The proposed design criterion is based on the product distance distribution for the large signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the trace distribution for the small SNR, respectively. Moreover, we propose new STTC's by the computer search based on the proposed design criterion in fast fading channels. By computer simulation, we show that the proposed design criterion is more useful than the Product Criterion in [1] in fast fading channels. We also show that the proposed STTC's achieve better FER than the conventional STTC's in fast fading channels.

The wavelet transform (WT) has recently emerged as a powerful tool for image compression. In this paper, a new image compression technique combining the genetic algorithm (GA) and grey-based competitive learning network (GCLN) in the wavelet transform domain is proposed. In the GCLN, the grey theory is applied to a two-layer modified competitive learning network in order to generate optimal solution for VQ. In accordance with the degree of similarity measure between training vectors and codevectors, the grey relational analysis is used to measure the relationship degree among them. The GA is used in an attempt to optimize a specified objective function related to vector quantizer design. The physical processes of competition, selection and reproduction operating in populations are adopted in combination with GCLN to produce a superior genetic grey-based competitive learning network (GGCLN) for codebook design in image compression. The experimental results show that a promising codebook can be obtained using the proposed GGCLN and GGCLN with wavelet decomposition.