We present a review of several types of microwave antennas made of metamaterials, including the resonant electrically small antennas, metamaterial-substrate patch antennas, metamaterial flat-lens antennas, and Luneburg lens antennas. In particular, we propose a new type of conformal antennas using anisotropic zero-index metamaterials, which have high gains and low sidelobes. Numerical simulations and experimental results show that metamaterials have unique properties to design new antennas with high performance.

Multiple antenna is introduced into spectrum sensing in cognitive radios recently. However, conventional multiple antenna spectrum sensing schemes exploited only space diversity. In this paper, we propose a new multiple antenna sensing scheme based on space and time diversity (MASS-BSTD). First, the primary user signal to be sensed is over-sampled at each antenna, and signal samples collected at the same time instant from different antennas are stacked into a column vector. Second, each column vector is utilized to estimate space correlation matrix that exploits space diversity, and two consecutive column vectors are utilized to estimate time correlation matrix that exploits time diversity. Third, the estimated space correlation matrix and time correlation matrix are combined and analyzed using eigenvalue decomposition to reduce information redundancy of signals from multiple antennas. Lastly, the derived eigenvalues are utilized to construct the test statistic and sense the presence of the primary user signal. Since the proposed MASS-BSTD exploits both space diversity and time diversity, it achieves performance gain over the counterparts that only exploit space diversity. Furthermore, the proposed MASS-BSTD requires no prior information on the primary user, the channel between primary user transmitter and secondary user receiver, and is robust to noise uncertainty. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the proposed MASS-BSTD can sense the presence of primary user signal reliably.

A small broadband omni-directional printed antenna comprising symmetrically arranged trapezoid elements is investigated for broadband Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR) and low center frequency characteristics. Two symmetrical trapezoid elements are printed on the bottom side of the substrate and are connected to a small ground plane printed on the same side over two strips. The trapezoid elements and the strips are excited in an electromagnetically coupled manner by the monopole element set between the trapezoid elements. Two resonance characteristics arise because the resonance part changes depending on the frequency, and a broad bandwidth becomes possible. The center frequency can be lowered by changing the shapes of the trapezoid elements. The monopole element length is a very important parameter for impedance matching. The space between the monopole element and the trapezoid elements is an important parameter for the optimization of two resonance characteristics. The proposed antenna is shown to achieve a VSWR bandwidth (≤2) of 28.9%, a low profile, and omni-directional pattern features. The measured and numerical results are in good agreement.

The performance of spectrum sensing in cognitive radio can be improved by employing multiple antennas. In this letter, the effect of antenna correlation on the performance improvement by deploying multiple antennas in the sensing node of the secondary system is investigated. It is proved mathematically that in the regime of low SNR, with antenna correlation, the secondary sensing node can achieve almost the same performance improvement as that without correlation. Simulation results verify the conclusions.

This paper presents a wideband technique for a mobile handset antenna. The proposed method inserts a distributed LC resonator into a loop antenna in order to provide non-uniform resonance shifts; without the use of a multi-radiator the bandwidth can be increased from 320 MHz (1900-2220 MHz) to 880 MHz (1750-2630 MHz). As a result of the wide bandwidth and good radiation efficiency, the proposed antenna can be employed in DCS/PCS/WDCMA/Bluetooth mobile handsets.

In this paper, we present a 0.18-µm CMOS fully integrated X-band shock wave generator (SWG) with an on-chip dipole antenna and a digitally programmable delay circuit (DPDC) for pulse beam-formability in short-range and hand-held microwave active imaging applications. This chip includes a SWG, a 5-bit DPDC and an on-chip wide-band meandering dipole antenna. By using an integrated transformer, output pulse of the SWG is sent to the on-chip meandering dipole antenna. The SWG operates based on damping conditions to produce a 0.4-V peak-to-peak (p-p) pulse amplitude at the antenna input terminals in HSPICE simulation. The DPDC is designed to adjust delays of shock-wave outputs for the purpose of steering beams in antenna array systems. The wide-band dipole antenna element designed in the meandering shape is located in the top metal of a 5-metal-layer 0.18-µm CMOS chip. By simulating in Momentum of ADS 2009, the minimum value of antenna's return loss, S 11, and antenna's bandwidth (BW) are -19.37 dB and 25.3 GHz, respectively. The measured return loss of a stand-alone integrated meandering dipole is from -26 dB to -10 dB with frequency range of 7.5-12 GHz. In measurements of the SWG with the integrated antenna, by using a 20-dB standard gain horn antenna placed at a 38-mm distance from the chip's surface, a 1.1-mVp-p shock wave with a 9-11-GHz frequency response is received. A measured 3-ps pulse delay resolution is also obtained. These results prove that our proposed circuit is suitable for the purpose of fully integrated pulse beam-forming system.

In this letter, we propose a set of Space-Time Block Codes (STBC) equipped with 4 transmit antennas to transmit one additional information bit achieving rate-9/8. To maintain full rank property of the coding gain matrix, one new orthogonal STBC code with full rate is proposed in this letter. Simulation results show that this method achieves good bit error rate (BER) performance with a small gap compared to that of the rate-1 case and throughput in the high SNR region.

Wide-band noise modulation is added to the adaptive scan technique for spaceborne rain radar. The performance of this technique is studied by simulation using one month of TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission) Precipitation Radar (PR) data from the viewpoints of improving the sensitivity and reducing power consumption. The results show that the adaptive scan technique with wide-band noise modulation uses about 25% less energy than the conventional scanning technique. The adaptive scan using wide-band noise modulation is more effective than that using a normal pulse for localized rainy areas. Surface data as well as rainfall data can be obtained by using the adaptive scan using wide-band noise modulation.

This paper presents the loss factors in the post-wall waveguide-fed parallel-plate slot array antenna in the millimeter-wave band. At first, transmission loss is evaluated per unit length by measuring the losses of post-wall waveguides on various substrates with different thicknesses in different bands. Measured results of the frequency dependence agree with theoretical predictions using the effective conductivity and the complex permittivity obtained by the whispering gallery mode resonator method. Then the authors evaluate the antennas with various sizes at 76.5 GHz. The antenna efficiency is evaluated by taking into account the loss factors related to: the transmission loss both in the feed and the parallel plate waveguides, the aperture efficiency and the insertion loss and the reflection of the transition. Also, the loss due to the locally-perturbed currents by the slot radiation is evaluated. The sum of the losses in the prediction quantitatively agrees with the measurement.

This paper proposes a new Ad-Hoc network system which comprises the multiple relay access points (APs) with multi channels. Ad-Hoc network systems are recently proposed and incorporated for the communication infrastructure, which relays wireless transmission among access points (APs) in wireless LAN (WLAN) system. System throughput is decreased due to hidden terminal problem when only a single channel is used for the Ad-Hoc network. In order to solve this problem, a new system with multi channels is proposed. However, even if the multi channels are employed, the co- and/or adjacent-channel interference occurs due to hidden terminal problem and multiple APs in a limited space, when considering a simultaneous transmit and reception at the relay AP. In this paper, we develop an Ad-Hoc network testbed which can reduce and avoid co- and/or adjacent-channel interference by using vertically arranged antenna configuration and distributed channel allocation scheme. Moreover, the effectiveness of our testbed is clarified by applying actual WLAN signals.

This letter introduces a closed form expression for the channel capacity increase achieved by adding a new pair of transmit and receive antennas. By analyzing this expression, an iterative transmit/receive antenna selection algorithm of low computational complexity is proposed. The new algorithm has higher computational complexity than some existing algorithms, but as the results show, the performance improvement of the proposed algorithm approaching more to the optimal algorithm.

A dominant-mode rectangular cavity antenna design yielding an improved bandwidth is experimentally verified. Simple field theories indicate that extending the aperture height should increase the antenna bandwidth without shifting the operation frequency. Antenna samples built from a 4.4 dielectric constant material produce 3-dB efficiency bandwidths of 15 and 23 percent for the respective cavity height-to-width ratios of 0.5 and 0.75 at 7 GHz.

We fabricated and evaluated a prototype imaging system using the Simultaneous Frequency-Encoding technique, which is an active imaging technique that is potentially capable of fast frame-frequency imaging using a frequency-scanning antenna with only a single transceiver. The prototype performed simultaneous acquisition of pixels in elevation using Simultaneous Frequency-Encoding and performed a mechanical scan in azimuth. We also studied a ranging technique and incorporated it into the prototype. The ranging technique for Simultaneous Frequency-Encoding must take into account the characteristics of the frequency-scanning antenna, which are fundamental to Simultaneous Frequency-Encoding. We verified that ordinary range processing can be performed before frequency analysis with Simultaneous Frequency-Encoding, giving both range and angular profiles. The prototype was evaluated based on the radiation patterns of a receiver antenna comprising the frequency-scanning antenna and a reflector, on which both the image quality and ranging performance depend. Finally we conducted actual imaging tests and confirmed the capability of through-obstacle imaging. The frame frequency was only 0.1 Hz, which was due to the use of a slow mechanical scan in azimuth. However, assuming electronic beam forming is used instead of the mechanical scan, the frame frequency can be improved to several Hertz.

This letter presents structurally simpler symbol error rate (SER) expressions for Transmit Antenna Selection/Maximal-Ratio Combining (TAS/MRC) scheme in independent Nakagami-m fading channels in a comparison with those in the literature. First, the SER is derived as a single infinite series of simple functions for arbitrary m. For integer m, the SER can be attained as a closed-form expression with a double finite series. Moreover, simple asymptotic SER expressions suggest that the TAS/MRC scheme can achieve a full diversity order at high SNR. Numerical and simulation results verify the conciseness of the derived expressions.

In this letter, we study the performance of multi-antenna relay networks with limited feedback beamforming in decode-and-forward (DF) relaying. Closed-form expression for both outage probability and symbol error rate are derived by using the moment generation function (MGF) of the combined signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the destination. Subjected to a total power constraint, we also explore adaptive power allocation between source and relay to optimize the performance. Simulations are given to verify the correctness of our theoretical derivations. Results show that the proposed adaptive power allocation solution significantly outperforms the uniform power allocation method.

A multiband system can flexibly create spectral holes to avoid interference between different systems. When two systems within the same frequency band coexist, the multiband system must immediately detect the signals from all users to remove unwanted interference. The complication of creating spectral holes is to obtain an occupied frequency band and an angle-of-arrival of interfering system. These parameters must be measured at the receiver of multiband system and then fed back to the transmitter. This paper presents a channel estimator with an interference detector that is developed to implement and test it's functionality in a multiband system. The proposed estimator can precisely detect the parameters before demodulation, and quickly feed back the interfering system parameters to transmitter. The effective design and the detection error rate were evaluated via verification tests in an anechoic chamber and computer simulations. The results of the proposed technique show an ability of interference detection as well as channel estimation.

Distributed networks employing collaborative transmission (CT) from remote antennas can provide improved system capacity and cell-edge performance, by using appropriate transmission strategies. When compared to conventional non-collaborative transmission (NCT) from one base station (BS), we show that CT from two adjacent BSs can be beneficial in terms of the capacity, even when the transmission rate is normalized by the number of collaborating BSs. We further demonstrate that performing adaptive transmission (AT) between NCT and CT based on the instantaneous channel conditions provide an additional gain in capacity. The exact amount of achievable gain is quantified by the closed-form formula for the capacity distribution, which is derived using the Jacobian transformation. The presented distribution is immediately applicable to 6-sectored distributed cellular network, for which we present numerical verification of the results.

A novel square patch antenna with reconfigurable circular polarization (CP) is presented in this letter. A circular slot with perturbation is placed beneath the patch. The circular slot that has an inner perturbation yields right-handed CP, but with an outer perturbation slot yields left-handed CP. Experiments show an antenna gain of 2.8 dBic and a 3-dB axial ratio bandwidth of 30 MHz which well match the corresponding simulation results.

Both multiplexing and multi-user diversity are exploited based on Round Robin (RR) scheduling to achieve tradeoffs between average throughput and fairness in distributed antenna systems (DAS). Firstly, a parallel Round Robin (PRR) scheduling scheme is presented based on the multi-user multiplexing in spatial domain to enhance the throughput, which inherits the excellent fairness performance of RR. Then a parallel grouping Round Robin (PGRR) is proposed to exploit multi-user diversity based on PRR. Due to the integration of multi-user diversity and multi-user multiplexing, a great improvement of throughput is achieved in PGRR. However, the expense of the improvement is at the degradation of fairness since the "best channel criteria" is used in PGRR. Simulations verify analysis conclusions and show that tradeoffs between throughput and fairness can be achieved in PGRR.

We edit in this paper several archives on the research and development in the field of microwave circuit technology in Japan, that originated with the invention of Yagi-Uda antenna in 1925, together with generally unknown historical topics in the period from the 1920s up until the end of World War II. As the main subject, we investigate the origin and evolution of the Multiply Split-Anode Magnetron, and clarify that the basic magnetron technology had been established until 1939 under the direction of Yoji Ito in cooperation of expert engineers between the Naval Technical Institute (NTI) and the Nihon Musen Co., while the Cavity Magnetron was invented by Shigeru Nakajima of the Nihon Musen Co. in May 1939, and further that physical theory of the Multiply Split-Anode Cavity Magnetron Oscillation and the design theory of the Cavity Magnetron were established in collaboration between the world-known physicists and the expert engineers at the NTI Shimada Laboratory in the wartime. In addition, we clarify that Sin-itiro Tomonaga presented the Scattering Matrix representation of Microwave Circuits, and others. The development mentioned above was carried out, in strict secrecy, in an unusual wartime situation up until 1945.