For coherent detection, decoding Orthogonal Space-Time Block Codes (OSTBC) requires full channel state information at the receiver, which basically is obtained by channel estimation. However, in practical systems, channel estimation errors are inevitable and may degrade the system performance more as the number of antennas increases. This letter shows that, using fewer receive antennas can enhance the performance of OSTBC systems in presence of channel estimation errors. Furthermore, a novel adaptive receive antenna selection scheme, which adaptively adjusts the number of receive antennas, is proposed. Performance evaluation and numerical examples show that the proposed scheme improves the performance obviously.

The directional MAC protocols improve spatial reuse, but require the exact location of destination and have the problem of deafness. In this paper, we propose a dual-channel MAC protocol with directional antennas for mobile ad-hoc networks. In the proposed MAC protocol, RTS/CTS are sent omnidirectionally as nodes do not have the exact location of the destination in mobile environments. Omnidirectional transmissions on control channel overcome deafness, but have low spatial reuse. We propose a new blocking algorithm to improve spatial reuse on control channel. We use the negative CTS (NCTS) to solve the exposed terminal problem. We confirm throughput of the proposed MAC protocol by simulations using Qualnet ver. 3.8 simulator.

A stacked rectangular microstrip antenna with a shorting plate is proposed as a car antenna for dual band (VICS and ETC) operation in the ITS. The proposed antenna has the proper radiation patterns for the VICS and ETC. The antenna is small in size and effective in dual band operation.

In this letter, we present a modified printed folded λ/2 dipole antenna design for Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) applications in UHF band (470-862 MHz). The arms of dipole are meandered to yield an asymmetrical structure. Wideband operation is obtained by increasing dipole-area. The impedance matching of the dipole structure is obtained by inserting some slots on the dipole-arms. This antenna combines omni-directional radiation pattern and wide bandwidth in an easy-to-fabricate structure. The experimental results of the constructed prototype are presented.

A novel low profile and dual-band antenna for terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting (T-DMB) and ultra high frequency (UHF) applications is proposed in this paper. The proposed antenna consists of a folded inverted-L antenna and two open stubs. The designed low profile antenna occupies an antenna volume of 1484911 mm3. The length of the folded radiating element is about 0.09λ at the resonant frequency of T-DMB application (180-210 MHz). The parasitic open stubs are utilized to obtain the wide bandwidth (50%) for UHF application (470-740 MHz). The maximum gains at the frequencies of T-DMB and DTV applications were -5 and +5 dBi, respectively. The radiation patterns are near omni-directional at frequency of interest.

Leaky wave radiation from evanescent-mode left-handed (LH) transmission lines is investigated that are composed of a cut-off parallel plate waveguide loaded with a one-dimensional (1-D) array of the disc type dielectric resonators. The apertures are placed on side walls of the parallel plate waveguide. First of all, the dispersion diagram is numerically obtained with the complex eigenmode solutions. The simulated and measured backward wave radiation characteristics validate the backward wave propagation along the 1-D waveguides. Based on the concept, the backfire leaky wave antenna was designed and demonstrated with the 15-cell structure. The beam scanning with the operational frequency was achieved by more than 30 degrees.

To create a next-generation mobile satellite communication system that offers large communication capacity, the onboard antenna system must be a multi-beam system consisting of a light weight 20-m class reflector and a light weight 100-beam class antenna feed system. We clarify that the antenna gain decrease created by the reflector surface distortion expected in orbit is relatively large. This paper presents a deformed antenna pattern compensation method that minimizes circuit scale. Validity of the proposed method is confirmed by antenna pattern calculations and experiments on a fabricated array-fed reflector antenna.

A double square loop antenna with fractal geometry that supports for multiband operation is proposed. The antenna has multiband operation in that the generator model, which is an initial model to create a fractal loop antenna to operate at the first and second resonant frequencies, is inserted at each center side of a big square loop antenna. It also has a small square loop to operate at the third resonant frequency. The proposed antenna is implemented and shown to effectively support the global system for mobile communication (880-960 MHz), digital communication system (1710-1880 MHz), personal communication system (1850-1990 MHz), universal mobile telecommunication system (1920-2170 MHz), and wireless local area network (2400-2483 MHz) bands. The radiation patterns of the proposed antenna are still similar to a bidirectional radiation pattern. The properties of the antenna such as return losses, radiation patterns and gain are determined via numerical simulation and measurement.

In this paper, small sized arrays with a few elements are investigated. The antenna diameter is assumed to be less than 3λo. The focus of this paper is to compare the gain characteristics of a triangle arrangement with these of a uniform arrangement. The method of moments is used to calculating the gain characteristics. It is shown that the triangle arrangement is not always sufficient to obtain maximum gain for a small-sized antenna with only a few elements. Also, the type of antenna element used greatly influences the required number of elements and the element configuration.

This paper presents design of an alternating-phase fed single-layer slotted waveguide array for a sector shaped beam in the E-plane radiation pattern. A sector beam pattern is very effective for radar applications for detecting obstacles in a certain angular range without mechanical or electronic scanning. The sector shaped beam with 13 degree beam width is synthesized by a cascade of T-junctions in the feed waveguide which excite the radiating waveguides with a longitudinal shunt slot array. In order to realize the required excitation distribution of the radiating waveguides for the sector shaped beam, 30 T-junctions with symmetrical arrangement are designed by tuning a width of the coupling window, an offset of the window, and a width of the feed waveguide cascaded to the subsequent T-junction, respectively. Design and measurement are performed in 60 GHz band. The prototype antenna assembles easily; the slotted plate is just tacked on the groove feed structure and is fixed by screws at the periphery, which is the key advantage of the alternating-phase fed arrays. The measured sector pattern with low sidelobe level agrees well with the predicted one. Validity of the sector beam design as well as the performance of the alternating-phase fed array is confirmed by the measurement.

The trend of microwave circuits has been toward highly integrated systems. Most design tools for designing microwave circuits mounted the linear or the nonlinear devices adopt the fundamental circuit theory using the S matrix on the frequency domain. The harmonic balance method is also used to correspond to the nonlinear circuit. Therefore, the effect of the electromagnetic field, for example, a mutual coupling between sub-circuits through the space is almost disregarded. To calculate these circuits included its surrounding electromagnetic field, the finite difference time domain method combined with the equivalent circuit simulation had been presented as the lumped element FDTD (LE-FDTD) method. In general, even if an analytical target is a linear circuit, the FDTD method requires very long analytical time. In this paper, we propose an efficient LE-FDTD method to reduce the analytical time. We investigate its efficiency to compare with the conventional LE-FDTD method or measurements, consequently, it is confirmed that the proposal method requires only at analytical time of 1/10 compared with the conventional method. We also show that the proposal method is able to analyze characteristics of the active integrated antenna (AIA) which are practicably impossible to analyze by using the conventional method.

The radiation characteristics of a monopole antenna that consists of one-half of a bow-tie dipole antenna, made of optically transparent conductive thin film and mounted above a ground plane, are investigated. The antenna's performance is measured for several films with different sheet resistivities. It is found that the gain lowering of the antenna caused by material resistance decreases from 4.4 dB to 0.2 dB at 2.4 GHz and the efficiency of the antenna increases from 46% to 93% at the same frequency, as the sheet resistivity decreases from 19.8 Ω/ to 1.3 Ω/. The antenna is analyzed by the moment method. A wire-grid model with resistance loading on every discretized wire is applied. The analyzed results agree with the experimental values very well.

An experimental study concerning Ultra Wideband (UWB) Microwave Radar for breast cancer detection is described. A simple phantom, consisting of a cylindrical plastic container with a low dielectric constant material imitating fatty tissues and a high dielectric constant object emulating tumour, is scanned with a tapered slot antenna operating between 3.1 to 10.6 GHz. A successful detection of a target is accomplished by a visual inspection of a two-dimensional image of the scanned phantom

This paper reviews our recent antennas and propagation studies for MIMO systems. First we introduce a MIMO propagation channel model in which an interesting nature can be found in eigenvalue statistics from a practical viewpoint. Then we introduce multi-keyhole model which is an efficient tool for designing a MIMO repeater systems, or MIMO radio-relay systems. For realization of compact MIMO antenna systems, effectiveness of using multiple polarizations such as dual polarizations and triple polarizations is demonstrated in multipath-rich propagation environments. With application of MIMO to OFDM systems, we focus our analysis on relation between propagation and digital transmission characteristics under a severe multipath-rich environment where the delay profile exceeds the guard interval. Finally, we discuss transmission characteristics of MIMO-OFDM with maximal ratio combining (MRC) diversity in the environment.

This paper presents the switched-beam slot antenna over the electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) reflector. This antenna is composed of two slot elements fed with a phase difference and the EBG reflector, which is used in order to realize a low profile structure. The radiation characteristics of this antenna are calculated using the FDTD method. Calculations show that the height of the antenna using the EBG reflector is 60 % lower than that of the antenna using a perfect electric conductor (PEC) reflector. The radiation characteristics at the center of the operating frequency band in the EBG reflector are equivalent to that in the PEC reflector. It is shown that the tilt angle of the main beam in the elevation plane varies with the operating frequency, and the variation in the case of the EBG reflector is caused by its frequency-dependent reflection phase. Moreover, the radiation pattern of the fabricated antenna is measured. The results demonstrate that the low profile design can be achieved by using the EBG reflector, and reveal the influence of the EBG reflector on the antenna efficiency.

This paper describes a beam scanning antenna that consists of a movable dielectric plate loaded onto a microstrip comb-line antenna. This type of antenna uses a mechanical system and so offers a simple structure and low cost. The main beam direction of the proposed antenna is changed by moving the dielectric plate. The guide wavelength of the microstrip line was measured at the quasi-millimeter wave band (20 GHz) when moving the dielectric plate to investigate the possibility of beam scanning. The proposed antenna was fabricated to experimentally demonstrate its principle operation. A possible beam scanning angle of 20 degrees was confirmed.

This paper describes a method for evaluating the performance of a small magnetic core loop antenna used for radio controlled watches. Recently, amorphous metal core loop antennas are used as built-in small antennas inside a metal case. It is difficult to perform electromagnetic simulation for amorphous core loop antennas because of the complicated laminate structure. Therefore, we modeled the amorphous metal core loop antenna as an equivalent bulk structure having anisotropic permeability property that we can simulate. We analyzed the receiving sensitivity of the amorphous antenna by calculating the antenna factor. The receiving sensitivity degrades remarkably when an antenna is inside a metal case. We performed further simulation to investigate eddy current losses that cause deterioration.

In this paper, CPW-fed slot antennas using loading metallic strips and a widened tuning stub (CPW-FSLW) which provides wideband operation on the flat, a Λ-shape reflector with horizontal plate that prevents the back radiation and provides the uni-directional radiation are investigated. We observe that the size and shape of the reflector have significant impact on the impedance matching and radiation patterns. By fabricating the CPW-FSLW on the Λ-shape reflector with horizontal plate structure, noticeable enhancements in both radiation pattern and bandwidth are achieved. The antennas are verified both through numerical simulations and also measurements of the experimental prototypes and these confirm the good performance antennas. It is found that the proposed antenna can deliver a measured impedance bandwidth of 64% from 1.6 to 3.1 GHz for VSWR ≤ 2. The antennas are designed to have wideband operation suitable for applications in GSM1800, GSM1900, PCS, IMT-2000 and WLAN bands.

In recent years, wireless communications systems such as wireless LAN, Bluetooth, etc. are being rapidly adopted. As the antennas used in wireless communications systems are usually installed in small mobile devices, it is demanded that the volume should be small. In our research, we focus our attention on flexible printed circuits (FPCs) to meet the miniaturization demand. In this paper, we introduce a planar inverted F antenna (PIFA) suitable for IEEE802.11b/g and Bluetooth. The antenna is made of FPC. We measured the radiation pattern of the antenna when the antenna is successively curved and folded, and it is clear that its radiation performance does not vary much when the antenna is deformed. We analyzed the antenna by using the moment method.

In this paper, we report the detailed investigation of novel printed disc monopole antennas for ultra-wideband (UWB) applications focusing on miniaturization of the disc radiator. First, the basic property was examined for the case of a circular disc with diameter of 50 mm, and it was found that the VSWR is less than 2 in the UWB band of 3.1-10.6 GHz when the feed gap length is between about -0.1 and 0.2 mm. Next, in order to reduce the size of the disc radiator, various dimensions of elliptical discs were investigated. It is shown that if the dimensions of the elliptical disc are chosen appropriately, a smaller disc size antenna can be achieved. To decrease the antenna size further, a triangular notch and an exponentially curved notch on the ground plane of the antenna were examined. It is observed that the use of the notched ground is very effective and that the diameter of the circular radiator can be reduced to 17 mm. The proposed antenna has an omnidirectional pattern in the x-y plane. The influence of the notch on the radiation pattern is very small. Details of the simulation results using the FDTD method and experimental results for the proposed antenna are presented and analyzed. These features are very attractive for UWB applications.