We propose two novel blind LMS algorithms, called exponential step size LMS algorithms (ES-LMS), for adaptive array antennas with fast convergence speeds. Both of the proposed algorithms are much better at tracking signal sources than the conventional LMS algorithms. In addition, they require neither spatial knowledge nor reference signals since they use the finite symbol property of digital signal. Computer simulations verify performances of the two proposed algorithms.

This paper addresses a classic question about whether transmit power control (TPC) can increase the spectrum efficiency of a TDMA system and an FDMA cellular system as in the case of a DS-CDMA cellular system. Two types of TPC schemes are considered; one is slow TPC that regulates the distance dependent path loss and shadowing loss, while the other is fast TPC that regulates multipath fading as well as path loss and shadowing loss. In addition to TPC, antenna diversity reception is considered. The allowable interference rise factor χ, which is defined as the interference plus background noise-to-background noise power ratio, is introduced. The simple expressions for the signal-to-interference plus background noise power ratio (SINR) at the diversity combiner output using maximal-ratio combining (MRC) are derived to obtain the reuse distance by computer simulations. The impact of joint use of TPC and antenna diversity reception on the spectrum efficiency is discussed. It is found that the joint use of fast TPC and antenna diversity is advantageous and larger spectrum efficiency can be achieved than with no TPC. On the other hand, the use of slow TPC is found advantageous only for small values of standard deviation of shadowing loss; however, the improvement in the spectrum efficiency is quite small.

An electric filed sensor using Mach-Zehnder interferometers has been designed to operate more than 10 GHz. The velocity of optical wave on the waveguide is investigated to determine the electrode length, and the characteristics of frequency response are analyzed using the moment method to determine the sensor element length. The electrode length of 1 mm and the element length of 8 mm are settled by these investigations. An isotropic electric field sensor is constructed using three sensors. The minimum detectable electric field strength is 22 mV/m at frequency bandwidth of 100 Hz. This is about 100 times for the conventional electric field sensor using the similar element. The sensitivity deviation is within 3 dB when temperature changes from 0 degree to 40 degree. The deviation of directivity can be tuned within 1 dB to calibrate the sensitivity of the each element. The sensitivity degradation is within 6 dB up to 5 GHz and within 10 dB up to 10 GHz. This is almost agree with the calculated results. The sensor can measure almost the same waveform as the applied electric field pulse whose width is 6 ns and rise time is less than 2.5 ns.

The electronically steerable passive array radiator (ESPAR) antenna is one kind of the parasitic elements based single-port output antennas with several variable reactances. It performs analog aerial beamforming and none of the signals on its passive elements can be observed. This fact and one that is more important--the nonlinear dependence of the output of the antenna from adjustable reactances--makes the problem substantially new and not resolvable by means of conventional adaptive array beamforming techniques. A novel approach based on stochastic approximation theory is proposed for the adaptive beamforming of the ESPAR antenna as a nonlinear spatial filter by variable parameters, thus forming both beam and nulls. Two learning rate schedule were examined about output SINR, stability, convergence, misadjustment, noise effect, bias term, etc., and the optimal one was proposed. Further development was traced. Our theoretic study, simulation results and performance analysis show that the ESPAR antenna can be controlled effectively, has strong potential for use in mobile terminals and seems to be very perspective.

The electronically steerable passive array radiator (ESPAR) antenna performs analog aerial beamforming that has only a single-port output and none of the signals on its passive elements can be observed. This fact and one that is more important--the highly nonlinear dependence of the output of the antenna from adjustable reactances--makes the problem substantially new and not resolvable by means of conventional adaptive array beamforming techniques. A novel approach based on stochastic approximation theory is proposed for the adaptive beamforming of the ESPAR antenna as a nonlinear spatial filter by variable parameters, thus forming both beam and nulls. Our theoretic study, simulation results and performance analysis show that the ESPAR antenna can be controlled effectively, has strong potential for use in mobile terminals and seems to be very perspective.

A method for fast calibration of digital-beam-forming (DBF) receiving array antennas by means of digital signal processing is described. It uses plane wave arriving from a known direction that contains a known reference sequence. Non-uniformities of the amplitude and phase in the branches are detected and calibrated in real time by the complex correlation of a replica of the known reference sequence with the received signal obtained from the output signals of each element. No special circuit for calibration is required, and the non-uniformities can quickly be compensated for by digital signal processing even for an array antenna with many antenna elements. This method enables highly accurate calibration of large-scale array antennas operating at a high frequency even under a low signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR).

Spatial multiplexing, or BLAST, is a signaling technique for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels in which multiple independent data streams are transmitted in parallel in space. The independence between streams, unfortunately, limits the diversity advantage. In this paper we present a space-time code design, using the linear dispersion code framework, for MIMO Rayleigh fading channels. Our design provides codes that have the same ergodic capacity performance as spatial multiplexing but allows for improved diversity advantage. We present a technique for finding good codes based on successive projection. Monte Carlo simulations illustrate performance improvements over spatial multiplexing in terms of bit error probability.

As a center of mobile multimedia of the 21st century, it is very much looking forward to explosion of R&D and business of the next generation of mobile communication systems and the ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) because ITS will enable information-oriented in the field of the road, traffic and vehicles, by using the most advanced technologies of mobile communications and devices, for the various purposes such as decrease of the traffic accident, the reduction of traffic jam, the increase in efficiency of the logistics and the harmony with the earth environment. This invited paper will first briefly introduce evolution of mobile communications and ITS in ministries, industries and academia in Japan. Then core communication technologies for ITS will be overviewed such as spread spectrum CDMA, adaptive antenna array, and software radio or software defined radio. Demands of SoC (System on a Chip) to carry out the core technologies will be addressed.

In this paper, we propose a method of unicast and broadcast packet sharing for the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) multi-base station (BS) indoor wireless communication system using an adaptive array antenna on mobile terminals. The adaptive array antenna placed on the mobile terminal allows quality improvement due to the diversity effect when the data transmitted from all BSs are the same, and provides capacity improvement by channel sharing when the data from each BS are different. In the proposed sharing method, unicast packets are transmitted independently from multiple BSs in order to increase the communication capacity, and broadcast packets are transmitted simultaneously with other BSs in order to enhance the communication quality without retransmission. Furthermore, by modifying the packet assignment procedure, we confirm that quality can be improved for unicast packets in a low traffic environment.

This paper investigates the optimum transmit-antenna-weight generation method for adaptive antenna array transmit diversity (AAA-TD) in the W-CDMA forward link: AAA-TD with beam and null steering (BNST), AAA-TD with beam steering (BST), or switched beam transmit diversity with fixed weights (SBTD-FW). The achievable BER performance after carrier frequency calibration in the transmit beam pattern is compared among the three methods assuming a different carrier frequency in a 2-GHz band with the carrier separation of 184.5 MHz based on computer simulations. The simulation results show that the achievable BER performance in the forward link using AAA-TD with BNST is almost identical to that using AAA-TD with BST when there are many more interfering users than there are array antennas, except for the special case when a small number of higher rate users exists in the reverse link. This is because by performing carrier frequency calibration, the directions of the beam nulls are shifted from the real directions of arrival (DOAs) of the interfering users. However, we also show that the required transmit Eb/N0 at the average BER of 10-3 using AAA-TD with BST is decreased by approximately 1.0 to 1.2 dB compared to that using SBTD-FW with 12 beams.

This paper describes performance enhancement of high-resolved delay time estimation by pattern diversity of wheel-shaped dipole antennas for the MUSIC algorithm. We propose that the wheel-shaped dipole antennas are used to average covariance matrices weightedly with their pattern diversity without decreasing the matrix dimension and to obtain freedom of selecting sweeping frequencies. It is numerically confirmed that the wheel-shaped dipole antennas can be used to enhance capability of the delay time estimation.

This paper proposes the Vector Evaluated GA-ICT (VEGA-ICT), a novel design method that employs the Genetic Algorithm (GA) to obtain the optimum antenna design. GA-ICT incorporates an arbitrary wire-grid model antenna to derive the optimum solution without any basic structure or limitation on the number of elements by merely optimizing an objective function. GA-ICT comprises the GA and an analysis method, the Improved Circuit Theory (ICT), with the following characteristics. (1) To achieve optimization of an arbitrary wire-grid model antenna without a basic antenna structure, the unknowns of the ICT are directly assigned to variables of the GA in the GA-ICT. (2) To achieve a variable number of elements, duplicate elements generated by using the same feasible region are deleted in the ICT. (3) To satisfy all complex design conditions, the GA-ICT generates an objective function using a weighting function generated based on electrical characteristics, antenna configuration, and size. (4) To overcome the difficulty of convergence caused by the nonlinearity of each term in the objective function, GA-ICT adopts a vector evaluation method. In this paper, the novel GA-ICT method is applied to downsize sector antennas. The calculation region in GA-ICT is reduced by adopting cylindrical coordinates and a periodic imaging structure. The GA-ICT achieves a 30% reduction in size compared to the previously reported small sector antenna, MS-MPYA, while retaining almost the same characteristics.

A dual-offset microstrip-fed slot antenna having large bandwidth studied in this paper. The proposed antenna is analyzed by the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method. In this case, two offsets and other design parameters of the antenna lead to the good impedance matching over a wide frequency band. The experimental bandwidth is approximately 1.587 octave (-10 dB S11). And the experimented data for the impedance loci, the radiation patterns, and gain of the antenna are also described. The measured results are relatively in good agreement with the FDTD results.

We describe a new system for high-speed wireless access systems between base stations and mobile terminals. In the proposed system, the base station has an array antenna and tracks mobile terminals by using a new tracking algorithm. A radio-on-fiber technique is used to simplify and miniaturize the components of the base station. Estimating the direction-of-arrival of the signals from a mobile terminal is important in implementing the proposed system. We propose a new tracking algorithm that uses directions-of-arrival, angular velocities of mobile terminals, and scatter modeling in multipath communications channels to improve the tracking performance. We also developed experimental equipment to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed millimeter-wave broadband wireless access system and the efficiency of the tracking algorithm using an array antenna system. In this paper, we describe our system and present a new approach for tracking mobile terminals, which is the key feature of the system. We also discuss our simulation and experimental results.

Rectangular/circular-to-radial waveguide tra-nsformers through a ring slot have been proposed for the feeder of radial line slot antennas (RLSAs) in millimeter wave application. Rotating electric modes are excited by a set of ring slot and perturbation dog bone slot. Basic operation is observed in 12 GHz band. Concentric array radial line slot antennas fed by these transformers are fabricated and the antenna gain of 26.9 dBi with the efficiency more than 60% is measured. The applicability for millimeter wave is verified for 38 GHz band RLSA fed by the rectangular waveguide. The measured gain of the antenna is 22.5 dBi with the efficiency of 53% with the diameter of 46mm and 26.4 dBi with 61% with the diameter of 66mm.

We propose a three-dimensional structure on a planar substrate employing micromachining technology. A low-loss suspended structure incorporating a BCB membrane employing deep trench etching technology has been newly proposed. A micromachined suspended line structure using BCB membrane film enables us to realize a low loss planar resonator, which achieved an unloaded quality factor (Q-factor) of more than 280 at 60 GHz. We design low-loss filters and antennas built into silicon in a 60 GHz band. A low-loss filter realizes an insertion loss of 1.0 dB at 60 GHz and a patch antenna obtains a 3% bandwidth. In addition, we demonstrate a 60 GHz receiver front-end IC incorporating the planar filter and the antenna, and obtain good results. These techniques enable us to integrate various functions into a compact package even in millimeter-wave bands.

Several configurations of millimeter wave Gaussian Beam Antennas (GBAs) are studied in this paper. A GBA is a quasi-planar radiating structure comprising a plano-convex half-wavelength Fabry-Perot (FP) resonator excited by a guided source or by a printed source. Both partially transparent mirrors of the resonator are formed with two-dimensional metal meshes. GBAs have very low side lobes, because of the gaussian distribution of the aperture electric field. They can be efficiently used in Wireless Local Area Networks in the 60 GHz band. After a brief presentation of intrinsic properties of FP cavities illuminated by a plane wave under normal incidence, performances of four passive GBAs are described and compared to theoretical results: the first two configurations concern cavities fed either by a waveguide (GBA#1), or by a pyramidal horn antenna (GBA#2); in the last two ones, the cavities are excited by a linearly polarized microstrip patch antenna (GBA#3), or by a coaxial-probe circularly polarized antenna array (GBA#4). These various examples enable to deduce and to compare typical radiation performances of GBAs, depending on (i) the feeding technique (planar or guided), on (ii) the geometry of the FP resonator (radius of curvature, grid parameters) and on (iii) the polarization (linear or circular). In particular, for a planar primary source, it is shown that the directivity and the efficiency of GBAs are respectively in the range [15.5 dB-23.5 dB] and [20%-50%], if power reflectivities of both mirrors are higher than 96.5% and lower than 99.5%, and if the radius of curvature of the cavity varies between 30λ0 and 1600λ0.

The efficiency-fractional bandwidth product (EB), which is expressed as a ratio of the radiation resistance to the absolute value of the input reactance of an antenna, is used as a performance criterion for small dielectric loaded monopole antennas (DLMAs). The dependence of the EB on the permittivity of the dielectric loading (i.e., the electrical volume) is experimentally and numerically investigated for the first time in antenna research. As a result, it is found that the EBs of the some DLMAs are enhanced over a bare monopole antenna and an EB characteristic curve has a maximum point. This result suggests the presence of the optimum electrical volume for the dielectric loading in order to obtain the best EB performance. A general reason for the existence of the peak value is also explained using a mathematical deduction. Finally the system EB, which is an efficiency-fractional bandwidth product of the DLMA with a practical matching circuit, is defined and its dependence on the relative permittivity is illustrated. Consequently, the existence of the peak value is also confirmed for the system EBs. In addition, it is demonstrated that the enhancement of the system EB is mainly due to the enhancement in the efficiency of the antenna system.

This paper proposes a novel bi-directional rod antenna comprising a narrow patch and parasitic elements for base station antennas of street microcell systems. It is shown that the parasitic elements improve the antenna efficiency of an ordinary bi-directional printed antenna and make it possible to form the antennas using conventional substrates. This paper also proposes a suitable configuration for the array and investigates radiation characteristics of the configuration. Finally, a prototype of the bi-directional rod antenna is presented and the effectiveness of the bi-directional antenna is evaluated.

This paper proposes serially arranged two parasitic elements above a fed dipole to obtain broad bandwidth in resonant frequency of a parasitic element. The above antenna can be used in triple-bands with one feed point. Its design method using FDTD is also presented. Next, application of the triple-bands antenna is proposed for 3-sector base station antenna. Its characteristics of return loss and radiation patterns are indicated. Calculated values are in good agreement with measured ones.