We propose a novel phased array-fed dual-reflector antenna that reduces performance degradation caused by multiple reflection. The marked feature of the proposed configuration is that different reflector profiles are employed for the two orthogonal directions. The reflector profile in the beam-scanning section (vertical section) is set to an imaging reflector configuration, while the profile in the orthogonal non-beam-scanning section (horizontal section) is set to a ring-focus Cassegrain antenna configuration. In order to compare the proposed antenna with the conventional antenna in which multiple reflection was problematic, we designed a prototype antenna of the same size, and verified the validity of the proposed antenna. The results of the verification were that the gain in the designed central frequency increased by 0.4 dB, and the ripple of the gain frequency properties that was produced by multiple reflection was decreased by 1.1,dB. These results demonstrated the validity of the proposed antenna.

In this paper, we propose a new structure for a compact matched filter bank for a mutually orthogonal zero-correlation zone (MO-ZCZ) sequence set consisting of ternary sequence pairs obtained by Hadamard and binary ZCZ sequence sets; this construction reduces the number of two-input adders and delay elements. The matched filter banks are implemented on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) with 51,840 logic elements (LEs). The proposed matched filter bank for an MO-ZCZ sequence set of length 160 can be constructed by a circuit size that is about 8.6% that of a conventional matched filter bank.

We propose a synthesis method of nested loops into parallelized circuits by integrating the polyhedral optimization, which is a state-of-the-art technique in the field of software, into high-level synthesis. Our method constructs circuits equipped with multiple processing elements (PEs), using information generated by the polyhedral optimizing compiler. Since multiple PEs cannot concurrently access the off-chip RAM, a method for constructing on-chip buffers is also proposed. Our buffering method reduces the off-chip RAM access conflicts and further enables burst accesses and data reuses. In our experimental result, the buffered circuits generated by our method are 8.2 times on average and 26.5 times at maximum faster than the sequential non-buffered ones, when each of the parallelized circuits is configured with eight PEs.

In this paper, we investigate the minimum-weight codewords of array LDPC codes C(m,q), where q is an odd prime and m ≤ q. Using some analytical approaches, the lower bound on the number of minimum-weight codewords of C(m,q) given by Kaji (IEEE Int. Symp. Inf. Theory, June/July 2009) is proven to be tight for m = 4 and q > 19. In other words, C(4,q) has 4q2(q-1) minimum-weight codewords for all q > 19. In addition, we show some interesting universal properties of the supports of generators of minimum-weight codewords of the code C(4,q)(q > 19).

This paper presents a spatial division (SD) transmission method based on two-ray fading that dispenses with the high signal processing cost of multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) detection and antennas with narrow beamwidth. We show the optimum array geometries as functions of the transmission distance for providing a concrete array design method. Moreover, we clarify achievable channel capacity considering reflection coefficients that depend on the polarization, incident angle, and dielectric constant. When the ground surface is conductive, for two- and three-element arrays, channel capacity is doubled and tripled, respectively, over that of free space propagation. We also clarify the application limit of this method for a dielectric ground by analyzing the channel capacity's dependency on the dielectric constant. With this method, increased channel capacity by SD transmission can be obtained merely by placing antennas of wireless transceiver sets that have only SISO (single-input and single-output) capability in a two-ray propagation environment. By using formulations presented in this paper for the first time and adding discussions on the adoption of polarization multiplexing, we clarify antenna geometries of SD transmission systems using polarization multiplexing for up to six streams.

In this paper, an adaptive expansion strategy (AES) is proposed for multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) detection in the presence of circular signals. By exploiting channel properties, the AES classifies MIMO channels into three types: excellent, average and deep fading. To avoid unnecessary branch-searching, the AES adopts single expansion (SE), partial expansion (PE) and full expansion (FE) for excellent channels, average channels and deep fading channels, respectively. In the PE, the non-circularity of signal is exploited, and the widely linear processing is extended from non-circular signals to circular signals by I (or Q) component cancellation. An analytical performance analysis is given to quantify the performance improvement. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve quasi-optimal performance with much less complexity (hundreds of flops/symbol are saved) compared with the fixed-complexity sphere decoder (FSD) and the sphere decoder (SD).

This paper presents the design and radiation properties of a linearly polarized radial line microstrip antenna array (RL-MSAA) with U-slot circular microstrip antennas. A circular microstrip antenna (C-MSA) with U-shaped slot is used as a radiation element of the RL-MSAA. Radiation phase of the U-slot C-MSA is controlled by tuning the radius of the C-MSA and dimensions of the U-slot on the C-MSA; therefore, the desired phase distribution of the RL-MSAA can be realized. In this paper, a linearly polarized RL-MSAA with three concentric rows of C-MSAs at a spacing of 0.65 wavelengths is designed for 12GHz operation. In order to realize uniform phase distribution, the U-slot C-MSAs are arranged for inner two rows and normal C-MSAs are arranged for the termination row. Validity of the linearly polarized RL-MSAA with the U-slot C-MSAs for radiation phase control is demonstrated by simulation and measurement.

A directional array radiator is presented, the aim of which is to enhance the sound of the television in a particular direction and hence provide a volume boost to improve speech intelligibility for the hard of hearing. The sound radiated by the array in other directions is kept low, so as not to increase the reverberant level of sound in the listening room. The array uses 32 loudspeakers, each of which are in phase-shift enclosures to generate hypercardioid directivity, which reduces the radiation from the back of the array. The loudspeakers are arranged in 8 sets of 4 loudspeakers, each set being driven by the same signal and stacked vertically, to improve the directivity in this plane. This creates a 3D beamformer that only needs 8 digital filters to be made superdirective. The performance is assessed by means of simulations and measurements in anechoic and reverberant environments. The results show how the array obtains a high directivity in a reverberant environment.

In the traditional microphone array signal processing, the performance degrades rapidly when the array aperture decreases, which has been a barrier restricting its implementation in the small-scale acoustic system such as digital hearing aids. In this work a new compressed sampling method of miniature microphone array is proposed, which compresses information in the internal of ADC by means of mixture system of hardware circuit and software program in order to remove the redundancy of the different array element signals. The architecture of the method is developed using the Verilog language and has already been tested in the FPGA chip. Experiments of compressed sampling and reconstruction show the successful sparseness and reconstruction for speech sources. Owing to having avoided singularity problem of the correlation matrix of the miniature microphone array, when used in the direction of arrival (DOA) estimation in digital hearing aids, the proposed method has the advantage of higher resolution compared with the traditional GCC and MUSIC algorithms.

Sound field reproduction systems seek to realistically convey 3D spatial audio by re-creating the sound pressure inside a region enclosing the listener. High-order Ambisonics (HOA), a sound field reproduction technology, is notable for defining a scalable encoding format that characterizes the sound field in a system-independent way. Sound fields sampled with a particular microphone array and encoded into the HOA format can be reproduced using any sound presentation device, typically a loudspeaker array, by using a HOA decoder. The HOA encoding format is based on the spherical harmonic decomposition; this makes it easier to design a decoder for large arrays of loudspeakers uniformly distributed over all directions. In practice, it is seldom possible to cover all directions with loudspeakers placed at regular angular intervals. An irregular array, one where the angular separation between adjacent loudspeakers is not constant, does not perform as well as a regular one when reproducing HOA due to the uneven sampling of the spherical harmonics. This paper briefly introduces the techniques used in HOA and advances a new approach to design HOA decoders for irregular loudspeaker arrays. The main difference between conventional methods and our proposal is the use of a new error metric: the radial derivative of the reconstruction error. Minimizing this metric leads to a smooth reproduction, accurate over a larger region than that achieved by conventional HOA decoders. We evaluate our proposal using the computer simulation of two 115-channel loudspeaker arrays: a regular and an irregular one. We find that our proposal results in a larger listening region when used to decode HOA for reproduction using the irregular array. On the other hand, applying our method matches the high-quality reproduction that can be attained with the regular array and conventional HOA decoders.

This paper proposes a sound source orientation estimation method that is suitable for a distributed microphone arrangement. The proposed method is based on orientation-extended beamforming (OEBF), which has four features: (a) robustness against reverberations, (b) robustness against noises, (c) free arrangements of microphones and (d) feasibility for real-time processing. In terms of (a) and (c), since OEBF is based on a general propagation model using transfer functions (TFs) that include all propagation phenomena such as reflections and diffractions, OEBF causes no model errors for the propagation phenomena, and is applicable to arbitrary microphone arrangements. Regarding (b), OEBF overcomes noise effects by incorporating three additional processes (Amplitude extraction, time-frequency mask and histogram integration) that are also proposed in this paper. As for (d), OEBF is executable in real-time basis as the execution process is the same as usual beamforming processes. A numerical experiment was performed to confirm the theoretical validity of OEBF. The results showed that OEBF was able to estimate sound source positions and orientations very precisely. Practical experiments were carried out using a 96-channel microphone array in real environments. The results indicated that OEBF worked properly even under reverberant and noisy environments and the averaged estimation error was given only 4°.

Sensing and reproduction of precise sound-space information is important to realize highly realistic audio communications. This study was conducted to realize high-precision sensors of 3D sound-space information for transmission to distant places and for preservation of sound data for the future. Proposed method comprises a compact and spherical object with numerous microphones. Each recorded signal from multiple microphones that are uniformly distributed on the sphere is simply weighted and summed to synthesize signals to be presented to a listener's left and right ears. The calculated signals are presented binaurally via ordinary binaural systems such as headphones. Moreover, the weight can be changed according to a human's 3D head movement. A human's 3D head movement is well known to be a crucially important factor to facilitate human spatial hearing. For accurate spatial hearing, 3D sound-space information is acquired as accurately reflecting the listener's head movement. We named the proposed method SENZI (Symmetrical object with ENchased ZIllion microphones). The results of computer simulations demonstrate that our proposed SENZI outperforms a conventional method (binaural Ambisonics). It can sense 3D sound-space with high precision over a wide frequency range.

We proposed a method for estimating sound source positions in 3D space by integrating sound directions estimated by multiple microphone arrays and taking advantage of reflection information. Two types of sources with different directivity properties (human speech and loudspeaker speech) were evaluated for different positions and orientations. Experimental results showed the effectiveness of using reflection information, depending on the position and orientation of the sound sources relative to the array, walls, and the source type. The use of reflection information increased the source position detection rates by 10% on average and up to 60% for the best case.

Earlier attempts to deploy two units of parametric loudspeakers have shown encouraging results in improving the accuracy of spatial audio reproductions. As compared to a pair of conventional loudspeakers, this improvement is mainly a result of being free of crosstalk due to the sharp directivity of the parametric loudspeaker. By replacing the normal parametric loudspeaker with the steerable parametric loudspeaker, a flexible sweet spot can be created that tolerates head movements of the listener. However, spatial aliasing effects of the primary frequency waves are always observed in the steerable parametric loudspeaker. We are motivated to make use of the spatial aliasing effects to create two sound beams from one unit of the steerable parametric loudspeaker. Hence, a reduction of power consumption and physical size can be achieved by cutting down the number of loudspeakers used in an audio system. By introducing a new parameter, namely the relative steering angle, we propose a stereophonic beamsteering method that can control the amplitude difference corresponding to the interaural level difference (ILD) between two sound beams. Currently, this proposed method does not support the reproduction of interaural time differences (ITD).

An integrated 2×28Gb/s dual-channel duobinary driver IC is presented. Each channel has integrated coding blocks, transforming a non-return-to-zero input signal into a 3-level electrical duobinary signal to achieve an optical duobinary modulation. To the best of our knowledge this is the fastest modulator driver including on-chip duobinary encoding and precoding. Moreover, it only consumes 652mW per channel at a differential output swing of 6Vpp.

Electromagnetic field analysis is a time-consuming process, and a method involving the use of an FPGA accelerator is one of the attractive ways to accelerate the analysis; the other method involve the use of CPU and GPU. In this paper, we propose an FPGA accelerator dedicated for a two-dimensional finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. This accelerator is based on a two-dimensional single instruction multiple data (SIMD) array architecture. Each processing element (PE) is composed of a six-stage pipeline that is optimized for the FDTD method. Moreover, driving signal generation and impedance termination are also implemented in the hardware. We demonstrate that our accelerator is 11 times faster than existing FPGA accelerators and 9 times faster than parallel computing on the NVIDIA Tesla C2075. As an application of the high-speed FDTD accelerator, the design optimization of a waveguide is shown.

This paper proposes a simple and practical scheme to decide the direction of a phased array antenna beam in wireless access systems using Radio-over-Fiber (RoF) technique. The feasibility of the proposed scheme is confirmed by the optical and wireless transmission experiments using 2GHz RoF signals. In addition, two-dimensional steering operation in the millimeter-wave band is demonstrated for targeting future high-speed wireless communication systems. The required system parameters for practical use are also provided by investigating the induced transmission penalties. The proposed detection scheme is applicable to two-dimensional antenna beam steering in the millimeter-wave band by properly designing the fiber length and wavelength variable range.

This paper presents a novel decoupling network consisting of transmission lines and a bridge resistance for a two-element array antenna and evaluates its performance through simulations and measurements. To decouple the antennas, the phase of the mutual admittance between the antenna ports is rotated by using the transmission lines, and a pure resistance working as a bridge resistance is inserted between the two antenna ports to cancel the mutual coupling. The simulation results indicate that the proposed decoupling network can provide a wider bandwidth than the conventional approach. The proposed decoupling network is implemented and tested as a demonstration to confirm its performance. The measurement results indicate that the mutual coupling between the two antenna ports is lowered by about 47dB at the resonant frequency.

This paper proposes the design of small CRPA arrays for dual-band Global Positioning System (GPS) applications. The array consists of five elements and is mounted on a circular ground platform with a diameter of 15-cm. Each antenna element has a coupled feed structure and consists of a feed patch and two radiating patches for dual-band operation. An external chip coupler is utilized for a broad circular polarization (CP) bandwidth, and its measured characteristics are taken into account in our simulation for more accurate performance estimation. Detailed parameters are optimized by using a genetic algorithm (GA) in conjunction with the FEKO EM simulator. The optimized antenna is fabricated on a ceramic substrate, and its performance is measured in a full anechoic chamber. Furthermore, a field test is also conducted to verify the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for real GPS satellite signals. The results prove that the proposed array is suitable for use in GPS CRPA applications.

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is an important tool for designing aircraft components. FaSTAR (Fast Aerodynamics Routines) is one of the most recent CFD packages and has various subroutines. However, its irregular and complicated data structure makes it difficult to execute FaSTAR on parallel machines due to memory access problem. The use of a reconfigurable platform based on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) is a promising approach to accelerating memory-bottlenecked applications like FaSTAR. However, even with hardware execution, a large number of pipeline stalls can occur due to read-after-write (RAW) data hazards. Moreover, it is difficult to predict when such stalls will occur because of the unstructured mesh used in FaSTAR. To eliminate this problem, we developed an out-of-order mechanism for permuting the data order so as to prevent RAW hazards. It uses an execution monitor and a wait buffer. The former identifies the state of the computation units, and the latter temporarily stores data to be processed in the computation units. This out-of-order mechanism can be applied to various types of computations with data dependency by changing the number of execution monitors and wait buffers in accordance with the equations used in the target computation. An out-of-order system can be reconfigured by automatic changing of the parameters. Application of the proposed mechanism to five subroutines in FaSTAR showed that its use reduces the number of stalls to less than 1% compared to without the mechanism. In-order execution was speeded up 2.6-fold and software execution was speeded up 2.9-fold using an Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a reasonable amount of overhead.