This letter presents an effective direction of arrival (DOA) estimator that is based on the orthogonal projection (OP) technique. When an OP matrix is attained, the proposed estimator, which dispenses with spatial smoothing (SS) preprocessing, can form the maximizing orthogonality for a single snapshot. Since this technique does not need to perform eigen-decomposition while maintaining better DOA estimates, it also has real-time DOA estimation capability. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the efficiency of this method.

We propose a novel propagation measurement scheme for terrestrial TV signal indoor reception based on a virtual array technique. The system proposed in this paper carries out two-branch recording of target signals and the reference signal. By using the signal phase reference in the reference signal, we clarify the spatial propagation characteristics obtained from the two-dimensional virtual array outputs. Outdoor measurements were performed first to investigate the validity of the proposed measurement system. The results confirm its effectiveness in accurately determining the direction-of-arrival (DOA). We then investigated the propagation characteristics in an indoor environment. The angular spectrum obtained showed clear wave propagation structure. Thus, our proposed system is promising as a very accurate measurement tool for indoor propagation analysis.

We propose a novel acceleration scheme for Monte Carlo based statistical static timing analysis (MC-SSTA). MC-SSTA, which repeatedly executes ordinary STA using a set of randomly generated gate delay samples, is widely accepted as an accuracy reference. A large number of random samples, however, should be processed to obtain accurate delay distributions, and software implementation of MC-SSTA, therefore, takes an impractically long processing time. In our approach, a generalized hardware module, the STA processing element (STA-PE), is used for the delay evaluation of a logic gate, and netlist-specific information is delivered in the form of instructions from an SRAM. Multiple STA-PEs can be implemented for parallel processing, while a larger netlist can be handled if only a larger SRAM area is available. The proposed scheme is successfully implemented on Altera's Arria II GX EP2AGX125EF35C4 device in which 26 STA-PEs and a 624-port Mersenne Twister-based random number generator run in parallel at a 116 MHz clock rate. A speedup of far more than10 is achieved compared to conventional methods including GPU implementation.

This paper proposes a novel multichannel speech enhancement technique for reverberant rooms that is effective when noise sources are spatially stationary, such as a projector fan noise, an air-conditioner noise, and unwanted speech sources at the back of microphones. Speech enhancement performance of the conventional multichannel Wiener filter (MWF) degrades when the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of the current microphone input signal changes from the noise-only period. Furthermore, the MWF structure is computationally inefficient, because the MWF updates the whole spatial beamformer periodically to track switching of the speakers (e.g. turn-taking). In contrast to the MWF, the proposed method reduces noise independently of the SNR. The proposed method has a novel two-stage structure, which reduces noise and distortion of the desired source signal in a cascade manner by using two different beamformers. The first beamformer focuses on noise reduction without any constraint on the desired source, which is insensitive to SNR variation. However, the output signal after the first beamformer is distorted. The second beamformer focuses on distortion reduction of the desired source signal. Theoretically, complete elimination of distortion is assured. Additionally, the proposed method has a computationally efficient structure optimized for spatially stationary noise reduction problems. The first beamformer is updated only when the speech enhancement system is initialized. Only the second beamformer is updated periodically to track switching of the active speaker. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method can reduce spatially stationary noise source signals effectively with less distortion of the desired source signal even in a reverberant conference room.

A hybrid approach for the synthesis of square thinned arrays with low sidelobes is presented. The proposed method combines the advantages of a genetic algorithm and combinatorial technique-cyclic difference sets (CDSs). The peak sidelobe level (PSL) and the thinning factor are numerically evaluated to show the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed hybrid method. In the proposed GA-enhanced square arrays with the DS and the best CDS, reductions of the PSL, of 4.16 dB and 2.45 dB, respectively, were achieved as compared to the results of conventional rectangular DS and CDS arrays.

A direction-of-arrival estimation (DoA) scheme that uses a uniform circular array (UCA) is proposed for near-field sources, where multiple pairs-of-subarrays exist with central symmetry. First, multiple generalized ESPRIT (G-ESPRIT) spectrums are obtained by applying the conventional G-ESPRIT algorithm to each of multiple pairs-of-subarrays. Second, a parallel spectrum is found by adding up the reciprocals of these G-ESPRIT spectrums and taking the reciprocal of the total. The locations of peaks in the parallel spectrum give the DoAs being estimated. When a DoA approaches the translation direction of two subarrays, the conventional G-ESPRIT spectrum is broken by a false peak. Since the translation directions of pairs-of-subarrays are different from each other, the false peak, due to the DoA approaching one of translation directions, does not exist simultaneously in all G-ESPRIT spectrums. The parallel concatenation of the spectrums suppresses the false peak and enhances the true DoA peaks. Simulation shows that the proposed scheme reduces the root mean square error of the DoA estimation, compared with the conventional G-ESPRIT algorithm.

Disk arrays and prefetching schemes are used to mitigate the performance gap between main memory and disks. This paper presents a new problem that arises if prefetching schemes that are widely used in operation systems are applied to disk arrays. The key point of the problem is that block address space from the viewpoint of the host is contiguous but from that of the disk array it is discontiguous and thus more disk accesses than expected are required. This paper presents two ways to resolve the problem that arises from the Linux readahead framework. The proposed scheme prevents a readahead window from being split into multiple requests from the viewpoint of the disk array but not from the viewpoint of the host thereby reducing disk head movements. In addition, it outperforms the prior work by adopting an asynchronous solution, improving performance for fragmented files, eliminating readahead size restriction, and improving disk parallelism. We implemented the proposed scheme and integrated it with Linux. Our experiment shows that the solution significantly improved the original Linux readahead framework when a storage server processes multiple concurrent requests.

A semi-analytical method for a planar periodic array formed by a finite number of magnetized ferrite circular cylinders is presented using a model of layered cylindrical structures. The method uses the T-matrix approach and the extraction of the reflection and transmission matrices based on the cylindrical harmonic mode expansion. Based on the proposed method, plane wave scattering by the finite number of magnetized ferrite circular cylinders is numerically studied from the viewpoint of realization the electronic switching and electronic scanning effects by varying the applied magnetic field.

In this paper, a new systolic array structure for the extended QR decomposition based recursive least-square (QRD-RLS) equalizer is proposed. The fact that the vectoring and rotation mode coordinate rotation digital computer (CORDIC) processors rotate in the same direction is used to show that the hardware complexity of the systolic array can be reduced. Furthermore, since the vectoring and rotation mode CORDIC processors in the proposed structure rotate simultaneously, operation time is also reduced. The performance of the proposed equalizer is analyzed by observing the flatness obtained by multiplying the frequency responses of the unknown channel with the proposed equalizer. Simulation results through hardware description language (HDL) coding and synthesis show that 23.8% of the chip implementation area can be reduced.

Bipolar complementary sequence pairs of Types II and III are defined, enumerated for n ≤ 28, and classified. Type-II pairs are shown to exist only at lengths 2m, and necessary conditions for Type-III pairs lead to a non-existence conjecture regarding their length.

As many digital terrestrial broadcasting stations have been installed and are now broadcasting, the problem of poor reception has become serious even though the receiving powers are high. Although we had developed a interference canceller for broadcast-wave relay stations, an adaptive array is desirable to be more robust against low-D/U multipath environment as a receiver for the service area. In this paper, we propose a weighting coefficient optimization algorithm for post-FFT adaptive array using the reciprocals of weighting coefficients. Numerical examples show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Let PA(n, d) be a permutation array (PA) of order n and the minimum distance d. We propose a new construction of the permutation array PA(pm, pm-1k) for a given prime number p, a positive integer k < p and a positive integer m. The resulted array has (|PA(p,k)|p(m-1)(p-k))m rows. Compared to the other constructions, the new construction gives a permutation array of far bigger size with a large minimum distance, for example, when k ≥ 2p/3. Moreover the proposed construction provides an algorithm to find the i-th row of PA (pm, pm-1k) for a given index i very simply.

This paper investigates construction methods of perfect 16-QAM sequences and arrays, since such sequences and arrays play quite an important role in synchronization of communication systems making use of 16-QAM signals. The method used for obtaining the results is to establish a relationship between the known perfect quaternary sequences/arrays and the required ones so that the former is transformed into the latter. Consequently, the sufficient conditions for implementing the required transformations are derived, and several examples are given. Our methods can provide perfect 16-QAM sequences with lengths 2, 4, 8, and 16, which are given in Table A·1 and infinite families of perfect 16-QAM arrays, whose existing sizes up to dimension 5 and volume 2304 are listed in Tables A·2 and A·3.

This paper proposes an easy-to-design, theory-consistent compact feeding circuit, with a single input and four outputs, being comprised of two hybrid circuits that are capable of switching a beam in three directions. The circuits that determine the phase differences between the antennas are present on the same single layer, and thus there is no effect of vias and the design agrees well with the underlying theory. In addition, the vertically and horizontally symmetrical circuit pattern contributes to a substantial reduction in design time. The circuit is designed for use in the ISM band and its properties are evaluated using an RF circuit simulator. A prototype is fabricated and evaluated. The results of the simulation and measurement agree well with the theoretical values. The dimensions of the feeding circuit are 75 (H)55 (W)3.0 (T) mm.

This paper describes very compact MIC magic-Ts and their integration with planar array antennas to realize the advanced antenna modules. The orthogonal transmission modes are effectively used to arrange the preferable port layout of magic-Ts. This flexible port layout of magic-Ts is a practical feature for integration with planar array antennas. The integration of magic-Ts and planar array antennas can easily create advanced functions. A couple of array antennas based on the integration advantages are introduced to materialize this technical concept. This integration approach is of big worth to originate various kinds of advanced antennas and the wireless modules in the ubiquitous society.

We have previously proposed an indoor monitoring and security system with an array sensor. The array sensor has some advantages, such as low privacy concern, easy installation with low cost, and wide detection range. Our study is different from the previously proposed classification method for array sensor, which uses a threshold to classify only two states for intrusion detection: nothing and something happening. This paper describes a novel state classification method based on array signal processing with a machine learning algorithm. The proposed method uses eigenvector and eigenvalue spanning the signal subspace as features, obtained from the array sensor, and assisted by multiclass support vector machines (SVMs) to classify various states of a human being or an object. The experimental results show that our proposed method can provide high classification accuracy and robustness, which is very useful for monitoring and surveillance applications.

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used as a common design tool in the aerospace industry. UPACS, a package for CFD, is convenient for users, since a customized simulator can be built just by selecting desired functions. The problem is its computation speed, which is difficult to enhance by using the clusters due to its complex memory access patterns. As an economical solution, accelerators using FPGAs are hopeful candidate. However, the total scale of UPACS is too large to be implemented on small numbers of FPGAs. For cost efficient implementation, partial reconfiguration which dynamically loads only required functions is proposed in this paper. Here, the MUSCL scheme, which is used frequently in UPACS, is selected as a target. Partial reconfiguration is applied to the flux limiter functions (FLF) in MUSCL. Four FLFs are implemented for Turbulence MUSCL (TMUSCL) and eight FLFs are for Convection MUSCL (CMUSCL). All FLFs are developed independently and separated from the top MUSCL module. At start-up, only required FLFs are selected and deployed in the system without interfering the other modules. This implementation has successfully reduced the resource utilization by 44% to 63%. Total power consumption also reduced by 33%. Configuration speed is improved by 34-times faster as compared to full reconfiguration method. All implemented functions achieved at least 17 times speed-up performance compared with the software implementation.

A novel method for automatically creating an optimum direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation algorithm for a given radio environment using a genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed. DOA estimation algorithms are generally described by parameters and operators. The performance of a DOA estimation algorithm is evaluated using root mean square error (RMSE) through computer simulations. A GA searches for the combination of parameters and operators that gives the lowest RMSE. Because a GA can treat only bit strings, Polish notation is used to convert bit strings into a DOA estimation algorithm. A computer simulation showed that the proposed method can create a new angle spectrum function. The created angle spectrum function has higher resolution than the Capon method.

This paper presents a simple 3-D array configuration for high-resolution 2-D Direction-Of-Arrival (DOA) estimation. Planar array structures like Uniform Rectangular Array (URA) or Uniform Circular Array (UCA) often well estimate azimuth angle but cannot well estimate elevation angle because of short antenna aperture in elevation direction. One may put more number of array elements to improve elevation angle estimation accuracy, however it will require very large hardware and software cost. This paper presents a simple 3-D array structure for high-resolution 2-D DOA estimation only by modifying the height of some array elements in a planar array. Based on the analysis of Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) formulation and its dependency on the height of array elements, we develop a simple 3-D array structure which improves elevation angle estimation accuracy while preserving azimuth angle estimation accuracy.

In the millimeter-wave band, the series-fed array antenna is facing a problem of large transmission loss and narrow bandwidth by using a high-permittivity and large-loss-tangent material. In this paper, an air region is inserted in the half of the height in the LTCC waveguide of εr =6.6 and tanδ =0.013 to reduce the transmission loss. The reduction of the equivalent dielectric constant by the air insertion structure enhances both the gain and the bandwidth of the series-fed slot array. The transmission loss of the single-mode rectangular waveguide has been reduced to about 1/6 by using the partially-filled structure in the 60-GHz band. In a one-dimensional slot array, the total loss has also been reduced to about 1/7. And the 3 dB-down gain bandwidth has also been increased from 1.3 GHz to 2.3 GHz.