Stratospheric platforms have been recently proposed as a new wireless infrastructure for realizing the next generation of communication systems. To provide high quality services, an investigation of the wireless stratospheric platform channel is essential. This paper proposes a definition and describes an analysis of the wireless channel for the link between stratospheric platforms and terrestrial mobile users based on an experiment in a semi-urban environment. Narrowband channel characteristics are presented in terms of Ricean factor (K factor) and local mean received power over a wide range of elevation angles ranging from 10to 90. Finally, we evaluated average bit error probability based on the proposed channel model to examine the channel performance. For the environment in which the measurements were conducted, we find that elevation angles greater than 40yield better performance.

The RGB signals generated by different cameras are not equal for the same scene. Therefore, cameras are characterized based on a CIE standard colorimetric observer. One method of deriving a colorimetric characterization matrix between camera RGB output signals and CIE XYZ tristimulus values is least squares polynomial modeling. Yet, this involves tedious experiments to obtain a camera transfer matrix under various white balance points for the same camera. Accordingly, the current paper proposes a new method for obtaining camera transfer matrices under different white balances using a 33 camera transfer matrix under a specific white balance point.

Hydrogenated germanium films were fabricated in the thickness range of 7-98 nm on SiO2 at 150 by an rf glow discharge decomposition of 0.25% GeH4 diluted with H2, and the nucleation and growth of Ge nanocrystallites were measured from topographic and current images simultaneously taken by a conductive AFM probe after Cr contact formation on films so prepared. We have demonstrated that current images show fine grains in comparison with topographic images and the lateral evolution of the Ge grains with progressive film growth. The contrast in current images can be interpreted in terms of the difference in electron concentration between nanocrystalline grains and their boundaries.

This paper presents practical modeling procedure of feed patterns, bond wires, and interconnects for microwave bare-chip devices. Dedicated test structures have been designed for the process. Modeling accuracy of BJTs and diodes has been unprecedentedly improved up to 30 GHz with this procedure despite popular SPICE models were used.

In order to design oscillators and switches phase noise characteristic is the key to obtain high quality frequency spectrums. Since the phase noise is directly affected by the 1/f noise of transistors in the circuit, 1/f noise measurement and modeling are important. This paper describes 1/f noise measurement, frequency and bias dependent flicker noise model, and noise parameter extraction method of MOSFET's. Also, for MOSFET's geometry dependencies of drain current 1/f noise are analyzed and modeled. The model has been verified by measuring the noise current spectral density of MOSFET's in two different process devices.

New equivalent characterizations are derived for Schur stability property of real polynomials. They involve a single scalar parameter, which can be regarded as a freedom incorporated in the given polynomials so long as the stability is concerned. Possible applications of the expressions are suggested to the latest results for stability robustness analysis in parameter space. Further, an extension of the characterizations is made to the matrix case, yielding one-parameter expressions of Schur matrices.

Understanding traffic characteristics in mobile communications is invaluable for planning, designing, and operating cellular networks, and various mobility models have therefore come to be developed to predict traffic characteristics. In this paper, cell-dwell-time distribution and transition probability in a virtual cellular system are first estimated from the results of measuring taxi motion using the Global Positioning System (GPS) for large-city and small-city ranges of motion. Then, on the basis of simulations using these estimations, traffic characteristics like handoff rate and channel blocking probability in a cellular system are evaluated. It was found that a difference between large and small cities could be observed in speed distribution and direction-of-travel probability, but only a slight difference in cell-dwell-time distribution.

To extract extrinsic resistances, conventional cold-FET methods require additional DC measurements or channel technological parameters. Additionally, the methods need at least two sets of cold-FET S-parameters measured at different cold-FET bias conditions in order to completely determine gate and drain pad capacitance as well as extrinsic gate, source and drain inductance and their resistances. One set of S-parameters handles the extraction of extrinsic inductances, and the other set extracts the gate and drain pad capacitance. To be free from additional DC measurement or channel technological parameters and reduce the number of sets of cold-FET S-parameters, we propose a cold-FET method that can extract all the extrinsic elements including the gate and drain capacitance, using only one set of cold-FET S-parameters. The method has shown excellent agreement between modeled and measured S-parameters up to 62 GHz at 56 different normal operating bias points.

Based on genetic algorithm (GA) in this paper we present a simple method to extract distributed circuit parameters of a multiple coupled nonuniform microstrip transmission lines from it's measured or computed S-parameters. The lines may be lossless or lossy, with frequency dependent parameters. First a sufficient amount of information about the system is measured or computed over an specified frequency range. Then this information is used as an input for a GA to determine the inductance and capacitance matrices of the system. The theory used for fitness evaluation is based on the steplines approximation of the nonuniform transmission lines and quasi-TEM assumptions. Using steplines approximation the system of coupled nonuniform transmission lines is subdivided into arbitrary large number of coupled uniform lines (steplines) with different characteristics. Then using modal decomposition method the system of coupled partial differential equations for each step is decomposed to a number of uncoupled ordinary wave equations which are then solved in frequency-domain.

We have developed a new type electrical probing system based on an atomic force microscope. This method enables us to measure simultaneously the surface topography and surface potential of thin films containing the crystal grains. The obtained local potential changes give an insight into conduction through the grains and their boundaries.

We describe FMCW reflectometry for characterization of long optical fibers by using an external-cavity laser diode as a light source. Since the optical path difference between the reference beam and the reflected beam from the optical fiber under test is much longer than the coherence length of the light source, the reference and the reflected beams are phase-decorrelated. As a result, the beat spectrum between the reference and the reflected beams is measured. In the phase-decorrelated FMCW reflectomety, the spatial resolution is enhanced by narrowing the spectral linewidth of the light source and increasing the repetition frequency of the optical frequency sweep as well as increasing the chirping range of the optical frequency sweep. In the experiments, an external-cavity DFB laser is used as a narrow linewidth light source, and the optical frequency is swept by minute modulation of the external cavity length. Long single mode optical fibers are characterized, and the maximum measurement range of 80 km is achieved, and the spatial resolutions of 46 m, 100 m and 2 km are achieved at 5 km, 11 km and 80 km distant, respectively. The Rayleigh backscattering is clearly measured and the propagation loss of optical fiber is also measured. The optical gain of an erbium-doped optical fiber amplifier (EDFA) is also estimated from the change in the Rayleigh backscattering level in the optical fiber followed after the EDFA.

A general analytical expression for describing the growth of the resonant peak wavelengths of long period gratings is derived. The theoretical calculations explain the shift of peak loss wavelengths in the direction of either shorter or longer wavelengths as the induced index change of grating increases. We have calculated and experimentally verified the sensitivity of the resonant peak wavelengths with respect to an overlay index for various grating periods. It is shown that the center wavelength shift of the claddding modes depends strongly on the grating period and the claddding mode order.

Future cellular communication systems will be called upon to provide multimedia services (voice, data, and video) for various user platforms (pedestrians, cars, and trains) that have a variety of mobility characteristics. Knowledge of mobility characteristics is essential for planning, designing and operating communication networks. The position data of selected vehicles (taxis) have been measured by using the Global Positioning System at 1-s intervals. Those data are used for evaluating mobility characteristics, such as probabilistic distributions of speed, cell dwell time, and cell crossover rate of vehicles, assuming that cells are hypothetically laid over the loci of the vehicles. The cell dwell time of vehicles is found to follow a lognormal distribution, rather than a conventionally-presumed negative exponential distribution. When the holding time distribution and random origination of calls along the loci are assumed, the properties of the cell dwell time and the handoff rate of terminals communicating in the hypothetical cellular systems are also estimated from the measured data.

The effect of surface roughness is crucial for contact recording and proximity recording. In this paper a probability model is developed for investigation of the influence of surface roughness on flying performance and the contact force of the slider. Simulations are conducted for both the contact recording slider and the proximity recording slider, and the results are well coordinated with the reported experimental results and the self-conducted experimental results. Studies are further extended to the characterization of the roughness of the air bearing surface and the disk surface that may support head/disk spacing between 5 nm and 15 nm.

We propose a new technique that is able to extract the small-signal equivalent-circuit elements of high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) without causing any gate degradation. For the determination of extrinsic resistance values, unlike other conventional techniques, the proposed technique does not require an additional relationship for the resistances. For the extraction of extrinsic inductance values, the technique uses the R-estimate, which is known to be more robust relative to the measurement errors than the commonly used least-squares regression. Additionally, we suggest an improved cold HEMT model that seems to be more general than conventional cold HEMT models. With the use of the improved cold HEMT model, the proposed technique extracts the extrinsic resistance and inductance values.

In this paper we present a complete methodology for efficient electro-mechanical characterization of a CMOS compatible MEMS technology. Using an original test structure, the so-called "U-shape cantilever beam," we are able to determine all mechanical characteristics of force sensors constituted with elementary beams in a given technology. A complete set of electro-mechanical relations for the design of Microsystems have also been developed.

One of the important challenges in the design of ATM networks is how to provide quality-of-service (QoS) while maintaining high network resource utilization. In this paper, we discuss the role of real-time traffic characterization in QoS control for ATM networks and review several approaches to the problem of resource allocation. We then describe a particular framework for QoS control in which real-time measurements of a connection stream are used to determine appropriate parameters for usage parameter control (UPC). Connection admission control (CAC) is based on the characterization of the aggregate stream in terms of the individual stream UPC descriptors, together with real-time measurements.

In this paper, we present CB-Power, a hierarchical power analysis and characterization environment of cell-based CMOS circuits. The environment includes two parts, a cell characterization system for timing, input capacitance as well as power and a cell-based power estimation system. The characterization system can characterize basic, complex and transmission gates. During the characterization, input slew rate, output loading, capacitive feedthrough effect and the logic state dependence of nodes in a cell are all taken into account. The characterization methodology separates the power consumption of a cell into three components, e.g., capacitive feedthrough power, short-circuit power and dynamic power. With the characterization data, a cell-based power estimator (CBPE) embedded in Verilog-XL is used for estimating the power consumption of the gates in a circuit. CBPE is also a hierarchical power estimator. Macrocells such as flip-flops and adders are partitioned into primitive gates during power estimation. Experimental results on a set of MCNC benchmark circuits show that the power estimation based on our power modeling and characterization provides within 6% error of SPICE simulation on average while the CPU time consumed is more than two orders of magnitude less.

Let L be any class of languages, L' be one of the classes of context-free, context-sensitive and recursively enumerable languages, and Σ be any alphabet. In this paper, we show that if the following statement (1) holds, then the statement (2) holds. (1) For any language L in L over Σ, there exist an alphabet Γ including Σ, a homomorphism h:Γ*Σ* defined by h(a)=a for aΣ and h(a)=λ (empty word) for aΓ-Σ, a Dyck language D over Γ, and a language L1 in L' over Γ such that L=h(DL1). (2) For any language L in L over Σ, there exist an alphabet of k pairs of matching parentheses Xk, Dyck reduction Red over Xk, and a language L2 in L' over ΣXk such that L=Red(L2)Σ*. We also give an application of this result.

Let L be any class of languages, L' be a class of languages which is closed under λ-free homomorphisms, and Σ be any alphabet. In this paper, we show that if the following statement (1) holds, then the statement (2) holds. (1) For any language L in L over Σ, there exist an alphabet of k pairs of matching parentheses Xk, Dyck reduction Red over Xk, and a language L1 in L' over ΣXk such that L=Red(L1)Σ*. (2) For any language L in L over Σ, there exist an alphabet Γ including Σ, a homomorphism h : Γ*Σ*, a Dyck language D over Γ, and a language L2 in L' over Γ such that L=h(DL2). We also give an application of this result.