This paper presents a fully digital gain control system with a new high bandwidth and wide dynamic range power detector for DVB-S2 application. Because the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of DVB-S2 system is so high and the settling time requirement is so stringent, the conventional closed-loop analog gain control scheme cannot be used. The digital gain control is necessary for the robust gain control and the direct digital interface with the baseband modem. Also, it has several advantages over the analog gain control in terms of the settling time and insensitivity to the process, voltage and temperature variation. In order to have a wide gain range with fine step resolution, a new AGC system is proposed. The system is composed of high-bandwidth digital VGAs, wide dynamic range power detectors with RMS detector, low power SAR type ADC, and a digital gain controller. To reduce the power consumption and chip area, only one SAR type ADC is used, and its input is time-interleaved based on four power detectors. Simulation and measurement results show that the new AGC system converges with gain error less than 0.25 dB to the desired level within 10 µs. It is implemented in a 0.18 µm CMOS process. The measurement results of the proposed IF AGC system exhibit 80-dB gain range with 0.25-dB resolution, 8nV/ input referred noise, and 5-dBm IIP3 at 60-mW power consumption. The power detector shows the 35 dB dynamic range for 100 MHz input.

This paper presents the design of a CMOS RF Power Detector (PD) using 0.18 µm standard CMOS technology. The PD is an improved unbalanced source coupled pair incorporating an output differential amplifier and sink current steering. It realizes an input detectable power range of -30 to -20 dBm over 0.1-1 GHz. Also it shows a maximum data rate of 30 Mbps with 2 pF output loading under OOK modulation. The overall current consumption is 1.9 mA under a 1.5 V supply.

The characteristics of violet-sensitive organic photodetectors (OPDs) utilizing polyalkylfluorene and triplet materials have been studied as a host and a dopant material, respectively. For the photo absorption layer, poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene) [PFO] and a phosphorescent iridium complex (Iridium (III) bis(2-(4,6-difluorophenyl)pyridinato-N,C2) [FIrpic] or Iridium (III) bis(2-(2'-benzothienyl)pyridinato-N,C3')(acetyl-acetonate) [(btp)2Ir(acac)]) were used as a host and a dopant material, respectively. PFO: (btp)2Ir(acac) device showed less photocurrent than PFO device because (btp)2Ir(acac) enhances recombination of the photo generated carriers in the photo absorption layer. On the other hand, PFO : FIrpic device showed larger photocurrent than PFO device due to triplet energy transfer from FIrpic to PFO. A cutoff frequency of 20 MHz was observed using a sinusoidal modulated violet laser light illumination under the reverse bias of 8 V.

A detector for space-time block coding is proposed to combat time-selective fading. To suppress both noise and interference, a minimum mean square error (MMSE) based detector is introduced for space-time block coding. It is shown by simulations that the proposed detector outperforms the conventional detectors when the channel is time-selective fading.

This letter introduces an efficient near-maximum likelihood (ML) detector for a coded double space-time transmit diversity-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DSTTD-OFDM) system. The proposed near-ML detector constructs a candidate vector set through a relaxed minimization method. It reduces computational loads from O(2|A|2) to O(|A|2), where |A| is the modulation order. Numerical results indicate that the proposed near-ML detector provides both almost ML performance and considerable complexity savings.

The Letter deals with constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detection of random Gaussian target signals embedded in Gaussian clutter with unknown covariance. The proposed detector is analyzed on the assumption that clutter covariance is not known and a random target signal has low-rank property. The low-dimensional subspace-based approach leads to a robust false alarm rate (RFAR) detector. The detection performance loss and the false alarm stability loss to unknown clutter covariance have been evaluated for example scenario.

In this letter, a decision-directed MOE detector with excellent robustness against signature waveform mismatch is proposed for DS-CDMA systems. Both the theoretic analysis and computer simulation results demonstrate that the proposed detector can provide better SINR performance than that of conventional detectors.

Two phase detectors (PD) are proposed to minimize the phase offset and deadzone when used in DLL or PLL. With the shortest symmetrical racing paths from both inputs, the binary PD achieves fast latch operation and theoretical elimination of the setup time. In contrast to the conventional PDs whose offsets are around 10 ps with large sensitivity to sizing, the proposed binary PD shows an offset of less than 1 ps with a reduction of 30-percent delay time. The proposed latch-type binary phase detection is also expanded to form a linear PD by the addition of a reset-generating circuit.

This paper proposes a novel MIMO system that introduces a heterogeneous stream (HTS) scheme and a blind signal detection method for mobile radio communications. The HTS scheme utilizes different modulation or coding methods for different MIMO streams, and the blind detection method requires no training sequences for signal separation, detection, and channel estimation. The HTS scheme can remove the ambiguity in identifying separated streams without unique words that are necessary in conventional MIMO blind detection. More specifically, two examples of HTS are considered: modulation type HTS (MHTS) and timing-offset type HTS (THTS). MHTS, which utilizes different modulation constellations with the same bandwidth for different streams, has been previously investigated. This paper proposes THTS which utilizes different transmission timing with the same modulation. THTS can make the blind detection more robust and effective with fractional sampling. The blind joint processing of detection and channel estimation performs adaptive blind MIMO-MLSE and is derived from an adaptive blind MLSE equalizer that employs the recursive channel estimation with the Moore-Penrose generalized inverse. Computer simulations show that the proposed system can achieve superior BER performance with Eb/N0 degradation of 1 dB in THTS and 2.5 dB in MHTS compared with the ideal maximum likelihood detection.

Device characteristics of In0.5Ga0.5As/GaAs quantum dot infrared detector (QDIP) have been enhanced with hydrogen plasma treatment. After the hydrogen (H) plasma treatment, the dark currents were noticeably decreased and photoluminescence (PL) intensity was increased by H-passivation of interfacial traps between quantum dots and GaAs and of non-radiative defect centers caused during QD growths. Photo response, which could not be observed in as-grown QDIP due to large dark currents which obscured the photocurrent signal, was measured successfully after H-treatment due to H-passivation.

The depth-first sphere decoder (SD) and the K-best algorithm have been widely studied as near optimum detectors. Depth-first SD has a non-deterministic computational throughput and K-best requires a sorting unit whose complexity is significant when a large K is used together with high modulation constellations. In this letter, we propose a MIMO detector that employs the trellis structure instead of the conventional tree searching. This detector can keep the computational throughput constant and reduce the complexity because the sorting is not required. From the simulation and complexity analysis, we investigate the advantage and drawback of the proposed detector.

Effect of the post-growth annealing on the morphology of a Ge mesa selectively grown on Si was studied from the viewpoint of near-infrared photodiode applications. By ultrahigh-vacuum chemical vapor deposition, Ge mesas were selectively grown at 600 on Si (001) substrates partially covered with SiO2 masks. The as-grown Ge mesas showed trapezoidal cross-sections having a top (001) surface and {311} sidewall facets, as similar to previous reports. However, after the subsequent post-growth annealing at ~800 in the ultrahigh-vacuum chamber, the mesas were deformed into rounded shapes having a depression at the center and mounds near the edges. Such a deformation cannot be observed for the samples annealed once after cooled and exposed to the air. The residual hydrogen atoms on the Ge surface from the germane (GeH4) decomposition is regarded as a trigger to the observed morphological instability, while the final mesa shape is determined in order to minimize a sum of the surface and/or strain energies.

In rich scattering environments, multiple antenna systems designed to accomplish spatial multiplexing have enormous potential of lifting the capacity of corresponding multiple input multiple output channels. In this paper, we present a new low complexity algorithm for decision feedback equalization detector in the SM scheme. The basic idea is to reduce the joint optimization problem to separate optimization problems to achieve better performance-complexity tradeoffs. Concretely, we separately optimize the detection order and the detector filters so that the complexity of the entire signal detection task is reduced. The new order search rule approximates the optimal Bell Labs layered space time (BLAST) approach from a geometrical perspective, and the detector filters are derived using a Cholesky based QR decomposition. The new algorithm is able to switch from zero forcing to minimum mean square error without additional operations and the computational effort is a small fraction of that in the optimal BLAST algorithm. Despite its low complexity, the error performance of new detector closely approximates that of the standard BLAST.

An entire dual-mode transceiver capable of both the conventional GFSK-modulated Bluetooth and the Medium-Rate π/4-DQPSK-modulated Bluetooth has been investigated and reported. The transmitter introduces a novel two-point-modulated polar-loop technique without the global feedback to realize reduced power consumption, small chip area and also high modulation accuracy. The receiver shares all the circuits for both operating modes except the demodulators and also features a newly-proposed cancellation technique of the carrier-frequency offset. The transceiver has been confirmed by system or circuit simulations to meet all the dual-mode Bluetooth specifications. The simulation results show that the transmitting power can be larger than 10 dBm while achieving the total power efficiency above 30% and also RMS DEVM of 0.050. It was also confirmed by simulation that the receiver is expected to attain the sensitivity of -85 dBm in both modes while satisfying the image-rejection and the blocker-suppression specifications. The proposed transceiver will provide a low-cost, low-power single-chip RF-IC solution for the next-generation Bluetooth communication.

The performance of the blind multiuser detector for a DS-CDMA system with linearly constrained constant modulus (LCCM) criterion is known to highly depend on the exact knowledge of the desired user amplitude; it is usually not available at receiver end. In this paper, we propose a novel LC adaptive CM RLS (LC-ACM-RLS) algorithm to adaptively implement the optimal solution of the LCCM receiver, and to track the desired user's amplitude, simultaneously. From computer simulations, we verify the superiority of the new proposed algorithm over the conventional LCCM-RLS algorithm for multiple access interference (MAI) suppression. Also, for time-varying channel during the adaptation processes, if the amplitude of desired user is not available and varies with time, such as hand-off and Rayleigh fading environments, we show that the proposed LC-ACM-RLS algorithm has better tracking capability compared with the conventional approaches.

In this paper, a non-data aided minimum mean square error (MMSE) receiver with enhanced multiple access interference (MAI) suppression is proposed for direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems over a multipath fading channel. The design of the proposed receiver is via the following procedure: First, an adaptive correlator is constructed based on the linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV) criterion to collect each multipath signal and suppress MAI blindly. A maximum ratio combiner is then utilized to coherently combine the correlator outputs. With a set of judicious chosen weight vectors, effective diversity combining can successfully suppress MAI and the desired signals can be effectively retained. Finally, further performance improvement against the finite data sample effect is achieved using a decision-aided scheme in which the channel response is obtained by the decision data and incorporated with the MMSE method to compute the refined weight vector. Performance analysis based on the output signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) is done to examine the efficacy of the proposed non-data aided MMSE receiver, which can offer the similar results as those of the MMSE receiver with the channel estimation correctly obtained beforehand. Computer simulation results then confirm correctness of the analysis results and demonstrate that the proposed blind receiver can successfully resist MAI as well as the finite data sample effect, and significantly outperform than the conventional blind receivers.

The front-end LSI having a capable of 2 reading and writing of BD-R/RW/ROM is developed. Its readability is improved by adopting 5-tap adaptive partial response maximum likelihood (PRML) with the PR(a,b,c,d,e) type channel. Due to the proposed PRML, less than 210-4 of the bit error rate (BER) is achieved with radial and tangential tilt margin of over 0.6°on 25 GB disc. The method of an optimum power control (OPC) for stable writing of various BD-R/RW is proposed. The presented chip contains 14-million transistors in a 60 mm2 dies, and is fabricated in 0.18 µm CMOS technology.

A normal-distribution-function-shaped superconducting tunnel junction (NDF-STJ) which consists of Nb/Al-AlOx/Al/Nb has been fabricated as an X-ray detector. Current - voltage characteristics were measured at 0.4 K using three kinds of STJs, which have the dispersion parameters σ of 0.25, 0.45 and 0.75. These STJs showed very low subgap leakage current of about 5 nA. By irradiating with 5.9 keV X-rays, we obtained the spectrum of these NDF-STJs. They showed good energy resolution with small magnetic fields of below 3 mT, which is about one-tenth of those for conventional-shaped STJs.

Time-of-Flight Mass Spectroscopy (TOF-MS) with superconducting detectors has two advantages over MS with conventional ion detectors. First, it is coverage for a very wide range of molecule weight over 1,000,000. Secondly, kinetic energies of accelerated molecules can be measured at impact events one by one. These unique features enable an ultimate detection efficiency of 100% for intact ions and a fragmentation analysis that is critical for top-down proteomics. Superconducting MS is expected to play a role in, for example, the detection of antigen-antibody complexes, which are important for medical diagnosis. In this paper, how superconductivity contributes to MS is described.

This paper proposes a compact interpolation scheme dedicated to a 1-dimensional position sensitive detector (PSD) with an optical sensing pixel array. The pixels are divided into even- and odd-numbered groups and winner take all (WTA) circuits are provided to each of the groups. The simulated results show that the detecting step-width is reduced to the half of the original one after applying the interpolation scheme.