To provide basic considerations for the realization of method for suppressing the EMI from differential-paired lines on flexible printed circuits (FPC), the characteristics of the SI performance and shielding effectiveness (SE) of shielded-flexible printed circuits for differential-signaling are investigated in this paper experimentally and by a numerical modeling. Firstly, transmission characteristics of TDR measurement and frequency response of |Sdd21| are discussed, from view point of signal integrity. Secondly, as the characteristics of the SE performance for EMI, frequency responses of magnetic field are investigated. Although placement of conductive shield near the paired-lines decreases characteristics impedance, |Sdd21| for the “with Cu 5.5 µm-thickness copper shield” is not deteriorated compared with “without shield” and sufficient SE performance for magnetic field can be established. But, thin-shield deteriorates SI as well as SE performances. The frequency response of |Sdd21| at higher frequencies for the “Ag 0.1 µm” case has the steep loss roll off. A reflection loss resulted from impedance-mismatching is not dominant factor of the losses. The dominant factor may be magnetic field leakage due to very thin-conductive shield.

To develop a flexible liquid crystal display (LCD) with a wide viewing angle range and high contrast ratio, we have proposed a flexible blue-phase LC device sustained by polymer walls inside the LC cell. We clarified that the polymer walls can maintain a constant cell gap and suppress the generation of alignment defects of the blue-phase LC in a bending state.

This letter presents a method for active noise cancelation (ANC) for headphone application. The method improves the performance of ANC by deriving a flexible independent component analysis (ICA) algorithm in a hybrid structure combining feedforward and feedback configurations with correlation-based wind detection. The effectiveness of the method is demonstrated through simulation.

Optical compensation of flexible in-plane switching (IPS) mode liquid crystal display (LCD) using polycarbonate substrate with uniaxial optical anisotropy was achieved for wide viewing angle. We theoretically clarified that the slow axis of plastic substrate must be parallel to the absorption axis of polarizer and alignment direction of IPS mode LC. We successfully suppressed a light leakage in the dark state in a wide viewing angle range by fabricated device using uniaxial polycarbonate substrates. These results show that it is possible to realize a high quality flexible LCD using plastic substrates.

Novel multi-band mixers that can receive multiple band signals concurrently are proposed and evaluated. The mixers achieve independent gain control through novel relative power control method of the multiple local oscillator (LO) signals. Linear control is also achieved through multiple LO signal input with total LO power control. Theoretical analysis shows that odd-order nonlinearity components of the multiple LO signals support linear conversion gain control. Dual- and triple-band tests are conducted using typical three MOSFET mixers fabricated by a 0.25 µm SiGe BiCMOS process. Measurements confirm over 40 dB independent control of conversion gain, linear control achieved through LO input power control. The proposed mixers have high input linearity with a 5 dBm output third intercept point. A method is also proposed to reduce interference caused by mixing between multiple LO signals.

We demonstrated a novel technique to fabricate nanosized structures on a Nafion membrane, using thermal nanoimprinting with alinebreak $5 imes 5$,$mu $m$^{mathrm{2}}$ square pattern Si mold without any polymer damage. A 24,MPa thermal imprinting pressure was used for 10,min. We observed high aspect ratio ($sim$1:10) pillars on the surface after imprinting at 200$^{circ}$C. Finally, we used a novel quartz mold with a 200,nm resolution dot pattern.

This paper presents a comparative study of the number of pieces of optical transport equipment, network cost and power consumption depending on the transmission reach of the 400-Gb/s-based signal between flexible-bitrate networks using 100-Gb/s and 400-Gb/s signals and 100-Gb/s-based single-line-rate networks. In this study, we use three types of network topologies: a North American network topology, a European network topology and a Japan photonic network topology. As for the transmission reach of the 400-Gb/s-based signal, considering performance margins, different transmission reaches of the 400-Gb/s signal are assumed varying from 300km to 600km with 100-km increments. We show that the 100-Gb/s and 400-Gb/s-based flexible-bitrate networks are effective for cutting the total number of pieces of equipment and could be effective for reducing network cost and power consumption depending on the transmission reach of the 400-Gb/s signal in the case of a relatively small-scale network.

Excimer laser annealing at 308nm in UV and semiconductor blue laser-diode annealing at 445nm were performed and compared in term of the crystallization depending on electrical properties of Si films. As a result for the thin Si films of 50nm thickness, both lasers are very effective to enlarge the grain size and to activate electrically the dopant atoms in the CVD Si film. Smooth Si surface can be obtained using blue-laser annealing of scanned CW mode. By improving the film quality of amorphous Si deposited by sputtering for subsequent crystallization, both laser annealing techniques are effective for LTPS applications not only on conventional glass but also on flexible sheet. By conducting the latter advanced annealing technique, small grain size as well as large grains can be controlled. As blue laser is effective to crystallize even rather thicker Si films of 1µm, high performance thin-film photo-sensor or photo-voltaic applications are also expected.

We review our recent achievements in monolithic 3D-ICs and flexible electronics based on single-grain Si TFTs that are fabricated inside a single-grain with a low-temperature process. Based on pulsed-laser crystallization and submicron sized cavities made in the substrate, amorphous-Si precursor film was converted into poly-Si having grains that are formed on predetermined positions. Using the method called µ-Czochralski process and LPCVD a-Si precursor film, two layers of the SG Si TFT layers with the grains having a diameter of 6µm were vertically stacked with a maximum process temperature of 550°C. Mobility for electrons and holes were 600cm2/Vs and 200cm2/Vs, respectively. As a demonstration of monolithic 3D-ICs, the two SG-TFT layers were successfully implemented into CMOS inverter, 3D 6T-SRAM and single-grain lateral PIN photo-diode with in-pixel amplifier. The SG Si TFTs were applied to flexible electronics. In this case, the a-Si precursor was prepared by doctor-blade coating of liquid-Si based on pure cyclopentasilane (CPS) on a polyimide (PI) substrate with maximum process temperature of 350°C. The µ-Czochralski process provided location-controlled Si grains with a diameter of 3µm and mobilities of 460 and 121cm2/Vs for electrons and holes, respectively, were obtained. The devices on PI were transferred to a plastic foil which can operate with a bending diameter of 6mm. Those results indicate that the SG TFTs are attractive for their use in both monolithic 3D-ICs and flexible electronics.

A self-powered urinary-incontinence sensor with a flexible wire-type urine-activated battery has been developed as an application for wireless biosensor networks. It is disposable and can be embedded in a diaper. The battery consists of two long film-type line electrodes printed on a flexible plastic sheet that abuts the absorbent material of the diaper. It conforms to the shape of the diaper when the diaper is worn. The stress produced by the curvature of the diaper presses the electrodes firmly against the diaper material, providing greater contact with any urine present. Thus, the battery generates more power than when it is flat, as in an unworn diaper. To verify the effectiveness of the battery, we fabricated a battery and a prototype sensor, which consists of an intermittent-power-supply circuit and a wireless transmitter, and embedded the battery in a diaper. The anode of the battery also acts as a wide ground plane for the antenna of the wireless transmitter, which radiates a large amount of power. When 80cc of urine is poured onto the diaper, the battery outputs a voltage of around 1V, which allows the sensor to transmit an ID signal over a distance of 5m every 40 seconds or so.

In the recently developed Flexible Wireless System (FWS), the same platform needs to deal with different wireless systems. This increases nonlinear distortion in its wideband power amplifier (PA) because the PA needs to concurrently amplify multi-band signals. By taking higher harmonics as well as inter- and cross-modulation distortion into consideration, we have developed a method to analytically evaluate the adjacent channel leakage power ratio (ACPR) and error vector magnitude (EVM) on the basis of the PA's nonlinear characteristics. We devise a novel method for modeling the PA amplifying dual-band signals. The method makes it possible to model it merely by performing a one-tone test, making use of the Volterra series expansion and the general Wiener model. We then use the Mehler formula to derive the closed-form expressions of the PA's output power spectral density (PSD), ACPR, and EVM. The derivations are based on the assumption that the transmitted signals are complex Gaussian distributed in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission systems. We validate the method by comparing measurement and simulation results and confirm it can appropriately predict the ACPR and EVM performance of the nonlinear PA output with OFDM inputs. In short, the method enables correct modeling of a wideband PA that amplifies dual-band signals merely by conducting a one-tone test.

We have fabricated printed active antenna for flexible information tag which have a loop antenna combined with step-edge vertical channel organic field-effect transistor (SVC-OFET). Fabrication using printing process, characterization of SVC-OFETs, and performances of active antenna elements are discussed in detail.

Turbo codes and LDPC (Low-Density Parity-Check) codes are two of the most powerful error correction codes that can approach Shannon limit in many communication systems. But there are little architecture presented to support both LDPC and Turbo codes, especially by the means of ASIC. This paper have implemented a common architecture that can decode LDPC and Turbo codes, and it is capable of supporting the WiMAX, WiFi, 3GPP-LTE standard on the same hardware. In this paper, we will carefully describe how to share memory and logic devices in different operation mode. The chip is design in a 130 nm CMOS technology, and the maximum clock frequency can reach up to 160 MHz. The maximum throughput is about 104 Mbps@5.5 iteration for Turbo codes and 136 Mbps@10iteration for LDPC codes. Comparing to other existing structure, the design speed, area have significant advantage.

In this paper, we propose a novel texture analysis method capable of estimating multiple primitives, which are elements repetitively arranged to compose a texture, in multi-structured textures. The approach is based on a texture description model that uses mathematical morphology, called the “Primitive, Grain, and Point Configuration (PGPC)” texture model. The estimation of primitives based on the PGPC texture model involves searching the optimal structuring element for primitives according to a size distribution function and a magnification. The proposed method achieves the following two improvements: (1) the simultaneous estimation of a multiple number of primitives in multi-structured textures with a ranking of primitives on the basis of their significance. and (2) the introduction of flexibility in the process of magnification to obtain a higher degree of fitness of large grains. With a computational combination of different primitives, the method provides an ordered priority to denote the significance of elements. The promising performance of the proposed method is experimentally shown by a comparison with conventional methods.

This paper proposes a comb filter design method which utilizes two linear phase FIR filters for flexibly adjusting the comb filter's frequency response. The first FIR filter is used to individually adjust the notch gains, which denote the local minimum gains of the comb filter's frequency response. The second FIR filter is used to design the elimination bandwidths for individual notch gains. We also derive an efficient comb filter by incorporating these two FIR filters with an all-pass filter which is used in a conventional comb filter to accurately align the nulls with the undesired harmonic frequencies. Several design examples of the derived comb filter show the effectiveness of the proposed comb filter design method.

In this paper, a 60 nm-thick ferroelectric film of poly(vinylidene fluoride–trifluoroethylene) on a flexible substrate of aluminum foil was fabricated and characterized. Compared to pristine silicon wafer, Al-foil has very large root-mean-square (RMS) roughness, thus presenting challenges for the fabrication of flat and uniform electronic devices on such a rough substrate. In particular, RMS roughness affects the leakage current of dielectrics, the uniformity of devices, and the switching time in ferroelectrics. To avoid these kinds of problems, a new thin film fabrication method adopting a detach-and-transfer technique has been developed. Here, 'detach' means that the ferroelectric film is detached from a flat substrate (sacrificial substrate), and 'transfer' refers to the process of the detached film being moved onto the rough substrate (main substrate). To characterize the dielectric property of the transferred film, polarization and voltage relationships were measured, and the results showed that a hysteresis loop could be obtained with low leakage current.

We previously proposed a unified wireless system called “Flexible Wireless System”. Comprising of flexible access points and a flexible signal processing unit, it collectively receives a wideband spectrum that includes multiple signals from various wireless systems. In cases of simultaneous multiple signal reception, however, reception performance degrades due to the interference among multiple signals. To address this problem, we propose a new signal separation and reconstruction method for spectrally overlapped signals. The method analyzes spectral information obtained by the short-time Fourier transform to extract amplitude and phase values at each center frequency of overlapped signals at a flexible signal processing unit. Using these values enables signals from received radio wave data to be separated and reconstructed for simultaneous multi-system reception. In this paper, the BER performance of the proposed method is evaluated using computer simulations. Also, the performance of the interference suppression is evaluated by analyzing the probability density distribution of the amplitude of the overlapped interference on a symbol of the received signal. Simulation results confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Current density-voltage (J-V) and capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics of P3HT/n--silicon heterojunction diodes were investigated to clarify the carrier conduction mechanism at the organic/inorganic heterojunction. The J-V characteristics of the P3HT/n--Si junctions can be explained by a Schottky diode model with an interfacial layer. Diode parameters such as Schottky barrier height and ideality factor were estimated to be 0.78 eV and 3.2, respectively. The C-V analysis suggests that the depletion layer appears in the n--Si layer with a thickness of 1.2 µm from the junction with zero bias and the diffusion potential was estimated at 0.40 eV at the open-circuit condition. The present heterojunction allows a photovoltaic operation with power conversion efficiencies up to 0.38% with a simulated solar light exposure of 100 mW/cm2. The forward bias current was enhanced by coating the Si surface with a SiC layer, where the ideality factor was improved to be the level of 1.451.50.

In this study, we demonstrate an acceleration of flexible generalized minimal residual algorithm (FGMRES) implemented with the method of moments and the fast multipole method (FMM), based on a combined tangential formulation. For the implementation of the FGMRES incorporated with the FMM concept, we propose a new definition of the truncation number for the FMM operator within the inner solver. The proposed truncation number provides an optimal variable preconditioner by controlling the accuracy and computational cost of the inner iteration. Moreover, to further accelerate the convergence, we introduce the concept of a multistage preconditioner. Numerical experiments reveal that our new version of FGMRES, based on the proposed truncation number for the inner solver and the multistage preconditioner, achieves outstanding acceleration of the convergence for large-scale and practical electromagnetic scattering and radiation problems with several levels of geometrical complexity.

In this letter, we propose a new construction of quaternary low correlation zone (LCZ) sequence set using binary LCZ sequence sets and an inverse Gray mapping. The new construction method provides optimal quaternary LCZ sequence sets even if the employed binary LCZ sequence set is suboptimal. The optimality is improved at the price of alphabet extension.