This paper proposes a frequency diversity scheme using only even-numbered samples for single-carrier transmission with frequency-domain equalization (SC-FDE). In the proposed scheme, a periodical frequency spectrum generated by using only even-numbered samples in the time domain provides the frequency redundancy, which is utilized for frequency diversity. Moreover, in order to avoid the data rate reduction due to the decrease in the samples within one block, the high-level modulation is applied to each sample and the transmitting power of each sample can be doubled for the equivalent power transmission instead. Computer simulation results show that the proposed scheme provides a steeper BER curve than the typical SC-FDE over frequency selective fading channels, while the typical SC-FDE is more favorable than the proposed scheme over flat fading channels. Moreover, the proposed scheme still retains its characteristic even when channel estimation and channel coding are additionally taken into account.

A carrier frequency synchronization scheme is proposed for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems in the presence of phase noise (PHN). In the proposed scheme, carrier frequency synchronization is performed based on the maximum-likelihood (ML) algorithm using an OFDM preamble symbol. The proposed scheme is compared with conventional methods. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in the presence of PHN.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been adopted in the physical layer of WLAN systems such as IEEE802.11a. In this letter, an efficient preamble structure is proposed to improve the frequency synchronization performance of OFDM-based WLAN systems. The novel preamble effectively multiplexes two different symbols, and the frequency-offset estimation can efficiently utilize the preamble for better estimation performance. Simulation results indicate that using the proposed preamble structure, the frequency synchronization performance can significantly be improved in OFDM-based WLAN systems.

As a review of the InP HEMT technology and its applications to logic ICs, the two-step-recess gate structure, which is now widely used in high-performance InP HEMTs, and its application to optoelectronic ICs are described. This paper also covers the topic of the gate delay analysis that reveals that the parasitic delay becomes the primary cause of the gate delay in sub-100-nm gate regime. For future challenge for logic applications, ways to reduce the off-state transistor current is also discussed.

This paper proposes a simple and feasible decision-feedback channel tracking scheme for multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) systems designed for wireless local area networks (LANs). In the proposed scheme, the channel state matrix for each subcarrier is tentatively estimated from a replica matrix of the transmitted signals. The estimated channel matrices, each derived at a different timing, are combined, and the previously estimated channel matrices are replaced with the latest ones. Unlike conventional channel tracking schemes based on a Kalman filter, the proposed scheme needs no statistical information about a MIMO channel, which makes the receiver structure quite simple. The packet error rate (PER) performances for the proposed scheme are evaluated on computer simulations. When there are three transmit and receive antennas, the subcarrier modulation scheme is 64 QAM, and the coding rate is 3/4, the proposed scheme keeps the SNR degradation at PER of 1e-2 less than 0.1 dB when the velocity of receiver is 3 km/h in an indoor office environment at 5 GHz band. In addition, compared to the conventional channel tracking scheme based on known pilot symbols, the proposed scheme improves throughput performance by 13.8% because it does not need pilot symbols. These results demonstrate that the proposed channel tracking scheme is simple and feasible for implementation in MIMO-OFDM systems based on wireless LANs.

As the channel frequency selectivity becomes severer, the bit error rate (BER) performance of direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) signal transmission with rake combining degrades due to an increasing inter-path interference (IPI). Frequency-domain equalization (FDE) can replace rake combining with much improved BER performance in a severe frequency-selective fading channel. For FDE, accurate estimation of the channel transfer function is required. In this paper, we propose an iterative channel estimation that uses pilot chips which are time-multiplexed within each chip block for fast Fourier transform (FFT). The pilot acts as a cyclic-prefix of FFT block as well. The achievable BER performance is evaluated by computer simulation. It is shown that the proposed channel estimation has a very good tracking ability against fast fading.

A nonlinear harmonic estimator (NHE) is proposed for extracting a harmonic signal and its fundamental frequency in the presence of white noise. This estimator is derived by applying an extended complex Kalman filter (ECKF) to a multiple sinusoidal model with state-representation and then efficiently specializing it for the case of harmonic estimation. The effectiveness of the NHE is verified using computer simulations.

It is well-known that, in DS-CDMA downlink signal transmission, frequency-domain equalization (FDE) based on minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion can replace rake combining to achieve much improved bit error rate (BER) performance in severe frequency-selective fading channel. However, in uplink signal transmission, as each user's signal goes through a different channel, a severe multi-user interference (MUI) is produced and the uplink BER performance severely degrades compared to the downlink. When a small spreading factor is used, the uplink BER performance further degrades due to inter-chip interference (ICI). In this paper, we propose a frequency-domain multi-stage soft interference cancellation scheme for the DS-CDMA uplink and the achievable BER performance is evaluated by computer simulation. The BER performance comparison of the proposed cancellation technique and the multi-user detection (MUD) is also presented.

In this paper, a weighted element-wise block adaptive frequency-domain equalization (WEB-FDE) is proposed for a single-carrier system with the cyclic-prefix. In the WEB-FDE, the one-tap equalizer corresponding to a frequency-bin first preserves input DFT elements (element-wise block). Its coefficient in each block is then calculated by minimizing a weighted squared norm of the a posteriori error. Simulation results in a time-varying typical urban (TU) channel show that the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of the WEB-FDE outperform that of the normalized least-mean-square (NLMS)-FDE and recursive-least-square (RLS)-FDE.

A method for shortening of the settling time in all digital phase-locked loops is proposed. The method utilizes self monitoring to obtain the parameters necessary for feed-forward compensation. Analysis shows that by employing this technique both fast settling and good stability can be achieved simultaneously. Matlab and Verilog-AMS simulation shows that typical settling speed can be reduced to less than one tenth compared to a system without the feed-forward compensation, by merely employing the feed-forward compensation system. Further more a design example shows that this settling time can be decreased further to less than one fifteenth through design considerations when compared to a speed optimized phase-locked loop design system without direct reference feed-forward compensation.

In multi-input multi-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) systems, phase tracking schemes suffer from co-channel interference (CCI) and inter-carrier interference (ICI) caused by residual frequency offset. In this paper, we propose a residual frequency offset compensation scheme using feedback phase tracking to eliminate the effect of both ICI and CCI for MIMO-OFDM systems. The proposed phase tracking scheme estimates the amount of residual frequency offset in the frequency domain, and compensates for it in the time domain, periodically. Thus, the effect of ICI can be reduced. Furthermore, we consider two methods of channel estimation that enable the system to estimate the channel response several times within a packet to eliminate the effect of CCI. This is because the channel is generally estimated at the beginning of a packet, and this estimation is affected by residual frequency offset. First is the method that employs midambles. Second is the one that reuses the preamble. When the channel is estimated several times within a packet, the effect of CCI can be reduced. Simulation results show the proposed scheme can compensate for residual frequency offset and CCI more accurately than the conventional scheme, and improve the packet error rate (PER) performance.

In this letter, the effects of transmit beamforming on downlink performance in DS-CDMA communication systems are examined. We present a simple-to-use expression for the conditional instantaneous SINR after Rake combining. Assuming BPSK modulation, the performance of average bit error rate is evaluated. We compare the average BER performance obtained by different beamforming methods under frequency selective multipath fading channels.

MC-CDMA is an attractive multi-access method for the next generation high-speed mobile communication systems. The uplink transmission performance is limited by the multi-access interference (MAI) from other users since all users share the same bandwidth. Adaptive antenna array can be used to suppress the MAI and to improve the uplink transmission performance. In this paper, we propose a frequency-domain adaptive antenna array for multi-code MC-CDMA. The proposed frequency-domain adaptive antenna array uses a simple normalized LMS (NLMS) algorithm. Although the NLMS algorithm is used, very fast weight convergence within one MC-CDMA symbol duration is achieved since the weight updating is possible as many times as the number of subcarriers within one MC-CDMA symbol duration.

We have developed a new simulation methodology for predicting shot noise intensity in Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MOSFET). In our approach, shot noise in MOSFETs is calculated by employing a two dimensional device simulator in conjunction with the shot noise model of a p-n junction. The accuracy of the noise model has been demonstrated by comparing simulation results with measured noise data of p-n diodes. The intensity of shot noise in various n-MOSFET devices under various bias conditions was estimated beyond GHz operational frequency by using our simulation scheme. At DC or low-frequency region, sub-threshold current dominates the intensity of shot noise. Therefore, shot noise is independent on frequency in this region, and its intensity is exponentially depends on VG, proportional to L-1, and almost independent on VD. At high-frequency region above GHz frequency, on the other hand, shot noise intensity depends on frequency and is much larger than that of low-frequency region. In particular, the intensity of the RF shot noise is almost independent on L, VD and VG. This suggests that high-frequency shot noise intensity of MOSFETs is decided only by the conditions of source-bulk junction.

A method to detect open node defects that cannot be detected by the conventional IDDQ test method has previously been proposed employing a sinusoidal wave superposed on the DC supply voltage. The present paper proposes a strategy to improve the detectability of the test method by means of frequency analysis of the supply current. In this strategy, defects are detected by determining whether secondary harmonics of the sinusoidal wave exist in the supply current. The effectiveness of the method is confirmed by experiments on two CMOS NAND gate packages (SSIs).

We develop a maximum likelihood estimation scheme for correcting the carrier frequency offsets prior to the general intercarrier interference (ICI) self-cancellation in the OFDM systems. Since the same data symbols employed for ICI self-cancellation are also used for frequency offset estimation, the proposed scheme does not consume additional bandwidth. The combined use of the estimation algorithm and ICI self-cancellation scheme provides both frequency offset compensation and ICI reduction hence improves the system performance greatly. The effectiveness of the proposed estimation-cancellation scheme is further verified by calculating the bit error rates of various OFDM receivers, and substantial improvements are found.

Time-frequency-selective, equivalently time-variant multipath, fading channels in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems introduce intercarrier interference (ICI), resulting in severe performance degradation. To suppress the effect of ICI, several symbol detection methods have been proposed, all of which are based on the observation that most of the ICI's power is distributed near the desired subcarrier. However, these methods usually ignore the channel variation in a OFDM symbol block by fixing the number of considered ICI terms. Therefore, we propose a novel frequency-domain symbol detection method with moderate complexity, which adaptively determines the number of ICI terms within each OFDM symbol block.

Nowadays, MIMO systems are playing an important role in wireless communications. In this paper, we propose a spatial-temporal adaptive MIMO beamforming scheme for single carrier transmission in frequency-selective fading channels with the assumption of perfect channel state information (CSI) at both the transmitter and receiver. The transmit and receive weight vectors for detecting the preceding signal and the receive weight vectors for detecting the delayed signals of the preceding signal are designed by an iterative update algorithm. Based on minimum mean square error (MMSE) method, the delayed versions of the preceding signal are exploited to maximize the output signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR) instead of suppressing them at the receiver. The improvement of output SINR is useful for MIMO systems to enhance the high-quality communication in broadband wireless systems.

Recently, we proposed space-time block coded-joint transmit/receive antenna diversity (STBC-JTRD) for narrow band transmission in a frequency-nonselective fading channel; it allows an arbitrary number of transmit antennas while limiting the number of receive antennas to 4. In this paper, we extend STBC-JTRD to the case of frequency-selective fading channels and propose frequency-domain STBC-JTRD for broadband direct sequence-spread spectrum (DSSS) signal transmission. A conditional bit error rate (BER) analysis is presented. The average BER performance in a frequency-selective Rayleigh fading is evaluated by Monte-Carlo numerical computation method using the derived conditional BER and is confirmed by computer simulation of the signal transmission. Performance comparison between frequency-domain STBC-JTRD transmission and joint space-time transmit diversity (STTD) and frequency-domain equalization (FDE) reception is also presented.

A novel high-speed and low-voltage CMOS level shifter circuit is proposed. The proposed circuit is suitable for block-level dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) environment or multiple-clock and multiple-power-domain logic blocks. In order to achieve high performance in a chip consisting of logic blocks having different VDD voltages, the proposed circuit uses the circuit techniques to reduce the capacitive loading of input signals and to minimize the contention between pull-up and pull-down transistors through positive feedback loop. The techniques improve the slew rate of output signals, so that the level transient delay and duty distortions can be reduced. The proposed level up/down shifters are designed to operate over a wide range of voltage and frequency and verified with Berkeley's 65 nm CMOS model parameters, which can cover a voltage range from 0.6 to 1.6 V and at least frequency range up to 1000 MHz within 3% duty errors. Through simulation with Berkeley's 65 nm CMOS model parameters, the level shifter circuits can solve the duty distortion preventing them from high speed operation within the duty ratio error of 3% at 1 GHz. For verification through performance comparison with reported level shifts, the simulations are carried out with 0.35 µm CMOS technology, 0.13 µm IBM CMOS technology and Berkeley's 65 nm CMOS model parameters. The compared results show that delay time and duty ratio distortion are improved about 68% and 75%, respectively.