Japan encounters an urgent issue of “Carbon Neutrality” as a member of the international world and is required to make the action plans to accomplish this issue, i.e., the zero emission of CO2 by 2050. Our world must change the industries to adapt to the electrification based on the renewable powers. Microwave chemistry is a candidate of electrification of industries for the carbon neutrality on the conditions of usage of renewable energy power generation. This invited paper shows an example of “Microwave Pidgeon process” for smelting magnesium in which heating with burning fossil coals can be replaced with microwave energy for discussing how microwave technology should be developed for that purpose from both the academic and industrial sides.

GaN solid state power amplifiers (SSPA) for wireless power transfer and microwave heating have been reviewed. For wireless power transfer, 9 W output power with 79% power added efficiency at 5.8 GHz has been achieved. For microwave heating, 450 W output power with 70% drain efficiency at 2.45 GHz has been achieved. Microwave power concentration and uniform microwave heating by phase control of multiple SSPAs are demonstrated.

We propose microwave heating via electromagnetic coupling using zeroth-order resonators (ZORs) to extend the uniform heating area. ZORs can generate resonant modes with a wavenumber of 0, which corresponds to an infinite guide wavelength. Under this condition, uniform heating is expected because the resulting standing waves would not have nodes or antinodes. In the design proposed in this paper, two ZORs fabricated on dielectric substrates are arranged to face each other for electromagnetic coupling, and a sample placed between the resonators is heated. A single ZOR was investigated using a 3D electromagnetic simulator, and the resonant frequency and electric field distribution of the simulated ZOR were confirmed to be in good agreement with those of the fabricated ZOR. Simulations of two ZORs facing each other were then conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed system as a heating apparatus. It was found that a resonator spacing of 25 mm was suitable for uniform heating. Heating simulations of SiC and Al2O3 sheets were performed with the obtained structure. The heating uniformity was evaluated by the width L50% over which the power loss distribution exceeds half the maximum value. This evaluation index was equal to 0.397λ0 for SiC and 0.409λ0 for Al2O3, both of which exceed λ0/4, the distance between a neighboring node and antinode of a standing wave, where λ0 is the free-space wavelength. Therefore, the proposed heating apparatus is effective for uniform microwave heating. Because of the different electrical parameters of the heated materials, SiC can be easily heated, whereas Al2O3 heats little. Finally, heating experiments were performed on each of these materials. Good uniformity in temperature was obtained for both SiC and Al2O3 sheets.

This letter presents a new framework for synchronous remote online exams. This framework proposes new monitoring of notebooks in remote locations and limited messaging only enabled between students and their instructor during online exams. This framework was evaluated by students as highly effective in minimizing cheating during online exams.

Recently, intelligent heating, next generation microwave ovens that achieve uniform heating and spot heating using solid-state devices, has been actively studied. There are two types of microwave generators using solid-state devices. Since compactness is indispensable to accommodate in a limited space, the miniaturized oscillator type was selected. The authors proposed an imbalanced coupling resonator, a resonator-less feedback circuit, a high power frequency variable resonator, and injection-locked phase control in order to achieve high performance of the oscillator type microwave generator. In addition, we confirmed that the oscillator type can be used as the microwave generator for intelligent heating using a Wilkinson combiner. As a result, it was demonstrated that the oscillator type microwave generator, realized the same high efficiency (67%) as the amplifier type, and found the possibility of variable frequency (2.4 to 2.5GHz) and variable phase, and can be used as the microwave generator for intelligent heating.

Recently, GaN devices are often adopted in microwave power amplifiers to improve the performances. And many new design methods of microwave power amplifier were proposed. As a result, a high-efficiency and super compact microwave signal source has become easily available. It opens up the way for new microwave heating systems. In this paper, the recent progress on design methods of microwave power amplifier and the applications for microwave heating are described. In the first, a device model of GaN transistor is explained. An equivalent thermal model is introduced into the electrical non-linear equivalent device model. In the second, an active load-pull (ALP) measurement system to design a high-efficiency power amplifier is explained. The principle of the conventional closed-loop ALP system is explained. To avoid the risk of oscillation for the closed-loop ALP system, novel ALP systems are proposed. In the third, a microwave heating system is explained. The heating system monitors the reflection wave. Then, the frequency of the signal source and the phase difference between antennas are controlled to minimize the reflection wave. Absorption efficiency of more than 90% was obtained by the control of frequency and phase. In the last part, applications for a medical instrument is described.

A planar electromagnetic field stirrer with periodically arranged metal patterns and diode switches is proposed for improving uneven heating of a heated object placed in a microwave oven. The reflection phase of the proposed stirrer changes by switching the states of diodes mounted on the stirrer and the electromagnetic field in the microwave oven is stirred. The temperature distribution of a heated object located in a microwave oven was simulated and measured using the stirrer in order to evaluate the improving effect of the uneven heating. As the result, the heated parts of the objects were changed with the diode states and the improving effect of the uneven heating was experimentally indicated.

Excitation of Extremely Low Frequency (ELF)/Very Low Frequency (VLF) from ionosphere,which is artificial modulated by High Frequency (HF) waves can provide a way of antenna generation for deep submarine communication. In this paper, based on plasma energy conservation equation, the theoretical model of amplitude modulation HF pump heating low ionosphere for ELF/VLF generation is established. The linear frequency modulation technique of up-chirp and down-chirp have good self-correlation and cross-correlation, by which information can be transmitted by up-chirp and down-chirp. Thus, the linear frequency modulation technique can be applied to the ionosphere ELF/VLF communication. Based on this, a Chirp-BOK (Binary Orthogonal Keying) communication scheme is proposed. Indeed the Chirp-BOK amplitude and power modulation function are designed by combining the linear frequency modulation technique with the square wave amplitude modulation technique. The simulation results show in the condition that the ionosphere is heated by the Chirp-BOK power modulation HF waves, the temperature of ionospheric electronic and the variations of conductivity have obvious frequency modulation characteristics which are the same as that of power modulation, so does the variation of ionospheric current. Thus, when the ionosphere is heated by Chirp-BOK power modulation HF waves, the up-chirp (symbol ‘0’) and down-chirp (symbol ‘1’) ELF/VLF signals can be generated.

In this paper, we treat (k, L, n) ramp secret sharing schemes (SSSs) that can detect impersonation attacks and/or substitution attacks. First, we derive lower bounds on the sizes of the shares and random number used in encoding for given correlation levels, which are measured by the mutual information of shares. We also derive lower bounds on the success probabilities of attacks for given correlation levels and given sizes of shares. Next we propose a strong (k, L, n) ramp SSS against substitution attacks. As far as we know, the proposed scheme is the first strong (k, L, n) ramp SSSs that can detect substitution attacks of at most k-1 shares. Our scheme can be applied to a secret SL uniformly distributed over GF(pm)L, where p is a prime number with p≥L+2. We show that for a certain type of correlation levels, the proposed scheme can achieve the lower bounds on the sizes of the shares and random number, and can reduce the success probability of substitution attacks within nearly L times the lower bound when the number of forged shares is less than k. We also evaluate the success probability of impersonation attack for our schemes. In addition, we give some examples of insecure ramp SSSs to clarify why each component of our scheme is essential to realize the required security.

A continuous flow reactor equipped with a low-loss flow channel and a microwave cavity was developed for synthesizing nanophosphors. A continuous solution synthesis of YVO4:Eu,Bi nanophosphor was succeeded through the rapid hydrothermal method using this equipment. Internal quantum efficiency of YVO4:Eu,Bi nanophosphor obtained by 20 minutes microwave heating is about 30% at 320 nm as high as that obtained by 6 hours hydrothermal treatment in autoclave.

Microwave heating is expected to increase the yield of product, to decrease the reaction time, and to discover the new reaction system. The Rolling Circle Amplification (RCA) is an enzymatic synthesis method of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) strands with repeated sequence of a circulate template-DNA. In previous study, controlled microwave heating accelerated the maximum 4-fold compared with the conventional condition. Further, we indicated that the selectively heat of some buffer components by microwave irradiation induced the acceleration of RCA. The purpose of this research is to clarify the relationship between the microwave heating and buffer components. The understanding of role of ion-containing buffer components under microwave will be able to control the microwave-assisted enzymatic reaction. We studied the relation between the microwave power loss and RCA components via dielectric measurements, cavity resonator feature measurement, and electromagnetic simulation. Electromagnetic simulation of the TM010 cavity showed that the sample tube was heated only by an electric field. The buffer containing ions of the RCA components was selectively heated via microwave irradiation in the TM010 cavity resonator.

In this paper, the integration of dynamic plant-wide optimization and distributed generalized predictive control (DGPC) is presented for serially connected processes. On the top layer, chance-constrained programming (CCP) is employed in the plant-wide optimization with economic and model uncertainties, in which the constraints containing stochastic parameters are guaranteed to be satisfied at a high level of probability. The deterministic equivalents are derived for linear and nonlinear individual chance constraints, and an algorithm is developed to search for the solution to the joint probability constrained problem. On the lower layer, the distributed GPC method based on neighborhood optimization with one-step delay communication is developed for on-line control of the whole system. Simulation studies for furnace temperature set-points optimization problem of the walking-beam-type reheating furnace are illustrated to verify the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed scheme.

A simple, low reflection, and highly-efficient pilot-plant scale microwave irradiation reactor for woody biomass pretreatment was fabricated. Pretreatment is an essential process for effective bioethanol production. The fabricated reactor consists of 8 microwave irradiators which are attached to a metal pipe. The woody biomass mixture which contains water and organic acid flows through the metal pipe and is heated by microwaves at a total power of 12,kW. To design the microwave irradiators, we used a 3D Finite Element Method (FEM) simulator, which was based on the measured complex permittivity data of the woody biomass mixture. The simulation results showed that the reflection coefficient $|S_{11}|$ from the reactor was less than -30,dB when the woody biomass mixture temperature was between 30$^{circ}$C and 90$^{circ}$C. Finally, we experimentally confirmed that the fabricated irradiation reactor yielded a microwave absorption efficiency of 79%.

The equivalent circuit of aperture-coupled cavities filled with a lossy dielectric is considered by means of an eigenmode expansion technique founded on the segmentation concept. It is different from a series LCR resonant circuit, and the resistor which symbolizes the dielectric loss is connected to the capacitor in parallel. If the cavities are formed by a short-circuited oversize waveguide, then the input admittance can be represented by the product of a coupling factor to the connected waveguide port and the equivalent admittance of the short-circuited waveguide. The transmission line model is effective even if lossy wall effect and dielectric partially-loading effect are considered. As a result, three-dimensional eigenmode parameters, such as the resonant frequency and the Q-factor, become dispensable and the computational complexity for the cavity simulation in the field of microwave heating is dramatically reduced.

In secret sharing scheme, Tompa and Woll considered a problem of cheaters who try to make another participant reconstruct an invalid secret. Later, some models of such cheating were formalized and lower bounds of the size of shares were shown in the situation of fixing the minimum successful cheating probability. Under the assumption that cheaters do not know the distributed secret, no efficient scheme is known which can distribute bit strings. In this paper, we propose an efficient scheme for distributing bit strings with an arbitrary access structure. When distributing a random bit string with threshold access structures, the bit length of shares in the proposed scheme is only a few bits longer than the lower bound.

Hyperthermia is one of the modalities for cancer treatment, utilizing the difference of thermal sensitivity between tumor and normal tissue. Interstitial microwave hyperthermia is one of the heating schemes and it is applied to a localized tumor. In the treatments, heating pattern control around antennas are important, especially for the treatment in and around critical organs. This paper introduces a coaxial-dipole antenna, which is one of the thin microwave antennas and can generate a controllable heating pattern. Moreover, generations of an arbitrary shape heating patterns by an array applicator composed of four coaxial-dipole antennas are described.

We investigate in detail the scattering properties and heating characteristics in various commercially available optical fibers and fiber cables when a bubble train forms in the middle of the fiber as a result of the fiber fuse phenomenon that occurs when a high power signal is launched into the fiber. We found theoretically and experimentally that almost all the optical light is scattered at the top of the bubble train. The scattered light heats UV coated fiber, nylon jacketed silica fiber, fire-retardant jacketed fiber (PVC or FRPE jacketed fiber) and fire-retardant fiber cable (PVC or FRPE fiber cable), to around 100, over 200 and over 600, respectively, and finally the fiber burns and is destroyed at a launched optical power of 3 W. Furthermore, it is confirmed that the combustion does not spread when we use fire retardant jacketed fibers.

In (k,n) threshold scheme, Tompa and Woll considered a problem of cheaters who try to make another participant reconstruct an invalid secret. Later, some models of such cheating were formalized and lower bounds of the size of share were shown in the situation of fixing the maximum successful cheating probability to ε. Some efficient schemes in which size of share is equal to the lower bound were also proposed. Let |S| be the field size of the secret. Under the assumption that cheaters do not know the distributed secret, these sizes of share of previous schemes which can work for ε > 1/|S| are somewhat larger than the bound. In this paper, we show the bound for this case is really tight by constructing a new scheme. When distributing uniform secret, the bit length of share in the proposed scheme is only 1 bit longer than the known bound. Further, we show a tighter bound of the size of share in case of ε < 1/|S|.

An inter-modulation distortion (IMD) compensation method for thermal memory effect using a multistage RC-ladder circuit has been proposed. The IMD caused by the thermal memory effect on an InGaP/GaAs HBT amplifier was compensated for by inserting a multistage RC-ladder circuit in the base bias circuit of the amplifier. Since heat flux owing to self-heating in the transistor can be approximated with a multistage thermal RC-ladder circuit, the canceling of IMD by an additional electrical memory effect generated from the RC-ladder circuit is predicted. The memory effects cause asymmetrical characteristics between upper and lower IMD. The IMD caused by the memory effects is expressed as a vector sum of each origin. By adjusting an electrical reactance characteristic for sub-harmonics affected by the thermal memory effect in the amplifier circuit, the asymmetric characteristic is symmetrized. The parameters of the RC-ladder circuit were estimated so that the adjusted electrical reactance characteristic is reproduced in simulation. A fabricated InGaP/GaAs HBT amplifier with the thermal memory effect compensation circuit exhibited a symmetrized and suppressed IMD characteristics.

This paper investigates whether the self-heating effect in short intra-block wires will become apparent with technology scaling. These wires seem to have good thermal radiation characteristics, but we validate that the self-heating effect in local signal wires will be greater than that in optimal repeater-inserted global wires. Our numerical experiment shows that the maximum temperature increase from the silicon junction temperature will reach 40.4 in a steady state at a 14-nm process. Our attribution analysis also demonstrates that miniaturizing the area of wire cross-section exacerbates self-heating as well as using low-κ material and increased power dissipation in advanced technologies below 28 nm. It is revealed that the impact of self-heating on performance in local wires is limited, while underestimating the temperature may cause an unexpected reliability failure.