Novel microstrip lowpass filters are developed with reduced size and significantly improved stopband characteristics. After introducing quarter-wavelength open stubs, we get one or two transmission zeros in the stopband. By folding the high impedance microstrip lines, we reduce the size of the filter. Three-pole and five-pole lowpass filters are designed, and their measured frequency responses agree well with theoretical predictions.

The purpose of this study is to provide a new approach for detection using bio-impedance. This impedance is measured by the four-electrode method. As the impedance changes resulting from ankle, knee, and hip movements depended heavily on electrode placement, we determined the optimal electrode configurations for those movements by searching for high correlation coefficients, large impedance changes, and minimum interferences in ten subjects (Age: 204). Our optimal electrode configurations showed very strong relationships between the ankle joint angle and ankle impedance (γ = -0.9130.03), between the knee joint angle and knee impedance (γ = 0.9440.02), and between the hip joint angle and hip impedance (γ = 0.8230.08). This study showed the possibility that lower leg movement could be easily measured by impedance measurement system with two pairs of skin-electrodes.

Chemical sensor which can be used for a multi-purpose chemical measurement to detect various chemical substances with a small number of a sensor array was investigated. It was confirmed that chemical compounds adsorbed strongly and irreversibly on a platinum surface using conventional electrochemical methods and an instrumental surface analysis. The adsorbates were also analyzed by means of an electrochemical impedance spectroscopy under dynamic potential scan; measured impedance reflects CPE (constant phase element) properties of the electrode surface. The method provides a convenient technique for the surface analysis of adsorbing chemicals. The CPE response profile was modified through chemical adsorption/desorption and the interaction between the polarized surface and chemical substances. Consequently, various profiles depending on chemical substances were obtained and it had quantitative and qualitative information about chemicals interacting with the surface. The present method which does not require a specific electrochemical reaction can be applied for multi-purpose chemical sensors and also simple chemical analyses.

In this paper a new method for the determination of the double layer capacitance and the internal inductance of a cell or battery is described. The resonance frequency of the double layer capacity with the internal inductance is determined by means of a phase measurement. The method can be used during operation of the battery. During a constant current discharge it is possible to predict the available discharge time from the resonance frequency at the start of the discharge and the actual resonance frequency. The method is tested with success on lead-acid batteries (VRLA, Plante) and nickel-cadmium batteries and it shows that the active surface is proportional to the state-of-charge (SOC). For primary zinc-MnO2 cells the measured electrical capacitance is not simply related to SOC.

We have developed a quick battery checker the Li-ion battery packs used in mobile phones. It checks for capacity deterioration by using an impedance-measuring method. Our previous measurements of the capacity and impedance at 1 kHz for various battery packs proved conclusively that there is a strong correlation between degraded capacity and impedance. The battery checker's design took into account the results we obtained from measuring impedances. We showed that the battery checker is highly accurate and fast.

This article presents the CMOS transimpedance amplifier (TIA) for gigabits optical communication, where an analytical method for designing a wideband TIA using different inductive peaking technology is introduced. In this study, we derive and analyze the transfer function (Vout/Iin) of the TIA circuit from the equivalent circuit model. By adding the peaking inductor in different locations, the TIA 3-dB bandwidth can be enhanced without sacrificing the transimpedance gain. These TIA designs have been realized by the advanced CMOS process, and the measured results confirm the predictions from the analytic approach, where the inductive peaking is an useful way to enhance the TIA bandwidth.

A Switched-Opamp is a device in SC circuits for replacing switches with Opamps which operate like a switch. This technique can be acheived in very low voltage operation. In this paper, we present a design for a Switched-Opamp that can operate at a low supply voltage during the ON-phase and can maintain a high output impedance during the OFF-phase.

Low-loss optical coupling structures between photonic crystal waveguides and channel waveguides were investigated. It was emphasized that impedance matching of guided modes of those waveguides, as well as field-profile matching, was essential to achieving the low-loss optical coupling. We developed an impedance matching theory for Bloch waves, and applied it to designing the low-loss optical coupling structures. It was demonstrated that the optical coupling loss between a photonic crystal waveguide and a Si-channel waveguide was reduced to as low as 0.7 dB by introducing an interface structure for impedance matching between the two waveguides.

The electromagnetic scattering of a plane wave by an inhomogeneous plane whose surface impedance changes locally on the plane is treated. A boundary-value problem is formulated to describe the scattering phenomenon, in which the boundary condition depends on the surface impedance of the plane. Application of the Fourier transform derives an integral equation, which is approximately solved by the method of least-squares. From the solution of the equation, the scattered field is obtained by the inverse Fourier transform. By the use of the incomplete Lipschitz-Hankel integral for the computation of the field, numerical examples are given and the scattering phenomenon is discussed.

In this paper the method of least squares is employed to design an axially symmetric contradirectional multisection coupled - line coupler together with the impedance matching of real generator and load impedances. An error function is constructed for the required coupling (C) based on the squared magnitude of the ratio of the coupler voltage to that at the incident port. Another algorithm based on the reflected and transmitted wave amplitudes is developed by the method of least squares for the design of a coupled - line coupler with impedance matching of different input and output complex impedances and arbitrary coupling and length. The error functions are minimized to determine the coupler geometry, namely the normalized strip conductor widths (u=w/h) and separation (g=s/h) and the coupler length, where h is the substrate thickness. A procedure is presented to provide the initial values of u and g. The computer implementation of the proposed method shows that a proper coupler design is possible for any given coupler length. This is particularly interesting where space limitations impose contraints on the coupler length. The results are favorably compared with available computer simulation softwares.

A new technique to reduce the isolation network's size in a Marchand balun needed for perfect all-port matching and isolation is proposed. The proposed isolation circuit is realized using a coupled-line phase-inverter in place of the bulky 180line section that has been previously proposed. Analysis of the proposed circuit yields the required relationship between coupling coefficient and electrical length of the coupler. Based on the design equations, the circuit is experimentally demonstrated at 1.8 GHz and has shown excellent results. The obtained output return loss and isolation loss are more than 18 dB and 40 dB, respectively. The proposed balun was then applied to the application of a doubled-balanced ring-diode mixer. The designed mixer achieves a low conversion loss of 6 dB at its operating frequency, which is 1.5 dB lower than for a doubled-balanced diode mixer using a conventional impedance-transforming Marchand balun. The RF-IF and LO-IF isolations are well below 25 dB and 18 dB across 1 GHz RF operating bandwidth, respectively.

The new hybrid antenna structures having external high-impedance-plane (HIP) shield are proposed. These antennas consist of normal patch or dipole antenna, working as a radiator, and HIP shield working as a reflector. The external HIP shield helps to reduce the undesired backward radiation. Generally, metal shield should be placed a quarter wavelengths apart from the antenna, but HIP shield can be placed close to the antenna and low profile structure can be obtained. In addition, compared with single-layer HIP antennas, having a patch surrounded by HIP structure, these hybrid antennas have the advantage of installation because the shielding effect can be obtained by attaching the external shield under the existing antenna. We fabricated HIP boards and combined with a microstrip patch or a regular dipole. The hybrid patch antenna with HIP shield improves the front-to-back radiation ratio (F/B ratio) similar to the single-layer HIP antenna or the hybrid patch with metal shield. But the dipole antenna with HIP shield, the F/B ratio is worse than the dipole with metal shield. These results indicate the TM mode antenna is suitable for the HIP shield in terms of the F/B ratio improvement.

The electrical characteristics of biologically active points (BAPs) compared with those of the surrounding human skins are investigated. We confirm that BAPs have lower resistance and higher capacitance than the surrounding skins have. We find that BAPs have higher characteristic frequency than surrounding skins and sometimes the impedance spectra of BAPs have two semicircles on the complex impedance plane. Therefore, we propose the skin impedance model that is proper to the BAPs. This model describes our experimental results sufficiently.

This paper presents the analysis of the impedance characteristics of a sectoral cylindrical cavity-backed axial slot antenna excited by a probe. The integral equations are derived based on boundary conditions of the proposed structure and they are expressed in terms of dyadic Green functions and unknown current densities. The dyadic Green functions are obtained by using the eigenfunction expansion method together with application of scattering superposition techniques. The unknown current densities are solved by the Method of Moments. The input impedance is subsequently determined from the unknown electric current density at the probe. Numerical results of input impedance and return loss are demonstrated as functions of frequency for various parameters such as cavity length, cavity radius ratio, slot location in φ direction, slot length and probe length. Calculated results are validated by the measurements. At the operating frequency, it is found that the result is sufficiently accurate. The results from this study are very useful for the design of a sectoral cylindrical cavity-backed axial slot array antenna excited by a probe with omnidirectional beam radiation.

In transient analyzing of a crosstalk, the crosstalk waveform can be obtained with a commercial simulator such as SPICE simulation or FDTD (Finite Difference Time Domain) simulation. In case of using a simple model, a CMOS-IC load is considered as a constant capacitance load in crosstalk simulation. However, the semiconductor devices, such as CMOS-IC, have a characteristic of nonlinear impedance depending on the input voltage. We measured the far-end crosstalk of two parallel microstrip lines for a CMOS inverter (74HC04) load by changing the magnitude of the input step voltage. As the result, we found that the far-end crosstalk for the CMOS inverter load dose not necessarily depend on the input capacitance of the CMOS inverter.

RF noise in quarter-micron nMOSFETs is analysed on the device level based on Shockley's impedance field method. The impact of different transport models and physical parameters is discussed in detail. Well-calibrated drift-diffusion and energy-balance models give very similar results for noise current spectral densities and noise figures. We show by numerical simulations with the general-purpose device simulator DESSIS_ISE that the hot-electron effect on RF noise is unimportant under normal operating conditions and that thermal substrate noise is dominant below 0.5 GHz. The contribution of energy-current fluctuations to the terminal noise is found to be negligible. Application of noise sources generated in bulk full-band Monte Carlo simulations changes the noise figures considerably, which underlines the importance of proper noise source models for far-from-equilibrium conditions.

The radar cross section (RCS) of a dielectric-coated cylindrical cavity was measured and the measurements were compared with those calculated according to the iterative physical optics (IPO). The IPO analysis used the equivalent-impedance boundary condition (EIBC) based on transmission-line theory which takes into account the thickness of the coating. It was consequently found that this condition is much more effective than the ordinary-impedance boundary condition based on the intrinsic impedance of the material.

To estimate inner multi-layer tissue conductivity distribution in a cross section of the local tissue by using bioresistance data measured noninvasively on the surface of the tissue, a measurement method using divided electrodes is proposed, where a current electrode is divided into several parts. The method is evaluated by computer simulations using a three-dimension (3D) model and two two-dimension (2D) models. In this paper, conductivity distributions of the simplified (2D) model are analyzed based on a combination of a finite difference method (FDM) and a steepest descent method (SDM). Simulation results show that conductivity values for skin, fat and muscle layers can be estimated with an error less than 0.1%. Even though different strength random noise is added to measured resistance values, the conductivities are estimated with reasonable precise, e.g., the average error is about 4.25% for 10% noise. The configuration of the divided electrodes are examined in terms of dividing pattern and the size of surrounding guard electrodes to confine and control the input currents from the divided electrodes within a cross sectional area in the tissue.

The FDTD method needs Fourier analysis to obtain the fields of a single frequency. Furthermore, the frequency spectra of the fields used in the FDTD method ordinarily have wide bands, and all the fields in FDTD are treated as real numbers. Therefore, if the permittivity ε and the permeability µ of the medium depend on frequency, or if the surface impedance used for the surface impedance boundary condition (SIBC) depends on the frequency, the FDTD method becomes very complicated because of convolution integral. In the electromagnetic theory, we usually assume that the fields oscillate sinusoidally, and that the fields and ε and µ are complex numbers. The benefit of introduction of the complex numbers is very extensive. As we do in the usual electromagnetic theory, the authors assume that the fields in FDTD oscillate sinusoidally. In the proposed FDTD, the fields, ε, µ and the surface impedances for SIBC are all treated as the complex numbers. The proposed FDTD method can remove the above-mentioned weak points of the conventional FDTD method.

Human tissues conduct electricity about as well as semiconductors. However, there are large differences between tissues which have recently been shown to be determined mainly by the structure of the tissue. For example, the impedance spectrum of a layered tissue such as skin is very different to that of the underlying tissues. The way in which the cells are arranged and also the size of the nucleus are both important. Some of the recent developments in measurement and modelling techniques are described and the relationship between tissue structures and impedance spectra is outlined. The illustrations and examples look at the effect of premalignant changes on localised impedance spectra measured from cervical tissues. Electrical Impedance Tomographic measurements on lung tissue are used to show the maturational changes of lung structure in neonates. The conclusion contains some speculation as to what further research outcomes might occur over the next few years.