There is currently a need for development of a new frequency band to enable creation of next-generation mobile communication systems. Of the potential bands, the 3 GHz and over microwave band holds the greatest promise. Experimental studies on the delay characteristics of multipath propagation must be conducted in order to achieve high-speed transmission in the microwave band. We have developed a system for measuring the microwave broadband propagation delay profile over 100 MHz spread bandwidths in the 3, 8 and 15 GHz bands. Our experiments confirmed system performances of 20-ns resolution, 40-µs maximum measurable delay, relative amplitude error of within 3 dB and dynamic range of over 60 dB. We used our system to measure delay profiles on an urban area with line of sight, particularly, in terms of the effects of mobile antenna height. Typical examples are presented. Analysis showed that delay spreads increased with transmit/receive distance and decreased with the higher antenna height.

The conductor-backed asymmetrical coplanar waveguide or micro-coplanar strip (MCS) line has been analyzed. The conformal mapping method is used to calculate the quasi-static effective permittivity εeff and characteristic impedance Z0. The computed results of the present work are found to be in good agreement when compared with the results obtained using the method reported by Yamashita et al. [1] and experimental values reported in [2]. A novel MCS end-coupled half-wavelength long resonator filter is designed to illustrate an application of the present work. The designed filter has 4% bandwidth at a center frequency of 10.5 GHz. The measured insertion loss is approximately 3.4 dB. One of the main advantages of the MCS filter compared to the CPW filter is that bond wires do not have to be used to maintain both coplanar ground at the same potential. The MCS filter is also easily integrable with other planar components and does not require a complicated transition to microstrip.

This paper presents a technique for miniaturization of microstrip line and coplanar waveguide for microwave integrated circuits by using airbridge technology. A theoretical analysis is given by a combination of the conformal mapping technique and the variational principle. Numerical results demonstrate significant effects on size reduction as well as wide range of the characteristic impedance variation due to the airbridge.

This paper discusses microwave path-loss characteristics as a function of mobile antenna height in an urban line-of-sight environment. Measurements were made in metropolitan Tokyo with high-density buildings, using base station antenna heights of 4 and 8 m. We describe the path-loss characteristics of vehicle-mounted mode (mobile antenna height is 2.7 m) and portable mode (mobile antenna heights are 1.6 and 0.5 m). Dependence of path loss on the distance between base and mobile stations was analyzed. This reveals that the break points shift to the near side in the vehicle-mounted mode. This phenomenon can be interpreted by the existence of an effective height h of the road. The typical value of h was found approximately 1.4 m. In the portable mode, on the other hand, break points were not observed. The mobile antenna heights (1.6 and 0.5 m) in this mode are close to or less than the average height (1-2 m) of pedestrians on the sidewalk; and the received waves at the mobile station are often disturbed by pedestrians. This explains the nonexistence of break points in portable mode. The average attenuation coefficients is observed 3.2 in this mode. The attenuation coefficients tend to be larger at lower base station antenna heights and narrower road widths.

When designing microwave amplifiers, it is the task to select values of the source (input generator) and load reflection coefficients for the transistor, to achieve certain amplifier performance requirements and ensure stability. For unconditionally stable transistors, simultaneous conjugate matching can be achieved using well-known design formulae. Under this condition, the gain is maximised, and the input and output ports are matched. On the other hand when the transistor is conditionally stable, source and load reflection coefficients are selected using graphical design methods, involving gain and stability circles. To eliminate the reliance on graphical techniques, this paper shows the derivation of explicit design formulae that ensure maximum gain for a minimum specified safety margin, with one port matched. In this work, the safety margin is the distance between the chosen source or load reflection coefficient and its respective stability circle. In a production environment, where the circuit and transistor parameters are subject to random variations, the safety margin therefore makes allowance for such variations. This paper shows that the design problem for conditionally stable transistors can be reduced from the selection of values for two complex variables (port terminations) to the selection of the value for just one scalar variable.

Design of circularly polarized active antennas of dual-fed square patch type is given, and spatial power combining and phased array operation of the antennas have been successfully achieved. In a phased array experiment of the arrays with two and three active antennas by the method of varying their free-running oscillation frequencies, we obtained the scan angles from -12 to +13 and those from -13 to +13, respectively, and good axial ratios together with high spatial power-combining efficiencies.

In this paper, we investigate the bit error rate (BER) performance of Direct Sequence-Code Division Multiple Access (DS-CDMA) systems under impulsive radio noise environments, and propose a novel DS-CDMA receiver which is designed to be robust against impulsive noise. At first, employing the Middleton's Class-A impulsive noise model as a typical model of impulsive radio noise, we discuss the statistical characteristics of impulsive radio noise and demonstrate that the quadrature components of impulsive noise are statistically dependent. Next, based on the computer simulation, we evaluate the BER performance of a conventional DS-CDMA system under a Class-A impulsive noise environment, and illustrate that the performance of the conventional DS-CDMA system is drastically degraded by the effects of the impulsive noise. To deal with this problem, motivated by the statistical dependence between the quadrature components of impulsive radio noise, we propose a new DS-CDMA receiver which can eliminate the effects of the channel impulsive noise. The numerical result shows that the performance of the DS-CDMA system under the impulsive noise environment is significantly improved by using this proposed receiver. Finally, to confirm the effectiveness of this proposed receiver against actual impulsive radio noise, we evaluate the BER performance of the DS-CDMA system employing the proposed receiver under a microwave oven (MWO) noise environment and discuss the robustness of the proposed receiver against MWO noise.

Technologies used to characterize and compensate nonlinearities in microwave power amplifiers are discussed. First, a complex power series representation that allows both amplitude and phase nonlinearities to be dealt with simultaneously is proposed, and in order to estimate the 3rd-order complex coefficient phase of practical amplifiers, two kinds of experimental measurement methods are proposed. Next, the fundamental circuit configuration of IF cuber predistortion linearizer that compensates 3rd-order intermodulation distortion is derived from a nonlinear analysis using complex power series representation. Two practical cuber predistorters for the 6-GHz TWTA and the 800-MHz FET-PA are demonstrated. Moreover, the unique nonlinear compensation technology of side-band inversion is introduced for microwave relay system using TWTAs. Finally, the self-adjusting feed-forward (SAFF)-PA developed for digital cellular base stations is reviewed.

This paper describes a new approach to analyze nonlinear characteristics of propagating waves in a ferrite material. As to the formulation of the wave in a ferrite medium, the analysis in this paper is not taken under the assumption of a sinusoidal steady state using Polder tensor permeability, but taken by directly differentiating the gyromagnetic equation in time domain without any linear approximations. Then it is combined with Maxwell equation in FDTD procedure. As a result, intensity-dependent nonlinear responses of the propagating wave are confirmed, and the nonlinearity is seen in only the right-hand polarization wave. It is also found that an effect of the damping term in the equation of the motion of the magnetization has nonlinear characteristics for wave propagation.

Retrieving the unknown parameters of scattering objects from measured field data is the subject of microwave imaging. This is naturally and usually posed as an optimization problem. In this paper, micro genetic algorithm coupled with deterministic method is applied to the shape reconstruction of perfectly conducting cylinders. The combined approach, with a very small population like the micro genetic algorithm, performs much better than the conventional large population genetic algorithms (GA's) in reaching the optimal region. In addition, we propose a criterion for switching the micro GA to the deterministic optimizer. The micro GA is utilized to effectively locate the vicinity of the global optimum, while the deterministic optimizer is employed to efficiently reach the optimum after inside this region. Therefore, the combined approach converges to the optimum much faster than the micro GA. The proposed approach is first tested by a function optimization problem, then applied to reconstruct perfectly conducting cylinders from both synthetic data and real data. Impressive and satisfactory results are obtained for both cases, which demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of the proposed approach.

This paper describes a new method for permittivity measurement using microwave free-space technique. The general consideration is to measure the amplitudes of transmission and reflection coefficients and calculate the permittivity from the measurement values. Theoretical analysis shows that the permittivity of the sample can be calculated solely from the measurement values of the amplitudes of transmission and reflection coefficients when the sample is prepared with so large attenuation that the multiple reflections between the two surfaces of the sample can be neglected. Using this method, the permittivity measurement can be performed without reflection influence, and on-line measurement of the permittivity becomes possible because the permittivity can be measured instantaneously and without contact with the material.

Perspectives of Cyclotron Wave Converter (CWC) of microwaves into DC are discussed in a form of short review. All main parts of CWC (microwave cavity, reverse region and collector) are analysed. Existing experimental results are briefly described.

This paper describes a calculation method of large-signal characteristics of multi-stage power amplifier modules using source-pull and load-pull data. An output power, a power-added efficiency, and a phase deviation of multi-stage power amplifier modules are calculated based on the source-pull and load-pull data, which are comprised of input and output reflection coefficients, an input power, an output power, a phase deviation and a drain voltage and current, taking into account the source and load impedance of each stage FET. Applying this method to a 900 MHz two-stage Si-MOSFET power amplifier module, the calculated and measured results are in good agreement.

This paper describes new IC design concepts using flip-chip bonding technologies for microwave and millimeter-wave circuit integration. Two types of bonding technologies, stud bump bonding (SBB) and micro bump bonding (MBB) are introduced, and their applications to microwave and millimeter-wave ICs are presented. Receiver front-end hybrid IC (HIC) for cellular and PHS handsets using SBB and new millimeter-wave ICs on Si substrate called millimeter flip-chip IC (MFIC) using MBB have been designed and fabricated to prove their advantages. These flip-chip bonding technologies are experimentally proven to provide excellent solutions for high performance and compact-sized ICs with low-cost. The HIC concept is applicable consistently over a wide range of devices from RF/microwave to millimeter-wave region.

The purpose of this letter is to investigate the stability conditions of the active two port networks having some restrictions on load and source terminations, and then they have been obtained. Next, these results and the previous stability coditions are investigated, and then the new combined stability condition are proposed.

This paper describes a diakoptics approach to the field simulation of shielded structures. If the structure can be divided so that the sliced cross section is homogeneously filled with a medium in the metal-surrounded region, the frequency domain diakoptics can be effectively formulated. In the method, the partial eigenfunction expansion (or modal expansion) is utilized at the interface between the divided structures, and the finite difference time domain calculation is used to characterize some of the divided parts. The synthesis of total characteristics is demonstrated using a simple example. The issue of term truncation in the eigenfunction expansion is also addressed and an effective algorithm for the term selection (mode selection) is proposed. The techniques described here are applicable to metal package designs for efficient structure optimization.

For Cable-To-The-Air network providing a seamless access network in both indoor and outdoor, direct optical switching CDMA scheme is newly proposed to multiplex any types of radio signals. In two types of connection methods, optical switch connection and optical coupler connection systems, the received carrier-to-interference-plus-noise power ratios are theoretically analyzed. It is clarified that in the optical switch connection connection system, by introducing the additional optical gain at each radio base station, the carrier-to-interference-plus-noise power ratios for all radio base stations and the connected number of radio base stations can be improved compared with the OC connection system.

The following, which is related to the design of the microwave filters, is mainly presented: (1) certain useful approximation which can be obtained by double-resistive- terminated 2-ports consisting of a cascade of two 1-variable 2-ports in different variables, and (2) an approach for filter design from 2-variable viewpoint. Approximations presented provide useful magnitude responses in 2-D domain. Hence it is discussed that how the provided 2-D responses can be used for the design of the microwave filters. Furthermore, properties of the 2-variable transfer functions resulting in such circuits are given.

Physics principles of a new type of microwave input amplifiers are described. Cyclotron wave electrostatic amplifier (CWESA) has a low noise level, broad band, switchable gain, super high self-protection against microwave overloads, rapid recovery and small DC consumption. CWESAs are widely used in Russian pulse Doppler radars and other systems.

A new broadband space diversity (B-SD) combining method, which is a key technique in the growth of digital microwave radio system, is proposed. In this B-SD combining method, two received signals, whose bandwidths are 280 MHz, are combined. To develop this combining method, an optimum control algorithm is developed that monitors power levels of all primary carriers and controls the endless phase shifter so that the higher level signal is decreased and the lower level signal is increased. This paper describes the proposed B-SD combining method which effectively operates over a wide bandwidth. Performance evaluations based on simulations and theoretical estimations are given. It is proven that this combining method offers the same performance obtained by the conventional narrowband SD combining method and can be applied to over 50% cases of the propagation paths observed in Japan. The suitability of the proposed combining method and the calculation methods adopted is demonstrated experimentally.