Design of acoustic modem becomes increasingly important in underwater sensor networks' development. This paper presents the design of a reconfigurable acoustic modem, by defining modulation and demodulation as reconfigurable modules, the proposed modem changes its modulation scheme and data rate to provide reliable and energy efficient communication. The digital system, responsible for signal processing and control, is implemented on Xilinx Virtex5 FPGA. Hardware and software co-verification shows that the modem works correctly and can self-configure to BFSK and BPSK mode. Partial reconfiguration design method improves flexibility of algorithm design, and slice, LUT, register, DSP, RAMB are saved by 17%, 25%, 22%, 25%, 25% respectively.

A mixed-mode high-speed binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) demodulator for IEEE802.15.3c mm-wave wireless personal area network (WPAN) application is realized with 0.18-µm CMOS process. The proposed demodulator scheme does not require any analog-to-digital converters (ADC) and, consequently, can have advantages over the conventional schemes for high-data-rate demodulation. The demodulator core consumes 53.8 mW from 2.5-V power supply while the chip area is 380500 µm2. The fabricated chip is verified by 60-GHz wireless link tests with 1.6-Gb/s data.

As the need for underwater communication has recently grown, an acoustic modem has become more necessary for the sensor nodes to perform effective underwater communication. To develop acoustic modems for effective underwater communication, some limitations must be overcome, such as the limited power supply and high cost of commercial acoustic modems. Recently, low-power, low-cost acoustic modems have been developed. However, the data rates of these modems are very slow. The objective of this work is to develop an acoustic modem capable of supporting high data rates. We introduce a coherent acoustic modem that uses waterproof ultrasonic sensors to process acoustic waves. The proposed modem is based on a low-power, low-cost, short-range concept, and it also supports a high data rate as confirmed by underwater experiments. Experimental results show that our modem has the best performance among all recently developed low-power modems.

This paper presents a prototype group modem for a hyper-multipoint data gathering satellite communication system. It can handle arbitrarily and dynamically assigned FDMA signals by employing a novel FFT-type block demultiplexer/multiplexer. We clarify its configuration and operational principle. Experiments show that the developed modem offers excellent performance.

The paper introduces both high-speed transmission and quality of system to offer the Internet services on a HFC (Hybrid Fiber Coaxial) network. This utilizes modulating the phase and the amplitude to the signal of the IPMS (Internet Protocol Multicasting Service). An IP-cable transmitter, IP-cable modem, and IP-cable management servers that support 30-Mbps IPMS on the HFC were developed. The system provides a 21 Mbps HDTV transporting stream on a cable TV network. It can sustain a clear screen for a long time.

This paper presents a wireless burst modulation/ demodulation method for narrowband ubiquitous communication systems. This method especially suits those systems, whose traffic is especially dominated by short frame bursts. The proposed modulation method provides a preamble-less frame structure with training symbols, which improves both transmission efficiency and burst synchronization performance. Moreover, the proposed demodulation method achieves superior burst synchronization performance in low carrier-to-noise power ratio (CNR) environments by applying a synchronization method that includes symbol timing recovery, slot synchronization, carrier frequency correction and channel tracking. In addition, this paper presents the result of experiments on hardware prototypes of the proposed modulator and demodulator. The basic operation and practical performance of the proposed method is confirmed through testbed studies.

A new Kalman carrier synchronization algorithm is developed for high-order QAM transmission to reduce complexity compared to the conventional Kalman approach. The state model in the proposed algorithm employs only phase, instead of both phase and frequency, as in the conventional method. A reduced-observation model is also introduced to eliminate matrix operations in the Kalman recursions. Simulations results show that the one-state Kalman algorithm has better performance and lower complexity than the two-state Kalman algorithm. The cable modem downstream system is applied to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

A new seamless symbol rate switchable modem for multi-rate FDMA systems is proposed in this paper. In the new modem, a novel clock phase compensation algorithm makes it possible to switch the symbol rate synchronously between the transmitter and the receiver, with no degradation in BER when the symbol rate is changed. In addition, by matching the interpolation filter to the symbol rate, this modem is capable of operating at lower clock speeds, which greatly reduces the consumption power. Computer simulations confirm its fundamental performance. Simulation results show that the proposed power-efficient symbol rate switchable modem can change the symbol rate without degrading BER performance.

The hybrid fiber coax (HFC) technology enables the conventional cable-television (CATV) network to provide subscribers with Internet access services. In this paper, we propose a new preemptive priority scheme (PPS) for IEEE 802.14 hybrid fiber coax (HFC) networks with the intelligent nodes (INs). The INs are placed between the headend controller and stations. By using INs, that stand for downstream subscribers to contend for the demand resources, the collision probability, and the collision resolving period can be reduced. In this paper, we further extend such network architecture to support multi-priority access. In each IN or individual station, the proposed PPS will prevent a higher priority request from colliding with requests of lower priority. Moreover, in PPS, the granted bandwidth for lower priority requests can be preempted by the waiting request with higher priority. This will speedup the channel capture by priority data. The efficiency of PPS is investigated by simulations. Simulation results show that by adopting INs with PPS to be an agent for subscribers can not only shorten the collision resolving period but also minimize the average request delay of priority data.

In this paper, we propose a modified CP-AFC (Cross-Product Automatic Frequency Control) algorithm to enhance coherent signal detection for WCDMA reverse link receiver. We introduce a moving average filter at the FDD input to decrease the noise effect by increasing the number of cross-products, since pilot symbol in WCDMA is not transmitted continuously. We also add normalization algorithm to overcome the conventional CP-FDD's sensitivity to the variance of input signal amplitude and to increase the linear range of S-curve. For rapid frequency acquisition and tracking, we adopt a multi-stage tracking mode. We applied the proposed algorithm in the implementation of WCDMA base station modem successfully.

In this paper, a new multi-engine architecture for the baseband modem LSI of W-CDMA systems is proposed. The developed test chip with this architecture is also presented. In the multi-engine architecture, processors and wired logic are combined to obtain both flexibility and low power dissipation. Multiple processors are used in the LSI to lower its operating frequency by distributed processing. A customized processor is used to lower the overhead of multiple processors in terms of LSI scale. The test chip was fabricated with a 0.25-µm process. Its measured power dissipation for simultaneous 384 kbit/s downlink reception and 64 kbit/s uplink transmission was 160 mW.

A high isolation hybrid circuit composed of a pair of transformers, a voltage control resistance (VCR) circuit and an automatic impedance control device is designed for a two-wire full duplex cable modem to adapt variable line impedance. A binary frequency shift keying (BFSK) cable modem using the new hybrid circuit with an isolation of 52 dB to 58 dB in the line impedance variation range of 400 to 950 ohm is demonstrated. The isolation of the new hybrid circuit is increased by more than 30 dB over the traditional hybrid circuit for a two-wire full duplex modem in the preset line impedance range.

CATV networks are considered as promising transmission channels in that they permit wide bandwidth and high quality data communications. In apartment houses, however, the ingress noise in the up-links due to the tree and branch structure of a network deeply degrades the transmission performance of data communication channels. This is a serious problem especially in apartment houses which are often equipped with old coaxial cables. It permits the noise generated from electrical appliances to disturb up-link data communications. In this paper, we propose a wireless CATV system. In the proposed system, the noise generated in the room of a subscriber does not intrude into a trunk line. We analyze the upstream channels of this system. Based on the results of numerical analyses, we found that the proposed system is suitable and practical for up-link operation in CATV networks for apartment houses.

In this paper, we compare the major issues associated with TDMA and S-CDMA (Synchronous-Code Division Multiple Access), which is considered as a new cable modem standard technology for upstream channel. We mainly deal with the following 3 topics: MAC protocol, modem structure and BER (Bit Error Rate) performance comparison between TDMA and S-CDMA. Especially, we derive BER of TDMA and S-CDMA schemes in the ε-mixture impulse noise model which appropriately reflects impulse noise characteristics of the upstream channel by using various parameters.

This paper presents the design, implementation and test results of a complete wideband CDMA modem with a modulator and a demodulator for use in next-generation cell sites. The modem is based on Japanese proposal for the next generation W-CDMA air interface. The modulator has a flexible architecture, which can transmit the data of different physical channels such as common control physical channels, and dedicated physical channels by setting the channel selection registers of the modulator. The modulator performs the transmission power control digitally according to the physical channel setting. The receiver consists of a searcher, four fingers and a combiner. The searcher supports path selected search operation considering antenna diversity which is employed to reduce the effect of excessively deep fades, and early dump operation to speed up the searching process. Since the simulation results to determine the number of finger showed that the system with more than four fingers had no essential performance improvement, demodulation performed with four-finger rake receiver. The proposed cell site modem was implemented with FPGAs and verified by the board-level experiment. Experiments have verified that the modem fully complied with the specifications.

A new type of Meteor Burst Communication (MBC) network is developed. Each unit of the network is based on a DSP board running a modem software. All the fundamental blocks and functions of a modem are implemented in software. Unlike hardware modems, this software modem has flexibility of system configuration and operation. The system implements adaptability in terms of modulation type (number of phases in MPSK) using a unique dynamic channel estimation scheme appropriate for MBC channel. An MBC network protocol is implemented within the modem software. Some preliminary experiments were carried out for differential BPSK and differential QPSK modulations over a practical meteor burst link, and the results are presented.

This paper proposes a novel spread spectrum (SS) modem for random access satellite communication systems that employs digital matched filters. The proposed modem employs a parallel structure to ensure detection of packet arrival. Code timing detection with a combination of a coarse detector and a fractional error detector reduces the sampling rate while maintaining the BER performance. An in-symbol pilot multiplexing scheme is also proposed for fast and stable carrier synchronization with a simple hardware. A performance evaluation shows that the proposed modem achieves the UW miss-detection probability of 10-4 at the Eb/No of 0 dB. The overall BER performance achieved in experiments well agrees simulation.

A 2.4 GHz band direct sequence (DS) spread spectrum (SS) radio frequency modem with a wide bandwidth of 26 MHz in half-duplex system has been newly developed using the small size (832 mm) and highly-efficient (-57 dBm) elastic type of surface acoustic wave (SAW) convolver. The size of SS modem is 905011 mm and the weight is 75 g. The power consumption of SS modem is 1.5 W and data rate is 206 kbps with 63 chips of PN code. Electrical characteristics measurements were made to evaluate the SS modem performance.

This paper presents fully digital high speed (17.6Mb/s) burst modem for Offset Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (OQPSK), which employs novel digital modem VLSICs. The modulator VLSIC directly generates modulated intermediate frequency (IF) signals in a fully digitalized manner. A newly proposed digital reverse-modulation and pre-filtered carrier filter-limiter scheme realizes low power consumption and stable operation in a low Eb/No condition. The demodulator VLSIC also achieves fast bit-timing acquisition in burst mode. Moreover, it supports stable initial burst acquisition by a novel automatic frequency control (AFC) acquisition detector and a digital burst detector. A digital burst automatic gain control (AGC) compensates burst-to-burst level differences without analog circutits. Performance evaluation results show that the new modem achieves satisfactory bit-error-rate performance in severe environments. The developed modem has been employed in a commercial portable earth station for ISDN services and reduces the hardware size to one third that of the conventional one.

This paper proposes a new digitized group modulator and demodulator (a group modem) for adaptive frequency hopping and multi-carrier (AFHMC) radio systems. The group modem can flexibly vary the number of carriers handled simultaneously, especially employing a time division multiplexing technique in the demodulator. We discuss the operational principle of the modem. The required operational clock frequency in the group demodulator is also examined and clarified taking into consideration the frequency characteristics of the baseband filter. The basic performance of the proposed configuration is measured experimentally by constructing a π/4-shift QPSK group modulator and a π/4-shift QPSK group demodulator. First, by measuring the output spectrum of the significant parts in the demodulator, we confirm that the basic operational performance conforms to the design specifications. Secondly, investigating the relationship between the number of multiplexed low-pass filter taps and the required CNR when multiple carriers are simultaneously input confirms that more than 40 taps are enough to obtain the best BER performance in this experiment. Next, examining the relationship between the number of carriers simultaneously input, the required CNR, and the input level of these carriers confirm that the required CNR is roughly constant and there is no significant difference among the cases when D/U is more than 0 dB. Finally, an experiment shows that the required number of quantization bits for A/D input in the demodulator is more than 6, which is enough to obtain the best BER even if simultaneous handled carriers are 4.