We demonstrate the characterization of a horn antenna in the full F-band (90 ∼ 140 GHz) based on far-field transformation from near-field electro-optic (EO) measurement. Our nonpolarimetric self-heterodyne EO sensing system enables us to simultaneously measure the spatial distribution of the amplitude and phase of the RF signal. Because free-running lasers are used to generate and detect the RF signal, our EO sensing system has wide frequency tunability. Owing to the stable and reliable amplitude and phase measurements with minimal field perturbation, the estimated far-field patterns agree well with those of the simulated results. We have evaluated the estimation errors of the 3-dB beamwidth and position of the first sidelobe. The largest standard error of the measurements was 1.1° for 3-dB beamwidth and 3.5° for the position of first sidelobe at frequency 90 GHz. Our EO sensing system can be used to characterize and evaluate terahertz antennas for indoor communication applications such as small-size slot array antennas.

Optical coherence tomography using a tunable single-mode laser is investigated to clarify the effects of long coherence length and step-wise frequency changes.

We present a 60-GHz wireless through-repeater system based on self-heterodyne transmission scheme with the potential to optimize the carrier-to-interference and noise ratio (CINR) performance according to the transmission distance. The phase-noise degradation through a 60-GHz repeater link is not a serious concern when we employ the self-heterodyne transmission scheme. Multichannel interferences caused by third-order intermodulation distortions are efficiently suppressed by setting a high power ratio of LO carrier to RF signals in the self-heterodyne transmission. However, this high power ratio results in a lower carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) and becomes unsuitable for improving link performance if the transmission distance increases. In order to facilitate a solution, we propose and make an embodiment of 60 GHz self-heterodyne transmitters that provide flexible control over the power ratio of LO to RF in a range of 10 dB ranges. With them, we successfully demonstrate terrestrial digital broadcasting signals on five channels and optimize their performance for wireless through-repeater applications.

This paper presents a novel technique to compensate intermodulation distortion of a self-heterodyne direct conversion OFDM system in multipath propagation environments. A self-heterodyne direct conversion system has an advantage that simple receivers can be built that are completely immune to any phase noise or frequency offset. This system, however, has a disadvantage that the nonlinear square-law detector at the receiver of the self-heterodyne direct conversion system gives rise to second order intermodulation distortion. In this study, channel estimation is performed using a training sequence and then the predistortion coefficients with regard to estimated channel parameters are derived to compensate the receiver nonlinearity. Transmit power distribution is employed to overcome multipath fading channels as well. Computer simulation demonstrates that the proposed approach improves the BER performance of the self-heterodyne direct conversion OFDM system in a multipath fading channel. This scheme gives advantage to multi-carrier systems that are much more sensitive to frequency and phase error than single-carrier systems.

A fiber-optic broadband signal distribution link based on a millimeter-wave self-heterodyne transmission/optical remote heterodyne detection technique was developed. To avoid having to use expensive optical and millimeter-wave devices to construct a frequency-stable fiber-optic millimeter-signal transmission system, a millimeter-wave self-heterodyne transmission technique was used, in which transmitted signals were generated by an optical remote heterodyne detection scheme. Theoretical discussion and experiments demonstrated that it is possible to construct an inexpensive millimeter-wave signal distribution link without the complexity or difficulties of a conventional link structure because applying the principle of the millimeter-wave self-heterodyne transmission technique enables the use of an unstable millimeter-wave carrier generated by heterodyning of two independently operating lasers. It was experimentally demonstrated that the proposed fiber-optic millimeter-wave link could successfully achieve bit-error-free transmission of a 156-Mb/s QPSK-formatted signal over a 10-km fiber link and a 5-m pseudo-air link.

Japanese terrestrial digital broadcasting (ISDB-T) began in 2003. To spread its signals throughout the country, optical fibers will be used to complement radio-wave networks. This paper describes recent applications of optical transmission of ISDB-T. It also describes our research on re-transmission with 40-GHz Radio On Fiber technology.

Integrated implementation of RF front-end components has been shown to posses many benefits. Furthermore, it presents a new way of approaching RF design. This paper will discuss the recent developments by the author's group in the field of RF front-end technology. This will include stand-alone RF front-end components such as a self-heterodyne mixer as well as more functional front-end circuitry such as digital beamformer arrays, retrodirective arrays and an array error calibration scheme.

A simple millimeter-wave quasi-maximal-ratio-combin-ing antenna diversity system based on the millimeter-wave self-heterodyne transmission technique is described. The millimeter-wave self-heterodyne transmission technique is useful for developing millimeter-wave systems with enhanced characteristics in regard to system miniaturization, development and fabrication cost, and the frequency stability of the signal transmission. We also show that applying this technique with an antenna diversity receiver configuration can easily solve a problem peculiar to millimeter-wave systems--the fact that the transmission link always requires a line-of-sight path--without requiring hardware designed with millimeter-scale precision. In this paper, we theoretically analyze the operating principle of a combining antenna diversity system based on the millimeter-wave self-heterodyne transmission technique. We further prove that we can obtain a diversity gain in accordance with that of a maximal-ratio combining diversity system without resorting to any complicated control of the received signal envelope and phase. Our experiments using the simplest two-branch diversity structure have validated the operating principle derived in our theoretical analysis. Our results show that a received CNR improvement of 3 dB is obtained as a diversity gain. We also demonstrate that circuit precision corresponding to the wavelength of the intermediate frequency, rather than to the millimeter wavelength, is sufficient to obtain the diversity effect when we control the signal phase or delay in combining the received signals.

We describe a low-cost and extremely stable millimeter-wave transmission system that uses a double-side-band (DSB) millimeter-wave self-heterodyne transmission technique. This technique allows us to use a comparatively low-cost and unstable millimeter-wave oscillator regardless of the modulation format. Furthermore, a transmission band-pass-filter (BPF) is not needed in the millimeter-wave band. The system cost can therefore be substantially reduced. We have theoretically and experimentally evaluated the carrier-to-noise power ratio (CNR) performance that can be obtained when using this technique relative to that attainable through a conventional millimeter-wave self-heterodyne technique where a single-side-band signal is transmitted. Our results show that the DSB self-heterodyne transmission technique can improve CNR by more than 3 dB.

This paper newly proposes radio-over-fiber systems using cascaded radio-to-optic direct conversion (ROC) scheme. The ROC system can convert a radio signal into an optical signal with the same signal format. The received carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) performance of the radio-over-fiber systems using the ROC/heterodyne detection (HD) scheme and the ROC/self-heterodyne detection (SHD) scheme are theoretically analyzed. The optimization of an optical modulation index (OMI) in each radio base station (RBS) is also presented. By using the proposed OMI optimization method, the ROC/HD and the ROC/SHD schemes are shown to provide approximately 16 dB and 14 dB improvement over the intensity modulation/direct detection scheme when the number of RBS is 20 and the radio-frequency (RF) signal bandwidth is 150 MHz, respectively. The ROC/SHD scheme enables a receiver structure to become simple while still achieving high received CNR.