Metamaterial-based electronically controlled transmission-line structure as a novel leaky-wave antenna with tunable radiation angle and beamwidth

A metamaterial-based electronically controlled transmission-line structure is presented and demonstrated as a novel leaky-wave (LW) antenna with tunable radiation angle and beamwidth functionalities. This structure is, in essence, a composite right/left-handed (CRLH) microstrip structure incorporating varactor diodes for fixed-frequency voltage-controlled operation. Angle scanning at a fixed frequency is achieved by modulating the capacitances of the structure by adjusting the (uniform) bias voltage applied to the varactors. Beamwidth tuning is obtained by making the structure nonuniform by application of a nonuniform bias voltage distribution of the varactors. A rigorous analysis based on an extension of the CRLH concept is proposed and the corresponding dispersion curves, obtained by equivalent-circuit formulas with LC parameters extracted from full-wave simulation, are shown. A 30-cell LW antenna structure, incorporating both series and shunt varactors for optimal impedance matching and maximal tuning range, is designed. This prototype exhibits continuous scanning capability from 50/spl deg/ to -49/spl deg/ by tuning the bias voltages from 0 to 21 V at 3.33 GHz. A maximum gain of 18 dBi at broadside is also achieved. In addition, it provides half-power beamwidth variation of up to 200% with comparison to the case of uniform biasing. The effect of intermodulation due to the nonlinearity of the varactors is shown to be negligible for antenna applications. The antenna is tested in a 10-Mb/s binary phase-shift keying transmission link and successful recovery of the baseband data is demonstrated.     

A novel phase noise reduction technique in oscillators usingdefected ground structure

A new technique to reduce the phase noise in microwave oscillators is developed using the resonant characteristic of the defected ground structure (DGS). Two kinds of oscillators have been designed and measured for the examination of the reduction of phase noise by the DGS. The first adopts the DGS section under the microstrip line at the gate circuit, while the second has only the conventional microstrip line. Measurement shows reduced phase noise by 10-15 dB in the oscillator with the DGS compared to the conventional one     

A compact-size microstrip spiral resonator and its application to microwave oscillator

This letter presents a compact size microstrip spiral resonator and its application to a low phase noise oscillator. This resonator has stopband characteristics to be used in the series feedback oscillator topology. The whole circuit area of the proposed resonator is within 1/10 wavelength, which results in the reduction of the circuit area and cost. A 10-GHz oscillator incorporated with this resonator was designed, fabricated and measured. It shows low phase noise performance of -95.4-dBc/Hz at 100 kHz offset.     

Advanced Concentration Gradient Cathode Material with Two‐Slope for High‐Energy and Safe Lithium Batteries

Li[Ni_0.65Co_0.13Mn_0.22]O₂ cathode with two‐sloped full concentration gradient (TSFCG), maximizing the Ni content in the inner part of the particle and the Mn content near the particle surface, is synthesized via a specially designed batch‐type reactor. The cathode delivers a discharge capacity of 200 mAh g^?1 (4.3 V cutoff) with excellent capacity retention of 88% after 1500 cycles in a full‐cell configuration. Overall electrochemical performance of the TSFCG cathode is benchmarked against conventional cathode (CC) with same composition and commercially available Li[Ni_0.8Co_0.15Al_0.05]O₂ (NCA). The TSFCG cathode exhibits the best cycling stability, rate capability, and thermal stability of the three electrodes. Transmission electron microscopy analysis of the cycled TSFCG, CC, and NCA cathodes shows that the TSFCG electrode maintains both its mechanical and structural integrity whereas the NCA electrode nearly pulverizes due to the strain during cycling.     

Real‐Time License Plate Detection in High‐Resolution Videos Using Fastest Available Cascade Classifier and Core Patterns

We present a novel method for real‐time automatic license plate detection in high‐resolution videos. Although there have been extensive studies of license plate detection since the 1970s, the suggested approaches resulting from such studies have difficulties in processing high‐resolution imagery in real‐time. Herein, we propose a novel cascade structure, the fastest classifier available, by rejecting false positives most efficiently. Furthermore, we train the classifier using the core patterns of various types of license plates, improving both the computation load and the accuracy of license plate detection. To show its superiority, our approach is compared with other state‐of‐the‐art approaches. In addition, we collected 20,000 images including license plates from real traffic scenes for comprehensive experiments. The results show that our proposed approach significantly reduces the computational load in comparison to the other state‐of‐the‐art approaches, with comparable performance accuracy.     

A 12-b, 10-MHz, 250-mW CMOS A/D converter

A 12-b, 10-MHz, 250-mW, four-stage analog-to-digital converter (ADC) was implemented using a 0.8-μm p-well CMOS technology. The ADC based on a digitally calibrated multiplying digital-to-analog converter (MDAC) selectively employs a binary-weighted capacitor array in the front-end stage and a unit-capacitor array in the remaining back-end stages to obtain 12 b level linearity while maintaining high yield. All the analog and digital circuit functional blocks are fully integrated on a single chip, which occupies a die area of 15 mm² (4.2 mm×3.6 mm). Measured differential nonlinearity (DNL) and integral nonlinearity (INL) of the prototype are less than ±0.8 LSB and ±1.8 LSB, respectively     

A dynamic frequency grid allocation scheme for the efficient designof equiripple FIR filters

In the design of a digital filter, the frequency response is often optimized to meet a given set of specifications on a dense grid of frequency points. The density of the frequency grid points must be sufficiently high so that the frequency response of the filter does not violate the specifications at frequencies in between the grid points. However, the computational complexity of the design process and the storage requirements of the computer increase with the number of frequency grid points. We propose a novel dynamic: grid point allocation technique for the design of minimax optimum FIR filter. It uses a sparse frequency grid but will produce a design that is the same as one designed on very dense frequency grid points. It requires significantly less computer time and memory resources compared with fixed grid point algorithms     

Medical Positron Imaging with a Dense Drift Space MultiWire Proportional Chamber

A multiplanar positron camera is proposed, made of six MWPC modules, arranged to form the lateral surface of a hexagonal prism. Each 50 x 50 cm(2) module has a single MWPC sandwiched by two 2-cm thick lead glass tube converters. The experimental results for a 15 x 15 cm(2) test module are reported. For 511 keV gamma-rays incident almost perpendicular onto a 1.0-cm thick converter, a detection efficiency of 4.3%, a time resolution of 130 ns (FWHM) and a spatial resolution of 2.8 mm (FWHM) have been measured with a standard Argon-Methane (70-30) mixture at 1.2 atm. The chamber may also be operated in high resolution mode: 1.2-mm (FWHM) spatial resolution has been measured at a 50% lower efficiency. The use of fast delay lines (specific delay 8 ns/cm) for the position read-out ensures a high rate capability. The expected performance of the six-module MWPC camera is discussed and compared with that of a BGO crystal ring camera. The MWPC solution seems very attractive not only for its low cost and simplicity of construction, but also for its fully three-dimensional imaging capability.     

Yield and quality of tofu made form soybeans and soy/peanut blends

The yield and quality of tofu made from blends of soybeans and raw peanuts, partially defatted peanut flour, and defatted peanut flour were investigated. Defatted peanut flour appears to be the most compatible with soybeans for tofu making, followed by partially defatted peanut flour and raw peanuts. Raw peanuts could be incorporated at levels of 10% while partially defatted or defatted peanut flour could be incorporated at a level of 20%: higher levels produced tofu with either poor texture or low yield. SEM images of tofu made from 100% soybeans showed a uniform, continuous, three-dimensional honeycomb-like protein network structure. When 10% of the soybeans was replaced by either raw peanuts; partially defatted peanut flour; or defatted peanut flour, the protein strands that make up the network structure were thicker than those of 100% soybean tofu. When soybeans were replaced with either of the three peanut products at a 30% level, the protein strands of the network structure were either less continuous or appeared perforated.     

Turbo multiuser detection for differentially modulated CDMA

In this letter, we study differentially modulated, iteratively decoded CDMA. The iterative multiuser receiver proposed consists of an additional soft-input soft-output (SISO) differential decoder, when compared to turbo multiuser detectors for absolutely modulated systems. Algorithms for iterative decoding with and without phase information at the receiver are developed. The resulting turbo receivers with differential modulation outperform coherent receivers with absolute modulation at moderate to high signal to noise ratios due to the interleaver gain associated with recursive inner encoders in serially concatenated encoding structures.