Reconfigurable Multiband Antenna Designs for Wireless Communication Devices

New designs for compact reconfigurable antennas are introduced for mobile communication devices. The uniqueness of the antenna designs are that they allow various groups of their operating frequency bands to be selected electronically. In particular, each group of frequency bands, or mode, can be made to serve several different communication systems simultaneously. These systems may include various combinations of GSM, DCS, PCS, UMTS, Bluetooth, and wireless local-area network (LAN). Therefore, by electronically selecting different antenna modes, a variety of communication systems can be conveniently served by only one antenna. One advantage is that through the different operational modes, the total antenna volume can be reused, and therefore the overall antenna can be made compact. In these designs, the selection of the different modes is achieved by either i) switching different feeding locations of the antenna (switched feed) or ii) switching or breaking of the antenna's connection to the ground (switched ground). This paper demonstrates these two designs. For the first design of switched feed, it can support GSM, DCS, PCS, and UMTS. In the second design, the antenna makes use of a switched-ground technique, which can cover GSM, DCS, PCS, UMTS, Bluetooth, and 2.4 GHz wireless LAN. The designs are investigated when ideal switches and also various realistic active switches based on PIN diodes, GaAs field effect transistor, and MEMs configurations. The designs are verified through both numerical simulations and measurement of an experimental prototype. The results confirm good performance of the two multiband reconfigurable antenna designs.     

The molecular basis of intractable diarrhoea of infancy

The intractable diarrhoeas of infancy present very major problems of clinical management. However, the conceptual importance of these conditions lies in the information that they may provide about normal small-intestinal function in humans: among such infants will be found the human equivalents of the 'knock-out' mice, in which targeted gene disruption allows sometimes unexpected insight into the regulation of intestinal function. The challenge posed by the intractable diarrhoeal syndromes, of working backwards from an apparently common phenotype to probably multiple genotypes, is, however, immense. Very few of these conditions have been described at the genetic level, although the molecular basis of pathogenesis has been better explored in recent years. The two major groups of intractable diarrhoea are due to (1) primary epithelial abnormalities (which usually present within the first few days of life) and (2) immunologically mediated (which generally present after the first few weeks). The high prevalence of autoimmune enteropathy among infantile autoimmune disease, in contrast to adult autoimmunity, is intriguing and may reflect constitutive abnormality of extrathymic lymphocyte maturation. The use of potent immunosuppressive drugs and increasing expertise with parenteral nutrition are improving the outlook of these previously fatal conditions. Viewed globally, however, the pressing problem is to treat effectively the millions of infants who die from severe persistent diarrhoea and wasting, which would certainly not be considered intractable in wealthy countries.     

A diversity antenna for external mounting on wireless handsets

In this paper we introduce an antenna that has two feed ports and is suitable for providing diversity signals in compact wireless communication handsets. The design is based on merging a monopole and a λ/4 slot antenna together to give a single compact antenna structure for external use on wireless handsets. Experimental results are presented for designs that operate at 2.4 GHz and include radiation patterns, S-parameters, and signal correlations between ports. It is demonstrated that signal cross correlations between the feed ports of less than 0.1 in typical wireless environments at the handset are possible     

Improving microwave imaging by enhancing diffraction tomography

In this paper, a technique for enhancing the reconstruction quality of diffraction tomography for microwave imaging is presented. The technique invokes the WKB approximation in conjunction with utilizing measurement data at more than one frequency to overcome some of the limitations of diffraction tomography. The resulting formulation has a mathematical interpretation which leads to some interesting insights into the limitations of diffraction tomography. Numerical implementation of the technique is also described and actual simulation results using this implementation for a variety of two-dimensional (2-D) objects are provided. These show that indeed significant improvements over conventional diffraction tomography are possible with our enhanced technique     

Congenital enterocyte heparan sulphate deficiency with massive albumin loss, secretory diarrhoea, and malnutrition

BACKGROUND: The molecular basis of protein-losing enteropathy is unknown. However it has been shown that sulphated glycosaminoglycans may be important in regulating vascular and renal albumin loss. METHODS: We describe three baby boys who presented within the first weeks of life with massive enteric protein loss, secretory diarrhoea, and intolerance of enteral feeds. All required total parenteral nutrition and repeated albumin infusions. No cause could be found in any case despite extensive investigations, including small intestinal biopsy sampling, which were repeatedly normal. FINDINGS: By specific histochemistry, we detected gross abnormality in the distribution of small intestinal glycosaminoglycans in all three infants, with complete absence of enterocyte heparan sulphate. The distribution of vascular and lamina propria glycosaminoglycans was, however, normal. INTERPRETATION: The presentation of these infants suggests that enterocyte heparan sulphate is important in normal small intestinal function.     

Pilot-Channel-Assisted Log-Likelihood-Ratio Selective Rake Combining for Low-Rate Ultra-Wideband Communications

For ultra-wideband (UWB) communications with signal energy dispersed by a large number of multipath components, the design of a Rake receiver that can provide a desirable output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) using only a moderate number of fingers becomes an important issue. In this paper, we propose a pilot-channel-assisted log-likelihood-ratio selective combining (PCA-LLR-SC) scheme for UWB Rake receivers to be used in long-range low-rate UWB communications envisioned by the IEEE 802.15.4a PHY specification. The pilot and data channels are constructed using quadrature sinusoidal bursts that have the same Gaussian envelope. The system parameters are optimized through jointly minimizing the channel estimation mean square error and maximizing the receiver output SNR. Extensive simulations confirm that the proposed PCA-LLR-SC scheme is capable of providing robust low-rate UWB communications in fast-fading multipath channels and in the presence of multi-user interference.     

Multiuser OFDM with adaptive subcarrier, bit, and power allocation

Multiuser orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) with adaptive multiuser subcarrier allocation and adaptive modulation is considered. Assuming knowledge of the instantaneous channel gains for all users, we propose a multiuser OFDM subcarrier, bit, and power allocation algorithm to minimize the total transmit power. This is done by assigning each user a set of subcarriers and by determining the number of bits and the transmit power level for each subcarrier. We obtain the performance of our proposed algorithm in a multiuser frequency selective fading environment for various time delay spread values and various numbers of users. The results show that our proposed algorithm outperforms multiuser OFDM systems with static time-division multiple access (TDMA) or frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) techniques which employ fixed and predetermined time-slot or subcarrier allocation schemes. We have also quantified the improvement in terms of the overall required transmit power, the bit-error rate (BER), or the area of coverage for a given outage probability     

Compact circular sector and annular sector dielectric resonatorantennas

We investigate circular sector and annular sector dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) geometries. The advantage these geometries offer, compared to conventional circular cylindrical DRAs are significant reductions in volume, making them potential candidates for use in compact applications such as mobile communication handsets. Approximate theory, simulation, and experimental results are provided to support the findings. In particular, a sector DRA is demonstrated to have 75% less volume than a conventional cylindrical DRA, with the same resonant frequency. The DRA volume minimization for compact antenna design is also discussed and a design is proposed and tested for a mobile telephone handset suitable for the DCS1800 system     

On the thermal conductivity of sintered metallic fibre structures

The present paper investigates the anisotropic thermal conductivity of a novel sintered metallic fibre structure with different porosities (i.e. 51.9%, 74.9%, 81.4%). Different methodologies are applied: numerical calculations (i.e. Finite Element and Lattice Monte Carlo methods) based on micro-computed tomography images, experimental tests (i.e. steady-state plate method) and analytical modelling. Good agreement between the numerical methods and experimental measurements is obtained for high porosity models (i.e. porosity > 72.5%). Furthermore, the thermal conductivity decreases with increasing porosity. A distinct thermal anisotropy is found where maximum values are in the parallel direction and minimum values in the transverse direction to the fibres.     

Molecular dynamics simulation of surface segregation, diffusion and reaction phenomena in equiatomic Ni-Al systems

The molecular dynamics method is used to provide fundamental insights into surface segregation, bulk diffusion and alloying reaction phenomena in equiatomic Ni-Al systems. This knowledge can serve as a guide for the search and development of economic routes for controlling microstructure and properties of the intermetallic compound NiAl. This paper gives an overview of recent molecular dynamics simulations in the area along with other theoretical calculations and experimental measurements.