Bistatic radar scattering by a chaff cloud

The bistatic radar scattering cross section of a chaff cloud is investigated in the ground-based system for arbitrarily polarized transmitters and receivers. The chaff cloud considered consists of a large number of identical thin conducting wires whose thickness is very small compared to their length and to the wavelength. Numerical results for bistatic cross sections for the cases of orientations uniform in azimuth and Gaussian in elevation, and also for uniformly random orientation in both azimuth and in elevation are presented in the form of three-dimensional graphs, for a few typical examples     

Evaluation and improvement of fault coverage of conformance testingby UIO sequences

The fault coverage of testing protocols using unique input/output (UIO) sequences is analyzed. UIO sequences can be efficiently employed in checking the conformance specifications of protocols by using transition testing. The test sequence is found using the rural Chinese postman tour algorithm. A comprehensive fault model is developed, and analytical expressions are given for the fault coverage. The conditions for undetectability are analyzed, and a new algorithm is proposed. Simulation results and illustrative examples are presented. Overhead issues are discussed, and significant improvements are shown for achieving 100% fault coverage. The major advantage of the proposed approach is that it provides the theoretical basis for fault coverage evaluation of protocol testing using UIO sequences     

Efficient algorithms for SS/TDMA scheduling

Efficient scheduling algorithms for the slot assignment problem in a satellite-switched time-division multiple-access (SS/TDMA) system are presented. This problem is translated into a modified open-shop scheduling problem, allowing the use of known optimal algorithms. Their complexity is expressed as a function of the following parameters: the number of nonzero entries in the demand matrix, the number of uplinks, and the number of downlinks. According to the values of these parameters, the algorithm with the lowest computational complexity can be adopted. Although the computational complexity of previously published algorithms is drastically reduced, simulation results show that the results are close to previously presented solutions in terms of the assignment duration and the number of switching matrices     

An ultraminiature CMOS pressure sensor for a multiplexedcardiovascular catheter

A multiplexed ultraminiature pressure sensor designed for use in a cardiovascular catheter is described. The sensor operates from only two loads, which are shared by two sensors per catheter. The sensing chip is 350 μm wide by 1.4 mm long by 100 μm thick. CMOS readout circuitry at the sensing site converts applied pressure to a frequency variation in the supply current, which is detected at the end of the catheter by a microprocessor-controlled interface. The nominal pressure sensitivity is 2 kHz/fF about a zero-pressure output frequency of 2.7 MHz. This on-site circuitry contains two reference capacitors which allow external compensation for nonlinearity and temperature sensitivity and has an idle-state power dissipation of less than 50 μW. With the transducer sealed at ambient pressure, the device can resolve pressure variations of about 3 mmHg, while vacuum-sealed devices do considerably better and should permit <2 mmHg resolution in practical systems     

Source-to-drain nonuniformly doped channel (NUDC) MOSFET structuresfor high current drivability and threshold voltage controllability

The source-to-drain nonuniformly doped channel (NUDC) MOSFET has been investigated to improve the aggravation of the V_th lowering characteristics and to prevent the degradation of the current drivability. The basic concept is to change the impurity ions to control the threshold voltage, which are doped uniformly along the channel in the conventional channel MOSFET, to a nonuniform profile of concentration. The MOSFET was fabricated by using the oblique rotating ion implantation technique. As a result, the V_th lowering at 0.4-μm gate length of the NUDC MOSFET is drastically suppressed both in the linear region and in the saturation region as compared with that of the conventional channel MOSFET. Also, the maximum carrier mobility at 0.4-μm gate length is improved by about 20.0%. Furthermore, the drain current is increased by about 20.0% at 0.4-μm gate length     

Electrical and optical properties of deep-red top-surface-emittinglasers

By studying thermal behavior of all-MBE surface-emitting lasers, barrier heights and optimum cavity design parameters are obtained. The barrier heights for holes between hetero-interfaces of Al_0.3Ga_0.7As-Al_0.65Ga_0.35As and AlAs-Al_0.65Ga_0.35As (Δx=-0.35) are measured to be 77 meV at zero bias for the deep-red top-surface-emitting laser. The barrier height decreases linearly with forward bias voltage, explaining the nonlinearity in current-voltage characteristics of the top-surface-emitting laser. The contribution of electrons to electrical resistance is estimated to be negligibly small compared to that of holes for the structure consisting of Δ_x =0.35. Minimum threshold current and maximum differential quantum efficiency observed around 200 K indicate slight mismatch between gain maximum and Fabry-Perot resonance for the deep-red top-surface-emitting laser     

Worst case Cramer-Rao bounds for parametric estimation ofsuperimposed signals with applications

The problem of parameter estimation of superimposed signals in white Gaussian noise is considered. The effect of the correlation structure of the signals on the Cramer-Rao bounds is studied for both the single and multiple experiment cases. The best and worst conditions are found using various criteria. The results are applied to the example of parameter estimation of superimposed sinusoids, or plane-wave direction finding in white Gaussian noise, and best and worst conditions on the correlation structure and relative phase of the sinusoids are found. This provides useful information on the limits of the resolvability of sinusoid signals in time series analysis or of plane waves in array processing. The conditions are also useful for designing worst-case simulation studies of estimation algorithms, and for the design of minimax signal acquisition and estimation procedures, as demonstrated by an example     

Transient simulation of resonant cavity enhanced heterojunctionphotodiodes

The transient response of heterojunction photodiodes under pulse illumination has been simulated. By solving discretized time dependent drift-diffusion and Poisson equations, the local potential and carrier concentrations are computed at each time step. The device-level simulation is carried out by a circuit simulator in which localized carrier transport is modeled by circuit elements such as voltage controlled current sources, capacitors, and resistors. Results on conventional AlGaAs/GaAs and resonant cavity enhanced (RCE) GaAs/InGaAs heterojunction p-i-n photodiodes are presented. For a 10-μm×10-μm area detector, more than 40% bandwidth improvement along with a two-fold increase in the efficiency is predicted for RCE devices over optimized conventional photodiodes     

Performance characterization of polarimetric active radarcalibrators and a new single antenna design

Several topics associated with the use of a polarimetric active radar calibrator (PARC), which is a high radar-cross-section transponder with a known scattering matrix, are addressed. The first involves experimental measurements of the magnitudes and phases of the scattering-matrix elements of a pair of PARCs that operate at 1.25 GHz and 5.3 GHz. The measurements were conducted over a wide range of incidence angles (relative to the boresight direction) in the azimuth, elevation, 45°, and 135° planes. The 5.3-GHz PARC, which consisted of two antennas placed several wavelengths apart, exhibited symmetrical patterns with no ripples and excellent isolation between orthogonal polarization channels. The 1.25-GHz PARC, whose antennas were in very close proximity to one another, exhibited unsymmetrical patterns as well as ripples in the phase patterns, thereby introducing errors in the elements of the scattering matrix. To avoid this problem, a single-antenna PARC is designed,, using an orthomode transducer. The single-target calibration technique is extended so that it applies to the use of a PARC as well as reciprocal passive calibration devices such as spheres and trihedral corner reflectors     

High-speed operation of single-quantum-well lasers with large gaincompression

It is shown that the overdamped response of single-quantum-well lasers due to a large gain compression can be countered by the destabilizing effect of an intracavity saturable absorber. Modulation bandwidths (3 dB) of up to 13 GHz for single-quantum well lasers were obtained using this technique