Array designs for amplitude and phase control of millimeter-wave beams

New array design concepts are described for the phase and amplitude control of millimeter and submillimeter-wave beams. Phase shifter array designs providing increased phase range and wider bandwidth are described. Techniques involving the integration of gain-producing elements as well as tuning elements on a single array are proposed for application to high-performance beam control and beam shaping. These concepts should facilitate the further development of quasi-optical solid state device-based arrays for application to millimeter-wave electronic systems.     

Europa's differentiated internal structure: inferences from four Galileo encounters

Radio Doppler data from four encounters of the Galileo spacecraft with the jovian moon Europa have been used to refine models of Europa's interior. Europa is most likely differentiated into a metallic core surrounded by a rock mantle and a water ice-liquid outer shell, but the data cannot eliminate the possibility of a uniform mixture of dense silicate and metal beneath the water ice-liquid shell. The size of a metallic core is uncertain because of its unknown composition, but it could be as large as about 50 percent of Europa's radius. The thickness of Europa's outer shell of water ice-liquid must lie in the range of about 80 to 170 kilometers.     

Interfacing synchronous and asynchronous modules within ahigh-speed pipeline

This paper describes a new technique for integrating asynchronous modules within a high-speed synchronous pipeline. Our design eliminates potential metastability problems by using a clock generated by a stoppable ring oscillator, which is capable of driving the large clock load found in present day microprocessors. Using the ATACS design tool, we designed highly optimized transistor-level circuits to control the ring oscillator and generate the clock and handshake signals with minimal overhead. Our interface architecture requires no redesign of the synchronous circuitry. Incorporating asynchronous modules in a high-speed pipeline improves performance by exploiting data-dependent delay variations. Since the speed of the synchronous circuitry tracks the speed of the ring oscillator under different processes, temperatures, and voltages, the entire chip operates at the speed dictated by the current operating conditions, rather than being governed by the worst case conditions. These two factors together can lead to a significant improvement in average-case performance. The interface design is simulated using the 0.6-μm HP CMOS14B process in HSPICE     

Closed-form solution of decomposable stochastic models

Markov and semi-Markov processes are increasingly being used in the modeling of complex reconfigurable systems (fault-tolerant computers). The estimation of the reliability (or some measure of performance) of the system reduces to solving the process for its state probabilities. Such a model may exhibit numerous states and complicated transition distributions, contributing to an expensive and numerically delicate solution procedure. Thus, when a system exhibits a decomposition property, either structureally (autonomous subsystems), or behaviorally (component failure versus reconfiguration), it is desirable to exploit this decomposition in the reliability calculation. In interesting cases there can be failure states which arise from non-failure states of the subsystems. We present equation which allow the computation of failure probabilities of the total (combined) model without requiring a complete solution of the combined model. This material is presented within the context of closed-form functional representation of probabilities as utilized in the Symbolic Hierarchical Automated Reliability and Performance Evaluator (SHARPE) tool. The techniques adopted enable one to compute such probability functions for a much wider class of systems at a reduced computational cost. Several examples show how the method is used, especially in enhancing the versatility of the SHARPE tool.     

Monolithic quasi-optical frequency tripler array with 5-W outputpower at 99 GHz

Two devices, the multi-quantum-barrier varactor (MQBV) and the Schottky-quantum-barrier varactor (SQBV), have been developed and applied in quasi-optical arrays for millimeter-wave harmonic generation. Monolithic arrays utilizing these devices have been successfully fabricated with nearly 100% yield. An output power of 5 W (1.25 W) at 99 GHz has been achieved with an SQBV (MQBV) tripler array, in excellent agreement with large-signal simulation predictions after correcting for diffraction losses in the matching system. These results represent the state of the art in solid-state millimeter-wave sources     

A monolithic diode array millimeter-wave beam transmittancecontroller

Amplitude control of transmitted millimeter-wave beams by monolithic Schottky diode arrays is demonstrated. An array containing 4800 diodes has demonstrated control over the range of 20-50% beam transmittance at 99 GHz and 20-70% beam transmittance at 165 GHz. Modulation testing on a second array (8640 diodes) with similar transmission characteristics has shown array control to 50 MHz with negligible loss of output response. An extensive evaluation performed for the 8640-diode array shows good agreement between array impedance parameters determined from quasi-optical measurements, theoretical calculations, and low-frequency C-V measurements. The results have extended the range of quasi-optical functions demonstrated by solid-state power-combining arrays for application to millimeter-wave systems     

Turbo space-time codes with time varying linear transformations

Turbo space-time codes with symbols precoded by randomly chosen unitary time variant linear transformations (TVLT) are investigated in this paper. It is shown that turbo codes with TVLT achieve full diversity gain and do not require exhaustive tests of the rank criterion. We prove that the coding gain performance of turbo space-time codes with TVLT improves with the Hamming distance between codewords (number of different columns). As an additional benefit of the application of TVLT, with the removal of the constant modulation condition, we prove that throughput rates achieved by these codes are significantly higher than those for conventional space-time codes. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate diversity gains, coding gains and rates of turbo space-time codes with TVLT     

Europa's differentiated internal structure: inferences from two Galileo encounters

Doppler data generated with the Galileo spacecraft's radio carrier wave during two Europa encounters on 19 December 1996 (E4) and 20 February 1997 (E6) were used to measure Europa's external gravitational field. The measurements indicate that Europa has a predominantly water ice-liquid outer shell about 100 to 200 kilometers thick and a deep interior with a density in excess of about 4000 kilograms per cubic meter. The deep interior could be a mixture of metal and rock or it could consist of a metal core with a radius about 40 percent of Europa's radius surrounded by a rock mantle with a density of 3000 to 3500 kilograms per cubic meter. The metallic core is favored if Europa has a magnetic field.