A tunnel film(9 nm thick) formed by a rapid thermal oxidation in dry oxygen-rapid thermal nitridation in NH3-rapid thermal oxynitridation in N2O (ONN) sequence is applied to a stacked-gate flash memory cell, in which writing and erasing are carried out by Fowler-Nordheim tunneling at a drain and at a channel, respectively. The writing, erasing, endurance, disturbance and retention characteristics of the memory cells with ONN tunnel films are, for the first time, compared to those of the memory cells with conventional tunnel films such as dry oxide, N2O-oxynitride and reoxidized nitrided oxide tunnel films. No significant difference of the writing and erasing characteristics was observed among the memory cells with the various tunnel films. However, the amount of Vth window narrowing in the endurance characteristics of the memory cells with ONN (-12.9%) and reoxidized nitrided oxide(-11.4%) tunnel films were much smaller than those of the memory cells with RTO(-34.0%) and NO (-38.2%) after 106 write/erase cycles. Furthermore, the decrease in Vth in the drain disturbance characteristics of the memory cells with ONN tunnel films (21.2%) after weak electron-ejecting stress of 105 cycles was smaller than those of the memory cells with the other films(51.4-64.4%). The retention characteristics of the memory cells with ONN tunnel films under the thermal stress of 200, 5.9105 sec were superior(ΔVth=-2.1%) to those of the memory cells with the other films(ΔVth=-5.4 - -8.2%). The reasons of these findings are because ONN films exhibit smaller number of charge traps and interface states induced by write/erase cycle stress, and suppress leakage curent stimulated by the weak electron-ejecting bias and the thermal stress, compared to the dry oxide, the N2O-oxynitride and the reoxidized nitrided oxide. ONN films are found to be suitable for use as tunnel films of fiash memory cells.

This paper proposes a channel allocation principle that prevents TCP throughput degradation in multihop transmissions in a mesh network based on the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) MAC protocol. We first address the relationship between the network topology of wireless nodes and the TCP throughput degradation based on computer simulations. The channel allocation principle is discussed in terms of resolution into a coloring problem based on throughput degradation. The number of required channels for the proposed channel allocation principle is evaluated and it is shown that two channels are sufficient for more than 96% simulated multihop patterns. The proposed channel allocation principle is extendable to generic mesh networks. We also clarify the number of required channels for mesh networks. The simulation results show that three channels are sufficient for more than 98% patterns in the generic mesh networks when the number of nodes is less than 10.

This paper proposes a differentially-coded-quadrature-phase-shift-keying (DQPSK) coherent demodulator using a new simultaneous carrier and bit-timing recovery scheme (SCBR). The new DQPSK SCBR (DSCBR) scheme works with a frequently used preamble, whose baseband signal alternates between two diagonal decision points, for example, a repeated bit-series of "1001." With the DSCBR scheme, the proposed demodulator achieves a significantly agile carrier and bit-timing recovery using an open-loop approach with a one-part preamble. To illustrate this, a preamble of 8 symbols is applicable with the Eb/No degradation from the theory over AWGN of 0.2 dB. It is also shown that the proposed demodulator achieves an improvement in the required Eb/No of more than 2 dB over differential detection over Ricean fading communication channels. The channels are modeled for wireless broadband communication systems with directional antennas or line of sight (LOS) paths. This paper concludes that the proposed demodulator is a strong candidate for receivers in wireles broadband communication systems.

This paper proposes a new simultaneous carrier and bit-timing recovery (CBR) scheme for offset quadrature phase shift keying (O-QPSK) for agile acquisition over satellite communication channels. The proposed simultaneous CBR scheme employs a preamble shared for the carrier and bit-timing recover, which has a specific bit-pattern designed so that its baseband signal alternates between two adjacent decision points at the symbol rate. Using the preamble, the proposed simultaneous CBR scheme estimates the carrier phase and the bit-timing, simultaneously and independently, by open-loop approach. For comparison, this paper also describes the performance and configuration of a joint carrier and bit-timing recovery scheme, which is expanded for O-QPSK from the one conventionally proposed for QPSK. This paper demonstrates with simulation results that the proposed simultaneous CBR scheme significantly improves the agility of acquisition: a mere 30-symbol preamble is sufficient for low-Eb/No channels typical of satellite communication systems. The proposed CBR scheme is also advantageous from the viewpoint of digital implementation: it processes at 2 samples/symbol and eliminates an analog voltage control clock (VCC). The proposed simultaneous CBR scheme is a strong candidate for TDMA systems that require the high data-transmission and frequency utilization efficiency.

This paper presents fully digital high speed (17.6Mb/s) burst modem for Offset Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (OQPSK), which employs novel digital modem VLSICs. The modulator VLSIC directly generates modulated intermediate frequency (IF) signals in a fully digitalized manner. A newly proposed digital reverse-modulation and pre-filtered carrier filter-limiter scheme realizes low power consumption and stable operation in a low Eb/No condition. The demodulator VLSIC also achieves fast bit-timing acquisition in burst mode. Moreover, it supports stable initial burst acquisition by a novel automatic frequency control (AFC) acquisition detector and a digital burst detector. A digital burst automatic gain control (AGC) compensates burst-to-burst level differences without analog circutits. Performance evaluation results show that the new modem achieves satisfactory bit-error-rate performance in severe environments. The developed modem has been employed in a commercial portable earth station for ISDN services and reduces the hardware size to one third that of the conventional one.

This paper proposes a new burst coherent demodulator that improves transmission quality of microcellular TDMA/TDD systems for personal communications and has configuration suitable for low power consumption with LSIC-implementation. To achieve the better transmission quality, the proposed demodulator employs coherent detection with a unique carrier recovery scheme that can operate without any preamble for carrier recovery. In addition, the demodulator uses a clock recovery scheme with clock phase estimation using twice differentiation, which eliminates hangup and attains fast clock acquisition at 2 samples/symbol. Experimental results clarify the superiority of the proposed coherent demodulator for microcellular TDMA/TDD systems. The proposed coherent demodulator reduces the irreducible frame error rate by 40%, and achieves 4dB improvement at the frame error rate of 10% compared with differential detection under the Rayleigh fading (fD/fs=810-5, τrms/Ts=510-2) typical of personal communication environments.

This paper presents a new offset-quadrature-phase-shift-keying (OQPSK) coherent demodulation scheme for wireless asynchronous transfer mode (WATM) systems that premise the Ricean fading communication channels (e.g., typically with derectional antennas). The presented demodulator is basically advanced from a simultaneous carrier and bit-timing recovery (SCBR) scheme by newly employing a phase compensated filter and a reverse-modulation scheme for OQPSK. This advancement aims to enhance the carrier phase tracking performance against the phase fluctuation due to the fading and/or the phase rotation caused by the carrier frequency error of the oscillator. Design consideration and performance evaluation of the demodulator are extensively carried out under Ricean fading channels typical of the WATM systems as well as additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels. The evaluation ressults show that the advanced SCBR (ASCBR) scheme achieves a bit-error-rate/cell-error-rate (BER/CER) performance close to ideal coherent detection with a considerably short preamble, e.g., 8 symbols. Specifically, compared with differential detection (evaluated for QPSK with the hard-wired clock), the new coherent demodulator achieves a significant required Eb/No improvement, which becomes larger as the fading condition degrades. This paper concludes that the ASCBR scheme is a strong candidate for the Ricean-fading-premise WATM systems.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals suffer nonlinear distortion within the transmitter, in the high-power amplifiers in particular. This paper proposes a nonlinear distortion compensation technique for OFDM signals, which incorporates a baseband predistortion with a constant peak-power OFDM (CP-OFDM). CP-OFDM fixes the envelope-peak amplitude to a constant value while maintaining the linearity of the inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) outputs; consequently, the baseband predistorter entirely compensates the nonlinear distortion. Simulation and experimental results verify that the proposed technique significantly reduces out-of-band power emission and adjacent channel interference (ACI) more than 10 dB respectively.

This paper presents a fully digital high speed (60 Mb/s) Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK)/Offset QPSK (OQPSK) burst demodulator for radio applications, which has been implemented on a 0.5 µm Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) master slice Very Large Scale Integrated circuit (VLSI). The developed demodulator VLSI eliminates analog devices such as mixers, phase-shifters and Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) for bit-timing recovery, which are used by conventional high-speed burst demodulators. In addition to the fully digital implementation, the VLSI achieves fast carrier and bit-timing acquisition in burst modes by employing a reverse-modulation carrier recovery scheme with a wave-forming filter for OQPSK operation, and a bit-timing recovery scheme with bit-timing estimation and interpolation using a pulse-shaping filter. Results of performance evaluation assuming application in Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems show that the developed VLSI achieves excellent bit-error-rate and carrier-slipping-rate performance at high speed (60 Mb/s) with short preamble words (less than 100 symbols) in low Eb/No environments.

This paper explores virtual destination (VD)/virtual source (VS)-based available bit rate (ABR) flow control performance, targeting wireless asynchronous transfer mode (WATM) application that can incur long link-delays because of employing radio-medium sharing and/or radio-specific data link control schemes. As this paper reveals, the conventional VD/VS scheme has difficulty in sustaining satisfactory ABR performance, when it is applied to long-delay-causing WATM; it suffers from significant increase in the necessary buffer capacity. To ensure the ABR performance in WATM, this paper proposes a new VD/VS coupling scheme using a feed-forward congestion indication. The proposed scheme controls the allowed cell rate of a source end system in a feed-forward manner by predicting the queue length at the time the WATM-associated-round-trip ahead. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme exhibits excellent ABR performance with a long delay of the divided loop on the radio-link side. It is also verified that the proposed scheme is rather robust against uncertainty and/or time-variation regarding the predetermined radio link delay.

This paper proposes a new polling-based dynamic slot assignment (DSA) scheme. With the rapid progress of wireless access systems, wireless data communication will become more and more attractive. In wireless data communication, an efficient DSA scheme is required to enhance system throughput, since the capacity of radio links is often smaller than that of wired links. A polling-based DSA scheme is typically used in centralized slot assignment control systems. It, however, is difficult to assign the slots to the targeted mobile terminals in a fair-share manner if only a polling-based scheme is used, especially in unbalanced-traffic circumstances, as revealed later. To solve this problem, we propose the exponential decreasing and proportional increasing rate control as is employed in available bit rate (ABR) service in ATM so that fair slot assignment is achieved even in heavily-unbalanced-traffic circumstances. Moreover, so that an AP operating with a large number of MTs can avoid long transmission delays, a polling-based resource request scheme with random access is featured in a new algorithm. Simulations verify that the proposed scheme offers fair slot assignment for each user while maintaining high throughput and short delay performance.