This paper considers a wireless coherent system that enables high-speed-data transmission in the presence of carrier phase error over an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. Carrier phase noise is caused by imperfect carrier tracking of the coherent demodulation. The channel characteristics of the system were modeled using phase noise whose stochastic process followed the Tikhonov distribution. For this model, we first propose an optimum detector that produces the most suitable decoding metric for a soft-input/soft-output (SISO) decoder, and then develop some simpler forms of the optimum detector to obtain efficient implementation at close to optimal performance. Those simple detectors that have a wide range of performance/complexity tradeoffs are promising in various applications. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed detectors, we have applied them to a bandwidth-efficient turbo-coded modulation scheme in which a component decoder based on SISO principles necessitates more exact channel measurement than is possible with a conventional decoder based on Viterbi decoding. Simulation results have demonstrated that the optimum detector enables excellent bit error rate (BER) performance that exceeds that with a normal detector designed for AWGN channels by more than 1 dB at a BER of 10-6 under a severe phase noise environment.

This paper describes a historical review of satellite onboard reflector antenna systems in Japan.

The paper overviews and surveys Japan's reflector antennas for earth stations and radio telescopes since the 1960's. Some interferometers for radio astronomy are included. Japanese original technologies regarding reflector antenna design and measurement are also described. There are 35 figures and 3 tables.

Mobility management is a core issue in IP/LEO satellite network related research. The LEO system consists of wide network of moving satellites providing connectivity to any place on the earth. It implies that the system must support numerous wireless connections under high-mobility conditions. Existing mobility management protocols like Mobile IP suppose that two types of identities, indicating a unique name and position in the network, are dynamically bound in each handover. However, in the IP/LEO system, handovers are mainly caused by fast moving satellites, not moving nodes. As a result, quite a few binding update requests are generated during a short period by the moving satellites; this makes mobility management difficult. In this paper, we propose a new mobility management method that separates binding updates from handovers by using geographical location of the nodes. We evaluate the proposed method and show its effectiveness.

This paper describes an analytical method to estimate the amount of interference in multibeam non-geostationary satellite systems. The performance of CDMA is compared with that of FDMA (or TDMA) by employing the maximum acceptable number of users per cell in uplink as a measure. Numerical examples shows that the maximum acceptable number of users in FDMA (or TDMA) systems varies according to the altitude of the satellites, while the performance is insensitive to the altitude in CDMA systems. Then, it is found that the superior multiple access scheme depends on the altitude of the satellite.

An S-band linearizer was developed using GaAs MMIC technology. We call it the even-order-distortion-implemented intermodulation distortion controller (EODIC). EODIC uses even-order intermodulation distortion (IM) components in the second harmonic frequency band to control its IM components in the fundamental frequency band. EODIC is a suitable tool to compensate near-saturated high power amplifiers (HPAs). We developed an EODIC using MMIC technology. This paper describes the principle of EODIC and then introduces the EODIC MMIC in detail. This paper also presents the IM reduction performance of an EODIC in a near-saturated HPA.

Asymmetric networks, which provide asymmetric bandwidth or delay for upstream and downstream transfer, have recently gained much attention since they support popular applications such as the World Wide Web (WWW). HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is the basis of most WWW services so, evaluating the performance of HTTP on asymmetric networks is increasingly important, particularly real-world networks. However, the performance of HTTP on the asymmetric networks composed of satellite and terrestrial links has not sufficiently evaluated. This paper proposes new formulas to evaluate the performance of both HTTP1.0 and HTTP1.1 on asymmetric networks. Using these formulas, we calculate the time taken to transfer web data by HTTP1.0/1.1. The calculation results are compared to the results of an existing theoretical formula and experimental results gained from a system that combines a VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) satellite communication system for satellite links (downstream) and the Internet for terrestrial links (upstream). The comparison shows that the proposed formulas yield more accurate results (compared to the measured values) than the existing formula. Furthermore, this paper proposes an evaluation formula for pipelined HTTP1.1, and shows that the values output by the proposed formula agree with those obtained by experiments (on the VSAT system) and simulations.

This paper presents efficient file management of a hard disk drive embedded digital satellite receiver. The digital broadcasting technology enables multimedia access via broadcasting systems. The amount of digital data to be processed is increased remarkably as compared to the previous analog broadcasting environments. The efficient digital data storage and management technology are discussed in this paper to cope with these changes. The DSR uses a new file system that is designed by considering disk cluster sizes and limited memories in the system, which is more appropriate than that of general Personal Computers. The proposed system enables us to watch broadcasting and to manage multimedia data efficiently.

Since the penetration of VSAT services is rapidly increasing, more earth stations will operate around airports than is currently true. This makes it essential to evaluate accurately and efficiently the impairment of received signals due to blockage by aircraft. This paper proposes developing an aircraft model using a thin, planar polygon to represent the aircraft projection and to apply GTD with corner diffraction terms. The effectiveness and applicability of the method is then examined numerically. It is demonstrated that the results measured in the Ku-band around two airports are a good match with the numerical simulations even when the distance between the aircraft and the stations is small.

A hybrid data transmission technique for multimedia satellite broadcasting is proposed. The main-channel data and sub-channel data are simultaneously transmitted using QPSK modulation and 2ASK modulation, respectively, but the latter modulation timing is offset by half the main-channel QPSK symbol length in time. The BER performance in a Gaussian channel, the transmission bandwidth, and the transmit power peak factor are theoretically analyzed for various impulse responses of the sub-channel transmit filter. It is found that the use of the sub-channel transmit filter having a sine impulse response minimizes the sub-channel BER while keeping the transmission bandwidth and the transmit power peak factor lower than those of CAPSK transmission.

The Fundamental Law of Science and Technology and the Basic Plan of Science and Technology were established in Japan in 1995 and 1996, respectively and the second Basic Plan for Science and Technology R&D was established in April, 2001. In addition, as a part of Japanese government administrative reform, the Council for Science and Technology Policy was organized in the Cabinet Office and the most of the national research laboratories including the Communications Research Laboratory (CRL) have been restructured to the Independent Administrative Institution (IAI). This paper introduces first the relationship between the info-communications R&D and the national science and technology policy in Japan. Second, the R&D of CRL, IAI is introduced. Third, as a typical example of the wireless communications R&D, the research of wireless communication in CRL is shown in more detail in terms of terrestrial wireless/mobile communication system and satellite communication system. Finally the future prospect of such an R&D is shown briefly.

In this paper, the statistical characteristics of rain attenuation in the equatorial zone are investigated. A more reasonable LMS channel model incorporating weather impairments is proposed and compared to the weather-affected Ka-band land mobile satellite (LMS) channel model suggested by Loo. The proposed LMS model uses Lutz's LMS channel model as its basis. The PDF of the received signal and BER performance derived from Loo's model and the proposed channel model are quantified and compared to verify the effectiveness of the proposed model. Finally, the influence of weather impairments on the BER performance is evaluated under various weather conditions, which clearly shows the superiority of the proposed model.

This paper presents methods for estimating the ocean wavelength in satellite altimetry and discusses the possibility of detecting the ocean wavelength. Numerical analyses show that there exists a relation between the significant wavelength and the pulse-to-pulse correlation coefficient. Presented methods are based on processing the data of existing satellite altimeters. Accordingly, we will be able to propose a method for measuring the wavelength without a large change in existing altimetry system.

In this article, a hierarchical classifier is proposed for classification of ground-cover types of a satellite image of Kangaroo Island, South Australia. The image contains seven ground-cover types, which are categorized into three groups using principal component analysis. The first group contains clouds only, the second consists of sea and cloud shadow over land, and the third contains land and three types of forest. The sea and shadow over land classes are classified with 99% accuracy using a network of threshold logic units. The land and forest classes are classified by multilayer perceptrons (MLPs) using texture features and intensity values. The average performance achieved by six trained MLPs is 91%. In order to improve the classification accuracy even further, the outputs of the six MLPs were combined using several committee machines. All committee machines achieved significant improvement in performance over the multilayer perceptron classifiers, with the best machine achieving over 92% correct classification.

An improved algorithm is developed for correcting the topographic impact on satellite imagery. First, we analyze the topography induced distortion on satellite image. It is shown that the variation of aspect can cause the obvious different distortions in the remotely sensed image, and also effect the image illumination significantly. Because the illumination is the basis for topographic correction algorithms, we consider its variation in different sun-facing aspects in calculation a correction parameter and take it as a key element in the modified correction algorithm. Then, we apply the modified correction method on the actual Landsat Thematic Mapper satellite image. The topographic correction was done in different image data with different season and different solar angle. The corrected results show the effectiveness and accuracy using this approach.

We studied a three-wave coupling process occurring in microwave power transmission (MPT) experiment in the ionospheric plasma by performing computer experiments with one-dimensional electromagnetic PIC (Particle-In-Cell) model. In order to examine the spatial variation of the coupling process, we continuously emitted intense electromagnetic wave from an antenna located at a simulation boundary. In the three-wave coupling, a low-frequency electrostatic wave is excited as the consequence of a nonlinear interaction between the forward propagating pump wave and backscattered one. In the computer experiments, low-frequency electrostatic bursts are discontinuously observed in space. The discontinuity of the electrostatic bursts is accounted for by the local electron heating due to the bursts and associated modification of the wave dispersion relation. In a case where the pump wave propagates along the geomagnetic field Bext, several bursts of Langmuir waves are observed. Since the first burst consumes a part of the pump wave energy, the pump wave is weakened and cannot trigger the three-wave coupling beyond the region where the burst occurs. Since the dispersion relation of the Langmuir wave is variable due to the local electron heating by the burst, the coupling condition eventually becomes unsatisfied and the first interaction becomes weak. Another burst of Langmuir waves is observed at a different region beyond the location of the first burst. In the case of perpendicular propagation, the upper hybrid wave, one of the mode branches of the electron cyclotron harmonic waves, is excited. Since the dispersion relation of the upper hybrid wave is less sensitive to the electron temperature, the coupling condition is not easily violated by the temperature increase. As a result, the three-wave coupling periodically takes place in time and eventually the transmission ratio of the microwaves becomes approximately 20% while almost no attenuation of the pump waves is observed after the first electrostatic burst in the parallel case.

A lot of efforts have been made to develop the international Internet environment. In order to achieve a better and efficient information infrastructure around the globe, there are very strong urgent demands in the area of Asia and Pacific for a practical working environment where engineers and researchers in related fields work cooperatively. Our AI3 Project was started in 1995 by WIDE Project and JSAT. It has been operating a satellite based testbed network in Southeast Asia and conducting a series of research activities using the testbed. In this paper, we explain AI3 satellite Internet infrastructure and describe our efforts of the deployment in Asia using our developed technology. Furthermore, we evaluate our testbed network from the aspect of sustainable international collaboration.

The unidirectional transmission links such as broadcast satellite links and cable links are strongly demanding type of link to provide high bandwidth and ubiquitous Internet connectivity with lower cost. In order to provide an internet connectivity, the UDLs, unidirectional links, should be available for the IP service. However, since the current Internet routing and upper layer protocols assume the bi-directional link, the UDLs have been considered as unavailable links for the IP service. This paper proposes an architecture and a mechanism for the IP service over the UDL. The proposed system emulates the bi-directional connectivity between all nodes on the UDL, in order to use the dynamic routing protocol, the TCP/IP protocol, on the UDL system. Receiver uses a link layer tunneling mechanism to forward the IP datagrams to the Feed over an IP cloud, that is not directly connected to the UDL. This proposed architecture enables the dynamic routing capability for UDLs, as well as user applications, without any software modification.

By the growth of the Internet, the client's access to the Internet have been increasing. In order to meet those demands, asymmetric networks have become a great attraction. However, asymmetric networks composed of satellite and terrestrial links have not been enough investigated. Therefore, this paper proposes a new formula for TCP performance evaluation for the asymmetric networks. Using this evaluation formula, we calculate the throughput of TCP Reno over the asymmetric networks taking Slow Start into account. The calculation results are compared with the following: (1) the value based on an existing theoretical formula, (2) the outputs of simulation by NS (Network Simulator), and (3) the experimental results using VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) satellite communication system for satellite links and the Internet for terrestrial links. As a result, it is shown that the new formula is more precise than the one already proposed.

This paper proposes a new satellite communication system that enables high-speed communication in a mobile environment. The system configuration combines a terrestrial mobile network and an existing satellite system, and includes a tracking antenna that was newly developed to receive 30 Mbit/s signals from commercial communication satellites. A prototype system comprising the mobile network, the satellite system and a vehicle in which the tracking antenna is installed was constructed for purposes of evaluation and demonstration. A LAN system was incorporated in the experimental vehicle by using the tracking antenna, a satellite router and a Personal Digital Cellular phone. The validity of the proposed system was verified by the tracking antenna driving tests, system UDP tests and FTP throughput tests in a mobile environment.