Direct digital synthesizer with jittered clock

Since the direct digital synthesizer (DDS) can potentially be used as a flexible clock source, it is of interest to study its spectrum purity as well as jitter characteristic. In this paper, we investigate the jitter transfer characteristic of the DDS clock driven by a jittered digital-to-analog converter (DAC) clock. We first derive the dosed form expressions of the spectrum of the DAC output signal with jittered driving clock. These expressions are then used to investigate the spectral structure of the DDS clock. Equations are derived for the calculation of the SNR. For a small phase noise power in the driving clock, the DDS clock SNR is obtained in a simple closed form and is shown to be lower than that of the input driving clock by the amount of 20 log(f_s/d_d) dB, where f_s is the nominal driving clock frequency and f_d is the desirable DDS output clock frequency     

Low RF noise and power loss for ion-implanted Si having an improved implantation process

Very-low-transmission line noise of <0.25 dB at 18 GHz and low power loss /spl les/0.6 dB at 110 GHz have been measured on transmission lines fabricated on proton-implanted Si. In contrast, a standard Si substrate gave much higher noise of 2.5 dB and worse power loss of 5 dB. The good RF integrity of proton-implanted Si results from the high isolation impedance to ground, as analyzed by an equivalent circuit model. The proton implantation is also done after forming the transmission lines at a reduced implantation energy of /spl sim/4 MeV. This enables easier process integration into current VLSI technology.     

Microhardness and corrosion behavior in CrN/electroless Ni/mild steel complex coating

The electroless nickel–phosphorous (Ni–P) coating was chosen as an interlayer to improve the properties of the CrN/mild steel (MS) composite. A hypophosphite-reduced acid solution was used to first deposit electroless Ni–P onto MS substrates, and then the CrN overlayer was deposited by reactive r.f. magnetron sputtering onto the electroless Ni–P modified substrate. The electroless Ni–P layer crystallizes with the precipitation of a Ni₃P phase during r.f. sputtering, and thus a coating–substrate composite of CrN/Ni–Ni₃P/MS is formed. The electroless Ni–P coating increases the surface hardness of the steel substrate to more than three times. The surface hardness of the CrN coating modified by an electroless Ni–P interlayer exhibits a hardness higher than 2000 HK_0.015. The usual substrate effect on the microhardness of the coatings is nearly eliminated with the complex coating feature, and a significant enhancement of surface hardness in the coating assembly is achieved. The corrosion tests indicate that the Ni–Ni₃P/MS configuration exhibits a more positive E_corr value (i.e. less electronegative) than CrN/MS and the corresponding potential curve is shifted toward the low-current side, indicating a better anti-corrosion performance. Through comparison of the E_corr values and the polarization curves, it is demonstrated that the CrN/Ni–Ni₃P/MS composite exhibits significantly higher corrosion resistance than the Ni–Ni₃P/MS and CrN/MS coating configurations.     

Logo detection with extendibility and discrimination

Logos are specially designed marks that identify goods, services, and organizations using distinguished characters, graphs, signals, and colors. Identifying logos can facilitate scene understanding, intelligent navigation, and object recognition. Although numerous logo recognition methods have been proposed for printed logos, a few methods have been specifically designed for logos in photos. Furthermore, most recognition methods use codebook-based approaches for the logos in photos. A codebook-based method is concerned with the generation of visual words for all the logo models. When new logos are added, the codebook reconstruction is required if effectiveness is a crucial factor. Moreover, logo detection in natural scenes is difficult because of perspective tilt and non-rigid deformation. Therefore, this study develops an extendable, but discriminating, model-based logo detection method. The proposed logo detection method is based on a support vector machine (SVM) using edge-based histograms of oriented gradient (HOGE) as features through multi-scale sliding window scanning. Thereafter, anti-distortion affine scale invariant feature transform (ASIFT) is used for logo verification with constraints on the ASIFT matching pairs and neighbors. The experimental results using the public Flickr-Logo database confirm that the proposed method has a higher retrieval and precision accuracy compared to existing model-based methods.

     

Simultaneous stabilization for a collection of nonlinear control systems in canonical form

A controller design method is provided to simultaneously stabilize a collection of nonlinear control systems in canonical form. It is shown that, under a mild assumption, any collection of nonlinear systems in canonical form can be simultaneously stabilized by one continuous state feedback controller. A constructive universal formula is presented explicitly. An illustrative example is given to demonstrate the validity of the method. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

The evaluation of hot-working characteristics of cobalt-based implant alloys

The hot-working characteristics of wrought Co-Ni-Cr-Mo implant alloy during ingot-to-billet conversion were evaluated using a Gleeble-2000A simulator. The hot tensile test at 700–1 320 °C was used to determine the optimum hot-working parameters at a strain rate equivalent to that of conventional press forging to ensure acceptable hot workability. Hot ductility and deformation resistance as a function of temperature can be clearly established. The fracture surfaces of the tensile specimens were examined to correlate them with the hot tensile ductility values at various temperatures. The poor ductility at temperatures above 1300 °C was attributed to the incipient melting of grain boundaries. The effect of temperature and strain rate on the flow-stress behaviour and microstructures were investigated by uniaxial compression testing in the temperature range 900–1200 °C and strain rate, , range of 0.01–10s^–1. The strain-hardening and steady-state behaviour were described from the measured true stress-true strain curves.     

Corrosion of aluminium nitride substrates in acid,alkaline solutions and water

Aluminium nitride substrates were immersed in acid, basic solutions and deionized water for 1–120 h at room temperature. The corrosion rates are higher in basic solutions (NaOH and KOH) than those in acid solutions (CH₃COOH, HCOOH, HNO₃, HCl and H₂SO₄) and deionized water. The weight loss of AIN corroded in alkali aqueous reaches 70% and results in an increase in surface roughness ranging from 10 nm to 7 m after 3 days corrosion. However, the weight loss in acid solution is only 1/700 of the alkali case. Violent chemical reactions between AIN and basic solutions were observed. Na₂O, or Na₂Al₂O₄·6H₂O, is the intermediate product, and NaOH is a catalytic agent of the reaction. The surface morphology of the AIN etched by alkaline solutions is coral-like in microscopic view and appears like hills. In contrast, only several atomic layers of AIN surface are etched off in acid solutions and in deionized water. The lightly etched surface is mirror-like and flat, and the shapes of the grains are visible under the microscope, as the corrosion rate of each AIN grain varies with different crystal orientations. Consequently, after etching in acid solutions, the resulting microscopic surface morphology looks like a map of a jigsaw puzzle.     

A Simultaneous Mixed LQR/H∞ Control Approach to the Design of Reliable Active Suspension Controllers

This paper is concerned with the synthesis of reliable controllers for quarter‐car active suspension systems. By a simultaneous mixed LQR/H_∞ control approach, a static output feedback controller is derived for guaranteeing good suspension performance under possible sensor fault or suspension component breakdown. The considered simultaneous mixed LQR/H_∞ control problem is a nonconvex optimization problem; therefore, the linear matrix inequality approach is not applicable. Based on the barrier method, we solve an auxiliary minimization problem to get an approximate solution for the simultaneous mixed LQR/H_∞ control problem. Necessary conditions for the local optimum of the auxiliary minimization problem are derived. Moreover, a three‐stage solution algorithm is developed for solving the auxiliary minimization problem. The simulation shows that the obtained static output feedback suspension controllers can improve suspension performance in nominal mode and all considered failure modes.