Efficiency of Optimized Dynamic Test Flows for ADCs: Sensitivity to Specifications

The long and complex procedure to test ADCs constitutes an important issue in the context of mixed-signal testing. To lower the testing costs, we propose shorter but less selective test flows solely based on spectral analysis. This paper investigates the efficiency that can be achieved using this approach and studies the influence of the ADC specifications on the efficiency of the proposed dynamic-only test flows.Florence Azaïs received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Montpellier, France in 1996. She is currently working in the Microelectronics department of the Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics and Microelectronics of Montpellier (LIRMM) as a researcher of the National Council of Scientific Research (CNRS). Since 1993, she has been interested in the general domain of test and reliability of integrated circuits and systems. Her main research interests include fault modeling, analog and mixed-signal circuit testing, MEMS testing, reliability and failure analysis of integrated systems. She has authored or co-authored over 80 international papers on these topics. She also served as a member of the Program Committee of several international conferences (DATE, ICCD, ETS, IMSTW, LATW).Serge Bernard received the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Paris XI, France in 1998 and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Montpellier, France in 2001. He is a researcher of the National Council of Scientific Research (CNRS) in the Microelectronics Department of the Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics and Microelectronics of Montpellier (LIRMM). His main research interests include Test, Design-For-Testability and Built-In-Self-Test for mixed-signal circuits and Design-For-Reliability for medical application ICs.Yves Bertrand is a Professor at the University of Montpellier (France). He works at the Microelectronics Department of the Laboratoire dAutomatique, Robotique et Microélectronique de Montpellier (LIRMM). Previously, Yves Bertrand worked in the field of solid-state physics and published several papers, especially on the photoemission of the semiconductors under synchrotron radiation. He joins the LIRMM in 1988. His research interests are principally, Fault Modeling, Design-For-Test and Built-In Self-Test for digital and mixed-signal analog/digital Integrated Circuits. He is author or co-author of about 200 papers in the field of solid-state physics and microelectronics. He is presently responsible for the CRTC (Centre de Ressources de Test du CNFM), which is the Common Test Resources Center for the French and European Universities.Mariane Comte took her Master of Engineering and Master of Sciences degrees in microelectronics engineering at INPG, (Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, National Engineering University Institution of Grenoble), France, in 2000. She carried out her Ph.D. studies at LIRMM (Laboratoire dInformatique, de Robotique et de Microélectronique de Montpellier, Computer Sciences, Robotics and Microelectronics Laboratory of Montpellier), France, working on Analog-to-Digital Converter testing, and received Ph.D. degree in microelectronics from the University of Montpellier, France, in 2003. After a post-doctoral fellow position at the Computer Design and Test Laboratory of NAIST (Nara Institute of Science and Technology), Japan, where she investigated on the detection of Gate-Oxide Shorts in Domino Logic cells, she is currently working as an assistant professor at the University of Montpellier. Her fields of interest spread from analog and mixed-signal testing to defect modeling.Michel Renovell is head of the Microelectronics Department at LIRMM (Laboratory of Computer Science, Automation and Microelectronics of Montpellier). His research interests include: Fault modeling, Analog testing and FPGA testing. He is Vice-Chair of the IEEE TTTC (Test Technology Technical Committee). He is a member of the editorial board of JETTA and the editorial board of IEEE Design & Test. Michel has been General Chair of the International Mixed Signal Testing Workshop IMSTW2000, the Field Programmable Logic Conference FPL2002 and the European Test Symposium ETS2004.     

Design of an ADC for subsampling video applications

This paper describes a 10 bit 30 Msample/s (MSPS) CMOS analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for high-speed signal processing, especially for subsampling applications, for example digital video broadcasting over cable (DVB-C), terrestrial (DVB-T) and handheld (DVB-H) systems. The proposed pipelined ADC shows a good figure-of-merit (FoM). It adopts a power efficient amplifier sharing technique, a symmetrical gate-bootstrapping technique with modified timing for the bottom-sampling switch of a wideband sample-and-hold (S/H) circuit, a proposed stable high-swing bias circuit for a wide-swing gain-boosting telescopic amplifier. The measured differential and integral nonlinearities of the prototype in a 0.25-μm CMOS technology show less than 0.4 least significant bit (LSB) and 0.85 LSB respectively at full sampling rate. The ADC exhibits higher than 9 effective number of bits (ENOB) for input frequencies up to about 60 MHz, which is the fourfold Nyquist rate (fs/2), at 30 MSPS. The ADC consumes 60 mW from a 3-V supply and occupies about 1.36 mm². Jian Li received the Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) degree in electronic engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China, in 2003. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree at Microelectronics department, Fudan University, Shanghai, China. His current research interest is high-speed high resolution A/D converter design. Xiaoyang Zeng was born in Hunan Province, P.R. China on April 17, 1972. He received the B.S. degree from Xiangtan University, China in 1992, and the Ph.D. degree from Changchun Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2001. From 2001 to 2003, he worked as a post-doctor researcher at the State-Key Lab of ASIC & System, Fudan University, P.R. China. Then he joined the faculty of Department of Micro-electronics at Fudan University as an associate professor. His research interests include information security chip design, VLSI signal processing, and communication systems. Prof. Zeng is the Chair of Design-Contest of ASP-DAC 2004 and 2005, also the TPC member of several international conferences such as ASCON 2005 and A-SSCC 2006, etc. Jianyun Zhang received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D degree in electrical engineering from Fudan University, Shanghai, China in 1997, 2000 and 2006 respectively. From 2000 to 2002, he was with Alcatel microelectronics, Belgium, where he was involved in circuit design for GSM and GPRS. In 2002, he joined Trident microsystem, where he concentrated on the design of Video AFE including data converters and mixed signal circuits. In 2005, he joined Shihong microelectronics Corp., where he is now a director of mixed signal IC for video high speed interface. His research interests include data conversion, HDMI SerDes, and analog circuit design. Lei Xie received the Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree in microelectronics from Nankai University, Tianjin, China, in 2005. He is currently working toward the M.S. degree at Fudan University, Shanghai, China. His current research interest is high-speed high resolution A/D converter. Huan Deng received the B.S. degree in microelectronics from Fudan University, Shanghai, P.R. China, in 2003. He is currently working toward the M.S. degree in microelectronics at the State Key Lab of ASIC & System, Fudan University. He is currently involved in the design of low-power, high-speed PLL’s. Yawei Guo received the B.S. and M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Fudan University in 1999 and 2002 respectively. From 2002 to August 2003, he was with Philips Semiconductors in Shanghai. Since August 2003, he has been with Shanghai MicroScience Integrated Circuits Co., Ltd., based in Shanghai, P. R. China. He has been leading a group and developing analog and mixed signal circuits. His research interests include high-speed data communication, data converters, and phase locked loops.     

Characteristic Investigation of New Pathological Elements

A characteristic investigation of the new pathological elements (i.e voltage mirror and current mirror) has been presented. Many nullor-mirror equivalences are explored. The circuit cascadability is discussed with nullor and mirror concepts. Also, the conventional inverse network transformation has been extended for applying to the circuits with current mirror output. To demonstrate the use of presented properties, practical examples have been given. The derived circuits have been verified with HSPICE simulation and the simulation results confirm with our theoretical prediction.Hung-Yu Wang was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Republic of China, on January 4, 1969. He received the Ph.D. degree in optical sciences from National Central University, Chung-Li, Taiwan in 2002.Since 1993 he has worked on promoting the prototyping IC implementation of academic researches, and propelling the collaboration of the academia and industries in Chip Implementation Center (CIC), National Science Council of the Republic of China. In 2003 he became a researcher and the deputy director in Division of Chip Implementation Service of CIC. He is currently working on South Region Office of National Chip Implementation Center, National Applied Research Laboratories as a researcher and the department manager. His research interests are in current-mode circuits design, analog IC design and analog IP design.Ching-Ting Lee was born in Taoyuan, Taiwan, R.O.C., on November 1, 1949. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering Department of the National Cheng-Kung University, Taiwan, in 1972 and 1974, respectively. He received Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering Department from the Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, in 1982.He worked on Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology, before he joined the Institute of Optical Sciences, National Central University, Chung-Li, Taiwan, as a Professor in 1990. He works on National Cheng-Kung University as the dean of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the professor or the Institute of Microelectronics, Department of Electrical Engineering in 2003. His current research interests include theory, design, and application of guided-wave structures and devices for integrated optics and waveguide lasers. His research activities have also involved in the research concerning semiconductor lasers, photodetectors and high-speed electronic devices, and their associated integration for electrooptical integrated circuits. He received the outstanding Research Professor Fellowship from the National Science Council (NSC), R.O.C. in 2000 and 2002. He also received the Optical Engineering Medal from Optical Engineering Society and Distinguish Electrical Engineering professor award from Chinese Institute of Electrical Engineering Society in 2003.Chun-Yueh Huang was born in Taichung, Taiwan, Republic of China, on March 24, 1967. He received the B.S. degree in industrial education from National Chang Hwa Normal University, Chang Hwa, Taiwan in 1991, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees both in electrical engineering from the National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan in 1993 and 1997, respectively. Since 1999 he has been with the Kan Shan University of Technology, where he is currently Associate Professor and Chairman of Department of Electronic Engineering. His biography is included in the 7th Edition (2003–2004) of Who’s Who in Science and Engineering.His current researches include current-mode circuits design, VLSI design, analog IC design and analog IP design.     

Voltage-Mode Universal Biquadratic Filters with One Input and Five Outputs

Four new voltage-mode universal biquadratic filters each with one input terminal and five output terminals are presented. Each of the first two proposed circuits uses four plus-type second-generation current conveyors, two grounded capacitors and five resistors. The third proposed circuit employs two plus-type second-generation current conveyors, one differential voltage current conveyor, two grounded capacitors and five resistors. The fourth proposed circuit employs two multi-output second-generation current conveyors, two grounded capacitors and five resistors. Each of the proposed circuits can realize all the standard filter functions; highpass, bandpass, lowpass, notch and allpass, simultaneously, without changing the passive elements. The proposed circuits enjoy the features of orthogonal controllable of resonance angular frequencies and quality factors, using only grounded capacitors as well as low active and passive sensitivities. Jiun-Wei Horng was born in Tainan, Taiwan, Republic of China, in 1971. He received the B.S. degree in Electronic Engineering from Chung Yuan Christian University, Chung-Li, in 1993, and the Ph.D. degree from National Taiwan University, Taipei, in 1997. From 1997 to 1999, he served as a Second-Lieutenant in China Army Force. From 1999 to 2000, he joined CHROMA ATE INC. where he worked in the area of video pattern generator technologies. From 2000 to 2005, he joined the Department of Electronic Engineering, Chung Yuan Christian University, Chung-Li, Taiwan as an Assistant Professor. Since 2005, he is an Associate Professor. His teaching and research interests are in the areas of Circuits and Systems, Analog and Digital Electronics, Active Filter Design and Current-Mode Signal Processing. Chun-Li Hou was born in Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China, in 1951. He received the B.S. degree, M.S. degree, and Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University, Taipei, in 1974, 1976, and 1991, respectively. From 1977 to 1979, he taught as a lecture in Tamkang College. From 1981 to 1991, he taught as a lecture in the department of Electronic Engineering, Chung-Yuan Christian University, Chung, Taiwan. From 1992 until now, he taught there as an Associate Professor. His teaching and research interests are in the areas of Current-Mode Analog Circuit Analysis and Design, Active Network Synthesis Circuit theory and Applications. Chun-Ming Chang obtained his bachelor and master degrees, both in the field of electrical engineering, from National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, R.O. China, and his Ph.D. degree in the field of electronics and computer science from the University of Southampton, U.K. He had been an associate professor in Chung Yuan Christian University in Taiwan from 1985 to 1991, and has been a full professor in the same University since 1991. His research interest is divided by two relative fields, network synthesis before 1991 and analog circuit design after 1991. He had been a chairman of the electrical engineering department in Chung Yuan Christian University from 1995 to 1999. Recently, he was recommended for inclusion in The Contemporary Who's Who of Professionals 2004 Edition, and nominated by the Governing Board of Editors of the American Biographical Institute for the prestigious title MAN OF THE YEAR-2005, and became an Advisor of the ABI's distinguished RESEARCH BOARD OF ADVISORS due to the invention of Analytical Synthesis Method and OTA-Only-Without-C Circuits in the field of analog circuit design. Wen-Yaw Chung was born in Hsin-Chu, Taiwan, R.O.C., 1957. He received the B.S.E.E. and M.S. degrees from Chung Yuan Christian University, Chung Li, Taiwan, in 1979 and 1981 respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Mississippi State University, USA, in 1989. Subsequently, he joined the Advanced Microelectronics Division, Institute for Technology Development in Mississippi, where he was involved in the design of a bipolar optical data receiver. In 1990 he worked as a design manager for the Communication Product Division, United Microelectronics Corporation, Hsin-Chu, where he was involved in the design of analog CMOS data communication integrated circuits. Since 1991 he has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering at Chung Yuan Christian University. His research interests include mixed-signal VLSI design, biomedical IC applications, sensor and actuator interfacing for deep submicron VLSI electronics.     

A secure incentive protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

The proper functioning of mobile ad hoc networks depends on the hypothesis that each individual node is ready to forward packets for others. This common assumption, however, might be undermined by the existence of selfish users who are reluctant to act as packet relays in order to save their own resources. Such non-cooperative behavior would cause the sharp degradation of network throughput. To address this problem, we propose a credit-based Secure Incentive Protocol (SIP) to stimulate cooperation among mobile nodes with individual interests. SIP can be implemented in a fully distributed way and does not require any pre-deployed infrastructure. In addition, SIP is immune to a wide range of attacks and is of low communication overhead by using a Bloom filter. Detailed simulation studies have confirmed the efficacy and efficiency of SIP. This work was supported in part by the U.S. Office of Naval Research under Young Investigator Award N000140210464 and under grant N000140210554. Yanchao Zhang received the B.E. degree in Computer Communications from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, China, in July 1999, and the M.E. degree in Computer Applications from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China, in April 2002. Since September 2002, he has been working towards the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA. His research interests are network and distributed system security, wireless networking, and mobile computing, with emphasis on mobile ad hoc networks, wireless sensor networks, wireless mesh networks, and heterogeneous wired/wireless networks. Wenjing Lou is an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She obtained her Ph.D degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Florida in 2003. She received the M.A.Sc degree from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 1998, the M.E degree and the B.E degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Xi'an Jiaotong University, China, in 1996 and 1993 respectively. From Dec 1997 to Jul 1999, she worked as a Research Engineer in Network Technology Research Center, Nanyang Technological University. Her current research interests are in the areas of ad hoc and sensor networks, with emphases on network security and routing issues. Wei Liu received his B.E. and M.E. in Electrical and Information Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 1998 and 2001. In August 2005, he received his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Florida. Currently, he is a senior technical member with Scalable Network Technologies. His research interest includes cross-layer design, and communication protocols for mobile ad hoc networks, wireless sensor networks and cellular networks. Yuguang Fang received a Ph.D. degree in Systems Engineering from Case Western Reserve University in January 1994 and a Ph.D degree in Electrical Engineering from Boston University in May 1997. He was an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology from July 1998 to May 2000. He then joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Florida in May 2000 as an assistant professor, got an early promotion to an associate professor with tenure in August 2003 and a professor in August 2005. He has published over 150 papers in refereed professional journals and conferences. He received the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Award in 2001 and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in 2002. He has served on many editorial boards of technical journals including IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing and ACM Wireless Networks. He is a senior member of the IEEE.     

A Video Streaming System for Mobile Phones: Practice and Experience

This paper presents a case of video streaming system for mobile phone which has actually been implemented and deployed for commercial services in CDMA2000 1X cellular phone networks. As the computing environment and the network connection of cellular phones are significantly different from the wired desktop environment, the traditional desktop streaming method is not applicable. Therefore, a new architecture is required to suit the successfully streaming in the mobile phone environment. We have developed a very lightweight video player for use in mobile phone and the related authoring tool for the player. The streaming server has carefully been designed to provide high efficiency, reliability and scalability. Based on a specifically-designed suite of streaming protocol, the server employs an adaptive rate control mechanism which transmits the media packets appropriately into the network according to the change in network bandwidth.Hojung Cha is currently a professor in computer science at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. His research interests include multimedia computing system, multimedia communication networks, wireless and mobile communication systems and embedded system software. He received his B.S. and M.S. in computer engineering from Seoul National University, Korea, in 1985 and 1987, respectively. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Manchester, England, in 1991.Jongmin Lee is a Ph.D. candidiate in computer science at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. His research interests include wireless multimedia system, QoS architecture, multimedia communication networks. He received his B.S. and M.S. in computer science from Kwangwoon University in 1999 and 2001, respectively.Jongho Nang is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Sogang University. He received his B.S. degree from Sogang University, Korea, in 1986 and M.S. and Ph.D. degree from KAIST, in 1988 and in 1992, respectively. His research interests are in the field of multimedia systems, digital video library, and Internet technologies. He is a member of KISS, ACM, and IEEE.Sung-Yong Park is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at Sogang University, Seoul, Korea. He received his B.S. degree in computer science from Sogang University, and both the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Syracuse University. From 1987 to 1992, he worked for LG Electronics, Korea, as a research engineer. From 1998 to 1999, he was a research scientist at Telcordia Technologies (formerly Bellcore) where he developed network management software for optical switches. His research interests include high performance distributed computing and systems, operating systems, and multimedia.Jin-Hwan Jeong received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from Korea University, Seoul, Korea, in 1997, and 1999, respectively. He is currently in Ph.D. course at Korea University. His research interests include video processing for thin devices, multimedia streaming and operating systems.Chuck Yoo received the B.S. degree in electronics engineering from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea and the M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science in University of Michigan. He worked as a researcher in Sun Microsystems Lab. from 1990 to 1995. He joined the Computer Science and Enginnering Department, Korea University, Seoul, Korea in 1995, where he is currently a professor. His research interests include high performance network, multimedia streaming, and operating systems.Jin-Young Choi received the B.S. degree from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 1982, the M.S. degree from Drexel University in 1986, and the Ph.D. degree from University of Pennsylvania, in 1993. He is currently a professor of Computer Science and Engineering Department, Korea University, Seoul, Korea. His current research interests are in real-time computing, formal methods, programming languages, process algebras, security, software engineering, and protocol engineering.     

Repacking on Demand for Hierarchical Cellular Networks

In mobile telecommunications operation, radio channels are scarce resources and should be carefully assigned. One possibility is to deploy the hierarchical cellular network (HCN). This paper studies a HCN channel assignment scheme called repacking on demand (RoD). RoD was originally proposed for wireless local loop networks. We expend this work to accommodate mobile HCN. A simulation model is proposed to study the performance of HCN with RoD and some previously proposed schemes. Our study quantitatively indicates that RoD may significantly outperform the previous proposed schemes. Hsien-Ming Tsai was born in Tainan, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1973. He received the double B.S. degrees in Computer Science & Information Engineering (CSIE) and Communication Engineering, the M.S. degree in CSIE, and the Ph.D. degree in CSIE from National Chiao-Tung University (NCTU), Taiwan, in 1996, 1997, and 2002, respectively. He is currently a research specialist in Quanta Research Institute, Quanta Computer Inc. His research interests are in the areas of cellular protocols (UMTS/GPRS/GSM/DECT), cellular multimedia (MPEG-4 Audio/Speech), and embedded systems. He is an IEEE member. Ai-Chun Pang was born in Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1973. She received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science and Information Engineering from National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) in 1996, 1998 and 2002, respectively. She joined the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University (NTU), Taipei, Taiwan, as an Assistant Professor in 2002. Her research interests include design and analysis of personal communications services network, mobile computing, voice over IP and performance modeling. Yung-Chun Lin was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1978. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science and Information Engineering (CSIE) from National Chiao-Tung University (NCTU), Taiwan, in 2001, 2003, respectively. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in CSIE. His research interests include design and analysis of a personal communications services network, the cellular protocols (UMTS/GPRS/GSM), and mobile computing. Yi-Bing Lin received his BSEE degree from National Cheng Kung University in 1983, and his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Washington in 1990. From 1990 to 1995, he was with the Applied Research Area at Bell Communications Research (Bellcore), Morristown, NJ. In 1995, he was appointed as a professor of Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering (CSIE), National Chiao Tung University (NCTU). In 1996, he was appointed as Deputy Director of Microelectronics and Information Systems Research Center, NCTU. During 1997-1999, he was elected as Chairman of CSIE, NCTU. His current research interests include design and analysis of personal communications services network, mobile computing, distributed simulation, and performance modeling. Dr. Lin has published over 150 journal articles and more than 200 conference papers. Lin is an Adjunct Research Fellow of Academia Sinica, and is Chair Professor of Providence University. Lin serves as consultant of many telecommunications companies including FarEasTone and Chung Hwa Telecom. Lin is an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Fellow.     

Single DDCC Biquads with High Input Impedance and Minimum Number of Passive Elements

Two new configurations for the design of biquad filters with high input impedance are presented. The first configuration can synthesize low-pass and high-pass filter functions according to the passive components used. The second one can synthesize a band-pass filter function. The proposed configurations employ only one differential difference current conveyor (DDCC) as active elements and minimum number of passive elements, namely two resistors and two capacitors. Another filter topology based on DDCC is presented that allows modifying the quality factor without changing its natural frequency. All the filters enjoy low sensitivities. SPICE simulation results are given to confirm the validity of the analysis and to point out the high performance of the filters.Muhammed A. Ibrahim was born in Erbil, Iraq in 1969. He obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Salahaddin University, Erbil, Iraq and Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey in 1990 and 1999, respectively, all in electronics and communication engineering. Between 1992 and 1996 he worked as Research Assistant at Salahaddin University where he was later appointed as Assistant Lecturer in 1999. Since 2000 he has been studying for his Ph.D. degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering Program at Istanbul Technical University. His main research interests are CMOS circuit design, current-mode circuits and analog signal processing applications. He has more than 20 international journal and conference papers in scientific review.H. Hakan Kuntman received his B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Istanbul Technical University in 1974, 1977 and 1982, respectively. In 1974 he joined the Electronics and Communication Engineering Department of Istanbul Technical University. Since 1993 he is a professor of electronics in the same department. His research interest include design of electronic circuits, modeling of electron devices and electronic systems, active filters, design of analog IC topologies. Dr. Kuntman has authored many publications on modelling and simulation of electron devices and electronic circuits for computer-aided design, analog VLSI design and active circuit design. He is the author or the coauthor of 76 journal papers published or accepted for publishing in international journals, 91 conference papers presented or accepted for presentation in international conferences, 99 turkish conference papers presented in national conferences and 10 books related to the above mentioned areas. Furthermore he advised and completed the work of 7 Ph.D. students and 31 M.Sc. students. Currently, he acts as the head of the Electronics and Communication Engineering Department in Istanbul Technical University. Dr. Kuntman is a member of the Chamber of Turkish Electrical Engineers (EMO).Oguzhan Cicekoglu received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Bogazici University and the Ph.D. degree from Istanbul Technical University all in Electrical and Electronics Engineering in 1985, 1988 and 1996 respectively. He served as lecturer at the School of Advanced Vocational Studies Electronics Prog. of Bogazici University where he held various administrative positions between 1993 and 1999. He served also as part time lecturer at various institutions. He was with the Biomedical Engineering Institute of the Bogazici University between 1999 and 2001. He is currently Associate Professor at the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department of the same University.His current research interests include analog circuits, active filters, analog signal processing applications and current-mode circuits. Oguzhan Cicekoglu is the author or co-author of 62 journal papers and about 90 international or local conference papers published or accepted for publishing in journals or conference proceedings.He served as the committee member in various scientific conferences and as reviewer in numerous journals including Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing, IEEE CAS-I, IEEE CAS-II, International Journal of Electronics, Microelectronics Journal, Solid State Electronics and IEE Proceedings Pt.G.Oguzhan Cicekoglu is a member of the IEEE.     

Reducing Scan Shifts Using Configurations of Compatible and Folding Scan Trees

In this paper, a new method for reducing scan shifts is presented. Scan design is one of the most popular designs for test method for sequential circuits. However, for circuits with many flip-flops, it requires a long test application time and high test-data volume. Our new scan method utilizes two configurations of scan chains, a folding scan tree and a fully compatible scan tree to alleviate these problems. It is observed that uncompacted test patterns typically contain a large fraction of don't care values. This property is exploited in the fully compatible scan tree to reduce scan shifts without degrading fault coverage. Then, a folding scan tree is configured to further reduce the length of scan chain and scan shifts. Experimental results on benchmark circuits show that this scan method can significantly reduce scan shifts. Hiroyuki Yotsuyanagi received his B.E., M.E. and Ph.D degrees from Osaka University, in 1993, 1995 and 1998, respectively. In 1998 he joined the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, the University of Tokushima, where he is currently an Associate Professor. His research interest includes test synthesis for sequential circuits and current testing for CMOS ICs. He is a member of the IEICE and the IEEE. Toshimasa Kuchii received B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Tokushima in 1994, 1996, and 1999, respectively. He is currently a DFT engineer at Sharp Corporation. His research interests are DFT methodologies for SoC devices, PLL jitter testing, and DFT for image sensor devices. Shigeki Nishikawa received B.E. in the Department of Information and Behavioral Sciences from Hiroshima University in 1980. He is currently a manager of LSI test engineering department at Sharp Corporation. His research interests are DFT, DFM and the total solution of testing technologies in the CAE tools. Masaki Hashizume received his B.E. and M.E. degrees in electrical engineering from the Univ. of Tokushima and Dr.E. degree from Kyoto Univ., in 1978, 1980 and 1993, respectively. He is currently a Professor of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, the Univ. of Tokushima. His research interests are logic synthesis and supply current testing of logic circuits. Kozo Kinoshita received B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. in Communication Engineering from Osaka University in 1959, 1961, and 1964, respectively. From 1964 to 1966 he was an Assistant Professor and from 1967 to 1977, an Associate Professor of Electronic Engineering at Osaka University, Osaka, Japan. From 1978 to 1989, he was a Professor in the Department of Information and Behavioral Sciences, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan. From 1989 to 2000, he again joined Osaka University as a Professor in the Department of Applied Physics, and is enumerates professor of Osaka University. Since April 2000, he has been a professor at Faculty of Informatics, Osaka Gakuin University, and is the Dean of Informatics. His fields of interest are test generation, fault diagnosis, memory testing, current testing, crosstalk testing, compact testing and testable design for logic circuits. He organized a series of Asian Test Symposium and was the Group Chair of Asian and Pacific Activities in Test Technology Technical Council of IEEE Computer Society until 2002. Prof. Kinoshita is IEEE Life Fellow, IEICE Fellow and a member of the Institute of Information Processing of Japan. He was a member of the editorial board of JETTA until 2000.     

A Design of BASK System for Giga-bit Modem

We propose a binary amplitude shift keying (BASK) system of Giga-bit Modem without intermediate frequency process for the 60 GHz band. The proposed system consists of a high speed shutter of the transmitter and a repeater of the receiver. The shutter of the proposed system is introduced for pulse shaping to improve the intersymbol interference (ISI). The repeater consists of several stage converters. A converter is constructed with a low pass filter and a limiter. The repeater can improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and make the rectangular pulse train. The advantage of the proposed system is very simple without the intermediate frequency (IF) process. Ki-Hwan Eom was born in Seoul, Korea in 1949. He received the B.S. degree from Dongguk University, the M.S. degree from Inha University, and Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from Dongguk University, Korea in 1972, 1975 and 1986, respectively. He was a visiting professor from 1989 to 1990 at Toho University, and from 2000 to 2001 at University of Canterbery. Since 1994, he has been with Dongguk University, where he is currently a Professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering. Seong-Ho Kang was born on September 5, 1972. He received the B.E. from JinJu National University in 2000 and Ph.D. degree from Dongguk University in 2006. His research interests are in communication systems and intelligent systems. Yoichi Sato was born on October 2, 1939. He received the B.E. from Kyoto University in 1963 and Ph.D. degree from Waseda University in 1976. From 1963 to 1982 he was a Research Engineer in the Central Research Labs. Of NEC Corporation. He joined Toho University in 1982. He is a Professor emeritus of the Department of Information Sciences in Toho University. He is a member of the IEEE Communication Society.     

Thyristor Input-Protection Device Suitable for CMOS RF IC’s

Based on simulation results and accompanying analysis, we suggest a thyristor-type ESD protection device structure suitable for implementation in standard CMOS processes to reduce the parasitic capacitances added to the input nodes, which is very important in CMOS RF ICs. We compare DC breakdown characteristics of the suggested device to those of a conventional NMOS protection device to show the benefits of using the suggested device for ESD protection. The characteristic improvements are demonstrated and the corresponding mechanisms are explained based on simulations. Structure dependencies are also examined to define the optimal structure. AC simulation results are introduced to estimate the magnitude of reduction in the added parasitic capacitance when using the suggested device for ESD protection. The analysis shows a possibility of reducing the added parasitic capacitance down to about 1/45 of that resulting with a conventional NMOS protection transistor, while maintaining robustness against ESD.Jin-Young Choi was born in Seoul, Korea in 1956. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Seoul National University, Korea, in 1979, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Florida, USA, in 1986 and 1991, respectively. In 1991, he joined Samsung Electronics Memory Division, Korea, where he was engaged in high-speed SRAM development. In 1992, he moved to the Hongik University, Jochiwon, Korea, where he is now an associate professor. His recent research interests include the high-frequency modeling of CMOS devices, CMOS RF circuit design, and analysis & design for ESD protection.Woo Suk Yang was born in Seoul, Korea in 1957. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Seoul National University, Korea, in 1979, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the North Calorina State University, USA, in 1990. His doctorial research was in the area of signal processing. In 1990, he joined LG Electronics Co. Korea. In 1991, he moved to the Hongik University, Jochiwon, Korea, where he is now a professor. His recent research interests include the high-frequency modeling and various topics in signal processing area.Dongmin Kim was born in Korea in 1956. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Seoul National University, Korea, in 1979 and 1984, respectively and the Ph.D. degree in ECE from the University of Michigan, USA, in 1996. Now, he is an assistant professor of the Hongik University, Jochiwon, Korea. His recent research interests include circuit design and analysis.Youngju Kim was born in Seoul, Korea in 1957. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Seoul National University, Korea in 1980 and 1985, respectively and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic University of New York, USA, in 1995, respectively. In 1996, he joined the Hongik University, Jochiwon, Korea, where he is now an assistance professor. His recent research interests include the RF circuit design and LIN wireless systems.     

Up-conversion mixers in a complementary 0.4 μm SiGe process

In this paper a 0.4 μm complementary SiGe process is used to fabricate up-conversion mixers for base-station applications. A current feedback mixer, and a mixer with a folded input, were designed in order to test benefits obtainable from the use of equally fast PNP- and NPN-transistors. The target was to improve linearity and to increase output compression point ( ) of the mixers. A +5 dBm output compression point @2 GHz was measured while drawing 43 mA from 5 V voltage supply. Harri Pellikka was born in Espoo, Finland, in 1980. He received the M.Sc. degree in electronics and electrical engineering from Helsinki University of Technology in 2005. He has been with Helsinki University of Technology Electronic Circuit Design Laboratory since 2003, where he works as research engineer. His research interests include the design of integrated circuits for telecommunication applications. Esa Tiiliharju was born in Rovaniemi, Finland, in 1966. He received the M.Sc. degree in information technology in 1995, and the Lic.Tech degree in electrical engineering in 1998, both from Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. He has joined the Microelectronics Laboratory in University of Turku in 2006. His research interests include the design of integrated circuits for telecommunication applications. Kari A. I. Halonen was born in Helsinki, Finland, on May 23, 1958. He received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, in 1982, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in Heverlee, Belgium, in 1987. Since 1988 he has been with the Electronic Circuit Design Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology. From 1993 he has been an associate professor, and since 1997 a full professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications. He became the Head of Electronic Circuit Design Laboratory year 1998. From 1997 to 1999 he was an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I. He has been a guest editor for IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits and the Technical Program Committee Chairman for European Solid-State Circuits Conference year 2000. He has been awarded the Beatrice Winner Award in ISSCC’02 Conference year 2002. He specializes in CMOS and BiCMOS analog integrated circuits, particularly for telecommunication applications. He is author or co-author over a hundred and fifty international and national conference and journal publications on analog integrated circuits. He has several patents on analog integrated circuits.     

Analysis, testing and optimisation of electrostatic comb-drive levitational actuators

This work presents an analysis of the levitation effect in electrostatic comb fingers and of its possible use for vertical or torsional actuation of micromachined structures. Two different levitational mechanical resonators were designed and fabricated in a thick-polysilicon technology. A study of the dependence of the force intensity on the geometric parameters of the actuators were performed using FEM simulations, and information about critical geometrical parameters in the design of operative levitational actuators were obtained. The devices were characterized and the obtained results were compared with FEM simulations. Antonio Molfese received the M.S. degree cum laude in Electronic Engineering from the University of Pisa, Italy on March 2003. In the summer 2003 he was at IMEC, Belgium for an internship. On November 2003 he received the diploma degree cum laude in Industrial and Information Engineering from Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna di Studi Universitari e Perfezionamento of Pisa, Italy. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in Information Engineering at University of Pisa and he is working at IEIIT-Sezione di Pisa of Italian National Research Council (CNR) as research assistant. His main research interests include design, modeling and characterization of micro-electro-mechanical systems and microfluidics. Giovanni Pennelli was born on October 23, 1967 in Lucca, Italy. He graduated in 1992, cum laude, in Electronic Engineering. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1997 for a thesis entitled "New Materials for a Silicon-Based Optoelectronics". He moved to the University of Glasgow in April 1997 to work as a Research Assistant in the MBE group concerned with optoelectronic device fabrication and process development. He developed some MBE grown structures for HEMT applications. In September 2000, Dr Pennelli has been appointed assistant professor in the Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, Italy, pursuing research in electron beam lithography and nanometer scale process development. Francesco Pieri received the laurea and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering, both from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 1996 and 2000 respectively. He joined the Department of Information Engineering of the same University as an assistant professor in 2001. His current research interests include applications of porous silicon to sensors and microtechnologies, and development of microelectromechanical systems. Andrea Nannini received his laurea degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 1982; He received his Ph.D. degree in 1987 at the end of the first Italian Ph.D. course held by the University of Padova, Italy. From 1988 to 1992 he was a Researcher at the “Scuola Superiore di Studi Universitari e Perfezionamento S. Anna” – Pisa- Italy. Since 1992 he joined the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Pisa as an Associate Professor. Since November 2000 he is a full professor of “Sensor and Microsystem Design”. He is currently chairman of the postgraduate school of Electronic Engineering and vice-chairman of the PhD school of Information Engineering of the University of Pisa. His main research interests concern solid state sensors, microelectronic devices and technologies, MEMS.     

High Performance Wireless Switch Protocol for IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks

All mobile stations (STAs) in IEEE 802.11 infrastructure wireless local area networks (IWLAN) are coordinated by an access point (AP). Within the 2.4 GHz unlicensed industry, science, and medicine (ISM) band defined in the IEEE 802.11 2.4 GHz physical layer (PHY) specifications, three channels are available for concurrently transferring data packets at the coverage area of an AP. In most of small/medium enterprises or home environments, an AP with one selected channel is sufficient for covering whole service area, but this implies that the radio resources for the remaining two channels are wasted. In order to overcome the drawback, we propose a new and simple media access control (MAC) protocol, named wireless switch protocol (WSP), for increasing the throughput of IEEE 802.11 IWLAN network to support high quality multimedia traffic. This is achieved by allowing any pair of STAs in IWLAN to exchange data packets in one of other idle channels after their handshake with each other in the common channel controlled by AP. Simulation results show that the total network throughput of WSP depends on the time taken by channel switching, and on the ‘Intranet’ and ‘Internet’ traffic distribution, where the Intranet and Internet mean data transmission between STAs in IWLAN and between the STA and wired host, respectively. When all data packets are Intranet traffic and the traffic load is heavy, the ratio of Goodput for the proposed WSP to that of IEEE 802.11 standard approximates 400%. In the worse case of all Internet traffic, the proposed WSP still obtains the similar throughput as that of IEEE 802.11 standard.Jenhui Chen was born on October 12, 1971 in Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China. He received the Bachelor’s and Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and Information Engineering (CSIE) from Tamkang University in 1998 and 2003, respectively. In the Spring of 2003, he joined the faculty of Computer Science and Information Engineering Department at Chang Gung University and served as the Assistant Professor. He occupies the supervisor of Network Department in the Information Center, Chang Gung University. Dr. Chen once served the reviewer of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, ACM/Kluwer Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET), and Journal of Information Science and Engineering. His main research interests include design, analysis, and implementation of communication and network protocols, wireless networks, milibots, and artificial intelligence. He is a member of ACM and IEEE.Ai-Chun Pang was born in Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1973. She received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science and Information Engineering from National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) in 1996, 1998 and 2002, respectively. She joined the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University (NTU), Taipei, Taiwan, as an Assistant Professor in 2002. Her research interests include design and analysis of personal communications services network, mobile computing, voice over IP, and performance modeling.Shiann-Tsong Sheu received his B.S. degree in Applied Mathematics from National Chung Hsing University in 1990, and obtained his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from National Tsing Hua University in May of 1995. From 1995 to 2002, he was an Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tamkang University. Since Feb. 2002, he has become a Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tamkang University. Dr. Sheu received the outstanding young researcher award by the IEEE Communication Society Asia Pacific Board in 2002. His research interests include next-generation wireless communication, WDM networks and intelligent control algorithms.Hsueh-Wen Tseng received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Tamkang University, Taipei country, Taiwan, in 2001 and M.S. degree in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, in 2003. He is currently pursuing the Ph. D. degree at the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. His research interests include design, analysis and implementation of network protocols and wireless communications.     

Baseband Digital Predistorter with Quadrature Error Correction

In this article simulation and measurement results of a FPGA implementation of a baseband digital complex gain predistorter with a quadrature modulator and demodulation error correction circuits are presented. Four different methods for finding the quadrature error correction values are compared and the effect of quadrature errors to predistortion is discussed. A 50 dB three stage power amplifier chain with an analog quadrature modulator and demodulator was used in the measurements as the device to be predistorted. The signal used in the measurements and simulations was a 30 dBm 18 kHz 16-QAM signal at 400 MHz carrier frequency. In the measurements 15 dB reduction in 3rd order nonlinearity was achieved. The usage of quadrature error correction reduced the adjacent channel power by 9 dB. Ilari Teikari was born in Tampere, Finland, in 1978. He received the M.Sc. (tech.) degree from Helsinki University of Technology (HUT), Helsinki, Finland, in 2002. He is currently working toward D.Sc. (tech) degree in the electronic circuit design laboratory, HUT. His current research intrests are in the area of power amplifier linearization methods and digital circuit design. Jouko Vankka was born in Helsinki, Finland, in 1965. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) in 1991 and 2000, respectively. Since 1995, he has been with the Electronic Circuit Design Laboratory, HUT. His research interests include VLSI architectures and mixed-signal integrated circuits for communication applications. Kari A. I. Halonen was born in Helsinki, Finland, on May 23, 1958. He received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, in 1982, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in Heverlee, Belgium, in 1987. From 1982 to 1984 he was employed as assistant at Helsinki University of Technology and as research assistant at the Technical Research Center of Finland. From 1984 to 1987 he was a research assistant at the E.S.A.T. Laboratory of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, enjoying also a temporary grant of the Academy of Finland. Since 1988 he has been with the Electronic Circuit Design Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, as senior assistant (1988–1990), and the director of the Integrated Circuit Design Unit of the Microelectronics Center (1990–1993). He was on leave of absence the academic year 1992–1993, acting as R&D manager in Fincitec Inc., Finland. From 1993 to 1996 he has been an associate professor, and since 1997 a full professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, Helsinki University of Technology. He became the Head of Electronic Circuit Design Laboratory year 1998. From 1997 to 1999 he was an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I. He has been a guest editor for IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits and the Technical Program Committee Chairman for European Solid-State Circuits Conference year 2000. He has been awarded the Beatrice Winner Award in ISSCC'02 Conference year 2002. He specializes in CMOS and BiCMOS analog integrated circuits, particularly for telecommunication applications. He is author or co-author over a hundred and fifty international and national conference and journal publications on analog integrated circuits. He has several patents on analog integrated circuits.     

An Overlay Smart Spaces System for Load Balancing in Wireless LANs

An overlay smart spaces system, called MITOS, is proposed for managing the use of the resources in wireless local area networks (WLAN). MITOS monitors the traffic load distribution in the different WLAN segments, as well as the location of each user, and when necessary, suggests to specific users to change their location in order to improve their quality of service. Enhancements to the basic MITOS architecture are introduced to intelligently manage local congestion, and maintain an almost uniform load level across the network. The approach used for load balancing is based on game theoretic mechanisms, such as the solutions to the Santa Fe Bar Problem. Simulation results are provided showing the efficiency of the proposed system. The research of the author for his PhD studies is supported by the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation Scholarship Programme. George Alyfantis received his B.Sc. degree in Informatics and Telecommunications from the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, University of Athens, Athens Greece, in 2002. He received his M.Sc. degree in Communication and Network Systems from the same Department, in 2003. Since 2001, he is a member of the Communication Networks Laboratory (CNL) of the University of Athens. Currently, he is working towards his Ph.D. thesis. His research interests include pervasive/mobile computing, middleware for wireless sensor networks, web caching performance and game theory. He is the author of 5 papers in the aforementioned areas. In the course of his studies he received numerous distinctions like the Alexandros Onassis Foundation Scholarship for his Ph.D. studies, the best student award of the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications for graduating first in his B.Sc./M.Sc. class and the best M.Sc. thesis Ericsson Award of Excellence in Telecommunications 2004. Stathes Hadjiefthymiades received his B.Sc. (honors) in Informatics from the Department of Informatics at the University of Athens, Greece, in 1993 and his M.Sc. (honors) in Informatics (Advanced information systems) from the same department in 1996. In 1999 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Athens (Department of Informatics and Telecommunications). In 2002 he received a joint engineering-economics M.Sc. degree from the National Technical University of Athens. In 1992 he joined the Greek consulting firm Advanced Services Group, Ltd., where he was involved in the analysis and specification of information systems and the design-implementation of telematic applications. In 1995 he became a member of the Communication Networks Laboratory (UoA-CNL) of the University of Athens. During the period September 2001–July 2002, he served as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Aegean, Department of Information and Communication Systems Engineering. On the summer of 2002 he joined the faculty of the Hellenic Open University (Department of Informatics), Patras, Greece, as an assistant professor. Since December 2003, he is in the faculty of the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, University of Athens, where he is presently an assistant professor. He is coordinating the Pervasive Computing Research Group of the Dept. of Informatics and Telecommunications at the University of Athens. He has participated in numerous projects realized in the context of EU programs (ACTS, ORA, TAP, and IST), EURESCOM projects, as well as national initiatives. His research interests are in the areas of web engineering, wireless/mobile computing, and networked multimedia applications. He is the author of over 80 publications in the above areas. Lazaros Merakos received the Diploma in electrical and mechanical engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece, in 1978, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the State University of New York, Buffalo, in 1981 and 1984, respectively. From 1983 to 1986, he was in the faculty of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department University of Connecticut, Storrs. From 1986 to 1994 he was in the faculty of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Northeastern University, Boston, MA. During the period 1993–1994, he served as director of the Communications and Digital Processing Research Center, Northeastern University. During the summers of 1990 and 1991, he was a visiting scientist at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY. In 1994, he joined the faculty of the University of Athens, Athens, Greece, where he is presently a professor in the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, and director of the Communication Networks Laboratory (UoA-CNL) and the Networks Operations and Management Center. Since 1995, he is leading the research activities of UoA-CNL in the area of mobile communications, in the framework of the Advanced Communication Technologies and Services (ACTS) and Information Society Technologies (IST) programs funded by the European Union (projects RAINBOW, Magic WAND, WINE, MOBIVAS, POLOS, ANWIRE, E2R, LIAISON). His research interests are in the design and performance analysis of communication networks, and wireless/mobile communication systems and services. He has authored more than 190 papers in the above areas. Dr. Merakos is chairman of the board of the Greek Universities Network, the Greek Schools Network, and member of the board of the Greek Research Network. In 1994, he received the Guanella Award for the best paper presented at the International Zurich Seminar on Mobile Communications.     

Silicon technologies for applications up to millimetre-waves: Some design guidelines

This paper presents some guidelines for the design of silicon circuits, which are able to achieve state of the art performances in the microwave frequency range despite their integration with a standard technology. Firstly, we point out the benefits which may be expected from the large number of available metallic layers, and which make possible the implementation of highly integrated and low loss interconnects and passives. Next, we emphasize the advantages of microwave differential structures: without any increase of the circuit complexity, a very well balanced behaviour can be reached leading to a strong attenuation of common mode parasitic signals. Finally, the interest and the feasibility of mixed-mode circuits (analog with digital) are demonstrated through dedicated designs for microwave frequency synthesis. Christophe Viallon received the M.S. degree and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France in 1999 and 2003 respectively. From 2000 to 2004 he was with the Laboratory of Analysis and Architecture of Systems (LAAS), Toulouse, France, where he was conducting research on the optimization of differential circuit topologies for millimeter-wave applications using SiGe BiCMOS technologies. Since 2005, he is an associate professor at Paul Sabatier University, and his researches at the LAAS laboratory are mainly focused on nonlinear microwave integrated circuit design and above-IC passive elements development. éric Tournier was born in Saint-Jean d’Angely, France, in 1970. He received the Engineer degree and the Ph.D. degree both from the Institut National des Sciences Appliqu, Toulouse, France, in 1993 and 1998 respectively. Since September 1998, he has been an associate professor of electrical engineering at the university of Toulouse, and a researcher at the Laboratoire d’Analyse et d’Architecture des Systèmes (LAAS). He has worked on low frequency analog, digital and smart-power integrated circuits design, and is now involved in microwave circuits design methodologies on silicon technologies for telecommunication ICs. He currently works on digital design applied to high frequency synthesis (frequency dividers, phase/frequency detectors and direct digital synthesis (DDS)), and analog design using BAW devices. Thierry Parra was born in August 1964. He received the Ph.D. degree in electronics engineering and the accreditation to supervise research in 1991 and 1999, respectively, both from the Paul Sabatier University (UPS), Toulouse, France. He joined the LAAS-CNRS in 1991, and since 2002 he is Professor of electrical engineering. His research interests are currently on microwave components and new materials characterisation and modelling, and on optimisation and design of microwave integrated circuits, up to the millimeter wave frequency range.     

Sine-Wave Signal Characterization Using Square-Wave and ΣΔ-Modulation: Application to Mixed-Signal BIST

This paper presents a method for extracting, in the digital domain, the main characteristic parameters of an analog sine-wave signal. It is based on a double-modulation, square-wave and sigma-delta, together with a simple Digital Processing Algorithm. It leads to an efficient and robust approach very suitable for BIST applications. In this line, some considerations for on-chip implementation are addressed together with simulation results that validate the feasibility of the proposed approach.Diego Vázquez was born in El Coronil, Sevilla, Spain, in 1966. He received the Licenciado en Física degree in 1989 and the Doctor en Ciencias Físicas degree in 1995, both from the University of Sevilla, Spain. Since 1990, he has been with the Departamento de Electrónica y Electromagnetismo, University of Sevilla, where he is a Associate Professor, and also with the Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla, Centro Nacional de Microelectrónica (IMSE-CNM-CSIC), Sevilla, Spain. He has published about 100 papers in international journals, books and major conferences. In 1992 he won the Best Paper Award of the 10th IEEE VLSI Test Symposium. His research interests are in the fields of design, fault tolerance, test, and design for testability of analog and mixed-signal circuits.Gloria Huertas was born in Sevilla, Spain, in 1974. She received the Licenciado en Física degree in 1997 and the Ph.D. in 2004, both from the University of Sevilla, Spain. Since then, she has been with the Departamento de Electrónica y Electromagnetismo, University of Sevilla, where she is Assistant Professor, and also with the Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla, Centro Nacional de Microelectrónica (IMSE-CNM-CSIC), Sevilla, Spain. Her research focuses on designing electronic mixed-signal circuits and systems including techniques for testability.África Luque was born in Zamora (Spain) in 1977. She received the Licenciado en Física degree in 2000 from the University of Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain. She is with the Departamento de Electrónica y Electromagnetismo, University of Sevilla, and also with the Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla, Centro Nacional de Microelectrónica (IMSE-CNM-CSIC), Sevilla, Spain, where she is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree. Her research focuses on the design and test of mixed-signal circuits including Silicon-On-Insulator technologies.Manuel J. Barragan was born in Sevilla, Spain, in 1980. He received the Licenciado en Física degree in 2003 from the University of Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree from the Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla (IMSE, CNM) on the topics of test and design for testability of analog and mixed-signal circuits.Gildas Leger was born in St. Brieuc, Côtes dArmor, France, in 1976. He received the Ingénieur en Physique degree in 1999 from the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA) of Rennes, France.He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree from the Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla (IMSE, CNM). His research focuses on designing electronic mixed-signal circuits and systems including techniques for testability, specially in the domain of analog to digital conversion.Adoración Rueda joined the Department of Electronics and Electromagnetism at the University of Seville in 1976 as Assistant Professor, and obtained the Ph.D. degree in 1982. From 1984 to 1996 she was Associate Professor in that Department, where now holds the position of Full Professor in Electronics. In 1989 she became researcher at the Department of Analog Design of the National Microelectronics Center (CNM), now Institute of Microelectronics at Seville (IMSE).She has participated in several research projects financed by the Spanish CICYT and by different programs of the European Community. She has published about 135 papers in international journals, books and major conferences. In 1992 she won the Best Paper Award of the 10th IEEE VLSI Test Symposium. Her research interests are currently focused on the topics of Design and Test of Analog and Mixed-signal Circuits, Behavioral Modeling of Mixed-signal Circuits, and development of CAD tools.Jose Luis Huertas received the Licenciado en Física degree nd the Doctor en Ciencias Físicas degrees in 1969 and 1973, respectively, both from the University of Sevilla, Spain.From 1970 to 1971, he was with the Philips International Institute, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, as a postgraduate student. Since 1971, he has been with the Departamento de Electrónica y Electromagnetismo, University of Sevilla, Spain, where he is a Full Professor. He is also the Director of the Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla, Centro Nacional de Microelectrónica de Sevilla, Seville, Spain. His current interests include the design and testing of analog/digital integrated circuits, computer-aided IC analysis and design, fuzzy logic, nonlinear microelectronics, and neural networks.     

A novel encoding scheme and data delivery in ubiquitous computing systems

Accessing information through wireless devices is becoming more and more popular. When the size of the accessed information is large, a great amount of access latency is incurred while a mobile user (MU) migrates across cells. This paper investigates this problem and proposes an effective way of delivering such data to the MU in ubiquitous computing systems. A cell-encoding scheme is proposed for the support of this efficient data delivery. The method is carefully evaluated on its feasibility and efficiency. Chao-Chun Chen received his Ph.D. degree in the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at the National Cheng-Kung University, Taiwan, in 2004. Currently, he is an assistant professor of the Department of Information Management, Shih-Chien University Kaohsung Campus, Taiwan. His research interests include mobile/wireless data management, sensor networks, spatio-temporal databases, and web information retrieval. Chiang Lee received the B.S. degree from the National Cheng-Kung University, Taiwan, in 1980 and the M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, in 1986 and 1989, respectively. He joined IBM Mid-Hudson Laboratories, Kingston, NY in 1989 and participated in a project working on the design and performance analysis of a parallel and distributed database system. He joined the faculty of National Cheng-Kung University in 1990 and is currently a professor of the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering of the university. His research interests are in the areas of mobile computing, sensor networks, and database systems. He has many papers published in major database journals and conferences, and has been invited as an author of a chapter for several technical books. Dr. Lee also served as a Steering Committee member of the DASFAA International Conference from 1996 to 1998, and served on organizing and program committee for several major international conferences. Lien-Fa Lin received his M.E. degree in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Yuan Ze University, Taiwan, in 1993. Currently, he is a Ph.D. student of the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at the National Cheng-Kung University, Taiwan. His research interests include mobile/wireless data management, spatio-temporal databases, and web information retrieval.     

Reconfigurable Coprocessor for Multimedia Application Domain

A new reconfigurable architectural template is presented. Such a template is composed of coarse-grained and fine-grained reconfigurable datapath and control to obtain performances at custom designed chip level. To show the adaptability/performance of such architectural template, the architecture has been customized (i.e. datapath and control features of the template have been properly sized) for multimedia application domain. To evaluate complexity and maximum clock frequency of the proposed architecture, it has been synthesized using Synopsys Design Compiler on a standard-cell 0.18 μ m technology. Estimated number of transistors is 335 K, while maximum allowable frequency is 460 MHz. Performances have been evaluated comparing the number of clock cycles and the processing time required to process application domain dominant kernels with commercial devices: we obtained up to 95% reduction with respect to ARM and up to 94% reduction with respect to TMS320C5510 in terms of clock cycles. Salvatore M. Carta (1997 Electronic Eng. Master. 2002 Electronics and Computer Science PhD) joined the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering of the University of Cagliari, Italy in 1998 as PhD student. From 2005 he has been assistant professor in Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Cagliari. His research interests focus mainly on architectures, software and tools for embedded and portable computing, with particular emphasis on: languages, architectures and compilers for reconfigurable and parallel computing; Networks-on-chip; Operating systems for multiprocessor-systems-on-chip; low power real-time scheduling algorithms. Danilo Pani (2002 Electronic Eng. Master, 2006 Electronics and Computer Science PhD) joined the Department of Electrical and Electronics engineering of the University of Cagliari, Italy in 2002 as Electronics and Computer Science PhD student. His primary research interests are in the area of Digital Signal Processing architectures and systems, Biomedical Engineering, Reconfigurable Systems and Cooperative VLSI architectures for distributed computing. Luigi Raffo (1989 Master, 1994 Electronics and Computer Science PhD) joined Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering of the University of Cagliari, Italy in 1994 as assistant professor. From 1998 he has been professor of Digital System Design, Integrated Systems Architectures and Microelectronics at the same Department. His research activity is mainly in the design of low-power analog and digital architectures/chips. He has been project manager of many local and international projects. He is author of more than 50 international papers in the field.