An analysis for AlGaN/GaN modulation doped field effect transistor using accurate velocity-field dependence for high power microwave frequency applications

An analytical model of Al_0.15Ga_0.85N/GaN modulation doped field effect transistor (MODFET), which uses an accurate velocity field relationship and incorporates the dominant effect of piezoelectric polarization induced charge at the AlGaN/GaN interface is presented. The effect of traps has also been taken into account. The calculated DC characteristics are in excellent agreement with the measured data. The model is extended to predict the microwave performance of the device. High current levels (>500 mA/mm), large transconductance (160.83 mS/mm) and a high cutoff frequency (9.6 GHz) have been achieved analytically and are in close agreement with the experimental data.     

A 570-kbps ASK demodulator without external capacitors for low-frequency wireless bio-implants

This paper proposes a novel structure of ASK (amplitude shift keying) demodulators, which requires no external capacitors, for implantable micro-stimulators. By using a traditional β multiplier reference to detect the signal envelope, followed by a Schmitt trigger and a load driver, the large off-chip capacitor in traditional ASK demodulators is not required any more. Therefore, the proposed circuit possesses small area to be integrated in an SOC (system-on-chip). Besides, due to the lack of the large capacitor, the proposed circuit can operate with a higher data rate using lower frequency carriers. The proposed circuit is integrated in an implantable micro-stimulator on silicon using 2P4M CMOS process. The area of the proposed circuit occupies merely with a maximum power dissipation of less than 12 mW (including the power consumption of the analog circuits of the micro-stimulator) by measurement results on silicon. Moreover, the measurement results verify that the proposed ASK demodulator can detect the ASK modulated signal up to 570 kbps data rate at 2 MHz carrier frequency when the modulation index is 10%.     

Low power clock recovery circuit for passive HF RFID tag

A low power clock recovery circuit for passive HF RFID tag is presented. The proposed clock recovery circuit, based on the architecture of Phase Locked Loop (PLL), is used to generate a stable system clock when communication occurs from interrogator to tag with 100% ASK modulation. An envelope detector is designed to detect the incident power from interrogator and control the operating state of the proposed clock recovery circuit. Loop bandwidth of PLL circuits is minimized to reduce the frequency deviation when operating in frequency maintaining state. Furthermore, an initialization circuit for loop filter is also used to speed up locking during initial system power-on-reset. Prototype chips have been fabricated in 0.35 μm 2P4M CMOS technology. A total current consumption of 3 μA has been achieved in the frequency maintaining state. Measurement results show that, when communication occurs from interrogator to tag with 100% ASK modulation, clock recovery circuit generates a stable and consecutive system clock and has an inevitable frequency derivation of 7.5% when operating in frequency maintaining state.     

On the design of inscribed triangle circular fractal antenna for UWB applications

In this article, an ultrawide band inscribed triangle circular fractal antenna is presented. The antenna has been designed on FR4 substrate dielectric constant ?_r = 4.3 and thickness of substrate 1.53 mm with initial dimension of 30 mm diameter. The experimental result of fractal antenna exhibits the excellent ultra bandwidth from 2.25 GHz to 15 GHz corresponds to 147.83% impedance bandwidth at VSWR 2:1. This ultrawide band characteristcs of antenna has been achieved by using the CPW-fed and fractal concept. The measured radiation pattern of fractal antenna is nealy omnidirectional in azimuth plane and bidirectional in elevation plane. The measured group delay of proposed antenna is almost constant throughout the band. Such type of antenna is very useful for UWB communication system.     

A 1.25 Gbps DC-coupled laser diode driver with VBE compensation technique

A 1.25 Gbps integrated laser diode driver (LDD) driving an edge-emitting laser has been designed and fabricated in 0.35 μm BiCMOS technology. The IC can provide independent bias current (5-100 mA) with automatic power control, and modulation current (4-85 mA) with temperature compensation adjustments to minimize the variation in extinction ratio. This paper proposed an unique modulation output driver configuration which is capable of DC-coupling a laser to the driver at +3.3 V supply voltage; and combined a V_BE compensation circuit, the IC can operate at a wide temperature range (−40 to 85 °C) for date rates up to 1.25 Gbps. V_BE compensation technique is used to compensate for variation in V_BE over the operating temperature range so as to minimize the variations in rise and fall time of modulation output over temperatures.     

A fully integrated analog front-end circuit for 13.56 MHz passive RFID tags in conformance with ISO/IEC 18000-3 protocol

A fully integrated analog front-end circuit for 13.56 MHz passive RFID tags is presented in this paper. The design of the RF analog front-end and digital control is based on ISO/IEC 18000-3 MODE 1 protocol. This paper mainly focuses on RF analog front-end circuits. In order to supply voltage for the whole tag chip, a high efficiency power management circuit with a rather wide input range is proposed by utilizing 15.5 V high voltage MOS transistors. Furthermore, a high sensitivity, low power consumption 10% ASK demodulator with a subthreshold-mode hysteresis comparator is introduced for reader-to-tag communication. The tag chip is fabricated in 0.18-μm 2-poly 5-metal mixed signal CMOS technology with EEPROM process. An on-chip 1 kb EEPROM is used to support tag identification, data writing and reading. The core size of the analog front-end is only 0.94×0.84 mm² with a power consumption of 0.42 mW. Measured results show that the power management circuit is able to maintain a proper working condition with an input antenna voltage range of 5.82–12.3 V; the maximum voltage conversion ratio of the rectifier reaches 65.92% when the tag antenna voltage is 9.42 V. Moreover, the power consumption of the 10% ASK demodulator is only 690.25 nW.     

A digital array based bit serial processor for arbitrary window size kernel convolution in vision sensors

The high speed and in-pixel processing of image data in smart vision sensors is an important solution for real time machine vision tasks. Diverse architectures have been presented for array based kernel convolution processing, many of which use analog processing elements to save space. In this paper a digital array based bit serial architecture is presented to perform certain image filtering tasks in the digital domain and hence gain higher accuracies than the analog methods. The presented method benefits from more diverse convolution options such as arbitrary size kernel windows, compared with the digital pulse based approaches. The proposed digital cell structure is compact enough to fit inside an image sensor pixel. When incorporated in a vision chip, resolutions of up to 12 bit accuracy can be obtained in kernel convolution functions with 35×28 μm² layout area usage per pixel in a 90 nm technology. Still, higher accuracies can be obtained with larger pixels. The power consumption of the approach is approximately 10 nW/pixel at a frame rate of 1 kfps.     

Development and characterisation of nanowire-based FETs

Development of Si nanowire-based FETs, suitable for sensor applications is reported. Process sequences for SOI and bulk p-channel FinFETs are described. SEM observations of the fabricated devices (180 nm wide, 87 nm or 175 nm high) are presented and discussed. Electrical characteristics measurements and basic characterisation results obtained for these devices are described. A procedure for serial resistance extraction has been mentioned in more detail, due to its high value inherent in the process used. Several aspects of the device sensitivity to front- and back-gate control have been discussed from the point of view of its application in biochemical detectors.     

Wireless smart sensor with small spiral antenna on Si-substrate

This paper presents a wireless smart sensor (WSS) with a thermoelectric sensor, a wireless transmitter and a small spiral antenna on a single package. To transmit a sensor signal, the wireless transmitter was designed to consist of an amplifier, a modulator, an oscillator, a buffer stage and an antenna. The wireless transmitter used dual pulse position modulation for low-power transmission. The fabricated transmitter has a sampling frequency of 2.6 kHz and an output carrier wave frequency of 300 MHz band due to the higher far field radiation of the transmitted signals from inside the body. The small size spiral antenna on the chip was fabricated for the transmission of carrier waves. The antenna has a bandwidth of 270-360 MHz for VSWR<2 and a gain of −40 dBi. The fabricated sensor, transmitter and spiral antenna were packaged with bond-wire on a single package. The WSS consumed a power of about 16.9 mW at the supply power of 5 V. The electric field strength of the WSS was measured to be 64.6 dB μV/m at a distance of 3 m. The wireless operation of the fabricated WSS was confirmed by demonstrating that the sensor signal was modulated by the transmitter and that the modulated sensor data was transmitted through the small size spiral antenna.     

A 1.7 Gb/s ASK and a 622 Mb/s incoherent FSK transmissionexperiment using a 1.55-μm multiquantum well distributed feedbacklaser

A multiple-quantum-well distributed-feedback (MQW-DFB) laser with narrow linewidth and low frequency chirp at low output power may experience linewidth rebroadening at high output power. the rebroadening is mostly due to a large carrier-induced change of refractive index, which also causes a large frequency modulation response for the MQW-DFB lasers. Using a 1.55-μm MQW-DFB laser, a 622-Mb/s amplitude-shift-keying (ASK) transmission experiment employing 200-km of fiber and an erbium-doped fiber amplifier has been demonstrated having a dispersion power penalty less than 9.8 dB. The receiver sensitivities at BER=10^-9 of the ASK system are -34.5 dBm and -42.5 dBm for 1.7-Gb/s and 622-Mb/s modulation, respectively. A 622-Mb/s incoherent frequency-shift-keying (FSK) transmission experiment using the same laser has also achieved a receiver sensitivity of -42.5 dBm     

Efficiency enhancement of organic light emitting diode via surface energy transfer between exciton and surface plasmon

Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) with surface plasmon (SP) enhanced emission have been fabricated. Gold nanoclusters (GNCs) deposited using thermal evaporation technique has been used for localization of surface plasmons. Size of GNCs and distance of GNCs from the emissive layer have been optimized using steady state and time resolved photoluminescence (PL) results. 3.2 Times enhancement in PL intensity and 2.8 times enhancement in electroluminescence intensity of OLED have been obtained when GNCs of size 9.3 nm has been introduced at a distance of 5 nm from emissive layer. Distance dependence of energy transfer efficiency between exciton and SPs was found to be of 1/R⁴ type, which is typically the dependence for dipole-surface energy transfer.     

Miniaturised multi-MEMS sensor development

This paper describes the design, fabrication and initial characterisation of a MEMS-based environmental monitoring system. Intended for use with miniaturised Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) motes, the die measures 3 × 3 mm and incorporates humidity, temperature, corrosion, gas and gas flow velocity sensors on a single substrate. Fabricated using a combination of surface and bulk micromachining technologies, the sensor system is designed to replace discrete components on WSN module boards, thereby minimising space consumption and enabling smaller, cheaper wireless motes. Sensors have been characterised over a wide range of environmental conditions. An analysis of the effects of changes in environmental parameters other than the measurand of interest on the performance of the temperature and humidity sensors has been carried out, and corrections applied where necessary. A variety of corrosion monitors have been demonstrated. A gas flow velocity sensor, based on forced convective heat transfer and which has been thermally isolated from the silicon substrate in order to reduce power consumption and improve sensitivity at low flow-rates, has also been presented. The paper also outlines the design of the next generation sensing platform using the novel 10 mm wireless cube developed at Tyndall.     

Hot embossing of micrographic elements in polypropylene

Micrographic features generated by electron beam lithography have been hot embossed in biaxially-oriented polypropylene (BOPP). Each micrographic element consisted of a sub-field of 30 × 30 μm with a specific configuration of symbols, lettering and graphics. The micrographic elements were integrated with arrays of diffractive gratings in the form of an optically variable device. A high quality embossing of various micrographic elements has been demonstrated in features with a linewidth dimension ?365 nm and depth ?255 nm. The replication of arrays of micrographic elements was achieved uniformly over an area of 20 × 20 mm in the BOPP film by embossing at a temperature of 130 °C.     

An 863-870 MHz spread-spectrum FSK transceiver design for wireless sensor

Simulation results of a 863-870 MHz frequency-hopped spread-spectrum (FHSS) transceiver with binary frequency shift keying (BFSK) modulation at 20 kb/s for wireless sensor applications is presented.The transmit/receive RF front end contains a BFSK modulator, an upconversion mixer, a power amplifier (PA), and an 863-870 MHz band pass filter (BPF) at the transmitter side and a low-noise amplifier with down conversion mixer to zero-IF, a low-pass channel-select filter, a limiter and a BFSK demodulator at the receiver side. The various block parameters of the transmit/receive RF front end like noise figure (NF), gain, 1 dB compression point (P-1 dB), and IIP3 are simulated and optimized to meet low power and low cost transceiver specifications.The transmitter simulations show an output ACPR (adjacent channel power ratio) of −22 dBc, 3.3 dBm P-1 dB of PA, and transmitted power of 0 dBm. The receiver simulations show 51.1 dB conversion gain, −7 dBm IIP3, −15 dB return loss (S11), and 10 dB NF. Low power arctangent-differentiated BFSK demodulator has been chosen and the BER performance has been co simulated with the analog receiver. The complete receiver achieves a BER of 10⁻³ at 10.5 dB of EbtoNo. The transceiver simulations show an RMS frequency error of 1.45 kHz.     

Sensitivity and power modeling of CMOS mems single axis convective accelerometers

In this paper, we present 3D finite element modeling and simulation of a CMOS MEMS single axis convective accelerometer. We describe the sensor architecture and present a sensor geometry model to be used in 3D FEM simulations. Differences between 3D and previously published 2D simulations are discussed. This work investigates 3D effects which give the opportunity to better predict not only sensor sensitivity but also power dissipation. Experimental sensitivity values and 3D FEM ones are compared for two different sensor geometries and two different heater temperatures. For a prototype having a heater-cavity border distance of 340 µm and a heater length of 230 µm, maximum sensitivity point is obtained for detectors localized at a distance of 125 µm from heater center. This distance should be moved to 90 µm if a 50 µm heater length is used. So, detectors should be placed closer to the heater than the usually used mid distance. Moreover, optimal detectors location shifts closer to the heater as heater length shrinks. We also show that if heater length is reduced by 80% (from 230 to 50 µm), then both electrical power and sensitivity decrease by 63% and 55%, respectively. So, best efficiency is obtained for shorter heaters. In addition, detector's length decrease is found to have a significant effect on sensitivity, with an increase of 58% and 87% using heater lengths of 230 µm and 50 µm, respectively. Here, detector's length decreased from the total side bridge length to a fraction of this length equals to 2.5%. Optimal length is obtained when detectors are implemented on the same side bridge fraction as that used to implement the heater on the central bridge.     

Improvement on the noise performance of InAs-based HEMTs with gate sinking technology

Improvement on the RF and noise performance for 80 nm InAs/In_0.7Ga_0.3As high-electron mobility transistor (HEMT) through gate sinking technology is presented. After gate sinking at 250 °C for 3 min, the device exhibited a high transconductance of 1900 mS/mm at a drain bias of 0.5 V with 1066 mA/mm drain-source saturation current. A current-gain cutoff frequency (f_T) of 113 GHz and a maximum oscillation frequency (f_max) of 110 GHz were achieved at extremely low drain bias of 0.1 V. The 0.08 × 40 μm² device with gate sinking demonstrated 0.82 dB minimum noise figure and 14 dB associated gain at 17 GHz with only 1.14 mW DC power consumption. Significant improvement in RF and noise performance was mainly attributed to the reduction of gate-to-channel distance together with the parasitic source resistance through gate sinking technology.     

Design of a micromachined thermal accelerometer: thermal simulation and experimental results

This paper describes numerical simulation of a micromachined thermal accelerometer and experimental measurements. The sensor principle consists of a heating resistor, which creates a symmetrical temperature profile, and two temperature detectors symmetrically placed on both sides of the heater. When an acceleration is applied, the free convection is modified, the temperature profile becomes asymmetric and the two detectors measure the differential temperature. This temperature profile and sensor sensitivity according to the distance heater-detector have been studied using numerical resolution of fluid dynamics equations with the commercial code CFD2000/STORM: it shows that the optimum distance between the temperature detectors and the heater is about 300 μm. A thermal accelerometer with 3 pairs of detectors placed at 100, 300 and 500 μm from the heater was manufactured using the techniques of micromachining silicon and experimental measurements have shown a good agreement with the numerical simulations: the experimental optimum distance between heater and detectors seems to be close to 400 μm and the differential temperature of detectors is about 3 °C/g for an operating heater power of 54 mW and an heater temperature rise ΔT of 238 °C. The electrical sensitivity is then 2.5 mV/g.     

A fully integrated feedback AGC loop for ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4) RF transceiver applications

This work presents an efficient solution for automatic gain control (AGC) loop in ZigBee transceiver compatible to IEEE 802.15.4 standard. The design is based on a RF (Radio Frequency) and linear IF (Intermediate Frequency) chain where the signal amplification is done in the RF front-end blocks and analog VGAs (variable gain amplifiers). The gains of the RF block and VGA are digitally controlled by the DAGC (Digital AGC) block to ensure that the ADC (Analog-to-Digital Converter) operates inside its dynamic range. Feedback loop architecture is employed for the advantage of high linearity due to its inherent characteristic. The whole AGC loop has been integrated in the ZigBee transceiver which was fabricated in a 0.18 μm CMOS technology. The AGC loop achieves a dynamic range of about 95 dB with the gain error of less than ±0.5 dB. The two-channel VGAs and peak detectors occupy an area of 1.5 mm×0.4 mm and dissipate 1.71 mW from a single 1.8 V power supply. The DAGC has been integrated in the digital baseband processor and occupies an area of about 0.4 mm×0.4 mm. The max gain lock time of the AGC loop is about 1.25 μs.     

基于LabVIEW的2ASK传输系统设计

本文研究2ASK信号的设计方法和计算机仿真,通过使用LabVIEW语言对2ASK传输系统进行设计及仿真.此次仿真包括调制和解调两个模块,在调制模块中,将输入序列与载波相乘产生2ASK信号,然后将调制出的信号加入高斯白噪声模拟真实信道的情况,在送入低通滤波器滤波后采用相干解调的方式实现2ASK的解调,形成所要的波形.并通过改变输入序列的输入值来得到波形.     

激光传感通信技术的智慧医疗监测系统

将激光传感通信技术应用在智慧医疗监测领域,设计高监测精度、高传输速率的智慧医疗监测系统。利用激光传感技术设计体温测量模块,模块采用F-P腔匹配滤波解调方法,泵浦源发射光产生宽带光在谐振腔生成激光,抵达光栅后原路反射到达F-P腔中心波长解调,光电探测器接收光栅反射光与F-P腔透射光的卷积,获取体温监测信号;激光跳频通信模块FPGA以串口为中介发送、接收医疗数据,模块的ASK基带编码激光调制依据调制激光循环频率随调制信号基带频率的变换的原理,计算可变基频调制信号,实现医疗数据通信传输。得到以下实验结论:体温测量模块能够提升中心波长,节约模块测量人体体温用时;激光通信模块可连续传输医疗数据,运行稳定。