Semiconductor device simulation

The most effective way to design VLSI device structures is to use sophisticated, complex two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) models. This paper and its companion [1] discusses the numerical simulation of such device models. Here we describe the basic semiconductor equations including several choices of variables. Our examples illustrate results obtained from finite-difference and finite-element implementations. We stress the necessary 3D calculations for small-size MOSFET's. Numerical results on inter-electrode capacitive coupling are included.     

EEDOS: an energy-efficient and delay-aware offloading scheme based on device to device collaboration in mobile edge computing

Telecommunication Systems - Device to device (D2D) communication and mobile edge computing (MEC) are two promising technologies in fifth generation (5G) cellular mobile communication. Besides MEC,...     

Conductively connected charge-coupled device

A new kind of charge-coupled device, the conductively connected charge-coupled device (C4D) has been built and operated. This device is formed by providing self-aligned, source-drain diffusions (or implants) between adjacent, refractory electrodes of a two-phase, ion implanted-barrier CCD. These implants eliminate the inherently unstable exposed channel region presently found in CCD's with coplanar gates, without resorting to overlapping gates. Shift registers ranging from 16 to 128 b in length were evaluated and in spite of low mobilities (80 cm²/V.s) and low barrier heights (2-3 V), incomplete transfer losses of 0.2 percent per transfer were measured at 1 MHz clock frequency. Fabrication has been demonstrated to be quite compatible with p-channel refractory gate IGFET technology, and because the sensitive interelectrode region of the C4D is heavily doped, these devices should show the same reliability as conventional circuits made with the same technology.     

Mode selection schemes for unicasting device‐to‐device communications supported by network coding

Device‐to‐device (D2D) communication in a cellular spectrum increases the spectral and energy efficiency of local communication sessions, while also taking advantage of accessing licensed spectrum and higher transmit power levels than when using unlicensed bands. To realize the potential benefits of D2D communications, appropriate mode selection algorithms that select between the cellular and D2D communication modes must be designed. On the other hand, physical‐layer network coding (NWC) at a cellular base station—which can be used without D2D capability—can also improve the spectral efficiency of a cellular network that carries local traffic. In this paper, we ask whether cellular networks should support D2D communications, physical‐layer NWC, or both. To this end, we study the performance of mode selection algorithms that can be used in cellular networks that use physical‐layer NWC and support D2D communications. We find that the joint application of D2D communication and NWC scheme yields additional gains compared with a network that implements only one of these schemes, provided that the network implements proper mode selection and resource allocation algorithms. We propose 2 mode selection schemes that aim to achieve high signal‐to‐interference‐plus‐noise ratio and spectral efficiency, respectively, and take into account the NWC and D2D capabilities of the network.     

Energy‐efficient resource allocation for device‐to‐device communication through noncooperative game theory

Wireless network with high data rate applications has seen a rapid growth in recent years. This improved quality of service (QoS) leads to huge energy consumption in wireless network. Therefore, in order to have an energy‐efficient resource allocation in cellular system, a device‐to‐device (D2D) communication is the key component to improve the QoS. In this paper, we propose a noncooperative game (NCG) theory approach for resource allocation to improve energy efficiency (EE) of D2D pair. A three‐tier network with macrocell base station (MBS), femtocell base station (FBS), and D2D pair is considered, which shares the uplink resource block. A resource allocation strategy with constraints is arrived, which maintains minimum throughput for each user in the network. The proposed resource allocation strategy optimizes the EE of D2D pair in the three‐tier network, which achieves Nash equilibrium (NE) and Pareto optimality (PO). Simulation results validate that EE is uniform and optimum for all D2D pair, which converges to NE when channel is static and it converges to PO when the channel is dynamic.     

Multi-user Shared Access (MUSA) procedure for device discovery in D2D communication

Telecommunication Systems - In a wireless self-organizing and the network-assisted Device-to-Device (D2D) network, proximal Device Discovery (DD) plays a noteworthy role. It is the foundation for...     

Integrating dynamic spectrum access and device‐to‐device via cloud radio access networks and cognitive radio

Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) can be integrated with Device‐to‐Device (D2D) communications to enable the exploitation of unused spectrum portions and to address the spectrum scarcity problem. Spectrum management mechanisms integrated into DSA and D2D allow low‐power communications between User Equipments without interfering with licensed primary users. However, these mechanisms tend to be energy and processing intensive, being unfeasible to implement in User Equipments with strict battery and processing limitations. On the other hand, Cloud Radio Access Networks already leverage the virtually unlimited computing capacity of clouds for baseband processing functions. Thus, in this article, we propose the Cognitive Radio Device‐to‐Device (CRD2D) approach aiming to offload spectrum management functionality to the cloud taking advantage of Cloud Radio Access Networks architecture to support the integration of DSA and D2D.     

Energy efficiency optimization for device‐to‐device communication underlaying cellular networks in millimeter‐wave

This paper studies energy efficiency maximization in device‐to‐device (D2D) communications underlaying cellular networks in millimeter‐wave (mm‐wave) band. A stochastic geometry framework has been used to extract the results. First, cellular and D2D users are modeled by independent homogeneous Poisson point process; then, exact expressions for successful transmission probability of D2D and cellular users have been derived. Furthermore, the average sum rate and energy efficiency for a typical D2D scenario have been presented. An optimization problem subject to transmission power and quality of service constraints for both cellular and D2D users has been defined, and energy efficiency of D2D communication is maximized. Simulation results reveal that by working in millimeter‐wave, significant energy efficiency improvement can be attained, e.g., 20% energy efficiency improvement compared with Rayleigh distribution in the practical scenarios by considering circuit power. Finally, to verify our analytical expressions, the simulation studies are carried out, and the excellent agreements have been achieved.     

Secure content delivery over device‐to‐device communications underlaying cellular networks

Content delivery via device‐to‐device (D2D) communications is a promising technology for offloading the heavy traffic for future mobile communication networks. As security is a critical concern for the users, we focus on improving the secrecy capacity for content dissemination in D2D communications. In this work, we explore the inherent characteristics of wireless channels to prevent eavesdropping. Firstly, we propose a power control scheme to obtain the optimal transmission powers for the D2D links without violating secrecy requirement of cellular users. Then, we formulate the problem as a stochastic optimization problem, aiming at maximizing the secrecy capacity gain of D2D communications. By solving the expected value model for the stochastic optimization problem, the optimal D2D links are selected to realize maximal ergodic secrecy capacity gain. Specifically, a weighted conflict graph is formulated according to the protocol model. Thus, the optimization problem has been transformed to the maximum weighted independent set problem, which is solved by a greedy weighted minimum degree algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate that the content dissemination scheme with power control can bring high secrecy capacity gain to the network. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A new SOI high voltage device based on E-SIMOX substrate

A new NI (n+ charge islands) high voltage device structure based on E-SIMOX (epitaxy-the separation by implantation of oxygen) substrate is proposed. It is characterized by equidistant high concentration n+-regions on the top interface of the dielectric buried layer. Inversion holes caused by the vertical electric field (Ev) are located in the spacing of two neighboring n+-regions on the interface by the force from lateral electric field (EL) and the compositive operation of Coulomb's forces with the ionized donors in the undepleted n+-regions. This effectively enhances the electric field of dielectric buried layer (EI) and increases breakdown voltage (Vb). An analytical model of the vertical interface electric field for the NI SOI is presented, and the analytical results are in good agreement with the 2D simulative results. EI = 568 V/μm and VB = 230 V of NI SOI are obtained by 2D simulation on a 0.375-μm-thick dielectric layer and 2-μm-thick top silicon layer. The device can be manufactured by using the standard CMOS process with addition of a mask for implanting arsenic to form NI. 2-μm silicon layer can be achieved by using epitaxy SIMOX technology (E-SIMOX).     

Analysis of outage probability for in‐band device‐to‐device communications underlaying cellular network

One of the key strategies for jointly increasing throughput and optimum resource allocation in 5G is device‐to‐device (D2D) communications, which can be obtained by minimizing the outage probability considered as an objective function of optimization problem. To minimize this objective function, we found that outage probability should be modeled by jointly considering the effect of interference, noise, and multipath phenomena. In this paper, the exact formulas for outage probability of in‐band D2D communications underlying cellular network are proposed. In the proposed model, additive white Gaussian noise and Rayleigh multipath fading are considered into 2 radio resource reuse scenarios. In the first scenario, each D2D pair is allowed to reuse radio resource block of one cellular user, whereas in the second scenario, 2 resources of 2 cellular users can be reused. The proposed formulas are compared to the approximate (nonexact) ones, which models additive white Gaussian noise by a constant variance. The numerical analysis for the first and second scenarios show that the approximate formulas and respected exact ones are in accordance with simulation results in MATLAB. Moreover, based on nonorthogonal multiple access approach, 2 approximations for the nonexact and the proposed formulas are extracted, which are acceptable for multiple resource reuse scenario. As a remarkable result, simulation results show that when the distance of the D2D pair from the respected cellular user is more than 71 m (2 times greater than average distance between the D2D nodes), multiple‐reuse scenarios offer higher throughput compared to 1‐reuse scenario in an acceptable outage probability.     

Three-dimensional input device with six degrees of freedom

Commodity priced PCs now come with powerful three-dimensional (3D) graphic capabilities that allow new applications to incorporate 3D interactivity. But, there are few low cost 3D input devices available for the desktop non-immersive virtual reality (VR) applications. Interactive systems that use a 3D world should ideally be complimented with a 3D input device. Such devices have previously been built mainly for immersive virtual reality systems and are not well suited for desktop systems. They are also expensive. Our device is intended to provide a low cost, intuitive full 3D input with six degrees of freedom. As well, it was to be used with the non-dominant hand, freeing the other hand for finer-motor skills to use a conventional mouse or the keyboard. We have built a prototype device that was inspired by the mechanics of the gimbal mount for a gyroscope. We used a field programmable gate array (FPGA) to provide rapid prototyping of the electronics from the sensors to the computer. Initial evaluation shows promise but also some problems together with suggestions for improvements.     

Enhancing quality of experience using peer‐to‐peer overlay on device‐to‐device communications

With the recent development of LTE‐A/5G technologies, data sharing among mobile devices offer an attractive opportunity to reduce Internet access. However, it requires smart strategies to share the data with low trade‐offs in time, cost, and energy. Several existing schemes offer a super‐peer‐based two‐tier model using a distributed hash table (DHT) organization for smart devices having device‐to‐device (D2D)/Bluetooth/WiFi capabilities. The primary focus of these schemes has been to reduce Internet usage by increased D2D content sharing. However, the real challenge is not in creating a two‐tier model, but evolving an efficient overlay that offers enhanced opportunities for D2D content sharing over the existing model. In this paper, we formulated a P‐median‐based selection of tier‐1 devices in a distribution network and solved it using the Lagrangian relaxation method. The tier‐2 devices become clients seeking content sharing services from tier‐1 devices. A strong motivation in this work is to raise a user's perception of the grade of service known as quality of experience (QoE). We analyzed the challenge for QoE assessment in resource‐constrained smartphones under the proposed model of enhanced D2D communication. Our focus is to establish a framework to evaluate QoE for applications and services over LTE‐A/5G networks with an improved D2D communication level. The simulation and the experimental results validate the claim that substantial improvements in QoE are possible with the proposed mathematical model for selecting and placing tier‐1 mobile devices and maintaining a DHT for D2D communication.     

Energy‐efficient device‐to‐device communication using adaptive resource‐block allocation

Device‐to‐device (D2D) communication in the fifth‐generation (5G) wireless communication networks (WCNs) reuses the cellular spectrum to communicate over the direct links and offers significant performance benefits. Since the scarce radio spectrum is the most precious resource for the mobile‐network operators (MNOs), optimizing the resource allocation in WCNs is a major challenge. This paper proposes an adaptive resource‐block (RB) allocation scheme for adequate RB availability to every D2D pair in a trisectored cell of the 5G WCN. The hidden Markov model (HMM) is used to allocate RBs adaptively, promoting high resource efficiency. The stringent quality‐of‐service (QoS) and quality‐of‐experience (QoE) requirements of the evolutionary 5G WCNs must not surpass the transmission power levels. This is also addressed while using HMM for RB allocation. Thus, an energy‐efficient RB allocation is performed, with higher access rate and mean opinion score (MOS). Cell sectoring effectively manages the interference in the 5G networks amid ultrauser density. The potency of the proposed adaptive scheme has been verified through simulations. The proposed scheme is an essential approach to green communication in 5G WCNs.     

大面阵短波碲镉汞红外焦平面器件研究

随着红外焦平面技术的发展,大面阵红外焦平面器件在遥感、气象、资源普查和高分辨对地观测卫星上得到了广泛应用。因此,基于第三代红外焦平面技术的超大规模焦平面器件成为国内外研究热点。文中介绍了昆明物理研究所采用n-on-p技术路线成功研制的短波（Short Wave, SW） 2 k×2 k（18 μm,像元中心距）碲镉汞红外焦平面器件。短波2 k×2 k碲镉汞红外焦平面器件突破了大尺寸碲锌镉（CdZnTe）衬底制备和大面积液相外延薄膜材料生长技术,衬底尺寸由Φ75 mm增加到Φ90 mm,获得了高度均匀的大面积碲镉汞（HgCdTe）薄膜材料。通过大面阵器件工艺、大面阵倒装互连等技术攻关,最终获得了有效像元率大于99.9%、平均峰值探测率(D*)大于4×1012 (cm·Hz1/2)/W、暗电流密度在1 nA/cm2的高性能短波2 k×2 k（18 μm）碲镉汞红外焦平面器件。     

Efficient device‐to‐device discovery and access procedure for 5G cellular network

A large number of new data‐consuming applications are emerging, and many of them involve mobile users. In the next generation of wireless communication systems, device‐to‐device (D2D) communication is introduced as a new paradigm to offload the increasing traffic to the user equipment. Before the traffic transmission, D2D discovery and access procedure is the first important step which needs to be completed. In this paper, our goal is to design a device discovery and access scheme for the fifth generation cellular networks. We first present two types of device discovery and access procedures. Then we provide performance analysis based on the Markov process model. In addition, we present numerical simulation on the Vienna Matlab platform. The simulation results demonstrate the viability of the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A tool towards integration of IC process, device, and circuitsimulation

An interactive simulation system, comprised of an integrated set of tools, suitable for accurate characterization of arbitrary submicrometer devices is presented. The system, which is an extension of the University of California, Berkeley, tool SIMPL-IPX, uses a transparent link with 2D device simulation and provides an application-specific interface to 3D. While the system can be used to generate typical device characteristics (I-V curves and delay analysis) useful for sensitivity analysis and analytic model development, a greater benefit of the system is its ability to analyze parasitic devices that may lead to reliability problems. These parasitic devices are extremely difficult to characterize and tend to be overlooked. The system is used to investigate the influence of these parasitics by analyzing the effect of layout on the latch-up characteristics of a standard logic cell     

Amorphous silicon device simulation by an adapted Gummel method

The operation of hydrogenated amorphous silicon devices depends crucially on the interplay between the dynamics of free and trapped carriers. This is due to a density of acceptor and donor states present in the mobility gap of amorphous materials. It is shown that Gummel's method used for the simulation of crystalline-material-based devices has to be modified to account for this interplay. The midgap density of states is identified as the parameter controlling the nature of the dynamics of the carriers and this is illustrated with two examples: the 1D Schottky diode and the 2D static induction transistor     

Location‐based distributed caching for device‐to‐device communications underlaying cellular networks

Device‐to‐device (D2D) communications have been viewed as a promising data offloading solution in cellular networks because of the explosive growth of multimedia applications. Because of the nature of distributed device location, distributed caching becomes an important function of D2D communications. By taking advantage of the caching capacity of the device, in this work, we explore the device storage and file frequent reuse to realize distributed content dissemination, that is, storing contents in mobile devices (named helpers). Specifically, we first investigate the average and lower bound of helper amount by dividing the network into small areas where the nodes are within each other's communication radius. Then, optimal helper amount is derived based on average helper amount and network topology. Subsequently, a location‐based distributed helper selection scheme for distributed caching is proposed based on the given optimal helper amount. In particular, nodes are selected as helpers according to their locations and degrees, and contents are placed in the manner for maximizing total user utility. Extensive simulation results demonstrate the factors that affect the optimal helper amount and the total user utility. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reliability study of power RF LDMOS device under thermal stress

This paper presents the results of comparative reliability study of two accelerated ageing tests for thermal stress applied to power RF LDMOS: Thermal Shock Tests (TST, air-air test) and Thermal Cycling Tests (TCT, air-air test) under various conditions (with and without DC bias, TST cold and hot, different extremes temperatures ΔT). The investigation findings of electrical parameter degradations after various ageing tests are discussed. On-state resistance (R_{ds_on}) is reduced by 12% and feedback capacitance (C_rss) by 24%. This means that the tracking of these parameters enables to consider the hot carrier injection as dominant degradation phenomenon. To reach a better understanding of the physical mechanisms of parameter's shift after thermal stress, a numerical device model (2D, Silvaco-Atlas) was used to confirm degradation phenomena.