A 470 × 235‐ppi poly‐Si TFT‐LCD for high‐resolution 2‐D and 3‐D autostereoscopic displays

Abstract— We have developed a 470 × 235‐ppi poly‐Si TFT‐LCD with a novel pixel arrangement, called HDDP (horizontally double‐density pixels), for high‐resolution 2‐D and 3‐D autostereoscopic displays. 3‐D image quality is especially high in a lenticular‐lens‐equipped 3‐D mode because both the horizontal and vertical resolutions are high, and because these resolutions are equal. 3‐D and 2‐D images can be displayed simultaneously in the same picture. In addition, 3‐D images can be displayed anywhere and 2‐D characters can be made to appear at different depths with perfect legibility. No switching of 2‐D/3‐D modes is necessary, and the design's thin and uncomplicated structure makes it especially suitable for mobile terminals.     

Defect‐free half‐V‐mode ferroelectric liquid‐crystal device

Abstract— The horizontal chevron defect found in a half‐V‐mode ferroelectric‐liquid‐crystal (HV‐FLC) device can be suppressed by lowering the FLC's total free energy. The energy levels between spontaneous polarization (PS) up and down domains were degenerated by asymmetrical‐alignment treatments. The difference in the polar surface coefficient (γ²) was the key to suppressing the alignment defect. Alignment layers with opposite surface polarities and different anchoring energies were applied to control the sign and value of γ². The asymmetric cells of PIrub ‐ PIplasma (rubbed polyimide and plasma‐treated polyimide surfaces), PVArub ‐ PIplasma (rubbed polyvinyl alcohol and plasma‐treated polyimide surfaces), and PVArub ‐ PIplasma (both rubbed PI and PVA) alignment conditions presented defect‐free alignment textures under a slow‐cooling process. Among these different alignment treatments, the PVArub ‐ PIrub treated cell demonstrated the best alignment result, benefited by the largest difference in polar surface coefficient.     

Scintillator‐based flat‐panel x‐ray imaging detectors

Abstract— Large‐area amorphous‐silicon flat‐panel x‐ray imaging detectors were introduced commercially about 10 years ago and have seen a steady increase in both volume and number of applications since. The flat‐panel‐detector industry was made possible by manufacturing methods and equipment first developed for the display industry. Here, the different types of flat‐panel detectors are described, with focus on the scintillator‐based TFT/photodiode detector. The manufacturing process used for these detectors is explained and compared to that for displays. Detector operation is detailed, and the various medical and industrial applications are described. Finally, the performance metrics for these detectors and the impact of the performance requirements on detector design are discussed.     

Impact of source/drain contacts formation of self‐aligned amorphous‐IGZO TFTs on their negative‐bias‐illumination‐stress stabilities

In this study, we have compared the performance of self‐aligned a‐IGZO thin‐film transistors (TFTs) whereby the source/drain (S/D) region's conductivity enhanced in three different ways, that is, using SiN_x interlayer plasma (hydrogen diffusion), using calcium (Ca as reducing metal) and using argon plasma (changing the atomic ratio). All these TFTs show comparable characteristics such as field‐effect mobility (μ_FE) of over 10.0 cm²/(V.s), sub‐threshold slope (SS^‐1) of 0.5 V/decade, and current ratio (I_ON/I_OFF) over 10⁸. However, under negative‐bias‐illumination‐stress (NBIS), all these TFTs showed strong degradation. We attributed this NBIS stability issue to the exposed S/D regions and changes in the conductivity of S/D contact regions. The hydrogen plasma‐treated TFTs showed the worst NBIS characteristics. This is linked to increased hydrogen diffusion from the S/D contact regions to the channel.     

Shared‐memory communication approaches for an MPI message‐passing library

This paper discusses several approaches to designing and implementing shared‐memory communication protocol modules for the message‐passing interface (MPI) libraries, colloquially called ‘shared‐memory devices’. The authors present a new taxonomy for classifying designs for shared‐memory MPI communication devices and formulate design evaluation criteria. Using these criteria, the authors compare three existing shared‐memory devices for MPICH and choose the best one. The authors also present experimental results that support their choice. The contributions of this paper are three‐fold. First, the authors present the taxonomy for shared‐memory communication devices. Second, they show advantages and potential problems of the devices that belong to different classes of their taxonomy using the formulated design criteria. Third, they analyze communication performance of existing MPICH shared‐memory devices, discuss optimizations of their performance, and show the performance gains that these optimizations yield. MPICH is used for comparison, since it is a widely used MPI implementation. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ultra‐low‐power LTPS TFT‐LCD technology using a multi‐bit pixel memory circuit

Abstract— Two types of low‐temperature poly‐Si TFT LCDs, which integrate a multi‐bit memory circuit and a liquid‐crystal driver within a pixel, have been developed using two different TFT process technologies. Both a 1.3‐in. 116‐ppi LCD having a 2‐bit pixel memory and a 1.5‐in. 130‐ppi LCD having a 5‐bit pixel memory consume very little power, less than 100 μW, which indicates that this technology is promising for mobile displays.     

A multi‐resolution multi‐classifier system for speaker verification

This paper describes a Speaker Verification System based on the use of multi resolution classifiers in order to cope with performance degradation due to natural variations of the excitation source and of the vocal tract. The different resolution representations of the speaker are obtained by considering multiple frame lengths in the feature extraction process and from these representations a single Pseudo‐Multi Parallel Branch (P‐MPB) Hidden Markov Model is obtained. In the verification process, different resolution representations of the speech signal are classified by multiple P‐MPB systems: the final decision is obtained by means of different combination techniques. The system based on the Weighted Majority Vote technique considerably outperforms baseline systems: improvements are between 15% and 38%. The execution time of the verification process is also evaluated and it proves to be very acceptable, thus allowing the use of the approach for applications in real time systems.     

STABILITY ANALYSIS OF UNCERTAIN DISCRETE‐TIME SYSTEMS WITH TIME‐VARYING STATE DELAY: A PARAMETER‐DEPENDENT LYAPUNOV FUNCTION APPROACH

This paper presents several new robust stability conditions for linear discrete‐time systems with polytopic parameter uncertainties and time‐varying delay in the state. These stability criteria, derived by defining parameter‐dependent Lyapunov functions, are not only dependent on the maximum and minimum delay bounds, but also dependent on uncertain parameters in the sense that different Lyapunov functions are used for the entire uncertainty domain. It is established, theoretically, that these robust stability criteria for the nominal and constant‐delay case encompass some existing result as their special case. The delay‐dependent and parameter‐dependent nature of these results guarantees the proposed robust stability criteria to be potentially less conservative.     

Meta‐heuristic multi‐ and many‐objective optimization techniques for solution of machine learning problems

Recently, multi‐ and many‐objective meta‐heuristic algorithms have received considerable attention due to their capability to solve optimization problems that require more than one fitness function. This paper presents a comprehensive study of these techniques applied in the context of machine learning problems. Three different topics are reviewed in this work: (a) feature extraction and selection, (b) hyper‐parameter optimization and model selection in the context of supervised learning, and (c) clustering or unsupervised learning. The survey also highlights future research towards related areas.     

Single‐layered multi‐color electrowetting display by using ink‐jet‐printing technology and fluid‐motion prediction with simulation

Abstract— This paper describes a single‐layered multi‐color electrowetting display (EWD) by using ink‐jet‐printing (IJP) technology and comparing different pattern electrodes with the use of the numerical investigations of ANSYS FLUENT®. This work consists of two parts: the first describes the design of implementing a single‐layered multi‐color EWD and the second demonstrates the application of ANSYS FLUENT® simulation in different pattern electrodes settings on the proposed EWD. The single‐layered multi‐color EW device was evaluated by using various colored oils without adopting a color filter. The single‐layered multi‐color EWD at a driving voltage of 25 V can achieve a maximum aperture ratio and reflectivity of 80% and 38.5%, respectively. The colored saturation of R, G, B oils can increase to 50% (NTSC: 13.3–27.8%). In addition, a radiate electrode at the required viewable area condition of 85% and force 5 * F^k, which results in ink stable contraction and a shorter response time of 50% (radiate vs. square), was proposed. The experimental results and simulation demonstrate that ink‐jet‐printing (IJP) technology along with the use of radiate electrodes can result in a single‐layered multi‐color EWD with a shorter response time.     

Optical characterization and ergonomical factors of near‐to‐eye displays

Abstract— Near‐to‐eye displays (NEDs) have unique optical properties requiring different characterization techniques compared to direct‐view display measurements. Here, a new version of a NED measurement system is introduced, and optical measurements of five commercially available consumer NED products are discussed. Luminance, focal distance, qualified viewing space, angular properties, and interocular differences are among the values. In addition, these results are compared to extensive subjective studies. The main intention is not to benchmark between the different products, but to show that display measurements are important for NEDs. According to the results, the determination of NED's characteristics helps to predict the subjective experiences, but the nature of the relation between subjective and objective findings is rather complex and depends on several NED‐, user‐, and task‐related features. Measured characteristics indicate that with a conventional biocular NED system approach of using two microdisplays and their enlarging optics, it is a design and a manufacturing challenge to build an ergonomically satisfactory NED device that fits everyone.     

In‐pixel temperature sensor for high‐luminance active matrix micro‐light‐emitting diode display using low‐temperature polycrystalline silicon and oxide thin‐film‐transistors

We propose an in‐pixel temperature sensor using low‐temperature polycrystalline silicon and oxide (LTPO) thin‐film transistor (TFTs) for high‐luminance active matrix (AM) micro‐light‐emitting diode (LED) displays. By taking advantage of the different off‐current characteristics of p‐type LTPS TFTs and n‐type a‐IGZO TFTs under temperature change, we designed and fabricated a temperature sensor consists of only LTPO TFTs without additional sensing component or material. The fabricated sensor exhibits excellent temperature sensitivity of up to 71.8 mV/°C. In addition, a 64 × 64 temperature sensor array with 3T sensing pixel and integrated gate driver has also been fabricated, which demonstrates potential approach for maxing out the performance of high‐luminance AM micro‐LED display with real‐time in‐pixel temperature monitoring.     

Performance‐oriented quasi‐LPV modeling of nonlinear systems

Polytopic quasi–linear parameter‐varying (quasi‐LPV) models of nonlinear processes allow the usage linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) to guarantee some performance goal on them (in most cases, locally, over a so‐called modeling region). In order to get a finite number of LMIs, nonlinearities are embedded on the convex hull of a finite set of linear models. However, for a given system, the quasi‐LPV representations are not unique, yielding different performance bounds depending on the model choice. To avoid such drawback, earlier literature on the topic used annihilator‐based approaches, which require gridding on the modeling region, and nonconvex BMI conditions for controller synthesis; optimal performance bounds are obtained, but with a huge computational burden. This paper proposes building a model by minimizing the projection of the nonlinearities onto directions, which are deleterious for performance. For a small modeling region, these directions are obtained from LMIs with the linearized model. Additionally, these directions will guide the selection of the polytopic embedding's vertices. The procedure allows gridding‐free LMI controller synthesis, as in standard LPV setups, with a very reduced performance loss with respect to the aforementioned BMI+gridding approaches, at a fraction of the computational cost.     

Letter: Mechanisms for on/off currents in dual‐gate a‐Si:H thin‐film transistors using indium‐tin‐oxide top‐gate electrodes

Abstract— Two types of dual‐gate a‐Si:H TFTs were made with transparent indium‐tin‐oxide (ITO) top‐gate electrodes of different lengths to investigate the static characteristics of these devices. By changing the length of the ITO top gate, we found that the variations in the on‐currents of these dual‐gate TFTs with dual‐gate driving are due to the high resistance of the parasitic intrinsic a‐Si:H regions between the back electron channel and the source/drain contact. In the off‐state of the dual‐gate‐driven TFTs, the Poole‐Frenkel effect is also enhanced due to back‐channel hole accumulation in the vicinity of the source/drain contact. Furthermore, we observed for the first time that under illumination the dual‐gate‐driven a‐Si:H TFTs exhibit extremely low photo‐leakage currents, much lower than that of single‐gate‐driven TFTs in a certain range (reverse subthreshold region) of negative gate voltages. The high on/off current ratio under backside illumination makes dual‐gate TFTs suitable devices for use as switching elements in liquid‐crystal displays (LCDs) or for other applications.     

Compact tri‐band MIMO antenna based on quarter‐mode slotted substrate‐integrated‐waveguide cavity

A compact tri‐band multiple‐input‐multiple‐output (MIMO) antenna based on a quarter‐mode slotted substrate‐integrated‐waveguide (SIW) cavity is proposed. By etching a wide slot, a single SIW cavity is divided into two sub‐cavities with the same size. They are fed by coaxial ports to form two MIMO elements and high antenna isolation can be achieved by this slot. To obtain multi‐band operations, two narrow slots are cut in the upper sub‐cavity and the other two slots are etched in the lower sub‐cavity. Three eighth‐mode resonances with different areas can simultaneously occur in these antenna elements. A prototype with the overall size of 0.34λ₀ × 0.34λ₀ has been fabricated. The measured center frequencies of three operating bands are 2.31, 2.91, and 3.35 GHz, respectively. The measured gain at above frequencies is 4.52, 4.29, and 4.57 dBi, respectively. Moreover, the measured isolation is higher than 16.7 dB within the frequency of interest.     

Wideband cavity‐backed log‐periodic‐slot end‐fire antenna with vertical polarization for conformal application

A 6–18 GHz wideband cavity‐backed log‐periodic‐slot end‐fire antenna with vertical polarization for conformal application is presented. The log‐periodic folded slots and parasitic slots with 10 slot elements are applied to cover 6–18 GHz frequency band and the log‐periodic metallic cavity is placed under each slot element to keep wideband performance and prevent the effects of large metallic carrier on radiation patterns. The ground plane etched with log‐periodic slots is reversed and touched directly to the backed cavity and a dielectric cover is added to the antenna, to further improve the antenna performance. Meanwhile, a broadband microstrip‐coplanar waveguide transition is inserted in the antenna for measurements. With these designs, the proposed antenna shows good impedance matching (|S₁₁|<27 dB) and end‐fire gain (>4 dBi) performances in 6–18 GHz. The proposed antenna also keeps low‐profile and easy flush‐mounted characteristic which is suitable for conformal applications of high speed moving carriers.     

Novel application of ink‐jet‐printing technology in multi‐domain alignment liquid‐crystal displays

Abstract— Based on the drop‐on‐demand characteristics of ink‐jet printing, the multi‐domain alignment liquid‐crystal display (LCD) could be achieved by using patterned polyimide materials. These polyimide ink locations with different alignment procedures could be defined in a single pixel, depending on the designer 's setting. In this paper, we combined the electro‐optical design, polyimide ink formulation, and ink‐jetting technology to demonstrate the application of multi‐domain alignment liquid‐crystal display manufactory. The first one was a multi‐domain vertical‐alignment LCD. After the horizontal alignment material pattern on the vertical alignment film, the viewing angle would reach 150° without compensation film. The second one was a single‐cell‐gap transflective LCD within integrating the horizontal alignment in the transmissive region and hybrid alignment in the reflective one in the same pixel. In addition, this transflective LCD was also demonstrated in the form of a 2.4‐in. 170‐ppi prototype.     

Design of UDE‐based controllers from their two‐degree‐of‐freedom nature

The control algorithm based on the uncertainty and disturbance estimator (UDE) is a robust control strategy and has received wide attention in recent years. In this paper, the two‐degree‐of‐freedom nature of UDE‐based controllers is revealed. The set‐point tracking response is determined by the reference model, whereas the disturbance response and robustness are determined by the error feedback gain and the filter introduced to estimate the uncertainty and disturbances. It is also revealed that the error dynamics of the system is determined by two filters, of which one is determined by the error feedback gain and the other is determined by the filter introduced to estimate the uncertainty and disturbances. The design of these two filters are decoupled in the frequency domain. Moreover, after introducing the UDE‐based control, the Laplace transform can be applied to some time‐varying systems for analysis and design because all the time‐varying parts are lumped into a signal. It has been shown that, in addition to the known advantages over the time‐delay control, the UDE‐based control also brings better performance than the time‐delay control under the same conditions. Design examples and simulation results are given to demonstrate the findings. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Measuring and modeling per‐element angular visibility in multi‐view displays

Abstract— Multi‐view displays employ an optical layer which distributes the light of an underlying TFT‐LCD panel in different directions. Certain properties of the layer create specific artifacts, such as ghost images, moiré patterns, and masking. The layer was modeled as an image‐processing channel, and the display parameters related with the model were identified, which are importantfor the design of image‐processing algorithms for artifact mitigation. The identified parameters are interleaving pattern, angular visibility, and frequency throughput of the display. A methodology for deriving these parameters for an arbitrary LCD‐based multi‐view display are presented, which does not require precisely positioned measurement equipment. As a case study, measurement and modeling results for a particular multi‐view display are also presented.     

Analysis and design of peer‐assisted video‐on‐demand services

We propose a deterministic fluid model to understand the trade‐offs in the design of peer‐assisted video‐on‐demand (VoD) services. There are three entities in this model: peers (or end users), seeders (altruistic users that own one or several complete video items), and cache servers that store and forward videos with a limited capacity. Peers join the network, download one or multiple concurrent video streams (possibly different video items), and abort the system when they wish. Peers are assumed to cooperate in a BitTorrent‐based fashion, governed by tit‐for‐tat and fair availability. The issue is to minimize the expected downloading times, choosing the set of video items that should be stored in each cache server. We first prove that the deterministic model is globally stable, and find closed expressions for the expected waiting times. Then, we introduce a combinatorial optimization problem (COP), whose nature is similar to the multiknapsack problem (where the items are videos, and knapsacks are related with the storage of cache servers). The problem turns out to be NP‐complete. Therefore, we heuristically address the problem following a GRASP (greedy randomized adaptive search procedure) methodology. Finally, we simulate the new caching methodology with real‐life traces taken from YouTube logs. The results suggest that the peer‐to‐peer philosophy is both stable and cost‐effective for on‐demand streaming purposes.