A new S-shaped MEMS PZT cantilever for energy harvesting from low frequency vibrations below 30 Hz

In this paper, a new S-shaped piezoelectric PZT cantilever is microfabricated for scavenging vibration energy at low frequencies (<30 Hz) and low accelerations (<0.4g). The maximum voltage and normalized power are 42 mV and 0.31 μW g ⁻², respectively, at input acceleration of 0.06g. For acceleration above 0.06g, the vibration of PZT cantilever changes from a linear oscillation to a nonlinear impact oscillation due to the displacement constraint introduced by a mechanical stopper. Based on theoretical modeling and experimental results, the frequency broadening effect of the PZT cantilever is studied with varying stop distances and input accelerations. The operation bandwidth of the piezoelectric PZT cantilever is able to extend from 3.4 to 11.1 Hz as the stop distance reduces from 1.7 to 0.7 mm for an acceleration of 0.3g, at the expense of the voltage and normalized power at resonance decreasing from 40 to 16 mV and from 17.8 to 2.8 nW g⁻², respectively.     

The research of indirectly-heated type microwave power sensors based on GaAs MMIC technology

In this work, the effect of the temperature and the humidity on the indirectly-heated type microwave power sensor is researched in order to extend its application field, and their mechanism is revealed. The fabrication of this microwave power sensor is divided into a front side and a back side processing using GaAs MMIC process and MEMS technology. One advantage of this microwave power sensor consists in compatibility with MMIC devices and other planar connecting circuits structures with zero dc power consumption. The measurement results show that the environment temperature has a significant effect on the performance of the indirectly-heated type microwave power sensor, and the humidity has a little effect on its performance. The temperature dependent coefficient is about 0.6 mV/(W K), which has an important reference value to other thermoelectric microwave power sensor. The reason is that the accuracy microwave power measurement will be realized as long as the environment temperature is tracked in the testing process.     

A micro electromagnetic low level vibration energy harvester based on MEMS technology

This paper presents a micro electromagnetic energy harvester which can convert low level vibration energy to electrical power. It mainly consists of an electroplated copper planar spring, a permanent magnet and a copper planar coil with high aspect ratio. Mechanical simulation shows that the natural frequency of the magnet-spring system is 94.5 Hz. The resonant vibration amplitude of the magnet is 259.1 μm when the input vibration amplitude is 14 μm and the magnet-spring system is at resonance. Electromagnetic simulation shows that the linewidth and the turns of the coil influence the induced voltage greatly. The optimized electromagnetic vibration energy harvester can generate 0.7 μW of maximal output power with peak–peak voltage of 42.6 mV in an input vibration frequency of 94.5 Hz and input acceleration of 4.94 m/s² (this vibration is a kind of low level ambient vibration). A prototype (not optimized) has been fabricated using MEMS micromachining technology. The testing results show that the prototype can generate induced voltage (peak–peak) of 18 mV and output power of 0.61 μW for 14.9 m/s² external acceleration at its resonant frequency of 55 Hz (this vibration is not in a low ambient vibration level).     

Low power integrated fluxgate sensor with a spiral magnetic core

Facing the new integrated applications, coordination between three parameters of the micro fluxgate sensor, namely, sensitivity, power consumption and operation range, is the key to make the applications come true. This paper reports a new low power micro integrated fluxgate sensor with low cost solution. A spiral electroplating permalloy magnetic core is introduced to reduce excitation current. Due to the design of little coils resistance and thick magnetic core, the fluxgate sensor exhibits a power consumption of 7.35 mW, a sensitivity of 117 V/T and a linear range of −200 to 200 μT. Compared with the constant-width magnetic core and the multi rectangular ring magnetic cores, experiment results show that the spiral magnetic core benefits both smaller excitation current and higher sensitivity. The newly developed fluxgate sensor maintains high sensitivity and wide linear range with low power consumption.     

Design and consideration of wafer level micropackaging for distributed RF MEMS phase shifters

A novel packaging structure which is performed using wafer level micropackaging on the thin silicon substrate as the distributed RF MEMS phase shifters wafer with vertical feedthrough is presented. The influences of proposed structure on RF performances of distributed RF MEMS phase shifters are investigated using microwave studio (CST). Simulation results show that the insertion loss (S₂₁) and return loss (S₁₁) of packaged MEMS phase shifters are −0.4–1.84 dB and under −10 dB at 1–50 GHz, respectively. Especially, the phase shifts have well linear relation at the range 1–48 GHz. At the same time, this indicated that the proposed pacakaging structure for the RF MEMS phase shifter can provide the maximum amount of linear phase shift with the minimum amount of insertion loss and return loss of less than −10 dB.     

A robust and low-power 2-D thermal wind sensor based on a glass-in-silicon reflow process

In this paper, the design, fabrication, and characterization of a robust and low-power micro-machined two-dimensional (2-D) wind sensor based on a glass-in-silicon reflow process are presented for the first time. The four thermistors, which act simultaneously as heat sources and as temperature sensors, are placed on a low thermal conductivity glass substrate, and arranged in a Wheatstone bridge configuration supplied with constant voltage. In this self-heated mode, the total power consumption of the sensor could be reduced into the sub-milliwatt range, offering high initial sensitivity and wide measurement range, respectively. The embedded vertical silicon vias in the glass substrate are used to realize the electrical connections between the sensing elements and the electrode-pads, which are respectively placed on the front and the back surface of the chip. Then, the sensor and the external circuit are connected using the wire-bonding process through the electrode-pads on the back surface. The bonding wires at the backside is encapsulated by polyester paint, protecting the electrical connections of the sensor from the effect of the external environment. In addition, a passivation layer of nitride is deposited on the surface of the wind sensor to prevent direct exposure of the sensing elements to harsh media. The sensor was tested in a wind tunnel in constant voltage mode. Measurement results show that the thermal wind sensor can measure wind speeds up to 17.5 m/s, and the measured sensitivities of the sensor with different applied voltages (0.5, 1, 1.5 V) are, respectively 24.9, 148.3 and 440.61 mV/(m/s) at zero-flow point. The corresponding power consumption of the sensor with different voltages are respectively 4.81, 19.23 and 43.27 mW. Measurement results also show that wind direction in a full range of 360° with an err within 6° could be obtained. The proposed sensor can be used for many applications with a low power consumption and high reliability.     

Hydrogen sensors with double dipole layers using a Pd-mixture-Pd triple-layer sensing structure

This paper reports on new GaN sensors using a Pd-mixture-Pd triple-layer sensing structure to enhance their sensitivity to hydrogen at the tens of ppm level. The proposed hydrogen sensor biased with a constant voltage produced relatively high sensing responses of 4.84 × 10⁵% at 10,100 ppm and 8.7 × 10⁴% at 49.1 ppm H₂ in N₂. The corresponding barrier height variations are calculated to be 220 and 168 mV. When the sensor is biased by a constant current with maximum power consumption of 0.4 mW, a sensing voltage as an output signal showed a voltage shift of more than 17 V (the highest value ever reported) at 49.1 ppm H₂ in N₂. By comparison to Pd-deposited GaN sensors, the improvement in static-state performance is likely attributed to double dipole layers formed individually at the Pd–GaN interface and inside the mixture. Moreover, voltage transient response and current transient response to various hydrogen-containing gases were experimentally studied. The new finding is that the former response time is shorter than the latter one.     

Integrated SWCNT sensors in micro-wind tunnel for air-flow shear-stress measurement

We have developed SWCNT sensors for air-flow shear-stress measurement inside a polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) “micro-wind tunnel” chip. An array of sensors is fabricated by using dielectrophoretic (DEP) technique to manipulate bundled single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) across the gold microelectrodes on a PMMA substrate. The sensors are then integrated in a PMMA micro-wind tunnel, which is fabricated by SU-8 molding/hot-embossing technique. Since the sensors detect air flow by thermal transfer principle, we have first examined the I–V characteristics of the sensors and confirmed that self-heating effect occurs when the input voltage is above ~1 V. We then performed the flow sensing experiment on the sensors using constant temperature (CT) configuration with input power of ~230 μW. The voltage output of the sensors increases with the increasing flow rate in the micro-wind tunnel and the detectable volumetric flow is in the order of 1 × 10⁻⁵m³/s. We also found that the activation power of the sensors has a linear relation with 1/3 exponential power of the shear stress which is similar to conventional hot-wire and polysilicon types of convection-based shear-stress sensors. Moreover, measurements of sensors with different overheat ratios were compared, and results showed that sensor is more sensitive to the flow with a higher overheat ratio.     

A compact hollowed‐out loop rectenna without matching network for wireless sensor applications

In this article, a compact and high‐efficiency loop rectenna with matching network elimination for wireless sensor applications at 2.45 GHz is presented. The proposed hollowed‐out square loop antenna is designed and directly provides a conjugate matching to a compact voltage‐doubler rectifier. The loop rectenna can harvest microwave power without increasing the total size or affecting the performance of a wireless sensor. The experiment results show that the peak microwave‐to‐dc conversion efficiency of 74% is obtained at 2.45 GHz when the input power is 18 dBm. The dimension of rectenna is 30 × 30 × 1 mm³ and only with a weight of 0.58 g, which successfully realizes a high power‐weight‐ratio (PWR). Hence, the proposed rectenna can provide a convenient and practical charging solution for wireless sensors in various applications.     

CVD-diamond-based thermocouple for high sensitive temperature measurements

The possibility to realize a high sensitive thermocouple by means of boron doped chemical vapour deposition (CVD) diamond was investigated. The thermoelectric power of p-type diamond, grown by plasma enhanced CVD was studied for films of electrical resistivity in the 0.2–40 Ω cm range in order to asses the dependence of thermocouple sensitivity on the doping level. The p-type diamond films were prepared by CH₃OH + B₂O₃ vapour addition to a 1% CH₄–H₂ gas mixture during the growth. The conductive films were then tested tracing the I–V characteristic in order to study the conduction properties of the films. An appropriate experimental setup was built to evaluate the thermoelectric properties of the grown samples for different temperatures imposed between two ends of the samples. Firstly, the output voltage was measured maintaining a reference temperature of 273 K at one end and varying the second temperature between 275.5 and 360.5 K. A constant value of the temperature drop of 5 K was then used for an accurate evaluation of the thermoelectric properties of the diamond films for different value of the average temperature. The measurements provided values of thermoelectric power in the range 0.3–0.6 mV/K while conductivity increases. These values showed different decreasing behaviour with increasing temperature for different resistivity of the sample. In particular, more relevant changes in thermoelectric power were measured for high resistive samples.     

Digitally-controlled array of solid-state microcoolers for use in surgery

This paper presents an approach for generating a well-defined cooling pattern over an area of tissue. An array of solid-state microcoolers is used, which could be included in a probe that provides local cooling. This medical instrument can be used for removal of scar tissue in the eye or for the rapid stopping of bleeding due to micro-cuts, which makes it a useful tool to medical doctors and could make surgery more secure to the patient. The array of microcoolers is composed of 64 independent thermo-electric elements, each controlled using an integrated circuit designed in CMOS. The independent control allows the flexible programming of the surface temperature profile. This type of control is very suitable in case abrupt temperature steps should be avoided. Cooling by lateral heat flow was selected in order to minimize the influence of heat by dissipation from the electronic circuits. Moreover, a thermo-electric component with lateral heat allows fabrication of the cooling elements using planar thin-film technology, lithography and wet etching on top of the silicon wafer. This approach is potentially CMOS compatible, which would allow for the fabrication of the thermo-electric elements on top of a pre-fabricated CMOS wafer as a post-process step. Each pixel is composed of thin-films of n-type bismuth telluride, Bi₂Te₃ and p-type antimony telluride, Sb₂Te₃, which are electrically interconnected as thermocouple. These materials have excellent thermoelectric characteristics, such as thermoelectric figures-of-merit, ZT, at room temperatures of 0.84 and 0.5, respectively, which is equivalent to power-factors, PF, of 3.62 × 10⁻³ W K⁻¹ m⁻² and 2.81 × 10⁻³ W K⁻¹ m⁻², respectively. The theoretical study presented here demonstrates a cooling capability of 15°C at room temperature (300 K ≈ 27°C). This cooling performance is sufficient to maintain a local tissue temperature at 25°C, which makes it suitable for the intended application. A first prototype was successfully fabricated to demonstrate the concept.     

A design approach of higher oscillation VCO made of CS amplifier with varying active load

This article proposes a design approach of common source (CS) amplifier based Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) to derive higher oscillation frequency. The working feature is such that, the active load of CS amplifier is varied to modulate the flow of current based on a bias circuit steered by an external controlled voltage (V_ctrl), which controls the delay of each stage and thereby regulates the oscillation frequency. The circuit is designed and analyzed on Cadence Virtuoso platform at a supply voltage of 1.2 V for 90 nm CMOS to read a device footprint of 0.105 mm², which offers a power burn and frequency of 2.092 mW and 9.21 GHz respectively with a phase noise and output noise of − 137.9 dBc/Hz and − 168.40 dB at 1 MHz offset frequency. To justify the reliability of the circuit we have conducted worst case analysis by considering effect of power delivery network (PDN) and corner variation along with 500 runs of Monte Carlo. The design is also introduced under 28 nm UMC to validate its scalability with technology trends.

     

A Micromachined Inline-Type Wideband Microwave Power Sensor Based on GaAs MMIC Technology

Wideband 8–12-GHz inline-type microwave power sensors that are based on measuring the microwave power coupled from the coplanar waveguide line by a microelectromechanical systems membrane are presented. In this method, the signal is available during the power detection. In order to obtain the low reflection losses and insertion losses, as well as the wideband response of the power sensor, an impedance match structure and a compensating capacitance are proposed. The fabrication of the power sensor is compatible with the GaAs monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) process. The experimental results show that the sensor has reflection losses better than 20 dB and insertion losses less than 0.45 dB up to 12 GHz. A sensitivity of more than 30 $muhbox{V/mW}$ and a resolution of 0.2 mW are obtained at the 10-GHz frequency.$hfill$[2008-0219]      

一种用于人体传感器网络的接收器模拟前端

设计了一种用于人体传感器网络的低功耗接收器模拟前端,电路物理层信道利用人体进行通信,并采用了一种宽带信号传输技术,可以在0.8 V电压供电,100 mV输入敏感度条件下传输20 Mb/s的数据。片上的电压偏置电路提供了50Ω的输入阻抗。放大器采用了一种低压低功耗的Cascode结构,具有58 dB的增益,25 MHz的增益带宽积。另外采用了一种结构简单,功耗极低的电流反馈型Schmitt触发器。电路采用SMIC0.13μm标准CMOS工艺设计,面积0.02 mm2,供电电压0.8 V,功耗仅为2.2 mW。     

A thermal-calorimetric gas flow meter with improved isolating feature

This paper presents design and characterization of a novel thermal-calorimetric flow-meter using suspended-cantilever-structure. There is an air gap between the heater and each individual thermistor providing a good thermal isolation. Due to the suspended-structure which consists of three cantilevers, the thermal convection effect is present on both sides of the active area. Also the velocity boundary layer thickness of the cantilever is much less than closed-membrane one. This characteristic enhances the sensitivity of sensor. The simulation results indicate that the average temperature difference between upstream and downstream thermistors are 36.5 and 1.04 K for flow rate of 1 m/s and the worst case of 0.1 m/s respectively. This solution significantly improves the sensitivity compared to the closed-membrane-structures. The maximum temperature difference causes 94 mV at the output of Wheatstone bridge with 3 V of voltage supply. The calculated and simulated results show that the maximum power consumption of sensor is 4.7 mW at the maximum flow velocity of 1 m/s. The operational range of the designed flow meter is from 0 to 1 m/s. The features of the device are analytically evaluated and simulated under various conditions.

     

A low power fully differential RF receiver front-end for 2.4 GHz wireless sensor networks

In this paper, a novel merged LNA-mixer denoted as LNMA is proposed. The proposed LNMA consisting of a folded cascode LNA using improved derivative superposition technique and folded double-balanced subthreshold mixer using capacitor cross-coupled common-gate transconductor and it is integrated with on-chip LC voltage controlled oscillator (LC-VCO). In LNMA, a diode and power clamp based on-chip ESD protection circuit is used to tolerate ESD current of human-body-model specifications. To evaluate its performance, it is implemented in 0.18-µm MMRF CMOS process with 1-V supply, studied through post layout simulation and compared the results with other reported works. It achieves higher conversion gain of 27 dB, lower noise figure of 9.5 dB, lower input return loss (S11) of − 20 dB, higher third-order input intercept point (IIP₃) of – 16 dBm and higher IIP₂ of + 29.9 dBm compared to the works reported in the literature. The on-chip oscillator has the lower phase noise of – 114 dBc/Hz. The proposed LNMA and the LC-VCO achieves the power consumptions of 1.6 and 1.72 mW, respectively at 1-V power supply.

     

A 0.6 V 117 nW high performance energy efficient system-on-chip (SoC) CMOS temperature sensor in 0.18 µm CMOS for aerospace applications

This research article presents and describes a novel design with improved performance low power consumption threshold voltage based CMOS thermal sensor for aerospace applications. The proposed temperature sensor utilizes the change in behavior of threshold voltage of MOSFET with variation in temperature. The challenge while designing the temperature sensor was to achieve the linearize output voltage with respect to change in temperature. Process corner analysis has been done to check the robustness of the circuit while performance analysis and sensitivity of the temperature sensor have been verified in the occurrence of parasitic. The proposed temperature sensor is featured with low power consumption, less power supply voltage utilization, high performance and sensitivity with inaccuracy as low as possible. The presented temperature sensor utilizes an active area of 18 µm × 9.85 µm with 117 nW power consumption. An improved linear performance with an inaccuracy of merely − 0.01 to + 0.47 °C over a wide temperature range of − 20 to + 120 °C is presented here. The sensitivity of proposed temperature sensor is found to be as high as 0.77 mV/°C. The proposed temperature sensor is realized and tested in Cadence virtuoso mixed signal design atmosphere using 0.18 µm CMOS technology and further investigated with support of tool from Mentor graphics. The engaged area of pad-limited chip is measured to be 0.96 mm².

     

Asymmetric quantum Reed-Solomon and generalized Reed-Solomon codes

Two new families of asymmetric quantum codes are constructed in this paper. The first one is derived from the Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) construction applied to classical Reed-Solomon (RS) codes, providing quantum codes with parameters [[N = l(q ^l −1), K = l(q ^l −2d + c + 1), d _z ≥ d/d _x ≥ (d−c)]] _q , where q is a prime power and d > c + 1, c ≥ 1, l ≥ 1 are integers. The second family is derived from the CSS construction applied to classical generalized RS codes, generating quantum codes with parameters [[N = mn, K = m(2k−n + c), d _z ≥ d/d _x ≥ (d−c)]] _q , where q is a prime power, 1 < k < n < 2k + c ≤ q ^m , k = n − d + 1, and n, d > c + 1, c ≥ 1, m ≥ 1 are integers. Although the second proposed construction generalizes the first one, the techniques developed in both constructions are slightly different. These new codes have parameters better than or comparable to the ones available in the literature. Additionally, the proposed codes can be utilized in quantum channels having great asymmetry, that is, quantum channels in which the probability of occurrence of phase-shift errors is large when compared to the probability of occurrence of qudit-flip errors.     

一种新型MEMS微波功率传感器的设计与模拟

提出了一种新型的三明治结构MEMS微波功率传感器结构,与传统传感器相比,新结构由于采用了垂直传热方式而具有较小的热损耗。在输入相同功率的情况下,模拟了热电堆的温度分布,三明治结构热电堆的温度高于传统结构,因此具有更高的灵敏度。同时模拟了两种结构的阻抗匹配特性,其差异不大,在1~6GHz的频率范围内,三明治结构的回波损耗小于-30dB;在6~20GHz的频率范围内,其回波损耗小于-20dB,显示了良好的匹配特性。     

A 2.4‐GHz dual polarized suspended square plate rectenna with inserted annular rectangular ring slot

This research has proposed a dual polarized suspended square plate rectenna for RF‐to‐DC conversion at the 2.40–2.50 GHz frequency band. The proposed dual polarized antenna yields improved isolation with an annular rectangular ring slot etched in the square radiating plate. The proposed antenna could achieve >40.00 dB isolation and >8.00 dBi gain with unidirectional radiation. The proposed SMS7630‐based rectifying circuits were measured and could realize the maximum conversion efficiency of 25.98% (1.57 V) with a 3.00 kΩ resistor and 2.00 mW input RF power of a signal generator. On integration, the experimental vertical polarization rectenna was capable of achieving the maximum conversion efficiency of 21.86% (14.20 mV) at the 0.5 m distance and 0.00015.00 mW/cm² input power density. The proposed dual polarized rectenna can receive the input RF power density of arbitrary polarization with obtained average conversion efficiency of 14.97% (10.50 mV) at the 0.5 m distance of wireless local area network (WLAN) system. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:164–173, 2016.