Low supply voltage high-performance CMOS current mirror with low input and output voltage requirements

This paper presents a scheme for the efficient implementation of a low supply voltage continuous-time high-performance CMOS current mirror with low input and output voltage requirements. This circuit combines a shunt input feedback and a regulated cascode output stage to achieve low input resistance and very high output resistance. It can be used as a high-precision current mirror in analog and mixed signal circuits with a power supply close to a transistor's threshold voltage. The proposed current mirror has been simulated and a bandwidth of 40 MHz has been obtained. An experimental chip prototype has been sent for fabrication and has been experimentally verified, obtaining 0.15-V input-output voltage requirements, 100-/spl Omega/ input resistance, and more than 200-M/spl Omega/ (G/spl Omega/ ideally) output resistance with a 1.2-V supply in a standard CMOS technology.     

Design principles underlying circadian clocks.

A fundamental problem for regulatory networks is to understand the relation between form and function: to uncover the underlying design principles of the network. Circadian clocks present a particularly interesting instance, as recent work has shown that they have complex structures involving multiple interconnected feedback loops with both positive and negative feedback. While several authors have speculated on the reasons for this, a convincing explanation is still lacking.We analyse both the flexibility of clock networks and the relationships between various desirable properties such as robust entrainment, temperature compensation, and stability to environmental variations and parameter fluctuations. We use this to argue that the complexity provides the flexibility necessary to simultaneously attain multiple key properties of circadian clocks. As part of our analysis we show how to quantify the key evolutionary aims using infinitesimal response curves, a tool that we believe will be of general utility in the analysis of regulatory networks. Our results suggest that regulatory and signalling networks might be much less flexible and of lower dimension than their apparent complexity would suggest.     

RF microelectronics for W-CDMA mobile communication systems

Third generation (3G) mobile communication systems are now just starting to be introduced. With a maximum data rate of 2 Mbit/s they will make wireless access to broadband data services like the Internet or video applications feasible. Most of the different physical layer technologies summarised under the acronym 3G are based on wideband-CDMA (W-CDMA), in contrast to existing second generation systems, which mostly use TDMA and FDMA. This has severe consequences for the design of the transceiver front-ends. During standardisation these were assumed to have an adequate RF performance yet they still present a performance bottleneck for the system. Starting with a short introduction to UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System)-the 3G standard to be deployed in Europe and already operating in Japan-this paper describes by way of example some of the test cases specified for UMTS and their impact on the analogue front-end. It is shown that accurate simulation of all the analogue and digital signal processing is necessary in order to predict the RF performance needed of today's commercial RFICs. The paper then presents and reviews some actual design examples. Finally, possible technologies and techniques for application in future mobile terminals are discussed     

The magnetic structure of TbNiSiD1.78

TbNiSiD_1.78 has been studied by powder neutron diffraction below 100 K. The compound takes the hexagonal room temperature structure at 100 and 50 K (P6₃/mmc). At 2 K, below the antiferromagnetic ordering temperature of 10 K, there is a small orthorhombic distortion of the lattice. The refined unit-cell dimensions at 2 K (space group Pnma) are a=7.9505(2), b=4.02502(14), c=6.9823(2) Å. The magnetic moments of Tb are 8.71(6) μ_B, and are ordered antiferromagnetically along a.     

InP D-HBT ICs for 40-Gb/s and higher bitrate lightwave transceivers

The combination of device speed (f/sub T/, f/sub max/ > 150 GHz) and breakdown voltage (V/sub bceo/ > 8 V) makes the double heterojunction bipolar InP-based transistor (D-HBT) an attractive technology to implement the most demanding analog functions of 40-Gb/s transceivers. This is illustrated by the performance of a number of analog circuits realized in an InP D-HBT technology with an 1.2- or 1.6-/spl mu/m-wide emitter finger: a low phase noise push-push voltage-controlled oscillator with -7-dBm output power at 146 GHz, a 40-GHz bandwidth and low-jitter 40-Gb/s limiting amplifier, a lumped 40-Gb/s limiting driver amplifier with 4.5-V/sub pp/ differential output swing, a distributed 40-Gb/s driver amplifier with 6-V/sub pp/ differential output swing, and a number of distributed preamplifiers with up to 1.3-THz gain-bandwidth product.     

Fuzzy rule-based classification of remotely sensed imagery

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the applicability of fuzzy rule-based modeling to classify a LANDSAT TM scene from 1984 of an area located in the south of Germany. Both a land cover map with four different categories and an image depicting the degree of ambiguity of the classification for each pixel is the expected output. The fuzzy classification algorithm will use a rule system derived from a training set using simulated annealing as an optimization algorithm. The results are then validated and compared with a common classification method in order to judge the effectiveness of the proposed technique. It will also be shown that the proposed method with only nine rules for four different land cover classes performs slightly better than the maximum likelihood classifier (MLC). For error assessment, the traditional error matrix and fuzzy operators have been used     

Magnetic effects of direct ion implantation of Mn and Fe into p-GaN

In p-GaN implanted with Mn (3×10¹⁶ cm⁻² at 250 keV), the material after annealing shows ferromagnetic properties below 250 K. Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) revealed the presence of platelet structures with hexagonal symmetry. These regions are most likely Ga_xMn_1−xN, which produce the ferromagnetic contribution to the magnetization. In p-GaN implanted with Fe, the material after annealing showed ferromagnetic properties at temperatures that were dependent on the Fe dose, but were below 200 K in all cases. In these samples, TEM and diffraction analysis did not reveal any secondary phase formation. The results for the Fe implantation are similar to those reported for Fe doping during epitaxial growth of GaN.     

A simple model for SAR azimuth speckle, focusing, and interferometric decorrelation

The phenomenon of speckle in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is well known as a characteristic grainy appearance of radar images. Speckle is frequently a significant obstacle to visual interpretations of radar data or target identification. In addition, it is usually the dominant noise source in SAR interferometry, since it is responsible for image decorrelation that degrades interferometric fringes, places severe constraints on orbits, and limits the accuracy of height measurements. This communication deals with the geometric sources of speckle. This conventional picture is extended to the case of vertically separated scatterers, and the formulation that results is applied to the structurally similar topics of azimuth focusing, interferometric decorrelation from defocusing, and atmospheric phase delays.     

Scattering from and penetration into a dielectric-filled conductingcylinder with multiple apertures

The theory of characteristic modes for aperture problems is used in this paper to solve the equivalent magnetic current and aperture fields due to a conducting cylinder with multiple slots. It is assumed that these slots are illuminated by either a transverse electric (TE) or a transverse magnetic (TM) plane wave and the media inside and outside the cylinder exhibit different electromagnetic properties. The formulation is given for the general case and numerical results for a limited number of slots are presented