Low-power pipeline ADC for wireless LANs

In this paper, a 10-bit 40-MS/s analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is presented. A power consumption of 12 mW was achieved by using a time-interleaved and pipelined architecture with shared operational amplifiers. This circuit was fabricated in a 2.5-V 0.25-/spl mu/m technology with metal-oxide-metal capacitors. Experimental results are within design ranges and are in good agreement with simulation data. It turns out that the proposed Nyquist-rate ADC provides a potential solution for low-power high-speed applications, e.g., wireless LANs.     

Plasmomechanical Systems: Principles and Applications

Extreme confinement of electromagnetic waves and mechanical displacement fields to nanometer dimensions through plasmonic nanostructures offers unprecedented opportunities for greatly enhanced interaction strength, increased bandwidth, lower power consumption, chip-scale fabrication, and efficient actuation of mechanical systems at the nanoscale. Conversely, coupling mechanical oscillators to plasmonic nanostructures introduces mechanical degrees of freedom to otherwise static plasmonic structures thus giving rise to the generation of extremely large resonance shifts even for minor position changes. This nanoscale marriage of plasmonics and mechanics has led to the emergence of a new field of study called plasmomechanics that explores the fundamental principles underneath the coupling between light and plasmomechanical nanoresonators. In this review, both the fundamental concepts and applications of plasmomechanics as an emerging field of study are discussed. After an overview of the basic principles of plasmomechanics, the active tuning mechanisms of plasmonic nano-mechanical systems are extensively analyzed. Moreover, the recent developments on the practical implications of plasmomechanic systems for such applications as biosensing and infrared detection are highlighted. Finally, an outlook on the implications of the plasmomechanical nanosystems for development of point-of-care diagnostic devices that can help early and rapid detection of fatal diseases are forwarded.     

Implementation of depth‐based routing and its enhancement in AquaSim–Next Generation for underwater wireless sensor networks

In the last decade, underwater wireless sensor networks have been widely studied because of their peculiar aspects that distinguish them from common terrestrial wireless networks. Their applications range from environmental monitoring to military defense. The definition of efficient routing protocols in underwater sensor networks is a challenging topic of research because of the intrinsic characteristics of these networks, such as the need of handling the node mobility and the difficulty in balancing the energy consumed by the nodes. Depth‐based routing protocol is an opportunistic routing protocol for underwater sensor networks, which provides good performance both under high and low node mobility scenarios. The main contribution of our work is presenting a novel simulator for studying depth‐based routing protocol and its variants as well as novel routing protocols. Our simulator is based on AquaSim–Next Generation, which is a specialized tool for studying underwater networks. With our work, we improve the state of the art of underwater routing protocol simulators by implementing, among other features, a detailed cross‐layer communication and an accurate model of the operational modes of acoustic modem and their energy consumption. The simulator is open source and freely downloadable. Moreover, we propose a novel and completely distributed routing protocol, named residual energy–depth‐based routing. It takes into account the residual energy at the nodes' batteries to select the forwarder nodes and improve the network lifetime by providing a more uniform energy consumption among them. We compare its performance with that of depth‐based routing protocol and a receiver‐based routing protocol implementing a probabilistic opportunistic forwarding scheme.     

Long‐Term Electrical and Mechanical Function Monitoring of a Human‐on‐a‐Chip System

The goal of human‐on‐a‐chip systems is to capture multiorgan complexity and predict the human response to compounds within physiologically relevant platforms. The generation and characterization of such systems is currently a focal point of research given the long‐standing inadequacies of conventional techniques for predicting human outcome. Functional systems can measure and quantify key cellular mechanisms that correlate with the physiological status of a tissue, and can be used to evaluate therapeutic challenges utilizing many of the same endpoints used in animal experiments or clinical trials. Culturing multiple organ compartments in a platform creates a more physiologic environment (organ–organ communication). Here is reported a human 4‐organ system composed of heart, liver, skeletal muscle, and nervous system modules that maintains cellular viability and function over 28 days in serum‐free conditions using a pumpless system. The integration of noninvasive electrical evaluation of neurons and cardiac cells and mechanical determination of cardiac and skeletal muscle contraction allows the monitoring of cellular function, especially for chronic toxicity studies in vitro. The 28‐day period is the minimum timeframe for animal studies to evaluate repeat dose toxicity. This technology can be a relevant alternative to animal testing by monitoring multiorgan function upon long‐term chemical exposure.     

Effects of Nodes Geometry and Power Allocation in Space-Time Coded Cooperative Wireless Systems

Cooperative communications are effective in improving the performance and extend the coverage of wireless networks. One issue is to find proper methods to allocate cooperative nodes. In this paper we investigate the effects of relay position and power allocation strategy in cooperative communications employing space-time codes (STCs). We consider non-ideal links between source, relay, and destination enabling the analysis of relay allocation problem based on the performance of each link in realistic scenarios. The frame error rate for various channel conditions, available diversity, relay positions, and transmitted power levels is obtained. Both the situation of balanced and unbalanced transmit power levels for source, relay, and destination are compared. Cooperative pragmatic STCs in block fading channel (BFC) are considered for our analysis. The results provide insight on how to allocate relay nodes based on geometry, link quality, and transmitted power considerations.     

Impact of Ge-Sb-Te compound engineering on the set operation performance in phase-change memories

The phase-change memory (PCM) technology is considered as one of the most attractive non-volatile memory concepts for next generation data storage. It relies on the ability of a chalcogenide material belonging to the Ge-Sb-Te compound system to reversibly change its phase between two stable states, namely the poly-crystalline low-resistive state and the amorphous high-resistive state, allowing the storage of the logical bit. A careful study of the phase-change material properties in terms of the set operation performance, the program window and the electrical switching parameters as a function of composition is very attractive in order to enlarge the possible PCM application spectrum. Concerning the set performance, a crystallization kinetics based interpretation of the observed behavior measured on different Ge-Sb-Te compounds is provided, allowing a physics-based comprehension of the reset-to-set transition.     

Environmentally Friendly Graphene Inks for Touch Screen Sensors

Graphene-based materials have attracted significant attention in many technological fields, but scaling up graphene-based technologies still faces substantial challenges. High-throughput top-down methods generally require hazardous, toxic, and high-boiling-point solvents. Here, an efficient and inexpensive strategy is proposed to produce graphene dispersions by liquid-phase exfoliation (LPE) through a combination of shear-mixing (SM) and tip sonication (TS) techniques, yielding highly concentrated graphene inks compatible with spray coating. The quality of graphene flakes (e.g., lateral size and thickness) and their concentration in the dispersions are compared using different spectroscopic and microscopy techniques. Several approaches (individual SM and TS, and their combination) are tested in three solvents (N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone, dimethylformamide, and cyrene). Interestingly, the combination of SM and TS in cyrene yields high-quality graphene dispersions, overcoming the environmental issues linked to the other two solvents. Starting from the cyrene dispersion, a graphene-based ink is prepared to spray-coat flexible electrodes and assemble a touch screen prototype. The electrodes feature a low sheet resistance (290 Ω □⁻¹) and high optical transmittance (78%), which provide the prototype with a high signal-to-noise ratio (14 dB) and multi-touch functionality (up to four simultaneous touches). These results illustrate a potential pathway toward the integration of LPE-graphene in commercial flexible electronics.     

An improved common-mode feedback loop for the differential-difference amplifier

Unconditional stability of the high-gain amplifiers is a mandatory requirement for a reliable steady-state condition of time-discrete systems, especially for all blocks designed to sample-and-hold (S/H) circuits. Compared to differential path, the common-mode feedback loop is often affected by poles and zeros shifting that degrades the large signal response of the amplifiers. This drawback is made worse in some well-known topologies as the difference-differential amplifier (DDA) that shows non-constant transconductance and poor linearity. This work proposes a body-driven positive-feedback frequency compensation technique (BD-PFFC) to improve the linearity for precision DDA-based S/H applications. Theoretical calculations and circuit simulations carried out in a 0.13 μm process are also given to demonstrate its validity.     

Adaptive transform skipping for improved coding of motion compensated residuals

New generations of video compression algorithms, such as those included in the under development High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard, provide substantially higher compression compared to their ancestors. The gain is achieved by improved prediction of pixels, both within a frame and between frames. Novel coding tools that contribute to the gain provide highly uncorrelated prediction residuals for which classical frequency decomposition methods, such as the discrete cosine transform, may not be able to supply a compact representation with few significant coefficients. To further increase the compression gains, this paper proposes transform skip modes which allow skipping one or both 1-D constituent transforms (i.e., vertical and horizontal), which is more suitable for sparse residuals. The proposed transform skip mode is tested in the HEVC codec and is able to provide bitrate reductions of up to 10% at the same objective quality when compared with the application of 2-D block transforms only. Moreover, the proposed transform skip mode outperforms the full transform skip currently investigated for possible adoption in the HEVC standard.     

A design methodology for high-order class-D audio amplifiers

This paper presents a design methodology for high-order class-D amplifiers, based on their similarity with sigma–delta ( $\Upsigma\Updelta$ ) modulators, for which established theory and toolboxes are available. The proposed methodology, which covers the entire design flow, from specifications to component sizing, is validated with three design examples, namely a second-order, a third-order, and a fourth-order class-D amplifier. Moreover, the third-order class-D amplifier has been integrated on silicon and characterized, further confirming the validity of the whole design flow. The achieved results demonstrate that high-order class-D amplifiers can achieve total-harmonic-distortion (THD) performance compatible with the specifications of high-end audio applications (THD  ≈ 90 dB), which would be unfeasible with conventional first-order class-D amplifiers.