Polyacrylonitrile Nanofibers: Formation Mechanism and Applications as a Photoluminescent Material and Carbon‐Nanofiber Precursor

The facile synthesis of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofibers is achieved using a microemulsion polymerization. The detailed formation mechanism of polymer nanofibers is examined using electron microscopy and UV‐vis and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopies, and the optoelectronic properties are studied by confocal laser scanning microscopy. The effects of surfactant properties, such as concentration, chain length, and ionic character, as well as monomer structure and polymerization temperature, on the structure of the resulting polymer nanofibers are also investigated extensively. Importantly, PAN nanofibers exhibited novel photoluminescence (PL), which is observed for the first time. The PL of PAN nanofibers is significantly different from that of PAN nanoparticles. The PAN nanofibers are also used as a precursor for carbon nanofibers. The carbonization temperature has a dominant effect on the degree of crystallinity of the resulting carbon nanofibers. This study is the first demonstration of the fabrication of polymer and carbon nanofibers using a convenient polymerization technique.     

Wavelength‐Dependent Photosensitivity in a Germanium‐Doped Sol–Gel Hybrid Material for Direct Photopatterning

Photosensitivity, as evident in permanent changes in refractive index and volume upon light exposure, is observed in a germanium‐doped methacrylate hybrid material (hybrimer) and found to depend on the wavelength of the UV light. Exposure to short‐wavelength UV illumination (220–260 nm) results in very high photosensitivity with changes in refractive index (Δn ≈ 0.0164) and film thickness (Δt ≈ –40 %) that are mainly a result of photopolymerization and Ge‐related densification. In contrast, the hybrimer is hardly photosensitive to light in the long UV‐wavelength range (350–390 nm). Direct photopatterning of a single circle on the hybrimer film creates a concave lens‐like topography upon illumination with UV light of short wavelength and a convex lens‐like one upon illumination with UV light of long wavelength.     

Globally optimal transmitter placement for indoor wireless communication systems

A global optimization technique is applied to solve the optimal transmitter placement problem for indoor wireless systems. An efficient pattern search algorithm - DIviding RECTangles (DIRECT) of Jones et al.- has been connected to a parallel three-dimensional radio propagation ray tracing modeler running on a 200-node Beowulf cluster of Linux workstations. Surrogate functions for a parallel wideband code-division multiple-access (WCDMA) simulator were used to estimate the system performance for the global optimization algorithm. Power coverage and bit-error rate are considered as two different criteria for optimizing locations of a specified number of transmitters across the feasible region of the design space. This paper briefly describes the underlying radio propagation and WCDMA simulations and focuses on the design issues of the optimization loop.     

Design of Reader Baseband Receiver Structure for Demodulating Backscattered Tag Signal in a Passive RFID Environment

In this paper, we present a demodulation structure suitable for a reader baseband receiver in a passive radio frequency identification (RFID) environment. In a passive RFID configuration, an undesirable DC‐offset phenomenon may appear in the baseband of the reader receiver, which can severely degrade the performance of the extraction of valid information from the received tag signal. To eliminate this DC‐offset phenomenon, the primary feature of the proposed demodulation structures for the received FM0 and Miller subcarrier signals is to reconstruct the signal corrupted by the DC‐offset phenomenon by creating peak signals from the corrupted signal. It is shown that the proposed method can successfully detect valid data, even when the received baseband signal is distorted by the DC‐offset phenomenon.     

Gait event detection algorithm based on smart insoles

Gait analysis is an effective clinical tool across a wide range of applications. Recently, inertial measurement units have been extensively utilized for gait analysis. Effective gait analyses require good estimates of heel‐strike and toe‐off events. Previous studies have focused on the effective device position and type of triaxis direction to detect gait events. This study proposes an effective heel‐strike and toe‐off detection algorithm using a smart insole with inertial measurement units. This method detects heel‐strike and toe‐off events through a time‐frequency analysis by limiting the range. To assess its performance, gait data for seven healthy male subjects during walking and running were acquired. The proposed heel‐strike and toe‐off detection algorithm yielded the largest error of 0.03 seconds for running toe‐off events, and an average of 0–0.01 seconds for other gait tests. Novel gait analyses could be conducted without suffering from space limitations because gait parameters such as the cadence, stance phase time, swing phase time, single‐support time, and double‐support time can all be estimated using the proposed heel‐strike and toe‐off detection algorithm.     

CMOS digital duty cycle correction circuit for multi-phase clock

A digital duty cycle correction circuit with a fixed-delay rising-edge output is proposed for use in applications with the multi-phase clock and the standby mode. Two integrators are used in the duty cycle detector to eliminate the effect of reference voltage variations. The output duty cycle is adjusted to 50/spl plusmn/0.25% throughout the input duty cycle range from 20% to 80% at the frequency of 1.25 GHz. 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS technology is used in this work.     

A low-noise L-band EDFA with a 1500-nm Raman-pumped dispersion-compensating fiber section

This report presents a low-noise L-band erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) with a dispersion-compensating Raman amplifier. With an optimized prestage and 1500-nm Raman-pump laser diodes, the proposed EDFA achieved an internal noise figure of less than 4.5 dB over a 33-nm flat gain bandwidth within 0.5 dB at -2 dBm of large signal input power.     

Reliable Wavelength-Division-Multiplexed Passive Optical Network Using Novel Protection Scheme

A novel, reliable wavelength-division-multiplexed passive optical network (WDM-PON) with self-protection capability is proposed. By utilizing the routing characteristics of N x N arrayed waveguide grating, the proposed architecture can provide automatic protection against any fiber cut between central office and optical network unit (ONU). Compared with the conventional schemes, this scheme adopts colorless ONUs, thus leading to a decrease in the costs of operation, administration, and maintenance, as well as the production cost. Without the performance degradation, the proposed WDM-PON scheme can offer a reliable network service. In the experiment, the protection performance was demonstrated in the carrier-distributed 1.25-Gb/s WDM transmission over 20-km single-mode fiber.     

Modeling of silicon oxynitride etch microtrenching using genetic algorithm and neural network

A prediction model of etch microtrenching was constructed by using a neural network. The etching of silicon oxynitride films was conducted in C₂F₆ inductively coupled plasma. The process parameters that were varied in a statistical experimental design include radio frequency source power, bias power, pressure, and C₂F₆ flow rate. The etch microtrenching was quantified from scanning electron microscope images. The prediction accuracy of optimized neural network model with genetic algorithm had a root mean-squared error of 0.03 nm/min. Compared to conventional model, this demonstrates an improvement of about 32%. The constructed model was used to infer etch mechanisms particularly as a function of pressure. Roles of profile sidewall variations were investigated by relating them to the microtrenchings. The pressure effect was conspicuous at lower source power, lower bias power, or higher C₂F₆ flow rate. Microtrenching variations could be reasonably explained by the expected ion reflection from the profile sidewall. The pressure effect seemed to be strongly affected by the relative dominance of fluorine-driven etching over polymer deposition initially maintained in the chamber.     

3D Localization for Launch Vehicle Using Virtual TOA and AOA of Ground Stations

Wireless Personal Communications - Generally, a ground telemetry station for a launch vehicle (LV) includes a tracking function only; therefore, position measurements for LV depend on received...