Energy Aware Signal Processing for Software Defined Radio Baseband Implementation

The fast pacing diversity and evolution of wireless communications require a wide variety of baseband implementations within a short time-to-market. Besides, the exponentially increased design complexity and design cost of deep sub-micron silicon highly desire the designs to be reused as much as possible. This yields an increasing demand for reconfigurable/ programmable baseband solutions. Implementing all baseband functionalities on programmable architectures, as foreseen in the tier-2 SDR, will become necessary in the future. However, the energy efficiency of SDR baseband platforms is a major concern. This brings a challenging gap that is continuously broadened by the exploding baseband complexity. We advocate a system level approach to bridge the gap. Specifically, we fully leverage the advantages (programmability) of SDR platforms to compensate its disadvantages (energy efficiency). Highly flexible and dynamic baseband signal processing algorithms are designed and implemented to exploit the abundant dynamics in the environment and the user requirement. Instead of always performing the best effort, the baseband can dynamically and autonomously adjust its work load to optimize the average energy consumption. In this paper, we will introduce such baseband signal processing techniques optimized for SDR implementations. The methodology and design steps will be presented together with 3 representative case studies in HSDPA, WiMAX and 3GPP LTE.     

Une caractérisation de technologie CMOS à l’usage d’étudiants en cycle d’ingénieur

This product is a part of a practical work set intended for students in the second year of engineering school. During the work, the student has to put into practice theoretical considerations (from courses and tutorials), as well as measurement methods in order to extract a set of parameters for theMOS transistor and theCMOS inverter. Finally, these results are analyzed in order to show the limitations of the first order graphical model used (Memelink’s model).     

给电压比较器添加滞后作用

正正反馈是围绕比较器来分配滞后作用的典型方法,前提是比较器的输出与非逆变输入之间具有电阻路径。正反馈形成两个具有(或呈现)固定值的阈值电压。另外,它们还取决于比较器输出级的饱     

Capacitance DNA bio-chips improved by new probe immobilization strategies

Label-free DNA detection plays a crucial role in developing point-of-care biochips. Capacitance detection is a promising technology for label-free detection. However, data published in literature often show evident time drift, large standard deviation, scattered data points, and poor reproducibility. To address these problems, mercapto-hexanol or similar alkanethiols are usually considered as blocking agents. The aim of the present paper is to investigate new blocking agents to further improve DNA probe surfaces. Data from AFM, SPR, florescence microscopy, and capacitance measurements are used to investigate new lipoate and ethylene-glycol molecules. The new surfaces offer further improvements in terms of diminished detection errors. Film structures are investigated at the nano-scale to justify the detection improvements in terms of probe surface quality. This study demonstrates the superiority of lipoate and ethylene-glycol molecules as blocking candidates when immobilizing molecular probes onto spot surfaces in label-free DNA biochip.     

Some statistical properties of mathematical morphology

Analyzes the statistical properties of the basic binary and multilevel morphological operations with both 1-D and 2D structuring elements. Very simple expressions for the output distribution of erosion and opening are derived in the case of any independent identically or nonidentically distributed inputs. The probability relations between erosion and dilation, also between opening and closing, are developed. The output expectation bias and variances are analyzed and computed to show the efficiency of morphological operations for noise supression. As applications of theoretical results, the effects of the morphological operations on noisy signals are illustrated by several examples. The study reveals certain interesting phenomena. For example, the output variances of opening for some input distributions are greater than those of erosion, and morphological operations perform better than median filters in edge preservation     

Securing Scan Control in Crypto Chips

The design of secure ICs requires fulfilling means conforming to many design rules in order to protect access to secret data. On the other hand, designers of secure chips cannot neglect the testability of their chip since high quality production testing is primordial to a good level of security. However, security requirements may be in conflict with test needs and testability improvement techniques that increase both observability and controllability. In this paper, we propose to merge security and testability requirements in a control-oriented design for security scan technique. The proposed security scan design methodology induces an adaptation of two main aspects of testability technique design: protection at protocol level and at scan path level. Without loss of generality, the proposed solution is evaluated on a simple crypto chip in terms of security and design cost.

MRI-guided focused ultrasound: methodology and applications

Focused ultrasound is very well suited for inducing noninvasive local hyperthermia. Since magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may be employed to obtain real-time temperature maps noninvasively the combination of these two technologies offers great advantages specifically aimed toward oncological studies. Real-time identification of the target region and accurate control of the temperature evolution during the treatment has now become possible. Thermal ablation of pathological tissue, local drug delivery using thermosensitive micro-carriers and controlled transgene expression using thermosensitive promoters have recently been demonstrated with this unique technology. Based on these experiments combined focused ultrasound and MRI thermometry holds promise for future oncological diagnostics and treatment. In this paper, we review some of the recent methodological developments as well as experimental and first clinical studies using this approach.     

A multiobjective approach for energy consumption and link stability issues in ad hoc networks

This letter presents a novel analytical framework that jointly accounts the energy consumption and the link stability of mobile nodes. Two indexes for energy and link-lifetime are defined and a multiobjective integer linear programming problem has been defined. The proposed target function separates the energy and the link-stability contributions in order to differently change the weights of two opposite characteristics of mobile ad hoc networks. Some simulation results has been presented and the jointed impact of energy and stability has been evaluated.     

Residual stress in hydroxyapatite coating: nonlinear analysis and high-energy synchrotron measurements

The thermal deposition of hydroxyapatite (HA) on titanium alloy substrate (Ti-6A1-4V) leads to a structure that has very good osseointegration properties. However, clinical failures have been occasionally reported at the interface between substrate and coating. Lifetime is the main parameter in such prostheses; therefore, in order to improve their quality, it is necessary to evaluate the level of stresses near the interface. The high-energy synchrotron radiation combines the advantages of a bulk analysis and reduced volume of the gauge. The objective of our study was to calculate the residual stress using a nonlinear finite-element model and to measure residual stress level near the interface, in the hydroxyapatite coating and in titanium alloy substrate with a nondestructive and high-resolution experiment. The high-energy synchrotron radiation of the BM16 beam-line at ESRF (Grenoble-France) was used with a resolution of down to 10 micrometers. The experimental measurements validate the results found by means of nonlinear finite-element analysis of the plasma spraying induced stress.