Real-time soft-error rate measurements: A review

The real-time (or life testing) soft-error rate (SER) measurement is an experimental reliability technique to determine the soft error sensitivity of a given component, circuit or system from the monitoring of a population of devices subjected to natural radiation and operating under nominal conditions. This review gives a survey over recent real-time SER experiments, conducted in altitude and/or underground, and investigating modern CMOS logic technologies, down to the 40 nm technological node. The review also includes our different contributions conducted during the last decade on the ASTEP Platform (Altitude Single Event Effects Test European Platform) and at the LSM facility (Underground Laboratory of Modane) to characterize soft error mechanisms in advanced static (SRAM) memories. Finally, the review discusses the specific advantages and limitations of this approach as well as its comparison with accelerated tests using intense particle beams or sources.     

Preliminary electrochemical testing of some Zr–Ti alloys in 0.9% NaCl solution

The aim of this study is to investigate the corrosion behaviour of three ZrTi alloys (denoted with Zr5Ti, Zr25Ti, and Zr45Ti) in 0.9% NaCl solution. For comparison, cp‐Ti was also investigated. In order to study the localized corrosion resistance and corrosion behavior at open circuit potential versus time, the open circuit potential (E_OC) was recorded, and the cyclic potentiodynamic polarization (CPP) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) were performed. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observations were made following the CPP tests. The Zr5Ti alloy was the most susceptible to localized corrosion. The Zr25Ti alloy presents a dangerous breakdown potential but have a sufficiently negative zero corrosion potential that the difference between them is sufficiently to provide a higher localized corrosion resistance in comparison with Zr5Ti. Among ZrTi alloys subjected to investigation, the Zr45Ti alloy had a much larger passive range in the polarization curve and was the most resistant to localized corrosion. For used test conditions, the localized corrosion was not found for the cp‐Ti. The EIS tests show that both investigated ZrTi alloys and cp‐Ti exhibit passivity after 168 h immersion in 0.9% NaCl solution, at open circuit potential.     

Infinite anti-uniform sources

In this paper we consider the class of anti-uniform Huffman (AUH) codes for sources with infinite alphabet. Poisson, negative binomial, geometric and exponential distributions lead to infinite anti-uniform sources for some ranges of their parameters. Huffman coding of these sources results in AUH codes. We prove that as a result of this encoding, we obtain sources with memory. For these sources we attach the graph and derive the transition matrix between states, the state probabilities and the entropy. If c₀ and c₁ denote the costs for storing or transmission of symbols “0” and “1”, respectively, we compute the average cost for these AUH codes.     

About minimum distance for QPP interleavers

Two search methods of quadratic permutation polynomials (QPP) for interleavers used in turbo codes are proposed. These methods lead to larger minimum distances and smaller multiplicities compared to the interleavers proposed by Takeshita in (Takeshita 1). The search is accomplished in a limited set of polynomials, that is, those for which the spreading factor and Ω′ metric are maximum. The minimum distance is computed by means of Garello algorithm in which the maximum weight of information sequence is 3 or 4, reducing the search time. The results obtained for two particular component codes show the efficiency of the proposed methods.     

Magnetic emulation of microgravity for earth‐bound multiphase catalytic reactor studies—Potentialities and limitations

A method is proposed to generate Earth‐bound artificial microgravity in a controlled facility capable of emulating lunar/Martian gravity or microgravity for experiments on passive/reactive catalytic multiphase flows. Its applicability was illustrated for trickle beds where flowing gas and liquid experience artificial microgravity inside the bore of a superconducting magnet generating large gradient magnetic fields to compensate for gravity. Artificial gravity is realized by commuting into apparent gravity acceleration the magnetization force at work on common “chemical engineering” non‐magnetic fluids. The scaling property to be matched and maintained invariant in multiphase systems to achieve magnetic mimicry is phasic mass magnetic susceptibility. Hydrodynamic (liquid holdup, wetting efficiency, pressure drop) as well as catalytic reaction (conversion and selectivity) measurements were obtained. The main finding is a proof that magnetic fields affect reactor outcomes exclusively via hydrodynamic phenomena making them appealing proxies for emulating non‐terrene reactor applications. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2009     

Damages and destruction of fiber optic cables on 161 kV overheadtransmission lines

All-dielectric self-supporting (ADSS) fiber optic cables are in use now on high-voltage (HV) and extra-high-voltage (EHV) overhead transmission lines (OHTL) in many countries all over the world. Their use allows the creation of highly effective data communication channels along the OHTL. However, in subtropical areas with specific climatic conditions, dry-band partial arcs have been found on the polyethylene external protective enclosure cable surface. This paper describes the various investigations performed to understand the causes for damage to ADSS fiber optic cable installed on four 161 kV OHTL and on one 110 kV, in the subtropical climate of Israel     

Exploiting quantization and spatial correlation in virtual-noise modeling for distributed video coding

Aiming for low-complexity encoding, video coders based on Wyner–Ziv theory are still unsuccessfully trying to match the performance of predictive video coders. One of the most important factors concerning the coding performance of distributed coders is modeling and estimating the correlation between the original video signal and its temporal prediction generated at the decoder.One of the problems of the state-of-the-art correlation estimators is that their performance is not consistent across a wide range of video content and different coding settings. To address this problem we have developed a correlation model able to adapt to changes in the content and the coding parameters by exploiting the spatial correlation of the video signal and the quantization distortion.In this paper we describe our model and present experiments showing that our model provides average bit rate gains of up to 12% and average PSNR gains of up to 0.5 dB when compared to the state-of-the-art models. The experiments suggest that the performance of distributed coders can be significantly improved by taking video content and coding parameters into account.     

Scalable Joint Source and Channel Coding of Meshes

This paper proposes a new approach for joint source and channel coding (JSCC) of meshes, simultaneously providing scalability and optimized resilience against transmission errors. An unequal error protection approach is followed, to cope with the different error-sensitivity levels characterizing the various resolution and quality layers produced by the input scalable source codec. The number of layers and the protection levels to be employed for each layer are determined by solving a joint source and channel coding problem. In this context, a novel fast algorithm for solving the optimization problem is conceived, enabling a real-time implementation of the JSCC rate-allocation. An instantiation of the proposed JSCC approach is demonstrated for MeshGrid, which is a scalable 3-D object representation method, part of MPEG-4 AFX. In this context, the L-inflnite distortion metric is employed, which is to our knowledge a unique feature in mesh coding. Numerical results show the superiority of the L-inflnite norm over the classical L-2 norm in a JSCC setting. One concludes that the proposed joint source and channel coding approach offers resilience against transmission errors, provides graceful degradation, enables a fast real-time implementation, and preserves all the scalability features and animation capabilities of the employed scalable mesh codec.     

Boundary stabilisation to non-stationary solutions for deterministic and stochastic parabolic-type equations

In this work, we design explicit, finite-dimensional boundary feedback laws for stabilisation to trajectories for parabolic-type equations. The simple form of the feedback allows to write the solution of the corresponding closed-loop equation in a mild formulation via a kernel; then, taking advantage of this, the stability is shown. As an application, null stabilisation for stochastic parabolic-type equations is deduced as well. As far as we know, the present work is the first result on boundary feedback stabilisation to trajectories and for stochastic parabolic-type equations, with stability guaranteed independent of how large the level of the noise is.     

A new method of real-time physical simulation of prime movers used in energy conversion chains

This paper focuses on exploring a new method of real-time replication of the dynamic behaviour of prime movers that drive rotating generators involved in energy conversion chains. Their behaviour depends on the mover’s mechanical characteristics and dynamical properties, such as inertia or friction coefficient, which are seldom known precisely. Being also dependent on the variations of the primary energy resource, not always controllable in its natural environment, this behaviour must be simulated by using a smaller and cheaper mover, whose model is sufficiently known such that to render it fully controllable. This paper explores the possibility that the desired real-time replication be achieved by means of a new method of tracking the mover’s rotational speed. To this end, various controllers, both linear and nonlinear can be employed. The design steps are provided for a PI controller, as well as for two nonlinear controllers, while focusing on the practical aspects of controller implementation. Their performance results are assessed comparatively on an experimental rig for two types of prime movers: one whose mechanical torque-speed characteristic is linear and a cross-flow water turbine, having a nonlinear torque-speed characteristic.