A formal approach to specifying assembly operations

Experience has proved that exploiting robots for assembly tasks is much more difficult than manufacturing engineers had expected and many attempts at implementing robotic assembly have failed. Our research has led us to believe that a formal approach to specifying the steps required for assembly would be of great benefit in developing the required software for a specific task, and in adaptively controlling and monitoring the execution of robotic assembly steps. The US National Bureau of Standards has developed a formal system, called ABC (for Assembly By Constraints) for specifying the steps required for assembly. The system is based on the reduction in the degrees of freedom of objects as they are assembled. Using this basic concept, we have developed 14 primitive operations which can be used to completely specify assembly steps for a large class of problems. This paper initially outlines the historical development of the system, then describes two pieces of software developed to allow easy definition of assembly tasks using the ABC system, and finally presents two practical examples.     

Inkjet Printed Large‐Area Flexible Few‐Layer Graphene Thermoelectrics

Graphene‐based organic nanocomposites have ascended as promising candidates for thermoelectric energy conversion. In order to adopt existing scalable printing methods for developing thermostable graphene‐based thermoelectric devices, optimization of both the material ink and the thermoelectric properties of the resulting films are required. Here, inkjet‐printed large‐area flexible graphene thin films with outstanding thermoelectric properties are reported. The thermal and electronic transport properties of the films reveal the so‐called phonon‐glass electron‐crystal character (i.e., electrical transport behavior akin to that of few‐layer graphene flakes with quenched thermal transport arising from the disordered nanoporous structure). As a result, the all‐graphene films show a room‐temperature thermoelectric power factor of 18.7 µW m^?1 K^?2, representing over a threefold improvement to previous solution‐processed all‐graphene structures. The demonstration of inkjet‐printed thermoelectric devices underscores the potential for future flexible, scalable, and low‐cost thermoelectric applications, such as harvesting energy from body heat in wearable applications.     

堆叠式LED结构实现紧凑型多通道光学耦合器

现代光学耦合器的核心是输入端的LED和输出端的光电探测器.它们被绝缘的光传导介质隔开.     

Link budget analysis for multistandard receiver architectures

As devices shrink, creating integrated circuits (ICs) that work with the required accuracy becomes more difficult due to issues related to device physics. Receivers are part of an area referred to as "mixed-signal design," meaning that both analog and digital circuitry will be on the same IC. This too presents many challenging issues, as the analog circuitry is highly sensitive to disruptions caused by the noisy digital circuitry. Therefore, accurate modeling and simulation is crucial in the design of wireless receivers to ensure the best possible operation of the fabricated IC. Through simulation and modeling a designer can determine if receiver architecture will meet the required specifications and pinpoint the possible problems before valuable time is spent developing the actual circuit. This article will present design issues for multistandard wireless receivers to give the reader an understanding of the challenges involved in link-budget analysis. TITAN (Toolbox for Integrated Transceiver Analysis), a link-budget analysis tool developed at The Ohio State University Analog VLSI Laboratory, will be presented as an example of a tool for receiver simulation. To determine design performance, various requirements must be translated to model parameters. Among the requirements for receivers are noise floor (NF), second- and third-order distortion (IP2 and IP3, respectively), reciprocal mixing, and phase noise. TITAN offers a graphical interface and encapsulated models to the designer, eliminating the possibility of formula corruption. The interface provides a more intuitive and sophisticated way of setting up the simulation and provides the designer with more readable results. Additionally, a blocking profile component allows the architecture to be tested across multiple standards.     

A BER-Based Partitioned Model for a 2.4GHz Vehicle-to-Vehicle Expressway Channel

Statistical channel models based on BER performance are presented for a frequency- and time-selective vehicle-to-vehicle wireless communications link in an expressway environment in Atlanta, Georgia, where both vehicles traveled in the same direction. The models are developed from measurements taken using the direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) technique at 2.45GHz. A collection of tapped delay line models, referred to as a “partitioned” model in the paper, is developed to attempt to capture the extremes of BER performance of the recorded channel. Overall and partition models are compared to the recorded channel in terms of the BER statistics obtained when the channels are inserted in a dedicated short range radio (DSRC) standard simulation system. The quality of the match between synthesized and recorded channel BER statistics is analyzed with respect to type of modulation (fixed or adaptive), the frame length, and the length of the interval over which the BER was calculated. Guillermo Acosta was born in Mexico City, Mexico, in 1962. He is a Ph.D. Candidate and a graduate research assistant in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, Georgia. He obtained his Bachelor of Engineering with Honors and Master of Engineering, both in Electrical Engineering, from Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1985 and 1987, respectively. He also obtained a Master of Business Administration with Honors from the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM), Mexico City, Mexico, in 1996. Mr. Acosta has held technical and managerial positions in the recording, radio, and TV industries and in the Communications Ministry of Mexico. He has been an adjunct instructor in Electrical Engineering in the Instituto Tecnologico y Estudios Superiores de Monterrey Campus Estado de Mexico (ITESM-CEM) and the Universidad Iberoamericana. He is member of the IEEE, INCE, Tau Beta Pi, and Eta Kappa Nu. Mary Ann Ingram received the B.E.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1983 and 1989, respectively. From 1983 to 1986, she was a Research Engineer with the Georgia Tech Research Institute in Atlanta, performing studies on radar electronic countermeasure (ECM) systems. In 1986, she became a graduate research assistant with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where in 1989, she became a Faculty Member and is currently Professor. Her early research areas were optical communications and radar systems. In 1997, she established the Smart Antenna Research Laboratory (SARL), which emphasizes the application of multiple antennas to wireless communication systems. The SARL performs system analysis and design, channel measurement, and prototyping, relating to a wide range of wireless applications, including wireless local area network (WLAN) and satellite communications, with focus on the lower layers of communication networks. Dr. Ingram is a Senior Member of the IEEE.     

A Backside-Illuminated Image Sensor With 200 000 Pixels Operating at 250 000 Frames per Second

In this paper, a high-speed image sensor with very high sensitivity is developed. The high sensitivity is achieved by introduction of backside illumination and charge-carrier multiplication (CCM). The high frame rate is guaranteed by installing the in situ storage image sensor (ISIS) structure on the front side. A test sensor of the BSI-ISIS has been developed and evaluated. It is shown that an image with a very low signal level embedded under the noise floor is recognizable by activating the CCM.     

Wireless Aspects of Telehealth

Telehealth is the use of electronic information and communication technology to deliver health and medical information and services over large and small distances. Broadband wireless services available today, along with more powerful and convenient handheld devices, will enable a transformational change in health management and healthcare with the introduction of real-time monitoring and timely responses to a wide array of patient needs. Further, a network of low-cost sensors and wireless systems help in creating constantly vigilant and pervasive monitoring capability at home and at work. This paper addresses recent efforts in this growing field, including standards, system architectures, propagation models, and lower layer protocols for body area networks. The paper also suggests the use of cooperative transmission-based strategies for such wireless topologies.     

On Lifetime-Based Node Failure and Stochastic Resilience of Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Networks

To model P2P networks that are commonly faced with high rates of churn and random departure decisions by end-users, this paper investigates the resilience of random graphs to lifetime-based node failure and derives the expected delay before a user is forcefully isolated from the graph and the probability that this occurs within his/her lifetime. Using these metrics, we show that systems with heavy-tailed lifetime distributions are more resilient than those with light-tailed (e.g., exponential) distributions and that for a given average degree, k-regular graphs exhibit the highest level of fault tolerance. As a practical illustration of our results, each user in a system with n = 100 billion peers, 30-minute average lifetime, and 1-minute node-replacement delay can stay connected to the graph with probability 1 - 1/n using only 9 neighbors. This is in contrast to 37 neighbors required under previous modeling efforts. We finish the paper by observing that many P2P networks are almost surely (i.e., with probability 1 - o(1)) connected if they have no isolated nodes and derive a simple model for the probability that a P2P system partitions under churn.     

Interfacial Connections between Organic Perovskite/n+ Silicon/Catalyst that Allow Integration of Solar Cell and Catalyst for Hydrogen Evolution from Water

The rapidly increasing solar conversion efficiency (PCE) of hybrid organic–inorganic perovskite (HOIP) thin-film semiconductors has triggered interest in their use for direct solar-driven water splitting to produce hydrogen. However, application of these low-cost, electronic-structure-tunable HOIP tandem photoabsorbers has been hindered by the instability of the photovoltaic-catalyst-electrolyte (PV+E) interfaces. Here, photolytic water splitting is demonstrated using an integrated configuration consisting of an HOIP/n⁺silicon single junction photoabsorber and a platinum (Pt) thin film catalyst. An extended electrochemical (EC) lifetime in alkaline media is achieved using titanium nitride on both sides of the Si support to eliminate formation of insulating silicon oxide, and as an effective diffusion barrier to allow high-temperature annealing of the catalyst/TiO₂-protected-n⁺silicon interface necessary to retard electrolytic corrosion. Halide composition is examined in the (FA_1-xCs_x)PbI₃ system with a bandgap suitable for tandem operation. A fill factor of 72.5% is achieved using a Spiro-OMeTAD-hole-transport-layer (HTL)-based HOIP/n⁺Si solar cell, and a high photocurrent density of −15.9 mA cm⁻² (at 0 V vs reversible hydrogen electrode) is attained for the HOIP/n⁺Si/Pt photocathode in 1 m NaOH under simulated 1-sun illumination. While this thin-film design creates stable interfaces, the intrinsic photo- and electro-degradation of the HOIP photoabsorber remains the main obstacle for future HOIP/Si tandem PEC devices.     

Mobile wireless network system simulation

This paper describes an advanced simulation environment which is used to examine, validate, and predict the performance of mobile wireless network systems. This simulation environment overcomes many of the limitations found with analytical models, experimentation, and other commercial network simulators available on the market today. We identify a set of components which make up mobile wireless systems and describe a set of flexible modules which can be used to model the various components and their integration. These models are developed using the Maisie simulation language. By modeling the various components and their integration, this simulation environment is able to accurately predict the performance bottlenecks of a multimedia wireless network system being developed at UCLA, determine the trade-off point between the various bottlenecks, and provide performance measurements and validation of algorithms which are not possible through experimentation and too complex for analysis.This work was supported in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPA/CSTO, under Contract J-FBI-93-112 Computer Aided Design of High Performance Wireless Networked Systems, and by ARPA/CSTO under Contract DABT-63-94-C-0080 TransparentVirtual Mobile Environment.This paper was in part presented at the ACM Mobile Computing and Networking Conference (Mobicom '95), Berkeley, California, 14–15 November 1995.