Stimulation of negative magnetoresistance by an electric field and light in silicon doped with boron and manganese

It is experimentally ascertained that light stimulates the negative magnetoresistance observed in a high electric field in silicon doped with boron and manganese. The optimum conditions (the electric field, temperature, illumination, and resistivity of the material) for observation of the largest magnitude of negative magnetoresistance in (Si:B):Mn are determined. The dependence of the negative magnetoresistance on the concentration of compensating impurity is established.     

Using Bandwidth-Space Partitioning to Improve Cell Coverage and Near-Far Unfair Access Problem in a Noise-Limited CDMA Cellular Network

This paper concerns CDMA cellular networks equipped with conventional matched filter receivers. For this type of cellular networks, two problems exist. One is the inverse relationship between the coverage and capacity, and the other one is the near-far unfair access problem. To resolve these two problems, a bandwidth-space partitioning technique is adopted. Several admission control schemes based on the bandwidth-space partitioning technique are proposed, and their performances are evaluated based on the simulation.Shih-Tsung Yang received his B.S. (1989) and M.S. (1991) degrees in electrical engineering from the National Taiwan University, and Ph.D. (1999) degree in electrical and computer engineering from University of Maryland, College Park.From 1999 to 2000, he was with SBC Technology Resourtces, Inc. where he was involved in the network architecture design for the ATM based networks. From November 2000 to May 2003, he was with Transilica/Microtune where he was involved in the design of Baseband and RF for the wireless communications. Since May 2003, Dr. Yang is now with Genesys Logic, Inc. where he is responsible for the baseband design of the WLAN and Ethernet.Dr. Yang’s research interests are in the area of Digital Communications, Communication networks and signal processing. E-mail: thomas.yang@genesyslogic.com.twAnthony Ephremides received his B.S. degree from the National Technical University of Athens (1967), and M.S. (1969) and Ph.D. (1971) degrees from Princeton University, all in Electrical Engineering. He has been at the University of Maryland since 1971, and currently holds a joint appointment as Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department and in the Institute of Systems Research (ISR) of which he is a founding member. He is co-founder of the NASA Center for Commercial Development of Space on Hybrid and Satellite Communications Networks established in 1991 at Maryland as an off-shoot of the ISR. He served as Co-Director of that Center from 1991 to 1994.He was a Visiting Professor in 1978 at the National Technical University in Athenas, Greece, and in 1979 at the EECS Department of the University of California, Berkeley, and at INRIA, France. During 1985-1986 he was on leave at MIT and ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. He was the General Chairman of the 1986 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control in Athens, Greece and of the 1991 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory in Budapest, Hungary. He also organized two workshops on Information theory in 1984 (Hot Springs, VA) and in 1999 (Metsovo, Greece). He was the Technical Program Co-Chair of the IEEE INFOCOM in New York City in 1999 and of the IEEE International Symposium on Information theory in Sorrento, Italy in 2000. He has also been the Director of the Fairchild Scholars and Doctoral Fellows Program, an academic and research partnership program in Satellite Communications between Fairchild Industries and the University of Maryland. He won the IEEE Donald E. Fink Prize Paper Award (1992) and he was the first recipient of the Sigmobile Award of the ACM (Association of Computer Machinery) for contributions to wireless communications in 1997. He has been the President of the Information Theory Society of the IEEE (1987) and has served on its Board of Governors almost continuously from 1981 until the present. He was elected to the Board of Directors of the IEEE in 1989 and 1990. Dr. Ephremides has authored or co-authored over 100 technical journal papers and 300 technical conference presentations. He has also contributed chapters to several books and edited numerous special issues of scientific journals. He has also won awards from the Maryland Office of Technology Liaison for the commercialization of products and ideas stemming from his research. He has served on the Editorial Boards of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on Information theory, the Journal of Wireless Networks, and the International Journal of Satellite Communications.He has been the Dissertation Supervisor of over twenty Ph.D. students who now hold prominent positions in academia, industry, and research labs. He is the founder and President of Pontos, Inc., a Maryland company that provides technical consulting services, since 1980.Dr. Ephremides’ interests are in the areas of communication theory, communication systems and networks, queueing systems, signal processing, and satellite communications. His research has been continuously supported since 1971 by NSF, NASA, ONR, ARL, NRL, NSA, and Industry. E-mail: tony@eng.umd.edu     

Platform designer: An approach for modeling multiprocessor platforms based on SystemC

This paper[3.5pc] presents the Platform Designer (PD) framework, a set of SystemC based tools that provide support for modeling, simulation and analysis of multiprocessor SoC platforms (MPSoC), at different abstraction levels. PD provides mechanisms for interconnection specification, process synchronization and communication, thus allowing the modeling of a complete platform, in a unified environment. To do that it uses an extension of the ArchC ADL and acsys, a tool that enables the automatic generation of a SystemC simulator of the platform. The main advantages of this approach are twofold. First, designers have more flexibility since they can integrate and configure different processors to the platform, using a single environment. Second, it enables a faster design space exploration, given that it automatically generates SystemC simulators of whole platforms at distinct abstraction levels. A number of platform variations can be tried out with minor design changes, thus reducing design time. Experimental results show the suitability of the platform simulator for design space exploration. Real applications (with medium complexity) run in the platform in few minutes. Combined with the facility to generate platforms with minor changes, this feature allows an improvement of the design space exploration.     

Field Performance Prediction and IR Imaging Simulation Based on Measured System Level Parameters*

Traditionally, the Minimum Resolvable Temperature Difference (MRTD) and the Johnson criteria are used to predict the field performance of IR imaging system. However this method generally leads to far too pessimistic range predictions. For the improvement of the prediction accuracy of the field performance, a novel approach to predict field performance is proposed based on the three-dimensional infrared scene generated by Vega software. Further, this approach utilizes the measured system level parameters to characterize the signal transfer process, noise, and the blur effect of the output image instead of theoretical model. By controlling the target range in the simulated image, a simulation experiment is performed, and the range corresponding to the 75% correct probability of discrimination is achieved by the statistical method. Comparisons with the real experimental result show that this method can give more accurate range prediction than the target acquisition (TA) model based on the MRTD.     

Generation of Technology-Independent Retargetable Analog Blocks

This paper introduces a complete methodology for retargeting of analog cells to different sets of specifications. This methodology is technology-independent, thus allowing the migration, from one technology to another, of the circuit under retargeting. Careful integration of the device sizing and layout generation tasks via the incorporation of layout constraints during the sizing process allows to generate fully functional designs in a few minutes. The methodology is illustrated via the retargeting of a fully-differential Miller-compensated two-stage operational amplifier for a new set of specifications and two different technological processes.An erratum to this article can be found at     

Permittivity and Conductivity Measurements of Building Materials at 5.8 GHz and 41.5 GHz

The results of various experiments performed to characterize electromagnetic properties of typical building materials at BRAN (Broadband Radio Access Networks) and MVDS (Multipoint Video Distribution System) bands are presented and compared. Transmission and reflection coefficients were measured as functions of the angle of incidence, using a wideband sounder based on the swept frequency technique. A high precision angular positioning system was built and used in co-ordination with the measurement equipment.The dielectric constants (_r) were estimated by comparing values predicted with a multiple successive internal reflection model and measured transmission and reflection coefficients. It has been found that the variation of the dielectric constant value with the frequency does not necessarily follow the same trend for different materials. For example, the measured _r for plasterboard presents an increment withfrequency (2.02 at 5.8 GHz, 2.5 at 41.5 GHz – measured by theauthors –, 2.58 at 59.5 GHz, and 2.81 at 60.2 GHz – given byliterature –), while the values for glass follow a wanderingpattern (6.06 at 5.8 GHz, 5–10 at 10 GHz, 3.41 at 41.5 GHz, 7.51at 57.6 GHz, and 5.29 at 60.2 GHz). Moreover, the measured_r for a brick wall at 5.8 GHz (3.58) shows differenceswith values reported at 2 GHz (4.44).     

An Adaptive Generalized Transmission Protocol for Ad Hoc Networks

Wireless networking and group communication in combination allows groups of dispersed mobile users to collaborate. This paper presents AGENT, a medium access control (MAC) protocol that unifies point-to-point and multi-point transmission services to facilitate group communication in ad hoc networks. Analysis and experiments performed in a simulated ad hoc network demonstrate that AGENT exhibits reliable and stable performance with high spatial bandwidth reuse. Moreover, variation in the proportion of point-to-point and multi-point traffic is shown to have little impact on the overall performance of AGENT. Comparison with the other tested MAC protocols reveals that the performance of AGENT is superior, achieving higher channel utilization and lower access delay.     

Spiral-CT-based assessment of tracheal stenoses using 3-D-skeletonization

PURPOSE: Demonstration of a technique for three-dimensional (3-D) assessment of tracheal-stenoses, regarding site, length and degree, based on spiral computed tomography (S-CT). PATIENTS AND METHODS: S-CT scanning and automated segmentation of the laryngo-tracheal tract (LTT) was followed by the extraction of the LTT medial axis using a skeletonization algorithm. Orthogonal to the medial axis the LTT 3-D cross-sectional profile was computed and presented as line charts, where degree and length was obtained. Values for both parameters were compared between 36 patients and 18 normal controls separately. Accuracy and precision was derived from 17 phantom studies. RESULTS: Average degree and length of tracheal stenoses was found to be 60.5% and 4.32 cm in patients compared with minor caliber changes of 8.8% and 2.31 cm in normal controls (p < 0.0001). For the phantoms an excellent correlation between the true and computed 3-D cross-sectional profile was found (p < 0.005) and an accuracy for length and degree measurements of 2.14 mm and 2.53% respectively could be determined. The corresponding figures for the precision were found to be 0.92 mm and 2.56%. CONCLUSION: LTT 3-D cross-sectional profiles permit objective, accurate and precise assessment of LTT caliber changes. Minor LTT caliber changes can be observed even in normals and, in case of an otherwise normal S-CT study, can be regarded as artifacts.     

Cellular fluorescent indicators and voltage/ion probe reader (VIPR) tools for ion channel and receptor drug discovery

High throughput functional assays are increasingly relied upon to generate early and novel discovery leads for drug development. Ion transport proteins including channels, transporters, and pumps play central roles in cellular bioenergetics, excitability, and a multitude of other biological functions. Facile, robust methods for detecting ion transport activity in both native and heterologous systems is desirable for rapid functional analysis and drug discovery for these difficult but important targets. Here we discuss cell-compatible fluorescent probes, functional assays, and VIPR instrumentation that are used to monitor real-time target activity and screen large chemical libraries for potent and selective modulators. Advances and issues for both exogenously applied and fluorescent protein probes of cellular membrane potential, Ca2+, Cl-, and pH are addressed. High throughput screening (HTS) compatible, rapid kinetic and fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) assays are emphasized, in particular the use of voltage-sensitive FRET probes to assay ion channel activity in single cells and 96/384-well formats.     

ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECT OF THE TRUNCATED SCAN PLANE IN TIME－DOMAIN NEAR－FIELD MEASUREMENTS

The thought and formulation for near-field far-field transformation based on the direct time-domain computation scheme are given.The effect of the truncated scan plane is investigated by simulating time-domain measurement of an open-ended waveguide antenna, and a simple and effective criterion is derived for removing the truncation errors in the practical time-domain near-field measurements.