Bathtub shaped failure rates from mixtures: a practical point of view

We show that a bathtub shaped failure rate can be obtained from a mixture of two increasing failure rate (IFR) models. Specifically, we study the failure rate of the mixture of an exponential distribution, and a Weibull distribution with strictly increasing failure rate. Under some reasonable conditions, we show that, from a practical point of view, the mixture failure rate is bathtub. Similar results can be obtained from other mixtures.     

Completely automated multiresolution edge snapper--a new technique for an accurate carotid ultrasound IMT measurement: clinical validation and benchmarking on a multi-institutional database

The aim of this paper is to describe a novel and completely automated technique for carotid artery (CA) recognition, far (distal) wall segmentation, and intima-media thickness (IMT) measurement, which is a strong clinical tool for risk assessment for cardiovascular diseases. The architecture of completely automated multiresolution edge snapper (CAMES) consists of the following two stages: 1) automated CA recognition based on a combination of scale-space and statistical classification in a multiresolution framework and 2) automated segmentation of lumen-intima (LI) and media-adventitia (MA) interfaces for the far (distal) wall and IMT measurement. Our database of 365 B-mode longitudinal carotid images is taken from four different institutions covering different ethnic backgrounds. The ground-truth (GT) database was the average manual segmentation from three clinical experts. The mean distance ± standard deviation of CAMES with respect to GT profiles for LI and MA interfaces were 0.081 ± 0.099 and 0.082 ± 0.197 mm, respectively. The IMT measurement error between CAMES and GT was 0.078 ± 0.112 mm. CAMES was benchmarked against a previously developed automated technique based on an integrated approach using feature-based extraction and classifier (CALEX). Although CAMES underestimated the IMT value, it had shown a strong improvement in segmentation errors against CALEX for LI and MA interfaces by 8% and 42%, respectively. The overall IMT measurement bias for CAMES improved by 36% against CALEX. Finally, this paper demonstrated that the figure-of-merit of CAMES was 95.8% compared with 87.4% for CALEX. The combination of multiresolution CA recognition and far-wall segmentation led to an automated, low-complexity, real-time, and accurate technique for carotid IMT measurement. Validation on a multiethnic/multi-institutional data set demonstrated the robustness of the technique, which can constitute a clinically valid IMT measurement for assistance in atherosclerosis disease management.     

大规模MIMO系统上行链路时间-空间结构信道估计算法

针对大规模多入多出(MIMO)系统上行链路非平稳空间相关信道的估计问题,该文利用信道的时间-空间2维稀疏结构信息,应用狄利克雷过程(DP)和变分贝叶斯推理(VBI),设计了一种低导频开销和计算复杂度的信道估计迭代算法,提高了信道估计精度。由于平稳空间相关信道难以适用于大规模MIMO系统,该文借助于狄利克雷过程构建了非平稳空间相关信道先验模型,可将具有空间关联的多个物理信道映射为具有相同时延结构的概率信道,并应用变分贝叶斯推理设计了低导频开销和计算复杂度的信道估计迭代算法。实验结果验证了所提算法的有效性,且具有对系统关键参数鲁棒性的优点。

     

MEMS陀螺仪技术简介

多轴MEMS陀螺仪结构大幅缩小,单封装集成数字接口,占板面积仅几平方毫米,低廉的价格被大多数客户接受,这些优势促使MEMS陀螺仪渗透到手持设备市场。     

Soft Nanopatterning on Light‐Emitting Inorganic–Organic Composites

In this work we demonstrate the nanopatterning of nanocomposites made by luminescent zinc oxide nanoparticles and light‐emitting conjugated polymers by means of soft molding lithography. Vertical nanofluidics is exploited to overcome the polymer transport difficulties intrinsic in materials incorporating nanocrystals, and the rheology, fluorescence, absolute quantum yield, and emission directionality of the nanostructured composites are investigated. We study the effect of patterned gratings on the directionality of light emitted from the nanocomposites, finding evidence of the enhancement of forward emitted light, due to the printed wavelength‐scale periodicity. These results open new possibilities for the realization of nanopatterned devices based on hybrid organic‐inorganic systems.     

High-electric-field effects and degradation of AlGaAs/GaAs power HFETs: a numerical study

This work presents a numerical study of high-field degradation and reliability issues of AlGaAs/GaAs power HFETs. A commercial two-dimensional drift–diffusion tool is used to investigate electric-field distributions, the effects of electron capture at the device surface under hot-carrier conditions, and the impact of drain recess scaling on such effects. Wherever experimental data are available for direct comparison, a good match is observed with our simulations. The main results of this study are (1) a validation of the hypothesis that attributes the main high-field degradation effects to electron capture over the gate–drain access region, and (2) design indications pointing out to the possibility of a reverse correlation between the gate–drain breakdown voltage and the device hot-carrier reliability.     

Biological tissue characterization by magnetic induction spectroscopy (MIS): requirements and limitations

Magnetic induction spectroscopy (MIS) aims at the contactless measurement of the passive electrical properties (PEP) sigma, epsilon, and mu of biological tissues via magnetic fields at multiple frequencies. Whereas previous publications focus on either the conductive or the magnetic aspect of inductive measurements, this article provides a synthesis of both concepts by discussing two different applications with the same measurement system: 1) monitoring of brain edema and 2) the estimation of hepatic iron stores in certain pathologies. We derived the equations to estimate the sensitivity of MIS as a function of the PEP of biological objects. The system requirements and possible systematic errors are analyzed for a MIS-channel using a planar gradiometer (PGRAD) as detector. We studied 4 important error sources: 1) moving conductors near the PGRAD; 2) thermal drifts of the PGRAD-parameters; 3) lateral displacements of the PGRAD; and 4) phase drifts in the receiver. All errors were compared with the desirable resolution. All errors affect the detected imaginary part (mainly related to sigma) of the measured complex field much less than the real part (mainly related to epsilon and mu). Hence, the presented technique renders possible the resolution of (patho-) physiological changes of the electrical conductivity when applying highly resolving hardware and elaborate signal processing. Changes of the magnetic permeability and permittivity in biological tissues are more complicated to deal with and may require chopping techniques, e.g., periodic movement of the object.     

Three-dimensional optical data storage through multi-photon confocal microscopy and imaging

Three dimensional optical data storage is one of the most promising tools to respond to the always growing demand for high data storage capacity. Here, we focused a femtosecond laser source by means of a confocal microscope onto different transparent recording media. The purpose of the study is to probe the capability of the system to independently address different data layers within the storage medium achieving thus three dimensional data storage. We demonstrated the possibility to write superposed independent layers of data due to either multiphoton excitation or to local optical breakdown and the performances observed in the different types of media used are compared.     

The inverse problem utilizing the boundary element method for a nonstandard female torso

This paper proposes a new method of rapidly deriving the transfer matrix for the boundary element method (BEM) forward problem from a tailored female torso geometry in the clinical setting. The method allows rapid calculation of epicardial potentials (EP) from body surface potentials (BSP). The use of EPs in previous studies has been shown to improve the successful detection of the life-threatening cardiac condition--acute myocardial infarction. The MRI scanning of a cardiac patient in the clinical setting is not practical and other methods are required to accurately deduce torso geometries for calculation of the transfer matrix. The new method allows the noninvasive calculation of tailored torso geometries from a standard female torso and five measurements taken from the body surface of a patient. This scaling of the torso has been successfully validated by carrying out EP calculations on 40 scaled torsos and ten female subjects. It utilizes the BEM in the calculation of the transfer matrix as the BEM depends only upon the topology of the surfaces of the torso and the heart, the former can now be accurately deduced, leaving only the latter geometry as an unknown.     

A Fourth Order Bandpass Delta-Sigma Modulator with Digitally Programmable Passband Frequency

The design and implementation of a fourth order switched-capacitorbandpass delta-sigma modulator with digitally programmable passbandis described. The quantization noise null can be programmed from0.4 (0.2f_s) to 0.6(0.3f_s) in steps of 0.01 (f_s/200)by changing digital switch settings. This design enables theA/D conversion of a bandpass signal with digital tuning of thecenter frequency for application in systems such as a transceiverIF stage. The modulator IC measures 4.8mm² in a2µ m CMOS process and achieves an SNR of 47 and59 dB over a 0.01 bandwidth at sampling ratesof 2.358 MHz and 1.25 MHz, respectively.