A new approach to cell size scaling with a multi-dual cell and a buffer/background programming of unified RAM

New investigations are presented here on a high-density and DRAM-like high-speed non-volatile memory (NVM) application of unified RAM (URAM). For a high-density application of URAM, multiple data storage is demonstrated with a multi-dual cell (MDC). Because each NVM state can be split by programming with a one-transistor (1T) DRAM without a capacitor, the total number of memory states can be doubled. Furthermore, a high-speed DRAM-level NVM scheme is proposed for the joint operation of 1T DRAM buffer programming and NVM post-background programming. The MDC and the proposed scheme are unique URAM properties that can extend the application range of memory devices.     

Design of 24 GHz Radar with Subspace‐Based Digital Beam Forming for ACC Stop‐and‐Go System

For an adaptive cruise control (ACC) stop‐and‐go system in automotive applications, three radar sensors are needed because two 24 GHz short range radars are used for object detection in an adjacent lane, and one 77 GHz long‐range radar is used for object detection in the center lane. In this letter, we propose a single sensor‐based 24 GHz radar with a detection capability of up to 150 m and ±30° for an ACC stop‐and‐go system. The developed radar is highly integrated with a high gain patch antenna, four channel receivers with GaAs RF ICs, and back‐end processing board with subspace based digital beam forming algorithm.     

Noun Sense Identification of Korean Nominal Compounds Based on Sentential Form Recovery

In a machine translation system, word sense disambiguation has an essential role in the proper translation of words when the target word can be translated differently depending on the context. Previous research on sense identification has mostly focused on adjacent words as context information. Therefore, in the case of nominal compounds, sense tagging of unit nouns mainly depended on other nouns surrounding the target word. In this paper, we present a practical method for the sense tagging of Korean unit nouns in a nominal compound. To overcome the weakness of traditional methods regarding the data sparseness problem, the proposed method adopts complement‐predicate relation knowledge that was constructed for machine translation systems. Our method is based on a sentential form recovery technique, which recognizes grammatical relationships between unit nouns. This technique makes use of the characteristics of Korean predicative nouns. To show that our method is effective on text in general domains, the experiments were performed on a test set randomly extracted from article titles in various newspaper sections.     

Fine‐Grained FSMD Power Gating Considering Power Overhead

As a fine‐grained power gating method for achieving greater power savings, our approach takes advantage of the finite state machine with a datapath (FSMD) characteristic which shows sequential idleness among subcircuits. In an FSMD‐based power gating, while only an active subcircuit is expected to be turned on, more subcircuits should be activated due to the power overhead. To reduce the number of missed opportunities for power savings, we deactivated some of the turned‐on subcircuits by slowing the FSMD down and predicting its behavior. Our microprocessor experiments showed that the power savings are close to the upper bound.     

Dynamic spectrum management for next-generation DSL systems

The performance of DSL systems is severely constrained by crosstalk due to the electromagnetic coupling among the multiple twisted pairs making up a phone cable. In order to reduce performance loss arising from crosstalk, DSL systems are currently designed under the assumption of worst-case crosstalk scenarios leading to overly conservative DSL deployments. This article presents a new paradigm for DSL system design, which takes into account the multi-user aspects of the DSL transmission environment. Dynamic spectrum management (DSM) departs from the current design philosophy by enabling transceivers to autonomously and dynamically optimize their communication settings with respect to both the channel and the transmissions of neighboring systems. Along with this distributed optimization, when an additional degree of coordination becomes available for future DSL deployment, DSM will allow even greater improvement in DSL performance. Implementations are readily applicable without causing any performance degradation to the existing DSLs under static spectrum management. After providing an overview of the DSM concept, this article reviews two practical DSM methods: iterative water-filling, an autonomous distributed power control method enabling great improvement in performance, which can be implemented through software options in some existing ADSL and VDSL systems; and vectored-DMT, a coordinated transmission/reception technique achieving crosstalk-free communication for DSL systems, which brings within reach the dream of providing universal Internet access at speeds close to 100 Mb/s to 500 m on 1-2 lines and beyond 1 km on 2-4 lines. DSM-capable DSL thus enables the broadband age.     

Distributed Topology Construction in ZigBee Wireless Networks

Topology control is one of the important techniques in wireless multi-hop networks to preserve connectivity and extend the network lifetime. This is more significant in ZigBee, since the address assignment scheme is tightly coupled with topology construction. For example, there can be orphan nodes that cannot receive the network address and isolated from the network due to predefined network configurations. In this paper, we propose a distributed topology construction algorithm that controls the association time of each node in order to solve the orphan node problem in ZigBee as well as construct an efficient routing tree topology. The main idea of the distributed topology construction algorithm is to construct primary backbone nodes by propagating the invitation packets and controlling the association time based on the link quality. Since the dynamically selected primary nodes are spread throughout the network, they can provide backbone to accept the association requests from the remaining secondary nodes which are majority in a network. In the performance evaluation, we show that the proposed topology construction algorithm effectively solves the orphan node problem regardless of network density as well as provides efficient tree routing cost comparable to the approximation algorithm for degree constrained minimum routing cost tree (DC-MRCT) problem.     

Mixed-objective optimization of a track-following controller using linear matrix inequalities

This work describes a design method for track-following controllers in data storage drives using mixed-objective optimization. Stability and performance requirements on the track following controller are established using norm conditions, which are converted to linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). The minimization of the position error in the root-mean-square sense is shown to be an H/sub 2/ norm minimization problem, whereas the vibration rejection requirements are expressed as H/sub 2/ or H/sub /spl infin// norm constraints. The robust stability requirement is enforced by an H/sub /spl infin// norm constraint. The mixed-norm problem is converted into a constrained minimization problem in LMIs, which is solved by convex optimization algorithms. The controller is designed directly in the discrete time domain to avoid typical degradation caused by continuous-time to discrete-time conversion. The proposed controller is implemented and tested on production hard disk drives. Experiments show that the proposed controller reduces the position error by 7%-11% while maintaining comparable stability margins and vibration rejection capability compared with the conventional controllers.     

A 3 Gb/s transmitter with a tapless pre-emphasis CML output driver

A 3 Gb/s wireline transmitter (Tx) with a tapless pre-emphasis current-mode logic output driver is presented in this paper. The proposed output driver can support 2.5, 6 and 10 dB pre-emphasis without any additional current tap. It can reduce the current consumption of the output driver by 30 %. The 1.5 GHz phase-locked loop (PLL), multi-phase generator, and 26-to-1 serializer are utilized to serialize 26-bit parallel data to 1-bit 3 Gb/s serial data stream. The rms and peak-to-peak jitters of PLL are 2.97 and 22.5 ps, respectively. The eye opening of the proposed output driver at 3 Gb/s is 0.8UI with a 10 dB loss channel. The current consumption of the output driver is only 5.14 mA, and the Tx is 9 mA. The area of the Tx is 0.72 mm² using the 0.11 μm CMOS process.     

Environmental effects on the electrical behavior of pentacene thin-film transistors with a poly(methyl methacrylate) gate insulator

The electrical properties of top-contact pentacene thin-film transistors (TFTs) with a poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) gate dielectric were analyzed in air and vacuum environments. Compared to the vacuum case, the pentacene TFT in air exhibited lower drain currents and more pronounced shifts in the threshold voltage upon reversal of the gate voltage sweep direction, together with a decrease in the field-effect mobility. These characteristic variations were explained in terms of two distinctive actions of polar H₂O molecules in pentacene TFT. H₂O molecules were suggested to diffuse under the source and drain contacts and interrupt the charge injection into the pentacene film, whereas those that permeate at the pentacene/PMMA interface retard hole depletion in and around the TFT channel. The diffusion process was much slower than the permeation process. The degraded TFT characteristics in air could be recovered mostly by storing the device under vacuum, which suggests that the air instability of TFTs is due mainly to the physical adsorption of H₂O molecules within the pentacene film.