Bulk Undoped GaAs–AlGaAs Substrate-Removed Electrooptic Modulators With 3.7-V-cm Drive Voltage at 1.55 $mu$ m

Substrate removed bulk GaAs-AlGaAs electrooptic modulators with 3.7-V-cm drive voltage at 1.55 mum were realized. The 1.94-mum-thick undoped GaAs-AlGaAs epilayer removed from its substrate behaves as an electrooptic dielectric layer and has electrodes placed directly on both sides. This allows a very strong modulating electric field overlapping very well with the optical mode. The propagation loss in the presence of electrodes is less than 2.9dB/cm. There is very good agreement between the measured and simulated values     

A 17-GHz Push–Push VCO Based on Output Extraction From a Capacitive Common Node in GaInP/GaAs HBT Technology

This paper presents a new push-push voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) technique that extracts a second harmonic output signal from a capacitive common node in a negative-g_m oscillator topology. The generation of the second harmonics is accounted for by the nonlinear current-voltage characteristic of the emitter-base junction diode causing: 1) significant voltage clipping and 2) different rise and fall times during the switching operation of the core transistors. Comparative investigations show the technique is more power efficient in the high-frequency region than a conventional push-push technique using an emitter common node. A prototype 17-GHz VCO realized in GaInP/GaAs HBT technology produces an output power of -6dBm and a phase noise of -110.4dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset, which is equivalent to a VCO figure-of-merit of -184.3dBc/Hz, while drawing 4.38 mA from a 3.0-V supply     

Home Health Gateway Based Healthcare Services Through U-Health Platform

The Ubiquitous Health, or u-Health, service is an IT health care service using the ubiquitous computing environment. U-Health provides customized medical services. As it is a service that has developed from the current hospital visiting medical system, the u-Health service provides a patient with healthcare anywhere and anytime. In this paper, we propose a home health gateway based healthcare services through the u-Health platform. Using home health gateway, u-Health can provide health monitoring, diet, and exercise services using the healthcare decision support module in the ubiquitous environment. This approach would offer specialized services using an external content provider of DB. In addition, a doctor can provide advice to patients using the monitoring service. The proposed u-Health platform provides effective services using home health gateway in ubiquitous environments to customers, which will improve the health of chronic patients.     

Relay-volunteered multi-rate cooperative MAC protocol for IEEE 802.11 WLANs

In IEEE 802.11, the rate of a station (STA) is dynamically determined by link adaptation. Low-rate STAs tend to hog more channel time than high-rate STAs due to fair characteristics of carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance, leading to overall throughput degradation. It can be improved by limiting the transmission opportunities of low-rate STAs by backoff parameters. This, however, may cause unfair transmission opportunities to low-rate STAs. In an attempt to increase overall throughput by volunteer high-rate relay STAs while maintaining fairness, we propose a new cooperative medium access control (MAC) protocol, relay-volunteered multi-rate cooperative MAC (RM-CMAC) based on ready to send/clear to send in multi-rate IEEE 802.11. In the RM-CMAC protocol, we show that the effect of hogging channel time by low-rate STAs can be remedied by controlling the initial backoff window size of low-rate STAs and the reduced transmission opportunity of low-rate STAs can be compensated by the help of volunteer high-rate relay STAs. We analyze the performance of RM-CMAC, i.e., throughput and MAC delay, by a multi-rate embedded Markov chain model. We demonstrate that our analysis is accurate and the RM-CMAC protocol enhances the network throughput and MAC delay while maintaining the fairness of low-rate STAs.     

Effect of capping layer and post-CMP surface treatments on adhesion between damascene Cu and capping layer for ULSI interconnects

The effect of the type of capping layer and post-CMP surface treatments on the adhesion between damascene Cu and the capping layer was investigated. The CMPed-surface was treated by six methods divided into four groups which consisted of no surface treatment, cleaning by plasma with vacuum break, cleaning by plasma without vacuum break and cleaning by the wet chemical method. SiN_x and SiC were used to cap the surface after the post-CMP cleaning. The adhesion strength between Cu and the capping material was measured using a sandwiched structure constructed for the four point bending test. The X-ray photoemission spectroscopy analysis showed that the adhesion strength is related to the interfacial chemical bonds. The adhesion is influenced by the presence of contaminants and residual oxygen which inhibit the bonding of Si and Cu.     

Coordination of wavelength and time-window assignment in WDM-based TDM hybrid-PONs

In passive optical networks (PONs), the low effectiveness in terms of service utilization and network evolution have been important design issues. In this article, we introduce a hybrid access network architecture, so called scalable WDM-based Ethernet hybrid-PON (SWE-PON), which features a wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) feeder network using a combination of tunable laser device (TLD) and cyclic arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) and time-division-multiplexed (TDM) distribution network based on a reflective transmission mode. Necessary conditions needed to guarantee flawless packet transmission through normal WDM/TDM hierarchical PONs including the SWE-PON, are analyzed. We also propose a hierarchical fair time-window allocation mechanism which coordinates wavelength assignment and time-window bandwidth allocation so that high link utilization and fair bandwidth allocation are guaranteed in every multiplexing level.

Construction of block orthogonal golay sequences and application to channel estimation of mimo-ofdm systems

In this paper, we construct a family of block orthogonal Golay sequences that have low peak-to-mean envelope power ratio (PMEPR) as well as block wise orthogonal properties. We then present an application of the sequences to channel estimation of multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) systems. We compare the performance of the proposed algorithm with that of a frequency division multiplexing (FDM) piloting algorithm, and investigate the effect of co-channel interference (CCI) on the channel estimation performance.     

A 0.2 V, 480 kb Subthreshold SRAM With 1 k Cells Per Bitline for Ultra-Low-Voltage Computing

A 2 muW, 100 kHz, 480 kb subthreshold SRAM operating at 0.2 V is demonstrated in a 130 nm CMOS process. A 10-T SRAM cell allows 1 k cells per bitline by eliminating the data-dependent bitline leakage. A virtual ground replica scheme is proposed for logic "0" level tracking and optimal sensing margin in read buffers. Utilizing the strong reverse short channel effect in the subthreshold region improves cell writability and row decoder performance due to the increased current drivability at a longer channel length. The sizing method leads to an equivalent write wordline voltage boost of 70 mV and a delay improvement of 28% in the row decoder compared to the conventional sizing scheme at 0.2 V. A bitline writeback scheme was used to eliminate the pseudo-write problem in unselected columns.     

An Interactive Design Environment for C-Based High-Level Synthesis of RTL Processors

Much effort in register transfer level (RTL) design has been devoted to developing "push-button" types of tools. However, given the highly complex nature, and lack of control on RTL design, push-button type synthesis is not accepted by many designers. Interactive design with assistance of algorithms and tools can be more effective if it provides control to the steps of synthesis. In this paper, we propose an interactive RTL design environment which enables designers to control the design steps and to integrate hardware components into a system. Our design environment is targeting a generic RTL processor architecture and supporting pipelining, multicycling, and chaining. Tasks in the RTL design process include clock definition, component allocation, scheduling, binding, and validation. In our interactive environment, the user can control the design process at every stage, observe the effects of design decisions, and manually override synthesis decisions at will. We present a set of experimental results that demonstrate the benefits of our approach. Our combination of automated tools and interactive control by the designer results in quickly generated RTL designs with better performance than fully-automatic results, comparable to fully manually optimized designs.     

The Operation Characteristics of an Alternating Current Plasma Display Panel With Si-Doped MgO Protecting Layer

In this paper, the operation characteristics of an ac plasma display panel (PDP) with Si-doped MgO protecting layer are investigated. The test panels are fabricated with the protecting layers of conventional MgO and Si-doped MgO, and the operation voltage margin, luminous efficacy, and address discharge time lag are observed. Even though the test panel with Si-doped MgO protecting layer showed lower operation voltages, higher luminous efficacy, and shorter statistical discharge time lag, its addressing discharge characteristics become deteriorated as the scanning time is increased from the end time of the reset period. The photon-induced surface conductivity increased by Si doping into MgO, and surface charges on the Si-doped MgO protecting layer showed faster decay characteristics compared to those on the conventional one. It is believed that the impurity doping into the protecting layer can improve the short-period characteristics of an ac PDP, but the long-term stability of surface charge retention is deteriorated.