Compensation of the Piezo-Hall Effect in Integrated Hall Sensors on (100)-Si

Silicon Hall sensors are known to suffer from a long-term drift in the magnetic sensitivity between 1% and 4%, depending on the degree of moisture in the mold compound of the package. This drift is mainly caused by changes of mechanical stress exerted by the plastic package onto the die. We present a system, which continuously measures the relevant stress components, estimates the sensitivity drift, and corrects for it digitally. An individual precalibration versus temperature is necessary to achieve the required level of accuracy. Results from laboratory characterization with pressure cells and lifetime drift during qualification runs show that this system can keep the drift of magnetic sensitivity well below 1%.     

Detection of Receptor-Ligand Interactions With an GHz Impedance Biosensor System

Nanogap impedance biosensors with an electrode separation of 75 nm have been used for the specific detection of biological interactions. Different model systems, such as thrombin-anti-thrombin antibody, and Rev-peptide-anti-Rev aptamer are presented to demonstrate the detectability of different molecular masses at varying concentrations. In order to improve the signal-to-noise ratio, the use of reference sensors has been explored. The interaction of prostate specific antigen (PSA) with an anti-PSA antibody is shown to demonstrate the detection at concentrations as low as 10 nM.     

Extracting electrical material parameters of electrically large dielectric objects from reverberation chamber measurements of absorption cross section

Reverberation chambers can be used to measure the absorption cross section of a dielectric object. The absorption cross section of a dielectric object depends on its size, shape, and electrical material parameters. By comparing with a theoretical model of the absorption cross section, material parameters can be extracted from measurements. A model based on a plane wave approach of incident fields is used here, valid for electrically large material samples in an isotropic environment such as that in a reverberation chamber. Which material parameter can be extracted depends on the properties of the material sample. The presented method combines the accuracy of cavity methods with the flexibility of being able to measure samples of arbitrary size and shape. Because both the reverberation chamber and the material sample are electrically large, the method is particularly useful at millimeter-wave frequencies.     

Online monitoring by dynamically refining imprecise models

Model-based monitoring determines faults in a supervised system by comparing the available system's measurements with a priori information represented by the system's mathematical model. Especially in technical environments, a monitoring system must be able to reason with incomplete knowledge about the supervised system, to process noisy and erroneous observations and to react within a limited time. We present MOSES, a model-based monitoring system which is based on imprecise models where the structure is known and the parameters may be imprecisely specified by numerical intervals. As a consequence, only bounds on the trajectories can be derived with imprecise models. These bounds are computed using traditional numerical integration techniques starting from individual points on the external surface of the model's uncertainty space. When new measurements from the supervised system become available, MOSES checks the consistency of this new information with the model's prediction and refutes inconsistent parts from the uncertainty space of the model. A fault in the supervised system is detected when the complete model's uncertainty space has been refuted. MOSES bridges and extends methodologies from the FDI and DX communities by refining the model's uncertainty space conservatively through refutation, by applying standard numerical techniques for deriving the trajectories of imprecise models and by exploiting the measurements as soon as possible for online monitoring. The performance of MOSES is evaluated based on examples and by online monitoring a complex heating system.     

Spannungsintensitätsfaktoren für vollständig umlaufende Oberflächenumfangsrisse in Rohren bei Thermoschockbelastung

Stress Intensity Factors for Complete Circumferential Surface Cracks in Thermally Shocked Pipes In the case of an emergency cooling of a reactor thermal stresses are generated in the pipes of the primary loop, which may be described conservatively as a thermal shock problem. In this paper complete interior circumferential surface cracks loaded by these thermal stresses are considered. By means of the weight function method stress intensity factors were calculated for this loading case.     

Closed-loop optimal control-enabled piezoelectric microforce sensors

This paper presents a closed-loop optimally controlled force-sensing technology with applications in both micromanipulation and microassembly. The microforce-sensing technology in this paper is based on a cantilevered composite beam structure with embedded piezoelectric polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) actuating and sensing layers. In this type of sensor, the application of an external load causes deformation within the PVDF sensing layer. This generates a signal that is fed through a linear quadratic regulator (LQR) optimal servoed controller to the PVDF actuating layer. This in turn generates a balancing force to counteract the externally applied load. As a result, a closed feedback loop is formed, which causes the tip of this highly sensitive sensor to remain in its equilibrium position, even in the presence of dynamically applied external loads. The sensor's stiffness is virtually improved as a result of the equilibrium position whenever the control loop is active, thereby enabling accurate motion control of the sensor tip for fine micromanipulation and microassembly. Furthermore, the applied force can be determined in real time through measurement of the balance force.     

Soft handoff algorithms for CDMA cellular networks

This paper discusses the design of soft handoff algorithms for cellular communication systems. The handoff process is modeled as a hybrid system and handoff design is cast as an optimization problem based on such a model. Performance is evaluated in terms of call quality, average number of active base stations, average number of active set updates, and average amount of interference. A soft handoff algorithm, which achieves a tradeoff between these performance criteria, is obtained using principles of dynamic programming. One key feature of the algorithm is that it incorporates the effects of mobility and shadow fading in the handoff decision. Different diversity combining schemes are considered including selective combining, equal gain combining (EGC), and various optimized combining (OC) methods in the soft handoff mode. For EGC and OC, Wilkinson's and Schwartz and Yeh's methods are used to compute the statistics for the power sum of the signals. Simulation results indicate that the performance of the handoff algorithm is a function of the different combining schemes and of the different methods used to compute the statistics of the power sum. Moreover, it is observed that interference cancellation is important in order for the algorithm to be viable for cellular systems which experience interference due to using nonorthogonal multiple access.     

Vortex Dynamics in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 Single Crystal with Low Density Columnar Defects Studied by Magnetic Force Microscope

We have studied vortex dynamics in Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O₈ single crystal with low density columnar defects by using a magnetic force microscope. Single crystal Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O₈ sample was irradiated by 1.3 GeV uranium ion to form artificial pinning centers along the crystalline c-axis. The irradiation dose corresponded to a matching field of 20 gauss. The radius of an individual vortex is approximately 140 nm, which is close to the penetration depth of this material. Magnetic force microscope (MFM) images show that intrinsic crystalline defects such as stacking fault dislocations are very effective pinning centers for vortices in addition to the pinning centers due to ion bombardment. By counting the number of vortex, we found that the flux trapped at each pinning center is a single flux quantum. At higher magnetic field, the vortex structure showed an Abrikosov lattice disturbed only by immobile vortices located at pinning centers. When increasing or decreasing the external magnetic field, the spatial distribution of vortices showed a Bean model like behavior.