Ambient Technology — Now You See It, Now You Don't

The continuing progression of Moore's Law has enabled the miniaturisation and dramatic cost reduction in electronics over the last ten years. For a truly pervasive communications environment the challenges of hiding key hardware technologies from the user are rapidly being overcome. This paper reviews the status of these hardware technology developments in the pervasive space and briefly discusses other contributing factors that will enable the pervasive vision to be realised.     

Mixed oxide supported hydrodesulfurization catalysts—a review

Support effects form important aspect of hydrodesulfurization (HDS) studies and mixed oxide supports received maximum attention in the last two decades. This review will focus attention on studies on mixed oxide supported Mo and W catalysts. For convenience of discussion, these are divided into Al₂O₃ containing mixed oxide supports, TiO₂ containing mixed oxide supports, ZrO₂ containing mixed oxide supports and other mixed oxide supports containing all the rest. TiO₂ containing mixed oxides received maximum attention, especially TiO₂–Al₂O₃ supported catalysts. A brief discussion about their prospects for application to ultradeep desulfurization is also included. An overview of the available literature with emphasis on research carried out in our laboratory form the contents of this publication.     

Failure analysis of a broken tooth

Several days after heart surgery, a patient discovered his upper right canine tooth had broken at the root. Such tooth damage, recognized post-operatively, is usually assumed to be caused by blunt mechanical force from an instrument used by the anesthesiologist during placement of a breathing tube at the start of surgery. In this case, the patient had saved the crown portion of the broken tooth, and it was possible to examine the root fracture characteristics. The curvature and direction of the crack path and natural tooth situation suggested that failure could be described through a cantilever beam model. This was confirmed when a whole extracted sample tooth was embedded and broken by a measured force in a manner consistent with the model. The resulting fracture surface matched that of the patient’s broken canine tooth. However, the high load and force direction necessary to fracture the root was inconsistent with forces applied during the anesthesia procedure. The failure analysis and further investigation indicated tooth clenching on the breathing tube during recovery was the likely cause of fracture. This paper presents an alternate explanation for intubation-related dental injury, demonstrates the practicality of fractographic analysis of biological materials, and introduces a methodology for simulating in vitro tooth settings for mechanical testing.     

Mathematical Modeling of Thermomechanical Processes under Intense Thermal Effect

Mathematical models of thermomechanical processes which are based on the laws of rational thermodynamics of irreversible processes are treated. Singular features of the unsteady-state behavior of a continuous medium are demonstrated within different models, such as a medium with internal parameters of state, a medium with memory, and a medium of the velocity type.     

NANODEV: A Nanoelectronic-Device Simulation Software System

The concept and structure of the NANODEV simulation software are described. NANODEV deals with nanoelectronic devices that exploit single-electron tunneling, resonant tunneling, or quantum interference. It can use both simplified and sophisticated models and enables one to evaluate a wide variety of devices and configurations. The capabilities of NANODEV are illustrated by examples.     

Optimal space-time constellations from groups

We consider the design of space-time constellations based on group codes for fading channels with multiple transmit and receive antennas. These codes can be viewed as multiantenna extensions of phase-shift keying (PSK), in the sense that all codewords have equal energy, all are rotations of a fixed codeword, and there is a simple differential transmission rule that allows data to be sent without channel estimates at the transmitter or receiver. For coherent detection, we show that all optimal full-rank space-time group codes are unitary (each code matrix has equal-energy, orthogonal rows). This leads to a simpler code design criterion and suggests that unitary codes may play an important role in coherent as well as noncoherent communication. For any number of transmit antennas t, we then use the design criterion to characterize all full-rank unitary space-time group codes of minimum block length (also t) which have 2/sup p/ codewords. These results allow us to characterize all optimal 2/sup p/-ary unitary group codes with square code matrices. This restricted class of block codes matches the class proposed for differential modulation by Hughes (see IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol.46, p.2567-78, Nov. 2000), and by Hochwald and Sweldens (see IEEE Trans. Commun., vol.48, p.2041-2052, Dec. 2000).     

Design principles underlying circadian clocks.

A fundamental problem for regulatory networks is to understand the relation between form and function: to uncover the underlying design principles of the network. Circadian clocks present a particularly interesting instance, as recent work has shown that they have complex structures involving multiple interconnected feedback loops with both positive and negative feedback. While several authors have speculated on the reasons for this, a convincing explanation is still lacking.We analyse both the flexibility of clock networks and the relationships between various desirable properties such as robust entrainment, temperature compensation, and stability to environmental variations and parameter fluctuations. We use this to argue that the complexity provides the flexibility necessary to simultaneously attain multiple key properties of circadian clocks. As part of our analysis we show how to quantify the key evolutionary aims using infinitesimal response curves, a tool that we believe will be of general utility in the analysis of regulatory networks. Our results suggest that regulatory and signalling networks might be much less flexible and of lower dimension than their apparent complexity would suggest.     

Evanescently coupled photodiodes integrating a double-stage taper for 40-Gb/s applications-compared performance with side-illuminated photodiodes

The design, fabrication, and performance of double-stage taper photodiodes (DSTPs) are reported. The objective of this work is to develop devices compatible with 40-Gb/s applications. Such devices require high efficiency, ultrawide band, high optical power handling capability, and compatibility with low-cost module fabrication. The integration of mode size converters improves both the coupling efficiency and the responsivity with a large fiber mode diameter. Responsivity of 0.6 A/W and 0.45 A/W are achieved with a 6-/spl mu/m fiber mode diameter and cleaved fiber, respectively, providing relaxed alignment tolerances (/spl plusmn/1.6 /spl mu/m and /spl plusmn/2 /spl mu/m, respectively), compatible with cost-effective packaging techniques. DSTPs also offer a wide bandwidth greater than 40 GHz and transverse-electric/transverse-magnetic polarization dependence lower than 0.2 dB. Furthermore, a DSTP saturation current as high as 11 mA results in optical power handling greater than +10 dBm and a high output voltage of 0.8 V. These capabilities allow the photodiode to drive the decision circuit without the need of a broad-band electrical amplifier. The DSTP devices presented here demonstrate higher responsivities with large fiber mode diameter and better optical power handling capabilities and are compared with classical side-illuminated photodiodes.     

Adaptive antenna system design for multi-element combining with transient interrupted channels

This paper presents an analysis and design procedure for a buoyant cable array antenna used for satellite communications. The towed multi-element array is susceptible to washovers and fluctuations due to the ocean wave interaction with the floating hose where the elements are housed. A model of system performance for coherent multi-element combining is presented based on the dropouts and fades of the individual elements. The array design, including the number and spacing of elements, is shown to be highly dependent on the individual element exposure characteristics and the degree of correlation of the fades between channels. The joint statistics of the array are analyzed using a binary conditional element exposure model and a first-order Markov interelement correlation model. Using this analysis, a family of array designs meeting the communications requirements is produced.     

LiNbO3 optical waveguides formed in a new proton source

Proton-exchanged planar waveguides have been fabricated on Z-cut and X-cut lithium niobate crystals by using a new proton source formed by a mixture of benzoic and adipic acids. Waveguide index profiles and optical characteristics have been obtained at different values of the adipic-benzoic acid concentration ratio. The samples have been structurally characterized by Raman and infrared (IR) absorption spectroscopy and double-crystal X-ray diffraction. Good quality samples have been fabricated by using 30 mol% ratio dilution, showing very low scattering levels (<0.1 dB/cm), relatively high electrooptic coefficient (r₃₃=0.88 pm/V), and low relative percentage of interstitial protons (26%). The main factor limiting the waveguide optical properties is the substitutional-interstitial proton ratio, which can be easily controlled to produce good quality waveguides. A demonstration of the repeatability of the exchange process in the acid mixture is also provided