Body controlled threshold voltage shifting variable gain current mirror

A programmable high-speed source-series-terminated driver with signal boost capability is presented. The driver uses only one main input data tap and is divided into main units and auxiliary units. A passive high pass filter is utilized to detect data transitions and control the inputs of the auxiliary units to enable a programmable amplitude boost for the output signal. The corner frequency of the high pass filter is adjusted depending on the data rate. Further, the amount of the high frequency signal boost can be adjusted depending on the loss of the channel. HSPICE simulations are used to demonstrate the performance of the driver at 10, 20 and 40 Gbps data rates. At 40 Gbps, the driver is capable of equalizing a PRBS9 data pattern signal through a channel that has a loss of 9 dB. At worst case conditions and 40 Gbps date rate, the driver achieves a differential eye-opening amplitude of 201 mVppd and an eye-opening of 0.952 UI. The driver is designed using 28 nm CMOS process and uses a nominal 1 V supply voltage. It consumes a maximum of 12 mW of at-speed power.     

Stackable nonvolatile memory with ultra thin polysilicon film and low-leakage (Ti, Dy)xOy for low processing temperature and low operating voltages

We report the fabrication process as well as material and electrical characterization of ultra thin body (UTB) thin film transistors (TFTs) for stackable nonvolatile memories by using in situ phosphorous doped low-temperature polysilicon followed by the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process. The resulting polysilicon film is about 13 nm thick with approximately 10¹⁹ cm⁻³ doping. Root mean square surface roughness below 1 nm is achieved. Metal nanocrystals and high-k dielectric are selected for storage nodes and tunneling barriers to achieve low operating voltages. The number density and average diameter of nanocrystals embedded in the gate stack are 7.5 × 10¹¹ cm⁻² and 5.8 nm, respectively. Furthermore, scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED) and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) are performed for material characterization. The dielectric constant of the (Ti, Dy)_xO_y film is 35, and the off-state leakage current at −1 V bias and 2.8 nm equivalent oxide thickness is 5 × 10⁻⁷ A/cm². We obtain a memory window of about 0.95 V with ±6 V program/erase voltages. Our results show that UTB TFT is a promising candidate for the three-dimensional integration in high-density nonvolatile memory applications.     

Ag Nanowire Reinforced Highly Stretchable Conductive Fibers for Wearable Electronics

Stretchable conductive fibers have received significant attention due to their possibility of being utilized in wearable and foldable electronics. Here, highly stretchable conductive fiber composed of silver nanowires (AgNWs) and silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) embedded in a styrene–butadiene–styrene (SBS) elastomeric matrix is fabricated. An AgNW‐embedded SBS fiber is fabricated by a simple wet spinning method. Then, the AgNPs are formed on both the surface and inner region of the AgNW‐embedded fiber via repeated cycles of silver precursor absorption and reduction processes. The AgNW‐embedded conductive fiber exhibits superior initial electrical conductivity (σ₀ = 2450 S cm^?1) and elongation at break (900% strain) due to the high weight percentage of the conductive fillers and the use of a highly stretchable SBS elastomer matrix. During the stretching, the embedded AgNWs act as conducting bridges between AgNPs, resulting in the preservation of electrical conductivity under high strain (the rate of conductivity degradation, σ/σ₀ = 4.4% at 100% strain). The AgNW‐embedded conductive fibers show the strain‐sensing behavior with a broad range of applied tensile strain. The AgNW reinforced highly stretchable conductive fibers can be embedded into a smart glove for detecting sign language by integrating five composite fibers in the glove, which can successfully perceive human motions.     

Ultra Low Power Improved Differential Amplifier

In this paper, a low voltage and ultra low power operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) is presented. As will be shown, the transient response and open loop gain of the proposed OTA are improved using adaptive biasing and DC gain enhancement techniques. The contributions of the proposed OTA are ultra low power consumption (only 3.977 μw), low supply voltages (±0.6 V), high swing, high speed, and high gain. It can clearly be seen that for the proposed OTA, the gain of the differential half-circuit in the input stage (A _d ), DC gain (A ₀), gain bandwidth (GBW), and slew rate (SR) are increased, whereas the settling time (T _S ) is decreased. The results of simulations done using 0.18 μm Silterra CMOS process technology and the measurement results are presented to validate and compare the advantages of this work and other related works.     

Structural,electronic and thermodynamic properties of SrxCd1−xO: A first-principles study

First principles calculations have been performed within the framework of density functional theory to investigate the structural, electronic and thermodynamic properties of Sr_xCd_1?xO ternary alloys. The exchange-correlation potential for structural properties was calculated by the standard local density approximation (LDA) and GGA (PBE), a more accurate nonempirical density functional generalized gradient approximation (GGA), as proposed by Wu and Cohen [Physical Review B 73 (2006) 235116], while for electronic properties, the Engel and Vosko GGA (EVGGA) and the modified Becke–Johnson (MBJ) of the exchange-correlation energy and potential, respectively, are used. Deviation of the lattice constants from Vegard's law and bulk modulus from linear concentration dependence (LCD) were observed for the ternary alloys. The MBJ band gaps values agree well with the available experimental results. In addition the thermodynamic stability of the alloys was investigated by calculating the critical temperatures of alloys.     

Enhancement of Return Routability Mechanism for Optimized‐NEMO Using Correspondent Firewall

Network Mobility (NEMO) handles mobility of multiple nodes in an aggregate manner as a mobile network. The standard NEMO suffers from a number of limitations, such as inefficient routing and increased handoff latency. Most previous studies attempting to solve such problems have imposed an extra signaling load and/or modified the functionalities of the main entities. In this paper, we propose a more secure and lightweight route optimization (RO) mechanism based on exploiting the firewall in performing the RO services on behalf of the correspondent nodes (CNs). The proposed mechanism provides secure communications by making an authorized decision about the mobile router (MR) home of address, MR care of address, and the complete mobile network prefixes underneath the MR. In addition, it reduces the total signaling required for NEMO handoffs, especially when the number of mobile network nodes and/or CNs is increased. Moreover, our proposed mechanism can be easily deployed without modifying the mobility protocol stack of CNs. A thorough analytical model and network simulator (Ns‐2) are used for evaluating the performance of the proposed mechanism compared with NEMO basic support protocol and state‐of‐the‐art RO schemes. Numerical and simulation results demonstrate that our proposed mechanism outperforms other RO schemes in terms of handoff latency and total signaling load on wired and wireless links.     

Efficient Computation Offloading Decision in Mobile Cloud Computing over 5G Network

Due to the significant advancement of Smartphone technology, the applications targeted for these devices are getting more and more complex and demanding of high power and resources. Mobile cloud computing (MCC) allows the Smart phones to perform these highly demanding tasks with the help of powerful cloud servers. However, to decide whether a given part of an application is cost-effective to execute in local mobile device or in the cloud server is a difficult problem in MCC. It is due to the trade-off between saving energy consumption while maintaining the strict latency requirements of applications. Currently, 5th generation mobile network (5G) is getting much attention, which can support increased network capacity, high data rate and low latency and can pave the way for solving the computation offloading problem in MCC. In this paper, we design an intelligent computation offloading system that takes tradeoff decisions for code offloading from a mobile device to cloud server over the 5G network. We develop a metric for tradeoff decision making that can maximize energy saving while maintain strict latency requirements of user applications in the 5G system. We evaluate the performances of the proposed system in a test-bed implementation, and the results show that it outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in terms of accuracy, computation and energy saving.     

RoBiN: Random Access using Border Routers in Cellular Networks

Introducing Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications over traditional 4G cellular networks make the cellular random access channel more congested and collision-prone. In order to resolve this random access congestion, we propose RoBiN - Random access using Border router in M2M cellular Networks. RoBiN proposes an architectural modification of introducing small cells, called Border Routers (BR), in cellular networks, with complete frequency reuse capability. We formulate the aforementioned challenge in terms of collision probability and system capacity. Subsequently, we propose an efficient solution for M2M communications in cellular networks. Exhaustive mathematical analysis shows that RoBiN significantly improves the random access success probability, by 50 % over existing 4G cellular systems. Simulation results on typical 4G networks corroborate our mathematical analysis and demonstrate almost 15 dB increase in Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) and 3 times throughput improvements over legacy 4G cellular systems. Furthermore, RoBiN also achieves 50 %?80 % improvement in collision probability over existing time alignment matching work.     

A design paradigm for mechatronic systems

Concepts of mechatronics are applicable in the design of complex and multi-domain dynamic systems. This paper presents an approach based on the mechatronic design quotient (MDQ) for systematic design of a mechatronic system. Traditional procedures of design are hierarchically separated into topological design and parametric design. Extending this concept, an MDQ may be “structured” into a multi-layered hierarchy. The approach and significance of the application of MDQ in mechatronic design are indicated using illustrative examples.