Fully Printed Dual‐Band Power Divider Miniaturized by CRLH Phase‐Shift Lines

In this letter, a compact and fully printed composite right‐ and left‐handed (CRLH) dual‐band power divider is proposed. The branches of the conventional Wilkinson power divider are replaced by subwavelength CRLH phase‐shift lines having +90° for one frequency and ?90° for another frequency for dual‐band and miniaturization performance. Equations are derived for the even‐ and odd‐mode analysis combined with the dual‐band CRLH circuit. A PCS and a WLAN band are chosen as the test case and the circuit approach agrees with the CAD simulation and the measurement. Additionally, the CRLH property is shown with the dispersion diagram and the eightfold size reduction is noted.     

Mobile Robot Navigation Using Wireless Sensor Networks Without Localization Procedure

In this paper, algorithms for navigating a mobile robot through wireless sensor networks are presented. The mobile robot can navigate without the need for a map, compass, or GPS module while interacting with neighboring sensor nodes. Two navigation algorithms are proposed in this paper: the first uses the distance between the mobile robot and each sensor node and the second uses the metric calculated from one-hop neighbors’ hop-counts. Periodically measuring the distance or metric, the mobile robot can move toward a point where these values become smaller and finally come to reach the destination. These algorithms do not attempt to localize the mobile robot for navigation, therefore our approach permits cost-effective robot navigation while overcoming the limitations of traditional navigation algorithms. Through a number of experiments and simulations, the performance of the two proposed algorithms is evaluated.     

A New Comb Circular Polarizer Suitable for Millimeter‐Band Application

This letter presents a new polarizer which has a simple comb structure inside a circular waveguide. The electrical performance of the proposed comb polarizer is optimized by a circular waveguide radius and by the physical parameters of the comb plates. This polarizer is suitable for providing good performance in millimeter‐band application because of its simple structure and low fabrication cost. In our experiments the dual‐band comb polarizer designed in band 1(K) and band 2(Ka) showed good electrical performance without any tuning elements.     

Static Dalvik Bytecode Optimization for Android Applications

Since just‐in‐time (JIT) has considerable overhead to detect hot spots and compile them at runtime, using sophisticated optimization techniques for embedded devices means that any resulting performance improvements will be limited. In this paper, we introduce a novel static Dalvik bytecode optimization framework, as a complementary compilation of the Dalvik virtual machine, to improve the performance of Android applications. Our system generates optimized Dalvik bytecodes by using Low Level Virtual Machine (LLVM). A major obstacle in using LLVM for optimizing Dalvik bytecodes is determining how to handle the high‐level language features of the Dalvik bytecode in LLVM IR and how to optimize LLVM IR conforming to the language information of the Dalvik bytecode. To this end, we annotate the high‐level language features of Dalvik bytecode to LLVM IR and successfully optimize Dalvik bytecodes through instruction selection processes. Our experimental results show that our system with JIT improves the performance of Android applications by up to 6.08 times, and surpasses JIT by up to 4.34 times.     

Conductive adhesive with transient liquid‐phase sintering technology for high‐power device applications

A highly reliable conductive adhesive obtained by transient liquid‐phase sintering (TLPS) technologies is studied for use in high‐power device packaging. TLPS involves the low‐temperature reaction of a low‐melting metal or alloy with a high‐melting metal or alloy to form a reacted metal matrix. For a TLPS material (consisting of Ag‐coated Cu, a Sn96.5‐Ag3.0‐Cu0.5 solder, and a volatile fluxing resin) used herein, the melting temperature of the metal matrix exceeds the bonding temperature. After bonding of the TLPS material, a unique melting peak of TLPS is observed at 356 °C, consistent with the transient behavior of Ag₃Sn + Cu₆Sn₅ → liquid + Cu₃Sn reported by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The TLPS material shows superior thermal conductivity as compared with other commercially available Ag pastes under the same specimen preparation conditions. In conclusion, the TLPS material can be a promising candidate for a highly reliable conductive adhesive in power device packaging because remelting of the SAC305 solder, which is widely used in conventional power modules, is not observed.     

HV‐SoP Technology for Maskless Fine‐Pitch Bumping Process

Recently, we have witnessed the gradual miniaturization of electronic devices. In miniaturized devices, flip‐chip bonding has become a necessity over other bonding methods. For the electrical connections in miniaturized devices, fine‐pitch solder bumping has been widely studied. In this study, high‐volume solder‐on‐pad (HV‐SoP) technology was developed using a novel maskless printing method. For the new SoP process, we used a special material called a solder bump maker (SBM). Using an SBM, which consists of resin and solder powder, uniform bumps can easily be made without a mask. To optimize the height of solder bumps, various conditions such as the mask design, oxygen concentration, and processing method are controlled. In this study, a double printing method, which is a modification of a general single printing method, is suggested. The average, maximum, and minimum obtained heights of solder bumps are 28.3 μm, 31.7 μm, and 26.3 μm, respectively. It is expected that the HV‐SoP process will reduce the costs for solder bumping and will be used for electrical interconnections in fine‐pitch flip‐chip bonding.     

Continuous Control of Charge Transport in Bi‐Deficient BiFeO3 Films Through Local Ferroelectric Switching

It is demonstrated that electric transport in Bi‐deficient Bi_1‐δFeO₃ ferroelectric thin films, which act as a p‐type semiconductor, can be continuously and reversibly controlled by manipulating ferroelectric domains. Ferroelectric domain configuration is modified by applying a weak voltage stress to Pt/Bi_1‐δFeO₃/SrRuO₃ thin‐film capacitors. This results in diode behavior in macroscopic charge‐transport properties as well as shrinkage of polarization‐voltage hysteresis loops. The forward current density depends on the voltage stress time controlling the domain configuration in the Bi_1‐δFeO₃ film. Piezoresponse force microscopy shows that the density of head‐to‐head/tail‐to‐tail unpenetrating local domains created by the voltage stress is directly related to the continuous modification of the charge transport and the diode effect. The control of charge transport is discussed in conjunction with polarization‐dependent interfacial barriers and charge trapping at the non‐neutral domain walls of unpenetrating tail‐to‐tail domains. Because domain walls in Bi_1‐δFeO₃ act as local conducting paths for charge transport, the domain‐wall‐mediated charge transport can be extended to ferroelectric resistive nonvolatile memories and nanochannel field‐effect transistors with high performances conceptually.     

Characterization of Fluxing and Hybrid Underfills with Micro‐encapsulated Catalyst for Long Pot Life

For the fine‐pitch application of flip‐chip bonding with semiconductor packaging, fluxing and hybrid underfills were developed. A micro‐encapsulated catalyst was adopted to control the chemical reaction at room and processing temperatures. From the experiments with a differential scanning calorimetry and viscometer, the chemical reaction and viscosity changes were quantitatively characterized, and the optimum type and amount of micro‐encapsulated catalyst were determined to obtain the best pot life from a commercial viewpoint. It is expected that fluxing and hybrid underfills will be applied to fine‐pitch flip‐chip bonding processes and be highly reliable.     

Symbiotic Dynamic Memory Balancing for Virtual Machines in Smart TV Systems

Smart TV is expected to bring cloud services based on virtualization technologies to the home environment with hardware and software support. Although most physical resources can be shared among virtual machines (VMs) using a time sharing approach, allocating the proper amount of memory to VMs is still challenging. In this paper, we propose a novel mechanism to dynamically balance the memory allocation among VMs in virtualized Smart TV systems. In contrast to previous studies, where a virtual machine monitor (VMM) is solely responsible for estimating the working set size, our mechanism is symbiotic. Each VM periodically reports its memory usage pattern to the VMM. The VMM then predicts the future memory demand of each VM and rebalances the memory allocation among the VMs when necessary. Experimental results show that our mechanism improves performance by up to 18.28 times and reduces expensive memory swapping by up to 99.73% with negligible overheads (0.05% on average).