Plasma-induced charging damage in ultrathin (3-nm) gate oxides

Plasma-induced damage in various 3-nm-thick gate oxides (i.e., pure oxides and N₂O-nitrided oxides) was investigated by subjecting both nMOS and pMOS antenna devices to a photoresist ashing step after metal pad definition. Both charge-to-breakdown and gate leakage current measurements indicated that large leakage current occurs at the wafer center as well as the wafer edge for pMOS devices, while only at the wafer center for nMOS devices. These interesting observations could be explained by the strong polarity dependence of ultra thin oxides in charge-to-breakdown measurements of nMOS devices. In addition, pMOS devices were found to be more susceptible to charging damage, which can be attributed to the intrinsic polarity dependence in tunneling current between nand p-MOSFETs. More importantly, our experimental results demonstrated that stress-induced leakage current (SILC) caused by plasma damage can be significantly suppressed in N₂O-nitrided oxides, compared to pure oxides, especially for pMOS devices. Finally, nitrided oxides were also found to be more robust when subjected to high temperature stressing. Therefore, nitrided oxides appear to be very promising for reducing plasma charging damage in future ULSI technologies employing ultrathin gate oxides     

Artificial convolution neural network techniques and applications for lung nodule detection

We have developed a double-matching method and an artificial visual neural network technique for lung nodule detection. This neural network technique is generally applicable to the recognition of medical image pattern in gray scale imaging. The structure of the artificial neural net is a simplified network structure of human vision. The fundamental operation of the artificial neural network is local two-dimensional convolution rather than full connection with weighted multiplication. Weighting coefficients of the convolution kernels are formed by the neural network through backpropagated training. In addition, we modeled radiologists' reading procedures in order to instruct the artificial neural network to recognize the image patterns predefined and those of interest to experts in radiology. We have tested this method for lung nodule detection. The performance studies have shown the potential use of this technique in a clinical setting. This program first performed an initial nodule search with high sensitivity in detecting round objects using a sphere template double-matching technique. The artificial convolution neural network acted as a final classifier to determine whether the suspected image block contains a lung nodule. The total processing time for the automatic detection of lung nodules using both prescan and convolution neural network evaluation was about 15 seconds in a DEC Alpha workstation.     

Five channel WDM soliton pulse generation using sinusoidally drivenelectroabsorption modulators in 16×1 laser/modulator array

Five wavelength multiplexed pulse streams are generated in an integrated 16×1 laser modulator array by sinusoidally driving five of the potential 16 electroabsorption modulators. At a repetition rate of 2.5 GHz, near transform-limited pulses spaced in wavelength over 7.6 nm are observed. Pseudorandom coding of one channel is achieved by applying an electrical RZ data signal to the modulator     

斜坡电流测试应用与比较方法研究

讨论了斜坡电流测试的相关参数如电流斜坡速率、步长及电流倍增速率对测试结果击穿电荷具有的严重影响。指出斜坡电流测试中各个参数的设定、影响及其相关性,使斜坡电流测试的结果具有可比较性。同时,讨论了由于斜坡电流测试本身的特性,击穿电荷具有非连续性,针对击穿电荷的非连续性,提供了一种统计上的数据处理方法,并且根据工程上不同的定性比较结果提供了不同的统计比较方法,可以对非连续的斜坡电流测试结果进行定量的统计比较。在产品验证或生产线出现异常时,能够进行统计上的比较,给出定量的结果。据此能对生产线的稳定性或异常事件对产品的影响给出明确的结论,为受影响的产品的处置提供定量的数据支持。这是首次对斜坡电流测试数据的统计定量分析。     

A novel search method to reduce PAPR of an OFDM signal using partial transmit sequences

One of the main drawbacks of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is the high peak‐to‐average power ratio (PAPR) of the transmitted OFDM signal. Partial transmit sequence (PTS) technique can improve the PAPR statistics of an OFDM signal. As ordinary PTS technique requires an exhaustive search over all combinations of allowed phase factors, the search complexity increases exponentially with the number of sub‐blocks. In this paper, we propose a novel PTS technique with reduced complexity that each level inverts twice of phase factor bits from previous level. Then we also use initial random phase sequence to find the better search way of PAPR reduction. Numerical results show that the proposed method can achieve significant reduction in search complexity with little performance degradation. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A New Digital Sense Multiple Access (DSMA) Protocol for High-Speed Wireless Networks

In this paper, we propose a new digital sensemultiple access with delayed transmission (DSMA/DT)protocol for reverse channel in high-speed wirelessnetworks. The new protocol is motivated by theobservation that the existing DSMA protocol does not yieldsatisfactory throughput for long round-trip propagationand processing delay, which occurs in outdoor high-speedenvironments or when the receiver hardware requires long signal processing time. The newDSMA/DT protocol is intended to reduce the performanceimpacts of the round-trip delay. Look-ahead busy/idleflag, seizure queueing, and reserved time slots are also devised for the new protocol. Whilerequiring at most two additional status bits on theforward channel and no additional hardware capability,these features further enhance the protocol performance and enable constant-bit-rate service withlittle added complexity in control. The channelthroughput of the DSMA/DT protocol and the optionalfeatures are analyzed. Closed-form expressions for thethroughput are obtained. For non-negligible round-tripdelay relative to packet transmission time, ournumerical results show that the new protocol improvesthe throughput by as much as 60% when compared to theexisting DSMA protocol. For superior performance andsimplicity, the DSMA/DT protocol will be appropriate foruse in high-speed wireless networks.     

On Frequency-Doubled Optical Millimeter-Wave Generation Technique Without Carrier Suppression for In-Building Wireless Over Fiber Applications

A novel optical millimeter-wave (mm-wave) generation scheme based on double-sideband phase modulation (DSB-PM) to achieve frequency doubling without suppressing the carrier is proposed. Theoretical analysis shows that the generated 60-GHz optical mm-wave can tolerant ${pm}$ 0.016-nm wavelength drifting with filter bandwidth ranging from 70 to 100 GHz to sustain first to second harmonic suppression ratio of 18 dB. In addition, error-free transmission of 60-GHz mm-wave at 2.5 Gb/s is experimentally demonstrated over a combined distance of 3-m wireless with 21-dBm equivalent isotropically radiated power, and 250-m fiber to best emulate an in-building network environment. Dispersion effect on the frequency-doubled PM optical mm-wave without carrier suppression is also analyzed and experimentally studied by comparing the link performance over single-mode fiber (SMF-28) and dispersion-shifted fiber (DSF), respectively.      

Fabrication and testing of surface micromachined polycrystallineSiC micromotors

The authors present the fabrication and testing of surface micromachined polycrystalline silicon carbide micromotors. A new multilayer fabrication process utilizing low temperature deposition and micromolding techniques was developed to create the desired SiC structural components. Typical operating voltages of salient-pole and wobble micromotors in room air were 100 and 80 V, respectively. Wobble micromotors were tested at room temperature in atmospheres of argon, nitrogen, oxygen, and room air (25% humidity). The gear ratio as a function of applied voltage was higher for operation in room air as compared with the other gases, suggesting a relationship between gear ratio and relative humidity. In addition, micromotors were tested at elevated temperatures and exhibited stable operation up to 500°C     

Design of robust envelope-constrained filter with orthonormal bases

In the continuous-time envelope-constrained (EC) filtering problem using an orthonormal filter structure, the aim is to synthesize an orthonormal filter such that the noise enhancement is minimized while the noiseless output response of the filter with respect to a specified input signal stays within the upper and lower bounds of the envelope. The noiseless output response of the optimum filter to the prescribed input signal touches the output boundaries at some points. Consequently, any disturbance in the prescribed input signal or error in the implementation of the optimal filter will result in the output constraints being violated. In this paper, we review a semi-infinite envelope-constrained filtering problem in which the constraint robustness margin of the filter is maximized, subject to a specified allowable increase in the optimal noisy power gain. Using a smoothing technique, it is shown that the solution of the optimization problem can be obtained by solving a sequence of strictly convex optimization problems with integral cost. An efficient optimization algorithm is developed based on a combination of the golden section search method and the quasi-Newton method     

Adaptive blind receivers for MC‐CDMA communication systems

In this paper, we propose three adaptive blind algorithms for multiuser multicarrier code division multiple‐access systems in multipath fading channels. The proposed adaptive blind receivers are based on the property of the discreteness of the input data symbol and are updated in every symbol interval. We also use the concept that the variance of the output signal approaches to the variance of the desired signal to get the cost function. The three proposed receiver structures are the traditional finite impulse response (FIR) structure, the despreading (DES) filter structure and the generalized sidelobe canceller (GSC) structure. The advantage of the FIR filter is that the length of the filter weights does not have to be the same length as the spreading code. For the DES filter, the combination of the adaptive weight and the despreading code has the simplest structure than the other two proposed receiver structures. The constrained GSC filter is superior to the other two proposed receiver structures in the environments dominated by multiple‐access interference. By this constraint, the blind GSC filter can guarantee to converge to the desired solution. Simulation results are given to show the effectiveness and comparison of the proposed adaptive blind receivers. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.