Computer interface design: A user-centered approach

Enhancing the way people use computers to perform tasks has become a very important issue in interface design and human-computer interactions. When the concept of human-computer interaction first began to emerge it was commonly understood as the hardware and software through which a human and computer could effectively communicate (Laurel, 1990). This effective communication is also know as user-friendliness. The concept of user friendliness has recently been expanded to include various attributes and cognitive aspects of the user's needs and experiences. Focus should be on the user's experiences, expectations, preferences, and cognitive aspects in developing efficient and effective computer interface designs. It is the basic premise of this paper to emphasize using a user-centered design in developing computer interfaces.     

Solder engineering for optoelectronic packaging

In addition to providing electrical connections, solder is useful in the formation of passive, precision alignments for optoelectronic packaging. Different designs have demonstrated micrometer-level alignment accuracies, and the aligned structures are becoming more and more complex. Solder engineering has been successfully introduced into the field of optoelectronics, and it is expected to be applied to many other areas demanding low-cost, precision alignments.     

Degradation of junction leakage in devices subjected to gateoxidation in nitrous oxide [MOS transistors]

Nitrided gate oxides offer several electrical and reliability advantages over conventional oxides and also provide a good barrier against impurity diffusion. Oxidation in nitrous oxide (N₂O) has been very successful in overcoming some of the problems associated with nitridation in ammonia. The authors have observed that the extent of N₂O oxidation has a strong detrimental effect on the drain leakage current of MOS transistors in the off state. This phenomenon has been identified to be caused by an increase in the active area junction leakage current     

Improved-performance, InGaAs/InGaAsP (/spl lambda/=980 nm) asymmetric broad-waveguide diode lasers via waveguide-core doping

Doping the waveguide core (p=2/spl times/10/sup 17/ cm/sup -1/) in asymmetric-waveguide InGaAs/InGaAsP, two-quantum-well diode lasers (/spl lambda/=980 nm) raises the injection efficiency to 90% and decreases the threshold-current density, J/sub th/. For 2 mm long, 100 /spl mu/m wide stripe, uncoated chips J/sub th/ decreases from /spl sim/188 A/cm/sup 2/ to /spl sim/150 A/cm/sup 2/. High characteristic temperatures for J/sub th/ and the slope efficiency are obtained: T/sub 0/=215K and T/sub 1/=600K.     

Wide-band fiber optic signal processor

Operation of a 16-tap fiber-optic delay line configured as a bandpass filter with a fundamental frequency of 2.0 GHz over the frequency range from 0 to 12.5 GHz is discussed. Equal tap weights and spacings were used to facilitate comparison of experimental and predicted results. More than 10¹¹ analog multiplications per second are performed in this relatively simple signal processing system. Other processors for performing functions such as matched filtering and correlation can be implemented by appropriate choice of the mirror reflectances and fiber lengths     

Performance characteristics of parallel resonant convertor

Using a set of characteristic curves derived from the stateplane analysis, a novel approach to the design of the parallel resonant convertor (PRC) is presented. It will be shown that the steady-state response of the convertor can also be obtained from these characteristic curves     

Multi-H phase-coded modulations with asymmetric modulationindexes

Multi-H phase-coded modulation (MHPM) is a bandwidth-efficient modulation scheme which offers substantial coding gain over conventional digital modulation schemes. MHPM with asymmetric modulation indices corresponding to the bipolar data +1 and -1 is considered, and numerical results for the minimum Euclidean distances are provided. It is shown that performance improvements on the error probability over conventional MHPM are gained with essentially the same bandwidth and a very slight modification in implementation. The upper bounds on the error probabilities as functions of observation intervals and received E_b/N₀ are also investigated in detail. It is concluded that the concept of asymmetric modulation indices for MHPM is attractive for bandwidth and power-efficient modulation