Process simulation for HgCdTe infrared focal plane array flexible manufacturing

The strategy and status of a process simulator for the flexible manufacture of HgCdTe infrared focal plane arrays is described. It has capabilities to simulate Hg vacancy and interstitial effects and cation impurity diffusion, for various boundary conditions in one dimension. Numerical complexity of these problems stems from the necessity of solving diffusion equations for each defect that are coupled to each other via nonlinear interaction terms. The simulator has already led to the prediction of heretofore unexplained experimental data. Current extensions of the one-dimensional simulator planned over the next few years include the addition of Te antisites, antisite-Hg vacancy pairs, and In-Hg vacancy pairs, ion implantation, and various energetic processes (such as ion milling). The sequential effect of various processes will be possible with the input to the simulator looking much like a process run sheet.     

Synchronizable test sequences based on multiple UIO sequences

A test sequence generation method is proposed for testing the conformance of a protocol implementation to its specification in a remote testing system where both external synchronization and input/output operation costs are taken into consideration. The method consists of a set of transformation rules that constructs a duplexU digraph from a given finite state machine (FSM) representation of a protocol specification; and an algorithm that finds a rural postman tour in the duplexU digraph to generate a synchronizable test sequence utilizing multiple UIO sequences. If the protocol satisfies a specific property, namely, the transitions to be tested and the UIO sequences to be employed form a weakly-connected subgraph of the duplexU digraph, the proposed algorithm yields a minimum-cost test sequence. X.25 DTE and ISO Class 0 transport protocols are shown to possess this property. Otherwise, the algorithm yields a test sequence whose cost is within a bound from the cost of the minimum-cost test sequence. The bound for the test sequence generated from the Q.931 network-side protocol is shown to be the cost sum of an input/output operation pair and an external synchronization operation     

Wireless distributed computing in cognitive radio networks

Individual cognitive radio nodes in an ad-hoc cognitive radio network (CRN) have to perform complex data processing operations for several purposes, such as situational awareness and cognitive engine (CE) decision making. In an implementation point of view, each cognitive radio (CR) may not have the computational and power resources to perform these tasks by itself. In this paper, wireless distributed computing (WDC) is presented as a technology that enables multiple resource-constrained nodes to collaborate in computing complex tasks in a distributed manner. This approach has several benefits over the traditional approach of local computing, such as reduced energy and power consumption, reduced burden on the resources of individual nodes, and improved robustness. However, the benefits are negated by the communication overhead involved in WDC. This paper demonstrates the application of WDC to CRNs with the help of an example CE processing task. In addition, the paper analyzes the impact of the wireless environment on WDC scalability in homogeneous and heterogeneous environments. The paper also proposes a workload allocation scheme that utilizes a combination of stochastic optimization and decision-tree search approaches. The results show limitations in the scalability of WDC networks, mainly due to the communication overhead involved in sharing raw data pertaining to delegated computational tasks.     

Hierarchical quantization indexing for wavelet and wavelet packet image coding

In this paper, we introduce the quantization index hierarchy, which is used for efficient coding of quantized wavelet and wavelet packet coefficients. A hierarchical classification map is defined in each wavelet subband, which describes the quantized data through a series of index classes. Going from bottom to the top of the tree, neighboring coefficients are combined to form classes that represent some statistics of the quantization indices of these coefficients. Higher levels of the tree are constructed iteratively by repeating this class assignment to partition the coefficients into larger subsets. The class assignments are optimized using a rate-distortion cost analysis. The optimized tree is coded hierarchically from top to bottom by coding the class membership information at each level of the tree. Context-adaptive arithmetic coding is used to improve coding efficiency. The developed algorithm produces PSNR results that are better than the state-of-art wavelet-based and wavelet packet-based coders in literature.     

The influence of defects on device performance of MBE-grown Si homojunction and strained Si1-xGex/Si heterostructures

Different Si homojunction and strained Si_1-xGe_x/Si heterojunction diodes and bipolar transistors have been fabricated by Si-MBE. The effect of annealing on Si homojunction diodes and transistors are studied. It is found that annealing generally improves the Si device performance, such as the ideality factor and breakdown characteristics. The influence of⁶⁰Co γ irradiation on the Si_1-xGe_x/Si diode performances are investigated by studying the temperature dependence of their electrical characteristics, and the results are correlated with the quality of the MBE-films. γ irradiation causes a drop in material conductivity due to the generation of atom-displacement defects in the whole volume of the wafers and increases the defect density at hetero-interfaces. The forward I-V curves of Si_1-xGe_x/Si devices may shift towards lower or higher voltages, depending on the film quality and the irradiation dose. The increase of defect density in strained Si_1-xGe_x/Si films appears to occur easier for the films with lower quality. Electrical measurements and calculations show that the defect-associated tunneling process is important in current transport for these MBE grown Si homojunction and strained Si_1-xGe_x/Si heterojunction devices, which have initially medium film quality or have been treated by irradiation.     

A Novel Artificial Intelligence Based Timing Synchronization Scheme for Smart Grid Applications

The smart grid control applications necessitate real-time communication systems with time efficiency for real-time monitoring, measurement, and control. Time-efficient communication systems should have the ability to function in severe propagation conditions in smart grid applications. The data/packet communications need to be maintained by synchronized timing and reliability through equally considering the signal deterioration occurrences, which are propagation delay, phase errors and channel conditions. Phase synchronization plays a vital part in the digital smart grid to get precise and real-time control measurement information. IEEE C37.118 and IEC 61850 had implemented for the synchronization communication to measure as well as control the smart grid applications. Both IEEE C37.118 and IEC 61850 experienced a huge propagation and packet delays due to synchronization precision issues. Because of these delays and errors, measurement and monitoring of the smart grid application in real-time is not accurate. Therefore, it has been investigated that the time synchronization in real-time is a critical challenge in smart grid applications, and for this issue, other errors raised consequently. The existing communication systems are designed with the phasor measurement unit (PMU) along with communication protocol IEEE C37.118 and uses the GPS timestamps as the reference clock stamps. The absence of GPS increases the clock offsets, which surely can hamper the synchronization process and the full control measurement system that can be imprecise. Therefore, to reduce this clock offsets, a new algorithm is needed which may consider any alternative reference timestamps rather than GPS. The revolutionary Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables the industrial revolution to provide a significant performance to engineering solutions. Therefore, this article proposed the AI-based Synchronization scheme to mitigate smart grid timing issues. The backpropagation neural network is applied as the AI method that employs the timing estimations and error corrections for the precise performances. The novel AIFS scheme is considered the radio communication functionalities in order to connect the external timing server. The performance of the proposed AIFS scheme is evaluated using a MATLAB-based simulation approach. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme performs better than the existing system.

     

90° SOI optical hybrid for Radio-over-fibre links

Radio-over- fibre (RoF) technology is receiving large attention due to its ability to provide simple antenna front ends, increased capacity and increased wireless access coverage. Coherently detected RoF systems would enable the information to be carried in both the amplitude and phase or in different states of the polarisation of the optical field. Additionally, the selectivity of coherent receiver is very well suited for access networks. We present a 90° optical hybrid built on a silicon-on-insulator planar light-wave circuit, which can be used as the optical front end of the digital coherent receiver in a digitised RoF link and will lead to reduced receiver footprint and cost. The optical hybrid circuit includes 2?×?2 and 4?×?4 multimode interference (MMI) splitters, in a polarisation diversity configuration. The simulation results at vacuum wavelength 1,550 nm show polarisation independence and phase errors between the ports of less than 0.03°. The properties of the prototyped 4?×?4 MMI were measured over a wide range of wavelengths. The 2?×?2 and 4?×?4 MMI showed nearly equal splitting ratios. Measurements of the relative phase relationship between the ports for Transverse Electric mode polarisation are shown to match the simulation results.     

Heavily doped silicon:A potential replacement of conventional plasmonic metals

The plasmonic property of heavily doped p-type silicon is studied here.Although most of the plasmonic devices use metal-insulator-metal(MIM)waveguide in order to support the propagation of surface plasmon polaritons(SPPs),metals that possess a number of challenges in loss management,polarization response,nanofabrication etc.On the other hand,heavily doped p-type silicon shows similar plasmonic properties like metals and also enables us to overcome the challenges pos-sessed by metals.For numerical simulation,heavily doped p-silicon is mathematically modeled and the theoretically obtained re-lative permittivity is compared with the experimental value.A waveguide is formed with the p-silicon-air interface instead of the metal-air interface.Formation and propagation of SPPs similar to MIM waveguides are observed.     

An inductive-degenerated current-bleeding LNA-merged CMOS mixer for 866 MHz RFID reader

This paper presents a new LNA merged mixer topology with improved linearity and noise figure for 866 MHz UHF RFID reader. A novel technique of inductive degeneration of the current bleeding PMOS devices has been utilized to reduce the RF signal leakage through this DC path. This technique along with common-mode inter-modulation feedback and tail capacitance tuning is employed to achieve the superior performance. The mixer was implemented in 130 nm IBM CMOS process and achieved an IIP3 of ?4.1 dBm, a DSB noise figure of 7.5 dB along with a flicker noise 1/f corner frequency of 45 kHz. In addition, with the noise and power matched merged LNA/transconductor, an S₁₁ of ?19.1 dB and an RF-to-IF conversion gain of 17 dB was achieved using a 1.2 V supply. The mixer occupied a silicon area of only 0.54 sq. mm which includes all the center-tapped degeneration and stray tuning inductors.     

Prioritized Medium Access Control in Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks: Protocol and Analysis

Cognitive radio (CR) technology enables opportunistic exploration of unused licensed channels. By giving secondary users (SUs) the capability to utilize the licensed channels (LCs) when there are no primary users (PUs) present, the CR increases spectrum utilization and ameliorates the problem of spectrum shortage. However, the absence of a central controller in CR ad hoc network (CRAHN) introduces many challenges in the efficient selection of appropriate data and backup channels. Maintenance of the backup channels as well as managing the sudden appearance of PUs are critical issues for effective operation of CR. In this paper, a prioritized medium access control protocol for CRAHN, PCR-MAC, is developed which opportunistically selects the optimal data and backup channels from a list of available channels. We also design a scheme for reliable switching of a SU from the data channel to the backup channel and vice-versa. Thus, PCR-MAC increases network throughput and decreases SUs’ blocking rate. We also develop a Markov chain-based performance analysis model for the proposed PCR-MAC protocol. Our simulations, carried out in \(NS-3\) , show that the proposed PCR-MAC outperforms other state-of-the-art opportunistic medium access control protocols for CRAHNs.