Linearity and power characteristics of SiGe HBTs at high temperatures for RF applications

In this paper, the power gain, power-added efficiency (PAE) and linearity of power SiGe heterojunction-bipolar transistors at various temperatures have been presented. The power characteristics were measured using a two-tone load-pull system. For transistors biased with fixed base voltage, the small-signal power gain and PAE of the devices increase with increasing temperature at low base voltages, while they decrease at high base voltages. Besides, the linearity is improved at high temperature for all voltage biases. However, for devices with fixed collector current, the small-signal power gain, PAE, and linearity are nearly unchanged with temperature. The temperature dependence of power and linearity characteristics can be understood by analyzing the cutoff frequency, the collector current, Kirk effect and nonlinearities of transconductance at different temperatures.     

The impacts of high tensile stress CESL and geometry design on device performance and reliability for 90 nm SOI nMOSFETs

The thickness effects of high-tensile-stress contact etch stop layer (HS CESL) and impact of layout geometry (length of diffusion and gate width) on mobility enhancement of 100/(100) 90 nm SOI nMOSFETs were studied in detail. Additionally, we also inspected the low frequency characteristic with low-frequency noise investigation for FB-SOI nMOSFETs. Experimental results show that devices with 1100 Å HS CESL possess worse characteristics and hot-carrier-induced degradations than devices with 700 Å HS CESL due to serious stress-induced defects happen. The lower plateau of Lorentzian noise spectrum observed from input-referred voltage noise (S_vg) implies higher leakage current for the devices with 1100 Å HS CESL. On the other hand, we found that devices with narrow gate widths possess higher driving capacity because of larger fringing electric fields and higher compressive stress in direction perpendicular to the channel. Owing to the more serious impact of compressive stress in direction parallel to the channel, the device performance was degraded particularly for devices with shorter LOD.     

Temperature and current-density distributions in flip-chip solder joints with Cu traces

Three-dimensional simulation was performed to investigate the temperature and current density distribution in flip-chip solder joints with Cu traces during current stressing. It was found that the Cu traces can reduce the Joule heating effect significantly at high stressing currents. When the solder joints were stressed by 0.6 A, the average temperature increases in solder bumps with the Al traces was 26.7°C, and it was deceased to 18.7°C for the solder joint with the Cu traces. Hot spots exist in the solder near the entrance points of the Al or Cu traces. The temperature increases in the hot spot were 29.3°C and 20.6°C, for solder joints with the Al traces and Cu traces, respectively. As for current density distribution, the maximum current density inside the solder decreased slightly from 1.66×10⁵ A/cm² to 1.46×10⁵ A/cm² when the Al traces were replaced by the Cu traces. The solder joints with the Cu traces exhibited lower Joule heating and current crowding effects than those with the Al traces, which was mainly attributed to the lower electrical conductivity of the Cu traces. Therefore, the solder joints with the Cu traces are expected to have better electromigration resistance.     

A wireless brainwave-driven system for daily-life analyses and applications

Smartphones have become more popular in our lives. We will no longer need to use our hands to control phones to do such things as take pictures, switch music, or make phone calls in the future; we will use our brains: all that can be controlled with the use of brainwaves instead. In this study, we implement a novel system that contains the most commonly used functions of a smartphone, including camera use and music play, with an app that uses brainwave controls. In addition, we also provide an essential daily-use function which can remind us to concentrate when we drive, study, or do something important. Under the proposed system, when the wireless brainwave instrument is worn, brainwave signals transfer to the smartphone via Bluetooth automatically and execute the aforementioned functions. Experimental results indicate that the present system is effective and suitable for such applications in our lives. In the future, some more related applications will be developed with brainwave control for practical daily-life uses.     

A Distributed Localization Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks with Improved Grid-Scan and Vector-Based Refinement

Localization is a fundamental and essential issue for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Existing localization algorithms can be categorized as either range-based or range-free schemes. Range-based schemes are not suitable for WSNs because of their irregularity of radio propagation and their cost of additional devices. In contrast, range-free schemes do not need to use received signal strength to estimate distances and only need simple and cheap hardware, and are thus more suitable for WSNs. However, existing range-free schemes are too costly and not accurate enough or are not scalable. To improve previous work, we present a fully distributed range-free localization scheme for WSNs. We assume that only a few sensor nodes, called anchors, know their locations, and the remaining (normal) nodes need to estimate their own locations by gathering nearby neighboring information. We propose an improved grid-scan algorithm to find the estimated locations of the normal nodes. Furthermore, we derive a vector-based refinement scheme to improve the accuracy of the estimated locations. Analysis, simulation, and experiment results show that our scheme outperforms the other range-free schemes even when the communication radius is irregular.     

Differentiated Service Provision in Optical CDMA Network Using Power Control

A simple scheme to use power control for differentiated service provision is proposed for the optical code-division multiple-access network. The main advantages of this scheme are: 1) Interference from other users can be eliminated theoretically. 2) The decoder with simple configuration can be used as compared to that in a previous power control scheme. 3) The design procedure of various service requirements in one network is simplified.      

Robust cerebellar model articulation controller design for unknown nonlinear systems

In this study, a robust cerebellar model articulation controller (RCMAC) is designed for unknown nonlinear systems. The RCMAC is comprised of a cerebellar model articulation controller (CMAC) and a robust controller. The CMAC is utilized to approximate an ideal controller, and the weights of the CMAC are on-line tuned by the derived adaptive law based on the Lyapunov sense. The robust controller is designed to guarantee a specified H/sup /spl infin// robust tracking performance. In the RCMAC design, the sliding-mode control method is utilized to derive the control law, so that the developed control scheme has more robustness against the uncertainty and approximation error. Finally, the proposed RCMAC is applied to control a chaotic circuit. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed control scheme can achieve favorable tracking performance with unknown the controlled system dynamics.     

Bipolar switching characteristics of low-power Geo resistive memory

We reported an ultra low-power resistive random access memory (RRAM) combining a low-cost Ni electrode and covalent-bond GeO_x dielectric. This cost-effective Ni/GeO_x/TaN RRAM device has very small set power of 2 μW, ultra-low reset power of 130 pW, greater than 1 order of magnitude resistance window, and stable retention at 85 °C. The current flow at low-resistance state is governed by Poole-Frenkel conduction with electrons hopping via defect traps, which is quite different from the filament conduction in metal-oxide RRAM.     

Reranking Methods for Visual Search

Most semantic video search methods use text-keyword queries or example video clips and images. But such methods have limitations. To address the problems of example-based video search approaches and avoid the use of specialized models, we conduct semantic video searches using a reranking method that automatically reorders the initial text search results based on visual cues and associated context. We developed two general reranking methods that explore the recurrent visual patterns in many contexts, such as the returned images or video shots from initial text queries, and video stories from multiple channels.