A review of reliability prediction methods for electronic devices

A wide range of reliability prediction methods is available today for electronic systems. This article classifies the commonly used and referred to reliability prediction methodologies into some categories easy to understand. A set of selected methods, which are of relevance to many industries, the aerospace industry among others, are reviewed and the possibility they offer to address the stated objectives is assessed. Their respective advantages and shortcomings are the basis for the recommendation we make to use the methods in a combined fashion (simultaneously or successively) along the product development process.     

COMPARATIVE LIMITING FLUX ANALYSIS OF BLACK LIQUOR AND POLYETHYLENE GLYCOL IN ULTRAFILTRATION

Ultrafiltration of black liquor was carried out using an asymmetric membrane and the results were compared with that of polyethylene glycol, a standard macromolecule, in a stirred batch cell. The effects of system parameters, e.g., pressure, concentration and stirrer speed on permeate flux and solute rejection were studied extensively for both the solutes.

An osmotic pressure model was used to analyze experimental results. To take into account the phenomena of concentration polarization, an extra resistance term, called the polarization layer resistance (R_p), was incorporated into the model. The polarization layer resistance was found to be a function of flow regime and concentration at the membrane. To correlate these, the following two types of relationship were examined and tested with the experimental results,

and

where a, b, c, a₁, b₁, are constants.     

AKH-NFIS: Adaptive Krill Herd Network Fuzzy Inference System for Mobile Robot Navigation

Wireless Personal Communications - Mobile robot navigation has been a current issue in the most recent two decades. Mobile robots are necessary to explore in obscure and dynamic situations. To...     

Irradiation of Transition Metal Dichalcogenides Using a Focused Ion Beam: Controlled Single‐Atom Defect Creation

Manipulation and structural modifications of 2D materials for nanoelectronic and nanofluidic applications remain obstacles to their industrial‐scale implementation. Here, it is demonstrated that a 30 kV focused ion beam can be utilized to engineer defects and tailor the atomic, optoelectronic, and structural properties of monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). Aberration‐corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy is used to reveal the presence of defects with sizes from the single atom to 50 nm in molybdenum (MoS₂) and tungsten disulfide (WS₂) caused by irradiation doses from 10¹³ to 10¹⁶ ions cm^?2. Irradiated regions across millimeter‐length scales of multiple devices are sampled and analyzed at the atomic scale in order to obtain a quantitative picture of defect sizes and densities. Precise dose value calculations are also presented, which accurately capture the spatial distribution of defects in irradiated 2D materials. Changes in phononic and optoelectronic material properties are probed via Raman and photoluminescence spectroscopy. The dependence of defect properties on sample parameters such as underlying substrate and TMD material is also investigated. The results shown here lend the way to the fabrication and processing of TMD nanodevices.     

Design and Implementation of Optical Signal Reinstatement Technique for High DPSK RZ Transceiver Scheme

Wireless Personal Communications - Optical signal reinstatement (OSR) is a common technique used in high-speed communication systems. OSR can be achieved using various techniques such as;...     

Bulk micromachining of silicon in TMAH-based etchants for aluminum passivation and smooth surface

The fabrication of silicon based micromechanical sensors often requires bulk silicon etching after aluminum metallization. All wet silicon etchants including ordinary undoped tetramethyl ammonium hydroxide (TMAH)-water solution attack the overlaying aluminum metal interconnect during the anisotropic etching of (100) silicon. This paper presents a TMAH-water based etching recipe to achieve high silicon etch rate, a smooth etched surface and almost total protection of the exposed aluminum metallization. The etch rate measurements of (100) silicon, silicon dioxide and aluminum along with the morphology studies of etched surfaces are performed on both n-type and p-type silicon wafers at different concentrations (2, 5, 10 and 15%) for undoped TMAH treated at various temperatures as well as for TMAH solution doped separately and simultaneously with silicic acid and ammonium peroxodisulphate (AP). It is established through a detailed study that 5% TMAH-water solution dual doped with 38 gm/l silicic acid and 7 gm/l AP yields a reasonably high (100) silicon etch rate of 70 μm/h at 80 °C, very small etch rates of SiO₂ and pure aluminum (around 80 Å/h and 50 Å/h, respectively), and a smooth surface (±7 nm) at a bath temperature of 80 °C. The etchant has been successfully used for fabricating several MEMS structures like piezoresistive accelerometer, vaporizing liquid micro-thruster and flow sensor. In all cases, the bulk micromachining is carried out after the formation of aluminum interconnects which is found to remain unaffected during the prolonged etching process at 80 °C. The TMAH based etchant may be attractive in industry due to its compatibility with standard CMOS process.     

Multiuser Detection in SDMA–OFDM Wireless Communication System Using Complex Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network

The space division multiple access–orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (SDMA–OFDM) wireless system has become very popular owing high spectral efficiency and high load capability. The optimal maximum likelihood multiuser detection (MUD) technique suffers from high computational complexity. On the other hand the linear minimum mean square error (MMSE) MUD techniques yields poor performance and also fails to detect users in overload scenario, where the number of users are more than that of number of receiving antennas. By contrast, the differential evolution algorithm (DEA) aided minimum symbol error rate (MSER) MUD can sustain in overload scenario as it can directly minimizes probability of error rather than mean square error. However, all these classical techniques are still complex as these do channel estimation and multiuser detection sequentially. In this paper, complex multi layer perceptron (CMLP) neural network model is suggested for MUD in SDMA–OFDM system as it do both channel approximation and MUD simultaneously. Simulation results prove that the CMLP aided MUD performs better than the MMSE and MSER techniques in terms of enhanced bit error rate performance with low computational complexity.     

Scanning of sector and cosecant beams generated by a circular aperture

A method of scanning a one-dimensional shaped pattern generated by a circular aperture is presented. It is shown that the desired beam shape can be retained in the desired scan plane by superposing on the nonlinear phase distribution applied along and parallel to the meridian plane, a linear phase progression along the perpendicular direction. Analysis carried out using the stationary phase method of evaluating the integral reveals that the gradient of the linear phase progression is a function of position along the meridian plane of the aperture. Expressions for the phase functions are derived. Computed results on the phase distribution and the radiation pattern are presented.     

Routing Correlated Data in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Sensory data gathered from sensor nodes in physical proximity tend to exhibit strong correlation. To minimize such redundancy and hence curtail the load in wireless sensor networks with a goal to conserve energy, effective in-network fusion schemes have been extensively proposed in the literature. To this end, routing schemes supporting data fusion are extremely important as they dictate where and when sensory data streams shall intersect with each other and thus fusion will be performed. In this article we briefly articulate this problem and classify recently proposed routing schemes supporting data fusion in wireless sensor networks into three categories: routing-driven, coding-driven, and fusion-driven. We also give an overview of various algorithms in each category by summarizing their design approaches, benefits, and drawbacks.