Packet Error Rate Distribution Between Random Bluetooth Piconet Pairs

The packet error rate between two piconets depends on the temporal alignment of their packets and the spectral alignment of the intervals from which the frequencies in their hop sequence are chosen. The relationship between two randomly paired piconets is one of over 828 billion possible relationships. We define these relationships and derive an expression for determining the packet error rate for a specific pair of piconets using single-slot packets. We derive the probability mass function for the packet error rate and extend it to provide the possible packet error rates for an arbitrary number of neighboring piconets. We also derive a probability mass function for the goodput of a piconet with a neighboring piconet. The probability mass functions for the packet error rate is bimodal, meaning the expected value of the goodput or packet error rate is not a good choice for piconet performance analysis. Brian S. Peterson is Chief of the Advanced MASINT Research and Requirements Branch at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. He received the B.S.E.E degree in 1991 from the United States Air Force Academy, an M.S. degree in Systems Engineering in 1995 from, and an M.S.E.E. degree from Florida State University in 1998. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in 2005 from the Air Force Institute of Technology. Dr. Peterson's research interests include computer communication protocols and wireless networking. Dr. Peterson is a member of the IEEE. Rusty O. Baldwin is an Associate Professor of Computer Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. He received the B.S.E.E degree (with honors) in 1987 from the New Mexico State University and the M.S. degree in Computer Engineering in 1992 from AFIT. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1999 from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Dr. Baldwin's research interests include computer communication protocols, information warfare, and wireless networking. Dr. Baldwin is a Senior member of the IEEE. Richard A. Raines is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. He received the B.S.E.E degree (with honors) in 1985 from the Florida State University and the M.S. degree in Computer Engineering in 1987 from AFIT. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1994 from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Dr. Raines' research interests include computer communication protocols, information security, and wireless networking. Dr. Raines is a Senior member of the IEEE.     

Designing the optical interface of a transcutaneous optical telemetry link

Optical telemetry has long been an option for transcutaneous data transfer and has been used in various types of implanted systems. This telemetry modality and the efficiency of these optical links are becoming ever more important as higher bandwidth sources such as cortical recording arrays are being implemented in implanted systems. The design of the transmitter-skin-receiver interface (the "optical interface") is paramount to the operation of a transcutaneous optical telemetry link. This interface functions to achieve sufficient receiver signal power for data communication. This paper describes a mathematical analysis and supporting data that quantitatively describes the relationship between the primary interface design parameters. These parameters include the thickness of the skin through which the light is transmitted, the size of the integration area of the optics, the degree of transmitter-receiver misalignment, the efficiency of the optics system, and the emitter power. The particular combination of these parameters chosen for the hardware device will determine the receiver signal power and, therefore, the data quality for the link. This paper demonstrates some of the tradeoffs involved in the selection of these design parameters and provides suggestions for link design. This analysis may also be useful for transcutaneous optical powering systems.     

Off‐Stoichiometric Thiol‐Ene Chemistry to Dendritic Nanogel Therapeutics

A novel platform of dendritic nanogels is herein presented, capitalizing on the self‐assembly of allyl‐functional polyesters based on dendritic‐linear‐dendritic amphiphiles followed by simple cross‐linking with complementary monomeric thiols via UV initiated off‐stoichiometric thiol‐ene chemistry. The facile approach enabled multigram creation of allyl reactive nanogel precursors, in the size range of 190–295 nm, being readily available for further modifications to display a number of core functionalities while maintaining the size distribution and characteristics of the master batch. The nanogels are evaluated as carriers of a spread of chemotherapeutics by customizing the core to accommodate each individual cargo. The resulting nanogels are biocompatible, displaying diffusion controlled release of cargo, maintained therapeutic efficacy, and decreased cargo toxic side effects. Finally, the nanogels are found to successfully deliver pharmaceuticals into a 3D pancreatic spheroids tumor model.     

Transillumination imaging for blood oxygen saturation estimation of skin lesions

Detecting the early stages of melanoma can be greatly assisted by an accurate estimate of subsurface blood volume and blood oxygen saturation, indicative of angiogenesis. Visualization of this blood volume present beneath a skin lesion can be achieved through the transillumination of the skin. As the absorption of major chromophores in the skin is wavelength dependent, multispectral imaging can provide the needed information to separate out relative amounts of each chromophore. However, a critical challenge to this strategy is relating the pixel intensities observed in a given image to the wavelength-dependent total absorption existing at each spatial location. Consequently, in this paper, we develop an extension to Beer's law, estimated through a novel voxel-based, parallel processing Monte Carlo simulation of light propagation in skin which takes into account the specific geometry of our transillumination imaging apparatus. We then use this relation in a linear mixing model, solved using a multispectral image set, for chromophore separation and oxygen saturation estimation of an absorbing object located at a given depth within the medium. Validation is performed through the Monte Carlo simulation, as well as by imaging on a skin phantom. Results show that subsurface oxygen saturation can be reasonably estimated with good implications for the reconstruction of 3-D skin lesion volumes using transillumination toward early detection of malignancy.     

薄膜电阻器提供不渗透硫的解决方案

当前的小型化趋势将电阻器技术推到了极限。例如,0201尺寸的片状电阻器仅封装就大约占到了元件总成本的60％。对某些在电路板上同一相邻位置使用相同电阻值的设计来说,片状元件阵列可以帮助缓解布局和封装问题。不过,这并不适用于所有厂商。     

Parallel Adder Design with Reduced Circuit Complexity Using Resonant Tunneling Transistors and Threshold Logic

Quantum-effect devices utilizing resonant tunneling are promising candidates for future nano-scale integration. Originating from the technological progress of semiconductor technology, circuit architectures with reduced complexity are investigated by exploiting the negative-differential resistance of resonant tunneling devices. In this paper a resonant tunneling device threshold logic family based on the Monostable-Bistable Transition Logic Element (MOBILE) is proposed and applied to different parallel adder designs, such as ripple carry and binary carry lookahead adders. The basic device is a resonant tunneling transistor (RTT) composed of a resonant tunneling diode monolithically integrated on the drain contact layer of a heterostructure field effect transistor. On the circuit level the key components are a programmable NAND/NOR logic gate, threshold logic gates, and parallel counters. The special properties of MOBILE logic gates are considered by a bit-level pipelined circuit style. Experimental results are presented for the NAND/NOR logic gate.     

用于130nm/90nm新工艺开发的铜CMP阻挡层磨料系统(英文)

通过与实验室的CMP和集成工程师合作,采用测试系统观察两种或两种以上混合配方磨料的选择比。实验数据表明,通过改变单个化学试剂组分的浓度改变磨料的选择比效果突出,磨料配方师可以简便地修改磨料配方。这种方法的优点是,如果改变集成方法或特殊膜层,可以很快地重新优化磨料。如SiN膜取代TEOW淀积氧化物膜,对新系统可以容易地重新优化磨料。介绍了几种磨料组分浓度的去除速率和选择比。     

Disruption of seven hypothetical aryl alcohol dehydrogenase genes from Saccharomyces cerevisiae and construction of a multiple knock-out strain

By in silicio analysis, we have discovered that there are seven open reading frames (ORFs) in Saccharomyces cerevisiae whose protein products show a high degree of amino acid sequence similarity to the aryl alcohol dehydrogenase (AAD) of the lignin-degrading fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium. Yeast cultures grown to stationary phase display a significant aryl alcohol dehydrogenase activity by degrading aromatic aldehydes to the corresponding alcohols. To study the biochemical and the biological role of each of the AAD genes, a series of mutant strains carrying deletion of one or more of the AAD-coding sequences was constructed by PCR-mediated gene replacement, using the readily selectable marker kanMX. The correct targeting of the PCR-generated disruption cassette into the genomic locus was verified by analytical PCR and by pulse-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) followed by Southern blot analysis. Double, triple and quadruple mutant strains were obtained by classical genetic methods, while the construction of the quintuple, sextuple and septuple mutants was achieved by using the marker URA3 from Kluyveromyces lactis, HIS3 from Schizosaccharomyces pombe and TRP1 from S. cerevisiae. None of the knock-out strains revealed any mutant phenotype when tested for the degradation of aromatic aldehydes using both spectrophotometry and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Specific tests for changes in the ergosterol and phospholipids profiles did not reveal any mutant phenotype and mating and sporulation efficiencies were not affected in the septuple deletant. Compared to the wild-type strain, the septuple deletant showed an increased resistance to the anisaldehyde, but there is a possibility that the nutritional markers used for gene replacement are causing this effect.     

Serial and Parallel FPGA-based Variable Block Size Motion Estimation Processors

H.264/AVC is the latest video coding standard adopting variable block size motion estimation (VBS-ME), quarter-pixel accuracy, motion vector prediction and multi-reference frames for motion estimation. These new features result in much higher computation requirements than previous coding standards. In this paper we propose a novel most significant bit (MSB) first bit-serial architecture for full-search block matching VBS-ME, and compare it with systolic implementations. Since the nature of MSB-first processing enables early termination of the sum of absolute difference (SAD) calculation, the average hardware performance can be enhanced. Five different designs, one and two dimensional systolic and tree implementations along with bit-serial, are compared in terms of performance, pixel memory bandwidth, occupied area and power consumption.

An Elastomeric Poly(Thiophene‐EDOT) Composite with a Dynamically Variable Permeability Towards Organic and Water Vapors

An interpenetrating polymer network (IPN) material with controllable nanoporosity is developed for applications such as chemical protection. The IPN material is based on a conducting polymer backbone consisting of thiophene and 3,4 ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT) repeat units–poly(thiophene‐EDOT)–formed within a soft polyurethane support. The IPN demonstrates reversible, electrochemically switchable nanoporosity in the absence of standard liquid electrolyte, with the oxidized state being the open (high porosity) state and the reduced state being the closed (low porosity) state. The switching of the IPN between its oxidized (open) and reduced (closed) states is actuated using application of ±1.0 V. The variability in the IPN porosity, induced by the electrochemical switching, is revealed by large changes in water vapor diffusivity, as well as changes in the diffusivities of the chemical agent simulants chloroethyl ethyl sulfide (CEES) and methyl salicylate (MeS). The closed state of the IPN is able to decrease CEES diffusivity by ≈99% compared to expanded Teflon (ePTFE), while the open state allows high MVT rates comparable to ePTFE. The IPN's ability to allow high MVT under non‐threat conditions (open state) and high protection from agents under threat conditions (closed state) is a unique and desirable characteristic of this novel IPN material.