Systematic characterization of Cl2 reactive ion etchingfor improved ohmics in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs

Pre-metal-deposition reactive ion etching (RIE) was performed on an Al_0.3Ga_0.7N/AlN/GaN heterostructure in order to improve the metal-to-semiconductor contact resistance. An optimum AlGaN thickness for minimizing contact resistance was determined. An initial decrease in contact resistance with etching time was explained in terms of removal of an oxide surface layer and/or by an increase in tunnelling current with the decrease of the AlGaN thickness. The presence of a dissimilar surface layer was confirmed by an initial nonuniform etch depth rate. An increase in contact resistance for deeper etches was experienced. The increase was related to depletion of the two-dimensional (2-D) electron gas (2-DEG) under the ohmics. Etch depths were measured by atomic force microscopy (AFM). The contact resistance decreased from about 0.45 Ωmm for unetched ohmics to a minimum of 0.27 Ωmm for 70 Å etched ohmics. The initial thickness of the AlGaN layer was 250 Å. The decrease in contact resistance, without excessive complications on device processing, supports RIE etching as a viable solution to improve ohmic contact resistance in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs     

Reduced and differential parallel interference cancellation forCDMA systems

Since code division multiple access systems in multipath environments suffer from multiple access interference (MAI), multiuser detection schemes should be used in the receivers. Parallel interference cancellation (PIC) is a promising method to combat MAI due to its relatively low computational complexity and good performance. It is shown that the complexity of PIC is still high for realistic scenarios in terms of the symbol rate, the number of users, spreading gain, and multipath components. However, two novel methods are introduced to reduce significantly the complexity without sacrificing performance. The first approach, called reduced PIC, takes advantage of the composition of the interference to concentrate interference cancellation only on significant terms. The second approach, called differential PIC, exploits the multistage character of PIC to avoid unnecessary double calculations of certain terms in consecutive stages. It is shown that a combination of both approaches leads to a performance very close to the single-user bound whereas the complexity can be kept on the order of the conventional RAKE receiver     

Mode coupling contribution to radiation losses in curvatures for high and low numerical aperture plastic optical fibers

We have studied the optical power losses due to multiple curvatures in polymethylmetacrylate (PMMA) plastic optical fibers (POFs) of different numerical apertures (NAs) and attenuation. The fibers were tested for several configurations in order to assess the influence of different types of curved-to-straight fiber transitions in the amount of power radiation. We found that losses are below the standards for all tested fiber types, and thus, they are a suitable choice for local area network (LAN) applications. In addition, our results revealed the presence of modal interactions as confirmed using an experimental procedure to estimate the mode coupling strength for the same fibers.     

Integrated chaos generators

This paper surveys the different design issues, from mathematical model to silicon, involved in the design of analog CMOS integrated circuits for the generation of chaotic behavior     

Sequential tripping strategy for a transmission network back-upprotection expert system

This paper describes a sequential tripping strategy used in a wide area back-up protection expert system (BPES) to combat situations in which protection relays have maloperated or information is missing. The BPES is an innovative back-up protection scheme designed to prevent the occurrence of widespread blackouts. The BPES evaluates the certainty that transmission lines are likely to be affected by the fault and uses a sequential tripping strategy to isolate the fault if a firm decision is not available due to maloperated relays and/or missing information. The mode of analysis and the sequential tripping strategy ensures that the BPES will clear a fault at minimum risk to the network. An example is included to demonstrate how the certainty factor based sequential tripping strategy is employed by the BPES to clear a fault which occurred on the South Western part of the UK National Grid System     

Announcement

Samples of nine different fruits grown in Oyo State of Nigeria were obtained from different market locations within Ibadan Municipality and analysed for their vitamin C content. Sweet orange was found to contain the highest amount of vitamin C ($\text{56·0}\text{mg}\text{100}\text{g}$ edible portion) whilst sweet banana variety II contained the lowest amount ($\text{9·4}\text{mg}\text{100}\text{g}$ edible portion). Lime, grapefruit, pawpaw and ‘agbalumo’ were found to contain considerable amounts of vitamin C, having 46·5, 47·0, 43·2 and $\text{48·0}\text{mg}\text{100}\text{g}$ respectively. Consumption of these fruits would thus meet the nutritional requirement for vitamin C in this part of Nigeria. It is also recommended that sweet orange, agbalumo, grapefruit, lime and pawpaw, found to contain considerable amounts of vitamin C, should be processed either at home or factory level to make them available to the people all year round.