Design and Simulation of a Wide-Beam High-Power Parabolic Antenna with Dual-Source

For resolving the essential problem that the beam is too narrow in the application of the high-power UWB (Ultra-Wideband) antenna with single-source, a novel wide-beam high-power parabolic antenna with dual-source has been designed, and the edge of the paraboloid was cut in order to reduce the size of the antenna. Radiation properties of this proposed antenna are studied with finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) numerical method. The radiation properties of the proposed antenna can be improved by changing the structure of the parabolic antenna and adjusting the angle between the source and the axis of the antenna. The result shows that the beam-width has been improved significantly under the precondition of maintaining the peak power, and also the size of the antenna was minished by cutting the edge of the paraboloid.     

Thermoelectric Effect Spectroscopy and Photoluminescence of High-Resistivity CdTe:In

Thermoelectric effect spectroscopy and photoluminescence techniques were used to study the defect levels in samples from three crystals of CdTe:In grown by the vertical gradient freeze method. The main goal of the investigation was to study defects, which strongly trap charge carriers or act as recombination centers in order to eliminate them from the technological process. The main difference among detecting and non-detecting samples was the absence of electron traps with a very high capture cross-section and energy 0.6 eV to 0.7 eV, which act as lifetime killers even at low concentrations. Recently published ab initio calculations show a complex of Te antisite and Cd vacancy within this energy range.     

Multiconstrained QoS multipath routing in wireless sensor networks

Sensor nodes are densely deployed to accomplish various applications because of the inexpensive cost and small size. Depending on different applications, the traffic in the wireless sensor networks may be mixed with time-sensitive packets and reliability-demanding packets. Therefore, QoS routing is an important issue in wireless sensor networks. Our goal is to provide soft-QoS to different packets as path information is not readily available in wireless networks. In this paper, we utilize the multiple paths between the source and sink pairs for QoS provisioning. Unlike E2E QoS schemes, soft-QoS mapped into links on a path is provided based on local link state information. By the estimation and approximation of path quality, traditional NP-complete QoS problem can be transformed to a modest problem. The idea is to formulate the optimization problem as a probabilistic programming, then based on some approximation technique, we convert it into a deterministic linear programming, which is much easier and convenient to solve. More importantly, the resulting solution is also one to the original probabilistic programming. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. This work was supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant DBI-0529012, the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award under grant ANI-0093241 and the Office of Naval Research under Young Investigator Award N000140210464. Xiaoxia Huang received her BS and MS in the Electrical Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2000 and 2002, respectively. She is completing her Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Florida. Her research interests include mobile computing, QoS and routing in wireless ad hoc networks and wireless sensor networks. Yuguang Fang received a Ph.D. degree in Systems Engineering from Case Western Reserve University in January 1994 and a Ph.D degree in Electrical Engineering from Boston University in May 1997. He was an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology from July 1998 to May 2000. He then joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Florida in May 2000 as an assistant professor, got an early promotion to an associate professor with tenure in August 2003 and to a full professor in August 2005. He holds a University of Florida Research Foundation (UFRF) Professorship from 2006 to 2009. He has published over 200 papers in refereed professional journals and conferences. He received the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Award in 2001 and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in 2002. He has served on several editorial boards of technical journals including IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing and ACM Wireless Networks. He have also been activitely participating in professional conference organizations such as serving as The Steering Committee Co-Chair for QShine, the Technical Program Vice-Chair for IEEE INFOCOM’2005, Technical Program Symposium Co-Chair for IEEE Globecom’2004, and a member of Technical Program Committee for IEEE INFOCOM (1998, 2000, 2003–2007).     

Programmable SiGe BiCMOS low-pass filter for a multicarrier WCDMA base-station receiver

SiGe BiCMOS low-pass filter for a multicarrier WCDMA base-station receiver is described in this paper. The 4th-order Chebyshev filter with a 0.1-dB passband ripple is designed to drive a high-resolution A/D converter. The −3-dB frequency of the implemented filter can be programmed to four different bandwidths: 2.5, 5, 7.5, and 10 MHz depending on the number of received WCDMA channels. The filter achieves +9.7-dBV in-band IIP3, +20-dBV out-of-band IIP3, and 8.5-nV/√Hz input-referred noise density with 10-MHz bandwidth. The circuit uses a 2.5 V supply and has been fabricated in a 0.25-μm SiGe BiCMOS process.     

A Policy-based Approach for Reconfiguration Management and Enforcement in Autonomic Communication Systems

This paper presents an overview of the policy-based reconfiguration management and enforcement for autonomic communication system platform (Pre-meacs). In contrast to existing management approaches, which require static priori policy configurations, policies are created dynamically. The proposed Pre-meacs framework creates new policies at runtime in response to the changing requirements. A hierarchical policy model is used to refine users and administrators’ high-level goals into low-level objectives. The new approach ensures the success of the reconfiguration through monitoring feedback. The main components of Pre-meacs framework for policy creation, storage, evaluation and enforcement are presented, and the procedures of Pre-meacs in networks reconfiguration management are also demonstrated. Illustrative example demonstrates the performance of the proposed framework.

Cellular Controlled Short-Range Communication for Cooperative P2P Networking

This article advocates a novel communication architecture and associated collaborative framework for future wireless communication systems. In contrast to the dominating cellular architecture and the upcoming peer-to-peer architecture, the new approach envisions a cellular controlled short-range communication network among cooperating mobile and wireless devices. The role of the mobile device will change, from being an agnostic entity in respect to the surrounding world to a cognitive device. This cognitive device is capable of being aware of the neighboring devices as well as on the possibility to establish cooperation with them. The novel architecture together with several possible cooperative strategies will bring clear benefits for the network and service providers, mobile device manufacturers and also end users.

Downlink Capacity Analysis of Collaborative Crossed Timeslots in CDMA TDD Systems

Traffic asymmetry between uplink and downlink is expected to be a remarkable 3G characteristic in cellular mobile multimedia communications. CDMA system with TDD is a good solution to this traffic asymmetry. However, the level of traffic asymmetry may be significantly different from a cell to another cell. To tackle this problem and to support the traffic hot spot, crossed slots are examined. The use of crossed slots is restricted within a certain range of a cell by investigating the inter-cell interference and the maximum planned load factor. We examine the radius of inner zone and discuss the capacity of downlink crossed slots for various neighbor cell environments. Computational results show that the capacity increase in the target cell is outstanding by reducing the service range of neighbor cells. When all six neighbors reduce their service range by 20%, the capacity at target cell crossed slot is increased by 35%. Monte Carlo simulation is performed with large scale fading to verify the numerical analysis.

Modeling of the zero-bias resistance-area product of long wavelength infrared HgCdTe-on-Si diodes fabricated from molecular beam epitaxy-grown epitaxial layers

The electrical effects of dislocations has been studied by modeling zero-bias resistance-area product (R₀A) of long wavelength infrared diodes fabricated in molecular beam epitaxy (MBE)-grown HgCdTe-Si epitaxial films. Results show that dislocations influence both 40 K and 78 K R₀A products in high dislocation density (HgCdTe/Si) material. In low dislocation density samples (HgCdTe/CdZnTe), the variations in 78 K R₀A are limited by the composition (x) variations in Hg_1-xCd_xTe material, whereas dislocation contribution dominates the variations at 40 K. The origin of relatively large spread in 40 K R₀A in both types of samples is traced to the statistical variations in the core charges of dislocations. It is concluded that additional alternatives besides the reduction of dislocation density (such as control of core charges), may also need attention in order to make Si a viable substrate material for the growth of HgCdTe epitaxial layers suitable for devices operating at 40 K.     

Development of nano-composite lead-free electronic solders

Inert, hybrid inorganic/organic, nano-structured chemicals can be incorporated into low melting metallic materials, such as lead-free electronic solders, to achieve desired levels of service performance. The nano-structured materials technology of polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes (POSS), with appropriate organic groups, can produce suitable means to promote bonding between nano-reinforcements and the metallic matrix. The microstructures of lead-free solder reinforced with surface-active POSS tri-silanols were evaluated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Wettability of POSS-containing lead-free solders to copper substrate was also examined. Steady-state deformation of solder joints made of eutectic Sn-Ag solder containing varying weight fractions of POSS of different chemical moieties were evaluated at different temperatures (25°C, 100°C, and 150°C) using a rheometric solids analyzer (RSA-III). Mechanical properties such as shear stress versus simple shear-strain relationships, peak shear stress as a function of rate of simple shear strain, and testing temperature for such nano-composite solders are reported. The service reliability of joints made with these newly formulated nano-composite solders was evaluated using a realistic thermomechanical fatigue (TMF) test profile. Evolution of microstructures and residual mechanical property after different extents of TMF cycles were evaluated and compared with joints made of standard, unreinforced eutectic Sn-Ag solder.     

Reprocessing of thermally oxidized aluminum arsenide (AlAs) in epitaxial multilayers without delamination

Annealing or processing of AlAs that has been subjected to a wet thermal oxidation process can result in severe delamination of material at the oxidation front. This paper reports a procedure for preventing this delamination and presents a possible cause for the delamination.