A multirate transceiver IC for four-wire full-duplex datatransmission

A CMOS IC transceiver for full-duplex data transmission at 14 data rates is described. At the highest rate of 72 kb/s, two of these chips communicate on a four-wire twisted-pair telephone loop with loss at 36 kHz of up to 48 dB. The chip performs all line driving, timing recovery, and data recovery functions with only 11 passive external line interface components. The transceiver can converge on all digital data service (DDS) lines. sending and receiving unscrambled data without the need for a training sequence. The chip was fabricated in a 2-μm, double-polysilicon, double-metal process with an area of 49 mm² . Power consumption is 200 mW from the single 5-V supply     

An analytic and accurate model for the threshold voltage of short channel MOSFETs in VLSI

Based on the two-dimensional Poisson equation, the surface potential distribution along the surface channel of a MOSFET has been analytically derived by assuming negligible source and drain junction depths and its minimum potential is then used to determine the threshold voltage. The existence of a minimum surface potential point along the channel of a MOSFET under an applied drain bias is consistent with the numerical results of the two-dimensional analysis. The effects of finite source and drain junction depths have been elegantly included by modifying the depletion capacitance under the gate and the resulted threshold voltage model has been compared to the results of the two-dimensional numerical analysis. It has been shown that excellent agreement between these results has been obtained for wide ranges of substrate doping, gate oxide thickness, channel length (< 1 μm), substrate bias, and drain voltage. Moreover, comparisons between the developed model and the existing experimental data have been made and good agreement has been obtained. The major advantages of the developed model are that no iterations and no adjustable fitting parameters are required. Therefore, this simple and accurate threshold voltage model will become a useful design tool for ultra short channel MOSFETs in future VLSI implementation.     

Enabling multiparty karaoke over Internet based on low‐level computers: practice and experiment

Karaoke is a system for amateur singing. The traditional online karaoke system does not allow multi‐singers to sing a song in one session. This study designs and implements multiparty karaoke over Internet (MKI) based on low‐level computers. The MKI is an online karaoke system of distributed architecture that allows multi‐singers to sing a song in one session. The MKI must deal with the problems of feedback, asynchronous audio latency at singers’ nodes, round‐trip latency at an inviter's node, and multi‐singers singing a song in one session. The acoustic isolation between microphone and speakers avoids feedback. Network Time Protocol avoids asynchronous audio latency. The third method's round‐trip latency in this study is within 86 ms, and all participants experience the simultaneous singing of the inviter and the invitees. MKI can be used for increasing leisure time, singing skills, and interpersonal relationships. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Molecular beam epitaxial growth of HgCdTe on CdZnTe(311)B

A series of n-type, indium-doped Hg_1−xCd_xTe (x∼0.225) layers were grown on Cd_0.96Zn_0.04Te(311)B substrates by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The Cd_0.96Zn_0.04Te(311)B substrates (2 cm × 3 cm) were prepared in this laboratory by the horizontal Bridgman method using double-zone-refined 6N source materials. The Hg_1−xCd_xTe(311)B epitaxial films were examined by optical microscopy, defect etching, and Hall measurements. Preliminary results indicate that the n-type Hg_1−xCd_xTe(311)B and Hg_1−xCd_xTe(211)B films (x ∼ 0.225) grown by MBE have comparable morphological, structural, and electrical quality, with the best 77 K Hall mobility being 112,000 cm²/V·sec at carrier concentration of 1.9×10⁺¹⁵ cm⁻³.     

Analysis of the properties of soft morphological filtering usingthreshold decomposition

We present the properties of soft morphological operations and the new definitions of binary soft morphological operations. It is shown that soft morphological filtering an arbitrary signal is equivalent to decomposing the signal into binary signals, filtering each binary signal with a binary soft morphological filter, and then reversing the decomposition. This equivalence allows problems in the analysis and the implementation of soft morphological operations in real time by using only logic gates for binary signals instead of sorting the numbers. The architectures of logic-gate implementation of soft morphological operations are also presented. Furthermore, unlike standard morphological filters, the soft morphological closing and opening are in general not idempotent. We develop the conditions and properties for a new class of idempotent soft morphological filters     

MSN: statistical understanding of broadcasted baseball video using multi-level semantic network

The information processing of sports video yields valuable semantics for content delivery over narrowband networks. Traditional image/video processing is formulated in terms of low-level features describing image/video structure and intensity, while the high-level knowledge such as common sense and human perceptual knowledge are encoded in abstract and nongeometric representations. The management of semantic information in video becomes more and more difficult because of the large difference in representations, levels of knowledge, and abstract episodes. This paper proposes a semantic highlight detection scheme using a Multi-level Semantic Network (MSN) for baseball video interpretation. The probabilistic structure can be applied for highlight detection and shot classification. Satisfactory results will be shown to illustrate better performance compared with the traditional ones.     

Tunable Capacitor Based on Polymer-Dispersed Liquid Crystal for Power Harvesting Microsystems

A tunable capacitor based on polymer-dispersed liquid-crystal (PDLC) technology is presented in this paper. Its application for robust power harvesting microsystems was investigated. The power harvesting device utilized a piezoelectric microcantilever excited by ambient random vibrations to convert mechanical energy into electric power. For improving the power harvesting efficiency, the PDLC tunable capacitor was used to adjust the resonance frequency of the piezoelectric microcantilever beam to match the frequency of the ambient vibrations in real time. The fabrication process and measurement results of the PDLC tunable capacitor are detailed. The measured tuning ratio of the PDLC tunable capacitor was 63% at 300-Hz excitation frequency when a 25-V driving voltage was applied. The dielectric and optical properties of the fabricated PDLC tunable capacitor have been examined thoroughly. Based on the results of the experiment, an equivalent lumped-element model of the PDLC tunable capacitor has been developed. The simulation results showed that the impedance of the developed model agreed well with that of the fabricated tunable capacitor. This model can be incorporated into the equivalent circuit of the integrated power harvesting system for efficiency optimization.     

New self-aligned T-gate InGaP/GaAs field-effect transistors grownby LP-MOCVD

This paper reports on self-aligned T-gate InGaP/GaAs FETs using n ⁺/N⁺/δ(P⁺)/n structures. N⁺ -InGaP/δ(P⁺)-InGaP/n-GaAs forms a planar-doped barrier. The inherent ohmic gate of camel-gate FETs together with a highly selective etch between an InGaP and a GaAs layers offers a self-aligned T-shape gate with a reduced effective length. A fabricated device with a reduced gate dimension of 1.5×100 (0.6×100) μm² obtained from 2×100 (1×100) μm² gate metal exhibits an extrinsic transconductance, unity-current gain frequency, and unity-power gain frequency of 78 (80) mS/mm, 9 (19.5), and 28 (30) GHz, respectively     

Aerosol-jet-printed, high-speed, flexible thin-film transistor made using single-walled carbon nanotube solution

A high-purity, surfactant-free and stable SWCNT aqueous solution was prepared using a series of chemical and physical processes. The SWCNT solution has a very limited amount of carbonaceous impurities, if any, and a total metal content of well below 500 ppb. It is stable for months without the addition of surfactant. Such SWCNT aqueous solution enables ink-jet printing of the entire fast, flexible SWCNT-based field-effect thin-film transistor (FE-TFT) at room temperature without the engagement of any traditional dry or wet chemical processes used for fabricating silicon-based transistors. High-speed SWCNT-based flexible FE-TFTs were printed using Aerosol Jet^® printing technology. The printed flexible FE-TFTs were characterized to have a current ON-OFF ratio of greater than 130 with an operation frequency of greater than 5 GHz.     

Channel‐switching and power control mechanisms for improving network connectivity in wireless mesh networks

A Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) consists of fixed wireless routers, each of which provides service for mobile clients within its coverage area and inter‐connects mesh routers to form a connected mesh backbone. Wireless mesh routers are assigned with a channel or a code to prevent collisions in transmission. With a power control mechanism, each router could be assigned with a power level to control connectivity, interference, spectrum spatial reuse, and topology. Assigning high transmitting power level to a router can enhance the network connectivity but may increase the number of neighbors and worsen the collision problem. How to assign an appropriate power level to each router to improve the network connectivity with a constraint of limited channels is one of the most important issues in WMNs. Given a network topology and a set of channels that has been assigned to mesh routers, the proposed channel‐switching mechanism further reassigns each router with a power level and switches channels of routers to optimize both power efficiency and connectivity. A matrix‐based presentation and operations are proposed to respectively identify and resolve the channel switching problems. Simulation study reveals that the proposed mechanisms increase network throughput and provides a variety of route selection, and thus improves the performance of a given WMN. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.