Flip chip underfill flow characteristics and prediction

This paper presents recent results on underfill flow characterization. The flow properties of a number of commercial and experimental underfills were recorded and analyzed using quartz test chips with specially designed bump patterns (e.g., peripheral, full array, and mixed designs). Each was bonded onto an organic laminate substrate to form a flip chip package. Underfill was then applied to the packages and flow time, filler settling, and air entrapment were evaluated. Good flow can be described in terms of three measurable parameters, namely, viscosity, contact angle, and more importantly, filler size and distribution. Viscosity and contact angle are commonly used in Hele Shaw and Washburn models. However, these models do not take filler properties into consideration. In general, underfills with particles less than 5 μm exhibited faster and more uniform flow fronts than materials with larger particles. The best flowing materials worked well with standoff heights between 50 and 75 μm, while the poorer flowing materials showed streaking, voiding, and fingering at these heights. At gaps of 25 μm, however, nearly all the materials exhibited pronounced and reproducible streaking     

Constraints on the cutoff frequencies of Mth-band linear-phase FIRfilters

Constraints are derived for the cutoff frequencies of linear-phase FIR Mth-band filters such that the filters have good passband and stopband characteristics, i.e. ones that very closely approximate an ordinary (non Mth-band) filter designed using some optimal method. Constraints on lowpass filters are first considered, and the results are extended to multiband filters     

Reverse Authentication in Financial Transactions and Identity Management

New families of protocol, based on communication over human-based side channels, permit secure pairing or group formation in ways such that no party has to prove its name. Rather, individuals are able to hook up devices in their possession to others that they can identify by context. We examine a model in which, to prove his or her identity to a party, the user first uses one of these “human-interactive security protocols” or HISPs to connect to it. Thus, when authenticating A to B, A first authenticates a channel she has to B: the reverse direction. This can be characterised as bootstrapping a secure connection using human trust. This provides new challenges to the formal modelling of trust and authentication.     

Performance Bound for LDPC Coded Unitary Space–Time Modulation

This paper is concerned with the bit error probability (BEP) of coded unitary space–time modulation systems based on finite-length low density parity check (LDPC) codes. The union bound on the BEP of the maximum likelihood (ML) decoding is derived for any code rate, unitary space–time constellation and mapping. The tightness of the bound is checked with simulation results of the ordered statistic decoding (OSD). Numerical and simulation results show that the union bound is also close to the error performance of the sum–product (SP) decoding at low BEP levels when Gray mapping is employed. The derived bound is useful to benchmark the error performance of finite-length coded unitary space–time modulation systems, especially for those that employ short-to-medium length LDPC codes.

Study for the non-contact characterization of metallization ageing of power electronic semiconductor devices using the eddy current technique

The ageing of the metallization layers of power semiconductor dies may be the cause of failure of power semiconductor modules. Usual indicators of failure like on-state voltage drops make it difficult to highlight the deterioration of the metallization layer. In this study, we evaluate the relevance of the characterization of power device metallizations by means of the eddy current sensors. Experimental results show the ability to monitor the state and the evolution of the metallization ageing with such a technique.     

Linear phase paraunitary filter bank with filters of differentlengths and its application in image compression

In this paper, the theory, structure, design, and implementation of a new class of linear-phase paraunitary filter banks (LPPUFBs) are investigated. The novel filter banks with filters of different lengths can be viewed as the generalized lapped orthogonal transforms (GenLOTs) with variable-length basis functions. Our main motivation is the application in block-transform-based image coding. Besides having all of the attractive properties of other lapped orthogonal transforms, the new transform takes advantage of its long, overlapping basis functions to represent smooth signals in order to reduce blocking artifacts, whereas it reserves short basis functions for high-frequency signal components like edges and texture, thereby limiting ringing artifacts. Two design methods are presented, each with its own set of advantages: the first is based on a direct lattice factorization, and the second enforces certain relationships between the lattice coefficients to obtain variable length filters. Various necessary conditions for the existence of meaningful solutions are derived and discussed in both cases. Finally, several design and image coding examples are presented to confirm the validity of the theory     

Energy-Efficient Broadcast and Multicast Trees in Wireless Networks

The wireless networking environment presents formidable challenges to the study of broadcasting and multicasting problems. In this paper we focus on the problem of multicast tree construction, and we introduce and evaluate algorithms for tree construction in infrastructureless, all-wireless applications. The performance metric used to evaluate broadcast and multicast trees is energy-efficiency. We develop the Broadcast Incremental Power (BIP) algorithm, and adapt it to multicast operation by introducing the Multicast Incremental Power (MIP) algorithm. These algorithms exploit the broadcast nature of the wireless communication environment, and address the need for energy-efficient operation. We demonstrate that our algorithms provide better performance than algorithms that have been developed for the link-based, wired environment.     

Energy-aware wireless networking with directional antennas: the case of session-based broadcasting and multicasting

We consider ad hoc wireless networks that use directional antennas and have limited energy resources. To explore quantitatively the advantage offered by the use of directional antennas over the case of omnidirectional antennas, we consider the case of connection-oriented multicast traffic. Building upon our prior work on multicasting algorithms, we introduce two protocols that exploit the use of directional antennas and evaluate their performance, We observe significant improvement with respect to the omnidirectional case, in terms of both energy efficiency and network lifetime. Additionally, we show that further substantial increase in the network's lifetime can be achieved by incorporating a simple measure of a node's residual energy into the node's cost function.     

Filter banks for improved LCD motion

In the past several years much attention has been placed on improving the motion picture quality of liquid crystal displays (LCDs). One pervasive problem is motion blur which occurs due to the inherent sample-and-hold nature of LCD image formation. In this work, we take a signal processing approach to motion blur reduction by pre-processing the data before it is sent to the display. We develop a two-channel non-perfect reconstruction filter bank that is able to reduce the amount of perceivable motion blur. In addition, as in similar works, we discriminate between different regions of the scene and weight the application of the algorithm based on their susceptibility to motion blur. Perceptual tests indicate that our algorithm reduces the amount of perceivable motion blur on LCDs.