Biasing a differential pair in low-voltage analog circuits: a systematic approach

This paper deals with a systematic approach to the common mode and the differential mode biasing of a differential transistor pair. Four different variants will be shown, two of these variants show practical importance; a practical circuit of one of these variants turns out to be the traditional long-tailed pair. This variant is mainly suited, if the input signal operates at voltage level, whereas another variant has great advantages if operation at current level occurs. Besides, the latter variant turns out to be very favorable in circuits operating with a single low supply voltage. Two practical circuits based on this variant are given.     

Performance analysis of linear MIMO equalizers for multitone DS/SS systems in multipath channels

In [11] the combination of multitone modulation with direct sequence spectrum spreading has been introduced. The performance of a correlation receiver has been evaluated for a multipath channel. In [12] the analysis has been extended to the presence of a multiple access interference. In the present paper we analyze the equalization problem of such a system for a single user scenario. In order to understand the potential of the system we first investigate the steady-state behavior of the MIMO equalizer for an MMSE design. The investigation is carried out for an equalizer following a receiver made of a bank of filters matched to both the symbol shape and the channel, which is a two-path channel. Assuming BPSK symbols an exact expression of the bit error probability before and after equalization is obtained in the form of an integral by means of the characteristic function method. Next adaptive LMS and RLS structures are proposed. The performance of the RLS algorithm is demonstrated.Part of this work has been presented at ICC '95, Seattle, June 1995.This author would like to thank the Belgian NSF for its financial support.This author is a Research assistant of FRIA.     

A power-efficient channel coder/decoder chip for GSM terminals

A compact power- and computing-delay-efficient channel codec chip for the Pan-European digital cellular radio (GSM) system is presented. This key component for the hand-portable mobile station, mainly implementing GSM Recommendation 5.03 on a full duplex basis, is accomplished through a dedicated architecture and application tailored memories. An important effort was made to increase the testability of the design; the sequentiality, the low pin count, and the presence of embedded macro functions implied the need for internal scan and BIST techniques. Full scan design and self-test facilities, supported by automatic test pattern generating software, resulted in time- and coverage-efficient testing. The chip is fabricated in a double-metal 1.2-μm CMOS technology, using a cell-based design approach incorporating memory and programmable array macro blocks. A full-rate speech channel block is decoded in less than 1.8 ms and typical average in-system power consumption does not exceed 10 mW     

Novel noise measurement setup with high dynamic range for optical receivers

A novel method is proposed, and verified experimentally, for wideband noise measurements with high dynamic range on optical receiver front ends. A synthetic white noise source, based on delayed selfhomodyne mixing, is calibrated with a weak shot noise source. The receiver noise is reconstructed from the calibrated synthetic noise source by ratio measurements.<>     

Numerical and experimental corroboration of an FDTD thin-slot modelfor slots near corners of shielding enclosures

Simple design maxims to restrict slot dimensions in enclosure designs below a half-wave length are not always adequate for minimizing electromagnetic interference (EMI). Complex interactions between cavity modes, sources, and slots can result in appreciable radiation through nonresonant length slots. The finite-difference time domain (FDTD) method can be employed to pursue these issues with adequate modeling of thin slots. Subcellular FDTD algorithms for modeling thin slots in conductors have previously been developed. One algorithm based on a quasistatic approximation has been shown to agree well with experimental results for thin slots in planes. This FDTD thin-slot algorithm is compared herein with two-dimensional (2-D) moment method results for thin slots near corners and plane wave excitation. FDTD simulations are also compared with measurements for slots near an edge of a cavity with an internal source     

Characterization of charge trapping in SiO2/Al2O3 dielectric stacks by pulsed C–V technique

In this work, charge trapping in SiO₂/Al₂O₃ dielectric stacks is characterized by means of pulsed capacitance–voltage measurements. The proposed technique strongly reduces the measurement time and, as a consequence, the impact of charge trapping on the measurement results. Flat band voltage shift and fast current transient during short stress pulses are systematically monitored and the centroid and the amount of the trapped charge are extracted using a first-order model.     

Design of ring convolutional trellis codes for MAP decoding of MPEG-4 images

We propose a trellis-coded modulation system using continuous-phase frequency-shift keying (CPFSK) and ring convolutional codes for transmitting the bits generated by an embedded zerotree wavelet encoder. Improved performance is achieved by using maximum a posteriori decoding of the zerotree symbols, and ring convolutional trellis codes are determined for this decoding method. The CPFSK transmitter is decomposed into a memoryless modulator and a continuous phase encoder over the ring of integers modulo 4; the latter is combined with a polynomial convolutional encoder over the same ring. In the code design process, a search is made of the combined trellis, where the branch metrics are modified to include the source transition matrix. Simulation results of image transmission are provided using the optimized system, including mismatched channel cases.     

A MEMS-based projection display

A period of rapid growth and change in the display industry has recently given rise to many new display technologies. One such technology, the Digital Micromirror Device^TM (DMD), developed at Texas Instruments, represents a unique application of microelectromechanical systems to the area of projection displays. In this paper, we describe a representative example of a DMD-based projection display engine, the digital display engine (DDE). The DDE is based on a single-DMD device having array dimensions of 800×600 elements, illuminated by a metal halide arc lamp through a compact optics train. The engine is designed for portable and fixed conference-room graphics and video display applications, and many design decisions were made to tailor the engine for its intended venue. The design of the projection engine optics and electronics is discussed, along with the basic operation, manufacture, and reliability of the DMD itself     

An image-guided planning system for endosseous oral implants

A preoperative planning system for oral implant surgery was developed which takes as input computed tomographies (CT's) of the jaws. Two-dimensional (2-D) reslices of these axial CT slices orthogonal to a curve following the jaw arch are computed and shown together with three-dimensional (3-D) surface rendered models of the bone and computer-aided design (CAD)-like implant models. A technique is developed for scanning and visualizing an eventual existing removable prosthesis together with the bone structures. Evaluation of the planning done with the system shows a difference between 2-D and 3-D planning methods. Validation studies measure the benefits of the 3-D approach by comparing plans made in 2-D mode only with those further adjusted using the full 3-D visualization capabilities of the system. The benefits of a 3-D approach are then evident where a prosthesis is involved in the planning. For the majority of the patients, clinically important adjustments and optimizations to the 2-D plans are made once the 3-D visualization is enabled, effectively resulting in a better plan. The alterations are related to bone quality and quantity (p<0.05), biomechanics (p<0.005), and esthetics (p<0.005), and are so obvious that the 3-D plan stands out clearly (p<0.005). The improvements often avoid complications such as mandibular nerve damage, sinus perforations, fenestrations, or dehiscences     

Tensor product basis approximations for Volterra filters

The paper studies approximations for a class of nonlinear filters known as Volterra filters. Although the Volterra filter provides a relatively simple and general representation for nonlinear filtering, it is often highly overparameterized. Due to the large number of parameters, the utility of the Volterra filter is limited. The overparameterization problem is addressed in the paper using a tensor product basis approximation (TPBA). In many cases, a Volterra filter may be well approximated using the TPBA with far fewer parameters. Hence, the TPBA offers considerable advantages over the original Volterra filter in terms of both implementation and estimation complexity. Furthermore, the TPBA provides useful insight into the filter response. The paper studies the crucial issue of choosing the approximation basis. Several methods for designing an appropriate approximation basis and error bounds on the resulting mean-square output approximation error are derived. Certain methods are known to be nearly optimal