An 8-bit 10 MS/s folding and interpolating ADC using thecontinuous-time auto-zero technique

An 8-bit 10-MS/s folding and interpolating analog-to-digital converter (ADC) using the continuous-time auto-zero technique is presented. Compared with the conventional architecture, it can improve the nonlinear errors and enhance the signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR). Both architectures have been fabricated on the same die of a 0.35-μm DPDM CMOS process and measured under the same conditions with a 2.7-V supply voltage and 10-MHz sampling rate. The continuous-time auto-zero architecture shows an ENOB of 7.7 bits while the conventional one shows 5.8 bits     

A low voltage-power 13-bit 16 MSPS CMOS pipelined ADC

A low voltage-power, 13-bit and 16 MSPS analog-to-digital converter (ADC) was implemented in 0.25-/spl mu/m one-poly five-metal standard CMOS process with MIM capacitors. This ADC used a constant-gm switch to improve the nonlinear effect and a telescopic operational transconductance amplifier with a wide-swing biasing technique for power saving and low supply voltage operation. The converter achieved a peak SNDR of 59.2 dB with 16.384 MSPS, a low supply voltage of 1.3V, and Nyquist input frequency of 8.75 MHz. The static INL of /spl plusmn/2.0 LSB and DNL of /spl plusmn/0.5 LSB were obtained. The total power consumption of this converter was 78 mW. This chip occupied 3.4 mm /spl times/ 3.6 mm area.     

Single-feed dual-band circularly polarised microstrip antenna

A novel technique for obtaining dual-band circular polarisation (CP) radiation of a single-feed circular microstrip antenna is proposed and demonstrated. By embedding two pairs of arc-shaped slots of proper lengths close to the boundary of a circular patch, and protruding one of the arc-shaped slots with a narrow slot, the circular microstrip antenna can perform dual-band CP radiation using a single probe feed. Details of the antenna design and experimental results are presented     

Small slot-coupled circularly-polarised microstrip antenna withmodified cross-slot and bent tuning-stub

A novel design of small slot-coupled circularly-polarised circular microstrip antenna with a modified cross-slot cut in the patch and a bent tuning-stub aligned along the patch boundary is proposed and experimentally studied. Results show that, for fixed circular polarisation (CP) operation, the antenna proposed can have an antenna size reduction of ~80%, as compared to a regular-size CP design. The significant size reduction of the proposed antenna is due to the novel modified cross-slot cut in the patch, and CP operation is obtained using a bent tuning-stub incorporating a properly oriented coupling-slot in the ground plane of the microstrip feed line     

A 90–96 GHz CMOS down-conversion mixer with high conversion gain and excellent LO–RF isolation

A 90–96 GHz down-conversion mixer for 94 GHz image radar sensors using standard 90 nm CMOS technology is reported. RF negative resistance compensation technique, i.e. NMOS LC-oscillator-based RF transconductance (GM) stage load, is used to increase the output impedance and suppress the feedback capacitance C_gd of RF GM stage. Hence, conversion gain (CG), noise figure (NF) and LO–RF isolation of the mixer can be enhanced. The mixer consumes 15 mW and achieves excellent RF-port input reflection coefficient of ?10 to ?36.4 dB for frequencies of 85–105 GHz. The corresponding -10 dB input matching bandwidth is 20 GHz. In addition, for frequencies of 90–96 GHz, the mixer achieves CG of 6.3–9 dB (the corresponding 3-dB CG bandwidth is greater than 6 GHz) and LO–RF isolation of 40–45.1 dB, one of the best CG and LO–RF isolation results ever reported for a down-conversion mixer with operation frequency around 94 GHz. Furthermore, the mixer achieves an excellent input third-order intercept point of 1 dBm at 94 GHz. These results demonstrate the proposed down-conversion mixer architecture is very promising for 94 GHz image radar sensors.     

High Risk of Viral Reactivation in Hepatitis B Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

HBV reactivation (HBVr) can occur in hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg)-positive and negative patients. Here, we determined the incidence of HBVr and its related hepatitis in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). From 2000 to 2017, 3307 SLE cases were retrospectively reviewed for episodes of hepatitis. The incidence, long-term outcomes and risk factors associated with HBVr, including HBsAg reverse seroconversion (RS) were analyzed. Among them, 607 had available HBsAg status. Fifty-five (9.1%) patients were positive for HBsAg and 63 (11.4%) were HBsAg-negative/antibody to hepatitis B core antigen (anti-HBc)-positive (resolved hepatitis B infection, RHB). None of them received antiviral prophylaxis before immunosuppressive treatment. During a mean 15.4 years of follow-up, 30 (54.5%) HBsAg-positive patients developed HBVr and seven (23.3%) died of liver failure, whereas only two (3.2%) RHB cases experienced HBsAg reverse seroconversion (RS). Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that age ≥ 40 years at diagnosis of SLE (HR 5.30, p < 0.001), receiving glucocorticoid-containing immunosuppressive therapy (HR 4.78, p = 0.003), and receiving glucocorticoid ≥ 10 mg prednisolone equivalents (HR 3.68, p = 0.003) were independent risk factors for HBVr in HBsAg-positive patients. Peak level of total bilirubin ≥ 5 mg/dL during HBVr was an independent factor of mortality (p = 0.002). In conclusion, the risk of HBVr was associated with glucocorticoid daily dose. Antiviral prophylaxis is mandatory for SLE patients diagnosed at age of ≥40 years who receive ≥ 10 mg daily dose of oral prednisone or equivalent.     

Decision tree based control chart pattern recognition

This paper presents a new approach to classify six anomaly types of control chart patterns (CCP), of systematic pattern, cyclic pattern, upward shift, downward shift, upward trend, and downward trend. Current CCP recognition methods use either unprocessed raw data or complex transformed features (via principal component analysis or discrete wavelet transform) as the input representation for the classifier. The objective of using selected features is not only for dimension reduction of input representation, but also implies the process of data compression. In contrast, using raw data is often computationally inefficient while using transformed features is very tedious in most cases. Therefore, owing to its computational advantage, using appropriate features of CCP to achieve good classification accuracy becomes more promising in real process implementation. In this study, using three features of CCP shows quite a competitive performance in terms of classification accuracy and computational loading. More importantly, the proposed method presented here has potential to be generalized to medical, financial, and other application of temporal data.     

A bibliometric analysis of the performance of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Water Research</Emphasis>

This paper presents a detailed chronological survey of papers published in the journal titled Water Research which started publication since 1967. This current investigation reviews publication patterns between 1967 and 2008. An analysis of the research performance according to publication output, distribution of words in article title, author keywords, and keywords plus. Performances of countries, institutes, and authors, including total, single, collaborative, first author, and corresponding author publications were analyzed. The most-frequently cited articles each year and the articles of the highest impact in 2008 were also reported. Results showed that “activated sludge” was the most frequently used author keyword, followed by “adsorption,” and “drinking water.” Authors from 114 different countries/territories published in the journal, with the most articles submitted by authors from the USA.     

Mechanically coupled CMOS-MEMS free-free beam resonator arrays with enhanced power handling capability

Integrated CMOS-MEMS free-free beam resonator arrays operated in a standard two-port electrical configuration with low motional impedance and high power handling capability, centered at 10.5 MHz, have been demonstrated using the combination of pull-in gap reduction mechanism and mechanically coupled array design. The mechanical links (i.e., coupling elements) using short stubs connect each constituent resonator of an array to its adjacent ones at the high-velocity vibrating locations to accentuate the desired mode and reject all other spurious modes. A single second-mode free-free beam resonator with quality factor Q > 2200 and motional impedance R(m) < 150 kΩ has been used to achieve mechanically coupled resonator arrays in this work. In array design, a 9-resonator array has been experimentally characterized to have performance improvement of approximately 10× on motional impedance and power handling as compared with that of a single resonator. In addition, the two-port electrical configuration is much preferred over a one-port configuration because of its low-feedthrough and high design flexibility for future oscillator and filter implementation.     

The impact of estimation error on the dynamic order admission policy in B2B MTO environments

When swarming demands cause stringent capacity situations, order promising becomes a challenging job. However, a dynamic order admission policy by utilizing the concept of revenue management may find a good way to solve the problem. Unfortunately, the expected profit under different dynamic order admission policies is sensitive to the estimation error of order forecasts. In this paper, the impact of estimation error is investigated under various order structures. The post analysis is performed and shows significant statistical difference among the optimal unbiased DSKP policy, biased DSKP policy, and FCFS policy. The results reveal the robustness and superiority of DSKP policy in most scenarios.