A low power tunable Gm–C filter based on double CMOS inverters in 0.35?μm

In this article, an inverter based transconductor using double CMOS pair is proposed for implementation of a second order lowpass G_m?CC Filter. The proposed operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) and biquad filter are designed using standard 0.35???m CMOS technology. Simulation results demonstrate the central frequency tunability from 10?kHz to 2.8?MHz which is suitable for the wireless specifications of Bluetooth (650?kHz), CDMA 2000 (700?kHz) and Wideband CDMA (2.2?MHz) applications. The power consumption of the filter is 445?nW and 178???W at 10?kHz and 2.8?MHz from 3.3?V supply voltage, respectively. The active area occupied by the designed filter on the silicon is 215?×?720???m². The proposed approach guarantees the upper bound on THD to be ?40?dB for 300?mVpp signal swing. Employing the double CMOS pair in the inverters causes PSRR to reach 68.6?dB which is higher than similar works.     

A broadband slant polarized cavity backed microstrip‐fed wide‐slot antenna array

This article deals with the design of a broadband cavity‐backed microstrip‐fed wide‐slot antenna array for L‐band applications. For verification purpose, a sample 1 × 4‐element antenna array has been designed, manufactured and tested. Experimental results have shown satisfactory agreement with the simulation. The proposed antenna array exhibits a measured impedance bandwidth of 1.4 GHz (90%) with frequency of 0.85 to 2.25 GHz and the gain is higher than 11 dBi. The designed antenna has small size and low weight and can be fabricated using a low‐cost fabrication process for easy integration with RF circuits and microwave components. This work is useful for some radar applications and radio frequency identification systems.     

Analog to digital converter for high density neural signal recording front-end in 90 nm

High-fidelity recording of neural signals requires varying levels of signal gain to capture low-amplitude single-unit activity in the presence of high-amplitude population activity. A floating-point approach has been used to widen the dynamic range of analog-to-digital converters (ADC) designed for this application. In this paper we present an ADC, designed for multi-channel, portable neural signal recording systems. To achieve low power consumption, small die area and wide dynamic range, an ADC based on a time-based algorithm, combined with a floating-point pipelined structure has been designed and simulated. A conventional variable-gain amplifier (VGA) stage has been eliminated in favor of a reference-current in a time-based ADC architecture. The 12-b pipelined time-based floating-point ADC has been designed with a 7-b mantissa and an exponent that provides an additional 5 bits of dynamic range. The mantissa is determined by a uniform 7-b pipelined time-based analog to digital converter. The ADC chip was designed and simulated in a 90 nm CMOS process, which occupies an active area of 360 μm × 550 μm, and consumes 7.8 μW at 1.2 V in full-scale conversion.     

Pseudo Relative Permeability Compensation for Numerical Dispersion

Abstract

Reservoir simulation is an approach of recreating the occurring phenomena of the reservoir by solving the general governing equations that describe the reservoir processes. Finite difference technique is an effective method to get the solution out of the reservoir models for different scenarios. In light of many benefits of using course grid models rather than fine grid and simplification, using the same relative permeability curves from laboratory cannot be applied in the fields having large grid dimensions because of numerical dispersion (smearing) of finite difference modeling. Thus, the relative permeability curves must be modified based on the grid size and then applied into the simulator. The authors introduce a methodology to demonstrate how the lab relative permeability curves can be modified based on coarse grid sizes to honor the same anticipated rock behavior. Thus, an objective function is developed to minimize the numerical dispersion in a synthetic tilted reservoir by automatically changing the relative permeability and comparing the results with the equivalent fine model. By this method, modified relative permeability curves can be obtained and introduced to the coarse model. This modification workflow is almost inevitable for reservoir simulation models with very coarse grids and it eases the history-matching process by approaching more realistic solution.     

Design of X‐band Moreno cross‐guide coupler based on superformula curves

This article deals with the design of Moreno cross‐guide couplers based on supershapes for X‐band applications. Crossed‐waveguide couplers are mainly used due to their compact structures. In these couplers, cross‐aperture structures are usually employed to offer flat coupling and high isolation. In the present article, the possible shapes for apertures and metal inserts that can be derived by the superfomula curves are explored and the effects of variations of superformula parameters are investigated on the performance of Moreno coupler. Finally, the proposed Moreno coupler is validated through fabrication and measurement. The experimental validation shows an excellent agreement with the simulated results. In the frequency range from 8 to 12.5 GHz, the measured coupling value changes from 18.8 to 20.8 dB and the directivity is better than 38 dB and 29 dB from 8 to 11 GHz and 11 to 12.5 GHz, respectively. The results are valuable for the design and evaluation of broadband high directive waveguide couplers.     

Parameter retrieval of chiral metamaterials based on the causality principle

The parameter retrieval method based on the causality principle and Kramers‐Kronig relations, which has been proposed for extracting effective parameters of metamaterials (MTMs) is extended to extract effective parameters of chiral metamaterials (CMMs) as well. Using Kramers‐Kroning relations, the branch selecting problem which is the challenge of effective media parameters retrieval methods could be simply removed. To demonstrate the validity of the method, first, the constitutive parameters of a homogeneous chiral media are retrieved in the excellent agreement with the supposed parameters. Second validation is achieved by extracting the effective parameters of two well‐known CMM structures whose effective parameters have been reported in the literature. The results are in excellent agreement with the reports of the previous works. Finally, a new type of CMMs called windmill structure is suggested, and its effective parameters are then extracted using the proposed method. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2013.     

A novel time-based low-power pipeline analog to digital converter

A new power reduction technique for analog-to-digital converters is proposed in this paper. A novel current-mode algorithm which uses time to perform analog-to-digital conversion has been described and a 12 bit 100-ksample/s time-based pipeline analog to digital converter has been designed and simulated in standard 90-nm CMOS technology based on introduced structure. Employed circuit techniques include a continues-time comparator, bottom plate sampling, digital correction and a state machine. A time based-mechanism has been used for subtraction and amplification. Simulation results show that the pipelined ADC achieves a peak signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio of 69.8 dB, a peak spurious-free dynamic range of 75 dB, a total harmonic distortion of 73 dB, and a peak integral nonlinearity of 0.85 least significant bits. The total power dissipation is 90 μW from a 3-V supply.     

Asymptotic Performance Analysis of Blind Minimum Output Energy Receivers for Large DS-CDMA Systems

The random matrix theory is used to analyze the asymptotic performance of the blind minimum output energy (MOE) receiver in direct-sequence code division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems in the presence of unknown multipath channel under the condition that the spreading factor and the number of users go to infinity with the same rate. As a special case, the asymptotic properties of the blind Capon receiver are also studied and the conditions of convergence of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) of this receiver to that of the optimal minimum-mean-square error (MMSE) receiver are discussed. In particular, it is shown that the SINR performances of the Capon and MMSE receivers are nearly identical in the uplink scenario, while the performance of the Capon receiver may be considerably inferior to that of the MMSE receiver in the downlink transmission case. As the performance of the Capon receiver is closely related to the performance of the Capon channel estimator, the asymptotic properties of the latter estimator are also studied and the conditions of convergence of the Capon channel estimate to a scaled version of the channel vector of the user-of-interest are obtained.     

Designing with Care: The Future of Pervasive Healthcare

Humane care—which is an important design paradigm relevant for pervasive healthcare—means designing systems with care, keeping in mind both users and other stakeholders. Understanding human values is a key factor in creating any successful healthcare application and is essential to avoid dehumanizing and stigmatizing users. By considering human values, designers and developers can create pervasive healthcare applications that better fit users' needs and desires. The Designing with Care 09 workshop aimed to bring together researchers, designers, and practitioners to share their experiences with incorporating values into the design of pervasive healthcare systems and to help understand the sensitive issues involved in designing for healthcare. Based on the findings from the workshop, the present state of the art is discussed, and a research agenda is presented.