FGMOS transistor based low voltage and low power fully programmable Gaussian function generator

In this paper floating gate MOS (FGMOS) transistor based fully programmable Gaussian function generator (GFG) is presented. The circuit combines the exponential characteristics of MOS transistor in weak inversion, tunable property of FGMOS transistor, and its square law characteristic in strong inversion region to implement the GFG. FGMOS based squarer is the core sub circuit of GFG that helps to implement full Gaussian function for positive as well as negative half of the input voltage. FGMOS implementation of the circuit provides low voltage operation, low power consumption, reduces the circuit complexity and increases the tunability of the circuit. The performance of circuit is verified at 0.75 V in TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS, BSIM3 and level 49 technology by using Cadence Spectre simulator. To ensure robustness of the proposed GFG, simulation results for various process corner variations have also been included.     

Enhanced Photovoltaic Performance of PEDOT:PSS/Si Heterojunction Solar Cell with ZnO BSF Layer: A Simulation Study using SCAPS-1D

Silicon - Here, we report an enhanced photovoltaic (PV) performance including open circuit voltage (Voc), short circuit current (Jsc), fill factor (FF) and power conversion efficiency (PCE) of...     

Volumetric medical image compression using inter-slice correlation switched prediction approach

With the advancement in medical data acquisition and telemedicine systems, image compression has become an important tool for image handling, as the tremendous amount of data generated in medical field needs to be stored and transmitted effectively. Volumetric MRI and CT images comprise a set of image slices that are correlated to each other. The prediction of the pixels in a slice depends not only upon the spatial information of the slice, but also the inter-slice information to achieve compression. This article proposes an inter-slice correlation switched predictor (ICSP) with block adaptive arithmetic encoding (BAAE) technique for 3D medical image data. The proposed ICSP exploits both inter-slice and intra-slice redundancies from the volumetric images efficiently. Novelty of the proposed technique is in selecting the correlation coefficient threshold (T_ϒ) for switching of ICSP. Resolution independent gradient edge detector (RIGED) at optimal prediction threshold value is proposed for intra-slice prediction. Use of RIGED, which is modality and resolution independent, brings the novelty and improved performance for 3D prediction of volumetric images. BAAE is employed for encoding of prediction error image to resulting in higher compression efficiency. The proposed technique is also extended for higher bit depth volumetric medical images (16-bit depth) presenting significant compression gain of 3D images. The performance of the proposed technique is compared with the state-of-the art techniques in terms of bits per pixel (BPP) for 8-bit depth and was found to be 31.21%, 27.55%, 21.89%, and 2.39% better than the JPEG-2000, CALIC, JPEG-LS, M-CALIC, and 3D-CALIC respectively. The proposed technique is 11.86%, 8.56%, 7.97%, 6.80%, and 4.86% better than the M-CALIC, 3D CALIC, JPEG-2000, JPEG-LS and CALIC respectively for 16-bit depth image datasets. The average value of compression ratio for 8-bit and 16-bit image dataset is obtained as 3.70 and 3.11 respectively by the proposed technique.     

Frequency compensation of two stage CMOS circuit using negative capacitance and flipped voltage follower

This paper presents a new and compact two stage CMOS structure with enhanced gain-bandwidth product (GBW) and high slew rate. The frequency compensation technique employed here comprises of a negative capacitance cell and a flipped voltage follower (FVF). The use of negative capacitance lowers the parasitic capacitance of preceding stage and thereby achieves significant improvement in GBW. The FVF acts as a voltage buffer and exploits pole-zero cancellation technique. The required compensation capacitor is very small so it can save chip area. The workability of the proposed circuit has been verified by using Mentor Graphics Eldo simulation tool with TSMC CMOS 0.18 µm process parameters. The simulated results show a GBW of 1.2 GHz and average slew rate of 88 V/µs with a power consumption of 6.3 mW.     

Study of Organic and Inorganic Binders on Strength of Iron Oxide Pellets

Bentonite is a predominant binder used in iron ore pelletization. However, the presence of a high content of silica and alumina in bentonite is considered undesirable for ironmaking operations. The objective of this study was to identify the alternatives of bentonite for iron ore pelletization. To achieve this goal, different types of organic and inorganic binders were utilized to produce iron oxide pellets. The quality of these iron oxide pellets was compared with pellets made using bentonite. All pellets were tested for physical strength at different stages of pelletization to determine their ability to survive during shipping and handling. The results show that organic binders such as lactose monohydrate, hemicellulose, and sodium lignosulfonate can provide sufficient strength to indurated pellets.     

High frequency flipped voltage follower with improved performance and its application

In this paper a wideband flipped voltage follower (FVF) with low output impedance at high frequency has been proposed. Inductive-peaking-based bandwidth extension technique is employed in the FVF cell. The small signal high-frequency analysis of both conventional and proposed FVF has been done. It is shown in analytical derivation of the proposed FVF that by adding an inductive element in the feedback path, the bandwidth is enhanced. Simulation results show that bandwidth extension ratio (BWER) of proposed FVF is about 2.00, without extra dc power dissipation. A wideband low voltage current mirror has been developed by using proposed FVF in place of conventional FVF and by doing so, BWER of 2.98 has been achieved. The performances of circuits are verified in TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS, BSIM3 and Level 49 technology with 1.5 V power supply and by using Spectre simulator of Cadence.     

Catalytic desorption of CO2-loaded solutions of diethylethanolamine using bentonite catalyst

The absorption of CO₂ gas into aqueous alkanolamine solutions is the most advanced CO₂ separation technology and a key challenge in this technique is the energy-intensive process of solvent regeneration. The tertiary amine N,N′-diethylethanolamine (or DEEA) is a candidate CO₂-capturing solvent with potential. To improve the energy efficiency of regeneration of DEEA, several catalysts were used for desorbing CO₂ from loaded solutions of DEEA (2.5 M) at T = 363 K. Desorption trials were conducted in batch mode. The initial CO₂ loading varied in the 0.3–0.35 mol CO₂/mol DEEA range. The performance was analyzed by calculating the rate of CO₂ desorption, cyclic capacity, and reduction in sensible energy. The amount of thermal energy needed for amine regeneration was significantly lowered by using nine transition metal oxide catalysts and the hierarchy was as follows: Al₂O₃ < MoO₃ < V₂O₅ < TiO₂ < MnO₂ < ZnO < Cr₂O₃ < SiO₂ < ZrO₂. Among the metal oxides, Al₂O₃ increased desorption efficiency compared to blank runs by 89%. A clay-based powder bentonite was also used as catalyst and its efficacy was compared with the metal oxides. This cheap and easily available bentonite catalyst was tuned through simple ion-exchange with four acids (HCl, H₃PO₄, HNO₃, and H₂SO₄). Upon treatment with H₂SO₄, bentonite remarkably increased desorption efficiency by 100%. Furthermore, bentonite catalyst treated with sulphuric acid (denoted here as Bt/H₂SO₄) was characterized by Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectrometery (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and ammonia temperature-programmed desorption (NH₃-TPD). In this way, a comprehensive study on catalytic desorption of DEEA was performed.     

The influence of website functionality,drivers and perceived risk on customer satisfaction in online shopping: an emerging economy case

Information Systems and e-Business Management - The study analyzed website functionality, perceived risk and drivers of online shopping to evaluate their impact on customer satisfaction in India....     

A new flipped voltage follower with enhanced bandwidth and low output impedance

The paper proposes a flipped voltage follower (FVF) cell with wider bandwidth and lower output impedance as compared to the conventional FVF. These improvements are obtained by adding a resistance in the feedback path of conventional FVF. A current mirror is implemented by using proposed FVF cell to verify the performance improvement. The circuits are designed in TSMC 0.18-µm CMOS technology with 1.5 V supply voltage. The simulation results show that bandwidth extension ratio (BWER) of newly developed FVF is 1.4 without peaking and 1.7 with peaking. The BWERs of the passive-compensated current mirror implemented by using proposed FVF cell are 1.28 without peaking and 1.58 with peaking in the frequency response.