This book is a single-source guide to nonlinearity and nonlinear techniques in energy harvesting, with a focus on vibration energy harvesters for micro and nanoscale applications. The authors demonstrate that whereas nonlinearity was avoided as an undesirable phenomenon in early energy harvesters, now it can be used as an essential part of these systems. Readers will benefit from an overview of nonlinear techniques and applications, as well as deeper insight into methods of analysis and modeling of energy harvesters, employing different nonlinearities. The role of nonlinearity due to different aspects of an energy harvester is discussed, including nonlinearity due to mechanical-to-electrical conversion, nonlinearity due to conditioning electronic circuits, nonlinearity due to novel materials (e.g., graphene), etc. Coverage includes tutorial introductions to MEMS and NEMS technology, as well as a wide range of applications, such as nonlinear oscillators and transducers for energy harvesters and electronic conditioning circuits for effective energy processing.

Modern multimedia systems are becoming increasingly multiprocessor and heterogeneous to match the high performance and low power demands placed on them by the large number of applications. The concurrent execution of these applications causes interference and unpredictability in the performance of these systems. In Multimedia Multiprocessor Systems, an analysis mechanism is presented to accurately predict the performance of multiple applications executing concurrently. With high consumer demand the time-to-market has become significantly lower. To cope with the complexity in designing such systems, an automated design-flow is needed that can generate systems from a high-level architectural description such that they are not error-prone and consume less time. Such a design methodology is presented for multiple use-cases -- combinations of active applications. A resource manager is also presented to manage the various resources in the system, and to achieve the goals of performance prediction, admission control and budget enforcement.

This book describes an alternative method of realizing accurate on-chip frequency references in standard CMOS processes. This method exploits the thermal-diffusivity of silicon, i.e. the rate at which heat diffuses through a silicon substrate. This is the first book describing the design of such electrothermal frequency references. It includes the necessary theory, supported by practical realizations that achieve inaccuracies as low as 0.1% and thus demonstrate the feasibility of this approach. The book also includes several circuit and system-level solutions to the precision circuit design challenges encountered during the design of such frequency references.

Dynamically Reconfigurable Systems is the first ever to focus on the emerging field of Dynamically Reconfigurable Computing Systems. While programmable logic and design-time configurability are well elaborated and covered by various texts, this book presents a unique overview over the state of the art and recent results for dynamic and run-time reconfigurable computing systems.

Reconfigurable hardware is not only of utmost importance for large manufacturers and vendors of microelectronic devices and systems, but also a very attractive technology for smaller and medium-sized companies. Hence, Dynamically Reconfigurable Systems also addresses researchers and engineers actively working in the field and provides them with information on the newest developments and trends in dynamic and run-time reconfigurable systems.

One of the leading causes of automobile accidents is the slow reaction of the driver while responding to a hazardous situation. State-of-the-art wireless electronics can automate several driving functions, leading to significant reduction in human error and improvement in vehicle safety. With continuous transistor scaling, silicon fabrication technology now has the potential to substantially reduce the cost of automotive radar sensors. This book bridges an existing gap between information available on dependable system/architecture design and circuit design. It provides the background of the field and detailed description of recent research and development of silicon-based radar sensors. System-level requirements and circuit topologies for radar transceivers are described in detail. Holistic approaches towards designing radar sensors are validated with several examples of highly-integrated radar ICs in silicon technologies. Circuit techniques to design millimeter-wave circuits in silicon technologies are discussed in depth.

It is indisputable that printed circuit boards (PCBs) play a vital role in our daily lives. With the ever-increasing applications of PCBs, one of the crucial ways to increase a PCB manufacturera (TM)s competitiveness in terms of operation efficiency is to minimize the production time so that the products can be introduced to the market sooner.

Optimal Production Planning for PCB Assembly is the first book to focus on the optimization of the PCB assembly linesa (TM) efficiency. This is done by:

a [ integrating the component sequencing and the feeder arrangement problems together for both the pick-and-place machine and the chip shooter machine;

a [ constructing mathematical models and developing an efficient and effective heuristic solution approach for the integrated problems for both types of placement machines, the line assignment problem, and the component allocation problem; and

a [ developing a prototype of the PCB assembly planning system.

The techniques proposed in Optimal Production Planning for PCB Assembly will enable process planners in the electronics manufacturing industry to improve the assembly linea (TM)s efficiency in their companies. Graduate students in operations research can familiarise themselves with the techniques and the applications of mathematical modeling after reading this advanced introduction to optimal production planning for PCB assembly.

As Moore 's law continues to unfold, two important trends have recently emerged. First, the growth of chip capacity is translated into a corresponding increase of number of cores. Second, the parallelization of the computation and 3D integration technologies lead to distributed memory architectures.This book describes recent research that addresses urgent challenges in many-core architectures and application mapping. It addresses the architectural design of many core chips, memory and data management, power management, design and programming methodologies. It also describes how new techniques have been applied in various industrial case studies.

Wireless sensor networks have the potential to become the third wireless revolution after wireless voice networks in the 80s and wireless data networks in the late 90s. Unfortunately, radio power consumption is still a major bottleneck to the wide adoption of this technology. Different directions have been explored to minimize the radio consumption, but the major drawback of the proposed solutions is a reduced wireless link robustness. The primary goal of Architectures and Synthesizers for Ultra-low Power Fast Frequency-Hopping WSN Radios is to discuss, in detail, existing and new architectural and circuit level solutions for ultra-low power, robust, uni-directional and bi-directional radio links. Architectures and Synthesizers for Ultra-low Power Fast Frequency-Hopping WSN Radios guides the reader through the many system, circuit and technology trade-offs he will be facing in the design of communication systems for wireless sensor networks. Finally, this book, through different examples realized in both advanced CMOS and bipolar technologies opens a new path in the radio design, showing how radio link robustness can be guaranteed by techniques that were previously exclusively used in radio systems for middle or high end applications like Bluetooth and military communications while still minimizing the overall system power consumption.

Logic networks and automata are facets of digital systems. The change of the design of logic networks from skills and art into a scientific discipline was possible by the development of the underlying mathematical theory called the Switching Theory. The fundamentals of this theory come from the attempts towards an algebraic description of laws of thoughts presented in the works by George J. Boole and the works on logic by Augustus De Morgan. As often the case in engineering, when the importance of a problem and the need for solving it reach certain limits, the solutions are searched by many scholars in different parts of the word, simultaneously or at about the same time, however, quite independently and often unaware of the work by other scholars. The formulation and rise of Switching Theory is such an example. This book presents a brief account of the developments of Switching Theory and highlights some less known facts in the history of it. The readers will find the book a fresh look into the development of the field revealing how difficult it has been to arrive at many of the concepts that we now consider obvious . Researchers in the history or philosophy of computing will find this book a valuable source of information that complements the standard presentations of the topic.

Biopotential Readout Circuits for Portable Acquisition Systems describes one of the main building blocks of such miniaturized biomedical signal acquisition systems. The focus of this book is on the implementation of low-power and high-performance integrated circuit building blocks that can be used to extract biopotential signals from conventional biopotential electrodes. New instrumentation amplifier architectures are introduced and their design is described in detail. These amplifiers are used to implement complete acquisition demonstrator systems that are a stepping stone towards practical miniaturized and low-power systems.

This unique book provides an up-to-date overview of the concepts behind lead-free soldering techniques. Readers will find a description of the physical and mechanical properties of lead-free solders, in addition to lead-free electronics and solder alloys. Additional topics covered include the reliability of lead-free soldering, tin whiskering and electromigration, in addition to emerging technologies and research.

This book introduces readers to the design of adaptive equalization solutions integrated in standard CMOS technology for high-speed serial links. Since continuous-time equalizers offer various advantages as an alternative to discrete-time equalizers at multi-gigabit rates, this book provides a detailed description of continuous-time adaptive equalizers design - both at transistor and system levels-, their main characteristics and performances. The authors begin with a complete review and analysis of the state of the art of equalizers for wireline applications, describing why they are necessary, their types, and their main applications. Next, theoretical fundamentals of continuous-time adaptive equalizers are explored. Then, new structures are proposed to implement the different building blocks of the adaptive equalizer: line equalizer, loop-filters, power comparator, etc. The authors demonstrate the design of a complete low-power, low-voltage, high-speed, continuous-time adaptive equalizer. Finally, a cost-effective CMOS receiver which includes the proposed continuous-time adaptive equalizer is designed for 1.25 Gb/s optical communications through 50-m length, 1-mm diameter plastic optical fiber (POF).

This book describes for readers technology used for effective sensing of our physical world and intelligent processing techniques for sensed information, which are essential to the success of Internet of Things (IoTs). The authors provide a multidisciplinary view of sensor technology from materials, process, circuits, and big data domains and showcase smart sensor systems in real applications including smart home, transportation, medical, environmental, agricultural, etc. Unlike earlier books on sensors, this book will provide a "global" view on smart sensors covering abstraction levels from device, circuit, systems, and algorithms. Profiles active research on smart sensors based on CMOS microelectronics; Describes applications of sensors and sensor systems in cyber physical systems, the social information infrastructure in our modern world; Includes coverage of a variety of related information technologies supporting the application of sensors; Discusses the integration of computation, networking, actuation, databases, and various sensors, in order to embed smart sensor systems into actual social systems.

During the last decade, many new concepts have been proposed for improving the performance of power rectifiers and transistors. The results of this research are dispersed in the technical literature among journal articles and abstracts of conferences. Consequently, the information is not readily available to researchers and practicing engineers in the power device community. There is no cohesive treatment of the ideas to provide an assessment of the relative merits of the ideas.

Advanced Power Rectifier Concepts provides an in-depth treatment of the physics of operation of advanced power rectifiers. Analytical models for explaining the operation of all the advanced power rectifier devices will be developed. The results off numerical simulations will be provided to provide additional insight into the device physics and validate the analytical models. The results of two-dimensional simulations will be provided to corroborate the analytical models and provide greater insight into the device operation.

This book is addressed to newcomers to error control coding (ECC), making the subject easy to understand and to apply in a variety of cases. The book begins by presenting in a detailed, step-by-step manner the plethora of parts an ECC system has and the way they interact to achieve the performance required. Contrary to the more abstract and formal approach followed in most books on this topic, this book is unique in that all of the concepts, methods, techniques and algorithms are introduced by way of examples. Thus, the book is almost a workbook, and therefore very suitable for self-study. Readers are encouraged to take an active role while reading, performing calculations as chapters' progress. Moreover, to reinforce the learning process, many of the topics introduced in the book (Galois fields, Extended Hamming codes, Reed-Solomon codes, interleaving, erasure correction, etc.) are presented in various parts of the book in different ways or contexts. Offers a practical guide to error control coding, accessible to readers with varying backgrounds; Provides newcomers with a sound foundation in error control coding, using a select few topics considered by the author fundamental from an engineering point of view; Presents material with minimal mathematics; Motivates carefully concepts, methods and algorithms making clear the idea behind the conditions for the code to work.

With vastly increased complexity and functionality in the "nanometer era" (i.e. hundreds of millions of transistors on one chip), increasing the performance of integrated circuits has become a challenging task. This is due primarily to the inevitable increase in the distance among circuit elements and interconnect design solutions have become the greatest determining factor in overall performance.
Three-dimensional (3D) integrated circuits (ICs), which contain multiple layers of active devices, have the potential to enhance dramatically chip performance and functionality, while reducing the distance among devices on a chip. They promise solutions to the current "interconnect bottleneck" challenges faced by IC designers. They also may facilitate the integration of heterogeneous materials, devices, and signals. However, before these advantages can be realized, key technology challenges of 3D ICs must be addressed.
This is the first book on 3-D integrated circuit design, covering all of the technological and design aspects of this emerging design paradigm, while proposing effective solutions to specific challenging problems concerning the design of three-dimensional integrated circuits. A handy, comprehensive reference or a practical design guide, this book provides a sound foundation for the design of three-dimensional integrated circuits.
* Demonstrates how to overcome "Interconnect Bottleneck" with 3D Integrated Circuit Design...leading edge design techniques offer solutions to problems (performance/power consumption/price) faced by all circuit designers.
* The FIRST book on 3D Integrated Circuit Design...provides up-to-date information that is otherwise difficult tofind;
* Focuses on design issues key to the product development cyle...good design plays a major role in exploiting the implementation flexibilities offered in the third dimension;
* Provides broad coverage of 3D IC Design, including Interconnect Prediction Models, Thermal Management Techniques, and Timing Optimization...offers practical view of designing 3D circuits.

This volume gives the latest developments in on the mechanisms of cancer cell resistance to apoptotic stimuli, which eventually result in cancer progression and metastasis. One of the main challenges in cancer research is to develop new therapies to combat resistant tumors. The development of new effective therapies will be dependent on delineating the biochemical, molecular, and genetic mechanisms that regulate tumor cell resistance to cytotoxic drug-induced apoptosis. These mechanisms should reveal gene products that directly regulate resistance in order to develop new drugs that target these resistance factors and such new drugs may either be selective or common to various cancers. If successful, new drugs may not be toxic and may be used effectively in combination with subtoxic conventional drugs to achieve synergy and to reverse tumor cell resistance. The research developments presented in this book can be translated to produce better clinical responses to resistant tumors.

This book includes a selection of the best contributions to the Forum on Specification and Design Languages held in 2005 (FDL'05). It provides detailed insights into recent works dealing with a large spectrum of issues in system-on-chip design. All the chapters have been carefully revised and extended to offer up-to-date information. They also provide seeds for further researches and developments in the field of heterogeneous systems-on-chip design.

Many and ever more mobile users wish to enjoy a variety of multimedia services, in very diverse geographical environments. The growing number of communication options within and across wireless standards is accommodating the growing volume and heterogeneity in wireless wishes. On the other hand, advancement in radio technologies opening much more flexibility, a.o. through Software Defined Radios, opens up the possibility to realize mobile devices featuring multi-mode options at low cost and interesting form factors.

It is crucial to manage the new degrees of freedom opened up in radios and standards in a smart way, such that the required service is offered at satisfactory quality as efficiently as possible. Efficiency in energy consumption is clearly primordial for battery powered mobile terminals specifically, and in the context of growing ecological concerns in a broader context. Moreover, efficient usage of the spectrum is a growing prerequisite for wireless systems, and coexistence of different standards puts overall throughput at risk.

The management of flexibility risks bringing about intolerable complexity and hamper the desired agility. A systematic approach, consisting of anticipative preparing for smooth operation, allows mastering this challenge. Case studies show that already today, this approach enables smart operation of radios realizing impressive efficiency gains without hampering Quality-of-Service. In the future wireless communication scenes will be able to profit form the opening of the spectrum. Even smarter and cognitive behavior will become possible and essential.

This book presents a new set of embedded system design techniques called multidimensional data flow, which combine the various benefits offered by existing methodologies such as block-based system design, high-level simulation, system analysis and polyhedral optimization. It describes a novel architecture for efficient and flexible high-speed communication in hardware that can be used both in manual and automatic system design and that offers various design alternatives, balancing achievable throughput with required hardware size. This book demonstrates multidimensional data flow by showing its potential for modeling, analysis, and synthesis of complex image processing applications. These applications are presented in terms of their fundamental properties and resulting design constraints. Coverage includes a discussion of how far the latter can be met better by multidimensional data flow than alternative approaches. Based on these results, the book explains the principles of fine-grained system level analysis and high-speed communication synthesis. Additionally, an extensive review of related techniques is given in order to show their relation to multidimensional data flow.

An effective and cost efficient protection of electronic system against ESD stress pulses specified by IEC 61000-4-2 is paramount for any system design. This pioneering book presents the collective knowledge of system designers and system testing experts and state-of-the-art techniques for achieving efficient system-level ESD protection, with minimum impact on the system performance. All categories of system failures ranging from 'hard' to 'soft' types are considered to review simulation and tool applications that can be used. The principal focus of System Level ESD Co-Design is defining and establishing the importance of co-design efforts from both IC supplier and system builder perspectives. ESD designers often face challenges in meeting customers' system-level ESD requirements and, therefore, a clear understanding of the techniques presented here will facilitate effective simulation approaches leading to better solutions without compromising system performance. With contributions from Robert Ashton, Jeffrey Dunnihoo, Micheal Hopkins, Pratik Maheshwari, David Pomerenke, Wolfgang Reinprecht, and Matti Usumaki, readers benefit from hands-on experience and in-depth knowledge in topics ranging from ESD design and the physics of system ESD phenomena to tools and techniques to address soft failures and strategies to design ESD-robust systems that include mobile and automotive applications. The first dedicated resource to system-level ESD co-design, this is an essential reference for industry ESD designers, system builders, IC suppliers and customers and also Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). Key features: * Clarifies the concept of system level ESD protection. * Introduces a co-design approach for ESD robust systems. * Details soft and hard ESD fail mechanisms. * Detailed protection strategies for both mobile and automotive applications. * Explains simulation tools and methodology for system level ESD co-design and overviews available test methods and standards. * Highlights economic benefits of system ESD co-design.

More than 1.3 billion people worldwide lack access to electricity. Although extension of the electricity grid remains the preferred mode of electrification, off-grid electrification can offer a solution to such cases. "Rural Electrification through Decentralised Off-grid Systems in Developing Countries" provides a review of rural electrification experiences with an emphasis on off-grid electrification and presents business-related aspects including participatory arrangements, financing, and regulatory governance.

Organized in three parts, "Rural Electrification through Decentralised Off-grid Systems in Developing Countries" provides comprehensive coverage and state-of-the art reviews which appraise the reader of the latest trend in the thinking. The first part presents the background information on electricity access, discusses the developmental implications of lack of electricity infrastructure and provides a review of alternative off-grid technologies. The second part presents a review of experiences from various regions (South Asia, China, Africa, South East Asia and South America). Finally, the third part deals with business dimensions and covers participatory business models, funding challenges for electrification and regulatory and governance issues.

Based on the research carried out under the EPSRC/ DfID funded research grant for off-grid electrification in South Asia, "Rural Electrification through Decentralised Off-grid Systems in Developing Countries" provides a multi-disciplinary perspective of the rural electrification challenge through off-grid systems. Providing a practical introduction for students, this is also a key reference for engineers and governing bodies working with off-grid electrification.

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Simplified Design of Filter Circuits, the eighth book in this popular series, is a step-by-step guide to designing filters using off-the-shelf ICs. The book starts with the basic operating principles of filters and common applications, then moves on to describe how to design circuits by using and modifying chips available on the market today. Lenk's emphasis is on practical, simplified approaches to solving design problems.

Contains practical designs using off-the-shelf ICs
Straightforward, no-nonsense approach
Highly illustrated with manufacturer's data sheets

This book provides an invaluable primer on the techniques utilized in the design of low power digital semiconductor devices. Readers will benefit from the hands-on approach which starts form the ground-up, explaining with basic examples what power is, how it is measured and how it impacts on the design process of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). The authors use both the Unified Power Format (UPF) and Common Power Format (CPF) to describe in detail the power intent for an ASIC and then guide readers through a variety of architectural and implementation techniques that will help meet the power intent. From analyzing system power consumption, to techniques that can be employed in a low power design, to a detailed description of two alternate standards for capturing the power directives at various phases of the design, this book is filled with information that will give ASIC designers a competitive edge in low-power design.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of current research on memristors, memcapacitors and, meminductors. In addition to an historical overview of the research in this area, coverage includes the theory behind memristive circuits, as well as memcapacitance, and meminductance. Details are shown for recent applications of memristors for resistive random access memories, neuromorphic systems and hybrid CMOS/memristor circuits. Methods for the simulation of memristors are demonstrated and an introduction to neuromorphic modeling is provided.