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.

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.

This book describes a new way to design and utilize Instrumentation Amplifiers (IAs) by taking advantages of the current-mode (CM) approach. For the first time, all different topologies of CMIAs are discussed and compared, providing a single-source reference for instrumentation and measurement experts who want to choose a topology for a specific application. The authors also explain major challenges in designing CMIAs, so the book can be useful for anyone studying instrumentation amplifiers, and even other analog circuits. Coverage also includes various CM signal processing techniques employed in CMIAs, and applications of the CMIAs in biomedical and data acquisition are demonstrated.

Noise is a fundamental problem that degrades the performance of every communications device. Noise starts at a very basic level - in the circuits within communications devices and systems. This book is a comprehensive treatment of how noise affects circuit performance. It covers practical methods for optimizing communications performance in a noisy environment. Special coverage is given to phase noise in oscillator circuits, which is a critical problem in cellular and mobile telecommunications. Software has become an indispensable tool for analyzing noise. This book gives circuit designers and software developers a solid understanding of this specialized software, so they can more effectively create noise-resistant circuitry. Noise is the basic stumbling block in creating reliable communications circuits, and this book shows engineers how to overcome this problem.

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.

Tin (Sn) whiskers are electrically conductive, single crystal eruptions that grow from Sn film surfaces. Their high aspect ratio presents reliability problems for the electronics industry due to bridging and metal arcing, leading to malfunctions and catastrophic failures in many electronic systems (including satellite and defense sectors). Due to legislation in the EU, Japan, and the U.S., mandating a gradual shift from lead (Pb)-based to lead-free solders and board finishes, there has been a reemergence of Sn whiskers. Continuing reports of Sn whisker induced failures coupled with the lack of an industry-accepted understanding of whisker growth and/or test methods to identify whisker prone products has made pure/high Sn substitutes a risky proposition in high reliability systems. This thesis is designed to clarify and control the fundamental mechanisms that govern whisker formation. The research focuses on reproducible "laboratory" created whiskers under a variety of rigorously controlled environmental factors such as film thickness, film stress, substrate material, gas environment, and humidity exposure, which are known to play a significant role in whisker production. The ultimate question of how to impede and/or prevent whisker growth is also addressed and shows that whisker prevention is possible via hard metal capping films, which are impenetrable by whiskers.

Today s semiconductor memory market is divided between two types of memory: DRAM and Flash. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. While DRAM is fast but volatile, Flash is non-volatile but slow. A memory system based on self-organized quantum dots (QDs) as storage node could combine the advantages of modern DRAM and Flash, thus merging the latter s non-volatility with very fast write times.

This thesis investigates the electronic properties of and carrier dynamics in self-organized quantum dots by means of time-resolved capacitance spectroscopy and time-resolved current measurements. The first aim is to study the localization energy of various QD systems in order to assess the potential of increasing the storage time in QDs to non-volatility. Surprisingly, it is found that the major impact of carrier capture cross-sections of QDs is to influence, and at times counterbalance, carrier storage in addition to the localization energy. The second aim is to study the coupling between a layer of self-organized QDs and a two-dimensional hole gas (2DHG), which is relevant for the read-out process in memory systems. The investigation yields the discovery of the many-particle ground states in the QD ensemble.In addition to its technological relevance, the thesis also offers new insights into the fascinating field of nanostructure physics."

As diverse as tomorrow's society constituent groups may be, they will share the common requirements that their life should become safer and healthier, offering higher levels of effectiveness, communication and personal freedom. The key common part to all potential solutions fulfilling these requirements is wearable embedded systems, with longer periods of autonomy, offering wider functionality, more communication possibilities and increased computational power. As electronic and information systems on the human body, their role is to collect relevant physiological information, and to interface between humans and local and/or global information systems. Within this context, there is an increasing need for applications in diverse fields, from health to rescue to sport and even remote activities in space, to have real-time access to vital signs and other behavioral parameters for personalized healthcare, rescue operation planning, etc. This book's coverage will span all scientific and technological areas that define wearable monitoring systems, including sensors, signal processing, energy, system integration, communications, and user interfaces. Six case studies will be used to illustrate the principles and practices introduced.

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.

The goal of Ultra-Low Voltage Nano-Scale Memories is to provide a detailed explanation of the state-of-the-art nanometer and sub-1-V memory LSIs that are playing decisive roles in power conscious systems. Emerging problems between the device, circuit, and system levels are systematically discussed in terms of reliable high-speed operations of memory cells and peripheral logic circuits. The effectiveness of solutions at device and circuit levels is also described at length. Voltage scaling is prevented by many resulting problems, such as the ever-decreasing signal-to-noise-ratio and voltage margin of many tiny flip-flop circuits in a memory-cell array and peripheral circuits, and the ever-increasing leakage and variation in speed caused by variations in process, voltage, and temperature. The problems and promising solutions at device and circuit levels are discussed in detail through clarifying noise components in an array, and even essential differences in ultra-low voltage operations between DRAMs and SRAMs. Moreover, various kinds of on-chip voltage converters necessary to solve the problems with internal power-supply managements are widely and deeply discussed. experience in memory and low-voltage designs in industry, bridging the different necessary technologies between memory, digital, and analog technologies, and even between DRAMs and SRAMs. A lot of knowledge that authors have acquired to date, and circuits that authors regard as important are covered from the basics to the state-of-the-art. Thus, the book is beneficial to students and engineers interested in ultra-low voltage nano-scale LSIs. Moreover, it is instructive not only for memory designers, but also for all digital and analog LSI designers who are the front edge of such LSI developments, since it is full of insight to develop such LSIs.

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.

Technological advances in the field of materials, devices, circuits, and systems began by the discovery of new properties of objects, or the entrepreneurship with the applications of unique or practical concepts for commercial goods. To implement products using these findings and challenges textbook knowledge is usually sufficient. "Semiconductor Technologies in the Era of Electronics" therefore does not aim to look deeper in certain areas but it offers a broad and comprehensive overview of the field to:

- Experts of specific knowledge who want to expand the overall understanding to different areas
- Persons who wish to understand the principle of electronic devices often seen in everyday life
- Entrepreneurs interested in the innovations and changes of semiconductor technologies and overall electronics industry

Aprofound and theoretical approach is therefore used and special cases essential to understanding these important concept are presented."

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.

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.

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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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.

Liquid Crystals LCs] are synthetic functional materials par excellence and are to be found in many types of LCDs; LCs self-assemble into ordered, but fluid, supramolecular structures and domains; they can be oriented in large homogeneous monodomains by electric and magnetic fields, Langmuir Blodgett techniques and also by self-orientation on suitable alignment layers; they are also anisotropic with preferred axes of light absorption, emission and charge transport with excellent semiconducting properties; they are soluble in organic solvents and can be deposited as uniform thin layers on device substrates, including plastic, by low-cost deposition processes, such as spin coating and doctor blade techniques; reactive mesogens polymerisable LC monomers] can be photopatterned and fixed in position and orientation as insoluble polymer networks. LCs are increasingly being used as active components in electronic and photonic organic devices, such as Organic Light-Emitting Diodes OLEDs], Organic Field Effect Transistors OFETs], Thin Film Transistors TFTs] and photovoltaic cells PVs]. Such devices on plastic substrates represent a major component of the plastic electronics revolution. The self-assembling properties and supramolecular structures of liquid crystals can be made use of in order to improve the performance of such devices. The relationships between chemical structure, liquid crystalline behaviour and other physical properties, such as charge-transport, photoluminescence and electroluminescence are discussed and explained. For example, high carrier-mobility, polarised emission and enhanced output-coupling are identified as the key advantages of nematic and smectic liquid crystals for electroluminescence. The advantageous use of anisotropic polymer networks formed by the polymerisation of reactive mesogens RMs] in devices with multilayer capability and photopatternability is described. The anisotropic transport and high carrier mobilities of columnar liquid crystals make them promising candidates for photovoltaics and transistors. The issues in the design and processing of liquid crystalline semiconductors for such devcies with improved performance are described. The photonic properties of chiral liquid crystals and their use as mirror-less lasers are also discussed.

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.

Power consumption becomes the most important design goal in a wide range of electronic systems. There are two driving forces towards this trend: continuing device scaling and ever increasing demand of higher computing power. First, device scaling continues to satisfy Moore's law via a conventional way of scaling (More Moore) and a new way of exploiting the vertical integration (More than Moore). Second, mobile and IT convergence requires more computing power on the silicon chip than ever. Cell phones are now evolving towards mobile PC. PCs and data centers are becoming commodities in house and a must in industry. Both supply enabled by device scaling and demand triggered by the convergence trend realize more computation on chip (via multi-core, integration of diverse functionalities on mobile SoCs, etc.) and finally more power consumption incurring power-related issues and constraints.

"Energy-Aware System Design: Algorithms and Architectures" provides state-of-the-art ideas for low power design methods from circuit, architecture to software level andoffers design case studies in three fast growing areas of mobile storage, biomedical and security.

Important topics and features:

- Describes very recent advanced issues and methods for energy-aware design at each design level from circuit andarchitecture toalgorithm level, and also covering important blocks including low power main memory subsystem and on-chip network at architecture level

- Explains efficient power conversion and delivery which is becoming important as heterogeneous power sources are adopted for digital and non-digital parts

- Investigates 3D die stacking emphasizing temperature awareness for better perspective on energy efficiency

- Presents three practical energy-aware design case studies; novel storage device (e.g., solid state disk), biomedical electronics (e.g., cochlear and retina implants), and wireless surveillance camera systems.

Researchers and engineers in the field of hardware and software design will find this book an excellent starting point to catch up with the state-of-the-art ideas of low power design.

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.

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.

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.

This book is intended for senior undergraduate and graduate students as well as practicing engineers who are involved in design and analysis of radio frequency (RF) circuits. Detailed tutorials are included on all major topics required to understand fundamental principles behind both the main sub-circuits required to design an RF transceiver and the whole communication system. Starting with review of fundamental principles in electromagnetic (EM) transmission and signal propagation, through detailed practical analysis of RF amplifier, mixer, modulator, demodulator, and oscillator circuit topologies, all the way to the basic system communication theory behind the RF transceiver operation, this book systematically covers all relevant aspects in a way that is suitable for a single semester university level course. Offers readers a complete, self-sufficient tutorial style textbook; Includes all relevant topics required to study and design an RF receiver in a consistent, coherent way with appropriate depth for a one-semester course; The labs and the book chapters are synchronized throughout a 13-week semester so that the students first study each sub-circuit and the related theory in class, practice problems, work out design details and then build and test the sub-circuit in the lab, before moving onto the next chapter; Includes detailed derivations of all key equations related to new concepts.