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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Over the past decade, system-on-chip (SoC) designs have evolved to address the ever increasing complexity of applications, fueled by the era of digital convergence. Improvements in process technology have effectively shrunk board-level components so they can be integrated on a single chip. New on-chip communication architectures have been designed to support all inter-component communication in a SoC design. These communication architecture fabrics have a critical impact on the power consumption, performance, cost and design cycle time of modern SoC designs. As application complexity strains the communication backbone of SoC designs, academic and industrial R&D efforts and dollars are increasingly focused on communication architecture design.
This book is a comprehensive reference on concepts, research and trends in on-chip communication architecture design. It will provide readers with a comprehensive survey, not available elsewhere, of all current standards for on-chip communication architectures.
KEY FEATURES
* A definitive guide to on-chip communication architectures, explaining key concepts, surveying research efforts and predicting future trends
* Detailed analysis of all popular standards for on-chip communication architectures
* Comprehensive survey of all research on communication architectures, covering a wide range of topics relevant to this area, spanning the past several years, and up to date with the most current research efforts
* Future trends that with have a significant impact on research and design of communication architectures over the next several years

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 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.

This book surveys the advanced simulation methods needed for proper modeling of state-of-the-art nanoscale devices. It systematically describes theoretical approaches and the numerical solutions that are used in explaining the operation of both power devices as well as nano-scale devices. It clearly explains for what types of devices a particular method is suitable, which is the most critical point that a researcher faces and has to decide upon when modeling semiconductor devices.

This book is the second of two volumes addressing the design challenges associated with new generations of semiconductor technology. The various chapters are compiled from tutorials presented at workshops in recent years by prominent authors from all over the world. Technology, productivity and quality are the main aspects under consideration to establish the major requirements for the design and test of upcoming systems on a chip.

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 provides an overview of automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) and introduces novel techniques to complement classical ATPG, based on Boolean Satisfiability (SAT). A fast and highly fault efficient SAT-based ATPG framework is presented which is also able to generate high-quality delay tests such as robust path delay tests, as well as tests with long propagation paths to detect small delay defects.

The aim of the techniques and methodologies presented in this book is to improve SAT-based ATPG, in order to make it applicable in industrial practice. Readers will learn to improve the performance and robustness of the overall test generation process, so that the ATPG algorithm reliably will generate test patterns for most targeted faults in acceptable run time to meet the high fault coverage demands of industry. The techniques and improvements presented in this book provide the following advantages:

Provides a comprehensive introduction to test generation and Boolean Satisfiability (SAT);Describes a highly fault efficient SAT-based ATPG framework; Introduces circuit-oriented SAT solving techniques, which make use of structural information and are able to accelerate the search process significantly;Provides SAT formulations for the prevalent delay faults models, in addition to the classical stuck-at fault model;Includes an industrial perspective on the state-of-the-art in the testing, along with SAT; two topics typically distinguished from each other.

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