Custom Package Research Articles

A 7 μW Offset- and Temperature-Compensated pH-to-Digital Converter

This paper demonstrates a micropower offset- and temperature-compensated smart pH sensor, intended for use in battery-powered RFID systems that monitor the quality of perishable products. Low operation power is essential in such systems to enable autonomous logging of environmental parameters, such as the pH level, over extended periods of time using only a small, low-cost battery. The pH-sensing element in this work is an ion-sensitive extended-gate field-effect transistor (EGFET), which is incorporated in a low-power sensor front-end. The front-end outputs a pH-dependent voltage, which is then digitized by means of a co-integrated incremental delta-sigma ADC. To compensate for the offset and temperature cross-sensitivity of the EGFET, a compensation scheme using a calibration process and a temperature sensor has been devised. A prototype chip has been realized in a 0.16 μm CMOS process. It occupies 0.35 × 3.9 mm2 of die area and draws only 4 μA from a 1.8 V supply. Two different types of custom packaging have been used for measurement purposes. The pH sensor achieves a linearity of better than ±0.1 for pH values ranging from 4 to 10. The calibration and compensation scheme reduces errors due to temperature cross-sensitivity to less than ±0.1 in the temperature range of 6°C to 25°C.

Hubungan Mutu Pelayanan Dengan Loyalitas Pelanggan Jasa Pengiriman Paket Pada Kantor Pos Kota Depok

<p>fice were (1) To identify the relationship between service quality and customer loyalty; (2) To analyze the relationship strength between service quality and customer loyalty; (3) Assessing the service quality level by Depok City Post Office. The data collecting were primary and secondary data. Convenience sampling was chosen as sampling technique. The research analyze by descriptive analysis, Importance Performance Analysis (IPA), Range and Rank Spearman correlation test, and processed by Microsoft Excel 2007 and Software SPSS 17.0 version for Windows. The study by IPA showed the attribute spread out around all quadrant with the majority attributes placed on quadrant III, however the study will be focused on attributes placed Quadrant I: completly of information media, quick service and complaint service, which are the main important factors to improve. The research finding was proven the customer is categorize as loyal customer. The analysis of work attributes level showed reliability has no relation with loyality. The Relationship between Good Quality of Customer Service and Customer Packaging Delivery Service Loyalty in Depok City Post Office is strong showed by r = 0,277.</p>

The VCSEL-based array optical transmitter (ATx) development towards 120-Gbps link for collider detector: development update

A compact radiation-tolerant array optical transmitter module (ATx) is developed to provide data transmission up to 10Gbps per channel with 12 parallel channels for collider detector applications. The ATx integrates a Vertical Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VCSEL) array and driver circuitry for electrical to optical conversion, an edge warp substrate for the electrical interface and a micro-lens array for the optical interface. This paper reports the continuing development of the ATx custom package. A simple, high-accuracy and reliable active-alignment method for the optical coupling is introduced. The radiation-resistance of the optoelectronic components is evaluated and the inclusion of a custom-designed array driver is discussed.

A Gigabit Transceiver for Data Transmission in Future High Energy Physics Experiments

The transmission of data from detectors in future high energy experiments will be driven by a number of requirements. In many cases, raw bandwidth is the strongest of these but other needs such as diverse functionality, compactness, low power and radiation resistance are equally important. The GigaBit-Transceiver project has been launched to provide a solution to these problems. The aim is to deliver a chip-set to build a bidirectional optical link transmitting and receiving serial data at 4.8 Gigabit/s. The project is based on three integrated circuits; a trans-impedance amplifier to receive signals from a photo-diode, a laser driver, and a transceiver containing a high-speed serialiser and de-serialiser. All of these have been successfully prototyped, and this paper will focus on the design and results from the serialiser/deserialiser prototype. This has been designed in commercial 130 nm CMOS with particular emphasis on enhancing its immunity to single-event-effects. The specific design features to achieve this will be described. The chip has been fully characterized in the lab, and jitter and bit-error-rate measurements are presented. The custom packaging of the chip will also be described together with the next steps foreseen in the project.

A 60 GHz Antenna-Referenced Frequency-Locked Loop in 0.13 $\mu$m CMOS for Wireless Sensor Networks

Some applications of wireless sensor networks (WSN) require long-term deployments and vanishingly-small unit volumes to make them cost effective and unobtrusive. Energy- and area-efficient circuits, as well as eliminating offchip components, are critical to meeting these objectives. A conventional WSN node can be fully integrated in CMOS except for the battery, crystal reference, and antenna. Typically, a PLL and a crystal reference are used for RF synchronization and to position the wireless signal in a desired band for FCC compliance. Crystals, however, require custom packaging that currently prohibits scaling to mm3 sizes. Moreover, an off-chip antenna increases the size of the node and raises the cost. In this paper, a fully integrated 60GHz frequency-locked loop (FLL) in 0.13μm CMOS is presented using an on-chip patch antenna as both the radiator and reference for frequency generation. The proposed technique efficiently integrates the antenna, eliminates the need for a crystal reference, is FCC compliant, and ensures the node transmits at the antenna's peak efficiency. The substrate beneath the antenna is shielded by an intermediate metal layer ground plane, freeing up space for active circuits and routing beneath the patch. By integrating circuits in CMOS underneath the patch, and stacking the die on e.g. a thin-film battery, a fully integrated WSN node in mm3 scale is feasible.

Wireless SAW Temperature Sensor System for High-Speed High-Voltage Motors

This paper gives an overview on the system development of a wireless surface acoustic wave (SAW) temperature measurement application in high-speed high-voltage motors. The measurement location of interest is on the rotor in the vicinity of the copper squirrel cage. To fit the sensor in a 4 mm bore, a custom packaging with outer dimensions of 10.0 × 3.1 × 2.0 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> has been developed. For the purpose of interrogation a mechanically robust metal slot antenna has been designed to withstand rotation speeds up to 15 000 rpm. As the sensor interacts only during a very short time of a few 100 μs with the reader antenna a fast frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) reader was developed. The reader operates in the ISM band of 2.4 GHz and achieves a typical sweep time for data acquisition of 100 μs. The sensor system has been tested both in test bed and real engine conditions and performed stable read outs, although in the real engine signal behavior is disturbed by reflections and possibly electromagnetic field bursts caused by the power converter.

3-Dimensional modelling of chick embryo eye development and growth using high resolution magnetic resonance imaging

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a powerful tool for generating 3-dimensional structural and functional image data. MRI has already proven valuable in creating atlases of mouse and quail development. Here, we have exploited high resolution MRI to determine the parameters necessary to acquire images of the chick embryo eye. Using a 9.4 Tesla (400 MHz) high field ultra-shielded and refrigerated magnet (Bruker), MRI was carried out on paraformaldehyde-fixed chick embryos or heads at E4, E6, E8, and E10. Image data were processed using established and custom packages (MRICro, ImageJ, ParaVision, Bruker and mri3dX). Voxel dimensions ranged from 62.5 μm to 117.2 μm. We subsequently used the images obtained from the MRI data in order to make precise measurements of chick embryo eye surface area, volume and axial length from E4 to E10. MRI was validated for accurate sizing of ocular tissue features by direct comparison with previously published literature. Furthermore, we demonstrate the utility of high resolution MRI for making accurate measurements of morphological changes due to experimental manipulation of chick eye development, thereby facilitating a better understanding of the effects on chick embryo eye development and growth of such manipulations. Chondroitin sulphate or heparin were microinjected into the vitreous cavity of the right eyes of each of 3 embryos at E5. At E10, embryos were fixed and various eye parameters (volume, surface area, axial length and equatorial diameter) were determined using MRI and normalised with respect to the un-injected left eyes. Statistically significant alterations in eye volume (p < 0.05; increases with chondroitin sulphate and decreases with heparin) and changes in vitreous homogeneity were observed in embryos following microinjection of glycosaminoglycans. Furthermore, in the heparin-injected eyes, significant disturbances at the vitreo-retinal boundary were observed as well as retinal folding and detachment confirming histological observations. These data reveal the utility and superiority of MRI for producing images enabling quantification of experimentally induced changes in eye volume and structure. The results indicate that MRI is an important tool that could become a routine approach for rapid and sensitive phenotypic analysis of normal chick ocular development and morphology as well as potentially the effects of surgical or genetic manipulations of chick embryo eyes in live embryos in ovo.

Architecture &amp; Design for Application Agility

The extremely dynamic, competitive, and global business environment has dramatically increased the rate of change in businesses resulting in mergers and acquisitions, building of alliances, increased pace of product and service development, and marketing innovation. To succeed in this hyper competitive environment corporations are increasingly focusing on design, architecture, optimization, and management of their intra and inter organizational business processes. They are also looking for capabilities to dynamically monitor, change, integrate and fine tune interand intra-organizational processes in a very short period of time without significant efforts and involvement of their IT staff. Unfortunately, in this environment IT is often looked upon more as a road block than the enabler of change. One of the major reasons for this is the slow pace and high cost of integrating and changing IT applications. These problems are inherently rooted in the way IT applications are architected and designed. Advances in component based development (CBD), Web Services technologies, and the concepts like Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) are significantly impacting the whole paradigm of application development. These technologies and concepts have significantly improved the interoperability at hardware, operating system, development language, and data levels. This allows radically different approaches and business models to be used for application architecture, design, and development. Started as a cost effective approach for integrating intra-firm and inter-firm applications, SOA is increasingly becoming an approach for architecting and developing applications using many vendor provided services. According to Gartner, by 2008, 80% of software development projects will be based on service-oriented architectures. Additionally, existing legacy applications and packaged applications are being re-factored and delivered as service-oriented business applications. Many major corporations are in the midst of implementing significant initiatives to re-architect their IT through service centric computing to help meet fast changing business requirements. This is expected to significantly change the application development approach from either custom application development or package implementation (including ERP) to more of a solution assembly approach. In this environment the central role of in-house IT is to be very closely aligned to business, help shape the corporate strategies and relationship with customers and suppliers, improve productivity through automation and control of operation and production environment using real time information, and determine system requirements based on business strategy. In spite of the significant interest in the business community in architecting and designing applications for agility, the processes and methodologies for designing, architecting and developing such applications are in their infancy. Numerous interesting research issues related to application agility definitions, business value of agility, agility measurement, agile application development approaches, design models, project team organization, communication within and across project teams, and governance need to be addressed. Many additional issues related to organizational implementation, adoption, impact of these changes on IT organization and IT education need to be studied. H. Jain Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA e-mail: jain@uwm.edu

Electromagnetically Actuated Mirror Arrays for Use in 3-D Optical Switching Applications

This paper presents an electromagnetic MEMS mirror technology for use in 3-D optical switching applications. These mirrors may be actuated through large angles at low voltage and low current. Multiple coils on the backs of the mirrors interact with permanent magnetic fields to provide two-axis orthogonal actuation. A custom package brings the MEMS mirror array and magnets into close proximity. Actuation is linear versus drive current on both axes, and displays negligible charging and drift. These mirrors have achieved greater than 10/spl deg/ mechanical rotation per mA in each axis. The mirror rotation angle is hysteresis free to less than the 0.01/spl deg/ measurement accuracy.

Highly integrated InP HBT optical receivers

This paper presents two highly integrated receiver circuits fabricated in InP heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) technology operating at up to 2.5 and 7.5 Gb/s, respectively. The first IC is a generic digital receiver circuit with CMOS-compatible outputs. It integrates monolithically an automatic-gain-control amplifier, a digital clock and data recovery circuit, and a 1:8 demultiplexer, and consumes an extremely low 340 mW of power at 3.3 V, including output buffers. It can realize a full optical receiver when connected to a photo detector/preamplifier front end. The second circuit is a complete multirate optical receiver application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that integrates a photodiode, a transimpedance amplifier, a limiting amplifier, a digital clock and data recovery circuit, a 1:10 demultiplexer, and the asynchronous-transfer-mode-compatible word synchronization logic. It is the most functionally complex InP HBT optoelectronic integrated circuit reported to date. A custom package has also been developed for this ASIC.

An active, microfabricated, scalp electrode array for EEG recording

We describe the microfabrication, packaging, and testing of an active, dry, scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) electrode. The electrode consists of a silicon sensor substrate and a custom circuit substrate (2 μm CMOS technology). A via-hole technology has been developed using reactive ion etching with SF 6 O 2 gas mixture to make electrical contacts between the sensor and circuit substrates. These substrates and batteries (power source) are then assembled in a custom package for testing on bench and human subjects.

Energy Dependence of pMOS Dosemeters

The results are presented of experimental work and numerical simulations of the energy response for pMOS dosimetric transistors in their custom packages. Specially produced radiation soft pMOS transistors were used in this experimental work. The irradiation of pMOS dosemeters was done using 60 CO and 137 Cs sources, a dosimetric X ray unit, and a radiotherapeutic linear accelerator in the range of photon energies from 21 keV to 8 MeV. The results show that package geometry and materials can significantly affect and smooth the energy dependence of pMOS transistors and that in custom transistor packages they are not tissue-equivalent dosemeters. Their response in the photon energy range of 45 to 250 keV is significantly larger than it should be (maximum dose enhancement factor can be as high as 8) and some energy compensation techniques must be used in order to fulfill the requirements of corresponding standards.

A System Executive for Real-Time Microcomputer Programs

Don't want to use an off-the-shelf system executive but lack the resources to develop one from scratch? This description will help you build your own custom package.