Low-cost IC Research Articles

Portable absorbance platform for sensing of viral and bacterial nucleic acid leveraging intercalation with methylene blue: Application for wastewater-based epidemiology

Monitoring the presence of viruses and bacteria in environmental reservoirs such as wastewater, lake water etc. is a very useful tool for early detection and controlling the spread of diseases, while also helping estimate the severity of infections at a community level. While several DNA sensors have been demonstrated for nucleic acid sensing for a variety of applications, most such demonstrations require sophisticated instrumentation or assays that need to be controllably performed in a well-equipped laboratory. In this work, we demonstrate a low-cost, portable device to detect DNA in wastewater and lake water, based on the color change in samples due to the intercalation of DNA with methylene blue (MB) dye. The optical sensor consists of a phase-sensitive detection circuit constructed with low-cost semiconductor ICs, red LED, and a silicon PIN photodiode. The phase-sensitive detection circuit has a resolution of 68μV, and the sensor has a limit of detection of 25.68 nM for DNA sensing. The utility of this sensor is demonstrated through the detection of bacteria (E. coli) and viruses (bacteriophage phi6) from wastewater and lake-water samples, respectively.

LOW COST IC TESTER USING PSEUDO-RANDOM APPROACH

Lowcost IC testing is now a burning issue in semiconductor technology. Conventional IC tester, ATE (automatic test equipment), cannot cope with the today’s continuously increasing complexities in IC technology. Deterministic algorithm, which is an idea of 1960’s, is adopted in the ATE. Recently pseudo random testing approach has been emerged as an economically viable alternative to the expensive deterministic testing. This paper introduces a SOC implementing pseudo-random test technique for lowcost IC testing with reliable performance. It is capable of testing combinational circuits as well as sequential circuits with scan-path facilities efficiently. It can also be used for testing PCB interconnection faults.

Development and performance analysis of a low-cost MEMS microphone-based hearing aid with three different audio amplifiers

In this paper, MEMS-based capacitive microphone and low-cost amplifier are designed for low-cost power-efficient hearing aid application. The developed microphone along with the associated circuitry is mounted on a common board in the form of pocket-type (body-worn) device. The designed microphone consists of a flexible circular silicon nitrite (Si3N4) diaphragm and a polysilicon-perforated back plate with air as dielectric between them. The incident acoustic waves on the sensor cause deflection of the diaphragm to alter the air gap between the perforated back plate (fixed electrode) and the diaphragm (moving plate) which causes a change in capacitance. The acoustic pressure applied to the microphone is from 0 to 100 Pa for an operating range of 100 Hz–10 kHz which corresponds to the audible frequency range in case of human beings. The main purpose of this work is to increase the longevity of battery used in conventional hearing aids. The designed MEMS microphone with Si3N4 diaphragm is capable of identifying acoustic frequencies (100 Hz to 10 kHz) which correspond to a specific change in absolute pressure from 0 to 100 Pa for 2-micron-thick diaphragm with a sensitivity of about 0.08676 mV/Pa. The design of the sensor and the characteristics analysis are performed in FEM-based simulation software, which are later validated in real time. The prototype is designed using MEMS microphone and low-cost amplifier ICs with biasing components in the form of pocket-type (body-worn) hearing aid. In order to study the performance of proposed device, three different market-available amplifiers with controllable gain are used. Finally, the performance of the hearing aid is studied through audio spectrogram analysis to choose the best-suited amplifier among the three.

An On-Chip Detector of Transient Stress Events

Testing and debugging of electrostatic discharge (ESD) or electrical fast transient (EFT) issues in modern electronic systems can be challenging. The following paper describes the design of an on-chip circuit which detects and stores the occurrence of a fast transient stress event at the ESD protection structures in an I/O pad. Measurements and simulations of a test circuit in 90 nm technology show it can accurately detect and record the presence of a transient stress event with a peak current as low as 0.9 A or duration as short as 1 ns and that the detector works well across typical temperature and process variations. The small size of the detector will allow it to be used effectively even in low-cost commercial ICs.

A 36 μW 1.1 mm2 Reconfigurable Analog Front-End for Cardiovascular and Respiratory Signals Recording.

This paper presents a 1.2 V 36 μW reconfigurable analog front-end (R-AFE) as a general-purpose low-cost IC for multiple-mode biomedical signals acquisition. The R-AFE efficiently reuses a reconfigurable preamplifier, a current generator (CG), and a mixed signal processing unit, having an area of 1.1mm2 per R-AFE while supporting five acquisition modes to record different forms of cardiovascular and respiratory signals. The R-AFE can interface with voltage-, current-, impedance-, and light-sensors and hence can measure electrocardiography (ECG), bio-impedance (BioZ), photoplethysmogram (PPG), galvanic skin response (GSR), and general-purpose analog signals. Thanks to the chopper preamplifier and the low-noise CG utilizing dynamic element matching, the R-AFE mitigates ${\text{1}}\text{/}f$ noise from both the preamplifier and the CG for improved measurement sensitivity. The IC achieves competitive performance compared to the state-of-the-art dedicated readout ICs of ECG, BioZ, GSR, and PPG, but with approximately 1.4×-5.3× smaller chip area per channel.

LabVIEW-based design and control of five-digit anthropomorphic robotic hand using EEG signals

In this paper we propose a novel technique in design and control of anthropomorphic robotic hand using EEG signals. The entire system designed is divided into three sub sections viz. design of low cost EEG amplifier, design of 5 digit robotic hand and providing an Interface between the two using LabVIEW environment. The EEG amplifier is designed using a low cost IC's LM324N and LM358. The simulation and real time implementation of FFT results match for the designed EEG amplifier. The construction of robotic hand were made using PVC tubing and Al-rubber-Al, with miniature metal gear motors of 71 RPM placed inside the palm. The analysis of motor was carried out using MATLAB/SIMULINK for with and without load. The interface between these two is provided under LabVIEW environment with NI USB DAQ-6009. The analysis for closure and opening of fingers is carried out based on thought process for three different subjects with different age groups ranges from 20 to 50 years. The results indicate that a peak signal is obtained in between the frequency range of 21 and 22 Hz with amplitude varying from 0.030 to 0.035 V. The robotic hand consumed current of 50 mA with 12 V DC supply when in action.

Guest editorial: Special issue on Communication IC

By definition, Communication ICs are integrated circuits specially designed for and used in communication systems. From hardware designer’s point of view, a communication system could be a system with DSP (Digital Signal Processor, including digital ASIC, Application Specific Integrated Circuit and FPGA) + MCU (Micro Controller Unit) surrounded with analog/digital interfaces, including ADC (Analog to Digital Converter), DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) and RFIC (Radio Frequency IC) modules. ICs are core components for communications. IC based on VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) has been the essential technology supporting telecommunications and it is growing rapidly in the last 20 years. It will definitely keep their high growing pace in the next decade. The involved R&D covers mobile communications, highway (core network) and last-mile (access network) broadband communication, and other domain specific communications. Radio communication steps into its new generation in every 10 years, the bandwidth has been 1Gbps and will be 10Gbps of 5G in the next 10 years. The bandwidth of broadband communication will soon reach 400Gbps per port. All of these challenges are drivers of R&D of high-end IC for communications. At the same time, R&D of low cost IC is also driven by volume communication markets including IoT (Internet of Things, including ZegBee, WIA-PA), Bluetooth, NFC (Near Field Communication, such as BAN: Body Area Communication, RFID), and other emerging technologies. Challenges on another side are low cost and low power consumption.

Design and Build of an Electrical Machines’ High Speed Measurement System at Low Cost

The principal objective of this paper is to demonstrate the capability of high speed measurement and acquisition equipment design and build in the laboratory at a very low cost. The presented architecture employees highly integrated market components eliminating thus the complexity of the hardware and software stack. The key element of the proposed system is a Hi-Speed USB to Serial/FIFO development module that is provided with full software and driver support for most popular operating systems. This module takes over every single task needed to get the data from the A/D to the user software gluelessly and transparently, solving this way the most difficult problem in data acquisition systems which is the fast and reliable communication with a host computer. Other ideas tested and included in this document offer Hall Effect measuring solutions using some excellent features and very low cost ICs widely available on the market today.

Design and Development of a PC based ECG Equipment

ECG is very important for diagnosis of cardiac disorders but most ECG equipment come from developed countries with very costly procurement and maintenance. Therefore, unless the technology is developed indigenously, common people in countries like Bangladesh will not get the benefits of modern healthcare technology. With the advent of personal computers (PC) at low cost, a PC based ECG equipment is also worth developing since many people already own a PC, thereby reducing the overall cost. With this view a PC based ECG equipment was designed and developed from the basics. An attempt was made to utilize maximum components and spares available in the local market. The main unit is based on a low cost but quality instrumentation amplifier IC with high common mode rejection ratio. Active filters were designed using common operational amplifier ICs. Right leg drive circuitry to reduce 50Hz noise of mains ac was kept as an option. Analog signal switching circuitry was used to obtain 12 Lead configurations, which were programme controlled, through graphical user interface. To achieve electrical isolation between patient and the mains ac, an analogue optical isolation circuit was designed and developed. Finally the analogue signal was converted to digital data and interfaced to a personal computer through its USB port using a microcontroller. The required power is obtained by USB port 5V supply. A medical grade isolated dc to dc converter was designed to power the patient side circuitry. Proper patient safety issues were followed in the design. Calibration was performed to make the equipment as accurate as possible. Outputs from several subjects were compared with that of reliable commercial equipment and were found to be satisfactory by cardiac experts. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bjmp.v6i1.19757 Bangladesh Journal of Medical Physics Vol.6 No.1 2013 39-54

Power Efficient SDR Implementation of IEEE 802.11a/p Physical Layer

Software defined physical layer modems can be considered the new trend in the field of communications. Differently from dedicated hardware, software can be easily modified to implement a large variety of standards on the same platform. The use of software can significantly reduce development costs, but generally comes at the price of an increase in silicon area and power consumption. For different reasons, this price is something that is not always convenient or even possible to pay, as in the case of low-cost ICs implementing a single waveform, or even multi-mode modems embedding legacy IPs already available in hardware. In particular, power consumption overhead can be prohibitive for mobile terminals or in general for battery-powered devices. The very first challenge for a computing fabric to be competitive is to find and implement the right trade-off between flexibility and performance. This was the guideline for the design of the Block Processing Engine (BPE), a template architecture conceived for power-efficient baseband processing. The BPE core feature is a mixed-grain instruction set balancing general-purpose fine-grain instructions with more specific coarse-grain instructions wrapping custom hardware modules. To further limit the power consumption, the BPE also implements instruction-pipelining, variable-size SIMD and multi-task support. To prove the efficiency of such an approach, a dual-mode IEEE 802.11a/p receiver has been implemented.

Large-Area Capacitive Active Touch Panel Using the Method of Pulse Overlapping Detection

In this paper, we propose a novel active touch panel circuit using the RC time constant changes when the panel is touched to induce pulse overlapping. The transient ON current of the pixel thin-film transistor(TFT) is to be detected for the judgment whether panel is touched or not. The proposed circuit has many advantages, such as simple structure, multi-touch, low operating power, as well as significant current to be read out easily by low cost ICs. Especially, it provides excellent stability since the circuit is hardly influenced by variation of TFTs. Discrete TFTs are used to build the proposed circuit to verify its function and the function is further demonstrated in a 2-inch 9×9 array. The potential for large area applications is proven by simulating a 42-inch touch panel with proper assumptions.

Secondary-Side LLC Resonant Controller IC With Dynamic PWM Dimming and Dual-Slope Clock Generator for LED Backlight Units

This paper presents a low-profile low-cost (LLC) resonant controller IC for LED backlight units fully operating at the secondary side. The integrated dimming circuitry is proposed to improve the dynamic current control characteristics and the LED current density for the brightness modulation of a large screen liquid crystal display. A dual-slope clock generator, including a soft start, is proposed in order to overcome the frequency error due to the undershoot found in conventional approaches. In addition, a new dead-time generator is proposed in order to implement an accurate dead time independent of the output frequency of the clock generator. Protection circuits, such as a under voltage lock out, thermal shut down, open LED detector, and shorted LED detector, have been implemented in order to improve the reliability of the controller IC. The chip is fabricated using 0.35 μm bipolar CMOS DMOS decimal technology; the die size is 2 mm × 2 mm. The frequency of the clock generator ranges from 50 to 500 kHz; the dead time ranges from 50 ns to 2.2 μs. The efficiency of the LED driving circuit is 91%. The current consumption of the LLC resonant controller IC is 40 mA for a 100 kHz operation frequency using a 15 V supply voltage.

An FPGA-Based Novel Digital PWM Control Scheme for BLDC Motor Drives

Development of advanced motor drives has yielded increases in efficiency and reliability. Residential and commercial appliances such as refrigerators and air conditioning systems use conventional motor drive technology. The machines found in these applications are characterized by low efficiency and high maintenance. A brushless dc (BLDC) motor drive is characterized by higher efficiency, lower maintenance, and higher cost. In a market driven by profit margins, the appliance industry is reluctant to replace the conventional motor drives with the advanced motor drives (BLDC) due to their higher cost. Therefore, it is necessary to have a low-cost but effective BLDC motor controller. This paper lays the groundwork for the development of a new low-cost IC for control of BLDC motors. A simple novel digital pulsewidth-modulation control has been implemented for a trapezoidal BLDC motor drive system. Due to the simplistic nature of this control, it has the potential to be implemented in a low-cost application-specific integrated circuit. The novel controller is modeled and verified using simulations. Experimental verification is carried out using field-programmable gate arrays to validate the claims presented.

Design of high frequency piezoelectric resonators utilizing laterally propagating fast modes in thin aluminum nitride (AlN) films

Highly c-oriented aluminum nitride (AlN) thin piezoelectric films have been grown by pulsed direct-current (DC) magnetron reactive sputter deposition. The films were deposited at room temperature and had a typical full width half maximum (FWHM) value of the (002) rocking curve of around 2°. Resonant devices in thin film plates having surface acoustic wave (SAW) based designs were fabricated by means of low resolution photolithography. The devices were designed to operate with the fast Rayleigh and Lamb modes respectively. Both types of devices exhibited propagation velocities in excess of 10000m/s and sufficient electromechanical couplings. The device measurements illustrate the big potential of these modes for the development of low cost IC compatible electroacoustic devices in the lower GHz range. The basic properties of the modes studied are discussed in a comparative manner. Potential commercial applications are also outlined.

A Multi-Carrier QAM Transceiver for Ultra-Wideband Optical Communication

The feasibility of a 40 Gb/s subcarrier modulated optical transmission system using low-cost optoelectronic components and CMOS IC technology is presented. The optical channel impairments are studied. A complete DSP framework is developed to cancel out the optical channel impairments as well as analog circuit imperfections. To validate that the 40 Gb/s system can be implemented in CMOS, an integrated QAM-16 transceiver with a carrier frequency of 13.32 GHz was designed and fabricated in a 0.14 mum, 1.5 V CMOS technology. The test chip occupies 3.6 mm2 of area and consumes 340 mW of power. Measurement results for a transmission link consisting of the CMOS QAM-16 modulator/demodulator, a directly modulated laser (DML), a 30 km single mode fiber and a p-i-n photo-detector are reported

Compact ADC DAC Interface for Parallel Port

In the modern world of electronics and process control instrumentation, computers are used for automation and to achieve high speed and accuracy. Hence it is required to have a simple, efficient and reliable interface, which can establish the connection between analog and digital world. In this paper, we have discussed the design and fabrication of such an interface card. This card can be plugged into readily available parallel port of PC. The samples of analog signal can be obtained through this card and processed samples can be converted back into analog form using the DAC available on the card. This design makes use of readily available low cost ICs. The signal processing software can be developed using any of the commercially available high level software languages like C++, VB and VC etc. For the specialized applications, software like MATLAB can also be used along with this card. This card can also be used for instrumentation and control applications like implementation of PID controller etc.

37.4: Mass-Production-Oriented Master Slice 6-Bit Gamma Correction for Mobile Applications

Thoughtful distinction between programmability for prototyping and mass-production proposes “Master slice gamma correction”, which gives not only programmability to adapt individual company or panel-specific gamma correction characteristic, but also both low-cost and low-power driver IC.

A fully planar microstrip coupled-line coupler with a high coupling level

A fully planar microstrip coupler with a high coupling level up to 4 dB is fabricated on PCB. Based on the conventional coupled-line structure, a gap size of coupled lines about 14 μm is realized by low cost IC process. It has a single stage and requires no bond wire. In measurement, a bandwidth more than 50% and isolation and return loss better than −20 dB are achieved. The measured responses have good agreement with EM simulation data. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 46: 170–172, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.20934

Minimization of the mechanical-stress-induced inaccuracy in bandgap voltage references

This paper shows a systematic approach to calculate and to minimize mechanical-stress-related problems in bandgap voltage references. Mechanical stress is the main cause of long-term drift and packaging-induced inaccuracy in bandgap voltage references. Especially, low-cost epoxy packaging can cause a large mechanical stress, being in the range from -200 to +200 MPa. This stress shows local variations over the chip area and changes over time or during thermal cycling. Due to the piezojunction effect, this stress causes changes and drift in the base-emitter voltages of bipolar transistors and consequently in the output voltage of bandgap references. In this paper, it is shown that, even when using low-cost IC and packaging technology, a bandgap reference with a high immunity for the effects of mechanical stress can be realized.

Philips Semiconductors introduces low-cost RF front-end IC for wireless equipment

Philips Semiconductors introduces low-cost RF front-end IC for wireless equipment