Consumer Electronics Technologies Research Articles

Elastic Tracking Operation Method for High-Speed Railway Using Deep Reinforcement Learning

Transportation-related consumer electronics technology has advanced rapidly, particularly for automated train operation on high-speed railways. To maximize transport capacity and meet growing demands, this manuscript proposes a new elastic tracking operation control method, that compresses the tracking interval while maintaining safety. The train operation process is formulated as a Monte Carlo process and the Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic policy gradient (TD3) algorithm is used to generate the basic operation strategy. A three-stage control principle and train tracking operation requirements are taken into account, and an elastic parameter-based train state transition rule is proposed. An improved cuckoo algorithm is then used to determine the elastic parameters for faster and more accurate solution convergence. Our results demonstrate that TD3-TOC is effective in i) improving the stability of the train operation process, ii) reducing the tracking interval, and iii) reducing delay in the case of emergency. In addition, the effectiveness of the elastic interval is demonstrated in experiments.

Challenges and needs for system-level electrochemical lithium-ion battery management and diagnostics

The desire for energy-dense and fast-charged battery technology in consumer electronics, electric vehicle, grid, and aviation applications is pushing the envelope from materials to cell and pack designs. However, some approaches could inherently decrease safety of the battery—thus requiring the development of advanced management and diagnostics. Safety of lithium-ion batteries (LiBs), particularly in multicell configurations, is highly variable and could evolve with use. Existing works primarily focus on cell life and safety diagnostics without considering module and pack-level uncertainties and sometimes imply that cell-level electrochemical diagnostics would work in modules or packs, a naive oversimplification. Using example case studies, we highlight the potential and challenges associated with extending single-cell diagnostics to multiple cells, note the existing gaps, and motivate the research, development, and support communities to devote efforts to fill the gap by developing diagnostics at these levels for current- and future-generation LiBs.

Electrochemical studies on wafer-scale synthesized silicon nanowalls for supercapacitor application

Silicon-based supercapacitors are highly essential for the utilization of supercapacitor technology in consumer electronics, owing to their on-chip integration with the well-established complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor-related fabrication technology. In this study, silicon nanowalls were carved on commercially available silicon wafers by using a facile, low-cost and complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor compatible method of metal (silver)-assisted chemical etching. The electron microscopic studies of the carved out silicon nanowalls reveal that they are smooth, single crystalline and vertically aligned to their base silicon wafer. Raman and ATR-FTIR spectroscopy confirm that the surface of the silicon nanowalls has Si–O–Si bonded structures. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) and galvanostatic charge–discharge (GCD) studies were carried out in the organic electrolyte tetraethylammonium tetrafluroborate (NEt4BF4) in propylene carbonate (PC). It is evident from both the CV and GCD studies that the silicon nanowalls exhibit redox peaks arising from the silver-related deep-level trap state in silicon in contact with adsorbed water and also from the oxidation of silicon and its hydrides by the water present in the electrolyte. The presence of silver in silicon nanowalls and water in the electrolyte are considered to be due to the minute amount of silver left over during its removal by HNO3, owing to the bunching of nanowalls and the highly moisture sensitive nature of the electrolyte, respectively. The influence of such redox peaks on capacitance and cycle life are discussed.

Toward an ICT-Based Service Oriented Health Care Paradigm

Health care platforms rapidly shift toward the ICT-based solutions. In this context, a wide range of consumer electronics technologies come into play ranging from robotics, embedded systems, sensors, and communication infrastructures. Driven by such observations, the H2020 RADIO project set forward a service-oriented, easily expandable design paradigm that emphasizes on how heterogenous commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) ICT technologies can be used as enablers of existing and new health-care services. Such services focus on activities of daily life (ADL) monitoring algorithms, on facilitating the indoor everyday life activities of the end user emphasizing on energy multifaceted conservation and security provision. All software components produced during the RADIO project with relative guidelines are freely available through dedicated GitHub repository (https://github.com/RADIO-PROJECT-EU).

Working From Home with External Storage

During the 2020 Covid-19 epidemic, many people who worked in “non-essential” industries, were working from home. Working from home has only been possible because of Internet connectivity and consumer electronics technologies such as personal computers (desktop or laptop), related peripheral devices (including digital stor-age), as well as smart phones and tablets. Collaboration between working teams was possible using cloud-based applications, content sharing, physical mail, and email.

Maskless Patterning of Biodegradable Conductors by Selective Laser Sintering of Microparticle Inks and Its Application in Flexible Transient Electronics.

Biodegradable electronic devices are able to break down into benign residues after their service life, which may effectively alleviate the environmental impacts as a consequence of the proliferation of consumer electronic technology. The widespread adaptation to biodegradable systems is currently impeded by the lack of economic fabrication techniques for functional devices. Here, a facile approach to generate a biodegradable conductor is developed based on selective laser sintering of zinc and iron microparticle ink. The sintering process is effective to convert naturally oxidized microparticles into interconnected conductors. Arbitrary conductive features are readily created over flexible biodegradable substrates under ambient conditions, which exhibits excellent conductivity (∼2 × 106 S m-1), low sheet resistance (∼0.64 Ω □ -1), fine feature resolution (∼45 μm), and mechanical flexibility. The practical suitability is demonstrated by fabricating a miniaturized near-field communication tag with the dimension to mount on the fingernail. The methodology is further extended to create a metallic grid as a biodegradable transparent electrode with low sheet resistance (2.5 Ω □-1) and high optical transmittance (96%), which is employed as an epidermal transparent heater for thermotherapy. Maskless patterning of biodegradable conductors may find a broad range of applications in environment friendly gadgets and implantable medical devices.

Recent Advances in OLED Optical Design

AbstractOrganic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs) have become a mainstream display technology in consumer electronics. Self‐emitting ability, transparency, true dark tone, and capability of being made flexible are some of the features of OLED displays, leading to a superior performance compared with liquid crystal displays. In addition to displays, OLEDs are also a strong candidate for lighting applications. Despite great advances in improving the internal quantum efficiency of an OLED to nearly 100%, the external quantum efficiency is still lacking behind due to optical losses. This review reports the latest advances in the optical design of OLEDs that address the external coupling efficiency of OLEDs. Discussed at first are the fundamentals of OLED optics and how the refractive indices of different layers in an OLED stack affect the extraction efficiency. Then, this paper reviews how microlens arrays, scattering layers, and corrugated structures can be used to recover the optical losses and improve the external efficiency, and the general optical designs for different optical structures for light extraction are presented.

Tackling Critical Challenges towards Efficient CyberPhysical Components & Services Interconnection: The ATLAS CPS Platform Approach

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) comprise a rapidly expanding research domain incorporating various diverse ICT aspects. Consequently, such systems are characterized by high degree of heterogeneity regarding communication, hardware and software technologies. Additionally, a high number of challenges must be tackled before such horizontal architectures can yield useful services, that can be exploited by todays and future consumer electronics and respective vertical domains. Aiming to address such objectives, this paper proposes a holistic end-to-end CPS architecture based on message passing communication technologies able to support the inherent complexity of respective deployments spanning several areas of applied industrial research and development. In this context, this paper aims to serve as a roadmap on how existing, prominent technologies from different domains can be effectively integrated and address all changes while be applied in diverse application demands. This is achieved by analytically presenting the proposed ATLAS infrastructure emphasizing on integration of prominent consumer electronics technologies. Finally, the deployment of the proposed solution in different verticals is presented, highlighting i) the applicability of the system and ii) a resource conservative behavior advocating the integration with nowadays COTS embedded systems.

Recent Developments in Flexible Organic Light‐Emitting Devices

AbstractAs the demand for display technology in consumer electronics and lighting panels increases, thin, light, high‐quality, and more cost‐effective light‐emitting devices are required. Organic light‐emitting devices (OLEDs), satisfying the criteria exactly, have been considered the most promising next‐generation display and lighting technique. In particular, an OLED based on flexible substrate enables the device to be applied to curved displays, electronic newspapers, wearable displays, and conceptual lighting panels, has been always in the spotlight both in science and industry. Great advances on flexible OLEDs (FOLEDs) have been made over the past three decades. The fundamental elements of FOLEDs including substrates, electrodes, fabrication and encapsulation techniques, as well as the strategies of efficiency improvement are discussed herein. Moreover, emerging electrodes such as graphene, carbon nanotubes, metal nanowire network and their composite, flexible perovskite light emitting devices, and stretchable light emitting devices are also considered. Finally, the future challenges and prospects for these devices are put forward.

Aerosol printing and photonic sintering of bioresorbable zinc nanoparticle ink for transient electronics manufacturing

Bioresorbable electronics technology can potentially lead to revolutionary applications in healthcare, consumer electronics, and data security. This technology has been demonstrated by various functional devices. However, majority of these devices are realized by CMOS fabrication approaches involving complex and time-consuming processes that are high in cost and low in yield. Printing electronics technology represents a series of printing and post processing techniques that hold promise to make high performance bioresorbable electronics devices. But investigation of printing approaches for bioresorbable electronics is very limited. Here we demonstrate fabrication of conductive bioresorbable patterns using aerosol printing and photonic sintering approaches. Experimental results and simulation reveals that ink compositions, photonic energy, film thickness, and ventilation conditions may influence the effect of photonic sintering. A maximum conductivity of 22321.3 S/m can be achieved using 1 flash with energy of 25.88 J/cm2 with duration of 2 ms. By combining two cascaded sintering procedures using flash light and laser further improve the conductivity to 34722.2 S/m. The results indicate that aerosol printing and photonic sintering can potentially yield mass fabrication of bioresorbable electronics, leading to prevalence of printable bioresorbable technology in consumer electronics and biomedical devices.

Microstructure reconstruction and impedance spectroscopy study of LiCoO2, LiMn2O4 and LiFePO4 Li-ion battery cathodes

Cathode materials have been the focal point of research in the quest for high-performance secondary battery technology in consumer electronics and electric vehicles. The present work investigates the effect of the microstructural morphology of major cathode materials (LiCoO2, LiMn2O4, and LiFePO4) on the performance of the Li-ion battery related to the charge and species transport. Simulated annealing method (SAM) was implemented to generate a virtual 3D domain of the electrode microstructure using a spherical particles, average radius of 3 and 6 μm. An equivalent circuit composed of resistance, capacitance and Warburg impedance was used to model the impedance response of the overall electrochemical reaction occur inside a typical battery system. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) results show that the ionic and electronic mobility in the solid electrode and bulk electrolyte were significantly determined by the morphology of the electrode microstructure. Higher porosity microstructures usually tend to have larger solid-electrolyte interface (SEI) area and lower pore tortuosity which improves the ionic diffusivity in solid and electrolyte phase. Furthermore, the Bruggeman's exponent for effective conductivity and diffusivity was derived from geometrical parameters of the reconstructed microstructure. The real and imaginary parts of the impedance were then presented in Nyquist plot on a frequency range of 20 kHz to 10 mHz.

A flexible Li-ion battery with design towards electrodes electrical insulation

The application of micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology in several consumer electronics leads to the development of micro/nano power sources with high power and MEMS integration possibility. This work presents the fabrication of a flexible solid-state Li-ion battery (LIB) (~2.1 μm thick) with a design towards electrodes electrical insulation, using conventional, low cost and compatible MEMS fabrication processes. Kapton® substrate provides flexibility to the battery. E-beam deposited 300 nm thick Ge anode was coupled with LiCoO2/LiPON (cathode/solid-state electrolyte) in a battery system. LiCoO2 and LiPON films were deposited by RF-sputtering with a power source of 120 W and 100 W, respectively. LiCoO2 film was annealed at 400 °C after deposition. The new design includes Si3N4 and LiPO thin-films, providing electrode electrical insulation and a battery chemical stability safeguard, respectively. Microstructure and battery performance were investigated by scanning electron microscopy, electric resistivity and electrochemical measurements (open circuit potential, charge/discharge cycles and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy). A rechargeable thin-film and lightweight flexible LIB using MEMS processing compatible materials and techniques is reported.

Flying Smartphones: When Portable Computing Sprouts Wings

Lightweight, highly autonomous drones that can actively interact with the world are emerging as the next step-change in consumer electronic technology, much in the same way that smartphones revolutionized personal computing.

Electrolyte Filling of Large-Scale Lithium-Ion Batteries: Challenges for Production Technology and Possible Approaches

Lithium-ion batteries have been the dominant energy storage technology in consumer electronics for several years and meanwhile advanced into e-mobility and stationary applications. The trend towards large-scale batteries presents manifold challenges to production technology. One decisive assembly process is filling electrolyte liquid into the battery case. This paper discusses the main influences and challenges for production technology concerning this crucial manufacturing process and how they are addressed. First preliminary results are presented.

Body Control HIL Testing: Leveraging Consumer Electronics Technology

Body Control HIL Testing: Leveraging Consumer Electronics Technology

Gold nanoparticles: novel catalyst for the preparation of direct methanol fuel cell.

The authors report the biosynthesis of gold nanoparticles (Au-NPs) using plant pathogenic Phoma glomerata (MTCC 2210). The synthesis of nanoparticles was characterised by visual observation followed UV-visible spectrophotometric analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and nanoparticle tracking analysis. Later, direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) was constructed using two chambers (anodic chamber and cathodic chamber). These Au-NPs as catalysts have various advantages over the other catalysts that are used in the DMFC. Most importantly, it is cheaper as compared with other catalysts like platinum, and showed higher catalytic activity because of its effective surface structure. Being nano in size, it provides more surface area for the attachment of reactant molecules (methanol molecules). The DMFC catalysed by Au-NPs are found to be suitable to replace lithium ion battery technology in consumer electronics like cell phones, laptops and so on due to the fact that they can produce a high amount of energy in a small space. As long as fuel and air are supplied to the DMFC, it will continue to produce power, so it does not need to be recharged. The use of Au-NPs as catalyst in DMFC has not been reported in the past; it is reported here the first time.

Deconstructing television: Delivery, content, and policy [Bits Versus Electrons

In 1949, the two IEEE broadcasting groups first met [1]. (This also happens to be the year I was born.) It wasn?t until 1983 that they were reorganized as the separate Consumer Electronics and Broadcast Technology Societies.

Setting MEPS for electronic products

When analysing price, performance and efficiency data for 15 consumer electronic and information and communication technology products, we found that in general price did not relate to the efficiency of the product. Prices of electronic products with comparable performance decreased over time. For products where the data allowed fitting the relationship, we found an exponential decrease in price with an average time constant of −0.30 [1/year], meaning that every year the product became 26% cheaper on average.The results imply that the classical approach of setting minimum efficiency performance standards (MEPS) by means of life cycle cost calculations cannot be applied to electronic products. Therefore, an alternative approach based on the improvement of efficiency over time and the variation in efficiency of products on the market, is presented. The concept of a policy action window can provide guidance for the decision on whether setting MEPS for a certain product is appropriate. If the (formal) procedure for setting MEPS takes longer than the policy action window, this means that the efficiency improvement will also be achieved without setting MEPS. We found short, i.e. less than three years, policy action windows for graphic cards, network attached storage products, network switches and televisions.

Wireless Remote Control [IP Corner

The article "Channel surfing redux" [ibid., Vol 1, no 4, Oct 2012] about the coinventors of the original wireless remote control (RC) technologies was inspired as a tribute to the recent passing of Eugene Polley. Within the IEEE Consumer Electronics (CE) Society, we are lucky to have an IEEE Fellow and longtime volunteer within our Society who worked with both Polley and Robert Adler. Adler invented an alternative technology for wireless RC at almost the same time. It is perhaps not surprising that there was occasional conflict between the two, but both made a significant contribution to consumer electronics technology at that time, and this issue of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine is themed around their work. As a compliment to the main article on the history and background of the original television RC, the author investigates the technologies behind both Flash-Matic (Polley) and Space Command (Adler) RCs.

Offloading of media transcoding for high-quality multimedia services

The demand for high-quality multimedia service in handheld devices has increased with the advance of consumer electronics technologies. However, there are inherent performance limits in such mobile devices due to low processing power, requirements for low power consumption, and limited storage capacity. These factors have obviously prevented high-performance multimedia services from being feasible. In addition, most of the mobile devices support distinct multimedia data formats for video and audio codecs, bit rate, and screen size. Therefore, streaming media or receiving data from other users' devices essentially requires additional data translation along with a transcoding operation. However, most of the processors that are used in mobile devices or even in personal media servers cannot provide sufficient processing power for transcoding. To address the problem, this paper proposes an efficient offloading method for media transcoding can be applied in current commercial products. The system is designed on top of Java and provides sufficient transcoding performance for media streaming with low-end processors.