Self-healing matériaux pour antenne RF et leur application dans l'exploitation minière

Certains systèmes de télécommunication (BAN) ont été proposés pour surveiller les accidents, l'emplacement des mines et l'existence de gaz toxiques dans les galeries des mines. Les BAN sont des systèmes de communication sans fil qui permettent la communication entre les dispositifs électroniques portables et implantés sur le corps humain. En raison de défaillances mécaniques et électriques des opérations de télécommunication dans l'environnement minier, ainsi que de la difficulté, du coût et du temps nécessaire à la réparation ; L'utilisation de matériel Self-Healing pour les systèmes de télécommunications devient importante. Le matériau Self-Healing peut les réparer avec ou sans influence externe. L'idée actuelle pour le travail de cette maîtrise à partir de mes recherches récentes sur les composites Self-Healing pour les applications spatiales. Pour éliminer les dommages possibles et également pour la surveillance de la santé des systèmes électroniques, une nouvelle génération de matériel intelligent pourrait être une alternative appropriée. Il existe de nombreuses méthodes pour organiser des matériaux Self-Healing qui comprennent des microcapsules, des Ionomères, des Céramiques, etc., qui sont actuellement utilisés. Dans un premier temps, l'effet du matériau Self-Healing sur les propriétés électromagnétiques d'une fréquence radio(RF) est évalué. Deuxièmement, la capacité de Self-Healing pour protéger l'antenne est atteinte expérimentalement

Dynamically Controllable Integrated Radiation and Self-Correcting Power Generation in mm-Wave Circuits and Systems

This thesis presents novel design methodologies for integrated radiators and power generation at mm-wave frequencies that are enabled by the continued integration of various electronic and electromagnetic (EM) structures onto the same substrate. Beginning with the observation that transistors and their connections to EM radiating structures on an integrated substrate are essentially free, the concept of multi-port driven (MPD) radiators is introduced, which opens a vast design space that has been generally ignored due to the cost structure associated with discrete components that favors fewer transistors connected to antennas through a single port. From Maxwell's equations, a new antenna architecture, the radial MPD antennas based on the concept of MPD radiators, is analyzed to gain intuition as to the important design parameters that explain the wide-band nature of the antenna itself. The radiator is then designed and implemented at 160 GHz in a 0.13 um SiGe BiCMOS process, and the single element design has a measured effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) of +4.6 dBm with a total radiated power of 0.63 mW. Next, the radial MPD radiator is adapted to enable dynamic polarization control (DPC). A DPC antenna is capable of controlling its radiated polarization dynamically, and entirely electronically, with no mechanical reconfiguration required. This can be done by having multiple antennas with different polarizations, or within a single antenna that has multiple drive points, as in the case of the MPD radiator with DPC. This radiator changes its polarization by adjusting the relative phase and amplitude of its multiple ports to produce polarizations with any polarization angle, and a wide range of axial ratios. A 2x1 MPD radiator array with DPC at 105 GHz is presented whose measurements show control of the polarization angle throughout the entire 0 degree through 180 degree range while in the linear polarization mode and maintaining axial ratios above 10 dB in all cases. Control of the axial ratio is also demonstrated with a measured range from 2.4 dB through 14 dB, while maintaining a fixed polarization angle. The radiator itself has a measured maximum EIRP of +7.8 dBm, with a total radiated power of 0.9 mW, and is capable of beam steering. MPD radiators were also applied in the domain of integrated silicon photonics. For these designs, the driver transistor circuitry was replaced with silicon optical waveguides and photodiodes to produce a 350 GHz signal. Three of these optical MPD radiator designs have been implemented as 2x2 arrays at 350 GHz. The first is a beam forming array that has a simulated gain of 12.1 dBi with a simulated EIRP of -2 dBm. The second has the same simulated performance, but includes optical phase modulators that enable two-dimensional beam steering. Finally, a third design incorporates multi-antenna DPC by combining the outputs of both left and right handed circularly polarized MPD antennas to produce a linear polarization with controllable polarization angle, and has a simulated gain of 11.9 dBi and EIRP of -3 dBm. In simulation, it can tune the polarization from 0 degrees through 180 degrees while maintaining a radiated power that has a 0.35 dB maximum deviation from the mean. The reliability of mm-wave radiators and power amplifiers was also investigated, and two self-healing systems have been proposed. Self-healing is a global feedback method where integrated sensors detect the performance of the circuit after fabrication and report that data to a digital control algorithm. The algorithm then is capable of setting actuators that can control the performance of the mm-wave circuit and counteract any performance degradation that is observed by the sensors. The first system is for a MPD radiator array with a partially integrated self-healing system. The self-healing MPD radiator senses substrate modes through substrate mode pickup sensors and infers the far-field radiated pattern from those sensors. DC current sensors are also included to determine the DC power consumption of the system. Actuators are implemented in the form of phase and amplitude control of the multiple drive points. The second self-healing system is a fully integrated self-healing power amplifier (PA) at 28 GHz. This system measures the output power, gain and efficiency of the PA using radio frequency (RF) power sensors, DC current sensors and junction temperature sensors. The digital block is synthesized from VHDL code on-chip and it can actuate the output power combining matching network using tunable transmission line stubs, as well as the DC operating point of the amplifying transistors through bias control. Measurements of 20 chips confirm self-healing for two different algorithms for process variation and transistor mismatch, while measurements from 10 chips show healing for load impedance mismatch, and linearity healing. Laser induced partial and total transistor failure show the benefit of self-healing in the case of catastrophic failure, with improvements of up to 3.9 dB over the default case. An exemplary yield specification shows self-healing improving the yield from 0% up through 80%.</p

Energy-Aware Low-Power CMOS LNA with Process-Variations Management

A reconfigurable low-noise amplifier (LNA) with digitally controllable gain and power consumption is presented.This architecture allows increasing power consumption only when required, that is, to improve LNA’s radiofrequency performance at extreme communication-channel conditions and/or to counteract the effect of process, voltage, and temperature variations.The proposed design leads to significant power saving when a relaxed operation is acceptable. The LNA is implemented in a 130nm 1.2V CMOS technology for a 2.4GHz IEEE-802.15.4 application. Simulated LNAperformance (taking into account theworst cases under process variations) is comparable to recently published worksCAPES-Brazil 176/12Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores y Cooperación D/024124/09Junta de Andalucía P09-TIC- 5386Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2011-2830

Silicon-Based Terahertz Circuits and Systems

The Terahertz frequency range, often referred to as the `Terahertz' gap, lies wedged between microwave at the lower end and infrared at the higher end of the spectrum, occupying frequencies between 0.3-3.0 THz. For a long time, applications in THz frequencies had been limited to astronomy and chemical sciences, but with advancement in THz technology in recent years, it has shown great promise in a wide range of applications ranging from disease diagnostics, non-invasive early skin cancer detection, label-free DNA sequencing to security screening for concealed weapons and contraband detection, global environmental monitoring, nondestructive quality control and ultra-fast wireless communication. Up until recently, the terahertz frequency range has been mostly addressed by high mobility compound III-V processes, expensive nonlinear optics, or cryogenically cooled quantum cascade lasers. A low cost, room temperature alternative can enable the development of such a wide array of applications, not currently accessible due to cost and size limitations. In this thesis, we will discuss our approach towards development of integrated terahertz technology in silicon-based processes. In the spirit of academic research, we will address frequencies close to 0.3 THz as 'Terahertz'. In this thesis, we address both fronts of integrated THz systems in silicon: THz power generation, radiation and transmitter systems, and THz signal detection and receiver systems. THz power generation in silicon-based integrated circuit technology is challenging due to lower carrier mobility, lower cut-o frequencies compared to compound III-V processes, lower breakdown voltages and lossy passives. Radiation from silicon chip is also challenging due to lossy substrates and high dielectric constant of silicon. In this work, we propose novel ways of combining circuit and electromagnetic techniques in a holistic design approach, which can overcome limitations of conventional block-by-block or partitioned design methodology, in order to generate high-frequency signals above the classical definition of cut-off frequencies (ƒt/ƒmax). We demonstrate this design philosophy in an active electromagnetic structure, which we call Distributed Active Radiator. It is inspired by an Inverse Maxwellian approach, where instead of using classical circuit and electromagnetic blocks to generate and radiate THz frequencies, we formulate surface (metal) currents in silicon chip for a desired THz field prole and develop active means of controlling different harmonic currents to perform signal generation, frequency multiplication, radiation and lossless filtering, simultaneously in a compact footprint. By removing the articial boundaries between circuits, electromagnetics and antenna, we open ourselves to a broader design space. This enabled us to demonstrate the rst 1 mW Eective-isotropic-radiated-power(EIRP) THz (0.29 THz) source in CMOS with total radiated power being three orders of magnitude more than previously demonstrated. We also proposed a near-field synchronization mechanism, which is a scalable method of realizing large arrays of synchronized autonomous radiating sources in silicon. We also demonstrate the first THz CMOS array with digitally controlled beam-scanning in 2D space with radiated output EIRP of nearly 10 mW at 0.28 THz. On the receiver side, we use a similar electronics and electromagnetics co-design approach to realize a 4x4 pixel integrated silicon Terahertz camera demonstrating to the best of our knowledge, the most sensitive silicon THz detector array without using post-processing, silicon lens or high-resistivity substrate options (NEP &lt; 10 pW &#8730; Hz at 0.26 THz). We put the 16 pixel silicon THz camera together with the CMOS DAR THz power generation arrays and demonstrated, for the first time, an all silicon THz imaging system with a CMOS source.</p

Biomedical Engineering

Biomedical engineering is currently relatively wide scientific area which has been constantly bringing innovations with an objective to support and improve all areas of medicine such as therapy, diagnostics and rehabilitation. It holds a strong position also in natural and biological sciences. In the terms of application, biomedical engineering is present at almost all technical universities where some of them are targeted for the research and development in this area. The presented book brings chosen outputs and results of research and development tasks, often supported by important world or European framework programs or grant agencies. The knowledge and findings from the area of biomaterials, bioelectronics, bioinformatics, biomedical devices and tools or computer support in the processes of diagnostics and therapy are defined in a way that they bring both basic information to a reader and also specific outputs with a possible further use in research and development

Solutions pour l'auto-adaptation des systèmes sans fil

The current demand on ubiquitous connectivity imposes stringent requirements on the fabrication of Radio-Frequency (RF) circuits. Designs are consequently transferred to the most advanced CMOS technologies that were initially introduced to improve digital performance. In addition, as technology scales down, RF circuits are more and more susceptible to a lot of variations during their lifetime, as manufacturing process variability, temperature, environmental conditions, aging… As a result, the usual worst-case circuit design is leading to sub-optimal conditions, in terms of power and/or performance most of the time for the circuit. In order to counteract these variations, increasing the performances and also reduce power consumption, adaptation strategies must be put in place.More importantly, the fabrication process introduces more and more performance variability, which can have a dramatic impact on the fabrication yield. That is why RF designs are not easily fabricated in the most advanced CMOS technologies, as 32nm or 22nm nodes for instance. In this context, the performances of RF circuits need to be calibrated after fabrication so as to take these variations into account and recover yield loss.This thesis work is presenting on a post-fabrication calibration technique for RF circuits. This technique is performed during production testing with minimum extra cost, which is critical since the cost of test can be comparable to the cost of fabrication concerning RF circuits and cannot be further raised. Calibration is enabled by equipping the circuit with tuning knobs and sensors. Optimal tuning knob identification is achieved in one-shot based on a single test step that involves measuring the sensor outputs once. For this purpose, we rely on variation-aware sensors which provide measurements that remain invariant under tuning knob changes. As an auxiliary benefit, the variation-aware sensors are non-intrusive and totally transparent to the circuit.Our proposed methodology has first been demonstrated with simulation data with an RF power amplifier as a case study. Afterwards, a silicon demonstrator has then been fabricated in a 65nm technology in order to fully demonstrate the methodology. The fabricated dataset of circuits is extracted from typical and corner wafers. This feature is very important since corner circuits are the worst design cases and therefore the most difficult to calibrate. In our case, corner circuits represent more than the two third of the overall dataset and the calibration can still be proven. In details, fabrication yield based on 3 sigma performance specifications is increased from 21% to 93%. This is a major performance of the technique, knowing that worst case circuits are very rare in industrial fabrication.La demande courante de connectivité instantanée impose un cahier des charges très strict sur la fabrication des circuits Radio-Fréquences (RF). Les circuits doivent donc être transférées vers les technologies les plus avancées, initialement introduites pour augmenter les performances des circuits purement numériques. De plus, les circuits RF sont soumis à de plus en plus de variations et cette sensibilité s’accroît avec l’avancées des technologies. Ces variations sont par exemple les variations du procédé de fabrication, la température, l’environnement, le vieillissement… Par conséquent, la méthode classique de conception de circuits “pire-cas” conduit à une utilisation non-optimale du circuit dans la vaste majorité des conditions, en termes de performances et/ou de consommation. Ces variations doivent donc être compensées, en utilisant des techniques d’adaptation.De manière plus importante encore, le procédé de fabrication des circuits introduit de plus en plus de variabilité dans les performances des circuits, ce qui a un impact important sur le rendement de fabrication des circuits. Pour cette raison, les circuits RF sont difficilement fabriqués dans les technologies CMOS les plus avancées comme les nœuds 32nm ou 22nm. Dans ce contexte, les performances des circuits RF doivent êtres calibrées après fabrication pour prendre en compte ces variations et retrouver un haut rendement de fabrication.Ce travail de these présente une méthode de calibration post-fabrication pour les circuits RF. Cette méthodologie est appliquée pendant le test de production en ajoutant un minimum de coût, ce qui est un point essentiel car le coût du test est aujourd’hui déjà comparable au coût de fabrication d’un circuit RF et ne peut être augmenté d’avantage. Par ailleurs, la puissance consommée est aussi prise en compte pour que l’impact de la calibration sur la consommation soit minimisé. La calibration est rendue possible en équipant le circuit avec des nœuds de réglages et des capteurs. L’identification de la valeur de réglage optimale du circuit est obtenue en un seul coup, en testant les performances RF une seule et unique fois. Cela est possible grâce à l’utilisation de capteurs de variations du procédé de fabrication qui sont invariants par rapport aux changements des nœuds de réglage. Un autre benefice de l’utilisation de ces capteurs de variation sont non-intrusifs et donc totalement transparents pour le circuit sous test. La technique de calibration a été démontrée sur un amplificateur de puissance RF utilisé comme cas d’étude. Une première preuve de concept est développée en utilisant des résultats de simulation.Un démonstrateur en silicium a ensuite été fabriqué en technologie 65nm pour entièrement démontrer le concept de calibration. L’ensemble des puces fabriquées a été extrait de trois types de wafer différents, avec des transistors aux performances lentes, typiques et rapides. Cette caractéristique est très importante car elle nous permet de considérer des cas de procédé de fabrication extrêmes qui sont les plus difficiles à calibrer. Dans notre cas, ces circuits représentent plus des deux tiers des puces à disposition et nous pouvons quand même prouver notre concept de calibration. Dans le détails, le rendement de fabrication passe de 21% avant calibration à plus de 93% après avoir appliqué notre méthodologie. Cela constitue une performance majeure de notre méthodologie car les circuits extrêmes sont très rares dans une fabrication industrielle

Parametric circuit fault diagnosis through oscillation based testing in analogue circuits : statistical and deep learning approaches

Oscillation-based testing of analogue electronic filters removes the need for test signal synthesis. Parametric faults in the presence of normal component tolerance variation are challenging to detect and diagnose. This study demonstrates the suitability of statistical learning and deep learning techniques for parametric fault diagnosis and detection by investigating several time-series classification techniques. Traditional harmonic analysis is used as a baseline for an in-depth comparison. Eight standard classification techniques are applied and compared. Deep learning approaches, which classify the time-series signals directly, are shown to benefit from the oscillator start-up region for feature extraction. Global average pooling in the convolutional neural networks (CNN) allows for Class Activation Maps (CAM). This enables interpreting the time-series signal’s discriminative regions and confirming the importance of the start-up oscillation signal. The deep learning approach outperforms the harmonic analysis approach on simulated data by an average of 11.77% in classification accuracy for the three parametric fault magnitudes considered in this work.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=6287639Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin

Advances in Bioengineering

The technological approach and the high level of innovation make bioengineering extremely dynamic and this forces researchers to continuous updating. It involves the publication of the results of the latest scientific research. This book covers a wide range of aspects and issues related to advances in bioengineering research with a particular focus on innovative technologies and applications. The book consists of 13 scientific contributions divided in four sections: Materials Science; Biosensors. Electronics and Telemetry; Light Therapy; Computing and Analysis Techniques

Proximal-Field Radiation Sensors for Dynamically Controllable and Self-Correcting Integrated Radiators

One of the major challenges in the design of integrated radiators at mm-wave frequencies is the generation of surface waves in the dielectric substrate by the on-chip antennas. Since dielectric substrates are excellent surface waveguides with a fundamental mode with no cutoff frequency, there is always some energy trapped in them due to the surface waves and the excited substrate modes. This phenomenon is a significant cause of reduced radiation efficiency for mm-wave integrated radiators. However, in this thesis, we use this as an opportunity. We show that the excited substrate modes in the dielectric substrate of an integrated antenna contain valuable information regarding its far-field radiation properties. We introduce Proximal-Field Radiation Sensors (PFRS) as a number of small sensing antennas that are placed strategically on the same substrate as the integrated antenna and measure electromagnetic waves in its immediate proximity. These sensors extract the existing information in the substrate modes and use it to predict the far-field radiation properties of the integrated antenna in real-time based on in-situ measurements in the close proximity of the antennas, without any need to use additional test equipment and without removing the antenna from its operating environment or interfering with its operation in a wireless system. In other words, PFRS enables self-calibration, self-correction, and self-monitoring of the performance of the integrated antennas. Design intuition and a variety of data processing schemes for these sensors are discussed. Two proof-of-concept prototypes are fabricated on printed circuit board (PCB) and integrated circuit (IC) and both verify PFRS capabilities in prediction of radiation properties solely based on in-situ measurements. Dynamically controllable integrated radiators would significantly benefit from PFRS, These radiators are capable of controlling their radiation parameters such as polarization and beam steering angle through their actuators and control units. In these cases, PFRS serves as a tool for real-time monitoring of their radiation parameters, so that without direct measurement of the far-field properties through bulky equipment the required information for the control units and the actuators are provided. Dynamically controllable integrated radiators can be designed using the additional design space provided by Multi-Port Driven (MPD) radiator methodology. After a review of advantages of MPD design over the traditional single-port design, we show that a slot-based MPD radiator would have the additional advantage of reduced exclusive use area compared to the original wire-based MPD radiator, through demonstration of a 134.5-GHz integrated slot-based MPD radiator with a measured single-element EIRP of +6.0 dBm and a total radiated power of -1.3 dBm. We discuss how MPD methodology enables the new concept of Dynamic Polarization Control, as a method to ensure polarization matching of the transmitter antenna to the receiver antenna, regardless of the polarization and orientation of the receiver antenna in space. A DPC antenna design using the MPD methodology is described and a 105.5-GHz 2x1 integrated DPC radiator array with a maximum EIRP of +7.8 dBm and a total radiated power of 0.9 mW is presented as the first demonstration of an integrated radiator with DPC capability. This prototype can control the polarization angle across the entire tuning range of 0 to 180 degrees while maintaining axial ratios above 10 dB, and control the axial ratio from 2.4 dB (near circular) to 14 dB (linear). We also demonstrate how simultaneous two-dimensional beam steering and DPC capabilities can even match the polarization to a mobile receiver antenna through a prototype 123-GHz 2x2 integrated DPC radiator array with a maximum EIRP of +12.3 dBm, polarization angle control across the full range of 0to 180 degrees as well as tunable axial ratio down to 1.2 dB and beam steering of up to 15 degrees in both dimensions. We also use slot-based DPC antennas to fabricate a 120-GHz integrated slot-based DPC radiator array, expected to have a maximum EIRP of +15.5 dBm. We also introduce a new modulation scheme called Polarization Modulation (Pol-M) as a result of DPC capability, where the polarization itself is used for encoding the data. Pol-M is a spatial modulation method and is orthogonal to the existing phase and amplitude modulation schemes. Thus, it could be added on top of those schemes to enable creation of 4-D data constellations, or it can be used as the only basis for modulation to increase the stream security by misleading the undesired receivers. We discuss how DPC antenna enables Pol-M and also present PCB prototypes for Pol-M transmitter and receiver units operating at 2.4 GHz.</p