Authentication of IC based on Electromagnetic Signature

IC Counterfeiting is becoming serious issue. The approach discussed here is to use Electromagnetic (EM) input to an IC and measure its EM input output response. The idea is to extract a signature from EM response which should be unique to one IC. The main purpose of this work is to show that it is possible to authenticate electronic chips from a nonintrusive method, based on the use of RF waves. IC authentication can be performed using Physical Unclonable Function (PUF). PUF are based on process variation inherent to semiconductor fabrication process. EM based authentication is also based on the same principle. Nevertheless, unlike PUF such a method does not need dedicated circuitry and thus may have lower cost of implementation and may be easier to industrialize. This work first focuses on FPGA which are a common target of counterfeiting. We first prove that FPGAs are sensitive to EM excitations and find the optimum configuration using a lightweight marker not as complex as PUF to optimize the sensitivity to EM excitation. Finally, a post processing is performed on the EM measurement to get the FPGA signature which is later used for authentication. The post-processing operations are being developed in order to deal with aging effects and other measurements issues commonly seen with RF measurement

Output and Labor Input in Manufacturing

macroeconomics, labor, manufacturing

A wireless ultrasonic NDT sensor system

Ultrasonic condition monitoring technologies have been traditionally utilized in industrial and construction environments where structural integrity is of concern. Such techniques include active systems with either single or multiple transmit-receiver combinations used to obtain defect positioning and magnitude. Active sensors are implemented in two ways; in a thickness operation mode, or as an area-mapping tool operating over longer distances. In addition, passive ultrasonic receivers can be employed to detect and record acoustic emission activity. Existing equipment requires cabling for such systems leading to expensive, complicated installations. This work describes the development and operation of a system that combines these existing ultrasonic technologies with modern wireless techniques within a miniaturized, battery-operated design. A completely wireless sensor has been designed that can independently record and analyze ultrasonic signals. Integrated into the sensor are custom ultrasonic transducers, associated analogue drive and receive electronics, and a Texas Instruments Digital Signal Processor (DSP) used to both control the system and implement the signal processing routines. BlueTooth wireless communication is used for connection to a central observation station, from where network operation can be controlled. Extending battery life is of prime importance and the device employs several strategies to do this. Low voltage transducer excitation suffers from poor signal-to-noise ratios, which can be enhanced by signal processing routines implemented on the DSP. Routines investigated include averaging, digital filtering and pulse compression

Design of automatic vision-based inspection system for solder joint segmentation

Purpose: Computer vision has been widely used in the inspection of electronic components. This paper proposes a computer vision system for the automatic detection, localisation, and segmentation of solder joints on Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) under different illumination conditions. Design/methodology/approach: An illumination normalization approach is applied to an image, which can effectively and efficiently eliminate the effect of uneven illumination while keeping the properties of the processed image the same as in the corresponding image under normal lighting conditions. Consequently special lighting and instrumental setup can be reduced in order to detect solder joints. These normalised images are insensitive to illumination variations and are used for the subsequent solder joint detection stages. In the segmentation approach, the PCB image is transformed from an RGB color space to a YIQ color space for the effective detection of solder joints from the background. Findings: The segmentation results show that the proposed approach improves the performance significantly for images under varying illumination conditions. Research limitations/implications: This paper proposes a front-end system for the automatic detection, localisation, and segmentation of solder joint defects. Further research is required to complete the full system including the classification of solder joint defects. Practical implications: The methodology presented in this paper can be an effective method to reduce cost and improve quality in production of PCBs in the manufacturing industry. Originality/value: This research proposes the automatic location, identification and segmentation of solder joints under different illumination conditions

A dynamic analysis of France's external trade

The purpose of the present paper is to review the sources of France's trade surplus in recent years and to attribute trade balance movements strictly to those determinants of trade flows suggested by economic theory. These determinants are price and/or cost developments, and demand in France and in the rest of the world. A primary objective of the paper is to analyse the dynamics of adjustment of trade flows to changes in competitiveness and in relative demand. To do so, a cointegration/error-correction model is applied to flows of both imports and exports, and the estimates of key elasticities obtained are instrumental in shedding light on this question.France trade balance; price competitiveness; export import; cointegration regression

A dynamic analysis of France's external trade. Determinants of merchandise imports and exports and their role in the trade surplus of the 1990s.

The purpose of the paper is to review the sources of France's trade surplus in recent years and to attribute trade balance movements strictly to those determinants of trade flows suggested by economic theory. The paper is organised as follows: after the introduction, section II reviews some salient characteristics of France's trade in recent years; section III discusses an accounting decomposition of movements in the non-energy and in the manufacturing trade balance over the period 1990 to 1996; section IV presents econometric methodology used in the empirical work; section V examines the error-correction model for non-energy and manufacturing imports; section VI examines the possibility of hysteresis in imports through equation stability tests; section VII examines the corresponding model for non-energy and manufacturing exports and section VIII reviews the question of hysteresis in exports; section IX uses elasticity estimates from the economic estimation to shed light on the relationship between the trade balance and demand and competitiveness developments; section X presents simulation results for the non-energy and the manufacturing trade balance since the 1990s; and, finally, section XI presents conclusions. There are 8 annexes complementing the paper.II/511/97-ENOne of the striking characteristics of France's economic performance since the beginning of the present decade has been the strength of the external accounts. In particular, on the basis of national accounts data, since 1989 the current account and the non-energy trade balance have recorded rising surpluses, which in 1996 amounted to 1.7 % of GDP and to close to 1.5 % of GDP, respectively. The service balance, on the other hand, has registered persistent surpluses which averaged between 1 and 1.4 percent of GDP in the 1990s. The largest component of merchandise trade is trade in manufactured goods. The balance on manufacturing trade recorded surpluses throughout the period following the 1973 oil crisis to the late 1980s. The manufacturing trade balance slipped into deficit in the period 1987-1991 but subsequently moved into surplus which rose to almost 1 % of GDP in 1996. Graph 1 presents quarterly data on the evolution of these variables from the beginning of the 1970s to the end of 1996; data adjusted for inflation present a similar picture. It is clear that since movements in the current account are dominated by movements in the non-energy and, in particular, in the manufacturing trade balance throughout this period the sources of the current account improvement in the 1990s are likely to be those explaining the improvement of the manufacturing trade balance.Awareness of the importance of developments in France's external transactions became more pronounced following the commitment to sustain a stable franc in the ERM. External accounts deficits were considered as leading to devaluations and, consequently, exchange rate stability required that the trade balance was not systematically in deficit, in order not to undermine exchange and the stability. Since the dominant component of France's external transactions is trade in manufactures, the commitment to a stable franc inevitably implied the necessity to strengthen the manufacturing trade balance, principally through improvements in competitiveness. These took the form of cost and price restraint which has had a beneficial effect on export growth and on the manufacturing trade balance, and on supporting the external value of the franc.Graph 1 also shows the importance of manufacturing in France's external and, more specifically, in non-energy trade. Over much of the period since the beginning of the 1970s peaks and troughs in the former coincide with peaks and troughs in the latter, while the level of the manufacturing trade balance accounts on average for virtually the level of the non-energy trade balance. This relationship has been particularly close in the period up to the second half of the 1980s. Since then, a systematic deviation has emerged where the level of the manufacturing trade balance has been lower than the level of the non-energy trade balance. Furthermore, since 1987 improvements in the non-energy trade balance have been larger than those in trade in manufactures where notably larger deficits have been recorded until late 1991. Clearly, marked improvements in non-manufacturing, non-energy trade (that is, trade in agricultural and food commodities) are at the background of these developments. By 1996, the non-energy trade balance had registered surpluses amounting to over 1 percent of GDP while the manufacturing trade balance had recovered from a peak deficit of 0.7 percent of GDP recorded at the end of the 1980s and in the beginning of the 1990s to a surplus of 0.7 percent of GDP in the first three quarters of 1996. This improvement has taken place against a background of turbulence in the ERM marked by the substantial nominal and real depreciations of the exchange rate for the Italian lira, the Spanish peseta, the Portuguese escudo, and the British and the Irish pound against the French franc.There are three significant factors which have undoubtedly contributed to France's external performance in recent years. First, the different cyclical position of France relative to its main trading partners; secondly, relative price developments which have moved to France's advantage or disadvantage principally, but not exclusively, as a result of nominal and real exchange rate changes; and, third, supply improvements which have promoted export expansion and import substitution, principally through gains in cost and price competitiveness but also through improvements in non-price competitiveness associated with changing technology through new investment in the trading sectors of the economy, increased export capacity, productivity-induced relative price changes etc. The impact of the first two factors has likely dominated, especially in short-term developments, the latter's influence on France's trade. Ultimately, however, many supply-side improvements have undoubtedly themselves taken the form of improvements in France's relative costs and relative prices.The purpose of the present paper is to review the sources of France's trade surplus in recent years and to attribute trade balance movements strictly to those determinants of trade flows suggested by economic theory. These determinants are price and/or cost developments, and demand in France and in the rest of the world. Nominal exchange rate movements in the 1990s have been perceived as playing a significant role in France's trade performance, particularly during the depreciation episodes of 1992 and 1993, since they were considered to have imparted a competitive advantage to those trading partners whose currency had depreciated against the franc; ceteris paribus, and assuming that the nominal depreciation led to a real exchange depreciation, imports would increase and exports would decline, and the trade surplus in real terms would decline. This could have permanent effects on the trade balance since, according to some models of international trade, prolonged exchange rate appreciations, or depreciations can induce hysteresis phenomena (see Baldwin (1988), for example). At the same time, slow growth in France relative to the rest of the world in the 1990s would be expected to have led to a widening of the trade surplus. These two factors have a conflicting impact on trade balance movements, and since income elasticities are generally substantially larger than relative price elasticities it is possible to argue that the emergence of the trade surplus since the beginning of the 1990s is dominated by relative demand movements. A primary objective of the paper is to examine the empirical support for these propositions and to analyse the dynamics of adjustment of trade flows to changes in competitiveness and in relative demand. To do so, a cointegration/error-correction model is applied to flows of both imports and exports, and the estimates of key elasticities obtained are instrumental in shedding light on this question.The paper, in addition to the introduction, is organized as follows: Section II reviews some salient characteristics of France's trade in recent years in terms of trade patterns, price and cost competitiveness developments, import penetration and export market performance, and in terms of demand developments in France and abroad; section III discusses an accounting decomposition of movements in the non-energy and in the manufacturing trade balance over the period 1990 to 1996 according to the state of price competitiveness and of relative demand; section IV presents the econometric methodology used in the empirical work; section V examines the error-correction model for non-energy and manufacturing imports; section VI examines the possibility of hysteresis in imports through equation stability tests; section VII examines the corresponding model for non-energy and manufacturing exports and section VIII reviews the question of hysteresis in exports again through equation stability tests; section IX uses elasticity estimates from the econometric estimation to shed light on the relationship between the trade balance and demand and competitiveness developments; section X presents simulation results for the non-energy and the manufacturing trade balance since the beginning of the 1990s where the contribution of price competitiveness and of relative demand is evaluated; and, finally, section XI presents conclusions. There are eight annexes complementing the paper. The sources and the time series properties of the data are presented in Annex A; Annexes B, C and D present additional cointegration results and further evidence on the stability of the import equations; and Annexes E, F, G, and H are devoted to reviewing further cointegration results and to examining the stability of the export functions.trade analysis, french imports, french exports

Adjustment, investment, and the real exchange rate in developing countries

At the center of the controversy about effectiveness of"adjustment with growth"loan packages from the IMF and the World Bank has been the heavy emphasis on real exchange rate depreciation as a way to restore external balance and elicit a positive supply response. The authors find that adjustment has been far more successful for countries exporting manufactured goods than for countries exporting primary goods. Devaluation of the exchange rate in countries exporting primary goods appears to be ineffective. Most of their adjustment has taken the form of reduced spending rather than increased supply. As a result, they have not resumed sustainable growth. The longer term prospects for exporters of manufactured goods are much brighter. They show more signs of improving efficiency and less decline in investment than do exporters of primary goods.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Stabilization,Macroeconomic Management,Achieving Shared Growth

Microeconomic Reform and Technical Efficiency in Australian Manufacturing

The technical efficiency dividend reaped by Australian manufacturing industries following the implementation of microeconomic reforms over the past three decades is analysed empirically in this paper. The technical efficiency scores have been estimated for manufacturing industries using a combined stochastic production-frontier inefficiency model that is free of simultaneity bias. The model parameters have been estimated using maximum likelihood techniques using a panel data set covering a cross-section of 8 industries spanning a time-series of 26 years (1969-1995). The empirical results shed light on how technical inefficiency in manufacturing has been whittled down by the microeconomic reform induced trade liberalisation and technology diffusion processes. Generalised likelihood ratio tests reject the null hypotheses that trade liberalisation and technology transfer had no significant impact on the reduction of technical inefficiency. The reduction of effective rate of assistance and technical efficiency and technology proxies such as intra-industry trade and capital deepening are negatively correlated during the study period. These findings give credence to the predictions of endogenous growth theories that openness of the economy provides a conduit for accessing new technology that promotes innovation and technical efficiency. The increase in technical efficiency of manufacturing industries is the unsung hero behind the emergence of the 'new economy' or the spectacular pick-up of productivity growth observed for Australia during the 1990s. The error-correction modelling reported at the outset confirms that this productivity pick-up is not an artefact of a cyclical upturn. It is attributable to the microeconomic reforms and the technology transfer that has followed it. The paper concludes on the need for further research , first, to shed light on the constituents of total factor productivity such as technical change and technical progress and second, to design policy to address the challenging issues of equity-efficiency trade-off lest it degenerates into a back-lash that could nullify the whole reform agenda.

Growth and Inflation: Analysis by Industry

macroeconomics, inflation, economic growth