Nano-Opto-Electro-Mechanical Systems

A new class of hybrid systems that couple optical, electrical and mechanical degrees of freedom in nanoscale devices is under development in laboratories worldwide. These nano-opto-electro-mechanical systems (NOEMS) offer unprecedented opportunities to dynamically control the flow of light in nanophotonic structures, at high speed and low power consumption. Drawing on conceptual and technological advances from cavity optomechanics, they also bear the potential for highly efficient, low-noise transducers between microwave and optical signals, both in the classical and quantum domains. This Progress Article discusses the fundamental physical limits of NOEMS, reviews the recent progress in their implementation, and suggests potential avenues for further developments in this field.Comment: 27 pages, 3 figures, 2 boxe

The 2019 surface acoustic waves roadmap

Today, surface acoustic waves (SAWs) and bulk acoustic waves are already two of the very few phononic technologies of industrial relevance and can been found in a myriad of devices employing these nanoscale earthquakes on a chip. Acoustic radio frequency filters, for instance, are integral parts of wireless devices. SAWs in particular find applications in life sciences and microfluidics for sensing and mixing of tiny amounts of liquids. In addition to this continuously growing number of applications, SAWs are ideally suited to probe and control elementary excitations in condensed matter at the limit of single quantum excitations. Even collective excitations, classical or quantum are nowadays coherently interfaced by SAWs. This wide, highly diverse, interdisciplinary and continuously expanding spectrum literally unites advanced sensing and manipulation applications. Remarkably, SAW technology is inherently multiscale and spans from single atomic or nanoscopic units up even to the millimeter scale. The aim of this Roadmap is to present a snapshot of the present state of surface acoustic wave science and technology in 2019 and provide an opinion on the challenges and opportunities that the future holds from a group of renown experts, covering the interdisciplinary key areas, ranging from fundamental quantum effects to practical applications of acoustic devices in life science

Energy-Aware System-Level Design of Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) are heterogeneous systems in which one or several computational cores interact with the physical environment. This interaction is typically performed through electromechanical elements such as sensors and actuators. Many CPSs operate as part of a network and some of them present a constrained energy budget (for example, they are battery powered). Examples of energy constrained CPSs could be a mobile robot, the nodes that compose a Body Area Network or a pacemaker. The heterogeneity present in the composition of CPSs together with the constrained energy availability makes these systems challenging to design. A way to tackle both complexity and costs is the application of abstract modelling and simulation. This thesis proposed the application of modelling at the system level, taking energy consumption in the different kinds of subsystems into consideration. By adopting this cross disciplinary approach to energy consumption it is possible to decrease it effectively. The results of this thesis are a number of modelling guidelines and tool improvements to support this kind of holistic analysis, covering energy consumption in electromechanical, computation and communication subsystems. From a methodological point of view these have been framed within a V-lifecycle. Finally, this approach has been demonstrated on two case studies from the medical domain enabling the exploration of alternative systems architectures and producing energy consumption estimates to conduct trade-off analysis

Wind Turbine Fault Detection System in Real Time Remote Monitoring

In new energy development, wind power has boomed. It is due to theproliferation of wind parks and their operation in supplying the nationalelectric grid with low cost and clean resources. Hence, there is an increasedneed to establish a proactive maintenance for wind turbine machines based on remote control and monitoring. That is necessary with a real-time wireless connection in offshore or inaccessible locations while the wired method has many flaws. The objective of this strategy is to prolong wind turbine lifetime and to increase productivity. The hardware of a remote control and monitoring system for wind turbine parks is designed. It takes advantage of GPRS or Wi-Max wireless module to collect data measurements from different wind machine sensors through IP based multi-hop communication. Computer simulations with Proteus ISIS and OPNET software tools have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the studied system. Study findings show that the designed device is suitable for application in a wind park.DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijece.v4i6.647

RF-MEMS Switch Module in a 0.25 µm SiGe:C BiCMOS Process

Drahtlose Kommunikationstechnologien im Frequenzbereich bis 6 GHz wurden in der Vergangenheit in Bezug auf Leistungsfaehigkeit und Frequenzbereich kontinuierlich verbessert. Aufgrund der Skalierung nach dem Mooreschen Gesetz koennen heutzutage mm-Wellen Schaltkreise in CMOS-Technologien hergestellt werden. Durch die Einfuehrung von SiGe zur Realisierung einer leistungsfaehigen BiCMOS-Technologie wurde ebenfalls eine Verbesserung der Frequenzeigenschaften und Ausgangsleistungen erreicht, wodurch aktive CMOS- oder BiCMOS-Bauelemente vergleichbare Leistungsparameter zu III-V Technologien bei geringeren Kosten bereitstellen koennen. Bedingt durch das niederohmige Silizium-Substrat der BiCMOS-Technologie weisen vor allem passive Komponenten hoehere Verluste auf und weder III-V- noch BiCMOS-Technologien bieten hochlineare Schaltkomponenten mit geringen Verlusten und geringen Leistungsaufnahmen im mm-Wellen Bereich. RF-MEMS Schalter sind bekannt fuer ihre ausgezeichneten HF-Eigenschaften. Die Leistungsaufnahme von elektrostatisch angetriebenen RF-MEMS Schaltern ist vernachlaessigbar und es koennen im Vergleich zu halbleiter-basierten Schaltern hoehere Leistungen verarbeitet werden. Nichtsdestotrotz wurden RF-MEMS Schalter hauptsaechlich als eigenstaendige Komponenten entwickelt. Zur Systemintegration wird meist ein System-in-Package (SiP) Ansatz angewandt, der fuer niedrige Frequenzen geeignet ist, aber bei mm-Wellenanwendungen durch parasitaere Verluste an seine Grenzen stoesst. In dieser Arbeit wird ein in eine BiCMOS-Technologie integrierter RF-MEMS Schalter fuer mm-Wellen Anwendungen gezeigt. Das Design, die Integration und die experimentellen Ergebnisse sowie verschiedene Packaging-Konzepte werden beschrieben Zur Bereitstellung der hohen Auslenkungs-Spannungen wurde eine Ladungspumpe auf dem Chip integriert. Zum Schluss werden verschiedene, rekonfigurierbare mm-Wellen Schaltkreise zur Demonstration der Leistungsfaehigkeit des Schalters gezeigt.Wireless communication technologies have continuously advanced for both performance and frequency aspects, mainly for the frequencies up to 6 GHz. The results of Moore’s law now also give the opportunity to design mm-wave circuits using advanced CMOS technologies. The introduction of SiGe into CMOS, providing high performance BiCMOS, has also enhanced both the frequency and the power performance figures. The current situation is that the active devices of both CMOS and BiCMOS technologies can provide performance figures competitive with III-V technologies while having still the advantage of low cost. However, similar competition cannot be pronounced for the passive components considering the low-resistive substrates of BiCMOS technologies. Moreover, both III-V and BiCMOS technologies have the lack of low-loss and low-power consumption, as well as highly linear switching and tuning components at mm-wave frequencies. RF-MEMS switch technologies have been well-known with excellent RF- performance figures. The power consumption of electrostatic RF-MEMS switches is negligible and they can handle higher power levels compared to their semiconductor counterparts. However, RF-MEMS switches have been mostly demonstrated as standalone processes and have started to be used as commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) devices recently. The full system integration is typically done by a System-in-Package (SiP) approach. Although SiP is suitable for lower frequencies, the packaging parasitics limit the use of this approach for the mm-wave frequencies. In this thesis, a fully BiCMOS embedded RF-MEMS switch for mm-wave applications is proposed. The design, the implementation and the experimental results of the switch are provided. The developed RF-MEMS switch is packaged using different packaging approaches. To actuate the RF-MEMS switch, an on-chip high voltage generation circuit is designed and characterized. The robustness and the reliability performance of the switch are also presented. Finally, the developed RF-MEMS switch is successfully demonstrated in re-configurable mm-wave circuits

A Problem-Oriented Approach for Dynamic Verification of Heterogeneous Embedded Systems

This work presents a virtual prototyping methodology for the design and verification of industrial devices in the field level of industrial automation systems. This work demonstrates that virtual prototypes can help increase the confidence in the correctness of a design thanks to a deeper understanding of the complex interactions between hardware, software, analog and mixed-signal components of embedded systems and the physical processes they interact with