1,064 research outputs found

    RF energy harvesters for wireless sensors, state of the art, future prospects and challenges: a review

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    The power consumption of portable gadgets, implantable medical devices (IMDs) and wireless sensor nodes (WSNs) has reduced significantly with the ongoing progression in low-power electronics and the swift advancement in nano and microfabrication. Energy harvesting techniques that extract and convert ambient energy into electrical power have been favored to operate such low-power devices as an alternative to batteries. Due to the expanded availability of radio frequency (RF) energy residue in the surroundings, radio frequency energy harvesters (RFEHs) for low-power devices have garnered notable attention in recent times. This work establishes a review study of RFEHs developed for the utilization of low-power devices. From the modest single band to the complex multiband circuitry, the work reviews state of the art of required circuitry for RFEH that contains a receiving antenna, impedance matching circuit, and an AC-DC rectifier. Furthermore, the advantages and disadvantages associated with various circuit architectures are comprehensively discussed. Moreover, the reported receiving antenna, impedance matching circuit, and an AC-DC rectifier are also compared to draw conclusions towards their implementations in RFEHs for sensors and biomedical devices applications

    LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volume

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    LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volum

    On Age-of-Information Aware Resource Allocation for Industrial Control-Communication-Codesign

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    Unter dem Überbegriff Industrie 4.0 wird in der industriellen Fertigung die zunehmende Digitalisierung und Vernetzung von industriellen Maschinen und Prozessen zusammengefasst. Die drahtlose, hoch-zuverlĂ€ssige, niedrig-latente Kommunikation (engl. ultra-reliable low-latency communication, URLLC) – als Bestandteil von 5G gewĂ€hrleistet höchste DienstgĂŒten, die mit industriellen drahtgebundenen Technologien vergleichbar sind und wird deshalb als Wegbereiter von Industrie 4.0 gesehen. Entgegen diesem Trend haben eine Reihe von Arbeiten im Forschungsbereich der vernetzten Regelungssysteme (engl. networked control systems, NCS) gezeigt, dass die hohen DienstgĂŒten von URLLC nicht notwendigerweise erforderlich sind, um eine hohe RegelgĂŒte zu erzielen. Das Co-Design von Kommunikation und Regelung ermöglicht eine gemeinsame Optimierung von RegelgĂŒte und Netzwerkparametern durch die Aufweichung der Grenze zwischen Netzwerk- und Applikationsschicht. Durch diese VerschrĂ€nkung wird jedoch eine fundamentale (gemeinsame) Neuentwicklung von Regelungssystemen und Kommunikationsnetzen nötig, was ein Hindernis fĂŒr die Verbreitung dieses Ansatzes darstellt. Stattdessen bedient sich diese Dissertation einem Co-Design-Ansatz, der beide DomĂ€nen weiterhin eindeutig voneinander abgrenzt, aber das Informationsalter (engl. age of information, AoI) als bedeutenden Schnittstellenparameter ausnutzt. Diese Dissertation trĂ€gt dazu bei, die EchtzeitanwendungszuverlĂ€ssigkeit als Folge der Überschreitung eines vorgegebenen Informationsalterschwellenwerts zu quantifizieren und fokussiert sich dabei auf den Paketverlust als Ursache. Anhand der Beispielanwendung eines fahrerlosen Transportsystems wird gezeigt, dass die zeitlich negative Korrelation von Paketfehlern, die in heutigen Systemen keine Rolle spielt, fĂŒr Echtzeitanwendungen Ă€ußerst vorteilhaft ist. Mit der Annahme von schnellem Schwund als dominanter Fehlerursache auf der Luftschnittstelle werden durch zeitdiskrete Markovmodelle, die fĂŒr die zwei Netzwerkarchitekturen Single-Hop und Dual-Hop prĂ€sentiert werden, Kommunikationsfehlerfolgen auf einen Applikationsfehler abgebildet. Diese Modellierung ermöglicht die analytische Ableitung von anwendungsbezogenen ZuverlĂ€ssigkeitsmetriken wie die durschnittliche Dauer bis zu einem Fehler (engl. mean time to failure). FĂŒr Single-Hop-Netze wird das neuartige Ressourcenallokationsschema State-Aware Resource Allocation (SARA) entwickelt, das auf dem Informationsalter beruht und die AnwendungszuverlĂ€ssigkeit im Vergleich zu statischer Multi-KonnektivitĂ€t um GrĂ¶ĂŸenordnungen erhöht, wĂ€hrend der Ressourcenverbrauch im Bereich von konventioneller EinzelkonnektivitĂ€t bleibt. Diese ZuverlĂ€ssigkeit kann auch innerhalb eines Systems von Regelanwendungen, in welchem mehrere Agenten um eine begrenzte Anzahl Ressourcen konkurrieren, statistisch garantiert werden, wenn die Anzahl der verfĂŒgbaren Ressourcen pro Agent um ca. 10 % erhöht werden. FĂŒr das Dual-Hop Szenario wird darĂŒberhinaus ein Optimierungsverfahren vorgestellt, das eine benutzerdefinierte Kostenfunktion minimiert, die niedrige AnwendungszuverlĂ€ssigkeit, hohes Informationsalter und hohen durchschnittlichen Ressourcenverbrauch bestraft und so das benutzerdefinierte optimale SARA-Schema ableitet. Diese Optimierung kann offline durchgefĂŒhrt und als Look-Up-Table in der unteren Medienzugriffsschicht zukĂŒnftiger industrieller Drahtlosnetze implementiert werden.:1. Introduction 1 1.1. The Need for an Industrial Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2. Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2. Related Work 7 2.1. Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.2. Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2.3. Codesign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.3.1. The Need for Abstraction – Age of Information . . . . . . . . 11 2.4. Dependability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.5. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 3. Deriving Proper Communications Requirements 17 3.1. Fundamentals of Control Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 3.1.1. Sampling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 3.1.2. Performance Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 3.1.3. Packet Losses and Delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 3.2. Joint Design of Control Loop with Packet Losses . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 3.2.1. Method 1: Reduced Sampling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 3.2.2. Method 2: Markov Jump Linear System . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 3.2.3. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 3.3. Focus Application: The AGV Use Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 3.3.1. Control Loop Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 3.3.2. Control Performance Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 3.3.3. Joint Modeling: Applying Reduced Sampling . . . . . . . . . . 34 3.3.4. Joint Modeling: Applying MJLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 3.4. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 4. Modeling Control-Communication Failures 43 4.1. Communication Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 4.1.1. Small-Scale Fading as a Cause of Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 4.1.2. Connectivity Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 4.2. Failure Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 4.2.1. Single-hop network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 4.2.2. Dual-hop network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 4.3. Performance Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 4.3.1. Mean Time to Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 4.3.2. Packet Loss Ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 4.3.3. Average Number of Assigned Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 4.3.4. Age of Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 4.4. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 5. Single Hop – Single Agent 61 5.1. State-Aware Resource Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 5.2. Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 5.3. Erroneous Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 5.4. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 6. Single Hop – Multiple Agents 71 6.1. Failure Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 6.1.1. Admission Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 6.1.2. Transition Probabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 6.1.3. Computational Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 6.1.4. Performance Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 6.2. Illustration Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 6.3. Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 6.3.1. Verification through System-Level Simulation . . . . . . . . . 78 6.3.2. Applicability on the System Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 6.3.3. Comparison of Admission Control Schemes . . . . . . . . . . 80 6.3.4. Impact of the Packet Loss Tolerance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 6.3.5. Impact of the Number of Agents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 6.3.6. Age of Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 6.3.7. Channel Saturation Ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 6.3.8. Enforcing Full Channel Saturation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 6.4. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 7. Dual Hop – Single Agent 91 7.1. State-Aware Resource Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 7.2. Optimization Targets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 7.3. Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 7.3.1. Extensive Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 7.3.2. Non-Integer-Constrained Optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 7.4. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 8. Conclusions and Outlook 105 8.1. Key Results and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 8.2. Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 A. DC Motor Model 111 Bibliography 113 Publications of the Author 127 List of Figures 129 List of Tables 131 List of Operators and Constants 133 List of Symbols 135 List of Acronyms 137 Curriculum Vitae 139In industrial manufacturing, Industry 4.0 refers to the ongoing convergence of the real and virtual worlds, enabled through intelligently interconnecting industrial machines and processes through information and communications technology. Ultrareliable low-latency communication (URLLC) is widely regarded as the enabling technology for Industry 4.0 due to its ability to fulfill highest quality-of-service (QoS) comparable to those of industrial wireline connections. In contrast to this trend, a range of works in the research domain of networked control systems have shown that URLLC’s supreme QoS is not necessarily required to achieve high quality-ofcontrol; the co-design of control and communication enables to jointly optimize and balance both quality-of-control parameters and network parameters through blurring the boundary between application and network layer. However, through the tight interlacing, this approach requires a fundamental (joint) redesign of both control systems and communication networks and may therefore not lead to short-term widespread adoption. Therefore, this thesis instead embraces a novel co-design approach which keeps both domains distinct but leverages the combination of control and communications by yet exploiting the age of information (AoI) as a valuable interface metric. This thesis contributes to quantifying application dependability as a consequence of exceeding a given peak AoI with the particular focus on packet losses. The beneficial influence of negative temporal packet loss correlation on control performance is demonstrated by means of the automated guided vehicle use case. Assuming small-scale fading as the dominant cause of communication failure, a series of communication failures are mapped to an application failure through discrete-time Markov models for single-hop (e.g, only uplink or downlink) and dual-hop (e.g., subsequent uplink and downlink) architectures. This enables the derivation of application-related dependability metrics such as the mean time to failure in closed form. For single-hop networks, an AoI-aware resource allocation strategy termed state-aware resource allocation (SARA) is proposed that increases the application reliability by orders of magnitude compared to static multi-connectivity while keeping the resource consumption in the range of best-effort single-connectivity. This dependability can also be statistically guaranteed on a system level – where multiple agents compete for a limited number of resources – if the provided amount of resources per agent is increased by approximately 10 %. For the dual-hop scenario, an AoI-aware resource allocation optimization is developed that minimizes a user-defined penalty function that punishes low application reliability, high AoI, and high average resource consumption. This optimization may be carried out offline and each resulting optimal SARA scheme may be implemented as a look-up table in the lower medium access control layer of future wireless industrial networks.:1. Introduction 1 1.1. The Need for an Industrial Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2. Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2. Related Work 7 2.1. Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.2. Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2.3. Codesign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.3.1. The Need for Abstraction – Age of Information . . . . . . . . 11 2.4. Dependability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.5. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 3. Deriving Proper Communications Requirements 17 3.1. Fundamentals of Control Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 3.1.1. Sampling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 3.1.2. Performance Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 3.1.3. Packet Losses and Delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 3.2. Joint Design of Control Loop with Packet Losses . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 3.2.1. Method 1: Reduced Sampling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 3.2.2. Method 2: Markov Jump Linear System . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 3.2.3. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 3.3. Focus Application: The AGV Use Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 3.3.1. Control Loop Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 3.3.2. Control Performance Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 3.3.3. Joint Modeling: Applying Reduced Sampling . . . . . . . . . . 34 3.3.4. Joint Modeling: Applying MJLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 3.4. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 4. Modeling Control-Communication Failures 43 4.1. Communication Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 4.1.1. Small-Scale Fading as a Cause of Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 4.1.2. Connectivity Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 4.2. Failure Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 4.2.1. Single-hop network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 4.2.2. Dual-hop network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 4.3. Performance Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 4.3.1. Mean Time to Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 4.3.2. Packet Loss Ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 4.3.3. Average Number of Assigned Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 4.3.4. Age of Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 4.4. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 5. Single Hop – Single Agent 61 5.1. State-Aware Resource Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 5.2. Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 5.3. Erroneous Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 5.4. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 6. Single Hop – Multiple Agents 71 6.1. Failure Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 6.1.1. Admission Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 6.1.2. Transition Probabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 6.1.3. Computational Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 6.1.4. Performance Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 6.2. Illustration Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 6.3. Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 6.3.1. Verification through System-Level Simulation . . . . . . . . . 78 6.3.2. Applicability on the System Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 6.3.3. Comparison of Admission Control Schemes . . . . . . . . . . 80 6.3.4. Impact of the Packet Loss Tolerance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 6.3.5. Impact of the Number of Agents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 6.3.6. Age of Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 6.3.7. Channel Saturation Ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 6.3.8. Enforcing Full Channel Saturation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 6.4. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 7. Dual Hop – Single Agent 91 7.1. State-Aware Resource Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 7.2. Optimization Targets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 7.3. Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 7.3.1. Extensive Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 7.3.2. Non-Integer-Constrained Optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 7.4. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 8. Conclusions and Outlook 105 8.1. Key Results and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 8.2. Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 A. DC Motor Model 111 Bibliography 113 Publications of the Author 127 List of Figures 129 List of Tables 131 List of Operators and Constants 133 List of Symbols 135 List of Acronyms 137 Curriculum Vitae 13

    Advanced Filter Solutions for High-performance Millimetre and Submillimetre-wave Systems

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    This thesis is devoted to the investigation of advanced filter design solutions for high-performance millimetre and submillimetre-wave systems. Each of the proposed design solutions are enabled using waveguide-based technologies with the aim of advancing future generations of satellite communications, radar, and remote sensing. As trends for frequency allocations move to higher and higher frequency bands, engineers are faced with increasingly complex challenges such as the degradation of component performance, the inability to correctively tune the performance, or scenarios that all together make circuits infeasible. In light of these challenges, this work seeks to advance the current literature on filter design and proposes many unique design solutions for overcoming manufacturing and accuracy limitations, reducing the transmission losses, and reducing the overall design complexity. Each of the proposed filter solutions that are presented in this thesis are based on either a novel structural design or a novel technology. Each of the proposed designs are presented with functional prototypes as a means of verifying the theory. In the majority of cases, prototypes have been manufactured using high-precision computer numerical control (CNC) milling, and in several articles, exploratory activities with the use of alternative technologies such as stereolithography (SLA) 3D-printing and deep-reactive ion etching (DRIE) are presented. Prior to the presentation of the filter designs, an overview on the design and synthesis of millimetre-wave filters and diplexers is provided and serves as a foundation for the coupling matrix descriptions of symmetric and asymmetric resonator designs throughout this work

    Toward an active CMOS electronics-photonics platform based on subwavelength structured devices

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    The scaling trend of microelectronics over the past 50 years, quantified by Moore’s Law, has faced insurmountable bottlenecks, necessitating the use of optical communication with its high bandwidth and energy efficiency to further improve computing performance. Silicon photonics, compatible with CMOS platform manufacturing, presents a promising means to achieve on-chip optical links, employing highly sensitive microring resonator devices that demand electronic feedback and control due to fabrication variations. Achieving the full potential of both technologies requires tight integration to realize the ultimate benefits of both realms of technology, leading to the convergence of microelectronics and photonics. A promising approach for achieving this convergence is the monolithic integration of electronics and photonics on CMOS platforms. A critical milestone was reached in 2015 with the demonstration of the first microprocessor featuring photonic I/O (Chen et al, Nature 2015), accomplished by integrating transistors and photonic devices on a single chip using a monolithic CMOS silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform (GlobalFoundries 45RFSOI, 45 nm SOI process) without process modifications, thus known as the "zero-change" approach. This dissertation focuses on leveraging the fabrication capabilities of advanced monolithic electronic-photonic 45 nm CMOS platforms, specifically high-resolution lithography and small feature size doping implants, to realize photonic devices with subwavelength features that could potentially provide the next leap in integrated optical links performance, beyond microring resonator based links. Photonic crystal (PhC) nanobeam cavities can support high-quality resonance modes while confining light in a small volume, enhancing light-matter interactions and potentially enabling ultimate efficiencies in active devices such as modulators and photodetectors. However, PhC cavities have been overshadowed by microring resonators due to two challenges. First, their fabrication demands high lithography resolution, which excludes most standard SOI photonic platforms as viable options for creating these devices. Secondly, the standing-wave nature of PhC nanobeam cavities complicates their integration into wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optical links, causing unwanted reflections when coupled evanescently to a bus waveguide. In this work, we present PhC nanobeam cavities with the smallest footprint, largest intrinsic quality factor, and smallest mode volume to be demonstrated to date in a monolithic CMOS platform. The devices were fabricated in a 45 nm monolithic electronics–photonics CMOS platform optimized for silicon photonics, GlobalFoundries 45CLO, exhibiting a quality factor in excess of 100,000 the highest among fully cladded PhC nanobeam cavities in any SOI platform. Furthermore to eliminate reflections, we demonstrate an approach using pairs of PhC nanobeam cavities with opposite spatial mode symmetries to mimic traveling-wave-like ring behavior, enabling efficient and seamless WDM link integration. This concept was extended to realize a reflectionless microring resonator unit with two microrings operating as standing-wave cavities. Using this scheme with standing-wave microring resonators could lead to an optimum geometry for microring modulators with interdigitated p-n junctions in terms of modulation efficiency in a manner that allows for straightforward WDM cascading. This work also presents the first demonstration of resonant-structure-based modulators in the GlobalFoundries 45CLO platform. We report the first-ever demonstration of a PhC modulator in a CMOS platform, featuring a novel design with sub-wavelength contacts on one side allowing it to benefit from the "reflection-less"' architecture. Additionally, we also report the first demonstration of microring modulators. The most efficient devices exhibited electro-optical bandwidths up to 30 GHz, and 25 Gbps non-return-to-zero (NRZ) on-off-keyed (OOK) modulation with 1 dB insertion loss and 3.1 dB extinction ratio. Finally, as the complexity of silicon photonic systems-on-a-chip (SoC) increases to enable new applications such as low-energy data links, quantum optics, and neuromorphic computing, the need for in-situ characterization of individual components becomes increasingly important. By combining Near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) with a flip-chip post-processing technique, this dissertation demonstrates a method to non-invasively perform NSOM scans of a photonic device within a large-scale CMOS-photonic circuit, without interfering with the performance and packaging of the photonics and electronics, making it a valuable tool for future development of high performance photonic circuits and systems

    Beam scanning by liquid-crystal biasing in a modified SIW structure

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    A fixed-frequency beam-scanning 1D antenna based on Liquid Crystals (LCs) is designed for application in 2D scanning with lateral alignment. The 2D array environment imposes full decoupling of adjacent 1D antennas, which often conflicts with the LC requirement of DC biasing: the proposed design accommodates both. The LC medium is placed inside a Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) modified to work as a Groove Gap Waveguide, with radiating slots etched on the upper broad wall, that radiates as a Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA). This allows effective application of the DC bias voltage needed for tuning the LCs. At the same time, the RF field remains laterally confined, enabling the possibility to lay several antennas in parallel and achieve 2D beam scanning. The design is validated by simulation employing the actual properties of a commercial LC medium

    Characteristic Mode Analysis for Multiport Antennas

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    This thesis focuses on the research to overcome challenges in using the theory of characteristic mode (TCM) for multiport antennas. TCM is particularly useful for exploiting multiple radia tions on the same structure, making it well-suited for dealing with multiport antennas. However, when multiple characteristic modal radiation are activated, many of the previous designs lack a satisfactory frequency band coverage, and the number of antenna ports is often limited. Further more, when applying TCM to analyse the coupling in multiport antennas, the previous methods is not sufficiently clear and does not accommodate a higher number of ports. On the other hand, for a typical dual-polarized Base station (BS) antenna whose radiation pattern is more worthy of concern than coupling and the number of ports, its ground size is typically much larger than the operating wavelength, resulting in a considerable number of irrelevant characteristic modes (CMs) that can disrupt the analysis. In this thesis, several novel research approaches are proposed to overcome the aforementioned challenges and further exploit the application of TCM in multiport antennas. Firstly, a novel planar hexagonal antenna design, developed solely based on the principles of TCM, is proposed. The study centers around the degenerate characteristic mode (CM) pairs of symmetrical shape and their excitation during the design process. By harnessing a higher number of degenerate CM pairs, the proposed design achieves a satisfactory bandwidth among four ports and a satisfying port-to-port isolation. The second proposal introduces a method to evaluate the radiation energy and mutual coupling. This new perspective enables the enhancement of the operating band and isolation in arbitrary multiport antennas. As a result, the design and analysis of multiport antennas become easier. In line with this method, a four-port hexagonal antenna is later proposed. This four-port hexag onal antenna consists of a planar hexagonal plate, vertical tapered baluns, and a feeding network at the ground plane. The antenna exhibits a broadband impedance bandwidth while minimizing mutual coupling among its ports. The last contribution focuses on a dual-port antenna from a BS array. It examines the improvement of radiation performance of the antenna. Instead of the conventional TCM, the sub-structure TCM is employed to isolate the antenna unit from its ground and study the variations of its CMs as the frequency increases. The irreverent CMs are thus eliminated. Modifications have been implemented to enhance the beamwidth stability across the entire band

    The Digital Transformation Roadmap

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    Development of a Microwave Imaging System for Brain Injury

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    Optical Synchronization of Time-of-Flight Cameras

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    Time-of-Flight (ToF)-Kameras erzeugen Tiefenbilder (3D-Bilder), indem sie Infrarotlicht aussenden und die Zeit messen, bis die Reflexion des Lichtes wieder empfangen wird. Durch den Einsatz mehrerer ToF-Kameras können ihre vergleichsweise geringere Auflösungen ĂŒberwunden, das Sichtfeld vergrĂ¶ĂŸert und Verdeckungen reduziert werden. Der gleichzeitige Betrieb birgt jedoch die Möglichkeit von Störungen, die zu fehlerhaften Tiefenmessungen fĂŒhren. Das Problem der gegenseitigen Störungen tritt nicht nur bei Mehrkamerasystemen auf, sondern auch wenn mehrere unabhĂ€ngige ToF-Kameras eingesetzt werden. In dieser Arbeit wird eine neue optische Synchronisation vorgestellt, die keine zusĂ€tzliche Hardware oder Infrastruktur erfordert, um ein Zeitmultiplexverfahren (engl. Time-Division Multiple Access, TDMA) fĂŒr die Anwendung mit ToF-Kameras zu nutzen, um so die Störungen zu vermeiden. Dies ermöglicht es einer Kamera, den Aufnahmeprozess anderer ToF-Kameras zu erkennen und ihre Aufnahmezeiten schnell zu synchronisieren, um störungsfrei zu arbeiten. Anstatt Kabel zur Synchronisation zu benötigen, wird nur die vorhandene Hardware genutzt, um eine optische Synchronisation zu erreichen. Dazu wird die Firmware der Kamera um das Synchronisationsverfahren erweitert. Die optische Synchronisation wurde konzipiert, implementiert und in einem Versuchsaufbau mit drei ToF-Kameras verifiziert. Die Messungen zeigen die Wirksamkeit der vorgeschlagenen optischen Synchronisation. WĂ€hrend der Experimente wurde die Bildrate durch das zusĂ€tzliche Synchronisationsverfahren lediglich um etwa 1 Prozent reduziert.Time-of-Flight (ToF) cameras produce depth images (three-dimensional images) by measuring the time between the emission of infrared light and the reception of its reflection. A setup of multiple ToF cameras may be used to overcome their comparatively low resolution, increase the field of view, and reduce occlusion. However, the simultaneous operation of multiple ToF cameras introduces the possibility of interference resulting in erroneous depth measurements. The problem of interference is not only related to a collaborative multicamera setup but also to multiple ToF cameras operating independently. In this work, a new optical synchronization for ToF cameras is presented, requiring no additional hardware or infrastructure to utilize a time-division multiple access (TDMA) scheme to mitigate interference. It effectively enables a camera to sense the acquisition process of other ToF cameras and rapidly synchronizes its acquisition times to operate without interference. Instead of requiring cables to synchronize, only the existing hardware is utilized to enable an optical synchronization. To achieve this, the camera’s firmware is extended with the synchronization procedure. The optical synchronization has been conceptualized, implemented, and verified with an experimental setup deploying three ToF cameras. The measurements show the efficacy of the proposed optical synchronization. During the experiments, the frame rate was reduced by only about 1% due to the synchronization procedure
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