Development of a Non-Invasive On-Chip Interconnect Health Sensing Method Based on Bit Error Rates

Electronic products and systems are widely used in industrial network systems, control devices, and data acquisition devices across many industry sectors. Failures of such electronic systems might lead to unexpected downtime, loss of productivity, additional work for repairs, and delay in product and service development. Thus, developing an appropriate sensing technique is necessary, because it is the first step in system fault diagnosis and prognosis. Many sensing techniques often require external and additional sensing devices, which might disturb system operation and consequently increase operating costs. In this study, we present an on-chip health sensing method for non-destructive and non-invasive interconnect degradation detection. Bit error rate (BER), which represents data integrity during digital signal transmission, was selected to sense interconnect health without connecting external sensing devices. To verify the health sensing performance, corrosion tests were conducted with in situ monitoring of the BER and direct current (DC) resistance. The eye size, extracted from the BER measurement, showed the highest separation between the intact and failed interconnect, as well as a gradual transition, compared with abrupt changes in the DC resistance, during interconnect degradation. These experimental results demonstrate the potential of the proposed sensing method for on-chip interconnect health monitoring applications without disturbing system operation

Pilot scale study of chlorination-induced transport property changes of a seawater reverse osmosis membrane

A pilot-scale study was performed to assess variations of reverse osmosis (RO) membrane water permeance (A) and salt retention (Robs) induced by chlorination and to compare them with those observed at the lab-scale. A chlorination protocol was adapted to expose only the surface active layer (an aromatic polyamide)of a composite RO membrane to consecutive free chlorine doses ranging from 40 to 4000 ppm h, at pH 6.9. Along the long-term filtration of seawater, performed with a 4" spiral wound RO module, we monitored the variations of A, the decrease of Robs and the rate of increase of A with time, and found themquantitatively similar to those reported in previous studies performed at the lab-scale under accelerated exposure conditions. The elemental analysis of the feed and permeate streams revealed that the rejection of divalent ions remained constant (ca. 100%), irrespective of the free chlorine dose reached, whereas the rejection of monovalent ions of the seawater (mainly sodium, chloride and bromide ions) decreased as the exposure dose increased. Overall, transposing the characterization procedure to the pilot-scale further supports that chlorination of PA, under pH conditions usually found in desalination plants (6.9 to 8.0), is controlled by the concentration of HOCl, as observed from elemental analysis of the surface by XPS

Event-triggered proportional-derivative control for nonlinear network systems with a novel event-triggering scheme: Differential of triggered state consideration

This article proposes event-triggered proportional-derivative control for a class of nonlinear network control systems. For derivative action of the proposed proportional-derivative control, a novel event-triggering scheme is devised together with the control that considers a differential of a triggered state. The class of the nonlinear network systems is represented as a Lur'e system to consider various nonlinear cases. Time varying transmission delay is considered which can be defined by lower and upper delay bounds. The proposed proportional-derivative control is designed by Lyapunov-Krasovskii stability analysis, and the design condition is presented by linear matrix inequalities. The proposed event-triggered proportional-derivative control and event-triggering condition are verified with numerical simulation. ? 2017 The Author(s).111Ysciescopu