6,057 research outputs found
A low power clock generator with adaptive inter-phase charge balancing for variability compensation in 40-nm CMOS
Power dissipation besides chip area is still one main optimization issue
in high performance CMOS design. Regarding high throughput building blocks
for digital signal processing architectures
which are optimized down to the physical
level a complementary two-phase clocking scheme (CTPC) is often
advantageous concerning ATE-efficiency.
The clock
system dissipates a significant part of overall power up to more than 50%
in some applications.
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One efficient power saving strategy for
CTPC signal generation is the charge balancing technique.
To achieve high efficiency with this approach
a careful optimization of timing relations within the control
is inevitable.
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However, as in modern CMOS processes device variations
increase,
timing relations between
sensitive control signals
can be affected seriously.
In order to compensate for the influence of global and local variations in this
work, an adaptive control system for charge balancing in a CTPC generator
is presented. An adjustment for the degree of charge recycling is performed
in each clock cycle.
In the case of insufficient recycling
the delay elements which define duration and timing position of
the recycling pulse are corrected by switchable timing units.
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In a benchmark with the conventional clock generation system,
a power reduction gain
of up to 24.7% could be achieved. This means saving in power
of more than 12% for a complete number-crunching building block
Resonant electron heating and molecular phonon cooling in single C junctions
We study heating and heat dissipation of a single \c60 molecule in the
junction of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) by measuring the electron
current required to thermally decompose the fullerene cage. The power for
decomposition varies with electron energy and reflects the molecular resonance
structure. When the STM tip contacts the fullerene the molecule can sustain
much larger currents. Transport simulations explain these effects by molecular
heating due to resonant electron-phonon coupling and molecular cooling by
vibrational decay into the tip upon contact formation.Comment: Accepted in Phys. Rev. Let
Scalar correlations in a quark plasma and low mass dilepton production
We investigate possible consequences of resonant scalar interactions for
dilepton production from a quark plasma at the chiral phase transition. It is
found that this production mechanism is strongly suppressed compared to the
Born process and has no significance for present experiments.Comment: 7 pages revtex, 2 ps figure
Personalized smart environments to increase inclusion of people with Down's Syndrome
Most people with Downs Syndrome (DS) experience low integration with society. Recent research and new opportunities for their integration in mainstream education and work provided numerous cases where levels of achievement exceeded the (limiting) expectations. This paper describes a project, POSEIDON, aiming at developing a technological infrastructure which can foster a growing number of services developed to support people with DS. People with DS have their own strengths, preferences and needs so POSEIDON will focus on using their strengths to provide support for their needs whilst allowing each individual to personalize the solution based on their preferences. This project is user-centred from its inception and will give all main stakeholders ample opportunities to shape the output of the project, which will ensure a final outcome which is of practical usefulness and interest to the intended users
The orbit rigidity matrix of a symmetric framework
A number of recent papers have studied when symmetry causes frameworks on a
graph to become infinitesimally flexible, or stressed, and when it has no
impact. A number of other recent papers have studied special classes of
frameworks on generically rigid graphs which are finite mechanisms. Here we
introduce a new tool, the orbit matrix, which connects these two areas and
provides a matrix representation for fully symmetric infinitesimal flexes, and
fully symmetric stresses of symmetric frameworks. The orbit matrix is a true
analog of the standard rigidity matrix for general frameworks, and its analysis
gives important insights into questions about the flexibility and rigidity of
classes of symmetric frameworks, in all dimensions.
With this narrower focus on fully symmetric infinitesimal motions, comes the
power to predict symmetry-preserving finite mechanisms - giving a simplified
analysis which covers a wide range of the known mechanisms, and generalizes the
classes of known mechanisms. This initial exploration of the properties of the
orbit matrix also opens up a number of new questions and possible extensions of
the previous results, including transfer of symmetry based results from
Euclidean space to spherical, hyperbolic, and some other metrics with shared
symmetry groups and underlying projective geometry.Comment: 41 pages, 12 figure
Electron power absorption dynamics in capacitive radio frequency discharges driven by tailored voltage waveforms in CF4
The power absorption dynamics of electrons and the electrical asymmetry effect in capacitive radio-frequency plasmas operated in CF4 and driven by tailored voltage waveforms are investigated experimentally in combination with kinetic simulations. The driving voltage waveforms are generated as a superposition of multiple consecutive harmonics of the fundamental frequency of 13.56 MHz. Peaks/valleys and sawtooth waveforms are used to study the effects of amplitude and slope asymmetries of the driving voltage waveform on the electron dynamics and the generation of a DC self-bias in an electronegative plasma at different pressures. Compared to electropositive discharges, we observe strongly different effects and unique power absorption dynamics. At high pressures and high electronegativities, the discharge is found to operate in the drift-ambipolar (DA) heating mode. A dominant excitation/ionization maximum is observed during sheath collapse at the edge of the sheath which collapses fastest. High negative-ion densities are observed inside this sheath region, while electrons are confined for part of the RF period in a potential well formed by the ambipolar electric field at this sheath edge and the collapsed (floating potential) sheath at the electrode. For specific driving voltage waveforms, the plasma becomes divided spatially into two different halves of strongly different electronegativity. This asymmetry can be reversed electrically by inverting the driving waveform. For sawtooth waveforms, the discharge asymmetry and the sign of the DC self-bias are found to reverse as the pressure is increased, due to a transition of the electron heating mode from the α-mode to the DA-mode. These effects are interpreted with the aid of the simulation results
Medium Modification of The Pion-Pion Interaction at Finite Density
We discuss medium modifications of the unitarized pion-pion interaction in
the nuclear medium. We incorporate both the effects of chiral symmetry
restoration and the influence of collective nuclear pionic modes originating
from the p-wave coupling of the pion to delta-hole configurations. We show in
particular that the dropping of the sigma meson mass significantly enhances the
low energy structure created by the in-medium collective pionic modes.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figures included, Latex fil
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