Thermal Noise Canceling in LNAs: A Review

Most wide-band amplifiers suffer from a fundamental trade-off between noise figure NF and source impedance matching, which limits NF to values typically above 3dB. Recently, a feed-forward noise canceling technique has been proposed to break this trade-off. This paper reviews the principle of the technique and its key properties. Although the technique has been applied to wideband CMOS LNAs, it can just as well be implemented exploiting transconductance elements realized with other types of transistors

Generating All Two-MOS-Transistor Amplifiers Leads to New Wide-Band LNAs

This paper presents a methodology that systematically generates all 2-MOS-transistor wide-band amplifiers, assuming that MOSFET is exploited as a voltage-controlled current source. This leads to new circuits. Their gain and noise factor have been compared to well-known wide-band amplifiers. One of the new circuits appears to have a relatively low noise factor, which is also gain independent. Based on this new circuit, a 50-900 MHz variable-gain wide-band LNA has been designed in 0.35-µm CMOS. Measurements show a noise figure between 4.3 and 4.9 dB for gains from 6 to 11 dB. These values are more than 2 dB lower than the noise figure of the wide-band common-gate LNA for the same input matching, power consumption, and voltage gain. IIP2 and IIP3 are better than 23.5 and 14.5 dBm, respectively, while the LNA drains only 1.5 mA at 3.3 V

Wide-band low-noise amplifier techniques in CMOS

This thesis describes circuit techniques for designing wide-band low-noise amplifiers that are suitable for monolithic embodiment in a highly integrated CMOS radio receive

Database Streaming Compression on Memory-Limited Machines

Dynamic Huffman compression algorithms operate on data-streams with a bounded symbol list. With these algorithms, the complete list of symbols must be contained in main memory or secondary storage. A horizontal format transaction database that is streaming can have a very large item list. Many nodes tax both the processing hardware primary memory size, and the processing time to dynamically maintain the tree. This research investigated Huffman compression of a transaction-streaming database with a very large symbol list, where each item in the transaction database schema’s item list is a symbol to compress. The constraint of a large symbol list is, in this research, equivalent to the constraint of a memory-limited machine. A large symbol set will result if each item in a large database item list is a symbol to compress in a database stream. In addition, database streams may have some temporal component spanning months or years. Finally, the horizontal format is the format most suited to a streaming transaction database because the transaction IDs are not known beforehand This research prototypes an algorithm that will compresses a transaction database stream. There are several advantages to the memory limited dynamic Huffman algorithm. Dynamic Huffman algorithms are single pass algorithms. In many instances a second pass over the data is not possible, such as with streaming databases. Previous dynamic Huffman algorithms are not memory limited, they are asymptotic to O(n), where n is the number of distinct item IDs. Memory is required to grow to fit the n items. The improvement of the new memory limited Dynamic Huffman algorithm is that it would have an O(k) asymptotic memory requirement; where k is the maximum number of nodes in the Huffman tree, k \u3c n, and k is a user chosen constant. The new memory limited Dynamic Huffman algorithm compresses horizontally encoded transaction databases that do not contain long runs of 0’s or 1’s

Networking strategy for competitive advantage

This paper explores the potential of networking strategy as a source of competitive advantage by integrating market- based and resource-based logics. It contributes to operations management literature by considering not just supply chain structures but also others kinds of network that can emerge from horizontal agreements (i.e. alliances, partnerships, joint ventures, etc.). The paper reviews the literature and develops propositions regarding how make/buy/make together decisions, governance mechanisms and network-base structures allow firms both to pursue operations performance objectives and obtain/create valuable resources. A case study supports the propositions and shows a practical application of the presented research framework

Business agreements objectives and decisions: a field research

Purpose - Many research studies in operations management (OM) and strategic management (SM) investigate how different kinds of firm decisions regarding business relationships can positively affect firm’s operations performance, resources endowment, and competitive position. Very few studies exist, however, trying to illuminate the actual behavior of managers when making strategic decisions about their company relationships with other companies, as opposed to normative theory. The purpose of this paper is to explore linkages between the “set” of strategic objectives that managers are willing to pursue, the “set” of networking decisions they make, and the “set” of business agreements they sign. Design/methodology/approach – In order to investigate and explore actual manager behaviours about networking strategy, we adopt multiple-case study-based field research. We collect data on 13 business agreements from 3 manufacturing firms in the mechatronic industry in Italy. Within-case and cross-case analyses are mainly used for theory building purposes. Findings – Empirical data allow us to identify four different archetypes of networking strategy. The archetypes capture different connections between “set” of strategic objectives that managers are willing to pursue, “set” of networking decisions that they consider, and “set” of strategic agreements that they actually adopt. Specifically, the identified archetypes are named Multi-alignment, Multi-agreement (Diversification), Multi-objective, and Mono-alignment (Focus) and are related to different association multiplicities among objectives, decisions, and agreements. The implications related to these archetypes are three-fold. First, the Multi-alignment archetype suggests to focus not just on one kind of agreement but on the firm overall portfolio of agreements to understand how different kinds of agreements and networking decisions can play a complementary role in achieving firm’s pre-fixed business objective/s. Second, the Multi-agreement archetype suggests that managers can minimize the risk of loosing the potentiality of networking collaboration by undertaking different kinds of agreements for the same strategic objective. Third, the Mono-alignment (Focus) and Multi-objective archetypes suggest that also just one agreement can potentially pursues one or multiple strategic objectives and thus can allow managers to minimize the cost of managing several networking relationships. Originality/value – The originality of this study consists in exploring linkages between objectives, decisions and networking agreements without specifically focusing on: 1) either vertical or horizontal relationships as, contrarily and respectively, most of the OM and SM papers on business relationships usually do, 2) either operations performance (positioning school) or resource endowment (resource based view school) strategic objectives as, contrarily, most of the OM and SM papers on strategic alignment usually do; 3) any specific kind of agreement contract (outsourcing, alliance, joint venture, etc.) as usually most of the OM and SM papers usually do. This paper comes up with four different networking strategy archetypes that represent different way of matching “set” of networking decisions, strategic objectives and business agreements. They are not related to either vertical or horizontal relationships, either operations performance or resource endowment objectives, and to any contract agreement specific form

Closed-loop supply chains: What reverse logistics factors influence performance?

This paper analyses the inventory and order flow dynamics in closed-loop supply chains (CLSCs). In this kind of supply chains the reverse flow of materials entering the system for recycling purposes complicates the way in which inventories should be managed and replenishment policies should be designed. Specifically, we analyse the relationships between some reverse logistics' factors (remanufacturing lead-time, return rate of recycled products, reverse order policy, and number of supply chain tiers) on the order and inventory variance amplification. We firstly perform a systematic literature review of the related studies. Secondly, by adopting a difference equation math approach and design of experiment we perform a robust what-if analysis of a CLSC under a variety of operational and market conditions. Results show that, ceteris paribus, CLSC outperforms a forward supply chain, both in mono-echelon and multi-echelon structures and under both stationary and turbulent market demands. Furthermore, reducing remanufacturing lead-time and promoting information transparency may be crucial to improve CLSC dynamics. Finally, we use the research findings to provide interesting managerial consideration about how to reduce unnecessary operational members' costs

How firms are using networking decisions to achieve strategic objectives: Building theories from four case studies

Many research studies in OM literature have investigated how different kinds of focal firm decisions regarding business vertical relationships (i.e. with both suppliers and buyers) can positively affect firm’s operations performance and thus improve its competitive position. In this paper we extend this genre of study by also considering business horizontal relationships (i.e with competitors and firms that own complementary capabilities) and by considering the impact of business relationships not only on focal firm’s operations performance but also on its resources endowment. We present four cases that describe what are the strategic manager intents (in term of operations performance and resource endowment) when make decisions about both vertical and horizontal business relationships (i.e. networking strategy). Using theory building through case studies, we identify four archetypes of networking strategy. Each type of networking strategy is a unique configuration of the set of networking decisions adopted and the set of strategic objectives pursued

Open innovation and firms' performance: State of the art and empirical evidences from the bio-pharmaceutical industry

The research presented in this paper explores the effect of inbound, outbound and coupled open innovation practices on firms' performances in the biopharmaceutical industry. Specifically, although existing researches on open innovation effectiveness have separately investigated the effect of open innovation practices on innovation and financial performance, this study evaluates the concurrent effect of these practices on both such performance dimensions in a single framework. We state the importance for a manager to explore concurrently the influence of specific open innovation practices both on innovation and economic-financial performance. We empirically test our framework on a sample of 120 companies listed on the NASDAQ biotechnology index