Current Sensing Completion Detection in Single-Rail Asynchronous Systems

In this article, an alternative approach to detecting the computation completion of combinatorial blocks in asynchronous digital systems is presented. The proposed methodology is based on well-known phenomenon that occurs in digital systems fabricated in CMOS technology. Such logic circuits exhibit significantly higher current consumption during the signal transitions than in the idle state. Duration of these current peaks correlates very well with the actual computation time of the combinatorial block. Hence, this fact can be exploited for separation of the computation activity from static state. The paper presents fundamental background of addressed alternative completion detection and its implementation in single-rail encoded asynchronous systems, the proposed current sensing circuitry, achieved simulation results as well as the comparison to the state-of-the-art methods of completion detection. The presented method promises the enhancement of the performance of an asynchronous circuit, and under certain circumstances it also reduces the silicon area requirements of the completion detection block

Experimental Verification of a Ultra-Low Voltage Charge Pump

This paper deals with the analysis of across coupled charge pump designed in a 130 nm CMOStechnology with ultra low power supply voltage. Wepropose a printed circuit board, designed to experimen-tally verify this integrated circuit. The test board wasdesigned to verify all function blocks of the charge pumpindependently, as well as the charge pump circuit as awhole. The charge pump was designed to operate at asupply voltage of 200 mV and the switching frequencyof 100 kHz. The achieved experimental results provethe correct functionality of the designed charge pumpintegrated circuit

Driving pressure influence in voltage maps measurement process using advanced pneumatic mapping probe

Our paper deals with the method of the voltage-impedance map measurement process as a method useful for the electric mapping of human skin. The area of research extends from the basic research to its practical application in acupuncture skin mapping and acupuncture point localization and visualization. The problem of sufficient skin coverage and electrical contact with measuring electrodes is solved by the conventional mechanical telescopic electrodes and by the pneumatic matrix electrode probe. A 2D or 3D voltage-impedance map of skin is an output of the measuring, interpretation and evaluation process. New pneumatic construction of measuring probe was implemented to achieve a better coverage of specified skin area and get a reduced force range of the touching electrodes allowing the steady contact of the skin-electrode. A skin contact is related to the driving pressure of touching electrodes. Our paper offers experimentally measured results, voltage maps of skin on specific areas, selected measured and described acupuncture points and their applications in electro-acupuncture

THE INFLUENCE OF THE SKIN FATIGUE, ITS PERSPIRATION AND THE TIME OF STIMULATION IN MEASUREMENT OF THE ACTIVE POINTS ON HUMAN SKIN

Our contribution deals with the human skin voltage chart measurement. The human skin has a certain impedance or resistance - it can be relatively easily described and simulated using a substitute electric circuit. But the skin also contains parts with measurably lower impedance and different electric properties – we can show them clearly by measurement of voltage chart. We have concentrated our effort on finding and following measurements of active points on certain part of the skin's surface, to acknowledge their existence and positions through a measuring process. The parameters of the measured voltage chart are influenced by the amplitude, frequency, the shape of the measuring electric signal and the parameters of skin-electrode connection changing in time. We focused our research effort in this paper to measure the influence of the time of external stimulation, irritation and a contact press on skin surface together with the skin fatigue and perspiration effects

A Control System for Automated Evaluation and Tuning of ASIC Parameters

VEGA 1/0731/2, VEGA 1/0760/21, APVV-19-0392.This paper deals with design of a control system for automated post-fabrication setting/tuning of ASIC parameters. A new computer application that easily and effectively measures and sets the functional parame ter values using graphical user interface (GUI) was devel oped. A non-standard communication protocol has been implemented on-chip, and the microcontroller (MCU) as a communication protocol converter was employed. Transformation of the substandard communication protocol into the standard one closes the communication channel between the computer and the Circuit Under Test (CUT). The whole control system was verified using a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), MCU and a Logic analyzer

0.5 V, nW-Range Universal Filter Based on Multiple-Input Transconductor for Biosignals Processing

This paper demonstrates the advantages of the multiple-input transconductor (MI-G(m)) in filter application, in terms of topology simplification, increasing filter functions, and minimizing the count of needed active blocks and their consumed power. Further, the filter enjoys high input impedance, uses three MI-G(m)s and two grounded capacitors, and it offers both inverting and non-inverting versions of low-pass (LPF), high-pass (HPF), band-pass (BPF), band-stop (BS) and all-pass (AP) functions. The filter operates under a supply voltage of 0.5 V and consumes 37 nW, hence it is suitable for extremely low-voltage low-power applications like biosignals processing. The circuit was designed in a Cadence environment using 180 nm CMOS technology from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). The post-layout simulation results, including Monte Carlo and process, voltage, temperature (PVT) corners for the proposed filter correlate well with the theoretical results that confirm attractive features of the developed filter based on MI-G(m)

Energy Monitoring Platform for Smart Grid Applications

The traditional power grid concept is suffering from lack of energy flow control mechanism. This is due to absence of distributed energy generation and storage nodes along the grid. With introduction of the Smart grid concept, this topic is addressed. However, such concept requires information on actual energy consumption that are distributed among the Smart grid flow control nodes in a secure way. These information should be as detailed as possible. This paper presents a consumption monitoring platform that is suitable for household and office building installations. The consumption data are gathered via wireless networks, while security is addressed on the application layer

A real-time method for smoke detection in monitored forest areas

An improved real-time method for smoke detection based on motion and color analysis is presented. Smoke detection in video surveillance is very important for early fire detection. In general, it is assumed that smoke is a low frequency signal, which may smooth the background. However, these conditions can be met by some pure-color objects, and smoke also produces high frequency signal on the edges. An improved smoke detection method was proposed in order to prevent these problems. The presented technique uses well known background subtraction for identifying of moving regions as well as novel color based algorithm for smoke detection. Detection efficiency is improving using a classifier that provides the identification of smoke-like regions. The main advantage is that it is not required to process each frame of the video signal for sufficient accuracy. Sampling rate was set to a few second in order to find the optimum value between performance and system requirements. Performance of the proposed method was evaluated using different kinds of the input signal, where satisfactory results were achieved