A Simple Control to Reduce the Voltage Stress of Non-Conducting Switches in Three-Level ANPC Converter

With the development of wide band-gap (WBG) technology, the switching speed of power semiconductor devices is increased, which makes circuits more sensitive to parasitics. For three-level active neutral point clamped (3L-ANPC) converters, the over-voltage of non-conducting switches can be an issue. This paper analyzes the multiple commutation loops in 3L-ANPC converter and summarizes the impact factors of the over-voltage for the non-conducting switch. It is found that the nonlinearity of the output capacitance of the device can significantly influence the over-voltage. A simple control without introducing any additional hardware circuit is proposed to attenuate the impact of the nonlinearity. With the proposed control, the peak over-voltage of the non-conducting switch can be reduced significantly. Multi-pulse test is conducted for a 3L- ANPC converter built with silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs. The testing results show that the peak over-voltage decreases from 892 V to 624 V with the proposed control. More detailed analysis and experimental results will be provided in the final paper

Wide-temperature integrated operational amplifier

The present invention relates to a reference current circuit. The reference circuit comprises a low-level current bias circuit, a voltage proportional-to-absolute temperature generator for creating a proportional-to-absolute temperature voltage (VPTAT), and a MOSFET-based constant-IC regulator circuit. The MOSFET-based constant-IC regulator circuit includes a constant-IC input and constant-IC output. The constant-IC input is electrically connected with the VPTAT generator such that the voltage proportional-to-absolute temperature is the input into the constant-IC regulator circuit. Thus the constant-IC output maintains the constant-IC ratio across any temperature range

A genetic network model of cellular responses to lithium treatment and cocaine abuse in bipolar disorder

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Lithium is an effective treatment for Bipolar Disorder (BD) and significantly reduces suicide risk, though the molecular basis of lithium's effectiveness is not well understood. We seek to improve our understanding of this effectiveness by posing hypotheses based on new experimental data as well as published data, testing these hypotheses in silico, and posing new hypotheses for validation in future studies. We initially hypothesized a gene-by-environment interaction where lithium, acting as an environmental influence, impacts signal transduction pathways leading to differential expression of genes important in the etiology of BD mania.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using microarray and rt-QPCR assays, we identified candidate genes that are differentially expressed with lithium treatment. We used a systems biology approach to identify interactions among these candidate genes and develop a network of genes that interact with the differentially expressed candidates. Notably, we also identified cocaine as having a potential influence on the network, consistent with the observed high rate of comorbidity for BD and cocaine abuse. The resulting network represents a novel hypothesis on how multiple genetic influences on bipolar disorder are impacted by both lithium treatment and cocaine use. Testing this network for association with BD and related phenotypes, we find that it is significantly over-represented for genes that participate in signal transduction, consistent with our hypothesized-gene-by environment interaction. In addition, it models related pharmacogenomic, psychiatric, and chemical dependence phenotypes.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We offer a network model of gene-by-environment interaction associated with lithium's effectiveness in treating BD mania, as well as the observed high rate of comorbidity of BD and cocaine abuse. We identified drug targets within this network that represent immediate candidates for therapeutic drug testing. Posing novel hypotheses for validation in future work, we prioritized SNPs near genes in the network based on functional annotation. We also developed a "concept signature" for the genes in the network and identified additional candidate genes that may influence the system because they are significantly associated with the signature.</p

Programmable Energy-Efficient Analog Multilayer Perceptron Architecture Suitable for Future Expansion to Hardware Accelerators

A programmable, energy-efficient analog hardware implementation of a multilayer perceptron (MLP) is presented featuring a highly programmable system that offers the user the capability to create an MLP neural network hardware design within the available framework. In addition to programmability, this implementation provides energy-efficient operation via analog/mixed-signal design. The configurable system is made up of 12 neurons and is fabricated in a standard 130 nm CMOS process occupying approximately 1 mm2 of on-chip area. The system architecture is analyzed in several different configurations with each achieving a power efficiency of greater than 1 tera-operations per watt. This work offers an energy-efficient and scalable alternative to digital configurable neural networks that can be built upon to create larger networks capable of standard machine learning applications, such as image and text classification. This research details a programmable hardware implementation of an MLP that achieves a peak power efficiency of 5.23 tera-operations per watt while consuming considerably less power than comparable digital and analog designs. This paper describes circuit elements that can readily be scaled up at the system level to create a larger neural network architecture capable of improved energy efficiency

LOW VOLTAGE ANALOG CIRCUITS USING STANDARD CMOS TECHNOLOGY

There are many factors that are driving the need to have lower power supply voltages in CMOS integrated circuits. As the channel lengths of CMOS technology decrease, the maximum allowable voltage will decrease

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Abstract-An overlap time for two commutating switches is necessary to prevent current interruption in a three-phase buck rectifier, but it may cause input current distortion. In this paper, a modified pulse-based compensation method is proposed to compensate for the overlap time. In addition to the traditional method which places the overlap time based on the voltage polarity, this new method first minimizes the overlap time to reduce its effect and then compensates the pulse width according to the sampled voltage and current. It is verified by experiments that the proposed method has better performance than the traditional method, especially when the line-to-line voltage crosses zero. Another distortion comes from the irregular pulse distribution when two sectors change in a 12-sector space vector PWM. This paper proposes two compensation methods for that scenario as well, compensating the duty cycle and increasing switching frequency near the boundaries of two sectors. It is shown through experiments that both methods can reduce the input current distortion in the buck rectifier. Index Terms-Three-phase buck rectifier, current source, overlap time, space vector, sector change