BiCMOS silicon technology:Electronics Seminar

The need for high-performance, low-power, and low-cost systems for network transport and wireless communications is driving silicon technology toward higher speed, higher integration, and more functionality. Further more, this integration of RF and analog mixed-signal circuits into high-performance digital signal-processing (DSP) systems must be done with minimum cost overhead to be commercially viable. While some analog and RF designs have been attempted in mainstream digital-only complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technologies, almost all designs that require stringent RF performance use bipolar or semiconductor technology. Silicon integrated circuit (IC) products that, at present, require modern bipolar or BiCMOS silicon technology in wired application space include the essential optical network (SONET) and synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) operating at 10 Gb/s and higher.

The viability of a mixed digital/analog. RF chip depends on the cost of making the silicon with the required elements; in practice, it must approximate the cost of the CMOS wafer, Cycle times for processing the wafer should not significantly exceed cycle times for a digital CMOS wafer. Yields of the SOC chip must be similar to those of a multi-chip implementation. Much of this article will examine process techniques that achieve the objectives of low cost, rapid cycle time, and solid yield.

Brush-less servomotor

A brush-less servomotor has been developed by using interdisciplinary mechatronics engineering. A mechanical switching device (commutator) is replaced by electronic circuits and controllers resulting in maintenance free and high performance servo drive.
The brush-less servomotor is an ac motor, in all respects and is in fact called the ac servomotor. Combined with a dedicated control device, the performance of the brush-less servomotor is found to be equal to the performance of the high performance dc servo motor.
The rotational speed of dc servomotor is generally varied by changing the voltage applied to the armature. As the armature voltage is nearly proportional to the rotational speed, the speed can be slowed down as much as is required by lowering the applied voltage. On the other hand the rotational speed of the ac motor is generally varied by changing the frequency. However the frequency has its limits of variation. A wide range of speed variation, which is a feature of servomotors, cannot be obtained by using only a simple inverter.
In dc motor when the current flows in the electrical conductor, after passing through the brushes and the commutator in the magnetic field generated by permanent magnets N and S, torque is generated. For getting a stable torque proportional to current, the line of magnetic force should intersect the c of current at right angles in a dc motor. This is enabled by the use of rectifiers (a commutator and brushes).
In ac motors slip ring is used instead of a commutator and a power source of alternating current makes the rotor rotate continuously at the rotational speed corresponding to the applied frequency. But the brushes of the ac motors can be eliminated by changing the revolving armature structure in to revolving field type.

BEHAVIORAL CLONING

Controlling a complex dynamic system such as a plane or a crane usually requires a skilled operator. Such a control skill is typically hard to reconstruct through introspection. Therefore an attractive approach to the reconstruction of control skill involves machine learning from operators control traces also known as behavioral cloning. Behavioral cloning is a method by which a machine learns control skills through observing what a human controller would do in a certain set of circumstances. It seeks to build a robust and explainable model by learning from the traces of a skilled operators behavior.

More details :

Boids

Boids, developed by Craig Reynolds in 1986, is an artificial life program, simulating the flocking behaviour of birds. His paper on this topic was published in 1987 in the proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH conference. The name refers to a "bird-like object", but its pronunciation evokes that of "bird" in a stereotypical New York accent.

As with most artificial life simulations, Boids is an example of emergent behavior; that is, the complexity of Boids arises from the interaction of individual agents (the boids, in this case) adhering to a set of simple rules. The rules applied in the simplest Boids world are as follows:
separation: steer to avoid crowding local flockmates
alignment: steer towards the average heading of local flockmates
cohesion: steer to move toward the average position of local flockmates

More complex rules can be added, such as obstacle avoidance and goal seeking.

The movement of Boids can be characterized as either chaotic (splitting groups and wild behaviour) or orderly. Unexpected behaviours, such as splitting flocks and reuniting after avoiding obstacles, can be considered emergent.

The boids framework is often used in computer graphics, providing realistic-looking representations of flocks of birds and other creatures, such as schools of fish or herds of animals.

Boids work in a manner similar to cellular automata, since each boid "acts" autonomously and references a neighbourhood, as do cellular automata.

Blue Laser Could Lead to Autism Cure

Lasers could one day cure, or at least aid in the search for drugs that treat diseases ranging from autism to schizophrenia, according to two new studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University and published in the online issue of the journal Nature.

A blue laser shined into a live mouse brain triggered gamma waves, which are a kind of brain wave necessary for concentration and cognition that people with autism and schizophrenia often lack.

"There are lots of theories about why [gamma wave oscillation] is impaired," said Li-Huei Tsai, a professor at MIT and a co-author on one of the Nature papers.

"This is the first proof that a specific set of neurons are responsible for gamma waves."

Blu Ray Disc

Abstract

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next-generation optical disc video recording format jointly developed by nine leading consumer electronics companies. The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HDTV). Blu-ray makes it possible to record over 2 hours of digital high-definition video (HDTV) or more than 13 hours of standard-definition video (SDTV/VHS picture quality) on a 27GB disc. There are also plans for higher capacity discs that are expected to hold up to 50GB of data.

The Blu-ray Disc technology can store sound and video while maintaining high quality and also access the stored content in an easy-to-use way. Adoption of the Blu-ray Disc in a variety of applications including PC data storage and high definition video software is being considered

Bluetooth Based Smart Sensor Networks

Definition
The communications capability of devices and continuous transparent information routes are indispensable components of future oriented automation concepts. Communication is increasing rapidly in industrial environment even at field level.In any industry the process can be realized through sensors and can be controlled through actuators. The process is monitored on the central control room by getting signals through a pair of wires from each field device in Distributed Control Systems (DCS). With advent in networking concept, the cost of wiring is saved by networking the field devices. But the latest trend is elimination of wires i.e., wireless networks.

Wireless sensor networks - networks of small devices equipped with sensors, microprocessor and wireless communication interfaces.In 1994, Ericsson Mobile communications, the global telecommunication company based in Sweden, initiated a study to investigate, the feasibility of a low power, low cost ratio interface, and to find a way to eliminate cables between devices. Finally, the engineers at the Ericsson named the new wireless technology as "Blue tooth" to honour the 10th century king if Denmark, Harald Blue tooth (940 to 985 A.D).
The goals of blue tooth are unification and harmony as well, specifically enabling different devices to communicate through a commonly accepted standard for wire less connectivity.

BLUE TOOTH
Blue tooth operates in the unlicensed ISM band at 2.4 GHZ frequency band and use frequency hopping spread spectrum technique. A typical Blue tooth device has a range of about 10 meters and can be extended to 100meters. Communication channels supports total bandwidth of 1 Mb / sec. A single connection supports a maximum asymmetric data transfer rate of 721 KBPS maximum of three channels.

BLUE TOOTH - NETWORKS
In bluetooth, a Piconet is a collection of up to 8 devices that frequency hop together. Each Piconet has one master usually a device that initiated establishment of the Piconet, and up to 7 slave devices. Master's Blue tooth address is used for definition of the frequency hopping sequence. Slave devices use the master's clock to synchronize their clocks to be able to hop simultaneously.

A Piconet
When a device wants to establish a Piconet it has to perform inquiry to discover other Blue tooth devices in the range. Inquiry procedure is defined in such a way to ensure that two devices will after some time, visit the same frequency same time when that happens, required information is exchanged and devices can use paging procedure to establish connection.When more than 7 devices needs to communicate, there are two options. The first one is to put one or more devices into the park state. Blue tooth defines three low power modes sniff, hold and park. When a device is in the park mode then it disassociates from and Piconet, but still maintains timing synchronization with it. The master of the Piconet periodically broadcasts beacons (Warning) to invite the slave to rejoin the Piconet or to allow the slave to request to rejoin. The slave can rejoin the Piconet only if there are less than seven slaves already in the Piconet. If not so, the master has to 'park' one of the active slaves first.

All these actions cause delay and for some applications it can be unacceptable for eg: process control applications, that requires immediate response from the command centre (central control room).Scatternet consists of several Piconets connected by devices participating in multiple Piconet. These devices can be slaves in all Piconets or master in one Piconet and slave in other Piconets. Using scatternets higher throughput is available and multi-hop connections between devices in different Piconets are possible. i.e., The unit can communicate in one Piconet at time so they jump from pioneer to another depending upon the channel parameter.