2008 Events

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Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas produced by the decay of uranium in the earth’s crust. Radon may become trapped in buildings, posing a serious health hazard.

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As the semiconductor industry moves beyond the 45nm node and as systems become more heterogeneous, System on Chip (SoC) solutions are facing major barriers due to technical and business related reasons. This is leading to the development of new technological solutions such as System on Package (SoP). SoP, a technology being pioneered by Georgia Tech, allows for integration of functions in the package. Higher levels of integration are possible by embedding functions in the substrate and merging the package and board level technologies into one. SoP enables the integration of digital, RF, opto-electronic and sensor electronics in the package leading to system miniaturization with micro, nano and bio convergence. This talk will focus on some of the technologies and CAD methods for SoP being developed at Georgia Tech.

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The past thirty years have been an exciting period with tremendous advances in the development of interior permanent magnet (IPM) electrical machines. Over the course of this period, interior permanent magnet synchronous machines (IPMSM) have expanded their presence in the commercial marketplace from few specialized niche markets such as machine tools, air conditioner compressors, servo drives to mass-produced applications, including high-efficiency electric traction drives for the latest generation of hybrid-electric vehicles (HEV).

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In this talk, an improved drain-source current (I-V) model for HEMTs is proposed.  The model is simple, easy to extract, and convenient for implementation in simulation tools.

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For over 60 years, artificial man--made satellites have been providing diverse, highly available services, worldwide. The Sun is the lifeline of majority of satellite space segments, providing to satellites a thermal equilibrium, and, via solar cells, the electric energy. When the Sun becomes obscured by the Earth or by the Moon, a solar eclipse occurs. A satellite's lifeline becomes vitally reduced or cut and its thermal equilibrium disrupted. Different measures have to be taken to reduce and/or avoid potential degradations and/or disruptions of services. The worst case scenario, an unavailability of service, is also called an outage.
Direct exposure to the Sun by a receiver's antenna main beam would cause an increase in the receiver's system noise temperature, which, consequentially, may cause a degradation of service and even an outage.

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The anticipated presentation will cover the current status and future trends of millimeter-wave MMICs, including those using III-V compound (GaAs, InP, GaN, etc.) and Si-based (CMOS, SiGe HBT and BiCMOS) MMIC technologies. Millimeter-wave MMICs used to be applied to military and astronomy systems for long time and started to be utilized for civil applications in the decade, such as communications and automotive radars. The evolution of IC technologies has enabled the performance of Si-based MMICs over 100 GHz, even in standard bulk CMOS processes. This is believed to have a major impact in the future development of millimeter-wave systems. Since low-cost mass-production potential pushes forward the technology, a very high integration of circuit functions on a chip, such as RF, base-band circuitry, automatic-control for a steady operation, and maybe even the antenna, etc. should be included, and thus the system on chip (SOC) issues should be addressed, especially in MMW regime. Moreover, millimeter-wave packaging cost always dominated in the module development. In order to simplify the assembly and reduced cost, the concept of system in package (SIP) has been proposed. This presentation will also survey the current technologies for SOC and SIP and discuss related issues and challenges.

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This lecture introduces general concepts and specific techniques for effective (efficient, general, and accurate) nonlinear behavioral modeling of microwave semiconductor devices and functional circuit blocks. A behavioral model is a simplified but accurate model of a lower-level component in the design hierarchy that simulates efficiently at the next higher level of abstraction. A unified treatment at both the device and functional block level is a distinguishing feature of this presentation. So too is the application to behavioral models constructed from real measurements and also from simulations starting from a detailed (complex) model. The emphasis is placed on the combination of nonlinearity and dynamics. Nonlinearity includes harmonic and inter-modulation distortion, clipping, etc. Dynamics includes frequency-dependence and long-term memory effects from a variety of physical origins. In the realm of dynamic nonlinearities, insight from linear analysis cannot always be applied. Superposition is not generally valid, the Fourier domain is less useful, and Green functions do not exist. No fully general or overarching theories of nonlinear dynamical systems exist that are comparable to what exists for linear systems. Nevertheless, great progress has been made recently in nonlinear behavioral modeling. In fact, this lecture suggests we are at the threshold for full interoperability of large-signal measurement systems, modeling approaches, and simulation algorithms for nonlinear hierarchical behavioral modeling. This means we can begin to do for driven nonlinear microwave systems what small-signal S-parameters enable for linear systems.

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Quantum processing of information requires the development of quantum systems that are at the same time coherent and quantum in nature, and yet easily manipulated to process and extract classical information. To meet this challenge we have embarked on the development of technologies which would allow us to design and build nano-scale scalable and coherent solid state systems using elementary building blocks such as single electron spins, single excitons, and single photons using semiconductor quantum dots. We show how gated quantum dots allow to localize individual electrons, control their spin properties by their number, form of confinement, and the magnetic field, enabling nano-spintronics. The spin can be probed and exploited by connecting quantum dots to spin polarized reservoirs. The resulting spectroscopic tool, the spin blockade spectroscopy, will be described as well as a prototype nanospintronic device, the "single spin transistor". By combining the single spin transistors into coherently coupled devices we are attempting to build an electron spin-based quantum computer.

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As process technologies and supply voltages shrink, designers are faced with a pressing need to address systematic and random sources of variation in a more deliberate and thorough way. Accounting for variation within the flow of design has not progressed commensurate with the process technologies. We still rely on best-, worst- case corners, mismatch plots and maybe a Monte Carlo verification if there is enough time. It is time for a new approach. This talk will begin with a brief review of the physical phenomena and industry-standard device models for variation sources, including random local and global variations and systematic proximity effects. New techniques to accelerate, increase accuracy and derive more information from statistical variation analysis will be presented.

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There is a considerable push to place silicon as the technology of choice for the implementation of millimetre-wave integrated circuits. This presentation outlines the design challenges.

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