Phase state stabilization of ammonium nitrate for creating an oxidizing agent for smokeless gas-generating formulations yielding no toxic combustion products

Methods for phase stabilization of ammonium nitrate were sought for in order to considerably expand the application area of this oxidizing agent in various-purpose self-combustible formulations, including that in a new generation of gas-generating formulations for automobile air bags. New methods for stabilization of ammonium nitrate were studied and, in particular, a search was made for organic compounds that can stabilize ammonium nitrate even at their low content. The mechanism of phase state stabilization of ammonium nitrate by compounds of this kind was examined.     

Calibrated Free-Space Microwave Measurements With an Ultrawideband Reflectometer-Antenna System

We present a 3-12 GHz compact mixer-based reflectometer (CMR) and horn antenna system, and demonstrate its use in detecting backscatter signals with a free space calibration procedure. We evaluate the frequency-domain performance of the CMR-antenna system for measuring the complex reflection coefficient of a dielectric slab and compare it with that of a commercial vector network analyzer (VNA)-antenna setup. Time-domain responses are also investigated, and show the effectiveness of this calibration method. This low-cost, compact system eliminates the need for traditional mechanical standards and a VNA, is effective in reducing reflection artifacts, and allows for flexibility in the placement of reference planes; thus it is well suited for array-based imaging applications     

A 1.5-V 45-mW direct-conversion WCDMA receiver IC in 0.13-/spl mu/m CMOS

A 2-GHz direct-conversion receiver for wide-band code division multiple access (WCDMA) is presented. It includes two low-noise amplifiers (LNAs), an I/Q demodulator, and two sixth-order baseband channel select filters with programmable gain. Quadrature local oscillator (LO) signals are generated on chip in a frequency divider flip-flop. An external interstage filter between the LNAs rejects transmitter leakage to relax demodulator linearity requirements. A low-voltage demodulator topology improves linearity as well as demodulator output pole accuracy. The active-RC baseband filter uses a programmable servo loop for offset compensation and provides an adjacent channel rejection of 39 dB. Programmable gain over 71-dB range in 1-dB steps is merged with the filter to maximize dynamic range. An automatic on-chip frequency calibration scheme provides better than 1.5% corner frequency accuracy. The receiver is integrated in a 0.13-/spl mu/m CMOS process with metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitors. Measured receiver performance includes a 6.5-dB noise figure, IIP2 of +27 dBm, and IIP3 of -8.6 dBm. Power consumption is 45 mW.     

Randomized scheduling algorithms for high-aggregate bandwidth switches

The aggregate bandwidth of a switch is its port count multiplied by its operating line rate. We consider switches with high-aggregate bandwidths; for example, a 30-port switch operating at 40 Gb/s or a 1000-port switch operating at 1 Gb/s. Designing high-performance schedulers for such switches with input queues is a challenging problem for the following reasons: (1) high performance requires finding good matchings; (2) good matchings take time to find; and (3) in high-aggregate bandwidth switches there is either too little time (due to high line rates) or there is too much work to do (due to a high port count). We exploit the following features of the switching problem to devise simple-to-implement, high-performance schedulers for high-aggregate bandwidth switches: (1) the state of the switch (carried in the lengths of its queues) changes slowly with time, implying that heavy matchings will likely stay heavy over a period of time and (2) observing arriving packets will convey useful information about the state of the switch. The above features are exploited using hardware parallelism and randomization to yield three scheduling algorithms - APSARA, LAURA, and SERENA. These algorithms are shown to achieve 100% throughput and simulations show that their delay performance is quite close to that of the maximum weight matching, even when the traffic is correlated. We also consider the stability property of these algorithms under generic admissible traffic using the fluid-model technique. The main contribution of this paper is a suite of simple to implement, high-performance scheduling algorithms for input-queued switches. We exploit a novel operation, called MERGE, which combines the edges of two matchings to produce a heavier match, and study of the properties of this operation via simulations and theory. The stability proof of the randomized algorithms we present involves a derandomization procedure and uses methods which may have wider applicability.     

AIRS/Vis near IR instrument

A component of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument system is the AIRS/Visible Near InfraRed (Vis/NIR) instrument. With a nadir ground resolution of 2.28 km and four channels, the Vis/NIR instrument provides diagnostic support to the infrared retrievals from the AIRS instrument and several research products, including surface solar flux studies. The AIRS Vis/NIR is composed of three narrowband (channel 1: 0.40-0.44 /spl mu/m; channel 2: 0.58-0.68 /spl mu/m, and channel 3: 0.71-0.92 /spl mu/m) and one broadband (channel 4: 0.49-0.94 /spl mu/m) channel, each a linear detector array of nine pixels. It is calibrated onboard with three tungsten lamps. Vicarious calibrations using ground targets of known reflectance and a cross-calibration with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) augment the onboard calibration. One of AIRS Vis/NIR's principal supporting functions is the detection of low clouds to flag these conditions for atmospheric temperature retrievals. Once clouds are detected, a cloud height index is obtained based on the ratio (channel 2 - channel 3)/channel 1 that is sensitive to the partitioning of water vapor absorption above and below clouds. The determination of the surface solar radiation flux is principally based on channel 4 broadband measurements and the well-established relationship between top-of-the atmosphere (broadband) radiance and the surface irradiance.     

Lateral ion implant straggle and mask proximity effect

Lateral scattering of retrograde well implants is shown to have an effect on the threshold voltage of nearby devices. The threshold voltage of both NMOSFETs and PMOSFETs increases in magnitude for conventional retrograde wells, but for triple-well isolated NMOSFETs the threshold voltage decreases for narrow devices near the edge of the well. Electrical data, SIMS, and SUPREM4 simulations are shown that elucidate the phenomenon.     

A New Hand-Held Microsystem Architecture for Biological Analysis

This paper presents a hand-held microsystem based on new fully integrated magnetoresistive biochips for biomolecular recognition (DNA hybridization, antibody antigen interaction, etc.). Magnetoresistive chip surfaces are chemically treated, enabling the immobilization of probe biomolecules such as DNA or antibodies. Fluid handling is also integrated in the biochip. The proposed microsystem not only integrates the biochip, which is an array of 16times16 magnetoresistive sensors, but it also provides all the electronic circuitry for addressing and reading out each transducer. The proposed architecture and circuits were specifically designed for achieving a compact, programmable and portable microsystem. The microsystem also integrates a hand-held analyzer connected through a wireless channel. A prototype of the system was already developed and detection of magnetic nanoparticles was obtained. This indicates that the system may be used for magnetic label based bioassays     

Correction to "Comments on 'On the connectivity in finite ad hoc networks'"

The probability of connectivity of a one-dimensional finite ad hoc network was derived by Desai and Manjunath, and further analyzed by Gore. In this letter, we point out a discrepancy, thus corroborating the original result. However, it provides the exact interpretation of the recursion and derives the probability of connectivity of a one-dimensional finite sensor network.     

Operating Penalties in Single-Fiber Operation 10-Gb/s, 1024-Way Split, 110-km Long-Reach Optical Access Networks

We report for the first time optical signal-to-noise penalties which lead to performance degradations in single-fiber long-reach optical access networks when compared to identical dual-fiber systems. A simplified architecture, with reduced optical amplifier count compared to previous work, for single-fiber operation of a symmetrical 10-Gb/s, 1024-way split, 110-km long-reach optical access network is presented and demonstrated. In addition, a possible solution to remove the optical signal-to-noise penalty is suggested     

Multi-level attention model for tracking and segmentation of objects under complex occlusion

A multi-level attention framework for tracking and segmentation of humans and objects under complex occlusions is investigated, featuring an effective probabilistic appearance-based technique for pixel reclassification during object grouping and splitting. A novel ’spatial-depth affinity metric’ is introduced in the conventional likelihood function, utilising information of both spatial locations of pixels and dynamic depth ordering of the component objects in grouping. Depth ordering estimation is achieved through a combination of top-down and bottom-up approach. Experiments on some realworld difficult scenarios of low quality and highly compressed videos demonstrate the very promising results achieved.