Localization and the integer-quantized Hall effect: Diffusion constant for high Landau levels and white noise potential

The diffusion constant and the diagonal conductivity for non-interacting electrons in a two-dimensional, disordered system are studied. A homogeneous magnetic field perpendicular to the electron system is assumed. For weak short-range random potentials and high fields the Landau quantum numbern can be used as expansion parameter. In the limit of high Landau levels the system shows metallic behaviour. Corrections for finiten decrease the conductivity and indicate localized states in the whole energy band. A breakdown of the expansion and stronger localization are observed only for the lowest Landau levels if the typical experimental length scale of the quantized Hall effect is used.     

Vascular morphology by three-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging

A three-dimensional examination of blood vessels is provided using MR data from seven cases. The vascular surfaces are constructed with an algorithm that automatically follows the selected artery or vein and generates a projected three-dimensional gradient shaded image. Fast 3DFT pulse sequences were optimized to enhance the time-of-flight contrast of the intravascular region. By increasing the surface threshold value in a three-dimensional head study, the flesh of a patient's face was peeled away to demonstrate the superfacial temporal artery. Gated cardiac images show the great vessels and cardiac chambers. A three-dimensional view of the aorta shows an irregular surface in the vicinity of an adrenal tumor. 3D MR exams provide a non-invasive technique for assessing vascular morphology in a clinical setting.     

Silicon-to-steel bonding using rapid thermal annealing

This paper presents the rapid, low-temperature bonding between silicon and steel using the rapid thermal annealing process. Three different thin-film adhesion layer systems including silver, gold, and nickel were utilized as the intermediate bonding material to assist the eutectic Pb/Sn bonding between silicon and steel. The bonding temperature was set at 220/spl deg/C for 20 s, with a 20-s ramp-up time. Five experiments were conducted to determine the strength of the bond, including static tensile and compressive four-point bend tests, axial extension tests, tensile bending fatigue tests, and corrosion resistance tests. The test results have shown that the gold adhesion layer is the most robust, demonstrating minimal creep during fatigue tests, no delamination during the tensile or compressive four-point bend tests, and acceptable strength during the axial extension tests. Additionally, all adhesion layers have withstood four months of submersion in various high-temperature solutions and lubricants without failure. Simulations of the axial stresses and strains that developed during the four-point bend and axial extension tests were performed and showed that the presence of the silicon die provides a local reinforcement of the bond as observed in the experimental tests.     

Tile-boundary artifact reduction using odd tile size and the low-pass first convention.

It is well known that tile-boundary artifacts occur in wavelet-based lossy image coding. However, until now, their cause has not been understood well. In this paper, we show that boundary artifacts are an inescapable consequence of the usual methods used to choose tile size and the type of symmetric extension employed in a wavelet-based image decomposition system. This paper presents a novel method for reducing these tile-boundary artifacts. The method employs odd tile sizes (2N + 1 samples) rather than the conventional even tile sizes (2N samples). It is shown that, for the same bit rate, an image compressed using an odd tile length low-pass first (OTLPF) convention has significantly less boundary artifacts than an image compressed using even tile sizes. The OTLPF convention can also be incorporated into the JPEG 2000 image compression algorithm using extensions defined in Part 2 of this standard.     

Peak-to-average power reduction in space division multiplexing based OFDM systems through spatial shifting

A new method to reduce the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) in space division multiplexing systems applying orthogonal frequency division multiplexing is proposed. The method applies spatial shifting to partial transmit sequences to achieve a decreased PAPR on all transmit branches.     

Interband light absorption in size-confined systems in uniform electric fields

A simple approach to calculation of the interband absorption coefficient in a uniform electric field is developed. This approach provides a means for studying the special features of electroabsorption in a wide class of semiconductor systems on the basis of the most general relationships. The approach is used to study the electroabsorption in two-dimensional systems with different profiles of their one-dimensional potential, quantum wells, and superlattices in magnetic fields.     

A Low-Supply-Voltage CMOS Sub-Bandgap Reference

A low-power (21 $muhbox{W}$ ) bandgap reference source that is operable from a nominal supply voltage of 1.4 V is described. The circuit provides an output voltage equal to the bandgap voltage having a low output resistance and allows resistive loading. It does not use resistors or operational amplifiers. Thus, the design is suitable for fabrication in any digital CMOS technology. The circuit uses a current conveyor and current mirrors to convert the proportional to absolute temperature voltage into a current using a MOSFET. The current is converted back to a voltage by using the functional inverse of the FET $v-i$ characteristics. This makes the voltage gain linear and temperature independent. The absence of back-gate bias is the reason for achieving the low supply voltage of operation. Simulation results using the transistor models for the 0.18-$mu$m TSMC process show that the voltage-variation over the temperature range 0 to 100 $^{circ} {hbox {C}}$ is $≪$1 mV.      

Cost-Efficient SHA Hardware Accelerators

This paper presents a new set of techniques for hardware implementations of Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) hash functions. These techniques consist mostly in operation rescheduling and hardware reutilization, therefore, significantly decreasing the critical path and required area. Throughputs from 1.3 Gbit/s to 1.8 Gbit/s were obtained for the SHA implementations on a Xilinx VIRTEX II Pro. Compared to commercial cores and previously published research, these figures correspond to an improvement in throughput/slice in the range of 29% to 59% for SHA-1 and 54% to 100% for SHA-2. Experimental results on hybrid hardware/software implementations of the SHA cores, have shown speedups up to 150 times for the proposed cores, compared to pure software implementations.      

Distributed Transmit Antenna Selection (DTAS) Under Performance or Energy Consumption Constraints

Motivated by the transmit antenna selection (TAS) concept, used in Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output systems, we argue for distributed transmit antenna selection (DTAS), which corresponds to a method of selecting a subset of available relays in cooperative diversity systems. Assuming amplify and forward relays, the proposed selection method represents a low-complexity tool for determining the optimum relaying set. Two optimization problems are studied: the error probability minimization subject to total energy consumption constraints, and the dual one, the total energy consumption minimization under error performance constraints. Numerical examples verify the advantage of the proposed method in adapting the number of relaying terminals to the desired performance-consumption tradeoff.