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Reliability testing has become extremely important in modern electronics as the soft error rate has been increasing due to technology scaling. The testing must be controllable, generic, done before deployment, cheap, and fast. Even though fault injection is often the most appropriate solution considering these requirements, it is very time-consuming. This work proposes a hybrid fault injection framework...
The emerging 650 V large current rating, Enhancement-mode (E-mode) Gallium Nitride High-Electron-Mobility Transistor (GaN HEMT) is a promising device for low to medium power, high power density converters (e.g., motor drives, battery chargers), which require high robustness levels. Thus, a comprehensive study of the short circuit behavior of high power E-mode GaN HEMT is the subject of this paper...
The goal of this paper is to provide a forum to discuss design activity from two different perspectives: industrial design and electrical engineering. We start with a general overview of design activity as defined by Larson and Dorst[1]. Next, perspectives on design are presented by two of the paper's authors, specifically in the following areas: identifying and framing design problems, design representations,...
A reliability study under high RF power stressing was conducted on two SiGe cascode Low Noise Amplifiers (LNA) using an in-house reliability tool. The first LNA was stressed at 19 dBm of RF power during 600 hours. Obtained results (relative degradation values in dB) showed a decrease of 11% in the small-signal gain (S21), while the second was stressed at 20 dBm of RF power during non-stop 600 hours...
In this paper, a hierarchical motion estimation (ME) algorithm is proposed for motion-compensated frame interpolation. The algorithm estimates the true motion vector field (MVF) of a video frame from its candidate MVFs, which are the results of full-search block-matching that utilizes multiple block sizes, by maximizing the posterior probability for the true MVF. Owing to probabilistic models utilized...
Due to its lots of advantages, CT20 type spring operating mechanism is widely used in the 126kV high voltage circuit breaker. This type mechanism should not meet the requirement of higher interrupting capacity circuit breaker while the interrupting capacity is increasing. In this situation, sometimes the vibration of the closing latch during closing may cause the closing process failed if there is...
In this contribution, impact of extreme environmental conditions in terms of energy-level radiation of protons on SiGe integrated circuits is experimentally studied. Canonical representative structures including linear (passive interconnects/antennas) and non-linear (Low Noise Amplifiers) are used as carriers for assessing impact of aggressive stress conditions on their performances. Perspectives...
In this paper, a multi-degree open-circuit faults diagnostic algorithm, for improving condition monitoring ability of spacecraft solar cell system, has been proposed. This algorithm combines the output parameter, output voltage, output current and the impedance of solar cell system under low frequency domain. The algorithm can be used to diagnose the degree of faults quantitively and quickly. The...
PUFs or Physically Unclonable Functions are emerging hardware security primitives that offer a lightweight alternative to standard security for highly restricted devices like RFIDs. PUFs, however, have been found to be vulnerable to modeling attacks and as such PUF-based authentication protocols had to employ cryptographic primitives to establish reliable security. We introduce a novel lightweight,...
The simulation of aging induced degradation mechanisms is a challenging task during the design of digital systems. Parametrical degradations can be handled most accurately at TCAD level, as the physical models like [1] and [2] can be implemented directly. On the other hand, timing failures caused by such degradations cannot be assessed exactly lower than Register Transfer Level (RTL), where the notion...
A lid is widely used in integrated circuit and package to provide the die protection, heat spreading and warpage control. High-speed signals from a die and traces can be coupled to the lid causing radiated emissions, which usually result in Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) problems. One method to mitigate the emissions is to connect the lid to the package ground by using electrically conductive...
The impact of conformal coating penetration on the solder joints' thermal fatigue reliability in QFNs was studied using computational modeling techniques. 3D finite element models were developed with consideration of realistic solder joint shape and the actual coating profile. Thermal mechanical simulations were carried out for three cycles under accelerated thermal test conditions of −25 to 100°C,...
Conventional capacitors contribute to a considerable scale of system level size, cost and failure, and suffer from one or more issues on energy density, cost, and reliability. A two-terminal active capacitor, which has the same level of convenience as passive capacitors, is proposed recently to overcome the above issues. In this paper, the modeling of the active capacitor is investigated and a voltage...
An effective optimization approach for the electromigration (EM) reliability in power grid (PG) has been presented in this paper. With core technology development and the key feature size of integrated circuits decreasing, it is more serious for the EM-induced failure occurrence in the entire PG. However, previous PG studies focus on supply noise optimization and neglect the EM influence in lines,...
The converter valve is the critical link of AC and DC system and the most commonly used switching devices for converter valve are thyristors. The performance of thyristors could significantly affect the performance of converter valve while the transient characteristics and second order effects of thyristor are critical to determine the reliability of converter valve in HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current)...
Variability and degradation in RRAM devices involve complex physical mechanisms that depend on the device, environment and programming/read operation. The development of solid and accurate compact models, ready to be used in standard circuit simulators, requires the meticulous emulation of this kind of non-ideal effects. In this work we present an advanced approach for the emulation of complex variability...
The availability and efficiency of reliability simulators for analog ICs is becoming critical with the scaling of devices down to the nanometer nodes. Two of the main challenges here are how to simultaneously include different sources of unreliability (such as the time-zero or spatial variability and the aging or time-dependent variability), and how to account for the self-induced changes in device...
With the evolution in the scale of integration in ICs, aging-related problems are becoming more important and, nowadays, solutions to cope with these issues are not yet mature enough, especially in the field of analog circuit simulation. CASE, the novel simulator presented in this paper, can evaluate the impact of reliability effects in analog circuits through a stochastic physic-based model. The...
Spin-Transfer Torque Magnetic Random Access Memory (STT-MRAM) has been explored as a post-CMOS technology for embedded and data storage applications seeking non-volatility, near-zero standby energy, and high density. Towards attaining these objectives for practical implementations, various techniques to mitigate the specific reliability challenges associated with STT-MRAM elements are surveyed, classified,...
Variability is one of the main and critical challenges introduced by the continuous scaling in integrated technologies and the need for reliable ICs. In this regard, it is necessary to take into account time-zero (i.e., spatial or process variability) and time-dependent variability (i.e., aging). While process variability has been extensively treated, considerable efforts are currently being made...
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