Sharif Digital Repository

This paper proposes an Age-Dependent Clustering (ADC) structure to be used for prognostics. To achieve this aim, a step-by-step methodology is introduced, that includes clustering, reproduction, mapping, and finally estimation of Remaining Useful Life (RUL). In the mapping step, a neural fitting tool is used. To clarify the age-based clustering concept, the main elements of the ADC model is discussed. A Genetic algorithm (GA) is used to find the elements of the optimal model. Lastly, the fuzzy technique is applied to modify the clustering. By investigating a case study on the health monitoring of some turbofan engines, the efficacy of the proposed method is demonstrated. The results showed... 

In this paper, a modified frequency control model is proposed, where the demand response (DR) control loop is added to the traditional load frequency control (LFC) model to improve the frequency regulation of the power system. One of the main obstacles for using DR in the frequency regulation is communication delay which exists in transferring data from control center to appliances. To overcome this issue, an adaptive delay compensator (ADC) is used in order to compensate the communication delay in the control loop. In this regard, a weighted combination of several vertex compensators, whose weights are updated according to the measured delay, is employed. Generating the phase lead is the... 

A high energy-efficiency and low-area switching method is proposed for the successive approximation register analog-to-digital converters. In the proposed scheme, the threshold voltage for comparison is derived from the charge sharing technique and using a voltage source connected to the bottom plates of the digital-to-analogue converter (DAC) capacitors. The switching method achieves an average DAC switching energy and DAC area reduction of 99.15% and 84.27%, respectively, with respect to the conventional method. The differential nonlinearity and integral nonlinearity of the proposed scheme are 0.1288 LSB and 0.1207 LSB, respectively. In addition, in the proposed method, the number of DAC... 

Pipeline Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) design processes include several redesign steps to achieve the optimum solution. Hence, designers prefer to use automated algorithms for this purpose. In this paper, an automated algorithm for CAD tool is presented considering the trade-off between yield and power consumption for pipeline ADCs. This automated algorithm benefits from multiple degrees of freedom including the system level down to transistor level parameters, which helps CAD tools to find the optimized solution. It allows designers to choose an optimum scenario considering the trade-off between yield and power consumption. To evaluate the capabilities of this algorithm, a 10-bit... 

In the case that phased array systems are not capable of attenuating interferences, Radio Frequency (RF) front-ends and Analog Digital Converters (ADCs) with a large dynamic range are required to avoid saturation of the receiver. This leads to a higher power consumption. In this paper, employing N-path circuits in Mixer-First receivers, a novel method is introduced in which spatial and frequency blockers are eliminated right before entering the system on the antennas input. In fact using this technique, adjustable spatial notch filter and band-pass frequency filter are implemented to suppress spatial and frequency interferences. The proposed method enhances the robustness and effectiveness... 

A novel structure of Capacitive Digital to Analog Converters (CDAC) for Successive Approximation Register Analog to Digital Converters (SAR ADC) is presented. In this CDAC, a number of pre-charged capacitors are placed in different series configurations to produce a desired voltage level. Therefore, given an input code, a series configuration of the capacitors is created to produce a voltage. Current is drawn from the supply voltage only in one step of the ADC conversion to reduce the power consumption. Therefore, the proposed CDAC consumes a fixed and small amount of power regardless of the input code. The output common mode voltage (Vcm) of the DAC remains fixed for all the digital codes.... 

A low-power technique for high-resolution comparators is introduced. In this technique, p-type metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors are employed as the input of the latch of the comparator just like the input of the preamplifier. The latch and preamplifier stages are activated in a special pattern using an inverter-based controller. Unlike the conventional comparator, the preamplification delay can be set to an optimum low value even if after the preamplification, the output voltages is less than n-channel metal-oxide semiconductor voltage threshold. As a result, the proposed comparator reduces the power consumption significantly and enhances the speed. The speed and power... 

A new structure of Capacitive Digital to Analog Converters (CDAC) for SAR ADCs is presented. In this structure, a number of capacitors are used in different series configurations to generate desirable voltage levels based on an input binary code. the proposed CDAC consumes a certain amount of power regardless of the input code. This method achieves more than 99.9% power reduction and 98.9% area reduction compared to the conventional binary weighted CDAC. © 2017 IEEE  

In this paper, a method is presented to reduce the power consumption of the two-stage dynamic comparators. In the two-stage dynamic comparators, the first stage (pre-amplifier stage) amplifies the input differential voltage. Then the second stage (latch stage) is activated and finishes the comparison. When the comparison is about to finish, the balance of the positive feedback of the latch stage tends to tilt toward one of the outputs; after this, to the end of the comparison, there is no need for additional pre-amplification gain which causes excess power consumption. In this paper, a method is proposed to eliminate this part of power consumption. It is shown that while reducing the power... 

In this paper, an optimal down sampler is used for Associate Discrete Circuit (ADC) based modeling and simulation of basic switching converters. Characteristic equation of backward Euler based discrete model of the circuit is used to find the value for down sampling. Using ADC modeling, fixed admittance matrix can be achieved for modeling switching converters and using down sampler, additional switch and diode current oscillations are minimized. Real-time digital simulation of buck converter using ADC with down sampler method is implemented on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and the results are those expected without additional numerical oscillations. Based on the place-and-route... 

A low-power high-speed two-stage dynamic comparator is presented. The voltage fluctuation at the first stage of the comparator (pre-Amplifier stage) is limited to V dd=2. Therefore, the power consumption of the first stage which is the dominant part of the total power consumption is reduced. The output voltage of the first stage is kept above V dd=2. As a result, during the comparison the second stage of the comparator (latch) is activated stronger compared to the conventional comparator. To prove the benefits of the proposed comparator, the proposed and the other circuits are simulated in the equal budget of power and offset. Simulation results prove that the proposed comparator is faster... 

A highly energy-efficiency switching procedure for the capacitor-splitting digital-To-Analog converter (DAC) is presented for successive approximation register (SAR) analogue-To-digital converters (ADCs). In this procedure, the MSB capacitor is divided into its binary constituents. All output digital bits, except the least significant bit (LSB), is determined using reference voltage (Vref), while the common-mode voltage (Vcm) is used to determine the LSB. Therefore, the precision of the proposed SAR ADC is independent of the precision of Vcm except in the LSB. This method reduces the area by 75% compared to the conventional binary weighted DAC and reduces the switching energy by 96.89%. ©... 

Time-interleaved analog to digital converters (TI-ADC) offer high sampling rates by passing the input signal through C parallel low-rate ADCs. We can achieve C-times the sampling rate of a single ADC if all the shifts between the channels are identical. In practice, however, it is not possible to avoid mismatch among shifts. Besides, the samples are also subject to jitter noise. In this paper, we propose a blind method to mitigate the joint effects of sampling jitter and shift mismatch in the TI-ADC structure. We assume the input signal to be bandlimited and incorporate the jitter via a stochastic model. Next, we derive an approximate model based on a first-order Taylor series and use an... 

This paper presents a methodology for implementing of the mathematical model of H-Bridge converter in an FPGA-based Real-Time simulator. Furthermore, it introduces a new method for choosing parameters of the Associate Discrete Circuit (ADC) model of semiconductor switches. The ADC-based model allows obtaining a fixed topology irrespective of switches states for the power electronic converters in the digital simulation. Backward-Euler based discretized state space matrix (SSM) of the circuit used for ADC parameter. Choosing appropriate switch parameter is based on 1) reducing the distance of SSM eigenvalues from origin in z-Plane to reduce settling-Time of system response; and 2) reducing the... 

A new switched-capacitor Digital to Analog converter (DAC) is presented. In this method, a ladder of series capacitors is used to generate the output voltage levels. A correction phase is used to increase the precision of the DAC. It is analytically shown that the proposed DAC is mismatch and process independent by virtue of the correction phase. That is after some correction phases, the effect of mismatch on the reference voltage levels on the ladder diminishes and an accurate voltage division is provided. It is proven that the whole process sinks no extra charge from the power supply  

A new switched-capacitor digital to analog converter (DAC) is presented. In this DAC, a ladder of series capacitors is used to generate the output voltage levels. A correction phase is used to increase the precision of the DAC. It is analytically shown that the proposed DAC is mismatch independent by virtue of the correction phase. That is after few correction phases (typically one), the effect of mismatch on the reference voltage levels on the ladder diminishes and an accurate voltage division is provided. It is proven that the whole process sinks no extra charge from the power supply. Furthermore, post layout simulations in 0.18 μm technology proves the benefits of the proposed method  

Signal to Noise and Distortion Ratio (SNDR) is widely chosen for dynamic characterization of ADC. For pipelined ADC in which the inner circuits' errors accumulate at the output, analysis of the origins of SNDR and its characterization can be very hard. However, due to a relationship between maximum INL of ADC and the distortion in its output codes, SNDR can be derived as a function of maximum INL value and its position in output codes. Utilizing this relationship, this paper develops two methods for SNDR enhancement that do not cost much power. The 50k sampled Monte-Carlo simulation in the behavioral level indicates 75% increase in the possibility of having SNDR > 60db just by utilizing... 

Computationally exhaustive time-domain Monte Carlo (MC) simulations are commonly conducted to obtain the static characteristics of a residual analog-to-digital converter (ADC) (e.g., pipelined ADC) for the calculation of the integral nonlinearity (INL) and differential nonlinearity (DNL). In this brief, a new ultrahigh-speed, yet precise, behavioral-level dc characterization algorithm for residual-based ADC is introduced. The algorithm derives the transition points of a given stage of the ADC based on the random parameters of that stage. Then, it merges the dc characteristics of all stages together to extract detailed dc input-output characteristics for the entire ADC. Then, the exact amount... 

This paper presents a new architecture for VCO-based Continuous Time Delta Sigma Modulators. This approach is based on the differential configuration for the quantizer while maintains its inherent dynamic element matching property. Consuming no additional power and area compared to the conventional scheme, this architecture can eliminate the even orders of harmonic distortion and achieve higher linearity. Theoretical analysis for signal to quantization noise, power and area consumption and mismatch effect is provided. To illustrate the effectiveness of the new architecture in continuous time modulators, a modulator with 640 MHz sampling rate utilizing the mentioned quantizer is simulated in... 

A low power 4-bit, 1.6 GS/s flash ADC is presented. A new power reduction technique which masks the unused blocks in a semi-pipeline chain of latches and encoders is introduced. The proposed circuit determines the unused blocks based on a pre-sensing of the signal. Moreover, a reference voltage generator with very low static power dissipation is used. Novel techniques to reduce the sensitivity to dynamic noise are proposed to suppress the noise effects on the reference generator. The proposed circuit reduces the power consumption by 20 percent compared to the conventional structure when a Nyquist rate OFDM signal is applied. The INL and DNL of the converter are smaller than 0.3 LSB after...