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A Review on Passive and Integrated Near-Field Microwave Biosensors
In this paper we review the advancement of passive and integrated microwave biosensors. The interaction of microwave with biological material is discussed in this paper. Passive microwave biosensors are microwave structures, which are fabricated on a substrate and are used for sensing biological materials. On the other hand, integrated biosensors are microwave structures fabricated in standard semiconductor technology platform (CMOS or BiCMOS). The CMOS or BiCMOS sensor technology offers a more compact sensing approach which has the potential in the future for point of care testing systems. Various applications of the passive and the integrated sensors have been discussed in this review paper.
Micro-Electromechanical Affinity Sensor for the Monitoring of Glucose in Bioprocess Media
An affinity-viscometry-based micro-sensor probe for continuous glucose monitoring was investigated with respect to its suitability for bioprocesses. The sensor operates with glucose and dextran competing as binding partner for concanavalin A, while the viscosity of the assay scales with glucose concentration. Changes in viscosity are determined with a micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) in the measurement cavity of the sensor probe. The study aimed to elucidate the interactions between the assay and a typical phosphate buffered bacterial cultivation medium. It turned out that contact with the medium resulted in a significant long-lasting drift of the assay’s viscosity at zero glucose concentration. Adding glucose to the medium lowers the drift by a factor of eight. The cglc values measured off-line with the glucose sensor for monitoring of a bacterial cultivation were similar to the measurements with an enzymatic assay with a difference of less than ±0.15 g·L−1. We propose that lectin agglomeration, the electro-viscous effect, and constitutional changes of concanavalin A due to exchanges of the incorporated metal ions may account for the observed viscosity increase. The study has demonstrated the potential of the MEMS sensor to determine sensitive viscosity changes within very small sample volumes, which could be of interest for various biotechnological applications.
5G transport network requirements for the next generation fronthaul interface
To meet the requirements of 5G mobile networks, several radio access technologies, such as millimeter wave communications and massive MIMO, are being proposed. In addition, cloud radio access network (C-RAN) architectures are considered instrumental to fully exploit the capabilities of future 5G RANs. However, RAN centralization imposes stringent requirements on the transport network, which today are addressed with purpose-specific and expensive fronthaul links. As the demands on future access networks rise, so will the challenges in the fronthaul and backhaul segments. It is hence of fundamental importance to consider the design of transport networks alongside the definition of future access technologies to avoid the transport becoming a bottleneck. Therefore, we analyze in this work the impact that future RAN technologies will have on the transport network and on the design of the next generation fronthaul interface. To understand the especially important impact of varying user traffic, we utilize measurements from a real-world 4G network and, taking target 5G performance figures into account, extrapolate its statistics to a 5G scenario. With this, we derive both per-cell and aggregated data rate requirements for 5G transport networks. In addition, we show that the effect of statistical multiplexing is an important factor to reduce transport network capacity requirements and costs. Based on our investigations, we provide guidelines for the development of the 5G transport network architecture.
Interpolation algorithm for asynchronous ADC-data
This paper presents a modified interpolation algorithm for signals with variable data rate from asynchronous ADCs. The Adaptive weights Conjugate gradient Toeplitz matrix (ACT) algorithm is extended to operate with a continuous data stream. An additional preprocessing of data with constant and linear sections and a weighted overlap of step-by-step into spectral domain transformed signals improve the reconstruction of the asycnhronous ADC signal. The interpolation method can be used if asynchronous ADC data is fed into synchronous digital signal processing.
On wireless channel parameters for key generation in industrial environments
The advent of industry 4.0 with its idea of individualized mass production will significantly increase the demand for more flexibility on the production floor. Wireless communication provides this type of flexibility but puts the automation system at risk as potential attackers now can eavesdrop or even manipulate the messages exchanged even without getting access to the premises of the victim. Cryptographic means can prevent such attacks if applied properly. One of their core components is the distribution of keys. The generation of keys from channel parameters seems to be a promising approach in comparison to classical approaches based on public key cryptography as it avoids computing intense operations for exchanging keys. In this paper we investigated key generation approaches using channel parameters recorded in a real industrial environment. Our key results are that the key generation may take unpredictable long and that the resulting keys are of low quality with respect to the test for randomness we applied.
Data link layer considerations for future 100 Gbps terahertz band transceivers
This paper presents a hardware processor for 100Gbps wireless data link layer. A serial Reed-Solomon decoder requires a clock of 12.5GHz to fulfill timings constraints of the transmission. Receiving a single Ethernet frame on a 100 Gbps physical layer may be faster than accessing DDR3 memory. Processing so fast streams on a state-of-the-art FPGA (field programmable gate arrays) requires a dedicated approach. Thus, the paper presents lightweight RS FEC engine, frames fragmentation, aggregation, and a protocol with selective fragment retransmission. The implemented FPGA demonstrator achieves nearly 120 Gbps and accepts bit error rate (BER) up to 2e - 3. Moreover, redundancy added to the frames is adopted according to the channel BER by a dedicated link adaptation algorithm. At the end, ASIC synthesis results are presented including detailed statistics of consumed energy per bit.
Morphological Evolution of Pit-Patterned Si(001) Substrates Driven by Surface-Energy Reduction
Lateral ordering of heteroepitaxial islands can be conveniently achieved by suitable pit-patterning of the substrate prior to deposition. Controlling shape, orientation, and size of the pits is not trivial as, being metastable, they can significantly evolve during deposition/annealing. In this paper, we exploit a continuum model to explore the typical metastable pit morphologies that can be expected on Si(001), depending on the initial depth/shape. Evolution is predicted using a surface-diffusion model, formulated in a phase-field framework, and tackling surface-energy anisotropy. Results are shown to nicely reproduce typical metastable shapes reported in the literature. Moreover, long time scale evolutions of pit profiles with different depths are found to follow a similar kinetic pathway. The model is also exploited to treat the case of heteroepitaxial growth involving two materials characterized by different facets in their equilibrium Wulff’s shape. This can lead to significant changes in morphologies, such as a rotation of the pit during deposition as evidenced in Ge/Si experiments.
Radio Frequency CMOS Chem-bio Viscosity Sensors based on Dielectric Spectroscopy
This paper presents a CMOS Radio frequency dielectric sensor platform for the detection of relative viscosity changes in a fluid sample. The operating frequency of the sensor is 12.28 GHz. This frequency range has been chosen for high signal to noise ratio and also to avoid other low frequency dispersion mechanisms for future lab on chip applications. The sensor chip has been fabricated in 250 nm BiCMOS technology of IHP. The measurements conducted to show the relative viscosity variation detection capability of the sensor chip, were based on mixtures of glycerol and water as well as glycerol and organic alcohol. The detection limit of viscosity is dependent on the permittivity contrast of the sample constituent. Therefore, it is also shown the choice of frequency inherently aids in the permittivity contrast of the sample constituents.