Performance Analysis of Ring Oscillators and Current-Starved VCO in 45-nm CMOS Technology

This paper presents a relative study among two Ring oscillators architecture (CMOS, NMOS) and current-starved Voltage-controlled oscillator (CS-VCO) on the basis of different parameters like power dissipation ,phase noise etc. All the design has been done in 45- nm CMOS technology node and 2.3 GHz Centre frequency have been taken for the comparison because of their applications in AV Devices and Radio control. An inherent idea of the given performance parameters has been realize by thecomparative study. The comparative data shows that NMOS based Ring oscillator is good option in terms of the phase noise performance. In this study NMOS Ring Oscillator have attain a phase noise -97.94 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset frequency from 2.3 GHz center frequency. The related data also shows that CMOS Ring oscillator is the best option in terms of power consumption. In this work CMOS Ring oscillator evacuatea power of 1.73 mW which is quite low. Keywords: Voltage controlled oscillator (VCO), phase noise, power consumption, Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS), Current Starved Voltage-Controlled Oscillator (CS- VCO), Pull up network (PUN), Pull down network (PDN)

Guidelines for the LTO Noise Assessment of Future Civil Supersonic Aircraft in Conceptual Design

One of the most critical regulatory issues related to supersonic flight arises from limitations imposed by community noise acceptability. The most efficient way to ensure that future supersonic aircraft will meet low-noise requirements is the verification of noise emissions from the early stages of the design process. Therefore, this paper suggests guidelines for the Landing and Take-Off (LTO) noise assessment of future civil supersonic aircraft in conceptual design. The supersonic aircraft noise model is based on the semi-empirical equations employed in the early versions of the Aircraft NOise Prediction Program (ANOPP) developed by NASA, whereas sound attenuation due to atmospheric absorption has been considered in accordance with SAE ARP 866 B. The simulation of the trajectory leads to the prediction of the aircraft noise level on ground in terms of several acoustic metrics (LAmax, SEL, PNLTM and EPNL). Therefore, a dedicated validation has been performed, selecting the only available supersonic aircraft of the Aircraft Noise and Performance database (ANP), that is, the Concorde, through the matching with Noise Power Distance (NPD) curves for LAmax and SEL, obtaining a maximum prediction error of ±2.19%. At least, an application to departure and approach procedures is reported to verify the first noise estimations with current noise requirements defined by ICAO at the three certification measurement points (sideline, flyover, approach) and to draw preliminary considerations for future low-noise supersonic aircraft design.

Simulated sensor characterization for virtual clinical trials in mammography and digital breast tomosynthesis

Virtual clinical trials in X-ray breast imaging permit to compare different technical solutions and imaging modalities at reduced costs, involved personnel, reduced times and reduced radiation risks to patients. In this context, the detector characteristics (spatial resolution, noise level and efficiency) play a key role for an appropriate generation of simulated images. The project AGATA proposes to compute images as dose deposit maps in a detector layer of defined materials. Simulated images are then post-processed on the basis of suitable comparison between intrinsic characteristics of real and simulated detectors. With this scope, as first step for the post-processing manipulations, we evaluated the presampled modulation transfer function (MTF), the detector-response function and the noise power spectrum (NPS) of the simulated detectors. Two detectors were simulated: (1) 0.20 mm-thick a-Se direct flat panel with 70 µm pixel pitch and (2) CsI(Tl) indirect flat panel with 100 µm pixel pitch and scintillator layer 0.25 mm thick. In addition, the impact of simulating the de-excitation processes (Auger emission and fluorescence) was explored. Simulated detector characteristics were evaluated for W/Rh spectra between 25 kV and 31 kV. The in-silico platform used a Monte Carlo software based on Geant4 toolkit (vers. 6). First, the simulation and tracking of electrons generated from photoelectric or Compton interactions was shown to have neglectable influence on the pixel values for the explored spectra, with the produced electrons presenting short ranges with respect to the pixel dimension. In the case of the CsI detector, which has fluorescence energies higher than those of the simulated X-ray photons, the deexcitation processes have not noticeable influence on the calculated pixel values. On the other hand, the MTF of the a-Se detector resulted slightly lower when the fluorescence is simulated in the detector materials, due to the dose spread derived from the fluorescence photons, which can travel far from the initial ionization interaction. Regarding the a-Se detector, the noise power spectrum resulted lower with simulated deexcitation.

Conditional Covariances for the Signal Lag Measurements in Fluoroscopic Imaging

In fluoroscopic imaging, we can acquire X-ray image sequences using a flat-panel dynamic detector. However, lag signals from previous frames are added to the subsequently acquired images and produce lag artifacts. The lag signals also inflate the measured noise power spectrum (NPS) of a detector. In order to correct the measured NPS, the lag correction factor (LCF) is generally used. However, the nonuniform temporal gain (NTG), which is from inconsistent X-ray sources and readout circuits, can significantly distort the LCF measurements. In this paper, we propose a simple scheme to alleviate the NTG problem in order to accurately and efficiently measure the detector LCF. We first theoretically analyze the effects of NTG, especially on the correlation-based LCF measurement methods, where calculating the correlation coefficients are required. In order to remove the biases due to NTG, a notion of conditional covariance is considered for unbiased estimates of the correlation coefficients. Experiments using practical X-ray images acquired from a dynamic detector were conducted. The proposed approach could yield accurate LCF values similarly to the current approaches of the direct and U-L corrections with a low computational complexity. By calculating the correlation coefficients based on conditional covariance, we could obtain accurate LCF values even under the NTG environment. This approach does not require any preprocessing scheme of the direct or U-L correction and can provide further accurate LCF values than the method of IEC62220-1-3 does.

Reconfigurable Architectures with High-Frequency Noise Suppression for Wearable ECG Devices

Recent advances in electronics and microelectronics have aided the development of low-cost devices that are widely used as well-being or preventive monitoring devices by many people. Remote health monitoring, which includes wearable sensors, actuators, and modern communication and information systems, offers effective programs that allow people to live peacefully in their own homes while also being protected in some way. High-frequency noise, power-line interface, and baseline drift are prevalent during the data-acquisition system of an ECG signal, and they can limit signal understanding. They (noises) must be isolated in order to provide an appropriate diagnostic of the patient. When removing high-frequency components (noise) from an ECG signal with an FIR filter, the critical path delay increases considerably as the filter's duration increases. To reduce high-frequency noise, simple moving average filters with pipelining and look-ahead transformation techniques are extensively used in this study. With the use of pipelining and look-ahead techniques, the only objective is to increase the clock speed of the designs. The moving average filters (conventional and proposed) were created on an Altera Cyclone IV FPGA EP4CE115F29C7 chip using the Quartus II software v13.1 tool. Finally, performance metrics such logic elements, clock speed, and power consumption were compared and studied thoroughly. The recursive pipelined 8-tap MA filter with look-ahead approach outperforms the other designs (685.48 MHz) in this investigation.

ICoRD: Iterative Correlation-Based ROI Detection Method for the Extraction of Neural Signals in Calcium Imaging

In vivo calcium imaging is a standard neuroimaging technique that allows the simultaneous observation of neuronal population activity. In calcium imaging, the activation signals of neurons are key information for the investigation of neural circuits. For efficient extraction of the calcium signals of neurons, selective detection of the region of interest (ROI) pixels corresponding to the active subcellular region of the target neuron is essential. However, current ROI detection methods for calcium imaging data exhibit relatively low extraction performance from neurons with a low signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR). This is problematic because a low SNR is unavoidable in many biological experimental settings. Therefore, we propose an iterative correlation-based ROI detection (ICoRD) method that robustly extracts the calcium signal of the target neuron from a calcium imaging series with severe noise. ICoRD extracts calcium signals closer to the ground truth than the conventional method from simulated calcium imaging data in all low SNR ranges. Additionally, this study confirmed that ICoRD robustly extracts activation signals against noise, even within in vivo environments. ICoRD showed reliable detection from neurons with low SNR and sparse activation, which were not detected by the conventional methods. ICoRD will facilitate our understanding of neural circuit activity by providing significantly improved ROI detection from noisy images.

Performance of Spectral Photon-Counting Coronary CT Angiography and Comparison with Energy-Integrating-Detector CT: Objective Assessment with Model Observer

Aims: To evaluate spectral photon-counting CT’s (SPCCT) objective image quality characteristics in vitro, compared with standard-of-care energy-integrating-detector (EID) CT. Methods: We scanned a thorax phantom with a coronary artery module at 10 mGy on a prototype SPCCT and a clinical dual-layer EID-CT under various conditions of simulated patient size (small, medium, and large). We used filtered back-projection with a soft-tissue kernel. We assessed noise and contrast-dependent spatial resolution with noise power spectra (NPS) and target transfer functions (TTF), respectively. Detectability indices (d’) of simulated non-calcified and lipid-rich atherosclerotic plaques were computed using the non-pre-whitening with eye filter model observer. Results: SPCCT provided lower noise magnitude (9–38% lower NPS amplitude) and higher noise frequency peaks (sharper noise texture). Furthermore, SPCCT provided consistently higher spatial resolution (30–33% better TTF10). In the detectability analysis, SPCCT outperformed EID-CT in all investigated conditions, providing superior d’. SPCCT reached almost perfect detectability (AUC ≈ 95%) for simulated 0.5-mm-thick non-calcified plaques (for large-sized patients), whereas EID-CT had lower d’ (AUC ≈ 75%). For lipid-rich atherosclerotic plaques, SPCCT achieved 85% AUC vs. 77.5% with EID-CT. Conclusions: SPCCT outperformed EID-CT in detecting simulated coronary atherosclerosis and might enhance diagnostic accuracy by providing lower noise magnitude, markedly improved spatial resolution, and superior lipid core detectability.