BRUNO NERI | University of Pisa (original) (raw)

Papers by BRUNO NERI

Frontiers in psychology, May 2, 2024

Journal of Circuits, Systems and Computers, 2017

This paper presents a design exploration, at both system and circuit levels, of integrated transc... more This paper presents a design exploration, at both system and circuit levels, of integrated transceivers for the upcoming fifth generation (5G) of wireless communications. First, a system level model for 5G communications is carried out to derive transceiver design specifications. Being 5G still in pre-standardization phase, a few currently used standards (ECMA-387, IEEE 802.15.3c, and LTE-A) are taken into account as the reference for the signal format. Following a top-down flow, this work presents the design in 65[Formula: see text]nm CMOS SOI and bulk technologies of the key blocks of a fully integrated transceiver: low noise amplifier (LNA), power amplifier (PA) and on-chip antenna. Different circuit topologies are presented and compared allowing for different trade-offs between gain, power consumption, noise figure, output power, linearity, integration cost and link performance. The best configuration of antenna and LNA co-design results in a peak gain higher than 27[Formula: se...

Cosmos and history: the journal of natural and social philosophy, 2018

In the last decades, one of the psychedelic substances which has gained high attention for its im... more In the last decades, one of the psychedelic substances which has gained high attention for its implications in several para-psychological phenomena (including out-of-body states, deep changes in sensory perception, mood, and thought, travels in "hyperspace", and meetings with disincarnate entities, as well as other "breakthrough experiences") is dimethyltryptamine (N,N-DMT, or simply DMT). High dose DMT-containing plants (like Psychotria viridis , in Quechua language Chacruna or Chacrona) are one of the two principal ingredients of the Ayahuasca, the visionary Amazonian brew reported to induce a range of paranormal experiences, but it can be found as well in a huge number of different natural sources, even some of animal origin - e.g., the Sonoran desert toad, in the form of 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine or 5-MeO-DMT. It was Rick Strassmann (born 1952), a medical doctor, psychiatrist and clinical psycho-pharmacologist, who had the virtue of giving a second bir...

IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers, 2019

In this paper the relationships between stability at the input and at the output of a linear non-... more In this paper the relationships between stability at the input and at the output of a linear non-unilateral 2-port are analyzed. For this purpose the existence of a duality mapping between the two ports is shown and, by using the main properties of Möbius transforms, new mutual relationships between the stability conditions at input and output ports are demonstrated. Such relationships add to the case of unconditional stability for which it is well known that unconditional stability at the input implies unconditional stability at the output (and vice versa). This concept will be extended to all the possible cases of reciprocal position between the stability area in the load reflection coefficient plane and the Smith circle, showing that, for a given situation at the output, only one corresponding situation can be observed at the input (and vice versa). Limit cases are further considered.

2006 13th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems

A new wide-band single-Pi equivalent circuit model for on-chip spiral inductors is presented. The... more A new wide-band single-Pi equivalent circuit model for on-chip spiral inductors is presented. The new model consists of frequency-independent lumped components to accurately keep the characteristic behaviour of inductors with and without patterned ground shield. The RLC circuit elements are derived directly from S-parameters by automatic fitting procedures. Two different fitting procedures are proposed which offer different levels of accuracy

2006 13th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems, 2006

A complete 2.4 GHz ultra low-power RF transceiver for IEEE 802.15.4 standard (ZigBee) application... more A complete 2.4 GHz ultra low-power RF transceiver for IEEE 802.15.4 standard (ZigBee) applications is reported. The circuits have been designed by using a low-cost 0.35 mum BiCMOS standard technology. The receiver, which consists of a LNA and I/Q mixers, exhibits a noise figure of 8.7 dB, a voltage gain of 26 dB, an input-referred third-order intercept point of -13

2017 IEEE 3rd International Forum on Research and Technologies for Society and Industry (RTSI), 2017

The paper presents the transistor-level design, using Keysight ADS environment, of a Low Noise Am... more The paper presents the transistor-level design, using Keysight ADS environment, of a Low Noise Amplifier (LNA), the key block of wireless transceivers in automotive V2X (vehicle to everything) applications. A system-level exploration of the transceiver, using an end-to-end Simulink model annotated bottom up with transistor-level circuit performance, is also presented. The system model allows analyzing the impact of LNA noise figure, gain and non-linearity on the error vector magnitude of the modem constellation. To this aim, a multi-carrier modulation scheme with QPSK bit-loading is used. To meet the stringent cost requirements of the large volume automotive market, a low-cost 0.35 μm CMOS technology is used. The technology is compliant with an automotive qualified flow and allows for the system-on-chip design of V2X transceivers. The achieved performance, although limited by the low Q value (<10) of the inductors available in the technology library, still ensure that the LNA is compliant with the physical layer, around 5.8–5.9 GHz, of IEEE 802.11p, CEN DRSC and ETSl 1TS-G5 standards.

2006 13th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems, 2006

A completely integrated VCO for IEEE 802.11a and HiPerLAN/2 WLAN applications has been designed i... more A completely integrated VCO for IEEE 802.11a and HiPerLAN/2 WLAN applications has been designed in a 0.35 μm CMOS standard technology. High-Q (40 at 5.2 GHz) equivalent inductors of the LC tanks have been implemented by means of a new topology of the active circuit 'boot-strapped inductor' (BSI). The VCO consumes 9 mW and produces a local oscillation signal with the tuning range from 4.91 to 5.93 GHz. The phase noise is -129 dBc at 1 MHz of frequency offset from the central frequency (5.4 GHz), which represents the best result in literature for integrated VCOs. The VCO achieves a FOM of -189.5 dBc/Hz at 100 KHz and -194.1 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz. These results are superior to those obtained in previous works which employ active inductors, and very close to those obtained by using passive inductors realized with additional fabrication steps in more expensive technologies.

2006 European Microwave Conference, 2006

A fully integrated RF front-end on standard silicon technology for 5-GHz indoor WLAN applications... more A fully integrated RF front-end on standard silicon technology for 5-GHz indoor WLAN applications is presented. It includes an innovative T/R antenna switch which does not require any additional technological steps and provides better performance (the measured insertion losses are 0.2 and 0.9 dB, in R and T modes respectively) with respect to those obtained by using PIN diodes as switching elements

International Journal of Computing, 2010

The paper presents an experimental characterization of wireless systems, specifically RFID techno... more The paper presents an experimental characterization of wireless systems, specifically RFID technologies, applied to polishing/cutting process control in the marble industry. The application of RFID systems has the final aim of allowing the automatic and contact-less detection of the presence of a marble slab in different points of a marble machine, outside and/or inside, trying to overcome some limitations of the currently used proximity detectors. Slab detection is needed for the process control in order to properly activate the abrasive or cutting heads of the machine. Four RFID systems at 125 kHz, 13.56 MHz, 868 MHz and 2.45 GHz have been tested in different setups representative of those found in marble machines. Starting from commercially available tags, readers and antennas, ad-hoc developed or customized hardware and/or software have been used for the experimental test campaign, that has been carried out also considering dirty and wet working environments representative of those found in real applications.

This work presents the design of a mixer in RF CMOS technology for a MB-OFDM UWB band transceiver... more This work presents the design of a mixer in RF CMOS technology for a MB-OFDM UWB band transceiver operating in Mode-1 (3.1–4.8 GHz). Working at circuit-level in ADSTM RF CAD and at system-level in Matlab-SimulinkTM, a Gilbert cell architecture is proposed, exploiting current bleeding, integrated matching and inductive tuning techniques. Circuit performance results in AMS 0.35 \(\upmu \)m SiGe CMOS technology prove the feasibility of the circuit for integration in a low-cost UWB receiver.

IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium. 1999 Digest. Held in conjunction with: USNC/URSI National Radio Science Meeting (Cat. No.99CH37010)

A numerical simulation scheme is presented for the design of miniaturized inductors and transform... more A numerical simulation scheme is presented for the design of miniaturized inductors and transformers compatible with a silicon-based standard bipolar process for RF integrated circuits. A combination of FDTD method and SPICE simulator has been used for the feasibility study of high Q integrated active coils

IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, 2020

This paper describes operating results with vehicle-solar-grid integration at the GridSTAR facili... more This paper describes operating results with vehicle-solar-grid integration at the GridSTAR facility of Pennsylvania State University. A Ford F-150 converted to a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle was interfaced with the grid via an electric vehicle photovoltaic (EVPV) installation. The EVPV used the vehicle battery to provide frequency regulation ancillary service to the grid overnight when the solar energy of a hypothetical solar array was less valuable than the ancillary service, and the vehicle battery and the solar inverter were otherwise underutilized. The objective is to create an incentive for electric vehicle and solar PV ownership by fully utilizing the vehicle battery and the PV inverter net metering connection to support the grid and earn revenue. The test plan simulated operation of a school bus, which appears to be a particularly suitable application of this technology. The results showed that the vehicle could provide frequency regulation service that meets the technical requirements for revenue generation.

Sensors, 2020

The design of a Phase-Locked Loop (PLL) to generate the clock reference for the new Spacefibre st... more The design of a Phase-Locked Loop (PLL) to generate the clock reference for the new Spacefibre standard is presented in this paper. Spacefibre has been recently released by the European Space Agency (ESA) and supports up to 6.25 Gbps for on-board satellite communications. Taking as a starting point a rad-hard 6.25 GHz Voltage Controlled Oscillator in 65 nm technology, this work presents the design of the key blocks for an integrated PLL: a Triple Modular Redundancy Phase/Frequency Detector, a Charge Pump, and a passive Loop Filter. The modeling activities carried out in an Advanced Design System have proven that the proposed PLL can be completely integrated on-chip, with a Loop Filter area consumption of only 6000 µm2 (considering the 65 nm technology). The design of active circuits has been carried out at the transistor level in a Cadence Virtuoso environment, implementing both system and layout rad-hard techniques, and different solutions are discussed in this paper. As a result, ...

Materials Science in Semiconductor Processing, 1999

Time±resolved electrical measurements show transient phenomena occurring during degradation and i... more Time±resolved electrical measurements show transient phenomena occurring during degradation and intrinsic dielectric breakdown of gate oxide layers under constant voltage Fowler±Nordheim stress. We have studied such transients in metal/oxide/semiconductor (MOS) capacitors with an n + poly-crystalline Si/SiO 2 /n-type Si stack and with oxide thickness between 35 and 5.6 nm. The data adds new information concerning the intrinsic breakdown mechanism and these are shown and discussed together with the adopted measurement techniques.

Proceedings of the 1999 7th International Symposium on the Physical and Failure Analysis of Integrated Circuits (Cat. No.99TH8394), 1999

In this paper, the results obtained by performing noise measurements during lifetime tests of met... more In this paper, the results obtained by performing noise measurements during lifetime tests of metal lines subject to electromigration are presented. One of the aims of this work is to investigate the possibility of establishing a new failure criterion based on noise measurement capable of providing, in a shorter time, the same type of information normally obtained from MTF (median time to failure) tests

IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 2017

This work explores the potentiality of millimeter waves (mmW) as physical layer in industrial wir... more This work explores the potentiality of millimeter waves (mmW) as physical layer in industrial wireless networks. Innovative models and a link design method are proposed to achieve reliable communication, at a distance of tens of meters for a single hop, even in harsh environments. By exploiting the worldwide-free band of several GHz, available around 60 GHz, mmW links allow to achieve a performance boosting of up to two orders of magnitude, w.r.t. conventional sub-6 GHz wireless links, in indoor industrial environments. Time slotted channel hopping and frequency-diversity can be implemented with a large number of channels, and with high bit rate (several Mb/s per channel). This allows for robust networking of high data-rate sensors, such as cameras, radars or laser scanners. Featuring a low bit error rate, mmW communication allows for low-latency link and large number of hops in networks with a large radius. Finally, it ensures interference separation from operating frequencies of electrical machines, switching converters, and other industrial wireless networks (e.g., 802.11 or 802.15). Implementation results for key HW blocks in low-cost technologies show the feasibility of mmW communication nodes with low-power and compact size.

IECON 2016 - 42nd Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, 2016

This work proposes models and a link design method to exploit the potentiality of millimeter wave... more This work proposes models and a link design method to exploit the potentiality of millimeter waves (mmW) as physical layer of industrial networking protocols. This work shows that, even taking into account harsh operating conditions, a transmitted power of 10 dBm allows for reliable connections at a distance of tens of meters. With respect to traditional sub-3 GHz wireless connections used in indoor industrial environments, mmW links feature worldwide-unlicensed ISM (Industrial Scientific Medical) wideband. This can be exploited to implement frequency-hopping and frequency-diversity techniques to increase link robustness. Operating at mmW allows for inherent interference separation from operating frequencies of electrical machine, power switching converters and other wireless connections. Implementation results of key hardware building blocks with CMOS and PCB technologies prove the feasibility of mmW nodes with low-power and low size.

Computers & Electrical Engineering, 2016

This paper presents the design of a compact Radar for real-time detection of targets in smart mob... more This paper presents the design of a compact Radar for real-time detection of targets in smart mobility applications. The Radar integrates Fabry-Perot resonating antennas, X-band and configurable continuous wave transceiver, high-speed analogdigital-converter and low-power/low-cost FPGA for the baseband signal processing. The latter includes region-of-interest selection, 2D Fast Fourier Transform for range-Doppler map extraction, peak detection and alarm decision logic. The transmitted power can be configured from few mW to 1.8 W. This allows for a trade-off between the maximum detection range, from few hundreds of meters up to 1.54 km, and the Radar power consumption, from 2.56 W to 11.66 W. The measured speed is up to 40 m/s. The speed and distance resolutions are 0.3 m/s and 37.5 cm, respectively. The configurable Radar features increased robustness vs. laser-scanners, video cameras, or induction loops detection techniques, and stands for its better trade-off in terms of covered range, size, and low-power consumption vs. state-of-the-art surveillance Radars.

Frontiers in psychology, May 2, 2024

Journal of Circuits, Systems and Computers, 2017

This paper presents a design exploration, at both system and circuit levels, of integrated transc... more This paper presents a design exploration, at both system and circuit levels, of integrated transceivers for the upcoming fifth generation (5G) of wireless communications. First, a system level model for 5G communications is carried out to derive transceiver design specifications. Being 5G still in pre-standardization phase, a few currently used standards (ECMA-387, IEEE 802.15.3c, and LTE-A) are taken into account as the reference for the signal format. Following a top-down flow, this work presents the design in 65[Formula: see text]nm CMOS SOI and bulk technologies of the key blocks of a fully integrated transceiver: low noise amplifier (LNA), power amplifier (PA) and on-chip antenna. Different circuit topologies are presented and compared allowing for different trade-offs between gain, power consumption, noise figure, output power, linearity, integration cost and link performance. The best configuration of antenna and LNA co-design results in a peak gain higher than 27[Formula: se...

Cosmos and history: the journal of natural and social philosophy, 2018

In the last decades, one of the psychedelic substances which has gained high attention for its im... more In the last decades, one of the psychedelic substances which has gained high attention for its implications in several para-psychological phenomena (including out-of-body states, deep changes in sensory perception, mood, and thought, travels in "hyperspace", and meetings with disincarnate entities, as well as other "breakthrough experiences") is dimethyltryptamine (N,N-DMT, or simply DMT). High dose DMT-containing plants (like Psychotria viridis , in Quechua language Chacruna or Chacrona) are one of the two principal ingredients of the Ayahuasca, the visionary Amazonian brew reported to induce a range of paranormal experiences, but it can be found as well in a huge number of different natural sources, even some of animal origin - e.g., the Sonoran desert toad, in the form of 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine or 5-MeO-DMT. It was Rick Strassmann (born 1952), a medical doctor, psychiatrist and clinical psycho-pharmacologist, who had the virtue of giving a second bir...

IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers, 2019

In this paper the relationships between stability at the input and at the output of a linear non-... more In this paper the relationships between stability at the input and at the output of a linear non-unilateral 2-port are analyzed. For this purpose the existence of a duality mapping between the two ports is shown and, by using the main properties of Möbius transforms, new mutual relationships between the stability conditions at input and output ports are demonstrated. Such relationships add to the case of unconditional stability for which it is well known that unconditional stability at the input implies unconditional stability at the output (and vice versa). This concept will be extended to all the possible cases of reciprocal position between the stability area in the load reflection coefficient plane and the Smith circle, showing that, for a given situation at the output, only one corresponding situation can be observed at the input (and vice versa). Limit cases are further considered.

2006 13th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems

A new wide-band single-Pi equivalent circuit model for on-chip spiral inductors is presented. The... more A new wide-band single-Pi equivalent circuit model for on-chip spiral inductors is presented. The new model consists of frequency-independent lumped components to accurately keep the characteristic behaviour of inductors with and without patterned ground shield. The RLC circuit elements are derived directly from S-parameters by automatic fitting procedures. Two different fitting procedures are proposed which offer different levels of accuracy

2006 13th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems, 2006

A complete 2.4 GHz ultra low-power RF transceiver for IEEE 802.15.4 standard (ZigBee) application... more A complete 2.4 GHz ultra low-power RF transceiver for IEEE 802.15.4 standard (ZigBee) applications is reported. The circuits have been designed by using a low-cost 0.35 mum BiCMOS standard technology. The receiver, which consists of a LNA and I/Q mixers, exhibits a noise figure of 8.7 dB, a voltage gain of 26 dB, an input-referred third-order intercept point of -13

2017 IEEE 3rd International Forum on Research and Technologies for Society and Industry (RTSI), 2017

The paper presents the transistor-level design, using Keysight ADS environment, of a Low Noise Am... more The paper presents the transistor-level design, using Keysight ADS environment, of a Low Noise Amplifier (LNA), the key block of wireless transceivers in automotive V2X (vehicle to everything) applications. A system-level exploration of the transceiver, using an end-to-end Simulink model annotated bottom up with transistor-level circuit performance, is also presented. The system model allows analyzing the impact of LNA noise figure, gain and non-linearity on the error vector magnitude of the modem constellation. To this aim, a multi-carrier modulation scheme with QPSK bit-loading is used. To meet the stringent cost requirements of the large volume automotive market, a low-cost 0.35 μm CMOS technology is used. The technology is compliant with an automotive qualified flow and allows for the system-on-chip design of V2X transceivers. The achieved performance, although limited by the low Q value (<10) of the inductors available in the technology library, still ensure that the LNA is compliant with the physical layer, around 5.8–5.9 GHz, of IEEE 802.11p, CEN DRSC and ETSl 1TS-G5 standards.

2006 13th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems, 2006

A completely integrated VCO for IEEE 802.11a and HiPerLAN/2 WLAN applications has been designed i... more A completely integrated VCO for IEEE 802.11a and HiPerLAN/2 WLAN applications has been designed in a 0.35 μm CMOS standard technology. High-Q (40 at 5.2 GHz) equivalent inductors of the LC tanks have been implemented by means of a new topology of the active circuit 'boot-strapped inductor' (BSI). The VCO consumes 9 mW and produces a local oscillation signal with the tuning range from 4.91 to 5.93 GHz. The phase noise is -129 dBc at 1 MHz of frequency offset from the central frequency (5.4 GHz), which represents the best result in literature for integrated VCOs. The VCO achieves a FOM of -189.5 dBc/Hz at 100 KHz and -194.1 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz. These results are superior to those obtained in previous works which employ active inductors, and very close to those obtained by using passive inductors realized with additional fabrication steps in more expensive technologies.

2006 European Microwave Conference, 2006

A fully integrated RF front-end on standard silicon technology for 5-GHz indoor WLAN applications... more A fully integrated RF front-end on standard silicon technology for 5-GHz indoor WLAN applications is presented. It includes an innovative T/R antenna switch which does not require any additional technological steps and provides better performance (the measured insertion losses are 0.2 and 0.9 dB, in R and T modes respectively) with respect to those obtained by using PIN diodes as switching elements

International Journal of Computing, 2010

The paper presents an experimental characterization of wireless systems, specifically RFID techno... more The paper presents an experimental characterization of wireless systems, specifically RFID technologies, applied to polishing/cutting process control in the marble industry. The application of RFID systems has the final aim of allowing the automatic and contact-less detection of the presence of a marble slab in different points of a marble machine, outside and/or inside, trying to overcome some limitations of the currently used proximity detectors. Slab detection is needed for the process control in order to properly activate the abrasive or cutting heads of the machine. Four RFID systems at 125 kHz, 13.56 MHz, 868 MHz and 2.45 GHz have been tested in different setups representative of those found in marble machines. Starting from commercially available tags, readers and antennas, ad-hoc developed or customized hardware and/or software have been used for the experimental test campaign, that has been carried out also considering dirty and wet working environments representative of those found in real applications.

This work presents the design of a mixer in RF CMOS technology for a MB-OFDM UWB band transceiver... more This work presents the design of a mixer in RF CMOS technology for a MB-OFDM UWB band transceiver operating in Mode-1 (3.1–4.8 GHz). Working at circuit-level in ADSTM RF CAD and at system-level in Matlab-SimulinkTM, a Gilbert cell architecture is proposed, exploiting current bleeding, integrated matching and inductive tuning techniques. Circuit performance results in AMS 0.35 \(\upmu \)m SiGe CMOS technology prove the feasibility of the circuit for integration in a low-cost UWB receiver.

IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium. 1999 Digest. Held in conjunction with: USNC/URSI National Radio Science Meeting (Cat. No.99CH37010)

A numerical simulation scheme is presented for the design of miniaturized inductors and transform... more A numerical simulation scheme is presented for the design of miniaturized inductors and transformers compatible with a silicon-based standard bipolar process for RF integrated circuits. A combination of FDTD method and SPICE simulator has been used for the feasibility study of high Q integrated active coils

IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, 2020

This paper describes operating results with vehicle-solar-grid integration at the GridSTAR facili... more This paper describes operating results with vehicle-solar-grid integration at the GridSTAR facility of Pennsylvania State University. A Ford F-150 converted to a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle was interfaced with the grid via an electric vehicle photovoltaic (EVPV) installation. The EVPV used the vehicle battery to provide frequency regulation ancillary service to the grid overnight when the solar energy of a hypothetical solar array was less valuable than the ancillary service, and the vehicle battery and the solar inverter were otherwise underutilized. The objective is to create an incentive for electric vehicle and solar PV ownership by fully utilizing the vehicle battery and the PV inverter net metering connection to support the grid and earn revenue. The test plan simulated operation of a school bus, which appears to be a particularly suitable application of this technology. The results showed that the vehicle could provide frequency regulation service that meets the technical requirements for revenue generation.

Sensors, 2020

The design of a Phase-Locked Loop (PLL) to generate the clock reference for the new Spacefibre st... more The design of a Phase-Locked Loop (PLL) to generate the clock reference for the new Spacefibre standard is presented in this paper. Spacefibre has been recently released by the European Space Agency (ESA) and supports up to 6.25 Gbps for on-board satellite communications. Taking as a starting point a rad-hard 6.25 GHz Voltage Controlled Oscillator in 65 nm technology, this work presents the design of the key blocks for an integrated PLL: a Triple Modular Redundancy Phase/Frequency Detector, a Charge Pump, and a passive Loop Filter. The modeling activities carried out in an Advanced Design System have proven that the proposed PLL can be completely integrated on-chip, with a Loop Filter area consumption of only 6000 µm2 (considering the 65 nm technology). The design of active circuits has been carried out at the transistor level in a Cadence Virtuoso environment, implementing both system and layout rad-hard techniques, and different solutions are discussed in this paper. As a result, ...

Materials Science in Semiconductor Processing, 1999

Time±resolved electrical measurements show transient phenomena occurring during degradation and i... more Time±resolved electrical measurements show transient phenomena occurring during degradation and intrinsic dielectric breakdown of gate oxide layers under constant voltage Fowler±Nordheim stress. We have studied such transients in metal/oxide/semiconductor (MOS) capacitors with an n + poly-crystalline Si/SiO 2 /n-type Si stack and with oxide thickness between 35 and 5.6 nm. The data adds new information concerning the intrinsic breakdown mechanism and these are shown and discussed together with the adopted measurement techniques.

Proceedings of the 1999 7th International Symposium on the Physical and Failure Analysis of Integrated Circuits (Cat. No.99TH8394), 1999

In this paper, the results obtained by performing noise measurements during lifetime tests of met... more In this paper, the results obtained by performing noise measurements during lifetime tests of metal lines subject to electromigration are presented. One of the aims of this work is to investigate the possibility of establishing a new failure criterion based on noise measurement capable of providing, in a shorter time, the same type of information normally obtained from MTF (median time to failure) tests

IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 2017

This work explores the potentiality of millimeter waves (mmW) as physical layer in industrial wir... more This work explores the potentiality of millimeter waves (mmW) as physical layer in industrial wireless networks. Innovative models and a link design method are proposed to achieve reliable communication, at a distance of tens of meters for a single hop, even in harsh environments. By exploiting the worldwide-free band of several GHz, available around 60 GHz, mmW links allow to achieve a performance boosting of up to two orders of magnitude, w.r.t. conventional sub-6 GHz wireless links, in indoor industrial environments. Time slotted channel hopping and frequency-diversity can be implemented with a large number of channels, and with high bit rate (several Mb/s per channel). This allows for robust networking of high data-rate sensors, such as cameras, radars or laser scanners. Featuring a low bit error rate, mmW communication allows for low-latency link and large number of hops in networks with a large radius. Finally, it ensures interference separation from operating frequencies of electrical machines, switching converters, and other industrial wireless networks (e.g., 802.11 or 802.15). Implementation results for key HW blocks in low-cost technologies show the feasibility of mmW communication nodes with low-power and compact size.

IECON 2016 - 42nd Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, 2016

This work proposes models and a link design method to exploit the potentiality of millimeter wave... more This work proposes models and a link design method to exploit the potentiality of millimeter waves (mmW) as physical layer of industrial networking protocols. This work shows that, even taking into account harsh operating conditions, a transmitted power of 10 dBm allows for reliable connections at a distance of tens of meters. With respect to traditional sub-3 GHz wireless connections used in indoor industrial environments, mmW links feature worldwide-unlicensed ISM (Industrial Scientific Medical) wideband. This can be exploited to implement frequency-hopping and frequency-diversity techniques to increase link robustness. Operating at mmW allows for inherent interference separation from operating frequencies of electrical machine, power switching converters and other wireless connections. Implementation results of key hardware building blocks with CMOS and PCB technologies prove the feasibility of mmW nodes with low-power and low size.

Computers & Electrical Engineering, 2016

This paper presents the design of a compact Radar for real-time detection of targets in smart mob... more This paper presents the design of a compact Radar for real-time detection of targets in smart mobility applications. The Radar integrates Fabry-Perot resonating antennas, X-band and configurable continuous wave transceiver, high-speed analogdigital-converter and low-power/low-cost FPGA for the baseband signal processing. The latter includes region-of-interest selection, 2D Fast Fourier Transform for range-Doppler map extraction, peak detection and alarm decision logic. The transmitted power can be configured from few mW to 1.8 W. This allows for a trade-off between the maximum detection range, from few hundreds of meters up to 1.54 km, and the Radar power consumption, from 2.56 W to 11.66 W. The measured speed is up to 40 m/s. The speed and distance resolutions are 0.3 m/s and 37.5 cm, respectively. The configurable Radar features increased robustness vs. laser-scanners, video cameras, or induction loops detection techniques, and stands for its better trade-off in terms of covered range, size, and low-power consumption vs. state-of-the-art surveillance Radars.