Estimation and Analysis of Higher-Order Harmonics in Advanced Integrated Circuits to Implement Noise-Free Future-Generation Micro- and Nanoelectromechanical Systems

This work deals with the analysis of spectrum generation from advanced integrated circuits in order to better understand how to suppress the generation of high harmonics, especially in a given frequency band, to design and implement noise-free systems. At higher frequencies, the spectral components of signals with sharp edges contain more energy. However, current closed-form expressions have become increasingly unwieldy to compute higher-order harmonics. The study of spectrum generation provides an insight into suppressing higher-order harmonics (10th order and above), especially in a given frequency band. In this work, we discussed the influence of transistor model quality and input signal on estimates of the harmonic contents of switching waveforms. Accurate estimates of harmonic contents are essential in the design of highly integrated micro- and nanoelectromechanical systems. This paper provides a comparative analysis of various flip-flop/latch topologies on different process technologies, i.e., 130 and 65 nm. An FFT plot of the simulated results signifies that the steeper the spectrum roll-off, the lesser the content of higher-order harmonics. Furthermore, the results of the comparison illustrate the improvement in the rise time, fall time, clock-Q delay and spectrum roll-off on the better selection of slow-changing input signals and more accurate transistor models.

Lower Extremity Muscle Activation in Alternative Footwear during Stance Phase of Slip Events

Muscle activity from the slipping leg have been previously used to analyze slip induced falls. However, the impact of casual alternative footwear on slipping leg muscle activity when exposed to slippery environments is still unknown. The purpose of the study was to analyze the impact of alternative footwear (crocs (CC) and flip-flops (FF)) compared to slip-resistant footwear (LT) on lower extremity muscle activity when exposed to dry gait (NG), unexpected (US), alert (AS), and expected slips (ES). Eighteen healthy males (age: 22.3 ± 2.2 years; height: 177.7 ± 6.9 cm; weight: 79.3 ± 7.6 kg) completed the study in a repeated measures design in three footwear sessions separated by 48 h. Electromyography (EMG) muscle activity from four muscles of the lead/slipping leg was measured during the stance phase of the gait-slip trials. A 3 (footwear) × 4 (gait-slip trials) repeated measures analysis of variance was used to analyze EMG dependent variables mean, peak, and percent of maximal voluntary contraction. Greater lower extremity muscle activation during the stance phase was seen in US and AS conditions compared to NG and ES. In addition, footwear differences were seen for the alternative footwear (CC and FF) during US and AS, while the low top slip resistant shoe had no differences across all gait trials, suggesting it as the most efficient footwear of choice, especially when maneuvering slippery flooring conditions, either with or without the knowledge of an impending slip.

Efficient implementation of LMS adaptive filter-based FECG extraction on an FPGA

In this Letter, the field programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation of a foetal heart rate (FHR) monitoring system is presented. The system comprises a preprocessing unit to remove various types of noise, followed by a foetal electrocardiogram (FECG) extraction unit and an FHR detection unit. To improve the precision and accuracy of the arithmetic operations, a floating-point unit is developed. A least mean squares algorithm-based adaptive filter (LMS-AF) is used for FECG extraction. Two different architectures, namely series and parallel, are proposed for the LMS-AF, with the series architecture targeting lower utilisation of hardware resources, and the parallel architecture enabling less convergence time and lower power consumption. The results show that it effectively detects the R peaks in the extracted FECG with a sensitivity of 95.74–100% and a specificity of 100%. The parallel architecture shows up to an 85.88% reduction in the convergence time for non-invasive FECG databases while the series architecture shows a 27.41% reduction in the number of flip flops used when compared with the existing FPGA implementations of various FECG extraction methods. It also shows an increase of 2–7.51% in accuracy when compared to previous works.