A Light-Weight On-Chip Monitoring Network for Dynamic Adaptation and Calibration

Current nanometer technologies suffer within-die parameter uncertainties, varying workload conditions, aging, and temperature effects that cause a serious reduction on yield and performance. In this scenario, monitoring, calibration, and dynamic adaptation become essential, demanding systems with a collection of multi purpose monitors and exposing the need for light-weight monitoring networks. This paper presents a new monitoring network paradigm able to perform an early prioritization of the information. This is achieved by the introduction of a new hierarchy level, the threshing level. Targeting it, we propose a time-domain signaling scheme over a single-wire that minimizes the network switching activity as well as the routing requirements. To validate our approach, we make a thorough analysis of the architectural trade-offs and expose two complete monitoring systems that suppose an area improvement of 40% and a power reduction of three orders of magnitude compared to previous works.

Multibeam Network Design and Measurement for Triangular Array of Three Radiating Elements

Nowadays, more a more base stations are equipped with active conformal antennas. These antenna designs combine phase shift systems with multibeam networks providing multi-beam ability and interference rejection, which optimize multiple channel systems. GEODA is a conformal adaptive antenna system designed for satellite communications. Operating at 1.7 GHz with circular polarization, it is possible to track and communicate with several satellites at once thanks to its adaptive beam. The antenna is based on a set of similar triangular arrays that are divided in subarrays of three elements called `cells'. Transmission/Receiver (T/R) modules manage beam steering by shifting the phases. A more accurate steering of the antenna GEODA could be achieved by using a multibeam network. Several multibeam network designs based on Butler network will be presented