One of the very important parts of any digital system is the control unit, coordin- ing interplay of other system blocks. As a rule, control units have irregular str- ture, which makes process of their logic circuits design very sophisticated. In case of complex logic controllers, the problem of system design is reduced practically to the design of control units. Actually, we observe a real technical boom connected with achievements in semiconductor technology. One of these is the development of integrated circuit known as the "systems-on-a-programmable- chip" (SoPC), where the number of elements approaches one billion. Because of the extreme complexity of microchips, it is very important to develop effective design methods oriented on particular properties of logical elements. Solution of this problem permits impr- ing functional capabilities of the target digital system inside single SoPC chip. As majority of researches point out, design methods used in case of industrial packages are, in case of complex digital system design, far from optimal. Similar problems concern the design of control units with standard ?eld-programmable logic devices (FPLD), such as PLA, PAL, GAL, CPLD, and FPGA. Let us point out that modern SoPC are based on CPLD or FPGA technology. Thus, the development of eff- tive design methods oriented on FPLD implementation of logic circuits used in the control units still remains the problem of great importance.

Real-Time Systems in Mechatronic Applications brings together in one place important contributions and up-to-date research results in this fast moving area.

The advent of the microelectronics technology has made ever-increasing numbers of small devices on a same chip. The rapid emergence of ultra-large-scaled-integrated (ULSI) technology has moved device dimension into the sub-quarter-micron regime and put more than 10 million transistors on a single chip. While traditional closed-form analytical models furnish useful intuition into how semiconductor devices behave, they no longer provide consistently accurate results for all modes of operation of these very small devices. The reason is that, in such devices, various physical mechanisms affect the device performance in a complex manner, and the conventional assumptions (i. e. , one-dimensional treatment, low-level injection, quasi-static approximation, etc. ) em­ ployed in developing analytical models become questionable. Thus, the use of numerical device simulation becomes important in device modeling. Researchers and engineers will rely even more on device simulation for device design and analysis in the future. This book provides comprehensive coverage of device simulation and analysis for various modem semiconductor devices. It will serve as a reference for researchers, engineers, and students who require in-depth, up-to-date information and understanding of semiconductor device physics and characteristics. The materials of the book are limited to conventional and mainstream semiconductor devices; photonic devices such as light­ emitting and laser diodes are not included, nor does the book cover device modeling, device fabrication, and circuit applications.

The recent boom in the mobile telecommunication market has trapped the interest of almost all electronic and communication companies worldwide. New applications arise every day, more and more countries are covered by digital cellular systems and the competition between the several providers has caused prices to drop rapidly. The creation of this essentially new market would not have been possible without the ap­ pearance of smalI, low-power, high-performant and certainly low-cost mobile termi­ nals. The evolution in microelectronics has played a dominant role in this by creating digital signal processing (DSP) chips with more and more computing power and com­ bining the discrete components of the RF front-end on a few ICs. This work is situated in this last area, i. e. the study of the full integration of the RF transceiver on a single die. Furthermore, in order to be compatible with the digital processing technology, a standard CMOS process without tuning, trimming or post-processing steps must be used. This should flatten the road towards the ultimate goal: the single chip mobile phone. The local oscillator (LO) frequency synthesizer poses some major problems for integration and is the subject of this work. The first, and also the largest, part of this text discusses the design of the Voltage­ Controlled Oscillator (VCO). The general phase noise theory of LC-oscillators is pre­ sented, and the concept of effective resistance and capacitance is introduced to char­ acterize and compare the performance of different LC-tanks.