A High-gain, fully balanced preamplifier is presented. The proposed structure advantages flipped voltage follower scheme to achieve a compact current conveyor with very low input impedance. The presented current conveyor then is used as a core element to realize a high-gain, gm-enhanced trans-conductance amplifier. The presented amplifier is suitable for application as a preamplifier. The high gain of amplifier makes it very suitable to be configured in a feedback form to deliver a high-precision predefined or programmable amplification gain. The proposed structure draws a very low power of 150nW from a 0.6V supply voltage. The Spectre Post-layout simulations with TSMC 180nm CMOS technology have been performed. The proposed amplifier exhibits an open-loop DC gain of 141.5dB and 3-dB frequency bandwidth of 2.4kHz at 60dB closed-loop configuration. The load capacitance is set to be 5pF. The proposed structure also delivers high CMRR and PSRR values of 148.3dB and 153.7dB, respectively.

Sales territory design is an important research field because salesforce allocation within territories impacts sales organization effectiveness and customer service. This work presents a novel multi-objective model for re-designing sales territories with three main objectives: sales balancing, workload balancing, and geographic balancing. To measure sales and workload balancing, the variance among territories was calculated. The metric considered for geographic balancing was the sum of the distances from every salesperson to their assigned customers. A metaheuristic algorithm based on Tabu search was developed to solve a weighted aggregate function that integrates the three objectives. The algorithm is embedded in a procedure to systematically change the weights in the aggregate objective function to produce an approximate Pareto front of solutions. The algorithm was tested with instances based on data from a company in Mexico, providing salesperson-customer assignments that can be projected in territories in geographic information systems. The algorithm converges very fast for the instances studied and produces a Pareto front efficiently. Comparing the current situation of the company to a dominating solution obtained with the algorithm in the Pareto front, a significant improvement in the balance is achieved, in the order of 42. 0-47. 1% on average in the three objective functions. Another managerial benefit achieved by the company was a better understanding for the top managers of the salesforce, the customer preferences, and the challenge of serving a large and dispersed market.

This paper describes the design of an X-band balanced low noise amplifier (LNA) using an available HJFET device. The balanced LNA consists of a pair of electrically similar transistors whose input and output signals are divided or combined by 3 dB two-stage Wilkinson power dividers. The proposed balanced LNA is fabricated and measured. The measured results show that the noise figure is 1.30 dB at 10 GHz, the input and output return loss are more than 15 dB and 10 dB, respectively. Also, the gain of 12 dB and gain flatness of ±0.5 dB over the 9-11 GHz frequency range are associated to the balanced LNA. In addition, 15-element small signal equivalent model parameters of the HJFET device used in amplifier design are extracted with an analytical and optimization approache such as Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to achieve accurate values. The small-signal model parameters evaluated with the PSO attain 5.9% error compared to the measured data. The validity of the proposed approach is shown by comparing the modeled S-parameter and measured results over 2-18GHz. Simulation results indicate that the PSO approach accurately extracts the small signal model parameters of the HJFET.

A mechanism is reactionless or dynamically balanced when there is no shaking force and shaking moment applied to the base during mechanism movement. The theory for designing reactionless 2 degree-of-freedom (DOF) planar parallel manipulator is discussed in this paper. The legs of the manipulator are four-bar 2-DOF mechanisms with revolute joints. The dynamic balancing conditions of the manipulator are derived, considering that the time rate of the total linear and angular momentum have to be vanished. The dynamic balancing equations first are obtained and illustrated through a numerical example and finally verified by computer simulation using ADAMS software.

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is one of the most successful techniques of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) and is mostly in use for the treatment of infertility with male factors. In this method, before injecting sperm into the intracytoplasmic of the oocyte, cumulus cells around the oocyte must be stripped to facilitate the injection process. To achieve this, both enzymatic and mechanical methods are used in embryological laboratories for denudation, which has major deficiencies, including the possibility of damaging the oocyte prior to the injection process. In this research, a microfluidic-based device is introduced for the separation of cumulus cells around the oocyte with minimum manual operations. The results prove high efficiency, and non-destructive denudation of the oocyte with the reduced amount of culture medium leads to the low-cost preparation process of oocytes. The process can also be integrated with ICSI chips under development and will be reported shortly.

Casting as a branch of steel industry plays a basic and strategic role in producing industrial parts in upstream and high priority fields of the technology in country. The survey results of science, technology and innovation in this industry shows that suitable and codified strategic plans and the lack of precise purpose for development are the most important weakness of this industry.This study tries to suggest a comprehensive, suitable, practical and updated model for strategic planning of steel casting factories. Also each of the strategic planning steps and of Balanced Scorecard developed with use fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (Fuzzy-AHP) for prioritize the goals of the organization to determine priority actions and projects are the most important results in this study.The suggested method is studied in a selected steel casting factory. In the strategic objectives prioritization part, the same organization managers’ recommendations were put in interval comparison matrixes, adjustability and fuzzy hierarchical analysis were conducted through Excel software and the results of the formulation of this strategy within the framework of the proposed model was tested and validated. The proposed model can be a suitable model for the strategic management of the operating or being established organizations in the steel casting industry.

High gain Balun-low-noise-amplifier (LNA) is proposed for tuner of digital televisions (DTVs). The proposed Balun-LNA is based on CS-CG (common-source-common-gate) structure. To improve the isolasion and frequency response, Balun-LNA has cascode transistors before load resistors. Balun-LNA uses current-bleeding circuit to increasie transconductance of CS transistor, so that current-bleeding transistor has transconductance of N-1 times larger than transconductance of cascode transistor. Thereby, transconductance and current of CS transistor are increased N times, as N-1 times of current pass to current-bleeding transistor. Therefore current of CG and CS stages stay identical. Also, Balun-LNA employs a positive feedback to satisfy input impedance matching and CG transistor has higher transconductance. By increasing transconductance of CS and CG transistors, the proposed Balun-LNA achieves to high voltage gain. Accordingly, CG and CS tansistors have symmetrical currents and loads at the differential output of the proposed Balun-LNA. Symmetrical loads cause the balanced differential outputs. This proposed Balun-LNA is designed in 90-nm CMOS technology and covers the frequency range of 40 MHz to 1GHz. This Balun-LNA achieves the voltage gain of 22.6 dB, S11 of less than -10 dB and the Minimum NF of 5 dB. This Balun-LNA operates at the nominal supply voltage of 2.2v.