For many products, the design process is a complex system involving the interaction of many distributed design activities that need to be carefully coordinated. This research develops a new tool, called a Bayesian network classifier, to improve one specific aspect of this challenge: quantitatively capturing a consensus of which designs are feasible options for meeting system-wide engineering requirements. Classifiers enable designers to independently develop and share maps of the feasible regions of their design space, enabling set-based collaborative design. The method is set-based in that resources are used to thoroughly understand design tradeoffs before commitment is made to a final design. The method is collaborative because the maps are coordinated between design teams to represent the mutually feasible design space of all stake-holders. The benefits are a more thorough understanding of the system-wide design problem across team boundaries as well as knowledge capture for future re-use, potentially leading to faster product development and higher quality products. / text

The demands of consumer electronic products to support multi-functionality such as computing, communication and multimedia applications with reduced form factor and low cost is the driving force behind packaging technologies such as System on Package (SOP). SOP aims to enhance the functionality of the package while providing form factor reduction by the integration of active and passive components. However, embedding components within mixed signal packages causes unwanted interferences across the digital and analog-radio frequency (RF) sections of the package, which is a major challenge yet to be addressed. This dissertation focused on the chip-last method of embedding chips within cavities in organic packages and addressed the challenges for preserving power integrity in such packages. The challenges associated with electromagnetic coupling in packages when chips are embedded within the substrate layers are identified, analyzed and demonstrated. The presence of the chip embedded within the package introduces new interaction mechanisms between the chip and package that have not been encountered in conventional packages with surface mounted chips. It is of significant importance to understand the chip-package interaction mechanisms, for ensuring satisfactory design of systems with embedded actives. The influence of the electromagnetic coupling from the package on the bulk substrate and bond-pads of the embedded chip are demonstrated. Solutions that remedy the noise coupling using Electromagnetic Band-Gap structures (EBGs) along with design methodologies for their efficient implementation in multilayer packages are proposed. This dissertation presents guidelines for designing efficient power distribution networks in multilayer packages with embedded chips.

Implementing a nonlinear gravity wave (GW) parameterization into a mechanistic middle and upper atmosphere model, which extends to the lower thermosphere (160 km), we study the response of the atmosphere in terms of the circulation patterns, temperature distribution, and migrating terdiurnal solar tide activity to the upward propagating smallscale internal GWs originating in the lower atmosphere. We perform three test simulations for the Northern Hemisphere winter conditions in order to assess the effects of variations in the initial GWspectrum on the climatology and tidal patterns of the mesosphere and lower thermosphere. We find that the overall strength of the source level momentum flux has a relatively small impact on the zonal mean climatology. The tails of the GW source level spectrum, however, are crucial for the lower thermosphere climatology. With respect to the terdiurnal tide, we find a strong dependence of tidal amplitude on the induced GW drag, generally being larger when GW drag is increased.

Implementing a nonlinear gravity wave (GW) parameterization into a mechanistic middle and upper atmosphere model, which extends to the lower thermosphere (160 km), we study the response of the atmosphere in terms of the circulation patterns, temperature distribution, and migrating terdiurnal solar tide activity to the upward propagating small scale internal GWs originating in the lower atmosphere. We perform three test simulations for the Northern Hemisphere winter conditions in order to assess the effects of variations in the initial GW spectrum on the climatology and tidal patterns of the mesosphere and lower thermosphere. We find that the overall strength of the source level momentum flux has a relatively small impact on the zonal mean climatology. The tails of the GW source level spectrum, however, are crucial for the lower thermosphere climatology. With respect to the terdiurnal tide, we find a strong dependence of tidal amplitude on the induced GW drag, generally being larger when GW drag is increased.

Decades of efforts have pushed the replacement of electrical interconnects by optical links to the interconnects between computers, racks and circuit boards. It may be expected that optical solutions will further be used for inter-chip and intra-chip interconnects with potential benefits in bandwidth, capacity, delay, power consumption and crosstalk. Silicon integration is emerging to be the best candidate nowadays due to not only the dominant status of silicon in microelectronics but also the great advantages brought to the photonic integrated circuits (PICs). Regarding the recent breakthroughs concerning active devices on silicon substrate, the question left is no longer the feasibility of the optical interconnects based on silicon but the competitiveness of the silicon device compared with other alternatives. This thesis focuses on the study of two key components for the optical interconnects, both especially designed and fabricated for silicon platform. One is a high speed electroabsorption modulator (EAM), realized by transferring an InP-based segmented design to the hybrid silicon evanescent platform. The purpose here is to increase the speed of the silicon PICs to over 50  Gb/s or more. The other one is a high performance grating coupler, with the purpose to improve the optical interface between the silicon PICs and the outside fiber-based communication system. An general approach based on the transmission line analysis has been developed to evaluate the modulation response of an EAM with a lumped, traveling-wave, segmented or capacitively-loaded configuration. A genetic algorithm is used to optimize its configuration. This method has been applied to the design of the EAMs on hybrid silicon evanescent platform. Based on the comparison of various electrode design, segmented configuration is adopted for the target of a bandwidth over 40 GHz with as low as possible voltage and high extinction ratio. In addition to the common periodic analysis, the grating coupler is analyzed by the antenna theory assisted with an improved volume-current method, where the directionality of a grating coupler can be obtained analytically. In order to improve the performance of the grating coupler, a direct way is to address its shortcoming by e.g. increasing the coupling efficiency. For this reason, a nonuniform grating coupler with apodized grooves has been developed with a coupling efficiency of 64%, nearly a double of a standard one. Another way is to add more functionalities to the grating coupler. To do this, a polarization beam splitter (PBS) based on a bidirectional grating coupler has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated. An extinction ratio of around -20 dB, as well as a maximum coupling efficiency of over 50% for both polarizations, is achieved by such a PBS with a Bragg reflector underneath. / QC 20100906