Nanophotonics is an emerging research field that deals with interaction between light and matter in a sub-micron length scale. Nanophotonic devices have found an increasing number of applications in many areas including optical communication, microscopy, sensing, and solar energy harvesting especially during the past two decades. Among all nanophotonic devices, three main areas, namely photonic crystals, optical metamaterials and plasmonic devices, gain dominant interest in the photonic society owning to their potential impacts. This thesis studies the fabrication and characterization of three types of novel devices within the above-mentioned areas. They are respectively photonic-crystal (PhC) surface-mode microcavities, optical metamaterial absorbers, and plasmonic couplers. The devices are fabricated with modern lithography-based techniques in a clean room environment. This thesis particularly describes the critical electron-beam lithography step in detail; the relevant obstacles and corresponding solutions are addressed. Device characterizations mainly rely on two techniques: a vertical fiber coupling system and a home-made optical transmissivity/reflectivity setup. The vertical fiber coupling system is used for characterizing on-chip devices intended for photonic integrations, such as PhC surface-mode cavities and plasmonic couplers. The transmissivity/reflectivity setup is used for measuring the absorbance of metamaterial absorbers. This thesis presents mainly three nanophotonic devices, from fabrication to characterization. First, a PhC surface-mode cavity on a SOI structure is demonstrated. Through a side-coupling scheme, a system quality-factor of 6200 and an intrinsic quality-factor of 13400 are achieved. Such a cavity can be used as ultra-compact optical filter, bio-sensor and etc. Second, an ultra-thin, wide-angle metamaterial absorber at optical frequencies is realized. Experimental results show a maximum absorption peak of 88% at the wavelength of ~1.58μm. The ultra-fast photothermal effect possessed by such noble-metal-based nanostructure can potentially be exploited for making better solar cells. Finally, we fabricated an efficient coupler that channels light from a conventional dielectric waveguide to a subwavelength plasmonic waveguides and vice versa. Such couplers can combine low-loss dielectric waveguides and lossy plasmonic components onto one single chip, making best use of the two. / QC 20110524

Optical devices based on Planar Lightwave Circuit (PLC) technology have well been studied due to their inherited advantages from Integrated Circuits (IC), such as: small size, high reliability, mass production and potential integration with microelectronics. Among all the materials, silicon nanowire platform gains more and more interest. The large refractive index difference between core and cladding allows tremendous reduction of the component size. This thesis studies theoretically and experimentally some integrated optical devices based on silicon nanophotonic platform, including echelle grating demultiplexers and photonic crystals. Some of the numerical methods are introduced first. Scalar integral diffraction method is efficient for calculating the diffraction efficiency of gratings. Beam propagation method and finite-difference time-domain method are also introduced, for simulating the light propagation along the devices. The fabrication technology and characterization methods are described. The fabrication steps involve: plasma assisted film deposition, E-beam lithography, RIE-etching. All these steps are proceeded under cleanroom environment. The characterization is mainly based on two methods: end-fire coupling and vertical grating coupling. The grating coupler is more efficient compared with the butt-coupling between fiber and nanowires, but is worse solution for final packaging. Two types of components have been realized and characterized with the above technology. The echelle grating demultiplexer is one of the key components in WDM networks. A method for increasing the diffraction efficiency based on total internal reflection is applied, and a significant improvement of the diffraction efficiency of more than 3dB is achieved. A novel cross-order echelle grating-based triplexer, a bidirectional transceiver for application in the Passive Optical Networks (PON), has been designed and fabricated, which can multi/demultiplex three channels located at 1310nm, 1490nm and 1550nm. Polarization dependence issue of echelle grating demultiplexers has been studied. Two polarization compensation schemes have been proposed, which are for the first time polarization insensitive designs of echelle grating demultiplexers based on silicon nanowire platform. Photonic crystal devices are also addressed in the thesis. There has been little research on the photonic crystal cavity based on pillar type. A silicon pillar type photonic crystal cavity has been fabricated with the measured Q value as high as about 104, and with an extremely high sensitivity for the changing of the background material or the effective diameter of the pillars. This kind of structure has the advantage on sensing applications compared to the air-hole type structure. / QC 20100820

<p>Economic affordability of services and infrastructures has rapidly become one of the key issues in the evaluation and design of wireless access systems. The provisioning of high data rates, at an ``affordable'' price, constitutes a serious challenge to the structure and management of current and future wireless networks.</p><p>The management of radio resources, Radio Resource Management or RRM for short, has traditionally been benchmarked mostly by technical merits such as throughput (data delivery capability) and Quality of Service (QoS). When comparing different RRM schemes, the scheme that can deliver more bits per Hertz (unit of bandwidth) or per Euro is often assumed the more efficient. From an economic point of view, however, cost efficiency is not equivalent to profitability.</p><p>We conjecture that the economic efficiency and profitability can be improved both by better technical efficiency and by better accounting for users' service appreciation and willingness to pay. While we shall, primarily treat the operator's benefit of improved RRM, we will try to improve the RRM by means of being more responsive to the demands of the users. In eight conference and journal papers, we investigate: Provisioning of support for asymmetric traffic, Quality and pricing aware resource management and Creation of forwarding incentive in multihop cellular networks.</p><p>We show that implementing support for asymmetric links can improve the efficiency of (service) production in Time Division Duplexing (TDD) mode wireless networks with asymmetric traffic. That is, more traffic can be handled with the same system resources. Compared to Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD), TDD offers more flexible use of spectrum resources. The benefits of TDD and support for asymmetric links are readily available for systems providing high-rate spotty coverage. For systems aiming at full coverage and tight reuse, however, proper measures must be taken to control inter-mobile- and inter-base-station-interference.</p><p>We present the MEDUSA model framework for taking users' service appreciation and willingness to pay into account in performance evaluations of wireless networks with elastic traffic. Assuming that user satisfaction depends on both the quality and the price of the service, numerical experiments show that the economic efficiency of an RRM scheme is affected by the pricing scheme. We also introduce the concepts of speculative resource management to exploit traffic elasticity and improve resource utilisation. With speculative admission control, users with good propagation conditions may be admitted to a full system at the expense of a slight degradation of the QoS of some or all users, if the expected total revenue would thereby increase. Results indicate significant revenue gain with speculative admission control. Service perception aware scheduling was evaluated as a means to improve resource utilisation, but yielded only marginal gain compared to a weighted proportional fair scheduler.</p><p>For the third area studied in this Thesis, i.e. multihopping in cellular networks, economic efficiency was both the goal and one of the means to achieve it. By means of a resource re-distribution scheme called Resource Delegation we eliminated the bandwidth bottle neck of the relays. We combined Resource Delegation with economic compensation for the energy expenditures of the relays and were able to achieve significantly increased operator revenue with maintained or improved user utility. Assuming that the added complexity of keeping track of reward transactions is negligible, profitability was correspondingly improved.</p>

<p>Large-scale deployment of IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs) remains a significant challenge. Many access points (APs) must be deployed and interconnected without a-priori knowledge of the demand. We consider that the deployment should be iterative, as follows. At first, access points are deployed to achieve partial coverage. Then, usage statistics are collected while the network operates. Overloaded and under-utilized APs would be identified, giving the opportunity to relocate, add or remove APs. In this thesis, we propose extensions to the WLAN architecture that would make our vision of iterative deployment feasible.</p><p>One line of work focuses on self-configuration, which deals with building a WLAN from APs deployed without planning, and coping with mismatches between offered load and available capacity. Self-configuration is considered at three levels. At the network level, we propose a new distribution system that forms a WLAN from a set of APs connected to different IP networks and supports AP auto-configuration, link-layer mobility, and sharing infrastructure between operators. At the inter-cell level, we design a load-balancing scheme for overlapping APs that increases the network throughput and reduces the cell delay by evenly distributing the load. We also suggest how to reduce the handoff time by early detection and fast active scanning. At the intra-cell level, we present a distributed admission control that protects cells against congestion by blocking stations whose MAC service time would be above a set threshold.</p><p>Another line of work deals with self-deployment and investigates how the network can assist in improving its continuous deployment by identifying the reasons for low cell throughput. One reason may be poor radio conditions. A new performance figure, the Multi-Rate Performance Index, is introduced to measure the efficiency of radio channel usage. Our measurements show that it identifies cells affected by bad radio conditions. An additional reason may be limited performance of some AP models. We present a method to measure the upper bound of an AP’s throughput and its dependence on offered load and orientation. Another reason for low throughput may be excessive distance between users and APs. Accurate positioning of users in a WLAN would permit optimizing the location and number of APs. We analyze the limitations of the two most popular range estimation techniques when used in WLANs: received signal strength and time of arrival. We find that the latter could perform better but the technique is not feasible due to the low resolution of the frame timestamps in the WLAN cards.</p><p>The combination of self-configuration and self-deployment enables the autonomic operation of WLANs.</p>

<p>Recently, the enormous growth in personal communications systems (PCS), satellite communication and various other forms of wireless data communication has made analogue frequency control a key issue as the operation frequency increases to the low/medium GHz range. Surface acoustic wave (SAW) and bulk acoustic wave (BAW) electroacoustic devices are widely used today in a variety of applications both in consumer electronics as well as in specialized scientific and military equipment where frequency control is required. Conventional piezoelectric materials such as quartz, LiNbO3 and LiTaO3 suffer from a variety of limitations and in particular medium to low SAW/BAW velocity as well as being incompatible with the IC technology. Thin piezoelectric films offer the great flexibility of choosing at will the substrate/film combination, thus making use of the electroacoustic properties of non-piezoelectric substrates, which widens greatly the choice of fabrication materials and opens the way for integration of the traditionally incompatible electroacoustic and IC technologies.</p><p>This thesis focuses on the synthesis and characterization of novel thin film materials for electroacoustic applications. A prime choice of material is thin piezoelectric AlN films which have been grown using both RF and pulsed-DC reactive sputter deposition on a variety of substrate materials. A unique synthesis process has been developed allowing the deposition of high quality AlN films at room temperature, which increases greatly the process versatility. The films are fully c-axis oriented with a 1.6° FWHM value of the rocking curve of the AlN-(002) peak. Complete process flows for the fabrication of both SAW and BAW devices have been developed. Electroacoustic characterization of 2 GHz BAW resonators yielded an electromechanical coupling coefficient (kt²) of 6.5%, Q-value of 600 and a longitudinal velocity of 11350 m/s. AlN thin films based SAW resonators on SiO2/Si yielded a SAW velocity of around 5000 m/s and a piezoelectric coupling coefficient (K²) of around 0.3%. Finally, AlN on polycrystalline diamond 1 GHz SAW resonators exhibited an extremely high SAW velocity of 11800 m/s, a piezoelectric coupling coefficient (K²) of 1% and a Q-value of 500.</p>

Large-scale deployment of IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs) remains a significant challenge. Many access points (APs) must be deployed and interconnected without a-priori knowledge of the demand. We consider that the deployment should be iterative, as follows. At first, access points are deployed to achieve partial coverage. Then, usage statistics are collected while the network operates. Overloaded and under-utilized APs would be identified, giving the opportunity to relocate, add or remove APs. In this thesis, we propose extensions to the WLAN architecture that would make our vision of iterative deployment feasible. One line of work focuses on self-configuration, which deals with building a WLAN from APs deployed without planning, and coping with mismatches between offered load and available capacity. Self-configuration is considered at three levels. At the network level, we propose a new distribution system that forms a WLAN from a set of APs connected to different IP networks and supports AP auto-configuration, link-layer mobility, and sharing infrastructure between operators. At the inter-cell level, we design a load-balancing scheme for overlapping APs that increases the network throughput and reduces the cell delay by evenly distributing the load. We also suggest how to reduce the handoff time by early detection and fast active scanning. At the intra-cell level, we present a distributed admission control that protects cells against congestion by blocking stations whose MAC service time would be above a set threshold. Another line of work deals with self-deployment and investigates how the network can assist in improving its continuous deployment by identifying the reasons for low cell throughput. One reason may be poor radio conditions. A new performance figure, the Multi-Rate Performance Index, is introduced to measure the efficiency of radio channel usage. Our measurements show that it identifies cells affected by bad radio conditions. An additional reason may be limited performance of some AP models. We present a method to measure the upper bound of an AP’s throughput and its dependence on offered load and orientation. Another reason for low throughput may be excessive distance between users and APs. Accurate positioning of users in a WLAN would permit optimizing the location and number of APs. We analyze the limitations of the two most popular range estimation techniques when used in WLANs: received signal strength and time of arrival. We find that the latter could perform better but the technique is not feasible due to the low resolution of the frame timestamps in the WLAN cards. The combination of self-configuration and self-deployment enables the autonomic operation of WLANs.

4H-SiC has physical properties supremely suited for a variety of high power, high frequency and high temperature electronic device applications. To fully take advantage of the material's potential, several problems remain to be solved. Two of the most important are (1) the characterization and understanding of crystallographic defects and their electrical impact on device performance, and (2) the introduction of acceptor dopants, their activation and control of the final distribution of charge carriers. Two main experimental methods have been employed in this thesis to analyze 4H-SiC material with respect to the issues (1) and (2): electron beam induced current (EBIC) and scanning spreading resistance microscopy (SSRM), respectively. EBIC yields a map of electron-hole-pairs generated by the electron beam of a scanning electron microscope and collected in the depleted region around a junction. EBIC is conducted in two modes. In the first mode the EBIC contrast constitutes a map of minority carrier diffusion lengths. Results from these measurements are compared to white beam syncrotron x-ray topography and reveal a one-to-one correlation between lattice distortions and the electron diffusion length in n+p 4H-SiC diodes. In the second EBIC mode, the junction is highly reverse biased and local avalanche processes can be studied. By correlating these EBIC results with other techniques it is possible to separate defects detrimental to device performance from others more benign. SSRM is a scanning probe microscopy technique that monitors carrier distributions in semiconductors. The method is for the first time successfully applied to 4H-SiC and compared to alternative carrier profiling techniques; spreading resistance profiling (SRP), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and scanning capacitance microscopy (SCM). SCM successfully monitors the doping levels and junctions, but none of these techniques fulfill the requirements of detection resolution, dynamic range and reproducibility. The SSRM current shows on the other hand a nearly ideal behavior as a function of aluminum doping in epitaxially grown samples. However, the I-V dependence is highly non-linear and the extremely high currents measured indicate a broadening of the contact area and possibly an increased ionization due to sample heating. Finite element calculations are performed to further elucidate these effects. SSRM is also applied to characterize Al implantations as a function of anneal time and temperature. The Al doping profiles are imaged on cleaved cross-sections and the measured SSRM current is integrated with respect to depth to obtain a value of the total activation. The evaluation of the annealing series shows a continuous increase of the activation even up to 1950 °C. Other demonstrated SSRM applications include local characterization of electrical field strength in passivating layers of Al2O3, and lateral diffusion and doping properties of implanted boron.

Recently, the enormous growth in personal communications systems (PCS), satellite communication and various other forms of wireless data communication has made analogue frequency control a key issue as the operation frequency increases to the low/medium GHz range. Surface acoustic wave (SAW) and bulk acoustic wave (BAW) electroacoustic devices are widely used today in a variety of applications both in consumer electronics as well as in specialized scientific and military equipment where frequency control is required. Conventional piezoelectric materials such as quartz, LiNbO3 and LiTaO3 suffer from a variety of limitations and in particular medium to low SAW/BAW velocity as well as being incompatible with the IC technology. Thin piezoelectric films offer the great flexibility of choosing at will the substrate/film combination, thus making use of the electroacoustic properties of non-piezoelectric substrates, which widens greatly the choice of fabrication materials and opens the way for integration of the traditionally incompatible electroacoustic and IC technologies. This thesis focuses on the synthesis and characterization of novel thin film materials for electroacoustic applications. A prime choice of material is thin piezoelectric AlN films which have been grown using both RF and pulsed-DC reactive sputter deposition on a variety of substrate materials. A unique synthesis process has been developed allowing the deposition of high quality AlN films at room temperature, which increases greatly the process versatility. The films are fully c-axis oriented with a 1.6° FWHM value of the rocking curve of the AlN-(002) peak. Complete process flows for the fabrication of both SAW and BAW devices have been developed. Electroacoustic characterization of 2 GHz BAW resonators yielded an electromechanical coupling coefficient (kt²) of 6.5%, Q-value of 600 and a longitudinal velocity of 11350 m/s. AlN thin films based SAW resonators on SiO2/Si yielded a SAW velocity of around 5000 m/s and a piezoelectric coupling coefficient (K²) of around 0.3%. Finally, AlN on polycrystalline diamond 1 GHz SAW resonators exhibited an extremely high SAW velocity of 11800 m/s, a piezoelectric coupling coefficient (K²) of 1% and a Q-value of 500.

Economic affordability of services and infrastructures has rapidly become one of the key issues in the evaluation and design of wireless access systems. The provisioning of high data rates, at an ``affordable'' price, constitutes a serious challenge to the structure and management of current and future wireless networks. The management of radio resources, Radio Resource Management or RRM for short, has traditionally been benchmarked mostly by technical merits such as throughput (data delivery capability) and Quality of Service (QoS). When comparing different RRM schemes, the scheme that can deliver more bits per Hertz (unit of bandwidth) or per Euro is often assumed the more efficient. From an economic point of view, however, cost efficiency is not equivalent to profitability. We conjecture that the economic efficiency and profitability can be improved both by better technical efficiency and by better accounting for users' service appreciation and willingness to pay. While we shall, primarily treat the operator's benefit of improved RRM, we will try to improve the RRM by means of being more responsive to the demands of the users. In eight conference and journal papers, we investigate: Provisioning of support for asymmetric traffic, Quality and pricing aware resource management and Creation of forwarding incentive in multihop cellular networks. We show that implementing support for asymmetric links can improve the efficiency of (service) production in Time Division Duplexing (TDD) mode wireless networks with asymmetric traffic. That is, more traffic can be handled with the same system resources. Compared to Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD), TDD offers more flexible use of spectrum resources. The benefits of TDD and support for asymmetric links are readily available for systems providing high-rate spotty coverage. For systems aiming at full coverage and tight reuse, however, proper measures must be taken to control inter-mobile- and inter-base-station-interference. We present the MEDUSA model framework for taking users' service appreciation and willingness to pay into account in performance evaluations of wireless networks with elastic traffic. Assuming that user satisfaction depends on both the quality and the price of the service, numerical experiments show that the economic efficiency of an RRM scheme is affected by the pricing scheme. We also introduce the concepts of speculative resource management to exploit traffic elasticity and improve resource utilisation. With speculative admission control, users with good propagation conditions may be admitted to a full system at the expense of a slight degradation of the QoS of some or all users, if the expected total revenue would thereby increase. Results indicate significant revenue gain with speculative admission control. Service perception aware scheduling was evaluated as a means to improve resource utilisation, but yielded only marginal gain compared to a weighted proportional fair scheduler. For the third area studied in this Thesis, i.e. multihopping in cellular networks, economic efficiency was both the goal and one of the means to achieve it. By means of a resource re-distribution scheme called Resource Delegation we eliminated the bandwidth bottle neck of the relays. We combined Resource Delegation with economic compensation for the energy expenditures of the relays and were able to achieve significantly increased operator revenue with maintained or improved user utility. Assuming that the added complexity of keeping track of reward transactions is negligible, profitability was correspondingly improved. / QC 20101021

Photodetectors are a kind of semiconductor devices that convert incoming light to an electrical signal. Photodetectors have different applications in sensors and fiber optic communication systems, and medical diagnosis etc. In this project  Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) Spectroscopy is used to investigate a new version  of photodiodes for near-infrared radiation that is based on self-assembled semiconductor nanowires (NWs) which are grown directly on the substrate without any epi-layer. The spectrally resolved photocurrent (at different applied biases) and IV curves (in darkness and illumination) for different temperatures have been studied, respectively. The thesis work also includes a comparison to a planar photodetector based on Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) deposited directly on an InP substrate.