X-ray medical imaging provides invaluable medical information, while subjecting patients to hazardous ionizing radiation. The dosage that the patient is exposed to may be reduced, at the cost of image resolution. A technology that promises lower dosage for a given resolution is direct conversion digital imaging, typically based on amorphous Selenium semiconductor. Sufficient exposure should be used for the first exposure to avoid subsequent exposures; a challenge is then to reduce the necessary exposure for a suitable image. To quantify how little radiation the detector can reliably discriminate, one needs an analysis of the variance that 1/f and white noise contribute to the signal of such detectors. An important consideration is that the dark current, which varies with time, is subtracted from the photo-current, to reduce the spurious spatial variance in the image. In this thesis, the variance that 1/f noise contributes to integrating detectors is analysed, for a very general integrating detector. Experiments were performed to verify the theoretical results obtained for the 1/f noise variance contribution.

Many studies have investigated the effects of background noise on cognitive functions, in particular memory and learning. But few studies have examined the effect of acute noise on the specific parts of the memory process. The purpose of the current study was to fill this gap in the research. Twenty-three students from Stockholm University were tested with two different semantic programming tasks during different white noise conditions. Working memory capacity and subjective sensitivity to noise was also tested. No significant effects were found on the participants’ recognition scores, but a significant main effect for noise during recognition, as well as a significant main effect of experimental group, was found on response times. The noise effect was positive, which puts the study in conflict with most previous ones. The results could perhaps be explained by the theory of Stochastic Resonance or the Yerkes-Dodson Effect. Other reaction-time related tasks are suggested as future topics of study.

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In this thesis, a novel technique based on the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) methodology is proposed and examined for the noise-robustness of automatic speech recognition systems. The EMD analysis is a generalization of the Fourier analysis for processing nonlinear and non-stationary time functions, in our case, the speech feature sequences. We use the intrinsic mode functions (IMF), which include the sinusoidal functions as special cases, obtained from the EMD analysis in the post-processing of the log energy feature. We evaluate the proposed method on Aurora 2.0 and Aurora 3.0 databases. On Aurora 2.0, we obtain a 44.9% overall relative improvement over the baseline for the mismatched (clean-training) tasks. The results show an overall improvement of 49.5% over the baseline for Aurora 3.0 on the high-mismatch tasks. It shows that our proposed method leads to significant improvement.

In the past decade, aggressive scaling of transistor feature size has been a primary force driving higher Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) integration density. Due to the scaling, nanometer SRAM designs are getting more and more stability issues. The traditional way of analyzing stability is the Static Noise Margins (SNM). However, SNM has limited capability to capture critical nonlinearity, so it becomes incapable of characterizing the key dynamics of SRAM operations with induced soft-error. This thesis defines new stability margin metrics using a system-theoretic approach. Nonlinear system theories will be applied rigorously in this work to construct new stability concepts. Based on the phase portrait analysis, soft-error can be explained using bifurcation theory. The state flipping requires a minimum noise current (Icritical) and time (Tcritical). This work derives Icritical analytically for simple L1 model and provides design insight using a level one circuit model, and also provides numerical algorithms on both Icritical and Tcritial for higher a level device model. This stability analysis provides more physical characterization of SRAM noise tolerance property; thus has potential to provide needed yield estimation.

The scaling of VLSI technology has spurred a rapid growth in the semiconductor industry. With the CMOS device dimension scaling to and beyond 90nm technology, it is possible to achieve higher performance and to pack more complex functionalities on a single chip. However, the scaling trend has introduced drastic variation of process and design parameters, leading to severe variability of chip performance in nanometer regime. Also, the manufacturing community projects CMOS will scale for three to four more generations. Since the uncertainties due to variations are expected to increase in each generation, it will significantly impact the performance of design and consequently the yield. Another challenging issue in the nanometer IC design is the high power consumption due to the greater packing density, higher frequency of operation and excessive leakage power. Moreover, the circuits are usually over-designed to compensate for uncertainties due to variations. The over-designed circuits not only make timing closure difficult but also cause excessive power consumption. For portable electronics, excessive power consumption may reduce battery life; for non-portable systems it may impose great difficulties in cooling and packaging. The objective of my research has been to develop design methodologies to address variations and power dissipation for reliable circuit operation. The proposed work has been divided into three parts: the first part addresses the issues related with power/ground noise induced by clock distribution network and proposes techniques to reduce power/ground noise considering the effects of process variations. The second part proposes an elastic pipeline scheme for random circuits with feedback loops. The proposed scheme provides a low-power solution that has the same variation tolerance as the conventional approaches. The third section deals with discrete buffer and wire sizing for link-based non-tree clock network, which is an energy efficient structure for skew tolerance to variations. For the power/ground noise problem, our approach could reduce the peak current and the delay variations by 50% and 51% respectively. Compared to conventional approach, the elastic timing scheme reduces power dissipation by 20% − 27%. The sizing method achieves clock skew reduction of 45% with a small increase in power dissipation.

As semiconductor technology is scaled and voltage level is reduced, the impact of the variation in power supply has become very significant in predicting the realistic worst-case delays in integrated circuits. The analysis of power supply noise is inevitable because high correlations exist between supply voltage and delay. Supply noise analysis has often used a vector-based timing analysis approach. Finding a set of test vectors in vector-based approaches, however, is very expensive, particularly during the design phase, and becomes intractable for larger circuits in DSM technology. In this work, two novel vectorless approaches are described such that increases in circuit delay, because of power supply noise, can be efficiently, quickly estimated. Experimental results on ISCAS89 circuits reveal the accuracy and efficiency of my approaches: in s38417 benchmark circuits, errors on circuit delay distributions are less than 2%, and both of my approaches are 67 times faster than the traditional vector-based approach. Also, the results show the importance of considering care-bits, which sensitize the longest paths during the power supply noise analysis.

In this research the stochastic nonlinear dynamic behaviors and probability density function of ship rolling are studied by nonlinear dynamic method and probability theory. The probability density function of rolling response is evaluated through solving the stochastic differential equations by using path integral method based on Gauss-Legendre interpolation scheme. The time-dependent probability of ship rolling restricted within the safe domain is provided and capsizing is investigated in the probability‟s view. The random differential equation of ships‟ rolling motion is established considering the nonlinear damping, nonlinear restoring moment, the white noise wave excitation, and the colored noise wave excitation. As an example, an ocean survey vessel T-AGOS is considered to sail in the seas of Pierson-Moskowitz wave spectrum. It is found that the probability decreases as time progresses and it decreases much more quickly for the high intensity of the noise. The ship will finally leave the safe domain and capsize in the probability‟s view. It is also shown the similarity of probability density contours between the case of white noise wave excitation and the case of colored noise wave excitation.

In this thesis, voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) with improved phase noise are designed and implemented. In the design of the resonant circuit varactor diodes are employed. In practice, a real VCO has to be packaged. The parasitic effect of the package may generate crosstalk inside the VCO and result in frequency shifting. To obtain an accurate prediction, a full wave model is developed. A simulation procedure is established combining High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) with Advance Design System (ADS) software to predict the frequency response at the initial stage of the VCO design. Prototypes have been constructed and the characteristics measured. The simulation agrees with the measured results well. The obtained result show that our study can be used to cut the development time and cost.

Ambient noise generated by surface random processes is the primary contribution to the noise-field energy in the intermediate frequency band, and thus is important in many applications of underwater sound. In this study, the noise field is analyzed with respect to the effects of random source spectrum, waveguide structure of the water column, and seabed stratification upon the noise-field intensity as well as spatial correlation. Based upon a noise-generation model due to continuous random sources, incorporating several analytical models for seabed stratification, a formulation may then be derived to facilitate the numerical implementation. Many results shall be generated and analyzed. In this study considers the noise field generated by surface random processes in an oceanic environment with a sediment layer possessing a continuously varying density and sound-speed profile. This model closely resembles the oceanic waveguide environment and therefore enables the simulation of surface noise generation. Many results of the noise field were generated, including the noise intensity distribution, vertical and horizontal correlations. It is demonstrated that the noise intensity may be affected by the stratification mainly through the continuous spectrum, in that the continuous spectrum is equally important as the normal modes in the present analysis. Moreover, the results for the correlations show that the noise field in the horizontal direction becomes more coherent when the noise sources are more correlated, while in the vertical direction, the results tend to reverse. The horizontal correlations of the noise field due to surface random sources with non-isotropic power spectrum, such as nonisotropic Gaussian and Pierson-Moskowitz, were generated and analyzed.