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Ni‐ferrite powder average grain size less than 0.9µm was used for the ferrite paste preparation. Ferrite paste was printed on Al2O3 substrate and fired 850°C/10min. After Ni‐ferrite thick film characterization had been done, simple planar inductor geometry, such as square spirals, were printed on it. Measurements were done, using an HP 4194A impedance analyser. The experimental results were summarized and compared with theoretical predictions given by the electromagnetic analysis using the method of current images for the reason of accounting the effect of magnetic substrate. The computer program, developed here, allows determination of the required thickness of the substrate which will produce inductance enhancement of the given permeability of the substrate material. The same results can also be used to determine the permeability of magnetic film or substrate quickly and are directly applicable to the design of the planar inductors.

Significant achievements in ferrite material processing enable developments of many ferrite devices with a wide range of power levels and working frequencies, which make demands for new characterization and modelling methods for ferrite materials and components. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a modelling and measurement procedure, which can be used for the characterization of two‐port ferrite components in high frequency range.

This paper presents a commercially available ferrite component (transformer) modelling and determination of its electrical parameters using in‐house developed software. The components are measured and characterized using a vector network analyzer E5071B and adaptation test fixture on PCB board. The parameters of electrical equivalent circuit of the ferrite transformer parameters are compared with values extracted out of measured scattering parameters.

A good agreement between modelled and extracted electrical parameters of the ferrite transformer is found. The modelled inductance curves have the same dependence versus frequency as extracted ones. That confirms the model validity in the wide frequency range.

In‐house developed software based on proposed model provides inclusion of the ferrite material dispersive characteristics, which dominantly determines high‐frequency behaviour of two‐port ferrite components. Developed software enables fast and accurate calculation of the ferrite transformer electrical parameters and its redesign in order to achieve the best performance for required application.

The appropriate selection of a testing method largely determines the accuracy of a measurement. Parasitic effects associated with test fixture demand a significant consideration in a measurement. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a measurement procedure which can be used for the characterization of surface mount devices (SMD) components, especially devoted to SMD inductors.

The paper describes measurement technique, characterization, and extracting parameters of SMD components for printed circuit board (PCB) applications. The commercially available components (multi‐layer chip SMD inductors in the ceramic body) are measured and characterized using a vector network analyzer E5071B and adaptation test fixture on PCB board. Measurement results strongly depend on the choice of the PCB; the behaviour of the component depends on the environment where the component is placed.

The equivalent circuit parameters are extracted in closed form, from an accurate measurement of the board‐mounted SMD inductor S‐parameters, without the necessity for cumbersome optimization procedures, which normally follow the radio frequency circuit synthesis.

It this paper, a new adaptation test fixture in PCB technology is realized. It is modeled and it has provided the extraction of parameters (intrinsic and extrinsic) of SMD inductor with great accuracy.

The problems of inelastic instability (buckling) and dynamic instability (resonance) have been the subject of extensive investigation and have received wide attention from the structural mechanics community. This paper aims to tackle these problems in thin-walled structures, taking into account geometrical and/or material non-linearity.

The inelastic buckling mode interactions and resonance instabilities of prismatic thin-walled columns are analysed by implementing the semi-analytical finite strip method (FSM). A scalar damage parameter is implemented in conjunction with a material modelling named rheological-dynamical analogy to address stiffness reduction induced by the fatigue damage.

Inelastic buckling stresses lag behind the elastic buckling stresses across all modes, which is a consequence of the viscoelastic behaviour of materials. Because of the lag, the same column length does not always correspond to the same mode at the elastic and inelastic critical stress.

This paper presents the influence of mode interactions on the effective stresses and resonance instabilities in thin-walled columns due to the fatigue damage. These mode interactions have a great influence on damage variables because of the fatigue and effective stresses around mode transitions. In its usual semi-analytical form, the FSM cannot be used to solve the mode interaction problem explained in this paper, because this technique ignores the important influence of interaction of the buckling modes when applied only for undamaged state of structure

The purpose of this paper is to test the measurement performances of a planar‐type meander sensor installed in robot foot in order to examine its potential application as ground reaction force sensor.

A planar‐type meander sensor is composed of two pairs of meander coils. Variation of input inductance between coils serves as a measure of small displacements in a plane. Pairs of meander coils are installed in an actuated robot foot to measure displacements proportional to normal or tangential components of ground reaction force which acts upon the foot. The sensor was modeled by the concept of partial inductance and a new simulation tool was developed based on this concept.

Pairs of meander coils were tested against angular displacements, and results showed that the sensor gives correct information about displacement regardless how the foot touches the ground with its whole area. Deviations between position of computed and real acting point of ground reaction force are relatively small. Owing to good results obtained, a miniaturized sensor was developed having the same performances as previously developed prototype.

This paper presents initial work in implementing a planar‐type meander sensor in robot foot as to measure ground reaction force. Developed simulation tool gives accurate analysis of inductance variation of meander structures. In addition, the measurement error and sensor's nonlinearity are analyzed. Calculated results show a good agreement with experimental results. Hence, miniaturized sensor, easier for implementation, is proposed.

Present 3D electromagnetic simulators have high accuracy but they are time and memory expensive. Owing to a fast and simple expression for inductance is also necessary for initial inductor design. In this paper, new efficient methods for total inductance calculation of meander inductor, are given. By using an algorithm, it is possible to predict correctly all inductance variations introduced by varying geometry parameters such as number of turns, width of conductor or spacing between conductors.

The starting point for the derivation of the recurrent formula is Greenhouse theory. Greenhouse decomposed inductor into its constituent segments. Meander inductor is divided into straight conductive segments. Then the total inductance of the meander inductor is a sum of self‐inductances of all segments and the negative and positive mutual inductances between all combinations of straight segments. The monomial equation for the total inductance of meander inductor has been obtained by fitting procedure. The fitting technique, using the method of least squares, finds the parameters of the monomial equation that minimize the sum of squares of the error between the accurate data and fitted equation. The paper presents new expression for inductance of meander inductor, in the monomial form, which is suitable for optimization via geometric programming. The computed inductances are compared with measured data from the literature.

The first, recurrent, expression has the advantage that it indicates to the designer how the relative contributions of self, positive, and negative mutual inductance are related to the geometrical parameters. The second expression presents the inductance of the meander inductor in the monomial form, so that the optimization of the inductor can be done by procedure of the geometric programming. Simplicity and relatively good accuracy are the advantages of this expression, but on the other hand the physical sense of the expression is being lost. Thus, the effects of various geometry parameters on inductance are analyzed using two expressions and the software tool INDCAL.

Applied flexible efficient methods for inductance calculation of meander inductor are able to significantly increase the speed of RF and sensor integrated circuit design.

For the first time a simple expression for fast inductance calculation for meander inductor in monomial form is presented. It is explained how such an expression is generated, which can be directly implemented in circuit simulators.

With continuous scaling of digital circuit CMOS technology, the vulnerability of these circuits are significantly increasing against the soft errors. On the other hand, the effects of process variation in the electrical properties of nano-scale circuits, have introduced the statistical methods as an unavoidable choice for the soft error rate (SER) estimation. The purpose of this paper is to provide a statistical soft error rate (SSER) estimation approach for combinational circuits in the presence of process variation.

In this paper a new method is proposed for the SSER estimation of combinational circuits based on the Bayesian networks (BNs). This allows to factor the joint probability distributions over variables in a circuit graph. The distribution of the initial transient fault pulse is estimated by the pre-characterization tables. Timing signals are propagated by BN theory and the probability distribution of electrical and timing masking are calculated.

Simulation results for some benchmark circuits show that the proposed method is accurate with 3.7 percent difference with the Monte-Carlo SPICE simulation and with orders of magnitude improvement in runtime.

The proposed framework is the scheme giving the low estimation time with plausible accuracy compared to other schemes. The comparison exhibits that the designer can save its estimation time in terms of performance and complexity. The deterministic-based methods also are able to evaluate the SER of combinational circuit, yet in an unacceptable time.

Thick film symmetrical LC cells with two pairs of terminations were printed on alumina using PdAg paste and crossover dielectric. Planar inductors such as meander, spiral, bispiral, and solenoid in plane were distributed over planar capacitors such as sandwich, interdigitated and segmented. Attenu‐ation and Smith charts of symmetrical EMI LC cells were measured on network analyzer in the range of 1 MHz to 3 GHz. Two or three main LC cells were joined in series to sum attenuation. The obtained results were compared mutually, at first, and than with the cubic (chip) EMI LC filters. The obtained EMI noise suppression was similar, but the filter band of thick film LC cells was much wider.

The aim of this paper is to present thermal and mechanical durability of conductive tracks screen-printed with silver polymer pastes on flexible magnetic sheets.

A test pattern that consisted of three straight lines was printed with two different silver pastes on a flexible magnetic sheet and a polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) foil for comparison. Electrical properties of these lines were examined by resistance measurements and their thickness was measured with a digital microscope on cross sections. Cyclic bending was performed to investigate mechanical properties of prepared samples as well as thermal shocks to analyse their thermal durability. Further, samples after thermal shocks underwent cyclic bending to test influence of thermal exposure on mechanical properties of the prepared samples. Changes in the test lines after the thermal and mechanical tests were assessed by resistance measurements and microscopic analysis of surface and internal structure of the test lines.

It was found that the most important factor having an impact on electrical, mechanical and thermal properties of the conductive tracks screen-printed on magnetic sheets is a type of paste used. The samples made with the paste PM-406 exhibited lower resistance because of a higher layer thickness compared to the lines printed with the paste PF-050. The PM-406 layers were revealed to be less durable to mechanical and thermal exposures. An analogical relationship was noticed for the samples made with PM-406 and PF-050 on a PEN foil after thermal shocks and cyclic bending. When magnetic sheets were used as a substrate, a bigger degree of damage was observed for the PF-050 samples, which even lost their electrical continuity after 1,000 bending cycles and thermal cycles, irrespective of their number. Some damage was also noticed in the magnetic sheet after the bending and thermal cycles.

Further investigations are required to examine the influence of other types of thermal exposure on electrical properties of lines printed on magnetic sheets. Other types of magnetic sheets are also recommended to be investigated as substrate materials.

The results reported in this study can be useful among others for designers of radio frequency identification (RFID) systems, which are intended to operate in a challenging environment with strong mechanical and thermal exposures.

This paper contains valuable information concerning mechanical and thermal properties of conductive tracks screen-printed on magnetic sheets which can be used, i.e. for designing of reliable near field communication/high frequency (NFC/HF)-RFID tags suitable for metallic surface.

Present 3D electromagnetic simulators have high accuracy, but they are time and memory expensive. Because of that, fast and simple expression for impedance is also necessary for initial inductor design. In this paper new efficient method for total impedance calculation of ferrite electromagnetic interference (EMI) suppressor is given. By using an algorithm, it is possible to predict correctly all variations of electrical characteristics introduced by varying geometry parameters of EMI suppressor.

The starting point for calculation of electrical characteristics of EMI suppressor is Greenhouse theory. Greenhouse decomposed inductor into its constituent segments. Basically, all segments of conductive layer are divided into parallel filaments having small, rectangular cross sections. The self‐ and mutual‐inductance were calculated using the concept of partial inductance. Total impedance of EMI suppressor is calculated taking care of dimension of chip size, material that are used and geometry of conductive layer.

The Simulator for Planar Inductive Structures (SPIS™) simulates effects of ferrite materials and geometrical parameters of planar inductive structures. With proposed software tool, designers can predict performance parameters quickly and easily before costly prototypes are built. SPIS™ software offers substantially reduced time to market, and increases device performance. The computed impedances, given by our software tool are compared with measured data and very good agreement was found.

Applied flexible efficient methods for impedance calculation of EMI suppressor are able to significantly increase the speed design of multilayer suppressors for universal series bus, low‐voltage differential signaling and in other high‐speed digital interfaces incorporated in notebooks and personal computers, digital cameras and scanners. Also, ferrite suppressors have been successfully employed for attenuating EMI in switching power supplies, electronic ignition systems, garage door openers, etc.

The paper presents realized structures of ferrite EMI suppressors. New geometries of conductive layer are proposed. In addition, using simple model of inductor, the paper develops a CAD simulation tool SPIS™ for calculation of electrical characteristics of EMI suppressors with different geometry of conductive layer.