1,721,077 research outputs found
Introducing Systems Thinking in Engineering Curricula as a Foundation for Sustainability Awareness
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Work in Progress: Systems Thinking as a Foundation for Sustainability Awareness and Ethical Use of Technologies
No full textThis work in progress paper reports the preliminary steps towards the definition of a course that aims to empower systems thinking skills in engineering students and to stimulate interest and awareness in issues related to sustainability and ethics. A key aspect of Systems Thinking is to examine any problem to be solved from a wide perspective, considering all elements and conditions that can influence or that can be influenced by the possible solution, over time. In the case of engineering problems, this calls for the consideration of non-technical aspects, too. A Systems Thinking approach should therefore stimulate future engineers to take care of the potential environmental impact of the systems and devices they design. Similarly, they should make their design choices thinking about the wellness of people: not just the end-users of the products, but all the individuals implied in the whole supply and production chains. Furthermore, the general social impact of the developed technologies should be a point of attention as well. These considerations motivate the idea to propose a course that promotes, with a synergic approach, Systems Thinking, Sustainability and Ethics. This paper reports a preliminary step toward the whole course, i.e. a 6-hour teaching unit proposed in the context of guidance activities of the University of Padova. Although the limited duration did not allow to effectively develop any skill, it was a chance to introduce some students to the basic concepts and to share with them the possible connection between Systems Thinking and the sustainability and ethics issues. As discussed in the paper, the feedback from these students was really encouraging. The implementation of a whole course and the assessment of the achieved learning outcomes fall in the future developments of this work in progress contribution
A Ready-to-Use Design Procedure for Operational Transconductance Amplifiers that Minimizes Power Consumption
No full textA Simple Procedure for the Design of Power-Optimized OTAs for SC Applications
No full textThis work proposes a possible procedure to exploit all the information carried out by the basic OTA equation in order to design a power-optimized OT
Enhancing output voltage swing in low-voltage micro-power OTA using self-cascode
No full textIt is shown how a self-cascode configuration can be profitably used in a micro-power operational transconductance amplifier (OTA), to enhance the output voltage swing, which eventually results in a power consumption reduction. A practical design example is proposed and used in order to discuss and quantify the circuit performance
A 1.8uW Sigma-Delta Modulator for 8-bit Digitization of Cardiac Signals in Implantable Pacemakers Operating Down to 1.8V
No full textImplantable biomedical devices can highly benefit from submicrometer CMOS technologies both in terms of duration-time increase and size shrinking. This work shows how design techniques for submicrometer CMOS technologies lead to improvements in the sensing stage of a cardiac implantable pacemaker. A sigma-delta modulator is presented for 8-bit quantization of the natural electrical activity of the heart, fabricated in a 0.8-μm CMOS technology. The low-voltage, low-power design procedure employs switched-opamp and weak inversion CMOS circuits. Measurement results confirm a power dissipation of 1.8 μW, a minimum supply voltage of 1.8 V, and more than 50 dB of dynamic range
A Very Low-Power 8-bit Sigma-Delta Converter in a 0.8 um CMOS Technology for the Sensing Chain of a Cardiac Pacemaker, Operating down to 1.8 V
No full textA low-power decimation filter for a sigma-delta converter based on a power-optimized sinc filter
No full textThis work proposes a digital sinc filter based on the direct implementation of the convolution relationship between the input samples and the filter coefficients. The proposed technique is an alternative to standard CIC approach and implies less hardware complexity that translates in power and area savings. The proposed technique has been applied to the design of a complete decimator for a ΣΔ converter intended for cardiac pacemakers. The simulation of a standard cell implementation of the filter proved good functionality of the decimator and demonstrated a 20% power saving for the whole decimator descending from a 50% power saving in the sinc stage
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