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A compact quasi-Yagi antenna with a modified ground plane is designed for a through-wall radar on-chip. A slot-based ground plane modification in the proposed antenna results in significant miniaturization with an increase in the impedance bandwidth by 44.62%. The antenna has a high directivity of 9.02 dBi and a front-to-back ratio of 25.76 dB at 2.4 GHz. Based on experiments in real-world deployment scenarios, the performance of the proposed quasi-Yagi antenna is found to be comparable to that of a Vivaldi antenna and a commercial-off-the-shelf horn antenna. Spectrogram-based signatures of a moving person behind a wooden partition and a 40 cm thick masonry wall are successfully obtained using the designed antenna, demonstrating the suitability of the quasi-Yagi antenna for portable applications using a radar-on-chip.

By utilizing frequency translational resistive feedback, a recently proposed blocker current-cancelling wideband receiver (Lenka and Banerjee in IEEE Trans Very Large Scale Integr Syst 27(5): 993–1006, 2019), tolerates 0-dBm blockers beyond 40 MHz offset with little degradation in performance. However, like most wideband receivers, the architecture is far less tolerant to “harmonic blockers”, that is, blockers located at or around precise integer multiples of the local oscillator frequency. This paper presents an enhanced blocker current-cancelling receiver that prevents harmonic blockers from undergoing large gain and thus boosts the receiver’s resilience to such blockers. Implemented in a 22-nm CMOS process, the RX can tolerate up to $$-$$ 1 dBm harmonic blockers. On the other hand, it achieves a 1-dB standard blocker compression point of + 3 dBm and out-of-band third-order input intercept point (OB-IIP3) of + 24 dBm at 40 MHz offset from the LO frequency.

Coconut (Cocos nucifera L.), an important source of vegetable oil, nutraceuticals, functional foods, and housing materials, provides raw materials for a repertoire of industries engaged in the manu...

A new architecture for Vernier-based frequency-to-voltage/digital converter (VFVDC) is proposed for time difference of arrival (TDOA) measurement using a frequency domain approach. The VFVDC is employed for indoor distance monitoring using an RFID front end. The proposed architecture employs an injection-locked ring oscillator (ILR) as the clock source. The proposed ILR oscillator does not need the complex calibration procedures, usually required by Phase Locked Loop (PLL) based oscillators in Vernier-based time-to-digital converters. The oscillator consumes 14.4 μ W and 1.15 mW from 0.4 V and 1.2 V supplies. The total power consumption of the entire chip is only 0.65 mW and 7.6 mW from 0.4 V and 1.2 V supplies while operating at 1.615 MHz and 22.55 MHz, respectively. The design was implemented in 130-nm CMOS process and has a core area of 0.1 mm 2 , one of the lowest in reported literature. The proposed VFVDC is reconfigurable and achieves a large detectable range of 1–300 mm, with a fine distance resolution of 3 mm/kHz in a small die size while consuming low power with FoM of 5.78 fA-s/m.

False smut disease of rice caused by Ustilaginoidea virens, is an emerging threat to rice cultivation worldwide due to its detrimental effects on grain yield and quality. False smut disease severity was 4.44‒17.22% during a roving survey in Kharif 2016 in the four different rice ecosystems of Karnataka, India. Further, 15 pathogen isolates representing four different ecosystems were studied for their virulence and morphometric diversity. Among the 15 strains studied, most virulent strains Uv-Gvt was selected for whole genome sequencing in Illumina NextSeq 500 platform using 2 × 150 bp sequencing chemistry. The total assembled genome of Uv-Gvt was 26.96 Mb, which comprised of 9157 scaffolds with an N50 value of 15,934 bp and 6628 protein-coding genes. Next, the comparative genomic study revealed a similar gene inventory as UV-8b and MAFF 236576 strains reported from China and Japan, respectively. But, 1756 genes were unique to Uv-Gvt strain. The Uv-Gvt genome harbors 422 putative host–pathogen interacting genes compared to 359 and 520 genes in UV-8b and MAFF 236576 strains, respectively. The variant analysis revealed low genetic diversity (0.073‒0.088%) among U. virens strains. Further, phylogenetic analysis using 250 single copy orthologs genes of U. virens revealed a distinct phylogeny and an approximate divergence time. Our study, report the genomic resource of rice false smut pathogen from India, where the disease originated, and this information will have broader applicability in understanding the pathogen population diversity.

In this paper, a frequency synthesizer, based on a type-2, third order phase locked loop (PLL), covering the frequency range of 0.9–5.4 GHz using three voltage controlled oscillators, is implemented using a 0.13- $$\upmu \hbox {m}$$ CMOS technology. The PLL has three modes of operation—a high bandwidth mode, a low bandwidth mode and a dynamic mode, in which the bandwidth dynamically changes from a low to a high value, during a frequency jump, and reverts back to low value, once the PLL settles. With a proper choice of bandwidth and timing synchronization during a frequency jump, a worst-case settling time of 3- $$\upmu \hbox {s}$$ has been obtained, which is one of the lowest in reported literature. The input clock of the PLL is set to 100 MHz, but it can go as low as 25 MHz without having any effect on its settling time. The PLL consumes 24 mW of power and occupies 0.8 mm $$^2$$ of active area.This PLL is expected to be specially useful in wide-bandwidth cognitive radios that require large and fast transitions in the frequency of operation.

A wideband stepped-frequency continuous wave-form radar transceiver is designed in a 130-nm CMOS technology. The designed system operates from 2 to 4 GHz, targeting a range/standoff-distance of 20 m and range resolution of 7.5 cm. A two-way wall obstruction loss of 23 dB is measured at 3.5 GHz. The waveform, system parameters, and wall properties are used to derive the integrated circuit (IC) based transceiver specifications. The designed receiver has a conversion gain of 48.65 dB, NF of 7.8 dB, 1-dB compression point of -31 dBm, -4.31 dBm of out-of-band IIP3 at 60 MHz offset and S 11 better than -10 dB across the targeted bandwidth.

False smut disease of rice caused by Ustilaginoidea virens, is an emerging threat to rice cultivation worldwide due to its detrimental effects on grain yield and quality. False smut disease severity was 4.44‒17.22% during a roving survey in Kharif 2016 in the four different rice ecosystems of Karnataka, India. Further, 15 pathogen isolates representing four different ecosystems were studied for their virulence and morphometric diversity. Among the 15 strains studied, most virulent strains Uv-Gvt was selected for whole genome sequencing in Illumina NextSeq 500 platform using 2 × 150 bp sequencing chemistry. The total assembled genome of Uv-Gvt was 26.96 Mb, which comprised of 9157 scaffolds with an N50 value of 15,934 bp and 6628 protein-coding genes. Next, the comparative genomic study revealed a similar gene inventory as UV-8b and MAFF 236576 strains reported from China and Japan, respectively. But, 1756 genes were unique to Uv-Gvt strain. The Uv-Gvt genome harbors 422 putative host–pathogen interacting genes compared to 359 and 520 genes in UV-8b and MAFF 236576 strains, respectively. The variant analysis revealed low genetic diversity (0.073‒0.088%) among U. virens strains. Further, phylogenetic analysis using 250 single copy orthologs genes of U. virens revealed a distinct phylogeny and an approximate divergence time. Our study, report the genomic resource of rice false smut pathogen from India, where the disease originated, and this information will have broader applicability in understanding the pathogen population diversity. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s13205-020-02336-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.