• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.399-406
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• 2016

Early life neuronal exposure to environmental toxicants has been suggested to be an important etiology of neurodegenerative disease development. Perfluorohexanesulfonate (PFHxS), one of the major perfluoroalkyl compounds, is widely distributed environmental contaminants. We have reported that PFHxS induces neuronal apoptosis via ERK-mediated pathway. Imperatorin is a furanocoumarin found in various edible plants and has a wide range of pharmacological effects including neuroprotection. In this study, the effects of imperatorin on PFHxS-induced neuronal apoptosis and the underlying mechanisms are examined using cerebellar granule cells (CGC). CGC were isolated from seven-day old rats and were grown in culture for seven days. Caspase-3 activity and TUNEL staining were used to determine neuronal apoptosis. PFHxS-induced apoptosis of CGC was significantly reduced by imperatorin and PD98059, an ERK pathway inhibitor. PFHxS induced a persistent increase in intracellular calcium, which was significantly blocked by imperatorin, NMDA receptor antagonist, MK801 and the L-type voltage-dependent calcium channel blockers, diltiazem and nifedipine. The activation of caspase-3 by PFHxS was also inhibited by MK801, diltiazem and nifedipine. PFHxS-increased ERK activation was inhibited by imperatorin, MK801, diltiazem and nifedipine. Taken together, imperatorin protects CGC against PFHxS-induced apoptosis via inhibition of NMDA receptor/intracellular calcium-mediated ERK pathway.

• Journal of electromagnetic engineering and science
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.61-67
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• 2014

This paper presents a zero-IF CMOS RF receiver, which supports three channel bandwidths of 5/10/40MHz for LTE-Advanced systems. The receiver operates at IMT-band of 2,500 to 2,690MHz. The simulated noise figure of the overall receiver is 1.6 dB at 7MHz (7.5 dB at 7.5 kHz). The receiver is composed of two parts: an RF front-end and a baseband circuit. In the RF front-end, a RF input signal is amplified by a low noise amplifier and $G_m$ with configurable gain steps (41/35/29/23 dB) with optimized noise and linearity performances for a wide dynamic range. The proposed baseband circuit provides a -1 dB cutoff frequency of up to 40MHz using a proposed wideband OP-amp, which has a phase margin of $77^{\circ}$ and an unit-gain bandwidth of 2.04 GHz. The proposed zero-IF CMOS RF receiver has been implemented in $0.13-{\mu}m$ CMOS technology and consumes 116 (for high gain mode)/106 (for low gain mode) mA from a 1.2 V supply voltage. The measurement of a fabricated chip for a 10-MHz 3G LTE input signal with 16-QAM shows more than 8.3 dB of minimum signal-to-noise ratio, while receiving the input channel power from -88 to -12 dBm.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.623-624
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• 2006

In this paper, we introduce the design and fabrication of V-band power amplifier MMIC with excellent gain-flatness for IEEE 802.15.3c WPAN system. The V-band power amplifier was designed using ETRI' $0.12{\mu}m$ PHEMT process. The PHEMT shows a peak transconductance ($G_{m,peak}$) of 500 mS/mm, a threshold voltage of -1.2 V, and a drain saturation current of 49 mA for 2 fingers and $100{\mu}m$ total gate width (2f100) at $V_{ds}$=2 V. The RF characteristics of the PHEMT show a cutoff frequency, $f_T$, of 97 GHz, and a maximum oscillation frequency, $f_{max}$, of 166 GHz. The gains of the each stages of the amplifier were modified to have broadband characteristics of input/output matching for first and fourth stages and get more gains of edge regions of operating frequency range for second and third stages in order to make the gain-flatness of the amplifier excellently for wide band. The performances of the fabricated 60 GHz power amplifier MMIC are operating frequency of $56.25{\sim}62.25\;GHz$, bandwidth of 6 GHz, small signal gain ($S_{21}$) of $16.5{\sim}17.2\;dB$, gain flatness of 0.7 dB, an input reflection coefficient ($S_{11}$) of $-16{\sim}-9\;dB$, output reflection coefficient ($S_{22}$) of $-16{\sim}-4\;dB$ and output power ($P_{out}$) of 13 dBm. The chip size of the amplifier MMIC was $3.7{\times}1.4mm^2$.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.8 no.7
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• pp.1429-1435
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• 2004

In this work, high performance broadband amplifier MMIC including all the matching and biasing components, and electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection circuit was developed for K/Ka band applications. Therefore, external biasing or matching components were not required for the operation of the MMIC. STO (SrTiO3) capacitors were employed to integrate the DC biasing components on the MMIC, and miniaturized LC parallel ESD protection circuit was integrated on MMIC, which increased ESD breakdown voltage from 10 to 300 V. A pre-matching technique and RC parallel circuit were used for the broadband design of the amplifier MMIC. The amplifier MMIC exhibited good RF performances and good stability in a wide frequency range. The chip size of the MMICs was $1.7{\pm}0.8$ mm2.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.444-457
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• 2014

This paper presents the design and realization of a digital PV simulator with a Push-Pull Forward (PPF) circuit based on the principle of modular hardware and configurable software. A PPF circuit is chosen as the main circuit to restrain the magnetic biasing of the core for a DC-DC converter and to reduce the spike of the turn-off voltage across every switch. Control and I/O interface based on a personal computer (PC) and multifunction data acquisition card, can conveniently achieve the data acquisition and configuration of the control algorithm and interface due to the abundant software resources of computers. In addition, the control program developed in Matlab/Simulink can conveniently construct and adjust both the models and parameters. It can also run in real-time under the external mode of Simulink by loading the modules of the Real-Time Windows Target. The mathematic models of the Push-Pull Forward circuit and the digital PV simulator are established in this paper by the state-space averaging method. The pole-zero cancellation technique is employed and then its controller parameters are systematically designed based on the performance analysis of the root loci of the closed current loop with $k_i$ and $R_L$ as variables. A fuzzy PI controller based on the Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model is applied to regulate the controller parameters self-adaptively according to the change of $R_L$ and the operating point of the PV simulator to match the controller parameters with $R_L$. The stationary and dynamic performances of the PV simulator are tested by experiments, and the experimental results show that the PV simulator has the merits of a wide effective working range, high steady-state accuracy and good dynamic performances.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.369-380
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• 2013

Direct torque control based on space vector modulation (SVM-DTC) protects the DTC transient merits. Furthermore, it creates better quality steady-state performance in a wide speed range. The modified method of DTC using SVM improves the electrical magnitudes of asynchronous machines, such as minimizing the stator current distortions, the stator flux with electromagnetic torque without ripple, the fast response of the rotor speed, and the constant switching frequency. In this paper, the proposed method is based on two new control strategies for direct torque control with space vector modulation. First, fuzzy logic control is used instead of the PI torque and a PI flux controller to minimizing the torque error and to achieve a constant switching frequency. The voltages in the direct and quadratic reference frame ($V_d$, $V_q$) are achieved by fuzzy logic control. In this scheme, the switching capability of the inverter is fully utilized, which improves the system performance. Second, the close loop of stator flux estimation based on the voltage model and a low pass filter is used to counteract the drawbacks in the open loop of the stator flux such as the problems saturation and dc drift. The response of this new control strategy is compared with DTC-SVM. The experimental and simulation results demonstrate that the proposed control topology outperforms the conventional DTC-SVM in terms of system robustness and eliminating the bad outcome of dc-offset.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.1187-1195
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• 2013

Photovoltaic inverters should always track the maximum power of solar cell arrays in operation. Also, they should be irrespective of the maximum power point voltage of a wide range of solar cells in tracking the maximum power point. If the current ripple of solar cells occurs, the function of maximum power point tracking drops, and normal tracking is difficult when solar radiation or the maximum power point changes. To solve this problem, this paper proposed a new maximum power point tracking algorithm with high efficiency and an algorithm to reduce the current ripple of solar cells. According to the results from the test on 4KW grid-connected PV inverter, the efficiency of maximum power point tracking and inverter output and the total harmonic distortion of inverter output current showed 99.97%, 97.5% and 1.05% respectively. So, the inverter showed excellent performance, and made possible stable maximum power point tracking operation when the solar radiation rapidly changed from 100% to 10% and from 10% to 100% for 0.5 seconds.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.555-566
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• 2015

A TRIAC dimming LED driver that can control the brightness of LED arrays for a wide range of source voltage variations is proposed in this paper. Unlike conventional PWM LED drivers, the proposed LED driver adopts a TRIAC switch, which inherently guarantees zero current switching and has been proven to be quite reliable over its long lifetime. Unlike previous TRIAC type LED drivers, the proposed LED driver is composed of an LC input filter and a variable switched capacitance, which is modulated by the TRIAC turn-on timing. Thus, the LED power regulation and dimming control, which are done by a volume resistor in the same way as the conventional TRIAC dimmers, can be simultaneously performed by the TRIAC control circuit. Because the proposed LED driver has high efficiency and a long lifetime with a high power factor (PF) and low total harmonic distortion (THD) characteristics, it is quite adequate for industrial lighting applications such as streets, factories, parking garages, and emergency stairs. A simple step-down capacitive power supply circuit composed of passive components only is also proposed, which is quite useful for providing DC power from an AC source without a bulky and heavy transformer. A prototype 60 W LED driver was implemented by the proposed design procedure and verified by simulation and experimental results, where the efficiency, PF, and THD are 92%, 0.94, and 6.3%, respectively. The LED power variation is well mitigated to below ${\pm}2%$ for 190 V < $V_s$ < 250 V by using the proposed simple control circuit.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.294-303
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• 2011

In this paper an effective five-phase induction motor (IM) and its drive methods are proposed. Due to the additional degrees of freedom, the five-phase IM drive presents unique characteristics for enhancing the torque producing capability of the motor. Also the five-phase motor drives possess many other advantages when compared to traditional three-phase motor drives. Some of these advantages include, reducing the amplitude and increasing the frequency of the torque pulsation, reducing the amplitude of the current without increasing the voltage per phase and increasing the reliability. In order to maximize the torque per ampere, the proposed motor has concentrated winding, the produced back electromotive force (EMF) is almost trapezoidal, and the motor is supplied with the combined sinusoidal plus the third harmonic of the currents. For demonstrating the superior performance of the proposed five-phase IM, the motors are also analyzed on the synchronously rotating reference frame. To supply trapezoidal current waveform and to exclude the effect of the $3^{rd}$ harmonic current, a new control stratagem is proposed. The proposed control method is based on direct torque control (DTC) and rotor flux oriented control (RFOC) of the five-phase IM drives. It is able to reduce the acoustical noise, the torque, the flux, the current, and the speed pulsations during the steady state. The DTC transient merits are preserved, while a better quality steady-state performance is produced in the five phase motor drive for a wide speed range. Experimental results clearly demonstrated a more dynamic steady state performance with the proposed control system.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.440-447
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• 2011

This paper deals with supercapacitor energy storage system for the compensation of the slow response characteristics of a fuel cell generation system for grid connection. A bidirectional dc/dc converter is used for the charging and discharging of the supercapacitor. The conventional converters use additional clamping circuit, etc. to reduce a voltage spike at the instant of switching and to provide wide range of soft switching. The proposed method provides simplified hardware implementation without any clamping circuit, and soft switching condition for both charging and discharging mode with proper switching patterns. The usefulness of the proposed scheme is verified through simulation and experimental results with 1 kW system.