Design by Analogy:Achieving More Patentable Ideas from One Creative Design

A patent is a kind of technical document to protect intellectual property for individuals or enterprises. Patentable idea generation is a crucial step for patent application and analogy is confirmed to be an effective technique to inspire creative ideas. Analogy?based design usually starts from representation of an analogy source and is followed by the retrieval of appropriate analogs, mapping of design knowledge and adaptation of target solution. To diffuse one core idea into other new contexts and achieve more patentable ideas, this paper mainly centered on the first two stages of analogy?based design and proposed a patentable ideation framework. The analogical information of the source system, including source design problems and solution, was mined comprehensively through International Patent Classification analysis and represented in the form of function, behavior and structure. Three heuristics were suggested for searching the set of candidate target systems with a similar design problem, where the source design could be transferred. To systematize the process of source representation, analogs retrieval, idea transfer, and solution generation, an ideation model was put forward. Finally, the bladeless fan was selected as a source design to illustrate the application of this work. The design output shows that the representation and heuristics are beneficial, and this systematic ideation method can help the engineer or designer enhance creativity and discover more patentable opportunities.

A Design of High-precision High-Voltage Fiber-Optic Analog Signal Isolation Converter

This paper introduces a design of high-precision high-voltage fiber-optic analog sig-nal isolation converter based on the technology of Voltage-to-Frequency (V/F) and Frequency-to-Voltage (F/V) conversion. It describes the principle, system configuration and hardware design.

Challenges and opportunities toward fully automated analog layout design

Realizing the layouts of analog/mixed-signal(AMS)integrated circuits(ICs)is a complicated task due to the high design flexibility and sensitive circuit performance.Compared with the advancements of digital IC layout automation,analog IC layout design is still heavily manual,which leads to a more time-consuming and error-prone process.In recent years,significant progress has been made in automated analog layout design with emerging of several open-source frameworks.This paper firstly reviews the existing state-of-the art AMS layout synthesis frameworks with focus on the different approaches and their individual challenges.We then present recent research trends and opportunities in the field.Finally,we summaries the paper with open questions and future directions for fully-automating the analog IC layout.

Design of a(480,240)CMOS Analog Low-Density Parity-Check Decoder

Digital low-density parity-check(LDPC) decoders can hardly meet the power-limits brought by the new application scenarios. The analog LDPC decoder, which is an application of the analog computation technology, is considered to have the potential to address this issue to some extent. However, due to the lack of automation tools and analog stopping criteria, the analog LDPC decoders suffer from costly handcraft design and additional decoding delay, and are not feasible to practical applications. To address these issues, a decoder architecture using reusable building blocks is designed to lower the handcraft design, and a probability stopping criterion that is specially designed for analog decoder is further planned and implemented to reduce the decoding delay. Then, a(480,240) CMOS analog LDPC decoder is designed and fabricated in a 0.35-μm CMOS technology. Experimental results show that the decoder prototype can achieve 50 Mbps throughput when the power consumption is about 86.3m W, and the decoding delay can be reduced by at most 93% compared with using the preset maximum decoding delay in existing works.

Design and synthesis of novel coumarin analogs and their nematicidal activity against five phytonematodes

The presence of hydroxyl groups at the C4 and C7 positions in coumarin backbone has been proposed as a potential modification site for providing excellent bioactivity according to previous studies. A series of novel coumarin derivatives were rationally designed and synthesized by use of a complex catalytic system for a targeted modification at the above sites. These derivatives were assayed for nematicidal activity. As predicted, the derivatization enhanced the activity of the coumarins against five nematodes.Compounds 7b, 9a, 10 c and 11 c showed significant strong nematicidal broad spectrum activity against all tested nematodes. Compound 10 c was the most effective with the lowest LC50 values against Meloidogyne incognita（5.1 mmol/L）, Ditylenchus destructor（3.7 mmol/L）, Bursaphelenchus mucronatus（6.4 mmol/L）, Bursaphelenchus B. xylophilus（2.5 mmol/L） and Aphelenchoides besseyi（3.1 mmol/L）,respectively. A brief investigation on the structure–activity relationships（SAR） revealed that the targeted modification by a C7 hydroxyl was optimum compared with that of a C4 hydroxyl and that the coupling chain length was crucial for the nematicidal activity.