Power electronics switching devices made on wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductors are known to have the potential to make a transformative impact on 21st century energy economy. However, their market penetration has been slow primarily due to high cost and unknown application-level reliability. This article presents a comprehensive report on the history, current state of the art, and impending challenges in WBG power semiconductor technologies in order to break open this gridlock.

Remote sensing has evolved into a multidisciplinary field involving many different areas such as sensor technology, computing, and advanced applications. Information extraction now plays a fundamental role in the exploitation of the massive amount of data collected by earth observation instruments. In this Point of View, the authors analyze the evolution of this field, identifying three main phases in its development. The first period, which was marked by advances in digital signal processing, led to a significant development of statistical processing methods. The second phase was based on advances in physical models and brought an era of quantitative remote sensing which lasted until the first decade of this century. In the third and current period, information extraction techniques are gradually adopting advanced artificial intelligence models in an effort to cope with the tremendous increase in data volume. This article describes some of these recent advances and addresses challenges caused by the 4Vs (volume, velocity, variety, and veracity) of big data. Finally, the authors offer insight into future directions in this multidisciplinary field.

Current status of wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor material technology is evaluated for developing high-performance and reliable power electronics switching converters. The study takes into account field reliability of silicon power metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) in compact computer/telecom power supplies where residual material defects present in the silicon space-charge region were found to generate local microplasma that eventually caused power MOSFETs to fail under long-term repetitive field-switching conditions. It is shown that silicon power MOSFETs with increased low-level leakage currents are more prone to field failures in high-density power supplies. A new single-event burnout (SEB) stress testing methodology is proposed; the SEB stress test results are shown to correlate well with silicon power MOSFET failures in power supply circuits. Based on these results and the current state of the art of silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) power devices, a “reliability-driven” manufacturing approach is recommended for rapid commercialization and market penetration of WBG semiconductor power devices.

A novel testability architecture has been developed for a mixed-signal VLSIC which has a functional architecture consisting of a microprocessor core, RF transceiver, and two voltage regulators. It permits a decoupling of analog/RF, digital, and power systems for individual stimulation and analysis. Testing may be performed at the subsystem or block level, and traditional scan techniques are augmented to allow mixed static and dynamic test. This approach aids in identifying any detrimental interaction between individual subsystems by providing isolation between the circuit-under-test and idle circuits.

A monolithic RFIC in 0.25-micron fully-depleted SOI CMOS has been designed consisting of a microcoded 8-bit 33-MHz microprocessor, a 400-MHz 8-bit ASK-modulated RF transceiver and two integrated dc-dc voltage converters for power management. This architecture exploits a low-power (sub 2-V) digital process for mixed-signal VLSI in a die size measuring 2.2 mm/spl times/2.2 mm.