**Meet the editor**

Mingbo Niu received a BEng degree in Electronic Engineering from Northwestern Polytechnical University in China and an MSc (Eng.) degree (first-class) major in Communication and Information Systems from the same university. Prior to pursuing his PhD, he worked at the National Key Laboratory on Information and Signal Processing. He received his PhD degree in Electrical and

Computer Engineering from the University of British Columbia, Canada, in 2013. From 2008 to 2012, he was a research assistant at Optical Wireless Communications Laboratory and Integrated Optics Laboratory, where he contributed to the development of ultra-high-speed optical data transmission links. Dr. Niu held a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship at Queen's University. He also worked for Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) at Calian Tech. Ltd where he contributed to statistical evaluation models of MIMO compressive sensing projects. He is now a professor of Electrical Engineering at Okanagan College, Canada. Dr. Niu has coauthored more than 20 IEEE and OSA papers and supervised a number of students' projects. Dr. Niu was the recipient of numerous scholarships during his undergraduate and graduate studies, which included a Chinese Government Award, two University of British Columbia University Graduate Fellowships, and a HuaWei Tech. Ltd Special Fellowship (first class). His current research and teaching interests include digital communications, microcontrollers, MIMO, DSP, energy harvesting, millimeter wave, electronic circuit theory, and ICs for data communication networks. Dr. Niu is a licensed Professional Engineer in British Columbia.

Contents

**Preface VII**

**Section 1 New Materials for Electric Circuits 1**

**in Extreme Environments 3**

**Section 2 Circuit Design and Architectures 65**

Radhouane Laajimi

**Localization 109**

Chapter 1 **Self-Oscillatory DC-DC Converter Circuits for Energy Harvesting**

Chapter 2 **New Energy Harvesting Systems Based on New Materials 21** Lucian Pîslaru-Dănescu and Lipan Laurențiu Constantin

Chapter 3 **Nanoarchitecture of Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata (QCA)**

**Using Small Area for Digital Circuits 67**

**Section 3 Applications on Emerging Technologies 107**

Prateek Asthana and Loveneet Mishra

Chapter 4 **Millimeter-Wave Multi-Port Front-End Receivers: Design Considerations and Implementation 85** Chaouki Hannachi and Serioja Ovidiu Tatu

Chapter 5 **Applications of Compressive Sampling Technique to Radar and**

Chapter 6 **High-Speed Electronic Memories and Memory Subsystems 127**

Soheil Salari, Francois Chan and Yiu-Tong Chan

Ming-Hung Weng, Daniel Brennan, Nick Wright and Alton Horsfall
