This paper hypothesizes that significant differences may occur between three commercially available Reliability Block Diagram (RBD) modeling tools due to differences in algorithms and simulation methodologies. The authors seek to resolve the correctness of their hypothesis and report the results of the comparison of the three tools.

Pizza and Sodas will be provided

Please RSVP by December 7th

Walt Willing

waltwilling@ieee.org

(410) 765-7372 / (443) 622-3390 (cell)

Sorry, attendees must be US citizens.

Directions to Northrop Grumman:

Take I-95 or I-295 to I-195 East (Toward BWI Airport) Exit onto Aviation Boulevard.

South at 3rd light.

Turn Left into Northrop Grumman Parking Lot (GATE 2).

Look for Visitor Parking Spaces.

Please do not park in reserved spaces.

Look for Visitor Entrance and sign in.

We will have escorts to bring you to the Conference Room

3. Power Engineering Society Gala

The following is a notice from Dewane A. Daley, Chairman of the Baltimore PES (2006).

The Baltimore Power Engineering Society first annual Gala will be held on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at the Grey Rock Mansion in Pikesville, Maryland from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM. This event will be a semi-formal evening affair of dining, wine tasting hosted by Boordy Vineyard, and networking, as well as a presentation by our distinguished guest speaker, Dr. Warren DeVries, Dean of Engineering and Information Technology at University of Maryland Baltimore County. The cost to attend will be $50 per person and is open to members and their guest, as well as supporters of PES and the engineering discipline.

The purpose of the event is to provide a forum for seasoned and young professional engineers from diverse sectors to network, while providing support for our local PES chapter so we can continue to meet the needs of our members and the local area power engineering community. This event also serves as an opportunity to meet with friends who you may not have seen for quite some time.

This Gala promises to be an exciting and entertaining evening for you and your guest. Please put this date on your calendar now, while you make necessary arrangements. Information regarding RSVP and payment method will follow in the next few days. Options will include check and pay pal via the Baltimore PES website. We are also seeking sponsorship for several of our young professionals to be able to attend the event as well. You may sponsor a young professional for $50 or make a donation at whatever level is comfortable for you. You may visit our website at:

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r2/baltimore/baltimorepes/

We would also like to hear from you if there are any questions. You may reach us by email at baltimorepes@ieee.org.

We look forward to your attendance and support.

4. Power Electronics Meeting Notice

Topic:

Reliability of Power Electronic Modules

Speaker:

Dr. Patrick McCluskey

Date:

December 4, 2006

Time:

6 PM

Location:

Historical Electronics Museum

Abstract:

There is an ever increasing need for advanced electrical power systems that can be used to control, manage, and distribute power at multiple levels, for applications as diverse as laptops, hybrid electric vehicles, and power substations. These advanced electrical power systems rely on solid-state electronic power modules to improve energy efficiency and reduce dependence on fossil fuels, while simultaneously reducing system size and weight and improving system performance. Critical to the widespread incorporation of these solid-state modules, however, is determining and enhancing their reliability under the harsh environmental (high temperatures, high humidity, and dust) and operational (high voltages, currents and power dissipation levels) loading conditions typical of power electronics applications.

Accelerated qualification testing, the traditional method for assessing the reliability of power electronic modules and systems, is time-consuming and costly, and provides little understanding of the fundamental factors that can be used to design reliability into an electronic system. This presentation will discuss the application of the PoF (Physics of Failure) based approach to assess the reliability of both traditional and next generation power modules. Critical failure sites to be discussed include wirebond interconnects, flip chip interconnects, die and substrate attach, and substrates.

Please RSVP to hobrien@arl.army.mil if planning to attend.

5. Johns Hopkins Reception

Alumni and friends are invited to join Nicholas P. Jones, Dean of the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University at a reception and lecture for Pioneers at the Forefront: An overview of the NASA space missions, New Horizons and MESSENGER.

Date:

Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Time:

Reception begins at 6:00 p.m.

Location:

Kossiakoff Center

Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

11100 Johns Hopkins Road

Laurel, Maryland

RSVP by Friday, December 1, 2006

(410) 516-8723 or engineering@jhu.edu

The speakers include:

Glen Fountain

New Horizons Project Manager and EPP Instructor

New Horizons is the first mission in NASA’s New Frontiers program of medium class planetary missions. It will be the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and its moon, Charon.

Mark Perry, Ph.D. ’85, ’89 (A&S)

MESSENGER Radio Scientist

MESSENGER is a scientific investigation of the planet Mercury by spacecraft. The name comes from “MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging,” highlighting the project’s broad range of scientific goals.

6. IEEE EDOC Conference

The Eleventh International IEEE EDOC Conference (EDOC 2007) “The Enterprise Computing Conference” will be held in Annapolis, MD 15 – 19 October 2007.

The EDOC 2007 Organizing Committee is looking for volunteers to work with the committee in support of local arrangements, registration, publications and publicity.

About the conference:

Formerly known as the enterprise distributed object computing conference, EDOC 2007 will be the eleventh event in the series of conferences, which since 1997 has brought together leading computer science researchers, IT decision makers, IT architects, solution designers and practitioners from academia, industry and government to discuss enterprise computing challenges, models and solutions. Enterprise computing is based on a wide (and ever growing) range of methods, models, tools and technologies traversing a broad spectrum of vertical domains and industry segments, from electronic and mobile commerce to real-time business applications for collaborating enterprises.

The EDOC 2007 Conference will emphasize the integration and management of enterprise computing research and development as well as novel implementation approaches and technologies related to business processes integration, management, execution and monitoring at any or all of the business, application, middleware and technical levels.

The main conference will be preceded by two days of workshops for which a separate call for proposals will be issued. For example, EDOC 2006 workshops included: VORTE: Vocabularies, Ontologies and Rules for the Enterprise; MWS: Middleware for Web Services; and, AQuSerM: Advances in Quality of Service Management among others

Topics:

The EDOC 2007 program will include papers addressing the domains, the life-cycle issues and the realization technologies involved in developing, deploying and operating enterprise computing systems. Topic areas include:

- State of the art in distributed enterprise applications

- Enterprise computing metrics and environment

- SW engineering approaches to distributed enterprise applications

- Web services

- Business Process Management (BPM) Systems

- Business Rules

- Identity Management and Distributed Access Control

- Information and Data Integration

Conference Schedule

Abstract submission (optional) 30 March 2007

Paper submission due 1 May 2007

Acceptance notification 30 June 2007

Workshop Schedule

Workshop proposals due 6 April 2007

Workshop selection TBD

Paper submission due TBD

Acceptance notification 30 June 2007

7. Continuing EE Education Course

Title:

Developing Real-Time, Embedded Products

Speaker:

Kim Fowler

Dates:

January 6 and January 13, 2007

Time:

8:45 am to 1:00 pm

Location:

Historical Electronics Museum (HEM)

(Directions below)

Please respond to:

Boris Gramatikov

Chair, Baltimore Section

bgramat@jhmi.edu

Course Summary:

The course surveys many different concerns that an engineer or designer needs to consider when developing a new product - hardware circuits, software processes, power, cooling, human interfaces, testing, integration, delivery, and support after product launch. It presents many different tradeoffs, such as buy versus build, architectures that suit specific applications, and types of markets.

Short bio:

Kim has spent 25 years in designing and developing medical, military, and satellite equipment. He authored, Electronic Instrument Design: Architecting for the Life Cycle, published by Oxford University Press and is currently working on three other books. He is Editor-In-Chief of the IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement magazine, writes the Tried and True column, and is an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer. He co-founded Stimsoft, a medical products company, which sold in 2003 and now consults in product development. He has published widely in engineering journals and has several patents.

CEU Credits:

THIS COURSE WILL BE ELIGIBLE FOR CEU-CREDITS. Boris has discussed this with Celeste M. Torres, CEU Administrator at IEEE Educational Activities, and is in the process of filing an application. The course will be 2 x 4 hours, on two consecutive Saturdays. Each hour counts as 0.1 CEU (CEU = Continuing Education Units). Also, 0.1 CEU = 1 PDH (Professional Development Hour). The CEU is a currency that measures a person's participation in a formal, non-credit continuing education program, such as a workshop, seminar, tutorial, or self-study course. IEEE is an Authorized CEU Provider through the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET). As defined by IACET, one CEU is equal to ten contact hours of instruction in a continuing education activity. Any activity less than one hour in duration is not eligible for CEUs. Currently, thirty states require Professional Development Hours to maintain P.E. licensure, encouraging engineers to seek CEUs for their participation in Continuing Education programs. Evidence of participation in these courses also helps engineers meet company training requirements.

The Section is expected to cover the cost ($35.00) for the course, and each interested participant who requests CEUs will have to cover the cost of $15.00 for his/her individual certificate.

Potential applicants to the course and CEUs need to register before Dec 22, 2007 by sending an email to Boris at bgramat@jhmi.edu.

Directions to HEM:

The Historical Electronics Museum (HEM) is located near BWI airport. The address for the HEM is:

Historical Electronics Museum

1745 W. Nursery Road, Linthicum, MD 21090

410-765-0230

The directions for the HEM are as follows:

From Baltimore:
Route 295 South (Baltimore Washington Parkway)
Take West Nursery Road exit, turn left at light and go through four stoplights.
Museum is on the left, next to the Marriott Hotel.

From Annapolis:
Route 97 North
Take BWI Airport exit. Right at first light onto Aviation Boulevard.
Turn right at sixth light onto Elkridge Landing Road.
Turn right at second light onto West Nursery Road.
Museum is on the right, next to the Marriott Hotel.

From Washington:
Route 295 North (Baltimore Washington Parkway)
Take West Nursery Road exit, stay right on ramp.
Go through three stoplights.
Museum is on the left, next to the Marriott Hotel.

From Route 195:
Route 170 North (Camp Meade Road) towards Linthicum.
Left at first light onto Elm Road.
Left at light onto Elkridge Landing Road.
Right onto West Nursery Road.
Museum is on the right next to the Marriott Hotel.

From Interstate 95:
Exit onto 195 East to 295 North and follow directions from Washington (above)

8. Continuing EE Education

We are re-running this request for interest in a continuing education program. This program will be in the format of seminars focused on a particular topic of interest. The seminars may run either during the week after work hours or possibly on Saturday. The idea for the program is described below.

Name of project: Continuing EE Education (“CEEE”)

Goal: A section-level program aimed at:

Updating the IEEE members on new developments in the EE field.

Familiarizing engineers with basic new tools, products and techniques as well as giving them the initial knowledge and skills to use them.

Inviting representatives from different vendors to present leading novel products.

Giving tutorials in new areas.

Helping IEEE fellow members become more competitive, especially in times of uncertain jobs, off-shoring and salary stagnation.

Facilitating networking.

Broadening the horizon of each IEEE member.

Fostering collaboration between members of different societies as well as generation of new ideas (“cross-pollination” element).

The program should be open to all IEEE members, including students. It is meant to be a cross-societies initiative, i.e. should not be limited to narrow topics serving the interests of a single chapter only. Emphasis should be placed on meeting with experienced experts from different fields. Critical comparisons between different solutions of EE problems are expected to be made, and trends should be discussed.

Potential topics of interest could include, but are not limited to:

Software tools:

Programming languages

Compilers

Real-Time Operating systems

Debuggers

Emulators

Hardware tools:

Novel electronic components

Single-Board Computers (SBC)

Embedded solutions

FPGAs

Printed circuit board design (schematics capture, layout)

Circuit simulation (PSPICE)

Portable devices

Signal and image processing (examples, tools, help)

Wireless devices:

Theory

Standards

Available OEM products

Trends

Internet-based methods and devices:

Standards

Available tools

Web Page Design

Contemporary design tools (like AutoCad and Solid Works)

Reliability and Compliance issues

We plan to invite qualified speakers from academia, industry and governmental institutions. The speakers will be professionals who can give first-hand information and share front-line experience on the technology, methods and tools being presented.

We plan to organize 2-4 meetings annually. Each meeting is planned to last for 2 hours or more. We could meet on weekdays, or on Saturdays.

Please send us your suggestions and preferences regarding topics, time and place of meetings, the name/acronym of the program etc.

Boris Gramatikov

Chair,

Baltimore Section

Bgramat@jhmi.edu