Software vulnerabilities due to memory management errors are among the easiest to exploit. To prevent an attacker from injecting its own arbitrary code (shellcode), modern systems commonly enforce a Data Execution Prevention (DEP), often implemented as segment permissions (Write xor Execute – W^E). Yet, Code-Reuse Attacks have emerged to circumvent the DEP protections. Thanks to...

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This thesis is part of the activities of the Digital Instrumentation Department (DIN) in Non-Destructive Testing (NDT), and aims to design a new, fast and advanced 3D ultrasound imaging method using matrix arrays. The aim will be to produce three-dimensional ultrasound images of the internal volume of a structure that may contain defects (e.g. cracks),...

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High throughput screening, which has been used for many years in the pharmaceutical field, is emerging as an effective method for accelerating materials discovery and as a new tool for elucidating composition-structure-functional property relationships. It is based on the rapid combinatorial synthesis of a large number of samples of different compositions, combined with rapid and...

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Providing assurances that autonomous systems will operate in a safe and secure manner is a prerequisite for their deployment in mission-critical and safety-critical application domains. Typically, assurances are provided in the form of assurance cases, which are auditable and reasoned arguments that a high-level claim (usually concerning safety or other critical properties) is satisfied given...

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With a strong context of regulation of AI at the European scale, several requirements have been proposed for the quot;cybersecurity of AIquot; and more particularly to increase the security of complex modern AI systems. Indeed, we are experience an impressive development of large models (so-called “Foundation” models) that are deployed at large-scale to be adapted...

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Antenna radiation control in terms of shape and polarization is a key element for future communication systems. Directive compact antennas offer new opportunities for wireless applications in terms of spatial selectivity and filtering. This leads to a reduction in electromagnetic pollution by mitigating interferences with other communication systems and reducing battery consumption in compact smart...

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In light of the growing demand for transmission capacity in communication networks, it is essential to explore innovative techniques that enhance spectral efficiency while maintaining the reliability and security of transmission links. This project proposes a comprehensive theoretical modeling of Faster-Than-Nyquist (FTN) systems, accompanied by simulations and numerical analyses to evaluate their performance in various...

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With the rapid evolution of technologies and the growing challenges of miniaturization and resource management, power converters are facing ever more stringent performance requirements. To meet these needs, the use of wide-bandgap semiconductors such as SiC (silicon carbide) and GaN (gallium nitride) is becoming increasingly common. These materials significantly increase the switching speed of converters,...

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The cybersecurity of our infrastructures is at the very heart in the digital transition on-going, and security must be ensured throughout the entire chain. At the root of trust lies the hardware, integrated circuits providing essential functions for the integrity, confidentiality and availability of processed information. But hardware is vulnerable to physical attacks, and defence...

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Semantic communications is an emerging and transformative research area, where the focus shifts from transmitting raw data to conveying meaningful information. While initial models and design solutions have laid foundational principles, they often rest on strong assumptions regarding the extraction, representation, and interpretation of semantic content. The advent of 6G networks introduces new challenges, particularly...

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In order to increase the power of electronic systems, a common approach is to parallelize components within modules. However, this parallelization is complicated by the dispersion of transistor parameters, both initial and post-aging. Fast switching of Wide Bandgap (WBG) semiconductors components often requires slowdowns to avoid over-oscillation and destruction. An intelligent driving scheme, including adjusted...

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The first worldwide deployment of a blockchain dates back to 2010 with Bitcoin, which introduced a completely digital monetary system and a crypto-currency, bitcoin. Within Bitcoin, all transactions are publicly accessible and traceable, which should generate trust between stakeholders. However, the traceability of transactions, and ultimately of the crypto-currency, does not imply the traceability of...

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The blockchain is based on a consensus protocol, the aim of which is to share and replicate ordered data between peers in a distributed network. The protocol stack, embedded in the network's peer devices, relies on a proof mechanism that certifies the timestamp and ensures a degree of fairness within the network. The consensus protocols...

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6G will integrate 5G and AI to merge physical, cyber and sapience spaces, transforming network interactions, revolutioning AI-driven decision-making and automation and radically changing the overall system’s perception of the foundational concepts of information and reliability. This requires the native-by-design integration of AI and communication system. Current 5G technologies cannot support such change. 5G limits...

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The rise of machine learning models for processing sensor data has led to the development of Edge-AI, which aims to perform these data processing tasks locally, directly at the sensor level. This approach reduces the amount of data transmitted and eases the load on centralized computing centers, providing a solution to decrease the overall energy...

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Silicon-based spin qubits in CMOS structures stand out for their compatibility with semiconductor technologies and their scalability potential. However, impurities and defects introduced during fabrication lead to noise and instability, which affect their performance. The objective is to characterize devices fabricated at CEA-Leti, from room temperature to cryogenic temperatures, to evaluate their quality and understand...

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Neural Networks (NNs) are inspired by the brain’s computational and communication processes to efficiently address tasks such as data analytics, real time adaptive signal processing, and biological system modelling. However, hardware limitations are currently the primary obstacle to widespread adoption. To address this, a new type of circuit architecture called quot;neuromorphic circuitquot; is emerging. These...

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Through the Carnot SpectroRF exploratory project, CEA Leti is involved in radio-frequency sensor systems based on atomic optical spectroscopy. The idea behind the development is that these systems offer exceptional detection performance. These include high sensitivity´ (~nV.cm-1.Hz-0.5), very wide bandwidths (MHz- THz), wavelength-independent size (~cm) and no coupling with the environment. These advantages surpass the...

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Sepsis is among the main cause of death across the world, and is caused by severe bacterial infection but can also originate from viruses, fungi or even parasites. In order to drastically increase survival rates, a rapid diagnostic and appropriate treatment is of paramount importance. The commercially available tools for nucleic acid detection by qPCR...

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The culture of adherent cells on microcarriers (MCs) is a promising approach for various bioproduction applications, such as drug manufacturing and delivery, regenerative medicine, and tracking of cellular differentiation. However, the analysis of single cell morphology and behavior without affecting the substrate integrity remains a major challenge. Lens-free holographic imaging is emerging as a promising...

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Side-channel attacks, such as analyzing a processorapos;s electrical consumption or electromagnetic emissions, allow for the recovery of sensitive information, including cryptographic keys. These attacks are particularly effective and pose a serious threat to the security of embedded systems. This thesis focuses on combining low-impact software countermeasures to strengthen security against side-channel attacks, an idea that...

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The Bureau international des poids et mesures (BIPM) is developing a new transfer instrument named the quot;Extension of the International Reference Systemquot; (ESIR), based on the Triple-to-Double Coincidence Ratio (TDCR) method of liquid scintillation counting with a specific instrumentation comprising three photomultipliers. The aim is to enable international comparisons of pure beta radionuclides, certain radionuclides...

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In the context of industrial digitalization and real-time monitoring, accessing 3D fields (velocity, viscosity, turbulence, concentration, etc.) in real time can be crucial, as local sensor networks are sometimes insufficient to provide a comprehensive view of the systemapos;s dynamics. This PhD project aims to investigate a methodology for the real-time reconstruction of fields within an...

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This thesis will explore the use of implanted brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) for motor rehabilitation in stroke patients. The project leverages Clinatecapos;s WIMAGINE technology, which measures brain activity through electrocorticography (ECoG) to accurately decode patientsapos; motor intentions. Integrating this technology into a rehabilitation protocol is expected to enhance residual motor abilities through neural plasticity. In this...

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This PhD proposal will develop a container orchestration scheme for real-time applications, deployed on a continuum of heterogeneous computing resources in the embedded-edge-cloud space, with a specific focus on applications that require real-time guarantees. Applications, from autonomous vehicles, environment monitoring, or industrial automation, applications traditionally require high predictability with real-time guarantees, but they increasingly ask...

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The rapid evolution of new technologies, such as autonomous cars and renewable energy, requires the development of increasingly complex structures. To achieve this, many surface patterning techniques are available today. In microelectronics, optical lithography is the standard method for creating micro- and nanometric patterns. However, it remains limited in terms of the diversity of shapes...

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Context : As semiconductor technology scales down to 10 nm and below, Back End of Line (BEOL) scaling presents challenges, particularly in maintaining the integrity of copper interconnects, where line/via resistance and copper fill are key issues. Copper (Cu) interconnections must resist diffusion and delamination while maintaining optimal conductivity. In the traditional Cu damascene process,...

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In most parasitic cycles, the free phase passes through an egg stage, which is released by the host into the environment via a complex faecal matrix, which has highly variable and often low egg concentrations. The classical detection method relies on microscopic observation of these eggs, which implies a tedious and time-consuming preparation of the...

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Smart Cut™ is a technology discovered at CEA and now industrially used for the manufacture of advanced substrates for electronics. However, the physical phenomena involved are still the focus of numerous studies at CEA. In Smart Cut™, a thin material layer is transferred from one wafer to another using a key fracture annealing step upon...

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In recent years, CEA-LETI emerged as a leading force in the development of advanced microelectronic manufacturing processes. A key focus has been on wafer-to-wafer Cu/SiO2 hybrid bonding (HB) process, an emerging technology increasingly employed for producing compact, high performance and multifunctional devices. Before bonding, a crucial surface activation step is necessary to enhance the mechanical...

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The miniaturization of the electronics components involves the development of new processes. Indeed, the 193nm immersion lithography alone does not permit anymore to achieve the dimensional requirements of the most advanced technological nodes (=10nm). Since the last 10 years, multi-patterning techniques have been developed to overcome the i193nm lithography limitations. Herein, we will study the...

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Quantum well heterostructures of HgTe/CdTe are known as topological insulators. They inherit very peculiar electronic properties. One of them is the ability of producing TeraHertz emission from inter-Landau energy level optical transitions. These transitions can be envisioned to lead to coherent optical sources in spectral range where they are basically absent. The PhD Thesis consists...

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Room temperature ferroelectric thin films are the key element of high density, low consumption nonvolatile memories. However, with the further miniaturization of the electronics devices beyond the Moore’s law, conventional ferroelectrics suffer great challenge arising from the critical thickness effect, where the ferroelectricity is unstable if the film thickness is reduced to nanometer or single...

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While developing and introducing new technologies (ex. FDSOI 10nm CMOS), design rules (DRM) are the guidelines used to ensure that a chip design can be reliably fabricated. These rules govern the physical dimensions and spacing of various features used by the designer in the chip layout. They translate both device electrical constraints and manufacturing processes...

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Every year, 20 million people worldwide are diagnosed with cancer, with 9.7 million succumbing to the disease (Kocarnik et al., 2021). Personalized treatment could significantly reduce the number of deaths. This thesis addresses this challenge by proposing the development of organoids derived from patient biopsies to optimize treatments. The bioproduction of encapsulated cells in biopolymers...

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Grayscale lithography process has been used for several years to obtain complex tridimensional structures on semiconductors substrates. This process is particularly adapted for optical and opto-electronics applications. CEA-LETI has developed a strong expertise on I-line (365nm) grayscale lithography, and is now willing to expand its capabilities and explore grayscale process with DUV (248nm and 193nm)...

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Ferroelectric Field Effect Transistors FeFET is a valuable high-density memory component suitable for 3D DRAM. FeFET concept combines oxide semiconductors SCO as canal material and ferroelectric metal oxides FE as transistor gate [2, 3]. Atomic layer deposition ALD of SCO and FE materials at ultrathin thickness level (lt;10 nm) and low temperature (lt;300°C) are highly...

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The topic fits into the deployment of silicon technologies at the European level (European chips act), led by CEA-Leti. The focus will be on providing advanced technological building blocks for electrical routing (Back End of Line) of logic and analog devices. The development of increasingly high-performance circuits requires interconnections with more aggressive dimensions. The use...

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Ultrathin HfO2-based materials are regarded as promising candidates for embedded non-volatile memory (eNVM) and logic devices. The CEA-LETI has a leadership position in the field of BEOL-FeRAM memories ultra-low consumption (lt;100fj/bit) at low voltage (lt;1V). In this context, the developments expected in this thesis aim to evaluate the impact of HfO2-based ferroelectric FE and antiferroelectric...

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CEA-Leti has a robust track record in memory technology. This PhD project aims to contribute to the development of HfO2-based ferroelectric devices. One of the major challenges in this field is to stabilize the orthorhombic phase while reducing film thickness and thermal budget. To gain a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms, a novel sample...

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As silicon technologies for microelectronics continue to evolve, processes involved in device manufacturing need to be optimized. More specifically, epitaxy, a crystal growth technique, is being used to fabricate 10 nm technological node FD-SOI (Fully Depleted-Silicon On Insulator) transistors as part of CEA-Letiapos;s NextGen project. Doped and undoped Si and SiGe semiconductor epitaxy is being...

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With the advancement of opto-electronic technology, 3D patterns with sub micrometer dimensions are more and more integrated in the device, especially on imaging and AR/VR systems. To fabricate such 3D structures using standard lithography technique requires numerous process steps: multiple lithography and pattern transfer, which is time and resource consuming. With optical grayscale lithography, such...

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For many industrial applications, the assembly of several structures is one of the key stages in the manufacturing process. However, these steps are generally difficult to carry out, as they lead to significant increases in warpage. Controlling stresses and strains generated by heterostructures is however imperative. We proposes to address this subject using both experimental...

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This PhD will take place at the CEA–LETI, a major European actor in the semiconductor industry, and more precisely, at the Nanocharacterization platform of the CEA–LETI witch offer world-class analytical techniques and state-of-the-art instruments. Our team aims to accompany the industry in the development of new characterization tools and so to meet the metrological needs...

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Infertility is a growing problem in all developed countries. The standard methods for the diagnostic of male infertility examine the concentration, motility and morphological anomalies of individual sperm cells. However, one in five male infertility cases remain unexplained with the standard diagnostic tools. In this thesis, we will explore the possibility to determine the male...

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The context of this PhD is the recent progress of Phase-Change Memory technology in the embedded applications (ePCM). The ultimate scaling of ePCM for sub-18nm nodes poses many challenges not only in fabrication, but also in the physico-chemical characterization of these devices. The aim of the project is to study the 3D chemical segregation/crystallization phenomena...

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Generative AI has the potential to transform various industries. However, current state-of-the-art models like transformers face significant challenges in computational and memory efficiency, especially when deployed on resource-constrained hardware. This PhD research aims to address these limitations by optimizing Mamba networks for hardware-aware applications. Mamba networks offer a promising alternative by reducing the quadratic complexity...

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Computational physics, artificial intelligence and graph analytics are important compute problems which depend on processing sparse matrices of huge dimensions. This PhD thesis focuses on the challenges related to efficiently processing such sparse matrices, by applying a systematic software are hardware approach. Although the processing of sparse matrices has been studied from a purely software...

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In multiple industries, such as metal forming and additive manufacturing, the discrepancy between the desired shape and the shape really obtained is significant, which hinders the development of these manufacturing techniques. This is largely due to the complexity of the thermal and mechanical processes involved, resulting in a high computational simulation time. The aim of...

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This doctoral project focuses on the design of innovative antennas suited for Internet of Things (IoT) applications, addressing major challenges related to size, performance, and integration. The scientific context is based on the growing demand for electrically small and efficient antennas, capable of seamlessly integrating with IoT devices while maintaining high radiation efficiency. The proposed...

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This thesis focuses on the transmission of power and data through metal walls using acoustic waves. Ultimately, this technology will be used to power, read and control systems located in areas enclosed in metal, such as pressure vessels, ship hulls and submarines. Because electromagnetic waves are absorbed by metal, acoustic waves are needed to communicate...

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The design of integrated circuits requires, at the end of the chain, circuit editing and failure analysis tools. One of these tools is the probing of electrical potential levels using an electron beam available in a SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) to determine the electrical signal present in an area of the circuit, which may be...

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X-rays is the most widely used medical imaging modality. It is used to establish diagnostics, monitor the evolution of pathologies, and guide surgical procedures. The objective of this thesis is to study a perovskite type semiconductor material for its use as a direct X-ray sensor. Perovskite-based matrix imagers demonstrate improved spatial resolution and increased signal,...

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Microbolometers currently represent the dominant technology for the realization of uncooled infrared thermal detectors. These detectors are commonly used in the fields of thermography and surveillance. However, the microbolometer market is expected to grow explosively in the coming years, particularly with their integration into automobiles and the proliferation of connected devices. The CEA Leti LI2T,...

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Riceapos;s theorem stating that no method can automatically tell whether a property of a program is true or not has led to the separation of verification tools into two groups: sound tools operating by over-approximation, such as abstract interpretation, are able to automatically prove that certain properties are true, but are sometimes unable to conclude...

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The performance of micro-LEDs (µLEDs) is crucial for micro-displays, a field of expertise at the LITE laboratory within CEA-LETI. However, simulating these components is complex and computationally expensive due to the incoherent nature of light sources and the involved geometries. This limits the ability to effectively explore multi-parameter design spaces. This thesis proposes to develop...

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The proposed thesis focuses on the optimization of multimodal vision transformers (ViT) for panoptic object segmentation, exploring two main directions. The first is to develop a versatile fusion pipeline to integrate multimodal data (RGB, IR, depth, events, point clouds) by leveraging inter-modal alignment relationships. The second is to investigate an approach combining pruning and mixed-precision...

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CHERI (Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions) is a solution for securing the processor against spatial and temporal memory leaks by transforming any pointer into a capability that clearly defines the access limits to the data or instructions addressed. In this thesis, we propose to enrich CHERI and its control-flow integrity capabilities on a RISC-V application...

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Quantum information technologies offers several promises in domains such as computation or secured communications. There is a wide variety of technologies available, including photonic qubits. The latter are robust against decoherence and are particularly interesting for quantum communications applications, even at room temperature. They also offers an alternative to other qubits technologies for quantum computing....

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Products secured by embedded cryptographic mechanisms may be vulnerable to side-channel attacks. Such attacks are based on the observation of some physique quantities measured during the device activity, whose variation may provoke information leakage and lead to a security flaw. Today, such attacks are improved, even in presence of specific countermeasures, by deep learning based...

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Work carried out within CEA-Leti has shown that physical attacks can be a threat to the security mechanisms of SoCs (System on Chips). Indeed, fault injections by electromagnetic disturbance have already led to an escalation of privileges by authenticating with an illegitimate password, or more recently have made it possible to bypass one of the...

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Radar technologies have gained significant interest in recent years, particularly with the emergence of MIMO radars and quot;Imaging Radars 4Dquot;. This new generation of radar offers both opportunities and challenges for the development of perception algorithms. Traditional algorithms such as FFT, CFAR, and DOA are effective for detecting moving targets, but the generated point clouds...

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Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) is a corpus of cryptographic techniques that allow to compute directly over encrypted data. Since its inception around 15 years ago, FHE has been the subject of a lot of research towards more efficiency and better practicality. From a security perspective, however, FHE still raises a number of questions and challenges....

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This research is part of an effort to reduce the energy consumption and carbon footprint of future wireless systems by investigating innovative transmitter (TX) architectures with improved energy efficiency. Objective of the thesis is to elaborate a novel TX architecture for beyond 5G and 6G standards. Efficiency enhancement design techniques such as supply modulation or...

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This thesis focuses on the cybersecurity of embedded systems, particularly the vulnerability of processors and programs to fault injection attacks. These attacks disrupt the normal functioning of systems, allowing attackers to exploit weaknesses to access sensitive information. Although formal methods have been developed to analyze the robustness of systems, they often limit their analyses to...

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The microelectronics industry is making increasing use of hydrophilic direct bonding technology to produce innovative substrates and components. CEA LETIapos;s teams have been leaders in this field for over 20 years, offering scientific and technological studies on the subject. The key role of water at the bonding interface can be newly understood thanks to a...

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The goal of this PhD is to explore the potential of machine learning (ML) tools for simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) applications, while leveraging multipath radio signals between cooperative wireless devices. The idea is to identify characteristic features of the propagation channels observed over multiple radio links, so as to jointly determine the relative positions...

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Photonic irradiation techniques exploit the interactions between a beam of high-energy photons and matter to carry out non-destructive measurements. By inducing photonuclear reactions such as photonic activation, nuclear resonance fluorescence (NRF) and photofission, these irradiation techniques enable deep probing of matter. Combining these different nuclear measurement techniques within a single irradiation platform would enable precise,...

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This thesis addresses the two major challenges facing Europe today in terms of integrating the communication systems of the future. The aim is to design RF integrated circuits using 22nm FDSOI technology in the frequency bands dedicated to 6G, which will not only increase data rates but also reduce the carbon footprint of telecoms networks....

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Context: The vision for future communication networks includes providing highly accurate positioning and localization in both indoor and outdoor environments, alongside communication services (JCAS). With the widespread adoption of radar technologies, the concept of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) has recently been adapted for radiofrequency applications. Initial proof-of-concept demonstrations have been conducted in indoor environments,...

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Our objective is to detect and locate drones entering an urban area to be protected by observing the signals emitted by cellular stations. Studies have shown that it is possible to locate a drone if it is close to the listening system and the cellular station (i.e. the base station). When the situation is more...

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Cryptography plays a fundamental role in securing modern communication systems by ensuring confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity. Public-key cryptography, in particular, has become indispensable for secure data exchange and authentication processes. However, the advent of quantum computing poses an existential threat to many of the traditional public-key cryptographic algorithms, such as RSA, DSA, and ECC, which...

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Optoelectronic devices such as CMOS Image Sensors (CIS) require the realization of 3D structures, convex microlenses, in order to focus photons towards the photodiodes defining the pixels. These optical elements are mandatory for the device efficiency. Their shape and dimension are critical for device performances. In the same way, devices based on diffractive optic and...

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Our ambition for 6G communication is to drastically reduce the Energy in IoT. For that purpose we aim at developing an integrated circuit enabling zero Energy communication. The objective of this PhD is to design this circuit in FD-SOI and operating in the 2.4 GHz. In this PhD, we propose to use a new design...

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In many applications, scene analysis modules such as object detection and recognition, or pose recognition, are required. Deep neural networks are nowadays among the most efficient models to perform a large number of vision tasks, sometimes simultaneously in case of multitask learning. However, it has been shown that they are vulnerable to adversarial attacks: Indeed,...

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