Admission and GoS control in a multiservice WCDMA system

We consider in this paper a WCDMA system with two types of calls: real time (RT) calls that have dedicated resources, and data non-real time (NRT) calls that are treated using a time-shared channel (such as the HDR or the HSDPA). We consider reservation of some resources for the NRT traffic and assume that this traffic is further assigned the resources left over from the RT traffic. The grade of service (GoS) of RT traffic is also controlled in order to allow for handling more RT calls during congestion periods, at the cost of degraded transmission rates. We consider both the downlink (with and without macrodiversity) as well as the uplink and study the blocking probabilities of RT traffic as well as the expected sojourn time of NRT traffic. We further study the conditional expected sojourn time of a data connection given its size and the state of the system. Finally, we extend our framework to handle handover calls.     

Linear and nonlinear optical absorption in copper nanocluster-glass composites

Copper nanoclusters have been formed in fused silica glasses under 100 keV and 200 keV Cu⁺ ion implantations. UV–Vis spectroscopy measurements have revealed prominent linear absorption bands at characteristic surface plasmon resonance (SPR) frequency signifying the appreciable formation of copper colloids in glass matrices even without thermal treatments. Ion-induced colloid formation in glasses without thermal treatments is probably the first time observation in the present study. Subsequent annealing of the implanted samples has resulted in the further enhancement of the absorption bands. Formation of copper nanoclusters without thermal annealing can be attributed to the relatively high mobility of copper atoms even at ambient conditions. The transmittance measurements made by Z-scan technique have revealed saturable absorption signifying the nonlinear optical responses of the metal nanocluster-glass composites.     

High performance SOFC/GT combined power generation system with CO2 recovery by oxygen combustion method

The authors newly propose and investigate two types of carbon dioxide recovering SOFC/GT combined power generation systems in which a gas turbine with carbon dioxide recycle or water vapor injection is adopted as the bottoming cycle. In these systems, fuel gas is first introduced to a SOFC, and its exhaust fuel gas is afterburned by pure oxygen. Carbon dioxide or water vapor is also injected into the combustor to reduce the combustion gas temperature. The obtained combustion gas, which is composed of only carbon dioxide and water vapor, is introduced to a gas turbine in the bottoming cycle. The exhaust gas of the gas turbine preheats the injection gas, and then, carbon dioxide is separated by only cooling and water condensation. It is made clear that the overall efficiency of the system with carbon dioxide recycle reaches 63.87% (HHV) or 70.88% (LHV), and that of the system with water vapor injection reaches 65.00% (HHV) or 72.13% (LHV). These values are sufficiently high, indicating that the proposed systems are worth further research and development.     

A simplified CAD of millimeter-wave diplexer with E-plane T-junction and all-metal insert filters

An equivalent circuit theory design of a class of rectangular waveguide E-plane T-junction diplexer with E-plane all-metal insert filters is presented. Element values of equivalent circuit models of E-plane T-junction proposed in [1] are computed and approximated. The parameters of the filters designed by [2] are also given. By use of the network combining technique, the scattering matrix of the diplexer is obtained and optimized according to the diplexer specification with a novel objective function. The experimental results show a fairly good agreement with the computed results.     

Structural and gas-sensing properties of nanometre tin oxide prepared by PECVD

A low-temperature plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) technique has been employed to produce ultrafine tin oxide powders. The structural features and phase transition of this material have been characterized using differential thermal analysis (DTA), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), X-ray diffraction, infrared spectroscopy (IR) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The oxygen absorption behaviour and gassensing properties have been investigated by electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and electrical measurements. Thick film gas sensors made from such ultrafine SnO₂ powders yield better sensitivities than those of normal undoped SnO₂ gas sensors. A gas-sensing reaction mechanism is also proposed.     

Selective growth of CNT by using triode-type radio frequency plasma chemical vapor deposition method

Triode-type radio frequency plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (RF-PECVD) equipment has been used in order to grow well-aligned carbon nanotubes on Si and glass substrates below 600 °C. This CVD equipment allows the growth of a well-aligned carbon nanotube with an inside and an outside diameter of 7 and 17 nm, respectively. The selective growth of the CNT was demonstrated.     

Linear periodically time-varying discrete-time systems: Aliasing and LTI approximations

Linear periodically time-varying (LPTV) systems are abundant in control and signal processing; examples include multirate sampled-data control systems and multirate filter-bank systems. In this paper, several ways are proposed to quantify aliasing effect in discrete-time LPTV systems; these are associated with optimal time-invariant approximations of LPTV systems using operator norms.     

Parameter identification for nonlinear systems: Guaranteed confidence regions through LSCR

In this paper we consider the problem of constructing confidence regions for the parameters of nonlinear dynamical systems. The proposed method uses higher order statistics and extends the LSCR (leave-out sign-dominant correlation regions) algorithm for linear systems introduced in Campi and Weyer [2005, Guaranteed non-asymptotic confidence regions in system identification. Automatica 41(10), 1751-1764. Extended version available at 〈http://www.ing.unibs.it/∼campi〉]. The confidence regions contain the true parameter value with a guaranteed probability for any finite number of data points. Moreover, the confidence regions shrink around the true parameter value as the number of data points increases. The usefulness of the proposed approach is illustrated on some simple examples.     

Optical pattern recognition using two-channel joint transform correlation

A new joint transform correlation (JTC) technique, named two-channel JTC (TJTC), is proposed in this paper for optical pattern recognition applications. The TJTC technique independently evaluates the autocorrelation and crosscorrelation values of the reference and the target images and employs a modified decision algorithm. In addition, optical threshold operation and fringe-adjusted filter are incorporated in the proposed technique to enhance the correlation output and to improve the discrimination performance. The proposed technique shows better recognition performance compared to existing JTC techniques. Computer simulation are presented to investigate the salient features of the proposed TJTC technique with noise-free as well as noisy input scenes. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Texture crack detection

Automatic visual inspection has become one of the active research issues in machine vision technology in the past decades. Most of the methodologies developed address the problems of defect detection on a nontextured or regularly textured surface. However, problems in detecting defects on a randomly textured surface, especially cracks, have not received much attention. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm that uses a Wigner model to identify cracks in complex textural backgrounds, regardless of whether the inspected surface is randomly or regularly textured. We also investigate the windowing characteristics of the Wigner distribution and their impact on crack detection. Some of the Brodatz' natural texture images have been used for evaluating the performance of the algorithm. Promising results are obtained and presented in this paper.