The case for SIMO random access in multi-antenna multi-hop wireless networks

In this paper, we demonstrate that multiple concurrent asynchronous and uncoordinated Single-Input Multiple-Output (SIMO) transmissions can successfully take place even though the respective receivers do not explicitly null out interfering signals. Hence, we propose simple modifications to the widely deployed IEEE 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) to enable multiple non-spatially-isolated SIMO sender-receiver pairs to share the medium. Namely, we propose to increase the physical carrier sense threshold, disable virtual carrier sensing, and enable message-in-message packet detection. We use experiments to show that while increasing the peak transmission rate, spatial multiplexing schemes such as those employed by the IEEE 802.11n are highly non-robust to asynchronous and uncoordinated interferers. In contrast, we show that the proposed multi-flow SIMO MAC scheme alleviates the severe unfairness resulting from uncoordinated transmissions in 802.11 multi-hop networks. We analytically compute the optimal carrier sense threshold based on different network performance objectives for a given node density and number of receive antennas.     

PMCNOC: A Pipelining Multi-channel Central Caching Network-on-chip Communication Architecture Design

With the de facto transformation of technology into nano-technology, more and more functional components can be embedded on a single silicon die, thus enabling high degree pipelining operations such as those required for multimedia applications. In recent years, system-on-chip designs have migrated from fairly simple single processor and memory designs to relatively complicated systems with multiple processors, on-chip memories, standard peripherals, and other functional blocks. The communication between these IP blocks is becoming the dominant critical system path and performance bottleneck of system-on-chip designs. Network-on-chip architectures, such as Virtual Channel (2004), Black-bus (2004), Pirate (2004), AEthereal (2005), and VICHAR (2006) architectures, emerged as promising solutions for future system-on-chip communication architecture designs. However, these existing architectures all suffer from certain problems, including high area cost and communication latency and/or low network throughput. This paper presents a novel network-on-chip architecture, Pipelining Multi-channel Central Caching, to address the shortcomings of the existing architectures. By embedding a central cache into every switch of the network, blocked head packets can be removed from the input buffers and stored in the caches temporally, thus alleviating the effect of head-of-line and deadlock problems and achieving higher network throughput and lower communication latency without paying the price of higher area cost. Experimental results showed that the proposed architecture exhibits both hardware simplicity and system performance improvement compared to the existing network-on-chip architectures.     

CFD simulations of hydrodynamic characteristics in a gas–liquid vertical upward slug flow

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are conducted using the volume-of-fluid (VOF) method to investigate the hydrodynamic characteristics of slug flow and the mechanism of slug flow induced CO₂ corrosion. The hydrodynamic characteristics are significantly affected by the viscous, interfacial, and inertial forces. In inertia dominated flows, the velocity of fully developed falling liquid film is increased with increased Taylor bubble rising velocity. The developing falling liquid film is formed at about the length of 0.5 diameter from the Taylor bubble nose, the fully developed falling liquid film is reached at about the length of 1.5–2.1 diameter from the Taylor bubble nose. The average mass transfer coefficient in the falling liquid film is always higher than that in the Taylor bubble wake zone. The iron ion near wall mass transfer coefficient is higher than that of hydrogen ion. The wall shear stress is increased with increased Taylor bubble rising velocity in fully developed falling liquid film zone, and the wall shear stress has a large fluctuation due to the chaotic and turbulent vortexes in Taylor bubble wake zone. The formation and the damage mechanism of the corrosion product scale are proposed for the gas–liquid two-phase vertical upward slug flow induced CO₂ corrosion. It is found that the wall shear stress of upward gas–liquid slug flow is alternate with high frequency, which is the key factor resulting in the corrosion product scale fatigue cracking. The CFD simulation results are in satisfactory agreement with previous experimental data and models available in literature.