A New Approach for Built‐in Self‐Test of 4.5 to 5.5 GHz Low‐Noise Amplifiers

This paper presents a low‐cost RF parameter estimation technique using a new RF built‐in self‐test (BIST) circuit and efficient DC measurement for 4.5 to 5.5 GHz low noise amplifiers (LNAs). The BIST circuit measures gain, noise figure, input impedance, and input return loss for an LNA. The BIST circuit is designed using 0.18 μm SiGe technology. The test technique utilizes input impedance matching and output DC voltage measurements. The technique is simple and inexpensive.     

Application of condition-based HRA method for a manual actuation of the safety features in a nuclear power Plant

A practical approach to develop a more realistic fault-tree model with a consideration of various conditions endured by a human operator is proposed. In safety-critical systems, the generation failure of an actuation signal is caused by the concurrent failures of the automated systems and an operator action. These two sources of safety signals are complicatedly correlated. The failures of sensors or automated systems will cause a lack of necessary information for a human operator and result in error-forcing contexts such as the loss of corresponding alarms and indications. It is well known that the error-forcing contexts largely affect the operator's performance. An automated system which consists of multiple processing channels and complex components is also affected by the availability of the sensors. This paper proposes a condition-based human reliability assessment (CBHRA) method in order to address these complicated conditions in a practical way. We apply the CBHRA method to the manual actuation of the safety features such as a reactor trip and auxiliary feedwater actuation in Korean Standard Nuclear Power Plants. Even the human error probability of each given condition is simply assumed, the application results prove that the CBHRA effectively accommodates the complicated error-forcing contexts into the fault trees.     

Development of the Base Station Controller and Manager in the CDMA Mobile System

The base station (BS) in the CDMA Mobile System (CMS) connects calls through the radio interface and is designed to provide mobile subscribers with high quality service in spite of mobile subscribers’ motions. The BS consists of multiple base station transceiver subsystems (BTSs), a base station controller (BSC) and a base station manager (BSM). This paper is concerned with the BSC and the BSM. The BSC is located between the BTSs and the mobile switching center (MSC) connected with the public network, and is responsible for controlling mobile calls from and to mobile subscribers via the BTSs. The BSM provides operator-interfaces per the BS and takes responsibility of operation and maintenance (OAM) of the BS. Design of the BSC is based on two module types: functional module and unit module. The functional module is used to support new services easily and the unit module to increase the system capacity economically. Both modular types are easily achieved by inserting the corresponding modules to the system. Particularly, in order to efficiently support the soft handover which is one of CDMA superior advantages, the BSC adopts a large high-speed packet switch connecting up to 512 BTSs, and thus mobile subscribers can be provided with soft handover in high probability. The BSM is based on a commercial workstation to support OAM functions efficiently and guarantee high reliability of the functions. The BSM uses graphical user interface (GUI) for efficient OAM functions of the BS.     

Analysis of color symbology from the perspective of cultural semiotics focused on Korean costume colors according to the cultural changes

The purpose of this study was to analyze the symbolization of colors as cultural codes, based on costume colors. In order to study the significance of colors in cultural changes, we carried out a quantitative analysis and interpreted it from the perspective of cultural semiotics. The range of this study was focused on Korean costume colors, over diverse diachronic stages of Korean culture. For this study 1535 color samples were collected, measured with a spectrophotometer, and analyzed quantitatively according their diachronic stages of origin. As a result, red, blue, and yellow were found to be the most frequently used colors during the Chosun Dynasty, a period based on Confucianism. These colors acted as cultural codes with cultural significance. During the Modern times pink, light blue, and black increased in frequency and represented the reception of western culture, the changing sex role of women in society, and utilitarianism. In these days, neutral colors and grayish tones of all colors are the most significant colors of high frequency. The use of such colors is closely related to industrialization, mechanization, functionalism, and the changes of women's sex roles in the societies. They are used as cultural codes, especially to emphasize a rational and masculine image rather than a feminine image. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 32, 71–79, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.20290     

New fatty acid derivatives from <Emphasis Type="Italic">Homaxinella</Emphasis> sp., a marine sponge

Fractionation of the MeOH extract of Homaxinella sp., a marine sponge, led to the isolation of a sodium salt of a new brominated FA (1), two new MG (2 and 4), and a new lysoPC (6). The geometry of the double bonds in 1 and 2 was defined by comparison of the NMR chemical shifts of the allylic carbons, nuclear Overhauser effect spectroscopy correlations of the allylic protons, and coupling constants of the vinylic protons with those reported. Evidence mainly from NMR and MS analyses established the planar structures of the compounds. Compounds 1, 2, 4, and 6 were evaluated for cytotoxicity against a panel of five human solid tumor cell lines. Only compound 1 showed moderate activity.     

A resource allocation policy for delay minimization in fetching capacitated feeds

As social media services such as Twitter and Facebook are gaining popularity, the amount of information published from those services is explosively growing. Most of them use feeds to facilitate distribution of a huge volume of content they publish. In this context, many users subscribe to feeds to acquire up-to-date information through feed aggregation services, and recent real-time search engines also increasingly utilize feeds to promptly find recent web content when it is produced. Accordingly, it is necessary for such services to effectively fetch feeds for minimizing fetching delay, while at the same time maximizing the number of fetched entries. Fetching delay is a time lag between entry publication and retrieval, which is primarily incurred by finiteness of fetching resources. In this paper, we consider a polling-based approach among the methods applicable to fetching feeds, which bases on a specific schedule for visiting feeds. While the existing polling-based approaches have focused on the allocation of fetching resources to feeds in order to either reduce the fetching delay or increase the number of fetched entries, we propose a resource allocation policy that can optimize both objectives. Extensive experiments have been carried out to evaluate the proposed model, in comparison with the existing alternative methods.     

Similarity assessment of design behavior data

Understanding the cognitive aspects of design behavior is important in understanding the nature of design ability, and various studies are being conducted to understand the underlying cognitive aspects of design abilities and to develop methods to enhance them. While simple visualization supports in graphical forms are helpful in finding characteristics in protocol analysis, similarity assessment of the protocol data of various designers and various design tasks and situations will also help to understand designers and design problem characteristics. In this paper, we propose similarity assessment methods of design behavior data as support tools for understanding and analysis of the nature of design ability.