On the performance of improved quadrature spatial modulation

Quadrature spatial modulation (QSM) utilizes the in‐phase and quadrature spatial dimensions to transmit the real and imaginary parts of a single signal symbol, respectively. The improved QSM (IQSM) transmits two signal symbols per channel use through a combination of two antennas for each of the real and imaginary parts. The main contributions of this study can be summarized as follows. First, we derive an upper bound for the error performance of the IQSM. We then design constellation sets that minimize the error performance of the IQSM for several system configurations. Second, we propose a double QSM (DQSM) that transmits the real and imaginary parts of two signal symbols through any available transmit antennas. Finally, we propose a parallel IQSM (PIQSM) that splits the antenna set into equal subsets and performs IQSM within each subset using the same two signal symbols. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed constellations significantly outperform conventional constellations. Additionally, DQSM and PIQSM provide a performance similar to that of IQSM while requiring a smaller number of transmit antennas and outperform IQSM with the same number of transmit antennas.     

Improving security of the Internet of Things via RF fingerprinting based device identification system

Neural Computing and Applications - Security is one of the primary concerns when designing wireless networks. Along detecting user identity, it is also important to detect the devices at the...     

Mechanical characterization and chemical resistances of cured unsaturated polyester resins modified with vinyl ester resins based on recycled poly(ethylene terephthalate)

Unsaturated polyester resin (UP) was prepared from glycolyzed oligomer of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) waste based on diethylene glycol (DEG). New diacrylate and dimethacrylate vinyl ester resins prepared from glycolysis of PET with tetraethylene glycol were blended with UP to study the mechanical characteristics of the cured UP. The vinyl ester resins were used as crosslinking agents for unsaturated polyester resin diluted with styrene, using free‐radical initiator and accelerator. The mechanical properties of the cured UP resins were evaluated. The compressive properties of the cured UP/styrene resins in the presence of different vinyl ester concentrations were evaluated. Increasing the vinyl ester content led to a pronounced improvement in the compression strength. The chemical resistances of the cured resins were evaluated through hot water, solvents, acid, and alkali resistance measurements. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 103: 3175–3182, 2007     

Interference impacts on 60 ghz real-time online video streaming in wireless smart tv platforms

In this paper we provide a method for computing and estimating the impact of interference on real-time online 1080p@30Hz and 1080p@60Hz high-definition video streaming in 60 GHz wireless smart TV platforms. The analysis involves two different interference scenarios: 1) downlink interference from deployed 60 GHz access points to the associated mobile ad-hoc devices, and 2) uplink interference from randomly deployed 60 GHz ad-hoc mobile devices to their associated access points. With these interference scenarios, the interference impact on the quality of main 1080p@30Hz and 1080p@60Hz wireless high-definition video streaming with various simulation settings are measured and estimated in terms of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio.     

Fate of Triton X-100 Applications on Water and Soil Environments: A Review

Triton X-100 applications as surfactant raises concern on water and soil environment due to its non-biodegradability and inhibition effect. This paper aims at reviewing Triton X-100 biodegradability and inhibition literature. It shows Triton X-100 is biodegradable by aerobic and anaerobic municipal wastewater sludge and Vibrio cyclitrophicus-sp-Nov organism. Adsorption and biodegradation are mechanisms of Triton removal. Triton inhibits anaerobic sludge organisms and some single aerobic organisms. Inhibition mechanisms are substrate shortage, physiological membrane-damaging and/or alteration in organism cell membrane. Thus Triton X-100 fate in the environment and its sustainable application can be controlled via proper selection of organism type, Triton concentration, and substrate.     

Antitumor activity and antioxidant role of a novel water-soluble carboxymethyl chitosan-based copolymer

In this study, a natural polymer, chitosan (CS) has been converted through modified procedures to produce a water-soluble nontoxic form that has been evaluated as a novel potential antitumor drug. CS was carboxymethylated and then further modified in mild aqueous medium via graft copolymerization using a new simple and reproducible method. The synthesized new derivative of carboxymethylated CS (DCMC) was fully characterized by numerous techniques including Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), elemental analyzer (EA), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), two-dimensional wide-angle X-ray scattering (2D-WAXS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The anticancer activity of the DCMC was investigated using mice bearing Ehrlich ascites tumor cells (EAC) at different doses dissolved in isotonic saline. It has been found that treatment with DCMC significantly inhibited tumor growth in a dose-dependent manner. To better understand the molecular mechanism explaining the DCMC effect on cancer cells, we tested the response of EAC cells in vivo to DCMC using flow cytometry cell cycle analysis. The cell cycle analysis revealed a G?/M phase accumulation as well as a significant increase in sub-G? phase cells after treatment with DCMC. This indicates an induction of apoptosis in EAC cells associated with a highly significant decrease in tumor volume. In general, our results indicated that the DCMC is a regulator of tumor cell growth and differentiation not only by causing G?/M cell cycle arrest but also inducing their apoptotic death. Moreover, the estimated hematological profile such as hemoglobin, RBCs, as well as WBCs counts revealed normal levels in mice treated with DCMC, indicating the possibility of using the DCMC in cancer chemotherapy without causing anemia like other drugs. Biochemical assays also revealed that treatment with DCMC has led to an augmentation of the antioxidant defense system without affecting lipid peroxidation in EAC-bearing mice.     

QoS Aware Multicast Routing Protocol for Video Transmission in Smart Cities

In recent years, Software Defined Networking (SDN) has become an important candidate for communication infrastructure in smart cities. It produces a drastic increase in the need for delivery of video services that are of high resolution, multiview, and large-scale in nature. However, this entity gets easily influenced by heterogeneous behaviour of the user's wireless link features that might reduce the quality of video stream for few or all clients. The development of SDN allows the emergence of new possibilities for complicated controlling of video conferences. Besides, multicast routing protocol with multiple constraints in terms of Quality of Service (QoS) is a Nondeterministic Polynomial time (NP) hard problem which can be solved only with the help of metaheuristic optimization algorithms. With this motivation, the current research paper presents a new Improved Black Widow Optimization with Levy Distribution model (IBWO-LD)-based multicast routing protocol for smart cities. The presented IBWO-LD model aims at minimizing the energy consumption and bandwidth utilization while at the same time accomplish improved quality of video streams that the clients receive. Besides, a priority-based scheduling and classifier model is designed to allocate multicast request based on the type of applications and deadline constraints. A detailed experimental analysis was carried out to ensure the outcomes improved under different aspects. The results from comprehensive comparative analysis highlighted the superiority of the proposed IBWO-LD model over other compared methods.     

Dynamic Modeling and Inverse Optimal PID with Feed-forward Control in <Emphasis Type="Italic">H</Emphasis><Subscript>∞</Subscript> Framework for a Novel 3D Pantograph Manipulator

This paper affords dynamic modeling and control for a new 3D pantograph manipulator. The new manipulator possesses pure decoupled translational motions and it is characterized by large workspace to size ratio, high speed, rigidity, and accuracy. Euler-Lagrange first type method is used to get the dynamic model. However, the resulted dynamic model is too complex to be used in model-based control techniques. Therefore, a simplified nominal plant is proposed. It allows the inverse dynamic solution efficiently. However, an explicit form of the nominal Coriolis and centrifugal matrix cannot be obtained due to the complicated kinematic terms. Considering these dynamic characteristics as well as the required robust trajectory tracking performance of the manipulator, a new controller is proposed. The new controller is called inverse optimal PID with Feed-Forward Control which is designed in H_∞ framework. The new controller has the following merits; robustness, optimality, simple implementation, and efficient execution without the need of explicit forms of dynamic matrices. The extended disturbance in the proposed controller is smaller than that in the inverse optimal PID control (IPID) and contains one type of error contrary to the nonlinear robust motion controller (NRIC). The performance of the proposed controller is compared with those of IPID and NRIC controllers for different trajectories and payloads. The dynamic simulation results via co-simulation of MSC-ADAMS® and MATLAB®/Simulink software prove the robustness of the proposed controller against speed/payload variations. The proposed controller is found to have higher performance compared with IPID and NRIC controllers. These results assure the feasibility of the 3D pantograph manipulator with the proposed controller for pure translational tracking applications.     

Testing closed source software: computer forensic tool case study

Computer forensic techniques are important for the prevention, detection, and investigation of electronic crime. Computer forensic investigators need computer forensic tools to produce reliable results that meet legal requirements and are acceptable in the courts. Most of these tools are closed-source, making the software a black-box for testing purposes. This paper illustrates a different black box testing method for experimenting computer forensic tools based on functional scenarios.