Effect of annealing on Zn1−xCoxO thin films prepared by electrodeposition

Polycrystalline thin films of Zn_1−xCo_xO with different cobalt (Co) content were grown on indium tin oxide (ITO) substrates by cathodic electrodeposition technique and subsequently annealed in air at 400 °C. The effect of annealing in their structural, optical and chemical properties has been characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Raman scattering and optical spectroscopy. Our measurements indicate that moderate annealing increases the crystal quality of the films. The films are highly transparent in the visible range and evidence an increase of the band gap and of the intensity of three typical Co absorption bands in the visible with the amount of Co. Thermal annealing produces an increase of the intensity of the Co²⁺-related absorption bands revealing that higher amount of Co atoms are occupying Zn sites.     

Configurable FFT Processor Using Dynamically Reconfigurable Resource Arrays

This paper presents results of using a Coarse Grain Reconfigurable Architecture called DRRA (Dynamically Reconfigurable Resource Array) for FFT implementations varying in order and degree of parallelism using radix-2 decimation in time (DIT). The DRRA fabric is extended with memory architecture to be able to deal with data-sets much larger than what can be accommodated in the register files of DRRA. The proposed implementation scheme is generic in terms of the number of FFT point, the size of memory and the size of register file in DRRA. Two implementations (DRRA-1 and DRRA-2) have been synthesized in 65 nm technology and energy/delay numbers measured with post-layout annotated gate level simulations. The results are compared to other Coarse Grain Reconfigurable Architectures (CGRAs), and dedicated FFT processors for 1024 and 2048 point FFT. For 1024 point FFT, in terms of FFT operations per unit energy, DRRA-1 and DRRA-2 outperforms all CGRA by at least 2× and is worse than ASIC by 3.45×. However, in terms of energy-delay product DRRA-2 outperforms CGRAs by at least 1.66× and dedicated FFT processors by at least 10.9×. For 2048-point FFT, DRRA-1 and DRRA-2 are 10× better for energy efficiency and 94.84 better for energy-delay product. However, radix-2 implementation is worse by 9.64× and 255× in terms of energy efficiency and energy-delay product when compared against a radix-2⁴ implementation.

     

Study of GaAsBi MOVPE growth on (1 0 0) GaAs substrate under high Bi flow rate by high resolution X-ray diffraction

GaAsBi alloy was grown on (1 0 0) GaAs substrate by metalorganic vapour phase epitaxy. GaAsBi film was elaborated with V/III ratio of 9.5, trimethyl bismuth molar flow rate of about 3 μmol/min and a growth temperature of 420 °C. The surface morphology of GaAsBi alloy was investigated by means of scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. Results show surface Bi droplets formation. High-resolution X-ray diffraction (HRXRD) curves present more diffraction peaks other than that of GaAs substrate. Detailed HRXRD characterization shows that diffraction peaks splitting do not represent a crystallographic tilting with respect to GaAs substrate. Diffraction patterns also show a remarkable stability of the alloy against thermal annealing.     

Tracking biological cells in time-lapse microscopy: an adaptive technique combining motion and topological features

This paper presents a vision-based method for automatic tracking of biological cells in time-lapse microscopy by combining the motion features with the topological features of the cells. The automation of tracking frequently faces problems of segmentation error and of finding correct cell correspondence in consecutive frames, since the cells are of varying size and shape, and may have uneven movement; these problems become more acute when the cell population is very high. To reduce the segmentation error, we introduce a cell-detection method based on h-maxima transformation, followed by the fitting of an ellipse for the nucleus shape. To find the correct correspondence between the detected cells, the topological features, namely, color compatibility, area overlap and deformation are combined with the motion features of skewness and displacement. This reduces the ambiguity of matching and constructs accurately the trajectories of the cell proliferation. Finally, a template-matching-based backward tracking procedure is employed to recover any break in a cell trajectory that may occur due to the segmentation errors or the presence of a mitosis. The tracking procedure is tested using a number of different cell sequences with nonuniform illumination, or uneven cell motion, and is shown to provide high accuracy both in the detection and the tracking of the cells.     

Steady-state analysis of quantized distributed incremental LMS algorithm without Gaussian restriction

In this paper, we analyze the steady-state performance of the distributed incremental least mean-square (DILMS) algorithm when it is implemented in finite-precision arithmetic. Our analysis in this paper does not consider any distribution of input data. We first formulate the update equation for quantized DILMS algorithm, and then we use a spatial-temporal energy conservation argument to derive theoretical expressions that evaluate the steady-state performance of individual nodes in the network. We consider mean-square error, excess mean-square error, and mean-square deviation as the performance criteria. Simulation results are generated by using two types of signals, Gaussian and non-Gaussian distributed signals. As the simulation results show, there is a good match between the theory and simulation.     

Average and randomized communication complexity

The communication complexity of a two-variable function f(x,y) is the number of information bits two communicators need to exchange to compute f when, initially, each knows only one of the variables. There are several communication-complexity measures corresponding to whether (1) the worst case or average number of bits is considered, (2) computation errors are allowed and (3) randomization is allowed. Tight bounds are provided for the typical behavior of all bounded-error communication-complexity measures of Boolean functions. In the present work, the authors formally define the deterministic model. They describe randomized protocols and compare them to deterministic ones. They both survey previous work and describe original results     

Dynamic provisioning of low-speed unicast/multicast traffic demands in mesh-based WDM optical networks

This paper addresses the problem of dynamically provisioning both low-speed unicast and multicast connection requests in mesh-based wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks. Several routing/provisioning schemes to dynamically provision both unicast and multicast connection requests are presented. In addition, a constraint-based grooming strategy is devised to utilize the overall network resources as efficiently as possible. Based on this strategy, several different sequential multicast grooming heuristics are first presented. Then, we devise a hybrid grooming approach and combine it with sequential approaches to achieve a grooming scheme that is biased toward serving multicast traffic demands in comparison with all other sequential grooming approaches. To achieve our objective, we decompose the problem into four subproblems: 1) routing problem; 2) light-tree-based logical-topology-design problem; 3) provisioning problem; and 4) traffic-grooming problem. The simulation results of the proposed schemes are compared with each other and with those of conventional nongrooming approaches. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first detailed paper to address and examine the problem of grooming dynamic multicast traffic demands.     

Optimal sensor placement for source localization based on RSSD

Wireless Networks - Source localization based on the received signal strength (RSS) has received great interest due to its low cost and simple implementation. In this paper we consider the source...     

Filter bank SCFDMA: an efficient uplink strategy for future communication systems

This paper develops a generalized system model for the precoded multicarrier communication system, using basic multirate building blocks. Mathematical analysis of the proposed model is carried out, and the results are utilized in developing an efficient uplink wireless communication standard filter bank single carrier frequency division multiple access. The proposed system combines the low peak to average power ratio (PAPR) advantage of a single carrier communication system with the reduced out of band emission (OBE) of filter bank multicarrier (FBMC) scheme. The sensitivity of the proposed system to carrier frequency offset (CFO) is analyzed, and the results are utilized in developing a CFO compensation scheme with reduced complexity. A Nyquist filter design approach, which strikes a balance between OBE and tail size, is developed and is incorporated into the proposed system to enhance the OBE and PAPR characteristics. The instantaneous power of the proposed system is theoretically analyzed using characteristic function based approach, and the effectiveness of modifications is substantiated. A detailed simulation study is carried out to validate the performance of the proposals.