Throughput and delay limits of chirp spread spectrum‐based IEEE 802.15.4a

The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is designed to provide a low‐power, low data rate protocol offering a high reliability. As an amendment to this standard, IEEE 802.15.4a introduces new options for physical layer to enable precision ranging. In this work, we analyzed the theoretical throughput and delay bounds of the unslotted version of chirp spread spectrum PHY‐based 802.15.4a. The formulae for transmission between one sender and one receiver for an ideal channel with no transmission errors are given. The throughput and delay bounds are derived for different frequency bands and data rates. Additionally, to measure spectral utilization, we measured the bandwidth efficiency for both the standards. We also compared our results with IEEE 802.15.4. The comparative analysis concludes that the performance of 802.15.4a exceeds 802.15.4 in terms of throughput and delay. The analytical results of throughput are verified by computer simulations. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An in vitro model of a retinal prosthesis

Epiretinal prostheses are being developed to bypass a degenerated photoreceptor layer and excite surviving ganglion and inner retinal cells. We used custom microfabricated multielectrode arrays with 200-microm-diameter stimulating electrodes and 10-microm-diameter recording electrodes to stimulate and record neural responses in isolated tiger salamander retina. Pharmacological agents were used to isolate direct excitation of ganglion cells from excitation of other inner retinal cells. Strength-duration data suggest that, if amplitude will be used for the coding of brightness or gray level in retinal prostheses, shorter pulses (200 micros) will allow for a smaller region in the area of the electrode to be excited over a larger dynamic range compared with longer pulses (1 ms). Both electrophysiological results and electrostatic finite-element modeling show that electrode-electrode interactions can lead to increased thresholds for sites half way between simultaneously stimulated electrodes (29.4 +/- 6.6 nC) compared with monopolar stimulation (13.3 +/- 1.7 nC, p < 0.02). Presynaptic stimulation of the same ganglion cell with both 200- and 10-microm-diameter electrodes yielded threshold charge densities of 12 +/- 6 and 7.66 +/- 1.30 nC/cm2, respectively, while the required charge was 12.5 +/- 6.2 and 19 +/- 3.3 nC.     

A generalized Navier's approach for solution of clamped moderately-thick cross-ply plates

A novel generalization of Navier's approach to obtain a unique boundary-continuous analytical or strong (differential) form of solution to the hitherto unsolved problem of bending of a moderately-thick rectangular cross-ply clamped plate is presented. The five highly coupled linear second-order partial differential equations with constant coef-ficients, that arise out of the utilization of first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) into the formulation, are solved using boundary-continuous double Fourier series, that satisfy the prescribed C4-type clamped boundary conditions a priori. Convergence characteristics of transverse displacement (deflection) and bending moment have been numerically established. Other numerical results presented include: (i) comparison with the available boundary-discontinuous analytical solutions based on classical lamination theory (CLT), (ii) variation of displacements and moments with the length-to-thickness and length-to-width ratios, and (iii) spatial variation of these response quantities.     

Formal methods applied to high‐performance computing software design: a case study of MPI one‐sided communication‐based locking

There is a growing need to address the complexity of verifying the numerous concurrent protocols employed in the high‐performance computing software. Today's approaches for verification consist of testing detailed implementations of these protocols. Unfortunately, this approach can seldom show the absence of bugs, and often results in serious bugs escaping into the deployed software. An approach called Model Checking has been demonstrated to be eminently helpful in debugging these protocols early in the software life cycle by offering the ability to represent and exhaustively analyze simplified formal protocol models. The effectiveness of model checking has yet to be adequately demonstrated in high‐performance computing. This paper presents a case study of a concurrent protocol that was thought to be sufficiently well tested, but proved to contain two very non‐obvious deadlocks in them. These bugs were automatically detected through model checking. The protocol models in which these bugs were detected were also easy to create. Recent work in our group demonstrates that even this tedium of model creation can be eliminated by employing dynamic source‐code‐level analysis methods. Our case study comes from the important domain of Message Passing Interface (MPI)‐based programming, which is universally employed for simulating and predicting anything from the structural integrity of combustion chambers to the path of hurricanes. We argue that model checking must be taught as well as used widely within HPC, given this and similar success stories. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Comparison of Two and Three Dimensional Dipole Antennas for an Implantable Retinal Prosthesis

The feasibility is investigated using three dimensional folded dipole antennas as a data-telemetry implantable receiving antenna in a dual-unit retinal prosthesis to restore partial vision to the blind. Three dimensional designs are explored in an effort to enhance certain antenna characteristics such as bandwidth and maximum gain while reducing the planar footprint size in comparison to its two dimensional equivalent. The current vector alignment between the three dimensional layers are examined through folding and rotating the dipole arms with respect to each other to fully optimize the antenna's characteristics. The performance of the 2D and 3D antennas were compared in simulations and further examined by fabricating and characterizing the performance in a transmit/ receive system in air and inside eye phantoms. Results show that three-dimensional antennas can provide larger bandwidth while being physically smaller than the correspondent two-dimensional ones, thus providing larger channel capacity that could lead to a system with an increased number of stimulating electrodes.     

A chipless RFID tag for smart temporal applications

A compact, robust, chipless radio frequency identification (RFID) tag is proposed. Resonant elements patterned in a concentric fashion encode data in the spectral domain employing frequency shift encoding. The proposed tag encodes 28.25 data bits over a miniscule physical footprint of 25 × 25 mm². The formulated scheme is demonstrated to be viable for encoding of temporal variables. The electromagnetic performance of the presented design is investigated for different laminates: Rogers RT/duroid® 5880 and Taconic TLX‐0. Multiple tag prototypes employing a variety of substrates are realized and evaluated for in‐laboratory performance. The proposed design is compared with existing work reported in literature. Code density of 4.52 bits/cm² has been successfully achieved. The tag design operates from 3.07 to 10.6 GHz and is readily realizable on flexible laminates. Smart retail, intelligent packaging, adaptive ticketing, and similar time‐related applications can be materialized using the proposed tag.     

Machine Learning Enabled Early Detection of Breast Cancer by Structural Analysis of Mammograms

Clinical image processing plays a significant role in healthcare systems and is currently a widely used methodology. In carcinogenic diseases, time is crucial; thus, an image’s accurate analysis can help treat disease at an early stage. Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) and lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS) are common types of malignancies that affect both women and men. The number of cases of DCIS and LCIS has increased every year since 2002, while it still takes a considerable amount of time to recommend a controlling technique. Image processing is a powerful technique to analyze preprocessed images to retrieve useful information by using some remarkable processing operations. In this paper, we used a dataset from the Mammographic Image Analysis Society and MATLAB 2019b software from MathWorks to simulate and extract our results. In this proposed study, mammograms are primarily used to diagnose, more precisely, the breast’s tumor component. The detection of DCIS and LCIS on breast mammograms is done by preprocessing the images using contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization. The resulting images’ tumor portions are then isolated by a segmentation process, such as threshold detection. Furthermore, morphological operations, such as erosion and dilation, are applied to the images, then a gray-level co-occurrence matrix texture features, Harlick texture features, and shape features are extracted from the regions of interest. For classification purposes, a support vector machine (SVM) classifier is used to categorize normal and abnormal patterns. Finally, the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system is deployed for the amputation of fuzziness due to overlapping features of patterns within the images, and the exact categorization of prior patterns is gained through the SVM. Early detection of DCIS and LCIS can save lives and help physicians and surgeons todiagnose and treat these diseases. Substantial results are obtained through cubic support vector machine (CSVM), respectively, showing 98.95% and 98.01% accuracies for normal and abnormal mammograms. Through ANFIS, promising results of mean square error (MSE) 0.01866, 0.18397, and 0.19640 for DCIS and LCIS differentiation during the training, testing, and checking phases.     

Smart-City-based Data Fusion Algorithm for Internet of Things

Increasingly, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are contributing enormous amounts of data. Since the recent deployments of wireless sensor networks in Smart City infrastructures, significant volumes of data have been produced every day in several domains ranging from the environment to the healthcare system to transportation. Using wireless sensor nodes, a Smart City environment may now be shown for the benefit of residents. The Smart City delivers intelligent infrastructure and a stimulating environment to citizens of the Smart Society, including the elderly and others. Weak, Quality of Service (QoS) and poor data performance are common problems in WSNs, caused by the data fusion method, where a small amount of bad data can significantly impact the total fusion outcome. In our proposed research, a WSN multi-sensor data fusion technique employing fuzzy logic for event detection. Using the new proposed Algorithm, sensor nodes will collect less repeated data, and redundant data will be used to increase the data's overall reliability. The network's fusion delay problem is investigated, and a minimum fusion delay approach is provided based on the nodes’ fusion waiting time. The proposed algorithm performs well in fusion, according to the results of the experiment. As a result of these discoveries, It is concluded that the algorithm describe here is effective and dependable instrument with a wide range of applications.