Signal compensation and compressed sensing for magnetization-prepared MR angiography

Magnetization-prepared acquisitions offer a trade-off between image contrast and scan efficiency for magnetic resonance imaging. Because the prepared signals gradually decay, the contrast can be improved by frequently repeating the preparation, which in turn significantly increases the scan time. A common solution is to perform the data collection progressing from low- to high-spatial-frequency samples following each preparation. Unfortunately, this leads to loss of spatial resolution, and thereby image blurring. In this work, a new technique is proposed that first corrects the signal decay in high-frequency data to mitigate the resolution loss and improve the image contrast without reducing the scan efficiency. The proposed technique then employs a sparsity-based nonlinear reconstruction to further improve the image quality. In addition to reducing the amplified high-frequency noise, this reconstruction extrapolates missing k-space samples in the case of undersampled compressed-sensing acquisitions. The technique is successfully demonstrated for noncontrast-enhanced flow-independent angiography of the lower extremities, an application that substantially benefits from both the signal compensation and the nonlinear reconstruction.     

Methods to improve efficiency of four stroke, spark ignition engines at part load

The four stroke, spark ignition (SI) engine pressure–volume diagram (p–V) contains two main parts. They are the compression–combustion–expansion (high pressure loop) and the exhaust-intake (low pressure or gas exchange loop) parts. The main reason for efficiency decrease at part load conditions for these types of engines is the flow restriction at the cross sectional area of the intake system by partially closing the throttle valve, which leads to increased pumping losses and to increased low pressure loop area on the p–V diagram. Meanwhile, the poorer combustion quality, i.e. lower combustion speed and cycle to cycle variations, additionally influence these pressure loop areas. In this study, methods for increasing efficiency at part load conditions and their potential for practical use are investigated. The study also includes a review of the vast literature on the solution of this problem. This investigation shows that the potential for increasing the efficiency of SI engines at part load conditions is not yet exhausted. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages. Among these, the most promising methods to decrease the fuel consumption at part load conditions are stratified charge and variable displacement engines. When used in combination, the other listed methods are more effective than their usage alone.     

Engineering solid oxide fuel cell electrode microstructure by a micro-modeling tool based on estimation of TPB length

In this study, a typical solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) electrode microstructure is numerically optimized in terms of the volume fraction of the catalyst, electrolyte and pore phases via a novel tool based on Dream.3D for the synthetic microstructure reconstruction and COMSOL Multiphysics® Modeling for visualizing and computing three/triple phase boundaries (TPBs). First, the properties of the representative volume element are studied by a parameter independence analysis based on the average particle size. The results indicate that the size of the representative volume element should be at least 10 times greater than the largest average particle size in the microstructure, while the number of mesh elements should be selected such that the smallest average particle size in the system is divided into at least 5. The method is then validated with the available studies in the literature and seems to agree well. Therefore, numerical reconstruction of SOFC electrodes by the proposed method is found to be a very useful tool in the viewpoints of accuracy, flexibility and cost. Finally, SOFC electrode microstructures having the same particle size distribution of an average particle size of 0.5 μm for each phase but with various phase volume fractions are generated and the resultant TPBs are computed similarly. It is found out that the volume fraction of each phase should be close to each other as much as possible to maximize the active TPB density and among the cases considered, the highest active TPB density of 9.53 μm/μm³ is achieved for an SOFC electrode including 35 vol% catalyst, 35 vol% electrolyte and 30 vol% porosity. The active TPB density is also found to be around 93% of the total TPB density.     

Differential modulation for asynchronous two‐way relay systems over frequency‐selective fading channels

We propose two schemes for asynchronous multi‐relay two‐way relay (MR‐TWR) systems in which neither the users nor the relays know the channel state information. In an MR‐TWR system, two users exchange their messages with the help of N_R relays. Most of the existing works on MR‐TWR systems based on differential modulation assume perfect symbol‐level synchronization between all communicating nodes. However, this assumption is not valid in many practical systems, which makes the design of differentially modulated schemes more challenging. Therefore, we design differential modulation schemes that can tolerate timing misalignment under frequency‐selective fading. We investigate the performance of the proposed schemes in terms of either probability of bit error or pairwise error probability. Through numerical examples, we show that the proposed schemes outperform existing competing solutions in the literature, especially for high signal‐to‐noise ratio values. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.