A survey on applications of IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover framework in next generation wireless networks

Integration of various wireless access technologies is one of the major concerns in recent wireless systems in which multi-technology mobile devices are provided to users to roam between different access networks. Being an essential part in heterogeneous wireless systems, vertical handover is more complex than conventional horizontal handover. As IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover (MIH) is the standard addressing a uniform and media-independent framework for seamless handover between different access technologies, many works have been carried out in the literature to employ MIH services in handover management This paper presents a comprehensive survey of the proposed mobility management mechanisms that are using this framework. As a comparative view, the paper categorizes the efforts according to the layer of mobility management and evaluates some of the representative methods discussing about their advantages and disadvantages The paper also looks into recent handover decision and interface management methods that are exploiting MIH Moreover, the extensions and the amendments proposed on MIH are overviewed.     

Using meta-heuristics for project scheduling under mode identity constraints

Mode identity and resource constrained project scheduling problem (MIRCPSP) is a substantial generalization of the well-known multi-mode problem. It arises when certain activities in the project are interdependent. That is, the set of all activities in the project are partitioned into disjoint subsets where all activities forming one subset have to be processed in the same mode. This paper addresses project scheduling problem with resource and mode identity constraints to minimize the project makespan. This problem is strongly NP-hard and three meta-heuristic algorithms namely imperialist competitive algorithm, simulated annealing and differential evolution are proposed to solve it. In order to improve the quality of the employed algorithms a local search and learning module is combined with the meta-heuristic algorithms. The performance of the algorithms is evaluated on 180 test problems by statistically comparing their solution in term of the objective function and computational times. The obtained computational results indicate that the integration of the learning module and the proposed algorithm is efficient and effective.     

The use of new intelligent techniques in designing retaining walls

Engineering with Computers - The stability of retaining walls against overturning is analyzed in this study using artificial intelligence methods. Five input parameters including wall height, wall...     

Incremental dynamic analysis of steel braced frames designed based on the first,second and third editions of the Iranian seismic code (standard no. 2800)

Incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) is an emerging method in structural analysis which allows evaluation of seismic capacity and demand of structures through a series of nonlinear dynamic analyses using multiple scaled ground motion records. Seismic behaviour of concentrically braced frames designed based on the first, second and third revisions of the Iranian seismic code, standard no. 2800, has been evaluated through IDA in the present paper. Besides, a brief comparison is made between seismic behaviour of these frames, frames with different heights and different bracing types. Seismic capacity and limit states of such structures have been reviewed through the paper. The IDA results imply that frames designed with the first edition are seriously vulnerable and fail before reaching the acceleration levels predicted in the code. On the other hand, frames designed with the second and third editions, although behaving better, need partial reinforcement in some cases. Other results of this study show that chevron braced frames behave seismically better than X‐braced ones. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Photoluminescence study of SBA-15@ZnO/Au nanocomposite for potential use in Staphylococcus aureus detection

Journal of Porous Materials - Staphylococcus aureus is most common causes of hospital-acquired infections and food-associated disease. In the last years, sensing platform based on fluorescence-...     

A new classifier ensemble methodology based on subspace learning

Different classifiers with different characteristics and methodologies can complement each other and cover their internal weaknesses; so classifier ensemble is an important approach to handle the weakness of single classifier based systems. In this article we explore an automatic and fast function to approximate the accuracy of a given classifier on a typical dataset. Then employing the function, we can convert the ensemble learning to an optimisation problem. So, in this article, the target is to achieve a model to approximate the performance of a predetermined classifier over each arbitrary dataset. According to this model, an optimisation problem is designed and a genetic algorithm is employed as an optimiser to explore the best classifier set in each subspace. The proposed ensemble methodology is called classifier ensemble based on subspace learning (CEBSL). CEBSL is examined on some datasets and it shows considerable improvements.     

Increasing photoactivity of titanium dioxide immobilized on glass plate with optimization of heat attachment method parameters

In the present work the optimization of heat attachment method for increasing photoactivity of immobilized TiO₂ on glass plate was investigated. Results show that sonication time, TiO₂ suspension dosage, immobilization temperature, solvent type and immobilization replications are very effective on the photoactivity of immobilized TiO₂ on glass plate on the removal of C.I. Acid Red 88 (AR88) and optimizing these parameters increases the photoactivity of immobilized catalyst. In other step, the effect of operational parameters such as light intensity and initial concentration of AR88 on the removal of AR88 was investigated with four times immobilized TiO₂ on glass plate. Results show that removal rate decreases with increasing initial concentration of AR88 but increases with increasing UV-light intensity.     

A Novel Interpolation Equalization Technique for Multicarrier Modulation/Demodulation Systems

This paper presents a novel multitap interpolation equalization technique for filter bank-based multicarrier modulation/demodulation systems. The proposed technique is based on the equalization of the channel fractional delay in each subchannel in time synchronization with the constituent receiver side decimator. The proposed synchronization is achieved by combining a subset of the polyphase components of the analysis filter output signal after having passed through a bank of interpolation equalizers. The resulting multitap interpolation equalization permits a trade-off between various equalization parameters, such as the number of used polyphase components, the length of the equalizer, and the interchannel interference terms, making it possible to achieve a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) involving moderate equalization cost or a moderate SNR involving very low equalization cost. Simulation results for the standard carrier serving area loop show that the proposed equalization technique gives rise to 15 dB improvement in SNR compared to the output combiner equalization technique and can achieve an SNR close to the matched-filter bound for the channel by employing a reasonable equalizer length. Compared to the output combiner equalization technique, the proposed equalization technique involves around three times less the storage requirement at the same computational cost or around three times less the computational cost at the same storage requirement for equalizer training. Two suboptimal solutions are also proposed to simplify the equalizer training at only a minor loss in SNR.     

Outage performance of downlink communications in cognitive-based two-tier networks: cooperative and non-cooperative femtocells

Femtocell deployment, which is a promising approach to the coverage and capacity improvement of indoor communications, suffers from cross-tier interference. Therefore to make the femtocell technology practical this issue needs to be addressed appropriately. One serious type of cross-tier interference occurs in downlink communication, in which a macrocell user is located far from its macro base station. In this setup, the communication of the adjacent femto access points with their users makes the macrocell user experience a low SINR. This paper considers this scenario and shows how cognitive-enabled femto access points can cope with cross-tier interference. More precisely, we compute the outage probability of macro users in a two-tier network when femto access points use the energy detection-based spectrum sensing technique to find the unoccupied frequency subband. To improve the outage probability of macro users, we also study the effectiveness of cooperation among neighbor femto access points. In all cases, the analytical expressions are validated by computer simulations which confirm the accuracy of the used approximations.