Bargaining‐Based Smart Grid Pricing Model for Demand Side Management Scheduling

A smart grid is a modernized electrical grid that uses information about the behaviors of suppliers and consumers in an automated fashion to improve the efficiency, reliability, economics, and sustainability of the production and distribution of electricity. In the operation of a smart grid, demand side management (DSM) plays an important role in allowing customers to make informed decisions regarding their energy consumption. In addition, it helps energy providers reduce peak load demand and reshapes the load profile. In this paper, we propose a new DSM scheduling scheme that makes use of the day‐ahead pricing strategy. Based on the Rubinstein–Stahl bargaining model, our pricing strategy allows consumers to make informed decisions regarding their power consumption, while reducing the peak‐to‐average ratio. With a simulation study, it is demonstrated that the proposed scheme can increase the sustainability of a smart grid and reduce overall operational costs.     

Trust based negotiation bargaining game model for bandwidth management algorithms

Nowadays, Multi-hop Relaying Network (MRN) has gained wide acceptance as a next step towards future radio networks. MRN can extend the service area as well as improve the performance of wireless networks. To exploit the multi-hop relaying operation, an important issue is how to properly control wireless bandwidth. In this paper, a new bandwidth management scheme is proposed for MRNs. By integrating the random arrival rule and Nash bargaining model, the proposed scheme adaptively controls the wireless bandwidth to maximize network efficiency. In our scheme, trust value and bargaining powers are decided according to the Bayesian inference and real-time negotiation process, respectively. This approach can make the network system be close to the optimized network performance. To prove the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, a simulation has carried out. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in comparison with other existing schemes.     

Electrical and optical studies of transparent conducting ZnO:Al thin films by magnetron dc sputtering

Transparent conducting aluminium-doped Zinc oxide (ZnO:Al) films have been deposited on glass substrates by magnetron dc sputtering using a ceramic target (ZnO with 2 wt% Al₂O₃). The dependence of the electrical and optical properties of these films on substrate temperature, sputtering pressure of Ar and location of substrates were investigated in detail. Target is perpendicular with substrate and we controlled the distance ‘x’ of target and substrate. Optimized films with resistivity of 3.7?×?10^?4 Ω cm, an average transmission in the visible range (300–800 nm) of greater than 85% and the reflectance in the infrared range being greater than 85% have been formed. Substrate temperature, distance ‘x’, and working pressure are optimized for lower resistivity and high concentration of carriers.     

An efficient intra-mode decision method for HEVC

This paper proposes a new intra-mode decision method for HEVC. The proposed method makes use of the characteristics of some special modes that belong to both rough mode decision mode set and most probable mode set. It also improves the coding efficiency by adaptively applying different algorithms depending on the prediction unit size. Not only the luma components but also the chroma components are considered in this paper. In the intra-coding process for the chroma components, the proposed method changes the examination order and makes efficient use of the spatial correlation and coded block flag information. As a result, the proposed method shows significantly better performance compared to other intra-mode decision methods.     

PU-type-dependent reference frame selection method for HEVC

This paper proposes an efficient reference frame selection method for HEVC. The proposed method makes use of the correlation between the best reference frame (BRF) in the \(2N\times 2N\) prediction unit (PU) and the BRFs in the other types of PUs. By efficiently using the BRF information of the \(2N\times 2N\) PU, the proposed method significantly reduces the number of reference frames to be examined. To minimize the performance degradation, the proposed method changes the examination order of the inter-prediction modes and makes use of the best merge mode information. It also uses the rate-distortion cost information of the \(2N\times 2N\) PU so as not to skip important reference frames. Because the proposed method deals with both uni-prediction and bi-prediction, it can be efficiently used, not only for LP but also for LB and RA coding structures. As a result, the proposed method reduces the encoding time by 12.7, 16.4 and 5.6 % with only 0.26, 0.29 and 0.04 % BD-BR increase for the LP, LB and RA coding structures, respectively.     

In Situ Co-transformation of Reduced Graphene Oxide Embedded in Laser-Induced Graphene and Full-Range On-Body Strain Sensor

On-body strain information provides various indicators such as heart rate, physiological pulse, voice waveform, respiratory rate, and body motion status. Recent advances in wearable strain sensors using nanomaterials have significantly enhanced sensor performance with regard to sensitivity, detectable range, and response time. However, it is still challenging to obtain all types of body strain information, from small vibrations to joint movements, using one type of sensor. Herein, a full-range on-body strain (FROS) sensor covering ultrasmall-to-large strains such as vocal vibration and joint movement is reported. To achieve an ultrawide detectable range, reduced graphene oxide (rGO)-embedded laser-induced graphene (LIG) is synthesized by laser engraving on a graphene oxide (GO)-embedded polyimide (PI) complex film. An rGO-LIG homostructure based on sp²-carbons is photothermally reconstructed from the GO-PI heterostructure in a complex film by in situ co-transformation and then transferred to an elastomer substrate. The fabricated FROS sensor successfully performs on-body strain monitoring of various indicators, such as physiological pulse, vocal sound waveform, and body movement, as well as American sign language translation. Furthermore, it is believed that this rGO-LIG homostructure-based material synthesized by in situ co-transformation can potentially provide novel functionalities in fields such as wearable electronics, humanoid, soft robotics, and intelligent prosthetics.     

Surface energy-controlled in-plane growth of t-Se nanowires transformed from a-Se colloids

This study investigated the surface energy-controlled transformation of amorphous Se (a-Se) colloids into trigonal Se (t-Se) crystals on solid substrates. Hydrophilic surfaces generated nanowires laterally grown along the surface of the substrates, while on hydrophobic surfaces the nanowires on the colloidal surface were randomly oriented. The ripening was considered to govern the growth of t-Se nanowires. The in-plane growth of the nanowires along the substrates made possible the creation of a chemically interconnected nanowire network because the nanowires made branches on meeting other a-Se colloids and formed chemical junctions on encountering other growing nanowires.     

Texturing of large area multi-crystalline silicon wafers through different chemical approaches for solar cell fabrication

Surface texturing of silicon can reduce the reflectance of incident light and hence increase the conversion efficiency of solar cells. Comparatively lesser concentrated (10%) standard alkaline (NaOH/KOH) solution does not give good textured multi-crystalline silicon (mc-Si) surface, which could give satisfactory open-circuit voltage. This is due to grain-boundary delineation with steps formed between successive grains of different orientations. In this work an attempt has been made to obtain a well-textured mc-Si surface through three different approaches. The first two are with two different types of acid solutions and the third with concentrated alkaline NaOH. Solutions of HF–HNO₃–CH₃COOH/H₂O system with different concentrations of HF and HNO₃ were used for texturing. The results on the effect of texturing of these three solutions on the surface morphology of very large area (125 mm×125 mm) mc-Si wafer as well as on the performance parameters of solar cell are presented in this paper. Attempts have been made to study extensively the surface morphologies of mc-Si wafers in two effective regions of the isoetch curves of the HF:HNO₃:diluent's system. Also we studied the reflectance, uniformity, spectral response, short-circuit current, open-circuit voltage, fill factor and dark current–voltage of the cells fabricated using wafers textured with the three different methods. Short-circuit current of the solar cells fabricated using acid-textured wafers were measured to be in the range of 4.93 A. This value is 0.37 and 0.14 A higher than the short-circuit current values measured in the cells fabricated with isotextured and alkaline-textured wafers, respectively.     

Crystal Structure of Lu2.92Ce0.08MgAl3SiO12 Garnet Phosphor and Its Photoluminescent Properties

A novel Ce³⁺‐doped Lu₃MgAl₃SiO₁₂ (LCMAS) phosphor was successfully synthesized by a conventional solid‐state reaction. The crystal structure of the LCMAS was characterized by Rietveld refinement. The broad emission spectra of the LCMAS were observed at 550 nm, and the temperature dependence on photoluminescence properties of the LCMAS was investigated. Also, the activation energy for thermal quenching was determined by Arrhenius fitting. The experimental results clearly indicate that the LCMAS phosphor has a great potential for the down‐conversion of yellow phosphor into white light‐emitting diodes.     

A pipelined architecture for the multidimensional DFT

This paper presents an efficient pipelined architecture for the N ^m-point m-dimensional discrete Fourier transform (DFT). By using a two-level index mapping scheme that is different from the conventional decimation-in-time (DIT) or decimation-infrequency (DIF) algorithms, the conventional pipelined architecture for the one-dimensional (1-D) fast Fourier transform (FFT) can be efficiently used for the computation of higher dimensional DFTs. Compared with systolic architectures, the proposed scheme is area-efficient since the computational elements (CEs) use the minimum number of multipliers, and the number of CEs increases only linearly with respect to the dimension m. It can be easily extended to the N^m-point m-dimensional DFT with large m and/or N, and it is more flexible since the throughput can be easily varied to accommodate various area/throughput requirements