Cumulative Fading and Rainfall Distributions for a 2.1 km, 38 GHz, Vertically Polarized, Line-of-Sight Link

Between February 1,1997 and January 31,1998, a 2.1 km vertically polarized 38 GHz communications link was studied in the subtropical city of Brisbane, Australia. According to the current ITU fading prediction method the link would be expected to experience a rainfall intensity of approximately 50 mm/h for 52.6 min during the year, when averaged over a 60 s integration time. This should have caused approximately 20 dB of fading for 52.6 min [1]-[3]. However the link actually experienced 20 dB of fading for 150.5 min, with fading of 37 dB exceeded for 53.5 min during the year. A rainfall intensity of 84 mm/h was exceeded for 64 min at the receive end, and a rainfall intensity of 72 mm/h was exceeded for 52 min at the transmit end of the hop.     

A Built-in Self-Test Scheme with Diagnostics Support for Embedded SRAM

In this paper we propose a novel built-in self-test (BIST) design for embedded SRAM cores. Our contribution includes a compact and efficient BIST circuit with diagnosis support and an automatic diagnostic system. The diagnosis module of our BIST circuit can capture the error syndromes as well as fault locations for the purposes of repair and fault/failure analysis. In addition, our design provides programmability for custom March algorithms with lower hardware cost. The combination of the on-line programming mode and diagnostic system dramatically reduces the effort in design debugging and yield enhancement. We have designed and implemented test chips with our BIST design. Experimental results show that the area overhead of the proposed BIST design is only 2.4% for a 128 KB SRAM, and 0.65% for a 2 MB one.     

Assessing the performance of long-term care information systems and the continued use intention of users

The needs of long-term care (LTC) have increased substantially worldwide. In particular, Taiwanese society has experienced an increasing aging population because of the sharp decline in the birth rate and advanced medical technology. Some LTC facilities have introduced information technologies to satisfy the substantial demand. Compared with the high level of informatization observed at Taiwanese hospitals, LTC facilities still exhibit low informatization levels despite belonging to the same industry. Therefore, this study evaluated the system use performance and continued use intentions of the long-term care information system (LTCIS) by applying the well-known theories of the task-technology fit, system satisfaction, and postacceptance continuance models used in information systems area. The results showed that users’ assessment of whether the LTCIS fulfilled their work and task needs primarily depended on the system quality, locatability of data, timeliness, ease of use, and system-user relationship. These factors also exerted a crucial influence on system use performance and user satisfaction. Moreover, the system use performance and user satisfaction further affected intentions of continued use.     

Singular Tetrahedral Finite Elements for Vector Electromagnetics

The electromagnetic fields at reentrant edges made of conductor are generally singular and the polynomial basis functions used in traditional finite elements do not model the fields well in these regions. Two new tetrahedral elements are introduced with basis functions that incorporate the known asymptotic variation of the fields with distance from the edge. The basis is split into gradient and rotational parts. Additional vertex functions can be added to improve the conditioning of the global matrix system that arises in the time-harmonic case. Results are presented for the scattering parameters of a number of waveguide discontinuities. The new elements reduce the error considerably compared to the Whitney element, and generally outperform the second-order edge element, even though that has more degrees of freedom     

Heat rejection limits of air cooled plane fin heat sinks for computer cooling

Current desktop computers typically use fan-heat sinks for cooling the CPU, referred to as active heat sinks. This work seeks to determine the heat rejection limits for such fan-heat sinks, within specific fan and heat sink space limits. A fixed volume, 80 /spl times/ 60 /spl times/ 50 mm is chosen as the limiting dimensions, which includes the fan volume. The present work addresses plane fin heat sinks, on which a typical 60 mm fan is mounted. Both duct flow and impinging flow are considered. Analytically based models are used to predict the optimum geometry (minimum convection resistance) for plane fins with duct and impinging flow configurations. Also assessed are the effects of increased fan speed (up to 25%) and heat sink base size (33% increase) on air-cooling limits in duct and impinging flow. Tests on fan-heat sinks are done to validate the predictions. Optimization is also done for an enhanced (offset-strip) fin geometry in duct flow. The plane fin is found to outperform the enhanced geometry.     

能源采集,终于等到了

背景＂能量采集＂的概念自2000年初就出现了,但凭借着近期的技术发展,相关的概念才推展至商业化阶段。目前,全球的工程师们都积极地开发着利用非传统型能源的新颖方法。     

Spatially-multiplexed fibre-optic Bragg grating strain andtemperature sensor system based on interferometric wavelength-shiftdetection

A prototype fibre-optic system using interferometric wavelength-shift detection, capable of multiplexing up to 32 fibre-optic Bragg grating strain and temperature sensors with identical characteristics, has been demonstrated. This system is based on a spatially multiplexed scheme for use with fibre-based low-coherence interferometric sensors, reported previously. Four fibre-optic Bragg grating channels using the same fibre grating have been demonstrated for measuring quasi-static strain and temperature     

Optical Fiber Cavity Ring Down Measurement of Refractive Index With a Microchannel Drilled by Femtosecond Laser

A microchannel was inscribed in the fiber of a ring cavity which was constructed using two 0.1% : 99.9% couplers and a 10-m fiber loop. Cavity ring down spectroscopy was used to measure the refractive index (RI) of gels infused into the microchannel. The ring down time discloses a nonlinear increase with respect to RI of the gel and sensitivity up to 300 mus/RI unit and an index resolution of 1.4 times10^-4 was obtained.