Sleep scheduling with expected common coverage in wireless sensor networks

Sleep scheduling, which is putting some sensor nodes into sleep mode without harming network functionality, is a common method to reduce energy consumption in dense wireless sensor networks. This paper proposes a distributed and energy efficient sleep scheduling and routing scheme that can be used to extend the lifetime of a sensor network while maintaining a user defined coverage and connectivity. The scheme can activate and deactivate the three basic units of a sensor node (sensing, processing, and communication units) independently. The paper also provides a probabilistic method to estimate how much the sensing area of a node is covered by other active nodes in its neighborhood. The method is utilized by the proposed scheduling and routing scheme to reduce the control message overhead while deciding the next modes (full-active, semi-active, inactive/sleeping) of sensor nodes. We evaluated our estimation method and scheduling scheme via simulation experiments and compared our scheme also with another scheme. The results validate our probabilistic method for coverage estimation and show that our sleep scheduling and routing scheme can significantly increase the network lifetime while keeping the message complexity low and preserving both connectivity and coverage.     

Design and implementation of multicasting for multi-channel multi-interface wireless mesh networks

Multicasting is a useful communication method in wireless mesh networks (WMNs). Many applications in WMNs require efficient and reliable multicast communications, i.e., high delivery ratio with low overhead among a group of recipients. In spite of its significance, little work has been done on providing such multicast service in multi-channel WMNs. Traditional multicast protocols for wireless and multi-hop networks tend to assume that all nodes, each of which is equipped with a single interface, collaborate on the same channel. This single-channel assumption is not always true, as WMNs often provide nodes with multiple interfaces to enhance performance. In multi-channel and multi-interface (MCMI) WMNs, the same multicast data must be sent multiple times by a sender node if its neighboring nodes operate on different channels. In this paper, we try to tackle the challenging issue of how to design a multicast protocol more suitable for MCMI WMNs. Our multicast protocol builds multicast paths while inviting multicast members, and tries to allocate the same channel to neighboring members in a bottom-up manner. By unifying fixed channels of one-hop multicast neighbors, the proposed algorithm can improve the performance such as reducing multicast data transmission overhead and delay, while managing a successful delivery ratio. In order to prove such expectation on the performance, we have implemented and evaluated the proposed solution on the real testbed having the maximum 24 nodes, each of which is equipped with two IEEE 802.11a Atheros WLAN cards.     

Method of Passive MMW Image Detection and Identification for Close Target

This paper mainly deals with the problem of detecting and identifying target in close range, the performance of which will be effected by the radiometer’s parameters and target’s characteristics. According to the relationship between the range equation of the Passive Millimeter Wave (PMMW) and these parameters, we present a convenient statistical method based on PMMW image detection to solve the inherent problem by statistical radiometer parameters, which can be achieved by the W band radiometer experimental data. Finally, we validate the method by simulation and experiment. The results show that the method is convenient for detecting and identifying target in close range.     

A New Flexible Filter Bank for Low Complexity Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radios

Conventional filter bank-based spectrum sensing methods employ uniform discrete Fourier transform filter bank (DFTFB). In this paper, we propose a multi-stage coefficient decimation filter bank (MS-CDFB) for wideband spectrum sensing in cognitive radios. From an initial fixed-coefficient modal filter, a filter bank that has multiple passbands of either uniform or different passband widths can be obtained using coefficient decimation. Design examples show that proposed MS-CDFB offers a complexity reduction of about 30% over the DFTFB while giving a superior sensing accuracy than the latter. The complexity reduction of MS-CDFB over the DFTFB is 85%, if both the spectrum sensors are designed to produce identical sensing accuracies.     

Using covariance intersection for change detection in remote sensing images

In this paper, an unsupervised change detection technique for remote sensing images ac-quired on the same geographical area but at different time instances is proposed by conducting Co-variance Intersection (CI) to perform unsupervised fusion of the final fuzzy partition matrices from the Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) clustering for the feature space by applying compressed sampling to the given remote sensing images. The proposed approach exploits a CI-based data fusion of the membership function matrices, which are obtained by taking the Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) clustering of the fre-quency-domain feature vectors and spatial-domain feature vectors, aimed at enhancing the unsuper-vised change detection performance. Compressed sampling is performed to realize the image local feature sampling, which is a signal acquisition framework based on the revelation that a small collection of linear projections of a sparse signal contains enough information for stable recovery. The experi-mental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has a good change detection results and also performs quite well on denoising purpose.     

Reactive Sintering of Copper Nanoparticles Using Intense Pulsed Light for Printed Electronics

Most commercial copper nanoparticles are covered with an oxide shell and cannot be sintered into conducting lines/films by conventional thermal sintering. To address this issue, past efforts have utilized complex reduction schemes and sophisticated chambers to prevent oxidation, thereby rendering the process cost ineffective. To alleviate these problems, we demonstrate a reactive sintering process using intense pulsed light (IPL) in the present study. The IPL process successfully removed the oxide shells of copper nanoparticles, leaving a conductive, pure copper film in a short period of time (2 ms) under ambient conditions. The in situ copper oxide reduction mechanism was studied using several different experiments and analyses. We observed instant copper oxide reduction and sintering through poly(N-vinylpyrrolidone) functionalization of copper nanoparticles, followed by IPL irradiation. This phenomenon may be explained by oxide reduction either via an intermediate acid created by ultraviolet (UV) light irradiation or by hydroxyl (-OH) end groups, which act like long-chain alcohol reductants.     

Thermoelectric Performance of Poly(3,4-Ethylenedioxy-thiophene)/Poly(Styrenesulfonate) Pellets and Films

The thermoelectric performance of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)/poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT/PSS) pellets and free-standing PEDOT/PSS films, prepared from PEDOT/PSS solution containing the additives dimethyl sulfoxide or ethylene glycol, have been systematically investigated. It has been found that the electrical conductivity of free-standing PEDOT/PSS films is invariably much higher than that of PEDOT/PSS pellets, while there is no distinct change in the Seebeck coefficient. The highest electrical conductivity of a free-standing PEDOT/PSS film can be up to 300 S cm⁻¹, five to six times higher than that of PEDOT/PSS pellets (55 S cm⁻¹). The thermal conductivity was measured over a wide temperature range, indicating that PEDOT/PSS has extremely low thermal conductivity. The figure of merit (ZT) of free-standing PEDOT/PSS films with good environmental stability can be up to 10⁻², an order of magnitude higher than that of pressed PEDOT/PSS pellets (10⁻³).     

Interpretation of Absolute Laser Reflectance During Optical Monitoring of Polycrystalline GaAs Deposition on Quartz Using Metalorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition

Gallium arsenide (GaAs) was deposited by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition in a horizontal quartz reactor tube using trimethylgallium and arsine at 400°C to 500°C. Nucleation time and deposition rate were monitored using in situ laser reflectometry. This allowed differentiation between film and parasitic growth, which was not possible with other optical techniques. An absolute reflectance model was developed using measurements prior to GaAs deposition, and then employed to calculate values for GaAs on quartz. Detected reflectance intensities during experimental GaAs deposition were low compared with the model due to three-dimensional island growth, causing scattering of the incident laser radiation.     

Thin-Film Thermoelectric Module for Power Generator Applications Using a Screen-Printing Method

A new process for fabricating a low-cost thermoelectric module using a screen-printing method has been developed. Thermoelectric properties of screen-printed ZnSb films were investigated in an effort to develop a thermoelectric module with low cost per watt. The screen-printed Zn _x Sb_1−x films showed a low carrier concentration and high Seebeck coefficient when x was in the range of 0.5 to 0.57 and the annealing temperature was kept below 550°C. When the annealing temperature was higher than 550°C, the carrier concentration of the Zn _x Sb_1−x films reached that of a metal, leading to a decrease of the Seebeck coefficient. In the present experiment, the optimized carrier concentration of screen-printed ZnSb was 7 × 10¹⁸/cm³. The output voltage and power density of the ZnSb film were 10 mV and 0.17 mW/cm², respectively, at ΔT = 50 K. A thermoelectric module was produced using the proposed screen-printing approach with ZnSb and CoSb₃ as p-type and n-type thermoelectric materials, respectively, and copper as the pad metal.     

Effects of Double Substitution with Ge and Te on Thermoelectric Properties of a Skutterudite Compound

Studies have shown that the thermoelectric properties of CoSb₃ could be improved by the substitution of group IVB or VIB elements for Sb. However, the substitution volume is limited. To get a better picture of the substitution volume in view of thermoelectric properties, Ge and Te double-substituted skutterudite materials were prepared with the nominal composition of Co₄Sb _x Ge_5.9−0.5x Te_6.1−0.5x (x = 11, 10, 9, 8) by the traditional solid-state reaction method and spark plasma sintering, and Rietveld analysis was employed to refine the crystal structure. The results showed that the lattice parameter decreased linearly and the solubility limitations of group IVB and VIB elements were greatly alleviated by the Ge and Te codoping. Besides, the thermoelectric properties were analyzed through measurements of electrical and thermal conductivities as well as room-temperature electrical transport properties. The results showed that the substitution volume of Ge and Te could play an important role in the thermoelectric properties, and a minimum lattice thermal conductivity value of 1.56 W m⁻¹ K⁻¹ was obtained at around 673 K for Co₄Sb₈Ge_1.9Te_2.1. Co₄Sb₁₁Ge_0.4Te_0.6 achieved the best figure of merit of 0.89 at around 773 K, which was remarkably improved over that of untreated CoSb₃.