Hot or cold: Is communicating anger or threats more effective in negotiation?

Is communicating anger or threats more effective in eliciting concessions in negotiation? Recent research has emphasized the effectiveness of anger communication, an emotional strategy. In this article, we argue that anger communication conveys an implied threat, and we document that issuing threats is a more effective negotiation strategy than communicating anger. In 3 computer-mediated negotiation experiments, participants received either angry or threatening messages from a simulated counterpart. Experiment 1 showed that perceptions of threat mediated the effect of anger (vs. a control) on concessions. Experiment 2 showed that (a) threat communication elicited greater concessions than anger communication and (b) poise (being confident and in control of one's own feelings and decisions) ascribed to the counterpart mediated the positive effect of threat compared to anger on concessions. Experiment 3 replicated this positive effect of threat over anger when recipients had an attractive alternative to a negotiated agreement. These findings qualify previous research on anger communication in negotiation. Implications for the understanding of emotion and negotiation are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implementation of boundary conditions in the finite-volume pressure-based method—Part I: Segregated solvers

ABSTRACT

The paper deals with the formulation of a variety of boundary conditions for incompressible and compressible flows in the context of the segregated pressure-based unstructured finite volume method. The focus is on the derivation and the implementation of these boundary conditions and their relation to the various physical boundaries and geometric constraints. While a variety of boundary conditions apply at any of the physical boundaries (inlets, outlets, and walls), geometric constraints define the type of boundary condition to be used. The emphasis is on relating the mathematical derivation of the boundary conditions to the algebraic equations defined at each centroid of the boundary elements and their coefficients. All derived boundary conditions are validated through a set of test cases with comparison of computed results to available numerical and/or experimental data.     

Location-unaware coverage in wireless sensor networks

In scenarios where sensors are placed randomly, redundant deployment is essential for ensuring adequate field coverage. This redundancy needs to be efficiently exploited by periodically selecting a subset of nodes (referred to as a “cover”) that actively monitor the field, and putting the remaining nodes to sleep. We consider networks in which sensors are not aware of their locations or the relative directions of their neighbors. We develop several geometric and density-based tests that enable a location-unaware sensor to intelligently determine whether it should turn itself off without degrading the quality of field coverage. These tests rely on distance measurements and exchanged two-hop neighborhood information. We design an algorithm (LUC) that exploits these tests for computing covers. Based on this algorithm, we propose two distributed protocols (LUC-I and LUC-P) that periodically select covers and switch between them so as to extend the network lifetime and tolerate unexpected failures. Our protocols are highly efficient in terms of message overhead and processing complexity. We implement LUC-I in TinyOS and evaluate it using the TOSSIM simulator. Experimental results indicate that our approach significantly prolongs the network lifetime and achieves comparable performance to location-aware protocols.     

Channel Access Scheme for MIMO-Enabled Ad Hoc Networks with Adaptive Diversity/Multiplexing Gains

Transmission power control (TPC) is used in wireless networks to improve channel reuse and/or reduce energy consumption. It has been often applied to single-input single-output (SISO) systems, where each node is equipped with a single antenna. Multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems can improve the throughput or the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by providing multiplexing or diversity gains, respectively. In this paper, we incorporate a power-controlled MAC protocol for a wireless network with two antennas per node. Our protocol, coined CMAC, combines different types of MIMO gains, allowing for dynamic switching between diversity and multiplexing modes so as to maximize a utility function that depends on both energy consumption and throughput. CMAC adapts the “antenna mode,” the transmission power, and the modulation order on a per-packet basis. By “antenna mode” we mean one of five possible transmit/receive antenna configurations: 1 × 1 (SISO), 2 × 1 (MISO-D), 1 × 2 (SIMO-D), 2 × 2 (MIMO-D), and 2 × 2 (MIMO-M). The second, third, and fourth configurations offer a diversity gain, whereas the last configuration offers a multiplexing gain. By using control packets to bound the transmission power of potentially interfering terminals, CMAC allows for multiple interference-limited transmissions to take place in the vicinity of a receiving terminal. We study via simulations the performance of CMAC in ad hoc topologies. Our results indicate that relative to non-adaptive protocols, CMAC achieves a significant improvement in both the overall energy consumption and the throughput.

On the performance of coefficient of variation control charts in Phase I

Control charts are mainly carried out in 2 interconnected phases: Phase I (retrospective phase) and Phase II (monitoring phase). Phase I uses a stable historical sample to establish control limits that will be used later in Phase II. The preciseness of the control limits obtained from Phase I can greatly affect the performance of control charts in Phase II. Monitoring the coefficient of variation (CV) is an effective approach when the process mean or standard deviation is not constant. Until now, little work has been dedicated on investigating the performance of CV control charts in Phase I. Viewed under this perspective, this study investigates the performance of CV control charts in Phase I in terms of probability to signal. A real‐life example is also provided to illustrate the working of CV charts in Phase I.     

Impact of video scheduling on bandwidth allocation for multiplexed MPEG streams

We present efficient schemes for scheduling the delivery of variable-bit-rate MPEG-compressed video with stringent quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. Video scheduling is being used to improve bandwidth allocation at a video server that uses statistical multiplexing to aggregate video streams prior to transporting them over a network. A video stream is modeled using a traffic envelope that provides a deterministic time-varying bound on the bit rate. Because of the periodicity in which frame types in an MPEG stream are typically generated, a simple traffic envelope can be constructed using only five parameters. Using the traffic-envelope model, we show that video sources can be statistically multiplexed with an effective bandwidth that is often less than the source peak rate. Bandwidth gain is achieved without sacrificing the stringency of the requested QoS. The effective bandwidth depends on the arrangement of the multiplexed streams, which is a measure of the lag between the GOP periods of various streams. For homogeneous streams, we give an optimal scheduling scheme for video sources at a video-on-demand server that results in the minimum effective bandwidth. For heterogeneous sources, a sub-optimal scheduling scheme is given, which achieves acceptable bandwidth gain. Numerical examples based on traces of MPEG-coded movies are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of our schemes.     

Minimizing Energy Cost of Air Conditioner in a Residential House under Demand Side Response Model

This research is aimed to develop a consumer demanding side response model to assist electricity consumers to mitigate peak demands during the peak season. The main contribution of this research is showing that consumers can mitigate peak demands by optimizing energy costs of an air conditioner (AC) when a spike happens. It may only occur in a one and a half hours spike during the peak season. This model also investigates how AC applies the pre-cooling method when there is a substantial risk of a price spike. The results indicate that the potential benefit of the model is achieving energy savings for consumers and aggregators, also reducing electricity bills for the consumers. The model is tested with selected characteristics of the room, and based on the standard room in a residential house in Makassar, a city of Indonesia.     

Channel access and traffic control for dynamic-spectrum networks with single-transmit, dual-receive radios

Cognitive radios have a great potential to improve spectrum utilization by enabling dynamic spectrum access. A key challenge in operating these radios is how to implement an efficient medium access control (MAC) mechanism that adaptively and efficiently allocates transmission powers and spectrum according to the surrounding environment. In this work, we propose a distributed MAC protocol for operating spectrum-agile radios in a multi-hop ad hoc network. Our protocol is unique in that it exploits the “dual-receive” capability of radios, which is used to overcome channel access problems that are common to multi-channel designs. We conduct theoretical analysis of the protocol and study its performance via simulations. To further improve the system throughput, we propose a framework for joint adaptive load and medium access controls. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves more than 90% of the maximum (global) system throughput that is achieved at saturation, while guaranteeing low collision rates.     

Predicting required licensed spectrum for the future considering big data growth

This paper proposes a new spectrum forecasting (SF) model to estimate the spectrum demands for future mobile broadband (MBB) services. The model requires five main input metrics, that is, the current available spectrum, site number growth, mobile data traffic growth, average network utilization, and spectrum efficiency growth. Using the proposed SF model, the future MBB spectrum demand for Malaysia in 2020 is forecasted based on the input market data of four major mobile telecommunication operators represented by A–D, which account for approximately 95% of the local mobile market share. Statistical data to generate the five input metrics were obtained from prominent agencies, such as the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, OpenSignal, Analysys Mason, GSMA, and Huawei. Our forecasting results indicate that by 2020, Malaysia would require approximately 307 MHz of additional spectrum to fulfill the enormous increase in mobile broadband data demands.