Influence of sodium bromide additive on polyethersulfone ultrafiltration membranes

The effect of sodium bromide (NaBr) on performance and characteristics of ultrafiltration (UF) membranes was studied. Asymmetric UF membranes were prepared by phase inversion technique from a multicomponent dope polymer solution consisting of the polymer; polyethersulfone (PES), solvent; N, N‐dimethylformamide (DMF) and NaBr as micromolecular additive. The dissolution of PES‐DMF‐NaBr was carried out using microwave irradiation technique to induce rapid dissolution through minimal heating time. Various concentrations of NaBr were mixed with PES in the range of 1–5 wt % and its influence on membrane characteristics such as surface hydrophilicity was measured by contact angle and the performance in terms of water flux and rejection rates were evaluated using micromolecular test substances. The morphology and streaming potential of PES UF membranes were analyzed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and ζ‐potential measurement, respectively. Overall, the results suggest that the membrane consisting of 1 wt % NaBr exhibits the best performance in terms of rejection and flux rates with molecular weight cutoff (MWCO) of 45 kDa and mean pore size of 6 nm. The membrane with the 1 wt % addition of NaBr demonstrates most negative charge which indicates less fouling characteristics and displays approximately three times higher permeation. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2013     

Improvement of thermally grown oxide layer in thermal barrier coating systems with nano alumina as third layer

A thermally grown oxide (TGO) layer is formed at the interface of bond coat/top coat. The TGO growth during thermal exposure in air plays an important role in the spallation of the ceramic layer from the bond coat. High temperature oxidation resistance of four types of atmospheric plasma sprayed TBCs was investigated. These coatings were oxidized at 1000 °C for 24, 48 and 120 h in a normal electric furnace under air atmosphere. Microstructural characterization showed that the growth of the TGO layer in nano NiCrAlY/YSZ/nano Al₂O₃ coating is much lower than in other coatings. Moreover, EDS and XRD analyses revealed the formation of Ni(Cr,Al)₂O₄ mixed oxides (as spinel) and NiO onto the Al₂O₃ (TGO) layer. The formation of detrimental mixed oxides (spinels) on the Al₂O₃(TGO) layer of nano NiCrAlY/YSZ/nano Al₂O₃ coating is much lower compared to that of other coatings after 120 h of high temperature oxidation at 1000 °C.     

Deployment of a 3D tag tracking method utilising RFID

Recent trend shows that one of the crucial problems faced while using radio frequency to track the objects is the inconsistency of the signal strength reception, which can be mainly due to the environmental factors and the blockage, which always have the most impact on the tracking accuracy. Besides, three dimensions are more relevant to a warehouse scanning. Therefore, this study proposes a highly accurate and new three-dimensional (3D) radio frequency identification-based indoor tracking system with the consideration of different attenuation factors and obstacles. The obtained results show that the proposed system yields high-quality performance with an average error as low as 0.27?m (without obstacles and attenuation effects). The obtained results also show that the proposed tracking technique can achieve relatively lower errors (0.4 and 0.36?m, respectively) even in the presence of the highest attenuation effect, e?=?3.3 or when the environment is largely affected by 50% of the obstacles. Furthermore, the superiority of the proposed 3D tracking system has been proved by comparing with other existing approaches. The 3D tracking system proposed in this study can be applicable to a warehouse scanning.     

Effect of modifier elements on machinability of Al-20%Mg2Si metal matrix composite during dry turning

The principle aim of this study was to observe the effect of machining parameters as well as the separate additions of 0.4 wt% bismuth, 0.01 wt% strontium, and 0.8 wt% antimony on the machinability of Al-20%Mg₂Si in situ metal matrix composite. Microstructure alteration, surface roughness, main cutting force, and chip morphology were taken into account as indices to examine the effect of modifiers and machinability during dry turning. It was found that the additives modify the Mg₂Si_P particles by changing the particle shape from coarse primary to polygonal shape and decrease the particle size and aspect ratio as well as increase the particle density. Results show that the modified work-pieces present adequate machinability with respect to cutting force and surface roughness. The smaller reinforcements enable lower surface roughness values to be obtained even if they are pulled out, fractured, or elongated. In addition, the modified work-pieces encourage lower surface roughness values in comparison with unmodified work-piece due to less built-up-edge formation. A scenario for surface roughness of Al-Mg₂Si composite with respect to the size and aspect ratio of reinforcement particles is proposed in this study.     

Spectrum Efficiency Enhancement in Dynamic Space Coded Multiple Access (DSCMA) System

In cellular mobile communication systems using coded modulations, the spectrum efficiency of the system is related to the number of available codes. Recently, large area synchronous (LAS) CDMA codes, which exhibit a region called interference free window (IFW) within some delay-spread, have been accepted as one of fourth-generation (4G) wireless communication systems. However, the number of synthesized LAS codes is very low due to the low duty ratio of the sequence. In this paper, a dynamic space coded multiple access (DSCMA) scheme which utilizes the spatial diversity from smart antenna system is proposed to overcome the low spectrum efficiency in LAS CDMA system. In the DSCMA a modified version of LAS codes called LAS even ternary (LAS-ET) codes is proposed. These codes are used together with a novel algorithm called dynamic space code (DSC), which will decrease the code length so that the spectrum efficiency can be increased. By taking advantage of dynamic code reuse assignment in spatial diversity, the spectrum efficiency of the DSCMA can be further increased significantly.     

Efficient Back-off Mechanism for Multimedia Support in 802.11e EDCA Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks

This paper presents an effective back-off mechanism to improve quality of service (QoS) for multimedia applications over the IEEE 802.11e enhanced distribution channel access (EDCA) standard. It can be done with proposed algorithm called dynamic fast adaptation for contention-based EDCA (DFA-EDCA) mechanism. The main concept of proposed DFA-EDCA mechanism is to use the exponential functions to adaptively tune the back-off parameters in IEEE 802.11e EDCA according to the changes on a network load within a short period. In this proposed mechanism an intra-access category (intra-AC) differentiation mechanism is provided to increase its back-off time randomly and achieve discrimination of same priority traffic on different stations. The performance evaluations have been conducted by using Network Simulator (NS-2). The simulation results show that the proposed DFA-EDCA mechanism has greatly outperformed the previous mechanisms such as non-linear dynamic adaptation scheme of the minimum contention window (CW_min-HA), dynamic adaptation algorithm of the maximum contention window (CW_max-adaptation), adaptive enhanced distributed coordination function and the conventional EDCA in terms of goodput, gain of goodput, packet delay, collision rate and channel utilization ratio (CUR). It has significantly reduced both packet delay and collision rate simultaneously together with an obviously increment in both goodput and CUR, which lead to the improvement in QoS for multimedia applications.     

Mobile Station Movement Direction Prediction (MMDP) Based Handover Scanning for Mobile WiMAX System

Mobile WiMAX is a broadband technology that is capable of delivering triple play services (voice, data, and video). However, mobility in mobile WiMAX system is still an issue when the mobile station (MS) moves and its connection is handed over between base stations (BSs). In the handover process, scanning is one of the required phases to find the target BS. During the handover scanning process, the MS must synchronize with all the advertised neighbour BSs (nBSs) to select the best BS candidate for the incoming handover action. Without terminating the connection between the SBS and MS, the SBS will schedule the scanning intervals and sleep-intervals (also called interleaving interval) to MS for the handover scanning. However, during the scanning interval period, all the coming transmissions will be paused. Therefore, the redundant or unnecessary scanning of neighbouring BS cause delay and MAC overhead which may affect real-time applications. In this paper, the MS movement direction prediction (MMDP) based handover scanning scheme is introduced to overcome the mobile WiMAX handover scanning issue. It based on dividing the BS coverage area is into zones and sectors. According to the signal quality; there are three zones, no handover (No-HO), low handover (Low-HO) and high handover (High-HO) zones respectively and six sectors. In this scheme, only two BSs can become candidates; the two that the MS moves toward them will be chosen as the candidate for the handover scanning purpose. Hence, the handover scanning process repetition will be reduced with these two shortlisted BS candidates instead of scanning all nBSs. Thus, MMDP will reduce scanning delay and the number of exchange messages during the handover scanning comparing to the conventional scanning scheme. Although, the MMDP may need an extra computational time, the prediction and scanning process will be finished before the MS reach the High-HO zone, which mean the end-user’s running application will be affected. Simulation results show that the proposed MMDP scheme reduces the total handover scanning delay and scanning interval duration by 25 and 50 % respectively. Also, the size of scanning message is reduced, which leads to reduced signalling overhead.     

新型PEO/纳米结构ZrO_2镁合金涂层的抗菌活性及腐蚀行为（英文）

为了增强镁合金的耐腐蚀性和抗菌活性,先采用等离子体电解氧化(PEO)在镁合金上制备一层结合层,再用空气等离子喷涂(APS)制备纳米结构ZrO_2表面涂层。采用电化学试验研究涂层样品的腐蚀行为,采用琼脂扩散法对其进行大肠杆菌病原菌抑菌活性评价,并与无涂层样品进行对比。与PEO涂层和无涂层镁合金相比,PEO/纳米ZrO_2涂层样品的腐蚀电流密度最低,电荷传递阻力最高,相位角和阻抗模量最高。PEO结合涂层被纳米ZrO_2表面涂层完全密封,能够显著延缓侵蚀性离子向镁合金表面迁移,显著提高镁合金在模拟体液(SBF)中的耐蚀性。此外,PEO/纳米ZrO_2涂层的抗菌活性也高于PEO涂层和无涂层镁合金,这是由于ZrO_2纳米颗粒通过作用于细胞膜而降低了大肠杆菌的生长速率。     

A Novel Ternary CDMA Code for TPSK Modulation Scheme

In code division multiple access (CDMA), two or more chips are grouped together to form symbols and each symbol is transmitted during the symbol period. The phase shift keying (PSK) modulation techniques map the digital baseband data into two or more possible signals by varying the phase of a radio frequency (RF) carrier. The recently proposed PSK scheme called ternary PSK (TPSK) scheme can convey three possible symbols. In this paper, a novel ternary based CDMA sequence so-called large area synchronous even ternary (LAS-ET) sequence is introduced to increase spectrum efficiency in TPSK scheme. Its sequence duty ratio and cross-correlation are analyzed. The performance analysis of this sequence is compared with the large area synchronous (LAS) sequence in term of symbol error rate and chip error rate (CER) over various channel models. It is shown that TPSK scheme in LAS-ET sequence outperforms LAS sequence in terms of CER evaluation. At the same time, the spectrum efficiency is doubled when a pair of chips in LAS-ET sequence is mapped into one symbol.