Functionalized Nanostructures with Liquid‐Like Behavior: Expanding the Gallery of Available Nanostructures

Recently, we have developed a novel family of functionalized nanostructures that exhibit liquid‐like behavior in the absence of solvents and preserve their nanostructure in the liquid state. The gallery of nanostructures developed so far includes functionalized silica and magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles, layer‐like organosilicate nanoparticles, polyoxometalate clusters, and organic–inorganic hybrid networks. In an effort to demonstrate the wider applicability of this concept and to provide a deeper insight into this class of materials, the present work cites additional paradigms of functionalized nanostructures with similar behavior as above. In one case, surface functionalization of anatase nanoparticles (TiO₂, an inorganic nanostructure) with a quaternary ammonium organosilane leads to ionically modified nanoparticles that, when electrostatically combined with a poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)‐tailed sulfonate anion, exhibit liquid‐like behavior in the absence of solvents. In a different but quite interesting case of a bionanostructure, ion‐exchange functionalization of a DNA oligonucleotide with a PEG‐tailed quaternary ammonium cation leads to an easily separable liquid derivative with attractive features. These examples show the versatility of this concept over a range of nanostructures.     

On Frequency-Doubled Optical Millimeter-Wave Generation Technique Without Carrier Suppression for In-Building Wireless Over Fiber Applications

A novel optical millimeter-wave (mm-wave) generation scheme based on double-sideband phase modulation (DSB-PM) to achieve frequency doubling without suppressing the carrier is proposed. Theoretical analysis shows that the generated 60-GHz optical mm-wave can tolerant ${pm}$ 0.016-nm wavelength drifting with filter bandwidth ranging from 70 to 100 GHz to sustain first to second harmonic suppression ratio of 18 dB. In addition, error-free transmission of 60-GHz mm-wave at 2.5 Gb/s is experimentally demonstrated over a combined distance of 3-m wireless with 21-dBm equivalent isotropically radiated power, and 250-m fiber to best emulate an in-building network environment. Dispersion effect on the frequency-doubled PM optical mm-wave without carrier suppression is also analyzed and experimentally studied by comparing the link performance over single-mode fiber (SMF-28) and dispersion-shifted fiber (DSF), respectively.      

Design and dimensioning of hybrid PONs

We investigate the greenfield deployment of hybrid time division multiplexing/wavelength division multiplexing passive optical networks, i.e., the optimized covering of a given geographical area by a set of cost-effective and properly dimensioned hybrid PONs. We first propose a three-phase optimization scheme. In the first phase, a p-center model is proposed to determine the best ONU clusterings and the lower-level passive distribution node equipment locations. The second phase takes care of the placement of the upper-level passive distribution node equipment and the third one, using the traffic demands, a mix of unicast and multicast requests, selects the most appropriate passive distribution node equipment, i.e., either an arrayed waveguide gratings or a splitter. We next merge the first two phases, leading then to a two-phase scheme. Computational experiments are conducted on two sets of ONUs, one with 128 and one with 512 ONUs. We compare the two- and three-phase schemes in terms of PON design costs. We observe that the two-phase scheme provides more cost-effective solutions. We also provide a sensitivity analysis with respect to several parameters in order to identify the number of ONU clusters that minimizes the deployment cost.     

Attribute Allocation and Retrieval Scheme for Large-Scale Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor network is an emerging technology that enables remote monitoring of large geographical regions. In this paper, we address the problem of distributing attributes over such a large-scale sensor network so that the cost of data retrieval is minimized. The proposed scheme is a data-centric storage scheme where the attributes are distributed over the network depending on the correlations between them. The problem addressed here is similar to the Allocation Problem of distributed databases. In this paper, we have defined the Allocation Problem in the context of sensor networks and have proposed a scheme for finding a good distribution of attributes to the sensor network. We also propose an architecture for query processing given such a distribution of attributes. We analytically determine the conditions under which the proposed architecture is beneficial and present simulation results to demonstrate the same. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to determine an allocation of attributes over a sensor network based on the correlations between attributes.     

Channel allocation and medium access control for wireless sensor networks

Recent developments in sensor technology, as seen in Berkeley’s Mica2 Mote, Rockwell’s WINS nodes and the IEEE 802.15.4 Zigbee, have enabled support for single-transceiver, multi-channel communication. The task of channel assignment with minimum interference, also named as the 2-hop coloring problem, allows repetition of colors occurs only if the nodes are separated by more than 2 hops. Being NP complete, development of efficient heuristics for this coloring problem is an open research area and this paper proposes the Dynamic Channel Allocation (DCA) algorithm as a novel solution. Once channels are assigned, a Medium Access Control protocol must be devised so that channel selection, arbitration and scheduling occur with maximum energy savings and reduced message overhead, both critical considerations for sensor networks. The contribution of this paper is twofold: (1) development and analysis of the DCA algorithm that assigns optimally minimum channels in a distributed manner in order to make subsequent communication free from both primary and secondary interference and (2) proposing CMAC, a fully desynchronized multi-channel MAC protocol with minimum hardware requirements. CMAC takes into account the fundamental energy constraint in sensor nodes by placing them in a default sleep mode as far as possible, enables spatial channel re-use and ensures nearly collision free communication. Simulation results reveal that the DCA consumes significantly less energy while giving a legal distributed coloring. CMAC, our MAC protocol that leverages this coloring, has been thoroughly evaluated with various modes in SMAC, a recent protocol that achieves energy savings through coordinated sleeping. Results show that CMAC obtains nearly 200% reduction in energy consumption, significantly improved throughput, and end-to-end delay values that are 50–150% better than SMAC for our simulated topologies.     

Energy and Network Balanced Distributed Clustering in Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless Personal Communications - Balancing energy consumption of sensor nodes to extend the network lifetime is a major concern for the energy constrained wireless sensor network. Improper load...     

Different Energy Saving Schemes in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Wireless Personal Communications - Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are one of the very active research area. They have many applications like military, health care, environmental monitoring and...     

Broadband,High‐Speed,and Large‐Amplitude Dynamic Optical Switching with Yttrium‐Doped Cadmium Oxide

Transparent conducting oxides, such as doped indium oxide, zinc oxide, and cadmium oxide (CdO), have recently attracted attention as tailorable materials for applications in nanophotonic and plasmonic devices such as low‐loss modulators and all‐optical switches due to their tunable optical properties, fast optical response, and low losses. In this work, optically induced extraordinarily large reflection changes (up to 135%) are demonstrated in bulk CdO films in the mid‐infrared wavelength range close to the epsilon near zero (ENZ) point. To develop a better understanding of how doping level affects the static and dynamic optical properties of CdO, the evolution of the optical properties with yttrium (Y) doping is investigated. An increase in the metallicity and a blueshift of the ENZ point with increasing Y‐concentrations is observed. Broadband all‐optical switching from near‐infrared to mid‐infrared wavelengths is demonstrated. The major photoexcited carrier relaxation mechanisms in CdO are identified and it is shown that the relaxation times can be significantly reduced by increasing the dopant concentration in the film. This work could pave the way to practical dynamic and passive optical and plasmonic devices with doped CdO spanning wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the mid‐infrared region.     

Software-defined optical networks (SDONs): a survey

This paper gives an overview of software-defined optical networks (SDONs). It explains the general concepts on software-defined networks (SDNs), their relationship with network function virtualization, and also about OpenFlow, which is a pioneer protocol for SDNs. It then explains the benefits and challenges of extending SDNs to multilayer optical networks, including flexible grid and elastic optical networks, and how it compares to generalized multi-protocol label switching for implementing a unified control plane. An overview on the industry and research efforts on SDON standardization and implementation is given next, to bring the reader up to speed with the current state of the art in this field. Finally, the paper outlines the benefits achieved by SDONs for network operators, and also some of the important and relevant research problems that need to be addressed.     

A Novel Approach for Mining High‐Utility Sequential Patterns in Sequence Databases

Mining sequential patterns is an important research issue in data mining and knowledge discovery with broad applications. However, the existing sequential pattern mining approaches consider only binary frequency values of items in sequences and equal importance/significance values of distinct items. Therefore, they are not applicable to actually represent many real‐world scenarios. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for mining high‐utility sequential patterns for more real‐life applicable information extraction from sequence databases with non‐binary frequency values of items in sequences and different importance/significance values for distinct items. Moreover, for mining high‐utility sequential patterns, we propose two new algorithms: UtilityLevel is a high‐utility sequential pattern mining with a level‐wise candidate generation approach, and UtilitySpan is a high‐utility sequential pattern mining with a pattern growth approach. Extensive performance analyses show that our algorithms are very efficient and scalable for mining high‐utility sequential patterns.