A neural circuit with transcendental energy function for solving system of linear equations

A feedback neural network based circuit to solve a system of simultaneous linear equations is presented. The circuit has an associated transcendental energy function that ensures fast convergence to the exact solution while enjoying reduction in hardware complexity over existing schemes. The proof of the energy function has been given and it is shown that the gradient network converges exactly to the solution of the system of equations. PSPICE simulation results are presented for linear systems of equations of various sizes and are found to agree exactly with the algebraic solution. Hardware implementation for small sized problems further confirm the circuit operation.     

A hop‐by‐hop delay‐constrained routing algorithm with explicit loop avoidance and backup routing information

QoS Routing is crucial for QoS provisioning in high‐speed networks. In general, QoS routing can be classified into two paradigms: source routing and hop‐by‐hop routing. In source routing, the entire path to the destination node of a communication request is locally computed at the source node based on the global state that it maintains, which does not scale well to large networks. In hop‐by‐hop routing, a path‐selecting process is shared among intermediate nodes between the source node and the destination node, which can largely improve the protocol scalability. In this paper, we present the design of hop‐by‐hop routing with backup route information such that each intermediate node can recursively update the best known feasible path, if possible, by collectively utilizing the routing information gathered thus far and the information that it locally stores. Such a route is kept as a backup route and its path cost is used as a reference to guide the subsequent routing process to search for a lower‐cost constrained path and avoid performance degradation. In this way, the information gathered is maximally utilized for improved performance. We prove the correctness of our presented algorithm and deduce its worst message complexity to be O(∣V∣²), where ∣V∣ is the number of network nodes. Simulation results indicate that, however, the designed algorithm requires much fewer messages on average. Therefore it scales well with respect to the network size. Moreover, simulation results demonstrate that the cost performance of our algorithm is near‐optimal. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

8.91% Power Conversion Efficiency for Polymer Tandem Solar Cells

A power conversion efficiency of up to 8.91% is obtained for a solution‐processed polymer tandem solar cells based on a large‐bandgap polymer, poly(4,4‐dioctyldithieno(3,2‐b:2′,3′‐d)silole)‐2,6‐diyl‐alt‐(2,1,3‐benzothiadiazole)‐4,7‐diyl) with a polymeric interconnecting layer to electrically connect the front and rear subcells, demonstrating that proper device and interface engineering are can improve the performance of polymer tandem solar cells.     

Analysis of the metastable behaviour of a BiCMOS SR latch

The successful design of digital systems with asynchronous inputs requires careful management of timing relations. Flip-flops used as arbiters or synchronizers in these systems are under asynchronous control and thus can suffer from additional propagation delays due to metastable operation. These added delays lead to system malfunction. An analysis of metastable operation in BiCMOS SR flip-flops is presented. An analytical expression for the flip-flop resolving time is derived. Optimal sizing of the MOSFETs and BJTs is investigated analytically as well as by using SPICE simulation.     

High reliability of real-time visual data transmission using superposition coding with receiver diversity

Supporting visual data applications in the real-time communication systems are among the most challenging issues over the next generation wireless communication systems. This challenge is further magnified by the fact that the quality of reception is highly sensitive to transmission delay, data losses and bit error rate (BER) in such applications. In this paper, we proposed Superposition Coding with Receiver Diversity (SPC-RD) scheme, which employs unequal error protection (UEP) to improve the error performance, maximize the received signal to noise ratio (SNR) and optimize the reliability of the transmission system. In the transmitter side, the visual data is divided into a number of different priority layers based on their effects on the reception quality. These layers are modulated individually where the highest priority layer is modulated with the highest UEP level against error-prone channels, and vice versa. These modulated signals are then superimposed together and transmitted via wireless Single-Input Multiple-Output (SIMO) Rayleigh fading channel. In the receiver side, three different diversity combining approaches; selection combining (SC), equal gain combining (EGC) and maximal ratio combining (MRC) are considered. The combined signal is then passed through a multiuser demodulator so-called the ordered successive interference cancellation (O-SIC) demodulator to reconstruct and separate the data layers. This demodulation technique is evaluated and compared with the traditionally maximum likelihood joint detection (MLJD) technique. Extensive simulations have been carried out to validate the various assertions. Under the assumption of equal transmission power, the simulation results illustrate that the proposed SPC-RD scheme provides a SNR gain of 14.5 dB over the Rayleigh fading channel at the diversity order of three for the acceptable BER level of 10^?3 when BPSK scheme is exploited compared to the traditional equal error protection system. In addition, the proposed scheme with O-SIC demodulation technique achieves almost similar performance compared to MLJD technique but using less computational complexity.     

Performance Analysis of Amplify-and-Forward Relay Systems with Interference-Limited Destination in Various Rician Fading Channels

In this paper, we investigate the performance of a dual-hop fixed-gain amplify-and-forward relay system in the presence of co-channel interference at the destination node. Different fading scenarios for the desired user and interferers’ channels are assumed in this study. We consider the Rician/Nakagami- \(m\) , the Rician/Rician, and the Nakagami- \(m\) /Rician fading environments. In our analysis, we derive accurate approximations for the outage probability and symbol error probability (SEP) of the considered scenarios. The generic independent non-identically distributed (i.n.d.) case of interferers’ channels is considered for the Rician/Nakagami- \(m\) scenario; whereas, the independent identically distributed (i.i.d.) case is studied for the Rician/Rician and the Nakagami- \(m\) /Rician environments. Furthermore, to get more insights on the considered systems, high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) asymptotic analysis of the outage probability and SEP is derived for special cases of the considered fading scenarios. Monte-Carlo simulations and numerical examples are presented in order to validate the analytical and asymptotic results and to illustrate the effect of interference and other system parameters on the system performance. Results show that the different fading models of interferers’ channels have the same diversity order and that the interference degrades the system performance by only reducing the coding gain. Furthermore, findings show that the case where the fading parameter of the desired user first hop channel is better than that of the second hop gives better performance compared to the vise versa case, especially, at low SNR values; whereas, both cases almost behave the same at high SNR values where the performance of the system is dominated by the interference affecting the worst link. Finally, results show the big gap in system performance due to approximating the Rician fading distribution with the Nakagami- \(m\) distribution which is an indication on the inaccuracy of making such approximations in systems like the considered.     

An evaluation oftcp with explicit congestion notification

We study the effect of Explicit Congestion Notification (ecn) ontcp for relatively large but finite file transfers inip networks, and compare it to other congestion avoidance mechanisms, namely Drop Tail (dt) and Random Early Detection (red). We use simulation to measuretcp performance for transfers initiated by a varying number of end hosts. In contrast to previous work, we focus on situations in which all nodes in the network operate uniformly under the same mechanism (dt orred orecn). Our results show that under such uniform conditionsecn does not necessarily lead to significant improvement intcp goodput, although in no case does it lead to an actual degradation in performance. Our results also show that, withecn, tcp flows benefit from lower overhead for unsuccessful transmissions. Furthermore, lockouts are largely avoided. In other words, in an all-ecn network resources are shared more fairly. Finally, we show that global synchronization is no longer an issue, and argue that currenttcp versions have essentially solved the problem, regardless of the queue management scheme employed.     

采用有限元法通过改进结构消除鼓式制动器噪声

降低制动器噪声已成为制动器工程师们具有挑战性的任务.目前关于处理盘式制动器噪声方面已有许多建议,但过去在鼓式制动器系统方面解决方法很少.本文企图提出一种采用有限元方法通过改进结构,降低鼓式制动器噪声.开发并证实了一个真实鼓式制动器的三维有限元(FE)模型.首先用模拟的基本有限元模型预测噪声,然后再提出几个改进结构,最后对选择的改进模型进行动态不稳定过程分析,以便确认由复杂的固有值分析得出的预测结果.     

Tannin properties of rhizophora mucronata barks of different ages

Laboratory investigation of bark extract from different age groups of Rhizophora mucronata (bakau kurap) showed that the tannin extract of barks of 40 years old trees had high reactivity towards formaldehyde as indicated by its stiasny number of 72. The bark also possessed high tannin and extractives'contents. Plywood manufactured from mersawa veneers using this tannin extract met the minimum knife test value of 5 and gave satisfactory strength properties as its failing load met the minimum failing load (45.4 kgf) for boiling resistant type of adhesive, stipulated in the British Standards.