Reconfigurable Digital Front-End Hardware for Wireless Base-Station Transmitters: Analysis, Design and FPGA Implementation

A versatile digital front-end architecture is designed and implemented on field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology. The architecture includes the digital up-conversion, and peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) reduction blocks that are applicable to down-link data paths in multi-band wireless base stations such as WCDMA or Wimax systems. Transmitter linearity requirements are addressed and tradeoff analysis for design and optimization of the PAPR reduction algorithm within the context of the error vector magnitude and adjacent channel leakage ratio quality metrics are studied. Statistical characteristics of the clipping noise are analyzed and a novel method for clipping the multi-band signal under the phase invariant constraint is proposed. Our study also includes mapping of the signal processing algorithms onto Xilinx Virtex-4trade FPGA device and addresses the resource utilization and efficient hardware implementation of the above signal processing blocks. Performance assessments and hardware validation of the proposed architecture are also addressed.     

Influence of surface metallisation on magnetoelastic surface wave

The surface-wave coupling which obtains between an elastic bulk shear wave and two magnetostatic modes (one of which is a bulk wave and the other a surface wave) is discussed in the context of a metallised semi-infinite ferrite geometry.     

Fractionation of serum cholesterol: a critique

A procedure for fractionation of serum cholesterol is developed by employing digitonin for the precipitation of free cholesterol in isopropanol. This method is based on the ferric acetate color reaction which is unaffected by traces of digitonin. It is influenced only negligibly by the presence of stanols in serum and is shown to be equally chromogenic with respect to both free and ester forms of cholesterol. The proposed procedure shows a three-fold improvement in precision (3.1 percent coefficient of variation [CV]) compared to that of the procedure by Leffler and McDougald (10.5 percent C.V.) which is based on the ferric chloride color reaction. The proposed free cholestrol procedure showed a mean recovery of 99.5% percent (98.1 to 102.5 percent) when cholesterol in 40 to 200 mg per dl concentrations was added to serum. The analytical performance of the proposed fractionation of serum cholesterol is critically reviewed with respect to its potential application in the diagnosis of liver diseases and in basic or experimental research.     

Effects of a localized region of damage on the parametric excitation of a bar

A model for the parametric excitation of a damaged bar is developed. Three pameters characterizing the damaged region: location, size and amount of deterioration are introduced to study the dynamic stability behavior. It is shown that a resonance type of response can be developed and can be expected to have deleterious effects on the integrity of the damaged bar. Therefore, the safe load based on static consideration alone is inadequate.     

Multifocal giant cell glioblastoma: case report

Echinococcus granulosus cyst wall possess high biochemical activities of malate dehydrogenase (MD) and fumarate reductase (FR), but low activity of succinate dehydrogenase (SD), suggesting that the cyst wall may utilize a partial reverse tricarboxylic acid cycle. When infected mice were given intragastrically with mebendazole, 25-50 mg.kg-1.d-1, albendazole 300 mg.kg-1.d-1 or praziquantel 500 mg.kg-1.d-1 for 7-14 d, no apparent effects on SD and FR activities of the cyst wall were found, while the MD activity was suppressed by all the 3 drugs, the inhibition rates being 34.6-61.6%, 59.8%, and 50.6%, respectively. The results suggested that MD may not be an important target for the antihydatidosis drugs.     

Fair and efficient packet scheduling using Elastic Round Robin

Parallel systems are increasingly being used in multiuser environments with the interconnection network shared by several users at the same time. Fairness is an intuitively desirable property in the allocation of bandwidth available on a link among traffic flows of different users that share the link. Strict fairness in traffic scheduling can improve the isolation between users, offer a more predictable performance and improve performance by eliminating some bottlenecks. This paper presents a simple, fair, efficient, and easily implementable scheduling discipline, called Elastic Round Robin (ERR), designed to satisfy the unique needs of wormhole switching, which is popular in interconnection networks of parallel systems. In spite of the constraints of wormhole switching imposed on the design, ERR is also suitable for use in Internet routers and has better fairness and performance characteristics than previously known scheduling algorithms of comparable efficiency, including Deficit Round Robin and Surplus Round Robin. In this paper, we prove that ERR is efficient, with a per-packet work complexity of O(1). We analytically derive the relative fairness bound of ERR, a popular metric used to measure fairness. We also derive the bound on the start-up latency experienced by a new flow that arrives at an ERR scheduler. Finally, this paper presents simulation results comparing the fairness and performance characteristics of ERR with other scheduling disciplines of comparable efficiency     

On the optimization of schedules for MapReduce workloads in the presence of shared scans

We consider MapReduce clusters designed to support multiple concurrent jobs, concentrating on environments in which the number of distinct datasets is modest relative to the number of jobs. In such scenarios, many individual datasets are likely to be scanned concurrently by multiple Map phase jobs. As has been noticed previously, this scenario provides an opportunity for Map phase jobs to cooperate, sharing the scans of these datasets, and thus reducing the costs of such scans. Our paper has three main contributions over previous work. First, we present a novel and highly general method for sharing scans and thus amortizing their costs. This concept, which we call cyclic piggybacking, has a number of advantages over the more traditional batching scheme described in the literature. Second, we notice that the various subjobs generated in this manner can be assumed in an optimal schedule to respect a natural chain precedence ordering. Third, we describe a significant but natural generalization of the recently introduced FLEX scheduler for optimizing schedules within the context of this cyclic piggybacking paradigm, which can be tailored to a variety of cost metrics. Such cost metrics include average response time, average stretch, and any minimax-type metric—a total of 11 separate and standard metrics in all. Moreover, most of this carries over in the more general case of overlapping rather than identical datasets as well, employing what we will call semi-shared scans. In such scenarios, chain precedence is replaced by arbitrary precedence, but we can still handle 8 of the original 11 metrics. The overall approach, including both cyclic piggybacking and the FLEX scheduling generalization, is called CIRCUMFLEX. We describe some practical implementation strategies. And we evaluate the performance of CIRCUMFLEX via a variety of simulation and real benchmark experiments.     

Multimodal control of sensors on multiple simulated unmanned vehicles

The use of multimodal (speech plus manual) control of the sensors on combinations of one, two, three or five simulated unmanned vehicles (UVs) is explored. Novice controllers of simulated UVs complete a series of target checking tasks. Two experiments compare speech and gamepad control for one, two, three or five UVs in a simulated environment. Increasing the number of UVs has an impact on subjective rating of workload (measured by NASA-Task Load Index), particularly when moving from one to three UVs. Objective measures of performance showed that the participants tended to issue fewer commands as the number of vehicles increased (when using the gamepad control), but, while performance with a single UV was superior to that of multiple UVs, there was little difference across two, three or five UVs. Participants with low spatial ability (measured by the Object Perspectives Test) showed an increase in time to respond to warnings when controlling five UVs. Combining speech with gamepad control of sensors on UVs leads to superior performance on a secondary (respond-to-warnings) task (implying a reduction in demand) and use of fewer commands on primary (move-sensors and classify-target) tasks (implying more efficient operation). STATEMENT OF RELEVANCE: Benefits of multimodal control for unmanned vehicles are demonstrated. When controlling sensors on multiple UVs, participants with low spatial orientation scores have problems. It is proposed that the findings of these studies have implications for selection of UV operators and suggests that future UV workstations could benefit from multimodal control.     

Optical anisotropy in single-walled carbon nanotube thin films: implications for transparent and conducting electrodes in organic photovoltaics

Optical anisotropy in single-walled carbon nanotube thin film networks is reported. We obtain the real and imaginary parts of the in-(parallel) and out-of-plane (perpendicular) complex dielectric functions of the single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) thin films by combining transmission measurements at several incidence angles with spectroscopic ellipsometry data on different substrates. In sparse networks, the two components of the real part of the complex dielectric constant (epsilon1 parallel and epsilon1 perpendicular) were found to differ by 1.5 at 2.25 eV photon energy. The resulting angular dependence (from 0 to 70 degrees incidence angles) of transmittance is reflected in the conversion efficiency of organic solar cells utilizing SWNT thin films as the hole conducting electrodes. Our results indicate that, in addition to the transparency and sheet resistance, factors such as the optical anisotropy must be considered for optical devices incorporating SWNT networks.     

Upconversion Nanocarriers Encapsulated with Photoactivatable Ru Complexes for Near‐Infrared Light‐Regulated Enzyme Activity

Enzyme activity is important for metabolism, cell functions, and treating diseases. However, remote control of enzyme activity in deep tissue remains a challenge. This study demonstrates near‐infrared (NIR) light‐regulated enzyme activity in living cells based on upconverting nanoparticles (UCNPs) and a photoactivatable Ru complex. The Ru complex is a caged enzyme inhibitor that can be activated by blue light. To prepare a nanocarrier for NIR photoinhibition of enzyme activity, a UCNP and the caged enzyme inhibitors are encapsulated in a hollow mesoporous silica nanoparticle. In such a nanocarrier, the UCNP can harvest NIR light and convert it into blue light, which can activate the caged enzyme inhibitors. This photoactivation process is feasible in deep tissue because of the tissue penetration ability of NIR light. The nanocarrier is compatible to LNCaP, PC3, and SAOS‐2 cells, which show high enzyme expression. NIR irradiation induces release of the inhibitors and inhibition of enzyme activity in living cells. NIR light provides high spatiotemporal resolution to regulate enzyme activity in deep tissue.