Measurements of Dielectric Properties at Ka-Band Using a Fabry-Perot Hemispherical Open Resonator

A Fabry-Perot hemispherical open resonator is designed and constructed in order to measure dielectric properties of BeO in the Ka-band (26 – 40 GHz) frequency range. Based on both analytic calculations and simulations by a 3-D finite element electromagnetic code, HFSS, the hemispherical open resonator is designed to excite a TEM_0,0,17 mode at 28 GHz. The TEM_0,0,17 mode is experimentally identified by a field perturbation technique. Dielectric measurements are made by both frequency variation and length variation methods. Measurements show that permittivity and loss tangent of BeO are 6.69 and 6.5 × 10^?4 - 7.2× 10^?4, respectively, in the frequency range of 26 – 34 GHz.     

Preparation and electrochromic properties of spin self-assembled polyelectrolyte multilayer films composed of PEDOT:PSS and PAH

Polyelectrolyte multilayer films composed of a polycation (poly(allylamine hydrochloride) PAH) and a polyanion (poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonate) PEDOT:PSS) were prepared by a spin self-assembly method, and their electrochemical and electrochromic properties were investigated. The change in the surface charge and the optical absorption spectra of the multilayer films revealed that sequential deposition of polyelectrolyte was successfully achieved during the spin self-assembly. The electrochromic properties of 20-bilayered PAH/PEDOT:PSS were also investigated. The response time for the coloring and bleaching processes was 6.2 and 2.5 s, respectively, and the coloration efficiency was 199.3 cm²/C. These results indicate that a spin self-assembly process could be a viable alternative for the fabrication of electrochromic devices.     

A class of adaptive hybrid ARQ schemes for wireless links

Wireless links are known to suffer location-dependent, time-varying, and bursty errors. This paper considers a class of adaptive error-control schemes in the data link layer for reliable communication over wireless links in which the error-control code and the frame length are chosen adaptively, based on the estimated channel state/condition. Three error-control schemes are considered according to: (1) the number of Reed Solomon code segments a packet is divided into and (2) the way a lost packet is retransmitted. Through throughput performance and computation complexity analyses, these three schemes are compared, and then one of them is claimed to be the most attractive in terms of computation complexity and practicality even though its throughput performance is not the best. The simulation results also verify that this scheme works well over a time-varying fading channel. Error control for the medium access control (MAC) header and its effect on the performance of each error-control scheme are also considered since, without proper error protection for the header, it would be futile to exercise error control on the user data     

Full software analysis and impedance matching of radio frequencyCMOS integrated circuits

We present a systematic analysis technique of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) radio-frequency (RF) integrated circuits (ICs). A full simulation program with integrated circuit emphasis (SPICE) simulation of the whole chip including the package and the die, with the parameters extracted from purely software analysis, has been performed. It is shown that the RF impedance matching without S-parameter based techniques is possible and the measured results agree well with our SPICE-only software based technique     

Dependence of thermo-mechanical and mechanical properties of novel fluorophosphate glass on various rare earth dopants

The dependence of thermo-mechanical, and mechanical properties on various rare earth dopants (RE) including Nd₂O₃, Er₂O₃, and Yb₂O₃ in 0.4MgF₂-0.4BaF₂-0.1Ba(PO₃)₂-0.1Al(PO₃)₃ glasses (MBBA system) is systematically investigated. MBBA system doped with RE dopants presented the potential application in the field of communication and high power layer system in the previous reports. In this work, it is found that the density of the doped glass increases with an increasing of RE concentration, which could be understood in terms of cationic field strength (CFS) effect. The Knoop hardness is found to decrease with the loading time and dopant concentration due to the indentation size effect (ISE) effect. The observed decrease of thermal expansion coefficient and the increase of glass transition temperature T _g with increasing dopant concentration are elucidated in terms of the increasing number of strong covalent bonds with increasing RE dopant concentration. Those results will be of paramount importance before designing optical devices.     

Contactless energy transfer using planar printed circuit boardwindings

An energy transfer circuit is proposed which employs a pair of neighbouring printed circuit board windings as a contactless energy transfer device, thereby making it amenable to low-profile designs and suitable for applications in which stringent requirements for height, space and reliability have to be met     

Error concealment using affine transform for H.263 coded videotransmissions

A new error concealment method is proposed that uses motion estimation to consider actual motions, such as rotation, magnification, reduction, and parallel motion, in moving pictures. Since many videos include a variety of complex three-dimensional motions, the proposed method uses an affine transform to estimate the motion of lost data more accurately, thereby producing a higher peak signal-to-noise ratio value and better subjective video quality     

Effect of water drying conditions on the surface property and morphology of waterborne UV-curable coatings for engineered flooring

UV-curable coatings are widely used on wooden materials such as flooring and furniture, because they have excellent properties, including high hardness, gloss, mar and chemical resistance, and are also environmental friendly, containing no solvents. Recently, waterborne UV-curable coatings have been studied as a viable alternative, since solvents are added to spray applications to lower viscosity. We investigated the effects of water drying conditions on the surface properties and morphology of waterborne UV-curable coatings at the flash-off step. Temperature conditions studied were 22 °C, 50 °C, and 80 °C, with various drying times. We evaluated surface properties such as pendulum hardness, pencil hardness, and adhesion strength. Also observed was surface morphology, comparing surface properties using optical microscopy after drying and UV-curing. Insufficient drying caused cracking, peeling and blistering at the surface of a cured coating. Sufficient drying was very important for the best application and ideal surface morphology of waterborne UV-curable coatings.     

Control of chaotic dynamical systems using radial basis function network approximators

This paper presents a general control method based on radial basis function networks (RBFNs) for chaotic dynamical systems. For many chaotic systems that can be decomposed into a sum of a linear and a nonlinear part, under some mild conditions the RBFN can be used to well approximate the nonlinear part of the system dynamics. The resulting system is then dominated by the linear part, with some small or weak residual nonlinearities due to the RBFN approximation errors. Thus, a simple linear state-feedback controller can be devised, to drive the system response to a desirable set-point. In addition to some theoretical analysis, computer simulations on two representative continuous-time chaotic systems (the Duffing and the Lorenz systems) are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

COMPARISON OF PROBE METHODS FOR MEASUREMENT OF BUBBLE PROPERTIES

Direct quantitative comparisons of four different probe methods were performed for determination of local gas holdup, vertical bubble length, bubble rising velocity, and bubble frequency. The methods include vertically projecting electroresistivity, horizontally projecting electroresistivity, U-shape light reflection, and light transmission. The measured bubble properties strongly depended on the size and configuration of the probe tips. The light transmission probe developed in this work can be used to determine the bubble properties effectively. In order to minimize interferences with bubble flow, the size of probe tip should be small as possible and its configuration must be vertically projecting.