Systematic convergence of nonlinear stochastic estimators on the Special Orthogonal Group SO(3)

This paper introduces two novel nonlinear stochastic attitude estimators developed on the Special Orthogonal Group with the tracking error of the normalized Euclidean distance meeting predefined transient and steady‐state characteristics. The tracking error is confined to initially start within a predetermined large set such that the transient performance is guaranteed to obey dynamically reducing boundaries and decrease smoothly and asymptotically to the origin in probability from almost any initial condition. The proposed estimators produce accurate attitude estimates with remarkable convergence properties using measurements obtained from low‐cost inertial measurement units. The estimators proposed in continuous form are complemented by their discrete versions for the implementation purposes. The simulation results illustrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed estimators against uncertain measurements and large initialization error, whether in continuous or discrete form.     

Optimal weighed Holoentropy for video compression: an advanced HEVC

ABSTRACT

In recent times, the applications of multimedia are rising in a greedy mode and hence the amount of video transactions is also increasing exponentially. This has shouted great demands on effective models on video encoding and also for reducing the transmission channel congestion. This research work introduces a managing technique termed weighted encoding for High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). HEVC, also termed as MPEG-H Part 2 and H.265 is a video compression standard that is widely utilized AVC (H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10). When compared to AVC, HEVC grants double the ratio of data compression at a similar level of quality of the video or considerably enhanced video quality at a similar bit rate. This work intends to optimize the weight that adopted in HEVC for encoding. For this, this paper proposes a new Iterative based propagation update in the water wave Optimization Algorithm (IPU-WWO), which is the improved form of Water wave Optimization (WWO). The performance of proposed IPU-WWO is compared over other conventional methods like Artificial Bee Colony (ABC), Firefly (FF), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Genetic Algorithm (GA) with respect to Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR). By doing the encoding process, it minimizes the video size with perceptually better quality video or PSNR.     

Food recognition using neural network classifier and multiple hypotheses image segmentation

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes the multiple-hypotheses image segmentation and feed-forward neural network classifier for food recognition to improve the performance. Initially, the food or meal image is given as input. Then, the segmentation is applied to identify the regions, where a particular food item is located using salient region detection, multi-scale segmentation, and fast rejection. Then, the features of every food item are extracted by the global feature and local feature extraction. After the features are obtained, the classification is performed for each segmented region using a feed-forward neural network model. Finally, the calorie value is computed with the aid of (i) food volume and (ii) calorie and nutrition measure based on mass value. The experimental results and performance evaluation are validated. The outcome of the proposed method attains 0.947 for Macro Average Accuracy (MAA) and 0.959 for Standard Accuracy (SA), which provides better classification performance.     

Upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) treatment of supernatant of cow manure by thermal pre-treatment.

Upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) methane fermentation treatment of cow manure that was subjected to screw pressing, thermal treatment and subsequent solid-liquid separation was studied. Conducting batch scale tests at temperatures between 140 and 180 degrees C, the optimal temperature for sludge settling and the color suppression was found to be between 160-170 degrees C. UASB treatment was carried out with a supernatant obtained from the thermal treatment at the optimal conditions (170 degrees C for 30 minutes) and polymer-dosed solid-liquid separation. In the UASB treatment with a COD(Cr) loading of 11.7 kg/m3/d and water temperature of 32.2 degrees C, the COD(Cr) level dropped from 16,360 mg/L in raw water to 3,940 mg/L in treated water (COD(Cr), removal rate of 75.9%), and the methane production rate per COD(Cr) was 0.187 Nm3/kg. Using wastewater thermal-treated at the optimal conditions, also a methane fermentation treatment with a continuously stirred tank reactor (CSTR) was conducted (COD(Cr) in raw water: 38,000 mg/L, hydraulic retention time (HRT): 20 days, 35 degrees C). At the COD(Cr) loading of 1.9 kg/m3/d, the methane production rate per COD(Cr), was 0.153 Nm3/kg. This result shows that UASB treatment using thermal pre-treatment provides a COD(Cr), loading of four times or more and a methane production rate of 1.3 times higher than the CSTR treatment.     

Analysis of phosphorus removal and anaerobic selector performance in a full-scale activated sludge process in Singapore.

This paper analyses the performance of the anaerobic selector (A/O process) in a full-scale activated sludge process receiving mostly industrial sewage discharge (> 60%) in Singapore. In addition to the sludge settleability, enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) was studied. The sludge volume index (SVI) reduced from 200 to 80 ml g(-1) and foaming was suppressed significantly, indicating the effectiveness of the anaerobic selector in improving sludge settleability. The phosphorus removal efficiency was 66%, and 7.5 mg HAc-COD was consumed per mg PO4(3-) -P removed. In the anaerobic compartment, 31% of the SCOD and 73% of the acetic acid in the settled sewage were removed with PO4(3-) -P release of 14.1 mg PO4(3-)-P l(-1). The linear correlation between PO4(3-) -P release in the anaerobic compartment and PO4(3-) -P uptake in the aerobic compartment indicates that there is about 0.8 mg PO4(3-) -P release in the anaerobic compartment per mg PO34(3-) -P uptake in the aerobic compartment. The fates of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) and its short chain acids (SCAs) in the process were studied and discussed.     

Using decision analysis to determine optimal experimental design for monitoring sewer exfiltration with tracers.

The tracer methods developed to assess exfiltration from sewers in the European project APUSS (assessment of the performance of sewer systems) have a high degree of freedom with regard to the choice of tracer and the dosing strategy. These can lead to very different degrees of uncertainty in the measured exfiltration ratio. In this study, we demonstrate how to select an optimal experimental design using decision analysis, which accounts for this uncertainty and its associated costs. Although the results are site-specific, we can conclude generally that, when NaCl is used as the tracer, the accuracy of the exfiltration estimate is most sensitive to the amount of tracer used and the starting time of the experiment.     

Tracking influent inorganic suspended solids through wastewater treatment plants.

From an experimental and theoretical investigation of the continuity of influent inorganic suspended solids (ISS) along the links connecting the primary settling tank (PST), fully aerobic or N removal activated sludge (AS) and anaerobic and aerobic sludge digestion unit operations, it was found that the influent wastewater (fixed) ISS concentration is conserved through primary sludge anaerobic digestion, activated sludge and aerobic digestion unit operations. However, the measured ISS flux at different stages through a series of wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) unit operations is not equal to the influent ISS flux, because the ordinary heterotrophic organisms (OHO) biomass contributes to the ISS flux by differing amounts depending on the active fraction of the VSS solids at that stage.     

Sampling for representative micropollutant loads in sewer systems.

Most commercially available auto-sampling devices do not support a continuous flow-proportional sampling mode, which would conceptually be the best for collecting representative composite samples. Instead different discrete sampling modes are available. Household chemicals can show considerable random short-term variations. With the anticorrosive benzotriazole, relating to a middle-frequent household activity, we show that, besides an accurate flow meter, mainly three factors are decisive for the representativeness of a substance's average load: the substance's load pattern, the sampling frequency and the length of the composite sample. When the sampling intervals are 10 minutes or longer, errors in the order of +/-40% (standard deviation) or more have to be accepted, if the substance of interest is contained in a low number of wastewater pulses (i.e., the level of household activity). This particularly holds true for specific pharmaceuticals e.g. carbamazepine. Ammonium would be less critical, because it relates to a larger number of sources in the same catchment.     

Control of reactive distillation production of high-purity isopropanol

The process characteristics and control strategy of a high-purity IPA reactive distillation column were investigated. A robust nominal operation was found by maintaining an excess of propylene feed to the column and recycling the unreacted propylene to the feed instead of the top stage. Stage temperature and propylene composition with one-to-one relationship with reboiler duty and propylene feed are selected as controlled variables for maintaining bottom purity and feed ratio in the presence of possible measurement bias respectively. High nonlinearity between selected input–output pair was reduced by using variable transformation. Dynamic simulations demonstrated that such a control scheme with nonlinear transformed variable was capable of providing much superior control performance than the one using natural variable.