A Fast Adaptive Salt and Pepper Noise Reduction Method in Images

In this paper, an effective filtering method is proposed to remove impulse noise from images. In this two-stage method, detected noise-free pixels remain unchanged. Afterwards, a Gaussian filter with adaptive variances according to the image noise level is applied on the noisy pixels. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms recent impulse denoising methods in terms of PSNR, MAE, IEF, and SSIM. Moreover, the speed of the method is comparable with them, and it can be used effectively in real-time applications.     

Calculation of Confined Phonon Spectrum in Narrow Silicon Nanowires Using the Valence Force Field Method

We study the effect of confinement on the phonon properties of ultra-narrow silicon nanowires of side sizes of 1 nm to 10 nm. We use the modified valence force field (MVFF) method to compute the phononic dispersion and extract the density of states, the transmission function, the sound velocity, the ballistic thermal conductance, and boundary-scattering-limited diffusive thermal conductivity. We find that the phononic dispersion and the ballistic thermal conductance are functions of the geometrical features of the structures, i.e., the transport orientation and confinement dimension. The phonon group velocity and thermal conductance can vary by a factor of two depending on the geometrical features of the channel. The 〈110#x232A; nanowire has the highest group velocity and thermal conductance, whereas the 〈111#x232A; has the lowest. The 〈111#x232A; channel is thus the most suitable orientation for thermoelectric devices based on Si nanowires since it also has a large power factor. Our findings could be useful in the thermal transport design of silicon-based devices for thermoelectric and thermal management applications.     

A new fast locking charge pump PLL: analysis and design

In this paper a new structure for a fast locking charge pump phase locked loop (CPPLL) is introduced which overcomes the trade-off between the settling time and overshoot of the system. This fast locking PLL uses an auxiliary bang–bang frequency comparator (BBFC) as a lock-aid. An additional charge pump current controlled by the output of the BBFC is injected into the main loop filter capacitor to accelerate the locking process. An analytical approach to extract the differential equation governing on the system’s dynamics is used to evaluate the performance of this fast locking PLL. A heuristic method that results in an approximate solution for the extracted differential equation is also proposed. The correctness of the presented differential equation and its closed-form solutions are verified by comparing the obtained closed-form solutions and simulation results. Using the obtained closed-form solutions, we predict the behavior of the system and design a fast BBFC-CPPLL which meets the system’s requirements. Correctness of the differential equation and its closed-form solutions are verified by comparing the obtained closed-form solutions and simulation results.     

A Low-Collision CSMA-Based Active RFID for Tracking Applications

Hardware complexity, active Tag power consumption, and Multiple Tags collection method are three critical parameters in all active radio frequency identification systems. In this work, both the MCU and RF operations are performed in single chip, which makes the Tag hardware smaller. A lot amount of energy is restored by setting Tags in the sleep mode in the most of times. Four commands are used for this system. At first, a unique ID is dedicated to each Tag by the ID allocation command. The polling command is implemented for searching desired Tags. By using of the ID clearing command, the object loses the passing permission for a given time or permanently. Utilizing the collection command, the information of all surrounding Tags are collected and monitored, simultaneously. The Carrier Sense Multiple Access method is used and its performance is evaluated. The maximum transmission range of 80 m at the output power of 4.5 dBm is obtained. An active Tag with unique ID is mounted on each vehicle. Receiver sensitivity of 97 dBm and current consumption of 1 $\mu \text{ A}$ in the sleep mode and 29.6 mA in the active mode are reported.     

Miniaturized Trapezoidal Patch Antenna with Folded Ramp-Shaped Feed for Ultra-Wideband Applications

A novel design for compact probe-fed wideband microstrip patch antenna for ultra-wideband (UWB) applications is proposed in this paper. The antenna consists of a folded ramp-shaped feed, trapezoidal patch and shorting pins. By adding two pins at end side of the patch, its size is miniaturized. The measured impedance bandwidth (VSWR  $\le $  2) of fabricated antenna is more than 130 % from 3.7 to 17.6 GHz. This antenna achieves an acceptable miniaturization and provides an excellent UWB impedance bandwidth with stable radiation patterns. It is shown by simulated results how the bandwidth can be considerably increased by introducing novel feeding method namely, the folded ramp-shaped feed. Likewise, the parametric study is performed to describe the characteristics of the proposed antenna. Moreover, good antenna performances such as radiation patterns, acceptable miniaturization and antenna gains over the operating band have been observed.     

A Prioritization Based Congestion Control Protocol for Healthcare Monitoring Application in Wireless Sensor Networks

Recent developments in biosensor and wireless technology have led to a rapid progress in wearable real time health monitoring. Unlike wired networks, wireless networks are subject to more packet loss and congestion. In this paper, we propose a congestion control and service prioritization protocol for real time monitoring of patients’ vital signs using wireless biomedical sensor networks. The proposed system is able to discriminate between physiological signals and assign them different priorities. Thus, it would be possible to provide a better quality of service for transmitting highly important vital signs. Congestion control is performed by considering both the congestion situation in the parent node and the priority of the child nodes in assigning network bandwidth to signals from different patients. Given the dynamic nature of patients’ health conditions, the proposed system can detect an anomaly in the received vital signs from a patient and hence assign more priority to patients in need. Simulation results confirm the superior performance of the proposed protocol. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt at a special-purpose congestion control protocol specifically designed for wireless biosensor networks.     

Analysis of an Unconditionally Secure Distributed Oblivious Transfer

In the Journal of Cryptology (20(3):323–373, 2007), Blundo, D’Arco, De Santis and Stinson proposed a general model for unconditionally secure distributed oblivious transfer (DOT), where a sender has n secrets and a receiver is interested to one of them. We show that their “t-private weak one-round (k,m)-DOT $\binom{n}{1}$ ” protocol cannot prevent a receiver who attempts to obtain more than one secret. We present a modification to Blundo et al.’s protocol that fixes this problem.     

The role of nanoclay partitioning and fibril formation on dyeability of blend nanocomposite fibres

The aim of the present work was to study the effect of microstructure and microfibril formation on dyeability of polypropylene/poly(butylene terephthalate)/organoclay blend nanocomposite fibres. The blend nanocomposite samples with the same blend ratio but varying in organoclay content were prepared via melt compounding by using a co‐rotating twin screw extruder. The microfibrillar morphology and nanoclay partitioning were studied using scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy together with rheological results. The presence of nanoclay in the form of tactoids in the polypropylene matrix accelerated the dye sorption but much greater ultimate dye uptake could be achieved for the sample in which the major part of the platelets were preferentially located inside the poly(butylene terephthalate) fibrils. Although increasing the organoclay concentration increased the ultimate dye uptake, it limited the fibril formation at higher organoclay concentration. The utilisation of a compatibiliser was found to have an enhancing effect on ultimate dye uptake. This could be explained in terms of the interfacial role of the compatibiliser in improving microfibril formation as well as partitioning a fraction of nanoclay platelets inside the polypropylene matrix.     

Joint detection, channel estimation, and interference cancellation in downlink MC-CDMA communication systems using complex-valued multilayer neural networks

Data detection in the presence of interference is one of the main challenges in multicarrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) communication systems. In this paper, a new detection technique for downlink MC-CDMA systems is proposed. This technique uses complex-valued multilayer neural networks at the receiver side. With the new definition for desired responses (±(1+J) instead of ±1, where $ J = \sqrt {{ - 1}} $ ), the convergence rate is increased (in the training process) regarding to saturation of imaginary output and the performance is increased because of increasing Euclidean distance of output neuron inputs in two states of desired outputs (with factor of $ \sqrt {2} $ ). The performance of the proposed method is improved further by considering two various saturation coefficients (in the activation function of output layer) in the training and test processes. Since the last performance improving lead to low convergence rate, this effect is compensated by correcting the coefficient of training rate in the output layer. Simulation results confirm the high convergence rate, low computational complexity, and also good performance of the proposed method in wide range of SNRs.     

On the Low Temperature Strain Aging of Bainite in the TRIP Steel

The aging behavior of a thermomechanically processed Mo-Al-Nb transformation-induced plasticity steel with ultrafine microstructure was investigated using transmission electron microscopy and atom probe tomography (APT). Strain aging at 73 K (200 °C) for 1800 seconds led to a significant bake-hardening response (up to 222 MPa). Moreover, aging for 1800 seconds at room temperature after 4 pct pre-strain also revealed a bake-hardening response (~60 MPa). The experimental results showed the formation of carbon Cottrell atmospheres around dislocations and the formation of carbon clusters/fine carbides in the bainitic ferrite during aging. It is proposed that this is associated with the high dislocation density of bainitic ferrite with formation of a complex dislocation substructure after pre-straining and its high average carbon content (~0.35 at. pct). The segregation of carbon and substitutional elements such as Mn and Mo to the retained austenite/bainitic ferrite interface during aging was observed by APT. This segregation is likely to be the preliminary stage for Mo-C particles’ formation. The aging after pre-straining also induced the decomposition of retained austenite with formation of ferrite and carbides.