A MAC protocol by applying staggered channel model for cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio (CR) is a novel and promising spectrum management technique, which aims to cope with the spectrum scarcity problem occurring in unlicensed bands and alleviate the inefficient spectrum utilization of licensed bands. To ensure that the operation of licensed users will not be adversely affected and that the licensed bands can be efficiently utilized by unlicensed users, this paper proposes a cognitive radio MAC protocol called SMC-CR-MAC. When any primary user is detected, the proposed SMC-CR-MAC protocol applies Contiguous Channel Switching and Sender-Receiver Channel Swap rules to cope with the rendezvous, packet collision, and channel congestion problems. Simulation results show that the proposed SMC-CR-MAC protocol can significantly improve the network performance in terms of utilization of licensed bands, standard deviation of traffic load on each channel, and probability of successful rendezvous.     

Throughput enhancement by exploiting spatial reuse opportunities with smart antenna systems in wireless ad hoc networks

Smart antenna (or multi-beam antenna) systems can support simultaneous transmissions (or receptions) of multiple packets in different beams using the same channel. However, network performance is highly dependent on transmission scheduling. This study develops two transmission-scheduling schemes for use with smart antenna systems to improve network throughput and reduce transmission delay. The proposed scheduling mechanisms, which are designed to minimize the average latency and maximize network throughput, exploit the opportunities for parallel transmissions and consider communication restrictions and packet sizes. The performance results indicate that the proposed schemes outperform previous schemes in network throughput and transmission delay.     

Obstacle-Free Geocasting Protocols for Single/Multi-Destination Short Message Services in Ad Hoc Networks

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) comprise mobile hosts in a network bereft of base stations and characterized by a highly dynamic network topology. The MANET environment contains unpredictable obstacles, such as mountains, lakes, buildings, or regions without any hosts, impeding or blocking message relay. This study proposes geocasting protocols for sending short message from a source host to single or multiple geocasting regions in ad hoc networks. The proposed protocols keep messages away from unpredictable obstacles and create a small flooding region. Experimental results show that a source host can send a short message to all hosts located in single or multiple geographical areas with a high success rate and low flooding overhead.     

Application of extension theory to PD pattern recognition in high-voltage current transformers

This paper presents a novel partial-discharge (PD) recognition method based on the extension theory for high-voltage cast-resin current transformers (CRCTs). First, a commercial PD detector is used to measure the three-dimensional (3-D) PD patterns of the high-voltage CRCTs, then three data preprocessing schemes that extract relevant features from the raw 3-D-PD patterns are presented for the proposed PD recognition method. Second, the matter-element models of the PD defect types are built according to PD patterns derived from practical experimental results. Then, the PD defect in a CRCT can be directly identified by degrees of correlation between the tested pattern and the matter-element models which have been built up. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, comparative studies using a multilayer neural network and k-means algorithm are conducted on 150 sets of field-test PD patterns of 23-kV CRCTs with rather encouraging results.     

Generation of Potent Anti-Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Neutralizing Antibodies from Mouse Phage Display Library for Cancer Therapy

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is an important stimulator for angiogenesis in solid tumors. Blocking VEGF activity is an effective therapeutic strategy to inhibit tumor growth and metastasis. Avastin, a humanized monoclonal antibody recognizes VEGF, has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. To generate potential VEGF-recognizing antibodies with better tumor regression ability than that of Avastin, we have designed a systematic antibody selection plan. From mice immunized with recombinant human VEGF, we generated three phage display libraries, scFv-M13KO7, Fab-M13KO7, and scFv-Hyperphage, in single-chain Fv (scFv) or Fab format, displayed using either M13KO7 helper phage or Hyperphage. Solid-phase and solution-phase selection strategies were then applied to each library, generating six panning combinations. A total of sixty-four antibodies recognizing VEGF were obtained. Based on the results of epitope mapping, binding affinity, and biological functions in tumor inhibition, eight antibodies were chosen to examine their abilities in tumor regression in a mouse xenograft model using human COLO 205 cancer cells. Three of them showed improvement in the inhibition of tumor growth (328%–347% tumor growth ratio (% of Day 0 tumor volume) on Day 21 vs. 435% with Avastin). This finding suggests a potential use of these three antibodies for VEGF-targeted therapy.     

Sum-of-squares-based fuzzy controller design using quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm

In the field of fuzzy control, control gains are obtained by solving stabilisation conditions in linear-matrix-inequality-based Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy control method and sum-of-squares-based polynomial fuzzy control method. However, the optimal performance requirements are not considered under those stabilisation conditions. In order to handle specific performance problems, this paper proposes a novel design procedure with regard to polynomial fuzzy controllers using quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithms. The first contribution of this paper is a combination of polynomial fuzzy control and quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithms to undertake an optimal performance controller design. The second contribution is the proposed stability condition derived from the polynomial Lyapunov function. The proposed design approach is dissimilar to the traditional approach, in which control gains are obtained by solving the stabilisation conditions. The first step of the controller design uses the quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithms to determine the control gains with the best performance. Then, the stability of the closed-loop system is analysed under the proposed stability conditions. To illustrate effectiveness and validity, the problem of balancing and the up-swing of an inverted pendulum on a cart is used.     

An overlapping communication protocol using improved time-slot leasing for Bluetooth WPANs

In this paper, we propose an overlapping communication protocol using improved time-slot leasing in the Bluetooth WPANS. One or many slave–master–slave communications usually exist in a piconet of the Bluetooth network. A fatal communication bottleneck is incurred in the master node if many slave–master–slave communications are required at the same time. To alleviate the problem, an overlapping communication scheme is presented to allow slave node directly and simultaneously communicates with another slave node to replace with the original slave–master–slave communication works in a piconet. This overlapping communication scheme is based on the improved time-slot leasing (TSL) scheme which modified from the original TSL, while the original TSL scheme only provides the slave-to-slave communication capability. The key contribution of our improved TSL scheme is to offer the overlapping communication capability. With the overlapping communication scheme, we developed an overlapping communication protocol in a Bluetooth WPANs. Finally, simulation results demonstrate that our developed communication protocol achieves the performance improvements on bandwidth utilization, transmission delay time, network congestion, and energy consumption.