Improved transparency in energy-based bilateral telemanipulation

In bilateral telemanipulation algorithms based on enforcing time-domain passivity, internal friction in the devices poses an additional energy drain. This can severely decrease the obtainable transparency of these algorithms when high amounts of friction are present in the slave device. Based on a model of the friction, the dissipated energy can be estimated and reclaimed inside the energy balance of the control algorithm. Extending the energy balance which is monitored, decreases the net passivity of the telemanipulation system enforced by the control algorithm, which usually enforces passivity of just the bilateral controller. Experimental results are provided that demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in increasing the obtainable transparency. As long as the physically dissipated energy is underestimated, the telemanipulation system as a whole will remain passive. Thus the guaranteed stability property of the time-domain passivity algorithm is maintained.     

Elimination of dislocations in heteroepitaxial MBE and RTCVD Ge x Si1-x grown on patterned Si substrates

We have grown Ge _x Si_1-x (0 <x < 0.20,1000–3000Å thick) on small growth areas etched in the Si substrate. Layers were grown using both molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) at 550° C and rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition (RTCVD) at 900° C. Electron beam induced current images (EBIC) (as well as defect etches and transmission electron microscopy) show that 2800Å-thick, MBE Ge_0.19Si_0.81 on 70-μm-wide mesas have zerothreading and nearly zero misfit dislocations. The Ge_0.19Si{0.81} grown on unpatterned, large areas is heavily dislocated. It is also evident from the images that heterogeneous nucleation of misfit dislocations is dominant in this composition range. 1000Å-thick, RTCVD Ge_0.14Si_0.86 films deposited on 70 μm-wide mesas are also nearly dislocation-free as shown by EBIC, whereas unpatterned areas are more heavily dislocated. Thus, despite the high growth temperatures, only heterogeneous nucleation of misfit dislocations occurs and patterning is still effective. Photoluminescence spectra from arrays of GeSi on Si mesas show that even when the interface dislocation density on the mesas is high, growth on small areas results in a lower dislocation density than growth on large areas.     

Building an index of activity of inhabitants from their activity on the residential electrical power line

In the framework of context awareness within the home, our team is currently assessing the unobtrusive detection of inhabitants' activity through the monitoring of their use and consumption of electricity. The objective is to develop a system for the remote monitoring of large populations of elderly people living independently at home. To be readily deployable on the field, such a system must be minimally intrusive both for the home environment and for the field professionals (paramedics and social workers) visiting the patients at home. We carried out two successive field experiments to evaluate and to improve our system designed to deliver a single index of daily activity. The first experiment involved 13 elderly persons over a nine-month period (84,240 h data recorded) and the second one 12 elderly over six months (51,840 h). We evaluated both the relevance of the index and the acceptability of the system as a whole. We discovered that electrical activity is a kind of unique "signature" of each person's activity. Moreover, this profile provides unexpected information on the health status of the subject. We confirmed that the system was unobtrusive and well accepted both by the subjects and by the professionals involved. Our unique index of activity, and its trend over time, can provide timely information to the professionals on the patient.     

Robust Encryption

We provide a provable-security treatment of “robust” encryption. Robustness means it is hard to produce a ciphertext that is valid for two different users. Robustness makes explicit a property that has been implicitly assumed in the past. We argue that it is an essential conjunct of anonymous encryption. We show that natural anonymity-preserving ways to achieve it, such as adding recipient identification information before encrypting, fail. We provide transforms that do achieve it, efficiently and provably. We assess the robustness of specific encryption schemes in the literature, providing simple patches for some that lack the property. We explain that robustness of the underlying anonymous IBE scheme is essential for public-key encryption with keyword search (PEKS) to be consistent (meaning, not have false positives), and our work provides the first generic conversions of anonymous IBE schemes to consistent (and secure) PEKS schemes. Overall, our work enables safer and simpler use of encryption.     

Load balancing routing with queue overflow prediction for WSNs

The ease of deployment of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) makes them very popular and useful for data collection applications. Nodes often use multihop communication to transmit data to a collector node. The next hop selection in order to reach the final destination is done following a routing policy based on a routing metric. The routing metric value is exchanged via control messages. Control messages transmission frequency can reduce the network bandwidth and affect data transmission. Some approaches like trickle algorithm have been proposed to optimize the network control messages transmission. In this paper, we propose a collaborative load balancing algorithm (CoLBA) with a prediction approach to reduce network overhead. CoLBA is a queuing delay based routing protocol that avoids packet queue overflow and uses a prediction approach to optimize control messages transmission. Simulation results on Cooja simulator show that CoLBA outperforms other existing protocols in terms of delivery ratio and queue overflow while maintaining a similar end-to-end delay.

     

Weighted proportional loss rate differentiation of TCP traffic

Relative service differentiation refers to service models that provide assurances for the relative quality ordering between classes, rather than for the absolute service level in each class. An example is the proportional differentiation model which provides a way to control the quality spacing between classes locally at each hop. In this model, certain forwarding metrics are ratioed proportional to the class differentiation parameters that the network operator chooses. In this paper, we propose a new proportional loss rate differentiation mechanism that integrates relative loss rate differentiation directly into active queue management using random early detection. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley &Sons, Ltd.     

Rigorous optical modeling and optimization of thin‐film photovoltaic cells with textured transparent conductive oxides

Typical thin‐film photovoltaic (PV) cells incorporate a textured transparent conductive oxide to enhance light trapping and efficiently harvest solar energy. Rigorous coherent optical simulations of these devices and a complete characterization of these textured films are a challenging problem because of the several orders of magnitude difference between the wavelengths of interest and the spatial dimension of the sample that needs to be evaluated. In this paper, a practical approach for rigorous and predictive modeling of optical properties of thin‐film PV cells incorporating a vast variety of light‐trapping structures including semi‐coherent textured films and patterned coherent structures is presented. In contrast to the existing semi‐empirical device models, it is demonstrated that the presented methodology can accurately predict the scattering properties of textured fluorine‐doped tin oxide and aluminum‐doped zinc oxide conductive transparent films. It is further shown that the optical response of single‐junction and tandem‐junction PV devices incorporating such films can also be predicted with good accuracy as compared with the measured results. Next, a methodology to identify the sufficient statistical fingerprints of semi‐coherent textured films that are needed to unambiguously predict the light propagation in thin‐film cells is presented. This comprehensive approach then lends itself to identifying the optimal surface morphology needed for strong light trapping. This rigorous approach automatically includes the effects of important loss mechanisms such as the surface plasmon‐enhanced absorption in textured metal surfaces that are otherwise very difficult to account for semi‐coherent approaches based on scalar scattering theory. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Proof of the Security of Quantum Key Distribution

We prove the security of theoretical quantum key distribution against the most general attacks which can be performed on the channel, by an eavesdropper who has unlimited computation abilities, and the full power allowed by the rules of classical and quantum physics. A key created that way can then be used to transmit secure messages such that their security is also unaffected in the future.     

An adaptive load balancing scheme for web servers

This paper describes an overload control scheme for web servers which integrates admission control and load balancing. The admission control mechanism adaptively determines the client request acceptance rate to meet the web servers' performance requirements while the load balancing or client request distribution mechanism determines the fraction of requests to be assigned to each web server. The scheme requires no prior knowledge of the relative speeds of the web servers, nor the work required to process each incoming request. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.