Deterministic and stochastic assessment of the harmonic currents consumed by discharge lamps

The paper examines the deterministic and stochastic behavior of magnetic ballast discharge lamps. Expressions to deterministically calculate the harmonic currents of discharge lamps are provided and analytical expressions of the probability density functions of these harmonic currents are obtained. The results are validated with experimental measurements.     

Comparative evaluation of sliding mode fuzzy controller and PID controller for a boost converter

Nonlinear controllers such as fuzzy controllers and sliding mode controllers have been applied to boost converters because of their nonlinear properties. Although both fuzzy and sliding mode controllers have desirable characteristics, they have disadvantages in practice when applied individually. A sliding mode fuzzy controller is proposed to control boost converters. The sliding mode fuzzy controller combines the advantages of both fuzzy controllers and sliding mode controllers. It also has advantages of its own that are well suited for digital control design and implementation. A sliding mode fuzzy controller is designed and verified with experimental results using a prototype boost converter with a DSP-based digital controller. Experimental results of the boost converter using sliding mode fuzzy control are evaluated in comparison with experimental results using a linear PID and PI controller. The comparison indicates that the sliding mode fuzzy controller is able to obtain the desired transient response under varying operating points without chattering. The startup response using sliding mode fuzzy control is superior to the response using PID and PI control, while the load transient response shows no obvious advantage.     

InRout - A QoS aware route selection algorithm for industrial wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks are a key enabling technology for industrial monitoring applications where the use of wireless infrastructure allows high adaptivity and low cost in terms of installation and retrofitting. To facilitate the move from the current wired designs to wireless designs, concerns regarding reliability must be satisfied. Current standardization efforts for industrial wireless systems lack specification on efficient routing protocols that mitigate reliability concerns. Consequently, this work presents the InRout route selection algorithm, where local information is shared among neighbouring nodes to enable efficient, distributed route selection while satisfying industrial application requirements and considering sensor node resource limitations. Route selection is described as a multi-armed bandit task and uses Q-learning techniques to obtain the best available solution with low overhead. A performance comparison with existing approaches demonstrates the benefits of the InRout algorithm, which satisfies typical quality of service requirements for industrial monitoring applications while considering sensor node resources. Simulation results show that InRout can provide gains ranging from 4% to 60% in the number of successfully delivered packets when compared to current approaches with much lower control overhead.     

Statistical optimization of a DC-RF hybrid plasma flow system for in-flight particle treatment

There are many input parameters to control a DC-RF hybrid plasma flow system, such as total gas flow rate, central gas flow rate, swirl gas ratio, RF power and DC power. Furthermore, the interactive effects among these parameters should be considered. In the present study, statistical analysis using simple linear model is conducted to clarify the effects of the input parameters and their interactions on the outputs such as particle residence time and average temperature in a DC-RF hybrid plasma flow system. The thermofluid characteristics of a DC-RF hybrid plasma flow are compared with those of an RF plasma flow. It is shown that the plasma characteristics are changed drastically by adding even small DC power. Furthermore, controllability is also improved by optimizing the operating conditions of a DC-RF hybrid plasma flow system.     

Nitridation of the Sol–Gel-Derived Titanium Oxide Films by Heating in Ammonia Gas

Dip-coated sol–gel-derived TiO₂ films on an alumina substrate were converted to nonstoichiometric titanium nitride (TiN _x ( x ≦ 1)) films by heating at approxmately 1000°C in NH₃ gas. TiO₂ films made from TiO₂ sols prepared from Ti(O– i -C₃H₇)₄ and stabilized by diethanolamine were more easily nitrided than those from sols containing HCl as a deflocculant reagent. This appears to be a result of the more porous structure of the former films.     

A pre-placement individual net length estimation model and an application for modern circuits

With the advances in integrated circuit (IC) technology, managing the individual and total interconnect is becoming one of the main challenges facing designers. An individual a-priori length estimation model can be a useful tool in helping designers obtain lower net lengths and congestion of interconnect. In this paper, the main characteristics that need to be considered while designing an individual a-priori length estimation technique for today's integrated circuits are discussed. A model that includes some of the most prevalent characteristics is designed and tested using the most current benchmark circuits released by IBM. In addition, one application of the length estimation is proposed in which a predictor-corrector framework for clustering that can be used to improve the results of placement is implemented. This model shows that the corrector step can improve the final placement results by up to 33% for special cases.     

Optimal gate sizing using a self-tuning multi-objective framework

In this paper, we present a self-tuning multi-objective framework for geometric programming that provides a fine trade-off between the competing objectives. The significance of this framework is that the designer does not need to perform any tuning of weights of objectives. The proposed framework is applied to gate sizing and clock network buffer sizing problems. In gate sizing application, power consumption is reduced on average by 86% while delay sees only an increase of 34 ns. In clock network butter sizing application, our framework results in a significant reduction in power, 57%, and an improvement of 31 ps in skew.     

An improved quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm for coding resource optimization based network coding multicast scheme

This paper investigates how to minimize the required coding resources in network-coding-based multicast scenarios. An evolutionary algorithm (MEQEA) is proposed to address the above problem. Based on quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm (QEA), MEQEA introduces multi-granularity evolution mechanism which allows different chromosomes, at each generation, to have different rotation angle step values for update. In virtue of this mechanism, MEQEA significantly improves its capability of exploration and exploitation, since its optimization performance is no longer overly dependant upon the single rotation angle step scheme shared by all chromosomes. MEQEA also presents an adaptive quantum mutation operation which is able to prevent local search efficiently. Simulations are carried out over a number of network topologies. The results show that MEQEA outperforms other heuristic algorithms and is characterized by high success ratio, fast convergence, and excellent global-search capability.     

Numerical and experimental characterization of antenna positioning in a dual-radio mesh router

This paper investigates the influence of the position of the antennas in a dual-radio mesh router by characterizing the router components from an electromagnetic point of view. Since the behavior of a wireless router equipped with multiple devices and antennas can be affected by mutual coupling among several close conducting bodies, numerical and experimental tests are carried out to provide some suggestions for an accurate positioning of the antennas. A reference configuration is implemented in an electromagnetic Computer-Aided Design (CAD) simulator. The most significant numerical results are validated by performing a campaign of measurements in anechoic chamber and deploying a testbed for the derivation of the experimental values of throughput, return loss, power density, and directivity.