A novel microstrip antenna loaded with EBG and ELC for bandwidth enhancement

This paper proposes the design of three compact antennas for WiMAX, WLAN and ISM band applications. Antenna 1 consists of a monopole radiating element with an electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structured ground. By employing the EBG structure, an ultra-wide band frequency of 2.4–4.8 GHz (66.66%) is achieved. Antenna 2 is configured with an electric-LC (ELC) element, which achieved an ultra-wide band (UWB) frequency of 2.38–4.91 GHz (69.41%). Antenna 3 is integrated with ELC and EBG together, in which a UWB frequency of 2.3–5.3 GHz (78.94%) is obtained with improved impedance matching. The three antennas have omnidirectional radiation patterns which cover the ISM band at 2.4 GHz and WiMAX at 2.5/3.5 GHz over the operating bands. The radiation efficiency is?>?75% throughout the operating bands of all the antennas. In addition to the WiMAX and ISM bands, antenna 3 covers WLAN in the 5.2 GHz band. The proposed design can be applied to wireless mobile communication systems, which have the advantage of ease of fabrication and compactness.

     

Enhancing the isolation between the strips of dipoles antenna at terahertz frequency with cuboid-shaped graphene layer

Wireless Networks - In this paper, the concept of mantle cloaking method uses to enhance the isolation between the two electrically close dipole antenna at low-terahertz (THz) frequencies, two...     

Implementation Issues in Turbo Decoding for 3GPP FDD Receiver

In the Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) mode of the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standard, implementation of the turbo decoder, especially for the mobile equipments, faces design decisions related to computational complexity, power efficiency, and memory requirements. In this paper we compare different approaches of low complexity implementation of the turbo decoder, with emphasis on the issues of signal scaling and quantization, the sliding window operation for memory size reduction and the iteration stopping algorithms. The demodulated signal at the output of the RAKE receiver may have a wide dynamic range and it may require many bits of precision. In order to overcome the numerical precision problem and to prevent Log Likelihood ratio (LLR) metric overflow, a scaling algorithm must be used. Our simulation results indicate that the Average Absolute (AA) algorithm using dynamic scaling outperforms other scaling schemes and it is less sensitive to the channel conditions. One of the major challenges in the implementation of a practical turbo decoder is optimization of memory requirements. In this paper we evaluate the performance of the sliding window algorithm using different main and guard window sizes. We show that the bit and block error rate performance of the sliding window scheme mainly depend on the guard window size rather than the main window size. The simulation results indicate that small guard window sizes can significantly decrease the iteration gain for large frames in fast fading channels. Iteration stopping algorithms reduce the power consumption and the latency of the decoder and help to dedicate more resources to other functions of the receiver. The block error distribution in the fading channels makes it even more essential to use an iteration stopping rule. Our simulations conclude that a rule called the minimum absolute value appears to be a very effective, low complexity and robust algorithm. Mohamadreza Marandian Hagh was born in Tabriz, Iran on January 1974. He received the B.S. and the M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Tehran University with honors in 1996 and 1999, respectively. He is pursuing the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering at Northeastern University, Boston. His research interests includes information theory, channel coding and iterative techniques for wireless communication systems. His current research is focused on low complexity designs for iterative receivers using Space-Time coding in time-dispersive channels. He is also interested in Exit-Chart analysis of iterative receivers. From 1996 to 1999, he was with Sana Pro Inc. as a system engineer, developing simulation tools for OFDM, WCDMA, CDMA2000. He is currently with Airvana Inc. in Chelmsford, MA and working on 1xEVDO wireless systems. Masoud Salehi received BS degree (Summa Cum Laude) from Tehran University and MS and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University all in Electrical Engineering. Before joining Northeastern, he was with the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology and Tehran University. From February 1988 to May 1989 Dr. Salehi was a visiting professor at the Information Theory Research Group, Department of Electrical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, where he did research in network information theory and coding for storage media.In 1989 Dr. Salehi joined Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University. Professor Salehi is a member of the CDSP (Communication and Digital Signal Processing) Center. His main areas of research interest are network information theory, source-channel matching problems in single and multiple user systems, data compression, turbo coding, coding for fading channels, and digital watermarking. Professor Salehi’s research has been supported by research grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), GTE, NUWC, CenSSIS, and Analog Devices. Professor Salehi has also done consulting to the industry including Teleco Oilfield Services and AT&T. Professor Salehi is currently a member of the Editorial Board of The International Journal of Electronics and Communications.Professor Salehi is the coauthor of the textbooks “Communication Systems Engineering”, Prentice-Hall 1994, 2002, “Contemporary Communication Systems Using MATLAB and Simulink” Thomson 1998, 2000, 2004, and “Fundamentals of Communication Systems”, Prentice-Hall 2005. Abhay Sharma received B.E. (Hons) Electrical and Electronics Engineering degree from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India in 1996 and M.S. Electrical Engineering degree from Ohio State University, Columbus in 2000. From 2000 to 2005 he was working with Analog Devices, RF and Wireless Systems Group, Wilmington, USA, where he was working on design and implementation of algorithms for the emerging cellular communication standards. Currently he is working with Allgo Embedded Systems, Bangalore, India, in the area of wireless networks and systems based on the emerging W-PAN wireless technologies. Zoran Zvonar received the Dipl. Ing. degree in 1986 and the M.S. degree in 1989, both from the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Northeastern University, Boston, in 1993.From 1986 to 1989 he was with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where he conducted research in the area of telecommunications. 1993 to 1994 he was a Post-Doctoral investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, anconducted research on multiple-access communications for underwater acoustic networks. Since 1994 he has been with the Analog Devices, Communications Division, Wilmington, USA. He is the Manager of the Systems Engineering Group focusing on the design of algorithms and architectures for wireless communications, with emphasis on integrated solutions and real-time software.He was a Guest Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, the International Journal of Wireless Information Networks and the ACM/Baltzer Wireless Networks, Associate Editor of the IEEE Communications Letters and a co-editor of the books GSM: Evolution Towards Third Generation Systems, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998, Wireless Multimedia Networks Technologies, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999 and Software Radio Technologies: Selected Reading, IEEE Press, 2001. Dr. Zvonar is currently Co-Editor of the Radio Communication Series in the IEEE Communications Magazine.     

CNFET Based Ultra-Low-Power Schmitt Trigger SRAM for Internet of Things (IoT) Applications

Wireless Personal Communications - This paper presents Carbon Nanotube FET (CNFET) based ultra-low-power Schmitt trigger SRAM designs which can operate at voltage levels as low as 200 mV, with high...     

城域网和接入网发展需要的低水峰单模光纤

密集波分复用(DWDM)的出现扩大了长途传输网的容量,但是DWDM技术的复杂性和使用了昂贵的器件,限制了DWDM在城域网的应用.最新研制的光纤,其在整个宽工作带,包括在(1 380±3) nm上都具有低水峰.低水峰光纤与粗波分复用(CWDM)系统比用标准单模光纤(SMF)的同一系统所用的信道间隔宽33%.经过恶劣的环境试验证明,低水峰光纤具有稳定的抗氢气引起的衰减性能,可确保现场安装的低水峰光纤光缆长期可靠地工作.由于低水峰光纤具有优异的弯曲敏感性,使其与最近研制的宽带接入技术,即所谓的光纤到驻地(FTTP)完全相适应.     

Low Complexity Preprocessing Approach for Wireless Physical Layer Secret Key Extraction Based on PCA

Achieving communication security, along with high computational efficiency, is one of the challenging issues in the advancement of modern resource constraint wireless networks. Wireless physical layer secure key extraction in conjunction with suitable preprocessing techniques may be a possible way out. Principal component analysis (PCA) is one of the dimensionality reduction techniques employed commonly in various domains for different applications. However, the physical layer secure key extraction employing PCA as dimensionality reduction is untouched so far. This paper presents a comprehensive study on PCA based wireless secret key extraction with real-time experimentation. In this work, we propose to apply PCA as a preprocessing technique to reduce the total number of numerical computations required in the key generation process, by cutting down the dimension of the input data set. We propose to select the extracted principal components to be processed further for key generation, based on their information content and cross-correlation. We analyzed the performance of the proposed in terms of bit disagreement rate, key randomness and pass ratio. The computational complexity of the proposed approach is derived and the effect of dimensionality reduction factor (\({\mathbf{R}}_{\mathbf{f}}\)) on the required numerical computations is analyzed. It is found that substantial improvement in bit disagreement performance is achieved along with a significant reduction in the required numerical computations. Remarkably, these outcomes are achieved by slightly modifying one of the blocks of the traditional key generation system. Furthermore, the practicability of the proposed technique is verified through real-time experimentation in different physical scenarios.

     

Premarin Reduces Neurodegeneration and Promotes Improvement of Function in an Animal Model of Spinal Cord Injury

Spinal cord injury (SCI) causes significant mortality and morbidity. Currently, no FDA-approved pharmacotherapy is available for treating SCI. Previously, low doses of estrogen (17β-estradiol, E2) were shown to improve the post-injury outcome in a rat SCI model. However, the range of associated side effects makes advocating its therapeutic use difficult. Therefore, this study aimed at investigating the therapeutic efficacy of Premarin (PRM) in SCI. PRM is an FDA-approved E2 (10%) formulation, which is used for hormone replacement therapy with minimal risk of serious side effects. The effects of PRM on SCI were examined by magnetic resonance imaging, immunofluorescent staining, and western blot analysis in a rat model. SCI animals treated with vehicle alone, PRM, E2 receptor antagonist (ICI), or PRM + ICI were graded in a blinded way for locomotor function by using the Basso–Beattie–Bresnahan (BBB) locomotor scale. PRM treatment for 7 days decreased post-SCI lesion volume and attenuated neuronal cell death, inflammation, and axonal damage. PRM also altered the balance of pro- and anti-apoptotic proteins in favor of cell survival and improved angiogenesis and microvascular growth. Increased expression of estrogen receptors (ERs) ERα and ERβ following PRM treatment and their inhibition by ER inhibitor indicated that the neuroprotection associated with PRM treatment might be E2-receptor mediated. The attenuation of glial activation with decreased inflammation and cell death, and increased angiogenesis by PRM led to improved functional outcome as determined by the BBB locomotor scale. These results suggest that PRM treatment has significant therapeutic implications for the improvement of post-SCI outcome.     

ADSORPTION OF ETHOXYLATED NONIONIC SURFACTANTS FROM SILOXANE-BASED SOLVENT AND AQUEOUS SYSTEMS: USE OF QCM AND MODEL POLYMERIC SURFACES

Adsorption behavior was quantified with pure ethoxylated nonionic surfactants onto different polymeric surfaces (hydrophilic cotton and hydrophobic polyester) and model hydrophilic gold surface. The polymer materials used for the study were characterized using SEM. The role of ethylene oxide group variation in surfactant-polymer interaction was established using pure surfactant with the same alkyl chain length but varying ethoxylate chain lengths. It was observed that surfactant with more ethylene oxide groups per molecule, being more hydrophilic, interacts favorably with cotton in the hydrophobic siloxane solvent environment. The adsorption of the pure surfactants on model gold surface from hydrophobic solvent and water was also established using the quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D) system. Effect of ethylene oxide chain length and surfactant concentration on the extent of adsorption was quantified. At the gold-water interface, the plateau adsorption for C₁₂ E₃ (15.9 × 10^?6 mole/m²) is about four times higher than for C₁₂E₈. An opposite trend was observed for adsorption of the surfactants on gold in the hydrophobic D5 environment. Information about thickness, adsorption and desorption kinetics, and structure of adsorbed layer was obtained from the QCM-D frequency-dissipation data. The study is an important contribution towards fundamental understanding of applications involving the use of ethoxylated nonionic surfactants.     

Stationary versus Fluidized-Bed Drying of High-Moisture Paddy with Rest Period

Drying of high-moisture paddy was examined experimentally under stationary and fluidized bed with and without intervening rest periods. Introduction of a rest period between first and second stage of drying improved drying rate and lowered the energy requirement and increased head rice yield. Fluidization further improved the overall drying process. A single-term drying diffusion equation was suitably fitted to first, rest, and second stage drying data of fluidized and stationary bed by applying nonlinear regression method and effective diffusion coefficients were evaluated. During the period of rest stage, paddy grain released a considerable amount of moisture as an effect of residual grain temperature. An appropriate moisture ratio at which resting should start and the length of resting were evaluated by measuring changes in relative humidity in the headspace of mass of paddy and also from the diffusion coefficient values obtained from the experimental drying data. Resting duration between 75 and 90 min at moisture ratio around 0.715 was found suitable for overall good performance in both fluidized and stationary bed drying. A considerable amount of energy (21–44%) can be saved by providing a rest period from 30 to 120 min between the two stages of drying. Fluidization further reduces (≈ 50% against continuous drying under stationary bed) the energy requirement. No significant difference was found in head rice yield obtained from fluidized and stationary bed experiments, though discontinuing drying by providing intervening rest periods considerably improved the percentage head rice when compared with the results from continuous drying.