Direct digital synthesizer with jittered clock

Since the direct digital synthesizer (DDS) can potentially be used as a flexible clock source, it is of interest to study its spectrum purity as well as jitter characteristic. In this paper, we investigate the jitter transfer characteristic of the DDS clock driven by a jittered digital-to-analog converter (DAC) clock. We first derive the dosed form expressions of the spectrum of the DAC output signal with jittered driving clock. These expressions are then used to investigate the spectral structure of the DDS clock. Equations are derived for the calculation of the SNR. For a small phase noise power in the driving clock, the DDS clock SNR is obtained in a simple closed form and is shown to be lower than that of the input driving clock by the amount of 20 log(f_s/d_d) dB, where f_s is the nominal driving clock frequency and f_d is the desirable DDS output clock frequency     

Simultaneous stabilization for a collection of nonlinear control systems in canonical form

A controller design method is provided to simultaneously stabilize a collection of nonlinear control systems in canonical form. It is shown that, under a mild assumption, any collection of nonlinear systems in canonical form can be simultaneously stabilized by one continuous state feedback controller. A constructive universal formula is presented explicitly. An illustrative example is given to demonstrate the validity of the method. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

Corrosion of aluminium nitride substrates in acid,alkaline solutions and water

Aluminium nitride substrates were immersed in acid, basic solutions and deionized water for 1–120 h at room temperature. The corrosion rates are higher in basic solutions (NaOH and KOH) than those in acid solutions (CH₃COOH, HCOOH, HNO₃, HCl and H₂SO₄) and deionized water. The weight loss of AIN corroded in alkali aqueous reaches 70% and results in an increase in surface roughness ranging from 10 nm to 7 m after 3 days corrosion. However, the weight loss in acid solution is only 1/700 of the alkali case. Violent chemical reactions between AIN and basic solutions were observed. Na₂O, or Na₂Al₂O₄·6H₂O, is the intermediate product, and NaOH is a catalytic agent of the reaction. The surface morphology of the AIN etched by alkaline solutions is coral-like in microscopic view and appears like hills. In contrast, only several atomic layers of AIN surface are etched off in acid solutions and in deionized water. The lightly etched surface is mirror-like and flat, and the shapes of the grains are visible under the microscope, as the corrosion rate of each AIN grain varies with different crystal orientations. Consequently, after etching in acid solutions, the resulting microscopic surface morphology looks like a map of a jigsaw puzzle.     

A Simultaneous Mixed LQR/H∞ Control Approach to the Design of Reliable Active Suspension Controllers

This paper is concerned with the synthesis of reliable controllers for quarter‐car active suspension systems. By a simultaneous mixed LQR/H_∞ control approach, a static output feedback controller is derived for guaranteeing good suspension performance under possible sensor fault or suspension component breakdown. The considered simultaneous mixed LQR/H_∞ control problem is a nonconvex optimization problem; therefore, the linear matrix inequality approach is not applicable. Based on the barrier method, we solve an auxiliary minimization problem to get an approximate solution for the simultaneous mixed LQR/H_∞ control problem. Necessary conditions for the local optimum of the auxiliary minimization problem are derived. Moreover, a three‐stage solution algorithm is developed for solving the auxiliary minimization problem. The simulation shows that the obtained static output feedback suspension controllers can improve suspension performance in nominal mode and all considered failure modes.     

A channel reservation and preemption model using overlapping regions in sector‐based cellular networks

This paper presents a channel reservation and preemption (CRP) model using overlapping regions in a cellular network with multiple sectors. To fully exploit and reuse the frequencies, directional antennas are installed on base stations (BSs) to divide the coverage into a number of equal‐sized sectors. When traffic is unevenly distributed across the sectors in a BS, channel utilization in every sector may become very different; low‐traffic sectors may be underutilized while high‐traffic sectors may be overutilized. A CRP scheme is thus proposed to more efficiently utilize free channels among sectors. CRP aims at reducing the dropping probabilities of handoff calls. Specifically, when free channels in a sector are not available, a handoff call, instead of being dropped, is allowed to preempt an ongoing call residing in the overlapping region of two adjacent sectors or two neighbor cells. Under CRP, the preempted ongoing call will not be disconnected, because it can switch over its service to the BS of a neighbor cell or to another directional antenna of an adjacent sector. For the purpose of evaluation, we build an analytical model for the proposed CRP using six‐tuple Markov chains. Analytical results show that the proposed CRP can significantly reduce the dropping probabilities of inter‐sector handoff calls, particularly when traffic between two sectors is not evenly distributed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Histogram Matching Approach for assessment of flow regime alteration: application to environmental flow optimization

In this paper we present a Histogram Matching Approach (HMA) for assessment of the flow regime alteration. The HMA uses the degree of histogram dissimilarity as a metric for impact assessment, which is based on the quadratic‐form distance between the frequency vectors of the pre‐ and post‐impact histograms weighted by a specified similarity matrix. The HMA is coupled with an aggregated multiobjective optimization genetic algorithm and applied to a case study on the Kaoping diversion weir (Taiwan) for determining the optimal environmental flow scheme that balances the ecosystem and human needs objectives. Two key issues are addressed in this study. First, we compare the performances of the HMA and existing Range of Variability Approach (RVA). Second, we employ three types of similarity function to investigate their effect on the outcomes of the HMA. The results reveal that the HMA consistently outperforms the RVA in preserving the natural flow variability regardless of what type of similarity function is used. No single type of similarity function can be found that would simultaneously best preserve the natural patterns of 32 Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration (IHA). For the situations where the water‐supply reliability is of critical concern, the pulse similarity is recommended because it would assure the smallest water‐supply deficit. If, however, minor degradation in the water‐supply reliability may be overlooked, the linear similarity is suggested because it would generally result in the post‐impact flows that most satisfactorily resemble to the natural flow regime. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Balancing reduction of linear systems having multiple delays

Abstract

In this paper we apply the balancing reduction method to derive reduced‐order models for linear systems having multiple delays. The time‐domain balanced realization is achieved through computing the controllability and observability gramians in the frequency domain. With the variable transformation s = i tan(θ/2), the gramians of linear multi‐delay systems can be accurately evaluated by solving first‐order differential equations over a finite domain. The proposed approach is computationally superior to that of using the two‐dimensional realization of delay differential systems.     

Vector data flow analysis for SIMD optimizations on OpenCL programs

Multi‐core systems equipped with micro processing units and accelerators such as digital signal processors (DSPs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) have become a major trend in processor design in recent years in attempts to meet ever‐increasing application performance requirements. Open Computing Language (OpenCL) is one of the programming languages that include new extensions proposed to exploit the computing power of these kinds of processors. Among the newly extended language features, the single‐instruction multiple‐data (SIMD) linguistics and vector types are added to OpenCL to exploit hardware features of the accelerators. The addition makes it necessary to consider how traditional compiler data flow analysis can be adopted to meet the optimization requirements of vector linguistics. In this paper, we propose a calculus framework to support the data flow analysis of vector constructs for OpenCL programs that compilers can use to perform SIMD optimizations. We model OpenCL vector operations as data access functions in the style of mathematical functions. We then show that the data flow analysis for OpenCL vector linguistics can be performed based on the data access functions. Based on the information gathered from data flow analysis, we illustrate a set of SIMD optimizations on OpenCL programs. The experimental results incorporating our calculus and our proposed compiler optimizations show that the proposed SIMD optimizations can provide average performance improvements of 22% on x86 CPUs and 4% on advanced micro devices GPUs. For the selected 15 benchmarks, 11 of them are improved on x86 CPUs, and six of them are improved on advanced micro devices GPUs. The proposed framework has the potential to be used to construct other SIMD optimizations on OpenCL programs. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Calculated X-ray Diffraction Data for Diamond Polytypes

Calculated X-ray diffraction pattern data for diamond polytypes are presented, which provides the required parameters for the characterization of the proposed diamond polytypes. The literature on diamond polytypes contains some small but significant errors with respect to the details of the crystal structure, including space groups, the atom positions in the unit cell, and the atomic layer stacking. In this paper, the crystal structures of four different hexagonal diamond and two different rhombohedral diamond polytypes are theoretically calculated to provide correct crystallographic information with which the diamond polytypes in a given sample can be characterized.     

Nano‐to‐Microdesign of Marimo‐Like Carbon Nanotubes Supported Frameworks via In‐spaced Polymerization for High Performance Silicon Lithium Ion Battery Anodes

Silicon (Si) has been perceived as a promising anode material for lithium‐ion batteries for decades due to its superior theoretical capacity, environmental benignity, and earth abundance. To accommodate the drastic volume expansion during lithiation, which is the primary drawback leading to poor cycling life, a novel structural design via fabricating the Marimo‐like carbon nanotubes frameworks with silicon nanoparticle (SiNP) filling in internal space has been developed. This facile fabrication procedure involves an in‐spaced polymerization process through ex situ polymerization, using pyrrole monomers with a soft organic template in which well‐dispersed SiNPs are present. Carbonization post‐treatment is then performed to construct rigid conductive networks. The thus‐fabricated 3D Marimo‐like hybrid structure exhibits a remarkably improved electrochemical performance compared with that of the simple ball‐milling method, which mainly originates from their structural advantages, including the built‐in buffer spaces and the robust line‐to‐line contact mode between the components. The state‐of‐the‐art structure exhibits an optimal high‐rate capability (422 mAh g^?1 at a current rate of 2 A g^?1) and long cycling stability (916 mAh g^?1 for 200th cycles at a current rate of 0.2 A g^?1) and achieves the requirements for industrial production with the facile and cost‐effective synthetic approach.