Electrical and optical study of Cu(In, Ga)Se2 co-evaporated thin films

Co-evaporation technique from three sources was used to prepare Cu(In, Ga)Se₂ polycrystalline thin films for photovoltaic conversion. Their conductivity was studied in the range 20–300 K. The grain boundary scattering mechanism is mainly responsible for the diffusion process in the latter materials. In the low temperature region, we interpret the data in terms of Mott law and the analysis is very consistent with the variable range hopping. However, thermoionic emission is predominant at high temperatures. When the conductivity deviates from the classical grain boundary conduction models, inhomogeneity is then considered and parameters such as the standard deviation and the mean potential barrier height are derived. Transmittance measurements yielded band gap values of 1.07 and 1.64 eV for CuInSe₂ and CuGaSe₂, respectively.     

Control and manipulation of entanglement between two coupled qubits by fast pulses

We have investigated the analytical and numerical dynamics of entanglement for two qubits that interact with each other via Heisenberg XXX-type interaction and subject to local time-specific external kick and Gaussian pulse-type magnetic fields in $x$ – $y$ plane. The qubits have been assumed to be initially prepared in different pure separable and maximally entangled states and the effect of the strength and the direction of external fast pulses on concurrence has been investigated. The carefully designed kick or pulse sequences are found to enable one to obtain constant long-lasting entanglement with desired magnitude. Moreover, the time ordering effects are found to be important in the creation and manipulation of entanglement by external fields.     

Midland: a service-oriented cluster computing infrastructure

Midland is a service-oriented software infrastructure that enables the clustering of arbitrarily large collections of computing resources. The resulting clusters may be integrated to form an open, dynamically configurable computational grid system where each cluster defines a self-reliant and independent management domain. Web Services make up the primary integration mechanism both at the cluster and grid levels, respectively. This is complemented by a light XML based messaging protocol exclusively used for cluster bound interactions. The paper describes Midland’s architecture, and the service-oriented approach taken to develop the associated resource management mechanisms. It also includes an exposition of the model of service capacity which is one of the enablers of the service-centric strategy underlying the cluster management mechanisms. The operational performance of Midland is illustrated experimentally in the context of a Grid test-bed comprising three clusters. The experimental results highlight the performance of the model of service capacity as well as some aspects of Midland operational performance.     

On the stochastic timed Pétri nets model and its application to the DQDB protocol

The goal of this paper is twofold : at first, to present the stochastic timed Pétri nets model by emphasizing its ability to express the main characteristics of real time distributed systems (parallelism, synchronization by message exchange, time attributes and in particular time constraints) and to allow both qualitative and quantitative analysis (concept of randomized states graph); second, to show a modeling methodology based on this model that allows a rigorous modeling of theDqdb protocol (Qa access, bwb mechanism role,Pa access influence). A new contribution to theQa mechanism has been done (1).     

On visual servoing based on efficient second order minimization

This paper deals with the Efficient Second order Minimization (ESM) and the image-based visual servoing schemes. In other words, it deals with the minimization based on the pseudo-inverse of the mean of the Jacobians or on the mean of Jacobian Pseudo-inverses. Chronologically, it has been noticed in Tahri and Chaumette (2003) [22] that ESM generally improves the system behavior when compared with the system in which only the simple Jacobian Pseudo-inverses are used. Subsequently, a mathematical explanation has been given in Malis (2004) [12]. In this paper, the proofs given by Malis are discussed and it will be shown that there is a limitation to the validity of the ESM. We will also show that the use of ESM does not necessarily ensure a better system behavior, especially in the situations where large rotational motions are involved. Further, a new appropriate formula of the ESM is proposed and validated using several kinds of features.     

Optimal Multi-Criteria Waypoint Selection for Autonomous Vehicle Navigation in Structured Environment

This paper deals with autonomous navigation of unmanned ground vehicles (UGV). The UGV has to reach its assigned final configuration in a structured environments (e.g. a warehouse or an urban environment), and to avoid colliding neither with the route boundaries nor any obstructing obstacles. In this paper, vehicle planning/set-points definition is addressed. A new efficient and flexible methodology for vehicle navigation throughout optimal and discrete selected waypoints is proposed. Combining multi-criteria optimization and expanding tree allows safe, smooth and fast vehicle overall navigation. This navigation through way-points permits to avoid any path/trajectory planning which could be time consuming and complex, mainly in cluttered and dynamic environment. To evaluate the flexibility and the efficiency of the proposed methodology based on expanding tree (taking into account the vehicle model and uncertainties), an important part of this paper is dedicated to give an accurate comparison with another proposed optimization based on the commonly used grid map. A set of simulations, comparison with other methods and experiments, using an urban electric vehicle, are presented and demonstrate the reliability of our proposals.     

Linguistic frequent pattern mining using a compressed structure

Traditional association-rule mining (ARM) considers only the frequency of items in a binary database, which provides insufficient knowledge for making efficient decisions and strategies. The mining of useful information from quantitative databases is not a trivial task compared to conventional algorithms in ARM. Fuzzy-set theory was invented to represent a more valuable form of knowledge for human reasoning, which can also be applied and utilized for quantitative databases. Many approaches have adopted fuzzy-set theory to transform the quantitative value into linguistic terms with its corresponding degree based on defined membership functions for the discovery of FFIs, also known as fuzzy frequent itemsets. Only linguistic terms with maximal scalar cardinality are considered in traditional fuzzy frequent itemset mining, but the uncertainty factor is not involved in past approaches. In this paper, an efficient fuzzy mining (EFM) algorithm is presented to quickly discover multiple FFIs from quantitative databases under type-2 fuzzy-set theory. A compressed fuzzy-list (CFL)-structure is developed to maintain complete information for rule generation. Two pruning techniques are developed for reducing the search space and speeding up the mining process. Several experiments are carried out to verify the efficiency and effectiveness of the designed approach in terms of runtime, the number of examined nodes, memory usage, and scalability under different minimum support thresholds and different linguistic terms used in the membership functions.

     

Exploring the main building blocks of SOA method: SOA maturity model perspective

The most successful enterprises plan its SOA adoption process as a series of maturity stages, where each stage acts as a foundation for the next. Various SOA maturity models (SOAMMs) are available to judge the current level of SOA adoption maturity of an enterprise. However, only a very few models review the formal use of SOA methods in the maturity assessment process. In this work, the SOAMMs are evaluated in terms of how they assess the methodological aspects of SOA adoption at each level of maturity. Based on methodical features, we introduce a set of building blocks for different maturity levels to assist the method engineers in SOA method definition. Welke’s SOAMM is selected as a base model to derive maturity guidelines for SOA methods. This work establishes the role of SOAMM in realizing the true potential of SOA and discusses why CMMI models are inapplicable to assess SOA adoption maturity. The main intention of this work is to develop a conceptual framework that describes the building block of SOA methods at different levels of maturity, including their processes, tools and technologies, and sourcing mechanisms. We adopt a real case study to determine the maturity level of SOA methodology dimension and to demonstrate how SOA adoption maturity can be improved by focusing on the methodical building blocks identified.     

Tribological behavior of composites fabricated by reactive SPS sintering in Ti-Si-C system

In this study, wear and friction behavior of two based-composites from the Ti-Si-C system, (40 wt% TiC; 28 wt% Ti₅Si₃; 17 wt% Ti₃SiC₂) and (18 wt% TiC; 26 wt% Ti₅Si₃; 41 wt% Ti₃SiC₂) reinforced by 15 wt% of large size SiC (100-150 µm) particles were investigated. The four-phase composites exhibited approximatively the same friction coefficient (µ ~ 0.9) under high loads (10 N and 7 N). The composite with high Ti₃SiC₂ showed higher wear rate values by one order of magnitude. However, under 1 N, the composite with high TiC content showed a higher running-in period and a lower steady state µ value (0.37 after 1000 m sliding distance). Scanning electron microscopy, Energy Dispersive X-Ray and Raman spectroscopy analysis of the worn surfaces of the two composites revealed that oxidation was the dominant wear mechanism. The oxidation process and the removal kinetics of the oxides during sliding controlled the tribological behavior of the composites. The influence of processing variables on microstructures development and wear mechanisms of the composites is discussed.     

Using New Hybrid Integrators to Design IIR Fractional-Order Integrators via Impulse Invariance Method

This paper presents a method for designing fullband and non-fullband IIR digital integrators with linear phase that has been used to approximate fractional-order integrators with IIR filters. Several numerical integration rules have been considered in this study, namely, Euler, Simpson, Schneider, bilinear, and F₀₁₂. The main idea in our design is based on interpolating the well-known integration rules (Euler, Bilinear and Simpson) proposed by Al-Alaoui combined with deterministic signal modeling techniques. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed integrators. It was found that the Euler–Simpson integrator gives better approximation accuracy than existing integrators.