Electrical properties of Ta2O5 films deposited on ZnO

High dielectric constant (high-k) Ta₂O₅films have been deposited on ZnO/p-Si substrate by microwave plasma at 150°C. Structure and composition of the ZnO/p-Si films have been investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) for chemical composition. The electrical properties of the Ta₂O₅/ZnO/p-Si metal insulator semiconductor (MIS) structures were studied using high frequency capacitance-voltage (C-V), conductance-voltage (G-V) and current-voltage (I-V) characteristics. Charged trapping properties have been studied by measuring the gate voltage shift due to trapped charge generation under Fowler-Nordheim (F-N) constant current stressing.     

Semianalytical Modeling of Concrete Beams Rehabilitated with Externally Prestressed Composites

This study attempts to develop a semianalytical model for the mechanical behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) beams rehabilitated with externally prestressed carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRP) laminates. The main significance of this study is the model of the process of degradation of RC beams until failure and its recovery through externally prestressed CFRP. Experiments have been carried out to observe the load–deflection behavior of fresh RC beams until the load resistance of the beam is exhausted. The beams have been rehabilitated with external CFRP laminates with varying levels of prestress. The rehabilitated beams have been reloaded until failure. The load–deflection behavior of the fresh and rehabilitated beams has been compared. A model for the load–deflection behavior of the fresh and rehabilitated beam has been proposed. The main import of the model is that it incorporates the effect of confinement of concrete. The model shows very good agreement with the experimental results.     

Progressive Streaming of Video Data for Traffic Surveillance

Traffic surveillance has been one of the essential attributes in smart city concept. Nowadays, in such applications rotating camera is preferred over static camera. Motivation behind this substitution is to reduce the cost of data transmission and Total of cost of ownership. To design an optimal and performant wireless ‘smart city area network’ for video surveillance systems, this paper focuses on some key areas, namely, transmission efficiency, lossless video data coding, data congestion, edge computing at transmission nodes. The end objective is to achieve high quality received video stream in spite of compressed data transmission. Some research initiatives in this domain are pertinent. For example, Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) based rate distortion optimization is an effective tool in enhancing the perceptual video quality in wireless environments. However, prevailing system does not consider the network congestion conditions, affecting quality of received video. Also, effect of distortion introduced by ‘channel noise’ is unattended. This motivated us to propose a new dual metric traffic control mechanism, wherein both metrics i.e. distortion and data congestion are considered. It is based on an ‘improvised SSIM’ method which incorporates the ‘Rate of allocation’ algorithm as a function. Experimental results unveil that the proposed traffic control using similarity index under noise diversity can achieve better video quality and more data throughput.