Cooperative Communication Enabled Cognitive Radio in a Home-Care Application

Wireless Personal Communications - In this paper, cooperative communication (CC) assisted cognitive wireless sensor network (CWSN) is presented for monitoring health and activity of an end-user in...     

High-efficiency Silicon Solar Cells: A Review

Over the past few decades, crystalline silicon solar cells have been extensively studied due to their high efficiency, high reliability, and low cost. In addition, these types of cells lead the industry and account for more than half of the market. For the foreseeable future, Si will still be a critical material for photovoltaic devices in the solar cell industry. In this paper, we discuss key issues, cell concepts, and the status of recent high-efficiency crystalline silicon solar cells.     

The Influence of the Amount of Fluoride Catalyst on the Morphological Properties of the Anilinepropylsilica Xerogel Prepared in Basic Medium

Anilinepropylsilica hybrid powder was synthesized by a sol-gel route in basic medium using HF as catalyst. The effect of the amount of HF catalyst on the morphologies and on organic content was studied. The xerogels were characterized using FTIR, SEM and N₂ adsorption-desorption isotherms. The increase in the HF quantity results in an slight increase in organic content and changes in the particle size, surface area and pore structure.     

Preliminary studies using hybrid mediated electrochemical oxidation (HMEO) for the removal of persistent organic pollutants (POPs).

This study investigates the hybrid mediated electrochemical oxidation (HMEO) technology, which is a newly developed non thermal electrochemical oxidation process for organic destruction. A combination of ozone and ultrasonication processes to the mediated electrochemical oxidation (MEO) process is termed as hybrid mediated electrochemical oxidation. The electrochemical cell was developed in this laboratory. In the present study, several organic compounds, such as phenol, benzoquinone and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA), were chosen as the model organic pollutants to be destructed by the hybrid process. The organic destruction was monitored based on the CO2 generation and total organic carbon (TOC) reduction. The HMEO process was found to be extremely effective in the destruction of all the target organics chosen in this study. The information obtained from this study will provide an insight in adopting this technique for dealing with more recalcitrant organics (POPs).     

Fundamental Limitations of Continuous-Time Delta–Sigma Modulators Due to Clock Jitter

We examine noise due to clock jitter in single-loop low-pass continuous-time delta-sigma (Delta Sigma) modulators (CT-DSMs) employing nonreturn to zero (NRZ) feedback digital-to-analog converters (DACs). Using the discrete-time version of the Bode sensitivity integral, we derive a lower bound on jitter noise and its relationship to the noise transfer function (NTF) of the modulator. We show that NTFs with optimized zeros result in lower jitter noise than those with all zeros at the origin. We give intuition to a recent observation (arrived through numerical optimization) that NTFs with peaking in their passbands have lower jitter noise than maximally flat NTFs. We propose a design procedure that minimizes the sum of the quantization and jitter noise. The arguments regarding Delta Sigma analog-to-digital converters are extended to Delta Sigma DACs and measurement results are presented.     

Supporting real-time and multimedia applications on the Mercuritestbed

This paper describes the distributed system, network and software architecture, the application development environment, the performance, and the early lessons learned on the ATM LAN testbed Mercuri established at the Honeywell Technology Center, to develop distributed multimedia technologies for real-time control applications. We have developed a client-server-based software architecture on Sun Sparcstation-2s connected by a Fore Systems' ASX-100 ATM switch, with video processing handled by Parallax's X Video cards. The architecture enables network-transparent applications and provides simple primitives for multimedia capture, display, transmission, storage, and retrieval. A real-time multimedia-in-the-loop control application was developed as the vehicle for testing the capabilities and performance of the network. Our test measurements focus on the end-user-level performance metrics such as message throughput and round-trip delay as well as video-frame jitter under no-load and load conditions. Our results show that the maximum burst throughput that can be supported at the user level is 48 Mb/s using AAL 5, while round-trip delays for 4-kbyte messages are about 3 ms. Our experience reveals a number of performance bottlenecks and open issues in using commercial ATM switches for practical applications. Our conclusions are outlined     

Influence of impact-ionization-induced base current reversal onbipolar transistor parameters

In this paper we describe a set of measurements representing a complete characterization of impact-ionization effects in bipolar transistors. We demonstrate that impact-ionization significantly influences the dependence of base resistance on current and voltages applied to the device. A dc method for the simultaneous extraction of all parasitic resistances in bipolar transistors is presented. The method can separate the influence of current-crowding on the base resistance from that of base width and conductivity modulation; the collector parasitic resistance is measured in the active region. Starting from the parameters extracted by means of these techniques, a complete and accurate circuit-model of impact-ionization effects can be defined     

Anaerobic co-digestion of sludge with other organic wastes in small wastewater treatment plants: an economic considerations evaluation.

This paper deals with an economic comparison between costs and incomes in small wastewater treatment plants where the anaerobic co-digestion process of sludge and biowaste with energy recovery is operated. Plants in the size range 1,000-30,000 persons equivalent (pe) were considered in the study: typical costs, comprehensive of capital and operating costs, were in the range euro69-105 per person per year depending on the plant size: the smaller the size the higher the specific cost. The incomes deriving from taxes and fees for wastewater treatment are generally in the range euro36-54 per person per year and can only partially cover costs in small wastewater treatment plants. However, the co-treatment of biowaste and the use of produced energy for extra credits (green certificates) determine a clear improvement in the possible revenues from the plant. These were calculated to be euro23-25 per person per year; as a consequence the costs and incomes can be considered comparable for wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) with size larger than 10,000 pe. Therefore, anaerobic co-digestion of biowaste and sludge can also be considered a sustainable solution for small wastewater treatment plants in rural areas where several different kinds of biowaste are available to enhance biogas production in anaerobic reactors.     

The combined effects of curing and environmental exposure on fracture properties of woven carbon/epoxy laminates

This paper concerns a study of the combined effects of curing conditions and environmental exposure on the ultimate properties of two commercial woven carbon/epoxy laminates. Curing parameters (heating rate and applied pressure) were varied so as to obtain six different conditions for each material. Moisture saturation was also achieved by exposing some of the cured samples to environmental conditions of 70°C and 95% relative humidity. Four different tests (tensile, impact, Mode I and Mode II interlaminar fracture resistance) were therefore performed, and the results obtained on the different materials before and after moisture saturation compared. Neither curing pressure nor heating rate nor moisture absorption were observed to have any practical effect on tensile and impact properties. On the contrary, one noticeable effect was the interlaminar fracture resistance of the laminates. The results are discussed and interpreted in terms of damage formation and stress intensification mechanisms.