Random poly(ε‐caprolactone‐L‐alanine) by direct melt copolymerization

A series of random polyesteramides (PEAs) with a range of molar composition from 90/10 to 50/50 were synthesized by direct melt polycondensation of ε‐caprolactone and l ‐alanine. Their structure was fully characterized by Fourier transform IR and NMR spectroscopy. The resulting copolymers are completely amorphous with the exception of PEA‐90/10 which possesses a semicrystalline structure. These PEAs present increasing glass transition temperatures at increasing l ‐alanine contents and exhibit fairly good thermal stability with 10% mass loss temperatures reaching 315 °C. © 2020 Society of Industrial Chemistry     

Clay compaction modelling by homogenization theory

The modelling of hydromechanical behavior of clayey sediments by homogenization theory is described. The rheological model of clays buried in depth requires a three-dimensional approach and laboratory experiments to quantify the model parameters. An iterative process which can be coupled to any homogenization method is used to model the porous media behavior. Hydromechanical compaction results from oedometric experiments are simulated with the proposed model.     

A Probabilistic Multiperiod Simulation–Optimization Approach for Dynamic Coastal Aquifer Management

Combined simulation–optimization (CSO) schemes are common in the literature to solve different groundwater management problems, and CSO is particularly well-established in the coastal aquifer management literature. However, with a few exceptions, nearly all previous studies have employed the CSO approach to derive static groundwater management plans that remain unchanged during the entire management period, consequently overlooking the possible positive impacts of dynamic strategies. Dynamic strategies involve division of the planning time interval into several subintervals or periods, and adoption of revised decisions during each period based on the most recent knowledge of the groundwater system and its associated uncertainties. Problem structuring and computational challenges seem to be the main factors preventing the widespread implementation of dynamic strategies in groundwater applications. The objective of this study is to address these challenges by introducing a novel probabilistic Multiperiod CSO approach for dynamic groundwater management. This includes reformulation of the groundwater management problem so that it can be adapted to the multiperiod CSO approach, and subsequent employment of polynomial chaos expansion-based stochastic dynamic programming to obtain optimal dynamic strategies. The proposed approach is employed to provide sustainable solutions for a coastal aquifer storage and recovery facility in Oman, considering the effect of natural recharge uncertainty. It is revealed that the proposed dynamic approach results in an improved performance by taking advantage of system variations, allowing for increased groundwater abstraction, injection and hence monetary benefit compared to the commonly used static optimization approach.

     

An efficient image-mosaicing method based on multifeature matching

Mosaicing is connecting two or more images and making a new wide area image with no visible seam-lines. Several algorithms have been proposed to construct mosaics from image sequence where the camera motion is more or less complex. Most of these methods are based either on the interest points matching or on theoretical corner models. This paper describes a fully automated image-mosaicing method based on the regions and the Harris points primitives. Indeed, in order to limit the search window of potential homologous points, for each point of interest, regions segmentation and matching steps are being performed. This enables us to improve the reliability and the robustness of the Harris points matching process by estimating the camera motion. The main originality of the proposed system resides in the preliminary manipulation of regions matching, thus making it possible to estimate the rotation, the translation and the scale factor between two successive images of the input sequence. This estimation allows an initial alignment of the images along with the framing of the interest points search window, and therefore reducing considerably the complexity of the interest points matching algorithm. Then, the resolution of a minimization problem, altogether considering the couples of matched-points, permits us to perform the homography. In order to improve the mosaic continuity around junctions, radiometric corrections are applied. The validity of the herewith described method is illustrated by being tested on several sequences of complex and challenging images captured from real-world indoor and outdoor scenes. These simulations proved the validity of the proposed method against camera motions, illumination variations, acquirement conditions, moving objects and image noise. To determine the importance of the regions matching stage in motion estimation, as well as for the framing of the search window associated to a point of interest, we compared the matching points results of this described method with those produced using the zero-mean normalized cross correlation score (without regions matching). We made this comparison in the case of a simple motion (without the presence of a rotation around optical axis and/or a scale factor), in the case of a rotation and in the general case of an homothety. For justifying the effectiveness of this method, we proposed an objective assessment by defining a reconstruction error.

Route Maintenance in IEEE 802.11 wireless mesh networks

In this paper, we propose a novel Route Maintenance scheme for IEEE 802.11 wireless mesh networks. Despite lack of mobility and energy constraints, reactive routing protocols such as AODV and DSR suffer from frequent route breakages in 802.11 based infrastructure wireless mesh networks. In these networks, if any intermediate node fails to successfully transmit a packet to the next hop node after a certain number of retransmissions, the link layer reports a transmission problem to the network layer. Reactive routing protocols systematically consider this as a link breakage (and therefore a route breakage). Transmission failures can be caused by a number of factors e.g. interference or noise and can be transient in nature. Frequent route breakages result in significant performance degradation. The proposed mechanism considers multiple factors to differentiate between links with transient transmission problems from those links which have permanent transmission problems and takes a coherent decision on link breakage. The proposed mechanism is implemented in AODV for single-radio single-channel mesh network and an extension is incorporated in multi-radio multi-channel scenarios. Simulation results show substantial performance improvement compared to classical AODV and local route repair schemes.     

Performance analysis of opportunistic nonregenerative relaying

Opportunistic relaying in cooperative communication depends on careful relay selection. However, the traditional centralized method used for opportunistic amplify‐and‐forward protocols requires precise measurements of channel state information at the destination. In this paper, we adopt the max–min criterion as a relay selection framework for opportunistic amplify‐and‐forward cooperative communications, which was exhaustively used for the decode‐and‐forward protocol, and offer an accurate performance analysis based on exact statistics of the local signal‐to‐noise ratios of the best relay. Furthermore, we evaluate the asymptotical performance and deduce the diversity order of our proposed scheme. Finally, we validate our analysis by showing that performance simulation results coincide with our analytical results over Rayleigh fading channels, and we compare the max–min relay selection with their centralized channel state information‐based and partial relay selection counterparts. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance analysis of an opportunistic multi‐user cognitive network with multiple primary users

Consider a multi‐user underlay cognitive network where multiple cognitive users concurrently share the spectrum with a primary network with multiple users. The channel between the secondary network is assumed to have independent but not identical Nakagami‐m fading. The interference channel between the secondary users (SUs) and the primary users is assumed to have Rayleigh fading. A power allocation based on the instantaneous channel state information is derived when a peak interference power constraint is imposed on the secondary network in addition to the limited peak transmit power of each SU. The uplink scenario is considered where a single SU is selected for transmission. This opportunistic selection depends on the transmission channel power gain and the interference channel power gain as well as the power allocation policy adopted at the users. Exact closed form expressions for the moment‐generating function, outage performance, symbol error rate performance, and the ergodic capacity are derived. Numerical results corroborate the derived analytical results. The performance is also studied in the asymptotic regimes, and the generalized diversity gain of this scheduling scheme is derived. It is shown that when the interference channel is deeply faded and the peak transmit power constraint is relaxed, the scheduling scheme achieves full diversity and that increasing the number of primary users does not impact the diversity order. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Role of end-groups and catalyst in polyester cyclodepolymerization and cycle-chain equilibria

The influence of polyesters end-groups on cyclic oligoester formation is investigated using a series of hydroxy-, carboxy- and methylester-terminated aliphatic polyesters, in the presence of various ester interchange catalysts. The presence of hydroxy end-groups is the preponderant factor on cyclodepolymerization kinetics. This indicates that the main reaction is the intramolecular hydroxy–ester interchange reaction between hydroxy end-groups and ester functions in the chain. Carboxy-ester and ester–ester interchanges play a minor role, as the cycle-chain equilibrium is reached only very slowly when carboxy- or ester-terminated polyesters are reacted. High temperature and the presence of tin catalysts are also favorable factors, while, as expected, dilution shifts the equilibrium toward the formation of high yields of cyclic oligoesters. A mechanism is proposed, based on the reverse of the “coordination-insertion” mechanism established for the ring-opening polymerization of lactones.