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Multifunctional flexible electronics have been a hot spot in scientific research and technology development. From the view of practical application, high-performance flexible heating devices with the capability to respond to commands are an urgent need for thermal management. Herein, we propose a strategy for multifunctional integration by assembling two pieces of laser-scribed Nomex paper, thus enabling the combination of heating and sensing modules. On account of the good electrothermal and piezoresistive properties of laser-induced graphene, the device can generate high steady-state temperature with a low voltage excitation and recognize valid commands from users finger to switch between operating states. Besides, the fast and efficient fabrication method entirely based on direct laser writing technology is another unique advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voltage-controlled three-phase three-leg inverters are widely applied in various occasions. The inverters are generally switched to the current-controlled mode to limit the fault currents when short-circuit faults happen. Under symmetrical fault, the inverter can be controlled as a symmetrical, three-phase current source. However, the voltage limiting will happen under asymmetrical fault. As a result, the fault phase currents will be distorted and cannot be completely controlled. Considering that the voltage limiting is mainly caused by large load impedance of healthy phase under asymmetrical fault, the voltage limiting is avoided by paralleling the virtual impedance with the output filter capacitor in this paper. As a result, the current limiting loop is not broken and the fault phase currents can be effectively controlled. The implementation of virtual impedance in control system and the influence of virtual impedance on the stability of system are also analyzed in detail in this paper. The theoretical results are validated by experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) is intended to supplant legacy (optical) bar code scanning technology found in many logistic and retail applications. RFID is distinguished by inexpensive, low power and compact form factor tags, whose longevity and efficacy are predicated on using passive communication techniques and on-tag power harvesting. Such tags employ backscatter modulation, which does not require any active RF components. As a result, backscatter has become an attractive design choice for short-range communications in power constrained wireless sensor networking scenarios. The purpose of this work is two-fold. First, it aims to expose backscatter communication as an emerging topic to a communication systems-theoretic audience. Since backscatter modulation and on-tag power harvesting efficiency are coupled, it is necessary to re-examine notions of power and spectral efficiency from an energy-constraint perspective; this leads to novel coded modulation schemes for future RFID systems. Further, we investigate RFID MIMO systems where the channel fading encountered has different statistics than the classical Rayleigh fading model. In turn,the trade off between diversity order and spatial multiplexing gains are distinct from wide-area MIMO. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The work presented in this paper concerns a switching-based control formulation for multi-intersection and multiphase traffic light systems. A macroscopic traffic flow modeling approach is first presented, which is instrumental to the development of a model-based and switching-based optimization method for traffic signal operation, in the framework of adaptive dynamic programming (ADP). The main advantage of the switching-based formulation is its capability to determine both “when”’ to switch and “which” mode to switch on without the need to use the cycle-based average flow approximation typical of state-of-the-art formulations. In addition, the framework can handle different cycle times across intersections without the need for synchronization constraints and, moreover, minimum dwell-time constraints can be directly enforced to comply with minimum green/red times in each phase. The simulation experiments on a multi-intersection and multiphase traffic light systems are presented to show the effectiveness of the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advantages of low power consumption, flexibility, and high readability against bright ambiance, electrophoretic displays (EPDs) have wide application prospects in the fields of education, smart supermarkets, Internet of Things, smart homes, wearable devices, etc. EPDs suffer from a severe history dependence during grayscale switching, which results in annoying ghost images. However, currently, it is difficult to distinguish diverse types of ghost images automatically; thus, lookup-tables (LUTs) for multi-grayscale waveform design cannot be effectively generated but require cumbersome manual adjustment. In this article, we proposed to adopt a convolutional neural network (CNN) to automatically recognize ghost images, based on which, LUTs that could suppress ghost images and achieve accurate grayscales were automatically generated for waveform design. Moreover, the workforce for manual adjustment was significantly saved. The results suggest that the CNN is a powerful tool for EPDs to achieve better image quality, as well as less manual cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

So, you've submitted your paper to your ideal target journal, waited the requisite period, and one day, your inbox contains an e-mail from the publication's editor-in-chief. It's not the hoped for acceptance, but a "Revise and Resubmit." (One of my favorite journals has switched to the more-discouraging, "Reject and Resubmit," but this is actually the same thing.) [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Piezoelectric actuators have been widely applied to precision positioning platforms. However, the positioning accuracy of piezoelectric ceramic has been significantly affected by its characteristics of hysteresis. Owing to the voltage-keeping feature of capacitive load for piezoelectric ceramic, this paper has proposed a switch-based driving in sequence method, which alternately drives each layer of PZT by using switches. Based on the driving in sequence method, the proposed method is capable of reducing the hysteresis to 1/N of the hysteresis under traditional voltage driving method, while significantly lowering the scale and cost of hardware, compared with the previous driving in sequence method. Thus, it allows for application to hundreds of layers of piezoelectric ceramic. According to experiment results, the hysteresis under different frequencies from 0.1 to 500 Hz for homemade seven-layer piezoelectric ceramic can be reduced from 12.5 to 2.1%. Furtherly, the residual hysteresis can be corrected by applying a simple quadratic-polynomial feedforward control, and the hysteresis is constrained within 0.8%, even with feedforward parameters that are not strictly calibrated. The dual-amplifier driving in sequence method proposed in this paper can significantly reduce the hysteresis in open-loop control of piezoelectric stack actuators, effectively improving the positioning and driving performance and saving cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a high isolation of single pole double throw (SPDT) PIN diode switch using switchable dumbbell-shaped defected ground structure (DGS). The proposed SPDT switch was designed for radio frequency (RF) front-end transceiver of antenna array multiple input multiple output (MIMO) in millimeter wave 28 GHz band. The switchable dumbbell-shaped DGS can be switched between allpass and bandstop responses where the bandstop response of the DGS can be utilized as a high isolation in the SPDT PIN diode switch circuit. A simple mathematical analysis is explained in this paper for the bandstop and allpass responses of the switchable dumbbell-shaped DGS. The propose SPDT switch was designed based on Roger RT/Duroid 5880 with 0.254 mm thickness and relative dielectric constant of 2.2. The simulated result showed that the proposed SPDT PIN diode switch produced an isolation of 36.36 dB at 27.3 GHz (center of 28 GHz band), which was 63% higher than the conventional SPDT design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an advanced technique for calculating activation energy of oil-impregnated pressboard through dielectric response current measurement under switching impulse voltage at different temperatures. The proposed technique analyzes the measured impulse voltage and current signals to formulate its equivalent circuit at different temperatures. The equivalent circuit parameters are utilized to determine the shifting of ac conductivity curve along frequency axis with variations in temperatures. Based on the shifted ac conductivity curves at different temperatures, the corresponding activation energy of the insulation is estimated. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is investigated through a few laboratory prepared test samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reliability is a fundamental concept for power systems, and the optimal placement of switchable devices is a valuable tool for improvements in this area. The goal of this paper is to propose an optimal allocation method for circuit breakers and switches that can break the cost–reliability dilemma and simultaneously achieve reliability and economic improvement in terms of the distribution network. Moreover, in view of the fact that variations in the load level can affect the reliability of the distribution network, the variations of different load level scenarios are considered in this paper, where a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model based on fictitious fault flows is established to derive the optimal allocation scheme that can adapt to the changes of multiple scenarios regarding the load. Meanwhile, due to the constraints of reliability indices, the post-fault reconfiguration scheme of a distribution network under different load level scenarios can also be obtained to enhance its overall reliability. Finally, the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed method are verified by numerical tests on a 54-node test system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The utilization of switched inductors, involving parallel charging and series discharging of inductors, is extensively embraced in diverse DC–DC converters for attaining high voltage gain; nevertheless, the stress on switch voltage and diode current escalates considerably with an increased count of inductors integrated into the switched inductors network. In the classical multistage switched inductor converter, the switch voltage aligns with the output voltage, and the diode experiences a high current as the number of stages increases. This research recommends a DC–DC multistage converter for energy conversion and high voltage gain with low stress. In this paper, a novel multistage switched inductor converter is introduced and designed to attain higher voltage gain while mitigating the stresses on switch voltage and diode current. The proposed circuit is created by replacing the standard multistage switched inductor converter's possible diodes with power switches. All of the switching devices are connected in such a way that the output voltage and input current are shared by all of the switches and diodes, respectively. As a consequence, the voltage stress on switches and the current stress on diodes are comparatively low, resulting in a high efficiency compared to a typical multistage switched inductor converter. It's interesting to note that the proposed converter and a typical multistage switched inductor converter both require the same amount of components. Different operation modes, analysis, a non‐ideal model, and a comparison of the suggested and recently constructed converters are discussed. The effectiveness and performance of the circuit are validated experimentally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a method for calculating the DC source amplitude in an extended multilevel inverter (MLI) structure so that the maximum number of levels and the output voltage waveform are as close as possible to the sinusoidal wave with minimum total harmonic distortion (THD). For the developed structure, three algorithms are suggested to determine the amounts of DC voltage resources. The first important point about choosing the right amounts for the DC resources is that the number of levels should be as large as possible, and the second important point is that the intervals between the levels should be the same throughout the waveform. By observing these two points, the output voltage waveform can be as near as possible to the sinusoidal wave that we want. In this study, we used iteration-based methods to find suitable values for DC sources. Simulation results are offered to confirm the capability of the extended multilevel converter. After we solved the problem through calculation and analysis, a code was written in MATLAB with the aim that this time the code will tell us for what values of DC sources we will have the largest number of levels and as we expected, the output of the MATLAB code confirmed the correctness of the calculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overhead of memory virtualization remains nontrivial. The traditional shadow paging (TSP) resorts to a shadow page table (SPT) to achieve the native page walk speed, but page table updates require hypervisor interventions. Alternatively, nested paging enables low-overhead page table updates, but utilizes the hardware MMU to perform a long-latency two-dimensional page walk. This paper proposes new memory virtualization solutions based on hardware (machine) mode—the highest CPU privilege level in some architectures like Sunway and RISC-V. A programming interface, running in hardware mode, enables software-implementation of hardware support functions. We first propose Software-based Nested Paging (SNP), which extends the software MMU to perform a two-dimensional page walk in hardware mode. Second, we present Swift Shadow Paging (SSP), which accomplishes page table synchronization by intercepting TLB flushing in hardware mode. Finally we propose Accelerated Shadow Paging (ASP) combining SSP and SNP. ASP handles the last-level SPT page faults by walking two-dimensional page tables in hardware mode, which eliminates most hypervisor interventions. This paper systematically compares multiple memory virtualization models by analyzing their designs and evaluating their performance both on a real system and a simulator. The experiments show that the virtualization overhead of ASP is less than 4.5% for all workloads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a key component of high‐performance switches and routers, the packet forwarding engine (PFE) is mainly responsible for selecting the appropriate output port for tens of thousands of packets within an extremely short time frame. However, the performance of PFE is determined by the selected group membership algorithm. This paper puts forth a hybrid strategy–caching scalar‐pair and vectors routing and forwarding (CSVRF), consisting of virtual output port bitmap caching (VOPBC) and fractional‐N SVRF to address major multicast forwarding issues such as scalability by using content addressable memory. In CSVRF, a virtual output port bitmap cache is introduced, which includes the most popular combinations of output port bitmap and divides the big scalar‐pair into N sub‐groups to achieve parallel compute and the reusability of less bit‐length prime. The results demonstrate that the memory space and the forwarding latency are effectively reduced compared with previous work. In space efficiency, it only required 10% memory space compared with the original SVRF/fractional‐N SVRF, decreased 10% memory usage compared with pure VOPBC and nearly improved 1 to 4 orders of magnitude of packet processing time compared with the original SVRF and the fractional‐N SVRF respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a continuously evolving, unmet need for RF (Radio Frequency) Filters that operate contiguously over multiple frequency octaves or bands. Unlike traditional switched filter banks, these new filters require similar levels of RF performance but with more filters and a smaller overall footprint. Legacy systems typically operate over a sub-octave and filters meant to break down information from the aperture to sub-bands (octave wide) or a little less. These wideband filters, pre-LNA (low noise amplifier), were minimal loss but very large. This paper will examine two new solutions to miniature, wideband, and contiguous filtering, their different capabilities, and where the new filter technologies can enable new overall system capabilities. The commercial (cell phone) vs DoD (Department of Defense) requirement differences which drive very different needs for RF filters highlight the SWAP-C (Size, Weight, and Power - Cost) challenge as wideband, contiguous vs. not, is considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ulcers and chronic wounds are a large and expensive problem, costing billions of pounds a year and affecting millions of people. Electrical stimulation has been known to have a positive effect on wound healing since the 1960s and this has been confirmed in numerous studies, reducing the time to heal, and the incidence of adverse events such as infections. However, because each study used different parameters for the treatment, inclusion criteria and metrics for quantifying the success, it is currently hard to combine them statistically and gain a true picture of its efficacy. As such, electrical stimulation has not been universally adopted as a recommended treatment for various types of wound. This paper summarises the biological basis for electrical simulation treatment and reviews the clinical evidence for its effectiveness. Notable is the lack of research focused on the electrodes used to deliver electrostimulation treatment. However, a significant amount of work has been conducted on electrodes for other medical applications in the field of e-textiles. This e-textile work is reviewed with a focus on its potential in electrostimulation and proposals are made for future developments to improve future studies and applications for wound healing via electrical stimulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a simple yet effective network pruning framework is proposed to simultaneously address the problems of pruning indicator, pruning ratio, and efficiency constraint. This paper argues that the pruning decision should depend on the convolutional weights, and thus proposes novel weight-dependent gates (W-Gates) to learn the information from filter weights and obtain binary gates to prune or keep the filters automatically. To prune the network under efficiency constraints, a switchable Efficiency Module is constructed to predict the hardware latency or FLOPs of candidate pruned networks. Combined with the proposed Efficiency Module, W-Gates can perform filter pruning in an efficiency-aware manner and achieve a compact network with a better accuracy-efficiency trade-off. We have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method on ResNet34, ResNet50, and MobileNet V2, respectively achieving up to 1.33/1.28/1.1 higher Top-1 accuracy with lower hardware latency on ImageNet. Compared with state-of-the-art methods, W-Gates also achieves superior performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an optimization approach for day-ahead reactive power planning to improve voltage security in transmission networks. The problem is formulated as a voltage-secure multi-period optimal reactive power dispatch (MP-ORPD) problem. The optimization approach searches for optimal set-points of dynamic and static reactive power (var) resources. Specifically, the output includes set-points for switching shunts, transformer taps, and voltage magnitudes at the regulated buses. The primary goal is to maximize the dynamic reactive power reserve of the system, by minimizing the reactive power supplied by synchronous generators. As the size of the MP-ORPD problem increases significantly with increasing number of contingencies and time periods, efficiency is crucial for practical applications. In this paper, a decomposition technique based on consensus and alternating optimization, where integer variable targets are obtained via MILP, is used to partition the MP-ORPD problem into a set of subproblems, which can be solved in parallel to reduce the computation time. The proposed MP-ORPD problem and its solution algorithm are integrated into the EPRI-VCA software. The results of various power networks of large electric utilities in the Eastern interconnection demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in providing preventive control schedules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to achieve the purpose of extending the speed range and reducing power electronics devices for the permanent-magnet linear motor drive system, a half-centralized open-end winding (OEW) topology is studied for rail transit applications in this paper. In this topology, compared with the traditional OEW topology, the number of voltage-source-inverters (VSIs) can be reduced from four to three to drive two OEW movers and all these VSIs share a common dc bus voltage. In order to improve the steady-state performances, a four-vector phase model predictive voltage control (FV-PMPVC) is proposed in this paper. Due to the spatial distribution of phase voltage vector (PVV), an orthometric synthesis principle (OSP) is proposed to calculated the duration time for the vector synthesis, which reduces the computation burden and enhances the robustness. Comparing the existing control method, FV-PMPVC can get similar dynamic performances but better steady-state performances. Additionally, the half-centralized topology using FV-PMPVC can have same speed range while less VSIs are required. The effectiveness of FV-PMPVC is verified by experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stable and reliable operation of high-speed railway requires continuous and reliable power supply of traction substation, and isolating switch is one of the most important electrical devices in high-speed railway traction substation. In this paper, to address the issue of isolating switch accurate localization and state recognition simultaneously, we present an automatic isolating switch segmentation and state recognition framework called ISSSR-Net using multitask learning that consists of two stages. First, an isolating switch segmentation network called ISS-Net is proposed for isolating switch pixel-level segmentation precisely, of which a new structure containing a strip pooling module, a channel attention and three pyramid pooling modules is designed to greatly improve the segmentation and recognition performance, even in complex conditions such as rain, snow and fog. Second, to improve state recognition accuracy, the segmentation map yielded from the ISS-Net and the feature map from the shared backbone are together fed into isolating switch recognition network called ISR-Net to recognize its three states. In addition, a global context block is integrated into ISR-Net to further improve state recognition accuracy. Extensive experimental results on a self-collected dataset from Heishan traction substation corroborate that this paper provides an effective and robust method to achieve isolating switch segmentation and state recognition simultaneously. The M IoU and ${F}~1$ -score of segmentation reach 0.93 and 0.94 respectively, which is better than U-Net and its variants, and other SOTA. The ${F}~1$ -score of recognition reach 1.00, which is higher than HOG+SVM and other deep learning methods that have been experimented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns the robust state estimation of automotive radar targets in presence of model uncertainty. Smooth variable structure filter (SVSF) achieves error-bounded estimation for target state, even with an inaccurate description of target kinematic model. However, it suffers the undesired chattering phenomenon especially in case of a high model uncertainty level, and its performance is sensitive to a preset smoothing boundary layer parameter. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid SVSF algorithm to handle these two problems simultaneously. First, we derive a nonlinear generalized variable smoothing boundary layer (NGVBL) parameter based on the conventional Tanh-SVSF method by minimizing the pseudo posterior estimation error covariance. Then this NGVBL is employed to realize an adaptive two-module switching strategy with respect to the uncertainty level to calculate the correction gain. If the uncertainty level is high, the undesired chattering is effectively suppressed by the standard Tanh-SVSF gain. In case of a low uncertainty level, the NGVBL is utilized to replace the preset smoothing boundary layer parameter and reformulate the correction gain. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the NGVBL-based gain is quasi-optimal in the mean square error (MSE) sense. Accordingly, this novel NGVBL-based hybrid SVSF (NGVBL-SVSF) algorithm improves the estimation performance by avoiding parameter sensitivity in a low uncertainty level case, and maintains effective chattering suppression and robustness to increasing uncertainties. Simulation and real-world automotive radar data experiment results show that, the proposed NGVBL-SVSF outperforms existing SVSFs and the classical Kalman filter in terms of tracking accuracy and track continuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owning to the sub-standards being developed by IEEE Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) Task Group, the traditional IEEE 802.1 Ethernet is enhanced to support real-time dependable communications for future time- and safety-critical applications. Several sub-standards have been recently proposed that introduce various traffic shapers (e.g., Time-Aware Shaper (TAS), Asynchronous Traffic Shaper (ATS), Credit-Based Shaper (CBS), Strict Priority (SP)) for flow control mechanisms of queuing and scheduling, targeting different application requirements. These shapers can be used in isolation or combination and there is limited work that analyzes, evaluates, and compares their performance, which makes it challenging for end-users to choose the right combination for their applications. This paper aims at (i) quantitatively comparing various traffic shapers and their combinations, (ii) summarizing, classifying, and extending the architectures of individual and combined traffic shapers and their Network calculus (NC)-based performance analysis methods, and (iii) filling the gap in the timing analysis research on handling ATS and CBS used for different priority queues, and two novel hybrid architectures of combined traffic shapers, i.e., TAS+ATS+SP and TAS+ATS+CBS when ATS and CBS used at the same queue. A large number of experiments, using both synthetic and realistic test cases, are carried out for quantitative performance comparisons of various individual and combined traffic shapers, from the perspective of upper bounds of delay, backlog, and jitter. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to quantitatively compare the performance of the main traffic shapers in TSN. The paper aims at supporting the researchers and practitioners in the selection of suitable TSN sub-protocols for their use cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electric power systems are in state of transition as they attempt to evolve to meet new challenges provided by growing environmental concerns, increases in the penetration of distributed renewable energy sources (DRES) as well as the challenges associated with integrating new technologies to enable smart grids. New techniques to improve the electrical power system, including the distribution system, are thus needed. One such technique is dynamic distribution system reconfiguration (DNSR), which involves altering the network topology during operation, providing significant benefits regarding the increased integration of DRES. This paper lays out an improved model which aimed to optimize the system operation in a coordinated way, where DRES, energy storage systems (ESS) and DNSR are considered as well as the uncertainty of these resources. The objective function was modeled to incentivize the uptake of DRES by considering the cost of emissions to incentivize the decarbonization of the power system. Also, the switching costs were modeled to consider not only the switching, but also the cost of degradation of these mechanisms in the system operation. Two systems are used to validate the model, the IEEE 119-bus system, and a real system in São Miguel Island. The results of this paper show that using DNSR, DRES, and ESS can lead to a significant 59% reduction in energy demand through a 24-hour period. In addition, using these technologies results in a healthier, more efficient, and higher quality system. This shows the benefits of using a variety of smart grid technologies in a coordinated manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weather-related or other types of faults can negatively impact the continuity of the electricity delivery to the consumers and, thus, lead to poorer reliability scores. 90% of customer outage-minutes are due to events which affect local distribution systems. The radial configuration is simple and has a low cost design; however, when a fault occurs it often causes power outages beyond the location of the fault itself. Therefore, it is beneficial for utilities to automatically isolate the fault and, thus, restore power to as many consumers as possible. The benefits of fault isolation and service restoration include, but are not limited to: enhanced reliability and resiliency, reduced loss of revenue to the utility, and enhanced comfort and satisfaction for the utility’s consumers. This paper provides an algorithm to quickly isolate a fault and automatically restore power to as many nodes of the distribution system as possible by opening and closing switches already placed within the system. The expert model and centralized algorithm that are proposed in this paper guarantee an optimal solution and a short run-time regardless of the size of the distribution system. A mathematical proof of the optimal nature of the solution is provided. In addition, the model is validated in practice, solving two different-sized systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the first to investigate both communication and control in traffic channel (TCH) and control channel (CCH) respectively when considering leader-follower formation keeping in UAV communication networks. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between the mutual interference and information exchange cost, and then formulate the joint channel and link selection problem as a two-way consensus game between CCH and TCH. To characterize the two-way choice of link selection, we creatively propose the generalized two-way consensus equilibrium (GTCE) to capture the stable state. Then, we prove that the formulated game has at least one pure-strategy GTCE which can maximize the UAV communication network utility. A distributed better reply based joint channel and link selection (BRJCLS) algorithm as well as two-dimensional minimum spanning tree (MST) based initialization (TMSTI) algorithm is proposed to achieve the GTCE. Simulation results are presented to show the convergence and effectiveness of the formulated two-way consensus game and proposed algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an adaptive hybrid robust filter (AHRF) for multi-sensor relative navigation systems that can be used to support cooperative intelligent transport systems. It is known that Huber’s M-estimation based robust filter and the fault detection and exclusion (FDE) based RAIM filter each has its own drawbacks, depending on the nature of the observation error biases. Based on the interactive multiple model (IMM) framework, our proposed AHRF in this paper can take advantage of both filters in a complementary sense. A new adaptive IMM (AIMM) algorithm with Markov transition probability prediction is proposed to allow AHRF to switch efficiently between the two filters. We consider the relative navigation system with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and ultra-wideband (UWB) as observations to verify AHRF in three cases of possible failure modes and multipath-induced errors. Our results show that AHRF outperforms both the FDE and robust filter in all cases. AHRF framework can be further adapted to include many other fault-tolerant filters to improve the robustness of multi-sensor relative navigation system even further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nature's remarkable and merciful gift to the planet Earth is sunlight which may be highly lucrative if harvested and harnessed properly. Photovoltaic (PV) panels are used to convert the solar energy to electrical energy which are currently used to feed AC loads/grid. In this paper, modelling, performance and power flow studies of grid connected single phase inverter fed from PV array under steady state as well as transient conditions are considered. This paper focuses on the study and development of analytical model of micro-grid integrated single phase five level cascaded H-bridge inverter (MGISPFLCHBPVI) powered by a PV panel. A simple power control strategy for MGISPFLCHBPVI is also considered. The simulations are completely carried out using MATLAB software for power-flow studies. The performance characteristics of the inverter are studied from the analytical model developed. The validation of the analytical model is carried out by comparing the results of simulation in Simulink/Matlab. In order to reduce the time to reach steady state taken by the system, a simple PQ control strategy for insolation is introduced in this paper. The proposed method is evaluated based on performance parameters such as settling time and rising time of the system compared with the results available in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Local Area Network (LAN) is a private communication network for connecting computers and devices in a circumscribed location. This paper explains the design and implementation of LAN for a Hotel named 'Greenwich'. The network topology is achieved with the help of nodes such as Server, Routers, Switches, PCs, Wireless Devices, WLANs and Ethernet cables. The paper also deals with a few other topics like Server Configuration (HTTP, DNS, FTP and Email Servers), IP Address Configuration, transmission of packets among the devices in the network, working of IP phones and also how Virtual LANs can help in separating sectors in a network. All routers of all the floors are connected to the Internet. The entire network topology of Hotel Greenwich is simulated with the help of a simulating software called Cisco Packet Tracer (CPT). The implemented design is of primary level and can be enhanced for higher levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we demonstrate biocompatible micromachined buckled membranes for the operation in liquids. The membranes feature diameters between 600 and 800 $\mu \text{m}$ as well as integrated piezoelectric thin film actuators, thus enabling switching between the bistable states. The membrane material is known to be not biocompatible, hence a hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbide (a-SiC:H) layer is deposited on the surface. For demonstration purposes, a 70 nm ±3 nm thin a-SiC:H coating with a specific silicon to carbon ratio was chosen, with a negligible impact on the overall switching performance of the bistable membranes. Furthermore, a relation between the membrane center velocity at the first characteristic resonance frequency and the switching ability of a membrane in different viscous fluids is shown. Based on a small signal analysis the switching behavior can be predicted. The membranes were successfully switched in liquids with a dynamic viscosity up to 286 mPa $\cdot \text{s}$. The biocompatibility of the membranes was examined by growing Caco-2 cells, a human carcinoma cell line, on a-SiC:H thin films, featuring different carbon contents and organic surface treatments. The proliferation and adhesion of the cells on the substrates are examined in an empirical cell growth and removal study. Only a-SiC:H surfaces pre-treated with an O2-plasma and coated with Collagen Type I indicated to provide an environment of improved cell adhesiveness compared to other surface treatments. The biological investigations resulted in good cell proliferation, that also depends on the altered hydrophilicity of the surface, as well as on the carbon content of the a-SiC:H thin films. This study reveals that a broad range of biocompatible a-SiC:H surfaces can be prepared, whereby the cell growth can be tailored in terms of proliferation and adhesion for different biomedical application scenarios. Finally, this paper reports on the mechanical features of bistable, buckled membranes and their suitability as a growth substrate for human cell cultures, due to the good biocompatibility of a-SiC:H thin films. We therefore suggest that it will be feasible to grow cells on bistable MEMS membranes, enabling cell experiments in liquid medical environments, with both mechanically excitable and biocompatible surfaces. [2022-0006] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a new modulation strategy based on the carrier-based switching strategy for the non-square direct matrix converters (MC) is proposed to control the active power of distributed generation (DG) units. In this strategy, the active power of DGs is controlled by the central input current control of the non-square direct MC independent from the voltage and frequency. Conventionally, each DG has a converter, and for supplying a load with N number of DGs, N number of converters are needed and each converter has its own modulation switching and control strategy to control the power output of each DG. Needless to say, in a microgrid with N number of DGs, the control strategy of each converter has more complex structure than that of a microgrid with one converter, and surely the former strategy entails more volume and price. Using the proposed converter in this paper, it is possible to supply a load with N number of DGs through one converter. Also, the power outputs of all DGs are controlled by a central control strategy. The proposed central control strategy is described and simulated for a typical microgrid. Experimental and simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed converter and the proposed strategy. The results demonstrate the applicability and efficiency of the system and verify the theoretical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In renewable energy micro-source applications, a wide range of voltage conversion of the step-up converter is an essential part to equalize the typical low voltage of micro-source with DC-bus voltage of Inverter or motor drives. In order to meet this purpose, an ultra-voltage gain step-up DC-DC converter is proposed in this paper. The proposed converter has made an arrangement of the regenerative-boost fed switched inductor and capacitor configurations. Thereby, due to such an organization of structure, the proposed converter can develop an extremely high voltage-gain even at lower duty ratios. In addition, it has the advantage of lower switching stress across all power semi-conductive diodes. Furthermore, this paper describes the steady-state analysis and comparative features of the converter with existing recent literature. Finally, to validate theoretical analysis and test the feasibility and suitability of the proposed ultra-gain converter, the experimental results were observed by a 500 W fabricated prototype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network function virtualization (NFV) is a promising technology that decouples network functions from hardware. Connecting virtual network functions (VNFs) in series to form a service function chain (SFC) can flexibly orchestrate and expand network functions. However, there are higher availability requirements for SFCs. This paper aims to solve the SFC placement problem under availability and resource constraints. This paper proposes the sideway cross (SC) backup model, which considers the availability of both VNFs and physical machines (PMs) in a data center. The SC model cross-arranges the backup instances of VNFs to guarantee availability and optimize resource consumption. Then, this paper proposes the heuristic meteor shower optimization (MSO) algorithm to place SFCs. Compared to traditional heuristic algorithms, MSO can improve the execution time by approximately 200%. Combined with the SC backup model, MSO can effectively improve the availability and resource overhead. The evaluation results show that the proposed approach can guarantee higher availability and consumes fewer resources. The proposed approach only needs 75% of the resources to achieve the same availability as the state-of-the-art models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Verbal fluency tasks are routinely used in clinical assessment and research studies of aphasia. People with aphasia produce fewer items in verbal fluency tasks. It remains unclear if their output is limited solely by their lexical difficulties and/or has a basis in their executive control abilities. Recent research has illustrated that detailed characterization of verbal fluency performance using temporal characteristics of words retrieved, clustering and switching, and pause durations, along with separate measures of executive control stands to inform our understanding of the lexical and cognitive underpinnings of verbal fluency in aphasia. Aims: To determine the locus of the verbal fluency difficulties in aphasia, we compared semantic and letter fluency trials between people with aphasia and healthy control participants using a wide range of variables to capture the performance between the two groups. The groups were also tested on separate measures of executive control to determine the relationship amongst these tasks and fluency performance. Methods & Procedures: Semantic (animal) and letter (F, A, S) fluency data for 60s trials were collected from 14 people with aphasia (PWA) and 24 healthy adult controls (HC). Variables, such as number of correct responses, clustering and switching analyses, were performed along with temporal measures of the retrieved words (response latencies) and pause durations. Participants performed executive control tasks to measure inhibitory control, mental‐set shifting and memory span. Outcomes & Results: Compared with HC, PWA produced fewer correct responses, showed greater difficulty with the letter fluency condition, were slower in getting started with the trials, showed slower retrieval times as noted in within‐ and between‐cluster pause durations, and switched less often. Despite these retrieval difficulties, PWA showed a similar decline in the rate of recall to HC, and had similar cluster size. Executive control measures correlated primarily with the letter fluency variables: mostly for PWA and in one instance for HC. Conclusions & Implications: Poorer performance for PWA is a combination of difficulties in both the lexical and executive components of the verbal fluency task. Our findings highlight the importance of detailed characterization of fluency performance in deciphering the underlying mechanism of retrieval difficulties in aphasia, and illustrate the importance of using letter fluency trials to tap into executive control processes. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on the subject: PWA typically show impaired performance in verbal fluency tasks. It is debated whether this impaired performance is a result of their lexical difficulties or executive control difficulties, or a combination of both. This debate continues because previous studies have mostly used semantic fluency condition without including letter fluency condition; used a limited range of variables (e.g., number of correct responses); and not included separate executive control measures to explain the performance pattern in aphasia. This research addresses these outstanding issues to determine the specific contribution of lexical and executive control processes in verbal fluency in aphasia by including: both semantic and letter fluency conditions; a wide range of variables to identify the relative contribution of lexical and executive control mechanisms; and independent measures of executive control. What this paper adds to existing knowledge: Using the multidimensional analysis approach for verbal fluency performance from both semantic and letter fluency conditions, this is the first study to systematically demonstrate that PWA had difficulties in both lexical and executive control components of the task. At the individual level, PWA had greater difficulty on the letter fluency condition compared with semantic fluency. We observed significant correlations between the executive control measures and verbal fluency measures primarily for the letter fluency condition. This research makes a significant contribution to our understanding of lexical and executive control aspects in word production in aphasia. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?: From a clinical perspective, this research highlights the importance of using a full range of verbal fluency and executive control measures to tap into the lexical as well as executive control abilities of PWA, and also the utility of using letter fluency to tap into the executive control processes in PWA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) has been pretty mature and widely used in our daily life, the positioning of the indoor environment cannot be realized due to the shielding of concretes or glasses by GNSS. Many positioning methods have been proposed to solve that problem, and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is one of the most widely used wireless technologies. This paper takes BLE Angle of Arrival (AOA) as the research object and proposes a method based on signal fitting and Propagator Direct Data Acquisition (PDDA) angle estimation algorithm. This method can be applied to both linear antenna array and rectangular antenna array and has good positioning performance. The method proposed in this paper does not need to calculate the phase differences between antennas, making it unnecessary to calculate the intersection of cones during spatial positioning. The angle estimation is divided into two steps. Firstly, the frequency deviation of Constant Tone Extension (CTE) is calculated based on the IQ samples captured during the reference period, and the received signal matrix of all antennas is fitted based on frequency deviation. Secondly, the antenna received signal model is established based on hardware antenna arrangement, and the arrival angle is estimated by the PDDA algorithm. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, the plane and spatial positioning experiments are carried out using the BLE devices of Nordic Company, which shows a good positioning accuracy. In spatial positioning, the average positioning accuracy of BLE in channel 37, channel 38, and channel 39 is 0.59m, 0.74m, and 0.77m, respectively, which can meet the basic indoor positioning requirements and cover a large area by one receiver. Compared with the classical MUSIC algorithm, the PDDA algorithm has the same positioning accuracy but lower computational complexity, so it has certain advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses an advanced method for estimating dc conductivity of oil using parameters evaluated under switching impulse voltage application. Firstly, the effectiveness of switching impulse application for assessing the condition of oil–paper insulation is investigated. Thereafter, the evaluated parameters under switching impulse voltage are fitted by Havriliak and Negami (HN) model for estimating the oil conductivity. The method is applied on oil-impregnated pressboards containing different moistures and a distribution transformer for experimental investigation. Moreover, the limitations of the proposed method are also discussed in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hybrid software-defined networks (SDN) architectures are beneficial for a smooth transition and less costly SDN deployment. However, legacy switches and SDN switches coexistence brings new challenges of deployment inconsistency management and security. Security is not well studied for hybrid SDN architecture. In this paper, we study the topology poisoning attacks in hybrid SDN for the first time. We propose new attack vectors for link fabrication in hybrid SDN. The new attack is named “multi-hop link fabrication,” in which an adversary successfully injects a fake multi-hop link (MHL) by exploiting the link discovery protocols. We presented the Hybrid-Shield, a link verification framework for hybrid SDN link discovery. Hybrid-Shield introduces a novel verification technique that includes: i) monitoring legacy switch and host generated traffic at MHL and ii) validating the existence of legacy switches contained in an MHL. This paper presents the prototype implementation of Hybrid-Shield over a real SDN controller. The experimental evaluation is performed with the mininet virtual network emulation. Our evaluation shows that Hybrid-Shield is capable of detecting MHL fabrication attacks in real-time with high accuracy. Hybrid-Shield’s performance evaluation shows that it is lightweight at the controller as it causes less overhead and requires no additional functionalities at the SDN controller for deployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an accurate impedance model for line commutated converter (LCC) in the stationary frame. The commutation overlap process caused by the transformer leakage inductance complicates the modeling for LCC. Traditional impedance models are derived in positive sequence and negative sequence frame based on the simplified commutation overlap process, which degrades the modeling accuracy and limits the description of frequency coupling. This paper systematically analyzes the effects of the commutation overlap process on the impedance model, and the impedance model with the accurate commutation overlap process is established in the dq-frame. For clearly revealing the frequency coupling phenomenon of the LCC, the complex space vector is employed to extend the impedance model in the dq-frame to the complex αβ-frame. A closed-loop model on PSCAD/EMTDC is used to verify the proposed impedance model in the time-domain and the frequency-domain. The consistency between the simulation results and theoretical analysis effectively verifies the accuracy of the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The linearity of high-resolution current-steering digital-to-analog converters (DACs) is often limited by inter-symbol interference (ISI). While dynamic element matching (DEM) can be applied to convert a portion of the ISI to uncorrelated noise instead of nonlinear distortion, DEM alone fails to prevent ISI from at least introducing strong second-order nonlinear distortion. This paper addresses this problem by proposing, analyzing, and experimentally demonstrating a low-cost add-on technique, called ISI scrambling, that, in conjunction with DEM, causes a DAC’s ISI to be free of nonlinear distortion. The ISI scrambling technique is demonstrated in a 1-GS/s, 14-bit DEM DAC implemented in 90 nm CMOS technology. The DAC’s measured linearity is in line with the state-of-the-art and its measured output power spectra closely match those predicted by this paper’s theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applications in data-parallel computing typically consist of multiple stages. In each stage, a set of intermediate parallel data flows (Coflow) is produced and transferred between servers to enable starting of next stage. While there has been much research on scheduling isolated coflows, the dependency between coflows in multi-stage jobs has been largely ignored. In this paper, we consider scheduling coflows of multi-stage jobs represented by general DAGs (Directed Acyclic Graphs) in a shared data center network, so as to minimize the total weighted completion time of jobs. This problem is significantly more challenging than the traditional coflow scheduling, as scheduling even a single multi-stage job to minimize its completion time is shown to be NP-hard. In this paper, we propose a polynomial-time algorithm with approximation ratio of $O(\mu \log (m)/\log (\log (m)))$ , where $\mu $ is the maximum number of coflows in a job and $m$ is the number of servers. For the special case that the jobs’ underlying dependency graphs are rooted trees, we modify the algorithm and improve its approximation ratio. To verify the performance of our algorithms, we present simulation results using real traffic traces that show up to 53% improvement over the prior approach. We conclude the paper by providing a result concerning an optimality gap for scheduling coflows with general DAGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by applications in data center networks, in this paper, we study the problem of scheduling in an input queued switch. While throughput maximizing algorithms in a switch are well-understood, delay analysis was developed only recently. It was recently shown that the well-known MaxWeight algorithm achieves optimal scaling of mean queue lengths in steady state in the heavy-traffic regime, and is within a factor less than 2 of a universal lower bound. However, MaxWeight is not used in practice because of its high time complexity. In this paper, we study several low complexity algorithms and show that their heavy-traffic performance is identical to that of MaxWeight. We first present a negative result that picking a random schedule does not have optimal heavy-traffic scaling of queue lengths even under uniform traffic. We then show that if one picks the best among two matchings or modifies a random matching even a little, using the so-called flip operation, it leads to MaxWeight like heavy-traffic performance under uniform traffic. We then focus on the case of non-uniform traffic and show that a large class of low time complexity algorithms have the same heavy-traffic performance as MaxWeight, as long as it is ensured that a MaxWeight matching is picked often enough. We also briefly discuss the performance of these algorithms in the large scale heavy-traffic regime when the size of the switch increases simultaneously with the load. Finally, we perform empirical study on a new algorithm to compare its performance with some existing algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]