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Discontinuous conduction mode is often used in boost power factor correction converter. This article proposes a unified control method to achieve both pulsewidth modulation control and pulse frequency modulation control, which is based on the virtual impedance principle. The control modes can easily be changed by only adjusting one control parameter. Consequently, by comprehensively considering current ripple, switching frequency, and efficiency, the converter can operate flexibly in the situation of variable loads. This article first introduces the operation principle of the proposed unified control method. Then, the operation condition for each control mode is discussed. Besides, the current ripple, the switching frequency, and the power loss are analyzed. Finally, the experimental results of steady-state test and load switching test are presented. And the efficiency of the converter is more than 95% in the range from half load to full load. These experimental results fully verify the effectiveness of the proposed control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the solution to the coordinated formation problem of heterogeneous vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the presence of parametric uncertainties. In particular, their inertial parameters are distinct and unavailable. For the sake of the accomplishment of the coordinated formation objective of multiple underactuated VTOL UAVs through local information exchange, an adaptive distributed control algorithm is developed under a cascaded structure. Specifically, by introducing an immersion and invariance (I&I) adaption strategy for the exponential mass estimation, a distributed command force is first synthesized in the position loop. Next, an applied torque with adaption is synthesized for the attitude tracking to a command attitude. This command attitude, as well as the applied thrust, is extracted from the synthesized command force without singularity. It is shown in terms of the Lyapunov theory that driven by the proposed adaptive distributed control algorithm, the concerned coordinated formation control of multiple VTOL UAVs is achieved asymptotically. Finally, an illustrative example is simulated to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional power factor correction (PFC) converters usually employ a large electrolytic capacitor to ensure a stiff output voltage. However, the electrolytic capacitor is not expected in terms of the reliability and the size of the system. This article proposes a peak and valley current control for Cuk PFC converter to remove the bulky electrolytic capacitor. The proposed control is realized by a combination of analog and digital circuits. The analog circuits are used to accomplish the real-time comparison between the actual currents and their reference values. And the digital circuits are employed to deal with simple logical judgement. Different from the existing full digital control technique, which needs a high-quality digital signal processor (DSP) to process complex arithmetic operation, the proposed control concept even can only require a low performance microcontroller unit. Besides, the control delay is avoided. This article first analyzes the operation stages of the Cuk PFC converter. Then, design considerations of main circuit and control circuit are introduced. Finally, the experimental results from 200W Cuk PFC converter are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The surface of a hypersonic vehicle traveling at a speed exceeding Mach 10 is covered by a plasma sheath. The plasma sheath is a complex dynamic random medium that seriously attenuates electromagnetic (EM) waves and generates the so-called blackout phenomenon. However, owing to changes in vehicle flight parameters, such as the angle of attack, speed, and altitude, or the effects of plasma weakening control measures, the attenuation effect of the plasma sheath on EM waves weakens for a short time. At times, the amplitude of the EM waves is higher than the communication threshold, and the EM waves penetrate the plasma sheath in a so-called “communication window”. However, the random temporal variance of the plasma sheath parameters causes the required parameters of the “communication windows” to appear randomly, resulting in the traditional communication methods that needs to keep the communication link open for a long time being no longer applicable. To maximize the use of these “communication windows”, this paper proposes a short-frame fountain code (SFFC), constructs a time-varying plasma sheath channel model, and studies the relationship between the SFFC parameters and the transmission performance of this particular channel. Simulation and experimental results show that the use of SFFC improves the reliability of communication through the plasma sheath. The uninterrupted and correct transmission of information can be achieved even when the plasma equivalent frequency is close to the carrier frequency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of radio blackout due to a plasma sheath during reentry has attracted much attention over the last several decades. However, radio blackout has long puzzled aerospace researchers and has not yet been completely resolved. Owing to the effects of the time-varying plasma sheath channel environment, the constellation of received signals exhibits multiple manifolds, making the traditional algorithms based on Euclidean distance unable to perform demodulation. In the current study, we proposed a novel demodulation method based on spectral clustering for phase-modulated signals interrupted by the plasma sheath channel. Experimental results revealed that as long as the receiving radio waves were above the floor of receiver’s dynamic range, the proposed algorithm effectively classified received signals after time-varying plasma. The parasitic modulation interference caused by time-varying plasma was restrained effectively through the novel algorithm. In contrast to the traditional communication method, the proposed method can be applied to telemetry, track and command, as well as communication between reentry vehicles and near-space hypersonic vehicles in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the state-of-the-art synchronize-embedding-changes (SECs) steganography. We propose the pixel-decimation-assisted steganalytic feature set, a novel feature set construction protocol that extends upon the recent selection-channel-aware spatial rich model maxSRMd2. Our method is based on pixel decimation, a specific type of image downsampling. Based on theoretical analysis and empirical evaluation, we clearly demonstrate that our method impairs the synchronization of embedding changes in SEC steganography, and improves the accuracy of embedding change probability estimation. Our method significantly improves stego image detection performance when extended from a selection-channel-aware rich-model feature set (maxSRMd2) and is robust to different image downsampling methods. Furthermore, increasing the number of sweeps in SEC steganography has no effect to the performance of our proposed method even though it further strengthens synchronization of embedding changes. It is worth noting that with ensemble classifier, the above-mentioned performance improvements are achieved at a little extra cost. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We demonstrate a low loss, wideband multi-core to single-mode fiber coupler using a modified side-polishing technique. The coupler was designed to access light from a single core of the multi-core fiber without disrupting the signal propagation in the remaining cores. The coupling ratio between the two fibers can be continuously tuned over the entire spectral band via a simple mechanical displacement method. We expect that such couplers will be of use for monitoring, splitting, and multiplexing applications in future multi-core communication and sensing systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes a hybrid feature extraction-based intrusion discrimination scheme for an optical fiber perimeter security system, which concurrently possesses high classification rate and high efficiency. The high classification rate lies in two aspects: On one hand, plentiful contents (including bandwidth segmentation in frequency domain, kurtosis in statistics, and the zero-crossing rate in time domain) are incorporated into the proposed hybrid feature vector; on the other hand, a configurable filter bank is adopted to reduce the intercoupling between features in the hybrid vector. The high efficiency also arises for two reasons: For one thing, the configurable filter bank works in a pipeline stream; for another, an efficient support vector machine is employed to classify hybrid vectors. Experiments demonstrated that the proposed scheme can accurately identify four common intrusions (fence climbing, knocking the cable, waggling, and fence cutting) with an average recognition rate higher than 94%. Moreover, the recognition efficiency is also high. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Graphene is a two-dimensional material which, as a result of its excellent photonic properties, has been investigated for a wide range of optical applications. In this paper, we propose and fabricate a commercial grade broadband graphene-based fiber polarizer using a low loss side-polished optical fiber platform. A high index polyvinyl butyral layer is used to enhance the light-graphene interaction of the evanescent field of the core guided mode to simultaneously obtain a high extinction ratio $\sim$ 37.5 dB with a low device loss $\sim$ 1 dB. Characterization of the optical properties reveals that the polarizer retains low transmission losses and high extinction ratios across an extended telecoms band. The results demonstrate that side-polished fibers are a useful platform for leveraging the unique properties of low-dimensional materials in a robust and compact device geometry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

High-resolution real-time intraocular imaging of retina at the cellular level is very challenging due to the vulnerable and confined space within the eyeball as well as the limited availability of appropriate modalities. A probe-based confocal laser endomicroscopy (pCLE) system, can be a potential imaging modality for improved diagnosis. The ability to visualize the retina at the cellular level could provide information that may predict surgical outcomes. The adoption of intraocular pCLE scanning is currently limited due to the narrow field of view and the micron-scale range of focus. In the absence of motion compensation, physiological tremors of the surgeons' hand and patient movements also contribute to the deterioration of the image quality. Therefore, an image-based hybrid control strategy is proposed to mitigate the above challenges. The proposed hybrid control strategy enables a shared control of the pCLE probe between surgeons and robots to scan the retina precisely, with the absence of hand tremors and with the advantages of an image-based auto-focus algorithm that optimizes the quality of pCLE images. The hybrid control strategy is deployed on two frameworks - cooperative and teleoperated. Better image quality, smoother motion, and reduced workload are all achieved in a statistically significant manner with the hybrid control frameworks.