Dual-band substrate integrated waveguide textile antenna with integrated solar harvester

A dual-band wearable textile antenna based on substrate integrated waveguide technology is presented for operation in the [2.4-2.4835]-GHz Industrial, Scientific and Medical band and the [2.5-2.69]-GHz 4G LTE band 7. The antenna features an integrated flexible solar harvesting system, consisting of a flexible solar cell, a power management system, and energy storage. All these components are judiciously positioned on the antenna platform in order not to affect its radiation performance. The measured reflection coefficients and radiation characteristics after bending and deploying the antenna on a human body prove that the antenna is well suited for on-body use. A measured on-body antenna gain and radiation efficiency of 5.0 dBi and 89% are realized. Measurements in a real-life situation have demonstrated the ability to scavenge a maximum of 53 mW by means of a single integrated flexible solar cell

A review of information flow diagrammatic models for product-service systems

A product-service system (PSS) is a combination of products and services to create value for both customers and manufacturers. Modelling a PSS based on function orientation offers a useful way to distinguish system inputs and outputs with regards to how data are consumed and information is used, i.e. information flow. This article presents a review of diagrammatic information flow tools, which are designed to describe a system through its functions. The origin, concept and applications of these tools are investigated, followed by an analysis of information flow modelling with regards to key PSS properties. A case study of selection laser melting technology implemented as PSS will then be used to show the application of information flow modelling for PSS design. A discussion based on the usefulness of the tools in modelling the key elements of PSS and possible future research directions are also presented

Enabling RAN Slicing Through Carrier Aggregation in mmWave Cellular Networks

The ever increasing number of connected devices and of new and heterogeneous mobile use cases implies that 5G cellular systems will face demanding technical challenges. For example, Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (URLLC) and enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) scenarios present orthogonal Quality of Service (QoS) requirements that 5G aims to satisfy with a unified Radio Access Network (RAN) design. Network slicing and mmWave communications have been identified as possible enablers for 5G. They provide, respectively, the necessary scalability and flexibility to adapt the network to each specific use case environment, and low latency and multi-gigabit-per-second wireless links, which tap into a vast, currently unused portion of the spectrum. The optimization and integration of these technologies is still an open research challenge, which requires innovations at different layers of the protocol stack. This paper proposes to combine them in a RAN slicing framework for mmWaves, based on carrier aggregation. Notably, we introduce MilliSlice, a cross-carrier scheduling policy that exploits the diversity of the carriers and maximizes their utilization, thus simultaneously guaranteeing high throughput for the eMBB slices and low latency and high reliability for the URLLC flows.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures. Proc. of the 18th Mediterranean Communication and Computer Networking Conference (MedComNet 2020), Arona, Italy, 202

Time-efficient fault detection and diagnosis system for analog circuits

Time-efficient fault analysis and diagnosis of analog circuits are the most important prerequisites to achieve online health monitoring of electronic equipments, which are involving continuing challenges of ultra-large-scale integration, component tolerance, limited test points but multiple faults. This work reports an FPGA (field programmable gate array)-based analog fault diagnostic system by applying two-dimensional information fusion, two-port network analysis and interval math theory. The proposed system has three advantages over traditional ones. First, it possesses high processing speed and smart circuit size as the embedded algorithms execute parallel on FPGA. Second, the hardware structure has a good compatibility with other diagnostic algorithms. Third, the equipped Ethernet interface enhances its flexibility for remote monitoring and controlling. The experimental results obtained from two realistic example circuits indicate that the proposed methodology had yielded competitive performance in both diagnosis accuracy and time-effectiveness, with about 96% accuracy while within 60 ms computational time.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio