Deliverable JRA1.1: Evaluation of current network control and management planes for multi-domain network infrastructure

This deliverable includes a compilation and evaluation of available control and management architectures and protocols applicable to a multilayer infrastructure in a multi-domain Virtual Network environment.The scope of this deliverable is mainly focused on the virtualisation of the resources within a network and at processing nodes. The virtualization of the FEDERICA infrastructure allows the provisioning of its available resources to users by means of FEDERICA slices. A slice is seen by the user as a real physical network under his/her domain, however it maps to a logical partition (a virtual instance) of the physical FEDERICA resources. A slice is built to exhibit to the highest degree all the principles applicable to a physical network (isolation, reproducibility, manageability, ...). Currently, there are no standard definitions available for network virtualization or its associated architectures. Therefore, this deliverable proposes the Virtual Network layer architecture and evaluates a set of Management- and Control Planes that can be used for the partitioning and virtualization of the FEDERICA network resources. This evaluation has been performed taking into account an initial set of FEDERICA requirements; a possible extension of the selected tools will be evaluated in future deliverables. The studies described in this deliverable define the virtual architecture of the FEDERICA infrastructure. During this activity, the need has been recognised to establish a new set of basic definitions (taxonomy) for the building blocks that compose the so-called slice, i.e. the virtual network instantiation (which is virtual with regard to the abstracted view made of the building blocks of the FEDERICA infrastructure) and its architectural plane representation. These definitions will be established as a common nomenclature for the FEDERICA project. Other important aspects when defining a new architecture are the user requirements. It is crucial that the resulting architecture fits the demands that users may have. Since this deliverable has been produced at the same time as the contact process with users, made by the project activities related to the Use Case definitions, JRA1 has proposed a set of basic Use Cases to be considered as starting point for its internal studies. When researchers want to experiment with their developments, they need not only network resources on their slices, but also a slice of the processing resources. These processing slice resources are understood as virtual machine instances that users can use to make them behave as software routers or end nodes, on which to download the software protocols or applications they have produced and want to assess in a realistic environment. Hence, this deliverable also studies the APIs of several virtual machine management software products in order to identify which best suits FEDERICA’s needs.Postprint (published version

Financing innovation activity in Ukraine: realities and perspectives

The role of the European Union (EU) in direct investment into the real sector of the Ukrainian economy is discussed in the article. Activity indicators of Ukrainian industrial enterprises are analyzed. Assessment of the attraction of foreign direct investment from the EU to the real sector of the Ukrainian economy is provided. The correlation between the influence of the total amount of expenditures for financing innovation activity of industrial enterprises and gross domestic product of Ukraine in actual prices is calculated and forecasting of these expenditures by applying the theory of Markov chains is carried out. The research on the basis of correlation-regression analysis between the total amount of expenditures for financing innovation activity of industrial enterprises and gross domestic product of Ukraine in actual prices for the period of 2013-2017 made it possible to establish a sufficiently strong correlation between the indicators (the correlation coefficient is 1), which indicates that the positive dynamics of the increase in the total amount of expenditures for financing innovation activity of industrial enterprises will lead to a positive dynamics of Ukraine’s gross domestic product in actual prices. This, in turn, will improve practically all indicators of the industrial activity of the national economy

Preface: Semantic Web technologies for mobile and pervasive environments

Artificial Intelligence provides a rich set of methods and tools for implementing the Ambient Intelligence vision, i.e. to transform our environments into smart spaces assisting as with our everyday tasks in an intelligent, seamless and non-obtrusive way. Among them, Semantic Web technologies, such as RDF, ontology languages and others, can be used to address several of the challenges that come with this vision, mainly with respect to modelling, sharing and reasoning with context information. This thematic issue demonstrates their capabilities by presenting three different Semantic Web-based solutions for mobile and computing environments

Design, Analysis, and Simulation of Rocket Propulsion System

This document details the functionality of a software program used to streamline a rocket propulsion system design, analysis and simulation effort. The program aids in unifying the nozzle, chamber and injector portions of a rocket propulsion system design effort quickly and efficiently using a streamlined graphical user interface (GUI). The program also allows for the selection of common nozzle profiles including 80% rao, conical, a user selected percentage bell, and a minimum length nozzle (MLN) using method of characteristics (MOC). Chamber dimensions, propellant selections, and injector selection between doublet or triplet allow for further refinement of the desired rocket system design. The program takes the available selections and specifications made by the user and outputs key design parameters calculated from the input variables. A 2-D graphical representation of the nozzle and/or chamber is plotted and coordinates of the plotted line are displayed. Additional design calculations are determined and displayed within the program such as specific impulse, exhaust velocity, propellant weight flow, fundamental instability frequencies, etc. The rocket propulsion system design coordinates are saved to a *dat file which can be used in a CAD program to plot a 3-D model of the rocket propulsion system. The *dat file is compatible for creating splines in Unigraphics NX, Catia, and SolidWorks. Coordinates of the injectors are saved to a *dat file to be modeled in a CAD program as well. The program currently provides a symbolic link in the form of a button on the output page which will open Unigraphics NX CAD program. The post-processing simulation of the rocket propulsion system is done in a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) program such as ANSYS ICEM CFD mesh generation software and ANSYS FLUENT CFD. The program provides a button on the output page which will open the ANSYS ICEM CFD mesh program and the ANSYS FLUENT CFD program. The user inputs the parasolid or IGES/STEP file of the CAD 3-D modeling of the rocket propulsion system into the ANSYS ICEM CFD meshing software. The geometry tolerant mesher program produces a volume or surface mesh to be read into the ANSYS FLUENT CFD software. Using ANSYS FLUENT CFD software, the user can choose to model the flow, turbulence, heat transfer, air flow over the rocket, combustion in the chamber, or various other options of the rocket propulsion system. The rocket propulsion system is a graphical user interface (GUI) which is run through Matlab and is compatible for 2009-2011 Matlab versions

From Multiview Image Curves to 3D Drawings

Reconstructing 3D scenes from multiple views has made impressive strides in recent years, chiefly by correlating isolated feature points, intensity patterns, or curvilinear structures. In the general setting - without controlled acquisition, abundant texture, curves and surfaces following specific models or limiting scene complexity - most methods produce unorganized point clouds, meshes, or voxel representations, with some exceptions producing unorganized clouds of 3D curve fragments. Ideally, many applications require structured representations of curves, surfaces and their spatial relationships. This paper presents a step in this direction by formulating an approach that combines 2D image curves into a collection of 3D curves, with topological connectivity between them represented as a 3D graph. This results in a 3D drawing, which is complementary to surface representations in the same sense as a 3D scaffold complements a tent taut over it. We evaluate our results against truth on synthetic and real datasets.Comment: Expanded ECCV 2016 version with tweaked figures and including an overview of the supplementary material available at multiview-3d-drawing.sourceforge.ne

Experimental performance of a 1-kilowatt arcjet thruster

A formerly unused cathode and anode/nozzle assembly from a flight model arcjet was tested with nitrogen, hydrogen, and nitrogen-hydrogen mixture simulating ammonia decomposition products at arc power levels from about 300 to 950 W. Two different power sources and two nozzle configurations were tested at low back-ground pressures to exclude facility effects. Increased nozzle expansion ratio improved cold flow nozzle efficiency from 0.8 to 0.9. Hydrogen thrust efficiency of 0.26 at 872 sec specific impulse matched some 1964 performance on a similar device. Simulated ammonia thrust efficiency was 0.31 at 422 sec. Spontaneously occurring voltage mode changes at constant arc current could be partially stabilized with appropriate power source characteristics. In the higher voltage mode specific impulse was higher, but thrust efficiency changed only slightly from that of the lower voltage mode. Sustained tests of up to 2 hr duration exhibited no apparent performance degradation with time

Secrecy rate analysis of UAV-enabled mmWave networks using matern hardcore point processes

IEEE Communications aided by low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as an effective solution to provide large coverage and dynamic capacity for both military and civilian applications, especially in unexpected scenarios. However, because of their broad coverage, UAV communications are prone to passive eavesdropping attacks. This paper analyzes the secrecy performance of UAVs networks at the millimeter wave (mmWave) band and takes into account unique features of air-toground channels and practical constraints of UAV deployment. To be specific, it explores the 3D antenna gain in the air-toground links and uses the Matérn hardcore point process to guarantee the safety distance between the randomly deployed UAV base stations. In addition, we propose the transmit jamming strategy to improve the secrecy performance in which part of UAVs send jamming signals to confound the eavesdroppers. Simulation results verify our analysis and demonstrate the impact of different system parameters on the achievable secrecy rate. It is also revealed that optimizing the density of jamming UAVs will significantly improve security of UAV-enabled networks

Secrecy Rate Analysis of UAV-Enabled mmWave Networks Using Matérn Hardcore Point Processes

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. Communications aided by low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as an effective solution to provide large coverage and dynamic capacity for both military and civilian applications, especially in unexpected scenarios. However, because of their broad coverage, UAV communications are prone to passive eavesdropping attacks. This paper analyzes the secrecy performance of UAVs networks at the millimeter wave band and takes into account unique features of air-to-ground channels and practical constraints of UAV deployment. To be specific, it explores the 3-D antenna gain in the air-to-ground links and uses the Matérn hardcore point process to guarantee the safety distance between the randomly deployed UAV base stations. In addition, we propose the transmit jamming strategy to improve the secrecy performance in which part of UAVs send jamming signals to confound the eavesdropper

The Economic Impact of the South-North Water Transfer Project in China: A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis

Water resources are unevenly spread in China. Especially the basins of the Yellow, Hui and Hai rivers in the North are rather dry. To increase the supply of water in these basins, the South-to-North Water Transfer project (SNWT) was launched. Using a computable general equilibrium model this study estimates the impact of the project on the economy of China and the rest of the world. We contrast three alternative groups of scenarios. All are directly concerned with the South-to-North water transfer project to increase water supply. In the first group of scenarios additional supply implies productivity gains. We call it the “non-market” solution. The second group of scenarios is called “market solution”. The market price for water adjusts such that supply and demand are equated again. In the third group of simulations the economic implications of China’s capital investment in infrastructure for the water South-North water transfer project is analyzed. Finally, the investment is combined with the increased capacity of water. If an increase in water supply in China leads to an increase in productivity of their water-intensive goods and services (non-market solution) this would result in a huge positive welfare effect from increased production and export. The effect on China’s welfare would still be positive, if a market for water would exist (market solution), but the world as a whole would lose. The negative effect for the rest of the world is largely explained by a deterioration of its terms-of-trade. Well functioning water markets in China are unlikely to exist.Computable General Equilibrium, South-North Water Transfer Project, Water Policy, Water Scarcity