88,606 research outputs found
Embedded Sensor System for Early Pathology Detection in Building Construction
Structure pathology detection is an important security task in building construction, which is performed by an operator by looking manually for damages on the materials. This activity could be dangerous if the structure is hidden or difficult to reach. On the other hand, embedded devices and wireless sensor networks (WSN) are becoming popular and cheap, enabling the design of an alternative pathology detection system to monitor structures based on these technologies. This article introduces a ZigBee WSN system, intending to be autonomous, easy to use and with low power consumption. Its functional parts are fully discussed with diagrams, as well as the protocol used to collect samples from sensor nodes. Finally, several tests focused on range and power consumption of our prototype are shown, analysing whether the results obtained were as expected or not
Chromosome Centromeres: Structural and Analytical Investigations with High Resolution Scanning Electron Microscopy in Combination with Focused Ion Beam Milling
Whole mount mitotic metaphase chromosomes of different plants and animals were investigated with high resolution field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) to study the ultrastructural organization of centromeres, including metacentric, acrocentric, telocentric, and holocentric chromosome variants. It could be shown that, in general, primary constrictions have distinctive ultrastructural features characterized by parallel matrix fibrils and fewer smaller chromomeres. Exposure of these structures depends on cell cycle synchronization prior to chromosome isolation, chromosome size, and chromosome isolation technique. Chromosomes without primary constrictions, small chromosomes, and holocentric chromosomes do not exhibit distinct ultrastructural elements that could be directly correlated to centromere function. Putative spindle structures, although rarely observed, spread over the primary constriction to the bordering pericentric regions. Analytical FESEM techniques, including specific DNA staining with Pt blue, staining of protein as a substance class with silver-colloid, and artificial loosening of fixed chromosomes with proteinase K, were applied, showing that centromere variants and ultrastructural elements in the centromere differ in DNA and protein distribution. Immunogold localization allowed high-resolution comparison between chromosomes with different centromere orientations of the distribution of centromere-related histone variants, phosphorylated histone H3 (ser10), and CENH3. A novel application of FESEM combined with focused ion beam milling (FIB) provided new insights into the spatial distribution of these histone variants in barley chromosomes. Copyright (C) 2009 S. Karger AG, Base
Front-end Electronics for the CALICE/EUDET Calorimeters
The CALICE collaboration is involved in the design of compact calorimeters
featuring a high granularity. The technical developments have to overcome
various design issues such as the power dissipation, the integration of the
front-end electronics inside the detector and connections between the parts. A
huge collaborative work is required to achieve the devices using common tools
and designs.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, talk given at LCWS0
Multiband Spectrum Access: Great Promises for Future Cognitive Radio Networks
Cognitive radio has been widely considered as one of the prominent solutions
to tackle the spectrum scarcity. While the majority of existing research has
focused on single-band cognitive radio, multiband cognitive radio represents
great promises towards implementing efficient cognitive networks compared to
single-based networks. Multiband cognitive radio networks (MB-CRNs) are
expected to significantly enhance the network's throughput and provide better
channel maintenance by reducing handoff frequency. Nevertheless, the wideband
front-end and the multiband spectrum access impose a number of challenges yet
to overcome. This paper provides an in-depth analysis on the recent
advancements in multiband spectrum sensing techniques, their limitations, and
possible future directions to improve them. We study cooperative communications
for MB-CRNs to tackle a fundamental limit on diversity and sampling. We also
investigate several limits and tradeoffs of various design parameters for
MB-CRNs. In addition, we explore the key MB-CRNs performance metrics that
differ from the conventional metrics used for single-band based networks.Comment: 22 pages, 13 figures; published in the Proceedings of the IEEE
Journal, Special Issue on Future Radio Spectrum Access, March 201
Bayesian Design of Tandem Networks for Distributed Detection With Multi-bit Sensor Decisions
We consider the problem of decentralized hypothesis testing under
communication constraints in a topology where several peripheral nodes are
arranged in tandem. Each node receives an observation and transmits a message
to its successor, and the last node then decides which hypothesis is true. We
assume that the observations at different nodes are, conditioned on the true
hypothesis, independent and the channel between any two successive nodes is
considered error-free but rate-constrained. We propose a cyclic numerical
design algorithm for the design of nodes using a person-by-person methodology
with the minimum expected error probability as a design criterion, where the
number of communicated messages is not necessarily equal to the number of
hypotheses. The number of peripheral nodes in the proposed method is in
principle arbitrary and the information rate constraints are satisfied by
quantizing the input of each node. The performance of the proposed method for
different information rate constraints, in a binary hypothesis test, is
compared to the optimum rate-one solution due to Swaszek and a method proposed
by Cover, and it is shown numerically that increasing the channel rate can
significantly enhance the performance of the tandem network. Simulation results
for -ary hypothesis tests also show that by increasing the channel rates the
performance of the tandem network significantly improves
The macroscopic effects of microscopic heterogeneity
Over the past decade, advances in super-resolution microscopy and
particle-based modeling have driven an intense interest in investigating
spatial heterogeneity at the level of single molecules in cells. Remarkably, it
is becoming clear that spatiotemporal correlations between just a few molecules
can have profound effects on the signaling behavior of the entire cell. While
such correlations are often explicitly imposed by molecular structures such as
rafts, clusters, or scaffolds, they also arise intrinsically, due strictly to
the small numbers of molecules involved, the finite speed of diffusion, and the
effects of macromolecular crowding. In this chapter we review examples of both
explicitly imposed and intrinsic correlations, focusing on the mechanisms by
which microscopic heterogeneity is amplified to macroscopic effect.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures. To appear in Advances in Chemical Physic
56+ Gb/s serial transmission using duo-binary signaling
In this paper we present duobinary signaling as an alternative for signaling schemes like PAM4 and Ensemble NRZ that are currently being considered as ways to achieve data rates of 56 Gb/s over copper.
At the system level, the design includes a custom transceiver ASIC. The transmitter is capable of equalizing 56 Gb/s non-return to zero (NRZ) signals into a duobinary response at the output of the channel. The receiver includes dedicated hardware to decode the duobinary signal. This transceiver is used to demonstrate error-free transmission for different PCB channel lengths including a state-of-the-art Megtron 6 backplane demonstrator
Matrix-Monotonic Optimization for MIMO Systems
For MIMO systems, due to the deployment of multiple antennas at both the
transmitter and the receiver, the design variables e.g., precoders, equalizers,
training sequences, etc. are usually matrices. It is well known that matrix
operations are usually more complicated compared to their vector counterparts.
In order to overcome the high complexity resulting from matrix variables, in
this paper we investigate a class of elegant multi-objective optimization
problems, namely matrix-monotonic optimization problems (MMOPs). In our work,
various representative MIMO optimization problems are unified into a framework
of matrix-monotonic optimization, which includes linear transceiver design,
nonlinear transceiver design, training sequence design, radar waveform
optimization, the corresponding robust design and so on as its special cases.
Then exploiting the framework of matrix-monotonic optimization the optimal
structures of the considered matrix variables can be derived first. Based on
the optimal structure, the matrix-variate optimization problems can be greatly
simplified into the ones with only vector variables. In particular, the
dimension of the new vector variable is equal to the minimum number of columns
and rows of the original matrix variable. Finally, we also extend our work to
some more general cases with multiple matrix variables.Comment: 37 Pages, 5 figures, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, Final
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