7,462 research outputs found
From carbon nanotubes and silicate layers to graphene platelets for polymer nanocomposites
In spite of extensive studies conducted on carbon nanotubes and silicate layers for their polymer-based nanocomposites, the rise of graphene now provides a more promising candidate due to its exceptionally high mechanical performance and electrical and thermal conductivities. The present study developed a facile approach to fabricate epoxy–graphene nanocomposites by thermally expanding a commercial product followed by ultrasonication and solution-compounding with epoxy, and investigated their morphologies, mechanical properties, electrical conductivity and thermal mechanical behaviour. Graphene platelets (GnPs) of 3.5
Energy Efficiency in Two-Tiered Wireless Sensor Networks
We study a two-tiered wireless sensor network (WSN) consisting of access
points (APs) and base stations (BSs). The sensing data, which is
distributed on the sensing field according to a density function , is first
transmitted to the APs and then forwarded to the BSs. Our goal is to find an
optimal deployment of APs and BSs to minimize the average weighted total, or
Lagrangian, of sensor and AP powers. For , we show that the optimal
deployment of APs is simply a linear transformation of the optimal -level
quantizer for density , and the sole BS should be located at the geometric
centroid of the sensing field. Also, for a one-dimensional network and uniform
, we determine the optimal deployment of APs and BSs for any and .
Moreover, to numerically optimize node deployment for general scenarios, we
propose one- and two-tiered Lloyd algorithms and analyze their convergence
properties. Simulation results show that, when compared to random deployment,
our algorithms can save up to 79\% of the power on average.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure
Markov Decision Processes with Applications in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of autonomous and resource-limited
devices. The devices cooperate to monitor one or more physical phenomena within
an area of interest. WSNs operate as stochastic systems because of randomness
in the monitored environments. For long service time and low maintenance cost,
WSNs require adaptive and robust methods to address data exchange, topology
formulation, resource and power optimization, sensing coverage and object
detection, and security challenges. In these problems, sensor nodes are to make
optimized decisions from a set of accessible strategies to achieve design
goals. This survey reviews numerous applications of the Markov decision process
(MDP) framework, a powerful decision-making tool to develop adaptive algorithms
and protocols for WSNs. Furthermore, various solution methods are discussed and
compared to serve as a guide for using MDPs in WSNs
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