Economic scheduling in Grid computing using Tender models

Economic scheduling needs to be considered for Grid computing environment, because it gives an incentive for resource providers to supply their resources. Moreover, it enforces efficient use of resources, because the users have to pay for their use. Tendering is a suitable model for Grid scheduling because users start the negotiations for finding suitable resources for executing their jobs. Furthermore, the users specify their job requirements with their requests and therefore the resources reply with bids that are based on the cost of taking on the job and the availability of their processors. In this thesis, a framework for economic Grid scheduling using tendering is proposed. The framework entities such as users, brokers and resources employ tender/contract-net model to negotiate the prices and deadlines. The brokers' role is acting on behalf of users. During the negotiations, the entities aim to maximise their performance which is measured by a number of metrics. In order to evaluate the entities' performance under different scenarios, a Java- based simulator, called MICOSim, supporting event-driven simulation of economic Grid scheduling is presented. MICOSim can perform a simulation of more than one hundred entities faster than real time. It is concluded from the evaluation that users who are interested in increasing the job success rate and paying less for executing their jobs have to consider received prices to select the most appropriate bids, while users who are interested in improving the job average satisfaction rate have to consider either received completion time or both price and completion time to select the most suitable bids when the submission of jobs is static. The best broker strategy is the one that doesn't take into account meeting the job deadlines in the bids it sends to job owners. Finally, the resource strategy that considers the price to determine if to reply to a request or not is superior to other resource strategies. The only exception is employing this strategy with price that is too low. However, there is a tiny difference between the performances of different user strategies in dynamic submission. It is also concluded from the evaluation that broker strategies have the best performance when the revenue they target from the users is reasonable. Thus, the broker's aim has to be receiving reasonable revenue (neither too low nor too high) from acting on behalf of users. It is observed from the results that the strategy performance is influenced by the behaviour of other entities such as the submission time of user jobs. Finally, it is observed that the characteristics of entities have an effect on the performance of strategies. For example, the two user strategies that consider the received completion time and both price and completion time to determine if to accept a broker bid have similar performance, because of the existence of resources with various prices from cheap to expensive and existence of resources which don't care about the price paid for the execution. So, the price threshold doesn't have a large effect on the performance.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

A new digital signature scheme with message recovery using hybrid problems

We present a new digital signature scheme with message recovery and its authenticated encryption based on elliptic curve discrete logarithm and quadratic residue. The main idea is to provide a higher level of security than all other techniques that use signatures with single hard problem including factoring, discrete logarithm, residuosity, or elliptic curves. The proposed digital signature schemes do not involve any modular exponentiation operations that leave no gap for attackers. The security analysis demonstrates the improved performance of the proposed schemes in comparison with existing techniques in terms of the ability to resist the most common attack

Optimal conditions for olive mill wastewater treatment using ultrasound and advanced oxidation processes

© 2019 Elsevier B.V. The treatment of olive mill wastewater (OMW) in Jordan was investigated in this work using ultrasound oxidation (sonolysis) combined with other advanced oxidation processes such as ultraviolet radiation, hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and titanium oxide (TiO2) catalyst. The efficiency of the combined oxidation process was evaluated based on the changes in the chemical oxygen demand (COD). The results showed that 59% COD removal was achieved within 90 min in the ultrasound /UV/TiO2 system. A more significant synergistic effect was observed on the COD removal efficiency when a combination of US/UV/TiO2 (sonophotocatalytic) processes was used at low ultrasound frequency. The results were then compared with the COD values obtained when each of these processes was used individually. The effects of different operating conditions such as, ultrasound power, initial COD concentration, the concentration of TiO2, frequency of ultrasound, and temperature on the OMW oxidation efficiency were studied and evaluated. The effect of adding a radical scavenger (sodium carbonate) on the OMW oxidation efficiency was investigated. The results showed that the sonophotocatalytic oxidation of OMW was affected by the initial COD, acoustic power, temperature and TiO2 concentration. The sonophotocatalytic oxidation of OMW increased with increasing the ultrasound power, temperature and H2O2 concentration. Sonolysis at frequency of 40 kHz combined with photocatalysis was not observed to have a significant effect on the OMW oxidation compared to sonication at frequency of 20 kHz. It was also found that the OMW oxidation was suppressed by the presence of the radical scavenger. The COD removal efficiency increased slightly with the increase of TiO2 concentration up to certain point due to the formation of oxidizing species. At ultrasound frequency of 20 kHz, considerable COD reduction of OMW was reported, indicating the effectiveness of the combined US/UV/TiO2 process for the OMW treatment

Efficient removal of phenol compounds from water environment using Ziziphus leaves adsorbent

© 2020 Elsevier B.V. Industrial processes generate toxic organic molecules that pollute environment water. Phenol and its derivative are classified among the major pollutant compounds found in water. They are naturally found in some industrial wastewater effluents. The removal of phenol compounds is therefore essential because they are responsible for severe organ damage if they exist above certain limits. In this study, ground Ziziphus leaves were utilized as adsorbents for phenolic compounds from synthetic wastewater samples. Several experiments were performed to study the effect of several conditions on the capacity of the Ziziphus leaves adsorbent, namely: the initial phenol concentration, the adsorbent concentration, temperature, pH value, and the presence of foreign salts (NaCl and KCl). The experimental results indicated that the adsorption process reached equilibrium in about 4 h. A drop in the amount of phenol removal, especially at higher initial concentration, was noticed upon increasing the temperature from 25 to 45 °C. This reflects the exothermic nature of the adsorption process. This was also confirmed by the calculated negative enthalpy of adsorption (−64.8 kJ/mol). A pH of 6 was found to be the optimum value at which the highest phenol removal occurred with around 15 mg/g at 25 °C for an initial concentration of 200 ppm. The presence of foreign salts has negatively affected the phenol adsorption process. The fitting of the experimental data, using different adsorption isotherms, indicated that the Harkins-Jura isotherm model was the best fit, evident by the high square of the correlation coefficient (R2) values greater than 0.96. The kinetic study revealed that the adsorption was represented by a pseudo-second-order reaction. The results of this study offer a basis to use Ziziphus leaves as promising adsorbents for efficient phenol removal from wastewater

Optimal spectrum utilisation in cognitive network using combined spectrum sharing approach: overlay, underlay and trading

Cognitive radio technology enables unlicensed users (secondary users, SUs) to access the unused spectrum. In the literature, there are three spectrum sharing paradigms that enable SUs to access the licensed spectrum. These access techniques include underlay, overlay and spectrum trading, and have their own drawbacks. To combat these drawbacks, we propose a new approach for each of them and merge them into one combined system. Our overlay scheme provides quick access to the unused spectrum. We propose a new cooperative sensing protocol to reduce the likelihood of interfering with PUs. In order to enable SUs for transmitting simultaneously with PUs, we suggest using our underlay scheme. Our trading scheme allows PUs to trade the unused spectrum for the SUs that require better quality of service. The new combined scheme increases the size of spectrum in the cognitive network. Simulation results show the ability of the new scheme to serve extra traffic

Impact of a Sand Filtration Pretreatment Step on High-Loaded Greywater Treatment by an Electrocoagulation Technique

Greywater (GW) treatment by the electrocoagulation (EC) technique alone might not meet the required standards in terms of pollutant removal, specifically when GW contains high loads of pollutants. In this preliminary study, a sand filtration (SF) unit was integrated with the EC technique as a pretreatment step to enhance the EC process for treating high-loaded GW. Three different voltage gradients were investigated (5 V/cm, 10 V/cm, and 15 V/cm) in the EC unit. The results demonstrated that the pretreatment SF step can contribute significantly to reducing pollutant concentrations in the greywater to be treated by EC. In terms of physical impurities, the results showed that the SF pretreatment step reduced the turbidity and the color of the treated GW by 28.4%, and 9.4%, respectively. The COD concentration was reduced by 25.5% by the SF step, which allowed a reduction of EC steady state time in the EC unit from 45 min to 30 min at an applied voltage of 15 V/cm. In addition, a high COD removal rate of 87.8% from high-load greywater was achieved with an energy consumption of only 4.11 kWh/m3 in comparison with 6.21 kWh/m3 without the SF step, which is equivalent to a 34% saving in energy consumption.This research was funded by the Scientific Research and Innovation Support Fund in Jordan; Grant Reference WE/1/19/2015

Design, microfabrication, and characterization of a moulded PDMS/SU-8 inkjet dispenser for a lab-on-a-printer platform technology

This thesis presents a novel concept, lab-on-a-printer, whereby microfluidic modules are directly integrated into an inkjet dispenser. To enable this concept, a novel inkjet dispenser that can be integrated with microfluidic modules is designed, fabricated, and characterized. To limit the risk of cross contamination which is critical to many targeted applications, the inkjet dispenser is designed to have a modular structure that enables reusing its actuation unit and the disposal of its microfluidic chip. Furthermore, a low-cost fabrication process for the disposable microfluidic chip, mainly based on simple Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) moulding and SU-8 epoxy-based negative photoresist casting processes, is developed to reduce its cost. The use of PDMS in the fabrication of the microfluidic chip creates a path for its integration with pre-existing PDMS-based microfluidic modules. The fabricated inkjet dispensers are characterized to understand their limitations and identify their potential applications. For instance, droplet-to-droplet variations and maximum printable ink viscosity are used as characterization metrics. Diameters of more than 50,000 droplets per tested device are found to have a coefficient of variation (CV) in a range of 0.8% - 2.5% for each of 10 tested devices. A water and glycerol mixture with a viscosity of ~19 mP·s is identified as the mixture with maximum printable viscosity. Numerical simulations are employed to identify the key design parameters for the inkjet dispenser. These simulation results, combined with manufacturability constraints, are used to derive techniques for improving performance, hence broadening the potential applications of the technology. This resulted in inkjet dispensers with improved performance, where the maximum printable viscosity is doubled, meeting and surpassing commercial devices. Finally, a novel approach to integrate microfluidics with the inkjet dispenser is presented. This approach is successfully implemented to integrate the inkjet dispenser with a microfluidic mixer to demonstrate the capability of the integrated lab-on-a-printer platform concept, specifically the capability of printing patterns with a configurable ink composition. The presented lab-on-a-printer concept has potential applications in multiple scientific fields including biology, chemistry, and printable electronics.Applied Science, Faculty ofElectrical and Computer Engineering, Department ofGraduat

A study of piezoresistive sensing based on carbon-nanotube forests

Carbon nanotubes have attracted considerable attention since their discovery due to their exceptional electrical, mechanical, and optical properties. Piezoresistance of carbon nanotubes is promising, and can be utilized to enable various types of devices. This work investigates devices functionalized with vertically aligned multi-walled carbon-nanotube forests, with a focus on pressure and strain sensors. A fabrication process based on Si-micromachining techniques that overcomes the challenges associated with using carbon-nanotube forests was developed for the devices construction. A pressure sensor is fabricated to have a multi-walled carbon-nanotube forest supported by a deflectable 8-µm-thick Parylene-C membrane suspended by a silicon frame. The responses of the fabricated sensors are experimentally characterized. The sensitivities to positive and negative gauge pressures are found to be comparable in magnitude with the average values of -986 ppm/KPa and +816 ppm/KPa, respectively. The measurement also reveals that the temperature coefficient of the resistance for a forest suspended with a Parylene membrane is -515 ppm/ºC, ~3x smaller than that for a forest fixed onto a silicon substrate. A strain gauge is also fabricated to have a multi-walled carbon-nanotube forest supported by an 8-µm-thick Parylene-C membrane that is supported by two silicon substrates at both ends. The response of the fabricated strain gauge is experimentally characterized. The experiments show that the fabricated device has two sensitivity regions: a sensitive region with a gauge factor of 4.52, about 3.76x more than that for a previously reported carbon-nanotube forest/PDMS based strain gauge, and a less sensitive region with a gauge factor of 0.87. Moreover, the response to gradual strain decreases is very similar to that for gradual strain increases, and the measured gauge factors are 4.4 and 0.77 for both sensitivity regions. The results are analyzed and the source of piezoresistance is explained. Finite element analysis is performed for the strain gauge. The results show that the change in lateral separations between the carbons nanotubes, which are transversal to the direction of the applied force, are not equal in the center region, whereas the change in longitudinal separations between the carbon nanotubes, which are parallel to the applied force, are more equal.Applied Science, Faculty ofElectrical and Computer Engineering, Department ofGraduat