Mechanism of saline deposition and surface flashover on high-voltage insulators near shoreline:mathematical models and experimental validations

This paper deals with sea salt transportation and deposition mechanisms and discusses the serious issue of degradation of outdoor insulators resulting from various environmental stresses and severe saline contaminant accumulation near the shoreline. The deterioration rate of outdoor insulators near the shoreline depends on the concentration of saline in the atmosphere, the influence of wind speed on the production of saline water droplets, moisture diffusion and saline penetration on the insulator surface. This paper consists of three parts: first a model of saline transportation and deposition, as well as saline penetration and moisture diffusion on outdoor insulators, is presented; second, dry-band initiation and formation modelling and characterization under various types of contamination distribution are proposed; finally, modelling of dry-band arcing validated by experimental investigation was carried out. The tests were performed on a rectangular surface of silicone rubber specimens (12 cm × 4 cm × 8 cm). The visualization of the dry-band formation and arcing was performed by an infrared camera. The experimental results show that the surface strength and arc length mainly depend upon the leakage distance and contamination distribution. Therefore, the model can be used to investigate insulator flashover near coastal areas and for mitigating saline flashover incidents.</p

Frequency planning for clustered jointly processed cellular multiple access channel

Owing to limited resources, it is hard to guarantee minimum service levels to all users in conventional cellular systems. Although global cooperation of access points (APs) is considered promising, practical means of enhancing efficiency of cellular systems is by considering distributed or clustered jointly processed APs. The authors present a novel `quality of service (QoS) balancing scheme' to maximise sum rate as well as achieve cell-based fairness for clustered jointly processed cellular multiple access channel (referred to as CC-CMAC). Closed-form cell level QoS balancing function is derived. Maximisation of this function is proved as an NP hard problem. Hence, using power-frequency granularity, a modified genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed. For inter site distance (ISD) &lt;; 500 m, results show that with no fairness considered, the upper bound of the capacity region is achievable. Applying hard fairness restraints on users transmitting in moderately dense AP system, 20% reduction in sum rate contribution increases fairness by upto 10%. The flexible QoS can be applied on a GA-based centralised dynamic frequency planner architecture

An Empirical Investigation into the Matching Problems among Game Theoretically Coordinating Parties in a Virtual Organization

Virtual organization emerged as a highly flexible structure in response to the rapidly changing environment of 20th century. This organization consists of independently working parties that combine their best possible resources to exploit the emerging market opportunities. There are no formal control and coordination mechanisms employed by the classical hierarchical structures. Parties, therefore, manage their dependencies on each other through mutual understanding and trust. Mathematician John Nash, having significant contributions in Game Theory suggests that in every non-cooperative game there is at least one equilibrium point. At this point, according to him, every strategy of the player represents a response to the others’ strategies. Such equilibria could exist in a virtual organization, at which parties coordinate which each other to optimize their performance. Coordination/Matching problems are likely to arise among game theoretically coordinating parties in a virtual organization, mainly due to lack of binding agreements. By identifying and resolving these matching problems, virtual organizations could achieve efficiency and better coordination among parties.Virtual organization, Game theory, Matching problems, Coordination

Energy and bursty packet loss tradeoff over fading channels: a system-level model

Energy efficiency and quality of service (QoS) guarantees are the key design goals for the 5G wireless communication systems. In this context, we discuss a multiuser scheduling scheme over fading channels for loss tolerant applications. The loss tolerance of the application is characterized in terms of different parameters that contribute to quality of experience (QoE) for the application. The mobile users are scheduled opportunistically such that a minimum QoS is guaranteed. We propose an opportunistic scheduling scheme and address the cross-layer design framework when channel state information (CSI) is not perfectly available at the transmitter and the receiver. We characterize the system energy as a function of different QoS and channel state estimation error parameters. The optimization problem is formulated using Markov chain framework and solved using stochastic optimization techniques. The results demonstrate that the parameters characterizing the packet loss are tightly coupled and relaxation of one parameter does not benefit the system much if the other constraints are tight. We evaluate the energy-performance tradeoff numerically and show the effect of channel uncertainty on the packet scheduler design

Design and implementation of hybrid vehicle using control of DC electric motor

The electric motors and its control technology are key components of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). Control of the electric motor is a fundamental issue for traction application in electric vehicles and HEVs. This paper presents the design, development and implementation of a hybrid vehicle using both an electric motor and petrol engine to increase efficiency and decrease carbon footprint. Initially, a prototype of a HEV is designed and the performance values are calculated, before a control system is developed and implemented to control the DC motor speed using a microcontroller as the vehicle’s electronic control unit along with simple proportional integral derivative (PID) control using speed as a feedback mechanism. The prototype made incorporated voltage, current, speed and torque sensors for feedback resulting in a closed loop control system which successfully matched the speed input of a user-controlled pedal sensor. A user interface was developed to show the driver of the vehicle key variables such as the revolutions per minute (RPM) of the motor, the speed of the vehicle along with the current being drawn, and the voltage applied to the motor with overall power. To output a variable voltage from the Arduino, a digital output was used with pulse width modulation (PWM) capabilities in order to provide a variable DC voltage to the speed controller