Development of Ultra-Wideband (UWB)Horn Antenna Using Approximation Method

This paper presents a design of an ultra wide-band (UWB) horn antenna for microwave imaging radar system. The key purpose of the study is to design a horn antenna which is used in medical imaging system. The proposed antenna operates within 3.1-10.6 GHz as it is the band allocated for medical industry usage. The antenna known as a directional antenna which is supported by rectangular waveguide. The horn antenna is purposely chosen to design in order to increase the directivity of the antenna within 15-20 dB and achieve higher gain and wider bandwidth as possible. This horn antenna is capable to produce return loss as minimum as possible. The antenna is designed and simulated using CST Microwave Studio. The simulation results show that the pyramidal horn antenna structure exhibits low VSWR as well as good radiation pattern over 3.1-10.6 GHz frequency ban

The Role of Library and Media Teachers in Malaysian School Resource Centre

Library and media teachers should be clear with the role of school resource centre has a direct relationship with the implementation of the curriculum and co-curricular programmes at the school level. Thus, many tasks that needs to be focused to ensure that school resource centre facilities can be leveraged by students and teachers.This study explores the role of library and media teachers in Malaysia. The findings are intended to help library and media teachers to improve their image. Consequently, corrective necessary measures should emerge, capable of improving the overall educational environment in Malaysia schools system. An anonymous survey was sent to the 50 library and media teachers in the Terengganu, Malaysia. 100% respondents completed the questionnaire. The study revealed that all schools in Malaysia not employ full-time and adequately trained professional school librarians and often teachers without proper professional library or information science training manage their school resource centre. As these teachers are also expected to take full teaching load and other tasks assigned by their school management, they have limited of time to the school resource centre.Evidence from the results of studies shows the impact of school library programmes on academic performance provide support on the need for professionally trained and credentialed school library media specialists. Keywords: Library and Media Teacher, School Resource Centre, Teacher Librarian, School Librarie

Students’ Perception on the Role of Library and Media Teachers

The role of library and media teachers in school resource centre management is unquestionably significant. Hence, one of the objectives of this study is to investigate students’ perceptions on the role of library and media teachers. This study explores the students’ perception on the role of library and media teachers in Malaysia. The findings are intended to help library and media teachers to improve their image. Consequently, corrective necessary measures should emerge, capable of improving the overall educational environment in Malaysia schools system. An anonymous survey was sent to the 30 primary and secondary students in the Terengganu, Malaysia. 27 respondents, or 90%, completed the questionnaire. Overall, students in Malaysian primary and secondary schools have positive perception on the role of library and media teachers. The results of this study proved that 88.9% agreed that their library and media teachers have knowledgeable enough to direct them to find information and 77.8% the respondents agreed that their library and media teachers were improved their abilities to use information effectively. Keywords: Students’ perception, Library and media teachers, School resource centre, teacher librarians, user stud

Independent component analysis for fetal heart rate detection using photosplethysmography

Photoplethysmography (PPG) is an optoelectronic technique for measuring and recording changes in the volume of body parts. These changes are associated with each heart beat and acquired by pulse oximetry. Fetal heart rate (FHR) monitoring using PPG is a challenging task since the acquired signals present the pattern of both fetal and maternal hearts. The effect of maternal component, noise and artifacts on fetal component makes the separation of FHR very difficult. In this paper, we study the applicability of independent component analysis (lCA) to FHR detection using PPG. The study was conducted using emulated signals to mimic the pulsation nature of both maternal and fetal hearts. The outcome of this experiment shows encouraging results in terms of the extraction ability oflCA, which can perform well even when fetal-to-maternal signal-to-noise ratio (SIY~) drops to -276 dB

Experimental Analysis on Double Layer Kapton Material using Peltier Thermoelectric Device

Kapton is one of the flexible materials used in the development of microwave components for the telecommunications system. The electrical properties of Kapton are dependent on the material's temperature. In this study, this material will be heated, and the electrical properties of dielectric permittivity and loss tangent will be analyzed. This material heating process is done by using Peltier thermoelectric which is installed with Aluminium alloy. The 0 V up to 7 V DC voltage was supplied to the Peltier during the heating process. Then, the electrical properties of Kapton were measured by using a dielectric probe and vector network analyzer (VNA) at frequencies of 1 GHz to 9 GHz. The results obtained show the Kapton temperature was increased from 27oC to 41oC. Meanwhile, the dielectric permittivity also varied from 1.72 to 1.64 at the frequency of 5 GHz when 4 V was used. The maximum loss tangent value of 0.5 was observed when the maximum DC voltage of 7 V was applied. The knowledge of this experimental work can be used to design reconfigurable microwave components for smart system application

A Prospective Study on Building Quality: Relationship between Workmanship Quality and Common Building Defects of Low-cost Construction Projects

This study focuses on the quality of workmanship in the construction of lowcost housing in Kedah and Penang State, Malaysia and its relation to defects occurring in the building. The objectives of this study are to investigate common building defects that mostly occur at low-cost housing due to poor workmanship, the factors that contribute to poor workmanship and to established possible measures to minimize these problems. From the combination of literary reviews and questionnaire surveys, this research explores all the stated objectives. For this particular study, quantitative research was conducted through questionnaire surveys involving respondents who are involved in and are experienced in working on construction projects. After analysing the data, this study found that most common defects occurring on low-cost housing are cracks on walls, settlement and peeling paint. Additionally, construction of low-cost housing commonly suffers from low quality workmanship due to poor project management and a lack of experience and competency among labourers. These significant impediments can be remedied by providing training and education to the labourers as well as implementing strict supervision during construction work

Microstructural refinement and corrosion resistance improvement of heat-treated A356 alloy processed by equal channel angular pressing

The microstructure refinement, hardness and corrosion resistance of heat-treated A356 aluminium alloy processed by equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP) were investigated. ECAP was carried out at room temperature using a mold, with a channel angle of 120° via route A. Results of the investigation confirm that the flaky coarse silicon particles were effectively fragmented from 4.22 to 0.761 μm and the grain size reduced from 171 to 40 μm after four passes of heat-treated as-cast using ECAP process. ECAP processing increases the hardness of heat-treated as-cast alloy from 61 Hv to 125 HV after four passes. Heat-treated A356 alloy shows enhanced corrosion resistance from 0.0424 to 0.00149 mmy-1, after four passes. In this research, ECAP processing has been shown to improve the hardness and corrosion resistance of as-cast A356 alloy

A new fair marker algorithm for DiffServ networks

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has proposed many new technologies to cover the new real time applications which have become very important in today's Internet demands. One such technology is Differentiated Services (DiffServ). DiffServ routers provide Per Hop Behaviors (PHBs) to aggregate traffic for different level of services. There is an unfairness problem that occur in a DiffServ networks. In this paper an improved version of the time sliding window three color marker is proposed and analyzed. The proposed algorithm is based on the adaptability concept of changing the constant value in the previous version of the algorithm (ItswTCM), in other words, changing the limit for the constant value without affecting the simplicity of the algorithm. The paper design and implement the algorithm with extensive simulations using NS-2 simulator to compare the proposed algorithm with previous algorithms. Results show that our new marker performs better than previous algorithms such as srTCM, trTCM, tswWTCM and ItswTCM in terms of fairness and number of yellow packets injected to the network in proportion to the committed rate

Kapton Based Antenna Simulation Analysis for Smart System

This paper describes the analysis of Kapton material in antenna design for telecommunication systems. Kapton is usually used in the design of radio and microwave frequency antenna. It is a flexible material and with different dielectric value. The antenna is made of a Kapton substrate, a patch and copper (FR4). The dielectric characteristics of Kapton substrate changes according to temperature. The simulation result shows that the bandwidth of the antenna increased up to 10 MHz with a second layer of Kapton substrate. While the antenna gain decreased 1.19 dB when the dielectric value is increased. Computer Simulation Technology (CST) software was used to analyse the antenna’s  performance

QSMSOR Iterative Method for the Solution of 2D Homogeneous Helmholtz Equations

In this paper, we consider the numerical solutions of homogeneous Helmholtz equations of the second order. The Quarter-Sweep Modified Successive Over-Relaxation (QSMSOR) iterative method is applied to solve linear systems generated form discretization of the second order homogeneous Helmholtz equations using quarter sweep finite difference (FD) scheme. The formulation and implementation of the method are also discussed. In addition, numerical results by solving several test problems are included and compared with the conventional iterative methods