Polarity Information Coded Flip-OFDM for Intensity Modulated Systems

A polarity-information-coded flip orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (PIC-flip-OFDM) is proposed for intensity modulation/direct detection (IM/DD) optical communications in this letter. In the proposed scheme, the modulated signals in the frequency domain are not constrained to have Hermitian symmetry. The real and imaginary parts of the timedomain complex signals are separated, and the polarities of the real and imaginary parts are jointly encoded and modulated. The transmit strategy and the receive algorithm of the proposed scheme are analyzed in detail. The major advantage of the proposed scheme is that its spectral and optical power efficiencies are higher than existing schemes, which is validated in simulation

Receiver Algorithms for Single-Carrier OSM Based High-Rate Indoor Visible Light Communications

In intensity-modulation and direct-detection (IM/DD) multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) visible light communication (VLC) systems, spatial subchannels are usually correlated, and spatial modulation is a good choice to achieve the advantages of MIMO technology. Peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) is a key issue in VLCs due to the limited linear dynamic range of light emitting diodes (LEDs). Single-carrier communication systems have a lower PAPR than orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communication systems. However, it is challenging to design a single-carrier spatial modulation for high-rate transmissions because of the time domain intersymbol interference. This paper develops an optical spatial modulation (OSM) scheme based on bipolar pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) and spatial elements for high-rate indoor VLC systems. Multiple data streams can be transmitted simultaneously in the proposed scheme. Based on the transmit strategy, we develop a low-complexity receiver algorithm that achieves better bit-error rate performance than reference schemes, and the proposed OSM scheme has a much lower PAPR than OFDM based OSM schemes. When the spatial subchannels are highly correlated, a spatial area division strategy is applied, and the receiver algorithm is investigated. The symbol-error rate expression of the proposed OSM scheme is derived, and the computational complexity is analyzed

Low-crystallinity to highly amorphous copolyesters with high glass transition temperatures based on rigid carbohydrate-derived building blocks

The current trend of developing novel biobased polymeric materials is focused more on utilizing the unique structural/physical properties of renewable building blocks towards niche market applications. In this work, with the aim of developing low-crystallinity to amorphous polyesters with enhanced thermal properties, a series of copolyesters based on rigid and structurally asymmetric carbohydrate-derived building blocks, namely furan-2,5-dicarboxylic acid and isosorbide, and 1,4-butanediol were successfully synthesized using melt polycondensation. The copolyesters were obtained with varied chemical compositions and rather high molecular weights (Mn = 24 000–31 000 g mol−1) and intrinsic viscosities ([η] = 0.56–0.72 dL g−1). Incorporation of both building blocks significantly enhances the glass transition temperatures (Tg = 38–107 °C) of polyesters, and also efficiently inhibits the crystallization of the copolyesters. A low content of isosorbide (ca 10 mol%) leads to complete transition of the homopolyester to nearly fully amorphous materials. Detailed characterizations of the chemical structures and thermal properties of the synthesized copolyesters were conducted using various analytical techniques. In addition, hydrolytic and enzymatic degradations of the copolymers in the presence of porcine pancreatic lipase and cutinase were also investigated

A dynamic homogenization model for long-wavelength wave propagation in corrugated sandwich plates

In the present work, a new dynamic homogenization model is developed to investigate the long-wavelength wave propagation in a corrugated sandwich plate. With the harmonic motion assumption and using a shifting operator, the governing equations of the plate are firstly represented in a state-space form. Then, a dynamic homogenization model is developed via the two-scale homogenization method. Based on this model and considering the propagation of sinusoidal waves, the dispersion relations and corresponding wave modes can be easily obtained. In order to validate the developed homogenization model, the obtained dispersion relations are compared with those predicted by the spectral element method. It is found that the present method gives accurate results in low frequency range. Furthermore, the effects of some geometric and material parameters on the dispersion relations for the corrugated sandwich plate are also discussed. The developed homogenization model is expected to be helpful in the prediction and control of dynamic responses of corrugated or even lattice sandwich structures

Channel Estimation for Multicell Multiuser Massive MIMO Uplink Over Rician Fading Channels

Pilot contamination (PC) is a major problem in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. This paper proposes a novel channel estimation scheme for such a system in Rician fading channels. First, the possible angle of arrivals (AOAs) of users served by a base station (BS) are derived by exploiting the channel statistical information, assuming a traditional pilot structure, where the pilots for the same-cell users are orthogonal but are identical for the same-indexed users from different cells. Although with this pilot structure the channel state information (CSI) derived contains CSI from other-cell users caused by PC, the line-of-sight (LOS) component of the desired user is PC-free when the number of antennas equipped at the BS is large. Then, based on the AOAs and the contaminated CSI, the LOS component of each user served by a BS is estimated, and data are detected by using the derived LOS components. Finally, the decoded data are used to update the CSI estimate via an iterative process. The achievable spectral efficiency of the proposed scheme is analyzed in detail, and simulation results are presented to compare the performance of the proposed scheme with that of three existing schemes

Thermal effect and active control on bistable behaviour of anti-symmetric composite shells with temperature-dependent properties

Anti-symmetric cylindrical shells with two stable configurations have been proved to offer novel morphing structures in advanced engineering fields. The bistable behaviour of anti-symmetric composite shells under thermomechanical loading is analysed herein theoretically combined with a finite element modelling. The properties of the composite material in current study are considered to be functions of temperature. The shell is subjected to two different thermal load, i.e. the uniform temperature field and through-thickness thermal gradient. The influence of this two temperature field on the shell’s stable shapes was predicted analytically, which thereafter is determined by finite element results. This provides a feasible approach of controlling the deformation of the bistable shell through adjusting the applied temperature field. For this purpose, a superposition of uniform temperature field and through-thickness thermal gradient is imposed and its influence on the bistable shapes of bistable shells is therefore investigated, which is of great importance to the design and application of morphing structures manufactured from bistable composite shells

Fuzzy-NMS: Improving 3D Object Detection with Fuzzy Classification in NMS

Non-maximum suppression (NMS) is an essential post-processing module used in many 3D object detection frameworks to remove overlapping candidate bounding boxes. However, an overreliance on classification scores and difficulties in determining appropriate thresholds can affect the resulting accuracy directly. To address these issues, we introduce fuzzy learning into NMS and propose a novel generalized Fuzzy-NMS module to achieve finer candidate bounding box filtering. The proposed Fuzzy-NMS module combines the volume and clustering density of candidate bounding boxes, refining them with a fuzzy classification method and optimizing the appropriate suppression thresholds to reduce uncertainty in the NMS process. Adequate validation experiments are conducted using the mainstream KITTI and large-scale Waymo 3D object detection benchmarks. The results of these tests demonstrate the proposed Fuzzy-NMS module can improve the accuracy of numerous recently NMS-based detectors significantly, including PointPillars, PV-RCNN, and IA-SSD, etc. This effect is particularly evident for small objects such as pedestrians and bicycles. As a plug-and-play module, Fuzzy-NMS does not need to be retrained and produces no obvious increases in inference time