Abstract: We consider optimal channel equalization for MIMO
(multi-input/multi-output) time-varying channels in the sense of
MMSE (minimum mean-squared-error), where the observation noise
can be non-stationary. We show that all ZF (zero-forcing) receivers
can be parameterized in an affine form which eliminates completely
the ISI (inter-symbol-interference), and optimal channel equalizers
can be designed through minimization of the MSE (mean-squarederror)
between the detected signals and the transmitted signals,
among all ZF receivers. We demonstrate that the optimal channel
equalizer is a modified Kalman filter, and show that under the AWGN
(additive white Gaussian noise) assumption, the proposed optimal
channel equalizer minimizes the BER (bit error rate) among all
possible ZF receivers. Our results are applicable to optimal channel
equalization for DWMT (discrete wavelet multitone), multirate transmultiplexers,
OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing),
and DS (direct sequence) CDMA (code division multiple access)
wireless data communication systems. A design algorithm for optimal
channel equalization is developed, and several simulation examples
are worked out to illustrate the proposed design algorithm.
Abstract: These This paper looks into frameworks which aim at
furthering the discussion of the role of regenerative design practices
in a city-s historic core and the tool of urban design to achieve urban
revitalization on the island of Cyprus. It also examines the region-s
demographic mix, the effectiveness of its governmental coordination
and the strategies of adaptive reuse and strategic investments in older
areas with existing infrastructure. The two main prongs of
investigation will consider the effect of the existing and proposed
changes in the physical infrastructure and fabric of the city, as well as
the catalytic effect of sustainable urban design practices. Through this
process, the work hopes to integrate the contained potential within
the existing historic core and the contributions and participation of
the migrant and immigrant populations to the local economy. It also
examines ways in which this coupling of factors can bring to the front
the positive effects of this combined effort on an otherwise sluggish
local redevelopment effort. The data for this study is being collected
and organized as part of ongoing urban design and development
student workshop efforts in urban planning and design education.
The work is presented in graphic form and includes data collected
from interviews with study area organizations and the community at
large. Planning work is also based on best practices initiated by the
staff of the Nicosia Master Plan task force, which coordinates holistic
planning efforts for the historic center of the city of Nicosia.
Abstract: An unstructured finite volume numerical model is
presented here for simulating shallow-water flows with wetting and
drying fronts. The model is based on the Green-s theorem in
combination with Chorin-s projection method. A 2nd-order upwind
scheme coupled with a Least Square technique is used to handle
convection terms. An Wetting and drying treatment is used in the
present model to ensures the total mass conservation. To test it-s
capacity and reliability, the present model is used to solve the
Parabolic Bowl problem. We compare our numerical solutions with
the corresponding analytical and existing standard numerical results.
Excellent agreements are found in all the cases.
Abstract: Fixed-point simulation results are used for the
performance measure of inverting matrices by Cholesky
decomposition. The fixed-point Cholesky decomposition algorithm
is implemented using a fixed-point reconfigurable processing
element. The reconfigurable processing element provides all
mathematical operations required by Cholesky decomposition. The
fixed-point word length analysis is based on simulations using
different condition numbers and different matrix sizes. Simulation
results show that 16 bits word length gives sufficient performance
for small matrices with low condition number. Larger matrices and
higher condition numbers require more dynamic range for a fixedpoint
implementation.
Abstract: The last Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, stating that the greatest risk in climate
change affects sustainability is now widely known and accepted.
However, it has not provoked substantial reaction and attention in
Hungary, while international and national efforts have also not
achieved expected results so far. Still, there are numerous examples
on different levels (national, regional, local, household) making
considerable progress in limiting their own emissions and making
steps toward mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. The
local level is exceptionally important in sustainability adaptation, as
local communities are often able to adapt more flexibly to changes in
the natural environment.The aim of this paper is to attempt a review
of the national climate policy and the local climate change strategies
in Hungary considering sustainable development.
Abstract: The response surface methodology (RSM) is a
collection of mathematical and statistical techniques useful in the
modeling and analysis of problems in which the dependent variable
receives the influence of several independent variables, in order to
determine which are the conditions under which should operate these
variables to optimize a production process. The RSM estimated a
regression model of first order, and sets the search direction using the
method of maximum / minimum slope up / down MMS U/D.
However, this method selects the step size intuitively, which can
affect the efficiency of the RSM. This paper assesses how the step
size affects the efficiency of this methodology. The numerical
examples are carried out through Monte Carlo experiments,
evaluating three response variables: efficiency gain function, the
optimum distance and the number of iterations. The results in the
simulation experiments showed that in response variables efficiency
and gain function at the optimum distance were not affected by the
step size, while the number of iterations is found that the efficiency if
it is affected by the size of the step and function type of test used.
Abstract: Telecommuting has become an increasingly popular
work arrangement. However, little research has examined the impact
of telecommuting on the relationship between employees and the
organization. This study aims to shed light on this aspect by
comparing the loyalty of telecommuters and non telecommuters as it
can be viewed from three angles: organizational loyalty, peer loyalty,
and professional loyalty. Furthermore, this paper will explore the
dynamics among employee loyalty, productivity, and job
satisfaction. Whereas previous studies had looked on employees that
are not fully telecommuting, the current study concentrates on
employees that are exclusively working from home.
Abstract: Chicken fat was employed as a feedstock for
producing of biodiesel by trasesterification reaction with methanol
and alkali catalyst (KOH). In this study chicken fat biodiesel with
1.4% free fatty acid, methanol and various amount of potassium
hydroxide for 2 hour were studied. The progression of reaction and
conversion of triglycerides to methyl ester were checked by IR
spectrum method.
Abstract: Medical imaging uses the advantage of digital
technology in imaging and teleradiology. In teleradiology systems
large amount of data is acquired, stored and transmitted. A major
technology that may help to solve the problems associated with the
massive data storage and data transfer capacity is data compression
and decompression. There are many methods of image compression
available. They are classified as lossless and lossy compression
methods. In lossy compression method the decompressed image
contains some distortion. Fractal image compression (FIC) is a lossy
compression method. In fractal image compression an image is
coded as a set of contractive transformations in a complete metric
space. The set of contractive transformations is guaranteed to
produce an approximation to the original image. In this paper FIC is
achieved by PIFS using quadtree partitioning. PIFS is applied on
different images like , Ultrasound, CT Scan, Angiogram, X-ray,
Mammograms. In each modality approximately twenty images are
considered and the average values of compression ratio and PSNR
values are arrived. In this method of fractal encoding, the
parameter, tolerance factor Tmax, is varied from 1 to 10, keeping the
other standard parameters constant. For all modalities of images the
compression ratio and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) are
computed and studied. The quality of the decompressed image is
arrived by PSNR values. From the results it is observed that the
compression ratio increases with the tolerance factor and
mammogram has the highest compression ratio. The quality of the
image is not degraded upto an optimum value of tolerance factor,
Tmax, equal to 8, because of the properties of fractal compression.
Abstract: During more than a decade, many proposals and standards have been designed to deal with the mobility issues; however, there are still some serious limitations in basing solutions on them. In this paper we discuss the possibility of handling mobility at the application layer. We do this while revisiting the conventional implementation of the Two Phase Commit (2PC) protocol which is a fundamental asset of transactional technology for ensuring the consistent commitment of distributed transactions. The solution is based on an execution framework providing an efficient extension that is aware of the mobility and preserves the 2PC principle.
Abstract: The transient hydrodynamics and thermal behaviors of
fluid flow in open-ended vertical parallel-plate porous microchannel are investigated semi-analytically under the effect of the hyperbolic
heat conduction model. The model that combines both the continuum approach and the possibility of slip at the boundary is adopted in the
study. The Effects of Knudsen number , Darcy number , and thermal relaxation time on the microchannel hydrodynamics and thermal behaviors are investigated using the hyperbolic heat
conduction models. It is found that as increases the slip in the hydrodynamic and thermal boundary condition increases. This slip in
the hydrodynamic boundary condition increases as increases. Also, the slip in the thermal boundary condition increases as
decreases especially the early stage of time.
Abstract: There are many automotive accidents due to blind spots and driver inattentiveness. Blind spot is the area that is invisible to the driver's viewpoint without head rotation. Several methods are available for assisting the drivers. Simplest methods are — rear mirrors and wide-angle lenses. But, these methods have a disadvantage of the requirement for human assistance. So, the accuracy of these devices depends on driver. Another approach called an automated approach that makes use of sensors such as sonar or radar. These sensors are used to gather range information. The range information will be processed and used for detecting the collision. The disadvantage of this system is — low angular resolution and limited sensing volumes. This paper is a panoramic sensor based automotive vehicle monitoring..
Abstract: An experiment was conducted with 80 unsexed
broilers of the Arbor Acress strain to determine the capability of a
carrot and fruit juice wastes mixture (carrot, apple, manggo, avocado,
orange, melon and Dutch egg plant) in the same proportion for
replacing corn in broiler diet. This study involved a completely
randomized design (CRD) with 5 treatments (0, 5, 10, 15, and 20% of
juice wastes mixture in diets) and 4 replicates per treatment. Diets
were isonitrogenous (22% crude protein) and isocaloric (3000 kcal/kg
diet). Measured variables were feed consumption, average daily
gain, feed conversion, as well as percentages of abdominal fat pad,
carcass, digestive organs (liver, pancreas and gizzard), and heart.
Data were analyzed by analysis of variance for CRD. Increasing
juice wastes mixture levels in diets increased feed consumption
(P
Abstract: Authentication of multimedia contents has gained much attention in recent times. In this paper, we propose a secure semi-fragile watermarking, with a choice of two watermarks to be embedded. This technique operates in integer wavelet domain and makes use of semi fragile watermarks for achieving better robustness. A self-recovering algorithm is employed, that hides the image digest into some Wavelet subbands to detect possible malevolent object manipulation undergone by the image (object replacing and/or deletion). The Semi-fragility makes the scheme tolerant for JPEG lossy compression as low as quality of 70%, and locate the tempered area accurately. In addition, the system ensures more security because the embedded watermarks are protected with private keys. The computational complexity is reduced using parameterized integer wavelet transform. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme guarantees the safety of watermark, image recovery and location of the tempered area accurately.
Abstract: Unlike general-purpose processors, digital signal
processors (DSP processors) are strongly application-dependent. To
meet the needs for diverse applications, a wide variety of DSP
processors based on different architectures ranging from the
traditional to VLIW have been introduced to the market over the
years. The functionality, performance, and cost of these processors
vary over a wide range. In order to select a processor that meets the
design criteria for an application, processor performance is usually
the major concern for digital signal processing (DSP) application
developers. Performance data are also essential for the designers of
DSP processors to improve their design. Consequently, several DSP
performance benchmarks have been proposed over the past decade or
so. However, none of these benchmarks seem to have included recent
new DSP applications.
In this paper, we use a new benchmark that we recently developed
to compare the performance of popular DSP processors from Texas
Instruments and StarCore. The new benchmark is based on the
Selectable Mode Vocoder (SMV), a speech-coding program from the
recent third generation (3G) wireless voice applications. All
benchmark kernels are compiled by the compilers of the respective
DSP processors and run on their simulators. Weighted arithmetic
mean of clock cycles and arithmetic mean of code size are used to
compare the performance of five DSP processors.
In addition, we studied how the performance of a processor is
affected by code structure, features of processor architecture and
optimization of compiler. The extensive experimental data gathered,
analyzed, and presented in this paper should be helpful for DSP
processor and compiler designers to meet their specific design goals.
Abstract: This paper presents an exploration into the structure of the corporate governance network and interlocking directorates in the Czech Republic. First a literature overview and a basic terminology of the network theory is presented. Further in the text, statistics and other calculations relevant to corporate governance networks are presented. For this purpose an empirical data set consisting of 2 906 joint stock companies in the Czech Republic was examined. Industries with the highest average number of interlocks per company were healthcare, and energy and utilities. There is no observable link between the financial performance of the company and the number of its interlocks. Also interlocks with financial companies are very rare.
Abstract: In this paper the authors propose and verify an approach to control heat flow in machine tool components. Thermal deformations are a main aspect that affects the accuracy of machining. Due to goals of energy efficiency, thermal basic loads should be reduced. This leads to inhomogeneous and time variant temperature profiles. To counteract these negative consequences, material with high melting enthalpy is used as a method for thermal stabilization. The increased thermal capacity slows down the transient thermal behavior. To account for the delayed thermal equilibrium, a control mechanism for thermal flow is introduced. By varying a gap in a heat flow path the thermal resistance of an assembly can be controlled. This mechanism is evaluated in two experimental setups. First to validate the ability to control the thermal resistance and second to prove the possibility of a self-sufficient option based on the selfsensing abilities of thermal shape memory alloys.
Abstract: This paper presents a tested research concept that
implements a complex evolutionary algorithm, genetic algorithm
(GA), in a multi-microcontroller environment. Parallel Distributed
Genetic Algorithm (PDGA) is employed in adaptive beam forming
technique to reduce power usage of adaptive antenna at WCDMA
base station. Adaptive antenna has dynamic beam that requires more
advanced beam forming algorithm such as genetic algorithm which
requires heavy computation and memory space. Microcontrollers are
low resource platforms that are normally not associated with GAs,
which are typically resource intensive. The aim of this project was to
design a cooperative multiprocessor system by expanding the role of
small scale PIC microcontrollers to optimize WCDMA base station
transmitter power. Implementation results have shown that PDGA
multi-microcontroller system returned optimal transmitted power
compared to conventional GA.
Abstract:
Innovation is becoming more and more important in
modern society. There are a lot of researches on different kinds of
innovation but marketing innovation is one kind of innovation that
has not been studied frequently before. Marketing innovation is
defined as a new way in which companies can market themselves to
potential or existing customers.
The study shows some key elements for marketing innovation that
are worth paying attention to when implementing marketing
innovation projects. Examples of such key elements are: paying
attention to the neglected market, suitable market segmentatio
reliable market information, public relationship, increased customer
value, combination of market factors, explore different marketing
channels and the use of technology in combination with what? Beside
the key elements for marketing innovation, we also present some
risks that may occur, such as cost, market uncertainty, information
leakage, imitation and overdependence on experience.
By proposing a set of indicators to measure marketing innovation,
the article offers solutions for marketing innovation implementation
so that any organization can achieve optimal results.
Abstract: Warranty is a powerful marketing tool for the
manufacturer and a good protection for both the manufacturer and the
customer. However, warranty always involves additional costs to the
manufacturer, which depend on product reliability characteristics and
warranty parameters. This paper presents an approach to optimisation
of warranty parameters for known product failure distribution to
reduce the warranty costs to the manufacturer while retaining the
promotional function of the warranty. Combination free replacement
and pro-rata warranty policy is chosen as a model and the length of
free replacement period and pro-rata policy period are varied, as well
as the coefficients that define the pro-rata cost function. Multiparametric
warranty optimisation is done by using genetic algorithm.
Obtained results are guideline for the manufacturer to choose the
warranty policy that minimises the costs and maximises the profit.