Abstract: Discovery schools in Jordan are connected in one flat
ATM bridge network. All Schools connected to the network will hear
broadcast traffic. High percentage of unwanted traffic such as
broadcast, consumes the bandwidth between schools and QRC.
Routers in QRC have high CPU utilization. The number of
connections on the router is very high, and may exceed recommend
manufacturing specifications. One way to minimize number of
connections to the routers in QRC, and minimize broadcast traffic is
to use PPPoE. In this study, a PPPoE solution has been presented
which shows high performance for the clients when accessing the
school server resources. Despite the large number of the discovery
schools at MoE, the experimental results show that the PPPoE
solution is able to yield a satisfactory performance for each client at
the school and noticeably reduce the traffic broadcast to the QRC.
Abstract: This paper presents a new technique for detection of
human faces within color images. The approach relies on image
segmentation based on skin color, features extracted from the two-dimensional
discrete cosine transform (DCT), and self-organizing
maps (SOM). After candidate skin regions are extracted, feature
vectors are constructed using DCT coefficients computed from those
regions. A supervised SOM training session is used to cluster feature
vectors into groups, and to assign “face" or “non-face" labels to those
clusters. Evaluation was performed using a new image database of
286 images, containing 1027 faces. After training, our detection
technique achieved a detection rate of 77.94% during subsequent
tests, with a false positive rate of 5.14%. To our knowledge, the
proposed technique is the first to combine DCT-based feature
extraction with a SOM for detecting human faces within color
images. It is also one of a few attempts to combine a feature-invariant
approach, such as color-based skin segmentation, together with
appearance-based face detection. The main advantage of the new
technique is its low computational requirements, in terms of both
processing speed and memory utilization.
Abstract: Developers need to evaluate software's performance to make software efficient. This paper suggests a performance evaluation system for embedded software. The suggested system consists of code analyzer, testing agents, data analyzer, and report viewer. The code analyzer inserts additional code dependent on target system into source code and compiles the source code. The testing agents execute performance test. The data analyzer translates raw-level results data to class-level APIs for reporting viewer. The report viewer offers users graphical report views by using the APIs. We hope that the suggested tool will be useful for embedded-related software development,because developers can easily and intuitively analyze software's performance and resource utilization.
Abstract: This paper investigates the performance of Multiple- Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) feedback system combined with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). Two types of codebook based channel feedback techniques are used in this work. The first feedback technique uses a combination of both the long-term and short-term channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter, whereas the second technique uses only the short term CSI. The long-term and short-term CSI at the transmitter is used for efficient channel utilization. OFDM is a powerful technique employed in communication systems suffering from frequency selectivity. Combined with multiple antennas at the transmitter and receiver, OFDM proves to be robust against delay spread. Moreover, it leads to significant data rates with improved bit error performance over links having only a single antenna at both the transmitter and receiver. The effectiveness of these techniques has been demonstrated through the simulation of a MIMO-OFDM feedback system. The results have been evaluated for 4x4 MIMO channels. Simulation results indicate the benefits of the MIMO-OFDM channel feedback system over the one without incorporating OFDM. Performance gain of about 3 dB is observed for MIMO-OFDM feedback system as compared to the one without employing OFDM. Hence MIMO-OFDM becomes an attractive approach for future high speed wireless communication systems.
Abstract: Under the limitation of investment budget, a utility
company is required to maximize the utilization of their existing
assets during their life cycle satisfying both engineering and financial
requirements. However, utility does not have knowledge about the
status of each asset in the portfolio neither in terms of technical nor
financial values. This paper presents a knowledge based model for
the utility companies in order to make an optimal decision on power
transformer with their utilization. CommonKADS methodology, a
structured development for knowledge and expertise representation,
is utilized for designing and developing knowledge based model. A
case study of One MVA power transformer of Nepal Electricity
Authority is presented. The results show that the reusable knowledge
can be categorized, modeled and utilized within the utility company
using the proposed methodologies. Moreover, the results depict that
utility company can achieve both engineering and financial benefits
from its utilization.
Abstract: The goal of admission control is to support the Quality
of Service demands of real-time applications via resource reservation
in IP networks. In this paper we introduce a novel Dynamic
Admission Control (DAC) mechanism for IP networks. The DAC
dynamically allocates network resources using the previous network
pattern for each path and uses the dynamic admission algorithm to
improve bandwidth utilization using bandwidth brokers. We evaluate
the performance of the proposed mechanism through trace-driven
simulation experiments in view point of blocking probability,
throughput and normalized utilization.
Abstract: The Ad Hoc on demand distance vector (AODV) routing protocol is designed for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). AODV offers quick adaptation to dynamic link conditions; it is characterized by low memory overhead and low network utilization. The security issues related to the protocol remain challenging for the wireless network designers. Numerous schemes have been proposed for establishing secure communication between end users, these schemes identify that the secure operation of AODV is a bi tier task (routing and secure exchange of information at separate levels). Our endeavor in this paper would focus on achieving the routing and secure data exchange in a single step. This will facilitate the user nodes to perform routing, mutual authentications, generation and secure exchange of session key in one step thus ensuring confidentiality, integrity and authentication of data exchange in a more suitable way.
Abstract: Modeling of a manufacturing system enables one to
identify the effects of key design parameters on the system performance and as a result to make correct decision. This paper
proposes a manufacturing system modeling approach using a spreadsheet model based on queuing network theory, in which a
static capacity planning model and stochastic queuing model are integrated. The model was used to improve the existing system utilization in relation to product design. The model incorporates few
parameters such as utilization, cycle time, throughput, and batch size.
The study also showed that the validity of developed model is good enough to apply and the maximum value of relative error is 10%, far
below the limit value 32%. Therefore, the model developed in this
study is a valuable alternative model in evaluating a manufacturing system
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a fully-utilized, block-based 2D DWT (discrete wavelet transform) architecture, which consists of four 1D DWT filters with two-channel QMF lattice structure. The proposed architecture requires about 2MN-3N registers to save the intermediate results for higher level decomposition, where M and N stand for the filter length and the row width of the image respectively. Furthermore, the proposed 2D DWT processes in horizontal and vertical directions simultaneously without an idle period, so that it computes the DWT for an N×N image in a period of N2(1-2-2J)/3. Compared to the existing approaches, the proposed architecture shows 100% of hardware utilization and high throughput rates. To mitigate the long critical path delay due to the cascaded lattices, we can apply the pipeline technique with four stages, while retaining 100% of hardware utilization. The proposed architecture can be applied in real-time video signal processing.
Abstract: Network management techniques have long been of
interest to the networking research community. The queue size plays
a critical role for the network performance. The adequate size of the
queue maintains Quality of Service (QoS) requirements within
limited network capacity for as many users as possible. The
appropriate estimation of the queuing model parameters is crucial for
both initial size estimation and during the process of resource
allocation. The accurate resource allocation model for the
management system increases the network utilization. The present
paper demonstrates the results of empirical observation of memory
allocation for packet-based services.
Abstract: Adhesion to the human intestinal cell is considered
as one of the main selection criteria of lactic acid bacteria for
probiotic use. The adhesion ability of two Bifidobacteriums strains
Bifidobacterium longum BB536 and Bifidobacterium
psudocatenulatum G4 was done using HT-29 human epithelium
cell line as in vitro study. Four different level of pH were used 5.6,
5.7, 6.6, and 6.8 with four different times 15, 30, 60, and 120 min.
Adhesion was quantified by counting the adhering bacteria after
Gram staining. The adhesion of B. longum BB536 was higher than
B. psudocatenulatum G4. Both species showed significant
different in the adhesion properties at the factors tested. The
highest adhesion for both Bifidobacterium was observed at 120
min and the low adhesion was in 15 min. The findings of this
study will contribute to the introduction of new effective probiotic
strain for future utilization.
Abstract: In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in using daylight to save energy in buildings. In tropical regions, daylighting is always an energy saver. On the other hand, daylight provides visual comfort. According to standards, it shows that many criteria should be taken into consideration in order to have daylight utilization and visual comfort. The current standard in Malaysia, MS 1525 does not provide sufficient guideline. Hence, more research is needed on daylight performance. If architects do not consider daylight design, it not only causes inconvenience in working spaces but also causes more energy consumption as well as environmental pollution. This research had surveyed daylight performance in 5 selected office buildings from different area of Malaysian through experimental method. Several parameters of daylight quality such as daylight factor, surface luminance and surface luminance ratio were measured in different rooms in each building. The result of this research demonstrated that most of the buildings were not designed for daylight utilization. Therefore, it is very important that architects follow the daylight design recommendation to reduce consumption of electric power for artificial lighting while the sufficient quality of daylight is available.
Abstract: Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) is an additive manufacturing process with capabilities that include: producing new
part directly from 3 Dimensional Computer Aided Design (3D CAD)
model, building new part on the existing old component and repairing an existing high valued component parts that would have
been discarded in the past. With all these capabilities and its advantages over other additive manufacturing techniques, the
underlying physics of the LMD process is yet to be fully understood probably because of high interaction between the processing
parameters and studying many parameters at the same time makes it
further complex to understand. In this study, the effect of laser power
and powder flow rate on physical properties (deposition height and
deposition width), metallurgical property (microstructure) and
mechanical (microhardness) properties on laser deposited most
widely used aerospace alloy are studied. Also, because the Ti6Al4V
is very expensive, and LMD is capable of reducing buy-to-fly ratio
of aerospace parts, the material utilization efficiency is also studied.
Four sets of experiments were performed and repeated to establish repeatability using laser power of 1.8 kW and 3.0 kW, powder flow
rate of 2.88 g/min and 5.67 g/min, and keeping the gas flow rate and
scanning speed constant at 2 l/min and 0.005 m/s respectively. The
deposition height / width are found to increase with increase in laser
power and increase in powder flow rate. The material utilization is favoured by higher power while higher powder flow rate reduces
material utilization. The results are presented and fully discussed.
Abstract: Coal will continue to be the predominant source of
global energy for coming several decades. The huge generation of fly
ash (FA) from combustion of coal in thermal power plants (TPPs) is
apprehended to pose the concerns of its disposal and utilization. FA
application based on its typical characteristics as soil ameliorant for
agriculture and forestry is the potential area, and hence the global
attempt. The inferences drawn suffer from the variations of ash
characteristics, soil types, and agro-climatic conditions; thereby
correlating the effects of ash between various plant species and soil
types is difficult. Indian FAs have low bulk density, high water
holding capacity and porosity, rich silt-sized particles, alkaline
nature, negligible solubility, and reasonable plant nutrients. Findings
of the demonstrations trials for more than two decades from lab/pot
to field scale long-term experiments are developed as FA soil
amendment technology (FASAT) by Central Institute of Mining and
Fuel Research (CIMFR), Dhanbad. Performance of different crops
and plant species in cultivable and problematic soils, are
encouraging, eco-friendly, and being adopted by the farmers. FA
application includes ash alone and in combination with
inorganic/organic amendments; combination treatments including
bio-solids perform better than FA alone. Optimum dose being up to
100 t/ha for cultivable land and up to/ or above 200 t/ha of FA for
waste/degraded land/mine refuse, depending on the characteristics of
ash and soil. The elemental toxicity in Indian FA is usually not of
much concern owing to alkaline ashes, oxide forms of elements, and
elemental concentration within the threshold limits for soil
application. Combating toxicity, if any, is possible through
combination treatments with organic materials and phytoremediation.
Government initiatives through extension programme
involving farmers and ash generating organizations need to be
accelerated
Abstract: Grid computing is a high performance computing
environment to solve larger scale computational applications. Grid
computing contains resource management, job scheduling, security
problems, information management and so on. Job scheduling is a
fundamental and important issue in achieving high performance in
grid computing systems. However, it is a big challenge to design an
efficient scheduler and its implementation. In Grid Computing, there
is a need of further improvement in Job Scheduling algorithm to
schedule the light-weight or small jobs into a coarse-grained or
group of jobs, which will reduce the communication time,
processing time and enhance resource utilization. This Grouping
strategy considers the processing power, memory-size and
bandwidth requirements of each job to realize the real grid system.
The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheduling
algorithm efficiently reduces the processing time of jobs in
comparison to others.
Abstract: The aim of research project is to evaluate quantity and
quality for conjunctive use of groundwater and surface water in lower
in the Lower Nam Kam area, Thailand, even though there have been
hints of saline soil and water. The mathematical model named
WUSMO and MIKE Basin were applied for the calculation of crop
water utilization. Results of the study showed that, in irrigation
command area, water consumption rely on various sources; rain water
21.56%, irrigation water 78.29%, groundwater and some small surface
storage 0.15%. Meanwhile, for non-irrigation command area, water
consumption depends on the Nam Kam and Nambang stream 42%,
rain water 36.75% and groundwater and some small surface storage
19.18%. Samples of surface water and groundwater were collected for
2 seasons. The criterion was determined for the assessment of suitable
water for irrigation. It was found that this area has very limited sources
of suitable water for irrigation.
Abstract: In this paper we used data mining techniques to
identify outlier patients who are using large amount of drugs over a
long period of time. Any healthcare or health insurance system
should deal with the quantities of drugs utilized by chronic diseases
patients. In Kingdom of Bahrain, about 20% of health budget is spent
on medications. For the managers of healthcare systems, there is no
enough information about the ways of drug utilization by chronic
diseases patients, is there any misuse or is there outliers patients. In
this work, which has been done in cooperation with information
department in the Bahrain Defence Force hospital; we select the data
for Cardiac patients in the period starting from 1/1/2008 to
December 31/12/2008 to be the data for the model in this paper. We
used three techniques for finding the drug utilization for cardiac
patients. First we applied a clustering technique, followed by
measuring of clustering validity, and finally we applied a decision
tree as classification algorithm. The clustering results is divided into
three clusters according to the drug utilization, for 1603 patients, who
received 15,806 prescriptions during this period can be partitioned
into three groups, where 23 patients (2.59%) who received 1316
prescriptions (8.32%) are classified to be outliers. The classification
algorithm shows that the use of average drug utilization and the age,
and the gender of the patient can be considered to be the main
predictive factors in the induced model.
Abstract: All practical real-time scheduling algorithms in multiprocessor systems present a trade-off between their computational complexity and performance. In real-time systems, tasks have to be performed correctly and timely. Finding minimal schedule in multiprocessor systems with real-time constraints is shown to be NP-hard. Although some optimal algorithms have been employed in uni-processor systems, they fail when they are applied in multiprocessor systems. The practical scheduling algorithms in real-time systems have not deterministic response time. Deterministic timing behavior is an important parameter for system robustness analysis. The intrinsic uncertainty in dynamic real-time systems increases the difficulties of scheduling problem. To alleviate these difficulties, we have proposed a fuzzy scheduling approach to arrange real-time periodic and non-periodic tasks in multiprocessor systems. Static and dynamic optimal scheduling algorithms fail with non-critical overload. In contrast, our approach balances task loads of the processors successfully while consider starvation prevention and fairness which cause higher priority tasks have higher running probability. A simulation is conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. Experimental results have shown that the proposed fuzzy scheduler creates feasible schedules for homogeneous and heterogeneous tasks. It also and considers tasks priorities which cause higher system utilization and lowers deadline miss time. According to the results, it performs very close to optimal schedule of uni-processor systems.