Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
20.1 A 28µW IoT Tag That Can Communicate with Commodity WiFi Transceivers via a Single-Side-Band QPSK Backscatter Communication Technique

Nearly all IoT devices require wireless connectivity, and to keep costs down and deployment opportunities up, communication should ideally occur with widely deployed commodity hardware such as WiFi. However, conventional WiFi transceivers (TRXs) require 10s to 100s of mW of active power. As a result, nearly all current WiFi-compatible IoT devices require either wall power, or large/frequently re-charged batteries (Fig. 20.1.1, left). While other standards such as BLE may require less power, very low power (<<1mW) is only achievable at very low throughputs via duty-cycling; and yet, despite low average power, very small coin cell batteries or energy harvesters cannot be used due to still relatively high peak-power requirements (e.g., a few mW for BLE), thereby limiting new products to certain minimum device sizes. More importantly, standards such as BLE do not have widely distributed infrastructure in most homes, offices, or other environments, making rapid low-cost deployment difficult. To enable a new class of miniaturized, battery-powered or energy-harvested IoT devices, backscatter communication, where an incident RF source is reflected via a low-power impedance modulating tag, has been proposed [1]. However, most current solutions rely on custom tone generators [1], [2], and thus cannot be rapidly deployed at scale with low cost. To enable operation with existing infrastructure, recent work has shown that already-pervasive WiFi signals can be used as incident RF sources for backscattering, and through techniques such as codeword translation, commodity WiFi RXs can be used to receive backscattered data [3]. However, this prior art required a WiFi RF source (like a smartphone) within 6m of the tag, and two separate WiFi readers within 8m (Fig. 20.1.1, middle). More importantly, to date, there has not been any practical backscatter systems developed with low-power electronics to demonstrate the low-power potential of WiFi-based backscattering.
Time-Resolved Measurements of Plasma Parameters for Nanosecond-Pulsed Argon Plasmas

This article aims to understand the physics of pulsed plasmas by investigating the ionization and recombination of pulsed plasmas on the nanosecond timescale and how operating conditions affect the time-resolved electron temperature and electron density of a pulsed plasma. A nanosecond-pulsed argon plasma discharge was generated at various pulse frequencies, widths, and pressures. The argon emission lines were analyzed with a time-synchronized, intensified charge-coupled device (ICCD) spectrometer assembly that gated at 4 ns, and relative intensities of strong argon neutral and ion lines were used in line-ratio calculations. These experimentally determined ratios were compared to theoretical ratios generated from PrismSPECT, a collisional-radiative spectral analysis software, to obtain time-resolved electron temperature (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sim 1$ </tex-math></inline-formula> eV) and electron density (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$10^{14}-10^{15}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> cm<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{-3}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) over the various operating conditions as well as to discover trends of these plasma parameters over the lifetime of the pulsed plasma. Increasing pulse repetition frequency of the plasma increased the value of maximum <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$T_{e}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, shortened the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$T_{e}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> rise and decay times, and increased the excited argon neutral population. While <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n_{e}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> was relatively independent of pulse frequency, higher pulse frequencies resulted in a faster <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n_{e}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> decay. Maximum <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$T_{e}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n_{e}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> were weakly dependent on applied discharge voltage, but both parameters decayed sooner in time with increasing voltage. Lastly, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$T_{e}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> was inversely proportional to pressure, but <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n_{e}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> was approximately linear. All three pressures had similar but time-shifted temporal profiles for <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n_{e}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. Plasmas in all operating conditions had ionization and recombination times in the tens of nanoseconds.
5.5 A 2.1e− Temporal Noise and −105dB Parasitic Light Sensitivity Backside-Illuminated 2.3µm-Pixel Voltage-Domain Global Shutter CMOS Image Sensor Using High-Capacity DRAM Capacitor Technology

As the automotive and AI industries are expanding rapidly, global-shutter (GS) image sensors are playing a more significant role in the perception system. More specifically, GS image sensors are required in various fields involving IR, including the face-ID in mobile devices, the driver monitoring system in automotive applications, and factory automation. GS image sensors are necessary for these applications because they can capture freeze-frame images without motion distortion due to their advantage in the pixel operation method. The simultaneous pixel exposure and in-pixel storing capability allow GS image sensors to achieve high-quality imaging, while the sequential pixel exposure and readout of rolling-shutter (RS) image sensors results in image distortion known as the jello effect. For mobile and automotive applications, a small form factor while maintaining a low parasitic light sensitivity (PLS) and low noise is crucial. In conventional backside illuminated (BSI) charge-domain GS image sensors, a light-shielding structure over the storage area must be formed in order to suppress the influence of parasitic light during the readout operation. Therefore, the introduction of such a light-shielding structure reduces the effective photodiode area, which results in a loss of full-well capacity (FWC), light sensitivity of the sensor, and pixel scalability.
6.1 A 112Gb/s PAM-4 Long-Reach Wireline Transceiver Using a 36-Way Time-Interleaved SAR-ADC and Inverter-Based RX Analog Front-End in 7nm FinFET

Interest in 112Gb/s wireline transceivers targeting data center and communication applications has rapidly increased. PAM-4 signaling remains the dominant choice of modulation scheme due to its superior spectral efficiency [1-2]. This paper reports a long-reach-capable 112Gb/s PAM-4 transceiver designed in 7nm FinFET. Figure 6.1. 1 illustrates the top-level block diagram of the transceiver, comprised of a shared LC-PLL, a transceiver channel, and a control block. The control block sends 875MHz 128b-wide TX data and receives 778MHz 144b-wide RX data to and from transceiver channels and calculates the PRBS bit error rate (BER). The LC-PLL synthesizes a 14GHz differential clock from a 583.33MHz external reference clock. The PLL output clock is then delivered to each channel via supply-regulated CMOS high-speed clock distribution buffers. TX architecture shown in Fig. 6.1. 1 adopts a 4-tap FFE and a quarter-rate clocking scheme with duty cycle and I/Q mismatch calibration to enable the use of a power-efficient CMOS 4:1 MUX [4]. The I/Q error is sensed by replica MUXs and background calibrated with a 100fs resolution. Pad driver topology [4-5] is chosen to achieve 3% FIR resolution without an excessive power penalty from the large number of unit cells as would be required in a voltage-mode driver. A distributed inductor peaking network is designed to compensate for >200fF device and parasitic capacitance at the current summing node. A series inductor and a T-coil provide isolation between ESD diodes, C4 bump pad and on-die termination (ODT) resistors to effectively form a broadband lumped transmission line.
A Case Series Study of Odontoid Fracture in the Elderly: A Severe Fracture Occurring Most Frequently in Osteoporotic Subjects

The WHO definition of osteoporosis excludes cervical fractures. Recent studies suggest that atraumatic odontoid fractures (OF) may be favored by osteoporosis but global bone status for osteoporosis diagnosis has not been described. We present a case series of patients >65 years old hospitalized for low‐energy OF who had an evaluation of their bone status within 3 months after fracture, including clinical risk factors of osteoporosis, bone mineral density (BMD), vertebral fracture assessment (VFA) by dual X‐ray absorptiometry, and laboratory tests. Osteoporosis was defined as a T‐score ≤ −2.5 on at least one site, or a bone fragility fracture associated with a T‐score ≤ −1 at one site. Thirty‐three patients were hospitalized for OF, 30 of them as a consequence of a low‐energy impact: 20 women and 10 men (mean age: 85 years). Eight patients died before bone evaluation, four refused, and six were lost to follow‐up. Twelve patients were included: 11 women and one man (mean age: 83.8 years). Ten out of twelve patients fulfilled diagnostic criteria of osteoporosis, including eight with previous osteoporotic fractures (six severe fractures). Eight fulfilled specific treatment of osteoporosis criteria, but only two were treated. The mean follow‐up period was 12.2 ± 4.1 months. Prior to OF occurrence, all lived at home and were independent; at the time of discharge, six went to a nursing home. At 3 months of follow‐up (n = 10), one was dead and nine lived at home. At 12 months (n = 9), two were dead and seven lived at home. This study provides for the first time a classical evaluation of osteoporotic status for low‐energy OF in the elderly and shows that it occurs in osteoporotic subjects. These preliminary results require larger‐scale studies to determine whether OF could be considered as a severe osteoporotic fracture. © 2018 The Authors. JBMR Plus is published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.
Supercapacitor Assisted Low Dropout (SCALDO) Regulators for Power Systems Applications

Despite the advantages and importance of conventional linear regulators, low efficiency of about 40% is one of the main corresponding drawbacks. Supercapacitor assisted low dropout regulator (SCALDO), a linear DC to DC technique that can be used to duplicate efficiency. Therefore, supercapacitor is playing a crucial role to maximize the efficiency as a result of nearly lossless voltage dropper element, which minimize the losses in the pass element and power semiconductors. This work represents the mathematical principles of SCALDO and a simple implementation with simple and costly effective electronic components contrary to the traditional techniques. The proposed low dropout regulator is used to convert 12V to 5V. The linear regulator based on high efficiency SCALDO technique makes it appropriate for solar cell power systems applications.
Multi-Target Defect Identification for Railway Track Line Based on Image Processing and Improved YOLOv3 Model

The condition monitoring of railway track line is one of the essential tasks to ensure the safety of the railway transportation system. Railway track line is mainly composed of tracks, fasteners, sleepers, and so on. Given the requirements for rapid and accurate inspection, innovative and intelligent methods for multi-target defect identification of the railway track line using image processing and deep learning methods are proposed in this paper. Firstly, the track and fastener positioning method based on variance projection and wavelet transform is introduced. After that, a bag-of-visual-word (BOVW) model combined with spatial pyramid decomposition is proposed for railway track line multi-target defect detection with a detection accuracy of 96.26%. Secondly, an improved YOLOv3 model named TLMDDNet (Track Line Multi-target Defect Detection Network), integrating scale reduction and feature concatenation, is proposed to enhance detection accuracy and efficiency. Finally, to reduce model complexity and further improve the detection speed, with the help of dense connection structure, a lightweight design strategy for the TLMDDNet model named DC-TLMDDNet (Dense Connection Based TLMDDNet) is proposed, in which the DenseNet is applied to optimize feature extraction layers in the backbone network of TLMDDNet. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is demonstrated by the experimental results.
Range-DOA Information and Scattering Information in Phased-Array Radar

In this paper, the application of information theory to describe radar measurement problems is investigated. We define the range-DOA information in the phased-array radar as the mutual information between range, direction of arrival (DOA) and the received signal. The theoretical expression and an asymptotic upper bound for this information are presented in a single target scenario. It is concluded that the range information is independent of DOA information at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The relationship between the upper bound and the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) is discussed. In addition, the scattering information is defined as the mutual information between scattering properties and the received signal. The corresponding expression is formulated theoretically. Numerical simulation confirms our theoretical observations and indicates that the derived information can be employed as an evaluation index to quantitatively analyse the system performance. The regularity of information change reflects the information acquisition efficiency of a radar system, providing a guidance for system designers.
Emulation and Performance Evaluation of a Transparent Reordering Robust TCP Proxy

The use of multiple paths in core networks for TCP traffic sounds promising as it suggests bandwidth aggregation, fault tolerance through redundancy, high resource utilization efficiency, reduced congestions, and increase in TCP throughput. In order to benefit from all these features, the load balancing approaches at different granularities (per-flow, per-destination, and per-packet) have to be applied. In order to promote use of per-packet load balancing in core networks, we already proposed a transparent TCP proxy called as ORTA (Out-of-Order Robustness for TCP with Transparent Acknowledgment Intervention). ORTA was introduced along with simulation results which were all promising and competing with the nontransparent approaches in the literature. However, network simulations may not reflect the real system performances because of the lack of precise and accurate model of the real systems. In this paper, ORTA is implemented as a netfilter module and emulation test results are presented. The results indicate that ORTA prevents TCP performance degradation caused by TCP packet reorderings. Moreover, ORTA has no degrading impact on TCP performance when packet reordering does not exist.
Aggregating animal welfare indicators: can it be done in a transparent and ethically robust way?

A central aim of animal welfare science is to be able to compare the effects of different ways of keeping, managing or treating animals based on welfare indicators. A system to aggregate the different indicators is therefore needed. However, developing such a system gives rise to serious challenges. Here, we focus specifically on the ethical aspects of this problem, taking as our starting point the ambitious efforts to set up an aggregation system within the project Welfare Quality® (WQ). We first consider the distinction between intra- and inter-individual aggregation. These are of a very different nature, with inter-individual aggregation potentially giving rise to much more serious ethical disagreement than intra-individual aggregation. Secondly, we look at the idea of aggregation with a focus on how to compare different levels and sorts of welfare problems. Here, we conclude that animal welfare should not be understood as a simple additive function of negative or positive states. We also conclude that there are significant differences in the perceived validity and importance of different kinds of welfare indicators. Based on this, we evaluate how aggregation is undertaken in WQ. The main conclusion of this discussion is that the WQ system lacks transparency, allows important problems to be covered up, and has severe shortcomings when it comes to the role assigned to experts. These shortcomings may have serious consequences for animal welfare when the WQ scheme at farm or group level is applied. We conclude by suggesting ways to overcome some of these shortcomings.
Energy-Aware User Association for NOMA-Based Mobile Edge Computing Using Matching-Coalition Game

Mobile edge computing (MEC) is regarded as a key technology to reduce the network pressure from the computing-intensive and latency-sensitive applications in future wireless networks. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) can achieve high spectral efficiency by allowing multiple users to reuse the same resources. In this paper, we consider a novel NOMA-based MEC network to improve the energy efficiency during task offloading process. With multiple access points (APs) being deployed, we formulate a joint optimization problem which involves user association, computing resource allocation, and transmit power control, with the objective of minimizing the total energy consumption of all users in such a network. Specifically, the problem can be modeled as a many-to-one matching game with externality due to the co-channel interference and resource competition among users. We then propose a matching-coalition approach coupled with computing resource allocation and power control to find the optimal solution, and also provide the analyses on related properties including stability, convergence, and complexity. Simulation results show that the proposed approach can efficiently reduce the total energy consumption in comparison to other simplified approaches.
Compensation the Unbalance of Non-Linear Load Based on Three-Leg Center-Split Inverter Four Wire

The unbalance problem in low voltage distribution systems is considered as an important issue related to the power quality aspects. The effects on the electric power system for both the utility and the consumers are also introduced. The related economic and technical considerations have been introduced. Several compensation techniques are also listed. This paper presents the configurations used as a solution for the unbalance problems. The 3-leg with Center-Split Inverter is selected as a standard inverter with lower semiconductor switches numbers. Two control methods are applied for the selected topology; Three Dimensional Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation (3D-SVPWM), Hysteresis. 3D-SVPWM with the steps of the required procedure is discussed, Hysteresis control is also applied. The power circuit with the unbalanced load with their relative block control diagram are presented. The results show that the topology of 3-Leg inverter with a split capacitor point succeed to minimize the unbalance at the PCC. Minimization of the neutral current at the source with stabilizing the DC voltage is achieved. The two control methods can restore the balancing for the unbalanced load.
Structural Reweight Spares Subspace Clustering under Unknown Noise

Sparse subspace clustering (SSC) aims at achieving state-of-the-art clustering performance via solving a ${l}_0$ minimization problem. The ${l}_1$ norm is used to instead of ${l}_0$ norm for finding a sparse matrix C. Reweight sparse subspace clustering (RSSC) proposed an iterative reweighting ${l}_1$ minimization algorithm for an accurate neighbor identification. This paper is inspired by RSSC and SSC. By reweighting the sparse subspace clustering algorithm, the proposed method can obtain a more appropriate representation of data. The proposed algorithm also generalizes a modified two-step ${l}_1$ minimization algorithm for solving clustering noise datasets problem. Even if we don’t know the type or any parameter of the noise, the algorithm can perform better. Experiments on synthetic data demonstrate the effect of our algorithm. Especially when there are noise, the proposed algorithm has excellent clustering effect. Experiments on Extended Yale B and ORL show that our algorithm can have state-of-the-art performance on real datasets.
Revisiting Link Quality Metrics for Wireless Sensor Networks

Packet Reception Ratio (PRR), Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) and Link Quality Indicator (LQI) are common metrics for link quality estimation. However, utilization and statistical methods of these metrics are different, so it fails to describe their link quality estimation capabilities systematically and deeply. Some works even came to contradicting conclusions. In this paper, these three metrics are comprehensively evaluated through collecting and analyzing large amounts of experimental data. It is shown that average PRR could be used to distinguish good links from bad links. Standard deviation of PRR could be used to identify moderate links. So, good links, moderate links and bad links are able to be distinguished more effectively and accurately by combining average value and standard deviation of PRR. Both average RSSI and LQI could be used to identify good links. However, they could not distinguish moderate and bad links. Standard deviation of RSSI doesn’t have link quality estimation capability, and so does the standard deviation of LQI within fixed time windows. Unlike them, standard deviation of LQI with fixed number of received packets could be used to identify good links, but still not moderate and bad links.
Model of the Retrograde Motion of a Vacuum Arc: Comparison to Experiments

In the absence of an external magnetic field, a cathode spot (CS) of a vacuum arc experiences a Brownian random walk (jumps) along the surface. A magnetic field parallel to the surface causes spot drift in the anti-Amperian direction (retrograde motion). Three statements are suggested to explain the retrograde motion and its features: 1) each CS jump is associated with a voltage drop fluctuation <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Delta {V}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>; 2) the tangential electric field (the Hall field) is created by the additional positive surface charges at the retrograde side of the spot. This field results in an additional voltage drop at the retrograde side of the spot <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\delta {V}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>; and 3) the probability of the spot jumping in the retrograde direction is proportional to <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\delta {V} /\Delta {V}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. Calculations based on these statements allow one to achieve qualitative and, in many cases, quantitative agreement with experiments concerning retrograde velocity dependences on these external parameters: magnetic field, arc current, interelectrode gap, and cathode surface conditions. No adjustable parameters were used in these calculations.
Poster: JUNIOR, A Research Platform for Connected and Automated Driving

This poster paper presents a platform to conduct connected and automated driving experiments. We describe a low cost and easy to implement hardware and software platform suitable for universities and companies. We first motivate the choice of the vehicle and the various hardware components, followed by the description of the open-source software stack. We will conclude by providing an overview of use cases and ongoing projects.