Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MCNP-FBSM: Development of MCNP/MCNPX Source Model for Simulation of Multi-Slice Fan-Beam X-Ray CT Scanners

Computed tomography (CT) is one of the most valuable diagnostic imaging tools in the clinic and is widely used worldwide. One of the main motivations driving research and development in CT is to achieve better image quality while keeping the radiation dose to the patient as low as possible. In this regard, computer simulations play a key role in the optimization of CT design. In this work, a fan-beam source model (FBSM) for the simulation of multi-slice fan-beam CT scanners using the MCNP Monte Carlo code, has been developed and implemented. The use of this model removes the need for using the collimator in the system configuration and thus to overcome the perennial problem of particle starvation imposed by the collimator. The accuracy of our developed MCNP-FBSM model was evaluated through comparison with previously published experimental results demonstrating good agreement. Therefore, the MCNP-FBSM based CT simulator is a powerful tool for protocol design, optimization of geometrical design parameters, assessment of image reconstruction algorithms and evaluating future innovations to improve the performance of CT scanners.
MFNN: Position and Attitude Measurement Neural Network Based on Multi-Feature Fusion

Accurate measurement of position and attitude information has become the basis of application engineering in related fields. Traditional position and attitude measurement schemes, including lasers, infrared light, etc., often place high demands on the measurement environment. The visual image-based measurement scheme needs to be combined with the actual situation to establish a complex pose calculation model. Therefore, exploring a measurement scheme for efficient solution has become an urgent need in related fields. In this paper, we propose a multi-feature fusion position and attitude measurement neural network (MFNN). We effectively introduce the HOG operator as an image feature and combine it with the original image for a specific ratio. At the same time, we draw on the utilization strategy of feature points in traditional measurement methods. By combining the extracted image feature points with the network, the measurement error of the six-dimensional information is effectively reduced. Based on this, we propose a new type of position and attitude measurement network architecture. MFNN has further improved the accuracy of related measurements.
VoIP traffic and resource management using Software-Defined Networking

Voice Over IP technology (VoIP) allows people to communicate voice using the Internet as a mean of transmission. VoIP calls between clients using the same Codec consume communication and computational resources from VoIP server. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has been disseminating the decoupling between control and data plane in network technologies. SDN can be used in order to optimize network traffic and consequently to reduce resources usage. Therefore, this paper aims to present a traffic management approach based on SDN to reduce the use of resources in VoIP services. Scenarios were emulated with and without the use of SDN to assess CPU utilization and bandwidth used in a VoIP server. Experimental results indicate considerable reduction on the consumption of the mentioned resources.
Miniaturized Pattern Reconfigurable HMSIW Leaky Wave Antenna Based on Liquid Crystal Tuning Technology in Millimeter Wave Band

A pattern reconfigurable leaky-wave antenna loaded liquid crystal material (LC) is presented based on novel half mode substrate integrated waveguide (HMSIW) circuit in this paper. By loading interdigital capacitor gap (IDC), the leaky wave radiation is realized. LC-based substrate integrated waveguide can achieve bias tuning by rectangular DC ground which inside the waveguide. With liquid crystal tuning, the main beam of antenna pattern is deflected 16.In addition, in the tuning process, the gain fluctuation of the antenna is less than 1.2dB and the maximum peak gain is 10.14dBi. The proposed antenna working at millimeter-wave band and the in-band reflection coefficient is less than -10dB.
Design of Broadband Branch-Line Couplers Utilizing Coupled Transmission Lines at Ka-Band

This paper describes broadband branch-line couplers (BLCs)with arbitrary coupling factors at Ka-band. The coupler has open-/short-circuited coupled transmission lines as external matching networks and a pair of branch-lines. Electromagnetic simulations for designed broadband couplers with coupling factors from −3 dB to −30 dB based on the equivalent admittance approach are carried out to verify the band-broadening design method.
Design and Implementation of 28GHz Phased Array Antenna System

This paper presents the design and implementation of a 28 GHz phased array antenna system which contains eight channels. Each channel contains a pair of 5-bit phase shifters and a pair of 5-bit digital step attenuators, which can be applied to separately tune the phase and amplitude of its either transmitting or receiving mode, and an eight-patch sub-array is connected to each channel. Therefore, the designed phased array system has altogether 64 patch elements and can perform one-dimensional beam scanning over an angle range of ±30°.
Modeling and Control of an Aerial Multi-Cargo System: Robust Acquiring and Transport Operations

In this paper, we introduce the concept of a multilink unmanned aerial system (ML-UAS) designed for multi-cargo transportation tasks. Such system features three links who are actuated by four flying robots. We present in detail the dynamics modeling based on the Euler-Lagrange formulation. A preliminary control scheme based on robust Adaptive Integral Sliding Mode Control (AISMC) is applied considering the ML-UAS model uncertainties and external disturbances. The control objective is to follow/track avian-inspired acquiring patterns for acquiring operations. The effectiveness of the proposed strategy is validated by numerical simulations.
SHE-PWM Control for A Four-level Hybrid-Clamped Inverter

In this paper, a control strategy for a four-level hybrid-clamped inverter using SHE-PWM is introduced. An algebraic method combining Groebner bases and symmetric polynomials is implemented to obtain the seven switching angles of SHE-PWM. Compared with the widely-used numerical and intelligent methods, it does not need to choose initial values and is able to obtain all the solutions. Moreover, the calculation efficiency is much higher than the existing algebraic methods. The voltage balancing of the DC-link capacitors and flying capacitors can be achieved by selecting proper redundant switching states. Simulation results are presented to confirm the harmonic elimination effect and the validity of this voltage control strategy.
A Qualitative Comparison Model for Application Layer IoT Protocols

Protocols enable things to connect and communicate, thus making the Internet of Things possible. The performance aspect of the Internet of Things protocols, vital to its widespread utilization, have received much attention. However, one aspect of IoT protocols, essential to its adoption in the real world, is a protocols’ feature set. Comparative analysis based on competing features and properties are rarely if ever, discussed in the literature. In this paper, we define 19 attributes in 5 categories that are essential for IoT stakeholders to consider. These attributes are then used to contrast four IoT protocols, MQTT, HTTP, CoAP and XMPP. Furthermore, we discuss scenarios where an assessment based on comparative strengths and weaknesses would be beneficial. The provided comparison model can be easily extended to include protocols like MQTT-SN, AMQP and DDS.
MsCoa: Multi-Step Co-Attention Model for Multi-Label Classification

Multi-label text classification (MLC) task, as one of the sub-tasks of natural language processing, has broad application prospects. On the basis of studying the previous research work, this research takes the relationship among text information, leading label information and predictive label information as the frame and analyzes the information loss of original text and leading label, decoding error accumulation. We propose an improved multi-step multi-classification model to mitigate the phenomenon of error prediction, label repetition and error accumulation. The model uses multi-step and multi-classification task to complete multi-label prediction. It uses the leading label and the original text as input, and the next to-be-predicted label as output. The co-attention mechanism is operated between the original text and the leading label. The attention of the original text to the leading label is helpful to filter out the error accumulation problem caused by the error prediction. The features is combined in a manner of difference and concatenation, which highlights the auxiliary effect of the model structure on feature extraction. In order to avoid the influence of the feature dimension on the performance of long short-term memory (LSTM), a multi-layer fully-connected classifier is used instead to predict the label. Through experimental validation, the performance of our model on the multi-label text classification task shows the current optimal level, which fully proves the superiority of our model.
Active Replication for Centrally Coordinated Teams of Autonomous Vehicles

Autonomous vehicles, drones in particular, are used to support a wide range of sensing and actuating missions. While these missions are typically coordinated by a human operator, it is attractive to automate this coordination through a computer program that retrieves information from the vehicles and issues commands to them according to the mission objectives. However, the fact that such a computer-driven system may interact with and affect the physical environment in a direct way, introduces several challenges. In particular, it is important to tolerate failures of the mission control computer as smoothly as possible, avoiding roll-backs that might lead to inconsistencies. To address this problem, we propose an active replication approach, ensuring that as long as at least one replica of the mission controller remains operational, the mission will progress in a consistent way and with full transparency for the mission program. We define the properties that should be satisfied to achieve the required consistency, and present system-level mechanisms that support both deterministic and non-deterministic mission programs. We then discuss a concrete implementation of the proposed approach for an existing programming framework targeting multi-drone applications. Finally, we give an analytical cost model for the communication overhead of the proposed approach, and report the actual execution delay incurred in our prototype implementation for indicative scenarios using a suitable simulation environment.
Digital Predistortion of Millimeter-Wave Multi-beam Transmitters with Digital Beam-forming Network

This paper proposes a novel digital predistortion (DPD) technique to linearize a millimeter-wave multi-beam transmitters with digital beam-forming network. It is achieved by modeling outputs of power amplifiers (PAs) and linearizing them with decomposed vector rotation-based model, respectively. The measurement results have shown that the proposed method can effectively realize the linearization of target beams, providing a promising solution for multi-user applications in 5G massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) wireless systems.
The Combined use of Measurements and Simulations for the Low-Uncertainty Characterization of a Reference Source of Electromagnetic Field

The accurate characterization of a broadband, compact and active antenna designed for use as a travelling sample for interlaboratory comparisons is described. Characterization is based on the combined use of measurement and simulations. The result of the characterization is the value and uncertainty of the generated electromagnetic field at different distances and in different electromagnetic environments (fully- and semi-anechoic). The dominant contribution to the uncertainty of the generated electromagnetic field is the mismatch between the output of the internal power source and the input of the radiating structure. Reduction of mismatch error cannot be easily achieved due to the physical limits imposed by the simultaneous requirements for a compact (small antenna size) and battery operated (low power source) travelling sample.
A High-Performance Radome for Millimeter Wave Antenna Applications

In this paper, a high-performance radome for millimeter wave (mm-Wave) antenna applications is proposed. Firstly, a microstrip patch antenna operating at 24 GHz is designed. A conventional radome is subsequently mounted on the patch antenna so as to protect the antenna from damage. However, since the wavelength of mm-Wave antenna is similar to the thickness of the radome, it would result in distortion of radiation patterns and reduction of radiation directivity. In order to overcome this problem, a novel and high performance radome is investigated by stacking six pieces of substrates in the traditional radome. In this way, the directivity is about 7 dBi higher than that of the antenna without the radome.
Virtual Pricing-Based User Association for Heterogeneous Small Cell Networks

To face surging traffic demands and achieve different user QoS requirements in heterogeneous small cell networks, we propose a virtual pricing-theoretical user association bargaining mechanism over multiple tier base-stations and terminal users for load balancing among cells. We also discuss the best bargaining responses updates to obtain the optimal equilibrium. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism and show that our QoS support framework is better than the existing ones.
Radiation Pattern Reshaping of Mircostrip Antennas Based on Spoof Surface Plasmon Polaritons Mode Coupling

In this paper, we proposed an approach to reshape the radiation pattern of a microstrip antenna by loading Spoof Surface Plasmon Polaritons (SSPPs). By coupling the field to the SSPPs structure located on the side of the microstrip antenna working in X-band, the radiation of the antenna changes from a broadside pattern to a endfire pattern, and the gain increases from 7.1 dB to 10.4 and 12.7 dB for two types of the SSPP-based antennas respectively.
Bioinspired Electric Stimulation: Comparison of ECoG Spectrum in the Main Auditory Structures

Neuroprosthetics represents a powerful tool to improve neural impairments, acting on plasticity in subjects with sensory or cognitive defeats. In this work, a biomimetic sonar was investigated to modulate neural activity in the auditory system by comparing electrocorticogram (ECoG) frequency spectrum in two stimulation sites: the inferior colliculus (IC), and the left primary auditory cortex (A1). The sonar provides electric signals generated from echoes in both areas, modulating the synaptic activity. Spectral analysis allows the evaluation of the excitatory and inhibitory responses. The dynamic interactions of the auditory cortex with the ascending and descending projections from the cortex to subcortical structures, make the A1 suitable to become an excellent stimulation site for a neuroprosthetic device since the high oscillations in gamma and beta band.
Analysis of Total-Factor Energy Efficiency in China under Low Carbon Constraint

This article considers energy, labor force and capital stock as the input variables that are commonly adopted by most of scholars. In order to demonstrate how the low-carbon economy affects energy efficiency in China, we use the so called low-carbon GDP as the output variable, which has never been discussed before and is different from the Green-GDP appearing in references. Based on the low-carbon GDP, we build a completely new input-output framework by using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to explore total-factor energy efficiency (TFEE) in 30 provinces and cities of China during 1998–2016. The Malmquist index is applied to analyze the variation tendency of TFEE. Selecting the cross section data in 2016 for empirical comparative analysis, the result shows that TFEE varies greatly from region to region. The TFEE is highest in the eastern region, followed by the central region and lowest in the western region. Especially, TFEEs in Shanghai, Fujian and Beijing obtain the optimal efficiencies. The Malmquist index of most regions is larger than 1, indicating that the productivity has increased but there may be the rebound effect. Besides, most of the provinces and cities in China show a downward tendency in technological progress.
Formal Verification of Radio Communication Management in Railway Systems Using Model Checking Technique

The European Railway Traffic Management System has the purpose to provide a common signaling system for all the European nations. It consists of two subsystems: the trackside subsystem (TSS) and the on-board subsystem (OBS) that communicate to exchange information about the state of the trackside and/or the train. Radio communication can take place according to the requirements specification reported in ERTMS/ETCS SUBSET-026-3. As the communication between TSS and OBS is a critical issue, we exploit model checking to verify the correctness of the communication process as specified in the SUBSET-026-3. The results achieved during the experimentation seem to be very promising.
A Discontinuous Consensus Algorithm with Neighbor Counting

A cooperative consensus algorithm is proposed for a group of double integrators. This algorithm is based on minimal relative information and does not use communication networks. Each agent counts the number of predecessor and successor neighbors. The difference of these numbers is used in the controller instead of any accurate range or position measurements. Non-smooth Lyapunov method is used to analyze the stability under the proposed consensus algorithm. Under certain conditions, the proposed protocol can ensure bounded control input, finite-time convergence, or fixed-time convergence. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
MP2 - Photoluminescence From GeSn Layers Fabricated Using Ion Implantation and Pulsed Laser Melting

Room temperature photoluminescence (PL) was observed from GeSn layers fabricated by ion implantation of Sn into bulk Ge followed by pulsed laser melting using an Nd:YAG laser at 355 nm. PL measurements indicate regions of high-crystalline quality with Sn concentrations of up to 9%.
Reconfigurable Wideband Bandpass Filters based on Dual Cross-Shaped Resonator

In this paper, a class of reconfigurable wideband bandpass filters based on dual cross-shaped resonator (DCSR) is studied. The proposed DCSR consists of shunt opened stubs loaded at the end of their parental shunt stub. This configuration can effectively produce additional poles and zeros to the wideband bandpass filter, and therefore providing an overall good in-band response with simultaneous shape cut-off. By introducing some tunable devices (i.e. pin diodes, varactors), the bandwidth of proposed filter can be easily adjusted to accommodate specific applications. In addition, a controllable notch is generated in the passband to reduce the strong interfering signal happened in wideband operation. A DCSR bandpass filter operating at 6 GHz is designed, fabricated and measured. The fractional bandwidth (FBW) centers around 102.2% with ±19% tuning range. Meanwhile, the notch can lie between 3.0 GHz to 7.9 GHz.
1V High Speed E-TSPC 2/3 Prescalers

This paper presents a 1V High Speed E-TSPC 2/3 Prescalers. The true single-phase clock divider was developed to constitute work faster and low power. All simulation results are performed using the Hspice simulator program. And uesd CMOS technology on 45 mm. The power consumption of the proposed circuit will consume less power than other circuits previously. The maximum input frequency for simulations of the suggested prescaler reaches up to 24GHz at 1V supply voltage.
Packaging-in-Dielectric Liquid Patch Antenna

A liquid patch antenna fully packaging-in-dielectric is presented for the first time. The proposed liquid patch antenna mainly consists of three parts: dielectric hollow cavities, conductive liquid and an SMA connector. The dielectric hollow cavities are made by 3D printing technique in-one-go. There are two hollow cavities embedded in a T-shaped dielectric box, a rectangular cavity placed at the upper part acting as the radiating element, and a non-planar cavity with a central groove under the radiating element serving as the ground plane. The radiating element and ground plane are metallized by filling high-conductivity single-walled carbon nanotube paste. The proposed antenna is designed at 5.2 GHz. Preliminary results show that the liquid patch antenna produces a good impedance matching and acceptable radiation characteristics at the desired frequency. As a proof of concept demonstration, this work presents a novel method for designing RF devices combining 3D printing technique with conductive liquids. Furthermore, due to the fluidity of liquid conductive materials, it is easy to manipulate the antenna’s radiation performances by adjusting the amount of conductive liquids.
Performance Analysis of Relay-Assisted D2D Network Offloading in Ultra-Dense Networks

Intensive users equipments (UEs) often make small base station (SBSs) work under full load so that subsequent access requests of UEs will be difficult to get real-time services in hot spots such as campus, dense office area or large business district. To solve this problem, device-to-device (D2D) offloading has been advocated in recent small cell architecture design. In this paper, we propose a relay-assisted D2D network offloading method without extra spectrum for ultra-dense small cell network. UEs who have new communication request in full load SBS are offloaded to the adjacent light load SBS by exploiting D2D receiver as a relay. We formulated the problem with three sub-problems: firstly, how to select the relay destination SBS; secondly, how to select the D2D relay UE; finally, how to allocate resources and control D2D UE transmitting power. Toward this end, a relay-assisted D2D communication network offloading algorithm is proposed to allocate channel resource and transmit power of D2D UE under the condition of satisfying the signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) of cellular UEs. The proposed scheme is evaluated through computer simulation and the results show that it can enable a significant increase in the number of accessible UEs of the network.
Towards In-Field and Online Calibration of Inertial Navigation Systems using Moving Horizon Estimation

Inertial sensors are used in an increasing number of autonomous applications. Integrating such sensors into dynamic systems, the problem of their calibration arises naturally. Existing methods often require the sensor to be accurately placed in certain poses, which can be infeasible in practice. In this paper, we present an optimization-based estimator for in-field identification of inertial biases and scale factors. Instead of predefined poses, we use measurements of an accurate global navigation satellite system receiver in the calibration algorithm. By adopting a moving horizon scheme, the resulting estimator has the potential to run on embedded hardware allowing for online calibration without sacrificing robustness. We also present an approach for the simulation of realistic sensor data. The resulting datasets are used to analyze the performance of the optimization-based estimator. The evaluated statistics clearly show that moving horizon estimation improves the robustness and accuracy of the presented calibration approach in the presence of uncertain initial conditions and outperforms traditional recursive filters.