Query: Cross-Coupled Substrate Integrated Waveguide Filters With Improved Stopband Performance

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Substrate Integrated Waveguide Cross-Coupled Filter With Negative Coupling Structure <=SEP=> Substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technology provides an attractive solution to the integration of planar and nonplanar circuits by using a planar circuit fabrication process. However, it is usually difficult to implement the negative coupling structure required for the design of compact canonical folded elliptic or quasi-elliptic cross-coupled bandpass filter on the basis of a single-layer SIW. In this paper, a special planar negative coupling scheme including a magnetic coupling post-wall iris and a balanced microstrip line with a pair of metallic via-holes is studied in detail. Two -band fourth-degree cross-coupled bandpass filters without and with source-load coupling using the negative coupling structures are then proposed and designed. The two novel SIW filters having the same center frequency of 20.5 GHz and respective passband width of 700 and 800 MHz are implemented on a single-layer Rogers RT/Duroid 5880 substrate with thickness of 0.508 mm. Measured results of those filters, which exhibit a high selectivity, and a minimum in-band insertion loss of approximately 0.9 and 1.0 dB, respectively, agree well with simulated results.

Dispersion characteristics of substrate integrated rectangular waveguide <=SEP=> Dispersion properties of the substrate integrated rectangular waveguide (SIRW) are rigorously obtained using the BI-RME method combined with the Floquet's theorem. Our analysis shows that the SIRW basically has the same guided-wave characteristics as the conventional rectangular waveguide. Empirical equations are derived from the calculated dispersion curves in order to estimate the cutoff frequency of the first two dominant modes of the SIRW To validate the analysis results, an SIRW guide was designed and measured. Very good agreements between the experimental and theoretical results were obtained.

Characteristics of cross (bypass) coupling through higher/lower order modes and their applications in elliptic filter design <=SEP=> This paper presents a new set of results concerning the use of higher/lower order modes as a means to implement bypass or cross coupling for applications in elliptic filter design. It is shown that the signs of the coupling coefficients to produce a transmission zero (TZ) either below or above the passband are, in certain situations, reversed from the predictions of simpler existing models. In particular, the bypass coupling to higher/lower order modes must be significantly stronger than the coupling to the main resonance in order to generate TZs in the immediate vicinity of the passband. Planar (H-plane) singlets are used to illustrate the derived results. This study should provide very important guidelines in selecting the proper main and bypass couplings for sophisticated filtering structures. Example filters are designed, built, and measured to demonstrate the validity of the introduced theory.

Multilayered substrate integrated waveguide (MSIW) elliptic filter <=SEP=> This letter presents the design and experiment of a novel elliptic filter based on the multilayered substrate integrated waveguide (MSIW) technique. A C-band elliptic filter with four folded MSIW cavities is simulated by using high frequency structure simulator software and fabricated with a two-layer printed circuit board process, the measured results show good performance and in agreement with the simulated results.

Novel compact net-type resonators and their applications to microstrip bandpass filters <=SEP=> Novel compact net-type resonators and their practical applications to microstrip bandpass filters have been presented in this paper. Three kinds of filters are designed and fabricated to demonstrate the practicality of the proposed compact net-type resonators. In addition, by adjusting the structural parameters of the net-type resonators, the spurious frequencies can be properly shifted to higher frequencies. As a result, a three-pole Chebyshev net-type resonator filter with a fractional bandwidth (FBW) of 6.8% has a spurious resonance of up to 4.1f/sub 0/, and it has more than 80% size reduction in comparison with the conventional U-shaped resonator filter. A four-pole quasi-elliptic net-type resonator filter with a FBW of 3.5% has a spurious resonance of up to 5f/sub 0/, and it has approximately 67% size reduction in comparison with the cross-coupled open-loop resonator filter. A three-pole trisection net-type resonator filter with a FBW of 4.7% has a spurious resonance of up to 6.5f/sub 0/, and its size is reduced by 68% in comparison with the trisection open-loop resonator filter. Consequently, each of the designed filters occupies a very small circuit size and has a good stopband response. The measured results are in good agreement with the full-wave simulation results by IE3D.

Today ’ s State-Owned Enterprises of China : Are They Dying Dinosaurs or Dynamic Dynamos ? <=SEP=> NOTE: The authors thank Bianca Bain for her assistance on an earlier draft of the paper and the University of Macao for providing financial support. Summary This paper raises the question and provides empirical evidence regarding the status of the evolution of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China today. In this study, we compare the SOEs to domestic private-owned enterprises (POEs) and foreign-controlled businesses (FCBs) in the context of their organizational cultures. While a new ownership form, many of the POEs, evolved from former collectives that reflect the traditional values of Chinese business. Conversely, the FCBs are much more indicative of the large global MNCs. Therefore, we look at the SOEs in the context of these two reference points. We conclude that the SOEs of today have substantially transformed to approximate a configuration desired by the Chinese government when it began the SOE transformation a couple of decades ago to make them globally competitive. The SOEs of today appear to be appropriately described as China's economic dynamic dynamo for the future.

Simplified high-accuracy calculation of eddy-current loss in round-wire windings <=SEP=> It has recently been shown that the most commonly used methods for calculating high-frequency eddy-current loss in round-wire windings can have substantial error, exceeding 60%. Previous work includes a formula based on a parametric set of finite-element analysis (FEA) simulations that gives proximity-effect loss for a large range of frequencies, using the parameters from a lookup table based on winding geometry. We improve the formula by decreasing the number of parameters in the formula and also, more importantly, by using simple functions to get the parameters from winding geometry such that a large lookup table is not needed. The function we present is exact in the low frequency limit (diameter much smaller than skin depth) and has error less than 4% at higher frequencies. We make our new model complete by examining the field expression needed to get the total proximity-effect loss and by including the skin-effect loss. We also present experimental results confirming the validity of the model and its superiority to standard methods.

Adapting attributes by selecting features similar across domains <=SEP=> Attributes are semantic visual properties shared by objects. They have been shown to improve object recognition and to enhance content-based image search. While attributes are expected to cover multiple categories, e.g. a dalmatian and a whale can both have "smooth skin", we find that the appearance of a single attribute varies quite a bit across categories. Thus, an attribute model learned on one category may not be usable on another category. We show how to adapt attribute models towards new categories. We ensure that positive transfer can occur between a source domain of categories and a novel target domain, by learning in a feature subspace found by feature selection where the data distributions of the domains are similar. We demonstrate that when data from the novel domain is limited, regularizing attribute models for that novel domain with models trained on an auxiliary domain (via Adaptive SVM) improves the accuracy of attribute prediction.

Area-efficient parallel-prefix Ling adders <=SEP=> Efficient addition of binary numbers plays a very important role in the design of dedicated as well as general purpose processors for the implementation of arithmetic and logic units, branch decision, and floating-point operations, address generations, etc. Several methods have been reported in the literature for the fast and hardware-efficient realization of binary additions. Among these methods, parallel-prefix addition schemes have received much of attentions, since they provide many design choices for delay/area-efficient implementations and optimization of tradeoffs. In this paper, we have proposed area-efficient approach for the design of parallel-prefix Ling adders. We have achieved the area efficiency by computing the real carries, based on the Ling carries produced by the lower bit positions. Using the proposed method, the number of logic levels can be reduced by one, which leads to reduction of delay as well as significant saving of area complexity of the adder. We have implemented the proposed adders using 0.18µm CMOS technology; and from the synthesis results, we find that our proposed adders could achieve up to 35% saving of area over the previously reported parallel-prefix Ling adders under the same delay constraints.

3D shape regression for real-time facial animation <=SEP=> We present a real-time performance-driven facial animation system based on 3D shape regression. In this system, the 3D positions of facial landmark points are inferred by a regressor from 2D video frames of an ordinary web camera. From these 3D points, the pose and expressions of the face are recovered by fitting a user-specific blendshape model to them. The main technical contribution of this work is the 3D regression algorithm that learns an accurate, user-specific face alignment model from an easily acquired set of training data, generated from images of the user performing a sequence of predefined facial poses and expressions. Experiments show that our system can accurately recover 3D face shapes even for fast motions, non-frontal faces, and exaggerated expressions. In addition, some capacity to handle partial occlusions and changing lighting conditions is demonstrated.

Explaining International Migration in the Skype Network: The Role of Social Network Features <=SEP=> In recent years, several new ways have appeared for quantifying human migration such as location based smartphone applications and tracking user activity from websites. To show usefulness of these new approaches, we present the results of a study of cross-country migration as observed via login events in the Skype network. We explore possibility to extract human migration and correlate it with institutional statistics. The study demonstrates that a number of social network features are strongly related to net migration from and to a given country, as well as net migration between pairs of countries. Specifically, we find that percentage of international calls, percentage of international links and foreign logins in a country, complemented by gross domestic product, can be used as relatively accurate proxies for estimating migration.

Compact Proofs of Retrievability <=SEP=> In a proof-of-retrievability system, a data storage center must prove to a verifier that he is actually storing all of a client’s data. The central challenge is to build systems that are both efficient and provably secure—that is, it should be possible to extract the client’s data from any prover that passes a verification check. In this paper, we give the first proof-of-retrievability schemes with full proofs of security against arbitrary adversaries in the strongest model, that of Juels and Kaliski. Our first scheme, built from BLS signatures and secure in the random oracle model, features a proof-of-retrievability protocol in which the client’s query and server’s response are both extremely short. This scheme allows public verifiability: anyone can act as a verifier, not just the file owner. Our second scheme, which builds on pseudorandom functions (PRFs) and is secure in the standard model, allows only private verification. It features a proof-of-retrievability protocol with an even shorter server’s response than our first scheme, but the client’s query is long. Both schemes rely on homomorphic properties to aggregate a proof into one small authenticator value.

Verilog HDL model based thermometer-to-binary encoder with bubble error correction <=SEP=> This paper compares several approaches to come up with the Verilog HDL model of the thermometer-to-binary encoder with bubble error correction. It has been demonstrated that implementations of different ideas to correct bubble errors yield circuits whose parameters tremendously vary in delay, area and power consumption. The shortest delay is achieved for the design synthesized from the model which mimics a human reading temperature on classic liquid-in-glass thermometer.

Robust detection of non-motorized road users using deep learning on optical and LIDAR data <=SEP=> Detection of non-motorized road users, such as cyclists and pedestrians, is a challenging problem in collision warning/collision avoidance (CW/CA) systems as direct information (e.g. location, speed, and class) cannot be obtained from such users. In this paper, we propose a fusion of LIDAR data and a deep learning-based computer vision algorithm, to substantially improve the detection of regions of interest (ROIs) and subsequent identification of road users. Experimental results on the KITTI object detection benchmark quantify the effectiveness of incorporating LIDAR data with region-based deep convolutional networks. Thus our work provides another step towards the goal of designing safe and smart transportation systems of the future.

Blockchain Platform for Industrial Internet of Things <=SEP=> Internet of Things (IoT) are being adopted for industrial and manufacturing applications such as manufacturing automation, remote machine diagnostics, prognostic health management of industrial machines and supply chain management. CloudBased Manufacturing is a recent on-demand model of manufacturing that is leveraging IoT technologies. While Cloud-Based Manufacturing enables on-demand access to manufacturing resources, a trusted intermediary is required for transactions between the users who wish to avail manufacturing services. We present a decentralized, peer-to-peer platform called BPIIoT for Industrial Internet of Things based on the Block chain technology. With the use of Blockchain technology, the BPIIoT platform enables peers in a decentralized, trustless, peer-to-peer network to interact with each other without the need for a trusted intermediary.

Fully automatic detection and segmentation of abdominal aortic thrombus in post-operative CTA images using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks <=SEP=> Computerized Tomography Angiography (CTA) based follow-up of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms (AAA) treated with Endovascular Aneurysm Repair (EVAR) is essential to evaluate the progress of the patient and detect complications. In this context, accurate quantification of post-operative thrombus volume is required. However, a proper evaluation is hindered by the lack of automatic, robust and reproducible thrombus segmentation algorithms. We propose a new fully automatic approach based on Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN) for robust and reproducible thrombus region of interest detection and subsequent fine thrombus segmentation. The DetecNet detection network is adapted to perform region of interest extraction from a complete CTA and a new segmentation network architecture, based on Fully Convolutional Networks and a Holistically-Nested Edge Detection Network, is presented. These networks are trained, validated and tested in 13 post-operative CTA volumes of different patients using a 4-fold cross-validation approach to provide more robustness to the results. Our pipeline achieves a Dice score of more than 82% for post-operative thrombus segmentation and provides a mean relative volume difference between ground truth and automatic segmentation that lays within the experienced human observer variance without the need of human intervention in most common cases.

The infrastructure problem in HCI <=SEP=> HCI endeavors to create human-centered computer systems, but underlying technological infrastructures often stymie these efforts. We outline three specific classes of user experience difficulties caused by underlying technical infrastructures, which we term constrained possibilities, unmediated interaction, and interjected abstractions. We explore how prior approaches in HCI have addressed these issues, and discuss new approaches that will be required for future progress. We argue that the HCI community must become more deeply involved with the creation of technical infrastructures. Doing so, however, requires a substantial expansion to the methodological toolbox of HCI.

An examination of the celebrity endorsements and online customer reviews influence female consumers' shopping behavior <=SEP=> 0747-5632/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. A http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.08.005 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +886 2 2737 6764; fa E-mail address: melodyps@gmail.com (P.-S. Wei). The goal of this study is to compare the influence of celebrity endorsements to online customer reviews on female shopping behavior. Based on AIDMA and AISAS models, we design an experiment to investigate consumer responses to search good and experience good respectively. The results revealed that search good (shoes) endorsed by a celebrity in an advertisement evoked significantly more attention, desire, and action from the consumer than did an online customer review. We also found that online customer reviews emerged higher than the celebrity endorsement on the scale of participants’ memory, search and share attitudes toward the experience good (toner). Implications for marketers as well as suggestions for future research are discussed. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Hat-Delta --- One Right Does Make a Wrong <=SEP=> We outline two methods for locating bugs in a program. This is done by comparing computations of the same program with different input. At least one of these computations must produce a correct result, while exactly one must exhibit some erroneous behaviour. Firstly reductions that are thought highly likely to be correct are eliminated from the search for the bug. Secondly, a program slicing technique is used to identify areas of code that are likely to be correct. Both methods have been implemented. In combination with algorithmic debugging they provide a system that quickly and accurately identifies bugs.

Terabit/sec-class board-level optical interconnects through polymer waveguides using 24-channel bidirectional transceiver modules <=SEP=> We report here on the design, fabrication and characterization of an integrated optical data bus designed for terabit/sec-class module-to-module on-board data transfer using integrated optical transceivers. The parallel optical transceiver is based on a through-silicon-via (TSV) silicon carrier as the platform for integration of 24-channel VCSEL and photodiode arrays with CMOS ICs. The Si carrier also includes optical vias (holes) for optical access to conventional surface-emitting 850-nm optoelectronic (OE) devices. The 48-channel transceiver is flip-chip soldered to an organic carrier forming the transceiver Optomodule. The optical printed circuit board (o-PCB) is a typical FR4 board with a polymer waveguide layer added on top. A 48-channel flex-waveguide is fabricated separately and attached to the FR4 board. Turning mirrors are fabricated into the waveguides and a lens array is attached to facilitate optical coupling. An assembly procedure has been developed to surface mount the Optomodule to the o-PCB using a ball grid array (BGA) process which provides both electrical and optical interconnections. Efficient optical coupling is achieved using a dual-lens optical system, with one lens array incorporated into the Optomodule and a second on the o-PCB. Fully functional Optomodules with 24 transmitter + 24 receiver channels were characterized with transmitters operating up to 20 Gb/s and receivers up to 15 Gb/s. Finally, two Optomodules were assembled onto an o-PCB and a full optical link demonstrated, achieving > 20 bidirectional links at 10 Gb/s. At 15 Gb/s, error-free operation was demonstrated for 15 channels in each direction, realizing a record o-PCB link with a 225 Gb/s bidirectional aggregate data rate.

PLUG: flexible lookup modules for rapid deployment of new protocols in high-speed routers <=SEP=> New protocols for the data link and network layer are being proposed to address limitations of current protocols in terms of scalability, security, and manageability. High-speed routers and switches that implement these protocols traditionally perform packet processing using ASICs which offer high speed, low chip area, and low power. But with inflexible custom hardware, the deployment of new protocols could happen only through equipment upgrades. While newer routers use more flexible network processors for data plane processing, due to power and area constraints lookups in forwarding tables are done with custom lookup modules. Thus most of the proposed protocols can only be deployed with equipment upgrades. To speed up the deployment of new protocols, we propose a flexible lookup module, PLUG (Pipelined Lookup Grid). We can achieve generality without loosing efficiency because various custom lookup modules have the same fundamental features we retain: area dominated by memories, simple processing, and strict access patterns defined by the data structure. We implemented IPv4, Ethernet, Ethane, and SEATTLE in our dataflow-based programming model for the PLUG and mapped them to the PLUG hardware which consists of a grid of tiles. Throughput, area, power, and latency of PLUGs are close to those of specialized lookup modules.

Algorithmic improvements for fast concurrent Cuckoo hashing <=SEP=> Fast concurrent hash tables are an increasingly important building block as we scale systems to greater numbers of cores and threads. This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of a high-throughput and memory-efficient concurrent hash table that supports multiple readers and writers. The design arises from careful attention to systems-level optimizations such as minimizing critical section length and reducing interprocessor coherence traffic through algorithm re-engineering. As part of the architectural basis for this engineering, we include a discussion of our experience and results adopting Intel's recent hardware transactional memory (HTM) support to this critical building block. We find that naively allowing concurrent access using a coarse-grained lock on existing data structures reduces overall performance with more threads. While HTM mitigates this slowdown somewhat, it does not eliminate it. Algorithmic optimizations that benefit both HTM and designs for fine-grained locking are needed to achieve high performance.
 Our performance results demonstrate that our new hash table design---based around optimistic cuckoo hashing---outperforms other optimized concurrent hash tables by up to 2.5x for write-heavy workloads, even while using substantially less memory for small key-value items. On a 16-core machine, our hash table executes almost 40 million insert and more than 70 million lookup operations per second.

Information-Driven Dynamic Sensor Collaboration for Tracking Applications <=SEP=> This article overviews the information-driven approach to sensor collaboration in ad hoc sensor networks. The main idea is for a network to determine participants in a " sensor collaboration " by dynamically optimizing the information utility of data for a given cost of communication and computation. A definition of information utility is introduced, and several approximate measures of the information utility are developed for reasons of computational tractability. We illustrate the use of this approach using examples drawn from tracking applications. I. INTRODUCTION The technology of wirelessly networked micro-sensors promises to revolutionize the way we live, work, and interact with the physical environment. For example, tiny, inexpensive sensors can be " sprayed " onto roads, walls, or machines to monitor and detect a variety of interesting events such as highway traffic, wildlife habitat condition, forest fire, manufacturing job flow, and military battlefield situation.

Estimating 3D Hand Pose from a Cluttered Image <=SEP=> A method is proposed that can generate a ranked list of plausible three-dimensional hand configurations that best match an input image. Hand pose estimation is formulated as an image database indexing problem, where the closest matches for an input hand image are retrieved from a large database of synthetic hand images. In contrast to previous approaches, the system can function in the presence of clutter, thanks to two novel clutter-tolerant indexing methods. First, a computationally efficient approximation of the image-to-model chamfer distance is obtained by embedding binary edge images into a high-dimensional Euclidean space. Second, a general-purpose, probabilistic line matching method identifies those line segment correspondences between model and input images that are the least likely to have occurred by chance. The performance of this cluttertolerant approach is demonstrated in quantitative experiments with hundreds of real hand images.

Thermal degradation of DRAM retention time: Characterization and improving techniques <=SEP=> Variation of DRAM retention time and reliability problem induced by thermal stress was investigated. Most of the DRAM cells revealed 2-state retention time with thermal stress. The effects of hydrogen annealing condition and fluorine implantation on the variation of retention time and reliability are discussed.

Data Science , Predictive Analytics , and Big Data : A Revolution That Will Transform Supply Chain Design and Management <=SEP=> W e illuminate the myriad of opportunities for research where supply chain management (SCM) intersects with data science, predictive analytics, and big data, collectively referred to as DPB. We show that these terms are not only becoming popular but are also relevant to supply chain research and education. Data science requires both domain knowledge and a broad set of quantitative skills, but there is a dearth of literature on the topic and many questions. We call for research on skills that are needed by SCM data scientists and discuss how such skills and domain knowledge affect the effectiveness of an SCM data scientist. Such knowledge is crucial to develop future supply chain leaders. We propose definitions of data science and predictive analytics as applied to SCM. We examine possible applications of DPB in practice and provide examples of research questions from these applications, as well as examples of research questions employing DPB that stem from management theories. Finally, we propose specific steps interested researchers can take to respond to our call for research on the intersection of SCM and DPB.

An integrated charger using segmented windings of interior permanent magnet motor based on 3 phase with 9 windings <=SEP=> Connecting the plug of electric vehicles (EVs) into the grid source directly means to charge the battery. The electric power generated from the grid goes through the electric motor, crosses the bidirectional inverter used as three-boost rectifier and is received by the load (battery). An innovative fast-integrated charger based on segmented windings of permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) is introduced for plug-in electric vehicles (PEV). The three-phase with nine windings of PMSM is used during the traction and charging modes. Three (or single) phases of grid source are directly connected to the neutral points of segmented PMSM windings to provide high power density to the battery. The system configuration and operation of charging mode are explained in detail for proposed integrated on-board charger. The simulation models are designed by using Ansoft Maxwell, Ansys Maxwell circuit editor, and Matlab/Simulink softwares, and simulation results are presented to verify the performance of the proposed system. In addition, the experimental setup of the integrated system is under progress.

From the Internet of Computers to the Internet of Things <=SEP=> This paper1 discusses the vision, the challenges, possible usage scenarios and technological building blocks of the “Internet of Things”. In particular, we consider RFID and other important technological developments such as IP stacks and web servers for smart everyday objects. The paper concludes with a discussion of social and governance issues that are likely to arise as the vision of the Internet of Things becomes a reality.

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Query Optimization Techniques In Graph Databases <=SEP=> Graph databases (GDB) have recently been arisen to overcome the limits of traditional databases for storing and managing data with graph-like structure. Today, they represent a requirementfor many applications that manage graph-like data,like social networks.Most of the techniques, applied to optimize queries in graph databases, have been used in traditional databases, distribution systems,... or they are inspired from graph theory. However, their reuse in graph databases should take care of the main characteristics of graph databases, such as dynamic structure, highly interconnected data, and ability to efficiently access data relationships. In this paper, we survey the query optimization techniques in graph databases. In particular,we focus on the features they have introduced to improve querying graph-like data.