Varactor-Tuned Dual-Band Quadrature Hybrid Coupler

A tunable dual-band quadrature hybrid coupler for mobile GSM bands (900 and 1800MHz) is proposed and characterized. The structure is composed of four quarter-wavelength sections at a frequency located between the two operating frequencies and two pairs of open-ended stubs. Frequency tuning is achieved by modifying the electrical length of the open-ended stubs with varactor-diode capacitors. A dual-band tunability of 33% and 10% is obtained for the first and the second bands, respectively     

Analysis of class D inverter with irregular driving patterns

This paper presents an analysis of Class D inverter when irregular driving patterns are given to the gate drive of the switch devices. The analysis has been carried out with focusing on the waveforms, harmonics, low-frequency components, output power, and equivalent dc resistance, which are numerically analyzed and discussed. Class D inverters with six different Q factors from 0.1 to 20 are analyzed about 2/sup 16/ driving patterns for each Q. Superior four models of the six inverters are built and tested in circuit experiments. The calculated waveforms are compared to the experimental results. Both of them are agreed well in time domain and frequency domain. Analytical results show a possibility of a novel control method with irregular driving patterns. In spite of discontinuous control, the output power or voltage can be strictly changed as if continuous using the selected driving patterns in some ranges.     

Convergence and trust in eCommerce

Trust is the key element of commerce, both for traditional models and — more recently — for eCommerce. Unlike its traditional counterpart, eCommerce relies on trust being created and maintained with the help of digital devices and services. Convergence brings significant changes to the way people interact through digital media by offering ubiquitous and seamless communication. This has a significant impact on the way trust is established and maintained, with consequent impact upon eCommerce. This paper identifies a number of the most important challenges to trust in eCommerce as well as trust-related aspects of key enablers of eCommerce. From this perspective, the paper studies an impact of convergence on trust within eCommerce to identify several positive relationships.     

Colloidal Synthesis of Hollow Cobalt Sulfide Nanocrystals

Formation of cobalt sulfide hollow nanocrystals through a mechanism similar to the Kirkendall Effect has been investigated in detail. It is found that performing the reaction at > 120 °C leads to fast formation of a single void inside each shell, whereas at room temperature multiple voids are formed within each shell, which can be attributed to strongly temperature‐dependent diffusivities for vacancies. The void formation process is dominated by outward diffusion of cobalt cations; still, the occurrence of significant inward transport of sulfur anions can be inferred as the final voids are smaller in diameter than the original cobalt nanocrystals. Comparison of volume distributions for initial and final nanostructures indicates excess apparent volume in shells, implying significant porosity and/or a defective structure. Indirect evidence for fracture of shells during growth at lower temperatures was observed in shell‐size statistics and transmission electron microscopy images of as‐grown shells. An idealized model of the diffusional process imposes two minimal requirements on material parameters for shell growth to be obtainable within a specific synthetic system.     

Encapsulation and Ostwald Ripening of Au and Au–Cl Complex Nanostructures in Silica Shells

We report a general template strategy for rational fabrication of a new class of nanostructured materials consisting of multicore shell particles. Our approach is demonstrated by encapsulating Au or Pt nanoparticles in silica shells. Other superstructures of these hollow shells, like dimers, trimers, and tetramers can also be formed by nanoparticle‐mediated self‐assembly. We have also used the as‐prepared multicore Au–silica hollow particles to perform the first studies of Ostwald ripening in confined microspace, in which chloride was found to be an efficient mediating ligand. After treatment with aqua regia, Au–Cl complex is formed inside the shell, and is found to be very active under in situ transmission electron microscopy observations while confined in a microcell. This aspect of the work is expected to motivate further in situ studies of confined crystal growth.     

Comprehensive heat exchange model for a semiconductor laser diode

By measuring the total energy flow from an optical device, we can develop new design strategies for thermal stabilization. Here we present a comprehensive model for heat exchange between a semiconductor laser diode and its environment that includes the mechanisms of conduction, convection, and radiation. We perform quantitative measurements of these processes for several devices, deriving parameters such as a laser's heat transfer coefficient, and then demonstrate the feasibility of thermal probing for the nondestructive wafer-scale characterization of optical devices.     

Pilot: probabilistic lightweight group communication system for ad hoc networks

Providing reliable group communication is an ever recurring topic in distributed settings. In mobile ad hoc networks, this problem is even more significant since all nodes act as peers, while it becomes more challenging due to highly dynamic and unpredictable topology changes. In order to overcome these difficulties, we deviate from the conventional point of view, i.e., we "fight fire with fire," by exploiting the nondeterministic nature of ad hoc networks. Inspired by the principles of gossip mechanisms and probabilistic quorum systems, we present in this paper PILOT (probabilistic lightweight group communication system) for ad hoc networks, a two-layer system consisting of a set of protocols for reliable multicasting and data sharing in mobile ad hoc networks. The performance of PILOT is predictable and controllable in terms of both reliability (fault tolerance) and efficiency (overhead). We present an analysis of PILOT's performance, which is used to fine-tune protocol parameters to obtain the desired trade off between reliability and efficiency. We confirm the predictability and tunability of PILOT through simulations with ns-2.     

Note on B-splines, wavelet scaling functions, and Gabor frames

Let g be a continuous, compactly supported function on such that the integer translates of g constitute a partition of unity. We show that the Gabor system (g,a,b), with window g and time-shift and frequency-shift parameters a,b>0 has no lower frame bound larger than 0 if b=2,3,... and a>0. In particular, (g,a,b) is not a Gabor frame if g is a continuous, compactly supported wavelet scaling function and if b=2,3,... and a>0. We give an example for our result for the case that g=B/sub 1/, the triangle function supported by [-1,1], by showing pictures of the canonical dual corresponding to (g,a,b) where ab=1/4 and b crosses the lines N=2,3,.     

Adaptive joint subband vector quantisation codec for handheld videophone applications

A new wavelet-based video codec is presented, which joins vectors in the same subbands of different frames in a frame group and uses the properties of the human visual system. Perceptual weights are designed and used in the vector selection and quantisation of the wavelet coefficients. Results indicate a significant improvement in frame quality compared to JPEG2000 image sequence coder.     

Performance study of iSCSI-based storage subsystems

iISCSI is emerging as an end-to-end protocol for transporting storage I/O block data over IP networks. By exploiting the ubiquitous Internet infrastructure, iSCSI greatly facilitates remote storage, remote backup, and data mirroring. This article evaluates the performance of two typical iSCSI storage subsystems by measuring and analyzing block-level I/O access performance and file-level access performance. In the file-level performance study, we compare file access performance in an NAS scheme with that in an iSCSI-based SAN scheme. Our test results show that Gigabit Ethernet-based iSCSI can reach very high bandwidth, close to that of a direct FC disk access in block I/O access. However, when the iSCSI traverses through longer distance, throughput relies heavily on the available bandwidth between the initiator and the target. On the other hand, the file-level performance shows that iSCSI-based file access (SAN scheme) provides higher performance than using NFS protocol in Linux and SMB protocol in Windows (NAS scheme). However, the advantage of using iSCSI-based file accesses decreases as the file size increases. The obtained experimental results shed some light on the performance of applications based on iSCSI storage.