Distribution of melamine in polyester–melamine surface coatings cured under nonisothermal conditions

The influence of experimental cure parameters on the diffusion of reactive species in polyester–melamine thermoset coatings during curing has been investigated with X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy and attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared. The diffusion of melamine plays a vital role in the curing process and, therefore, in the ultimate properties of coatings. At a low (<20%) hexamethoxymethylmelamine (HMMM) crosslinker concentration, the matrix composition is uniform, but at high HMMM concentrations, excess HMMM rapidly segregates to the air–coating interface. The rate of migration is governed by the difference in the surface free energies of polyester and HMMM and the concentration gradient of HMMM between the bulk and the surface. An increased rate of energy absorption also increases the rate of migration of HMMM to the surface. A physical model has been proposed to explain this surface segregation phenomenon in terms of cocondensation and self‐condensation reactions. It suggests that an appropriate amount of melamine can be segregated on the surface and allowed to self‐condense to form a desired thickness of a melamine topcoat through the control of the binder composition and cure conditions. This technique can be implemented to apply a melamine topcoat during cure. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 42: 83–91, 2004     

Analytical general results for handoff dwell time distribution in wireless networks

1 Introduction The calling dwell time characteristic is critical for the user network planning and deployment, e.g., global system for mobile communications (GSM), as well as the next generation wireless multimedia networks, such as, the currently standar…     

Call Admission Policies Based on Calculated Power Control Setpoints in SIR-Based Power-Controlled DS-CDMA Cellular Networks

In this paper, we develop call admission control algorithms for SIR-based power-controlled DS-CDMA cellular networks. We consider networks that handle both voice and data services. When a new call (or a handoff call) arrives at a base station requesting for admission, our algorithms will calculate the desired power control setpoints for the new call and all existing calls. We will provide necessary and sufficient conditions under which the power control algorithm will have a feasible solution. These conditions are obtained through deriving the inverse of the matrix used in the calculation of power control setpoints. If there is no feasible solution to power control or if the desired power levels to be received at the base station for some calls are larger than the maximum allowable power limits, the admission request will be rejected. Otherwise, the admission request will be granted. When higher priority is desired for handoff calls, we will allow different thresholds (i.e., different maximum allowable power limits) for new calls and handoff calls. We will develop an adaptive algorithm that adjusts these thresholds in real-time as environment changes. The performance of our algorithms will be shown through computer simulation and compared with existing algorithms.     

ATM防火墙技术

ATM网络在很多方面与当今的其它通信网络不同.提出一种ATM防火墙结构,研究它对ATM的影响,提出了ATM防火墙的实现方法.为不影响ATM网络的高性能,提出了ATM防火墙中结合入侵检测的思想.     

Spectral pattern recognition of improved voice quality

The self-organizing map (a neural network) was applied to the spectral pattern recognition of voice quality in 34 subjects: 15 patients operated on because of insufficient glottal closure and 19 subjects not treated for voice disorders. The voice samples, segments of sustained /a/, were perceptually rated by six experts. A self-organized acoustic feature map was first computed from tokens of /a/ and then used for the analysis of the samples. The locations of the samples on the map were determined and the distances from a normal reference were compared with the perceptual ratings. The map locations corresponded to the degree of audible disorder: the samples judged as normal were overlapping or close to the normal reference, whereas the samples judged as dysphonie were located further away from it. The comparison of pre- and postoperative samples of the patients showed that the perceived improvement of voice quality was also detected by the map.     

Cyclic networks with general blocking and starvation

We introducegeneral starvation and consider cyclic networks withgeneral blocking and starvation (GBS). The mechanism of general blocking allows the server to process a limited number of jobs when the buffer downstream is full, and that of general starvation allows the server to perform a limited number of services in anticipation of jobs that are yet to arrive. The two main goals of this paper are to investigate how the throughput of cyclic GBS networks is affected by varying (1) the total number of jobsJ, and (2) the buffer allocationk=(k₁..., k_m) subject to a fixed total buffer capacityK=k ₁ +... + k_m. In particular, we obtain sufficient conditions for the throughput to be symmetric inJ and to be maximized whenJ=K/2. We also show that the equal buffer allocation is optimal under the two regimes of light or heavy usage. In order to establish these results, we obtain several intermediate structural properties of the throughput, using duality, reversibility, and concavity, which are of independent interest.Research supported in part by NSF Grant No. ECS-8919818.     

A routing framework for providing robustness to node failures in mobile ad hoc networks

Nodes in a mobile ad hoc network are often vulnerable to failures. The failures could be either due to fading effects, battery drainage, or as a result of compromised nodes that do not participate in network operations. Intermittent node failures can disrupt routing functionalities. As such, it is important to provide redundancy in terms of providing multiple node-disjoint paths from a source to a destination. In line with this objective, we first propose a modified version of the widely studied ad hoc on-demand distance vector routing protocol to facilitate the discovery of multiple node-disjoint paths from a source to a destination. We find that very few of such paths can be found. Furthermore, as distances between sources and destinations increase, bottlenecks inevitably occur and thus, the possibility of finding multiple paths is considerably reduced. We conclude that it is necessary to place what we call reliable nodes (in terms of both being robust to failure and being secure) in the network to support efficient routing operations. We propose a deployment strategy that determines the positions and the trajectories of these reliable nodes such that we can achieve a framework for reliably routing information. We define a notion of a reliable path which is made up of multiple segments, each of which either entirely consists of reliable nodes, or contains a preset number of multiple paths between the end points of the segment. We show that the probability of establishing a reliable path between a random source and destination pair increases tremendously even with a small number of reliable nodes when we use our algorithm to appropriately position these reliable nodes.     

Dynamic Survivability in WDM Mesh Networks Under Dynamic Traffic

Network survivability is a crucial requirement in WDM mesh networks. In this paper, we systematically consider the problem of dynamic survivability with dynamic single link failure in WDM networks under dynamic traffic demands. Specifically, we investigate various protection schemes, such as dedicated path protection (DPP), shared path protection (SPP), dedicated link protection (DLP), shared link protection (SLP), and two restoration schemes, path restoration (PR) and link restoration (LR). Moreover, two new shared protection methods are proposed, i.e., SRLG-based shared link protection (SRLG-SLP) and SRLG-based shared path protection (SRLG-SPP). The SRLG (shared risk link group) constraint defines the availability of protection resources to a working path, which requires that any two working paths sharing the same risk of failure (or in the same SRLG) cannot share the same protection resources. Furthermore, in our study, we consider a more practical dynamic single-link failure model, in which the link-failure-interarrival time and link-failure-holding time are considered as two independent parameters. Based on this link-failure model, extensive simulations are done to analyze and compare the dynamic survivable performance of various protection and restoration schemes. Resource utilization, protection efficiency, restoration efficiency, and service disruption ratio are employed as survivable performance metrics versus traffic load, link-failure frequency, and link-failure reparation time to evaluate the survivable performance. Many meaningful results are given. In addition, we show that the developed SRLG-SLP and SRLG-SPP protection schemes perform very well in terms of protection efficiency and service disruption ratio, while sacrificing some performance in terms of resource utilization.     

EXPONENTIAL STABILITY AND PERIODIC SOLUTION OF HYBRID BIDIRECTIONAL ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY NEURAL NETWORKS WITH DISCRETE DELAYS

In this paper, we study the existence, uniqueness, and the global exponential stability of the periodic solution and equilibrium of hybrid bidirectional associative memory neural networks with discrete delays. By ingeniously importing real parameters di > 0 (i = 1,2, …, n) which can be adjusted, making use of the Lyapunov functional method and some analysis techniques, some new sufficient conditions are established. Our results generalize and improve the related results in [9]. These conditions can be used both to design globally exponentially stable and periodical oscillatory hybrid bidirectional associative neural networks with discrete delays, and to enlarge the area of designing neural networks. Our work has important significance in related theory and its application.     

A Review of Wavelets for Digital Wireless Communication

Wavelets have been favorably applied in almost all aspects of digital wireless communication systems including data compression, source and channel coding, signal denoising, channel modeling and design of transceivers. The main property of wavelets in these applications is in their flexibility and ability to characterize signals accurately. In this paper recent trends and developments in the use of wavelets in wireless communications are reviewed. Major applications of wavelets in wireless channel modeling, interference mitigation, denoising, OFDM modulation, multiple access, Ultra Wideband communications, cognitive radio and wireless networks are surveyed. The confluence of information and communication technologies and the possibility of ubiquitous connectivity have posed a challenge to developing technologies and architectures capable of handling large volumes of data under severe resource constraints such as power and bandwidth. Wavelets are uniquely qualified to address this challenge. The flexibility and adaptation provided by wavelets have made wavelet technology a strong candidate for future wireless communication. Madan Kumar Lakshmanan was born in Chennai, India, in 1979. He received the B.E. (with distinction) in electrical engineering from the University of Madras, Chennai, India, in 2000. He joined the Indian Software firm, Polaris Software Labs Ltd., in 2000 where he wrote software for Telecommunication applications. At Polaris, he was awarded the “On The Spot Of Excellence Award” for his efforts. In 2003, he moved to the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, to develop and establish a wireless communications network for rural connectivity. In 2004, he was awarded the Royal Dutch/Shell Chevning scholarship to pursue a Master degree in Telecommunications at the Delft University of Technology (TUDelft). At TUDelft he is affiliated to the International Research Center for Telecommunications-Transmission and Radar (IRCTR) where he is undertaking research in the field of wavelets applications in Wireless Communications. Homayoun Nikookar received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology (TUDelft), The Netherlands, in 1995. From 1995 to 1998 he was a postdoc researcher at the International Research Center for Telecommunications-Transmission and Radar, TUDelft, where since 1999 he has been an Assistant Professor. Dr. Nikookar has done research on different areas of wireless communications, including wireless channel modeling, UWB, MIMO, multicarrier transmission, Wavelet-based OFDM and CDMA. He is a senior member of the IEEE.