Depth completion towards different sensor configurations via relative depth map estimation and scale recovery

Depth completion, which combines additional sparse depth information from the range sensors, substantially improves the accuracy of monocular depth estimation, especially using the deep-learning-based methods. However, these methods can hardly produce satisfactory depth results when the sensor configuration changes at test time, which is important for real-world applications. In this paper, the problem is tackled by our proposed novel two-stage mechanism, which decomposes depth completion into two subtasks, namely relative depth map estimation and scale recovery. The relative depth map is first estimated from a single color image with our designed scale-invariant loss function. Then the scale map is recovered with the additional sparse depth. Experiments on different densities and patterns of the sparse depth input show that our model always produces satisfactory depth results. Besides, our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance on the indoor NYUv2 dataset and performs competitively on the outdoor KITTI dataset, demonstrating the effectiveness of our method.     

OFDM系统中基于压缩感知恢复由限幅和HPA产生的非线性失真研究

正交频分复用（Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing,OFDM）系统的主要缺点之一就是有较高的峰均功率比（Peak to Average Power Ratio,PAPR）,降低了功率放大器（High Power Amplifier,HPA）的工作效率,同时HPA引入的非线性失真,恶化了系统的误比特率（Bite Error Rate,BER）性能.本文所提算法将限幅和HPA引入的非线性失真视为一个整体来考虑,利用与限幅噪声在时域上的近似稀疏性,对整个非线性过程进行建模.发送端通过限幅降低了OFDM信号的PAPR,在接收端,选取受噪声干扰小的可靠性观测向量,最小化信道噪声的影响,基于非线性模型计算得到的参数,利用压缩感知（Compressive Sensing,CS）算法能有效地恢复总的非线性失真信号,提升了系统的BER性能.     

Bioeconomic modeling of household waste recovery

The ecological consciousness has driven developed societies to explore alternatives to the growing need for energy and the consequent increase in waste production. The adjustment towards the waste recovery and their transformation into energy, by various processes, is then necessary. However, so far, the domain has not benefited much from a mathematical modeling approach. The main contribution of this work consists of building a bioeconomic model describing the problem of a potential investor who aims to maximize his net profit generated by selling the produced energy from the household waste transformation. We first study the evolution of a waste stock, the energy quantity produced, and the capital dedicated to the transformation process in a giving landfill and recovery center. Then we insert decision variables to this dynamic which are both the investment and the part of waste to be treated. This leads to an optimal control problem which we solve by the deductive method. The resulted solution is then illustrated by some numerical simulations. This investment policy would be to support the decision makers to go towards investment in this activity.     

CFR: A cooperative link failure recovery scheme in software‐defined networks

Software‐defined networking that separates the control plane from the data plane is envisioned as a promising technology to enable resilient and flexible network management. Tolerating link failures is a fundamental problem in enhancing such network resilience in software‐defined networking. Reactive and proactive fault tolerant schemes for conventional networks may not well balance the fault recovery time and network performance, since the proactive scheme typically underutilizes resources and the reactive scheme usually incurs a longer recovery time. In this paper, we propose a cooperative link failure recovery scheme to find a fine‐grained trade‐off between resource utilization and recovery time by combining reactive and proactive methods. We formalize the problem of link failure recovery as a multiobjective optimization problem and devise a 2‐stage algorithm for it. The first stage of the algorithm guarantees connectivity restoration in an acceptable recovery interval based on fast failover feature supported in OpenFlow protocol, meanwhile it assigns virtual local area network tags to back up paths for achieving a lower memory consumption. The second stage of the algorithm guarantees the quality of service for different applications by adjusting the backup paths after rapid connectivity restoration. Extensive simulations highlight that cooperative link failure recovery scheme can satisfy both the carrier‐grade recovery requirements and quality of service requirements in terms of delay and network bandwidth.     

Design of an FPGA based DPLL with fuzzy logic controllable loop filters with application customization capability

The carrier recovery loops are important in carrier tracking approaches particularly in the presence of high dynamic stress on user receivers and noisy environment applications. The precise carrier tracking techniques are proposed in systems that are sensitive to carrier mismatches, such as terrestrial or satellite tracking systems. The fading phenomenon, phase and frequency step changes and high user dynamics are currently most important challenges in the development of robust carrier tracking systems. In this work, a novel Digital Phase Locked Loop (DPLL) is proposed using type-2 fuzzy logic controller to improve noise immunity and handling user dynamic in digital receivers with application customization capability. Due to fast and accurate decision-making by proposed fuzzy logic controller, optimal loop filter coefficients are generated for DPLL. The proposed DPLL is simulated with Xilinx System Generator Software and can be implemented on FPGA. In comparison to traditional approaches, proposed new DPLL shows better performance in response to phase step, frequency step and frequency ramp signals with acceptable settling time alongside minimum complexity in implementation and customization.     

A performance comparison of measurement matrices in compressive sensing

Compressive sensing involves 3 main processes: signal sparse representation, linear encoding or measurement collection, and nonlinear decoding or sparse recovery. In the measurement process, a measurement matrix is used to sample only the components that best represent the signal. The choice of the measurement matrix has an important impact on the accuracy and the processing time of the sparse recovery process. Hence, the design of accurate measurement matrices is of vital importance in compressive sensing. Over the last decade, a number of measurement matrices have been proposed. Therefore, a detailed review of these measurement matrices and a comparison of their performances are strongly needed. This paper explains the foundation of compressive sensing and highlights the process of measurement by reviewing the existing measurement matrices. It provides a 3‐level classification and compares the performance of 8 measurement matrices belonging to 4 different types using 5 evaluation metrics: the recovery error, processing time, recovery time, covariance, and phase transition diagram. The theoretical performance comparison is validated with experimental results, and the results show that the Circulant, Toeplitz, and Hadamard matrices outperform the other measurement matrices.     

Dynamics of nonspecific adsorption of insulin to erythrocyte membranes

Molecules may arrive at targets (receptors, enzymes, etc.) localized on a membrane surface by first adsorbing onto the surface and then surface diffusing to the targets. The flux rate of molecules arriving at targets via this mechanism depends on the surface diffusion coefficient of the molecules and, in some circumstances, on the adsorption/desorption kinetics. The technique of total internal reflection with fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (TIR-FRAP) was used here to study these rate parameters of fluorescein-labeled insulin (f-insulin) interacting with erythrocyte ghosts. Ghosts were adhered to polylysine coated slides for TIR illumination. Some ghosts became flattened and unsealed on the polylysine so that both extracellular and cytoplasmic sides of the membrane were openly exposed to the solution. An aluminum thin film between the polylysine and the fused silica of a slide quenched background fluorescence from f-insulin adsorbed directly onto the polylysine. An interference fringe pattern from two intersecting and totally internally reflecting laser beams provided surface-selective excitation with a spatial variation of illumination intensity across a ghost for surface diffusion measurements. Measured characteristic values of desorption rate constants ranged from 0.043 to 270 s^–1. According to a preexisting theoretical model, the largest desorption rate constant in this range would result in some increase in the total flux rate to a perfect sink target due to capture from the surface, provided that the surface diffusion coefficient was about 10^–8 cm²/s. However, based on TIR-FRAP measurements on our system, we estimate that the surface diffusion coefficient is less than about 5×10^–10 cm²/s. The combination of novel techniques presented here may prove valuable to other workers seeking to make diffusive and chemical kinetic rate parameter measurements of biomolecules at biological cell membranes.     

低温省煤器技术在电厂锅炉的应用

低温省煤器技术是为了充分节约能源、保护环境,深度利用锅炉排烟余热的一项技术,针对当前电厂锅炉的排烟温度过高的问题,这项技术便成为近年来发电厂有效降低锅炉排烟温度的一项很实用的方法.     

Effect of Crude Oil Fractions on Interfacial Tensions of Novel Sulfobetaine Solutions

The dynamic interfacial tensions (IFTs) of two novel zwitterionic surfactants with different hydrophobic groups, alkyl sulfobetaine (ASB), and xylyl substituted alkyl sulfobetaine (XSB), against kerosene, crude oil, and model oils containing crude oil fractions, such as resins, asphaltenes, saturates, aromatics, and acidic fractions, have been investigated by a spinning drop interfacial tensiometer. The experimental results show that XSB solutions show higher interfacial activity than ASB against kerosene because of the larger size of the hydrophobic part of the XSB molecule. The petroleum acids have high interfacial activity and can adsorb onto the interface. For ASB solutions, the synergism mixed adsorption of betaine and acid molecules lowers IFT values. On the one hand, the partly displacement of XSB molecules by petroleum acid at the interface results in the increase of IFTs. Therefore, resins, aromatics, and acidic fractions show strong effects on IFTs of betaine solutions. On the other hand, asphaltenes and saturates have little effect on interfacial properties. Moreover, the hydrophilic part of the betaine molecule at the interface may vary its orientation from vertical to flat with aging time. Therefore, the dynamic IFT curves of ASB solutions against model oils show “V” shape for resins, aromatics, and acidic fractions.     

Influence of nitrogen speciation on the TDN measurement in fresh waters by high temperature catalytic oxidation and persulfate digestion

Analytical methodologies for the determination of total dissolved nitrogen (TDN) in waters are based on a conversion step able to transform selectively all the nitrogen species into a compound that is then quantified. A crucial requirement to meet accuracy is the quantitative recovery of all organic and inorganic nitrogen species during the conversion step. In this work, the N recoveries of two widely employed methodologies that use different conversion steps (high temperature catalytic oxidation (HTCO) and persulfate digestion (PD)) were assessed on a set of organic nitrogen compounds, representative of the structures of both dissolved organic matter (DOM) and anthropogenic contaminants. Low recoveries are due to poor selectivity during the conversion step, with the formation of nitrogen compounds other than nitrogen oxide (HTCO) and nitrate (PD). The results show that in many instances the TDN measurements give systematically low results depending on N speciation. PD could give lower results than HTCO even for samples containing only DOM of biological origin. In particular (i) low N recovery was always observed with compounds having two or more contiguous N atoms; (ii) the HTCO method is very effective for TDN quantification in the presence of s-triazine rings while PD method did not yield satisfactory N recovery; (iii) a full N recovery was observed with compounds having amido or amino groups or nitrogen atoms in imidazole, indole and pyrimidine rings; and (iv) the N recoveries for purine derivatives are almost complete with HTCO, but give systematically low results by PD.

Finally, the estimation of dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) fluxes and pools from TDN measurements can be affected by uncertainties larger than previously thought as a consequence of (i) the lower N recovery for some nitrogen compounds and (ii) the differences in the N recovery as a function of the adopted analytical methods.