Information refinement over multi-media question-answering applying ranking and Naïve Bayes classification

K. Kedhareswari and B. Sathya Bama

Interactive answers are feat out to the users, which plays an important role to provide information. Usually, Question-Answering (QA) is provided only in plain text which may not be in a useful format presuming the customer. Image and videos if accompanied then it would be better to demonstrate the object or process. In this paper, textual response is accompanied by the appropriate media to recommend a method inspired by the response. Our system is classified into four components, (a) Rendering media picking, (b) Questioning propagation, (c) Information picking and (d) Initiate. Rendering media picking is used to select a variety of responses to the receiver. Extracting keywords from the source in question is widely used in the questioning propagation. Choose the correct answer and the result is used to retrieve by Information picking and Initiate. We use Stemming algorithm, Naïve Bayes classifier algorithm and ranking algorithms. We have increased the contribution of community responses also. Any user can get information immediately which is unconscious. In our perspective is to dispense with multiplex query. Questions are engender on the premise of the details, then we straight-up congregate picture and video in search engines.

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Causes, impact and management of electronic wastes: Case study of some Nigerian communities

Omole D. O., Tenebe I. T., Emenike C. P., Umoh A. S. and Badejo A. A.

Electronic waste (E-waste) is a relatively new and emerging municipal waste in Nigeria. As much as 400, 000 units of used electronic equipment arrive through the Lagos port into Nigeria each month. A large percentage of these imported equipment are completely unserviceable, thus contributing to waste load in the country. E-wastes are leading sources of heavy metal contamination in the environment when improperly managed. The current study examines the reasons for the upsurge in demand for electronics in waste. Information regarding factors that contribute to the generation of e-wastes was gathered through the administration of a structured questionnaire to sections of Ogun State, Nigeria. Findings from the study show that young people between the ages of 15 - 35 are responsible for the highest demand for electronics in the country. It was also shown that the national policy on E-wastes management (especially with respect to enforcement), is still in its formative stages and that public health is highly vulnerable to the effects of e-wastes.

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Quest for the determination of environmental flow assessment for Hilsa fish of the Hooghly estuary by hydraulic rating method

Adya Prasad Banerjee, Siddhartha Dutta and Asis Majumdar

Environmental flow is a concern for ecologically healthy river, living river and it comprises both water quality and water quantity. This is the process of optimization of river flow for maintenance of its indigenous beneficial flora and fauna, without any allowance for the opportunistic species to reign in the river system. The biotic and abiotic factors dependant on the environmental flow plays the guiding role for this maintenance of river eco system. Hence the need for the assessment of the biotic and abiotic factors for the determination of environmental flow is felt. Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is to balance water allocation keeping in view to the different users and uses among human and other living creatures of the nature. This is because in many cases of the flows of the rivers of this world are increasingly being modified through impoundments such as dams and weirs, abstraction for agriculture and urban water supply, drainage return flow, maintenance of flows for navigation and structure for flood control. It is to be noted that in the Hooghly estuary in India, Hilsa fish is the main commercial and most popular and highest profit making product of the river. Hence its abundance (Hilsa catch) along with the abiotic parameter has been considered for the assessment purpose of the environmental flow, by the method of Hydraulic Rating, which consists low cost and rapid to use (i.e. wetted perimeter, river cross section and salinity variation, River Flux Study with time) and a befitting water quality status based on Indexing Method. Indexing Method has been applied using additive type for the determination of proper weight in respect of each water quality parameters considered here, as used by National Sanitation Foundation Water Quality Index (NSF WQI) of the U.S.A.

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Optimizing communication between heterogeneous distributed embedded systems using can protocol

JKR Sastry, M. Vijaya Lakshmi and SMT J. Sasi Bhanu

Distributed embedded systems are being used for many purposes especially in the field of automobile automation, safety critical systems and the process systems which need high performance and response. Many communications systems are being used which include I²C, CAN, and USB etc., for interconnecting distributed embedded systems. These communication systems will function effectively if all the distributed embedded systems are homogeneous. However these systems need many of the conversions when the networking of heterogeneous embedded systems is needed. Every distributed embedded system requires the design of networking, communication system architecture, design of flow of messages through proper addressing and arbitration, synchronization, error detection and control etc. These issues become complicated due to the use of heterogeneous embedded systems. This paper presents networking of a distributed embedded system through use of CAN protocol which is to be built around heterogeneous microcontroller based systems, a novel system for implementation of arbitration, the architecture for message flow and the design of data flow across the distributed embedded systems.  The inventions presented in the paper have been applied to a pilot distributed system that monitors and controls the temperatures within a Nuclear reactor system.

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The planner of movement of a quadrocopter based on voronoi diagram

Valery Ivanovich Finaev, Vladimir Vladimirovich Ignatyev, Igor Olegovich Shapovalov, Victor Vladimirovich Soloviev and Oleg Borisovich Spiridonov

The purpose of work is the solution of a problem of planning of movement of a quadrocopter in the environment with an unknown obstacles location. The solution of a task is carried out using the Voronoi diagram. The analysis of many known works showed that planning of movement of movable object in the environment with an unknown location of obstacles requires large computing resources. In article the algorithm of mapping of the environment based on information of locator is offered. The locator is mounted on a movable object. The task of planning of a trajectory is solved in real time. The stages of algorithm of a clustering of coordinates of the obstacles are defined. The version of the analysis of clusters of coordinates through crossing of polygons is offered. A procedure for the analysis of sensor data at the coincidence of the information with the data in the base of coordinates. The modes of the movement of movable object in the environment are considered: the movement between obstacle, the movement from the left and from the right from obstacles, the movement without obstacles. The description of the bypass mechanism of obstacles in an increment of coordinates of the extreme points belonging to one object is provided. The movement between obstacles on an edge of Voronoi diagram is considered, that corresponds to the case of an incomplete road map. The modeling of the movement in case of location of obstacle near the aim and at a uniform location of obstacles in the environment is carried out.

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Large hsdi cr diesel engines multiple injections and multiple swirls concept

Luca Piancastelli, Mauro Forghieri, Leonardo Frizziero, Luca Chinni and Marco Cremonini

All future power developments should consider as primary tasks the achievement of the required emission levels and CO2-values, while still providing optimum torque-to-rpm curves, the lowest SFC (Specific Fuel Consumption) over the widest range possible, good power-to-weight and affordable costs. One method to achieve these objectives is the downsizing. To achieve the levels of engine performance that are required, a significant increase in the rated speed and in the boost pressure is mandatory. In this case, the result is an increase in the flow rate through the intake and exhaust ports and valves. Considering the impact of these changes, the port layout of the system is reanalyzed. Another physical limit to the maximum speed depends on the CR (Common Rail) injector dynamic performances. These performances decrease with size for inertia problems and they depend on the amount of effort involved in their development. Automotive engines in the range of 10 to 100 HP per cylinder are the most common. For this reason, these injectors are the most advanced and cost-effective. Furthermore, their small size and inertia is favorable to the best dynamic performance. The larger number of nozzles improves combustion performance. In fact the better surface to volume ratio or the spray improves heat transfer. For this reason, multiple injection systems can be used in the modern HSDI (High Speed Direct Injection) CR large diesels. This solution was commonplace before WWII, but has been progressively abandoned with the introduction of mechanical high-pressure injection systems and the bowl combustion chamber. In this paper, a dual combustion chamber per cylinder engine is considered. The primary purpose of this study is to examine the best port layout on a modern diesel combustion system and to introduce a new promising concept. The study included flow measurements of intake flow and CFD simulations of the flow field during intake. This design enables the formation of two homogenous swirls centered onto the injectors, with excellent flow coefficient. The design also allows an increase in volumetric efficiency combined with a reduction in flow losses.

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The frozen disperse environment with fructose impurity electro-physical properties frequency dispersion research

Aleksandr S. Volkov, Gennadiy D. Koposov, Anatoliy V. Tyagunin

Temperature and concentration dependences of electro-physical properties are investigated at various frequencies in the range of 25 Hz 1 MHz. The difference between Debye frequency dispersions is revealed. For explanation is offered the new model that is based on the frequency dependence of relaxation time. Impurity temperature and concentration influence are revealed. Function satisfactorily describes frequency dispersion relaxation time τ =τ₀·ω^‑β.

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Monitoring of railroad parts for the presence of an objects on the rails

Petr Krug, Andrey Ostroukh, Tatiana Morozova, Evgeniy Kashkin and Irina Ivanova

The problems of wavelet-based data and image fusion design for on-board control equipment of the locomotive are highlighted. Development of a new algorithmic supply for the locomotive on-board hardware to process images obtained in different spectrum subbands to create a fused image of high quality is required. It allows the algorithms for object detection and recognition to be efficiently applied to the fused image. Paper describes some our methods to the fusion of multispectral images, which are degraded not only by bad weather conditions, but also the internal noise of the sensors. The results of modeling and comparison are presented.

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Thrust force, surface roughness and ovality prediction by RSM in drilling of aluminium based metal matrix composites

Senthil Babu S. and Vinayagam B. K.

Drilling is one of the most economical and widely used conventional machining processes for making holes during assembly operations.  Predictions of cutting forces and the quality of drilled holes for any set of cutting parameters are essential in optimal design and manufacturing of products. In this paper, thrust force and drilled hole surface characteristics during drilling of Al/SiC metal matrix composites using high speed steel  have been studied. The thrust force is measured using drill tool dynamometer, drilled hole surface roughness using Sufcom- surface measuring instrument and ovality of the hole using profile projector. Linear regression equations are developed using Response surface methodology with an objective to establish a correlation between the selected drilling parameters with the quality characteristics of the drilled holes. The predicted values are compared with experimental data and are found to be in good agreement.

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An intelligent weighted outlier detection method for intrusion detection using MST and k-NN

R. Selvi and S. Saravan Kumar and A. Suresh

Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is a potential part in the area of network security system. An effective intrusion detection system is necessary for providing effective communications in the past world. The major challenging task in this system is the classification of users such as normal user and attacker. For that purpose so many classification algorithms have been proposed in the past to detect and report about user’s behaviour (normal or abnormal) in networks. The sufficient detection accuracy is not yet met due to the lacking of suitable methodology introduction in this field. Outlier detection is the effective process to improve the classification performance. In the past, many outlier detection methods with the combination of different clustering methods have been proposed. These all are have limitations in terms of accuracy and speed. In this paper, we propose a new outlier detection model called Intelligent Weighted MST and k-NN Based Outlier Detection (IWMKOD) to detect the intruders in all kinds of network environment. This model is the combination of the proposed Intelligent MST and kNN based Outlier Detection and Weighted Distance based Outlier Detection. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm improves the detection accuracy and reduces the false alarm rate.

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Rice straw-cementitious bricks: Analytical study on mechanical properties and sustainability measures

G. Garas, E. Bakhoum and M. Allam

The methods for disposing of the straw remaining  in  the  fields  after rice harvest  are  either  burning  or  baling. Due to the lack of adequate baling machines available to serve most farmers, burning is still the principal disposal method for most of the rice straw residue, as it is efficient, effective and cheap, even after being phased out in the Egyptian law of Environment number 4-1994. As a result most farmers tend to burn the straw in open fields, boosting air pollution and serious human health problems. This research studies the recycling of rice straw in order to produce sustainable light weight cementitious-straw bricks. An experimental and analytical study on the mechanical properties and sustainability of the produced bricks were carried out. Several proportions of rice straw were examined in the production of the brick to reach the best mix proportions under compression strength according to the Egyptian codes of building. It was concluded that the maximum compressive stress values for the cementitious- rice straw bricks  increased by decreasing the chopped rice straw content to a value of  40 kg/ 1000 bricks using  the  same  quantity  of  cement with  almost  the  same  amount  of  fine aggregate. To the contrary, the sustainability measures improved while increasing the amount of rice straw used to substitute the aggregates.

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Multicarrier modulated multi level inverter based DVR and DSTATCOM for mitigating swell

G. Annapurna and G. Tulasiramdas

The most commonly occurring power quality issue such as voltage swell may cause mal- operation and loss of production. This paper presents voltage swell reduction technique using multi level inverter based DVR and DSTATCOM employing CBSVPWM algorithm. SVPWM generates fewer harmonics when compared to SPWM. However, as the number of levels in the inverter output voltage increases, the control complexity also increases. To reduce the complexity involved in conventional SVPWM, a novel modulation scheme, CBSVPWM is presented in this paper. The proposed 3 level and 5 level neutral point clamped DVR and DSTATCOM are simulated using multicarrier based SVPWM technique for generating pulses to the inverter. Simulations carried out using MATLAB/SIMULINK prove that the proposed control algorithm is able to compensate any type of voltage swell and also compensation is perfect with negligible THD.

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A review on shoreline detection based on satellite imagery

Siti Zaleha Ismail, Mohd Asyraf Zulkifley, Aini Hussain and Mohd Marzuki Mustafa

Sea level rise is one of the main factors that affect the shoreline, which directly will affect its surrounding activities. Thus, it is important to observe the shoreline level, mainly for mitigation purpose. However, manual inspection and field work require extensive amount of effort, time and money. Therefore, satellite imagery has been widely used to observe the shoreline variability so that estimation can be calculated based on past data. There are various techniques of shoreline detection which depend on the application. In this paper, some popular methods of shoreline detection were discussed such as pixel swapping, active contour and artificial neural network. The most challenging issue in processing satellite imagery is the computational burden. In a nutshell, shoreline detection technique should be selected based on the required application due to timing constraint.

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Nano structured aluminum oxide black coating for solar panels: Double anodization using much improved energy saving process

M. F. Shaffei, A. M. Awad, H. S. Hussein and M. S. Mohammed

Aluminum oxide coating with highly dense nanopores arranged in ordered close arrays was prepared. The recent two-steps anodization technique has been adopted for this purpose. An improved method for detaching the porous non-regular part from the barrier layer, resulting from the first anodization was suggested. More power saving have been assessed. It also ensures the use of non-toxic species. The nanoporous construction produced shows an extra durability represented by hardness values.  Samples with developed nanoporous films were investigated by using SEM and AFM analysis. Plan views and side sections revealed the improvement in the surface morphology and topography. Deep black colored sample was produced using copper sulphate solution 40 g/l.

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Big data for mobile applications in retail market

P. Lakshmi Prasanna, P. Vidyul Latha, B. Sekhar Babu, M. Narmada Chowdary, Samhita Roy Bhuri and Varsha Kamireddy

A large torrent of data is being generated on a daily basis due to many recent technological developments (Web data, Health care, Retail industry, etc) which cannot be managed by traditional data. So, big data fashion has been increased to capture this humungous amount of data. It has many unique features compared to the traditional data. Data is now not being seen as a by-product of a company/business but as a biggest asset. Data includes insights to customer needs, predicting trends in customer behavior, regularizing of advertisement to suit varied customer predilection etc.  The increase in the pliability and power of smart phones provides more opportunities for rising services to the customer. In the current Business firms, mobile commerce or M-Commerce has entered in retails, telecommunication, finance, services and information technology services. M-Commerce is not only being widely accepted but also it is being more used as a popular way of business/ commerce. This paper provides an overview of the unique features of big data over traditional datasets. In addition to this, the application of big data analytics in the M - Commerce (retail market) and the various technologies that make analytics of consumer data possible is discussed. Further, this paper will also present some case studies of how leading Commerce vendors like Flipkart, Amazon, Walmart Inc, Adidas apply big data analytics in their business strategies.

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Security holes in manuscript management systems

Silnov Dmitry Sergeevich

Today’s web-oriented programming languages are simple in nature, thus increasingly used in developing websites. However, simplicity has also weakened data security in the content management systems of these sites.

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Energy loss minimization and reliability enhancement in radial distribution systems during line outages

N. Gnanasekaran, S. Chandramohan, P. Sathish Kumar and T.D. Sudhakar

This paper proposes a methodology for energy loss minimization and reliability enhancement in radial distribution systems during line outages. Energy loss is reduced by simultaneous network reconfiguration and capacitor placement. In addition, network reconfiguration also helps in service restoration. The solution methodology have two parts: In part one, sensitivity analysis is done for all the possible line outage conditions considering single line outage at a time, from which the common set of nodes for capacitor placement is identified and fixed for capacitor placement. In the second part, Global best guided Artificial Bee Colony algorithm is used for reconfiguration and capacitor placement.  The proposed approach has been tested on two test feeders.

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Energy based trusted source routing protocol for mobile Ad Hoc networks

V. Jayalakshmi and T. Abdul Razak

Secure transmission in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks has proven to still be a challenging task due to the openness in network topology and absence of a centralized administration. In order to enhance the security of network and protect the nodes from vulnerabilities, this paper proposes a novel energy based trusted routing scheme to select the most trustable path based on the route trust and also the energy level of nodes in the route. The path obtained by using this scheme not only includes the nodes with high trusted values but also excludes the nodes which have low residual energy. We have integrated the proposed model into the popular DSR routing protocol. Our novel on-demand trust-based source routing protocol for MANETs, called as Energy based Trusted DSR routing protocol (ET-DSR), provides a flexible and feasible method to choose the route that meets the security requirement of data packets transmission. Extensive experiments have been conducted to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed mechanism in malicious node identification and attack resistance.  The results show that ET-DSR protocol selects trustworthy and energy based and improves the overall performance of the protocol in presence of malicious nodes.

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High rate anaerobic digestion for solid waste treatment of the mushroom crop factory

Prayong Keeratiurai

The solid wastes were about 10 to 20 tons/cycle from the mushroom crop factories that were released into the wilderness areas, canal, public swamps or wetlands of the community. The survey to preliminary problems in the Pakthongchai district found that the quality of water in canal near the mushroom crop factories was over the industry wastewater standards. A review of anaerobic treatment of wastewater in high rate anaerobic digestion reactors was presented. Solid wastes of the mushroom crop factories were discharged to be a collection of animal breeding and disease and also have bad smell. Dust and smoke from the burning of wood used as fuel to make the mushroom. As well as problem was global climate changing from greenhouse gases emissions for energy using in the mushroom crop factories. Therefore, the any problems should be studied to find solutions to control solid waste treatment, renewable energy to fuel production facility of the mushroom crop factories and the economy evaluation of the biogas plants was renewable fuel. This study had the four conditions of hydraulic retention times were 3 days, 5 days, 7 days, and 9 days following which the all conditions were controlled system in the range of pH 7.5 ± 0.5 and 25-40 ºC. The influence of temperature, nutrients and pH upon process performance was evaluated. A pilot-scale of the high rate anaerobic digestion reactor with vertically arranged PVC tubes as biomass carrier, treating the solid wastes of the mushroom crop factories was started-up in 31 days at ambient temperatures between 25- 40 ºC. The start-up process consisted of a long acclimatization phase followed by a low loaded growth phase at which total COD removal efficiencies of 80-90% were achieved. The results showed that the high rate anaerobic digestion reactor could be effective in removing COD are highest were 80%. The pH was 7-7.67 at outlet in the four hydraulic retention times. The ratio of COD: BOD was high as shown that the anaerobic biological process has the potential to eliminate the organic matter in the solid wastes. Most organic compounds containing carbon was the main component to be easily digested by microorganisms. There was a significant organic removal efficiency of the high rate anaerobic digestion tested in terms of TS, DO, COD, N, P, and K (p < 0.05). The maximum biogas production was 4.00 cm³ / day in the hydraulic retention time as 9 days. A summary of this research could to solve problems many aspects of the community. The high rate anaerobic digestion technology reduced to solid wastes and air pollution such as dust, smoke and greenhouse gases from the biogas using as fuel to the mushroom crop factories. Therefore, the factories should reduce emissions from energy consumption such as reduce electricity utilization in factories and reduce the use of firewood for heating in production. The economics evaluation of solid wastes to produce biogas showed that the internal rate of return of this project was 17% per year, PI was 1.51 and the payback period was 1.33 years.

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High stress abrasive wear behaviour of aluminium alloy and composite: A review

Raj Kumar Singh, Amit Telang and S. Das

Aluminium alloys and its composites have of wide application in the automobile, aerospace, defense and other engineering sectors especially where abrasive wear plays major role. This review article aims to investigate experimental procedures and effects of parameter like sliding distance, abrasive medium, reinforcement, abrasive grit size and load on the wear rate. Many researchers have mostly used aluminium alloys which are LM2, LM6, LM13, LM25 and of other series Al-1100, 2011, 2014, 2024, 2124, 6061 and 7075 on high stress abrasive wear (HSAW). Apart from these, in the series of aluminum alloys very limited work has been done on HSAW.

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Virtual eye: A new approach in assistive technology for visually impaired people

Omaimah Bamasag

In this paper, we propose a novel approach in assistive devices for visually impaired people, named Virtual Eye. The idea is to allow the blind person to feel the world around him in a form of a 3D textured map in a handheld device, and move/react accordingly. To realize this idea, three technologies are to be integrated, Project Tango by Google, E-sense by Senseg, and RFID. We envision that Virtual Eye will get the world in the hands of the blind people, and hence, improve the quality of their life.

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Experimental calculation of RSSI for Jennic wireless sensor platform

Auda Raheemah, Naseer Sabri, Phaklen Ehkan and M. S. Salim

Wireless Sensor Network received signal strength and link quality Indicators, RSSI and LQI respectively, are considered as a crucial indication for channel characterization and thus network communication success. Most of researcher used LQI as an estimation of RSS, although it is not accurate since it depend on approximation estimation. This research introduces an experimental method to calculate the RSS value of Jennic wireless network transceiver in dBm. The work has done indoor and outdoor environments to validate the results. The results can be used by researchers who adopt this platform based propagation and network communication prospective.

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128 bit key generations from the dynamic behavior of ECG for securing wireless body area network

J. Mohana and V. Thulasi Bai

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) consists of resource constraints sensors and hence security methods with less computation are chosen. To make the resource consumption less, available information in the WBAN that is common to all the sensors is utilized. The proposed biometric security scheme is based on the distinctiveness and non stationary behavior of the ECG signal. This behavior guarantees that the key generated for each individual is different. ECG also possesses the added advantage of generating keys with low latency that is a short duration of measured signal is enough. The above scheme reduces the need for the distribution of security key. The number of keys required by each node for secure communication is also reduced. The design constraints such as energy and randomness are considered in this work. In this research, the dynamic feature (i.e. ECG) is utilized to generate the key. The 128 bit key is generated from the R-R interval of the ECG signal. The generated 128 bit can be used as encryption keys in WBAN. The generated key shows randomness and distinctiveness.

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Swarm based classifier model using ensemble feature ranking methods

P. Amudha, S. Karthik and S. Sivakumari

Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is a security support mechanism which has become an essential component of security infrastructure to detect attacks, identify and track the intruders. In intrusion detection, the quantity of data is huge that includes thousands of traffic records with number of various features. Selecting a subset of informative features can lead to improved classification accuracy. In this paper ensemble of feature ranking techniques are used to select the most relevant features that can represent the pattern of the network traffic. The efficiency of the presented method is validated on KDDCUP’99 dataset using hybrid swarm based classifier, Simplified Swarm Optimization (SSO) with Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). The performance of the proposed method is compared with the SSO and hybridization of SSO with Support Vector Machine (SVM). It is shown that the hybridization of SSO with Ant Colony Optimization using hybrid feature ranking method outperformed other algorithms and can be efficient in the detection of intrusive behaviour.

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Microstrip antenna with combined star and elips pattern patch

Rudy Yuwon and Ihsanuriza Haromain

This paper describes about microstrip antenna which made from FR-4 substrate and copper for patch, this antenna has a small size and unique form. This antenna works for dualbands that consist of the first band at 2.296 GHz - 2.402 GHz which can be applied on Wi-Fi. For build this antenna, has been simulated using CST STUDIO SUITE 2014.

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CFD analysis of the Zimmerman's V173 stol aircraft

Luca Piancastelli, Alfredo Gatti, Leonardo Frizziero, Lena Ragazzi and e Marco Cremonini

The present work had as its main aim to carry out a study of the high lift of an unconventional aircraft of the '40s, the Vought V-173 Flying Pancake. To obtain this result the Authors used the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software SolidWorks Flow Simulation. In particular, the C_L-α and C_D-α curves have been interpolated from the points obtained from the simulations for different configurations of the V173 aircraft CAD model. In a first phase the aerodynamics of the aircraft was evaluated 'clean' without the presence of the propellers was analyzed. In a second phase, the influence of the two large propellers was taken into account. The effect of the propeller was clearly shown especially at high AOA.  These results were obtained from the direct comparison of the Lift-AOA and Drag-AOA curves for the un-powered and the powered condition. The CFD results confirmed the impression of high controllability of the powered aircraft up to AOA of 50°. This behavior with the extremely smooth stall gave the impression of an aircraft impossible to stall or to spin.

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A new approach on solving Intuitionistic fuzzy linear programming problem

K. Prabakaran and K. Ganesan

In this paper, we propose a new approach for solving Intuitionistic Fuzzy Linear Programming Problems (IFLPP) involving triangular intuitionistic fuzzy numbers (TIFN). We introduce a new algorithm for the solution of an Intuitionistic Fuzzy Linear Programming Problem without converting in to one or more classical Linear Programming Problems. Numerical examples are provided to show the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.

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BLE enhanced decentralised work time sheet and real time monitoring using smart ID card

S. Sri Krishna Kumar, G. Chandni, A. L. Meenal, T. S. Kalaimohan, R. Senthil Kumar and K. R. Sugavanam

Looking into the technological advancement, we can visualize the smart phones bringing the world within our palm, which has opened a new era of decentralization being the key to speed up the processes. An innovative ideology of monitoring the presence of employees within the work-zone with BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) makes the centralized attendance entry to be quick and user friendly.  The BLE is sensed when it comes within a certain range from the main receiver terminal. The employee can register his presence through smart phones enabled with a customized biometric app.  Each employee has a unique QR code and RFID tag embedded within their ID cards, where the former is used to ensure the speed of operation, scrutiny of fake IDs and the latter for real time monitoring of employee location.

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The architectures of the broadband amplifiers without classical stages with a common base and a common emitter

Nikolay Nikolaevich Prokopenko, Nikolay Vladimirovich Butyrlagin and Ilya Viktorovich Pakhomov

This article considers a new design method of broadband amplifiers (BrA) for automation and control systems with higher voltage transfer ratio (Gain = 8÷58 dB). The feature of the proposed architectures of BrA lies in their implementation on the basis of emitter followers and current mirrors in the elemental basis of bipolar n-p-n transistors, for example, designated for the technological process SGB25VD and in the absence of classical stages with a common emitter or a common base. The results of computer simulations in the Cadence and Orcad environments are submitted.

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Developing regression model to predict the tensile strength, bending load and micro hardness and to optimize the wt % of SiC in Al-SiC composite

Sivachidambaram Pichumani, Srinivasan Raghuraman and Ramamoorthi Venkaraman

Production of aluminium - silicon carbide (Al-SiC) metal matrix composite with different wt % of SiC reinforcement such as (4%, 8% and 12%) using stir casting method. Micro hardness, tensile test and bend test were performed to evaluate the mechanical behaviour with respect to wt% of SiC on Al-SiC composite. Increase in wt% of SiC tends to increase in micro hardness and tensile strength but it reduces the bend strength and elongation (%) of the material. Al-8% SiC have good micro hardness and tensile properties without losing the elongation (%) and bending strength.

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Best electronic shopping technique (BEST)- An adhoc component using bat model

K. R. Sekar, K. S. Ravichandran, SaiKishor Jangiti and J. Sethuraman

The rapid development of internet and technology made internet based virtual electronic shops come true. The moral stuff of online shopping is “Avail anything from anywhere at any time”. Online shopping paves a sophisticated way for customers to buy the commodity in less time. It helps the customers to know the feedback about the commodity that makes them to take corrective decisions. In addition to that, it serves the privacy to the customers as the traditional way does not suit this. Comparison shopping have emerged a new path to the online shopping. It assists the customers to compare the ‘N’ commodity simultaneously. However, umpteen number of online shops exists that makes a gap, since no website contribute adequate solution to meet the request of the customers about other aspects of commodity such as warranty, delivery days, review rating, quantity, EMI, COD, shipping cost, compare option etc. In this paper we are proposing BEST - Best Electronic Shopping Technique with a new model called TIM (Training Set - Interface - Model) which is imbibed, considering important attributes from top 20 popular sites to perform evaluation based on Crisp and Fuzzy methodologies. At the same time, details will be hunted and filtered by their demands and sorted them accordingly. Arrived results were obtained using variance, chi square, ANOVA and Theil indexing. As a consequence the customers will be able to yield commodity without spending more time and effort in visiting numerous number of sites.

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Improvised novel fuzzy clustering for cardiac diagnosis using cross amalgamation approach

R. KrishanKumar, K. S. Ravichandran and K. R. Sekar

Diseases are growing stronger every now and then coping with the Dalton’s theory of Survival of Fittest. To compensate such a drastic growth in vulnerability, medicines are also being well equipped. Scientist and doctors work tirelessly to fix the disease that pop every now and then. One such chronic, life threatening disease is the Cardiac Disease which is more prevalent in all parts of the world. Medical world is working a whole lot of ways to get remedy for this chronic disease. Last decade enormous amount of research had been set on track to find the cause and remedy to heart diseases. The literature signifies that not only is advancement in medical field efficient but also research models in computing field drive more accurate results. In this paper efforts are made to bring computers into medical field by proposing a statistical model. This model is wrapped using an Improvised Novel Fuzzy Clustering (INFC) which is a cross amalgamation of Prism classifier and Fuzzy Clustering methodology. This duo fold scheme drives the model for better accuracy. The methodology is incorporated to a real time dataset from Cleveland Hospital. The attributes taken up for study have a near optimal reach of the expert defined thresholds. The proposed INFC approach is compared with the classical Prism Classifier, Fuzzy Clustering and Actual expert inference. The inferences are graphically depicted based on match status of experimental and actual results.

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Engineering of automotive painting process using integrated information system to improve total painting and supply chain performance of paint in Indonesia

Darmawan Raymond D.

As the increasing demand in auto–refinish industry, workshop has to work their process an order rapidly. There are workshops do not accept any orders as they already have reach the maximum capacity. One of the problems is the delayed by interval of painting delivery process. It is caused by the suddenly order. To overcome the situation carried out the reengineering process by using of integrated information system between workshop and supplier. Based on the simulation result, the output increase is 21%.

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Real time delay tolerant feature approximation technique for DDoS attack detection to improve network performance

V. Shyamala Devi and R. Umarani

The performance of network highly depends on different metrics like throughput, latency, and security of packet delivered. All these three factors are interconnected and there exists various malicious threats for the packets, which pass through the network channels. Modern adversaries perform various threats like modification, spoofing, sinkholes and many more. To safeguard the network packets from these attacks, the researchers have proposed different approaches with different attributes of packets. Still there are many issues, which do not considered to overcome the problem of network threats, For example the DDoS approach uses features like payload, TTL, Hop count, Hop addresses. They never consider about the delay that could occur in performing modification attacks. Similarly, there are many cases, which do not consider performing DDoS attack detection. This article aims at performing DDoS attack detection in different forms like Identifying botnet, Delay tolerant features based detection, Flow based approximation and so on. The proposed method uses various features in a different way. In botnet detection approach, the packet traversal patterns are identified and with the help of service access history the common nodes present in the traversal path is identified. Based on network topology and routes available, the presence of botnet controller and compromised nodes are identified to prevent the DDoS attack. In case of delay tolerant approach, the packet traversal path and hop count is used to compute the delay approximation according to available service access history to prevent DDoS attack. Similarly, the flow based approximation technique uses the service access history to compute the legitimate weight of packet being received to identify DDoS attack. All these approaches are interlinked to perform the DDoS attack so that the performance of the network could be improved.

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Multi-level inverter with DC link switches for renewable energy sources

Sangari A., Umamaheswari R. and Karthika N.

In this paper a H Bridge Multi Level Inverter is connected to grid connected photo voltaic system. The major intention for a grid connected Photo Voltaic (PV) inverter is to supply the harvested power from solar panel to the grid. The H Bridge inverter has high efficiency and high power quality. This paper proposes a H Bridge Multi Level Inverter topology for the solar plants that can account for voltage profile fluctuations among the panels during the day and the performance is studied by comparing total harmonic distortion and switching losses at different switching frequencies. The operating principle and performance of the proposed multi-level inverter is verified through simulation and experimental results.

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Enhanced scheduling traffic light model using discrete event simulation for improved signal timing analysis

Zuraida Abal Abas, Lim Ee-Theng, Ahmad Fadzli Nizam Abdul Rahman, Zaheera Zainal Abidin and Abdul Samad Shibghatullah

Most traffic light today used pre-timed traffic light, traffic light using sensors and traffic light which displaying a countdown timer. However, the existing methods consume a long time of vehicle queuing and waiting the traffic light signals to change, which created congestion at intersection of roads. In this paper, the proposed model enhanced the scheduling traffic light, which simulates the vehicle behaviour based on discrete event simulation and queue theory. Therefore, the simulation becomes more realistic and contributes to accurate outcome. This work focuses on the analysis of the average waiting time for the vehicle in three cases: heavy, medium and low traffic volume. The most optimum traffic signal timing is the one with minimum waiting time for the vehicles. Moreover, the new model solves the critical traffic congestion problem not only in simulation but also in real environment, which drivers take the longest average waiting time is 86 seconds while the shortest average waiting time is 64 seconds at the junction although in heavy traffic congestion. An extensive simulations have been conducted in this work in which a green interval as a control parameter is selected.

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Correlation between microstructure and microhardness on al-sic composite welded using pulsed current TIG welding

Sivachidambaram Pichumani, Srinivasan Raghuraman and Ramamoorthi Venkaraman

Study of pulsed current TIG welding parameter on Al - 8% SiC composite about micro hardness, microstructure and correlation between micro hardness and microstructure. Experiment was designed using Taguchi L₉ orthogonal array techniques to reduce the number of experimental run from 81 to 9. Micro hardness values observed form weld centre to heat affected zone. Microstructure was also observed on weld zone and heat affected zone. Correlation between micro hardness and microstructure was studied and the following results were observed. Coarse grain microstructure gives micro hardness value around 60HV and Fine grain microstructure gives micro hardness value around 70HV.  Pulsed current TIG parameter such as peak current of 160A, base current of 60A, pulse on time - 50% and pulse frequency was 5Hz showed fine grain microstructure with micro hardness value of 75HV.  Weld zone showed microstructure’s grain size which is finer than the heat affected zone microstructure’s grain size.

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Modification of open circuit wind tunnel

Ismail, Samsul Kamal, Purnomo, Sarjiya, Sulaiman Tampubolon, Azhim Asyratul azmi and Inderanata

A modification of the wind tunnel is important to overcome existing problems in order to provide deeper research development. This method of modification is conducted by varying some design contraction sections, test sections and diffuser section by using the simulation CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamic) using software SolidWorks 2014. Then, the the most optimal result is realized on existing wind tunnel. The results obtained from optimization are a combination of the 2nd contraction section design, a test section design and 2nd diffuser section design which are the most optimal results. The results of these modifications open circuit wind tunnels can generate wind flow on the scope of an average wind speed up to 15 m/s in the test section with an average turbulence intensity up to 1%.

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Spam NSGA-II-NvBys: An efficient hybrid approach for email spam filtering

S. Kumar and S. Arumugam

Spam is any sort of email that you don’t want and that you didn’t sign up to receive. Some spam is aggravating but inoffensive, but some might be part of an identity theft scam or other kind of fraud. In recent years, anti-spam filiters have become necessary tools for Internet service providers to face up to the continuously growing spam phenomenon. There is no one specific algorithm for statistically determining whether or not a given e-mail message is in fact a spam message. To overcome this issue, we propose a hybrid approach by merging Navie Bayes spam filtering algorithm and Multi objective Genetic Algorithm: Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) which will produce a better result in reducing spam mails entering into user’s inbox. Our proposed hybrid approach will be called as SPAM-NSGA-II-NvBys. The evaluation of the filter showed its ability to make decisions with high accuracy (96.24% in the worst case and 99.66% in the best case).

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Combination of first and second order statistical features of bulk grain image for quality grade estimation of green coffee bean

Radi Muhammad Rivai and Mauridhi Hery Purnomo

This study evaluated the use of image features for estimating the quality of green coffee beans in bulk. These features are extracted from green bean image obtained with a camera installed inside in a closed chamber equipped with varied light sources. Image data acquisition was done by preparing green coffee beans on a sample board, levelling the surface, and then putting inside the chamber. This experiment used three sets of sample consisting of two sets of Robusta coffee (eight categories) and a set of Arabica coffee (seven categories). Each sample was captured thirty times with randomization prior measurement to various illuminations. The image data of each set were randomly divided into training and testing data set. Statistical features including first and second order statistical features were then extracted and concatenated as a feature set. The feature set extracted from the training data set was learned to a classifier being used to identify the testing data set. Recognition accuracy of the classifier was used to determine an appropriate combination of features applying for quality estimation system based on statistical features for the bulk coffee grains. The result indicates that the illumination influences on the classification accuracy in which the optimum rate is obtained at the range of 100-200 lux. The highest accuracy is obtained at 100 lux in which the use of either second order statistical features or combination of selected first and second order features reach the average recognition level of 80%. Therefore, these features can be recommended as meaningful feature for estimating the coffee grains quality in bulk required on the industry of secondary coffee processing.

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Image based approach for cognitive classification using EEG signals

Chunchu Rambabu, B. Rama Murthy, F. Fareeza and S. Saraswathi

The EEG state classifier distinguishes different states and these information are used to understand the normal and abnormal states of users and to adapt their interfaces and add new functionalities. EEG classification is performed conventionally by extracting statistical parameters. But, this classification is affected more by artifacts and hence a better approach using image based is proposed. Typically, EEG signals are captured using multiple electrodes and subsequently used to map the cognitive states. It is useful for control applications, human machine interface, virtual reality concepts, etc suited to critically ill persons.] This paper deals with the classification of state based on standalone EEG signals using Hamming distance measure and assist the critically ill person to perform tasks. The cognitive states the brain can be studied at state space level and it is possible to discriminate between different tasks (though complex).

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Analysis of dustfall generation from regosol soil in Java island, Indonesia

Asiyah Azmi, Arief Sabdo Yuwono, Erizal, Allen Kurniawan and Budi Mulyanto

Dustfall is one of ambient air quality parameters according to PP 41/1999 about Air Pollution Control. Dustfall pollution in open field can be controlled effectively and efficiently if the influence of wind speed, soil moisture and land cover to dustfall generation are known. This research aims to obtain correlation between wind speed, soil moisture, and land cover factors on dustfall generation, to describe the influence of these factors on dustfall generation, and to analyze the physical properties of dustfall (dustfall particle’s shape and size frequency distribution). The study was conducted with regosol soil samples from three different locations, i.e. Gunung Sindur Sub-District, Pelabuhan Ratu beach and Parangkusumo Sand Dunes. The instruments and materials used in the research were dustfall canister (AS 2011-1), filter paper (Whatman #41), wind blower, digital anemometer, digital moisture tester and universal oven. The measurement of dustfall generation was conducted in a laboratory scale using regosol soil from three locations as land cover.  Analysis were also conducted on soil texture and physical characteristics of dustfall, i.e. shape and size frequency distribution. Based on the research results, wind speed known to be positively correlated with dustfall generation, while the soil moisture and land cover was negatively correlated with dustfall generation. The relationship between wind speed, soil moisture content, and the percent of land cover with dustfall concentration can be described with multiple polynomial equation. The size frequency distribution of dustfall particles from regosol soil in each sampling locations were dominated by particulate size of 10-100 µm.

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Statistical evaluation of hydro-meteorological data: A case study of Ishiagu in south-east zone Nigeria

B. U. Ngene, T. I. Tenebe and C. P. Emenike

For any Engineering project to be efficient, it must be based on consistent and reliable data with good analysis. Reliability especially for hydro-meteorological data also depends on the method of collection, analysis and storage. Ishiagu weather data has been collected since the inception of the school of agriculture in the town in 1997 to date. Statistical analysis of the randomly varying data to check for their consistency and reliability is necessary before use. In this regard, the monthly data set is analysed for annual mean, trends and seasonal distribution pattern. A significant finding of this analysis is that the monthly rainfall has bimodal distribution with peaks in July and September. For the temperature of the area, it showed a sinusoidal pattern due to the seasons and this also reflects on the relative humidity of the area. A regression analysis of the three data of rainfall, temperature and relative humidity indicates a coefficient of correlation of r = 0.3, t = -0.40 and rh = -0.67. Because of the low state of the coefficient of correlation of the three parameters it may be necessary to recheck with either power, exponential or polynomial functions. From the determination of frequency of extreme events using Gumbel distribution, the highest annual rainfall value is determined to have a return period of less than 20years and the 17years records also was adjudged adequate.

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Gray code for generating tree of permutation with three cycles

Henny Widowati, Sulistyo Puspitodjati and Djati Kerami

This paper present a new Gray code formed from generation tree of n-length permutation with three cycles. Gray code is a list of all the objects arranged such that, there are only minor differences between one object to another object. To be effective, listing of all objects is done with successive generation, where the structure-ith is determined by structure-(i^-1)th. The listing algorithm is done by finding a method or algorithm for listing all objects in a certain order without any repetition and without losing any of the objects, so that two successive objects differ slightly. Combinatorial Gray code is widely used, for example, in circuit testing, hardware and software testing, encryption, data compression, and games. The purpose of this research is to develop a new Gray code that formulated from generating tree of n-length permutation with three cycles proposed by Puspitodjati. The Gray code formulated by traversing the generating tree of permutation with three cycles. It is a modification of Bernini’s Gray code formulation for Catalan number generating tree. The Gray code then analyzed by measuring the Hamming distance of each two successive words of the list and it is of a Hamming 1.

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An improved solution for resource management based on elastic cloud balancing and job shop scheduling

Tamilvizhi T., Parvatha Varthini B. and R. Surendran

Cloud Computing is an internet based processor architecture that combines computing resources from various areas to reach a main goal. The Resource Management is heart of Cloud system because it maintains the entire system of Cloud environment.  But it is difficult to manage the resources because they are heterogeneous and distributed in addition they were owned by different persons having different policies. In this paper, survey the various Resource Management Techniques and discuss the major issue of Resource Management and its solution. In existing system limited innovative Load Balancing and Scheduling in Resource Management process. In the proposed system, improve the previous system by using Elastic Cloud Balancing (ECB) combined with Job Shop Scheduling (JSS). ECB is techniques which avoid a situation where some cloud nodes are heavily loaded while others are unused doing little work. ECB enables to achieve even larger quality in cloud applications, seamlessly providing the amount of load balancing capacity needed in response to incoming application traffic. ECB helps to schedule computing cloud resources by using Job Shop Scheduling algorithm by considering QoS attributes.

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Analysis of the causes of distresses in a pre-stressed concrete bridge

Yogita Gupta, Suneet Kaur and Nitin Dindorkar

In recent years, distress has been observed in several PSC structures, which had a latent weakness due to lack of good detailing, improper design, adverse climate, absence of skilled work man to manufacture and place good quality concrete. In some cases there would be multiple interacting events to cause distress. Common interactive causes are corrosion combined with poor quality of construction or improper design with heavy load etc. This paper describes a PSC bridge of balance cantilever-cum-suspended span type, distressed due to improper design and poor quality of construction. Stresses at cracked section have been calculated. The nature of the failure, location of crack and cause of distress has been discussed.

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Sonar projector cell design for submarine detection

Syamsu Ismail, Deni Permana, Tauffiqurrachman, Eko Joni Pristianto and Hana Arisesa

Sound Navigation and Ranging (SONAR), is a detection technique using acoustic waves. One part in the SONAR system is subsystem transmitter with the projector as an electrical signal converter into acoustic waves. Designing a SONAR system begins with Link Budget underwater transmission and propagation referring to predetermined specifications. In the Link Budget calculated intensity acoustic power needs at the hydrophone, thus acoustic power projected by the projector on the transmitter can be determined. This paper discusses the design of the projector cell acoustic submarine detection sonar crystal based on Zirconate Lead Titanate, or PZT, which is relatively easy to obtain in the market. Submarine sonar detection system is an early warning underwater detection. Therefore, the acoustic output power must be large enough to be able to work as needed. Cell projector is designed in the form of a vertical array consisting of several pieces of PZT crystals with a specific interconnection between the chip to obtain maximum acoustic radiation. Cell projector is the basic element of a projector. An acoustic projector with high transmit power, directivity, radiation pattern, beam steering applications, composed of a number of cells projector.

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APF based power quality improvement on micro grid using artificial intelligent network

Hemanand T. and N. P. Subramaniam

This paper deals with the injection of wind power into electrical micro grid (MG) application. More alternating energies are compromised and Power quality enhancement has influenced by MG units. But the improper power generation of wind turbine has affects the sensitive load operation due to dip voltage, current harmonics, and interruption as well as real and reactive power variations. The proposed shunt active filter with Artificial Intelligent (AI) technique has produces the effective solution for this problem. Therefore, this paper proposes novel techniques to develop the power quality enhancement in micro grid critical load application. Artificial Intelligent (AI) network includes FUZZY logic, neural networks and genetic algorithm.  Shunt active filter is enhanced the performance of MG unit and power quality has realized by fuzzy logic rules in varies load conditions. In addition, the performance of fuzzy logic controller is compared with the conventional proportional integral controller performances. Finally, the proposed concept is developed in Matlab/Simulink environment.

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A multilevel integral control technique for reaching high output voltage and compensating non-ideal DC input effect

Javad Ghanbariyan Hossein Tohidi

Output voltage and current of an inverter is based on the assumption that the DC input is ideal and ripple free. Indeed, DC input sources are not ideal and the ripple of the DC input can affect the output voltage and current. It can make low order harmonics that are severe to filter. On the other hand, by industry developing, high voltage inverters are mostly needed. This paper proposes a multilevel integral control inverter which can solve both non-ideal DC input and high output voltage problems. The technique is based on sensing the voltage of switches for feed forwarding and compensating the non-ideal effect of the DC input source, however, multilevel procedure is used to make a high voltage output. These two techniques are used for the first time together and the result is shown in this paper. A simulation of three-level diode-clamped integral control inverter has been proposed in this paper.

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Image based heart murmur classification using hamming distance measure

Suresh D., B. Ramamurthy, S. Ravi and B. C. Premkumar

The heart murmur signal is an acoustic signal and presents artifacts when its path is tracked in a non-optimal manner. The sound signal is very similar to the light wave and takes the shortest path when traveling from one region to another. The heart murmur occurs inside the heart chamber (mechanical model of the heart) but is sensed external to it using a microphone or stethoscope. This difference in the distance between the occurrence point and the sensing point itself is an artifact at the sensing point. Thus, further transforms acting on the sensed signal to extract the features out of it is like an invasive mathematical operation on the data and increases the artifacts. In this paper, non-invasive mathematical approach for analyzing the data from the sensing point using image based approach is presented. Our approach of content extraction in this paper searches for the content in the input rather following traditional text mining techniques and translational issues.

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First principle calculation on electronic and magnetic properties of hydrogenated germanene

Sasfan Arman Wella and Suprijadi

First principle calculation has been performed to explore the structural, electronic, and magnetic properties of hydrogenated germanene (germanium analogue of graphene). Similar to silicene (silicon analogue of graphene), buckled pristine germanene (BL) also has more stable condition than pristine germanene in planar configuration (PL). Metallic properties can be found in planar structure, and semi-metal (with zero band gap) properties can be found in buckled structure, which are comparable to other works. As the most stable structure, buckled pristine germanene is performed with hydrogen atoms with several configurations. From five configurations that have been investigated, stable structure is only able to be found in chairlike obtuse and boatlike obtuse configuration. We found that both of them are semiconductor. Nevertheless, only in chairlike obtuse configuration, the system has non-zero magnetic moment. Overall, compared with 100 percent hydrogenated silicene and graphene, 100 percent hydrogenated germanene has the smallest band gap energy.

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Bandwidth reservation policy performance analysis in a wireless cellular network under non-exponential distributions

R. Nandhini

Past studies in bandwidth reservation strategies in wireless multimedia cellular networks use the exponential distribution for service time and inter-arrival time distributions. But in real world (example like GSM/GPRS), inter-arrival, service time and cell residence time in cellular systems have been shown to be non-exponential. As a result, network performance could be worse than that reported in the literature. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the impact of the network performance under various non-exponential distributions on a specific bandwidth reservation policy. The threshold-based bandwidth reservation policy has been taken into consideration and its performance is observed under different inter-arrival time distributions, and channel holding time distributions. The network performance is measured in terms of new call blocking probability and handoff call dropping probability.

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The phase ambiguity resolution by the exhaustion method in a single-base interferometer

Y. L. Fateev, D. D. Dmitriev, V. N. Tyapkin, I. N. Ishchuk and E. G. Kabulova

The paper considers the phase methods for measuring an object spatial orientation by means of satellite navigation equipment. Methods for the resolution of phase ambiguity are analyzed. Effectiveness and applicability of the one-step methods are discussed in more detail. It is proved that for the realization of the exhaustion method the minimal group of navigation spacecrafts should include 5–6 observed ones. When measuring signals of 8 spacecrafts with base length of 1 m, an unambiguous solution is achieved practically in all cases.

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Fuzzy modeling for steel-making processes

Mikhail Matveew, Olesya Kanisheva and Evgenia Kabulova

Nowadays to expand assortment and execution of contracts iron and steel manufacturers facing fierce competition need to produce quality steel, satisfying the hardenability requirements, provided by certain alloying modes. One of the solutions of this problem is to develop models for predicting hardness of steel and optimal control algorithms for steel-making process with specified hardness, which will enable to increase process control effectiveness and quality of the obtained products. The article presents the model of relation between depth-distributed steel hardness and its chemical composition in the form of a system of fuzzy production rules (Takagi-Sugeno-Kang model - TSK) that allowed determining predicted values of the distributed steel hardness as weighted average outputs of a set of linear regression models and eliminating the problem of selection of the most adequate regression model.

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Performance of mobile base station in extending network lifetime for wireless sensor networks

Idrus Salimi Ismail and Nurul Adilah Abdul Latiff

Wireless sensor network is composed of large number of sensor nodes and base station. The sensor node usually is irreplaceable and power by limited power supply. Taking the fact into consideration, a network should operate with minimum energy as possible to increase lifetime of network for improving the overall energy efficiency. In this work, we proposed an energy efficiency protocol for mobile base station using the concept of trigonometric functions for the distributed sensor nodes. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol can improve significantly the network lifetime compared to existing energy efficiency protocol developed for this network. Furthermore, the simulation result for proposed protocol also compared to each other for difference network field in term of network lifetime, data delivery and energy dissipated.

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Determination of young’s moduli of clays using image processing technique and stress-strain calculation

Riska Ekawita, Eko Widiatmoko, Hasbullah Nawir, Suprijadi and Khairurrijal

A system that consists of compression, imaging, and computation subsystems was successfully developed to determine Young’s moduli of clay samples. The compression subsystem utilized a Mark-10 instrument that has a compressor with a capacity of 11.3 Nm. The instrument also has a displacement sensor with a resolution of 0.01 mm and an integrated display that was used as a standard to compare deformations obtained from images. The imaging subsystem operated a Canon IVX digital camera to obtain images with sizes of 3000×4000 pixels. The computation subsystem exploited a personal computer (PC) installed with Scilab ver. 5.3.3 to process the images. Experimentally, a clay sample was initially prepared in cylindrical shape. The sample was then continuously compressed at the rate of 80 mm/min and its image was subsequently captured every second. Next, the obtained images were processed to extract deformation experienced by the sample. Finally, the sample deformation was used to calculate its Young’s modulus. It was shown that deformation data obtained from image processing are almost the same as those recorded by the Mark-10 display with the coefficient of determination R2 of 0.99. As the accurate displacement sensor is much more expensive than the Canon IVX digital camera, the image processing technique offers an affordable way to obtain deformation. It was demonstrated that Young’s modulus versus the quadratic of height has very good linearity as revealed by the R2 coefficient of 0.94. This result is in agreement with the theoretical formula.

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Sewage water treatment via electrocoagulation using iron anode

Nabila H. Hussien, H.H. Shaarawy and M. S. Shalaby

This work deals with the possibility of using elctrocoagulation method for sewage treatment. The effect of various operational parameters of the treatment efficiency were investigated and optimized. The treatment using iron sacrificial anode was affected by the initial pH, the current density, the amount of sodium chloride and initial dye concentration. The optimum operating conditions of pH 7.6, current density of 65mA/cm², electrolysis time of 30mins, 1g/l sodium chloride as supporting electrolyte and 3cm as electrode gap distance. The elctrocoagulation process is a very promising pre-treatment step for UF and RO process for the conversion of sewage water to high quality irrigation water or disinfected drinking water.

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Design of institutional and implementation barriers models of fuel subsidy policy for fisheries sector with interpretive structural modeling method

Achmad Ali Ma’sum, M. Dachyar, Yadrifil and Novandra Rhezza Pratama

The fisheries sector is one of the consumer users in the fuel subsidy policy with custody transfer point in the Fuel Retail Station. The problem that arises in the fisheries sector is the actual price received by fisherman above the price that has been set by the Government due to lack of fuel Retail Station for fishery and other constraints. In addition, there are many institutions involved in the fuel subsidy policy of the fisheries sector. Interpretive Structural Modeling method is used to produce a model of structural institutional strategic relationship which mutually supports on fulfillment of fuel subsidies for fishermen for decision making through policy formulation and acknowledge the obstacles that are considered to be a major factor in the implementation of the fuel subsidy policy to the fisheries sector through structured interview and questionnaire with 5 experts. This research resulted in structural model of institutions with the 7 institutions that are considered to be a major factor in the preparation and implementation of fuel subsidy policy for fisheries sector. There are 3 barriers that are considered to be the major factors in implementing the fuel policy subsidy to the fisheries sector; one price policy, regulation and licensing and also distribution of fuel retail station, especially for fisheries sector.

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A 2.4 GHZ low noise amplifier using forward body bias technique for wireless sensor network applications

Anishaziela Azizan, Sohiful Anuar Zainol Murad, Mohd Nazrin Md Isa and Rizalafande Che Ismail

This work presents a 2.4 GHz low noise amplifier (LNA) for wireless sensor network in CMOS 0.13-µm Silterra process. The forward body bias technique with cascode configuration has been adopted in order to implement a suitable LNA for low power consumption target. The supply voltage was varied from 0.4 V to 0.6 V as to optimize the tradeoffs for LNA performances. The simulation results show that the power consumption of 0.2 mW is achieved. However, the best performance of the proposed LNA is obtained at supply voltage of 0.5 V due to the tradeoffs between power consumption, s-parameters, noise figure (NF) and linearity. A gain of 12.03 dB, NF of 4.95 dB and input third order intercept point (IIP3) of -7.5 dBm at 2.4 GHz is obtained. The input return loss (S11) and the output return loss (S22) is below than -10 dB with the calculated figure of merit (FOM) is 6.46 (1/mW).

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An efficient core architecture for protein sequence alignment

Mohd Nazrin Md Isa, Sohiful Anuar Zainol Murad, Rizalafande Che Ismail and Asral Bahari Jambek

This paper presents efficient biological sequence alignment core architecture to reduce execution time of the well-known dynamic programming-based (DP) pairwise sequence alignment algorithms i.e. the Smith Waterman algorithm. The PE was prototyped in the Xilinx Virtex 5 FPGA with further improvements have been done in the scheduling strategy of alignment matrix computation and substitution coefficients’ pre-loading onto the processing elements in folded systolic arrays. Implementation results showed that the new hardware architecture for the protein sequence alignment achieved over 100x speed-up performance, compared to the well-known SSEARCH 35 ‘software-only implementation’ and more than ~1.6x speed up improvement against our previously implemented core in Virtex 5 FPGA.

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Design and fabrication of PDMS microfluidic channels for lab on chip automation

U. Hashim and Tijjani Adam

Delivery fluid to a Nano transducer has been the quest every researcher working in this field and in-expensive way of fabricating the automatic flow delivery system is presented which can be used for both laboratory and commercial scale. The microfluidic was designed using AutoCAD for master mold preparation and subsequently created with SU8 for rapid prototyping process; the micro mixer and the whole mixer were fabricated in less than without using costly fabrication steps. The device profiles were observed for structural integrity and evaluation by dropping two food coloring dyes through the two inlets and collecting the sample at outlet. Flow rate and mixing efficiency were quantitatively measured by analyzing the recorded flow profiles and values of the image collected from the high powered microscope at inlet and outlet locations is fully obtained and will be presented in our next publication.

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RF energy harvesting with efficient matching technique  for low power level application

Ismahayati Adam, Mohd Fareq Abd Malek, Mohd Najib Mohd Yasin and Hasliza A. Rahim

Development of energy harvesting and wireless power transfer have emerged batteryless and non-contact energy transfer. For optimum power transfer between antenna and the rectifier circuit, impedance of the antenna and rectifier should be match. This paper describes the design and implementation of the 7-stage multiplier in energy harvesting. A Modified dickson configuration is chosen, consists of two HSMS 2850 Schottky diodes and two capacitors for each stage. The aim of this paper is to analyze the performance of the designed rectifier together with matching network. Simulation results show an improvement for the multiplier circuit with a matching network compare to the multiplier alone. Maximum of 60% improvement in rectified output has been achieved at low input power.

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A 2.4 GHZ two stage CMOS class-F power amplifier for wireless applications

Sohiful Anuar Zainol Murad, Mohd Najib Mohd Yasin, Faizah Abu Bakar, Norhawati Ahmad and Rohana Sapawi

The design of a 2.4-GHz CMOS class-F power amplifier (PA) for wireless applications is presented in this paper. The class- F PA design is implemented using 0.13-µm CMOS process. It utilizes two stages cascade topology and the transistors are arranged in parallel to reduce the transistor’s on resistance which correspondingly increase the PA efficiency. The simulation results show that the PA delivers 12 dBm output power and 60% power added efficiency (PAE) into a 50 Ω load. The supply voltage is 1.3 V and the chip layout is 0.66 mm².

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Review of AC-DC rectifier circuit based on complementary metal-oxide semiconductor for radio frequency energy harvesting system

Mohd Anuar Rosli, Sohiful Anuar Zainol Murad and Mohd Nazrin Md Isa

The development of energy harvesting gained much attention in previous decades. This paper reviews the latest research progress on developing the AC-DC rectifier circuits based on Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) for radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting. The various topologies of AC-DC rectifier circuits were reviewed in term of circuit design, technology and performance. The performances criteria such as input power, frequency, output power and efficiency are discussed in details. The overall performances are compared and the best topology of AC-DC rectifier circuit is identified for the future RF energy harvesting system.

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Design of low power single stage folded cascode CMOS operational amplifier for pipeline analog-to-digital converter

Izatul Syafina Ishak, Sohiful Anuar Zainol Murad and Faizah Abu Bakar

This work presents a low power single stage folded cascode CMOS operational amplifier (op-amp) implemented in 0.13 µm CMOS Silterra technology. This op-amp will intended for pipeline analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The proposed op-amp is employed folded cascode topology for obtaining a high DC gain and fast settling with high unity gain. The NMOS input differential pair is used to obtain larger output gain. The simulation results show that the op-amp achieved DC gain of 64.5 dB and unity gain bandwidth (UGB) of 133.1 MHz at 1.8 V supply voltage. Moreover, the cut-off frequency of 95.62 MHz is attained. A 1 pF load capacitor is applied in performing a stable phase margin of 68.4°. The slew rate of 22.6 V/µs with 72.4 ns settling time is obtained with a 0.3 mW of power consumption.

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Gold nanoparticles embedded silicon channel biosensor for improved sensitivity

H. Y. Chang, M. K. Md Arshad, M. Nuzaihan M. N., M. F. M. Fathil and U. Hashim

This paper presents the fabrication steps of a biosensor device on p-type silicon-on-insulator (SOI). The gold nanoparticles (GNPs) are used to enhance the sensitivity of the device. Conventional photolithography technique is used to fabricate the device. Optical and electrical characterization of the fabricated device are carried out using optical microscope and source meter. Surface morphology of the fabricated device is captured using scanning electron microscope (SEM) and atomic force microscope (AFM). Source meter is used to plot the I-V graph and to characterize the electrical behaviour of the fabricated device with or without GNPs. By incorporating the GNPs, higher current can be expected compared with the device without GNPs. Hence, with the addition of GNPs, it boost up the signal and enhance the sensitivity of the device.

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The effects of intrinsic silicon epitaxial layer in p-i-n diode for high power devices

Cheh Chai Mee, M. K. Md Arshad, M. F. M. Fathil and U. Hashim

The p-i-n diode is one of the earliest semiconductor devices developed for power circuit application. The diode is formed with the intrinsically doped i.e. i-layer sandwiched between the p-type and n- type layers. In this paper, we focus on the variables in the intrinsic region of silicon p-i-n diode to the current-voltage characteristics. In our structure, n-type refers to the bulk substrate and intrinsic region refers to the epitaxial layer of the silicon substrate. Result shows that intrinsic layer optimization has successfully enhanced the diode device robustness in terms of diode current-voltage characteristics, which reflects better manufacturing yield and improve the final product performance.

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The effect of solution volume of graphene oxide for the application on electrode for biosensor detection

A. Rashid Diyana, A. Rahim Ruslinda, M. F. Fatin, Saeed S. Ba Hashwan, U. Hashim and M. K. Md. Arshad

The effect of different volume of graphene oxide (GO) were demonstrated to provide a suitable biosensor platform. A simple technique using spray method was presented to deposit GO on silicon substrate. This method is a promising method due to ideal coating on a variety of substrates with high production speed. Thermal reduction process was selected to reduce the GO and produce even flakes of the coating material. Reduced graphene oxide (RGO) was obtained after heating on hot plate fixed at temperature of 250˚C. A surface morphology of RGO using Scanning electron microscopy were observed imply that the morphology obtained were rely on the parameters such as reduction temperature, volume of GO solution and height of spray nozzle. In this study, the height of 10 cm with a 0.3 ml GO solution was successful presented for RGO deposition on electrode for biosensor. The electrical were conducted for Tat protein detection revealed that shift of current occurred during each step of immobilization and detection.

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Security enhancement of advanced encryption standard (AES) using time-based dynamic key generation

Zuhar Musliyana, Teuku Yuliar Arif and Rizal Munadi

Login is the first step which is conducted every time we access to a system and only granted to those who are entitled. Login is very important and it is a part of the security of a system. Registered user or guest and administrator are two kinds of users that have the privilege and access. Nowadays, wrongdoers are always on the dark side and frequently try to gain access to the system. To provide a better security, it is important to enhance the access mechanism and to evaluate the authentication process. Message-Digest 5 (MD5) is one of the algorithms that commonly used in the login system. Although it has been so popular, but the algorithm is still vulnerable to dictionary attacks and rainbow tables. In addition to the hash function algorithm, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm alternatively can be the best choice in the login authentication process. This study is proposed to develop a dynamic key generation on the AES algorithm using the function of time. The experimental results obtained that AES key can be generated at random based on the value of the time when a user logs in with a particular active period. In this implementation, the security authentication becomes stronger because of changes in key generating chiper text changes for each encryption process. Based on the time as a valuable benchmark, the result shown that AES encryption-decryption process is relatively fast with a time average about 0.0023 s.

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Utilization of bottom ash for alkali-activated (Si-Al) materials: A Review

Laila Mardiah Deraman, Mohd Mustafa Al Bakri Abdullah, Liew Yun Ming, Kamarudin Hussin, Zarina Yahya and Aeslina Abdul Kadir

In Malaysia, 180 tons/day of solid waste bottom ash are produced by a Tanjung Bin power station, which is one of the four coal power plants in Malaysia. Hence, to overcome this problem, the solid waste could be used as source material in construction industry using geopolymer technique. Alkali-activated materials are introduced as alternative materials to ordinary Portland cement (OPC) in the construction industry. There are many types of alkaline activator raw materials such as bottom ash, fly ash, metakaolin and so on that can be substituted the materials existing such as cement and fine or course aggregate in the market now to make any production where the materials are coming from waste. The geopolymerization process involves a substantially fast chemical reaction under alkaline conditions with Si and Al minerals that results in a three‐dimensional polymeric chain and ring structure consisting of SiOAlO. The higher SiOAlO bonds are contained in the geopolymer, the higher compressive strength results will find. Several types of building materials such as bricks and blocks can be formed for commercial exploitation using bottom ash with geopolymerization method.

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Analyzing the effect of multi-channel multi-scale segmentation of retinal blood vessels

Ain Nazari, Mohd Marzuki Mustafa and Mohd Asyraf Zulkifley

Retinal blood vessel segmentation is one of the important modules in developing an automated vessel detection system, which is used to pre-screen various types of disease. This paper proposes a segmentation technique for retinal blood vessel using multi-channel multi-scale edge detection method. Multi-channel approach is implemented because of more information can be extracted compared to a single channel. After that, multi-scale edge detection is applied to detect the blood vessels which vary in size from 1 pixel to 15 pixels width. The contrast is then improved through standardization of the original response image. Finally, binarization method is applied to remove the noise to get the final segmented retinal blood vessels. Simulation results show that blood vessels have been segmented accurately by using images from two publicly available databases, DRIVE and HRF. The best accuracy is 0.93 obtained from DRIVE database while the finest precision is 0.94 obtained from HRF database. Meanwhile, the highest sensitivity obtained is 0.61 from DRIVE database whereas the best specificity is 0.98 based on HRF database. In conclusion, an accurate information of retinal blood vessel condition will be very beneficial to pre-screen numerous diseases.

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Internal state measurement from facial stereo thermal and visible sensors through SVM classification

Mohd Norzali Haji Mohd, Masayuki Kashima, Kiminori Sato and Mutsumi Watanabe

Our main aim is to propose a vision-based measurement as an alternative to physiological measurement for recognizing mental stress. The development of this emotion recognition system involved three stages: experimental setup for vision and physiological sensing, facial feature extraction in visual-thermal domain, mental stress stimulus experiment and data analysis and classification based on Support Vector Machine. In this research, 3 vision-based measurement and 2 physiological measurement were implemented in the system. Vision based measurement in facial vision domain consists of eyes blinking and in facial thermal domain consists 3 ROI`s temperature value and blood vessel volume at Supraorbital area. Two physiological measurement were done to measure the ground true value which is heart rate and salivary amylase level. We also propose a new calibration chessboard attach with fever plaster to locate calibration point in stereo view. A new method of integration of two different sensors for detecting facial feature in both thermal and visual is also presented by applying nostril mask, which allows one to find facial feature namely nose area in thermal and visual domain. Extraction of thermal-visual feature images was done by using SIFT feature detector and extractor to verify the method of using nostril mask. Based on the experiment conducted, 88.6% of correct matching was detected. In the eyes blinking experiment, almost 98% match was detected successfully for without glasses and 89\% with glasses. Graph cut algorithm was applied to remove unwanted ROI. The recognition rate of 3 ROI`s was about 90%-96%. We also presented new method of automatic detection of blood vessel volume at Supraorbital monitored by LWIR camera. The recognition rate of correctly detected pixel was about 93%. An experiment to measure mental stress by using the proposed system based on Support Vector Machine classification had been proposed and conducted and showed promising results.

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Evolutionary robotics + 3D printing = rapid and low-cost deployment of autonomous mobile robots

Jason Teo, Shun-Hoe Lim, Wei-Shun Chee and Kim-On Chin

The design, programming and deployment of autonomous mobile robots is a highly complex, time-consuming and expensive endeavor. In this research, we propose an approach which combines evolutionary robotics with 3D printing as an approach for rapid and cheaper method for the fabrication of autonomous mobile robots. We have purposefully chosen the domains of continuum robots and hybrid articulated-wheeled robots as the proving grounds for our approach as these two areas of autonomous robotics have been proven to be among the most complex to design and program as well as being highly cost-intensive to fabricate and deploy in the real world. Capitalizing on the automated design and optimization phases of evolutionary robotics and harnessing the rapid and relatively low cost of 3D printing, our tests show that the time required and cost involved to design, fabricate and successfully deploy evolved and 3D printed continuum robots as well as hybrid articulated-wheeled mobile robots can indeed be observably be reduced. Analysis shows that the transference from simulated to real-world robots is indeed feasible and readily achievable with functioning mobile robots with autonomous behaviors that display a good level of fidelity.

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Power optimization of semiconductor laser driver using voltage scaling technique

Bhagwan Das, M. F. L. Abdullah and Mohd Shah Nor

In this paper, green hybrid silicon semiconductor (HSS) laser driver is designed using voltage scaling techniques. Voltage scaling is very popular approach for reducing total power of integrated circuits. The HSS laser driver is designed using current mode logic (CML) technique, which is widely used technique for designing optical components. CML technique provides the strength to the laser driver for high frequencies mid-range infrared range. The HSS laser driver firstly, is developed in Matlab that consume very high power. After that, the HSS laser driver design is implemented on FPGA virtex-6 family, package FF784, XC6VCX75T device at speed of -2 using voltage scaling technique. The HSS laser driver is operated at different mid infrared range frequencies on Matlab based model and FPGA model. It is concluded that using voltage scale technique on FPGA, power optimization is performed for the HSS laser driver. In results for different mid-range infrared frequencies more than 95% power is saved by comparing the power consumption of Matlab based model and power-optimized model using voltage scaling on FPGA. This energy efficient design of semiconductor laser can be integrated with other optical components to make optical communication system green.

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Inverse kinematics analysis of a 5-axis RV-2AJ robot manipulator

Mohammad Afif Ayob, Wan Nurshazwani Wan Zakaria, Jamaludin Jalani and Mohd Razali Md Tomari

This paper presents the inverse kinematics analysis of the five degree of freedom (DOF) Mitsubishi Melfa RV-2AJ industrial robot. The proposed method is used specifically for controlling the z-axis Cartesian position. The kinematics problem is defined as the transformation from the robot’s end-effector Cartesian space to the joint angle of the robotic arms. An analytical solution using trigonometry illustration is presented to describe the relation between the position of the robot end-effector to each of the robot joints. Several lab experiments to validate the established kinematics equations have been conducted. In this study, the developed kinematics solutions were found to be accurate to approximately 99.83% compared to the real robot. These findings have significant implication for developing a kinematic simulation model that can be used to evaluate position and force control algorithm.

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A fuzzy logic positional-based controller for sensor-based robotic motion planning

Weria Khaksar, Moslem Yousefi, Khairul Salleh Mohamed Saharia and Firas B. Ismail

Motion planning is a critical task for any robotic system. Despite the large volume of research in this field, the computational complexity of the motion planning and the increasing potential application domains require more accurate and efficient motion planning algorithms. In this paper, a novel positional-based motion controller is proposed which requires very little amount of information from the robot’s sensory system. The proposed controller evaluates candidate positions of the robot and selects the most promising ones according to the output of a fuzzy logic controller. The designed controller defines three positional variables for destination evaluation in order to improve the path length and runtime of the solutions. The performance of the proposed planner is tested through computer simulation in different types of environments. Simulation studies indicate the efficiency and robustness of the proposed algorithm.

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Fabrication and testing of electromagnetic MEMS micro-actuator utilizing PCB based planar micro-coil

R. E. Pawinanto, J. Yunas, B.Y. Majlis, B. Bais and Muzalifah Mohd Said

An electromagnetic MEMS actuator with planar electromagnetic micro-coil on a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) is reported. The microactuator device consists of permanent magnet made of NdFeB, silicon based membrane and planar micro-coil electroplated on PCB. Each part of the system was fabricated using simple MEMS technique and bonded together using epoxy material. The performance of the fabricated device was tested by measuring the deflection capability of the silicon membrane. The measurement results showed that a planar spiral micro-coil is able to generate magnetic flux density and to deform a 20 µm thin silicon membrane with a maximum deflection height of 12.87 µm. The functionality of the actuator system was tested by measuring the dynamic response in a period of 50 seconds. Test on planar parallel round micro-coil resulted in a maximum membrane displacement in 40 s for all tested input power from 100 to 1000 mWatt. The results from this study will benefit the future development of electromagnetic MEMS actuator for integrated micropump.

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Electromagnetic shielding of cement-graphite powder between 100 TO 2000 MHz

See Khee Yee and Mohd Zarar Bin Mohd Jenu

Electromagnetic interference (EMI) issue is of concern as it may cause the malfunction of other electrical or electronic devices. Extra protection can be provided not only to the equipment but also to the human inside a building if the shielding capability can be embedded directly into the building material. The inherent shielding of the cement powder is not adequate to eliminate the incoming electromagnetic (EM) field efficiently (less than 2dB from the result of this work). Hence this work is carried out to improve the shielding effectiveness (SE) of cement powder by mixing graphite fine powder as a conductive filler into the cement powder. The increment in the loss factor reflected that the addition of the conductive filler has increased the conductivity of the mixture. The addition of 30 percent of graphite into the cement powder is able to produce 110dB of shielding at 900MHz at 10cm.

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Mass flow rate in gravity flow rig using optical tomography

Siti Zarina Mohd Muji, Ruzairi Abdul Rahim, Rahman Amirulah, Norhidayati Podari, Nurashlida Ali and Mohd Fadzli Abdul Shaib

Monitoring mass flow rate is important in solid gas application. There are two common technique namely, inferential and direct method. Direct method is the focus in this research as it only involves in single plane system. The optical tomography system will be placed at the gravity flow rig to find its percent of concentration, and this value will be manipulated to get the mass flow rate. Direct method is the solution for a system that needs easy computation.

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Monitoring grid frequency

Mohd Firdaus bin Mohd Ab Halim, Mohamad Haniff Harun, Khalil Azha Mohd Annuar and Suziana Ahmad

The grid frequency of a 50 Hz system varies from 49.8 Hz to 50.2 Hz. Every 0.01 Hz of change in grid frequency corresponds to approximately 6% to 8% of power supply dropped in the grid (S. Pourmousaviet al. 2009). Hence high resolution of measurement device is a must to monitor the grid frequency. Most frequency measurement devices such as oscilloscope usually cater high frequency measurement range. Even though some oscilloscope able to measure low frequency signal, its accuracy and resolution is not up to the challenge of measuring grid frequency. Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) uses by most power system company is not economical to be used by small scale power generation company or for research purpose. In this paper, a simple zero crossing method will be employ to measure the grid frequency with a resolution of 0.003 Hz using Arduino Uno controller. The test and validation of the frequency data took place in Europe specifically at University of Applied Science Rosenheim.

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Analysis of geometrical features of e-shaped core μ-coil fluxgate magnetometer

Mohammed Thameemul Ansari M. H., N. Sulaiman and A. Z. Jusoh

This paper presents the variation analysis of micro-coil fluxgate magnetometer. The design and analysis have been carried out using COMSOL multiphysics. The performance of the μ-coil have been analyzed by taking three different combinations of one parameter into account such as number of turns in order to find the optimized design. The optimized design of the micro coil can be used as a reference for the future fabrication of μ-scale fluxgate magnetometer. According to the results we found that the optimized design which has more number of turns. Therefore the number of turns has been adjusted to finalize the sensitive device. Hence, the coil with more number of turns has more sensitivity than the other with 0.053 mV.

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Non-invasive estimation of blood oxyhemoglobin and carboxyhemoglobin saturations using cumulant based forward model

Audrey K. C. Huong, Sheena P. Philimon and Xavier T. I. Ngu

This paper aims to study the feasibility of using optical reflectance spectroscopy and Cumulant based forward model (CM) for non-invasive investigation of differences in mean blood oxyhemoglobin (SmO₂) and carboxyhemoglobin saturations (SmCO) amongst the participated smoking and nonsmoking recruits, and the effects of different smoking characteristics of smokers on the predicted SmCO level. The value of SmO2 and SmCO is given by those that produce the best agreement between the employed CM and measurement data optimized using the developed fitting routine. The fitting algorithm required the use of extinction coefficients of hemoglobin components as the background information. This work conducted reflectance point spectroscopy measurement on right index finger of seventeen smoking and eleven nonsmoking Asian volunteers at resting condition. The quantitative analysis of the collected data using the employed CM and fitting strategy revealed SmO₂ and SmCO with mean value of  and, respectively, for the nonsmoking population. Meanwhile mean SmO₂ of  and mean SmCO of  are estimated for the smoking volunteers. These blood saturation values agreed acceptably well with the value reported in literature. This preliminary study found a high correlation between one’s CO poisoning level and their number of years smoked but no relationship is observed between the poisoning level and one’s average daily cigarette consumption.

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Survey on input output relation based combination test data generation strategies

Abdul Rahman A. Alsewari,  Nasser M. Tairan and Kamal Z. Zamli

Combinatorial test data generation strategies have been known to be effective to detect the fault in the product due to the interaction between the product’s features. Over the years, many combinatorial test data generation strategies have been developed supporting uniform and variable strength interactions. Although useful, these existing strategies are lacking the support for Input Output Relations (IOR). In fact, there are only a handful of existing strategies addresses IOR. This paper will review the existing combinatorial test data generation strategies supporting the IOR features specifically taking the nature inspired algorithm as the main basis. Benchmarking results illustrate the comparative performance of existing nature inspired algorithm based strategies supporting IOR.

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Evolution of access network from copper to PON: Current status

Rizwan Aslam Butt, Hasunah Mohammad S., Sevia M. Idrus and Shahid Ur Rehman

There was a time when data services were available at 56kbps using dial up connections over the conventional pots network based on copper local loop. But with the introduction of bandwidth thirsty data and video applications, the telecom data networks have gradually evolved from copper based solutions like ISDN and DSL to the fiber based HFC network, SDH based Access networks (FTTC and FTTB) and finally to the Passive Optical Networks (FTTB and FTTH). In this paper we have reviewed these technologies with emphasis on ITU-T PON technologies. We also discuss the future trend of PON based solutions and report on the current progress.

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Improved accuracy of GTEM cell/sac-correlated measurement of IC-radiated electric fields by a correction factor

King Lee Chua and Mohammad Zarar Mohamed Jenu

Gigahertz Transverse Electromagnetic (GTEM) cell has been a popular test facility for evaluating integrated circuit (IC)-radiated emission. Since it is single-port test device, GTEM measurement cannot distinguish electric field component from magnetic field component. Rather, both fields are captured as a global quantity. It is therefore speculated that radiated emission measured using GTEM cell is less precise comparing with near-field probe scanning technique. Nonetheless, GTEM cell is cost-effective in providing sufficiently good ambient shielding to conduct field measurement at broad frequency range. Meanwhile, GTEM measurement typically is associated with semi-anechoic chamber (SAC) measurement. This study attempted to improve the correlation between GTEM and SAC through a correction factor. A specific circuitry pattern was constructed to replicate the wide-ranging IC interconnections and used for evaluation in GTEM cell and SAC. The horizontal and vertical electric fields based on GTEM measurement were preprocessed by MATLAB code to obtain the correction factor. Subsequently, the correction factor was employed to fine-tune any deviation arose from correlating the IC-radiated electric fields of GTEM cell to SAC. The results demonstrated a strong correlation coefficient upon regulation of GTEM fields with a correction factor, thereby offering a high-accuracy GTEM cell measurement strategy.

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Design of programmable power controller to reduce energy consumption of HVAC devices in office building

Unggul Wibawa, Rini Nur Hasanah and Akhmad Zainuri

This paper presents the design and performance analysis of a programmable power controller (PPC) to reduce electrical energy consumption of heating, ventilating, air-conditioning (HVAC) devices used in office buildings. This PPC operates based on the pre-programmed turning-on and turning-off HVAC devices such as air conditioners, fans, etc. including lightings in a building automatically with the use of a computer program. Programming can be done either based on pre-scheduled functioning of the devices considering the users behaviour or using feedback sensors of the room conditions. It concludes that in general there is still common to find the negligence of occupants/users to turn off the HVAC equipments of the building under consideration, being potential as priorities of energy management and conservation measures. It shows also that the use of PPC is prospective in energy management and conservation efforts, resulting in a prospective reduction of up to 20% - 30% of electrical energy consumption of the building under study.

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Data transmission performance analysis in cloud and grid

Mohammed Abdul Karem and Rohaya Latip

Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) and MapReduce programming model are for storage and retrieval of the big data. The Terabytes size file can be easily stored on the HDFS and can be analyzed with MapReduce. HDFS is becoming more popular in recent years as a key building block of integrated grid storage solution in the field of scientific computing. However, due to the nature of HDFS that it cannot support asynchronous write, it is widely confirmed that for the case of sustained high throughput in WAN transfer, single stream per GridFTP transfer is the best solution. GridFTP, designed by using Globus, is one of the most popular protocols for performing data transfers in the Grid environment. In this paper, we take on the challenge of integrating Hadoop with grid, by proposing a new framework called Grid-over-Hadoop by retaining the features of Hadoop and using GridFTP for data transfer.

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At a macro scale level, mixing is generally achieved by a turbulent flow, which makes possible of segregating the fluid in small domains, thereby leading to an increase in the contact surface and decrease in the mixing path. At low Reynolds number, the viscous effects dominate inertial effects and a completely laminar flow occurs. In the laminar flow system, fluid streams flow parallel to each other and the velocity at any location within the fluid stream is variant with pressure when boundary conditions are constant and due to the change in surface area–to-volume tension and diffusion, do not simply scale linearly from large to small devices. This makes the use of microfluidic as a mixing device difficult. Thus, the study posed to bridge this gap by created geometrically enhanced Micromixer for homogenous mixing.

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Investigation of threshold voltage variations in NMOS

Rabiatul Adawiyah Musa and Rahmat Sanudin

As MOSFET is rigorously scaled down to meet the expected circuit evolution according to the Moore’s Law, the issue of threshold voltage (VTH) becoming more dominant in transistor operation. This parameters is worth to be investigated since it dictates the performance of the transistor operation. On top of that, channel length modulation, which related to transistor scaling, plays dominant role in affecting the VTH. The investigation is performed primarily based on transistor modelling that relates the parameters of interest in device operation. It is carried out through simulation work of 45 nm n-type MOSFET (NMOS) in Sentaurus TCAD to see changes in transistor operation. Simulation results suggest that oxide thickness and dopant cocncentration in substrate have significant effect on the VTH. The changes in both parameters are related to changes in oxide layer capacitance and number of minority carriers that essentially affect the VTH.

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An activity monitoring system for elderly

Kian Sek Tee, Afiqa Hairennas Binti Zulkifli and Chin Fhong Soon

Health declines due to insufficient physical activities especially the erlderly. These may contribute in growing number of diseases related to insufficient physical activities. An activity monitoring system is designed to detect physical activities of an elderly in daily life and alert the user. This activity monitoring system is able to detect daily activities such as standing, sitting and walking. A multi-axial motion sensor is attached to trunk of the elderly. Kinematic data of the user could be used to assess the degree of activeness. These data provide proofs for the purpose of health monitoring, early warning and detection of falling due to poor health condition.

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Compressive forces of cell induced longitudinal deformation to the liquid crystal surface

Chin Fhong Soon, Kian Sek Tee, Mansour Youseffi and Morgan Clive Thomas Denyer

The ability of a cell to contract plays an important role in determining the ability of the cell to migrate, proliferate and associating with other cells. The transduction of the force in soft substrate such as the liquid crystal surface is a method proposed to study the traction forces of single cells. In this work, finite element method was used to study the compressive forces induced by the keratinocyte to the liquid crystal surface via the anchorage of focal contacts. The constitutive finite element model of the liquid crystal-focal contacts was established. The stress and displacement were analyzed using linear static stress analysis for a quiescent cell. The data for lateral displacements obtained from the experiment were provided as inputs to develop the model and verified through the output acquired for both simulation and experiment. The simulation results indicated that the cell compressive stresses were in the range of 14.93 ± 1.9 nN/mm² per focal contact. Based on the result obtained, it was suggested to model focal contact-liquid crystal interface with a compressive model that can better approximate the mechanism observed.

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Reconstruction of extremely dense breast composition utilizing inverse scattering technique integrated with frequency-hopping approach

Ng Shi Wei, Kismet Anak Hong Ping, Lim Sin Yee, Wan Azlan Bin Wan ZainalAbidin, Toshifumi Moriyama and Takashi Takenaka

The Forward-Backward Time-Stepping (FBTS) inverse scattering technique is utilized for breast composition reconstruction of an extremely dense breast model at different center frequencies. A numerical extremely dense breast phantom is used and resized to suit the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) lattice environment utilizing two-dimensional (2-D) FBTS technique. The average value of fibroglandular region for reconstruction with Frequency-hopping approach applied is much closer to average value of the actual image compared to the reconstruction without Frequency-approach applied. Hence, the composition of the extremely dense breast model can be reconstructed with Frequency-hopping approach is applied and the details of the reconstruction is also enhanced.

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Integrated optical and wireless access networks: From the energy consumption perspective

A. Ramli, M. A. Wong, N. Zulkifli and S. M. Idrus

Integrated optical and wireless technologies is one of the emerging access network solution that offers to combine the robustness and high capacity of optical networks with the mobility and ubiquity of wireless networks. This article reviews the potential of integrating the wireless and optical access networks for future broadband access networks taking into account the energy consumption and energy modeling for evaluating the energy efficiency of such networks.

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Effect of white noise stimulation and visual working memory task on brain signal

S. S. Daud and R. Sudirman

Researcher had claimed that white noise is one of the sound stimulation that is able to improve the human cognitive thinking. This study aims to determine the effect of white noise and visual working memory task on brain signal. The performance of the subject during the task has been analyzed based on the brain signal activation at location Fp1, Fz, F8, Pz, O1 and O2. In achieving the objective of this study, an experiment has been conducted that involving twenty six adult subjects. They are required to memorize the task within two minutes. Electroencephalography (EEG) machine (Neurofax 9200) with 10-20 placement electrode was used to record the electrical activity of the brain. Two features which are mean and standard deviation has been extracted from the EEG signal by using stationary wavelet transform approach. T-test analysis has been done to determine the significant differences between the sound stimulation and control condition. The result shows that there is a significant difference between white noise and silence condition at certain brain locations. Findings from this study show that the location Fp1 and Fz is mostly affected by sound stimulation and visual working memory task.

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A Bat-Inspired strategy for pairwise testing

Yazan A. Alsariera, Mazlina A. Majid and Kamal Z. Zamli

Owing to exponential growth of software lines of codes (LOC)s, testing becomes painstakingly difficult activities. Test engineers are often under pressure to test more and more LOCs yet within the same targeted deadline. For this reason, efficient testing strategy is required. Pairwise testing is amongst the most common strategies for minimizing and sampling of tests for testing consideration. Recently, there are growing interests for adapting optimization algorithms as the basis of the newly developed strategies. Complementing the existing work, we propose a novel design and implementation of Bat-inspired algorithm (BA) for pairwise strategy, called Bat-inspired pairwise testing strategy (BPTS). Based on the benchmarking results, BPTS outperforms most existing strategies in terms of the generated test suite size. BPTS serves as our research vehicle to investigate the effectiveness of Bat-inspired algorithm for pairwise test generation, which is going to be helpful to reduce the time and cost of software testing by reducing the number of test cases.

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Powertrain main components sizing of PHERB using KL river driving cycle

J. S. Norbakyah, W. H. Atiq and A. R. Salisa

Due to clean and efficient power generation, the plug-in hybrid vehicle has received extensive attention. A series-parallel plug-in hybrid electric recreational boat (PHERB) is a new model for recreation boat innovation was introduced. In this paper, a design of main components sizing for a series-parallel PHERB powertrain was presented. The PHERB powertrain component sizing begins with calculation of boat energy and power requirements for typical driving conditions according to the boat power parameters, specifications and performance requirements. The size and capacity of the main components are determined through a power flow analysis so as to fulfill the PHERB powertrain design specifications and requirements. After that, the parameters and specifications for each component that make up the overall structure of the PHERB powertrain are defined based on the developed Kampung Laut river drive cycle. The results obtained from this analysis are within reasonable range and satisfactory.

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ST river driving cycle characterization

W. H. Atiq, J. S. Norbakyah and A. R. Salisa

This paper indicates the results of the Seberang Takir (ST) river driving cycle characterization for plug-in hybrid electric recreational boat (PHERB) powertrain. The real world data are obtained using on-board measurement techniques, which is global positioning system, in order to collect boat speed-time data along the selected route. The designated route based on the previous daily average traffic of the ST passenger boat record. Multiple variables are implemented in the characterization of ST river driving cycle for PHERB powertrain. The constructed driving cycle consists of 466 s speed time series, with a distance of 939.42 m, come along with an average and maximum speed of 7.26 km/h and 14.18 km/h, respectively. The results obtained from the analysis are within adequate range and satisfactory.

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