Sharif Digital Repository

The earned value management (EVM) model is an essential technique for managing and forecasting project features such as scheduling and cost performances indexes. This paper presents a novel fuzzy earned-value model based on Z-number theory incorporating both the impreciseness of real life conditions and a degree of reliability through considering an expert judgment process. The latter factor has not been used by other researchers in the field. The proposed model provides a reliable assessment for the progress performance of a project and its 'at completion' cost in an uncertain environment. Finally, an illustrative case demonstrates the applicability of the proposed model in real life... 

This work aims to propose a new technique that considerably helps enhance time and precision needed to identify "Inertia Parameters (IPs)" of a typical Autonomous Space-Robot (ASR). Operations might include, capturing an unknown Target Space-Object (TSO), "active space-debris removal" or "automated in-orbit assemblies". In these operations generating precise successive commands are essential to the success of the mission. We show how a generalized, repeatable estimation-process could play an effective role to manage the operation. With the help of the well-known Force-Based approach, a new "modular formulation" has been developed to simultaneously identify IPs of an ASR while it captures a... 

Kinetic modeling is an important issue, whose objective is the accurate determination of the rates of various reactions taking place in a reacting system. This issue is a pivotal element for the process design and development particularly for novel processes which are based on reactions taking place between various types of species. In this paper, the Genetic Algorithms have been used to develop a systematic computational framework for kinetic modeling of various reacting systems. This framework can be used to find the optimum values of various parameters that exist in the kinetic model of a reacting system. The Fischer-Tropsch (FT) reactions have been used as the kinetic modeling bench... 

This paper presents a hierarchically distributed algorithm for the execution of distribution state estimation function in active networks equipped with some phasor measurement units. The proposed algorithm employs voltage-based state estimation in rectangular form and is well-designed for large-scale active distribution networks. For this purpose, as the first step, the distribution network is supposed to be divided into some overlapped zones and local state estimations are executed in parallel for extracting operating states of these zones. Then, using coordinators in the feeders and the substation, the estimated local voltage profiles of all zones are coordinated with the local state... 

We have developed an enhanced technique for characterizing quantum optical processes based on probing unknown quantum processes only with coherent states. Our method substantially improves the original proposal (Lobino et al 2008 Science 322 563), which uses a filtered Glauber-Sudarshan decomposition to determine the effect of the process on an arbitrary state. We introduce a new relation between the action of a general quantum process on coherent state inputs and its action on an arbitrary quantum state. This relation eliminates the need to invoke the Glauber-Sudarshan representation for states; hence, it dramatically simplifies the task of process identification and removes a potential... 

Small signal stability of power systems is one of the most crucially important issues, since the electrical demand is increasing at a galloping rate and power systems are expanding day by day. In this regard, estimation of dampings and frequencies of electromechanical modes through the analysis of field measurements has become a heated study topic for electrical power system researchers in recent years. There have been several methods to analyze different types of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) signals i.e., transient, ambient, and probing. Among the proposed techniques, those which are capable of analyzing ambient data seems to be more practical, since this type of data can be achieved... 

The multi-path phenomenon is one of the main causes of error in Direction Of Arrival Estimation systems which are located in a complex environment. The received signal in this environment consists of Line Of Sight (LOS) and multi-path components which are delayed versions of the LOS signal with the amplitude and the phase depending on the path length. In order to eliminate the multi-path signal, it is necessary to estimate the amplitude, the phase, and the delay of the signal. To this end, a method based on correlation which has been already used to estimate amplitudes and delays of Line Of Sight and multi-path signals in GPS systems, is implemented. After this estimation process, a phase... 

Trolling mode atomic force microscopy (TR-AFM) can considerably reduce the liquid-resonator interaction forces, and hence, has overcome many imaging problems in liquid environments. This mode increases the quality factor (QF) significantly compared with the conventional AFM operation in liquid; therefore, the duration to reach the steady-state periodic motion of the oscillating probe is relatively high. As a result, utilizing conventional imaging techniques, which are based on measuring the amplitude and phase, are significantly slower when compared to our proposed method. This research presents a high-speed scanning technique based on an estimation law to obtain the topography of various... 

Trolling mode atomic force microscopy (TR-AFM) can considerably reduce the liquid-resonator interaction forces, and hence, has overcome many imaging problems in liquid environments. This mode increases the quality factor (QF) significantly compared with the conventional AFM operation in liquid; therefore, the duration to reach the steady-state periodic motion of the oscillating probe is relatively high. As a result, utilizing conventional imaging techniques, which are based on measuring the amplitude and phase, are significantly slower when compared to our proposed method. This research presents a high-speed scanning technique based on an estimation law to obtain the topography of various... 

In this study, a novel technique based on adaptive fading extended Kalman filter for atomic force microscopy is proposed to directly estimate the topography of a sample surface without needing any control system. While in conventional imaging techniques, the scanning speed or the bandwidth is limited due to a relatively large settling time, the method proposed in this research is able to address this issue and estimate the topography throughout transient oscillation of the microcantilever. With this aim, an estimation process using an adaptive fading extended Kalman filter (augmented with forgetting factor) as the system observer is designed and coupled with the system dynamics to obtain... 

Unlike a single-body approach, modeling based on a two-body approach has been employed to prepare the required system dynamic model as a time update equation in the applied filtering technology and measurement data for the estimation process. This more precise mathematical model enabled better understanding about the dynamics of the change in the aircraft mass properties during the airdropping operation. The problem is defined as estimation of the optimal mass properties parameters for the best possible fit of the model output to the real data. The parameter estimation problem is investigated by a nonlinear filtering methodology in two sequential steps. In the first step, the single extended... 

Leakage power has already become the major contributor to the total on-chip power consumption, rendering its estimation a necessary step in the IC design flow. The problem is further exacerbated with the increasing uncertainty in the manufacturing process known as process variability. We develop a method to estimate the variation of leakage power in the presence of both intra-die and inter-die process variability. Various complicating issues of leakage prediction such as spatial correlation of process parameters, the effect of different input states of gates on the leakage, and DIBL and stack effects are taken into account while we model the simultaneous variability of the two most critical... 

The Burr III distribution properly approximates many familiar distributions such as Normal, Lognormal, Gamma, Weibull, and Exponential distributions. It plays an important role in reliability engineering, statistical quality control, and risk analysis models. The Burr III distribution has four parameters known as location, scale, and two shape parameters. The estimation process of these parameters is controversial. Although the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) is understood as a straightforward method in parameters estimation, using MLE to estimate the Burr III parameters leads to maximize a complicated function with four unknown variables, where using a conventional optimization such as... 

As a non-invasive method, photographic imaging techniques offer some interesting potentials for characterization of soil moisture content in unsaturated porous media, enabling mapping at very fine resolutions in both space and time. Although less explored, the wealth of soil moisture data provided by photographic imaging is also appealing for the estimation of unsaturated soil hydraulic parameters through inverse modeling. However, imaging data have some unique characteristics, including high susceptibility to noise, which can negatively affect the parameter estimation process. In this study a sequential data assimilation approach is developed to simultaneously update soil moisture content...