Sharif Digital Repository

By increasing the number of registered speakers in Speaker Identification (SI) systems, computation time for identifying an unknown speaker is significantly increased. This problem arises from the simple design of conventional methods. Due to this limitation, we cannot use conventional SI methods in real time applications. In this paper, we propose a two-step method to overcome this limitation. We use different identification methods for each step. In the first step we reduce the search space using Nearest Neighbor method. In the second step we identify the target speaker using the conventional GMM-based SI method. The experimental results show 3.4× speed-ups without any accuracy loss using... 

The matrix decomposing into a sum of low-rank and sparse components has found extensive applications in many areas including video surveillance, computer vision, and medical imaging. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for recovery of low rank and sparse components of a given matrix. We have also proved the convergence of the proposed algorithm. The simulation results with synthetic and real signals such as image and video signals indicate that the proposed algorithm has a better performance with lower run-time than the conventional methods. © 1991-2012 IEEE  

Measuring the coupling of single neuron's spiking activities to the local field potentials (LFPs) is a method to investigate neuronal synchronization. The most important synchronization measures are phase locking value (PLV), spike field coherence (SFC), pairwise phase consistency (PPC), and spike-triggered correlation matrix synchronization (SCMS). Synchronization is generally quantified using the PLV and SFC. PLV and SFC methods are either biased on the spike rates or the number of trials. To resolve these problems the PPC measure has been introduced. However, there are some shortcomings associated with the PPC measure which is unbiased only for very high spike rates. However evaluating... 

The low thermal conductivity of phase change materials (PCM) results in the slowdown in the discharging process of PCM which limits the usability of these materials in the field of Thermal Energy Storage (TES). In this research, an innovative solution is proposed to significantly accelerate the solidification speed, up to two orders of magnitude greater than conventional methods. Using acetone as the intermediate boiling fluid (IBF), the paraffin discharge rate as a phase-change material is significantly improved which is known as super-fast discharge (SFD) in this article. In this method, liquid acetone takes the heat by boiling in liquid paraffin and causes it to solidify. As the liquid... 

An ultra-efficient switching method for successive approximation register ADCs is proposed. In this method, the input signals are sampled in a special fashion to reduce the switching energy. Owing to the sampling method, only one reference voltage (Vq=Vref/4) is required to implement the switching steps. Therefore, in addition to reduction in the switching energy (due to the lower supply voltage), the precision of the DAC is improved. The proposed method reduces the switching energy and area by 99.41 and 50%, respectively, compared with the conventional method. © 2016 The Institution of Engineering and Technology  

Using mobile robots in disaster areas can reduce risks and the search time in urban search and rescue operations. Optimal path-planning for mobile robotics can play a key role in the reduction of the search time for rescuing victims. In order to minimize the search time, the shortest path to the target should be determined. In this paper, a new integrated Reinforcement Learning—based method is proposed to search and find a hidden target in an unknown environment in the minimum time. The proposed algorithm is developed in two main phases. Depending on whether or not the mobile robot receives the signal from the hidden target, phases I or II of the proposed algorithm can be carried out. Then,... 

Using mobile robots in disaster areas can reduce risks and the search time in urban search and rescue operations. Optimal path-planning for mobile robotics can play a key role in the reduction of the search time for rescuing victims. In order to minimize the search time, the shortest path to the target should be determined. In this paper, a new integrated Reinforcement Learning—based method is proposed to search and find a hidden target in an unknown environment in the minimum time. The proposed algorithm is developed in two main phases. Depending on whether or not the mobile robot receives the signal from the hidden target, phases I or II of the proposed algorithm can be carried out. Then,... 

The inception of transformation optics has opened avenues for designing of a plethora of applications related to the propagation of electromagnetic waves in anisotropic media. In this paper, an algorithm is proposed using a coordinate transformation for the purpose of designing a cloak for a body having an arbitrary convex geometry. For the purpose of verification of the algorithm, a ray tracing process is carried out for an ellipsoid as well as an irregularly shaped body, both having axial symmetry. The ray tracing is carried out in a two dimensional plane since the transmitted ray vector would lie in the plane of incidence containing the incident ray vector and the normal vector to the... 

A label-free electrochemical biosensor was developed for the rapid detection of the matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP-9) biomarker on the basis of antibody immobilizing on the zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticle and ZnO nanorod electrodes. The charge transfer resistance (Rct) of the electrodes was used as the indicator for MMP-9 concentration, which was obtained through cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The ZnO nanorod-based biosensor exhibited linear behavior in the MMP-9 concentration range of 1–1000 ng/ml, which is a wider range than the available concentration ranges for most of the conventional methods. The biosensor sensitivity was 32.5 μA/(decade × cm2)... 

Meanwhile with increasing demand for energy sources in the world, hydropower plants can be considered as clean energy sources for sustainable development. Hydropower plant environmental impact is almost none. They are easy to construct and operate with much lower cost in comparison with other types of power plants. Currently in Iran, Conventional methods for determining hydropower plant potent location are very complicated and do not always eventuated to the best result. This study focuses on run of river projects and proposes a new methodology to spot hydropower plan best location according to specific engineering criteria, using ArcGIS and an algorithm developed in MATLAB. An economic... 

Material selection for mechanical designs is an important task. Different approaches have been proposed to fulfill this job, so far. However, most of them work well with only quantitatively measurable properties of materials. Also, due to a wide range of materials available, the selection space finds a fuzzy characteristic. Therefore, here a simplified fuzzy logic approach is introduced to provide a powerful tool for easy dealing with the qualitative properties of materials and the corresponding fuzzy space. With this approach the volume of mathematics involved with the conventional methods reduces, considerably. The results show an excellent match with the Manshadi's method. © 2008 Elsevier... 

Datapath designs that perform polynomial computations over Z 2n are used in many applications such as computer graphics and digital signal processing domains. As the market of such applications continues to grow, improvements in high-level synthesis and optimization techniques for multivariate polynomials have become really challenging. This paper presents an efficient algorithm for optimizing the implementation of a multivariate polynomial over Z2n in terms of the number of multipliers and adders. This approach makes use of promising heuristics to extract more complex common sub-expressions from the polynomial compared to the conventional methods. The proposed algorithm also utilizes a... 

The conventional delay-line discriminator method for phase noise measurement is modified to achieve better sensitivity. In the proposed technique, to decrease delay-line loss, the under-test oscillator's microwave frequency is down-converted by another oscillator, and delay-line is implemented in the IF range. Full validation of the technique is presented. In adition, we experimentally demonstrate that system sensitivity is considerably improved compared to the conventional method  

Access to a computational tractable method for representing the system more realistically has always been an important issue in power system reliability assessment. The Post Optimal Analysis (POA), as a well recognized technique to attack a set of similar optimization problems, has been successfully used to assess the reliability of composite systems. This method exploits the similarity of the system states to speed up the contingency evaluation procedure without sacrificing the accuracy of the results. In this paper, the performance and practical feasibility of the POA technique for power system reliability evaluation is tested using the Iran power grid. The POA based approach is applicable... 

Access to a computational tractable method for representing the system more realistically has always been an important issue in power system reliability assessment. The Post Optimal Analysis (POA), as a well recognized technique to attack a set of similar optimization problems, has been successfully used to assess the reliability of composite systems. This method exploits the similarity of the system states to speed up the contingency evaluation procedure without sacrificing the accuracy of the results. In this paper, the performance and practical feasibility of the POA technique for power system reliability evaluation is tested using the Iran power grid. The POA based approach is applicable... 

To improve power system reliability, it is important to reduce the amount of curtailed load when a contingency occurs. While comparing the conventional methods in load shedding, this paper presents a new approach based on sensitivity between line flows and bus power injections. The proposed method selects a set of buses for alleviating the overloaded transmission lines. The RBTS, IEEE-RTS79, and IEEE 118-bus test systems are used to examine the applicability of the proposed method. The results obtained are compared with those of global optimization and heuristic approach from the amount of curtailed load and the computational burden points of view. It will be shown that the proposed method... 

The overall system status calculated by pflower flow analysis is the most basic information used for all decisions taken by power system operators and planners. While conventional AC pflower flow solutions are computationally tractable, approximate DC models are employed in many applications, such as optimal power flow studies and unit commitment problems, mainly due to the linear nature of DC models. These models do not provide any information on the reactive power and voltage magnitude quantities and occasionally inaccurate results of the active power values. This paper presents an efficient power flow approach compromising both the con icting aspects of speed and accuracy. The proposed... 

Automatic access control systems (ACS) based on the human biometrics or physical tokens are widely employed in public and private areas. Yet these systems, in their conventional forms, are restricted to active interaction from the users. In scenarios where users are not cooperating with the system, these systems are challenged. Failure in cooperation with the biometric systems might be intentional or because the users are incapable of handling the interaction procedure with the biometric system or simply forget to cooperate with it, due to for example, illness like dementia. This work introduces a challenging bimodal database, including face and hand information of the users when they... 

In this paper, a new method for modal parameter estimation using time-frequency representations is presented. Smoothed Pseudo Wigner-Ville representation which is a member of the Cohen's class distributions is used that reduces cross-terms in time-frequency plane dramatically and holds resolution as well. The method was applied to systems with high damping, and the results were superior to other conventional methods. © (2006) by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Department of Mechanical Engineering All rights reserved  

The aim of this study was to develop a predictive method for heat transfer coefficients in solar water heaters and their performance evaluation of such heaters with different materials used as heat collectors. Two approaches have been used: conventional method and an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to predict the performance of solar water heaters and to compare these two approaches. This performance is measured in terms of outlet temperature by using a set of conventional feed forward multi-layer neural networks. The actual experimental data which were used as our network's input gathered from published literature (for polypropylene tubes) and from the experiments carried out recently using...