Sharif Digital Repository

We give an upper bound on the performance of the belief propagation algorithm in decoding a code over a binary-input output-symmetric channel in terms of the decoding threshold of the code over the erasure channel. Using this upper bound, we obtain the overhead of fountain codes on the erasure channel, provided that they are capacity-achieving on a symmetric channel. The upper bound is similar to a lower bound proved by Khandekar. The lower bound will be used to bound from above the reception overhead of fountain codes on symmetric channels  

Based on the notion of maximal correlation, we introduce a new measure of correlation between two different rankings of the same group of items. Our measure captures various types of correlation detected in previous measures of rank correlation like the Spearman correlation and the Kendall tau correlation. We show that the maximal rank correlation satisfies the data processing and tensorization properties (that make ordinary maximal correlation applicable to problems in information theory). Furthermore, MRC is shown to be intimately related to the FKG inequality. Finally, we pose the problem of the complexity of the computation of this new measure. We make partial progress by giving a simple... 

We extend the construction and analysis of Raptor codes originally designed in [1] for the erasure channel to general symmetric channels. We explicitly calculate the asymptotic fraction of output nodes of degree one and two for capacity-achieving Raptor codes, and discuss techniques to optimize the output degree distribution  

Natural convective heat transfer of Fe3O4/ethylene glycol nanofluids around the platinum wire as a heater in the absence and presence of the high electric field was investigated, numerically. The control volume finite element method was employed for the numerical simulation. Effects of the flow model, the volume fraction of nanoparticles, Rayleigh number, and the electric field intensity on the natural heat transfer coefficient (NHTC) of nanofluid were studied. Simulation results of single-phase and two-phase flow models showed that the two-phase model could better predict experimental data than the single-phase model due to take into account the velocity of each phase in the mixture. The... 

Natural convective heat transfer of Fe3O4/ethylene glycol nanofluids around the platinum wire as a heater in the absence and presence of the high electric field was investigated, numerically. The control volume finite element method was employed for the numerical simulation. Effects of the flow model, the volume fraction of nanoparticles, Rayleigh number, and the electric field intensity on the natural heat transfer coefficient (NHTC) of nanofluid were studied. Simulation results of single-phase and two-phase flow models showed that the two-phase model could better predict experimental data than the single-phase model due to take into account the velocity of each phase in the mixture. The... 

Robotic blimps have a wide range of applications, such as monitoring activities in their surroundings, advertising, and performing on stages. They also have remarkable capacities to be used as a social robot. In this research, a manually operated social robotic blimp has been developed intending to interact with children as a social agent and attract adults’ attention as an entertainer in indoor public environments. Since the appearance of a social robot has a significant impact on its acceptance, first, we acquired opinions of several participants on the shape of a desired floating robot. The results revealed that a simple spherical structure adequately draws people’s attention. After... 

A pH-responsive drug delivery system based on core shell structure of mesoporous silica nanoparticle (MSN) and chitosan-PEG copolymer was prepared and characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and high-resolution transmission microscope (HR-TEM) techniques. In order to improve compatibility MSN and drug, mesoporous nanosilica was modified by 3-aminopropyl triethoxysilane. The release of erythromycin (a macrolide antibiotic) as a model drug was investigated in two pHs, 7.4 and 5.5  

In this paper, Stochastic Activity Networks (SANs) are used to model and evaluate the performance and power consumption of an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud. The proposed SAN model is scalable and flexible, yet encompasses some details of an IaaS cloud, such as Virtual Machine (VM) provisioning, VM multiplexing, and failure/repair behavior of VMs. Using the proposed SAN, a power-aware self-adaptive resource management scheme is presented for IaaS clouds that automatically adjusts the number of powered-on Physical Machines (PMs) regarding variable workloads in different time intervals. The proposed scheme respects user-oriented metrics by avoiding Service Level Agreement (SLA)... 

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) clouds not only have to meet business requirements but also need to consider other important metrics that influence the quality of service, such as performance, availability, and power consumption. In this paper, we present a Stochastic Activity Network (SAN) based analytical approach that simultaneously computes these metrics under a given load for IaaS cloud data centers. The model's high-level abstraction of IaaS clouds allows us to evaluate different resource management strategies and features, including cloud federation and dispatching policies. In a first step, we model a single rack including its autonomous local manager responsible for scheduling...