Sharif Digital Repository

The respiratory system is a vital organ system which makes breathing and gas exchange possible for human's body. The loss of functionality in this system is due to either genetical problems or environmental issues like pollution or toxic gases which in many cases is inevitable. These circumstances may cause different respiratory diseases which may not be curable presently but their side effects can be partly controlled by careful and timely analysis improving the quality of patient's life. So, an appropriate device for conducting different analysis can be effective for people who suffer from respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, occupational lung... 

As microfluidic chips are evolving to become a significant analysis tool toward POCT devices, it is crucial to make the cost and the time required for the fabrication process of these chips as low as possible. Because of the multidisciplinary nature of these systems and the collaboration of many different laboratories and organizations from vastly various fields with unequal types of equipment, it is essential to develop new techniques and materials to make the integration of disparate systems together more straightforward, accessible, and economical. In this paper, we present ethylene–vinyl acetate (EVA) as a new polymer-based material for the fabrication of different microfluidic chips,... 

In this paper we propose and analyze the application of generalized optical orthogonal codes (GOOC) in the optical wireless local area networks (OWLAN). A system deploying GOOC can support more users and achieve better BER performance. We evaluate the system performance of GOOC noting practical constraints of OWLAN applications. We consider average and peak power limitations of free space infrared sources, arising from eye safety and device non-linearity restriction. We include the impact of various noises including background-light induced noise in system evaluation. Proper system design requires appropriate selection of GOOC code parameters. We analyze the influence of code parameters on... 

Wireless infrared optical code-division multiple access (W-OCDMA) is a new developing technique with many useful applications. Noting the limitation on power consumption and eye-safety requirements, wireless optical systems are power limited. Therefore control and efficient use of optical power is a key issue in analysis and design of these systems. Also, multi-user interference is the major source of impairment in these systems and power control is required to control and reduce this interference. Power control and the inevitable errors in its algorithms play an important role in design and implementation of these systems. In this article the authors study the uplink performance of W-OCDMA... 

A Non-rigid Air Flow Active Sensor (NAFAS) to detect the respiratory patterns is introduced in this paper. The main part of NAFAS is an ionic electroactive polymer-based ( ${i}$ -EAP) soft sensor. It can accurately detect breathing patterns and has promising features to develop low cost, wearable, and ubiquitous spirometers. Patients with respiratory diseases need to take pulmonary function tests consistently. Hence, it is time-consuming and expensive. To address these problems, NAFAS presents point-of-care testing (POCT) of the respiratory system's function. The proposed ${i}$ -EAP based sensor is a small strip of Ionic Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC) that has been fabricated using a Nafion... 

Actuator limitations hinder high-performance control of robotic manipulators. The problem is particularly challenging in case of underactuated robots where the issue has received less attention. In this brief, we investigate stabilization of manipulators under input constraints via total energy shaping. For this purpose, we use interconnection and damping assignment passivity-based control (IDA-PBC) together with an optimization technique to keep actuator torque close to allowable limits. Using a subsequent technique, the actuator torques are ensured to stay within the specified bounds for special classes of manipulators. The results are verified through simulations on a 2 degree-of-freedom... 

In this paper we study slotted ALOHA random access optical code division multiple access packet-switching networks with a chip-level receiver structure. We use generalized optical orthogonal codes (GOOCs) and the overlapping pulse position modulation (OPPM) signaling technique to improve system performance. The impact of physical layer parameters such as the GOOC cross-correlation value and the OPPM overlapping index on key performance benchmarks such as network throughput and delay are analyzed. We also study the stability of the network based on the number of backlogged users, using the expected state drift. It has been shown that using GOOC instead of strict optical orthogonal codes... 

The aim of this paper is to provide a solution to decrease water consumption in the slab-cooling unit of Mobarakeh Steel Complex in Iran. The plan should give an hourly decline in water consumption during a one-year operation period to calculate the annual reduction in water consumption of the proposed process. Recommended solutions for the conversion scheme of an existing wet cooling tower to a dry or hybrid cooling system require modeling of the slab cooling process. The curves of temperature drop in slabs are extracted in this paper by modeling the transient heat transfer of the slabs in the cooling process. This will reduce the computational volume. Then, the design and optimization of... 

Electroactive-Polymers (EAPs) are one of the best soft $mu $ -actuators with great biomedical applications. Ionic ones (i-EAPs) have more promising features and have adequate potential for using in the active microfluidic devices. Here, as a case study, we have designed and fabricated a microfluidic micromixer using an i-EAP named Ionic Polymer-Metal Composite (IPMC). In microfluidics, active devices have more functionality but due to their required facilities are less effective for Point of Care Tests (POCTs). In the direction of solving this paradox, we should use some active components that they need minimum facilities. IPMC can be one of these components, hence by integrating the IPMC... 

Direct reduction of iron process in steel industry has special production conditions. Low quality cooling water, low cold and high hot cooling water temperature, space limitation for new equipment installation, high value-added of product and severe effect of cooling water temperature on production rate are of these conditions. Considering technical and economic constraints and limitations, this situation makes this process an attractive case study for converting the existing wet cooling tower to hybrid cooling system. In this paper, based on integration of process, dry and wet cooling system and ambient conditions profiles, a new method for designing hybrid cooling system has been proposed.... 

Increasing demand for wearable devices has resulted in the development of soft sensors; however, an excellent soft sensor for measuring stretch, twist, and pressure simultaneously has not been proposed yet. This paper presents a novel, fully 3D, microfluidic-oriented, gel-based, and highly stretchable resistive soft sensor. The proposed sensor is multi-functional and could be used to measure stretch, twist, and pressure, which is the potential of using a fully 3D structure in the sensor. Unlike previous methods, in which almost all of them used EGaIn as the conductive material, in this case, we used a low-cost, safe (biocompatible), and ubiquitous conductive gel instead. To show the...