Sharif Digital Repository

Capsule endoscopy is a minimally invasive diagnostic technology for gastrointestinal diseases providing images from the human's digestion system. Developing a robust and real-time localization algorithm to determine the orientation and position of the endoscopic capsule is a crucial step toward medical diagnostics. In this paper, we propose a novel model-aided real-time localization approach to estimate the position and orientation of a magnetic endoscopic capsule swimming inside the stomach. In the proposed method, the governing equations of the motion of an ellipsoidal capsule inside the fluid, considering different hydrodynamics interactions, are derived. Then, based on the dynamic model,... 

Capsule endoscopy is a minimally invasive gastrointestinal diagnostic procedure. The active endoscopic capsule enables the physician to steer the device to any desired position and direction, resulting in a better diagnosis of the disease. Due to the model uncertainties and the existence of disturbances in the gastrointestinal system, traditional control methods cannot achieve robust performance and stability. To overcome this issue, in this paper, a robust sliding mode controller is proposed for 5 Degrees Of Freedom (DOF) control (3-DOF closed-loop control for position and 2-DOF open-loop control for orientation) of the capsule endoscope using an electromagnetic actuation system. The... 

A new type of collapsible soil was encountered in Southern Iran and caused some serious technical problems including subsidence, collapse and sinkholes during the construction of Zahedan-Chabahar railway. Field observations indicated that in-situ soil contains excessive amount of salts resulting in dispersive features in response to seepage forces in addition to its collapsibility. Therefore, a systematic research plan including field sampling and laboratory testing was carried out to investigate the observed geotechnical features. Results of physio-chemical tests revealed the dominance of Sodium in excess of 70% relative to total dissolved salts, which results in high dispersive potential.... 

Research on the reliable characterization of saturated permeability has received great yet necessary attention globally. However, most studies were carried out on soils with a volumetric tendency being almost insensitive to water saturation or at least with this hidden assumption. This is clearly not the case when dealing with the two broad categories of problematic soils, including collapsible and expansive soils. As confirmed by previous research, at least one-fifth of the planet comprises of these soils with a relatively fair distribution. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to introduce a low-compliance double cell/burette permeameter to track all volumetric changes during the... 

Load-frequency control is the intrinsic function of the governor in the power plants. It would be used in variant structures depend on the controller type such as PID, adaptive, fuzzy or robust. Temporary droop structure governor (TDSG) was commonly used in Hydro power plants (HPP). After representation of TDSG, this paper is dedicated to introducing a procedure for tuning TDSG parameters. The technique is based on pole placement for the closed loop poles of the system. These poles correspond to the TDSG parameters that by accurate tuning of them, pole placement is accomplished. The results for tuning TDSG of Abbaspour HPP have been presented as well. © 2008 IEEE  

The performance of conventional imaging lenses, relying on the phase transformation of propagating waves, is impairing due to the aberration and diffraction limits. For imaging beyond the diffraction limit, different superlens designs have been proposed. Although subdiffraction resolution imaging in the near field has been realized by the superlenses with negative refractive index, magnification of the subwavelength objects into the far field has not been fulfilled. Imaging using “hyperlens” is promising to overcome the energy spreading associated with diffraction, by utilizing negative permittivity parallel to the optical axis, and positive permittivity perpendicular to it. Among various... 

In this paper, we report on the design and analysis of filters and lenses realized by an array of metallic posts integrated in a parallel-plate waveguide (PPWG). The design methodology of these components is inferred from the modal analysis of a spoof surface plasmonic waveguide composed of metallic posts arranged in a 1D periodic structure inside PPWG. Samples of the proposed devices are analyzed using a full-wave analysis method and their performance is assessed. We show that the mentioned structure can be used to realize all-metallic band-pass filters and lenses for mm-wave and terahertz applications  

Femtocell has appeared as a solution to increase both coverage and capacity of cellular networks. However, interference problem between the macrocell and the femtocell must be solved before any deployment. In this paper, we deal with the problem of joint subband, rate, and power allocation in OFDMA based two-tier femtocell networks. It is assumed that for macrocell users, spectrum allocation is accomplished through Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR). Our objective is to maximize the femtocell user's throughput while maintaining as little as possible reduction in the macrocell users' performance. Our proposed algorithm is decentralized, and needs to be done only when femtocell access point is... 

The problem of signal detection using a flexible and general model is considered. Owing to applicability and flexibility of sparse signal representation and approximation, it has attracted a lot of attention in many signal processing areas. In this study, the authors propose a new detection method based on sparse decomposition in a union of subspaces model. Their proposed detector uses a dictionary that can be interpreted as a bank of matched subspaces. This improves the performance of signal detection, as it is a generalisation for detectors. Low-rank assumption for the desired signals implies that the representations of these signals in terms of some proper bases would be sparse. Their... 

Liquefaction is a phenomenon through which saturated sandy soil loses its shear strength and turns into a liquefied state. One of the most detrimental consequences of liquefaction is the reconsolidation volumetric settlements after the earthquakes, which is due to the dissipation of excess pore pressure caused by earthquakes. Severe floods can follow these settlements in free fields such as grounds close to the sea or rivers. Several researchers studied this phenomenon using data obtained from experiments in the lab or observations in the fields. Previous works were mainly based on a limited number of experimental observations and considered loadings and boundary conditions that were... 

In this paper, we study two important transmission strategies in full-duplex two-way relaying in the presence of channel estimation errors. In analog network coding (ANC), the relay transmits the combined signals that were received from both sources, with the aim of achieving better spectral efficiency. However, due to imperfect channel-state information (CSI), sources cannot perfectly cancel their own data in the relayed signal. We derive an achievable information rate for ANC in imperfect-CSI conditions and show how the ANC performance can significantly be degraded as a result. Moreover, we derive cut-set bounds with channel estimation errors for traditional routing (TR), in which time... 

Edit distance is one of the most fundamental problems in combinatorial optimization. Ulam distance is a special case of edit distance where no character is allowed to appear more than once in a string. Recent developments have been very fruitful for obtaining fast and parallel algorithms for both edit distance and Ulam distance. In this work, we present an almost optimal MPC algorithm for Ulam distance and improve MPC algorithms for edit distance. Our algorithm for Ulam distance is optimal in the sense that (1) the approximation factor of our algorithm is 1 + ϵ, (2) the round complexity of our algorithm is constant, (3) the total memory of our algorithm is almost linear (OH(n)), and (4)] the... 

Abstract Multiple Description Coding (MDC) is a technique where multiple streams from a video source are generated, each individually decodable and mutually refinable. MDC is a promising solution to overcome packet loss in video transmission over noisy channels, particularly for real-time applications in which retransmission of lost information is not practical. The error resiliency feature of MDC is achieved at the cost of redundancy, and the required amount of redundancy for each frame depends on the packet loss ratio and also the importance of the frame in the sequence. Due to the error propagation in video transmission over lossy channels, reference frames of a Group of Pictures (GOP)... 

The Haptic device is capable of interacting dynamically with the operator by the forces it can exert on human's hand. Controlling the haptic device and constraining it through the desired trajectory is the common task in the most of the training systems. Haptic interface application in virtual Persian handwriting learning system is investigated in this paper. Two different modes of learning is investigated: The full guidance mode, guides the user to follow a prerecorded trajectory by applying proper force to operator's hand; whereas in partial guidance, combination of haptics andvisual feedback guides the operator and prevents deviation from the desired trajectory. © 2009 IEEE  

One of the shortcomings of photoconductive (PC) antennas in terahertz (THz) generation is low effective radiated power in the desirable direction. In this paper, we propose a defective photonic crystal (DPC) substrate consisting of a customized 2D array of air holes drilled into a solid substrate in order to improve the radiation characteristics of THz PC antennas. The effect of the proposed structure on the performance of a conventional THz PC antenna has been examined from several aspects including radiation efficiency, directivity, and field distribution. By comparing the radiation performance of the THz antenna on the proposed DPC substrate to that of the conventional solid substrate, it... 

In this paper, arrays of two different terahertz (THz) antennas based on defective photonic crystal (DPC) substrates are proposed and their radiation characteristics are investigated by using full-wave simulation. We show that employing DPC substrates in THz photoconductive antenna (PCA) arrays reduces the amount of power coupled to the substrate surface waves and, as a result, decreases the mutual coupling between the elements of the antenna array and increases the directivity in the boresight direction. By studying 1 × 2 arrays of bowtie and four-leaf-clover-shaped antennas, we show that either the improvement of directivity in a broad bandwidth or the enhancement of photomixer antenna... 

Several lattice Boltzmann models for multi-phase flow have been developed, but few of them are capable of modeling fluid flows with high density ratio in the order of 1000. Therefore, an advanced chromodynamics, Rothmann-Keller (RK) type model is employed in current study, which can handle liquid-gas density ratio in the order of 1000 and viscosity ratio in the order of 100. Other distinctive characteristics of the proposed model are high stability, and capability of setting parameters such as surface tension independently. In spite of these benefits, the original RK model fails to model wetting tendency of the fluids. As a result, it is impossible to correctly simulate two-fluid phase flow... 

In this study, the kinetics of aging in AA6061 and AA6061 with 5% volume fraction SiCp were studied and compared. The composite was first produced and homogenized using stir casting technique followed by hot extrusion with the ratio of 18:1. Then, both AA6061 and the composite were aged at three different temperatures including room temperature, 170 °C and 240 °C, while mechanical properties during aging were evaluated employing hardness measurements and tensile testing. Moreover, in order to assess the effect of plastic deformation on the kinetics of aging, a series of samples were first deformed by equal-channel angular pressing immediately after solution treatment and then aged in the...