Sharif Digital Repository

Hereby a simple, low-cost and scalable route is being presented for preparation of binder-free electrodes of reduced graphene oxide (RGO) on Ni foam (Ni/Gr). In this regard, the Ni foams are dipped in graphene oxide (GO) slurry. Next, the GO loaded Ni foams are kept in a freeze dryer for 24 h and heated up to 800 °C in an inert atmosphere. In this approach, the amount of active materials can be easily optimized for capacitive deionization (CDI). The characterization of Ni/Gr electrodes revealed a 3D porous assembly of RGO on Ni substrate which is helpful for the fast ion diffusion and rapid electron transport. The electrochemical performance of the prepared electrodes is investigated in both... 

By the advancement in technology on one side, and governmental as well as social demands for lowest rate of driving accidents and reliable communication among vehicles on the other side, particularly in highways, vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) are of special interest as a reliable approach to this aim. VANET is typically defined as the communication network for wireless communicating between vehicles in a region. One of the most important challenges in such networks is reliable routing of data packages among the vehicle users. Several VANET routing topologies are published in the literature; however, there is still a lack of reliable scheme. This is due to the nature of users behaviour... 

In this paper, by applying a new permutation to the full-diversity block circular delay diversity (BCDD) space-frequency codes (SFCs), we show that their performance could be enhanced. Furthermore, we propose a new method for performing the permutation in the absence of partial channel state information at the transmitter. This new permutation, which is done based on artificial delay and power profiles (ADPPs), could improve the performance of the BCDD SFCs more than 3 dB as simulation results demonstrate  

Polyphosphate reduced graphene oxide on Ni foam (PPO-RGO/NF) is synthesized by varying weight ratios of Na5P3O10 (PO): graphene oxide (GO) with a simple, scalable and low cost method through freeze-drying of the PO-GO/NF followed by thermal treatment of the prepared electrodes. The resulting samples are characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), and raman spectroscopy methods. The results show that the weight ratio of PO:GO, considerably affect the... 

The authors regret We have found, there is a problem with the image orders in the last version of the article that is being published online. In the accessible version, the caption of the images are exactly in the true orders, but the images are shifted up and they are not shown in their exact positions. This Corrigendumm is being released for revision of the image orders, like what they were in the accepted version of the manuscript. The materials are shown in the following pages. The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused. [Formula presented] Scheme 1. Binder-free fabrications of the PPOGrCNT on nickel foam (Ni/PPOGrCNT electrode). [Formula presented] Fig. 1. (a)... 

In this study, the authors show that the coding advantage (CA) of quasi-orthogonal space-frequency block codes (QOSFBCs) could be decomposed into two parts, namely intrinsic CA (ICA) and extrinsic CA (ECA). Then, by using the ICA, the authors demonstrate that the optimum precoder of the QOSFBCs could be analytically derived without any requirement of the exhaustive search. Then, by improving the ECA, the authors enhance performances of the QOSFBCs efficiently - up to 4dB. Finally, the authors show that a very fast optimisation process for the QOSFBCs is viable over any arbitrary frequency-selective channel  

In this paper we consider the issue of energy efficiency in random access networks and show that optimizing transmission probabilities of nodes can enhance network performance in terms of energy consumption and fairness. First, we propose a heuristic power control method that improves throughput, and then we model the Utility Constrained Energy Minimization (UCEM) problem in which the utility constraint takes into account single and multi node performance. UCEM is modeled as a convex optimization problem and Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) is used to find optimal transmission probabilities. Numerical results show that our method can achieve fairness, reduce energy consumption and... 

An efficient and commercially available method is introduced for preparation of a binder-free electrode for capacitive deionization (CDI) application. An interconnected porous composite consisting of polyphosphate (PPO), graphene (Gr) and multi-walled carbon nanotube (CNT) is fabricated and assembled on a Ni foam substrate to prepare a binder-free electrode (Ni/PPOGrCNT). The resulting electrodes were characterized using various instrumental techniques such as TEM, SEM, EDS, XRD, FT-IR, Raman, XPS and XRF. Characterization results indicated that a mesoporous PPO structure is formed on a 3D assembly of carbon backbone. Accordingly, the 3-D porous structure facilitates the ion diffusion into... 

The effects of different nano-SiO2 contents on the rheological properties of poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) solution and mechanical, thermal, structural, and piezoelectric properties of composite nanofibers were investigated. Results showed an increase in fiber diameter (∼125 to 350 nm) and ∼450% increase in tensile strength as the content of nano-SiO2 particles increased. The degree of crystallinity decreased by 19% as the nano-SiO2 content increased by 2% (w/w). Further investigation demonstrated that silica could significantly improve the piezoelectric properties of PVDF nanofibers as the output voltage showed an increase in the presence of silica attributed to change in the crystalline... 

In this letter, both the number of participating nodes and spatial dispersion are incorporated to establish a bi-objective optimization problem for maximizing the quality of aggregation under interference and delay constraints in tree-based wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The formulated problem is proved to be NP-hard with respect to Weighted-sum scalarization and a distributed heuristic aggregation scheduling algorithm, named SDMAX, is proposed. Simulation results show that SDMAX not only gives a close approximation of the Pareto-optimal solution, but also outperforms the best, to our knowledge, existing alternative proposed so far in the literature  

In this paper, a novel method is exposed to improve the performance of the Golden code. In fact, we recommend using the octagonal reconfigurable isolated orthogonal element (ORIOL) antennas instead of a conventional microstrip patch antenna. In order to obtain a dramatic improvement, the ORIOL antenna should be employed in both the transmitter and the receiver sides. Accordingly, in this paper, we recommend space-time-polarization diversity instead of space-time singly; therefore, it is obvious that by employing this technique, the system obtains more strength against destructive fading. The simulations for different rates have confirmed that utilizing the ORIOL antenna outperforms patch... 

In recent years, humans have been forced to create effective water treatment methods because of the increasing water contamination caused by various industrial activities. This study focuses on synthesizing a nanocomposite consisting of two metal-organic frameworks based on ZIF-8 with effective antibacterial characteristics and water-stable, highly porous UiO-66-NH2. After characterizing the synthesized nanocomposite, its application as (i) an adsorbent for methylene blue (MB) removal from a polluted aqueous environment and (ii) an antibacterial agent; was considered. The impact of different factors on the uptake of MB, including dye concentration, adsorption temperature, and the initial pH... 

In this study, the authors present a new criterion which can be used to decompose the coding advantage (CA) of space-frequency block codes (SFBCs). The proposed decomposition separates the CA into two parts, called precoder-CA and channel-CA. The precoder-CA represents the effects of the precoder and the signal constellation, and can be used in the design of the precoder of SFBCs. The channel-CA, on the other hand, gives an indication of the effects of the channel characteristics, and can be utilised for optimising the permutation parameter. The authors have shown that the proposed decomposition method leads to a lower computational complexity for the optimisation procedure compared with the... 

Traditionally energy systems were analyzed technically, but current environmental issues and considerations have put new constraints on the planning and managing of energy systems. Such an exergoeconomic and exergoenvironmental analysis were born. This analysis is aimed to describe the necessity and application of a new concept in environmental liability accounting based on physical quantities to overcome the weaknesses of the developed allocation methods and the internalization of external environmental damages. The proposed method is modified in environmental analysis to consider the effect of non-energy flows on a macro-surface energy system. As a case study, this method is tuned for a... 

This paper presents a centralized structure for optimum navigation of emergency vehicles with emphasis on ambulances in disaster situations. In this system, an enhanced fuzzy controlled ant colony system (FCACS) based search engine is proposed for optimum route selection. Performance of the system is evaluated by simulating it on a part on London, UK  

In this study, a composite patch repair will be designed for an aluminum plate with a central crack placed at 45 degrees to the applied unidirectional tensile load carried by the plate. In this state, the condition of loading is mixed mode. In the first step, behavior of the crack repaired by the composite patch under the applied tensile load is simulated by using ABAQUS commercial software. The crack growth process is modeled with the extended finite element method (XFEM) and the cohesive zone model (CZM) is used to model any damage progression in the adhesive of the composite patch repair. The shape of the five layer composite patch is assumed to be elliptical. For design optimization, the... 

In this study, graphene sheets and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were selectively grown on Fe foil at a relatively low growth temperature and varying cooling rates using a hot filament chemical vapor deposition (HFCVD) apparatus with C2H2 as the precursor. The results of the scanning electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy revealed that the increase of the cooling rate from 7 to 10 or 20 °C/min provoked a structure transition from CNT to graphene. The optimum crystal quality of the graphene sheets (Iq/Id ∼1.1) was achieved at the cooling rate of 20 °C/min. According to the AFM analysis, the thickness of the stacked graphene sheets was found to be ∼2.9-3.8 nm containing ∼8-11 monolayers. The XRD... 

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is one of the widely used multiplexing techniques in wireless communications and especially cognitive radio networks. One of the key challenges of this technique is its high peak to average power ratio (PAPR) of the transmitted signal. This paper, introduces a new approach to PAPR reduction of OFDM signals using harmony search algorithm (HSA) based on the partial transmit sequence (PTS) method. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has better PAPR reduction performance as an accurate and low complexity approach for OFDM systems  

Hereby, a sonochemical method for synthesis of pure magnetic Fe3O4Onanoparticles (Fe3O4-NPs) in large scale is being introduced. Synthesis proceeds via simple approach, at room temperature, under sonication, using cheap reagents, green antioxidant-reductant reagent and without using inert gas purge as protective atmosphere condition. During this procedure, hydrogen gas releases continuously as valuable byproduct at the anaerobic step of reaction. Characterizations' results indicate that the final product is pure spherical Fe3O4-NPs, with narrow size distribution and about less than 32nm in mean diameter while more than 99% of particles size were less than 40nm. According to Vibrational... 

In this study, a thorough analysis of image reconstruction in an active millimetre-wave (MMW) cylindrical imaging system is performed. To improve the system's performance in terms of the total cost as well as the coupling effect, sparse multistatic arrays are desired. Nevertheless, the existing reconstruction methods fail to operate in sparse multi-static antenna-array systems. Therefore, to address these shortcomings, in this study, at first, the existing MMW mono-static cylindrical image reconstruction methods are modified in both single-frequency and wideband reconstruction platforms. Moreover, in order to further improve the image quality and the system cost, a sparse multi-static...