Sharif Digital Repository

A 37 dBm power amplifier (PA) is designed on a 0.25 μm optical T-gate pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor (pHEMT) technology. The design of this two-stage PA along with a step-by-step design procedure is presented in this paper. This methodology can be used for design of PA in different technologies and frequencies. The PA delivers 5 W output power over the frequency band of 13-19 GHz. It shows average power-added efficiency of 37% and large signal gain of 15 dB in measurements which is consistent with simulation results. The output power and efficiency of the realised amplifier reach maximums of 37.6 dBm and 45%, respectively. Considering output power, bandwidth, chip area and... 

The application of sensor system is becoming more commonplace in improving productivity and reliability. Although measuring force signal have been widely used for monitoring of metal machining process that their application to stone cutting has not been well investigated. In this paper, the effect of machining parameter on force signal and tool wear was investigated. The result indicate that increasing of the depth of cut and spindle speed will increase the force and tool wear while increasing feed rate will increase force and decrease tool wear  

In this study, a novle robust antistatic waterborne polyurethane (WBPU)-ZrO2 nanoparticle (NP) coating is specially designed using sol-gel process. For this purpose the effective parameters on resin performance and surface resistivity of the synthesized coating investigated and optimized. The WBPU composite containing 6 wt% ZrO2 NPs, dissipates electrostaic charges with surface resistivity of 9.1 × 109 Ω sq−1 and also improves adhesion strength about 30 % compared with neat resin. Moreover, the homogenous distribution of modified ZrO2 NPs provides a surface roughness of 27.0 nm which can avoid the absorption of dust on the surface. Facile fabrication of robust WBPU–ZrO2 coating with... 

Lifetime is the most important concern in wireless sensor networks due to limited battery power of sensor nodes. In this paper, we focus on designing an energy-efficient and energy-aware routing algorithm, LLR, to increase the operational lifetime of multi-hop wireless sensor networks in the presence of unreliable communication links. Our proposed protocol utilizes a parameter, Broadcasting Delay, in each node associated with the hop parameters passed by a route request packet to select long lifetime paths in the network. The key point in Broadcasting Delay formulation is that it includes both node and link specific parameters. We use two different scenarios: either the link layer... 

The reliability of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) depends on both sensing coverage and reliable transmission of collected data provided by the target cluster of sensors in the proximity of the phenomenon to the observer. In this paper, we establish a probabilistic fundamental quantitative notion for performance-critical applications on reliable information transfer and propose a new analytical model to calculate the coverage-oriented reliability of cluster-based WSNs. Here, the packet loss probability is modeled as a function of two main parameters. The first is the probability of link failure when the node's buffer at the end point of the link is full (discarding the packet) or when the... 

Data aggregation is a technique that is used to decrease extra and repetitive data in cluster based routing protocols. As we know SPEED routing algorithm is based on service quality and dose not perform data aggregation. In this article, we try to add an data aggregation technique to the available techniques without interfering with the functions of previous ones. The idea involves virtual configuration of sensors and specification of an individual ID to the created data by the sensors in each region, then data aggregation in relay node is done by this ID, resulting in less energy consumption, lower traffic and repeated data, an increase in network lifetime and better quality of service  

The approximation power of general feedforward neural networks with piecewise linear activation functions is investigated. First, lower bounds on the size of a network are established in terms of the approximation error and network depth and width. These bounds improve upon state- of-the-art bounds for certain classes of functions, such as strongly convex functions. Second, an upper bound is established on the difference of two neural networks with identical weights but different activation functions. © The Author(s) 2018  

A magnetic actuation system is a promising tool for untethered manipulation at the microscale that medical treatment can benefit from. This paper proposes a new magnetic actuation system that comprises of two coaxial coils on a rotary table. A fixed workspace is placed between coils. The proposed system is able to generate magnetic force with desired direction and magnitude in a plane. The conducted simulation and experiment confirm the capability of the proposed system to control the position of the microrobot. © 2019 IEEE  

Metal matrix composites (MMCs) have received considerable attention due to their excellent engineering properties. However, poor machinability has been the main deterrent to their substitution for metal parts. The hardness and abrasive nature of reinforcement phase causes rapid tool wear during machining which results in high machining costs. In this study, the effect of SiC particles (5, 15 & 20 percent) on tool wear in turning process is experimentally investigated. Continuous dry turning of Al/SiC particulate metal matrix composite produced by powder metallurgy and utilizing titanium carbide inserts has been achieved as the test method. The influence of machining parameters, e.g. cutting... 

Background: Pluripotency is proposed to exist in two different stages: Naive and Primed. Conventional human pluripotent cells are essentially in the primed stage. In recent years, several protocols have claimed to generate naive human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). To the best of our knowledge, none of these protocols is currently recognized as the gold standard method. Furthermore, the consistency of the resulting cells from these diverse protocols at the molecular level is yet to be shown. Additionally, little is known about the principles that govern the metabolic differences between naive and primed pluripotency. In this work, using a computational approach, we tried to shed light on... 

Leakage in embankment dam by applying seepage and thermal numerical simulations are studied in this paper. Unpredicted seepage in earthen dams is known as the main cause of damage in most cases. Determination of seepage flow quantity and prediction of dam leakage is very important. Temperature variation in dam body can be simulated to estimate the water velocity in soil layers. While moving through dam body, seepage flow carries all physical specifications of reservoir water, including its temperature. Mass and energy balance equations are discretized for modeling flow and temperature fields. The finite element method along with a mathematical model has been utilized to discretize and solve... 

Titanium nitride/graphene nanocomposite as an anode material of lithium ion batteries has been fabricated through the reaction of TiCl4 and NaN3 in supercritical benzene medium followed by ammonia treating at 1000 °C for 10 h. The synthesized TiN/G nanocomposite depicts rate-dependent behavior in such a way that it shows specific capacity of 115 mAh g−1 when is cycled at higher rate (1.6 C) while it shows 76 mAh g−1 when is cycled initially at lower rate (0.2 C) and is subsequently subjected to higher rate (1.6 C). Moreover, TiN/G anode demonstrates capacity retention of 112%, 100%, and 70% after 250 cycles at charge/discharge rates of 1.6, 0.7, and 0.2 C, respectively. This unusual behavior... 

Data aggregation is a key, yet time-consuming functionality introduced to conserve energy in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this paper, to minimize time latency, we focus on aggregation scheduling problem and propose an efficient distributed algorithm that generates a collision-free schedule with the least number of time slots. In contrast to others, our approach named FAST mainly contributes to both tree construction, where the former studies employ Connected 2-hop Dominating Sets, and aggregation scheduling that was previously addressed through the Competitor Sets computation. We prove that the latency of FAST under the protocol interference model is upper-bounded by 12R+Δ-2, where R... 

The bioinertness makes surface treatments essential to improve the bioactivity of porous titanium scaffold, and surface treatment might affect their mechanical properties. So finding an optimum condition lying between bioactivity and mechanical properties seems to be curial. In this research, the effect of the time of the thermal oxidation at 600 °C on apatite formation and mechanical properties of the porous titanium scaffold was studied. The results of thin film X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy indicated that the surface of heat treated samples up to 480 min was mainly covered by rutile. Also, wettability measurement and in vitro apatite formation ability assessment indicated that... 

In this research, a new approach for extraction and determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from sea and rain water samples was developed by implementing a superhydrophobic substrate and consuming the least amount of solvent. This version of solvent–supported microextraction enabled us to perform the procedure in the immersion mode with the slightest troubles arising from water leakage into the gas chromatography. The superhydrophobic property leads to the fixation of extracting solvent on the substrate surface during water sampling. To prepare a superhydrophobic substrate, a piece of melamine foam was coated by tannic acid and silica nanoparticles using methyltrimethoxysilane and... 

In this study adsorption of fluoride ion from high-fluorine solutions (<2000 ppm) using the natural and modified ground clinoptilolite is investigated. These low-cost adsorbents are carefully characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), thermos-gravimetry (TGA) and differential scanning calorimeter analysis (DSC). In order to enhance the fluoride removal capacity of natural zeolite, it is milled into nano-powders and modified using hexadecyltriammoniumions (HDTMA+). The kinetic, equilibrium, and thermodynamic of fluoride adsorption are measured and described by the well-known... 

Background: Long reads provide valuable information regarding the sequence composition of genomes. Long reads are usually very noisy which renders their alignments on the reference genome a daunting task. It may take days to process datasets enough to sequence a human genome on a single node. Hence, it is of primary importance to have an aligner which can operate on distributed clusters of computers with high performance in accuracy and speed. Results: In this paper, we presented IMOS, an aligner for mapping noisy long reads to the reference genome. It can be used on a single node as well as on distributed nodes. In its single-node mode, IMOS is an Improved version of Meta-aligner (IM)... 

Purpose: Does the long-term growth rate of a firm increase by exporting? If yes, how large is that increase in a developing economy? The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach: The authors incorporate data from the manufacturing plants in Iran as a developing economy for 2003–2011 to address this question. Using fixed effect panel and propensity score matching method, the authors examine whether exportation can affect a firm’s growth rate to test for the learning to grow hypothesis. Findings: The findings document that: not only the exporters are larger and more productive than non-exporters, but they also grow faster in size and productivity measures as well.... 

We study queues with impatient customers and Processor Sharing (PS) discipline as well as other variants of PS discipline, namely, Discriminatory Processor Sharing (DPS) and Generalized Processor Sharing (GPS) disciplines, where customers have deadlines until the end of service (DES). Customers arrive according to a state-dependent Poisson process and have general impatience. Customers have exponential service times with state-dependent service rates. Analytical methods based on simple Markov chains are given for the performance analysis of such queues. The principal measures of performance are the steady-state probability of missing deadline and the steady-state probability of blocking.... 

We study queues with impatient customers and Processor Sharing (PS) discipline as well as other variants of PS discipline, namely, Discriminatory Processor Sharing (DPS) and Generalized Processor Sharing (GPS) disciplines, where customers have deadlines until the end of service (DES). Customers arrive according to a state-dependent Poisson process and have general impatience. Customers have exponential service times with state-dependent service rates. Analytical methods based on simple Markov chains are given for the performance analysis of such queues. The principal measures of performance are the steady-state probability of missing deadline and the steady-state probability of blocking....