Sharif Digital Repository

Material design and input field properties limit high-harmonic excitation efficiency of surface-plasmon polaritons (SPPs) in a nanoscopic device. We remedy these limitations by developing a concept for a plasmonic waveguide that exploits spatiotemporal control of a weak surface polaritonic field to create efficient four-wave mixing (FWM) and periodic phase singularities. Our configuration comprises four-level double 3-type atomic medium (43 As) doped in a lossless dielectric situated above a negative-index metamaterial (NIMM) layer. We report the coherent excitation and propagation of the multiple surface polaritonic shock waves (SWs) and establish the highly efficient frequency combs by... 

In this study, a new multi-input high step-up inverter, based on isolated soft-switching DC-DC converter blocks is proposed. Each of these blocks can provide zero-voltage and zero-current switching for its semiconductors, which improve power efficiency. The interesting feature of this DC-DC converter is using bidirectional switches to generate both positive and negative output voltage levels in each DC-DC block with an appropriate control scheme. Each DC-DC converter operates by simple pulse width modulation control through fixed frequency and has two degrees of freedom, which provide the capability of output voltage regulation or maximum power point tracking. The proposed inverter consists... 

Computed Tomography (CT) is one of the most widely used screening and diagnostic tools in medical imaging centers. Considering IAEA HUMAN HEALTH SERIES No. 19 and the American College of Radiology (ACR) Accreditation Program, quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) are mandatory programs to periodically monitor the system condition to promote the effective utilization of ionization radiation for a diagnostic outcome through obtaining and retaining appropriate image quality and reduction of patient dose. Computational phantoms (CPs) are the key tool to monitor system condition. The commercial QC phantoms are expensive products and are not flexible enough for user demands. In this... 

This paper presents a new technique for the state estimation and reference tracking of nonlinear dynamic systems over the packet erasure channel, which is an abstract model for transmission via the Internet, WiFi wireless network and ZigBee modules. A new encoder and decoder for real time state estimation of nonlinear dynamic systems at the end of communication link when the measurements are sent through the limited capacity erasure channel, are presented. Then, using the available results from control theory, a controller for reference tracking and hence the stability of the system is also designed. That is, for nonlinear systems, almost sure asymptotic state estimation and reference... 

In this work, a three-dimensional numerical model is developed to investigate the performance of a photovoltaic thermal system integrated with a thermoelectric generator module (PVT/TE). Furthermore, the effects of various operating parameters such as solar radiation, coolant mass flow rate, and inlet and ambient temperatures on the performance of both the PVT and PVT/TE systems are investigated and compared. Based on the obtained results, the electrical efficiency of the PVT/TE system, when exposed to solar radiation of 600 and 1000 W/m2, is 6.23% and 10.41% higher than that of the PVT system, respectively. Besides, the electrical efficiency of the PVT and PVT/TE by increasing the inlet... 

Due to the increasing need for drinking water in the world, various membrane processes have been developing significantly over the past several years. The process of membrane distillation is one of the non-isothermal processes that cause steam to pass from the membrane due to the difference in temperature and the resulting difference in vapor pressure. Due to the lack of precision in the amount of flux and thermal efficiency in various operating conditions the membrane distillation process still needs development. This article attempted to examine the effects of flowrate, temperature, and module length on the performance of the membrane distillation process using computational fluid dynamics... 

In this article, a new soft switching isolated push-pull dc-dc converter using a three-winding transformer is proposed. The proposed hybrid resonant and pulse width modulated converter employs a conventional push-pull structure in the primary side, a voltage doubler in the secondary side, and a bidirectional switch besides the transformer, altogether help offering a high efficiency over a wide range of input and output voltage signals with an unsophisticated fixed-frequency control mechanism. The primary-side switches are commutated under zero voltage switching with low switching current and the secondary-side diodes are commutated under zero current switching. In this article, we first... 

The macro-scale molecular communication (MC) recently received considerable attention because of its potential applications. Since most of the experimental research in MC focuses on the micro-scale cases, it is necessary to study and implement experiments to investigate the concept’s feasibility as well as to validate the models and parameters. In this paper, a macro-scale flow-based MC platform with fluidic medium is developed, in a semi-cylindrical channel with laminar flow condition. The transmission medium we consider is water in the plexi pipe, a transmitter releases Hydrochloric acid molecules into this pipe and a chemical sensor is used as the receiver. We propose an LTI model for the... 

A compact low power circuit for implementation of a direct conversion OQPSK modulator is proposed. The circuit consists of a digital to analog converter, a low pass filter and an up-converter mixer. By embedding these three blocks, the circuit performance is enhanced and the total power consumption is reduced. The mixer is designed base on a Gilbert cell with on chip inductor loads. Instead of transconductance transistors of Gilbert cell, a fully deferential current mode DAC is used and proficiently a low pass filter is embedded between them and therefore the linearity of total system is improved. All of circuits are designed based on 0.18 μm CMOS technology with a single 1.8 volt power... 

In this paper, a unified hybrid vector control of vector modulated VIENNA I rectifier is presented. Feedback linearization technique is used for the DC-link voltage control. For this purpose, at first a mathematical model of the VIENNA I rectifier is derived. Using this model, it is shown that the dynamic of the rectifier falls into two categories; linear inner dynamic which consists of inner current control and neutral-point potential control and nonlinear outer dynamic which consists of the DC-link voltage control. Based on these facts, a hybrid vector control scheme meaning linear vector control of inner dynamics and nonlinear vector control of outer dynamic is devised. Simulations... 

Ageing is one of the main contributing factors towards increasing arterial stiffness, leading to changes in peripheral pulses propagation. Therefore the characteristics of the photoplethysmogram (PPG) pulse, especially the rising edge and peak position, are greatly affected. In this study, the PPG pulse rising edge and corresponding peak position have been investigated non-invasively in human subjects as a function of age. Fifteen healthy subjects were selected and grouped in five age intervals, from 20 to 59 years, based on their comparable systolic-diastolic blood pressure and PPG amplitude. As expected, the peripheral pulse shows a steep rise and early peak in younger subjects. With age,... 

A unified multiple-access performance analysis and comparison of three multicarrier spread-spectrum multiple-access schemes, namely, MC-CDMA (Multicarrier Code-Division Multiple-Access), MC-FH (Multicarrier Frequency Hopping) and a hybrid of the above systems, called DS-MC-FH (Direct-Sequence MC-FH), in a multirate environment, where each user can have several multirate services, is provided. In MC-CDMA and MC-FH systems, users and their diverse services are differentiated by means of only one kind of signature code. However, in a DS-MCFH scheme, different users and different services of the same user are distinguished through the first and second signature codes, respectively. The... 

In this paper, the systematic error due to interpolation in CMOS deep sub micron folding and interpolating ADC is studied and a closed form equation is presented to calculate the error as a function of interpolation coefficient, input voltage range and the number of input differential pairs. The amount of INL due to interpolation error can be considered as the lower bound for attainable INL of a specific ADC architecture. A case study for an 8_bit ADC is treated under consideration of different folding and interpolating factors. The trade off between power dissipation and ADC performance is characterized according to input stage characteristics. ©2006 IEEE  

Water flooding is one of the most common enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods, however its application in naturally fractured reservoirs (NFR), suffers from the flow of water in high permeable channels and fractures which leads to low areal and volumetric sweep efficiency. Preformed Particle Gels (PPG), as a subset of gel treatments, can play a vital role in plugging super-permeable zones either near wellbore or deep in the reservoir. Nevertheless the mechanical strength and thermal stability of the designed PPGs, especially under harsh environmental conditions, are subject to further research and development. In spite of recent studies, the effects of nano-materials on the rheological and... 

This paper presents a new technique for the state estimation and reference tracking of nonlinear dynamic systems over the packet erasure channel, which is an abstract model for transmission via the Internet, WiFi wireless network and ZigBee modules. A new encoder and decoder for real time state estimation of nonlinear dynamic systems at the end of communication link when the measurements are sent through the limited capacity erasure channel, are presented. Then, using the available results from control theory, a controller for reference tracking and hence the stability of the system is also designed. That is, for nonlinear systems, almost sure asymptotic state estimation and reference... 

This article presents a leakage cancellation architecture for single-antenna frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radars at W-band. A shared antenna for transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) can substantially reduce the form factor, cost, and complexity of radar modules. Due to the simultaneous operation of the TX and RX in FMCW radars, employing a shared antenna will, however, significantly increase TX-to-RX leakage, resulting in RX saturation and desensitization. Our proposed cancellation scheme employs analog feedback to confine the TX leakage right at the RX input port, and thus, relieves the ongoing RX chain from saturation. The proposed single-antenna transceiver (TRX) prototype was... 

OFDM is a multicarrier modulation scheme with high bandwidth efficiency and robustness to multipath environment used in high data rate transmission. However, a drawback of this system is the large Peak-to-Average-Power Ratio (PAR) of the transmit signal which makes its straightforward implementation quite costly. PAR in an OFDM based system can be reduced significantly by PTS method for which data recovery requires side information (SI) about the phases used at transmitter. Sending SI, not only reduces the rate, but also increases BER, for any error in SI detection can damage a large amount of transmitted information. By introducing a new phase set, we propose a PTS based method for MPSK... 

Radiative sky cooling (RSC) systems have enjoyed a privileged position in the research community due to generating cooling energy without consuming electricity using the open atmospheric window and infrared emission to the sky. However, the system's justification occurs when it reaches a temperature below the minimum 24-hour ambient temperature. This study utilizes phase change materials (PCM) as the energy storage of a hybrid daytime photovoltaic-thermal and nighttime RSC module and investigates the nocturnal cooling energy-saving potential of the system at different phase transition temperatures. After being validated by the experimental data in the literature, the simulated model was used... 

Non-targeted persistent immune activation or suppression by different drug delivery platforms can cause adverse and chronic physiological effects including cancer and arthritis. Therefore, non-toxic materials that do not trigger an immunogenic response during delivery are crucial for safe and effective in vivo treatment. Hydrogels are excellent candidates that can be engineered to control immune responses by modulating biomolecule release/adsorption, improving regeneration of lymphoid tissues, and enhancing function during antigen presentation. This review discusses the aspects of hydrogel-based systems used as drug delivery platforms for various diseases. A detailed investigation on... 

Adding memory to artificial intelligence systems in an effective way has been addressed by researchers for many years. Recurrent neural networks and long short-term memories (LSTMs), among other neural network systems, have some inherent memory capabilities. Recently, in memory augmented neural networks, such as neural Turing machine (NTM) and its variants, a separate memory module is implemented, which can be accessed via read and write heads. Despite its capabilities in simple algorithmic tasks, such as copying and repeat copying, neural Turing machines fail when doing complex tasks with long-term dependencies due to their limited memory capacity. In this paper, we propose a new memory...