Exploring use of climate information for optimal design of water resources infrastructure

We conducted surveys of fire and fuels managers at local, regional, and national levels to gain insights into decision processes and information flows in wildfire management. Survey results in the form of fire managers’ decision calendars show how climate information needs vary seasonally, over space, and through the organizational network, and help determine optimal points for introducing climate information and forecasts into decision processes. We identified opportunities to use climate information in fire management, including seasonal to interannual climate forecasts at all organizational levels, to improve the targeting of fuels treatments and prescribed burns, the positioning and movement of initial attack resources, and staffing and budgeting decisions. Longer-term (5–10 years) outlooks also could be useful at the national level in setting budget and research priorities. We discuss these opportunities and examine the kinds of organizational changes that could facilitate effective use of existing climate information and climate forecast capabilities.

ELISA: An Estimated Load Information Scheduling Algorithm for Distributed Computing Systems

In this paper, we present a decentralized dynamic load scheduling/balancing algorithm called ELISA (Estimated Load Information Scheduling Algorithm) for general purpose distributed computing systems. ELISA uses estimated state information based upon periodic exchange of exact state information between neighbouring nodes to perform load scheduling. The primary objective of the algorithm is to cut down on the communication and load transfer overheads by minimizing the frequency of status exchange and by restricting the load transfer and status exchange within the buddy set of a processor. It is shown that the resulting algorithm performs almost as well as a perfect information algorithm and is superior to other load balancing schemes based on the random sharing and Ni-Hwang algorithms. A sensitivity analysis to study the effect of various design parameters on the effectiveness of load balancing is also carried out. Finally, the algorithm's performance is tested on large dimensional hypercubes in the presence of time-varying load arrival process and is shown to perform well in comparison to other algorithms. This makes ELISA a viable and implementable load balancing algorithm for use in general purpose distributed computing systems.

Model Predictive Static Programming: A Computationally Efficient Technique For Suboptimal Control Design

Combining the philosophies of nonlinear model predictive control and approximate dynamic programming, a new suboptimal control design technique is presented in this paper, named as model predictive static programming (MPSP), which is applicable for finite-horizon nonlinear problems with terminal constraints. This technique is computationally efficient, and hence, can possibly be implemented online. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by designing an ascent phase guidance scheme for a ballistic missile propelled by solid motors. A comparison study with a conventional gradient method shows that the MPSP solution is quite close to the optimal solution.

ADAMIS: a database for medical information systems

This paper describes the design and implementation of ADAMIS (‘A database for medical information systems’). ADAMIS is a relational database management system for a general hospital environment. Apart from the usual database (DB) facilities of data definition and data manipulation, ADAMIS supports a query language called the ‘simplified medical query language’ (SMQL) which is completely end-user oriented and highly non-procedural. Other features of ADAMIS include provision of facilities for statistics collection and report generation. ADAMIS also provides adequate security and integrity features and has been designed mainly for use on interactive terminals.

A Modified Heffron-Phillip's Model for The Design of Power System Stabilizers

In this paper a modified Heffron-Phillip's (K-constant) model is derived for the design of power system stabilizers. A knowledge of external system parameters, such as equivalent infinite bus voltage and external impedances or their equivalent estimated values is required for designing a conventional power system stabilizer. In the proposed method, information available at the secondary bus of the step-up transformer is used to set up a modified Heffron-Phillip's (ModHP) model. The PSS design based on this model utilizes signals available within the generating station. The efficacy of the proposed design technique and the performance of the stabilizer has been evaluated over a range of operating and system conditions. The simulation results have shown that the performance of the proposed stabilizer is comparable to that could be obtained by conventional design but without the need for the estimation and computation of external system parameters. The proposed design is thus well suited for practical applications to power system stabilization, including possibly the multi-machine applications where accurate system information is not readily available.

Information Ambiguity

We propose a quantity called information ambiguity that plays the same role in the worst-case information-theoretic nalyses as the well-known notion of information entropy performs in the corresponding average-case analyses. We prove various properties of information ambiguity and illustrate its usefulness in performing the worst-case analysis of a variant of distributed source coding problem.

Signal set design for full-diversity low-decoding-complexity differential scaled-unitary STBCs

The problem of designing high rate, full diversity noncoherent space-time block codes (STBCs) with low encoding and decoding complexity is addressed. First, the notion of g-group encodable and g-group decodable linear STBCs is introduced. Then for a known class of rate-1 linear designs, an explicit construction of fully-diverse signal sets that lead to four-group encodable and four-group decodable differential scaled unitary STBCs for any power of two number of antennas is provided. Previous works on differential STBCs either sacrifice decoding complexity for higher rate or sacrifice rate for lower decoding complexity.

Understanding the Knowledge Needs of Designers During Design Process in Industry

Product success is substantially influenced by satisfaction of knowledge needs of designers, and many tools and methods have been proposed to support these needs. However, adoption of these methods in industry is minimal. This may be due to an inadequate understanding of the knowledge needs of designers in industry. This research attempts to develop a better understanding of these needs by undertaking descriptive studies in an industry. We propose a taxonomy of knowledge, and evaluate this by analyzing the questions asked by the designers involved in the study during their interactions. Using the taxonomy, we converted the questions asked into a generic form. The generic questions provide an understanding about what knowledge must be captured during design, and what its structure should be.

A systematic design of high-rate full-diversity space-frequency codes for MIMO-OFDM systems

This paper presents a systematic construction of high-rate and full-diversity space-frequency block codes for MIMO-OFDM systems. While all prior constructions offer only a maximum rate of one complex symbol per channel use, our construction yields rate equal to the number of transmit antennas and simultaneously achieves full-diversity. The proposed construction works for arbitrary number of transmit antennas and arbitrary channel power delay profile. A key step in this construction is the generalization of the stacked matrix code design criteria given by Bolcskei et.al., (IEEE WCNC 2000). Explicit equivalence of our generalized code design criteria with the Hadamard-product based criteria of W. Su et.al., (lEEE Trans. Sig. Proc. Nov 2003) is established and new high-rate codes are constructed using our criteria.

Signal set design for full-diversity low-decoding-complexity differential scaled-unitary STBCs

The problem of designing high rate, full diversity noncoherent space-time block codes (STBCs) with low encoding and decoding complexity is addressed. First, the notion of g-group encodable and g-group decodable linear STBCs is introduced. Then for a known class of rate-1 linear designs, an explicit construction of fully-diverse signal sets that lead to four-group encodable and four-group decodable differential scaled unitary STBCs for any power of two number of antennas is provided. Previous works on differential STBCs either sacrifice decoding complexity for higher rate or sacrifice rate for lower decoding complexity.

A non-orthogonal distributed space-time coded protocol - Part 1:Signal model and design criteria

In this two-part series of papers, a generalized non-orthogonal amplify and forward (GNAF) protocol which generalizes several known cooperative diversity protocols is proposed. Transmission in the GNAF protocol comprises of two phases - the broadcast phase and the cooperation phase. In the broadcast phase, the source broadcasts its information to the relays as well as the destination. In the cooperation phase, the source and the relays together transmit a space-time code in a distributed fashion. The GNAF protocol relaxes the constraints imposed by the protocol of Jing and Hassibi on the code structure. In Part-I of this paper, a code design criteria is obtained and it is shown that the GNAF protocol is delay efficient and coding gain efficient as well. Moreover GNAF protocol enables the use of sphere decoders at the destination with a non-exponential Maximum likelihood (ML) decoding complexity. In Part-II, several low decoding complexity code constructions are studied and a lower bound on the Diversity-Multiplexing Gain tradeoff of the GNAF protocol is obtained.