A weighted average based external clock synchronization protocol for wireless sensor networks

Clock synchronization is an extremely important requirement of wireless sensor networks(WSNs). There are many application scenarios such as weather monitoring and forecasting etc. where external clock synchronization may be required because WSN itself may consists of components which are not connected to each other. A usual approach for external clock synchronization in WSNs is to synchronize the clock of a reference node with an external source such as UTC, and the remaining nodes synchronize with the reference node using an internal clock synchronization protocol. In order to provide highly accurate time, both the offset and the drift rate of each clock with respect to reference node are estimated from time to time, and these are used for getting correct time from local clock reading. A problem with this approach is that it is difficult to estimate the offset of a clock with respect to the reference node when drift rate of clocks varies over a period of time. In this paper, we first propose a novel internal clock synchronization protocol based on weighted averaging technique, which synchronizes all the clocks of a WSN to a reference node periodically. We call this protocol weighted average based internal clock synchronization(WICS) protocol. Based on this protocol, we then propose our weighted average based external clock synchronization(WECS) protocol. We have analyzed the proposed protocols for maximum synchronization error and shown that it is always upper bounded. Extensive simulation studies of the proposed protocols have been carried out using Castalia simulator. Simulation results validate our theoretical claim that the maximum synchronization error is always upper bounded and also show that the proposed protocols perform better in comparison to other protocols in terms of synchronization accuracy. A prototype implementation of the proposed internal clock synchronization protocol using a few TelosB motes also validates our claim.

Seismic site classification and correlation between standard penetration test N value and shear wave velocity for Lucknow city in Indo-Gangetic basin

Subsurface lithology and seismic site classification of Lucknow urban center located in the central part of the Indo-Gangetic Basin (IGB) are presented based on detailed shallow subsurface investigations and borehole analysis. These are done by carrying out 47 seismic surface wave tests using multichannel analysis of surface waves (MASW) and 23 boreholes drilled up to 30 m with standard penetration test (SPT) N values. Subsurface lithology profiles drawn from the drilled boreholes show low- to medium-compressibility clay and silty to poorly graded sand available till depth of 30 m. In addition, deeper boreholes (depth >150 m) were collected from the Lucknow Jal Nigam (Water Corporation), Government of Uttar Pradesh to understand deeper subsoil stratification. Deeper boreholes in this paper refer to those with depth over 150 m. These reports show the presence of clay mix with sand and Kankar at some locations till a depth of 150 m, followed by layers of sand, clay, and Kankar up to 400 m. Based on the available details, shallow and deeper cross-sections through Lucknow are presented. Shear wave velocity (SWV) and N-SPT values were measured for the study area using MASW and SPT testing. Measured SWV and N-SPT values for the same locations were found to be comparable. These values were used to estimate 30 m average values of N-SPT (N-30) and SWV (V-s(30)) for seismic site classification of the study area as per the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) soil classification system. Based on the NEHRP classification, the entire study area is classified into site class C and D based on V-s(30) and site class D and E based on N-30. The issue of larger amplification during future seismic events is highlighted for a major part of the study area which comes under site class D and E. Also, the mismatch of site classes based on N-30 and V-s(30) raises the question of the suitability of the NEHRP classification system for the study region. Further, 17 sets of SPT and SWV data are used to develop a correlation between N-SPT and SWV. This represents a first attempt of seismic site classification and correlation between N-SPT and SWV in the Indo-Gangetic Basin.

Circulating power test setup for a PWM rectifier motor drive

Power converters burn-in test consumes large amount of energy, which increases the cost of testing, and certification, in medium and high power application. A simple test configuration to test a PWM rectifier induction motor drive, using a Doubly Fed Induction Machine (DFIM) to circulate power back to the grid for burn-in test is presented. The test configuration makes use of only one power electronic converter, which is the converter to be tested. The test method ensures soft synchronization of DFIM and Squirrel Cage Induction Machine (SCIM). A simple volt per hertz control of the drive is sufficient for conducting the test. To synchronize the DFIM with SCIM, the rotor terminal voltage of DFIM is measured and used as an indication of speed mismatch between DFIM and SCIM. The synchronization is done when the DFIM rotor voltage is at its minimum. Analysis of the DFIM characteristics confirms that such a test can be effectively performed with smooth start up and loading of the test setup. After synchronization is obtained, the speed command to SCIM is changed in order to load the setup in motoring or regenerative mode of operation. The experimental results are presented that validates the proposed test method.

Boosting-based transfer learning for multi-view head-pose classification from surveillance videos

This work proposes a boosting-based transfer learning approach for head-pose classification from multiple, low-resolution views. Head-pose classification performance is adversely affected when the source (training) and target (test) data arise from different distributions (due to change in face appearance, lighting, etc). Under such conditions, we employ Xferboost, a Logitboost-based transfer learning framework that integrates knowledge from a few labeled target samples with the source model to effectively minimize misclassifications on the target data. Experiments confirm that the Xferboost framework can improve classification performance by up to 6%, when knowledge is transferred between the CLEAR and FBK four-view headpose datasets.

Apparatus and method for heat-run test on high-power PWM converters with low energy expenditure

Before installation, a voltage source converter is usually subjected to heat-run test to verify its thermal design and performance under load. For heat-run test, the converter needs to be operated at rated voltage and rated current for a substantial length of time. Hence, such tests consume huge amount of energy in case of high-power converters. Also, the capacities of the source and loads available in the research and development (R&D) centre or the production facility could be inadequate to conduct such tests. This paper proposes a method to conduct heat-run tests on high-power, pulse width modulated (PWM) converters with low energy consumption. The experimental set-up consists of the converter under test and another converter (of similar or higher rating), both connected in parallel on the ac side and open on the dc side. Vector-control or synchronous reference frame control is employed to control the converters such that one draws certain amount of reactive power and the other supplies the same; only the system losses are drawn from the mains. The performance of the controller is validated through simulation and experiments. Experimental results, pertaining to heat-run tests on a high-power PWM converter, are presented at power levels of 25 kVA to 150 kVA.

Flying between Sky Islands: The Effect of Naturally Fragmented Habitat on Butterfly Population Structure

High elevation montane areas are called ``sky islands'' when they occur as a series of high mountains separated by lowland valleys. Different climatic conditions at high elevations makes sky islands a specialized type of habitat, rendering them naturally fragmented compared to more continuous habitat at lower elevations. Species in sky islands face unsuitable climate in the intervening valleys when moving from one montane area to another. The high elevation shola-grassland mosaic in the Western Ghats of southern India form one such sky island complex. The fragmented patches make this area ideal to study the effect of the spatial orientation of suitable habitat patches on population genetic structure of species found in these areas. Past studies have suggested that sky islands tend to have genetically structured populations, possibly due to reduced gene flow between montane areas. To test this hypothesis, we adopted the comparative approach. Using Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphisms, we compared population genetic structures of two closely related, similar sized butterfly species: Heteropsis oculus, a high elevation shola-grassland specialist restricted to the southern Western Ghats, and Mycalesis patnia, found more continuously distributed in lower elevations. In all analyses, as per expectation the sky island specialist H. oculus exhibited a greater degree of population genetic structure than M. patnia, implying a difference in geneflow. This difference in geneflow in turn appears to be due to the natural fragmentation of the sky island complexes. Detailed analysis of a subset of H. oculus samples from one sky island complex (the Anamalais) showed a surprising genetic break. A possible reason for this break could be unsuitable conditions of higher temperature and lower rainfall in the intervening valley region. Thus, sky island species are not only restricted by lack of habitat continuity between montane areas, but also by the nature of the intervening habitat.

AIPE-active green phosphorescent iridium(III) complex impregnated test strips for the vapor-phase detection of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT)

Detection of explosives, especially trinitrotoluene (TNT), is of utmost importance due to its highly explosive nature and environmental hazard. Therefore, detection of TNT has been a matter of great concern to the scientific community worldwide. Herein, a new aggregation-induced phosphorescent emission (AIPE)-active iridium(III) bis(2-(2,4-difluorophenyl)pyridinato-NC2') (2-(2-pyridyl)benzimidazolato-N,N') complex FIrPyBiz] has been developed and serves as a molecular probe for the detection of TNT in the vapor phase, solid phase, and aqueous media. In addition, phosphorescent test strips have been constructed by impregnating Whatman filter paper with aggregates of FIrPyBiz for trace detection of TNT in contact mode, with detection limits in nanograms, by taking advantage of the excited state interaction of AIPE-active phosphorescent iridium(III) complex with that of TNT and the associated photophysical properties.

Analytical test functions for free vibration analysis of rotating non-homogeneous Timoshenko beams

In this paper, the governing equations for free vibration of a non-homogeneous rotating Timoshenko beam, having uniform cross-section, is studied using an inverse problem approach, for both cantilever and pinned-free boundary conditions. The bending displacement and the rotation due to bending are assumed to be simple polynomials which satisfy all four boundary conditions. It is found that for certain polynomial variations of the material mass density, elastic modulus and shear modulus, along the length of the beam, the assumed polynomials serve as simple closed form solutions to the coupled second order governing differential equations with variable coefficients. It is found that there are an infinite number of analytical polynomial functions possible for material mass density, shear modulus and elastic modulus distributions, which share the same frequency and mode shape for a particular mode. The derived results are intended to serve as benchmark solutions for testing approximate or numerical methods used for the vibration analysis of rotating non-homogeneous Timoshenko beams.

Dynamic Site Characterization and Correlation of Shear Wave Velocity with Standard Penetration Test `N' Values for the City of Agartala, Tripura State, India

Seismic site characterization is the basic requirement for seismic microzonation and site response studies of an area. Site characterization helps to gauge the average dynamic properties of soil deposits and thus helps to evaluate the surface level response. This paper presents a seismic site characterization of Agartala city, the capital of Tripura state, in the northeast of India. Seismically, Agartala city is situated in the Bengal Basin zone which is classified as a highly active seismic zone, assigned by Indian seismic code BIS-1893, Indian Standard Criteria for Earthquake Resistant Design of Structures, Part-1 General Provisions and Buildings. According to the Bureau of Indian Standards, New Delhi (2002), it is the highest seismic level (zone-V) in the country. The city is very close to the Sylhet fault (Bangladesh) where two major earthquakes (M (w) > 7) have occurred in the past and affected severely this city and the whole of northeast India. In order to perform site response evaluation, a series of geophysical tests at 27 locations were conducted using the multichannel analysis of surface waves (MASW) technique, which is an advanced method for obtaining shear wave velocity (V (s)) profiles from in situ measurements. Similarly, standard penetration test (SPT-N) bore log data sets have been obtained from the Urban Development Department, Govt. of Tripura. In the collected data sets, out of 50 bore logs, 27 were selected which are close to the MASW test locations and used for further study. Both the data sets (V (s) profiles with depth and SPT-N bore log profiles) have been used to calculate the average shear wave velocity (V (s)30) and average SPT-N values for the upper 30 m depth of the subsurface soil profiles. These were used for site classification of the study area recommended by the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program (NEHRP) manual. The average V (s)30 and SPT-N classified the study area as seismic site class D and E categories, indicating that the city is susceptible to site effects and liquefaction. Further, the different data set combinations between V (s) and SPT-N (corrected and uncorrected) values have been used to develop site-specific correlation equations by statistical regression, as `V (s)' is a function of SPT-N value (corrected and uncorrected), considered with or without depth. However, after considering the data set pairs, a probabilistic approach has also been presented to develop a correlation using a quantile-quantile (Q-Q) plot. A comparison has also been made with the well known published correlations (for all soils) available in the literature. The present correlations closely agree with the other equations, but, comparatively, the correlation of shear wave velocity with the variation of depth and uncorrected SPT-N values provides a more suitable predicting model. Also the Q-Q plot agrees with all the other equations. In the absence of in situ measurements, the present correlations could be used to measure V (s) profiles of the study area for site response studies.

Multithreaded Test Synthesis for Deadlock Detection

Designing and implementing thread-safe multithreaded libraries can be a daunting task as developers of these libraries need to ensure that their implementations are free from concurrency bugs, including deadlocks. The usual practice involves employing software testing and/or dynamic analysis to detect. deadlocks. Their effectiveness is dependent on well-designed multithreaded test cases. Unsurprisingly, developing multithreaded tests is significantly harder than developing sequential tests for obvious reasons. In this paper, we address the problem of automatically synthesizing multithreaded tests that can induce deadlocks. The key insight to our approach is that a subset of the properties observed when a deadlock manifests in a concurrent execution can also be observed in a single threaded execution. We design a novel, automatic, scalable and directed approach that identifies these properties and synthesizes a deadlock revealing multithreaded test. The input to our approach is the library implementation under consideration and the output is a set of deadlock revealing multithreaded tests. We have implemented our approach as part of a tool, named OMEN1. OMEN is able to synthesize multithreaded tests on many multithreaded Java libraries. Applying a dynamic deadlock detector on the execution of the synthesized tests results in the detection of a number of deadlocks, including 35 real deadlocks in classes documented as thread-safe. Moreover, our experimental results show that dynamic analysis on multithreaded tests that are either synthesized randomly or developed by third-party programmers are ineffective in detecting the deadlocks.

A model for the classification and survey of clock synchronization protocols in WSNs

Clock synchronization in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) assures that sensor nodes have the same reference clock time. This is necessary not only for various WSN applications but also for many system level protocols for WSNs such as MAC protocols, and protocols for sleep scheduling of sensor nodes. Clock value of a node at a particular instant of time depends on its initial value and the frequency of the crystal oscillator used in the sensor node. The frequency of the crystal oscillator varies from node to node, and may also change over time depending upon many factors like temperature, humidity, etc. As a result, clock values of different sensor nodes diverge from each other and also from the real time clock, and hence, there is a requirement for clock synchronization in WSNs. Consequently, many clock synchronization protocols for WSNs have been proposed in the recent past. These protocols differ from each other considerably, and so, there is a need to understand them using a common platform. Towards this goal, this survey paper categorizes the features of clock synchronization protocols for WSNs into three types, viz, structural features, technical features, and global objective features. Each of these categories has different options to further segregate the features for better understanding. The features of clock synchronization protocols that have been used in this survey include all the features which have been used in existing surveys as well as new features such as how the clock value is propagated, when the clock value is propagated, and when the physical clock is updated, which are required for better understanding of the clock synchronization protocols in WSNs in a systematic way. This paper also gives a brief description of a few basic clock synchronization protocols for WSNs, and shows how these protocols fit into the above classification criteria. In addition, the recent clock synchronization protocols for WSNs, which are based on the above basic clock synchronization protocols, are also given alongside the corresponding basic clock synchronization protocols. Indeed, the proposed model for characterizing the clock synchronization protocols in WSNs can be used not only for analyzing the existing protocols but also for designing new clock synchronization protocols. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Maximum likelihood analysis of multi-stress accelerated life test data of series systems with competing log-normal causes of failure

This article presents frequentist inference of accelerated life test data of series systems with independent log-normal component lifetimes. The means of the component log-lifetimes are assumed to depend on the stress variables through a linear stress translation function that can accommodate the standard stress translation functions in the literature. An expectation-maximization algorithm is developed to obtain the maximum likelihood estimates of model parameters. The maximum likelihood estimates are then further refined by bootstrap, which is also used to infer about the component and system reliability metrics at usage stresses. The developed methodology is illustrated by analyzing a real as well as a simulated dataset. A simulation study is also carried out to judge the effectiveness of the bootstrap. It is found that in this model, application of bootstrap results in significant improvement over the simple maximum likelihood estimates.

BIMODAL NANOINDENTATION RESPONSE OF THE (001) FACE IN CRYSTALLINE SODIUM SACCHARIN DIHYDRATE

The nanoindentation response of the (001) face of sodium saccharin dihydrate is examined. The structure can be demarcated into regular and irregular regions or domains. The regular domains have solid-like and the irregular ones have liquid-like characteristics. Therefore, these domains impart a microstructure to the crystal. The indent face (001) is prominently developed in this crystal and unambiguously presents the regular and irregular regions to nanoindention. Average values of elastic modulus and hardness show a distinct bimodal mechanical response. Such a response has been observed in the case of intergrown polymorphs of aspirin and felodipine. We examine two possible reasons as to why the responses could be for bimodal in this crystal. The first possibility could be that the two domains correspond to regions of the original dihydrate and a lower hydrate that is obtained by the loss of some water. The second possibility could be that these responses correspond to regular and irregular regions in the structure. Nanoindentation is a very useful technique in the characterization of molecular solids, as a complementary technique to X-ray crystallography, because it samples different length scales.

ANRC Hybrid Test Bed Implementation and an End-to-End Performance Characterization of Dynamic Spectrum Access

An abundance of spectrum access and sensing algorithms are available in the dynamic spectrum access (DSA) and cognitive radio (CR) literature. Often, however, the functionality and performance of such algorithms are validated against theoretical calculations using only simulations. Both the theoretical calculations and simulations come with their attendant sets of assumptions. For instance, designers of dynamic spectrum access algorithms often take spectrum sensing and rendezvous mechanisms between transmitter-receiver pairs for granted. Test bed designers, on the other hand, either customize so much of their design that it becomes difficult to replicate using commercial off the shelf (COTS) components or restrict themselves to simulation, emulation /hardware-in-Ioop (HIL), or pure hardware but not all three. Implementation studies on test beds sophisticated enough to combine the three aforementioned aspects, but at the same time can also be put together using COTS hardware and software packages are rare. In this paper we describe i) the implementation of a hybrid test bed using a previously proposed hardware agnostic system architecture ii) the implementation of DSA on this test bed, and iii) the realistic hardware and software-constrained performance of DSA. Snapshot energy detector (ED) and Cumulative Summation (CUSUM), a sequential change detection algorithm, are available for spectrum sensing and a two-way handshake mechanism in a dedicated control channel facilitates transmitter-receiver rendezvous.

Thermal test method for high power three-phase grid-connected inverters

Semiconductor device junction temperatures are maintained within datasheet specified limits to avoid failure in power converters. Burn-in tests are used to ensure this. In inverters, thermal time constants can be large and burn-in tests are required to be performed over long durations of time. At higher power levels, besides increased production cost, the testing requires sources and loads that can handle high power. In this study, a novel method to test a high power three-phase grid-connected inverter is proposed. The method eliminates the need for high power sources and loads. Only energy corresponding to the losses is consumed. The test is done by circulating rated current within the three legs of the inverter. All the phase legs being loaded, the method can be used to test the inverter in both cases of a common or independent cooling arrangement for the inverter phase legs. Further, the method can be used with different inverter configurations - three- or four-wire and for different pulse width modulation (PWM) techniques. The method has been experimentally validated on a 24 kVA inverter for a four-wire configuration that uses sine-triangle PWM and a three-wire configuration that uses conventional space vector PWM.