Growth and Characterization Studies of ABi2ta2o9 (A = Ba, Sr and Ca) Ferroelectric Thin Films

Thin films of ferroelectric ABi2Ta2O9 bismuth-layered structure, where A = Ba, Sr and Ca, were prepared by pulsed laser deposition technique on Pt/TiO2/SiO2/Si(100) substrates. The influence of substrate temperature between 500 to 750°C, and oxygen partial pressure 100-300 mTorr, on the structural and electrical properties of the films was investigated. The films deposited above 650°C substrate temperature showed complete Aurivillius layered structure. Films annealed at 750°C for 1h in oxygen atmosphere have exhibited better electrical properties. Atomic force microscopy study of surface topography shows that the films grown at lower temperature has smaller grains and higher surface roughness. This paper discusses the pronounced influence of A-site cation substitution on the structural and ferroelectric properties with the aid of Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and electrical properties. The degradation of ferroelectric properties with Ba and Ca substitution at A-sites is attributed to the higher structural distortion caused by changing tolerance factor. A systematic proportionate variation of coercive field is attributed to electronegativity difference of A-site cations.

Low Complexity Wideband LSFQuantization Using GMM of Uncorrelated Gaussian Mixtures

We develop a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) based vector quantization (VQ) method for coding wideband speech line spectrum frequency (LSF) parameters at low complexity. The PDF of LSF source vector is modeled using the Gaussian mixture (GM) density with higher number of uncorrelated Gaussian mixtures and an optimum scalar quantizer (SQ) is designed for each Gaussian mixture. The reduction of quantization complexity is achieved using the relevant subset of available optimum SQs. For an input vector, the subset of quantizers is chosen using nearest neighbor criteria. The developed method is compared with the recent VQ methods and shown to provide high quality rate-distortion (R/D) performance at lower complexity. In addition, the developed method also provides the advantages of bitrate scalability and rate-independent complexity.

Low complexity Bit allocation algorithms for AAC encoding

We have developed two reduced complexity bit-allocation algorithms for MP3/AAC based audio encoding, which can be useful at low bit-rates. One algorithm derives optimum bit-allocation using constrained optimization of weighted noise-to-mask ratio and the second algorithm uses decoupled iterations for distortion control and rate control, with convergence criteria. MUSHRA based evaluation indicated that the new algorithm would be comparable to AAC but requiring only about 1/10 th the complexity.

On a Novel Geometric Representation of Rotation

This paper presents a novel method of representing rotation and its application to representing the ranges of motion of coupled joints in the human body, using planar maps. The present work focuses on the viability of this representation for situations that relied on maps on a unit sphere. Maps on a unit sphere have been used in diverse applications such as Gauss map, visibility maps, axis-angle and Euler-angle representations of rotation etc. Computations on a spherical surface are difficult and computationally expensive; all the above applications suffer from problems associated with singularities at the poles. There are methods to represent the ranges of motion of such joints using two-dimensional spherical polygons. The present work proposes to use multiple planar domain “cube” instead of a single spherical domain, to achieve the above objective. The parameterization on the planar domains is easy to obtain and convert to spherical coordinates. Further, there is no localized and extreme distortion of the parameter space and it gives robustness to the computations. The representation has been compared with the spherical representation in terms of computational ease and issues related to singularities. Methods have been proposed to represent joint range of motion and coupled degrees of freedom for various joints in digital human models (such as shoulder, wrist and fingers). A novel method has been proposed to represent twist in addition to the existing swing-swivel representation.

Direct mdct domain psychoacoustic modeling

We extend the recently proposed spectral integration based psychoacoustic model for sinusoidal distortions to the MDCT domain. The estimated masking threshold additionally depends on the sub-band spectral flatness measure of the signal which accounts for the non- sinusoidal distortion introduced by masking. The expressions for masking threshold are derived and the validity of the proposed model is established through perceptual transparency test of audio clips. Test results indicate that we do achieve transparent quality reconstruction with the new model. Performance of the model is compared with MPEG psychoacoustic models with respect to the estimated perceptual entropy (PE). The results show that the proposed model predicts a lower PE than other models.

High-rate analysis of channel-optimized vector quantization

High-rate analysis of channel-optimized vector quantizationThis paper considers the high-rate performance of channel optimized source coding for noisy discrete symmetric channels with random index assignment. Specifically, with mean squared error (MSE) as the performance metric, an upper bound on the asymptotic (i.e., high-rate) distortion is derived by assuming a general structure on the codebook. This structure enables extension of the analysis of the channel optimized source quantizer to one with a singular point density: for channels with small errors, the point density that minimizes the upper bound is continuous, while as the error rate increases, the point density becomes singular. The extent of the singularity is also characterized. The accuracy of the expressions obtained are verified through Monte Carlo simulations.

Lossy distribution source coding with side information

In a typical sensor network scenario a goal is to monitor a spatio-temporal process through a number of inexpensive sensing nodes, the key parameter being the fidelity at which the process has to be estimated at distant locations. We study such a scenario in which multiple encoders transmit their correlated data at finite rates to a distant and common decoder. In particular, we derive inner and outer bounds on the rate region for the random field to be estimated with a given mean distortion.

An Overmodulation Scheme for Vector Controlled Induction Motor Drives

This paper presents an algorithm for control of line side voltage of a voltage source inverter upto six-step mode. This is a modified version of an existing overmodulation algorithm. The modified algorithm maintains proportionality between the reference voltage and the output fundamental voltage, and also reduces the computational effort required for implementation, while resulting in a marginally higher harmonic distortion. An estimation method is proposed for calculation of lower order ripple current. This estimation method is applied to a sensorless vector controlled induction motor drive to improve the performance of the drive during overmodulation.

Novel Switching Sequences for a Space-Vector-Modulated Three-Level Inverter

A three-level inverter produces six active vectors, each of normalized magnitudes 1, 0.866, and 0.5, besides a zero vector. The vectors of relative length 0.5 are termed pivot vectors.The three nearest voltage vectors are usually used to synthesize the reference vector. In most continuous pulsewidth-modulation(PWM) schemes, the switching sequence begins from a pivot vector and ends with the same pivot vector. Thus, the pivot vector is applied twice in a subcycle or half-carrier cycle. This paper proposes and investigates alternative switching sequences, which use the pivot vector only once but employ one of the other two vectors twice within the subcycle. The total harmonic distortion(THD) in the fundamental line current pertaining to these novel sequences is studied theoretically as well as experimentally over the whole range of modulation. Compared with centered space vector PWM, two of the proposed sequences lead to reduced THD at high modulation indices at a given average switching frequency.

First-order structural transition in the magnetically ordered phase of Fe(1.13)Te

Specific heat, resistivity, magnetic susceptibility, linear thermal expansion (LTE), and high-resolution synchrotron x-ray powder diffraction investigations of single crystals Fe(1+y) Te (0.06 <= y <= 0.15) reveal a splitting of a single, first-order transition for y <= 0.11 into two transitions for y >= 0.13. Most strikingly, all measurements on identical samples Fe(1.13)Te consistently indicate that, upon cooling, the magnetic transition at T(N) precedes the first-order structural transition at a lower temperature T(s). The structural transition in turn coincides with a change in the character of the magnetic structure. The LTE measurements along the crystallographic c axis display a small distortion close to T(N) due to a lattice striction as a consequence of magnetic ordering, and a much larger change at T(s). The lattice symmetry changes, however, only below T(s) as indicated by powder x-ray diffraction. This behavior is in stark contrast to the sequence in which the phase transitions occur in Fe pnictides.

Thermodynamic properties of Fe3O4 FeAl2O4 spinel solid solution

The Gibbs energy of mixing for the system Fe3O4-FeAl2O4 was determined at 1573 K using a gas-metal-oxide equilibration technique. Oxide solid solution samples were equilibrated with Pt foils under controlled CO+CO2 gas streams. The equilibrium iron concentration in the foil was determined by chemical analysis. The cation distribution between tetrahedral and octahedral sites in the spinel crystal can be calculated from site-preference energies and used as an alternate method of determining some thermodynamic properties, including the Gibbs energy of mixing. The solvus occurring at low temperatures in the system Fe3C4-FeAl2C4 was used to derive the effect of lattice distortion due to cation size difference on the enthalpy of mixing and to obtain a better approximation to the measured thermodynamic quantities.

Thermodynamic properties of Fe3O4 FeV2O4 and Fe3O4 FeCr2O4 spinel solid solutions

Solid solutions of Fe304-FeV204 and Fe304-FeCr204 were prepared and equilibrated with Pt under controlled streams of CO/CO, gas mixtures at 1673 K. The concentration of Fe in Pt was used to determine the activity of Fe304 in the solid solutions. The activity of the second component was calculated by Gibbshhem integration. From these data, the Gibbs energy of mixing was derived for both systems. The experimental results and theoretical values which are determined from calculated cation distribution compare favorably in the case of vanadite solid solutions but not in the case of chromite solid solutions. The difference is attributed to a heat term arising from lattice distortion due to cation size difference. The positive heat of mixing will give rise to a miscibility gap in the system Fe304-FeCr204 at lower temperatures.

High-Rate Vector Quantization for Noisy Channels With Applications to Wideband Speech Spectrum Compression

This paper considers the high-rate performance of source coding for noisy discrete symmetric channels with random index assignment (IA). Accurate analytical models are developed to characterize the expected distortion performance of vector quantization (VQ) for a large class of distortion measures. It is shown that when the point density is continuous, the distortion can be approximated as the sum of the source quantization distortion and the channel-error induced distortion. Expressions are also derived for the continuous point density that minimizes the expected distortion. Next, for the case of mean squared error distortion, a more accurate analytical model for the distortion is derived by allowing the point density to have a singular component. The extent of the singularity is also characterized. These results provide analytical models for the expected distortion performance of both conventional VQ as well as for channel-optimized VQ. As a practical example, compression of the linear predictive coding parameters in the wideband speech spectrum is considered, with the log spectral distortion as performance metric. The theory is able to correctly predict the channel error rate that is permissible for operation at a particular level of distortion.

Continuous Recording of Retardation and Intensity of Echoes from the Ionosphere

Pulse retardation method of Breit and Tuve has been modified to record continuously the equivalent height as well as the intensity of reflections from the ionosphere. Synchronized pulses are transmitted, and the received ground pulse and the reflected pulses, after amplification and suitable distortion, are applied to the focusing cylinder of a cathode ray tube the horizontal deflecting plates of which are connected to a synchronized linear time base circuit. The pattern on the screen is composed of a bright straight line corresponding to the time base with dark gaps corresponding to the received pulses. The distance between the initial points of the gaps represents retardation while the widths of the gaps correspond to the intensity of the pulses. The pattern is photographed on a vertically moving film. One of the first few records taken at Bangalore on 4 megacycles is reproduced. It shows, among other things, that the less retarded component of magneto-ionic splitting from the F layer is present most of the time. Whenever the longer retardation component does occur, it has stronger intensity than the former. Towards the late evening hours, just before disappearing, when the F layer rises and exhibits magnetoionic splitting, the intensity of the less retarded component is extremely low compared with the other component.

Online Handwriting Recognition of Tamil Script Using Fractal Geometry

We present a fractal coding method to recognize online handwritten Tamil characters and propose a novel technique to increase the efficiency in terms of time while coding and decoding. This technique exploits the redundancy in data, thereby achieving better compression and usage of lesser memory. It also reduces the encoding time and causes little distortion during reconstruction. Experiments have been conducted to use these fractal codes to classify the online handwritten Tamil characters from the IWFHR 2006 competition dataset. In one approach, we use fractal coding and decoding process. A recognition accuracy of 90% has been achieved by using DTW for distortion evaluation during classification and encoding processes as compared to 78% using nearest neighbor classifier. In other experiments, we use the fractal code, fractal dimensions and features derived from fractal codes as features in separate classifiers. While the fractal code is successful as a feature, the other two features are not able to capture the wide within-class variations.