A reference station-based GNSS computing mode to support unified precise point positioning and real-time kinematic services

Currently, the GNSS computing modes are of two classes: network-based data processing and user receiver-based processing. A GNSS reference receiver station essentially contributes raw measurement data in either the RINEX file format or as real-time data streams in the RTCM format. Very little computation is carried out by the reference station. The existing network-based processing modes, regardless of whether they are executed in real-time or post-processed modes, are centralised or sequential. This paper describes a distributed GNSS computing framework that incorporates three GNSS modes: reference station-based, user receiver-based and network-based data processing. Raw data streams from each GNSS reference receiver station are processed in a distributed manner, i.e., either at the station itself or at a hosting data server/processor, to generate station-based solutions, or reference receiver-specific parameters. These may include precise receiver clock, zenith tropospheric delay, differential code biases, ambiguity parameters, ionospheric delays, as well as line-of-sight information such as azimuth and elevation angles. Covariance information for estimated parameters may also be optionally provided. In such a mode the nearby precise point positioning (PPP) or real-time kinematic (RTK) users can directly use the corrections from all or some of the stations for real-time precise positioning via a data server. At the user receiver, PPP and RTK techniques are unified under the same observation models, and the distinction is how the user receiver software deals with corrections from the reference station solutions and the ambiguity estimation in the observation equations. Numerical tests demonstrate good convergence behaviour for differential code bias and ambiguity estimates derived individually with single reference stations. With station-based solutions from three reference stations within distances of 22–103 km the user receiver positioning results, with various schemes, show an accuracy improvement of the proposed station-augmented PPP and ambiguity-fixed PPP solutions with respect to the standard float PPP solutions without station augmentation and ambiguity resolutions. Overall, the proposed reference station-based GNSS computing mode can support PPP and RTK positioning services as a simpler alternative to the existing network-based RTK or regionally augmented PPP systems.

Scene signatures : localised and point-less features for localisation

This paper is about localising across extreme lighting and weather conditions. We depart from the traditional point-feature-based approach as matching under dramatic appearance changes is a brittle and hard thing. Point feature detectors are fixed and rigid procedures which pass over an image examining small, low-level structure such as corners or blobs. They apply the same criteria applied all images of all places. This paper takes a contrary view and asks what is possible if instead we learn a bespoke detector for every place. Our localisation task then turns into curating a large bank of spatially indexed detectors and we show that this yields vastly superior performance in terms of robustness in exchange for a reduced but tolerable metric precision. We present an unsupervised system that produces broad-region detectors for distinctive visual elements, called scene signatures, which can be associated across almost all appearance changes. We show, using 21km of data collected over a period of 3 months, that our system is capable of producing metric localisation estimates from night-to-day or summer-to-winter conditions.

Temperature dependent vibrational lifetimes in supercritical fluids near the critical point

Vibrational relaxation measurements on the CO asymmetric stretching mode (similar to 1980 cm(-1)) of tungsten hexacarbonyl (W(CO)(6)) as a function of temperature at constant density in several supercritical solvents in the vicinity of the critical point are presented. In supercritical ethane, at the critical density, there is a region above the critical temperature (Tc) in which the lifetime increases with increasing temperature. When the temperature is raised sufficiently (similar to T-c + 70 degrees C), the lifetime decreases with further increase in temperature. A recent hydrodynamic/thermodynamic theory of vibrational relaxation in supercritical fluids reproduces this behavior semiquantitatively. The temperature dependent data for fixed densities somewhat above and below the critical density is in better agreement with the theory. In fluoroform solvent at the critical density, the vibrational lifetime also initially increases with increasing temperature. However, in supercritical CO2 at the critical density, the temperature dependent vibrational lifetime decreases approximately linearly with temperature beginning almost immediately above T-c. The theory does not reproduce this behavior. A comparison between the absolute lifetimes in the three solvents and the temperature trends is made.

Concept of "Crossover Point" and its Application on Threshold Voltage Definition for Undoped-Body Transistors

As the conventional MOSFET's scaling is approaching the limit imposed by short channel effects, Double Gate (DG) MOS transistors are appearing as the most feasible candidate in terms of technology in sub-45nm technology nodes. As the short channel effect in DG transistor is controlled by the device geometry, undoped or lightly doped body is used to sustain the channel. There exits a disparity in threshold voltage calculation criteria of undoped-body symmetric double gate transistors which uses two definitions, one is potential based and the another is charge based definition. In this paper, a novel concept of "crossover point'' is introduced, which proves that the charge-based definition is more accurate than the potential based definition.The change in threshold voltage with body thickness variation for a fixed channel length is anomalous as predicted by potential based definition while it is monotonous for charge based definition.The threshold voltage is then extracted from drain currant versus gate voltage characteristics using linear extrapolation and "Third Derivative of Drain-Source Current'' method or simply "TD'' method. The trend of threshold voltage variation is found same in both the cases which support charge-based definition.

Concept of Crossover point and its application on Threshold Voltage definition for Undoped-Body Transistors

As the conventional MOSFETs scaling is approaching the limit imposed by short channel effects, Double Gate (DG) MOS transistors are appearing as the most feasible andidate in terms of technology in sub-45nm technology nodes. As the short channel effect in DG transistor is controlled by the device geometry, undoped or lightly doped body, is used to sustain the channel. There exits a disparity in threshold voltage calculation criteria of undoped-body symmetric double gate transistors which uses two definitions, one is potential based and the another is charge based definition. In this paper, a novel concept of "crossover point" is introduced, which proves that the charge-based definition is more accurate than the potential based definition. The change in threshold voltage with body thickness variation for a fixed channel length is anomalous as predicted by, potential based definition while it is monotonous for change based definition. The threshold voltage is then extracted from drain currant versus gate voltage characteristics using linear extrapolation and "Third Derivative of Drain-Source Current" method or simply "TD" method. The trend of threshold voltage variation is found some in both the cases which support charge-based definition.

A cost effective pipelined divider for double precision floating point number

he growth of high-performance application in computer graphics, signal processing and scientific computing is a key driver for high performance, fixed latency; pipelined floating point dividers. Solutions available in the literature use large lookup table for double precision floating point operations.In this paper, we propose a cost effective, fixed latency pipelined divider using modified Taylor-series expansion for double precision floating point operations. We reduce chip area by using a smaller lookup table. We show that the latency of the proposed divider is 49.4 times the latency of a full-adder. The proposed divider reduces chip area by about 81% than the pipelined divider in [9] which is based on modified Taylor-series.

Computing a matrix symmetrizer exactly using modified multiple modulus residue arithmetic

A symmetric solution X satisfying the matrix equation XA = AtX is called a symmetrizer of the matrix A. A general algorithm to compute a matrix symmetrizer is obtained. A new multiple-modulus residue arithmetic called floating-point modular arithmetic is described and implemented on the algorithm to compute an error-free matrix symmetrizer.

A fixed-grid finite element based enthalpy formulation for generalized phase change problems: role of superficial mushy region

The enthalpy method is primarily developed for studying phase change in a multicomponent material, characterized by a continuous liquid volume fraction (phi(1)) vs temperature (T) relationship. Using the Galerkin finite element method we obtain solutions to the enthalpy formulation for phase change in 1D slabs of pure material, by assuming a superficial phase change region (linear (phi(1) vs T) around the discontinuity at the melting point. Errors between the computed and analytical solutions are evaluated for the fluxes at, and positions of, the freezing front, for different widths of the superficial phase change region and spatial discretizations with linear and quadratic basis functions. For Stefan number (St) varying between 0.1 and 10 the method is relatively insensitive to spatial discretization and widths of the superficial phase change region. Greater sensitivity is observed at St = 0.01, where the variation in the enthalpy is large. In general the width of the superficial phase change region should span at least 2-3 Gauss quadrature points for the enthalpy to be computed accurately. The method is applied to study conventional melting of slabs of frozen brine and ice. Regardless of the forms for the phi(1) vs T relationships, the thawing times were found to scale as the square of the slab thickness. The ability of the method to efficiently capture multiple thawing fronts which may originate at any spatial location within the sample, is illustrated with the microwave thawing of slabs and 2D cylinders. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Construction of equivalent circuit of a transformer winding from driving-point impedance function - analytical approach

Analytical solution is presented to convert a given driving-point impedance function (in s-domain) into a physically realisable ladder network with inductive coupling between any two sections and losses considered. The number of sections in the ladder network can vary, but its topology is assumed fixed. A study of the coefficients of the numerator and denominator polynomials of the driving-point impedance function of the ladder network, for increasing number of sections, led to the identification of certain coefficients, which exhibit very special properties. Generalised expressions for these specific coefficients have also been derived. Exploiting their properties, it is demonstrated that the synthesis method essentially turns out to be an exercise of solving a set of linear, simultaneous, algebraic equations, whose solution directly yields the ladder network elements. The proposed solution is novel, simple and guarantees a unique network. Presently, the formulation can synthesise a unique ladder network up to six sections.

On the Erdos-Szekeres n-interior-point problem

The n-interior-point variant of the Erdos Szekeres problem is the following: for every n, n >= 1, does there exist a g(n) such that every point set in the plane with at least g(n) interior points has a convex polygon containing exactly n interior points. The existence of g(n) has been proved only for n <= 3. In this paper, we show that for any fixed r >= 2, and for every n >= 5, every point set having sufficiently large number of interior points and at most r convex layers contains a subset with exactly n interior points. We also consider a relaxation of the notion of convex polygons and show that for every n, n >= 1, any point set with at least n interior points has an almost convex polygon (a simple polygon with at most one concave vertex) that contains exactly n interior points. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Position-dependent velocity of an effective temperature point for the estimation of the thermal diffusivity of solids

A new approach is proposed to estimate the thermal diffusivity of optically transparent solids at ambient temperature based on the velocity of an effective temperature point (ETP), and by using a two-beam interferometer the proposed concept is corroborated. 1D unsteady heat flow via step-temperature excitation is interpreted as a `micro-scale rectilinear translatory motion' of an ETP. The velocity dependent function is extracted by revisiting the Fourier heat diffusion equation. The relationship between the velocity of the ETP with thermal diffusivity is modeled using a standard solution. Under optimized thermal excitation, the product of the `velocity of the ETP' and the distance is a new constitutive equation for the thermal diffusivity of the solid. The experimental approach involves the establishment of a 1D unsteady heat flow inside the sample through step-temperature excitation. In the moving isothermal surfaces, the ETP is identified using a two-beam interferometer. The arrival-time of the ETP to reach a fixed distance away from heat source is measured, and its velocity is calculated. The velocity of the ETP and a given distance is sufficient to estimate the thermal diffusivity of a solid. The proposed method is experimentally verified for BK7 glass samples and the measured results are found to match closely with the reported value.

Fixed-lag blind equalization and sequence estimation in digital communications systems using sequential importance sampling

We present methods for fixed-lag smoothing using Sequential Importance sampling (SIS) on a discrete non-linear, non-Gaussian state space system with unknown parameters. Our particular application is in the field of digital communication systems. Each input data point is taken from a finite set of symbols. We represent transmission media as a fixed filter with a finite impulse response (FIR), hence a discrete state-space system is formed. Conventional Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques such as the Gibbs sampler are unsuitable for this task because they can only perform processing on a batch of data. Data arrives sequentially, so it would seem sensible to process it in this way. In addition, many communication systems are interactive, so there is a maximum level of latency that can be tolerated before a symbol is decoded. We will demonstrate this method by simulation and compare its performance to existing techniques.

Some Results on Fixed and Best Proximity Points of Precyclic Self-Mappings

12 p.

Using idiothetic cues to swim a path with a fixed trajectory and distance: Necessary involvement of the hippocampus but not the retrosplenial cortex.

Rats rapidly learned to find a submerged platform in a water maze at a constant distance and angle from the start point, which changed on every trial. The rats performed accurately in the light and dark, but prior rotation disrupted the latter condition. The rats were then retested after receiving cytotoxic hippocampal or retrosplenial cortex lesions. Retrosplenial lesions had no apparent effect in either the light or dark. Hippocampal lesions impaired performance in both conditions but spared the ability to locate a platform placed in the center of the pool. A hippocampal deficit emerged when this pool-center task was run in the dark. The spatial effects of hippocampal damage extend beyond allocentric tasks to include aspects of idiothetic guidance.

Analysis of Fixed-Speed Wind Farm Low-Frequency Power Pulsations using a Wavelet-Prony Method

The increasing penetration of wind generation on the Island of Ireland has been accompanied by close investigation of low-frequency periodic pulsations contained within the active power flow from different wind farms. A primary concern is excitation of existing low-frequency oscillation modes already present on the system, particularly the 0.75 Hz mode as a consequence of the interconnected Northern and Southern power system networks. Recently grid code requirements on the Northern Ireland power system have been updated stipulating that wind farms connected after 2005 must be able to control the magnitude of oscillations in the range of 0.25 - 1.75 Hz to within 1% of the wind farm's registered output. In order to determine whether wind farm low-frequency oscillations have a negative effect (excite other modes) or possibly a positive impact (damping of existing modes) on the power system, the oscillations at the point of connection must be measured and characterised. Using time - frequency methods, research presented in this paper has been conducted to extract signal features from measured low-frequency active power pulsations produced by wind farms to determine the effective composition of possible oscillatory modes which may have a detrimental effect on system dynamic stability. The paper proposes a combined wavelet-Prony method to extract modal components and determine damping factors. The method is exemplified using real data obtained from wind farm measurements.