This letter presents a multi-frequency proportional-resonant (MFPR) current controller developed for PWM voltage source converter (VSC) under the unbalanced supply voltage conditions. The delta operator is used in place of the shift operator for the implementation of MFPR by using a low-cost fixed-point DSP. The experimental results with an alternative control strategy validated the feasibility of the proposed MFPR current controller for the PWM VSC during voltage unbalance.

This paper presents modeling of Distribution STATCOM (D-STATCOM) in load flow calculations for the steady-state voltage compensation. An accurate model for D-STATCOM is derived to use in load flow calculations. The rating of this device as well as the direction of required reactive power injection for voltage compensation in the desired value (1 p.u.) is derived and discussed analytically and mathematically by the phasor diagram method. Furthermore, an efficient method for node and line identification used in load flow calculations is presented. The validity of the proposed model is examined by using two standard distribution systems consisting of 33 and 69 nodes, respectively. The best location of D-STATCOM for under voltage problem mitigation approach in the distribution networks is determined. The results validate the proposed model for D-STATCOM in large distribution systems.

This paper presents a standard scalable and reconfigurable design for testability (SR DfT) in order to increase accessibility to deeply embedded A/MS cores and to limit application of costly off-chip mixed-signal testers. SR DfT is an oscillation-based wrapper compatible with digital embedded core-based SoC test methodologies. The impact of the optimized oscillation-based wrapper design on MS SoC testing is evaluated in two directions: area and test time. Experimental results are presented for several SoCs from the ITC’02 test benchmarks with inclusion of eight analog filters.

Using composite field arithmetic in Galois field can result in the compact Rijndael S-Box. However, the power consumption of this solution is too large to be used in resource-limited embedded systems. A full-custom hardware implementation of composite field S-Box is proposed for these targeted domains in this paper. The minimization of power consumption is implemented by optimizing the architecture of the composite field S-Box and using the pass transmission gate (PTG) to realize the logic functions of S-Box. Power simulations were performed using the netlist extracted from the layout. HSPICE simulation results indicated that the proposed S-Box achieves low power consumption of about 130 μW at 10 MHz using 0.25 μm/2.5 V technology, while the consumptions of the positive polarity reed-muller (PPRM) based S-Box and composite field S-Box based on the conventional CMOS logic style are about 240 μW and 420 μW, respectively. The simulations also showed that the presented S-Box obtains better low-voltage operating property, which is clearly relevant for applications like sensor nodes, smart cards and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags.

Antenna is very crucial to radiotelemetry capsules which can measure the physiological parameters of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. The objective of this paper is to design a novel spiral slots microstrip patch antenna for the radiotelemetry capsules communicating with external recorder at 915 MHz located in ISM (Industry, Science, and Medical) bands. The microstrip patch antenna is designed and evaluated using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. Return loss characteristics and the effect of the human body on resonant frequency are analyzed, and the performances of radiation patterns at different positions of the human alimentary tract are also estimated. Finally, specific absorption rate (SAR) computations are performed, and the peak 1-g and 10-g SAR values are calculated. According to the peak SAR values, the maximum delivered power for the designed antenna was found so that the SAR values of the antenna satisfy the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) limitations.

Broadband phase shifters are mostly proposed and fabricated based on the scheme proposed by Shiffman, which uses a coupled line with far ends connected together and a uniform transmission line to give a differential phase shift. Based on the unique dispersion property of the composite right/left-handed (CRLH) metamaterial structure, a new configuration is presented in this paper for fabricating the broadband differential phase shifter, which employs a novel CRLH metamaterial structure as one of the differential phase-shift arms, instead of the conventional coupled line. The new circuit can achieve a phase shift of 90° in an operational bandwidth as broad as one octave and its phase deviations are quite small. An original design of the novel broadband phase shifter is presented, in which the artificial CRLH structure was implemented by microstrip quasi-lumped elements. Both the simulated and measured results of the 90° broadband differential phase shifter are presented.

In the 802.11b networks, the guarantee of an equal long-run channel access probability causes performance anomaly in a multi-rate wireless cell. Much interest has been involved in this issue and many effective mechanisms have been proposed. The usual MAC layer solutions include the initial contention window adaptation, the maximum transfer unit size adaptation and the packet bursting. In this paper, we propose a novel approach which introduces a new parameter called the transmission probability p_t to the legacy protocol. By adjusting p_t according to the transmission rate, the proposed scheme can solve the performance anomaly problem cleanly. Throughput analysis and performance evaluation show that our scheme achieves significant improvement in the aggregate throughput and the fairness.

With the rapid development of wireless technologies, it is possible for Chinese greenhouses to be equipped with wireless sensor networks due to their low-cost, simplicity and mobility. In the current study, we compared the advantages of ZigBee with other two similar wireless networking protocols, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and proposed a wireless solution for greenhouse monitoring and control system based on ZigBee technology. As an explorative application of ZigBee technology in Chinese greenhouse, it may promote Chinese protected agriculture.

In this study, an unscented particle filtering method based on an interacting multiple model (IMM) frame for a Markovian switching system is presented. The method integrates the multiple model (MM) filter with an unscented particle filter (UPF) by an interaction step at the beginning. The framework (interaction/mixing, filtering, and combination) is similar to that in a standard IMM filter, but an UPF is adopted in each model. Therefore, the filtering performance and degeneracy phenomenon of particles are improved. The filtering method addresses nonlinear and/or non-Gaussian tracking problems. Simulation results show that the method has better tracking performance compared with the standard IMM-type filter and IMM particle filter.

In a tractor automatic navigation system, path planning plays a significant role in improving operation efficiency. This study aims to create a suboptimal reference course for headland turning of a robot tractor and design a path-tracking controller to guide the robot tractor along the reference course. A time-minimum suboptimal control method was used to generate the reference turning course based on the mechanical parameters of the test tractor. A path-tracking controller consisting of both feedforward and feedback component elements was also proposed. The feedforward component was directly determined by the desired steering angle of the current navigation point on the reference course, whereas the feedback component was derived from the designed optimal controller. Computer simulation and field tests were performed to validate the path-tracking performance. Field test results indicated that the robot tractor followed the reference courses precisely on flat meadow, with average and standard lateral deviations being 0.031 m and 0.086 m, respectively. However, the tracking error increased while operating on sloping meadow due to the employed vehicle kinematic model.

Determination of relative three-dimensional (3D) position, orientation, and relative motion between two reference frames is an important problem in robotic guidance, manipulation, and assembly as well as in other fields such as photogrammetry. A solution to pose and motion estimation problem that uses two-dimensional (2D) intensity images from a single camera is desirable for real-time applications. The difficulty in performing this measurement is that the process of projecting 3D object features to 2D images is a nonlinear transformation. In this paper, the 3D transformation is modeled as a nonlinear stochastic system with the state estimation providing six degrees-of-freedom motion and position values, using line features in image plane as measuring inputs and dual quaternion to represent both rotation and translation in a unified notation. A filtering method called the Gaussian particle filter (GPF) based on the particle filtering concept is presented for 3D pose and motion estimation of a moving target from monocular image sequences. The method has been implemented with simulated data, and simulation results are provided along with comparisons to the extended Kalman filter (EKF) and the unscented Kalman filter (UKF) to show the relative advantages of the GPF. Simulation results showed that GPF is a superior alternative to EKF and UKF.

This paper presents a practical iterative algorithm for two-view metric reconstruction without any prior knowledge about the scene and motion in a nonsingular geometry configuration. The principal point is assumed to locate at the image center with zero skew and the same aspect ratio, and the interior parameters are fixed, so the self-calibration becomes focal-length calibration. Existing focal length calibration methods are direct solutions of a quadric composed of fundamental matrix, which are sensitive to noise. A quaternion-based linear iterative Least-Square Method is proposed in this paper, and one-dimensional searching for optimal focal length in a constrained region instead of solving optimization problems with inequality constraints is applied to simplify the computation complexity, then unique rotational matrix and translate vector are recovered. Experiments with simulation data and real images are given to verify the algorithm.

The diagnostic potential of brain positron emission tomography (PET) imaging is limited by low spatial resolution. For solving this problem we propose a technique for the fusion of PET and MRI images. This fusion is a trade-off between the spectral information extracted from PET images and the spatial information extracted from high spatial resolution MRI. The proposed method can control this trade-off. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to build a multiscale fusion model, based on the retinal cell photoreceptors model. This paper introduces general prospects of this model, and its application in multispectral medical image fusion. Results showed that the proposed method preserves more spectral features with less spatial distortion. Comparing with hue-intensity-saturation (HIS), discrete wavelet transform (DWT), wavelet-based sharpening and wavelet-à trous transform methods, the best spectral and spatial quality is only achieved simultaneously with the proposed feature-based data fusion method. This method does not require resampling images, which is an advantage over the other methods, and can perform in any aspect ratio between the pixels of MRI and PET images.

With the rapid development of 3D digital photography and 3D digital scanning devices, massive amount of point samples can be generated in acquisition of complex, real-world objects, and thus create an urgent need for advanced point-based processing and editing. In this paper, we present an interactive method for blending point-based geometries by dragging-and-dropping one point-based model onto another model’s surface metaphor. We first calculate a blending region based on the polygon of interest when the user drags-and-drops the model. Radial basis function is used to construct an implicit surface which smoothly interpolates with the transition regions. Continuing the drag-and-drop operation will make the system recalculate the blending regions and reconstruct the transition regions. The drag-and-drop operation can be compound in a constructive solid geometry (CSG) manner to interactively construct a complex point-based model from multiple simple ones. Experimental results showed that our method generates good quality transition regions between two raw point clouds and can effectively reduce the rate of overlapping during the blending.

This paper focuses on a pattern design method for a 3D triangular garment surface. Firstly, some definitions of 3D style lines are proposed for designing the boundaries of patterns as drawing straight lines or splines on the triangular surface. Additionally some commonly used style lines are automatically generated to enhance design efficiency. Secondly, after style lines are preprocessed, a searching method is presented for quickly obtaining the boundaries and patches of a pattern on the 3D triangular surface. Finally a new pattern design reuse method is introduced by encoding/decoding the style line information. After style lines are encoded, the pattern design information can be saved in a pattern template and when decoding this template on a new garment surface, it automates the pattern generation for made-to-measure apparel products.

Applying homogeneous coordinates, we extend a newly appeared algorithm of best constrained multi-degree reduction for polynomial Bézier curves to the algorithms of constrained multi-degree reduction for rational Bézier curves. The idea is introducing two criteria, variance criterion and ratio criterion, for reparameterization of rational Bézier curves, which are used to make uniform the weights of the rational Bézier curves as accordant as possible, and then do multi-degree reduction for each component in homogeneous coordinates. Compared with the two traditional algorithms of “cancelling the best linear common divisor” and “shifted Chebyshev polynomial”, the two new algorithms presented here using reparameterization have advantages of simplicity and fast computing, being able to preserve high degrees continuity at the end points of the curves, do multi-degree reduction at one time, and have good approximating effect.

This paper presents a quadratic programming method for optimal multi-degree reduction of Bézier curves with G¹-continuity. The L₂ and l₂ measures of distances between the two curves are used as the objective functions. The two additional parameters, available from the coincidence of the oriented tangents, are constrained to be positive so as to satisfy the solvability condition. Finally, degree reduction is changed to solve a quadratic problem of two parameters with linear constraints. Applications of degree reduction of Bézier curves with their parameterizations close to arc-length parameterizations are also discussed.

As three control points are fixed and the fourth control point varies, the planar cubic C-curve may take on a loop, a cusp, or zero to two inflection points, depending on the position of the moving point. The plane can, therefore, be partitioned into regions labelled according to the characterization of the curve when the fourth point is in each region. This partitioned plane is called a “characterization diagram”. By moving one of the control points but fixing the rest, one can induce different characterization diagrams. In this paper, we investigate the relation among all different characterization diagrams of cubic C-curves based on the singularity conditions proposed by Yang and Wang (2004). We conclude that, no matter what the C-curve type is or which control point varies, the characterization diagrams can be obtained by cutting a common 3D characterization space with a corresponding plane.

We give the topology changing of the silhouette in 3D space while others study the projections in an image. Silhouettes play a crucial role in visualization, graphics and vision. This work focuses on the global behaviors of silhouettes, especially their topological evolutions, such as splitting, merging, appearing and disappearing. The dynamics of silhouettes are governed by the topology, the curvature of the surface, and the view point. In this paper, we work on a more theoretical level to give enumerative properties of the silhouette including: the integration of signed geodesic curvature along a silhouette is equal to the view cone angle; in elliptic regions, no silhouette can be contained in another one; in hyperbolic regions, if a silhouette is homotopic to a point, then it has at least 4 cusps; finally, critical events can only happen when the view point is on the aspect surfaces (ruled surface of the asymptotic lines of parabolic points with surface itself). We also introduce a method to visualize the evolution of silhouettes, especially all the critical events where the topologies of the silhouettes change. The results have broad applications in computer vision for recognition, graphics for rendering and visualization.

We consider the Cauchy problem, free boundary problem and piston problem for one-dimensional compressible Navier-Stokes equations with density-dependent viscosity. Using the reduction to absurdity method, we prove that the weak solutions to these systems do not exhibit vacuum states, provided that no vacuum states are present initially. The essential requirements on the solutions are that the mass and energy of the fluid are locally integrable at each time, and the L_loc¹-norm of the velocity gradient is locally integrable in time.

Let K be a closed convex subset of a real reflexive Banach space E, T:K→K be a nonexpansive mapping, and f:K→K be a fixed weakly contractive (may not be contractive) mapping. Then for any t∈(0, 1), let x_t(K be the unique fixed point of the weak contraction x↦tf(x)+(1−t)Tx. If T has a fixed point and E admits a weakly sequentially continuous duality mapping from E to E^*, then it is shown that {x_t} converges to a fixed point of T as t→0. The results presented here improve and generalize the corresponding results in (Xu, 2004).