Electronics, Volume 7, Issue 2 (February 2018) – 16 articles

A biometric recognition system is one of the leading candidates for the current and the next generation of smart visual systems. The visual system is the engine of the surveillance cameras that have great importance for intelligence and security purposes. These surveillance devices can be a target of adversaries for accomplishing various malicious scenarios such as disabling the camera in critical times or the lack of recognition of a criminal. In this work, we propose a cross-layer biometric recognition system that has small computational complexity and is suitable for mobile Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Furthermore, due to the involvement of both hardware and software in realizing this system in a decussate and chaining structure, it is easier to locate and provide alternative paths for the system flow in the case of an attack. For security analysis of this system, one of the elements of this system named the advanced encryption standard (AES) is infected by four different Hardware Trojansthat target different parts of this module. The purpose of these Trojans is to sabotage the biometric data that are under process by the biometric recognition system. All of the software and the hardware modules of this system are implemented using MATLAB and Verilog HDL, respectively. According to the performance evaluation results, the system shows an acceptable performance in recognizing healthy biometric data. It is able to detect the infected data, as well. With respect to its hardware results, the system may not contribute significantly to the hardware design parameters of a surveillance camera considering all the hardware elements within the device. Full article

A coupled-line coupler based on the asymmetric cascade connection of two coupled line sections is used to achieve a high coupling factor using low-cost material and technology in the X frequency band, and its performance is compared with a standard quarter-wave, coupled-line coupler, showing an increase in the coupling factor of about 3 dB. The proposed coupler can be effectively used in a Doppler motion detection sensor, due to its strong coupling and relatively high isolation. The coupler is designed through a simple, yet rigorous, equivalent circuital model. Then, an optimization procedure was performed using the commercial software Ansys HFSS in order to compensate for losses and second order effects. A prototype of the designed coupler was realized, and the measured data show very good agreement with simulations. Full article

A microstrip-to-waveguide transition has been realized for radio astronomy applications, designed to operate in the Q-band (33–50 GHz). As part of an array radio frequency (RF) receiver, the main requirement of such a transition is the reduction of transverse space occupation for the integration in the entire receiver chain, so an in-line configuration has been developed. Moreover, the high frequency band implies that an easy fabrication is a critical requirement if a good match between the two guiding structures is to be obtained in the desired band (with a relative bandwidth of 40%). The combination of CAD software and an optimization tool allows the device to achieve a good return loss over the entire band. Full article

With the increase of three-dimensional (3D) printing applications in many areas of life, a large amount of 3D printing data is copied, shared, and used several times without any permission from the original providers. Therefore, copyright protection and ownership identification for 3D printing data in communications or commercial transactions are practical issues. This paper presents a novel watermarking algorithm for 3D printing models based on embedding watermark data into the feature points of a 3D printing model. Feature points are determined and computed by the 3D slicing process along the Z axis of a 3D printing model. The watermark data is embedded into a feature point of a 3D printing model by changing the vector length of the feature point in OXY space based on the reference length. The x and y coordinates of the feature point will be then changed according to the changed vector length that has been embedded with a watermark. Experimental results verified that the proposed algorithm is invisible and robust to geometric attacks, such as rotation, scaling, and translation. The proposed algorithm provides a better method than the conventional works, and the accuracy of the proposed algorithm is much higher than previous methods. Full article

Cooperative control consensus is one of the most actively studied topics within the realm of multi-agent systems. It generally aims to drive multi-agent systems to achieve a common group objective. The core aim of this paper is to promote research in cooperative control community by presenting the latest trends in this field. A summary of theoretical results regarding consensus for agreement analysis for complex dynamic systems and time-invariant information exchange topologies is briefly described in a unified way. The application under both non-formation and formation cooperative control consensus for multi-agent system also investigated. In addition, future recommendations and some open problems are also proposed. Full article

This paper describes the development and the realization of an adaptive antenna based on a reconfigurable parasitic structure. The geometry of the proposed antenna is circular, and it is composed by an active omni-directional radiator, surrounded by a number of parasitic elements that can be optically activated and configured as a director or as a reflector. The optical switches are activated by means of optic fibers in order to avoid electromagnetic perturbations. The optimized structure of the parasitic elements permits a high versatility since each parasitic element can act as reflector or director. Thanks to this structure, integrated with a suitable control software, it is possible to obtain a directive beam pattern that can be opportunely set in order to maximize the coupling with a desired signal and to attenuate the presence of interfering signals. A prototype has been designed, developed and experimentally assessed. The prototype has been integrated with a control software and the whole system has been numerically and experimentally tested. A good agreement between numerical and experimental results has been obtained demonstrating the capabilities of the proposed antenna prototype. Full article

This paper proposes an artificial neural network (ANN) based maximum power point tracking (MPPT) control strategy for wind energy conversion system (WECS) implemented with a DC/DC converter. The proposed topology utilizes a radial basis function network (RBFN) based neural network control strategy to extract the maximum available power from the wind velocity. The results are compared with a classical Perturb and Observe (P&O) method and Back propagation network (BPN) method. In order to achieve a high voltage rating, the system is implemented with a quadratic boost converter and the performance of the converter is validated with a boost and single ended primary inductance converter (SEPIC). The performance of the MPPT technique along with a DC/DC converter is demonstrated using MATLAB/Simulink. Full article

Location information is crucial in various location-based applications, the nodes in location system are often deployed in the 3D scenario in particle, so that localization algorithms in a three-dimensional space are necessary. The existing RFID three-dimensional (3D) localization technology based on the LANDMARC localization algorithm is widely used because of its low complexity, but its localization accuracy is low. In this paper, we proposed an improved 3D LANDMARC indoor localization algorithm to increase the localization accuracy. Firstly, we use the advantages of the RBF neural network in data fitting to pre-process the acquired signal and study the wireless signal transmission loss model to improve localization accuracy of the LANDMARC algorithm. With the purpose of solving the adaptive problem in the LANDMARC localization algorithm, we introduce the quantum particle swarm optimization (QPSO) algorithm, which has the technology advantages of global search and optimization, to solve the localization model. Experimental results have shown that the proposed algorithm improves the localization accuracy and adaptability significantly, compared with the basic LANDMARC algorithm and particle swarm optimization LANDMARC algorithm, and it can overcome the shortcoming of slow convergence existed in particle swarm optimization. Full article

In the modern era, distributed generation is considered as an alternative source for power generation. Especially, need of the time is to provide the three-phase loads with smooth sinusoidal voltages having fixed frequency and amplitude. A common solution is the integration of power electronics converters in the systems for connecting distributed generation systems to the stand-alone loads. Thus, the presence of suitable control techniques, in the power electronic converters, for robust stability, abrupt response, optimal tracking ability and error eradication are inevitable. A comprehensive review based on design, analysis, validation of the most suitable digital control techniques and the options available for the researchers for improving the power quality is presented in this paper with their pros and cons. Comparisons based on the cost, schemes, performance, modulation techniques and coordinates system are also presented. Finally, the paper describes the performance evaluation of the control schemes on a voltage source inverter (VSI) and proposes the different aspects to be considered for selecting a power electronics inverter topology, reference frames, filters, as well as control strategy. Full article

Device-to-device (D2D) pairs are allowed to reuse the spectrum of cellular users who are in a good quality channel state with underlaying cellular network. However, cellular users usually suffer a poor performance in term of achievable rate when they are in a cell edge or in deep fading. To solve this problem, a hybrid relay-aided D2D communication scheme with a two-antenna infrastructure and using two unequal transmission slots is proposed in this paper. Different from the pure half-duplex and full-duplex D2D relay work, the hybrid-duplex relay mode that we propose enables the D2D relay to receive and transmit signals at the same time in the first time slot. Thus, it is similar to the full-duplex which could increase the spectrum efficiency. In addition, in the second time slot, the D2D relay will forward only the cellular user’s signals, thus avoiding the transmission of mixed signals which would deteriorate the system performance, similarly to the half-duplex mode. Moreover, by bringing in a slot splitting factor, the relay node in our hybrid-duplex mode is set to guarantee the matching of the transmission rate in two hops. We formulate the problem of maximizing the D2D transmission rate while guaranteeing in priority the minimum rate for the cellular user. By using the method of rate matching and linear programming, we deduce the expression of the slot splitting factor as well as the optimal power allocation for the base station and D2D relay, while guaranteeing the minimum rate requirement for the cellular user in a close form. The simulation results show that the proposed relay-based hybrid-duplex D2D scheme outperforms the existing half-duplex and full-duplex relay-based D2D communication schemes in term of achievable rate. Full article

In the fault diagnosis system using empirical mode decomposition (EMD), it is important to select the intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) which contain as much fault information as possible and to alleviate the problems of mode mixing and spurious modes. An effective solution to these problems in the decomposition process can help to determine significant IMFs and to improve the performance of the fault diagnosis system. This paper describes a novel power-based IMF selection algorithm and evaluates the performance of the proposed fault diagnosis system using improved complete ensemble EMD with adaptive noise and a multi-layer perceptron neural network. Full article

Graphene ink is a commercialized product in the graphene industry with promising potential application in electronic device design. However, the limitation of the graphene ink is its low electronic performance due to the ink preparation protocol. In this work, we proposed a simple post-treatment of graphene ink coating via electrochemical oxidation. The electronic conductivity of the graphene ink coating was enhanced as expected after the treatment. The proposed electrochemical oxidation treatment also exposes the defects of graphene and triggered an electrocatalytic reaction during the sensing of paracetamol (PA). The overpotential of redox is much lower than conventional PA redox potential, which is favorable for avoiding the interference species. Under optimum conditions, the graphene ink-based electrochemical sensor could linearly detect PA from 10 to 500 micro molar (μM), with a limit of detection of 2.7 μM. Full article

This paper presents sliding mode control of sensor-less parallel-connected two five-phase permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs) fed by a single five-leg inverter. For both machines, the rotor speeds and rotor positions as well as load torques are estimated by using Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) scheme. Fully decoupled control of both machines is possible via an appropriate phase transposition while connecting the stator windings parallel and employing proposed speed sensor-less method. In the resulting parallel-connected two-machine drive, the independent control of each machine in the group is achieved by controlling the stator currents and speed of each machine under vector control consideration. The effectiveness of the proposed Extended Kalman Filter in conjunction with the sliding mode control is confirmed through application of different load torques for wide speed range operation. Comparison between sliding mode control and PI control of the proposed two-motor drive is provided. The speed response shows a short rise time, an overshoot during reverse operation and settling times is 0.075 s when PI control is used. The speed response obtained by SMC is without overshoot and follows its reference and settling time is 0.028 s. Simulation results confirm that, in transient periods, sliding mode controller remarkably outperforms its counterpart PI controller. Full article

Axial flux machines have positive sides on the power and torque density profile. However, the price of this profile is paid by the torque ripples and irregular magnetic flux density production. To gather higher efficiency, torque ripples should close to the zero and the stator side iron should be unsaturated. Torque ripples mainly occur due to the interaction between the rotor poles and the stator teeth. In this study, different rotor poles are investigated in contrast to stator magnetic flux density and the torque ripple effects. Since the components of the axial flux machines vary by the radius, analysis of the magnetic resources is more complicated. Thus, 3D-FEA (finite element analysis) is used to simulate the effects. The infrastructure of the characteristics which are obtained from the 3D-FEA analysis is built by the magnetic equivalent circuit (MAGEC) analysis to understand the relationships of the parameters. The principal goal of this research is a smoother distribution of the magnetic flux density and lower torque ripples. As the result, the implementations on the rotor poles have interesting influences on the torque ripple and flux density profiles. The MAGEC and 3D-FEA results validate each other. The torque ripple is reduced and the magnetic flux density is softened on AFPM irons. In conclusion, the proposed rotors have good impacts on the motor performance. Full article

This paper presents a novel passive repeater that achieves enhanced Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) communication between two isolated terminals. The novel aspect of this work is an avoidance of the key-hole effect, which is normally caused by a repeater since all of the signal goes through the same point. Moreover, our idea uses electrical control, which is simply realized by only varactor diodes on the antennas, and this idea provides fast and low-cost control of the MIMO channel. This configuration allows the passive repeater to control the MIMO channel. MIMO channel capacity is maximized by controlling all repeater elements individually. The effectiveness of the passive repeater in enhancing MIMO channel capacity is verified by experiments. First of all, we obtained propagation data from field experiment, and propagation characteristics were evaluated using equations. The results show that the 10% value of MIMO channel capacity can be improved by 2.92 bits/s/Hz in an indoor propagation environment, which well confirms the effectiveness of the proposed method. Full article

In this paper, we propose a low-complexity peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) reduction scheme that combines both multi-band (MB)-Hadamard precoding and clipping for the optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Approximations of PAPR distribution for baseband OFDM signals are analyzed and the effective signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the whole transmission link considering both the clipping and quantization noise are presented. After that, the MB-Hadamard precoding is adopted to compresses the peak signals, minimizing the contaminating influence of signal distortions in subsequent clipping operations. In addition, the received SNRs and bit error rate (BER) are calculated theoretically for each split sub-band. The 50-m step-index polymer optical fiber (POF) transmission is adopted as a special case to both evaluate the system performance and then compare the proposed scheme with other well-known PAPR reduction techniques. With this scheme, the PAPR is reduced effectively and the system’s BER performance is improved significantly. The results show that the proposed scheme with appropriate number of sub-bands precoding provides favorable trade-offs among PAPR reduction, power spectral density, transmission rate, BER, and computational complexity, which demonstrates its feasibility and validity. Full article