Feedback control design for an anaerobic digestion process

An approach for the design of linear feedback controllers for anaerobic digestion systems is presented. The effluent chemical oxigen demand (COD) concentration and the dilution rate are taken respectively as the regulated and the manipulated variables. The control design is based on simple step‐response models of the process endowed with an input delay to account for dead‐times induced by measurement devices. The resulting feedback controller has a traditional proportional‐integral (PI) control structure, so it can be easily implemented with conventional control technologies. Since the concentration of volatile fatty acids can be easily and quickly measured as compared with COD concentration, it is used as a secondary measurement that is incorporated into the feedback loop scheme to enhance the robustness of the control scheme with respect of influent disturbances. The performance of the proposed control scheme is illustrated via numerical simulations and experimental work. © 2002 Society of Chemical Industry     

Pulse shaping for high data rate ultra‐wideband wireless transmission under the Russian spectral emission mask

This paper addresses impulse‐radio ultra‐wideband (IR‐UWB) transmission under the Russian spectral emission mask for unlicensed UWB radio communications. Four pulse shapes are proposed and their bit error rate (BER) performance is both estimated analytically and evaluated experimentally. Well‐known shapes such as the Gaussian, root‐raised cosine, hyperbolic secant, and the frequency B‐spline wavelet are used to form linear combinations of component pulses, shaped to make efficient use of the spectral emission mask. Analytical BER values are derived using a Nakagami‐m model, and good agreement is found with the experimentally obtained BER. The proposed pulse shapes allow IR‐UWB transmission with BERs below the limit for a 7% overhead forward error correction, achieving distances of up to 6.5 m at 1 Gbit/s, 4.5 m at 1.25 Gbit/s, and 1 m at  Gbit/s. These results confirm the viability of IR‐UWB transmission under the strict regulations of the Russian spectral emission mask.     

Decision criteria with partial information

In this paper we use an extreme point approach to analyze some usual decision criteria for multiple attribute decision-making problems when partial information about the importance of the attributes is available. The obtained results show that the decision criteria to be chosen depend not only on the rationality principles, but also on the structure of the information set. We apply the obtained criteria to problems where the set of actions to be evaluated are either in qualitative and/or quantitative scales.     

Visible-blindness in photoconductive and photovoltaic AlGaN ultraviolet detectors

The influence of the photodetection mechanism on the performance of AlGaN ultraviolet (UV) detectors is analyzed by studying the characteristics of photoconductors and photovoltaic Schottky diodes fabricated on the same samples. The photoconductive response below the bandgap is not a direct function of the absorption coefficient. Instead, it is amplified by the dominant photoconductive responsivity mechanism, which is attenuated as the chopping frequency increases. On the contrary, photovoltaic detectors are characterized by a sharp UV/visible contrast, mainly dependent on the absorption properties of the material. Thus, these detectors are more suitable for selective UV applications, such as ozone layer monitoring or flame detection.     

A Comparison of Electrical and Photonic Pulse Generation for IR-UWB on Fiber Links

We present and compare experimental results for electrical and photonic generation of 2-Gb/s pulses for impulse radio ultra-wideband on fiber transmission systems based on direct current modulation of a semiconductor laser diode and external optical injection of a semiconductor laser diode, respectively. We assess the performance of the two generation approaches in terms of bit-error rate after propagation over 20 km of optical fiber followed by wireless transmission.      

Experimental 2.5-Gb/s QPSK WDM Phase-Modulated Radio-Over-Fiber Link With Digital Demodulation by a -Means Algorithm

Highest reported bit rate of 2.5 Gb/s for optically phase-modulated radio-over-fiber (RoF) link, employing digital coherent detection, is demonstrated. Demodulation of 3$,times,$ 2.5 Gb/s quadrature phase-shift-keying modulated wavelength-division-multiplexed RoF channels is achieved after 79 km of transmission through deployed fiber. Error-free performance (bit-error rate corresponding to $10^{{-}4}$) is achieved using a digital coherent receiver in combination with a $K$-means algorithm for radio-frequency phase recovery.      

3.125 Gb/s Impulse Radio Ultra-Wideband Photonic Generation and Distribution Over a 50 km Fiber With Wireless Transmission

A 3.125 Gb/s photonic impulse radio ultra-wideband signal is created using the incoherent optical field summation resulting from the cross gain modulation of an uncooled distributed feedback laser injected with an external cavity laser. After 50 km of fiber and wireless transmission over 2.9–3.3-m, successful detection using a digital signal processing receiver is achieved.      

Prediction of drip-loss, pH, and color for pork using a hyperspectral imaging technique

Many subjective grading methods with poor repeatability and tedious procedures are still widely used in meat industry. In this study, a hyperspectral-imaging-based technique was investigated to evaluate its potentials for objective determination of pork quality attributes. The system extracted spectral and spatial characteristics simultaneously to determinate the quality attributes, drip loss, pH, and color, of pork meat. Six feature band images were selected for predicting the drip loss (459, 618, 655, 685, 755 and 953nm), pH (494, 571,637, 669, 703 and 978nm) and color (434, 494, 561, 637, 669 and 703nm), respectively. Two intensity indices of the band images were used as inputs to establish neural network models to predict the quality attributes. The results showed that with the hyperspectral-imaging system, the drip loss, pH, and color of pork meat could be predicted with correlation coefficients of 0.77, 0.55 and 0.86, respectively. Pork meat could be classified based on their exudative characteristics and color successfully.