Bainite morphologies in a 0.2 C–1.5 Mn steel

The isothermal transformation products of austenite over a wide range of temperatures and times in the bainitic range in a 0.2 wt.% C–1.5 wt.% Mn steel have been studied by transmission electron microscopy in order to characterise the bainitic microstructures in low-carbon low-alloy steels. Widmanstätten ferrite has formed with alternate layers of austenite (martensite) as a transition product at 600 and 500°C that has finally transformed on further isothermal transformation to either pearlite (at 600°C) or upper bainite (at 500°C). This type of transformation product was referred to as BI bainite by earlier investigators, but on the basis of the present investigation it is concluded that such ferrite-austenite (martensite) structures are not bainitic as this is not the final transformation product either at 600 or 500°C. Both upper bainite and lath-type lower bainite are formed at 450°C while the transformation product has been only lath-type lower bainite at 400°C.     

Preemption-Aware Instantaneous Request Call Routing for Networks With Book-Ahead Reservation

This paper presents a new preemption-aware quality of service (QoS) routing algorithm for instantaneous request (IR) call connections in a QoS-enabled network where resources are shared between IR and book-ahead (BA) call connections. BA reservation, which confirms the availability of resources in advance, is a highly attractive technique for time sensitive applications that require high amount of bandwidth with guaranteed QoS. One of the major concerns for the implementation of BA reservation is the need for preemption of on-going IR calls to accommodate BA calls when resource scarcity arises. Preemption disrupts service continuity of on-going calls which is considered as severely detrimental from users' perceived QoS definition found in recent studies. Existing QoS routing algorithms focus on resource conservation or load balancing as the key objective to attain in addition to guaranteed QoS. No works have yet focused on the preemption problem of on-going IR calls at routing stage in the presence of BA calls. We present a mathematical formulation to compute the preemption probability of an incoming IR call at routing stage based on the current IR and future BA load information. We propose a routing strategy by formulating a link cost function comprising of the calculated preemption probability of the incoming IR call and hop count. Simulation results confirm that QoS routing based on the proposed link cost function significantly outperforms widely recommended shortest path and widest path routing algorithms in terms of IR call preemption and blocking rate. The proposed approach also yields higher network utilization and IR effective throughput.     

Orthogonal variable spreading factor encoded unmanned aerial vehicle-assisted nonorthogonal multiple access system with hybrid physical layer security

Physical layer security (PLS) can improve the security of both terrestrial and nonterrestrial wireless communication networks. This study proposes a simplified framework for nonterrestrial cyclic prefixed orthogonal variable spreading factor (OVSF)-encoded multiple-input and multiple-output nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems to ensure complete network security. Various useful methods are implemented, where both improved sine map and multiple parameter-weighted-type fractional Fourier transform encryption schemes are combined to investigate the effects of hybrid PLS. In addition, OVSF coding with power domain NOMA for multi-user interference reduction and peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) reduction is introduced. The performance of $\frac{1}{2}$-rated convolutional, turbo, and repeat and accumulate channel coding with regularized zero-forcing signal detection for forward error correction and improved bit error rate (BER) are also investigated. Simulation results ratify the pertinence of the proposed system in terms of PLS and BER performance improvement with reasonable PAPR.