The problem of leak location is actually a time delay estimation (TDE) problem. Since most existing TDE methods may encounter the problem of high computational complexity when used for online leak location. This paper presents a fast leak locating method based on wavelet transform (WT). The method first gets a rough estimate of the time delay from the WT coefficients of the pressure signals at the largest scale, then keeps refining the estimate using WT coefficients on smaller and smaller scales...

The problem of improving the performance of linear programming (LP) decoding of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes is considered in this paper. A multistep linear programming (MLP) algorithm was developed for decoding LDPC codes that includes a slight increase in computational complexity. The MLP decoder adaptively adds new constraints which are compatible with a selected check node to refine the results when an error is reported by the original LP decoder. The MLP decoder result is shown to ...

The cost of the central register file and the size of the program code limit the scalability of very long instruction word (VLIW) processors with increasing numbers of functional units. This paper presents the architectural design of a six-way VLIW digital signal processor (DSP) with clustered register files. The architecture uses a variable length instruction set and supports dynamic instruction dispatching. The one-level memory system architecture of the processor includes 16-KB instruction an...

Bit-depth scalability is a new research field in the on-going scalable extension of the H.264/AVC (SVC) video coding standard. The key point is to accurately predict the enhancement layer, whose bit depth is 10 or more, from the 8 bit base layer. An improved inter-layer prediction scheme for bit-depth scalability was developed that ensures compatibility with the standard and improves the encoding efficiency. The scheme uses a “perfect” 8 bit picture with an adaptive neighbor filter w...

With the explosion of network bandwidth and the ever-changing requirements for diverse network-based applications, the traditional processing architectures, i.e., general purpose processor (GPP) and application specific integrated circuits (ASIC) cannot provide sufficient flexibility and high performance at the same time. Thus, the network processor (NP) has emerged as an alternative to meet these dual demands for today's network processing. The NP combines embedded multi-threaded cores with a r...

A smart image sensor was developed which integrates a digital pixel image sensor array with an image processor designed for wireless endoscope capsules. The camera-on-a-chip architecture and its on-chip functionality facilitate the design of the packaging and power consumption of the integrated capsule. The power reduction techniques were carried out at both the architectural and circuit level. Gray coding and power gating in the sensor array to eliminate almost 50% of the switch activity on the...

Electrochemical methods have been widely used in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, which require accurate concentration measurements, chemical reaction detections and analyses. The electrochemical potentiostat, the core element in electrochemical instruments, have been discussed as a hot topic addressing the difficulty of applying high-precision constant voltage and picoampere current measurements. Meanwhile, reliable potentiostats are in demand for complicated industrial environments ...

A low power digital operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) was developed for low voltage switched capacitor applications. The OTA has a high slew rate (SR) and a large open loop gain with a differential pseudo-two-stage Class-AB structure. A fully compensated depletion mode capacitor is used in the switched capacitor common mode feedback block instead of a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor to reduce the fabrication cost. Simulations show that with a 1.0-V supply voltage and a 34-pF loa...

Several methods were developed to improve grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P) conversion models for Chinese text-to-speech (TTS) systems. The critical problem of data sparsity was handled by combining approaches. First, a text-selection method was designed to cover as many G2P text corpus contexts as possible. Then, various data-driven modeling methods were used with comparisons to select the best method for each polyphonic word. Finally, independent models were used for some neutral tone words in additio...

A dynamic simulation method for non-linear systems based on genetic programming (GP) and bond graphs (BG) was developed to improve the design of nonlinear multi-domain energy conversion systems. The genetic operators enable the embryo bond graph to evolve towards the target graph according to the fitness function. Better simulation requires analysis of the optimization of the eigenvalue and the filter circuit evolution. The open topological design and space search ability of this method not only...

A three-dimensional (3-D) physiological articulatory model was developed to account for the biomechanical properties of the speech organs in speech production. Control of the model to investigate the mechanism of speech production requires an efficient control module to estimate muscle activation patterns, which is used to manipulate the 3-D physiological articulatory model, according to the desired articulatory posture. For this purpose, a feedforward control strategy was developed by mapping t...

This paper describes the design of a unified framework for a multilingual text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis engine – Crystal. The unified framework defines the common TTS modules for different languages and/or dialects. The interfaces between consecutive modules conform to the speech synthesis markup language (SSML) specification for standardization, interoperability, multilinguality, and extensibility. Detailed module divisions and implementation technologies for the unified framework are in...

In the pedestrian headform impact test mandated by the European pedestrian safety requirements, the contact friction between the headform and the engine hood affects the headform kinematics and head injury criterion (HIC) to some extent. This study shows that the friction effect is more significant with child headform impact than with adult headform impact and the relative angle between the headform impact direction and the hood surface greatly affects the headform impact sensitivity to the fric...

This paper presents an analysis of the dynamic response of a low pressure proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell stack to step changes in load, which are characteristic of automotive fuel cell system applications. The goal is a better understanding of the electrical and electrochemical processes when accounting for the characteristic cell voltage response during transients. The analysis and experiment are based on a low pressure 5 kW proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) stack, which is s...

This paper analyzes the geometric quantities that remain unchanged during parallel mapping (i.e., mapping from a reference curved surface to a parallel surface with identical normal direction). The second gradient operator, the second class of integral theorems, the Gauss-curvature-based integral theorems, and the core property of parallel mapping are used to derive a series of parallel mapping invariants or geometrically conserved quantities. These include not only local mapping invariants but ...

Learners in hypermedia educational systems (HES) often become disorientated and experience cognitive overhead. This study presents a method for reducing disorientation in HES. The study uses two usability methods, retrospective thinking aloud (RTA) and performance measure (PM), to find usability problems in HES that impact participant disorientation. The participants had field independent (FI) and field dependent (FD) cognitive styles. The results indicate that the participants' disorientation d...

This paper analyzes the kinematic optimization design of the 4R 2-DOF parallel mechanism taking into account the force transmissibility. Three indices are introduced to reflect the force transmissibility. Based on these indices and their performance charts, the optimization design process with respect to the workspace is presented in detail. The results show that the designed mechanism is not only far from every singularity but also has good force transmissibility in its workspace. These kinemat...

There has been an increasing amount of interest in modeling virus propagation in recent years. However, the group-based infection mechanism of computer viruses is not well understood and the selection of infection function in virus propagation modeling has not been well studied. This paper describes a point-to-group (P2G) infection mode to describe virus propagation in networks with information sharing groups. Simulations compare the constant infection and I-type infection functions with the new...