Volume 66 (2015): Issue 6 (November 2015)

The authors of this article deals with the implementation of a combination of techniques of the fuzzy system and artificial intelligence in the application area of non-linear noise and interference suppression. This structure used is called an Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS). This system finds practical use mainly in audio telephone (mobile) communication in a noisy environment (transport, production halls, sports matches, etc). Experimental methods based on the two-input adaptive noise cancellation concept was clearly outlined. Within the experiments carried out, the authors created, based on the ANFIS structure, a comprehensive system for adaptive suppression of unwanted background interference that occurs in audio communication and degrades the audio signal. The system designed has been tested on real voice signals. This article presents the investigation and comparison amongst three distinct approaches to noise cancellation in speech; they are LMS (least mean squares) and RLS (recursive least squares) adaptive filtering and ANFIS. A careful review of literatures indicated the importance of non-linear adaptive algorithms over linear ones in noise cancellation. It was concluded that the ANFIS approach had the overall best performance as it efficiently cancelled noise even in highly noise-degraded speech. Results were drawn from the successful experimentation, subjective-based tests were used to analyse their comparative performance while objective tests were used to validate them. Implementation of algorithms was experimentally carried out in Matlab to justify the claims and determine their relative performances.

Various electric machines can be the candidate for electric vehicles applications, including induction machines, permanent magnet synchronous machines, switched reluctance machines, etc. Another class of machine, which has been relatively ignored, is synchronous reluctance machines. In order to enhance and increase torque density of pure synchronous reluctance machines, the low cost permanent magnet can be inserted into rotor lamination to contribute torque production, which is so-called permanent magnet-assisted synchronous reluctance machines. This paper presents the design and rotor geometry analysis of low cost ferrite permanent magnet-assisted synchronous reluctance machines with transversally-laminated rotor. The advanced finite element method will be employed to calculate d-axis and q-axis inductance variation with rotor geometric parameters. The electromagnetic performance of optimized permanent magnet-assisted synchronous reluctance machines will be evaluated as well.

Scalar and vector potential as well as the electromagnetic field of a moving point charge is a nice example how the application of symbolic functions (distributions) in electromagnetics makes it easier to obtain and interpret solutions of otherwise hardly solvable problems.

The contribution is focused on the diagnostics of structures with a heterojunction between amorphous and crystalline silicon prepared by HIT (Heterojunction with an Intrinsic Thin layer) technology. The samples were irradiated by Xe ions with energy 167 MeV and doses from 5 × 10⁸ cm⁻² to 5 × 10¹⁰ cm⁻². Radiation defects induced in the bulk of Si and at the hydrogenated amorphous silicon and crystalline silicon (a-Si:H/c-Si) interface were identified by Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy (DLTS). Radiation induced A-centre traps, boron vacancy traps and different types of divacancies with a high value of activation energy were observed. With an increased fluence of heavy ions the nature and density of the radiation induced defects was changed.

In modern computing technique, calculation of leading zeros in a data represented as strings of digits is used very often. Those techniques require high speed of the circuit, as well as its fast design. In this paper we propose a design of such a counter, which is applicable to data length of w = 4j bits, for 4 < j ≤ 8. With this solution it is also possible to process longer data, since the suggested technique offers a good modularity. This is very important, considering the current technology scaling trends. In this paper, a delay behavior of the proposed circuit has also been investigated using equations and VHDL simulation based worst-case delay estimation method. The results show a significant improvement of the circuit speed, compared to the known solutions.

X-ray diffraction (XRD) and positron annihilation spectroscopy (PAS) have been used for the characterization of the two binary alloys Fe-Cr with Cr content 2.36 and 8.39 wt%. The influence of ion implantation on these alloys was studied. Different implantation doses of helium, up to 0.5 C/cm², were used to simulate neutron-induced damage in a sub-surface region. To characterize the damage, a lattice parameter, coherent domain size, residual stress and a crystallographic texture have been studied by grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD). It was found out that these parameters showed a similar dependence on the implantation dose as the positron lifetime determined by positron annihilation spectroscopy.

The work describes the dependence of the electrical conductivity of carbon materials infiltrated with copper in a vacuum-pressure autoclave on copper concentration and on the effective pore radius of the carbon skeleton. In comparison with non-infiltrated material the electrical conductivity of copper infiltrated composite increased almost 500 times. If the composite contained less than 7.2 vol% of Cu, a linear dependence of the electrical conductivity upon cupper content was observed. If infiltrated carbon contained more than 7.2 vol% of Cu, the dependence was nonlinear – the curve could be described by a power formula (x − x_c)^t. This is a typical formula describing the electron percolation process in regions containing higher Cu fraction than the critical one. The maximum measured electrical conductivity was 396 × 10⁴ Ω⁻¹ m⁻¹ for copper concentration 27.6 vol%. Experiments and analysis of the electrical conductivity showed that electron percolation occurred in carbon materials infiltrated by copper when the copper volume exceeded the critical concentration. The analysis also showed a sharp increase of electrical conductivity in composites with copper concentration higher than the threshold, where the effective radius of carbon skeleton pores decreased to 350 nanometres.

Due to their properties, carbon nanotubes and reduced graphene oxide are highly promising materials for obtaining low-resistance ohmic contacts to p-GaN with good optical transparency for visible light. In this contribution we designed a combination of these two materials, along with a cap layer, to be used as structures for ohmic contacts to p-GaN. Carbon nanotube (CNT) and graphene oxide (GO) layers were deposited by spray coating using an off-the-shelf airbrush on p-GaN layers. The metallic layers of Au/Pd were vapour deposited. The structures for ohmic contacts were prepared in two configurations, namely as Au/Pd/r-GO/CNT/p-GaN and Au/Pd/CNT/r-GO/CNT/p-GaN. The prepared structures provide a low resistivity ohmic contact after subsequent annealing in air ambient at 600 °C for 3 minutes. The contact containing the sandwich CNT/r-GO/CNT interstructure exhibits lower values of contact resistance in comparison with the r-GO/CNT interstructure.

A system with macrodiversity selection combining (SC) receiver and for microdiversity equal gain combining (EGC) receivers is considered. Received signal is subjected, simultaneously to multipath fading and shadowing, resulting in signal envelope and signal power variation. Closed form expressions for moments of macrodiversity SC receiver output signal envelope are calculated. Numerical expressions are plotted to present the influences of Gamma shadowing severity and Nakagami-m severity on moments of proposed system output signal.