Flying Ad-Hoc Networks (FANETs) composed of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) offer innovative solutions in various fields. However, their dynamic nature and sparse topology pose significant challenges for connectivity and routing efficiency. To address these issues, we propose the Adaptive Virtual Tunnel Routing protocol (AVTR) with eliminating boundary effects for FANETs. AVTR is a location-based, on-demand protocol that introduces a hop-by-hop virtual relay tunnel (HH-VRT) to confine forwarding within a limited set of UAVs. This approach reduces unnecessary transmissions and overhead. Additionally, AVTR incorporates a novel eliminating boundary effect factor (Q) to minimize path deviation and a new link quality factor (LQ) to evaluate link stability. By considering residual energy, LQ, and hop count, AVTR optimally selects the next forwarding node, enhancing routing efficiency and connectivity. Simulation results demonstrate that AVTR outperforms existing EARVRT, Pipe, IHCR, IoDMix routing protocols across seven critical metrics, including end-to-end delay and routing overhead, validating its effectiveness in improving FANET performance.

As the electric vehicles (EVs) become prevalent, the demand for smart charging rises. The disordered charging problem of EVs, the high cost, and the location problem of charging stations bring a great challenge to the power grids and transport networks. The Internet of Things (IoT) technology enables the IoT-based EV (IoEV) to plan the route and process the information with smart wireless charging. However, how to schedule the optimal routing and wireless charging is challenging. In this article, we consider a joint routing and wireless charging scheduling problem with a microwave power transfer system to minimize the travel distance, the charging cost, and battery degradation cost when IoEVs provide shuttle services. To solve this mixed linear programming problem for the joint routing and charging schedule of IoEVs with the integer routing variables and continuous charging variables, we propose a routing and charging customized benders decomposition (RCBD) algorithm. To increase the time efficiency of the RCBD algorithm, we propose an improved RCBD (IRCBD) algorithm with the trajectory similarity measurement method. Extensive simulation results show the effectiveness and correctness of the proposed scheduling algorithms. We compare the IRCBD algorithm with the actor–critic algorithm and the RCBD algorithm. The charging cost of the IRCBD algorithm with the threshold 0.9 of trajectory similarity is 5.56% more than that of the RCBD algorithm. The running time of the IRCBD algorithm is 50.01% less than that of the RCBD algorithm when there are 300 pickups and deliveries. The running time of the IRCBD algorithm is less than that of the RCBD algorithm and the actor–critic algorithm.

With the increasing use of electric vehicles (EVs) and the development of emerging transportation network services, autonomous EVs (AEVs) may play an important role in the future of transportation. AEVs can automatically plan their route, park in the charging station, and support the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) services. However, V2G services may influence user dissatisfaction due to the task delays. There is a tradeoff between the optimization of electricity cost and user dissatisfaction. In this article, we formulate the problem to minimize the electricity cost of AEVs and the degradation cost of the charging station batteries with the constraint of V2G services and user dissatisfaction, which is a nonconvex problem and is difficult to solve. To solve the nonconvex optimization problem, we design a suboptimal charging algorithm with some constraints (SCAC) based on the Lyapunov optimization technique to find a tradeoff between the total cost and user dissatisfaction. This algorithm cannot find the optimal solution but can give a selection criterion. Furthermore, in order to get a global charging schedule, we use the criterion from the SCAC algorithm as a priori knowledge to design the charging scheduling reinforcement-learning-based (CSRL) algorithm, which is more efficient than the reinforcement learning (RL) method without any particular criterion. We do simulations by using day-ahead price and practical profiles of AEVs to evaluate the proposed algorithms. The numerical results show that the CSRL algorithm has a better performance 5.12% than the SCAC algorithm and both algorithms are 12.66% and 17.14% better than the benchmark algorithm which is the shortest path (SP)-based algorithm. The CSRL algorithm has more efficiency ε(1 - Pr(Λ(t) = 0)) than the SCAC algorithm, where Pr(Λ(t) = 0) is a selection criterion calculated from the SCAC algorithm.

Flanged valves are ubiquitous in oil and gas pipeline networks. The valves help to both connect pipes together and control the flow of fluids. Depending on the location, the valve may experience high temperatures, high pressures, and corrosive agents, all of which degrade the integrity of the flange connection. Thus, flanged valves require regular inspection and maintenance. However, in cases where the valve is located in inaccessible areas, regular inspection can be difficult and costly. While certain methods are currently available for automatic inspection of flanged valves, they often suffer from impracticality issues, such as intrusiveness, unintuitive operation, or sensor fragility. Therefore, this paper introduces a sensing device that, as inspired by wearable technology, can be easily and noninvasively “worn” onto the flanged valve and performs measurements in real-time. The device is composed of piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate (PZT) transducers fortified by a layer of cushioning rubber and a metallic outer layer. This paper presents the design of the device, and verifies its performance using a 12-bolted flanged valve recovered from the field. The device is able to accurately track the tightness of the bolted connections. Unlike prior PZT-based monitoring methods, this device shows great promise for practical application.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the internetworking of a variety of devices, including sensors. Among all sensors, visual sensors (i.e. cameras) are special because they can provide rich and versatile information. The world already has more than one billion cameras on mobile phones. We define the internet-working of visual sensors as the Internet of Video Things. This article estimates the number of cameras the world will see in 2030 and the implications of a large number of cameras. Transmitting, storing, and analyzing the data from cameras could impose significant challenges to existing technological infrastructures. This paper surveys recent progress in relevant technologies and suggests directions for future research.

Summary form only given. Data aggregation and active/sleep scheme are wildly used in energy-efficient wireless sensor networks. However, little research has been done on the optimal active/sleep scheme design for an aggregator node. In our previous work, we developed a stochastic model of aggregator node with active/sleep scheme for performance analysis and optimization. That model simulates the direct mode transfer from active to sleep or vice versa. In this paper, we propose a new stochastic analytical model for aggregator with multiple modes in the active period which reflect the wireless sensor's multiple energy saving modes. We derive Complete Aggregation Packet (CAP) rate, Total Aggregation Packet (TAP) rate, the Success Ratio which is defined as CAP rate divided by TAP rate, and Average Packet Delay (APD) to evaluate the aggregator performance. The extensive numerical simulations validate the accuracy of the stochastic analytical model. We would like to optimize the performance measures of APD and TAP rate by Lagrangian Optimization method which has not been finished yet.

Data aggregation and active/sleep scheme are frequently used methods in energy efficient wireless sensor networks. However, little research has been done on the optimal active/sleep scheme design for an aggregator node. In our previous work, we developed a stochastic model of an aggregator node with active/sleep scheme for performance analysis and optimization. That model simulates the direct mode transfer from active to sleep and vice versa. In this paper, we propose a new stochastic analytical model for an aggregator with multiple modes in the active period which reflect the wireless sensor's multiple energy saving modes. We derive the Complete Aggregation Packet (CAP) rate, the Total Aggregation Packet (TAP) rate, the Success Ratio which is defined as CAP rate divided by TAP rate, and the Average Packet Delay (APD) to evaluate the aggregator performance. By the Lagrangian Optimization method, we optimize APD under the constraint of the TAP rate. The extensive numerical simulations validate the accuracy of the analytical results.

A nondestructive evaluation (NDE) method is developed to detect the dielectric constant and surface roughness of concrete highway pavement. The system is based on Leader's slope-expansion scattering theory. Different from most other scattering theories, the slope-expansion method does not pose stringent requirements about the nature of the rough surface. Yet, it can calculate the in-plane scattered field (or power), including the nonzero slope terms up to the second order. The explicit expression of the scattered power is given, provided that the incident wave is plane wave, and the surface is Gaussian distributed. A microwave scatterometer operating in X-band is implemented. The measurement system consists of a pair of horn antennas. The measured scattered power is used as the input to the software application. The program then computes the dielectric constant and surface roughness inversely by the least square inversion technique. Several samples have been measured in the laboratory. To verify the test results, a laser profiler and a radar system were used to provide a direct measurement result.

Various studies show that a basic architecture of an MPEG-2 transcoder consists of a cascaded decoder/encoder. Such a transcoder re-uses the motion vectors and minimizes the changes of macroblock mode. One interesting feature that can be added on this type of transcoder is to insert a translucent logo into the transcoded bit-stream.

The techniques needed to decode the (47,24,11) quadratic residue (QR) code differ from the schemes developed for cyclic codes. By finding certain nonlinear relations between the known and unknown syndromes for this special code, two methods are developed to decode up to the true minimum distance of the (47,24,11) QR code. These algorithms can be utilized to decode effectively the 1/2 -rate (48,24,12) QR code for correcting five errors and detecting six errors.

This paper presents an efficient motion estimation method for an arbitrarily shaped video object which significantly reduces the number of searches in motion estimation for shape and texture coding in MPEG-4. The proposed method can be employed in an MPEG-4 encoder with other fast search schemes. By examining the content of the alpha plane, a mask for the effective search area can be generated. With the knowledge of the mask, the proposed method disregards part of the reference video object plane (VOP) that is completely outside an object and hence reduces the number of searches significantly for both motion estimation processes in shape and texture coding compared to the full search method while providing an identical search results.

This paper describes the bitplane coding technique to achieve fine granularity scalability (FGS) in MPEG-4. It reports its coding efficiency results and discusses a few improvement methods.

Previous developments in digital video compression, transmission, and displays have made object-based video viable for many applications, e.g., coding chroma-keyed video for digital TV and manipulating video objects on interactive multimedia terminals, etc. To facilitate these applications, there is a demand on international standards for coding methods and transmission formats for object-based natural and synthetic video. For the past few years, the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) of the International Standards Organization (ISO), which successfully created the MPEG-1/2 standards, has been working to establish a new standard, called MPEG-4. MPEG-4 will provide standardized technological elements enabling the integration of the production, distribution, and content-access paradigms in four fields: wireless communication, digital TV, interactive graphics, and the World Wide Web. To meet the needs of interlaced video applications, MPEG-4 video adopted interlaced coding tools similar to those in MPEG-2 and features schemes to code multiple video objects. This paper provides an overview of MPEG-4 interlaced coding tools, and focuses in detail on the new shape and texture-coding algorithms for interlaced video.

The coding method in MPEG-4 for interlaced video is introduced in this paper. Such a method is an extension of MPEG-2 interlaced coding tools to allow compression of arbitrarily shaped interlaced video. The new texture-and-shape coding tools discussed here for arbitrarily shaped interlaced video provide good compression performance. It is demonstrated here that these interlaced tools improve the coding efficiency of MPEG-4 video in both subjective and objective means.

This paper provides two theorems for decoding all types of cyclic codes. It is shown that from a polynomial ideal point of view, the decoding problems of cyclic codes are closely related to the monic generators of certain polynomial ideals. This conclusion is also generalized to the decoding problems of algebraic geometry codes.>

A general algebraic method for decoding all types of binary cyclic codes is presented. It is shown that such a method can correct t=[(d-1)/2] errors, where d is the true minimum distance of the given cyclic code. The key idea behind this decoding technique is a systematic application of the algorithmic procedures of Grobner bases to obtain the error-locator polynomial L(z). The discussion begins from a set of syndrome polynomials F and the ideal T(F) generated by F. It is proved here that the process of transforming F to the normalized reduced Grobner basis of I(F) with respect to the "purely lexicographical" ordering automatically converges to L(z). Furthermore, it is shown that L(z) can be derived from any normalized Grobner basis of I(F) with respect to any admissible total ordering. To illustrate this new approach, the procedures for decoding certain BCH codes and quadratic residue codes are demonstrated.>

The 1/2-rate binary quadratic residue (QR) codes, using binary phase-shift keyed (BPSK) modulation and hard decoding, are presented as an efficient system for reliable communication. Performance results of error correction are obtained both theoretically and by means of computer calculations for a number of binary QR codes. These results are compared with the commonly used 1/2-rate convolutional codes with constraint lengths from 3 to 7 for the hard-decision case. The binary QR codes of different lengths are shown to be equivalent in error-correction performance to some 1/2-rate convolutional codes, each of which has a constraint length K that corresponds to the error-control rate d/n and the minimum distance d of the QR codes.>

The class of binary quadratic residue (QR) codes of length n=8m-1 contains two perfect codes. These are the (7,4,3) Hamming code and the (23,12,7) Golay code. However, it is proved in the present paper that there are no quasi-perfect QR codes of length 8m-1. Finally, this result is generalized to all binary self-dual codes of length N>72.>

A new algebraic approach for decoding the quadratic residue (QR) codes, in particular the (41, 21, 9) QR code, is presented. The key ideas behind this decoding technique are a systematic application of the Sylvester resultant method to the Newton identities associated with the syndromes to find the error-locator polynomial, and next a method for determining error locations by solving certain quadratic, cubic, and quartic equations over GF(2/sup m/) in a new way which uses Zech's logarithms for the arithmetic. The logarithms developed for Zech's logarithms save a substantial amount of computer memory by storing only a table of Zech's logarithms. These algorithms are suitable for implementation in a programmable microprocessor or special-purpose VLSI chip. It is expected that the algebraic methods developed can apply generally to other codes such as the BCH and Reed-Solomon codes.>