In this paper, we first propose an HDR-mcd architecture, which integrates periodically all-in-phase based multiple clock domains and multi-cycle interconnect communication into high-level synthesis. In HDR-mcd, an entire chip is divided into several huddles. Huddles can realize synchronization between different clock domains in which interconnection delay should be considered during high-level synthesis. Next, we propose a high-level synthesis algorithm for HDR-mcd, which can reduce energy consumption by optimizing configuration and placement of huddles. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves 32.5% energy-saving compared with the existing single clock domain based methods.

A power allocation to active and reactive power in stochastic resonance is discussed for energy harvesting from noise. It is confirmed that active power can be increased at stochastic resonance, in the same way of the relationship between energy and phase at an appropriate setting in resonance.

This paper studies the energy-saving problem in cognitive multicast orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, for which a time-frequency two-dimensional model is established to enable the system energy conservation through joint temporal and spectral adaptations. The formulated two-dimensional problem, minimizing the total power consumption whilst guaranteeing the minimal-rate requirement for each multicast session and constraining the maximal perceived interference in each timeslot for the active primary user, is categorized as mixed integer non-convex programming, whose optimal solution is intractable in general. However, based on the time-sharing property, an asymptotically optimal algorithm is proposed by jointly iterating spectrum element (SE) assignment and power allocation. Moreover, a suboptimal algorithm, which carries out SE assignment and power allocation sequentially, is presented as well to reduce the computation complexity. Simulation results show the proposed joint algorithm can achieve the near-optimal solution, and the proposed sequential algorithm approximates to the joint one very well with a gap of less than 3%. Compared with the existing slot-by-slot energy-saving algorithms, the total power consumption is considerably decreased due to the combined exploitation of time and frequency dimensions.

Power-aware distributed file systems for efficient Big Data processing are increasingly moving towards power-proportional designs. However, current data placement methods for such systems have not given careful consideration to the effect of gear-shifting during operations. If the system wants to shift to a higher gear, it must reallocate the updated datasets that were modified in a lower gear when a subset of the nodes was inactive, but without disrupting the servicing of requests from clients. Inefficient gear-shifting that requires a large amount of data reallocation greatly degrades the system performance. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a data placement method known as Accordion, which uses data replication to arrange the data layout comprehensively and provide efficient gear-shifting. Compared with current methods, Accordion reduces the amount of data transferred, which significantly shortens the period required to reallocate the updated data during gear-shifting then able to improve the performance of the systems. The effect of this reduction is larger with higher gears, so Accordion is suitable for smooth gear-shifting in multigear systems. Moreover, the times when the active nodes serve the requests are well distributed, so Accordion is capable of higher scalability than existing methods based on the I/O throughput performance. Accordion does not require any strict constraint on the number of nodes in the system therefore our proposed method is expected to work well in practical environments. Extensive empirical experiments using actual machines with an Accordion prototype based on the Hadoop Distributed File System demonstrated that our proposed method significantly reduced the period required to transfer updated data, i.e., by 66% compared with an existing method.

We propose a reality-based model of a two-echelon repair system with “priority resupply” and present a method for analyzing the availability of the system operated in each base. The two echelon repair system considered in our model consists of one repair station, called depot, and several bases. In each base, n items which constitute a k-out-of-n: G system, called k/n system, are operated. Each item has two failure modes, failures repaired at a base (level 1) and failures repaired at the depot (level 2). When a level 2 failure occurs in a base, either a normal order or an emergency order of a spare item is issued depending on the number of operating items in the base. The spare item in the depot is sent preferentially to the base where the emergency order is placed. We propose two models, both including priority resupply. Firstly, we propose an approximation method for analyzing the basic model where a k/n system is operated in a base. Using a simulation method, we verify the accuracy of our approximation method. Secondly, we expand the basic model to a dual k/n system where the items of the system are interchangeable between two k/n systems in the case of an emergency, which is called “cannibalization”. Then, we show a numerical example and discuss the optimal timing for placing an emergency order.

Satellite clusters have been satisfactorily implemented in a number of applications, such as positioning and sensor networks, with the purpose of improving communication system capabilities. However, because the use of clusters requires good management of the resources, those solutions imply new challenges for communication systems. This paper focuses on improving the data management between network elements by considering a network formed by satellite clusters. Satellite clusters work in cooperation to provide real-time and non-real-time services in different footprint areas. This study proposes the adjustable energy consumption access scheme (AECS) as one possible solution response to particular necessities of communication and at the same time, as a way of decreasing the system energy consumption. Energy consumption is a key issue that concerns green network operations and it is directly linked to the cooperation and coordination between network elements. On the other hand, we support the implementation of Optical Inter-Satellite Links (OISL) for communication between cluster elements. The analysis involves the study of energy consumption, transmission delay, specific link margins, bit error rate (BER) and QoS.

Nowadays, computer systems are limited by the power and memory wall. As the Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) has dominated the power consumption in modern devices, developing power-saving approaches on DRAM has become more and more important. Among several techniques on different abstract levels, scheduling-based power management policies can be applied to existing memory controllers to reduce power consumption without causing severe performance degradation. Existing power-aware schedulers cluster memory requests into sets, so that the large portion of the DRAM can be switched into the power saving mode; however, only the target addresses are taken into consideration when clustering, while we observe the types (read or write) of requests can play an important role. In this paper, we propose two scheduling-based power management techniques on the DRAM controller: the inter-rank read-write aware clustering approach greatly reduces the active standby power, and the intra-rank read-write aware reordering approach mitigates the performance degradation. The simulation results show that the proposed techniques effectively reduce 75% DRAM power on average. Compared with the existing policy, the power reduction is 10% more on average with comparable or less performance degradation for the proposed techniques.

The field electron emission characteristics of a p-type Si emitter sharpened by a spirally scanned Ga focused-ion-beam milling process were investigated. Saturated Fowler--Nordheim (F--N) plots, which are unique phenomena of p-type semiconductor emitters, were observed. The slight increase of the emission current in the saturated F--N plots region was discussed in terms of the depletion layer width in which electron generation occurs. The temperature dependence of the field electron emission current was also discussed. The activation energy of carrier generation was determined to be 0.26,eV, ascribable to the surface states that accompany the defects introduced by the Ga ion beam. When the emitter was irradiated by a 650-nm-wavelength laser, the increase in the emission current, i.e., the photoexcited emission current, was observed in the saturated region of the F--N plots. The photoexcited emission current was proportional to the laser intensity.

In this paper, an energy harvesting architecture in an Underlay Cooperative Cognitive Network (UCCN) is investigated, in which power constrained Decode-and-Forward relays harvest energy from radio-frequency signals received from a source, and then consume the harvested energy by forwarding the recoded signals to their destination. These recoded signals are launched by a transmitting power which is the harvested energy per a time interval. Based on the energy harvesting architectures that have been studied, two operation protocols are proposed: UCCN with Power Splitting architecture (UCCN-PS), and UCCN with Time Switching architecture (UCCN-TS). The best cooperative relay in both protocols is taken to be the one that satisfies the following conditions: maximum harvested energy, and maximum decoding capacity. As a result of the best relay selection, the signal quality of the selected link from the best relay to the destination is enhanced by the maximum harvested energy. The system performance of the secondary network in the UCCN-PS and UCCN-TS protocols is analyzed and evaluated by the exact closed-form outage probabilities and throughput analyses over Rayleigh fading channels. The Monte Carlo simulation method is performed to verify the theoretical expressions. Evaluations based on outage probability and throughput show that the system performance of the secondary network in the UCCN-PS and UCCN-TS protocols improves when the number of cooperative relays and the interference constraint increase as well as when the primary receiver is farther from the transmitting nodes such as the source and relays of the secondary network. In addition, the throughput performance of the UCCN-PS protocol outperforms that of the UCCN-TS protocol. Finally, the effects of the power splitting ratio, energy harvesting time, energy conversion efficiency, target Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), and location of cooperative relays on the system performance of the secondary network are presented and discussed.

A four-pixel-array superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES) microcalorimeter with a mushroom-shaped absorber was fabricated for the energy dispersive spectroscopy performed on a transmission electron microscope. The TES consists of a bilayer of Au/Ti with either a 50-nm or 120-nm thickness. The absorber of 5.0,$mu$m thick is made from a Au layer and its stem is deposited in the center of the TES surface. A Ta$_{2}$O$_{5}$ insulating layer of 100-nm thickness is inserted between the overhang region of the absorber and the TES surface. A selected pixel of the TES microcalorimeter was operated for the detection of Np L X-rays emitted from an $^{241}$Am source. A response of the TES microcalorimeter to L X-rays was obtained by analyzing detection signal pulses with using the optimal filter method. An energy resolution was obtained to be 33,eV of the full width at half maximum value at 17.751,keV of Np L$_{eta 1}$ considering its natural width of 13.4,eV. Response to L X-rays emitted from a mixture source of $^{238}$Pu, $^{239}$Pu and $^{241}$Am was obtained by operating the selected pixel of the TES microcalorimeter. Major L X-ray peaks of progeny elements of $alpha$ decay of Pu and Am isotopes were clearly identified in the obtained energy spectrum. The experimental results demonstrated the separation of $^{241}$Am and plutonium isotopes by L X-ray spectroscopy.

In order to verify the channel sum-rate improvement by multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) transmission in distributed antenna systems (DASs), we investigate and compare the characteristics of channel sum-rates in both centralized antenna systems (CASs) and DASs under the effects of path loss, spatially correlated shadowing, correlated multi-path fading, and inter-cell interference. In this paper, we introduce two different types of functions to model the shadowing, auto-correlation and cross-correlation, and a typical exponential decay function to model the multi-path fading correlation. Thus, we obtain the distribution of the channel sum-rate and investigate its characteristics. Computer simulation results indicate that DAS can improve the performance of the channel sum-rate compared to CAS, even in the case under consideration. However, this improvement decreases as interference power increases. Moreover, the decrease in the channel sum-rate due to the increase in the interference power becomes slow under the effect of shadowing correlation. In addition, some other analyses on the shadowing correlation that occurs on both the transmit and receiver sides are provided. These analysis results show that the average channel sum-rate in a DAS without inter-cell interference considerably decreases because of the shadowing correlation. In contrast, there appears to be no change in the CAS. Furthermore, there are two different types of sum-rate changes in a DAS because of the difference in shadowing auto-correlation and cross-correlation.

We report a real time method to monitor the chemical reaction in microdroplets, which contain an organic dye, 5(6)-carboxynaphthofluorescein and a CdSe/ZnS quantum dot using fluorescence spectra. Especially, the relationship between the droplet size and the reaction rate of the two reagents was investigated by changing an injection speed.

Coarse-grained Reconfigurable Architecture (CGRA) is a promising mobile computing platform that provides both high performance and high energy efficiency. In an application, loop nests are usually mapped onto CGRA for further acceleration, so optimizing the mapping is an important goal for design of CGRAs. Moreover, obviously almost all of mobile devices are powered by batteries, how to reduce energy consumption also becomes one of primary concerns in using CGRAs. This paper makes three contributions: a) Proposing an energy consumption model for CGRA; b) Formulating loop nests mapping problem to minimize the battery charge loss; c) Extract an efficient heuristic algorithm called BPMap. Experiment results on most kernels of the benchmarks and real-life applications show that our methods can improve the performance of the kernels and lower the energy consumption.

Efficiency of the photovoltaic-assisted UHF CMOS rectifier, which is one example realization of the synergistic ambient energy harvesting concept, has been improved by symmetric PV cell structure. Balanced biasing for the n-channel and p-channel diode-connected MOSFETs realized by the symmetric PV cells effectively compensates Vths and prevents useless leakage current, resulting in the improved efficiency of the rectifier under low input power conditions. In addition, by extending the balanced biasing concept, output-voltage-boosted PV cell structure was proposed and found to be effective for further improving the efficiency of the rectifier. As a result, under a typical indoor lighting condition of 300lx, power conversion efficiency of 25.4% was achieved at -20dBm of 920MHz RF input and 47kΩ output loading conditions, being 3.6 times larger than a conventional rectifier without PV assistance.

The bidirectional DC-DC converters that are used in backup power supplies, energy storage systems, and electric vehicles, are described in this paper, because they have recently attracted a lot of attention. First, this paper shows the main use of the bidirectional DC-DC converter, the optimum circuit topology in accordance with its use, and the characteristic properties of the circuits. In addition, the expected characteristics for the next generations of power semiconductor devices for each bidirectional converter circuit are shown.

In elevator-group control, the average number of running cars should be finely adjusted by the dynamically controlling the number of running cars (DCNRC). Traffic demand in an office building varies throughout the day. In this paper, we propose a new energy-saving method for elevator-group control that adjusts the number of running cars according to the traffic demand, simulate the proposed energy-saving method under nearly real traffic demand conditions of an office building, and reduce the daily energy consumption to the target level after several days.

In this paper, we propose a novel energy-efficient sensor device management scheme called sensor device personalization (SDP) for the Internet of things (IoT) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) based on the IEEE 802.15.4 unslotted carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). In the IoT and WSNs with the star topology, a coordinator device (CD), user devices (UDs), and sensor devices (SDs) compose a network, and the UDs such as smart phones and tablet PCs manage the SDs, which consist of various sensors and communication modules, e.g., smart fridge, robot cleaner, heating and cooling system, and so on, through the CD. Thus, the CD consumes a lot of energy to relay packets between the UDs and the SDs and also has a longer packet transmission delay. Therefore, in order to reduce the energy consumption and packet transmission delay, in the proposed SDP scheme, the UDs obtain a list of SD profiles (including SDs' address information) that the UDs want to manage from the CD, and then the UDs and the SDs directly exchange control messages using the addresses of the SDs. Through analytical models, we show that the proposed SDP scheme outperforms the conventional scheme in terms of normalized throughput, packet transmission delay, packet loss probability, and total energy consumption.

The endurance time of smartphone still suffer from the limited battery capacity, and smartphone apps will increase the burden of the battery if they download large data over slow network. So how to manage the download tasks is an important work. To this end we propose a smartphone download strategy with low energy consumption which called CLSA (Concentrated Download and Low Power and Stable Link Selection Algorithm). The CLSA is intended to reduce the overhead of large data downloads by appropriate delay for the smartphone, and it based on three major factors: the current network situation, the length of download requests' queue and the local information of smartphone. We evaluate the CLSA using a music player implementation on ZTE V880 smartphone running the Android operation system, and compare it with the other two general download strategies, Minimum Delay and WiFi Only. Experiments show that our download algorithm can achieve a better trade-off between energy and delay than the other two.

Energy conservation is one of the hot topics within the domain of traffic problems. It is well known that shortening the distance between vehicles reduces the aerodynamic drag of the lagging (or following) vehicle and leads to energy savings, which benefits the drivers. Recently, systems have been developed in which trucks or vehicles travel in a platoon with reduced headway from the preceding vehicle by using automated driving or driver assistance systems. The objective of the present study is to investigate how human factors, such as driving style, a driver's condition, or a driver's personal characteristics, influence the decision of a driver to close the gap with a preceding vehicle and obtain the benefit of aerodynamic drag reduction. We developed a realistic experimental paradigm for investigating the relationship between distance and several factors including the driver's personal characteristics and the size of preceding vehicle. Our experimental setup made use of real vehicles on a test track, as opposed to a vehicle simulator. We examined behavior of subjects that drove the following vehicle as well as subjects that sat in the passenger seat in the following vehicle. The experimental results demonstrate that all subjects attempted to reduce the distance to the preceding vehicle in order to gain the benefit. Based on the experimental and questionnaire results, we conclude that there are relationships between the category of subjects and subject's following distances.

The joint power allocation (PA) issue is studied in multi-user three-cell systems under the degree-of-freedom (DoF) based transmission protocol. This protocol makes all the interferences received at each user orthogonal to the useful signal at the same user by Jafar's topological interference management through index coding, which is proved to offer full DoF. Under this protocol, we formulate the joint power allocations problem based on the objective of energy efficiency under the required quality-of-service constraint. Due to the highly complicated Lagrangian equation, the properties of Lambert function are widely exploited to solve the problem using a closed-form expression. It is discovered that the relationship among the optimal power coefficients are completely different from that of the well-known water-filling method. Simulations demonstrate the energy efficiency of the designed scheme.