• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.51-58
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• 2020

Despite the recent growth of interest in molten salt reactor technology and the crucial role which heat transfer plays in the design of power reactors, specific studies on the design of heat exchangers for the Molten Salt Fast Reactor have not yet been performed. In this work we deliver a preliminary but quantitative analysis of the intermediate heat exchangers, based on reference design data from the SAMOFAR H2020-Euratom project. Two different promising reference technologies are selected for study thanks to their compactness features, the Printed Circuit and the Helical Coil heat exchangers. We present preliminary design results for each technology, based on simplified design tools. Results highlight the limiting effects of the compactness constraints imposed on the fuel salt inventory and the allowed size. Large pressure drops on both flow sides are to be expected, with negative consequences on pumping power and natural circulation capabilities. The small size required for the flow channels also represents possible fabrication issues and safety concerns regarding channel blockage.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.1320-1330
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• 2017

Wireless sensor networks for forest monitoring are typically deployed in fields in which manual intervention cannot be easily accessed. An interesting approach to extending the lifetime of sensor nodes is the use of energy harvested from the environment. Design constraints are application-dependent and based on the monitored environment in which the energy harvesting takes place. To reduce energy consumption, we designed a power management scheme that combines dynamic duty cycle scheduling at the network layer to plan node duty time. The dynamic duty cycle scheduling is realized based on a tier structure in which the network is concentrically organized around the sink node. In addition, the multi-paths preserved in the tier structure can be used to deliver residual packets when a path failure occurs. Experimental results show that the proposed method has a better performance.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.105-116
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• 2019

Recently, there has been an increase in research on wireless sensor networks (WSNs) because they are easy to deploy in applications such as internet-of-things (IoT) and body area networks. However, WSNs have constraints in terms of power, quality-of-service (QoS), computation, and others. To overcome the power constraint issues, wireless energy harvesting has been introduced into WSNs, the application of which has been the focus of many studies. Additionally, to improve system performance in terms of achievable rate, cooperative networks are also being explored in WSNs. We present a review on current research in the area of energy harvesting in WSNs, specifically on the application of simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) in a cooperative sensor network. In addition, we discuss possible future extensions of SWIPT and cooperative networks in WSNs.

• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.146-151
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• 2017

This paper proposes a transmission algorithm that optimizes transmission power and sub-channel allocation to maximize energy efficiency considering characteristics of the channel impedance of power lines in power line communication systems. Since the received power at the receiver is influenced by the characteristics of the power line channel, it is necessary to consider channel characteristics when developing a transmission strategy in a power line communication systems. In addition, the energy efficiency should be optimized while meeting the practical constraints, such as the maximum transmission power limit of the transmitter and minimum quality of service for each user. In the computer simulation, we confirm that the energy efficiency of the proposed algorithm is improved compared to baseline schemes.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.130-145
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• 2019

Widespread commercialization of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) is expected to be realized in various application fields with the advent of cost-effective fabrication of cells and stacks in high volumes. Cost-reduction efforts have focused on production yield, power density, operation temperature, and continuous manufacturing. In this article, we examine several issues associated with processing for SOFCs from the standpoint of the bimodal packing model, considering the external constraints imposed by rigid substrates. Optimum compositions of composite cathode materials with high volume fractions of the second phase (particles dispersed in matrix) have been analyzed using the bimodal packing model. Constrained sintering of thin electrolyte layers is also discussed in terms of bimodal packing, with emphasis on the clustering of dispersed particles during anisotropic shrinkage. Finally, the structural transition of dispersed particle clusters during constrained sintering has been correlated with the structural stability of thin-film electrolyte layers deposited on porous solid substrates.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.7 no.12
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• pp.3071-3095
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• 2013

Configuring optimization of wireless sensor networks, which can improve the network performance such as utilization efficiency and network lifetime with minimal energy, has received considerable attention in recent years. In this paper, a cross layer optimal approach is proposed for multi-source linear network and grid network under Rayleigh block-fading channels, which not only achieves an optimal utility but also guarantees the end-to-end reliability. Specifically, in this paper, we first strictly present the optimization method for optimal nodal number $N^*$, nodal placement $d^*$ and nodal transmission structure $p^*$ under constraints of minimum total energy consumption and minimum unit data transmitting energy consumption. Then, based on the facts that nodal energy consumption is higher for those nodes near the sink and those nodes far from the sink may have remaining energy, a cross layer optimal design is proposed to achieve balanced network energy consumption. The design adopts lower reliability requirement and shorter transmission distance for nodes near the sink, and adopts higher reliability requirement and farther transmission distance for nodes far from the sink, the solvability conditions is given as well. In the end, both the theoretical analysis and experimental results for performance evaluation show that the optimal design indeed can improve the network lifetime by 20-50%, network utility by 20% and guarantee desire level of reliability.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.175-185
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• 2011

It is usual for energy consumption in accordance with facing and sitting direction of tower-type apartments to be calculated by the official statistics or computer simulation. Previous studies for energy consumption appear to be very limited due to the dependence on flat type of apartment. Acknowledging these constraints, an empirical study for a tower type apartment was conducted to demonstrate how a on-site indoor temperature measurement in spring can be used to assist in estimating the total energy consumption in terms of facing and sitting orientation specific settings. The results indicate that maximum temperature difference in spring was identified as $1.16^{\circ}C$ between south and eastern direction. It is known that raising $1^{\circ}C$ indoor temperature require 7% more energy consumption than normal. The $1.16^{\circ}C$ difference means that sitting direction of tower type apartment is a crucial explanatory variable as unit of analysis for energy consumption. It was demonstrated that the indoor temperature could be used effectively as an indicator to estimate energy consumption among various sitting direction of tower type apartments. It is anticipated that this research output could be used as a valuable reference to support more scientific and objective decision-making for facing and sitting orientation of tower type apartments.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.10
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• pp.1029-1036
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• 2011

An energy-efficient reference walking trajectory generation algorithm is suggested utilizing allowable ZMP (Zero-Moment-Point) region, which maxmizes the energy efficiency for cyclic gaits, based on three-dimensional LIPM (Linear Inverted Pendulum Model) for biped robots. As observed in natural human walking, variable ZMP manipulation is suggested, in which ZMP moves within the allowable region to reduce the joint stress (i.e., rapid acceleration and deceleration of body), and hence to reduce the consumed energy. In addition, opimization of footstep planning is conducted to decide the optimal step-length and body height for a given forward mean velocity to minimize a suitable energy performance - amount of energy required to carry a unit weight a unit distance. In this planning, in order to ensure physically realizable walking trajectory, we also considered geometrical constraints, ZMP stability condition, friction constraint, and yawing moment constraint. Simulations are performed with a 12-DOF 3D biped robot model to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.261-269
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• 2016

In this paper, the impact of energy constraints on a two-hop network with a source, a relay and a destination under random medium access is studied. A collision channel with erasures is considered, and the source and the relay nodes have energy harvesting capabilities and an unlimited battery to store the harvested energy. Additionally, the source and the relay node have external traffic arrivals and the relay forwards a fraction of the source node's traffic to the destination; the cooperation is performed at the network level. An inner and an outer bound of the stability region for a given transmission probability vector are obtained. Then, the closure of the inner and the outer bound is obtained separately and they turn out to be identical. This work is not only a step in connecting information theory and networking, by studying the maximum stable throughput region metric but also it taps the relatively unexplored and important domain of energy harvesting and assesses the effect of that on this important measure.

• KIPS Transactions on Computer and Communication Systems
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• v.3 no.6
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• pp.173-178
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• 2014

By exploiting parallel processing, the proposed scheduling scheme enhances energy saving capability of multicore processors for real-time tasks while satisfying deadline and fault tolerance constraints. The scheme searches for a near minimum-energy schedule within a polynomial time, because finding the minimum-energy schedule on multicore processors is a NP-hard problem. The scheme consumes manifestly less energy than the state-of-the-arts method even with low parallel processing speedup as well as with high parallel processing speedup, and saves the energy consumption up to 86%.