Annual Research Conference 2016
Abstract Booklet
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
ARC 2016 welcomes you!
On behalf of the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, the ARC 2016 Committee would like to offer a
warm welcome to this year’s conference proceedings. It is a great honour to welcome you to the 18th Annual
Research Conference at Newcastle University.
The School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Newcastle University aims to provide a research
environment in which ambitious new and original ideas can flourish and in which every individual member of
staff can be research active. The School was awarded a 5A for research in the RAE 2001. Research has increased
dramatically since the RAE 2001 and we have exceeded our targets for the RAE 2008. In The Sunday Times
University Guide on Research Quality EEE is ranked amongst the top 5 schools in the UK. Our research work
is centred on four major research groups of international standing in Communications, Sensors and Signal
Processing, Emerging Technologies and Materials, Microelectronics System Design and Power Electronics, Drives
and Machines. The School runs an Annual Research Conference which provides a showcase for our research
students and young research staff. This annual event is an excellent opportunity for staff and research students
to come together with industrial partners to celebrate the school’s research and collaborative links. It is a great
networking event, where attendees can meet people from other research areas, exchange knowledge and
discuss common research interests.
Finally, this year will be the first ARC to have an awards ceremony of £1000 for best paper winner of each group
and combined networking event at the Research Beehive, old library. This will consist of a speech given by the
Vice President of the SEVCON, NI, and IET, followed by prize giving for best papers, presentations and posters.
The networking event is aimed at encouraging cross-research-group networking as well as with the industrial
sponsors and representatives from the IET.
We hope that you find the two days interesting that you thoroughly enjoy both days of the Annual Research
Conference 2016, and take something of value and lasting memory from the two days.
Best wishes from ARC2016 Committee.
Chair
lijuan Xia
Event Coordinator
Oras Ahmed Al-Ani
Vice-Chair
yuqing Xu
Media Coordinator
Ghazal Ghazaei
Industrial Liaison
Ehsan Dehghan-Azad
Student Liaison
Achonu Adejo
TIME
ARC 2016 Presentations Schedule – Day One, Research Beehive
20 January 2016
08:30 - 09:00
Registration – Ground floor reception, Research Beehive.
09:00 - 09:15
Opening Plenary –Room 2.21 &2.22
09:15- 09:30
Keynote Presentation - Room 2.21 & 2.22
09:30 - 10:00
Coffee Break
SESSION I
COMS2IP talks -Room 2.21
10:00 - 10:15
10:15 - 10:30
10:30 - 10:45
10:45 - 11:00
11:00 - 11:15
11:15 - 11:30
Chair: Kianoush Nazarpour
Assessor: Jeffrey Neasham
Xiaotian Chen
Aobo Zhao
Zaid Abduladheem Abdullah
Ali Munthr Abdulkareem Alameer
Bilal Alauldeen Jebur
Adikari Kabita
11.30-13:00
SESSION II
EP talks -Room 2.22
10:00 - 10:15
10:15 - 10:30
10:30 - 10:45
10:45 - 11:00
11:00 - 11:15
11:15 - 11:30
Lunch Break
COMS IP and ETM Poster Session. Room 2.20
2
µSystem talks -Room 2.22
COMS2IP talks-Room 2.21
Chair: Said Boussakta
Assessor: Martin Johnston
13:00 - 13:15
13:15 - 13:30
13:30 - 13:45
13:45 - 14:00
14:00 - 14:15
14:15 - 14:30
Chair: Barrie Mecrow
Assessor: Volker Pickert
Ruisheng Li
Junnan Wang
Ehsan Dehghan-Azad
Jamie Lamb
Deng Xu
Sichao Yang
Musab Tahseen Al-kaltakchi
Mohammed A. Abdullah
Benjamin Sherlock
Safaa M Z Nash At-Awny
Mohamad Abdulrahman Ahmed
Akachukwu Belusolisa Okoli
13:00 - 13:15
13:15 - 13:30
13:30 - 13:45
13:45 – 14.00
Chair: Alex Yakovlev
Assessor: Andrey Mokhov
Lijuan Xia
Austin J. Ogweno
Nabeel A. Fattah
Michael Walker
Tea Break
14:30 - 15:00
SESSION III
µSystem talks -Room 2.21
15:00 - 15:15
15:15 - 15:30
15:30 - 15:45
15:45 - 16:00
16:00 - 16:15
16:15 - 16:30
Chair: Graeme Chester
Assessor: Nick Coleman
Alessandro De Gennaro
Kaiyuan Gao
Ali Majeed Aalsaud
Mohammed Al-Hayanni
Jonathan Beaumont
Khaled Al-Ma’aith
EP talks -Room 2.22
15:00 - 15:15
15:15 - 15:30
15:30 - 15:45
15:45 - 16:00
16:00 - 16:15
16:15 - 16:30
Chair: Dave Atkinson
Assessor: Shady Gadoue
Andrew M. Jenkins
He Liu
Aslan S. Jalal
Yang Lu
Chenming Zhang
Richard Mandeya
IME
SESSION IV
ARC 2016 Presentations Schedule – Day Two, Research Beehive
21 January 2016
µSystem talks -Room 2.22
COMS2IP talks -Room 2.21
Chair: Patrick Degenaar
Assessor: Rishad Shafik
Chair: Mohsen Naqvi
Assessor: Maninder Pal
08:45 – 09:00
09:00 - 09:15
09:15 - 09:30
09:30 - 09:45
09:45 - 10:00
10:00 - 10:15
10:15 - 10:30
10:30 -11:00
Saadoon A. M. Al-Sumaidaee
Ruslee Sutthaweekul
Wael Abd Alaziz
Mingye Dai
Ali Jaber Abdulwaham Al-Askery
Yasir Ahmed Al Mathehaji
Ghazal Ghazaei
SESSION V
COMS2IP talks -Room 2.21
08:45 – 09:00
09:00 - 09:15
09:15 - 09:30
09:30 - 09:45
09:45 - 10:00
Coffee Break
EP talks -Room 2.22
Chair: Gui Yun Tian
Assessor: Emma Bruntun
11:00 - 11:15
11:15 - 11:30
11:30 - 11:45
11:45 - 12:00
12:00 - 12:15
12:15 - 12:30
12:30-13:30
SESSION VI
Raid Al-Nima
Pengming Feng
Harith Fakrey Tahir Al-Shwaily
Jafaar Mohammed Al-Khasaraji
Ghanim Abdulkareem Al-Rubaye
Di Wu
Chair: Matthew Armstrong
Assessor: Mohamed Dahidah
11:00 - 11:15
11:15 - 11:30
11:30 - 11:45
11:45 - 12:00
12:00 - 12:15
12:15 - 12:30
Muhsien Mohammed Yazid
Mehmet Caglar Kulan
Liam Alexander Naugher
Mohamed Awad Mohamed
Xiang Lu
Ahmed Alturas
Lunch Break
EP and µSystem Poster Session. Room 2.20
COMS2IP talks -Room 2.21
ETM talks -Room 2.21
Chair:Noel Healy
Assessor: Jon Goss
13:30 - 13:45
13:45 - 14:00
14:00 - 14:15
14:15 - 14:30
14:30 - 14:45
14:45 - 15:00
Mohammed I. T. Al-Daloo
Yuqing Xu
Vladimir Dubhikhin
Mohamed A. Abufalgha
Issa H. Qiqieh
Nurul Syazwina Binti Mohamed
Srinivas Ganti
Marzaini Rashid
Oras Ahmed Shareef Al-Ani
Chloe Victoria Peaker
Sherko Ghaderi
13:30 - 13:45
13:45 - 14:00
14:00 - 14:15
14:15 - 14:30
14:30 - 14:45
14:45 - 15:00
15:00 - 15:15
15:15 - 15:30
15:30 - 15:45
Chair: Satnam Dlay
Assessor: Aissa Ikhlef
Waqas Rafique
Mohammed Dahiru Buhari
Zhen Mei
Achonu Oluwole Adejo
Dong Zhou
Alaa Hussain Ahmed
Jamal Ahmed Hussein
Ali Imam Sunny
Yulong Chen
TIME
ARC 2016 Presentations Schedule – Day Two, Research Beehive
21 January 2016
16:00–16:15
Tea Break
SESSION VII
COMS2IP talks -Room 2.21
EP talks -Room 2.22
Chair: Charalampos Tsimenidis
Assessor: Stephane Le Goff
16:15 - 16:30
16:30 - 16:45
16:45 - 17:00
17:00 - 17:15
17:15 - 17:30
17:30-18:00
18:00-18:30
Sinan Husam Mahdi AlKassar
Sameer Alsudany
Mahammad Majed Fakhir
Ahmed SattarHadi Al Tmeme
Hasan Mohammad Kadhim
Chair: Glynn Atkinson
Assessor: Nick Baker
16:15 - 16:30
16:30 - 16:45
16:45 - 17:00
17:00 - 17:15
17:15 - 17:30
Weichi Zhang
Osama Sh Mohamed Abushafa
Ruchao Pupadubsin
Huaxia Zhan
Jiankai Ma
Drinks Reception
Closing Plenary - IEEE Committee
Presentation Ceremony - Dr Glynn Atkinson, Postgraduate Research
Director, School of EEE, Room 2.21 and 2.22.
ARC 2016 Poster Presentations Schedule – Day One, Research Beehive
11:30, 20 January 2016,
COMS2IP posters –Room 2.20
Chair: Rajesh Tiwari
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Fahad Abdalrahman Alsifany
Hayfaa Talib Hussein
Zeyu Fu
Mahmoud Algeli
Yang Sun
Chaoqing Ran
Yachao Ran
Denis ljike Ona
Huan Cao
Israa Ali Abdulrazaq Al-Shaikhli
Ahmad Nashwan Abdulfattah
Jiachen Yin
ETM posters -Room 2.20
Chair : Sarah Olsen
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
Johannes Gausden
Hind Ateeg T Alsnani
Idris Muhammed
Tiago Marinheiro
Fatimah Hameed Khaleel
Faiz bin Arith
Andrew Douglas Reid
Luke Bragley
ARC 2016 Poster Presentations Schedule – Day Two, Research Beehive
12:30 , 21 January 2016
EP posters –Room 2.20
Chair: Kristopher Smith
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Ilias Sarantakos
Stalin Eloy Munoz Vaca
David Frederick Mecrow
Mohammad Abdul Hakin Raihan
Yaohui Gai
Fangbo Liu
Ari Akbar Al-Jaf
Yerasimos Yerasimou
Hamza Khalfalla
µSystem posters -Room 2.20
Chair: Alex Bystrov
10. David Burke
11. Konstantinos Goutsos
12. Matthew Travers
Maps of the Research Beehive
Guests and sponsors

Opening plenary - Professor Bryn Jones
Dean of Postgraduate Studies
He has been employed by Newcastle University since 1990. His first post
was as a scientific officer in the Fossil Fuels and Environmental
Geochemistry Postgraduate Research Institute. In 2002, following a
University re-structuring, He was appointed Director of Postgraduate
Studies in the School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences. He continued in
this role until mid-2006 when He became Dean of Postgraduate Studies in
the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering. Having completed my
initial (2006-2009) term, his appointment as Dean was extended for a further two years (2009-2011) and
subsequently for a further five years (2011-2016).
From November 2013 until January 2015, he was seconded to become the first Head of Academic Operations at
Newcastle University International Singapore (NUIS). As Head of Academic Operations, he had oversight of
academic staff at NUIS and accountability for the academic performance and management of NUIS programmes.
Over the years he has held many other roles within the University. He has been a Degree Programme
Director and chair of Boards of Studies and Boards of Examiners. He has chaired the University's eLearning and
Student Information Committee and its Researcher Development Co-Ordination Group, as well as the Faculty
Graduate School Committee. I have played a role in a number of significant projects generating funding for
postgraduates, facilitating postgraduate placements with business, improving the experience of postgraduate
students, developing initiatives in doctoral education and supporting the international activities of the
University. In 2012, I became Newcastle University's academic lead for Brazil and led the development of the
University's Brazil Strategy.

Primary Sponsor – SEVCON
Sevcon manufactures high quality motor controllers and system
components for electric vehicles - impacting on the way people
around the world travel, work and live.
Sevcon offer a diverse range of products on electrically powered vehicles from fork lift trucks to electric cars
and bikes. These components - whether for on-road or off-road vehicles - are constructed to perform reliably
in the most severe conditions. Priding ourselves on our products with a dedication to design and development,
we are constantly evolving to meet the needs of our customers. Sevcon operates worldwide from our
headquarters in Gateshead, UK, and from subsidiaries in France, Japan, Korea, and the USA.
Sevcon has recognised that quality of service and product is essential to customers and is a key component of
success. In 1994 we became accredited to ISO9000, which means that we have a strong quality policy and
system in place, regularly review our products and work to improve on them. We are a world class supplier in
the industry and work to the requirements of QS9000 and TS16949.
Sevcon is equally dedicated to investment in design and development, evolving products and services to serve
its present and future markets better. We have a powerful history of innovation, application expertise and
customer support. This means that our products are reliable and durable, with a low energy output and low
lifetime costs.

Keynote presentation – Dr. Peter Barrass Vice President of Engineering of Sevcon
Peter has a Master’s degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Leeds
University UK and gained a PhD from Newcastle University UK on the subject of High
Performance Switched Reluctance Drives. His first employer was GEC TDPL (now
ALSTOM) where he worked on various aspects of High Voltage DC transmission, Static
VAR Compensators, naval and rail traction power systems. He joined Control
Techniques in 1995 where he worked on the successful Unidrive range of variable speed
drives becoming Power Design Manager in 1999. In 2003 he joined Sevcon as Vice
President of Engineering. He has authored and co-authored several papers and a book on the subject of power
electronics, drives and motor control. Peter holds several patents and is a member of the IET and IEEE. Outside
work he likes to spend time with his family and keeping fit cycling and walking.
Our second sponsor – National Instruments
When it comes to innovation, progress is collaborative.
For nearly 40 years, NI (ni.com) has worked with engineers and scientists
to provide answers to the most challenging questions. Through these pursuits, NI
customers have delivered hundreds of thousands of products to market,
overcome innumerable technological roadblocks, and engineered a better life for us all. If you can turn it on,
connect it, drive it, or launch it, chances are NI technology helped make it happen.
Through the work of NI customers, we are seeing the type of societal and technological impact within our
DTlifetimes that would have once been impossible. NI’s platform-based approach—a unified software
architecture and modular, programmable hardware—reduces the complexity of smart, connected systems and
helps engineers innovate faster, and easily integrate new technologies as they become available.
You can’t build systems to solve the challenges of tomorrow based on the infrastructure and standards
available today. That’s why NI innovates for the future, based on next-generation system architectures, to
ensure that our customers stay ahead of the technology curve. With these powerful, off-the-shelf NI solutions,
engineers and scientists can tailor their systems to meet their needs now and in the future.
Web: http://uk.ni.com/
Our Academic Partner – IET
'IET is one of the largest engineering institutions with over 163,000 members. A multi-disciplinary organisation
which reflects the diverse nature of engineering in the 21st century.
IET is working to engineer a better world by inspiring, informing and influencing our engineers and technicians
and those who are touched by engineering.'
We would like to thank you IET for providing us sponsorship , literature and copies of E&T magazine ,
Newcastle University are an IET Academic Partner as they understand the value in professional development
and being affiliated with professional body at an early stage. As much, the university will fund IET student
membership for its PhD students in Electrical and Electronic engineering. To find out more about IET
membership, please visit the IET stand or see our website : http://theiet.org/
We would like to thank the IEEE Newcastle University student branch for their complementary bundle.
Abstracts
____________________________________________
Communications, Sensors, Signal & Information Processing
Presentations
____________________________________________
Active 3D Surface Thermography for ECPT
Xiaotian Chen
The use of infrared camera to obtain heat surface information is wildly applied in areas such as biomedical
engineering, NET & E and heat transfer investigation for building and machines. The 2D infrared thermography
have been well studied, however, the thermal image is strongly affected by the viewing angle of the infrared
camera because of the directional emissivity. This article proposed a new method by integrating RGB-D
camera and thermal infrared camera to generate real-time 3D temperature surface. A new calibration
method is proposed for infrared camera and depth camera. The 3d point cloud will also help to correct the
directional emissivity error for thermal image. We will show our experiment result on our ECPT (Eddy Current
Thermography System).
____________________________________________
Using Meander Line Structure for UHF RFID based Corrosion and Crack Sensing
Aobo Zhao, Guiyun Tian and Jun Zhang
UHF RFID is an emerging technology to bridge the gap between NDT and SHM. Sensitivity and communication
ability in metallic environment are two main challenges of applying RFID for sensing applications. Using
meander line antenna based sensor can achieve the balance between sensitivity and communication through
centralised current distribution and impedance matching. Experiment results show that different stages of
corrosion can be distinguished through resonance frequency shift of the antenna.
____________________________________________
Using Meander Line Structure for UHF RFID based Corrosion and Crack Sensing
Zaid Abdullah, Charalampos Tsimenidis and Martin Johnston
Massive Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems are a state of the art research area in wireless
communications. Massive MIMO can significantly improve the system performance and capacity by using a
large number of antenna elements at the base station (BS). However, this increases the system complexity,
power consumption and hardware cost. Low complexity Antenna selection techniques can reduce the system
complexity and hardware cost by choosing the best antenna subset and keeping the system performance at
a certain required level. Bio-inspired optimization techniques are commonly used in many different
engineering applications and are known for their low complexity while at the same time finding the best
solution for a certain optimization. In this paper, Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization
(PSO) algorithms are investigated to develop low complexity antenna selection techniques for massive MIMO
systems and achieve a performance comparable with the higher complexity optimal antenna selection.
____________________________________________
An elastic net-regularized HMAX model of visual processing
Ali Alameer, Patrick Degenaar and Kianoush Nazarpour
The hierarchical MAX (HMAX) model of human visual system has been used in robotics and autonomous
systems widely. However, there is still a stark gap between human and robotic vision in observing the
environment and intelligently categorising the objects. Therefore, improving models such as the HMAX is still
topical. In this work, in order to enhance the performance of HMAX in an object recognition task, we
augmented it using an elastic net-regularised dictionary learning approach. We used the notion of sparse
coding in the S layers of the HMAX model to extract mid- and high-level, i.e. abstract, features from input
images. In our model, the sparse coefficients calculated by the elastic net-regularised dictionary learning
algorithm were used to train and test the model. With this setup, we achieved a classification accuracy of
82.6387%∓3.7183%averaged across 5- folds which is significantly better than that achieved with the original
HMAX.
____________________________________________
Performance Analysis of OFDM-Based Denoise-and-Forward Full-Duplex PLNC with
Imperfect CSI
Bilal Jebur, Charalampos Tsimenidis and Martin Johnston.
In this paper, we propose a full-duplex physical-layer network coding (FD-PLNC) scheme for frequencyselective multipath channels using orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM). We consider a
network scenario of two-way relay channels (FD-TWRCS) with two source nodes, A and B, intending to
exchange information with the aid of a relay node R. All nodes operate in full-duplex mode and are equipped
with two antennas dedicated for transmission and reception, respectively. Moreover, the proposed FD-PLNC
system is combined with an active self-interference cancellation scheme in order to minimize the effect of
self-interference and its performance is investigated in the presence of channel estimation errors. Semianalytical bit error rate performance (BER) expressions as a function of the signal to noise ratio (SNR) are
derived to describe the end-to-end performance. Furthermore, simulation based performance results show
a close match with the derived semi-analytical solutions demonstrating the feasibility of FD-PLNC using the
active self-interference cancellation scheme.
____________________________________________
Fusion Features Based On Speaker Recognition
Musab Tahseen Salahaldeen Al-Kaltakchi, Wai Lok Woo, Satnam S. Dlay and Jonathon Chambers
Speech biometrics are used to recognize an individual’s voice for speaker identification tasks. The proposed
system consists of three stages: feature extraction and normalization, acoustic modelling and decision fusion.
Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) are efficient for speaker identification in clean speech while
Power Normalized Cepstral Coefficients (PNCC) features are robust for noisy environments. Therefore,
combining both features together is better than taking each one individually. In addition, Cepstral Mean and
Variance Normalization (CMVN) and Feature Warping (FW) are used for feature normalization mitigate
possible channel effect and the channel mismatch in voice measurements. Acoustical environment modelling
is based on a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) with Maximum A posterior Probability (MAP) adaptation
applied to the means of the universal background model (UBM). Finally, fusion maximum, mean and weighted
sum are used to modify the Speaker Identification Accuracy (SIA). Verifications conducted on the TIMIT
database with and without noise performance improvement.
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Iris Recognition Performance under the Visible and Near-Infrared Imaging: Comparisons
and Fusion
Mohammed A. M. Abdullah, Jonathon Chambers, Wai Woo and Satnam Dlay
Most of the commercially available iris recognition systems operate in the Near-Infrared (NIR)
spectrum due to the clarity of the dark pigmented iris texture under the NIR spectrum. Recently,
Visible Light (VL) iris imaging has attracted researchers due to the interest in the iris recognition at
a distance for security applications. Nonetheless, limited numbers of wok have compared the iris
biometric performance under both the VL and NIR imaging or the fusion between them. This work
aims to evaluate the performance of the iris biometric under both the VL and NIR spectra using
images taken from the same subject and the fusion between them. Experimental results indicate
that the VL and NIR images provide complementary features for the iris biometric and their fusion
improves the recognition performance considerably.
____________________________________________
Signal and Receiver Design for Low-Power Acoustic Communications Using M-ary
Orthogonal Code Keying
Benjamin Sherlock
Low-power, low received signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) signals have potential for reducing the impact on marine
life from acoustic communications. Here we explore the use of bandlimited pseudo-noise m-ary orthogonal
code keying (M-OCK) scheme using m-sequences. Analysis and simulation of receiver structure for
synchronisation and data demodulation performance is carried out. Real-world channel experiments with
transmission power for the M-OCK sequences limited to less than 1W acoustic power (170.8dB re 1μPa at
1m) and transmission range varied from 100 m to 10 km in the North Sea. Synchronisation at 10 km is achieved
with effective received signal-to-noise-ratio of less than -9.96dB, and data demodulation of 140.7bit/s raw
throughput with pre-coding bit-error-rate (BER) 0.5 X 10-1 (symbol-error-rate (SER) 0.1) and 46.9bit/s raw
throughput with pre-coding BER 0.9 X 10-3 (SER 1.95 X 10-3). Error-free synchronisation and data
demodulation is achieved at ranges up to 2km, demonstrating data rates in excess of 140bit/s.
____________________________________________
Hierarchical Modulation OFDM for Physical Layer Network Coding Channel
Safaa Nash'At Awny, Charalampos Tsimenidis and Aissa Ikhlef
In this work, Hierarchical Modulation (HM) is proposed as a practical implementation of Superposition Coding
(SC) scheme, offering a different degree of protection to the transmitted data according to their comparative
importance. The main concept is to merge two different streams at the modulation level, the High Priority
(HP) stream and the Low Priority (LP) stream, which select the quadrant and the position inside the quadrant,
respectively. Furthermore, using PNC-OFDM to remedy the relay problem by using an appropriate
modulation, in order to enhance the performance, to improve overall spectral efficiency. This scheme
improves the system throughput by analysing the error performance of the physical layer network coding
(PLNC) over AWGN channels. It is assumed that a two way relay network (TWRN) will help the two end nodes
to communicate, where each node transmits the data using a single antenna and operates in a half-duplex
mode.
____________________________________________
Self-interference Cancellation for Coded Full-Duplex MIMO Systems
Mohamad Abdulrahman Ahmed, Charalampos C. Tsimenidis and Stephane Y. Le Goff
In this paper, we propose and analyse the performance of a coded full-duplex (FD) bidirectional transceiver
with multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas, in the presence of self-interference-cancellation (SIC).
We propose an adaptive Minimum Mean-Squared-Error (MMSE) filter used in conjunction with a soft parallel
interference cancellation (SPIC) to suppress the residual self-interference (SI) remaining after applying passive
and active approaches to the received signal in the analog and digital domains, respectively. Convolutional
and turbo codes based channel coding is considered. The system's performance in terms of Bit-Error Rate
(BER) as a function of the signal to noise ratio (SNR) is evaluated over MIMO Rayleigh fading channels in the
presence of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). Furthermore, Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) is
utilized as modulation scheme. The results demonstrate a significant improvement in BER performance as a
result of the proposed iterative method that mitigates SI considerably.
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Femur Segmentation using an Interactive Livewire Algorithm
Akachukwu Okoli and Satnam Dlay
A livewire segmentation algorithm that aids the user in delineating medical structures is implemented. The
feature of interest is the human femur in this instance. While manual segmentation is still employed by
experts in medical domains, it is quite laborious and time consuming. Here Canny edge cost and Laplacian
edge cost are combined along with the image gradient magnitude and image gradient direction and used to
compute a cost function which is used to guide the segmentation of the femur. Results show that the livewire
method outperforms the manual method within a certain range and is obviously faster than the manual
method.
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New Facial Expression Classification Method based upon Histogram Sequence of the Local
Gabor Gradient Code-Horizontal Diagonal Descriptor
Saadoon Al-Sumaidaee
We propose a method for the facial expression classification by constructing a new layer structure that
compound from the local gradient features based on the Gabor’s coefficients. Hence, we combine the Local
Gradient Code-Horizontal Diagonal (LGC-HD) descriptor with set of the Kernel Gabor Filters (KGFs). Firstly, we
extract the Gabor Features Map (GFM) by convolving each image with five scales and eight orientations of
the KGFs. Then, we apply the LGC-HD descriptor on the output of each image in the GFM to obtain the new
Local Gabor Gradient Code-Horizontal Diagonal descriptor (LGGC-HD). Consequently, a sequence of the
histogram features of the LGGC-HD descriptor is calculated from the 42 blocks of each image in the GFM. We
classified each expression based on the histogram features by measuring the distance among other
expressions. The experimental results on the JAFFE database demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed
method compared to the other methods.
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Steel Corrosion Stage Characterisation using Open-Ended Waveguide Probe
Ruslee Sutthaweekul and Guiyun Tian
This paper proposes a novel measurement method for corrosion stage characterisation using open-ended
waveguide probes. To study the effect of the different operational frequency, two open-ended rectangular
waveguide probes: WR-62 and WR-42 with operating frequency bands of Ku-band and K-band respectively
were used. To investigate the influences of common and different parameters, three sets of samples are
studied: two sets of the uncoated and coated corrosion progression samples (1, 3, 6, 10, and 12 months) and
a set of four different surface preparation samples. The waveguide probes in conjunction with vector network
analyser (VNA) can measure reflection coefficients (S11) under sweeping frequency, above the samples. To
deal with multiple parameters influences, principal component analysis (PCA) methods are also applied to
analyse the major influences of the corrosion samples with different surface preparation processing, coating
and corrosion progression stages and quantitative analysis.
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Non-Binary Turbo Codes on Additive Impulsive Noise Channels
Wael Abd Alaziz, Martin Johnston and Stephane Le Goff
It is well known that binary error-correcting codes with iterative decoders can achieve near Shannon-limit
performance on the additive white Gaussian noise channel, but their performance on more realistic wireless
channels becomes degraded due to the presence of burst errors or the noise at the receiver having a nonGaussian distribution due to random impulses caused by interference. Non-binary codes are known to be
effective in correcting burst errors, but there is no research reported in the literature investigating non-binary
codes on impulsive noise channels. In this paper, we will investigate the performance of non-binary turbo
codes defined in finite fields on symmetric alpha-stable impulsive noise channels and compare with binary
turbo codes, employing a Cauchy receiver to mitigate the effects of the channel.
____________________________________________
Channel State Information Acquisition for Massive MIMO
Mingye Dai, Charalampos Tsimenidis and Said Boussakta
Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system is a promising technology for next-generation of
wireless communications. Channel state Information (CSI) at the BS is a critical role in massive MIMO system
and usually obtained with the assistance of training signals. However, as the number of UT antenna grows,
the pilot overhead could significantly decrease the system efficiency, which would be the system bottleneck.
To reduce the pilot overhead, block type pilot is considered as a solution instead of comb type pilot.
Furthermore, spreading sequences such as gold sequences could be utilized as pilot signals due to its bounded
small cross-correlation within a set. Combined with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), this
could be a way to eliminate the interference from other antennas within a cell during the training period.
____________________________________________
LDPC Coded Massive MIMO OFDM system
Ali Al-Askery, Charalampos Tsimenidis, Said Boussakta and Jonathon Chambers
In this paper, a novel approach is performed to find the actual probability density function (PDF) of the noise
post the Multiple-Input-Multiple- Output (MIMO) detector. The receiver is designed with Zero-Forcing (ZF)
detector by approximating the matrix inversion formula with Neumann series approximation. To verify the
accuracy of this PDF compared to the histogram plot of the actual PDF, we have plotted both PDFs and the
result have shown close match compared to the histogram of the actual noise PDF. Next, this PDF is used to
design the Log-Likelihood Ratio (LLR) for the Low Density Parity-Check (LDPC) coded massive MIMO-OFDM
systems. The simulation results have shown 1 dB improvement in the performance of the LDPC coded system
compared to using Gaussian PDF.
____________________________________________
Reliable Distributed Broadcast Protocol in Multi-hop Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks
without a Common Control Channel
Yasir Al-Mathehaji, Said Boussakta and Martin Johnston
Cognitive radio (CR) technology is a promising technology that aims to enhance the spectrum utilization
through enabling the unlicensed users to opportunistically use the vacant spectrum bands assigned to the
licensed users. Broadcast is one of the most classical operations in the wireless networks, as well as in
cognitive radio network. However, it is not trivial to extend traditional broadcasting methods to CRNs. In
this paper, we proposed a novel distributed broadcast protocol that specifically address the problems: the
reliable data dissemination, transmitters-receivers synchronization, and PR users’ communication
protection in cognitive radio networks. Our proposed protocol explicitly considers the spatial variation of
the spectrum opportunities and different local topologies and dynamically allocates the
transmitting/receiving channels within each node. Simulations are conducted to examine the performance
of the proposed protocol, which confirmed that it provides better CR network performance.
____________________________________________
An exploratory study on the use of convolutional neural networks for object grasp
classification
Ghazal Ghazaei, Patrick Degenaar, Graham Morgan and Kianoush Nazarpour.
The loss of hand profoundly affects an individual’s quality of life. Prosthetic hands can provide a route to
functional rehabilitation by allowing the amputees to undertake their daily activities. However, the
performance of current artificial hands falls well short of the dexterity that natural hands offer. The aim of
this study is to test whether an intelligent vision system could be used to enhance the grip functionality of
prosthetic hands. To this end, a convolutional neural network (CNN) deep learning architecture was
implemented to classify the objects in the COIL100 database in four basic grasp groups: tripod, pinch, palmar
and palmar with wrist rotation. Our preliminary, yet promising, results suggest that the additional machine
vision system can provide prosthetic hands with the ability to detect object and propose the user an
appropriate grasp.
____________________________________________
Personal verification based on finger textures
Raid Al-Nima, Satnam Dlay, Wai Lock and Jonathon Chambers
In this paper, a comparison method to extract the Finger Texture (FT) of the main four finger images (index,
middle, ring and little) from contactless and very low resolution hand images is proposed. Moreover, feature
extraction was applied based on adopting image processing to solve the illumination problem and increase
the contrast of the FTs. Then the pre-processed image was segmented and prepared for the next intelligent
authentication process, where an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technique is used as to evaluate the
personal recognition performance. A large database from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Contact-free
2D Hand Images Database version 1.0 has been used in this work. The results showed that our proposed
algorithm for the finger extraction has a comparable performance in terms of collecting more features
compared to other publications. Furthermore, our proposed feature extraction model has been succeeded
and achieved a good indication.
____________________________________________
Variational Bayesian PHD filter with Deep Learning Network Updating for Multiple Human
Tracking
Pengming Feng, Wenwu Wang, Syed Mohsen Naqvi and Jonathon Chambers
We propose a robust particle probability hypothesis density (PHD) filter where the variational Bayesian
method is applied in joint recursive prediction of the state and the time varying measurement noise
parameters. The proposed particle PHD filter is based on forming variational approximation to the joint
distribution of states and noise parameters at each frame separately; the state is estimated with a particle
PHD filter and the measurement noise variances used in the update step are estimated with a fixed point
iteration approach. A deep belief network is used in the update step to mitigate the effect of measurement
noise which is trained based on both colour and oriented gradient histogram features. Simulation results using
sequences from the CAVIAR dataset show the improvements of the proposed DBN aided variational Bayesian
particle PHD filter over the traditional particle PHD filter.
____________________________________________
On the Optimality of Location-Dependent Key Management Protocol for a WSN with a
Random Selected Cell Reporter LKMP-RSCR
Harith Al-Shwaily, Martin Johnston and Rajesh Tiwari
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) employed to be used in the applications of smart cities can be widely
deployed, but are vulnerable in terms of disseminated data security. So that, confidentiality, availability and
authenticity of mentioned data must be guaranteed. Several key management schemes had been proposed
to ensure these requirements. The most common schemes depend on the sensor location to generate the
security credentials. This paper investigate the optimum setting of our location-dependent key management
protocol with random selected cell reporters (LKMP-RSCR). In this protocol, the generated report of an event
involve a third level of endorsement implemented by a set of cell reporters. As a result, the adversary must
compromise the entire set of cell reporters to generate a bogus report from a particular region. Mathematical
evaluation is presented for the ELKMP-RSCR, comparing to the LEDS and MKMP schemes, our scheme
outperform others significantly.
____________________________________________
Performance analysis of FEC codes for short range underwater optical wireless
communication
Jafaar Alkhasraji and Charalampos Tsimenidis
Investigation of the oceans has been growing in recent years owing to massive undersea resources which
are still under exploration. Despite radio electromagnetic waves EMWs’ suffer from high attenuation in
water body. Acoustic frequency has the ability to transmit data over a long distance in oceans. However,
there are obstacles such as limited bandwidth and low data rate as a result of multi-path reflection even at
short range. The challenges limit the researchers’ options to transmit and collect a large amount of data.
Therefore, underwater based on optical wireless communications UWOCs’ promises an indispensable
choice to achieve these requirements for short ranges. In this paper, an underwater optical wireless
communication system with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing OFDM and Quadrature Amplitude
Modulation QAM modulation with low density parity check LDPC error correction coding scheme has been
introduced in order to improve the robustness and reliability of underwater optical channel.
____________________________________________
Improved performance of binary/non-binary LDPC coded OFDM in impulsive power line
channels
Ghanim Al-Rubaye, Charalampos Tsimenidis and Martin Johnston
Currently, power-line communication (PLC) channels becomes an emerging technology that uses the indoor
grid for high data transmission, due to the existing of wiring infrastructure, it becomes an economical
communication with cheap installation. On the other hand, PLC has a harsh medium for communication due
to high attenuation, frequency selectivity and impulsive noise. In this paper, we propose Binary/Non-Binary
Low Density Parity Check (B/NB-LDPC) codes to overcome these problems. Therefore, the performance of
both decoders is improved using optimum construction of the parity check matrix H by progressive edge
growth (PEG) algorithm with a novel log likelihood ratio (LLR) of each decoder to mitigate the highly impulsive
noise in PLC channels. Numerical results show that the proposed NB-LDPC-OFDM gives more than 21 dB and
more than 6 dB coding gains compared to uncoded system and the proposed B-LDPC-OFDM respectively at
Pe=10-4.
____________________________________________
NMF2D based source separation using Extreme Learning Machine
Di Wu
In this paper, we study Non-negative Matrix Two-Dimensional Factorization (NMF2D) based Single Channel
Source Separation (SCSS) using a newly proposed algorithm named Extreme Learning Machine (ELM).
Compared with other machine learning algorithms such as Support Vector Machines and Neural Networks,
ELM can provide better generalization performance and a much faster learning speed. Unlike conventional
researches that concentrate on generating masks for each source, we use ELM to classify estimated sources
separated by NMF2D algorithm. The experiment results show that the performance of proposed method
is improved not only in training and testing speed, but also in the quality of separated signal compared
with using DNNs and NMF2D.
____________________________________________
Speech Source Separation using the IVA Algorithm with Multivariate Mixed Super Gaussian
Student’s t Source Prior in Real Room Environment
Waqas Rafique, Syed Mohsen Naqvi and Jonathon Chambers
Independent vector analysis (IVA) can theoretically avoid the permutation problem in frequency domain blind
source separation by using a multivariate source prior to retain the dependency between different frequency
bins of each source. In this paper a mixture of multivariate super Gaussian distribution and multivariate
Student’s t distribution is adopted as a source prior for the IVA algorithm. The Student’s t distribution due to
its heavy tail nature can better model the high amplitude information in the frequency bins and at the same
time a dependent super Gaussian distribution can be adopted to model other information in frequency bins.
The weight of both distributions can be varied in source prior mixture and their separation performance is
tested over different scenarios by using the binaural room impulse responses (BRIRs). All the experimental
results confirm that the IVA with proposed mixed super Gaussian-Student’s t source prior can consistently
achieve improved separation performance.
____________________________________________
Optimal OFDM Subcarrier Design for SAR Cross-range Profile Reconstruction
Mohammed Dahiru Buhari, Gui Yun Tian and Rajesh Tiwari
In this paper, we investigate an optimal Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) subcarrier
design for a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system that can be used in Through-the-Wall radar Imaging (TWI),
detection of hidden object and pipelines inspection. At first, an OFDM SAR model is developed for a single
target detection. The target is reconstructed via match filtering of the estimated phase history with a
reference function. The phase history is estimated using Least Square Estimate (LSE) and parameters such as
Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), cumulative side lobe levels and the main lobe width are used to test and
compare the accuracy of the reconstruction process. Simulation results shows that increasing the number of
subcarriers results in an improvement in the target reconstruction but at the cost of having a wider main lobe.
The results are also compared with the Single Frequency (SF) case. Initial results shows that OFDM SAR
method is a promising technique in SAR reconstruction process as compared with SF case such as Frequency
Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW). The technique is later extended to the detection of multiple targets
scene.
____________________________________________
Finite Length Analysis of LDPC codes on Impulsive Noise Channels
Zhen Mei, Martin Johnston, Stephane Le Goff and Li Chen
Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes are well known to approach the Shannon capacity when their length
is very long, but their performance is degraded for short lengths. Finite length analyses of LDPC codes have
already been presented in the literature for the AWGN channel, but in this paper we consider the analysis of
short LDPC codes for channels that exhibit impulsive noise. Density evolution is applied to evaluate the
asymptotic performance of LDPC codes on impulsive noise channels and determine the threshold signal-tonoise ratio. We then derive closed expressions for the bit and block error rate of short LDPC codes on these
channels, which match closely with simulated results on channels with different levels of impulsiveness for
block lengths as low as 1000 bits.
____________________________________________
Resource allocation for irregular Macro Base station deployment using Self-Organization
Achonu Adejo, Said Boussakta and Jeffrey Neasham
A major challenge in current cellular networks like the Long Term Evolution (LTE) is the intense demand for
data. Heavy data is needed to drive applications that run on devices like smartphones, tablets and PCs. Soft
Frequency reuse (SoftFR) is a technique used to implement reuse of the limited frequency spectrum while
guaranteeing reduced interference in the system. In this paper, we propose a self-organized technique that
efficiently performs the SoftFR algorithm when the Macro BS deployment is considered to be irregular. Our
results give improvements in the system capacity over static SoftFR implementations. This research will aid
the analysis and optimization of practical cellular network deployments which are not always hexagonal but
form irregular patterns. It is also a precursor to our research in optimizing SoftFR in heterogeneous cellular
networks.
____________________________________________
Buffer-Aided Relay system with physical layer network coding
Dong Zhou
UHF RFID is an emerging technology to bridge the gap between NDT and SHM. Sensitivity and communication
ability in metallic environment are two main challenges of applying RFID for sensing applications. Using
meander line antenna based sensor can achieve the balance between sensitivity and communication through
centralised current distribution and impedance matching. Experiment results show that different stages of
corrosion can be distinguished through resonance frequency shift of the antenna.
____________________________________________
AF-PNC for frequency selective channels with 16-QAM modulation using DFE
Alaa Ahmed, Charalampos Tsimenidis and Jeffrey Neasham
Physical layer network coding (PLNC) is a very efficient scheme when it comes to bandwidth saving. Direct
implementation of this scheme is not possible in frequency selective channels. Such channels are not
uncommon and cause intersymbol interference (ISI). One of the best ways to deal with these channels is by
using a decision feedback equalizer (DFE). The proper way of using this DFE in such systems is shown with
optimal design and simulated end to end performance. Moreover, the feasibility of the proposed method is
checked for 16-QAM and/or higher modulation schemes without further adjustments. The computational
complexity is in the same order as that of one DFE equalizer at the end nodes and no computations of any
kind are required at the relay.
____________________________________________
Outage Performance of a Multi-User Underlay Cognitive Radio Network
Jamal Hussein, Said Boussakta and Charalampos Tsimenidis
In this paper, the outage performance of a dual-hop amplify-and-forward multi-user underlay cognitive
relaying network is investigated. An expression is derived for the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the
equivalent signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). From the derived CDF, the outage performance of the cognitive
network is thoroughly investigated. Furthermore, simple and generic asymptotic expression for the outage
probability is obtained and discussed. The asymptotic result show that opportunistic scheduling has no impact
on diversity gain. It is confirmed that the array gain determines the SNR advantage of opportunistic scheduling
over the single user scenario. Finally, numerical results and Monte Carlo simulations are also provided to
support the correctness of the analytical calculations.
____________________________________________
LOW FREQUENCY (LF) RFID SENSOR SYSTEM FOR STRUCTURAL HEALTH
MONITORING (SHM) AT HIGH TEMPERATURE ENVIRONMENT
Ali Imam Sunny and Gui Yun Tian
Structural health monitoring at high temperature environment is vital particularly in petrochemical industries
where processes conduct at 150°C or more. In such conditions, corrosion and rust formation is a major cause
of deterioration to metallic structures. Current inspection methods used to detect any deterioration requires
removal of thermal insulation layer to gain access to the metallic surface which requires shutting down of
operations and are an expensive process. This paper will demonstrate the use of LF RFID sensors for SHM at
high temperature conditions. Presence of corrosion on the sample will cause impedance change on which will
be analysed in this paper. Furthermore, the response characteristics of commercial RFID tags placed on hot
metallic samples will cause further significant impedance variation which will be compensated by feature
extraction and selection of features. Enhanced sensing efficiency in the harsh environment at high
temperature will be developed.
____________________________________________
An improved precoding design for downlink massive MIMO systems
Yulong Chen, Said Boussakta and Charalampos Tsimenidis
Massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) is an emerging technology for future wireless networks,
scaling up conventional MIMO to an unprecedented number of antennas at base stations (BS). In terms of
massive MIMO, precoding design is an active research for downlink transmission, because high channel
capacity performance can be achieved by precoding. Compared with nonlinear precoding such as the
capacity-achieving dirty paper coding, previous studies have shown that some linear precoding methods can
achieve close to optimal capacity performance. Therefore, because of lower complexity, linear precoding is
always regarded as an effective solution in massive MIMO systems. Assume that in time division duplex
systems, we can obtain the perfect channel state information from uplink channel by utilizing the reciprocity
of the wireless medium. One potential scheme is partitioning precoding matrix into several steps and then
respectively improve these steps by optimization methods such as polynomial expansion and convex
optimization.
____________________________________________
Efficient Sclera Vein Segmentation Method with Images Captured At-A-Distance and OnThe Move
Sinan Alkassar, Jonathon Chambers, Satnam Dlay and Lok Woo
Sclera blood veins have been investigated recently as an efficacious biometric trait. The sclera has a rich
pattern of blood vessels which have different orientations and layers. Capturing this part of the eye with a
normal camera using visible-wavelength images rather than near-infrared images has provoked research
interest. However, segmenting noisy sclera areas with images captured on-the-move and at-a-distance has
not been extensively investigated. Therefore in this paper, we propose a new method for minimizing the
effect of distance on sclera segmentation. In addition, the proposed method involves sclera template rotation
alignment and a distance scaling method to minimize the error rates when noisy eye images are introduced.
The experimental results using the on-the-move and at-a-distance UBIRIS.v2 database show a significant
improvement in term of error rates and accuracy.
____________________________________________
IPV6 Header Compression using a Context-Based Algorithm for Integrating Wireless Sensor
Networks and the Internet of Things
Sameer Alsudany, Said Boussakta and Martin Johnston
Connecting wireless sensor networks(WSNs) to the Internet using the traditional IPV6 protocol is a great
challenge due to the short medium access layer frame length of the WSN and large IPV6 and UDP headers.
Therefore the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) recently formulated a protocol that connects WSNs to
the Internet. One of its functions depends on a context table that maps the more frequent Internet address
prefixes to several bits identifiers leading to decreasing the number of bytes used by IPV6 address. However,
the design of the context table is out of scope of this protocol. This paper proposes an algorithm to manage
a dynamic context system in which a context table was designed. Mechanisms for updating, synchronizing
and disseminating its contents through the network were implemented to perfect the operation of the
system. Simulation results showed the performance of this algorithm compared to the static context system.
____________________________________________
Geometrical Method for Face Recognition
Mahammad Fakhir, Wai Lok Woo, Jonathon Chambers and Satnam Dlay
Pose variance is a particular challenge in face recognition. This problem is part of the grand challenge of
recognition variation in pose and camera calibration. Hence, we introduce our novel algorithm based on a
geometric method of different pose face recognition that is efficient in handling the range of pose variations
within ±60° of rotation. Our approach is to calibrate the camera from a 2D image using fixed robust facial
landmarks to ensure a reliable estimation of real dimensions. Therefore, we decompose the image into
grayscale before any feature extraction and selection. Our technique then transforms the original image to a
full face pose in order to accurately estimate the distance between the eyes. Extensive and systematic
experimentation on FERET database shows that our proposed method consistently outperforms single-taskbased baselines as well as state-of-the-art methods for the pose problem.
____________________________________________
HARMONIC AND PERCUSSIVE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS SEPARATION BASED ON
NMF2D
Ahmed Al Tmeme, W. Woo and S. Dlay
In this paper the Harmonic and Percussive musical instruments will be separated by using the two dimensional
nonnegative matrix deconvolution (NMF2D). Where both the Harmonic musical instruments and the
Percussive musical instruments will be simultaneously modelled by using the NMF2D. The Itakura-Saito (IS)
divergence will be used as the cost function for the proposed method, due its scale invariant properties. The
proposed algorithm will be used in the under - determined mixture (where the number of mixing channels is
less than the number of the musical sources). Finally, experimental results that applied on the SiSEC dataset
showed the competence of the proposed algorithm in comparison with other algorithms.
____________________________________________
Stochastically Speech Segregation by the Clustering of Audio Feature
Hasan Kadhim, Lok Woo and Satnam Dlay
To simplify the jobs of speaker diarization and speech separation, at first, speech signal should be segregated
to two speech formats, dialog and mixture. This paper describes a new algorithm which achieves that first
step efficiently. The algorithm is based on Perceptual Linear Predictive feature extraction, optimized k-means
and both top-down & bottom-up scenarios. After extracting features of the observation signal, k-means
clusters the statistical properties such as variances of the PDF (histogram) of clustered extracted features. kmeans is optimized by discounting the worst pattern of clustering step through doing the k-means procedure
twice. The feedback loop is necessary for the guiding of the optimized k-means by exploiting the attributes of
ordinary k-means. The results of segregation are excellent. The calculated diarization error rate of outputs
are very limited.
Electrical Power
Presentations
____________________________________________
On-line Parameter Estimation and Adaptive Control of Non-Minimum Phase Switch Mode
Power Converters
Ruisheng Li and Matthew Armstrong
Influenced by many internal and external disturbances, varying parameters of passive components is a
significant restriction for high quality voltage regulation of Switching Model Power Converters (SMPCs). This
research focuses on the efficient online System Identification for a DC-DC boost converter to identify the
varied passive component and estimated the new parameters value. Different from buck converter, boost
converter has two left half-plane poles (LHP) and one right half-plane (RHP) zero in its mathematical model.
The existence of RHP zero of boost converter causes a zero is out of the unit cycle in discrete model which
consequent an unstable effect to the system. As a result, system identification for boost converter is more
difficult than buck type. The paper will illustrate the RHP zero problem in detail and propose a novel method
to resolve this problem.
____________________________________________
Linear Modulate Pole Machine manufacture simplification
Junnan Wang and Nick Baker
Compared to traditional linear machine which the stator winding is distributed around the motion direction,
the modulate pole machine (MPM) can be classified into flux transverse machine moreover as each pole for
each phase can be analysed individually which be called ‘modulate’. The MPM offers better efficiency, simpler
winding structure and higher utilization on magnet material which have been approved elsewhere, however
the construct lamination and assembly process are more difficult, in this paper by using the method of
combing stator tooth the machine lamination and assembly difficulty can be released which can be regarded
as ‘combined three phase-pole’ machine meanwhile the performance (electric force) won’t be reduce
reversely increased about 10% moreover by further varying the combined tooth parameters the cogging force
and voltage harmonics can be improved as well. This research was approved by using finite element analysis
software and will be validated during the lab work.
____________________________________________
Sensorless Torque Control of Induction Motor for EV Application
Ehsan Dehghan-Azad
One of the key components in Electric Vehicle (EV) application is position sensor. Position sensor is
responsible for providing speed of electrical machine to commanding control algorithm. Due to harsh
environment and vibration, probability of exposure to position sensor failure in EVs is very high. This failure
forces EV’s control mechanism to shut down and brings the vehicle to halt mode. In order to increase safety
of EV during position sensor failure, this paper proposes sensorless torque control using Indirect Field
Oriented Control (IFOC) applied to Induction Motor (IM). The sensorless control technique consists of torque
and speed observer. The torque observer takes advantage of closed-loop current and voltage based stator
flux observers which are suitable for low and high speed operations, respectively. The torque observer
compensates for stator resistance variation and dead time problems. In order to estimate the speed, Phase
Lock Loop (PLL) mechanism is employed.
____________________________________________
Sensor-less Induction Motor Drive with Multilevel Converter and Output Filtering
Jamie Lamb
Some applications and operating environments such as downhole drilling in the oil and gas industry demand
the use of remote induction machines. A complication that arises with remote machine control comes from
long supply cables and square PWM waveforms giving rise to reflected waves. A low pass filter can be
connected to the output of an inverter so that a smooth sinusoidal waveform is presented to the machine.
Sensor-less vector control with output filter is not a common practice and the impact of filter cut off frequency
upon the dynamic response of the system is unclear. Stator voltage knowledge is an essential parameter for
MRAS speed estimation and direct measurement is not possible with conventional PWM drives due to the
necessary high sampling rate however with output filtering direct measurement of the machine terminal
voltage becomes possible. An MRAS speed observer utilising stator voltage detection is presented in this
work.
____________________________________________
Effect of winding connection on performance of 6 phase switched reluctance motor
Deng Xu, Barrie Mecrow and Shady Gadoue
In this paper, five winding connection types for a 6 phase switched reluctance motor (SRM) are proposed. By
comparing the mutual inductance effect between conducting phases of different winding connection types,
optimized decoupling types have been found. In order to compare the performance of different winding
connection types, a 6 phase 12/10 poles traditional SRM test rig is employed. Test results of low speed and
high speed are presented, long flux-path types have better control performance of current chopping control
(CCC) in low speed and angle position control (APC) in high speed.
____________________________________________
Establishing EV charging load flexibility for supporting the power system without impacting
driver usability
Andrew Jenkins
Electric Vehicles (EVs) have been proposed previously to be a form of flexible electrical load (including
potentially vehicle to grid generation) that could be controlled to help support distribution networks. This is
because they are typically stationary 95% of the time, potentially plugged into the grid and have a relatively
large battery on board. This paper proposes an aggregation and control methodology for the grid to consider
a number of EVs in a similar way to more established Energy Storage Systems (ESS) allowing existing ESS
control algorithms to be utilised. Central to the methodology is the knowledge that the flexibility will only be
realised if drivers are willing to use utility controlled charging posts and as such the drivers’ requirements are
considered; a minimum amount of energy is guaranteed to be within each vehicle at the time of departure.
____________________________________________
High Voltage High Power Modular Multilevel DC/DC Converter for Off-shore Wind Farm
DC Collection Point
He Liu
This paper presents a new high voltage high power DC/DC converter configuration suitable for off-shore wind
farm application. The proposed converter functions as a DC collection point and boosts the wind generators
voltage to facilitate the employment of high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines. The proposed
converter utilizes the modular multilevel converter (MMC) structure and combined DC/DC converter linked
by medium frequency transformer, which leads to lower voltage and current stresses of diode bridge rectifier
compared to the conventional DC/DC converters while using relatively smaller transformer. This topology also
features modularity, which significantly improves system’s reliability and implementation. The design and the
analysis of the proposed converter will be presented in this paper with various operating points. A new control
method will be also derived and demonstrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed system.
____________________________________________
Design of Surface Mounted PM Linear Alternator for FPE applications
Aslan Jalal and Nick Baker
The work presents a design methodology for a Surface Mounted Permanent Magnet Linear Alternator
(SMPMLA) for use with an External Combustion - Free Piston Engine (EC-FPE). This topic has attracted research
interest in the past (2-3) decades as an alternative to the conventional rotary engine in special applications,
such as range extender for hybrid vehicles, combined heat power generation into the grid, generation on
board spacecraft or use as a standalone power supply.
In the literature, individual topologies have been considered throughout research groups worldwide, from
which the tubular geometry dominates over other geometries due to its axisymmetric properties,
manufacturability, and compactness assuring higher power densities. In this paper, the design of three
alternative tubular surface mounted permanent magnet linear machines with modular windings is
investigated for the same force capability, where these three topologies have not been specifically compared
for the same force capability.
____________________________________________
Torque Improvement of Switched Reluctance Motor by Considering Mutual Coupling Effect
Yang Lu, James Widmer and Richard Martin
The Switched Reluctance Machine (SRM), as a magnet-free electric machine has been witnessed rapidly
development during recent years. Due to its low-cost and robust structure, the SRM is a potential candidate
for propulsive applications in electric vehicles. However, there are still some drawbacks in the SRM that
impede its application. One of the major problem is the lower torque density comparing to the Permanent
magnet machine. To enhance the torque output, the extra torque from mutual coupling effects may provide
a possible assistance. In this paper, the mutual coupling effects in the conventional SRM will be investigated
and a SRM that may benefit from mutual coupling effects will be described. The static and transient 2D Finite
Element analysis result of this SRM will be presented. It will be observed that this SRM could provide a
promising torque performance.
____________________________________________
High reliable capacitors embedded in modular multilevel converters
Chenming Zhang
The modular multilevel converters (MMC) is a hot issue in high-power application for its high power and
redundancy with low distortions and switching frequency. The reliability issue of the MMC is drawing more
attention recently. The reliability contains three aspects: 1) fault diagnosis 2) life-time prediction 3) fault
management. The fault diagnosis scheme is the ESR and capacitance estimation by the identification methods
based on ripple current and voltage across the sub-module (SM) capacitors. In order to improve the accuracy
of the estimation, the voltage balancing algorithm and circulating current control methods are introduced.
The validation of proposed methods are verified by the simulation results. The life-time prediction model and
future research direction about the fault management are also discussed in this report.
____________________________________________
Health Monitoring Applied to High Power IGBT Modules
Richard Mandeya and Volker Pickert
This paper proposes a novel in-situ health monitoring interface for high voltage high current Insulated Gate
Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) modules, also known as high power or multichip IGBT modules. In practice, a
multichip IGBT module may continue operating upon the initial single chip failure due to several IGBT chips in
parallel. Nevertheless, the IGBT module’s health depreciates with every chip failure, eventually suffering
catastrophic failure. In this paper, a new technique is proposed that monitors IGBT module chip failures
through a signature between the zero-crossing and threshold voltage of the Gate-Emitter Voltage (VGE) at
turn on. In this VGE region before threshold, the IGBT is still in the off-state, such that variations in Collector
Current (IC) and Collector-Emitter Voltage (VCE) have negligible influence on the proposed technique. To
validate the proposed method, simulation and practical results are presented in the paper.
____________________________________________
A comparison of Magnetic Microstructure for different SmCo Alloys obtained using
Magnetic Force Microscopy
Muhsien Yazid, Glynn Atkinson and Sarah Olsen
This paper describes the use of Magnetic Force Microscopy (MFM) to investigate the domain structure of
different sintered SmCo alloys in a thermally demagnetized state, prepared with different processing routes.
Observations are made on surfaces perpendicular and parallel to the alignment axis (easy axis). Maze-like
magnetic domains and stripe magnetic domains are observed in the form of fine and coarse domains.
Interaction domains are formed depends on the material structure. The average domain width in both
directions is determined. The ratio of ϕ┴ to ϕ^(//) was found to be a good indicator for the magnetic
performance.
____________________________________________
Design of Electrical Machines with Compressed Windings
Mehmet Kulan, Nick Baker, James Widmer and Simon Lambert
Permanent magnet (PM) electrical machine drives offer significant advantages in terms of torque and power
density but there is still room for improvement, especially in increasing slot fill factor to achieve electrically
and thermally improved electric machines. Coil pressing is a method that bobbins can be compressed at high
pressures by using a punch and die to enhance the slot fill factor. In this research, deterioration of insulation
in compressed windings will be investigated by performing quasi-static explicit dynamics finite element
simulations and single stress model accelerated life tests. The results obtained from the proposed methods
will be further investigated experimentally to validate the durability of the compressed coils. A crankshaft
mounted integrated starter–generator (ISG) machine with pre-pressed stator bobbins is also designed and
optimised to verify the advantages of high slot fill factor on the overall machine performance considering
electromagnetic and thermal aspects, as a part of the research.
____________________________________________
Large air gap squirrel cage induction machine for a tidal turbine
Liam Naugher, Nick Baker and Glynn Atkinson
The project is to design an electrical generator for application as a tidal turbine. The existing design is of a
permanent magnet synchronous generator, which is manufactured by the company OpenHydro. Initially this
generator was optimised, and other generator topologies were investigated as alternatives. The results of the
optimised design are the benchmark for the comparison of the alternative topologies. The induction machine
was chosen for the alternative design due to its simple and robust construction, and the absence of rare earth
magnets. An analytical design method was created to provide the initial designs, and these designs were
validated using the software MotorSolve before the use of FEA to confirm the designs performance. These
designs were then manually optimised using the analytical design method. The design that fulfils the set
criteria will be constructed to scale for collection of experimental data for comparison to the simulated
results.
____________________________________________
An Electrical Machine with Integrated Drive Filter Components
Mohamed Mohamed
In active power converters supply current filtering is achieved using input filters which are responsible for
reducing switching frequency ripple and suppressing voltage transients. An input AC current filter is necessary
for grid-connected, three-phase active rectifiers supplying adjustable speed drives. Unfiltered these
converters would inject harmonic current distortion onto the supply current and hence inputAC filters are
used to mitigate these harmonics. In literature, it was shown that “LCL” filters offer optimum results in power
ranges up to hundreds of kilovolt-amperes.
In the context of an Integrated Drive (where the machine, power devices and passives are mechanically
packaged together in a single unit) this paper will present various options for the three larger filter inductors
(one per phase) to be integrated into a motor by sharing the same magnetic circuit producing a single
mechanically packaged unit without significant increase in loss and size which in turn achieves higher power
density.
____________________________________________
Online Health Monitoring for SiC MOSFET
Xiang Lu and Volker Pickert
Comparative simulation works have been done in regarding the TSEPs (Temperature Sensitive Electrical
Parameters) of both Si devices including MOSFET and IGBT and SiC MOSFET. The results show that traditional
TSEPs which work well for the Si devices are not quite suitable for the SiC MOSET. This is mainly because the
sensitivity of the TSEP of SiC MOSFET is too small to be detected in practical experiment and the shift of the
TSEP is not sufficient enough to tell the temperature change. Another difficulty is the dynamic response of
the SiC MOSFET is also hard to be observed due to the ultra-fast switching frequency while the device is more
vulnerable and sensitive to the parasitic components than the Si devices. In this letter, a new method has
been proposed to use signal injection to detect the degradation of the bond wire of SiC MOSFET.
____________________________________________
On the Identifiability of Steady State Induction Machine Models using External
Measurements
Ahmed Alturas, Shady Gadoue, Mohammed Elgendy and Bashar Zahawi
A common practice in induction machine parameter identification techniques is to use external
measurements of voltage, current, speed, and/or torque. Using this approach, it is possible to obtain an
infinite number of mathematical solutions representing the machine parameters. This paper examines the
identifiability of two commonly used induction machine models, namely the T-model and the inverse Γ-model.
A novel approach based on the Alternating Conditional Expectation algorithm is employed here for the first
time to study the identifiability of the two models. The results obtained from the proposed ACE algorithm
show that the parameters of the commonly employed T-model are un-identifiable, unlike the parameters of
the inverse Γ-model which are uniquely identifiable from external measurements. The identifiability analysis
results are experimentally verified using the measured operating characteristics of a 1.1 kW three-phase
induction machine in conjunction with the Levenberg-Marquardt (L-M) algorithm which is developed and
applied here for this purpose.
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Novel DC dtection method for Transformer-less Single Phase Grid Connected PV Inverter
Weichi Zhang, Matthew Armstrong and Mohammed Elgendy
Transformer-less, grid connected, photovoltaic inverter systems are becoming increasingly popular due to
their reduced volume and high efficiency performance. However, the potential risk of dc current injection
into the grid is of significant concern in such systems. Moreover, accurate determination of the dc current
content in the inverter output is particularly challenging. This is primarily because the very small dc signals
have to be extracted from much larger ac signals, and the measurements can be significantly influenced by
noise.
In the paper, a Mid-Grounded Low Pass Filter (MGLPF) circuit is proposed which will greatly step down the AC
voltage. Most importantly, the small DC component is fully remained in the meantime. A further Digital-CycleAverage (DCA) algorithm is then applied to accurately extract the DC voltage through inputting the step-down
signal in microprocessor. In the simulation, the proposed method shows advantages in both simplicity and
accuracy.
____________________________________________
Capacitor voltage estimation in Modular Multilevel Converters using an adaptive observer
Osama Abushafa, Shady Gadoue, Mohamed Dahidah and David Atkinson
Future power grid (i.e. smart grid) requires high power efficiency as well as low cost power suppliers to
customers. Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) suggested being a key element for future connection
between power plants and transmission lines because of its futures comparing with traditional converters.
Different application can be used for this converter; one of the most promising applications is a high voltage
direct current system (HVDC). However, the MMC has some challenges which need to be included in the
converter design. Examples of these challenges are: voltage capacitors imbalance, effect of circulating current
on the output signals and high number of mandatory sensors. This paper will focus mainly on how to minimise
some of voltage transducers. This work proposes a novel adaptive observer based on Kalman filter (KF) to
estimate the capacitor voltages of the MMC.
____________________________________________
Material property parameters for structural simulation model of electrical machines
Ruchao Pupadubsin, Andrew Steven, James Widmer and Barrie Mecrow
The accuracy of the structural simulation model is necessary for prediction of each dominant modal frequency
of stator vibration in electrical machines. The material properties such as mass density, Poisson's ratio and
Young's modulus play an important role of the modal frequencies in the machine structure as well as
mechanical shapes and dimensions. Because of changing the properties of material during manufacturing
process of the stator lamination core, and vanished windings, the Young's modulus of the stator lamination
core and coil winding is difficult to know the exact values. In contrast, the Young's modulus of solid component
parts as motor frame and end-covers can be found from manufacturing data sheet. In this paper, the
techniques for the Young's modulus estimation of the stator lamination core and coil winding were presented,
and a new semi-finite element technique has also been developed for calculation of the Young's modulus in
the lamination core.
____________________________________________
A cascaded transformer-based equalisation converter for series connected battery cells
Huaxia Zhan, Simon Lambert and Volker Pickert
Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) have increased in popularity since they use
rechargeable battery as energy source instead of petrol, furthermore, help to reduce the release of
greenhouse gases. Generally, for applications as an EV, a battery pack insists of hundreds even thousands of
batteries is needed to meet voltage and energy capacity requirements. However, every battery cell has unique
charging/discharging speed due to their chemical characteristics. This would lead to unbalanced voltage
during charging/discharging period among the battery pack, and cause over-charging/over-discharging for
certain cells. Therefore, an equalization circuit is quite essential in a battery charging system. This paper
proposes a new cascaded multi-winding transformer based equalization circuit, which compares to traditional
transformer-based circuits, the structure of transformer has been simplified and much more easier to
manufacture, besides, accelerate equalization speed at same time.
____________________________________________
Low Frequency AC Transmission System for Offshore Wind Farm
Jiankai Ma and Mohamed Dahidah
This presentation presents the implementation of Back-to-Back Modular Multilevel Converter in Low
Frequency AC Transmission System (LFAC) for offshore wind farm. The LFAC has been compared with other
conventional transmission systems, DC and 50Hz AC. The Back-to-Back MMC with half-bridge structure and
N+1 topology has been simulated in Matlab. The performance of voltage balancing control in Back-to-Back
MMC is studied in steady state, simulation results shows that is highly fast and accurate. As the ultimate goal
is to control the power exchanges between two AC grids, it is important to monitor the active and reactive
power of the AC grid at each end in LFAC system. In Matlab, by collecting the values of the AC side voltage
and DC voltage, it is possible to derive the required controlling signals by using PI controllers. Tuning PI is time
consuming but the results illustrated that the system responses quickly and stable.
µSystems
Presentations
____________________________________________
An FPGA implementation of a wavelet based seizure detection filter for real time close loop
epileptic seizure suppression
Lijuan Xia and Patrick Degenaar
An implantable low power PCB Board design based on flash FPGA has been proposed for epileptic seizure
detection in this paper. It is a part of the close loop wearable epilepsy treatment prosthesis which triggers
optogenetic stimulus to suppress epileptic seizures with halorhodopsin. The proposed PCB Board design
consists a pre-amplifier, ADC module, and wavelet filter and threshold detection module. A mathematical
model of this proposed wavelet-filter seizure detection algorithm has been validated by matlab and a VHDL
design has been implemented in flash FPGA ProASIC3 Starter kit. The proposed detector has been tested by
using cortex Local field potential recording from rats with drug-resistant epilepsy ( ). An average detection
delay of 900ms is achieved with a sensitivity of 96% and specificity of 93%.
____________________________________________
An Event-Driven Asynchronous Level-Crossing ADC Based on Charge to Digital Conversion
Austin Juma, Oyinkuro Benafa, Patrick Degenaar and Alex Yakovlev
We proposes an event driven asynchronous Level Crossing ADC, based on Charge to Digital conversion that
exhibits a power consumption profile proportional to its input signal’s rate of change. The ADC utilizes a fixed
voltage window, level crossing slope detector to trigger a local Charge to Digital converter that samples and
converts the input signal at a non-uniform rate. The circuit was realized and simulated in a 0.35um technology
process, achieving a SNDR of 41.26dB while consuming 48.6uW for a 2kHz pure sine-wave input.
____________________________________________
Wireless Data and Power Transfer of an Optogenetic Implantable Visual Cortex Stimulator
Nabeel Fattah, Patrick Degenaar, Graeme Chester and Danil Sokolov
In this paper, the wireless data and power transfer for a novel optogenetic visual cortex implant system was
demonstrated by using pork tissue mimic in-vitro at the ISM 2.4 GHz and 13.5 MHz frequency band
respectively. The observed data rate was 120 kbps with no loss in data for up to a thickness of 35 mm in both
water & pork. To increase the power level of the implant a Class E power amplifier is separately designed and
simulated for the transmitter end and has an output power of around 223 mW with an efficiency of 81.83%.
The transferred power at the receiver was measured to be 66.80 mW for the pork tissue medium considering
a distance of 5 mm between the transmitter and the receiver coils, with a coupling coefficient of ~0.8. This
serves the power requirement of the visual cortex implant.
____________________________________________
Towards a Systematic and Automated Approach in the Design of Processor Instruction Sets
Alessandro de Gennaro and Paulius Stankaitis
Adopting a systematic approach for the design of a processor instruction set is instrumental for tackling the
complexity, which rules most of modern processors.
We present a tool-chain which follows the designer through all the phases of the design, from the
specification of instructions to the hardware synthesis of a microcontroller. The flow is also meant to simplify
the understanding of the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) reference manuals. Often, these documents are
semi-formal, hard to read and fully understand. We believe that designers will benefit from a visual graphbased model, automatically derived from the ISA specification, and customisable to fit different needs. Some
of the tools have already been developed and tested on ARMv6-M architecture, others yet need to be
fully implemented.
The design flow will be integrated inside the Workcraft framework. We also compare
the presented approach with the others available in the literature.
____________________________________________
Wideband Dynamic Voltage Sensing Mechanism for EH Systems
Kaiyuan Gao, Yuqing Xu, Delong Shang, Fei Xia and Alex Yakovlev
In Energy Harvesting (EH) scenarios, the 'survival zone' pertains to the state of power supply with insufficient
energy to provide a nominal and stable Vdd. In this situation the system Vdd tends to be low and to vary over
a wide band. Benefits can be had if the system can already function to some degree under survival zone
conditions. Such functionalities may include providing control to improve the efficiency of power processing
units and starting the computation load for light but crucial survival-related tasks. Knowledge of the Vdd is
often indispensable for running these types of survival zone functionalities. A novel low-power voltage
sensing scheme for EH based electronic systems is proposed to function in the survival zone to provide this
vital Vdd information. The method is derived by combining voltage controlled delays and simple circuits to
implement time comparison.
____________________________________________
Study of Power-Aware Performance Adaptation in Embedded Heterogeneous Multi-Core
Systems
Ali Aalsaud, Rishad Shafik, Fei Xia and Alex Yakovlev
Modern embedded systems consist of heterogeneous computing resources with diverse energy and
performance tradeoffs. This is because applications with varying workloads exercise the underlying hardware
resources differently. As a result, determining the most energy-efficient system configuration (i.e. the number
of parallel threads, the operating frequencies, etc.) tailored for each kind of workload (CPU- or memoryintensive or both) is extremely challenging. In this paper, a comprehensive study is carrying out to investigate
the trade-offs under different system configurations using an Odroid XU-3 heterogeneous platform with a
number of PARSEC benchmark applications. To effectively determine energy-efficiency, a power normalized
performance metric is used, expressed in terms of instructions per second (IPS) per unit power (watt). Using
this metric, we show that with increasing number of threads CPU-intensive applications show higher IPS/watt
compared to memory-intensive applications. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that increasing frequency
affects to CPU performance normalized power.
____________________________________________
Investigation into Power Normalised Speedup Models for Energy-Efficient Many-Core
Computing
Mohammed Al-Hayanni, Fie Xia, Alex Yakovlev and Rishad Shafik
Continued technology scaling has enabled seamless integration of many interconnected cores on a single
silicon chip. The emergence of such integration has facilitated unprecedented performance improvement,
which has been defined by a number of speedup models. Amdahl’s law is a major speedup model that
estimates the maximum performance improvement (in terms of latency) with fixed workloads in parallel and
serial parts. Following Amdahl’s law, a number of variant models have also been proposed over the years.
Among these Gustafson’s law is a popular model that introduces variable workloads and estimates fixed time
speedup (in terms of throughput). Sun and Li combined the above two models into one considering the
memory-bounded situation with variable workloads. These models are further extended by the Hill-Marty
model through considerations of homogenous and heterogeneous core configurations. This paper
investigates into these models and comparatively analyses them through novel insights using a power
normalised performance metric for both homogenous and heterogeneous configurations. A comprehensive
analysis is carried out with different ratios of parallel and sequential workloads to identify the most energyefficient system configuration based on these models.
____________________________________________
Compositional design of asynchronous circuits from behavioural concepts
Jonny Beaumont, Andrey Mokhov, Danil Sokolov and Alex Yakovlev
Asynchronous circuits can be useful in many applications, however, they are yet to be widely used in industry.
The main reason for this is a steep learning curve for concurrency models, such Signal Transition Graphs, that
are developed by the academic community for specification and synthesis of asynchronous circuits. In this
paper we introduce a compositional design flow for asynchronous circuits using concepts – a set of formalised
descriptions for system requirements. Our aim is to simplify the process of capturing system requirements in
the form of a formal specification, and promote the concepts as a means for design reuse. The proposed
design flow is applied to the development of an asynchronous buck converter.
____________________________________________
ASCA: Approximate adder with speculated parts and configurable accuracy
Khaled Al-Maaitah
Approximate computing is an emerging paradigm that exploits the error tolerance in some application like
Multimedia and data mining for more efficiency in terms of speed, area and energy. However, the key
challenge is how to trade off gracefully the power and accuracy in order to keep accepted outputs. On the
other hand, speculation methods are used in main arithmetic units like adders and multipliers to produce high
speed designs by speculating carry-in values; however, these designs propose rare probability of error
occurrence. In this paper, a new hybrid adder’s design is proposed, which shows new techniques for
segmentation and carry in prediction combined with light weight error detection and correction (EDC) circuit.
In addition, a novel technique for controlling the adder accuracy is proposed using related speculative adder
signals within each segmented block; this technique uses the correlation of distribution of error and a group
of significant bits in input data. Simulation results show speed increasing, reduction of power consumption
with lower overhead of area.
____________________________________________
Design interconnects driver in ultra-low power
Mohammed Al-Daloo, Alex Yakovlev and Charalampos Tsimenidis
For many years ago the power was neglected and the main concentrated on performance, cost, area and
reliability, but this change by emerging applications demands low power and not a high performance. These
applications require less weight, longer energy source life, and no cooling system. Since reduce power
consumption could achieve that the trend to have circuits have ultra-low power budget is seemed to be the
solution.
Therefore, proposed work has focused on a particular type of interconnect drivers based on voltage boosting
(via charge pumping) technique to drive a long interconnect under the ULP regime using subthreshold. The
bootstrap driver consists of two stages, the first one is a normal driver with PMOS and NMOS transistors that
are derived by the enhancing voltage circuit (stage 2) which is duty to generate a voltage, theoretically, from
-Vdd for pulling up to 2Vdd for pulling down.
____________________________________________
Low Power Capacitance to Digital Conversion
Yuqing Xu, Delong Shang, Kaiyuan Gao, Fei Xia and Alex Yakovlev
Capacitance sensors are widely used for sensing physical parameters. Conventional capacitance to digital
methods use complex analog ADC techniques which are power hungry. Recently a fully digital solution was
proposed with improved power consumption. This paper describes a number of problems in that solution,
analyzes these problems, and proposes a new design free of these problems. The new method achieves the
same accuracy with less than half the circuit size, and 17% and 35% savings on power and energy
consumption.
____________________________________________
A Workflow for the Design of Mixed-signal Systems with Asynchronous Control
Vladimir Dubikhin, Andrew Fisher, Danil Sokolov, Chris Myers and Alex Yakovlev
While numerous tools have been developed for automation and verification of digital design, analogue tool
development has not kept pace. To cope with this problem analogue designers have turned to using digital
alternatives whenever possible. Existing methods for digital design are based on synchronous circuits, which
results in suboptimal solutions for mixed-signal systems. Asynchronous circuits can provide greater
robustness, reactivity, and power efficiency, however, due to the lack of necessary computer-aided design
tools, engineers have to rely on ad hoc development approaches and use extensive simulation to prove
correctness of their designs.
Recent research has addressed both problems in the design of analogue/mixed-signal(AMS) systems. The tool
WORKCRAFT aims to provide formal methods for specification and synthesis of asynchronous circuits. Formal
verification of AMS circuits is performed by the tool LEMA. This paper describes a workflow that leverages
both of these tools to design mixed-signal circuits with asynchronous digital control.
____________________________________________
Analytical technique to assess digital circuit reliability
Mohamed Abufalgha, Alex Bystrov and Alex Yakovlev
Reliability of integrated circuits and energy consumption is considered as a critical challenge facing the chip
designers. In nanotechnology design, circuit reliability becomes main part in the trade-off concept. Reliability,
energy consumption, and performance trade-off has been studied in this paper, which considered as a next
step of Performance and voltage Dynamic scaling. We introduced analytical method to evaluate the reliability
of a circuit, and how the reliability improves according to the change of supply voltage, operating frequency,
and energy consumption. It is a different method from the previous methods, where Monte Carlo simulation
software has been used. The relation between the reliability and the position of the neutron strike is studied
to find the effect of attenuation on the generated glitch. The proposed method has been applied on a chain
of inverters, which is considered as a single path circuit.
____________________________________________
Initial ideas about significance-driven approximate multiplication
Issa Qiqieh
There has been an increasing interest in approximate computing to exploit the inherent resilience in a broad
spectrum of hardware implementations by relaxing the need for completely precise or totally deterministic
operations. Therefore, approximate computing trades off output quality for achieving much lower power
consumption, shorter run times, and often smaller area than their exact equivalents. In this paper, we
describe approaches and results in our work on approximate arithmetic. We propose a new significancedriven multiplier architecture for error-resilient designs. Since our aim is to make approximate multiplier fast,
we present a novel Carry-in Prediction Logic that significantly reduces the horizontal critical path. The
proposed multiplication reduces the latency and increases the throughput of an accurate multiplier. Our
design is based on a new algorithm for approximate multiplication where an efficient precomputation logic is
employed to increase its throughput in conjunction with allowing greater pipeline level parallelism.
Emerging Technology and Materials
Presentations
____________________________________________
FABRICATION AND CHARACTERISATION OF 4H-SiC SCHOTTKY DIODE FOR
HIGH VOLTAGE TESTING
Nurul Mohamed, Nick Wright and Alton Horsfall
There is increasing interest in the development of radiation hard detector materials with the capability to
discriminate between different types of radiation. Since high-energy radiation and low-charged particles stop
at higher range in detector material, high bias voltage is required to increase the depletion region width.
Characteristics of different Schottky contact areas have been analysed using Cheung’s method prior to high
voltage testing. The values of series resistance, RS obtained from two different plots agree within 5.5% and
scales with contact area. Annealing Ti/Ni metal contacts at 660°C/700°C resulted in the formation of nickel
silicide with barrier heights, Φb in the range of 1.14-1.75eV and ideality factor, n values between 1.0-1.5. The
breakdown voltage of the diodes exceeded the depletion voltage of the epilayer and electrical characteristics
at room temperature demonstrate leakage currents as low as 0.4pA (-200V). Therefore, these devices are
ideally suited for the realisation of radiation detectors.
____________________________________________
Plasmon activated hot carrier emssion for ohmic contacts to n-type germanium
Srinivas Ganti, Peter King and Anthony O'Neill
This paper presents a unique contact materials system that enables surface plasmon modes to provoke hot
carrier emission. Ohmic transport is demonstrated on low doped n-type germanium. Evidence of Zener
breakdown is also reported at ~ -0.6 V in the reverse bias at room temperature. Cryogenic I-V data shows that
this breakdown onsets at even smaller voltages at liquid nitrogen temperatures in the reverse bias; enabling
the use of germanium based CMOS technology in harsh environments.
____________________________________________
Blue-shifted Optical Properties of Porous SiC Prepared by Anodic Electrochemical Etching
and Ultrasonication of 4H-SiC Substrate
Marzaini Rashid, Benjamin Horrocks, Noel Healy, Jonathon Goss and Alton Horsfall
Bulk silicon carbide (SiC) has been known as a technologically important material for applications in extreme
environments owing to its high radiation and chemical tolerance, high thermal conductivity and high critical
electric field. Despite its superior properties, SiC in its bulk form is an indirect bandgap material similar to
silicon. Room temperature emission in porous Si (P-Si) has initiated interest in porous SiC (P-SiC). The large
surface area and enhanced optical properties of P-SiC have found use in preparing SiC quantum dots with
potential application as biomarkers, high temperature resistant gas sensors and ultraviolet photodetectors.
In this work, bulk n-type 4H-SiC substrate was anodically etched in HF/ethanol solution followed by
sonication. Characterisation by x-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM),
photoluminescence (PL), ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-ViS) and Raman spectroscopy showed enhanced
and blue-shifted optical properties of crystalline P-SiC that are promising for use in novel optoelectronic
applications.
____________________________________________
Impact of interstitial iron at extended defects on silicon solar cell performance
Oras Al-Ani, Jonathan Goss, Nick Cowern, Patrick Briddon and Mark Rayson
First-principles quantum-chemical simulations are combined with TCAD device modelling to examine the
silicon properties with the EDs before and after segregating iron atom impurities, as an attempt to balance
interoperation of the advantageous and disadvantageous properties of these defects and impurities on the
performance of solar cells.
The optical absorption and carrier generation are considered as function of iron concentration. Segregation
of diffusing iron at these EDs has a clear impact on device characteristics, but non-radiative recombination
processes and carrier traps due to iron have potential impact on device efficiency at these regions. The results
show that Fe-impurity has trivial impact on the open-circuit voltage and short-circuit current of solar cell.
However, it significantly influence the fill factor by adding series resistance, which in turn degrade the
efficiency.
____________________________________________
A First Principles Study Of The Vacancy-Hydrogen Defect In Diamond
Chloe Peaker
Diamond is well known for its superlative properties, for example its high carrier mobilities (µe=4500cm2V1s-1 cf. Si µe=1450cm2V-1s-1) which are desirable for fast-response and high-frequency electronic devices.
Diamonds high thermal conductivity of 24Wcm-1K-1 (cf. Si=1.5Wcm-1K-1) can also be utilised to out-perform
conventional materials in areas such as power-electronics, where large amounts of heat are generated.
Defects may be introduced accidentally or intentionally during the manufacturing process of diamond and
they are found in natural diamond too. As defects influence the electrical and optical properties, it is
imperative to gain an understanding of their properties in order to successfully exploit the material.
Synthetic diamond grown from the gas phase is known to incorporate both hydrogen and lattice defects. One
example of a grown-in defect is the vacancy-hydrogen complex which compensates donors. The aim of the
project is to employ density-functional theory, to accurately determine experimentally observable properties
of the vacancy-hydrogen defect.
____________________________________________
Analysis of embedded nickel nanoparticles (NiNP)
Sherko Ghaderi, Sarah Olsen and Lidija Siller
Nickel nanoparticles (NiNP) embedded in silica aerogels has a variety of applications including
thermoelectrics, carbon capture and surface enhancement techniques of Raman spectroscopy. In this paper
the impact of the density of NiNP on the key parameters affecting thermoelectric properties are
characterised. In particular, the thermal conductivity and electrical conductivity are analysed as the density
of NiNP is increased from 0 to 700ppm. We have used scanning thermal microscopy (SThM) to examine the
thermal conductivity and four-probe techniques to measure electrical conductivity of the bulk silica aerogel
embedded with NiNP. Initial results suggest that utilising an increased density of NiNP could yield promising
thermoelectric properties, as the conductivity is shown to increase with NP density while the thermal
conductivity remains constant.
Abstracts
____________________________________________
Communications, Sensors, Signal & Information Processing
Poster
____________________________________________
Distributed Alamouti Relay Network Using Space Time Code
Fahad Alsifinay
Cooperative communications allow improving the capacity and/or expanding the coverage of wireless
communication networks. Distributed space time code consists in using space time coding in cooperative
relay networks. In this work, we compare the point-to-point and distributed Alamouti schemes in terms of
error probability. In particular, we provide the signal model and describe the Alamouti scheme for both pointto-point and cooperative communications. We assume amplify-and-forward relaying protocol and half-duplex
transmission mode. Simulation results show that both schemes achieve full diversity. However, the point-topoint Alamouti scheme provides better error probability compared to its distributed counterpart.
____________________________________________
Image Retrieval Using Artificial Intelligence Methods
Hayfaa Hussein, Jonathon Chambers and Mohsen Naqvi
In this work we will focus upon content-based image retrieval systems particularly containing facial
expressions. Content-based image retrieval systems play a significant role in many application areas such as
satellite images data, diagnostic images data, video content and general consumer use. There is an imperative
demand for a system based on the image content to store spontaneous images efficiently and provide faster
retrieval. Initially, image enhancement will be studied to improve the quality of a face image. In addition, this
work proposes two approaches for analysis: first, spontaneous facial expression will be investigated in term
of segmentation and feature extraction effectively to describe expressions. Second, facial recognition
methods will be applied to publically available data sets such as the Jaffe database. Finally, facial expression
exploiting eigenfaces using by PCA (principle component analysis) will be studied. The aim will be to enhance
the state-of-the-art in the field.
____________________________________________
Multimodal Behavioural Signal Processing With Application in Assisted Living
Zeyu Fu, Jonathon Chambers and Mohsen Naqvi
This project will focus upon the design, development and analysis of new algorithmic solutions for processing
multimodal signals to aid in assisted living. It is effectively combining audio and visual information to perform
human tracking in an enclosed environment. Multimodal tracking could be part of a system to monitor the
wellbeing of both an elderly person and a carer, having the advantage that only ambient sensors are employed
thereby not encumbering an individual with wearable devices.It is necessary to investigate the established
single modality tracking schemes such as Kalman filtering, extended Kalman filtering, together with particle
and probability hypothesis density (PHD) filtering. Further research will concentrate on the Multimodal and
Multi-Target tracking, aiming to solve the challenging problems of Non-linearity model, Non-Gaussian
distribution and the occlusion and varying lighting conditions in home environment. Tracking performance
will be examined by using objective performance measures and suitability for real-time processing.
____________________________________________
Cyclic Prefix-Based Relay Selection for Alamouti OFDM Amplify-and-Forward Relay
Network
Mahmoud Alageli, Jonathon Chambers and Aissa Ikhlef
In this work, we investigate relay selection in asynchronous multi-relay network for frequency selective
channels. We consider distributed Alamouti space-time coding and amplify-and-forward relaying, where
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is implemented with adaptive cyclic prefix (CP) to deal
with the channels frequency selectivity and timing errors. Optimal and suboptimal relay selection and joint
relay-subcarrier selection schemes have been proposed based on two selection criteria. The first criterion
uses the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the second one uses the effective capacity which is a
function of both the SNR and the CP. Simulation results reveal that the optimal relay selection based on
effective capacity performs better in terms of outage performance compared to the selection when
considering the SNR alone. Furthermore, for joint relay-subcarrier selection, it is shown that no significant
improvement is attained by using the criterion based on the effective capacity compared to that based on
SNR.
____________________________________________
Multimodal Processing Based Algorithms for Applications in Healthcare Systems
Yang Sun, Mohsen Naqvi and Jonathon Chambers
Providing the assisted living systems within smart home environments for growing elder population will be
one of the future challenges. Multimodal signal and information processing can provide robust solutions to
the problem. In this work, audio-video modalities will be exploited for automatic fall detection systems. This
research will be in algorithmic prospective and major focus will be on audio processing. In a home
environment, there could be different type of audio signals from people, television, etc. The observed audio
signals will be mixed with noise. Blind source separation (BSS) is one of the significant methods by the signal
processing community to separate the mixed signals. The methods in BSS are mainly based on statistical signal
processing. Robust solutions to separate the sources at relatively large reverberation time (RT60) are still
missing; which is the immediate target of the research. The proposed algorithms will be evaluated on real
data sets.
____________________________________________
Novel Cooperative Wireless Sensor Networks for Structural Health Monitoring
Chaoqing Tang and Guiyun Tian
This research aims to find secure, reliable, high speed and low energy consumption communication solution
for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). New lightweight encryption method or physical layer solution will be
adopted to increase security performance, and novel virtual muti-input multi-output scheme aiming at
increasing the channel capacity and compressing the energy consumption will be proposed. Meanwhile, this
research will apply methods like compressive sensing and optimization theory to remove redundant data,
thus cutting down transmitting overhead and improving the system energy efficiency. The proposed scheme
will verified by both prototype system and computer simulation. The fruits of this project can offer a more
reliable solution for problems such as the data loss, security concern and low transmitting rate of WSN in
wireless monitoring systems.
____________________________________________
Security protocols for monitoring system based on The Internet of Things
Yachao Ran and Guiyun Tian
The Internet of Things (IoT) utilizes series of techniques to connect smart objects or "things" together. The
concept of IoT involves information gathering, data transmission, data storage and processing which all
requires security solutions. The research studies in reviews of cryptography, security protocols and
approaches, implementation and applications of IoT and aims to identify challenge and novelty. Deliver a
system or protocol with novelty to resolve remaining security issues such as anonymous, privacy and
authentication.Methodology involves cryptography algorithms such as ECC, symmetric algorithms such as
AES. As communication security combine with resource limitation is one of the major concern of IoT systems,
the outcomes of the research include providing optimized protocol to withstand series of attacks,and security
solutions to certain IoT monitoring architectures with relative low energy consumption.
____________________________________________
Enhancing Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducer (EMAT) for Pipeline Non-destructive
Testing
Denis Ijike Ona and Gui Yun Tian
The performance of Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducer (EMAT) in long-range Non-destructive Testing as
compared to other sensing techniques calls for its development for pipeline inspection. The magnetostrictive
Patch transducer (MPT) type of EMAT is capable of generating high powered torsional wave modes which is
difficult or cost-ineffective with other sensing systems. However, MPT has challenges of generating high
frequency waves at megahertz frequencies and of providing uniform Magnetic field in the patch. This study
proposes the enhancement of the MPT by development of Coil configuration techniques and parameter
optimisation to compensate for the challenges of MPT while keeping its capabilities.
____________________________________________
Physical layer security with error-correcting codes
Huan Cao and Martin Johnston
As wireless networks play an extremely important role in civil and military networks, security has become an
important topic. Most widely used security methods are at the upper layers of a wireless network, but an
alternative method of ensuring secure communication is physical layer security, which is a hot topic. The
primary aim of physical layer security is to ensure that confidential messages can be transmitted through the
wireless medium without being intercepted by eavesdroppers. It has recently been shown that errorcorrecting codes play an important role in physical layer security and in this project, the design of binary and
non-binary codes with physical layer security will be investigated for a variety of different channel models
comprising legitimate users and eavesdroppers to strengthen the security of wireless communications.
____________________________________________
XG-FAST: Evolving the Copper Access
Israa Ali, Charalampos Tsimenidis and Martin Johnston
Recently, the fourth generation broadband technology (4GBB), abbreviated as G.fast, demonstrated data rate
up to 1 Gbps over length loop up to 250 meters. XG-FAST dubbed fifth generation broadband technology is
currently finalized by ITU to succeed G.fast. This technology aims to increase bit rate to 10 Gbps over shorten
copper length loop up to 30 meters.
This PhD project will focus on the concept of XG-FAST technology by utilizing bonding and phantom
transmission modes over short loop lengths up to 30 meters and multiple copper twisted-pair cables. XGFAST uses an increased frequency range, up to 500 MHz with DMT modulation and concatenated ReedSolomon (RS) code and trellis code modulation for forward error correction with an interleaver in between.
Vectoring techniques will also be considered to mitigate cross-talk cancellation and improve throughput along
with state-of-the-art channel coding methods.
____________________________________________
Transceiver Framework for Ultra Low Energy Communications
Ahmad Abdulfattah
The remote monitoring of human body functionalities has emerged rapidly in recent years due to the
limitations of hospital resources. Recent advances suggest the Body Sensor Nodes (BSNs) to be one of the
solutions in healthcare domain. BSNs enable continuous monitoring which can support medical personnel to
prevent and diagnose the illnesses such as heart attack. However, BSNs need continuous power sources to
maintain efficient and long-term monitoring. Therefore, conventional batteries are not feasible for such
applications due to their fast energy decay and short lifespan. Due to these limitations, there is an increased
need for energy harvesting techniques to power the body sensor nodes with long-term energy. In this
research, a transceiver framework design is proposed and will be verified for ultra-low energy
communication. New chirp-based modulations schemes will be designed under the assumption of nonconstant power supply voltage operation and their performance will be evaluated using hardware
implementations.
____________________________________________
Software defined radio employing a multi-sensor data fusion approach for safe and secure
vehicle-to-vehicle communications
Jiachen Yin, Rajesh Tiwari and Martin Johnston
The major objectives of efficient intelligent traffic systems (ITS) are to improve road users’ safety
and ease traffic congestion. One of the important parameters for efficient ITS, is to establish
communication between vehicles (V2V), infrastructures (V2I) or any other device (V2X). In order
to avoid accidents, the vehicle’s precise position information needs to be shared with other vehicles
within a stringent time and distance. Precise positioning information is critically important to
identify each vehicle’s location in order to avoid vehicular collision.
In this study, we discuss the effects of signal blockage or multipath fading on radio propagation
which degrades the positional information. To mitigate these conditions, a data fusion solution
combining a GPS software receiver, inertial navigation system (INS) LiDAR sensors and a Wi-Fi
receiver will be developed in order to improve the localization for weak GPS signal strength or
completer loss of GPS lock.
Electrical Power
Poster
____________________________________________
Incorporating Asset Management into Power System Operations
Ilias Sarantakos, Pádraig Lyons and Phil Taylor
The privatization of the UK electrical power industry in recent years and ageing power equipment in
distribution networks have pushed utilities to consider more effective use of their financial resources. That
means that the utility companies have to find an optimum balance between their capital as well as operational
expenditure and quality of supply. Reducing costs while preserving high network reliability has become much
harder nowadays due to increased renewable and distributed generation (DG) along with their associated
power output variability and the increasingly old power system components. At present, the situation is that
power system operations and asset management actions do not take into account each other. All the
aforementioned aspects indicate the significance of coordinating asset management and real-time
operations. This research work will try to bring together these two fields in order to achieve a better outcome
on the balance between cost and supply quality.
____________________________________________
Coordinated Control of Hybrid Energy Storage Systems at Distribution Networks
Stalin Munoz, Haris Patsios and Phil Taylor
Energy storage within the smart grid concept might be considered as an attractive way for addressing the
operational challenges of the grid caused by the continuous growth of energy demand and the increasing
penetration of renewables [1, 2, 3]. There are many different types of energy storage devices with a wide
range of characteristics and constraints regarding energy capacity, response time and power output. Hybrid
systems comprising of two or more energy storage technologies have the potential of combining the
individual advantages of different storage devices without presenting any of their drawbacks [4]. The ongoing
research will come up with coordinated control techniques for optimizing the operation of grid-connected
hybrid systems and expand the number of services that can be provided to the grid. These control techniques
will consider multiple objectives (such as peak shaving and frequency control), multiple stakeholders and
multiple constraints (e.g. aging).
____________________________________________
Power System Research for improved life and performance
David Mecrow, Glynn Atkinson and Matthew Armstrong
One major concern when buying a product is its usable life and the length of the manufacturer's warranty.
Due to the extended high speed operation of Dyson machines, the first failure point is most often the
bearings. Various methods of decreasing the wear on the bearings as well as more durable or wear tolerant
bearings will be discussed. Integration of the new bearing systems into the existing products will be
considered, along with the management and optimisation of cost and effective life increase. Any new system
must meet the dynamic requirements of the intended products to ensure safe operation and that product
quality is not compromised. The benefits and suitability of ceramic rolling element bearings, fluid bearings,
magnetic bearings and others will be analysed and compared to provide a general, cost effective solution for
increasing the life span of all Dyson products.
____________________________________________
Transverse flux machines for multi mega watt renewable energy generation
Mohammad Raihan
Renewable energy converters for wind and wave energy place very specific and unique requirements on
electrical generators. Their lower speed of operation has led to the inclusion of gearboxes to step up the
speed. Gearboxes have the undesirable maintenance requirement that creates growing trend for direct drive
motors. Several commercially available wind turbines use direct drive surface mounted PM machines with a
high magnet mass – which has economic and constructional implications. Increasing generator radius is one
method of reducing the magnet mass, but constructional worries become worse. Alternative method is
replacing conventional electrical machines and investigate transverse flux machines which has superior
torque and power density. Whilst theoretically very attractive, the transverse flux machine has unique
structure which may be difficult to assemble at full scale. This thesis will use analytical and simulation
techniques to investigate the design and build a transverse flux machines for multi-megawatt renewable
energy generation.
____________________________________________
Research on heat dissipation and cooling system of permanet magnet synchronous machines
Yaohui Gai, James Widmer and Mohammad Kimiabeigi
Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) will inevitably lead to poor thermal environment heat
production or more problem due to its high power, high speed but small installation space. The high
temperature of motor will cause a hidden damage in the electric vehicles. In order to avoid such problems.
To accurately predict the internal motor temperature distribution to ensure the safe operation of motor
stability is very important. The research contents are about influencing factors of loss, reduce loss method,
the key issues about loss of in-wheel motor, how driving part influences loss. Cooling pattern design,
correction about water-cooled heat release coefficient correction, winding equivalent model. The factors
influencing temperature field simulation, the temperature distribution of PMSM under different conditions.
The motor also be cooling under different coolants, for example oil or hybrid water / air approaches. The
analysis of heat transfer through computational fluid dynamics.
____________________________________________
Fault torlerant induction machine
Fangbo Liu, Barrie Mecrow and Richard Martin
Induction machines are the commonest form of electrical machine and are used for a large variety of traction
and industrial applications. There are an increasing number of cases in which very high reliability of the
machine and associated power converter is required. For this reason the introduction of fault tolerance is
necessary. Fault tolerance in permanent magnet and reluctance machines has been extensively explored, but
there has been far less attention to induction motors in this context. The commonest manner in which fault
tolerance can be introduced is by splitting the machine into a series of circumferential segments, with each
isolated magnetically and electrically from its neighbours. Induction machines pose particular problems,
including coupling of adjacent segments through the rotor; and large impact upon performance due to
discontinuities in the magnetic field. This work is examining how fault tolerance can be successfully
introduced to induction motors for the first time.
____________________________________________
Fault Tolerant Power Steering Systems
Barrie Mecrow and Ari Al-Jaf
Driverless vehicles are likely to become mainstream alternatives to conventional vehicles over the next 20
years. The biggest barrier to overcome is that of safety. Very high levels of reliability are needed because
there is no immediate backup from a human driver. Central to this is the need for very high reliability in the
steering mechanism. In this work, sponsored by ZF TRW, an interior permanent magnet motor is investigated
to ascertain its ability to survive faults. Different connection mechanisms and winding arrangements are
investigated for an existing motor that is designed by ZF TRW. It is shown that some winding connections
create better fault tolerant capability, due to reduced mutual coupling between coils, however account must
also be taken of any degradation of torque quality resulting from increased torque ripple following faults.
____________________________________________
Lifetime enhancement for power electronic devices
Yerasimos Yerasimou
Power semiconductor devices suffer from thermo-mechanical stress that consequently leads to faults such as
bond wire lift-off or solder joint fatigue. These failures are generated by the different expansions of the
materials that construct a power module. That is, because each material has its own thermal expansion
coefficient (CTE) and each material experiences fluctuating temperatures caused by the chip losses. In order
to reduce the mechanical stress the temperature of the power chip should be kept constant. This project is
developing a technique how to achieve a constant chip temperature by actively cooling the baseplate of the
power module. A new unique active cooling adapter has been developed and is presented here. Results show
that the lifetime of the power module can be increased by a factor of 2.
____________________________________________
Design of an adaptive proportional multi resonant controller for grid connected PV inverter
systems
Hamza Khalfalla
The proportional resonant controller (PR) implemented in PV grid connected PV inverter systems is known of
its advantageous over the conventional proportional integral (PI) controller when regulating sinusoidal
waveforms. These advantages are highlighted because PR controller provides an infinite gain at the
fundamental frequency so the steady state error can be eliminated. Another advantage is the possibility of
cascading a low order harmonic compensation (HC) without affecting the system dynamics. However, certain
drawbacks are associated with PR+HC controller like the sensitivity to grid operating condition such as
frequency and grid impedance variation. This poster discusses the design of an adaptive PR controller to
improve the controller performance under such variation by exploiting the grid information into the controller
design. The proposed solution makes the use of the grid information for controller tuning.
µSystems
Poster
____________________________________________
A Scalability Analysis of Embedded System Applications
Dave Burke and Rishad Shafik
As an introduction to a research project investigating the structure of future designs for the Internet of Things
(IoT), it was decided to investigate and categorise existing designs, score their Device Technology makeup and
give an indication of scores for Power consumption, Performance and Reliability. During this analysis further
parameters were added to show Maintainability, Sustainability and Relative Lifetime Cost. The results of this
analysis will be presented.
____________________________________________
Energy Efficiency and Scalability Analyses of Concurrent Applications in Linux-based
Multicore Systems
Matthew Travers, Rishad Shafik, Fei Xia and Alex Yakovlev
Modern multicore operating systems, such as Linux, typically execute a number of parallel applications
concurrently. These applications are characterised by their variations in the way they exercise the
computation and memory resources. This paper aims to investigate the impact of such variations on the
overall energy consumption and performance trade-offs. To analyse the trade-offs, three benchmark
applications have been chosen with different characteristics - memory intensive, CPU intensive and a mixture
of both. These applications are concurrently executed with varied combinations with an aim to also identify
the scalability of the system in terms of the number of concurrent applications executed within a given power
budget. Underpinning this study, a scalable and energy-efficient concurrency model will be developed for
current and future generations of multicore systems.
____________________________________________
Physical Unclonable Function cryptocore for Internet of Things applications
Konstantinos Goutsos
Embedded devices in various forms are increasingly becoming parts of everyday life, constituting the Internet
of Things(IoT). As IoT applications are beginning to gather and process critical data, the rising importance of
the security of such networks is evident. Physical Unclonable Functions(PUF) provide a cost-efficient and
highly secure way to enhance many security aspects of embedded devices, including uniquely identifying a
device, generating and storing cryptography keys and secure storage. The main aim of this project is to
develop methods and perform case studies for using PUFs in IoT scenarios and enhancing device
identification, secure enrollment and other security functions while requiring minimal configuration which
can be provided out-of-box by the manufacturer. The development of a demonstration application will also
be undertaken and a strong relationship with commercial products and platforms will be built, including the
open-source IoT platform DeviceHive.
____________________________________________
Enhancing SRAM Physically Unclonable Functions by Embracing Metastability and
Stochastic Analysis
Michael Walker and Alex Bystrov
The infrastructure of embedded devices is ever-growing and our dependence upon them is ever-increasing.
However, electronic devices are vulnerable to many security threats and strengthened cryptographic
primitives provide increased security, especially in the areas of anti-counterfeiting and key management.
Physically Unclonable Functions are a topic of active research, analogous to fingerprints for electronics.
They potentially offer low-cost, automated provision of authentication and key generation. One type, the
SRAM-PUF, is an attractive option to designers, yet currently has known technical limitations.
In our work we seek to find techniques to improve upon the SRAM-PUF. Current techniques treat the
effects of noise on authentication responses as problems to be mitigated. We examine the effects of noise
sources on SRAM behaviour for use in modelling and stochastically predicting errors. This can be utilised to
enhance unclonability and cryptographic strength. From this new SRAM based cryptographic primitives can
be developed with improved security features.
Emerging Technology and Materials
Poster
____________________________________________
Heterojunctions of Two-Dimensional Materials
Johannes Gausden
The study of two-dimensional materials, such as graphene, is a young and rapidly growing field. Recently,
research into the effects of combining materials both vertically and laterally has been initiated with efforts to
custom-build structures with novel properties.
The aim of the project is to fabricate heterojunctions from single- and few-layer materials. These are expected
to have a broad range of applications, such as the promise of a step change in the capability of thermoelectric
devices, or devices capable of sub-photo detection. Importantly, the elements within these 2D materials are
generally common, providing a potential alternative to the use of rare elements in modern semiconductor
industry. It is also expected that the unusual physics observed within these structures, such as the valley-Hall
effect, will provide a pathway to previously inaccessible technologies, creating devices with greater
computing power than are currently possible with modern semiconductor technology.
____________________________________________
The role of defect in high performance SiC electronic
Hind Alsnani, Alton Horsfall and Jonathan Goss
Silicon carbide (SiC) being an attractive material for electronic device applications due to its superlative
properties including, wide band gap, high electron mobility, and its high thermal conductivity. However, this
material has a wide range of defects and impurities, which have a detrimental effect on device performance.
In this study density functional theory (DFT) as implemented in AIMPRO will used to study the behavior and
evolution of common defects in SiC. The simulation will be compared to characteristics from deep level
transient spectroscopy (DLTS) in order to identify the evaluation of these defects during high temperature
process steps such as implantation annealing and oxidation. The combination of these two methods (DFT&
DLTS) can serve to determine the behavior of the deep levels denoted as Z1/2, EH6/7 centers that are the
most common defects in as grown SiC and ascertain their suitability of realize quantum computation qubits.
____________________________________________
Influence of dielectric formation on the operation of 4H-SiC MOSFETs
Muhammad Idzdihar Idris, A.B. Horsfall and N.G. Wright
SiC MOSFETs have been suffering with low carrier mobility that hinders the uptake of silicon carbide
technology in integrated circuits. The high value of interface state density, Dit at the SiC/SiO2 interface is
believed to be the main reason for this problem in the subthreshold region. Reducing the density of interface
states at the interface between SiC/SiO2 has become a key challenge in the development of high performance
SiC MOS technology. An understanding of the origin of defects at the SiC/SiO2 interface is required to predict
the practicable evolution of methods to passivate or eradicate the defects. In this work, the electrical
characterization and performance of n and p-type 4H-SiC CMOS structures with different dielectric formation
conditions has been performed. From C-V measurements, parameters such as interface state density (Dit),
flatband voltage (VFB), threshold voltage (VTH) and effective charge (NEFF) have been acquired to assess the
effectiveness of the process.
____________________________________________
Towards large scale accurate Kohn-Sham DFT for the cost of tight-binding
Tiago Marinheiro
Using a comparison package developed to assess the error estimates of a DFT code [1], we present results
obtained for a specific basis generation procedure in AIMPRO [2,3,4] a Gaussian orbital DFT code. As a further
test of accuracy we compare total energies to converged plane wave results. The implementation of the
filtration method [2, 3, 4] in AIMPRO is described and preliminary results are presented. A summary is
presented which explains how we aim to implement filtration and the basis generation to obtain ‘plane wave
accuracy at the cost of tight-binding’.
[1] K. Lejaeghere, et all, Critical Rev. S. S. M. S. 39, 1 (2014)
[2] M. J. Rayson and P. R. Briddon, Phys. Rev. B 80, 205104 (2009).
[3] M. J. Rayson, Comput. Phys. Commun. 181, 1051 (2010).
[4] P. R. Briddon and M. J. Rayson, Phys. Status Solidi B 248, 1309 (2011).
____________________________________________
Defects and interfaces in compound thin film solar cell devices
Fatimah Bahrani, Jonathan Goss and Patrick Briddon
Quaternary semiconductors of the I2-II-IV-VI4 family including copper zinc tin sulfide (CZTS) have features
which make them well placed to replace silicon, binary and ternary semiconductors in photovoltaic cells (pnjunctions). They are non-toxic, have a high absorption coefficient, have direct band gaps, are low-cost and are
made up from earth-abundant elements. In the kesterite crystal structure, the intrinsic lattice defects have a
significant role in determining the structural, electronic and electrical properties for the absorber layer in a
PV module. Electronic, electrical, and structural properties of material, and defects will be studied using
computational methods, primarily being first-principles density-functional theory (DFT).
Phase space stability of CZTS relative to secondary phases have been studied. In addition, it is found that
intrinsic defects including vacancies and anti-sites are predicted to have a high equilibrium concentration and
dope the material electrically. The calculations support the growth conditions in the literature.
____________________________________________
Silicon Carbide MOSFET
Faiz Arith, Jesus Urresti, Amit Tiwari, Konstantin Vasilevskiy, Nick Wright and Anthony O'Neill
The study investigates SiC MOSFET channel mobility following the introduction of an ultrathin SiO2 layer
between an Al2O3 gate dielectric and 4H-SiC. A previous paper has reported that by growing an ultrathin SiO2
layer at low temperature underneath Al2O3, the channel mobility increases significantly. This ultrathin (SiO2)
is believed to be a good interface layer between SiC and Al2O3 as the combination of Al2O3 and ultrathin
SiO2 produces an adequate barrier height by the conduction band offset to render a low leakage current. By
increasing the oxide thickness and/or temperature condition, the field effect mobility decreases sharply. It is
believed that thermally grown SiO2 generates Ci that can eventually bind to each other and form immobile
clusters like (Ci)2 giving rise to a reduction of the carrier mobility. However until now, researchers have not
reported a conclusive correlation between those factors believed to be the source of channel mobility
reduction.
____________________________________________
Investigation and Manufacture of a Bio-inspired Submersible Through the Use of Soft
Robotic Actuators
Andrew Reid
Electro active polymers as robotic actuators, and especially ionic polymer metal composites (IPMCs), have
received a great deal of interest within the scientific community due to: their small size; light weight nature;
as well as displaying large deformations under relatively small voltages (~1-10V). Underwater exploration
holds great promise, for both scientific research and mineral exploitation. Conventional mechanical actuators
are greatly effected by pressure, requiring bulky ‘casing’ to operate at depth. This increases the power
required for operation as well as the propulsion of the housing craft, reducing mission time. Effect of pressure
on the operation of IPMCs is expected to be minimal, negating the need for protective casing. This project
aims to produce a bio-inspired submersible modelled on common cephalopods. This project will explore the
fabrication of an appropriate IPMC as well as the design of a propulsion system and manipulator suitable for
the task.
____________________________________________
Calculating Baligas Figure of Merit in Ge, Si, GaAs and 4H-SiC for Determination of the
Ideal Semiconductor to be used for a Given Temperature Range
Robotic Actuators
Luke Bradley
Baligas Figure Of Merit (BFOM) is a metric used to describe the performance of a semiconductor for power
electronic applications based on its permittivity, carrier mobility and critical electrical field. In order to
determine which semiconductor is most suitable at a given temperature, we first look into the temperature
dependence of the carrier mobility in Ge, Si, GaAs, and 4H-SiC via scattering from ionized impurities and
optical phonons. The polarisation of dipoles within a material is then shown to be virtually temperature
independent with ~2.5% change in Si from 10K to 370K. Finally we approximate the temperature dependency
of the critical electric field based on the materials energy gap, saturation velocity, effective mass of carriers
and carrier mobility. We have created a model to describe the temperature dependence of BFOM and allow
calculations to be made to determine the best semiconductor of choice for a given temperature, from which
we have found Ge to be the most suitable material for devices functioning at 20K.
.