Abstract

Electing democratic representatives via voting has been a common mechanism since the 17th century. However, these mechanisms raise concerns about fairness, privacy, vote concealment, fair calculations of tally, and proxies voting on their behalf for the voters. Ballot voting, and in recent times, electronic voting via electronic voting machines (EVMs) improves fairness by relying on centralized trust. Homomorphic encryption-based voting protocols also assure fairness but cannot scale to large scale elections such as presidential elections. In this paper, we leverage the blockchain technology of distributing trust to propose a smart contract-based protocol, namely, FASTEN. There are many existing protocols for voting using smart contracts. We observe that these either are not scalable or leak the vote tally during the voting stage, i.e., do not provide vote concealment. In contrast, we show that FASTEN preserves voter’s privacy ensures vote concealment, immutability, and avoids double voting. We prove that the probability of privacy breaches is negligibly small. Further, our cost analysis of executing FASTEN over Ethereum is comparable to most of the existing cost of elections.

Abstract

The use of in situ hyperspectral reflectance and bio-physical measurements has been increasing in forestry. Due to limited physical accessibility in a forest environment, most of the reflectance measurements of trees are acquired at a leaf or bunch of leaves level. A few radiative transfer models are available for upscaling leaf spectra to canopy level. While these models are sophisticated, they retrieve canopy spectra based on certain assumptions. We propose ‘semi-empirical model for upscaling leaf spectra (SEMULS)’ which upscales in situ leaf spectra to canopy level based on the relationship between leaf spectra and its bio-physical parameters. The performance of the model has been quantitatively validated by comparing the upscaled canopy spectra with spectra from – CHRIS hyperspectral imagery acquired concurrently and from the PROSAIL model. Results indicate that the SEMULS retrievals are …

Abstract

We, the people’ is the most popular phrase from the constitutions. In spite of the fact that the number of countries including preamble as part of their constitution has been on the rise, preambles have received scant attention in academia. The importance of preambles has been established in multiple studies yet preambles have been looked at in isolation from socio-economic-environmental contexts. Our article attempts to present a unique insight by correlating preambles with the socio-economicenvironmental and infrastructural context within which they exist. It explores whether these correlations exist and if they do with which features and to what extent and the possibility of a causal link. We pursue a statistical study between various indicators that reflect the growth of a country and the presence or absence of various elements in preambles across the world. Our study finds that correlations exist between the economic-social-environmental and infrastructural context of a nation-state and different elements in their preambles. Our study rigorously engages with patterns in development indicators across years to provide correlational insights into the role of preambles not just as a dormant reference but as active fragments of the socio-political-economic reality of a nation-state. We hope our article establishes grounds for a further study of the manner in which preambles and the nonpolitical aspects of a nation-state can engage with each other.

Abstract

Individual device loads and energy consumption feedback is one of the important approaches for pursuing users to save energy in residences. This can help in identifying faulty devices and wasted energy by devices when left On unused. The main challenge is to identity and estimate the energy consumption of individual devices without intrusive sensors on each device. Non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) or energy disaggregation, is a blind source separation problem which requires a system to estimate the electricity usage of individual appliances from the aggregated household energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a novel deep neural network-based approach for performing load disaggregation on low frequency power data obtained from residential households. We combine a series of one-dimensional Convolutional Neural Networks and Long Short Term Memory (1D CNN-LSTM) to extract features that can identify active appliances and retrieve their power consumption given the aggregated household power value. We used CNNs to extract features from main readings in a given time frame and then used those features to classify if a given appliance is active at that time period or not. Following that, the extracted features are used to model a generation problem using LSTM. We train the LSTM to generate the disaggregated energy consumption of a particular appliance. Our neural network is capable of generating detailed feedback of demandside, providing vital insights to the end-user about their electricity consumption. The algorithm was designed for low power offline devices such as ESP32. Empirical calculations show that our model outperforms the state-of-the-art on the Reference Energy Disaggregation Dataset (REDD)

Abstract

The radiant systems consume less energy and provide better thermal comfort as compared to the conventional system, but the main drawback of radiant technology is inability to cater the latent load and condensation. This problem has engaged researchers to push their emphasis on Personalized Conditioning System (PCS). It forms a micro-climate region near the occupant. This study is aimed at PCS combined with a radiant conditioning system, which evaluates the performance of the PCS and compares it with different radiant cooling systems. A radiant cubicle was used to investigate the performance of the PCS for both heating & cooling modes. For heating mode, the Standard Effective Temperature (SET) was calculated with the help of thermal comfort surveys which were in a range of 23.4°C to 27.3°C. For cooling mode, four different cases compared the performance of the system which are: Conventional Air Conditioning System (CACS), Radiant Cooled Ceiling System (RCCS), Personalized Radiant Conditioning System (PRCS), and both PRCS-RCCS coupled. It was observed that PRCS alone reaches the thermal comfort criteria with low energy consumption. The energy-saving of RCCS-PRCS was achieved 38% when compared with CACS. It can be concluded that PRCS is a new step in the field of thermal comfort.

Abstract

The growing need for localization has created an array of alternative approaches to GNSS, based on Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ultra-Wideband, etc. Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) is one such technology that has garnered tremendous attention due to its low power and long-range capabilities. Many attempts to achieve localization using LoRaWAN have been made till now, based on a variety of techniques such as Angle of Arrival (AoA), Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA), Received Signal Strength Index (RSSI). In this paper, we present a novel, standalone localization approach by developing a collaborative, TDoA-based methodology using LoRaWAN. The server determines the target node location by means of TDoA measurements from the target node to the gateways. The introduction of an additional stationary node allows the synchronization of the gateways without utilizing GNSS, either inbuilt or external. The cooperation between target node, synchronization node and server, is the innovative feature which makes this approach attractive for GNSS-free localization. Further, we explore the effects of timing resolution, time-on-air, and duty cycle constraints on the localization error. Finally, the distribution of error in a triangle of gateways situated approximately 8.6 kilometers apart is simulated in ideal Line of Sight (LoS) conditions, showing the maximum error to be around 23 meters

Abstract

Methods and apparatus for modulating light using a tunable light modulation device . The tunable light modulation devices comprises an elastomer structure including at least one elastomer layer , a compliant electrode network of con ducting fibers arranged on a first surface of the at least one elastomer layer , a patterned electric conductor arranged on a second surface of the at least one elastomer layer opposite the first surface . The patterned electric conductor includes a plurality of individually - addressable sections , and the com pliant electrode network is configured to compress the at least one elastomer layer in the presence of an electric field between the compliant electrode network and one or more of the individually - addressable sections of the patterned elec tric conductor to produce a voltage - dependent roughening of the at least one elastomer layer .

Abstract

This paper presents an ultra-low power CMOS voltage reference (CVR) which is free of amplifier and resistor. A current generator circuit is used to generate a supply independent current to bias the active load in the temperature compensation circuit. Drain-source voltage of two critical MOSFETs is made equal in the current generator circuit by using a feedback arrangement to ensure a high PSRR of -75dB for the reference voltage. Temperature compensation is achieved by using the complementary to absolute temperature (CTAT) nature of gatesource of a MOSFET operating in the subthreshold region and proportional to absolute temperature (PTAT) nature of conventional composite pair architecture. The proposed CVR is designed in TSMC 180nm technology. The circuit works desirably for a supply range of 0.85V to 2.3V while generating a reference voltage of around 0.68V. Maximum temperature coefficient (TC) of 184 ppm/˚C and minimum TC of 69 ppm/˚C are noted for mismatch and process variations in the Monte-Carlo simulation for 1000 samples. The circuit consumes only 46nW of power, which makes it suitable for ultra-low power applications.

Abstract

The present description relates to a method based on artifi cial intelligence to implement a wide range of microelec tronic circuits that can adapt by themselves to the usage conditions ( e.g. loading changes ) , manufacturing variances or defects ( e.g. process variations , device parameter mis matches , device model inaccuracies or changes , etc. ) , as well as environmental conditions ( e.g. voltage , temperature , interference ) in order to negate all or part of their effects on the circuit performance characteristics and achieve a very tight set of specifications over the wide range of conditions . Each microelectronic circuit is represented by a neural network model whose behavior is a function of the actual input signals , the usage and environmental conditions . An attached AI engine will infer from the model , the input signals , the usage conditions and the environmental condi tions and create the adaptive changes required to modify the microelectronic circuit's behavior to negate all or part of their effects on the circuit performance characteristics and to achieve a very tight set of specifications

Abstract

Hysteresis and proteresis are two complementary phenomena used in integrated circuits. Hysteresis is a widely known and applied phenomenon, while proteresis is used less frequently. Hysteresis exhibits a delayed response, whereas proteresis demonstrates an advanced response. This paper presents the design of a single CMOS circuit that exhibits both hysteretic and proteretic properties and has been named as ProHys switch, thus leveraging the benefits of both phenomena. The circuit can switch between hysteretic and proteretic operations based on the control input signal. It maintains the noise immunity of 0.2V in each state. Proof of concept is established by postlayout simulation of the proposed circuit in TSMC 180nm CMOS technology and occupies an area of 41µm X 48µm. It is demonstrated to work in the temperature range of -20°C to 100°C and up to a maximum frequency of 10MHz. This paper also explores the possibility of using the proposed ProHys Switch as a Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) for security applications. Index Terms—Hysteresis, Proteresis, ProHys, Switch