Recent Developments in Engineering Research Vol. 11

A vehicular adhoc network (VANET) is a mobile adhoc network in which moving road vehicles are network nodes. The major problem faced in VANET is transmitting the safety message or an ALERT message between the vehicles to avoid collisions. The large number of vehicles moving in a particular area will cause the data congestion that results in a long delay on delivering the messages. Clustering the vehicles into groups is an efficient approach to broadcast the messages with a less delay and high delivering ratio. The performance of the clusters is greatly influenced by the selection of Cluster Heads (CHs). In this paper, the formation of clusters and cluster head selection is formulated as optimization problem in order to maximize the efficiency of the network energy and link quality. The formulated problem has been solved using two approaches: Density based Clustering and the cluster heads selection using Differential Evolution (DE) Algorithm. By combining these approaches the safety or Alert messages will be transmitted easily to all the vehicles by dynamically adapting transmission power and contention window size. The performance of the proposed ESMBS protocol is compared and evaluated against the existing AdvB and CBAPA protocols. The proposed scheme can control various performance metrics such as the collision, packet delivery ratio, packet delay ratio, latency, transmission time and throughput. The proposed scheme broadcasts the alert or safety messages by reducing the probability of collisions.

This paper presents the design, simulation and analysis of Platinum micro-heaters for sensor applications. Finite element method (FEM) analysis was used to investigate the thermal properties of individual electrically driven platinum micro-heaters. The uniform heat distribution and optimization of power consumption for the micro-heaters were performed by simulating on possible different patterns using COMSOL. Four different patterns of micro-heaters were used in simulation and they are (a) rectangular spiral, (b) diagonal slanting, (c) double spiral and (d) complementary double spiral type. These micro-heaters are designed to ensure minimum power consumption, low thermal mass and better temperature uniformity. The Simulated temperature profile shows that the temperature distribution is uniform over the sensing area. For all the four patterns the temperature profile and power consumption when operated over a supply voltage of 0.5 V to 4 V to obtain an operating temperature from 300 K to 1200 K is compared and presented.

Leaf Recognition is very important in agriculture for identification of plants. Leaves of various plants have unique characteristics which are to be used for categorization. Out of the different features, leaf vein is one of the prominent biometric feature. Extracting leaf vein and perform classification based on these features leads to more accurate identification of plants. In practice, due to change in various lighting conditions and orientations, the extraction of leaf vein becomes difficult. This work focuses on extracting veins using ridge orientation and frequency estimation using region mask which brings out good quality vein structure under different conditions. The vein structure thus obtained is used for identifying keypoints using Harris corner detector. Features are extracted from the keypoints using SURF feature extraction method and finally the trained and query images are compared to identify the correct leaf species using FLANN matcher. Flavia leaf image database with 32 different species are used and an accuracy of 98.75% was resulted. The proposed methodology can be used for plant leaf identification in real world for identifying medicinal plants and other category of plants. This method can be used for identifying veins of dry leaves which can further extract the features and identify the species. This paper presents how leaf veins are segmented and extracted using frequency estimation and region mask

United Kingdom’s Brexit from the European Union implies restricted access to the European Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) System - Galileo; with no access to the secured and encrypted signal used for defense and government purposes, which is restricted to European Union (EU) members. To mitigate this issue, the United Kingdom can, as a matter of urgency, launch a payload on a national military Communications Satellite to provide Navigation Overlay Services for the United Kingdom territory, surrounding waters and neighboring ally countries to meet the requirements of: Defense systems, Aviation, Maritime requirements and the effectiveness of Location-based Services for Emergencies and Crisis management etc. The United Kingdom can deploy a low-cost Satellite-Based Augmentation System(SBAS) as a navigation overlay service (NOS) on a hosted national geostationary satellite utilizing GNSS, especially GPS and Galileo as an alternative to the Galileo’s PRS.  This paper describes the design of a navigation overlay service system as a hosted payload on a national satellite and the required supporting ground infrastructure, highlighting various applications, services and solutions.

The importance and application of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) has never been greater; there is increasing demand for both commercial and government projects; indeed, owning and operating a GNSS facility has become a matter of national esteem. Global availability of signal and continuous service has made GNSS technology popular with a large number of users. This article reviews some of the history that led up to the USA building its benchmark Global Positioning System (GPS) exploiting electromagnetic waves and reviews the progress being made by other nations and regions in constructing accurate navigation positioning systems.

In October, 2016 the China Great Wall Industry Corporation and Spacestar Technology Company Ltd of China entered into a cooperative agreement with Nigerian Communications Satellite Ltd on a Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS) performance test and assessment of the Nigerian Communications Satellite (NIGCOMSAT-1R) augmentation system exploiting NIGCOMSAT-1R L Band. The NigComSat-1R Navigation (L-band) payload provides a Navigation Overlay Service (NOS) known as Nigerian Satellite Augmentation System (NSAS). This paper examines test bed experimentation conducted in conjunction with partners to validate functional requirements, performance validation of units, sub-systems and systems of both the SBAS payload and ground infrastructure before a pilot project demonstration of capabilities and proof-of-concept nationwide and extension to other locations and regions of Africa.

The paper presents influence of ceramic coating in all surfaces of the combustion chamber of SI four-stroke engine on working parameters mainly on heat balance and total efficiency. Three cases of engine were considered: standard without ceramic coating, fully adiabatic combustion chamber and engine with different thickness of ceramic coating. Consideration of adiabatic or semi-adiabatic engine was realized by the mathematical modelling of heat transfer from the cylinder gas to the cooling medium. This model takes into account the changeable convection coefficient based on the experimental formulas of Woschni, heat conductivity of multi-layer walls and also small effect of radiation in SI engines. The simulation model was elaborated with full heat transfer to the cooling medium and unsteady gas flow in the engine intake and exhaust systems. The computer program, which took into account 0D model of engine processes in the cylinder and 1D model of gas flow, was elaborated for determination of many basic engine thermodynamic parameters for Suzuki DR-Z400S 400 cc SI engine. The paper presents calculation results of influence of the ceramic coating thickness on indicated pressure, specific fuel consumption, cooling and exhaust heat losses. Next, there are presented comparisons of effective power, heat losses in the cooling and exhaust systems, total efficiency in function of engine rotational speed and also comparison of temperature inside the cylinder for standard, semi-adiabatic and full adiabatic engine. On the basis of the achieved results it was found higher total efficiency of adiabatic engines at 2500 rpm from 27% for standard engine to 37% for full adiabatic engine. Future work concerning the adiabatic SI engine should be conducted on experimental test in order to calibrate the parameters of combustion process, particularly to determine the Wiebe coefficients and possibility of knock combustion due to higher temperature at the end of compression process.

The exploitation of mature natural gas fields is a topical issue in the industry given that most of the production, about 70%, comes from these reservoirs. Implementation of the project management into the exploitation of mature gas reservoirs has a notable ascension because of the fact that in the execution of the operational programs always has developed a mechanism to achieve the objectives in a sustainable manner. The project management in gas industry it is known as rehabilitation concept or integrated reservoir development, which has a major impact on increasing the recovery factor. The paper intends to present the current trends in the exploitation of mature gas fields by applying the concept of rehabilitation as well as expansion opportunities in order to drive the business performance results. The dynamism of gas demand is an external factor that directly influences the operating model of the field, so having an integrated, efficient and sustainable field management system will mitigate the adverse effects that may occur and also be able to meet the challenges from the energy market.

We attempted to find the location of collinear equilibrium points in the generalized photogravitational elliptic restricted three body problem. The problem is generalized in the sense that both the primaries are considered as oblate spheroids. By photogravitational we mean both primaries are radiating as well. We have found the solution for the location of collinear point L₁. We found that location of collinear point L₁ is affected by oblateness, eccentricity and radiation factor terms. Also, when these terms are neglected, we get the same terms as in classical elliptical restricted three body problem. The same method may be applied for the location of collinear points L₂ and L₃.

The most known free-floating perennial aquatic plant is Water hyacinth, which is thick, broad, shiny, ovate leaves. It may rise above the surface of the water as much as one meter in height. The leaves are 10 to 20 cm acros, and float above the water surface. They have long, spongy and bulbous stalks. The feathery, freely hanging roots are purple-black. An erect stalk supports a single spike of 8 to 15 conspicuously attractive flowers, mostly lavender to pink in color with six petals. When not in bloom, water hyacinth may be mistaken for frog's-bit. These water weeds would consume large volume of water to grow which is major concern in today world where the water availability if reduced. One of the fastest growing plants known, water hyacinth reproduces primarily by way of runners or stolons, which eventually form daughter plants. Each plant can produce thousands of seeds each year, and these seeds can remain viable for more than three decades. So far the lake water cleaning process has been carried out only by using man power. This project deals with the design and fabrication of an efficient handling water weed removing machine. It has been proposed with an idea to reduce the working time, by remote control operation of the machine for water weed removing. The water weeding machines are designed and implemented with the concern of human ease of handling through controlling the water weed removal using smart phones. The experimental scenario proves the efficient handling of water weed removal machine. In the further scenario, “Engine is to be set for effective weed removal operation and Profile of the weed remover blades should be optimized”.

With rapid industrial and commercial growth and flourishing population, power demand is increasing rapidly. Modern methods of UHV transmission lines are important to transmit bulk amount of power more efficiently in comparison to earlier methods of transmission. 1200 KV UHV transmission line is India future and therefore forthcoming project to tackle this situation. However as line to line voltage level increases, complexity of the transmission line increases. But, with higher level of line to line voltage, complexity of transmission line increases. ROW is one of the major concerns with transmission lines. Many parameters need to take care in designing; one of them is a magnetic field distribution at surroundings of transmission line. India has initiated to expand its UHV range to 1200kv. Paper suggest magnetic field of three configurations of the 1200KV line. Horizontal and vertical configuration test lines have been installed. Analysis has been done by two  methods finite element method and

(Method of images) analytical method. FEM is used to solve partial differential equations. Results from both methods have been compared. 3D electric field analysis of configuration also performed. Plotted results are compared with ICNIRP standards and safety limits defined. Adverse effects of excess magnetic field is also discussed. Biological effects of electromagnetic field on people, animals and plants are also discussed. Thus paper aimed at magnetic field calculation and verification with respect to standard. It also helps to utilize less right of way. The subject is under broad development due to its advantages over lower voltage levels and holds significance in future as well.

The Mobile Adhoc network (Manet) has been identified as keen networking scenario in modern internet world. The most networking solutions have been enabled to access through mobile devices. The physical characteristics of mobile nodes keep changing the topology of network at each second. However, achieving higher streaming performance is most important in point of quality of service. There exist numerous techniques to route data packets between the source and sink/destination nodes, but suffer with poor performance. To overcome the deficiency, a dynamic multi constraint routing algorithm has been presented in this paper. The method considers different parameters like energy, lifetime, traffic, mobility speed, direction and hop count in route selection. According to the above-mentioned parameters, the multi constraint algorithm estimates streaming support score (SSS) for any route to perform routing of packets. The algorithm improved routing performance of routing and increases the streaming rate in Manet. Based on the measures estimated, the method computes the streaming support score value for each route. Based on the value of SSs, a single route has been selected to forward the data packet. The proposed DMR algorithm has produced higher throughput performance and reduces the latency.