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Shengli Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Shengli Zhang.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

Two-dimensional Ca-Cl crystals under ambient conditions observed directly by cryo-electron microscopy

Recently, we report the direct observation, under ambient conditions, of Na2Cl and Na3Cl as two-dimensional (2D) Na-Cl crystals, together with regular NaCl, on reduced graphene oxide membranes and on the surfaces of natural graphite powders from salt solutions far below the saturated concentration. However, what are these abnormal stoichiometries for high valence ions, such as calcium ions and copper ions still remain unknown. Here, using cryo-electron microscopy, we report the direct observation of two-dimensional (2D) Ca-Cl crystals on reduced graphene oxide (rGO) membranes, in which the calcium ions are only monovalent (i.e. +1). Remarkably, metallic properties rather than insulating are displayed by those CaCl crystals. We note that such CaCl crystals are obtained by simply incubating rGO membranes in salt solutions below the saturated concentration, under ambient conditions. Theoretical studies show that the formation of those abnormal crystals is attributed to the strong cation-pi interactions of the Ca2+ ions with the aromatic rings in the graphitic surfaces. Since strong cation-pi interactions also exist between other metal ions (such as Mg2+, Fe2+, Co2+, Cu2+, Cd2+, Cr2+ and Pb2+) and graphitic surfaces, similar 2D crystals with abnormal valence state of the metal cations and corresponding abnormal properties are highly expected. The 2D crystals with monovalent calcium ions show unusual electronic properties, and can be applicated in catalyzer, hydrogen storage, high-performance conducting electrodes and sensors. These findings also produce functionalized graphene including compact "graphene-metallic CaCl-insulating CaCl2" junction that can serve as transistors down to the atomic scale, and other devices for magnetic, optical and mechanical applications.

physics.chem-ph↗

Performance Analysis of the Raft Consensus Algorithm for Private Blockchains

Consensus is one of the key problems in blockchains. There are many articles analyzing the performance of threat models for blockchains. But the network stability seems lack of attention, which in fact affects the blockchain performance. This paper studies the performance of a well adopted consensus algorithm, Raft, in networks with non-negligible packet loss rate. In particular, we propose a simple but accurate analytical model to analyze the distributed network split probability. At a given time, we explicitly present the network split probability as a function of the network size, the packet loss rate, and the election timeout period. To validate our analysis, we implement a Raft simulator and the simulation results coincide with the analytical results. With the proposed model, one can predict the network split time and probability in theory and optimize the parameters in Raft consensus algorithm.

cs.NI↗

A wavelet frame coefficient total variational model for image restoration

In this paper, we propose a vector total variation (VTV) of feature image model for image restoration. The VTV imposes different smoothing powers on different features (e.g. edges and cartoons) based on choosing various regularization parameters. Thus, the model can simultaneously preserve edges and remove noises. Next, the existence of solution for the model is proved and the split Bregman algorithm is used to solve the model. At last, we use the wavelet filter banks to explicitly define the feature operator and present some experimental results to show its advantage over the related methods in both quality and efficiency.

cs.CV↗

Pre-Processing-Free Gear Fault Diagnosis Using Small Datasets with Deep Convolutional Neural Network-Based Transfer Learning

Early fault diagnosis in complex mechanical systems such as gearbox has always been a great challenge, even with the recent development in deep neural networks. The performance of a classic fault diagnosis system predominantly depends on the features extracted and the classifier subsequently applied. Although a large number of attempts have been made regarding feature extraction techniques, the methods require great human involvements are heavily depend on domain expertise and may thus be non-representative and biased from application to application. On the other hand, while the deep neural networks based approaches feature adaptive feature extractions and inherent classifications, they usually require a substantial set of training data and thus hinder their usage for engineering applications with limited training data such as gearbox fault diagnosis. This paper develops a deep convolutional neural network-based transfer learning approach that not only entertains pre-processing free adaptive feature extractions, but also requires only a small set of training data. The proposed approach performs gear fault diagnosis using pre-processing free raw accelerometer data and experiments with various sizes of training data were conducted. The superiority of the proposed approach is revealed by comparing the performance with other methods such as locally trained convolution neural network and angle-frequency analysis based support vector machine. The achieved accuracy indicates that the proposed approach is not only viable and robust, but also has the potential to be readily applicable to other fault diagnosis practices.

cs.NE↗

Artificial-Noise-Aided Secure Channel with a Full-duplex Source

This paper consider a new secure communication scene where a full-duplex transmitter (Alan) need to transmit confidential information to a half-duplex receiver (Bob), with a silent eavesdropper (Eve) that tries to eavesdrop the confidential information. For realizing secure communication between Alan and Bob, a novel two phases communication scheme is proposed: in Phase 1, Alan and Bob send artificial noises (AN) simultaneously, while in Phase 2, Alan superimposes the AN received in Phase 1 with its confidential signal and sends the mixed signalto Bob. Since the mixed AN could degrade the SINR (Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio) of Eve, but does not affect the SINR of Bob, a secrecy capacity can be achieved. We also derive the conditions that the secrecy capacity of the proposed scheme exists, and analyze the secrecy outage probability under Rayleigh fading channel. Numerical results show that the secrecy capacity is about two times higher than without AN, even though in the proposed scheme half of the time is used to transmit ANs, and the outage probability is about five times lower than that without AN.

cs.NI↗

Multi-antenna Enabled Cluster-based Cooperation in Wireless Powered Communication Networks

In this paper, we consider a wireless powered communication network (WPCN) consisting of a multi-antenna hybrid access point (HAP) that transfers wireless energy to and receives sensing data from a cluster of low-power wireless devices (WDs). To enhance the throughput performance of some far-away WDs, we allow one of the WDs to act as the cluster head (CH) that helps forward the messages of the other cluster members (CMs). However, the performance of the proposed cluster-based cooperation is fundamentally limited by the high energy consumption of the CH, who needs to transmit all the WDs' messages including its own. To tackle this issue, we exploit the capability of multi-antenna energy beamforming (EB) at the HAP, which can focus more transferred power to the CH to balance its energy consumption in assisting the other WDs. Specifically, we first derive the throughput performance of each individual WD under the proposed scheme. Then, we jointly optimize the EB design, the transmit time allocation among the HAP and the WDs, and the transmit power allocation of the CH to maximize the minimum data rate achievable among all the WDs (the max-min throughput) for improved throughput fairness among the WDs. An efficient optimal algorithm is proposed to solve the joint optimization problem. Moreover, we simulate under practical network setups and show that the proposed multi-antenna enabled cluster-based cooperation can effectively improve the throughput fairness of WPCN.

cs.NI↗

Structure--property relationships of cell clusters in biotissues: 2D analysis

To insight the relationships between the self-organizing structures of cells, such as the cell clusters, and the properties of biotissues is helpful in revealing the function and designing biomaterial. Traditional random foam model neglects several important details of the frameworks of cell clusters, in this study we use a more complete model, cell adhesion model, to investigate the mechanical and morphological properties of the two-dimensional (2D) dry foams composed by cells. Supposing these structures are formed due to adhesion between cells, the equilibrium formations result from the minimum of the free energy. The equilibrium shape equations for high symmetrical structures without the volume constraint are derived, and the analytical results of the corresponding mechanical parameters, such as the Young's modulus, bulk modulus and failure strength, are obtained. Numerical simulation method is applied to study the complex shapes with the volume constraint and several stable multicellular structures are obtained. Symmetry-breaking due to the volume change is founded and typical periodic shapes and the corresponding phase transformations are explored. Our study provides a potential method to connect the microstructure with the macro-mechanical parameters of biotissues. The results also are helpful to understand the physical mechanism of how the structures of biotissues are formed.

cond-mat.soft↗

On-off Analog Beamforming for Massive MIMO

This paper investigates a new analog beamforming architecture for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, where each of the multiple transmit antennas is switched to be on or off to form a beam according to the channel state information at transmitters. This on-off analog beamforming (OABF) scheme has the advantages in terms of both hardware complexities and algorithmic complexities. OABF can completely remove the high-cost, power-consuming and bulky analog phase-shifters that are extensively employed by traditional analog beamforming schemes; it only requires the deployment of low-cost analog switches that are easy to implement. Moreover, we show that the beams formed by such simple antenna on-off switch operations can achieve rather good performances with low-complexity beamforming algorithms. Specifically, we first propose two optimal signal-to-noise ratio maximization algorithms to determine the on-off state of each switch under the per-antenna power constraint and the total power constraint, respectively. After that, we theoretically prove that OABF can achieve the full diversity gain and the full array gain with complexities up to a polynomial order. Numerical results are consistent with our theoretical analysis. We believe that the simple structure of OABF makes massive MIMO much easier to implement in real systems.

cs.IT↗

Collective fermion excitation in a warm massless Dirac system

Basing on a self-consistent method, we predict theoretically that there occurs not only a normal (quasi) fermion mode, but also a collective fermion mode, plasmino, in a warm 2D massless Dirac system, especially in a warm intrinsic graphene system. Results of Landau damping show that both fermion and plasmino are well defined modes. We find that there are sharp differences between the discussed system and the QCD/QED system. Firstly, the thermal mass is proportional to $α_g^{3/4}T$ but not $α_g T$. Secondly, at $0 q_c$. Thirdly, the fermion behaves as a "relativity particles" with none zero mass and the plasmino exhibits an anormal dispersion at moderate momentum.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

Low-energy quantum scattering induced by graphene ripples

We report a quantum study of the carrier scattering induced by graphene ripples. Crucial differences between the scattering induced by the ripple and ordinary scattering were found. In contrast to the latter, in which the Born approximation is valid for high-energy process, the former is valid for the low-energy process with a quite broad energy range. Furthermore, in polar symmetry ripples, the scattering amplitude exhibits a pseudo-spin structure, an additional factor $\cosθ/2$, which leads to an absence of backward scattering. We also elucidate that the scattering cross sections are proportional to the energy cubed of the incident carrier.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

STAC: Simultaneous Transmitting and Air Computing in Wireless Data Center Networks

The data center network (DCN), wired or wireless, features large amounts of Many-to-One (M2O) sessions. Each M2O session is currently operated based on Point-to-Point (P2P) communications and Store-and-Forward (SAF) relays, and is generally followed by certain further computation at the destination. %typically a weighted summation of the received digits. Different from this separate P2P/SAF-based-transmission and computation strategy, this paper proposes STAC, a novel physical layer scheme that achieves Simultaneous Transmission and Air Computation in wireless DCNs. In particular, STAC takes advantage of the superposition nature of electromagnetic (EM) waves, and allows multiple transmitters to transmit in the same time slot with appropriately chosen parameters, such that the received superimposed signal can be directly transformed to the needed summation at the receiver. Exploiting the static channel environment and compact space in DCN, we propose an enhanced Software Defined Network (SDN) architecture to enable STAC, where wired connections are established to provide the wireless transceivers external reference signals. Theoretical analysis and simulation show that with STAC used, both the bandwidth and energy efficiencies can be improved severalfold.

cs.NI↗

Joint Multiple Symbol Differential Detection and Channel Decoding for Noncoherent UWB Impulse Radio by Belief Propagation

This paper proposes a belief propagation (BP) message passing algorithm based joint multiple symbol differential detection (MSDD) and channel decoding scheme for noncoherent differential ultra-wideband impulse radio (UWB-IR) systems. MSDD is an effective means to improve the performance of noncoherent differential UWB-IR systems. To optimize the overall detection and decoding performance, in this paper, we propose a novel soft-in soft-out (SISO) MSDD scheme and its integration with SISO channel decoding for noncoherent differential UWB-IR. we first propose a new auto-correlation receiver (AcR) architecture to sample the received UWB-IR signal. The proposed AcR can exploit the dependencies (imposed by the differential modulation) among data symbols throughout the whole packet. The signal probabilistic model has a hidden Markov chain structure. We use a factor graph to represent this hidden Markov chain. Then, we apply BP message passing algorithm on the factor graph to develop a SISO MSDD scheme, which has better performance than the previous MSDD scheme and is easy to be integrated with SISO channel decoding to form a joint MSDD and channel decoding scheme. Simulation results indicate the performance advantages of our MSDD scheme and joint MSDD and channel decoding scheme.

cs.IT↗

Near-Optimal Modulo-and-Forward Scheme for the Untrusted Relay Channel

This paper studies an untrusted relay channel, in which the destination sends artificial noise simultaneously with the source sending a message to the relay, in order to protect the source's confidential message. The traditional amplify-and-forward (AF) scheme shows poor performance in this situation because of the interference power dilemma: providing better security by using stronger artificial noise will decrease the confidential message power from the relay to the destination. To solve this problem, a modulo-and-forward (MF) operation at the relay with nested lattice encoding at the source is proposed. For this system with full channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT), theoretical analysis shows that the proposed MF scheme approaches the secrecy capacity within 1/2 bit for any channel realization, and hence achieves full generalized security degrees of freedom (G-SDoF). In contrast, the AF scheme can only achieve a small fraction of the G-SDoF. For this system without any CSIT, the total outage event, defined as either connection outage or secrecy outage, is introduced. Based on this total outage definition, analysis shows that the proposed MF scheme achieves the full generalized secure diversity gain (G-SDG) of order one. On the other hand, the AF scheme can only achieve a G-SDG of 1/2 at most.

cs.IT↗

Improving Two-Way Selective Decode-and-forward Wireless Relaying with Energy-Efficient One-bit Soft Forwarding

Motivated by applications such as battery-operated wireless sensor networks (WSN), we propose an easy-to-implement energy-efficient two-way relaying scheme. In particular, we address the challenge of improving the standard two-way selective decode-and-forward protocol (TW-SDF) in terms of block-error-rate (BLER) with minor additional complexity and energy consumption. By following the principle of soft relaying, our solution is the two-way one-bit soft forwarding (TW-1bSF) protocol in which the relay forwards the one-bit quantization of a posterior information metric about the transmitted bits, associated with an appropriately designed reliability parameter. In WSN-related standards (such as IEEE802.15.6 and Bluetooth), block codes are adopted instead of convolutional and other sophisticated codes, due to their efficient decoder hardware implementation. As the second main contribution, we derive tight upper bounds on the BLER performance for both TW-SDF and TW-1bSF, when the two-way relaying network employs block codes and hard decoding. The error probability analysis confirms the superiority of TW-1bSF. Moreover, we derive the asymptotic performance gain of TW-1bSF over TW-SDF, which further suggests that the proposed protocol is a good choice, especially when long block codes are used.

cs.IT↗

The Capacity of Known Interference Channel (updated)

In this paper, we investigate the capacity of known interference channel, where the receiver knows the interference data but not the channel gain of the interference data. We first derive a tight upper bound for the capacity of this known-interference channel. After that, we obtain an achievable rate of the channel with a blind known interference cancellation (BKIC) scheme in closed form. We prove that the aforementioned upper bound in the high SNR regime can be approached by our achievable rate. Moreover, the achievable rate of our BKIC scheme is much larger than that of the traditional interference cancellation scheme. In particular, the achievable rate of BKIC continues to increase with SNR in the high SNR regime (non-zero degree of freedom), while that of the traditional scheme approaches a fixed bound that does not improve with SNR (zero degree of freedom).

cs.IT↗

Electron spin-orbit interaction in helically coiled carbon nanotube

Recent theoretical and experimental works on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have revealed that spin-orbit interaction (SOI) is more robust than it was thought. Motivated by this, we investigate the SOI in helically coiled CNTs. Calculations are performed within the tight-binding model with the inclusion of a four-orbital basis set; thereby the full symmetry of the helical lattice and the hybridization of $π$\ and $σ$ bands are considered. By virtue of unitary transformation and perturbation approach, we obtain the analytic solution for the torsion-dependent SOI in helically coiled CNTs. Due to the enhancement of curvature and torsion, the calculated SOI values reach the order of meV which has been confirmed by \textit{ab initio} electronic structure calculation.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Conformation characters of gel sheets with rotational symmetry: the role of boundary

In this paper, we systemically study the conformation characters of rotational symmetric gel sheets with free boundary and investigate the role of boundary on the equilibrium conformation. In gel sheet the boundary provides a residual strain which leads to re-distribution of stress and impacts the shape of equilibrium conformation accordingly. For sheet with boundary, the in-plane stretching energy is far larger than the bending energy in some cases. It is intrinsic different from closed membrane. In gel sheets, the boundary doesn't only quantitatively amend to the elastic energy. The residual strain on boundary cooperates with bending and stretching to determine the equilibrium conformation rather than just the last two factors. Furthermore, on the boundary of gel sheet, there is an additional energy induced by boundary line tension $γ$. If $γ=0$, there is $10\%$ difference of elastic energy from the experimental result. Finally, we discuss the effects of such line tension $γ$ and propose a way to measure it by the border radius. It redounds to study the physical origination of $γ$.

physics.bio-ph↗

Manipulate the coiling and uncoiling movements of Lepidoptera proboscis by its conformation optimizing

Many kinds of adult Lepidoptera insects possess a long proboscis which is used to suck liquids and has the coiling and uncoiling movements. Although experiments revealed qualitatively that the coiling movement is governed by the hydraulic mechanism and the uncoiling movement is due to the musculature and the elasticity, it needs a quantitative investigation to reveal how insects achieve these behaviors accurately. Here a quasi-one-dimensional (Q1D) curvature elastica model is proposed to reveal the mechanism of these behaviors. We find that the functions of internal stipes muscle and basal galeal muscle which locate at the bottom of proboscis are to adjust the initial states in the coiling and uncoiling processes, respectively. The function of internal galeal muscle which exists along proboscis is to adjust the line tension. The knee bend shape is due to the local maximal spontaneous curvature and is an advantage for nectar-feeding butterfly. When there is no knee bend, the proboscis of fruit-piercing butterfly is easy to achieve the piercing movement which induced by the increase of internal hydraulic pressure. All of the results are in good agreement with experiential observation. Our study provides a revelatory method to investigate the mechanical behaviors of other 1D biologic structures, such as proboscis of marine snail and elephant. Our method and results are also significant in designing the bionic devices.

q-bio.TO↗