• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.466-469
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• 2013

Currently, piezoelectric ceramics are being applied in various fields, such as ultrasonic sensors, vibration devices, sound filters, and various energy conversion devices. Flexible piezoelectric ceramics are widely studied in an effort to mitigate the disadvantages of their brittle and inductile properties. Structural damage to piezoelectric fibers is much less than that to thin films when piezoelectric fibers are twisted or bent. Therefore, stretchable devices can be fabricated if piezoelectric fibers are obtained using an elongated substrate. In this study, sintering processes of PZT ($Pb(Zr_{0.53}Ti_{0.47})O_3$) fibers prepared by electrospinning were optimized through the TGA and XRD analyses. The crystal structure and microstructure of the piezoelectric fibers were investigated by XRD, FE-SEM and TEM.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.135-156
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• 2014

The Online business model for purchasing agent service is getting more popular. However, consumers perceive more risk when buying products from foreign online purchasing agents (FOPA) than from common online sellers (COS). This study focuses on finding out how consumers manage risk when they perceive risk and what different risk-reliever strategies they use when buying from high-risk FOPA and low-risk COS. This study has proved the following two. First, when consumers perceive risk at online purchasing, they tend to select risk-reliever strategies, such as the use of communication media, online assurance mark, seller's record, and secure payment to mitigate risk. With the application of those risk-reliever strategies, they built trust with the seller. Second, risk-perception of FOPA influences usage of communication media and check of online assurance mark more strongly than that of COS. On the contrary, risk-perception of COS influences the check of seller record more strongly than that of FOPA. This study helps to explain why FOPA is proliferating, despite its inherent high risk due to the fact that buyers and sellers are separated in time and space and that buyers and sellers have different social and cultural backgrounds. This study also helps managers of E-commerce to relieve consumer's risk-perception and to build trust.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.269-276
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• 2013

Information and communication technology (ICT) is a promising solution for mitigating road traffic congestion. ICT allows road users and vehicles to be managed based on real-time road status information. In Tanzania, traffic congestion causes losses of TZS 655 billion per year. The main objective of this study was to develop an optimal approach for integrating real-time road information (RRI) to mitigate traffic congestion. Our research survey focused on three cities that are highly affected by traffic congestion, i.e., Arusha, Mwanza, and Dar es Salaam. The results showed that ICT is not yet utilized fully to solve road traffic congestion. Thus, we established a possible approach for Tanzania based on an analysis of road traffic data provided by organizations responsible for road traffic management and road users. Furthermore, we evaluated the available road information management techniques to test their suitability for use in Tanzania. Using the floating car data technique, fuzzy logic was implemented for real-time traffic level detection and decision making. Based on this solution, we propose a RRI system architecture, which considers the effective utilization of readily available communication technology in Tanzania.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.108-114
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• 2011

In order to mitigate the possible hazards from electric shock due to the touch and step voltages, the high resistivity material such as gravel is often spread on the earth's surface in substations. When the grounding electrode is installed in two-layer soil structures, the surface layer soil resistivity is different with the resistivity of the soil contacted with the grounding electrodes. The design of large-sized grounding systems is fundamentally based on assuring safety from dangerous voltages within a grounding grid area. The performance of the grounding system is evaluated by tolerable touch and step voltages. Since the floor surface conditions near equipment to be grounded are changed after a grounding system has been constructed, it may be difficult to determine the tolerable touch and step voltage criteria. In this paper, to propose an accurate and convenient method for evaluating the protective performance of grounding systems, the propriety of the method for evaluating the current flowing through the human body around on a counterpoise buried in two-layer soils is presented. As a result, it is reasonable that the grounding system performance would be evaluated by measuring and analyzing the current flowing through the human body based on dangerous voltages such as the touch or step voltages and the contact resistance between the ground surface and feet.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.300-303
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• 2015

Digital imaging process has been put to practical use in various application sectors due to a rapid advancement such as memory devices, etc. However, noises are being generated due to various reasons during the image processing and a variety of methods are being studied in order to eliminate these noises. Generally, images are damaged due to a mixed noise having different characteristics. In this paper, a filter algorithm which switches according to the noise types was proposed in order to mitigate the influence of mixed noise included in the image. And using the PSNR as the standard for objective decision making of the improvement effect, it was compared with the existing methods.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.933-935
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• 2015

Currently, image processing is being utilized in various fields and many studies on the image restoration is being progressed in order to eliminate the noise being generated during the process of transmitting, processing and storing of image. There are various types of noises included in the image according to the causes and types but AWGN is the most representative. In this paper, an algorithm was proposed which applies the variables differently according to the differences in surrounding pixels and central pixels within the local mask in order to mitigate the AWGN included in the image.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.58 no.2
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• pp.232-238
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• 2009

Flicker, also known as voltage fluctuation, is a newest problem of power quality issues, because it is caused by nonlinear loads such as electrical arc furnace and large-scale induction motor, which are country-widely used as the heavy industries of a country develop. An international standard, International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61000-4-15, was published in 1997 and revised in 2003. With increasing concerns about flicker, its mitigation methods have been also studied. General countermeasures for flicker are divided into three categories: a) enhancing the capacity of supplying system, b) Series elements including series reactor and series capacitor and c) power electronic devices including static VAR compensator (SVC) and static synchronous compensator (STATCOM). This paper introduces how to mitigate the voltage flicker at the point of common coupling (PCC) and presents how to simulate and compare the flicker alleviating effects by each mitigation method, using IEC flickermeter based on the Matlab/Simulink program.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.327-338
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• 2011

With the incitation to reduce power consumption and the aggressive reuse of spectral resources, there is an inevitable trend towards the deployment of small-cell networks by decomposing a traditional single-tier network into a multi-tier network with very high throughput per network area. However, this cell size reduction increases the complexity of network operation and the severity of cross-tier interference. In this paper, we consider a downlink two-tier network comprising of a multiple-antenna macrocell base station and a single femtocell access point, each serving multiples users with a single antenna. In this scenario, we treat the following beamforming optimization problems: i) Total transmit power minimization problem; ii) mean-square error balancing problem; and iii) interference power minimization problem. In the presence of perfect channel state information (CSI), we formulate the optimization algorithms in a centralized manner and determine the optimal beamformers using standard convex optimization techniques. In addition, we propose semi-decentralized algorithms to overcome the drawback of centralized design by introducing the signal-to-leakage plus noise ratio criteria. Taking into account imperfect CSI for both centralized and semi-decentralized approaches, we also propose robust algorithms tailored by the worst-case design to mitigate the effect of channel uncertainty. Finally, numerical results are presented to validate our proposed algorithms.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.167-174
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• 2011

In this paper, we propose and simulate an efficient interference cancellation scheme with an optimal ordering successive interference cancellation (SIC) algorithm for ultra wideband (UWB)/multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems in a wireless body area network (WBAN). When there are several wireless communication devices on a human body, multiple access interference (MAI) usually occurs. To mitigate the effect of MAI and achieve additional diversity gain, we utilize SIC with an optimal ordering algorithm. A zero correlation duration (ZCD) code with robust MAI capability is employed as a spread code for UWB systems in a multi-device WBAN environment. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated in terms of the bit error rate (BER). Simulation results confirm that the BER performance can be improved significantly if the proposed interference cancellation scheme and the ZCD code are jointly employed.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.282-290
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• 2006

In vertically overlaid cellular systems, a temporary traffic concentration can occur in a hot-spot area, and this adversely affects overall system capacity. In this paper, we develop an adaptive hot-spot operating scheme (AHOS) to mitigate the negative effects from the nonuniform distribution of user location and the variation in the mixture of QoS requirements in orthogonal frequency division multiple access downlink systems. Here, the base station in a macrocell can control the operation of picocells within the cell, and turns them on or off according to the system overload estimation function. In order to determine whether the set of picocells is turned on or off, we define an AHOS gain index that describes the number of subcarriers saved to the macrocell by turning a specific picocell on. For initiating the picocell OFF procedure, we utilize the changes in traffic concentration and co-channel interference to the neighboring cells. According to computer simulation, the AHOS has been proved to have maximize system throughput while maintaining a very low QoS outage probability under various system scenarios in both a single-cell and multi-cell environments.