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In this study, the problems of the low deposition rate and bath instability in chemical deposition can be effectively solved by using the pulsed current-assisted chemical deposition process when preparing Ni–P alloy coating. Orthogonal experiments were designed by changing the average current density, pulse frequency and duty ratio of the pulses to study their effects on the deposition rate and hardness of the coatings. Compact Ni–P coating with uniform surface morphology and good performance was prepared by parameter optimization. The results show that our method can greatly improve the deposition rate while ensuring the surface quality and performance of the deposited layer.

An Internet of Things (IoT) device that can automatically measure water consumption can help prevent excessive water usage or leaks. However, automating too many residences or condominiums with multiple IoT devices can lead to extra energy consumption and more network congestion. We propose controlling the energy consumption of an IoT water consumption management system by dynamically controlling its duty cycle. By analyzing the energy consumption of the developed prototype and its duty cycle variation, we calculated how much energy could be saved by controlling the antenna and the water flow sensor used in the IoT device. While controlling the antenna offered some energy savings, having some way to cut down on the water flow sensor’s consumption can have a dramatic impact on the overall IoT energy consumption or its battery longevity. Our results showed that we could get up to 69% extra energy savings compared to just putting the antenna in sleep mode. There is an observable trade-off in saving so much energy, as we can also see that water reading error rates go up alongside the extra energy savings.

Two heterogeneous chaotic Rulkov neurons with electrical synapses are investigated in this paper. First, we study the ability of the second neuron to modify the dynamics of the first neuron. It is shown that when the parameters of the first neuron are located at the vicinity of the Neimark–Sacker bifurcation curves the first firing neuron can be controlled into the quiescent state when coupled with the second neuron. While the parameters of the first neuron are near the flip bifurcation curves the first firing neuron cannot be suppressed. Second, we discuss burst synchronization for two bursting neurons and two tonic spiking neurons. It is shown that two heterogeneous chaotic Rulkov neurons with tonic spiking firing cannot reach anti-phase synchronization under the inhibitory coupling, which is different from the property of nonchaotic Rulkov neurons. Finally, we show that for two bursting neurons if the coupling is strong enough then burst synchronization can be converted into spike synchronization. However, complete synchronization cannot be achieved for any strong coupling.

The term "Duty Cycle" has been used widely on the daily basis in many industries for various purposes in both technical and marketing/sales communities. People also use this term to design reliability testing, quantify stress acceleration factor (AF), predict product reliability, and conduct field warranty projection. However, there have been tremendous confusion and misunderstanding about this term over the years. The purpose of this paper is to provide clarification and standardize the quantified definitions for various intended product duty cycles. The impact of various duty cycle definitions on product reliability, and their correlation with reliability calculations are also investigated.

One of the fundamental requirements for energy-constrained wireless sensor networks (WSN) is to reduce the power consumption and prolong the network lifetime. To deal with the problem, a mobile agent-based clustering management model is proposed, which adopts the distributed architecture and realize data processing in local nodes. Based on proposed model and traditional client/server model, we present the comprehensive performance comparison and analysis. Furthermore, we develop an algorithm to calculate an optimal power management scheme applied to mobile agent-based clustering WSN. Simulation results indicate a remarkable performance improvement by using the proposed model and the optimal power management scheme. At the same time, the simulation study also provides the valuable guidance for the WSN designers.