Wan Azlan Wan Zainal Abidin

Design of FPGA-based Traffic Light Controller System

This paper proposed a design of a modern FPGA-based Traffic Light Control (TLC) System to manage the road traffic. The approach is by controlling the access to areas shared among multiple intersections and allocating effective time between various users; during peak and off-peak hours. The implementation is based on real location in a city in Malaysia where the existing traffic light controller is a basic fixed-time method. This method is inefficient and almost always leads to traffic congestion during peak hours while drivers are given unnecessary waiting time during off-peak hours. The proposed design is a more universal and intelligent approach to the situation and has been implemented using FPGA. The system is implemented on ALTERA FLEX10K chip and simulation results are proven to be successful. Theoretically the waiting time for drivers during off-peak hours has been reduced further, therefore making the system better than the one being used at the moment. Future improvements include addition of other functions to the proposed design to suit various traffic conditions at different locations.

Development of shape pattern recognition for FPGA-based object tracking system

This project presents Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based solution for an object tracking system. The tracking design was applied in FPGA as rich information of FPGA offers one of the more powerful methods in object tracking. Object tracking system has a very useful application in many real world situations which require object detection. In general, a lot of different algorithms are used in various types of object tracking system such as the detection of handwriting, moving objects, barcodes etc. This project is focusing on shape detection to observe the real object image. This paper starts by describing the method of converting RGB image to binary signal using MATLAB. Then the binary signal is used as an input signal for the detection part. Detection algorithm used in the design is using a fixed method. The simulated waveform shows that the algorithm design can detect the shape correctly if and only if the input image is clear, located in the center of the image and does not flip or rotated. Verification done using FPGA board also proven that. But there are lot of improvement can be done to improve the design such as increasing the size of the binary signal for the input of the system.

Wind energy assessment and mapping using terrain nonlinear autoregressive neural network (TNARX) and wind station data

This paper presents the potential of generating wind power using soft computing model and ground station data. In reality, the process of wind resource assessment is to set up an experiment in the ...

Renewable Night Cooled Chill Water Source for Energy Efficient Indoor Radiant Cooling

This study investigates cooling of water at night in Malaysian climate as renewable cooling medium source for radiant cooling purpose. An experiment with a 1.95 m2 steel roof rig structure was constructed and night cooling cycle was conducted during the hot season and cold season of the year. Regression model was developed to predict water temperature after the night cooling process and the corresponding water and roof ratio was established. An annual simulation of a low income home model retrofitted with radiant cooling system charged by night cooled water as cooling medium shows that 99% of the time the thermal condition could meet ISO 7730 category C PMV between-0.7 and + 0.7 . For an outdoor ASHRAE design day condition, the peak indoor operative temperature of 37oC could be lowered to about 30oC with the use of radiant cooling system. The calculated energy saving for the home model was 85% or about 15% of the conventional air system operating cost.

900MHz and 1800MHz mobile phone effect towards adult head in SAR distribution and SAR in weight

The investigation on the effect of mobile phone towards adult head in Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) Distribution and SAR in Weight is presented in this paper. Finite Different Time-Domain (FDTD) was used to construct adult head modeling with the attachment of monopole antenna and also to do a simulation in obtaining the SAR Distribution and SAR in Weight either 1g or 10g weight value, respectively. From the simulation, the results show that the values of both SAR are small and do not exceed 4W/kg stated by International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement (NCRP) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The simulation covered 900MHz and 1800MHz frequency with 0.6W radiated power.

A simple and cost effective data acquisition system for mobile satellite experimental work under tree-shadowed and building-shadowed

Signal degradation in Mobile Satellite (MS) is due to several factors such as ionospheric effect, multipath fading, tree-shadowed and building-shadowed. This affects the Mobile Satellite Service (MSS) to provide continuous communication service to the users. Since there is not adequate data available on the signal performance of the MS in the Asian continent, thus, an experimental work is essential to be carried out to investigate the effect of factors such as the tree-shadowed and building-shadowed on the signal strength. This paper discusses the cost effective set up. It can be used to measure the effect of trees and buildings on the received mobile satellite signal operating in the L-band. The methodology uses to carry up the experimental works is discussed in detail. The measurements of the signal performance are performed under different MS environments such as tree-shadowed and building-shadowed and hence the results are compared to the data obtained for open space environment. The analysis of the signal performance under different MS environments is performed with respect to the elevation and azimuth degree at different time under a clear sky condition. The analysis produced forms an important part in the studies of the signal performance. From this research work, we would like to propose a simple and low cost data acquisition system in order to encourage more experimental works to be carried out especially in the less developed countries.

Open space experimental work for L-band mobile satellite (MS) using a simple and low cost data acquisition system

Mobile satellite (MS) signal performance is affected by many factors such as ionospheric effect, multipath fading and shadowing effect. Satellites transmit signals at the same strength, but things like trees and buildings can obscure a signal beyond recognition. Some experimental works have been done using the existing geo-satellite system or airborne platform in the developed countries which is quite expensive and complicated. Very little data is represents less developed countries such as Africa and Asia. Therefore, a simple and low cost data acquisition system that can be used to carry out measurement of the MS signal performance is proposed. The experiment is carried out in open area with no obstruction of the direct wave. In addition, NMEA sentences will be used to obtain the required signal propagation parameters. The measurement is then performed to determine the relationship between the signal performance with respect to the elevation and azimuth angles. Results obtained from analysis will be used to determine the characteristics of the open space environment. This method can be used to encourage more experimental works in the less develop countries. Propagation data for the open space environment can be used as a reference to determine the MS signal quality for shadowing environments.

A Thresholding Algorithm for Text/Background Segmentation in Degraded Handwritten Jawi Documents

The old documents in Jawi script are being used widely for references. The hard copies of those scripts will deteriorate as time passes. Most of the previous works on Jawi documents focused on the character recognition and the accuracy of the algorithm was very much affected by noise. An effective preprocessing method is required to binarize degraded Jawi document. In this paper, a new technique to threshold degraded Jawi document is proposed. The results of the new algorithm were also evaluated and compared with several algorithms. The quality of the thresholding methods was assessed using visual inspection and mathematical evaluation. The results show that the new technique has outclassed other binarization algorithms.

Wind Speed Prediction in Non-Monitored Areas Based on Topographic Radial Basis Neural Network (T-RBNN)

This paper shows an improved method for the prediction of wind speed in the areas where wind monitoring station is not available. The model has nine meteorological inputs, and one output, which is wind speed. The model was developed using Matlab/Simulink (R2016). The model was trained, tested and validated for accuracy purposes. The overall performance of the model was judged using statistical measures. It was realized that the developed model is capable of reproducing wind speed in the areas not covered by measurements. The root mean square and covariance of the developed model was 7.18 % and 0.0098 respectively.

An Artificial Intelligence Strategy for the Prediction of Wind Speed and Direction in Sarawak for Wind Energy Mapping

Accurate and reliable wind speed and direction prediction is one of the necessary concepts in implementing a wind energy system. In this paper, meteorological and geographical variables were modeled via artificial neural networks (ANNs), taking terrain elevation and roughness class into account. The feedforward neural network (FFNN) with back propagation trained with Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm was utilized, with wind speed and direction as the target function in each model. The results obtained using the formulated topographical models showed a regression value R in the range of 0.8256–0.9883. The optimum network based on the lower mean square error and fast computation time was 9-152-1. Thus, the developed topographical feedforward neural network (T-FFNN) is efficient to predict the wind speed and direction properly.