Department of Electrical Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad&nbsp;(IIT Palakkad or IIT PKD) is a public autonomous&nbsp;engineering&nbsp;and&nbsp;research&nbsp;institute located in&nbsp;Palakkad,&nbsp;Kerala. It was&nbsp;one of the five new&nbsp;IITs&nbsp;proposed in the&nbsp;2014 Union budget of India. The campus was inaugurated on 3 August 2015. The institute has 94 faculty, 978 students, and 63 non-teaching staffs.

IT Palakkad currently offers four-year Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and two years MS programmes in 8 different engineering disciplines including&nbsp;Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil among others.

&nbsp;

IIT Palakkad

The focus of this work is to study the effect of cobalt (Co) and Mg doping on structural, surface morphological, photocatalytic, antibacterial and magnetic properties of ZnO nanopowders. The undoped and doped ZnO nanopowders were prepared using a simple, speedy and cost-effective microwave assisted synthesis. The XRD studies reveal that the Co doping only slightly degrade the crystalline quality of ZnO nanopowder whereas Mg doping causes a considerable degradation in the crystallinity. This result is interpreted on the basis of lattice compatibility theory. Surface morphological study shows that ZnO nanopowder exhibits hexagonal shaped grains. The Co doping results in well defined needle and disc shaped grains while spherical shaped ZnO nanopowders are observed for Mg doped ZnO nanopowders. The EDAX spectra affirm the presence of anticipated elements Zn, O, Co and Mg. The Co doping induces room temperature ferromagnetism in ZnO nanopowders. Both the dopants enhance the photocatalytic activity against methylene blue dye and antibacterial activities against gram negative bacteria such as E. coli and Vibrio cholerae. Between the Co and Mg doped ZnO nanopowders, the former seems to be superior in photocatalytic and antibacterial activities.

World University root node

JOURNAL OF MATERIALS SCIENCE-MATERIALS IN ELECTRONICS

Enhanced photocatalytic, antibacterial and magnetic properties of ZnO nanopowders through lattice compatible cobalt doping

Automatic detection and removal of baseline wanders is most important for accurate measurement of clinical features of local waves including, P-wave, QRS complex, T-wave and U-wave of the ECG signals. In this paper, we investigate on the use of variational mode decomposition (VMD) technique for removal of baseline wander in ECG signals. The proposed method consists of three stages: VMD based ECG signal decomposition, baseline wander extraction using frequency criterion, and base-line wander subtraction. The method is tested and evaluated using a wide variety of ECG signals including different kinds of PQRST morphologies corrupted with different patterns of baseline wanders. Performance evaluation results show that the VMD based method can adequately remove the baseline wanders without significantly distorting local components (P-wave, QRS complex, ST-segment, T-wave) of the ECG signal. The noise reduction capability of the VMD-based method is compared with the existing methods using the wavelet transform and Fourier transform. The subjective and objective quality assessment results show that the VMD based method outperforms the existing methods in terms achieving better objective quality metric values for various noisy ECG signals. © 2016 IEEE.

2016 22nd National Conference on Communication, NCC 2016

On the use of variational mode decomposition for removal of baseline wander in ECG signals

A long-term continuous cardiac health monitoring system highly demands more battery power for real-time transmission of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals and increases bandwidth, treatment costs and traffic load of the diagnostic server. In this Letter, the authors present an automated low-complexity robust cardiac event change detection (CECD) method that can continuously detect specific changes in PQRST morphological patterns and heart rhythms and then enable transmission/storing of the recorded ECG signals. The proposed CECD method consists of four stages: ECG signal quality assessment, R-peak detection and beat waveform extraction, temporal and RR interval feature extraction and cardiac event change decision. The proposed method is tested and validated using both normal and abnormal ECG signals including different types of arrhythmia beats, heart rates and signal quality. Results show that the method achieves an average sensitivity of 99.76%, positive predictivity of 94.58% and overall accuracy of 94.32% in determining the changes in heartbeat waveforms of the ECG signals. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2016.

Healthcare Technology Letters

Robust cardiac event change detection method for long-term healthcare monitoring applications

This paper presents a variational mode decomposition (VMD) and decision tree based detection and classification method of single and mixed power quality (PQ) disturbances in grid-connected distributed generation system. Applicability of VMD technique is investigated for discrimination of stationary PQ disturbances (such as harmonics, interharmonics, and flicker), non-stationary events (e.g., transients) and noise. Studies indicate usefulness of VMD for accurate estimation of phasor quantities such as amplitude, phase angle, and frequency and other describing features. Features namely, mode central frequencies, relative mode energy ratios, zero crossings, and instantaneous amplitude (IA) are extracted for classification of single and mixed PQ disturbances using a decision tree algorithm. A set of synthetic test signals, disturbance signals obtained from real events as well as signals generated from real time digital simulator platform arc used to test effectiveness of proposed method, under various system operating scenarios and noise levels. Proposed method is found to be capable of accurate detection, estimation, localization, and classification of all kinds of PQ disturbances in both noisy and noise-free cases.

IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid

Variational mode decomposition and decision tree based detection and classification of power quality disturbances in grid-connected distributed generation system

Persistent increase in population of world is demanding more and more supply of food. Hence there is a significant need of advancement in cultivation to meet up the future food needs. It is important to know moisture levels in soil to maximize the output. But most of farmers cannot afford high cost devices to measure soil moisture. Our research work in this paper focuses on home-made low cost moisture sensor with accuracy. In this paper we present a method to manufacture soil moisture sensor to estimate moisture content in soil hence by providing information about required water supply for good cultivation. This sensor is tested with several samples of soil and able to meet considerable accuracy. Measuring soil moisture is an effective way to determine condition of soil and get information about the quantity of water that need to be supplied for cultivation. Two separate methods are illustrated in this paper to determine soil moisture over an area and along the depth. © 2016 IEEE.

Advanced Computing and Communication Systems, 10th October

Monitoring moisture of soil with low cost home made soil moisture sensor and Arduino Uno

In recent years, alloy electronic structure calculations based on supercell Brillouin zone unfolding have become popular. There are a number of formulations of the method which on the surface might appear different. Here we show that a discrete real-space description, based on discrete Fourier transforms, is fully general. Furthermore, such an approach can more easily show the effects of alloy scattering. We present such a method for treating the random alloy problem. This treatment features straightforward mathematics and a transparent physical interpretation of the calculated effective (i.e., approximate) energy bands. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Fulltext

Physica B: Condensed Matter

Unfolding and effective bandstructure calculations as discrete real- A nd reciprocal-space operations

This paper presents a seventeen level inverter topology for open end induction motor drives requiring only twelve switches per phase. One three-level inverter and one seven-level inverter with DC link voltages in 3:1 ratio are connected to the two ends of the stator winding of the induction motor to generate a seventeen level space vector structure. A level shifted carrier based scheme is used to modulate the inverter, which requires only instantaneous phase voltage references. Selection of switching states is used to ensure that both inverters supply real power to the motor the over entire modulation range, preventing overcharging of the DC bus. The topology was tested for steady state operation over the entire modulation range, and experimental results are included below. © 2016 IEEE.

IECON Proceedings (Industrial Electronics Conference)

Reduced switch count seventeen level inverter topology for open-end induction motor drives

This paper presents a data-mining-based intelligent differential relaying scheme for transmission lines, including flexible ac transmission system device, such as unified power flow controller (UPFC) and wind farms. Initially, the current and voltage signals are processed through extended Kalman filter phasor measurement unit for phasor estimation, and 21 potential features are computed at both ends of the line. Once the features are extracted at both ends, the corresponding differential features are derived. These differential features are fed to a data-mining model known as decision tree (DT) to provide the final relaying decision. The proposed technique has been extensively tested for single-circuit transmission line, including UPFC and wind farms with in-feed, double-circuit line with UPFC on one line and wind farm as one of the substations with wide variations in operating parameters. The test results obtained from simulation as well as in real-time digital simulator testing indicate that the DT-based intelligent differential relaying scheme is highly reliable and accurate with a response time of 2.25 cycles from the fault inception. © 2015 IEEE.

IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems

Data-Mining-Based Intelligent Differential Relaying for Transmission Lines Including UPFC and Wind Farms

A three terminal (transistor-like) photodetector fabricated on a silicon-on-insulator substrate with a high responsivity over a wide spectral range from ultraviolet to the near infrared is described. Even for low gate and drain voltages of -0.15 V and +1 V, respectively, its responsivity is 0.5 A/W at 315 nm, 0.63 A/W at 455 nm, and 0.26 A/W at 880 nm. Moreover, the device exhibits a negative differential resistance (due to Pt nano particles which are embedded within the gate dielectric) with large peak-to-valley current ratios of 60 in the dark and up to 140 under illumination. These values are several times larger than those obtained in alternative two or three terminal systems which are based on heterostructures or structures with extremely high doping regions that cause band-banding or resonant tunneling. © 2016 Author(s).

Applied Physics Letters

Negative differential resistance in three terminal photodetectors

Stochastic stabilization of discrete-time inhomogeneous Markov jump linear system is addressed for the case of transition probability matrix considered as an interval matrix. The approach involves representing the interval transition probability matrix as a convex combination of stochastic matrices, where stochastic stabilization can be addressed using stochastic version of Lyapunov's second method. The current approach is superior to the existing result for the same system, because of the ability to synthesize a state-feedback stabilizing controller. A vertical take-off and landing vehicle dynamics are utilized to illustrate the effectiveness of the results. © 2016 IEEE.