Hybrid Shaping Research Articles

Enacting ‘true business sustainability’ − Market shaping for environmental impact

Market-shaping research on firms’ efforts to transform markets for environmental aims is scarce and limited to incumbent actors’ efforts to replace existing technologies with more sustainable alternatives. While important, these studies implicitly adhere to the ‘business case for sustainability’ approach, in which CSR is harnessed to facilitate profitability and competitive advantage. We offer a new perspective by examining market shaping explicitly aimed at inducing environmental impact. Using the lens of for-profit hybrid firms, which enact a ‘true business sustainability’ approach by blending environmental impact goals with commercial objectives, we explore the case of a hybrid shaping an existing EU regulation-born ‘sustainability market’ built around the Guarantees of Origin for renewable electricity. We contribute to the contextual understanding of market shaping for sustainability by presenting a model of firm-level market shaping for environmental impact, unfolding through six intertwined processes inherently connected to the organization’s development.

Performance analysis of hybrid geometric-probabilistic shaped 8/12 quadrature amplitude modulation for coherent optical communication system

A hybrid shaping (HS) scheme based on geometric shaping (GS) and probabilistic shaping (PS) in a coherent optical communication system is proposed. A particle swarm optimization algorithm and Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution are employed to sequentially implement GS and PS. The results demonstrate that hybrid shaped 8/12-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (HS-8/12QAM) is superior to regular-8/12QAM (R-8/12QAM) in terms of reducing the bit error rate (BER) and increasing the generalized mutual information (GMI). HS-8QAM achieves a 2 dB optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) gain and 0.45 bits / symbol GMI gain compared with R-8QAM. Meanwhile, HS-12QAM achieves 1.9 dB OSNR gain and 0.68 bits/symbol GMI gain compared with R-12QAM. In addition, HS-8/12QAM is better than R-8/12QAM in terms of transmission distance and data rate.

When Probabilistic Shaping Realizes Improper Signaling for Hardware Distortion Mitigation

Hardware distortions (HWDs) render drastic effects on the performance of communication systems. They are recently proven to bear asymmetric signatures; and hence can be efficiently mitigated using improper Gaussian signaling (IGS), thanks to its additional design degrees of freedom. Discrete asymmetric signaling (AS) can practically realize the IGS by shaping the signals' geometry or probability. In this paper, we adopt the probabilistic shaping (PS) instead of uniform symbols to mitigate the impact of HWDs and derive the optimal maximum a posterior detector. Then, we design the symbols' probabilities to minimize the error rate performance while accommodating the improper nature of HWD. Although the design problem is a non-convex optimization problem, we simplified it using successive convex programming and propose an iterative algorithm. We further present a hybrid shaping (HS) design to gain the combined benefits of both PS and geometric shaping (GS). Finally, extensive numerical results and Monte Carlo (MC) simulations highlight the superiority of the proposed PS over conventional uniform constellation and GS. Both PS and HS achieve substantial improvements over the traditional uniform constellation and GS with up to one order magnitude in error probability and throughput.

Microstructure and Interface Characteristics of 17-4PH/YSZ Components after Co-Sintering and Hydrothermal Corrosion

Combining stainless steel with zirconia components by powder technological shaping routes for manufacturing of multifunctional parts is an advantageous and promising one-step method making expensive and time-consuming additional joining steps redundant. However, several requirements for co-shaping and co-sintering of the very different compound partners have to be met. The microstructural and chemical constitution of the interface between both materials plays an important role for the mechanical properties, durability and corrosion resistance of the manufactured parts. In the present study, different shaping techniques for co-shaping of stainless steel and zirconia are introduced. The microstructure and the interphase properties of metal/ceramic hybrid parts have been investigated for samples made by tape casting, subsequent lamination and co-sintering. Nevertheless, the results of this study are valid for components made by other hybrid shaping processes as well. The interfaces were characterized by TEM, FESEM, EDX, and X-ray diffraction. Furthermore, the hydrothermal stability of the material compound was investigated.

Performance Comparison of Probabilistically Shaped QAM Formats and Hybrid Shaped APSK Formats With Coded Modulation

We study and compare performance of probabilistically shaped (PS)-64QAM formats (with spectral efficiency ranging from 3.6 to 8.6 b/s/Hz) and coded modulation (CM)-64/16APSK formats with PS or geometric shaping (GS) or hybrid shaping (HS) with spectral efficiency ranging from 4.8 to 8.8 b/s/Hz. We show that a well-designed CM-64/16APSK format could exceed the performance of PS-64QAM formats by a small margin both in back-to-back and transmission. This was verified for transmission distances from 4,435 to 22,176 km using laboratory hardware and our implemented FEC. We show similar nonlinearity compensation (NLC) benefit for both PS and CM formats using 3-stage NLC schemes. The NLC benefit increases from 1.2 to 1.6 dB as the transmission distance increases from 4,435 to 9,504 km and then nearly saturates at ∼1.6 dB after ∼10,000 km. Furthermore, we experimentally demonstrate 71.6 Tb/s (7.36 b/s/Hz) using a CM-64/16APSK format and 70.3 Tb/s (7.22 b/s/Hz) with a PS-64QAM format over 6,970 km using C+L band EDFA testbed.

Carrier-less amplitude-phase geometric probabilistic hybrid shaping 16QAM scheme applied to data center networks

A hybrid shaping scheme, carrier-less amplitude and phase modulation geometric-probabilistic hybrid shaping 16QAM (CAP-GPS-16QAM), is proposed for data center networks. The probabilistic shaping is achieved by applying the proposed probabilistic subset shaping to the constellation after geometric shaping (GS). An intensity modulation/direct detection experimental system of 5 GBaud is built to verify the proposal. The results show that the gains of the proposed scheme are 2.4, 2.6, and 3 dB compared with CAP-GS-16QAM, CAP-PAS-16QAM, and CAP-square-16QAM, respectively, at BER = 10^{− 3}. Meanwhile, in terms of generalized mutual information, the proposal improves the performance by 0.078, 0.125, and 0.153 bits/symbol compared with CAP-GS-16QAM, CAP-PAS-16QAM, and CAP-square-16QAM, respectively.

Hybrid shaping applied to concert hall design

One of the first questions posed at the beginning of any concert hall design process is whether the room will be in the traditional long “shoebox” shape or the more intimate wrapping of the audience around the performers, characteristic of the “vineyard” approach. This paper presents the design process, acoustical measurements, and musician comments for a recently completed room where the answer was “both”. Sala Minas is the home of the Orquestra Filarmônica de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The concert hall has 1500 seats with a hybrid shape combining the attractive physical and acoustical attributes of shoebox and vineyard approaches. While the audience is held close to the performers, enhancing clarity and impact, the basic room geometry is a modified rectangle with a significant vertical “hard cap” zone providing ample reverberation, envelopment, and blending of orchestral sections. The result is a vineyard configuration with unusually consistent acoustic character in all the seating sections. Adjustable acoustic elements include a movable canopy over the stage, motorized acoustical banners, and shutters on the stage walls that can be opened or closed. After two seasons since Sala Minas opening, the reviews about its acoustics are impressive.

Facile shape control synthesis and optical properties of silver nanoparticles stabilized by Daxad 19 surfactant

It is known that silver (Ag) nanoparticles are attractive due to their novel and mild chemical and physical properties. In this research, anisotropic mono-dispersed silver nanoparticles are synthesized via a simple chemical reduction method and assisted by Daxad 19 surfactant. The reactant temperatures and weight ratios of the chemical constituents play a key role in controlling the hybrid shaping mechanism. The results indicate that the reduction rate of Ag + to Ag 0 nanoparticles is enhanced significantly with increasing weight ratios of Daxad 19 and AgNO 3 under controlled reactant temperature. The results show that the as-prepared silver nanoparticles are well-dispersed and uniform in size and shape. The dimensions of the particles are easily controlled. A comparison between experimental absorbance UV–visible spectra and simulated spectra from Mie's Scattering Theory is carried out. It is observed that the simulated spectrum confirms well with the optical behaviour of the experimental spectra.

Development of a portable directional thermal neutron detection system for nuclear monitoring

A directional thermal neutron detector has been developed that is capable of locating sources of thermal neutron emissions. The detector is based on large area silicon detectors in a modular design that is configured to take advantage of the non-isotropic angular response of the detectors to determine the direction of the radiation source. The detector module consists of a thin gadolinium converter foil sandwiched between two planar silicon detectors coupled to an eight channel hybrid shaping amplifier and discriminator. A microcontroller unit processes the data in real time and displays neutron and gamma count rates and directional information. Detector modeling and tradeoff analyses were conducted to specify design criteria. Radiation transport methods were used to compute detector efficiency, front-to-back detector response and measurements were made to substantiate the detector modeling. Tests were conducted with the array to evaluate directional sensitivity under various measurement conditions.