A sound reproduction system usually consists of several types of loudspeakers to cater to sophisticated applications. The directivity of a loudspeaker is a measure of its efficiency in sending sounds to a particular direction instead of all directions. Demand to control the directivity of a sound reproduction system is gaining momentumwith many new designs of directional loudspeakers, including...

The subject of enhancing microstrip patch antennas directivity, using either a frequency selective surface (FSS) or a double-negative (DNG) metamaterial slab, has been investigated by a number of researchers in recent years. The purpose of this paper is to show that we can also achieve the same goal by using a much simpler design for the superstrate, namely a dielectric slab, whose performance ...

The design of time-invariant beamformers is often posed as an optimization problem using practical design constraints. In many scenarios it is sufficient to assume that the microphones have an omnidirectional directivity pattern, a flat frequency response in the range of interest, and a 2D environment in which wavefronts propagate as a function of azimuth angle only. In this paper we consider a...

The directivity index is a parameter that is commonly used to characterize the performance of directional hearing aids, and is determined from the measured directional response. Since this response is different for a hearing aid worn on a person as compared to when it is in a free field, directivity index measurements of hearing aids are usually done under simulated real-ear conditions. Details...

Horn antennas can result in good impedance matching between the waveguide and free space due to the gradual increase in the aperture size. In this paper, a novel plasmonic sectoral horn nanoantenna based on using lens in the aperture is proposed. It is investigated that in addition to improvement of the directivity, the reflection coefficient is also reduced using the proper lens structure. The...

Heartbeat activity in tethered adult drosophilids was recorded using a linear optosensor chip and an IR-light beam. Recording from two to five sensor elements within 250 mum along the anterior heart, it was possible to analyze periodic reversals. In intact Drosophila melanogaster and D. hydei, longer anterograde pulse periods with lower pulse rates generally alternated with shorter retrograde p...

One of the important challenges in the emerging field of synthetic biology is designing artificial networks that achieve coordinated behavior in cell communities. Here we present a synthetic multicellular bacterial system where receiver cells exhibit transient gene expression in response to a long-lasting signal from neighboring sender cells. The engineered sender cells synthesize an inducer, a...

Error exponent bounds for a noise free optical channel using a direct detection receiver are computed for the cases of Pulse Position Modulation (PPM) and for the basic channel with binary output and average intensity constraint. Some consequences are derived regarding the behavior of the interleaving scheme suggested by Massey, the optimality of the PPM format and the significance of the Ro pa...