Pulse August 2008

PulseMagaz ne I

august 2008

Techies’ Arena....2

Ecea Vista...7 Tutorials...8 Legends...9 Nitty-Gritty...10

Gaiety...11

EDITORIAL

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e gladly welcome you to PULSE, the veritable voice of the charismatic and vivacious engineers of ECEA. This year, the new effervescent PULSE team has ambitious plans, yet pragmatic and implementable. We will have at least four issues with electrifying technical as well as cerebrumstimulating general articles. The magazine will comprise of five sections with something in it for everyone from the gizmo fanatics to the prospective business leaders. Besides the usual “Techies Arena”, we have a couple of enlightening tutorials and the new “Nitty-

gritty” section which will contain all the thought-provoking writeups on general engineering, science, management and currentaffairs. The “ECEA Vista” section will contain all the up to date happenings in the ECE department while the “Gaiety” section will contain all the merriness as the name suggests. PULSE is a unique opportunity to bring out the creative genius in you. We are obliged to kindle the fire in you.Wishing you all the best for your endeavours and commitments in this new academic year, we welcome contributions on a wide range of topics. Mail your artefacts to [email protected]

TETE-A-TETE WITH THE HOD, DECE

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r. N Kumaravel, Professor and HOD of DECE, discussed his views on department activities and many other things with the PULSE team.

What are your areas of expertise and the papers that you have published? My areas of expertise include Digital Signal Processing, Bio Medical Signal Processing, Medical Image Processing, VLSI Signal Processing and Artificial Intelligence Techniques. I have over 30 conference papers and 20 journal papers published in various reputed international journals such as ELSEVIER Journal, Journal of Medical Engineering & Technology, IEEE journals, etc. Where did you do your graduation, post graduation and doctoral programme? I completed B Sc (Physics) from Madurai University, DMIT in Electronics Engineering from MIT, ME in Communication Systems from Madras University and Ph D in Bio Medical Signal Processing from Anna University. What inspired you to take teaching as a career? The passion and love for Digital Signal Processing, Bio Medical Signal and Image processing, etc inspired me to take teaching as a career though I was more inclined to get a job in the industry during the initial stages of my career.

During my ME course, a reputed professor from Canada attended one of my lectures on Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and was greatly impressed. Later, when higher authorities wanted a person wellversed in DSP, the Canadian professor personally recommended me and insisted that no other person could effectively replace me. This was a real morale booster for my teaching career. What major change do you propose in our education system? Our education system must be application -oriented. Equal weightage should be given for theory and practical. Practical education is the need of the hour. Also, the macro concepts of any subject must be introduced before we get into the micro concepts. What’s the major difference between students of your time and students nowadays? When I was in college, the number of students enrolling for any course was very less. The students preferred government jobs while the opportunities and awareness was also less.

Can you recall any one incident as a teacher that you will Nowadays, the number of engineering students per course never forget? The official newsletter of ECEA

techies arena...... is enormous. They also seem to prefer private sector jobs rather than government jobs. Every student seems to be a jack of all trades. The students’ acquaintance with world affairs is impressive. What are your plans for DECE as HOD? Firstly I am planning to improve the infrastructure of our department. A couple of new blocks will be built having state of art laboratories for each specialisation. There will be numerous tie-ups and MOUs with various MNCs such as Altera, Renesas, Cypress Semiconductor, Matrix View, etc. There will be a Centre of Imaging and Signal Sciences in collaboration with Texas Instruments. Research on building low cost equipments for hospitals is also being carried out vigorously. What is your message for the ECE students? The Department of ECE is currently the hottest destination for the cream of the state. Thus I strongly insist that the students excel in every possible realm. They should live up to the expectations of the industry as well as the society.

NANOELECTRONICS ARUN GOUD, iV year

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n 1947, the field of electronics witnessed a revolution brought about by the invention of the bipolar and the field effect transistors. Since then transistors have become the mainstay of digital electronics. With the emergence of state of the art IC fabrication technologies in the last quarter of the 20th century, transistors have become so widespread that in any modern IC the most common and widely appearing component will invariably be the MOS transistor. An ordinary NMOS transistor has a very simple structure. It has three terminals- the source, drain and gate.The gate voltage controls the electron density in the channel between the source and the drain.For large gate voltages, electron density in the channel is high and current flows from the source to the drain on applying a bias voltage. However, for small gate voltages current does not flow since the electron density in the channel is low. This property allows the transistor to operate as a switch and all digital circuits exploit this property of MOS transistors. Today, chip makers are constantly battling to make the channel length in transistors smaller and smaller. Adding impetus to this is the famous law in electronics dubbed the Moore’s Law which states that the number of transistors that can be packed on a chip doubles every 18 months. But many scientists expect that within 10-20 years silicon will reach its physical limits thereby halting the ability to pack more transistors on a chip. A decade ago, it was this impending roadblock which prompted researchers to look for other alternatives that consequently opened up new horizons for research into Nanoelectronics. Nanoelectronics came to light in 1991 with the discovery of multi-walled nanotubes by Sumio Iijima of Meijo University and NEC Research Corporation. While using a high-resolution transmission electron microscope to study the soot created in an electrical discharge between two carbon electrodes at the NEC

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Fundamental Research Laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan he found that the soot contained structures that consisted of several concentric tubes of carbon, nested inside each other. A year later Thomas Ebbesen and Pulickel Ajayan, also working for NEC in Tsukuba, developed a highly efficient way of making large quantities of these multiwall nanotubes. Subsequently, in 1993, Iijima’s group at NEC and Donald Bethune’s group at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in California independently discovered single-wall nanotubes. Nanotubes, which are extremely thin hollow cylinders of carbon atoms, are considered “wonder materials” for building tiny circuits. They’re strong, nonreactive, tolerant of extreme temperatures, and pass current essentially without resistance. They’re also much smaller than any wires in today’s electronics. The diameter of a nanotube can vary from a few nanometers up to tens of nanometers, and can be hundreds or even thousands of nanometers long. Surprisingly, nanotubes can have either metallic or semiconducting properties, depending on the geometry and the direction in which the graphene sheet consisting of carbon atoms is rolled up to produce the tubes. The semiconductor varieties find applications in electronic devices as substitutes for active components like field effect transistors and the metallic ones have high electrical conductivity and therefore serve as perfect replacements for metallic wires in integrated circuits. The past decade has seen a plethora of research into both types of nanotubes.

Images showing deformation in nanotubes

Today, nanotubes can be grown efficiently by the catalytic decomposition of a reaction gas that contains carbon such as methane, with iron often being used as the catalyst. This usually produces a mixture of both single-walled and multi-walled tubes as well as the metallic and semiconductor varities. The multiwall nanotubes are tens of nanometres across whereas the typical diameter of a single-wall nanotube is just one or two nanometres. In the past this mixture of nanotubes with different electrical properties hindered efforts to exploit the tubes in electronic devices. But now a process exists to segregate the metallic and semiconducting nanotubes. With the current fabrication technology, nanotubes can be grown to lengths exceeding 100 microns, and in various shapes such as “nanosprings”. Nanotube transistors represent the most promising application of nanotubes in electronics. Nanotube transistors have been successfully fabricated and tested using individual multi-wall or single-wall nanotubes as the channel of a field-effect transistor (FET). In 1998 IBM came out with the first Carbon Nanotube Field Effect Transistor (CNTFET). This device had a thin single walled nanotube connecting two gold electrodes which served as the source and drain. The amount of current (ISD) flowing through the nanotube channel could be changed by a factor of almost 100,000 by changing the voltage applied to the gate (VG). When first constructed, most

Potential Unleashed by Logic Saturated Engineers

.....techies arena transistors on a cost-effective chip and, therefore, the processing or storage capacity of that chip, double every year or two, following Moore’s law . While it has provided better computing power, researchers are now applying this technology in ways that enable a new role for computing in science. of the CNTFETs had characteristics resembling those of a PMOS device. However, it soon turned out that these devices could be made to exhibit NMOS characteristics by adding certain chemicals or heating them beyond certain temperatures. Interest in nanotubes has increased dramatically in the present decade. Researchers at Delft University in the Netherlands have even managed to build CNT Single Electron Transistors (SET) employing a buckled nanotube. As the name suggests, such a transistor can act as a switch which can be flicked by just one electron. Unlike other conventional transistors, SETs do not suffer from excessive heat build up because of the limited current flowing and hence there is little degradation in performance. Also conventional transistors require millions of electrons to operate, so a single-electron version would enable electronic circuitry to occupy just a fraction of its present size. Nanotube transistors are also competing with conventional transistors over operating speed. Theoretically, nanotube transistors are estimated to have a speed limit near 1 terahertz(1012 Hz). This is about 1000 times faster than modern computer speeds. These speeds might have seemed unattainable a few years ago but it is likely that they may be achieved soon. A glimpse of this was provided by Peter Burke and colleagues at the University of California at Irvine. They demonstrated their device – which consisted of a single-walled carbon nanotube sandwiched between two gold electrodes –that could operate at extremely fast microwave frequencies. On varying the gate voltage in the device, the circuit was shown to operate at 2.6 gigahertz (2.6 x 109 Hertz). This means that current can be switched on and off in about 0.1 nanoseconds. With more and more of such path-breaking research being conducted regularly, it appears that we may soon be treated to integrated circuits of CNT transistors consisting of billions of transistors. IC manufacturers are already vying with one another to come out with such remarkable feats as manufacturing the first CNT based processors. That day may not be too far away. But as of today, the truth is crystal clear - Nanoelectronics is here to stay.

UNTETHERED SENSOR NETWORKS ARUN S, iV year

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he advances in science and technology are deeply intertwined. The telescope enables a deep understanding of astronomy, the microscope brings

bacteria into view, and satellites survey the Earth’s surface, expanding what we can perceive and measure. Now, we can use computers to visualize physical phenomena which we cannot observe through empirical means, thanks to numerical simulation. This trend has advanced with the prolonged exponential growth in the underlying semiconductor technology. The number of

Researchers can use the semiconductor manufacturing techniques that underlie this miniaturization to build radios and exceptionally small mechanical structures that sense fields and forces in the physical world. These inexpensive, low-power communication devices can be deployed throughout a physical space, providing dense sensing close to physical phenomena, processing and communicating this information, and coordinating actions with other nodes(we will see what they are later). Combining these capabilities with the system software technology that forms the Internet makes it possible to instrument the world with increasing fidelity. Welcome to the age of Wireless sensor networking (WSN). SCOPE OF WSN In a 1999 article titled “21 Ideas for the 21st Century” published in Business Week, Nobel Laureate Horst Stormer wrote, “Untethered micro sensors will go anywhere and measure anything— traffic flow, water level, number of people walking by, temperature. This is developing into something like a nervous system for the earth, a skin for the earth. The world will evolve this way”. This summarizes the indispensable nature of WSN in the future. Smart environments represent the next evolutionary development step in building, utilities, industrial, home, shipboard, and transportation systems automation. Like any sentient organism, the smart environment relies first and foremost on sensory data from the real world. Sensory data comes from multiple sensors of different modalities in distributed locations. The smart environment needs information about its surroundings as well as about its internal workings. The information needed by smart environments is provided by Distributed Wireless Sensor Networks, which are responsible for sensing as well as for the first stages of the processing hierarchy. The importance of sensor networks is highlighted by the number of recent funding initiatives, including the DARPA SENSIT program, military programs, and NSF Program Announcements. Now that’s some really good news for those planning to pursue their Graduate studies in the US, is that not? Recent terrorist and guerilla warfare countermeasures require distributed networks of sensors that can be deployed using, e.g. aircraft, and have self-organizing capabilities. In such applications, running wires or cabling is usually impractical. A sensor network is required that is fast and easy to install and maintain. Wireless sensor networks satisfy these requirements. Desirable functions for sensor nodes include: ease of installation, self-identification, self-diagnosis, reliability, time awareness for coordination with other nodes, some software functions and DSP, and standard control protocols and network interfaces approximately up to 100 ft.

The official newsletter of ECEA

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techies arena......

Figure: A Berkeley mote (MICAz MPR2400 series)

What are the types of constraints which specify the problem? First, energy (battery powered versus continuous power supply). Wireless communications brings a significant list of constraints. These include one or multi-hop communications, to a fixed infrastructure versus no fixed infrastructure; homogeneous versus non-homogeneous nodes (such as including “base stations”); synchronization (via beacons or message passing) and geo-location; the degree of robustness to interference; and highly variable radio propagation conditions. Other constraints include random versus deterministic sensor node placement, and sensor field density. We are all familiar with the various forms of Moore’s Law, such as digital processing power requirements dropping by a factor of about 1.6 per year. In contrast, Shannon’s theory and Maxwell’s equations govern the required receiver signal-to-noise ratio (SNR, or Eb/N0) and propagation losses, and these values are fixed. Consequently, while DSP may increase in sophistication without an increase in energy requirements, there remains the need to couple energy between transmitter and receiver. We therefore quickly come to the conclusion that, in energy-constrained sensor networking, maximizing network lifetime implies minimizing the communications. This has implications for virtually all aspects of the sensor node across the signal processing and communications, and leads naturally to cross-layer issues and design. SENSOR NETWORK APPLICATIONS A typical sensor network application is inventory tracking in factory warehouses. A single sensor node can be attached to each item in the warehouse. These sensor nodes can then be used for tracking the location of the items as they are moved within the warehouse. They can also provide information on the location of nearby items as well as the history of movement of various items. Once deployed, the sensor network needs very little human intervention and can function autonomously. Another typical application of sensor networks lies in military situations. Sensor nodes can be air-dropped behind enemy lines or in inhospitable terrain. These nodes can self-organize themselves and provide unattended monitoring of the deployed area by gathering information about enemy defenses and equipment, movement of troops, and areas of troop concentration. They can then relay this information back to a friendly base station for further processing and decision making. Although computer-based instrumentation has existed for a long time, the density of instrumentation made possible by a shift

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to mass-produced intelligent sensors and the use of pervasive networking technology gives WSNs a new kind of scope that can be applied to a wide range of uses. These can be roughly differentiated into • monitoring space, • monitoring things, and • monitoring the interactions of things with each other and the encompassing space. The first category includes environmental and habitat monitoring, precision agriculture, indoor climate control, surveillance, treaty verification, and intelligent alarms. The second includes structural monitoring, ecophysiology, condition-based equipment maintenance, medical diagnostics, and urban terrain mapping. The most dramatic applications involve monitoring complex interactions, including wildlife habitats, disaster management, emergency response, ubiquitous computing environments, asset tracking, healthcare, and manufacturing process flow. CONCLUSION Over the 50 years of modern computing, we have seen a new class of computer emerge about once a decade, progressing through mainframes, minicomputers, personal computers, and mobile computers. Each successive model relies upon technical advances, especially integration, to make computing available in a form factor not previously possible. Each has ushered in new uses for computer technology. Each succeeding generation is smaller, more plentiful, and more intimately associated with personal activity than the generation that preceded it. WSNs appear to represent a new class. They follow the trends of size, number, and cost, but have a markedly different function. Rather than being devoted to personal productivity tasks, WSNs make it possible to perceive what takes place in the physical world in ways not previously possible. In addition to offering the potential to advance many scientific pursuits, they also provide a vehicle for enhancing larger forms of productivity, such as manufacturing, agriculture, construction, and transportation. The architecture and design challenges of WSNs will be elaborated in the forthcoming issues. Keep sensing until then…

Eureka ! •

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Some well known materials act quite differently at the nanoscale. Opaque substances become transparent (copper). Inert materials become catalysts (platinum, gold). Stable materials turn combustible (aluminum). Solids turn into liquids at room temperature (gold). The diameter of a nanotube is about 10,000 times smaller than a human hair. Nanotubes have an exceptionally high elastic Young’s modulus of about 1012 Newton per square metre (or one terapascal) - about five times the value for steel. This makes them a suitable contender for the material of choice for future

Potential Unleashed by Logic Saturated Engineers

automobile industries. In the event of an accident,a car made from nanotubes will be compressed along the line of impact and once the force subsides, it can regain its original shape.

CELLPHONE KEYPAD FOR COMPUTERS Sindhu a, iii year

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ave you ever thought of eating a burger and chatting in the computer at the same time? After all, the goal of technology is to ease the burden of life. An innovative writing tool, aptly named “cre8txt” is a 24 key handheld keypad that resembles a typical mobile phone keypad .It fits neatly in the palm of the hand making it unobtrusive to use. This patent- pending venture is the outcome of a two-year hard work by edutainment experts. It would probably end the treasure hunt for alphabetical letters in the typical QWERTY keyboard. It is simple to use. To type, you have to just plug in the keypad via USB port and start typing in the genX “sms text slang” you are familiar with. An added advantage is that as you type in your semantics free sms slang, the Cre8txt software automatically translates it to proper English. The context-based word predicting software, an add-on of this product, would be of immense help in improving your vocabulary and spelling skills. Furthermore, it aids in fast typing too. The amount of prediction can also be varied over a wide range. The device was developed targeting the education market, in which the current trend is to encourage children learn new words as they type. The paradox is that higher end mobiles are now moving on to the full QWERTY keyboard, so the appreciation of its functionality is up to the individual’s typing speed. But, as far as comfort is concerned, you can snug in the sofa while typing your document. You can switch between multi-tap and prediction mode. The software is compatible with all applications that require text input including the web browsers. The device is compatible with all types of PC’s and Xbox. The word-predicting software runs in Windows XP / Vista and other Mac operating systems. The word bank can be amended allowing easy addition and removal of abbreviations. The entire kit comes with a price tag of $105 (Rs.4400 approx) only. That sounds a pretty fat amount, but may be with practice you can gear up for the ubiquitous fast-texting competitions like the one conducted by Nokia and win a whopping $6000 (250,000 approx).

GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM O.S.SHEERAPTHINATH, iii year

WHAT IS GPS AND HOW WAS IT DEVELOPED? Global positioning system is space based navigation and positioning system designed by US military for soldiers to determine their exact position. This necessity came out because, US military is a global force and it needs worldwide coverage for every second.

.....techies arena Thus the GPS receiver was given to each soldier and the military vehicles were equipped with the receiver. THEORY BEHIND GPS Global Positioning System is based upon the principle of TRILATERATION. The position of an unknown point is determined by measuring the length of sides of the triangle between the unknown point and two or more known points i.e. the satellites. The satellites transmit radio signals that are unique to each other and the receiver measures the time taken for the signal to reach that point and calculates the time accordingly. This is the basic theory behind GPS. WORKING OF GPS Let’s consider the submarine. It uses SONAR to measure the distance of an object. It measures the time taken for the sound waves to reach the object and reflect back. Thus it calculates the distance. This is called two way ranging. But GPS works on one way ranging i.e. there is no bouncing back of the signal. The satellites are the transmitters and the users possess the receivers to locate their position. AMBIGUITY WITH ONE SATELLITE GPS Navstar satellite transmits radio signals. The signal is essentially omnidirectional, although its preferred orientation is towards the Earth. If we happen to know that the distance to a particular satellite is precisely 20,000 kilometers , then the only place in the universe which is precise, is somewhere on the surface of an imaginary sphere that has a radius of 20,000 kilometres. With this information there is no way to know where on this sphere we are located. This problem should be overcome. Hence a second satellite is introduced. AMBIGUITY WITH TWO SATELLITES We can narrow down the search from an imaginary sphere by adding a second satellite. Let’s assume that we are at a distance of 22000 kilometres from the second satellite. Already we know that we are 20000 kilometres away from first satellite. On combining the above information, the search gets reduced. We will be located on the intersection of these two spheres. We still don’t know where we are located on this circle. Thus the ambiguity arises. There comes a need for the introduction of the third satellite. POSITIONING USING THIRD SATELLITE If we add a third satellite with a range of 21000 kilometres, we are almost there. Now the only place in the universe which is 20000 kilometres from first satellite, 22000 kilometres from second satellite and 21000 kilometres from third satellite is at the only two points where the three spheres intersect. We know now where we are precisely i.e. at either one of the two possible points. It is fairly easy to figure out in which point we are located because one of the points will be somewhere out of space. The receivers are designed in such a way that they reject the wrong one. But this positioning gives the approximate location usually to within 500 kilometres. Three satellite ranges have given us our approximate location. Actually it turns out that four satellites are needed to obtain the accurate information.

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techies arena...... WHY FOUR SATELLITES? To acquire accurate position, very precise time measurements are needed. It turns out that it only takes something like l/15 of a second for a satellite signal from orbit to reach our receiver on the ground. With radio waves traveling at some 300,000 kilometers per second, only 1/1,000,000 (one one-millionth) of a second of error in measuring the travel time translates into approximately 300 meters of error in our position. There is, however, a way to largely eliminate this problem. This error occurs because the satellites use atomic clocks which are precise to one billionth and the receivers use “inexpensive” quartz clocks i.e. the receiver clocks and the satellite clocks are not synchronized. Suppose the receiver clock is one second faster. Let’s locate the object in 2D. In 2D, two satellites are enough to locate the position. The signal from satellite takes 5 sec to reach the receiver from 1st satellite and 6sec from 2nd satellite. Since the receiver is 1 sec faster it reads the time as 6 sec and for the 2nd satellite it reads as 7 sec.The position of intersection of two spheres change with respect to correct time measurements. The problem is based on receiver clocks and not in the atomic clocks. If 3rd satellite is introduced, assume, its 7 sec travel is perceived as 8 sec travel. It turns out that with three satellite ranges; there is no place which is six seconds from the first satellite, seven seconds from the second satellite and eight seconds from the third. As soon as the receiver recognizes, it changes its clock settings until the three ranges intersect. This description explains the need of the 3rd satellite in 2D.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(a)If the centre of the chord AB lies inside the circle C1 of radius r sqroot(2) as shown in fig.a, then l > r sqroot(3). So possible outcomes = all points inside circle C and favourable outcomes = all points inside circle C1.Here area measure comes and p = ( 3.14 r^2/ 4)/(3.14 r^2) = ¼. (b)Assume that one end (A) of the chord is fixed. This reduces the number of possibilities but has no effect on p, because the number of favourable outcomes is reduced proportionately. If the other end B is on the 120 degree arc DBE, then l is greater than r sqroot(3) (simple geometry calculations for fig.b).So the total possibility is accounted by 360deg and the favourable outcomes are accounted by this 120 degree. So p = 120/360 = 1/3. (c)In fig.c, if the centre M of AB is between G and H, then l > r sqroot(3).AB is perpendicular to FK. The favourable and possible outcomes are addressed by all points on GH and FK respectively. Using as their measures the respective lengths r and 2r, we have p=r/2r = 1/2.

On carrying out the same explanation in 3D, we require 4 satellites for precise and accurate positioning.

Oops! Having three answers for same problem, all of them seemingly plausible!? Of these ,which is correct? Where is the bug?

BACK TO SCHOOL FOR PROBABILITY...

We can see that these discrepancies are because of not defining the terms “favourable” and “possible” precisely. The first problem can be addressed by adding a constraint that the events should occur equally likely. This solves the problem of having 2 to 11 as the sample space, but makes this definition of probability not usable for practical situations (where the events need not be equally probable). In the Bertrand paradox, the subtle point that all the three experiments are different is not made obvious by the ambiguities involved in the classical definition.

karthyek rajhaa, IV YEAR

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hat would you comment on an event occurring with probability very close to zero or one? Immediately if you say that the event will never occur or will certainly occur respectively, then go ahead. First of all let us have a recap of the classical definition of probability. The probability of an event A determined apriori without actual experimentation is P(A) = NA/ N, where N and NA represent the total number of possible and favourable events respectively. Is this definition clear enough? First consider a simple problem solved in higher secondary, finding the probability of getting a sum of 7 in the roll of two fair dice. The possible answers that I would give based on the above definitions are: (a) possible outcomes of the sum: 2 to 11 and favourable outcome: 7. So N=11 , NA=1 and p=1/11. (b) possible outcomes – the ‘as usual’ (1,1) to (6,6).Here N = 36, NA = 6 and hence p = 1/6. We all know that the second answer is correct. Then what went wrong in the first case?!?

Then how do we have a probability measure? Here comes the relative frequency measurement which is defined with posteriori results. It is nothing but the ratio of no. of times the favourable event occurred in the infinite (very large) no. of trials conducted. In numerous applications it is impossible to determine the probabilities of various events by repeating the experiment large no. of times. In such cases, we use the classical definition as working hypothesis, assuming that the events occur equally likely. The hypothesis is accepted if the observable consequences agree with experience, otherwise it is rejected. So it becomes clear that what we define as probability metric in real time applications itself varies.

Next let us have the famous Bertrand paradox, which asks you to find the probability of having a chord in a circle with centre C and radius r, with length greater than r sqroot(3).If the sample space is infinite, then we can use measures of length, area or angles

Now answer the first question, what does probability near to zero or one mean? If we have p = 0.6, we can state, “to a certain degree of confidence event A will occur”. This implies that if an experiment is conducted 1000 times the n “almost certainly” the no.

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Potential Unleashed by Logic Saturated Engineers

of time the event occurs is between 550 and 650.In case of p = 0.999, if the event does not occur in next trial, we can seriously doubt whether p=0.999. However we should note that both these assumptions are made on inductive reasoning. So we can conclude that objective conclusion of the case having p = 0.999 is only an inference. No prediction about future events based on experience can be accepted as logical certainty. Our inability to make categorical statements about future events is not limited to probability but applied to all sciences. The results are presented in single trial if they are deterministic, and in several trials if they probabilistic. i.e., average of values obtained in many trials. To prove that a future event is certain, we must invoke a metaphysical cause, which is not possible most of the times; and here comes the beauty of probability and random variables. This article is aimed at encouraging you to read “Probability, Random variables, and Stochastic processes” by Athanasios Papoulis, which illustrates the above content. It gives us a clear picture of the basic notions involved in probability and random variables in a new dimension.

ECEA CORNER Roopini dan, Iii YEAR

.....ECEA VISTA relevant and useful topic – “New markets and the emerging trends in IT”. The conference was well received with close to 500 people attending it. Next on the ECEA’s agenda is the formal inauguration of ECEA for the new academic year. That’s all for now from this front, folks. Keep an eye on this column for updates on all exciting events by the ECEA. Chairman Treasurer President Vice-President Deputy Treasurer Secretaries

Organizing Secretaries AB Batch CD Batch

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R.Dhileeban C.Sowmiya N.Mohan Kumar T.Sangeetha

Joint Secretaries AB Batch

i friends… A new semester has dawned bright and clear and the ECEA has already begun its activities for the semester. For the uninitiated, ECEA stands for Electronics and Communication Engineers Association and includes all the students and the staff of the ECE department. Now let’s take a quick recap of the events organized by the ECEA last semester.

Dr. N. Kumaravel Mrs O.Uma Maheshwari S.Irulappan R.Vignesh V.Pop Richards S.Velavan V.Sampath Kumar Swathi C. Sekar

CD Batch

R.Kannan S.Lakshmi P.Shanmuga Sundaram T.Nilofer

INTERVIEW WITH THE PRESIDENT, ECEA

A QUICK RECAP

Mr. S.Irulappan, ECEA President, shares his thoughts and novel plans for the upcoming days.

VISION 2008, the mother of all events and the pride of the ECE department was successfully pulled off by the ECEA. The ECEA headed by the ex-president E. Ram Prakasam worked hard to make the event a blockbuster. There were four crowd pulling workshops and many interesting events. The events were innovative and were designed to bring out the best from the participants. The four workshops were conducted by Cypress Semiconductors, Texas Instruments, Wipro – VLSI and ISRO. The Cypress Semiconductor workshop on PSOC (Programming Systems On Chips) was particularly well received.

Tell us something about ECEA… Electronics and Communication Engineers Association (ECEA) is a vibrant community of our department, where we share our knowledge, experience and vision. Comprising all undergraduate and postgraduate students and all the faculty members of our department, it has a strength of over 1000 members. Our beloved HOD Dr.N.Kumaravel is the chairman of the ECEA. The objectives of ECEA are to bring together all the students of our department and serve for the welfare of its members.

THE NEW SEMESTER

As the President of ECEA what are your duties and responsibilities? Providing dynamic leadership, setting high targets and achieving them, managing events, fostering innovation and delegating responsibilities are my agenda as President. ECEA should serve as an open platform for students to express themselves and showcase their creativity. My duties and responsibilities lies therein to create such opportunities for the members of ECEA.

The first week of the new semester saw the election of the new president of the ECEA and its office bearers. The office bearers are given in the box following this article. We wish them a very fruitful term at their respective posts. The ECEA organized a conference in the first week of their tenure itself. The conference was given by Mr. Ram Mynampati of Sathyam Computers on a very

Can you tell us about the events for this academic year? First of all there will be a formal meet of fourth year students and office bearers of ECEA with our faculty members which would serve as an ice breaking session between the faculty and ECEA office bearers. Next, we have Directivity ’08 to introduce the department to the first year students and show the exciting journey

After the outstanding success of VISION 08, ECEA conducted a Career Guidance programme for the third years at the Muthian Auditorium. The event was a big boost to the morale of the students awaiting the long grind of tests and interviews for placement.

The official newsletter of ECEA

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tutorials..... ahead of them. This will be followed by the formal inauguration of ECEA. Next, Project and academic guidance program for the second years, titled Radiance ’08, will inspire them to bring out their hidden talents. And the career guidance program for the third year students will help them make right decisions at the right time by enlightening them of the various career options available. Then we have the intra-college and inter-college national level technical symposiums Resonance ’08 and Vision ’09 respectively. They serve as a platform where students, tuning themselves to the right frequency, exhibit their talents. They provide a common ground to share our visions for the future through innovative projects and ideas that will benefit our society. So do you have any new plans for this year, different from the previous years? We have planned to incorporate several changes in the functioning of ECEA. This year ECEA is going to function through teams consisting of members from 2nd, 3rd and 4th year. To increase mutual interaction between the team members, industrial visits are going to be arranged for each team. We would also seek industry sponsored projects for us to work on, thereby increasing the employability value of every student. To expose our students to cutting edge research going on all around the world, work is underway to open an IEEE branch in our department. As a President, what is your message for our friends? ECEA is a wonderful opportunity for young men and women like us to mould our personality and groom our skills. I invite you to make the most out of it. And this year we are determined to achieve our lofty goals and committed to give 110% of our effort in terms of hard work and innovation. Share our dreams and let’s create history.

Tools > Options, go to Directories tab, choose Include files in the “Show Directories for:” combo box and then add the path where OpenCV include files exists (The default installation location for OpenCV is C:\Program Files\OpenCV\cv\include\cv.h , C:\program files\OpenCV\cvaux\include\cvaux.h, C:\Program files\OpenCV\cxcore\include\cxcore.h, C:\program files\OpenCV\otherlibs\highgui\include\highgui.h) and then in the “Show Directories for:” combo box choose Library files and then add the path of the library files in the OpenCV directory same as above and add the library files. Using Dev-C++ In Dev-C++ select Tools > Compiler Options, go to directories tab and then add the necessary include and library files as in above. Using GCC To compile the program using gcc use the following command “gcc –I /usr/local/include/opencv –L /usr/local/lib/ – lhighgui –lcv –lcvaux –lml –lcxcore filename.c” from a Terminal. The procedure is same for gcc in Linux UNIX and Mac OS X (for gcc in Mac OS X). Writing a simple program using C Loading and displaying an image in a window using OpenCV #include void main() { IplImage* img1; /*IplImage is the data type used to store images in OpenCV*/ img1=cvLoadImage(“C:\ocv.jpg”); //Loads the image to the variable “img1”

OPENCV PRASANNA KUMAR T.S.M, iii year

What is OpenCV? OpenCV stands for open source computer vision library, developed by Intel® mainly used for real time applications. It is a set of library functions used for image processing and computer vision in robotics, artificial intelligence, etc. These library functions can be used in C and Python programming languages. Why OpenCV? OpenCV is preferable to other applications like MATLAB® for image processing and computer vision because it is faster than other applications (its efficiency is equal to the efficiency of the programming languages which we use generally C or C++), it can be used with any C compiler like Turbo C++ , Microsoft® Visual C++, etc. It can be used with Microsoft® Windows™, Linux, Mac OS X, UNIX operating systems. Moreover it is free of cost. To download OpenCV, use the link http://opencvlibrary.sourceforge.net Compiling OpenCV Using Microsoft® Visual C++ To compile the program created in Visual C++ select

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cvNamedWindow(“window1”,4);

/*Creates a window named “window1” if it does not exist and does nothing if the window already exists.*/

cvShowImage(“window1”,img1);

/*Displays the image in a window with title “window1”, the file format is recognized using the file extension*/

cvWaitKey(0);

/*Waits till the user presses any key in the keyboard (this function is used because the program will start executing the next line which will close the window named “window1”)*/ cvMoveWindow(200,600); /*moves the current window to the specified point*/ cvWaitKey(0); /*waits till a key is pressed*/ cvDestroyWindow(“window1”); /*destroys the window named “window1”, if no

Potential Unleashed by Logic Saturated Engineers

....legends argument is given it closes all the windows*/ cvReleaseImage(&img1); /*Release or deallocates the memory used for image “img1”*/ } The value 4 in the cvLoadImage function indicates that the image is of any colour, value 0 is used to load gray scale images. Image formats that are supported in OpenCV version 1.0 are bmp, dib, jpeg, jpg, jp2, jpe, png, pbm, tiff, tif, exr, sar, sr etc. Video file formats supported are wmv, mpeg, avi, vob etc Functions useful for analysing video from video camera and files CvCapture* video1=cvFileCapture(“file1”) captures an video file named file1. CvCapture* video2=cvCreateCameraCapture(0) captures the frames from a video camera. The value 0 indicates the index of the camera that is used; if only one camera is used -1 is given as argument. IplImage* img1=cvGrabFrame(video1) grabs a single frame form “video1” and saves that to image “img1” and stores that internally and cannot be displayed using cvShowImage function but it is used for fast capturing and for synchronizing purposes that are necessary in while capturing video files from many cameras. IplImage* img2=cvRetrieveFrame(img1) retrieves the frame from the image “img1” and saves in image “img2”. This image “img2” can be displayed using cvShowImage function. IplImage* img3=cvQueryFrame(video2) grabs the current frame from the camera and then retrieves it so that it can directly used with cvShowImage function (actually it does cvGrabFrame and cvRetrieveFrame functions) cvReleaseCapture(&video1) deallocates the video1 from memory.

T r i v i a Co r n e r

• It is physically impossible for pigs to look up • • •

•

into the sky A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out. The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet Heisenberg is out for a drive when he’s stopped by a traffic cop. The cop says ‘Do you know how fast you were going?’ Heisenberg says ‘No, but I know where I am.’

You can’t kill yourself by holding your breath • Women blink nearly twice as much as men! • Coca-Cola was originally green

THE WAR VETERAN FROM AMRITSAR VISSWANATH v, III YEAR

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n life as in death, Field Marshall Sam Manekshaw defied all odds. The man eventually destined to be India’s first ever Field Marshall was born on 03 April, 1914 in Amritsar. He possessed the patrician features of a senator and also was a burly man. Sam was the fifth child in his family. He had four brothers and two sisters. He finished his schooling from Nainitals Sherwood School. Sam wanted to pursue his higher studies in England but his family wasn’t well off to help him. So he was admitted into Hindu Sabha College, Amritsar. If he had gone abroad, he often reminisces that he would have become a doctor. What doctor when queried, he replied “Gynaecologist”, just like his dad. He was a man with intense prodigies. A sincere, acquiescent and charismatic person who never abdicated any form of responsibility offered to him. Sam also had a cover of subtle attractiveness when he dresses resplendently in his green patrols and pouch belt. He was a showman par excellence and also the epitome of generalship. He never spilt out any form of curmudgeon behaviour on any damn earthling. He wasn’t a great sportsman. He liked gardening, tendering roses, trimming hedges and also manicuring the lawn. Sam’s rise to giddy heights without having commanded a battalion was unique. The highest point in his career was the unblemished victory in East Pakistan in the year 1971. His brilliant spy war converted what would have been a UN supervised ceasefire into a complete capitulation and surrender. He was also honoured by King Mahendra who conferred on him the title and sword of honorary General of the Royal Nepal Army. For his selfless service to the nation, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 1972. On 27th Jun 2008 this great personality succumbed to pneumonia at 94. In wellington his last rites were performed. The official ceremony was grossly inadequate. The President, Supreme commander of Armed Forces, The Prime Minister and worse the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee, the Air Force Chief were all absent. Usually Queen Elizabeth of England sends roses to all her field marshals on their birthdays and also attends their funerals. Here, flags were not even lowered and the affront of an explanation for this ignominy was that the field marshal is not in the warrant of precedence. I say that’s a lie. We all have time for IPL matches, Ashes Tournament, etc ....but the big guns of the country didn’t have spare time for the war veteran, who spent his entire life serving our nation.“What a shame?”

FAMOUS QUOTES "The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good." - Samuel Johnson "There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread." - Mahatma Gandhi “An inch of time is an inch of gold but you can't buy that inch of time with an inch of gold.” -Chinese Proverb

The official newsletter of ECEA

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Nitty-Gritty....

A GLIMPSE OF THE INFLATION RAGE IN INDIA Bharanidharan B, iv year

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o you know why a loaf of bread costs $50 million in Zimbabwe? Do you know why an item which cost 10 paise during our parents’ time costs Rs 10 now? Moreover, it seems that the cost of living is surging in India, the profits of many Indian companies are dipping, the US dollar seems fragile and USA is apparently in a recession. So, what’s all the fuss about? Through this article, let’s have a brief look at the nuts and bolts of inflation and its ramifications in India. In simple terms, inflation is nothing but the increase in the average level of prices of commodities and services of a nation. Let’s consider the following analogy to understand inflation in India. Assume that there is a Grand Prix motor race analogous to the world, while each car on the track represents a world nation. The speed of each car indicates the economic growth of a nation. So as in every race, the ultimate aim of every car is to stay ahead of its rivals in the race track. Similarly every nation wants to have a better economic growth than its comrades. Every car wants to travel fast but if it travels too fast it may skid off the track. Similarly the economy of any nation having a high growth rate is welcomed but sooner or later it may enter into inflation. Besides the high growth rate of India; the soaring oil prices, high demand for commodities such as steel, skyrocketing food prices and other such global phenomena are the root causes for escalating inflation in India. Furthermore, it’s not that only growing economies have a high inflation rate. For instance Guinea, one of the world’s poorest nations, has an inflation rate greater than that of India, the second fastest growing economy. Several other factors may also fuel inflation. This may include skirmishes, political instability, failing crop yield, wide-scale unemployment, natural calamities, etc. In India, the second fastest growing economy, more people want to consume more commodities or goods, so the manufacturers produce more goods for when the demand is high, the supply is also high. But to produce more finished goods, the manufacturers have to buy or consume more raw materials which will in turn lead to an increase in the cost of raw materials and man power. Thus the prices of the finished products will be elevated. Those with higher incomes start consuming more goods which again increases demand. Thus the prices of the finished goods keep rising further since the demand is high. This leads to inflation. Eventually many people want the finished goods, but all of them cannot afford it. The worst affected are the working class since they are denied access to the basic amenities of life while the middle class will have to cut down on expenditures to make both ends meet. In the analogy considered previously, whenever a car travels too fast it slows down so that it can stabilise. Similarly the growth rate of a nation may slow down so that it can stabilise its economy, and when this is continued for more than six months it enters into recession. This is what is happening to USA. A prolonged recession may in turn lead to a depression.

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Inflation rate, the yardstick of inflation, is calculated on the basis of either WPI (Wholesale Price Index) or CPI (Consumer Price Index). The former is used by nations like India, Philippines, etc while the latter is used by USA, China, Japan, etc. In simple terms, inflation rate is the percentage change of either WPI or CPI. WPI is an indicator designed to measure the changes in the price levels of commodities that flow into the wholesale trade intermediaries while CPI is a measure of the weighted average of prices of a specified set of goods and services purchased by consumers. To understand the significance of inflation rate, let’s consider the following example. Suppose, one invests Rs 100 in India (where the inflation rate is around 11 %) and the interest rate is 5% per annum. The investor gets Rs 105 at the end of the first year. Since the inflation rate is 11 %, an item that costs Rs 100 today will cost Rs 111 a year from now. Thus what the investor would buy with Rs.100 this year, he would only be able to buy with Rs.111 next year. Therefore the investor is actually losing money because the inflation rate is more than the rate of investment. Similarly inflation is also the reason why an item which costs 10 paise during our parents’ time costs Rs 10 now. The consequences of inflation are traumatizing. For instance, 4 out of 5 people are unemployed and basic amenities of life are denied to majority of the people in Zimbabwe where the inflation rate is a whopping 355,000%. The junta controlled Myanmar and the war-torn Iraq are no exceptions. In a nutshell, unprecedented inflation causes undesirable woes. Compared to the 355,000 % of Zimbabwe, the 11 % inflation rate of India may seem nugatory. Sceptics even say that it’s not the actual inflation that’s causing all the trouble in India, but it’s the way that inflation is calculated since India’s uses the WPI as opposed to the CPI which is used by any other major economy. Taking into consideration that the working class accounts for more than 50% of the population in India while more than 20 million people live under the poverty line, even a small change in the economy may thwart the progress of our nation though one can be assured that the economist of repute, Dr. Manmohan Singh would do his best to have the situation under control.

SUBPRIME CRISIS Saravanan p , iv year

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his is the catch-word that has attained the status of a shibboleth. The much clichéd “Subprime crisis” more often than not should be viewed with a wider connotation attached to it. It’s a crisis fuelled by the avarice and the greed of many subprime lenders. The term sub-prime is invariably attached to mortgage which is something like borrowing money usually from banks to buy off or build a house. What could have triggered the crisis that has become a monster and vitiating the already volatile markets and presumably bolstering stagflation? The greed to reap short-time profits is culpable. Why would subprime lenders put themselves in this precarious position? The simple answer is that they thought they had a system to mitigate their risk while still making a profit. After they got the borrower to sign on the dotted line, the lending institutions

Potential Unleashed by Logic Saturated Engineers

packaged up the loans and sold them to hedge funds, mutual funds and private equity groups looking for quick returns. To make matters worse, many of the buyers of these packaged loans used borrowed funds, thus adding another layer of debt to a shaky foundation. The shares of these companies were then bought by pension funds and insurance companies looking for high returns, even though they would never have bought the risky mortgages outright. This layer upon layer of risky debt was created to fuel one thing: short-term profits. And voila! Here we witness the cascading domino effect. The not-so-confident lenders are facing a tough time. The economy crumbles. Inflation reigns havoc and play spoilsport with the common-man who stumbles and chokes because the mere idea of “making both ends meet” vanishes. He gropes in the dark for the end. But to talk about the pros and cons or the nitty-gritty of the subprime crisis may not be possible at a stretch. We can however do some justice to show the effect this can have on the economy. Fait-accompli, it’s in their as well as in the common man’s interests , the lenders and borrowers should act. After all the Bardof-Avon quips: “IT BLESSETH HIM THAT GIVES AND HIM THAT TAKES”! Beware!

KERS IN CARS M.Prashanth, ii year

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ould F1 bite the oil bullet and get the boot? This is a question that seems to have cropped up in the minds of most F1 fanatics. But come on guys… Know-all Mr. Mosley surely wouldn’t let this happen. In 2006 he had given an ultimatum to all the teams to fit their cars with some sort of an energy recovery system by 2009 (Energy recovery is defined as feeding the heat created in the engine back to the car). Heeding attention to this were two former Renault race engineers Jon Hilton and Doug Cross. They’ve come up the Kinetic Energy Recovery System or KERS and today we are on the cusp of bringing about a revolution not only in F1 but in the cars world over. How the system operates The system comprises a flywheel connected by a continuously variable transmission [CVT] to the drivetrain. Unlike conventional mechanical transmission, CVT is a transmission which can change steplessly through an infinite number of effective gear ratios between maximum and minimum values. The flexibility of a CVT allows the driving shaft to maintain a constant angular velocity over a range of output velocities which provides better fuel economy than other transmissions by enabling the engine to run at its most efficient revolutions per minute for a range of vehicle speeds. By nature this may not be an innovative concept, Flybrid Systems( the company co-founded by Hilton and Cross) deserves credit for coming up with a mechanism that creates sufficient power storage density in a unit small and light enough for F1. The flywheel’s speed is a massive 64500 rpm and hence is pretty small and light. But this demands a robust system which would create huge power losses and generate large amounts of heat. Hence it was decided to run it in vacuum which negates friction and hence heat losses. In

....gaiety order to ensure that the system was air-tight, the entire unit is placed in a hermetically sealed shaft. Most of the system’s problems had off the shelf solutions except those relating to a flywheel construction capable of staying intact at high speeds, a containment that would retain everything in the event of a crash, a vacuum seal and a bearing solution. Their solutions to the first 3 problems worked perfectly except the bearing. Flybrid’s Solutions include flywheel, housing, seal and bearing. KERS works even better if the drive is applied directly to the engine rather than downstream of transmission. But current rules do not allow any crank re-design to extract more power. But as is the case with any new, innovative design KERS has drawn its own share of flak. Most notable was the veiled criticism coming from Honda’s Ross Brawn who said that the theoretical advantage of having KERS is perhaps two or three tenths a lap, but you have to carry 20 or 30kg extra for that. Also he says that KERS is pretty redundant when it comes to the control over the amount of braking at the rear end. Hence he says that teams would lose out on weight, packaging and torsional moment. And also top teams like Ferrari and Mclaren claim that their timings are not going to be greatly affected by KERS. As of now there isn’t any clear consensus among the teams regarding the use of KERS. So it might take sometime for KERS to be implemented. But if the FIA had given the green signal in 1999 to a system akin to KERS developed by Mercedes’ Marco Illen the scenario might have been different. Back then, that system would have given a power boost of 45 bhp. The one developed by Hilton and Cross provides a boost of 80bhp. Next year or not, Hilton and Cross truly deserve a pat on the back for coming up with a system that could find universal application.

QUIZ CORNER Mail your entries to [email protected]. Exciting prizes await the first few entries with maximum right answers. (1) He was born in spring, 1915 in a Russian village. During the Second World War, he volunteered to fight along the front-lines in the battle of Stalingrad. His excellent sniper skills, which he learnt from hunting deer near his home in the Ural Mountains, catapulted him to the level of a Hero in Russia. Lurking in the ruins of Stalingrad, his team of snipers spread fear among German soldiers. Claimed to have killed as many as 400 enemy men, which tremendously helped Russia in the war, he was awarded with some of the prestigious awards of his country, such as Hero of Soviet Union, Order of Lenin, etc. And recently, his life was fictionalized in a famous Hollywood movie. Identify this personality. (2)

Rare are we in this mysterious universe for we are just thousands in numbers. Bred in labs by savvy scientists, to fathom nature’s bizarre twists. Though we existed in zillions, eons ago, Vanquished were we in a brilliant show. We’ve even starred in sci-fi movies

The official newsletter of ECEA

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gaiety..... helping mankind to realize journeys extending light years into space. Now, can you identify my face? ( 3)During the Great War between Illianers and Tairens, a thousand Tairen soldiers were captured as prisoners of war by the Illianers and were doomed to death in a most horrible way by the evil King of Illian. They were made to stand in a circle and were numbered from one to thousand. A sword was given to the first soldier and he was asked to chop the head of the second and give the sword to the third. The third will kill the fourth and pass the sword to the fifth and so on. This process will continue until only one man was left. Can you guess who that lucky guy would be? (4)How would you find the approximate radius of the earth by just using a five minute stopclock? By the way, I love watching sunsets. (5)Eighty one horses are to participate in horse races. Only nine horses are allowed to participate in a single race. Can you find the minimum number of races that must be conducted, in order to find the fastest four horses among the eighty one? (6)Many modern TV's draw power even if turned off. The circuit the power is used in does what function? (7)When yellow light is incident on a surface, no electrons are emitted while when green light is incident, electrons are emitted. If red light is incident on the surface, then what is expected ? (8)If Intel’s quad-core processor is called Xeon then what is the name for AMD’s quad core processor? (9)Many engineering books state Marconi as the inventor of radio. But Mr.X had obtained the patent for it in 1900 which was shockingly reversed and given to Marconi in 1904(partly because of the latter’s powerful financial backing).Finally in 1943,the US Supreme Court declared Mr.X as the primary inventor of Radio and rightfully so, for Marconi had used 17 patents owned by Mr.X. Who was Mr.X?

Mail your entries to [email protected]. Exciting prizes await the first few entries with maximum right answers.

CLUES ACROSS 1. They flow against the current (9) 8. Who said only humans had brains? (2) 9. Medium used for brief communication (5) 10. Jupiter’s companion qualifies microprocessor’s pins (2) 13. Converts characters to numbers (4) 15. Bell Labs (4) 16. A handy processor (3) 17. Electronic Gadget that rocked the music world (4) 18. Defines Telecommunication standards (4) 21. On seeing Aragog, the giant spider, a baffled Ron inverted himself digitally(2) 22. Expand the first letter of 19 down (5) 23. “Electronic” gaming company (2) 26. I had plum and date to get modulation of voice (9) DOWN 2. Inverted Chlorine loves oscillations (2) 3. Edible Circuit (4) 4. Gets logical address using physical address (4) 5. Heard of computational complexity? 6. Makes DRAMs volatile (9) 7. Put on your footwear properly for better performance (9) 11. As opposed to a generator (5) 12. Get a taste of digital logic (5) 14. Head of a crowbar can be used to observe signals (3) 19. Programming language for ASICs (4) 20. Part of a connected datastructure (4) 24. Contribution of electronics to the entertainment industry (2) 25. Tail of US capital did a volte-face to store data (2) editors

Arun Chekhov I

&

Bharanidharan B

principal correspondents

CROSSWORD Ganesh c & Arun Chekhov I, IV year

Anish A Arun Goud Arun S Harish Guruprasad Karthyek Rajhaa Saravanan P third year generators

Prasanna Kumar TSM Roopini Dan Sheerapthinath OS Sindhu A Visswanath V [email protected]

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Potential Unleashed by Logic Saturated Engineers