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This study seeks insights into the engineering undergraduates’ knowledge of problem-solving process, teamwork characteristics and communication skills.

The data for the study were collected through consecutive sampling technique from 78 engineering undergraduates at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Pilani Campus, India on a five-point Likert scale-based questionnaire.

Exploratory factor analysis results traced three stages of the problem-solving process. However, the results of teamwork characteristics and communication skills validated the literature-based results. An important finding was that all the three skills were correlated. This means that one skill can be used to develop and promote other skills. The paired sample t-test demonstrated that all the three skills were perceived with a difference, which indicates that these skills worked in collaboration without losing their individuality.

This study supports that there is a need to engage learners in an active and collaborative environment to improve the engineering undergraduates’ knowledge of skills.

The conscious effort to make the engineering undergraduates aware would reduce the gap between the graduating engineers skills currently possessed in academia and the required skills at workplace.

Communicating a clear, precise, interpretable and unambiguous visual message usually relies on a cross-disciplinary team of professionals. Their complementary visions can uncover which information matter and how it could be visually displayed to inform, sensitize and encourage people to act toward sustainability. While design studies generally claim that this team has to come to a shared vision, the authors question this assumption, which seems to contradict the benefits of cross-disciplinarity. The purpose of this study is to reveal how simple visual representations displayed in a PowerPoint actively participate in the expression of various and sometimes divergent visions. Recognizing the agency of visuals also leads this study to propose the notion of (un)shared professional vision, which shows that the richness of visual representations can only reveal itself through the capacity of professional visions to maintain their differences while confronting each other.

Over a 20-month ethnography, this study documented its own cross-disciplinary reflective design process, which aimed to design collectively an experimental environmental label, focusing on interactions occurring between professionals and visuals displayed on five key PowerPoint slides.

This study first demonstrates how, in practice, a cross-disciplinary reflective design conversation with visuals concretely unfolds through boundary-objects. This study shows how these visuals manage to ex-press themselves through the multiple visions represented in the discussions, revealing their complexity. Second, this study introduces the notion of (un)shared professional vision which underlines that unsharing a vision nurtures the team’s collective capacity to express the complexity of a design situation, while sharing a vision is also necessary to confront these respective expressions to allow the professional uncovering of what should be visually communicated.

The Communication as Constitutive of Organization lens the authors chose to understand the reflective design conversation illustrates that, even though each collaborator’s vision was “(un)shared,” their many voices expand the understanding of the situation and lead them to develop an unexpected and creative environmental information ecosystem that can positively transform society through visuals.

Introduction: Skill development is crucial in developing economies by enhancing productivity and creating employment opportunities. At the macro level, it also leads to industrial development and economic growth.

Purpose: The research is to identify the types of skills required for increasing the probability of employability of labour. It also aims to define the challenges and opportunities in skill development to drive change.

Need of the Study: Studying opportunities and challenges for skill development in developing economies is essential for achieving sustainable economic growth, reducing poverty, increasing employment opportunities, and promoting global competitiveness.

Research Methodology: Some skills are recognised through research that has been published to determine the skill set needed to increase labour productivity. To draw lessons, some skill development initiatives by various companies are also identified and presented in case studies. Additionally, several government programs are available to assess the possibilities and prospects for skill development in the Indian market.

Practical Implications: The research will be valuable in micro and macro decision making. At the micro level, research is advantageous for a business person to initiate the skill development of its employees by using government schemes. Nations other than India can understand the policy framework for skill development.

Findings: The term ‘skilling’ has become fashionable. Due to the need for skill-based earnings data, only some studies examine the return on skill (ROS) of the labour market. Skill development plays a significant role in bringing change at the micro and macro levels. Hence it is necessary to exploit all opportunities for skill development.

This study aims to develop an interface management risk interaction modeling and analysis methodology applicable to complex systems in high-speed rail construction projects, reveal the interaction mechanism of interface management risk and provide theoretical support for project managers to develop appropriate interface management risk response strategies.

This paper introduces the association rule mining technique to improve the complex network modeling method. Taking China as an example, based on the stakeholder perspective, the risk factors and significant accident types of interface management of high-speed rail construction projects are systematically identified, and a database is established. Then, the Apriori algorithm is used to mine and analyze the strong association rules among the factors in the database, construct the complex network, and analyze its topological characteristics to reveal the interaction mechanism of the interface management risk of high-speed rail construction projects.

The results show that the network is both scale-free and small-world, implying that construction accidents are not random events but rather the result of strong interactions between numerous interface management risks. Contractors, technical interfaces, mechanical equipment, and environmental factors are the primary direct causal factors of accidents, while owners and designers are essential indirect causal factors. The global importance of stakeholders such as owners, designers, and supervisors rises significantly after considering the indirect correlations between factors. This theoretically explains the need to consider the interactions between interface management risks.

The interaction mechanism between interface management risks is unclear, which is an essential factor influencing the decision of risk response measures. This study proposes a new methodology for analyzing interface management risk response strategies that incorporate quantitative analysis methods and considers the interaction of interface management risks.

Rolling element bearings (REBs) are commonly used in rotating machinery such as pumps, motors, fans and other machineries. The REBs deteriorate over life cycle time. To know the amount of deteriorate at any time, this paper aims to present a prognostics approach based on integrating optimize health indicator (OHI) and machine learning algorithm.

Proposed optimum prediction model would be used to evaluate the remaining useful life (RUL) of REBs. Initially, signal raw data are preprocessing through mother wavelet transform; after that, the primary fault features are extracted. Further, these features process to elevate the clarity of features using the random forest algorithm. Based on variable importance of features, the best representation of fault features is selected. Optimize the selected feature by adjusting weight vector using optimization techniques such as genetic algorithm (GA), sequential quadratic optimization (SQO) and multiobjective optimization (MOO). New OHIs are determined and apply to train the network. Finally, optimum predictive models are developed by integrating OHI and artificial neural network (ANN), K-mean clustering (KMC) (i.e. OHI–GA–ANN, OHI–SQO–ANN, OHI–MOO–ANN, OHI–GA–KMC, OHI–SQO–KMC and OHI–MOO–KMC).

Optimum prediction models performance are recorded and compared with the actual value. Finally, based on error term values best optimum prediction model is proposed for evaluation of RUL of REBs.

Proposed OHI–GA–KMC model is compared in terms of error values with previously published work. RUL predicted by OHI–GA–KMC model is smaller, giving the advantage of this method.

This study aims to design a compact filtering monopole antenna for 5G communication. The design is most suited for various applications within the frequency range of 2.2–3.8 GHz. It offers enhanced bandwidth and reasonable gain with wide-stopband performance.

A low-pass filter (LPF) of complementary split ring resonator (CSRR) with short-circuited stub lines is integrated with a compact defected coplanar waveguide fed truncated circular monopole ultrawideband (UWB) antenna. The reference UWB antenna etched on an FR4 substrate was coupled to the designed LPF to transform the UWB antenna into a wideband antenna. The effect of coupling is analyzed based on the real and imaginary responses of the terminal impedance (ZT) curve. Three short-circuited stub lines of asymmetric lengths are added to the CSRR LPF to suppress harmonics, thereby enhancing the stopband performance and impedance matching between the elements. The proposed filtering antenna is fabricated using a photolithography process, and the corresponding results are measured using a network analyzer (N9951A). The radiation parameters of the proposed filtering monopole antenna are tested in the anechoic chamber. The simulated/measured results are compared and are found in agreement with each other.

The proposed design suppresses 6.5f0 harmonics, resulting in wide stopband performance and increased gain selectivity at the transition edge. A peak suppression of −41 dB and an average suppression of −18 dB were attained throughout the stopband. An operating fractional bandwidth of 54.5%/143% with a peak gain of 3 dBi/5 dBi was obtained. The proposed filtering antenna supports 5G applications such as WiMAX, WLAN, n7, n38 IMT-E, n30 WCS, n40 TDD, n41 TDD, n48 TDD, n78 TDD and n90 TDD.

The proposed design is novel and compact and has a wide application in 5G communication. With the filter, the antenna operates in wideband, and without the filter, it operates in UWB. Besides, it offers enhanced stopband performance with high gain selectivity at the transition edge. Comparatively, a 50% improvement in bandwidth, 52% improvement in size reduction and 33% improvement in harmonic suppression are attained.

The purpose of this paper is to present an up-to-date survey on the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technique with co-operative strategy, a fast-evolving fifth-generation (5 G) technology. NOMA is used for serving many mobile users, both in power and code domains. This paper considers the power-domain NOMA, which is now discussed as NOMA.

The first part of the paper discusses NOMA-based cooperative relay systems using different relay strategies over different channel models. In various research works, the analytical expressions of many performance metrics were derived, measured and simulated for better performance of the NOMA systems. In the second part, a brief introduction to diversity techniques is discussed. The multiple input and multiple output system merged with cooperative NOMA technology, and its future challenges were also presented in this part. In the third part, the paper surveys some new conceptions such as cognitive radio, index modulation multiple access, space-shift keying and reconfigurable intelligent surface that can be combined with NOMA systems for better performance.

The paper presents a brief survey of diverse research projects being carried out in the field of NOMA. The paper also surveyed two different relaying strategies that were implemented in cooperative NOMA over different channels and compared several performance parameters that were evaluated and derived in these implementations.

The paper provides a scope for recognizable future work and presents a brief idea of the new techniques that can be united with NOMA for better performance in wireless systems.

A cross-domain intelligent software-defined network (SDN) routing method based on a proposed multiagent deep reinforcement learning (MDRL) method is developed.

First, the network is divided into multiple subdomains managed by multiple local controllers, and the state information of each subdomain is flexibly obtained by the designed SDN multithreaded network measurement mechanism. Then, a cooperative communication module is designed to realize message transmission and message synchronization between the root and local controllers, and socket technology is used to ensure the reliability and stability of message transmission between multiple controllers to acquire global network state information in real time. Finally, after the optimal intradomain and interdomain routing paths are adaptively generated by the agents in the root and local controllers, a network traffic state prediction mechanism is designed to improve awareness of the cross-domain intelligent routing method and enable the generation of the optimal routing paths in the global network in real time.

Experimental results show that the proposed cross-domain intelligent routing method can significantly improve the network throughput and reduce the network delay and packet loss rate compared to those of the Dijkstra and open shortest path first (OSPF) routing methods.

Message transmission and message synchronization for multicontroller interdomain routing in SDN have long adaptation times and slow convergence speeds, coupled with the shortcomings of traditional interdomain routing methods, such as cumbersome configuration and inflexible acquisition of network state information. These drawbacks make it difficult to obtain global state information about the network, and the optimal routing decision cannot be made in real time, affecting network performance. This paper proposes a cross-domain intelligent SDN routing method based on a proposed MDRL method. First, the network is divided into multiple subdomains managed by multiple local controllers, and the state information of each subdomain is flexibly obtained by the designed SDN multithreaded network measurement mechanism. Then, a cooperative communication module is designed to realize message transmission and message synchronization between root and local controllers, and socket technology is used to ensure the reliability and stability of message transmission between multiple controllers to realize the real-time acquisition of global network state information. Finally, after the optimal intradomain and interdomain routing paths are adaptively generated by the agents in the root and local controllers, a prediction mechanism for the network traffic state is designed to improve awareness of the cross-domain intelligent routing method and enable the generation of the optimal routing paths in the global network in real time. Experimental results show that the proposed cross-domain intelligent routing method can significantly improve the network throughput and reduce the network delay and packet loss rate compared to those of the Dijkstra and OSPF routing methods.

This paper aims to find the incidence of university sustainability, as sustainability practices, in university performance at private universities.

Quantitative research using structural equation modelling. Data collection and analysis followed sustainability and performance scales from previous research. The scales were validated by surveying students, teachers and administrative staff of five private universities in Medellin, Colombia. The responses (i.e. 5,344 useful answers) were collected between April 2019 and December 2020 and analysed using the Smart partial least square (PLS) software and the PLS calculation methodology.

The results confirmed the reliability and validity of the sustainability and performance university measurement models and validated the dimensions proposed to determine sustainability and performance holistically in private universities. The results confirmed that universities implementing sustainability holistically in their system positively impact their performance as higher education institutions. The university sustainability is forecasting the University Performance in about 60% of the universities analysed, with a considerable contribution from sustainability in outreach and strategic management.

This study was cross-sectional and empirically validated the model of sustainability and performance at five private universities in a single period and territory. A broader validation from longitudinal studies considering other universities in Colombia and Latin America is suggested to understand local and regional trends better.

Results provided a model for better understanding the incidence of sustainability in performance holistically at private universities in developing countries such as Colombia. In addition, the proposed dimensions and model could help regional decision-making on higher education.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first attempts relating a structural equation model and inter-university research on the incidence of sustainability in private university performance. This work contributes to a local consensus on sustainability and performance models at private universities. Furthermore, from this research emerged a joint policy framework for incorporating sustainability holistically and regionally as an effective strategy for universities and their commitment to sustainable development.

This paper aims to present the design, fabrication and analysis of a wideband, enhanced gain 1 × 2 patch antenna array with a simple profile structure to meet the desired antenna traits, such as wide bandwidth, high gain and directional patterns expected for the upcoming fifth-generation (5G) wireless applications in the millimeter wave band. To enhance these parameters (bandwidth and gain), a new antenna geometry by using a T-junction power divider is presented.

The theory behind this paper is connected with advancements in the 5G communications related to antennas. The methodology used in this work is to design a high gain array antenna and to identify the best possible power divider to deliver the power in an optimized way. The design methodology adopts several steps like the selection of proper substrate material as per the design specification, size of the antenna as per the frequency of operation and application-specific environment condition. The simulation has been performed on the designed antenna in the electromagnetic simulation tool (high-frequency structure simulator [HFSS]), and optimization has been done with parametric analysis, and then the final array antenna model is proposed. The proposed array contains 2-patch elements excited by one port adapted to 50 Ω through a T-junction power divider. The 1 × 2 array configuration with the suggested geometry helps to improve the overall gain of the antenna, and the implementation of the T-junction power divider provides enhanced bandwidth. The proposed array designed using a 1.6 mm thick flame retardant substrate occupies a compact area of 14 × 12.14 mm².

The prototype of the array antenna is fabricated and measured to validate the design concept. A good agreement has been reached between the measured and simulated antenna parameters. The measured results confirm its wideband and high gain characteristics, covering 24.77–28.80 GHz for S₁₁= –10 dB with a peak gain of about 15.16 dB at 27.65 GHz.

The proposed antenna covers the bandwidth requirements of the 26 GHz n258 band (24.25–27.50 GHz) to be deployed in the UK and Europe. The suggested antenna structure also covers the federal communications commission (FCC)-regulated 28 GHz n261 band (27.5–28.35 GHz) to be deployed in America and Canada. The low profile, compact size, simple structure, wide bandwidth, high gain and desired directional radiation patterns confirm the applicability of the suggested array antenna for the upcoming 5 G wireless systems.