Federalism Practice in Nepal: Does it Move in the Expected Course?

This study examines how far Nepal's current practice of federalism has progressed toward people's aspirations, based on power separation, public trust, power equalization, and intergovernmental relationships. Primary data was collected on purposively 72 key informant interviews, which were then triangulated by the KII response. Finding demonstrates that functions and authorities were devolved in accordance with the principle of separation of powers at all three levels of government. However, the constitutional provisions were completely disregarded, and power was centralized by an unholy alliance of political leadership and bureaucracy. Second, people expected the democratic government to take a welfare approach to ensure greater pluralism and alliances, but special interests of politicians for their election constituencies, as well as identity-based issues, caused havoc in the effective operation of federalism. Third, the provision of three tiers of power-sharing mechanisms was based on coexistence, cooperation, and coordination. However, the federal government appears hesitant to support sub-national governments due to the centralized mindset of bureaucrats and politicians. Fourth, the constitution has focused on intergovernmental relations, but such relationships fail due to imbalances in vertical and horizontal relationships, fiscal dependency, and the bureaucracy's power-seeking attitude. In the end, two key questions for the discussions are raised. First, the institutionalization of accountability at the local level is it a true commitment, or is it merely an ivory tower? Second, the provision of autonomy has been used as a means of transformation or simply as a bargaining tool at the local level?

Power balance modulation strategy for hybrid cascaded H-bridge multi-level inverter

Under the traditional hybrid modulation strategy, the output powers of the hybrid cascaded H-bridge inverter are not balanced between the cascaded units. With a hybrid cascaded H-bridge 13-level inverter with a DC side voltage ratio of 1:1:1:3 (referred to as III-inverter in the paper) as the research object, a hybrid modulation power equalization strategy based on carrier rotation is proposed. Under the control of which, the output voltage of inverters is formed by superposition of multiple basic voltage waveforms. Firstly, the hybrid modulation strategy is adopted to modulate the inverter so that the high- and low-voltage units, respectively, operate in the low-frequency and high-frequency states. Then, the pulse sequence within the 3/2 output voltage cycle is made to circulate among all the cascaded units by carrier rotation. Finally, the output voltage of each cascaded units is made to contain all the basic voltage waveforms, thus implementing the output power balance between all the cascaded units. Based on simulation and experiment, the effectiveness of the strategy is verified, and it is shown that under the control of this power balance modulation strategy, the output voltage waveform quality of the inverter is high, there is no current backflow, and the output power can be balanced within 3/2 cycles.

A Multireceiver Wireless Power Supply System with Power Equalization in Stereoscopic Space

With the rapid development of wireless power transfer (WPT) technology, the traditional single-transceiver WPT system has become more and more advanced; however, it is still difficult to meet its extensive application requirements. Aiming at the wireless charging of mobile phones in public places, electric vehicles (EVs) in multistorey garages, and electronic shelf labels (ESLs) in supermarket merchandise shelves, a multireceiver wireless power supply system with power equalization is proposed. The condition of power equalization is derived according to the equivalent circuit of the proposed WPT system, and the received power can be equally maintained by adjusting the transceiver loop resistance when the total load number or transmission distance changes. A simulation model is established to evaluate the electromagnetic environment of the proposed WPT system, and the results comply with the electromagnetic safety of the ICNIRP-2018 guidelines. Finally, the experimental results show that the power differential rate that meets the power equalization condition is 13 to 17% lower than that of the unsatisfied rate, which verifies the effectiveness of the proposed system in terms of power equalization.

Mathematical Support of Automatic Power Equalization Systems for Modular Power Source

An algorithm for controlling the modules of a power supply source of vacuum electric furnaces intended for growing artificial monocrystals of leucosapphire according to the Kyropoulos method is considered. Since the modules from which a source with the required capacity is assembled by connecting them in parallel are not exactly identical with one another, and so are the current conducting buses used to interconnect them, a situation may occur in which some of the modules are underloaded, while others are overloaded. Therefore, in addition to stabilizing the total power produced by the source, the automatic control system must minimize the power difference among the modules. An algorithm ensuring balanced operation of the modules is developed, which is based on modeling the processes in an electrical system consisting of power supply modules and current supply buses that take into account their parameters — resistance, inductance, and mutual inductance. The algorithm has been implemented in the MatLab environment. The algorithm testing results have shown that the power difference among the power supply modules is decreased by more than a factor of two.

A Deeply Saturated Differentially-Biased SOA-MZI for 20 Gb/s Burst-Mode NRZ Traffic

We experimentally demonstrate an optical Burst-Mode Wavelength Converter (BMWC) that simultaneously provides power equalization and wavelength conversion of Non-Return to Zero-On/Off Keying (NRZ-OOK) data and operates up to 20 Gb/s. It employs a balanced, differentially-biased, Semiconductor Optical Amplifier-Mach Zehnder Interferometer (SOA-MZI) operating in deeply saturated regime and its performance is evaluated at 10 Gb/s and 20 Gb/s with loud/soft peak–power ratios up to 9 dB and 5 dB, respectively. Bit Error Rate (BER) measurements reveal error free operation with up to 6.1 dB BER improvement at 10 Gb/s and 3.51 dB at 20 Gb/s, while the use of a single SOA-MZI yields 50% reduction in the number of active components against state-of-the-art BMWCs. Finally, the proposed BMWC is evaluated in non-dispersion compensated 25 km fiber transmission experiment, providing error-free operation with 1.43 dB BER improvement, validating its capabilities for potential employment in Passive Optical Networks (PON) and 5G fronthaul networks.