Autonomous Observations in Antarctica with AMICA

The Antarctic Multiband Infrared Camera (AMICA) is a double channel camera operating in the 2-28 micron infrared domain (KLMNQ bands) that will allow to characterize and exploit the exceptional advantages for Astronomy, expected from Dome C in Antarctica. The development of the camera control system is at its final stage. After the investigation of appropriate solutions against the critical environment, a reliable instrumentation has been developed. It is currently being integrated and tested to ensure the correct execution of automatic operations. Once it will be mounted on the International Robotic Antarctic Infrared Telescope (IRAIT), AMICA and its equipment will contribute to the accomplishment of a fully autonomous observatory.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, Advances in Astronomy Journal, Special Issue "Robotic Astronomy", Accepted 11 February 201

Transmitted Power Formulation for the Optimization of Spectrum Aggregation in LTE-A over 800 MHz and 2 GHz Frequency Bands

This work starts by proposing a formulation to calculate the transmitter power needed to cover cells of different sizes, whilst maintaining the average signal to interference-plus-noise ratio constant, and near the maximum, for two Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems operating over non-contiguous frequency bands, 800 MHz and 2 GHz, with an integrated common radio resource management (iCRRM) entity. In the context of spectrum aggregation (SA), iCRRM is able to switch users between the two LTE-Advanced scenarios to facilitate the best user allocation and maximize the total network throughput in these LTE systems. We address a formulation based on the computation of the average received power and average co-channel interference in cellular topologies with frequency reuse pattern K = 3, keeping the presence of coverage holes insignificant, whilst considering the COST-231 Hata path loss model. We have verified how the normalized power increases as the cell radius increases. The objective of applying this formulation in the dimensioning process is to save power for the shortest coverage distances. It has been found that without SA the maximum average cell throughput is observed in the presence of 80 simultaneous users within the cell (40 for each LTE system, operating in different frequency bands). We have considered traced-based video sessions with a (video) bit rate of 128 kbps. In this scenario, through extensive simulations cell average supported throughput of approximately 6,800, 8,500 and 9,500 kbps have been obtained for the cases without SA (considering the sum of the 800 MHz and 2 GHz systems capacities), with a simple CRRM and with iCRRM, respectively. It was also found that when the peak throughput is achieved with 80 users, the average cell packet loss ratio without SA, with CRRM and iCRRM present values of 22, 11 and 7 %. The average cell delay with both CRRM and iCRRM entities is 22 ms, whereas without SA is equal to 32 ms. Finally, the cost/revenue tradeoff is analysed from the operator/service provider’s point of view, whose main goal is obtain the maximum profit from his business. It was found that CRRM increases the total profit in percentage, compared to a simple allocation, without SA. Nevertheless, the profit growth with iCRRM is even larger, from 253 to 296 % for R = 1,000 m and a price of 0.010 €/MByte. Therefore, our proposal for SA is convenient not only in terms of technical features and QoS, as loss and delay have been obtained within a range of reasonable values, but also in terms of economic aspects.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Multi-user cross-layer allocation design for LP-OFDM high-rate UWB

International audienceIn this paper, we investigate a cross-layer design for the packet scheduling and the resource allocation in UWB systems. This design considers the combination of queuing and channel state information (CSI) which provides QoS support for multimedia applications in UWB. For the physical layer, the use of a linear precoded orthogonal division multiplexing (LPOFDM) waveform is proposed because of its significant performance increase compared to the WiMedia proposal. For the medium access control layer, scheduling is performed in order to differentiate between the different users and to satisfy their quality of service constraints. This cross-layer approach optimizes the system spectral efficiency and solves the problem in the WiMedia solution of cohabitation of more than three users sharing the three sub-bands of the same channel. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme leads to a considerable improvement in resource allocation and can guarantee the required quality of service

In-band relays for next generation communication systems

Next generation mobile communication systems will operate at high system bandwidths of up to 100MHz and at carrier frequencies beyond 2GHz to provide peak data rates of up to 1Gbit/s with similar average revenues per user as todays cellular networks. High bit rates should be available to all users in a cell which is challenging due to the unfavorable propagation conditions in these bands. In-band relays are a seen as a promising technology for cellular networks to extend the high bit rate coverage and to enable cost efficient network deployments. The research in this thesis has contributed to the development of the relaying concept within the European research project WINNER. WINNER has designed a next generation radio system concept based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) with the inclusion of relays as one of the major innovations. In our work we have identified the radio resource management as the most important function to exploit the potential benefits of relay based deployments. We develop a flexible radio resource management framework that adapts to a wide range of deployments, whereas our main focus is on metropolitan area deployments. Here we propose to utilize a dynamic resource assignment based on soft frequency reuse. Further, we propose a practical way to integrate cooperative relaying in a relay network. This concept allows the cooperation of multiple radio access points within a relay enhanced cell with low overhead and small delays. In system simulations we compare the performance of relay deployments to base station only deployments in a metropolitan area network. Our results show that relay deployments are cost efficient and they increase both the network throughput as well as the high bit rate coverage of the network. Further, they show that our proposed soft frequency reuse scheme outperforms competing interference coordination schemes in the studied metropolitan area scenario. Even though the results have been obtained for WINNER system parameters, the conclusions can also be applied to OFDMA based systems such as 3GPP Long Term Evolution and WiMAX

An Artificial Neural Networks based Temperature Prediction Framework for Network-on-Chip based Multicore Platform

Continuous improvement in silicon process technologies has made possible the integration of hundreds of cores on a single chip. However, power and heat have become dominant constraints in designing these massive multicore chips causing issues with reliability, timing variations and reduced lifetime of the chips. Dynamic Thermal Management (DTM) is a solution to avoid high temperatures on the die. Typical DTM schemes only address core level thermal issues. However, the Network-on-chip (NoC) paradigm, which has emerged as an enabling methodology for integrating hundreds to thousands of cores on the same die can contribute significantly to the thermal issues. Moreover, the typical DTM is triggered reactively based on temperature measurements from on-chip thermal sensor requiring long reaction times whereas predictive DTM method estimates future temperature in advance, eliminating the chance of temperature overshoot. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have been used in various domains for modeling and prediction with high accuracy due to its ability to learn and adapt. This thesis concentrates on designing an ANN prediction engine to predict the thermal profile of the cores and Network-on-Chip elements of the chip. This thermal profile of the chip is then used by the predictive DTM that combines both core level and network level DTM techniques. On-chip wireless interconnect which is recently envisioned to enable energy-efficient data exchange between cores in a multicore environment, will be used to provide a broadcast-capable medium to efficiently distribute thermal control messages to trigger and manage the DTM schemes

Simultaneous Transmission and Reception: Algorithm, Design and System Level Performance

Full Duplex or Simultaneous transmission and reception (STR) in the same frequency at the same time can potentially double the physical layer capacity. However, high power transmit signal will appear at receive chain as echoes with powers much higher than the desired received signal. Therefore, in order to achieve the potential gain, it is imperative to cancel these echoes. As these high power echoes can saturate low noise amplifier (LNA) and also digital domain echo cancellation requires unrealistically high resolution analog-to-digital converter (ADC), the echoes should be cancelled or suppressed sufficiently before LNA. In this paper we present a closed-loop echo cancellation technique which can be implemented purely in analogue domain. The advantages of our method are multiple-fold: it is robust to phase noise, does not require additional set of antennas, can be applied to wideband signals and the performance is irrelevant to radio frequency (RF) impairments in transmit chain. Next, we study a few protocols for STR systems in carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) network and investigate MAC level throughput with realistic assumptions in both single cell and multiple cells. We show that STR can reduce hidden node problem in CSMA network and produce gains of up to 279% in maximum throughput in such networks. Finally, we investigate the application of STR in cellular systems and study two new unique interferences introduced to the system due to STR, namely BS-BS interference and UE-UE interference. We show that these two new interferences will hugely degrade system performance if not treated appropriately. We propose novel methods to reduce both interferences and investigate the performances in system level.Comment: 20 pages. This manuscript will appear in the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

Performance Evaluation Of Multiband CSMA/CA With RTS/CTS For M2M Communication With Finite Retransmission Strategy

International audienceM2M communication is information exchange between machines and machines without any human interaction. M2M commu-nication based on cellular network suffers from the extremely large number of devices in service coverage. In cellular network case, the large number of devices lead to communication problem caused by collisions between the senders. In this work we study the collision probability, saturation throughput and packet error rate for the carrier sense multiple access collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol with request to send and clear to send (RTS/CTS) mechanism in the case of frequency band division. We propose in this paper a modified version of CSMA/CA-RTS/CTS to be compatible with the band repartition technique and we prove that an important gain is introduced in terms of system performance especially for loaded networks. Different backoff stage numbers with different finite retransmission limit values are investigated. Simulations highlight that dividing the RTS band into independent channels reduces drastically the RTS collision probability and in particular the packet error rate. A gain in terms of saturation throughput is also demonstrated especially in charged networks mode