Modern Applications in Optics and Photonics: From Sensing and Analytics to Communication

Optics and photonics are among the key technologies of the 21st century, and offer potential for novel applications in areas such as sensing and spectroscopy, analytics, monitoring, biomedical imaging/diagnostics, and optical communication technology. The high degree of control over light fields, together with the capabilities of modern processing and integration technology, enables new optical measurement systems with enhanced functionality and sensitivity. They are attractive for a range of applications that were previously inaccessible. This Special Issue aims to provide an overview of some of the most advanced application areas in optics and photonics and indicate the broad potential for the future

Wake-Up Transceiver Architectures with Novel Symbol Time Synchronization Schemes for ElectroMagnetic NanoNetworks

Projecte final de carrera fet en col.laboració amb Georgia Institute of TechnologyEnglish: The work we present on this thesis covers unresolved PHY-Layer topics for Electromagnetic Nanonetworks that covers the transceiver architecture, frequency estimation for symbol synchronization and a wake-up receiver module for node synchronziation. Solving these PHY-Layer topics leads to stablish a base to propose and design network protocols on top of a well-defined architecture.Castellano: El trabajo que se presenta en este proyecto cubre temas de capa física no resueltos para Electromagnetic Nanonetworks. Se propone una arquitectura de transceiver, la estimación de frecuencia para la sincronización del tiempo de símbolo y además se propone un modulo wake-up para sincronización entre nodos. Solucionar estos temas de capa física propone establecer una base para el diseño de futuros protocols de redes diseñados sobre bajo dichas consideracionesCatalà: El traball presentat cobreix temes de capa física no resolts per a Electromagnetic Nanonetworks. Es proposa una arquitectura de transceiver, una estimació de freqüència per a la sincronització del temps de símbol i un mòdul wake-up per a sincronització entre nodes. Donant solució a aquests temes de capa física permet establir una base per al diseny de futurs protocols de xarxes dissenyats sota aquestes consideracions

Facilitating Internet of Things on the Edge

The evolution of electronics and wireless technologies has entered a new era, the Internet of Things (IoT). Presently, IoT technologies influence the global market, bringing benefits in many areas, including healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, and entertainment. Modern IoT devices serve as a thin client with data processing performed in a remote computing node, such as a cloud server or a mobile edge compute unit. These computing units own significant resources that allow prompt data processing. The user experience for such an approach relies drastically on the availability and quality of the internet connection. In this case, if the internet connection is unavailable, the resulting operations of IoT applications can be completely disrupted. It is worth noting that emerging IoT applications are even more throughput demanding and latency-sensitive which makes communication networks a practical bottleneck for the service provisioning. This thesis aims to eliminate the limitations of wireless access, via the improvement of connectivity and throughput between the devices on the edge, as well as their network identification, which is fundamentally important for IoT service management. The introduction begins with a discussion on the emerging IoT applications and their demands. Subsequent chapters introduce scenarios of interest, describe the proposed solutions and provide selected performance evaluation results. Specifically, we start with research on the use of degraded memory chips for network identification of IoT devices as an alternative to conventional methods, such as IMEI; these methods are not vulnerable to tampering and cloning. Further, we introduce our contributions for improving connectivity and throughput among IoT devices on the edge in a case where the mobile network infrastructure is limited or totally unavailable. Finally, we conclude the introduction with a summary of the results achieved

Design of protein-nanomaterial hybrids as tools for sensing, imaging and bioelectronics

217 p.El diseño de proteínas permite construir herramientas nanotecnológicas adaptadas para su uso en campos como la biomedicina o la industria. Las proteínas de repetición CTPR son una buena opción para desarrollar nano-herramientas dada su estructura modular y tolerancia a mutaciones, lo que permite combinar módulos funcionalizados sin comprometer la estabilidad de la proteína. Además, las proteínas CTPR pueden modificarse para desarrollar módulos que coordinan metales, lo que permite la unión de nanomateriales metálicos con propiedades interesantes como las nanopartículas de oro, o la síntesis de nanocristales metálicos in situ. En la presente tesis doctoral se propone un sistema modular de proteínas CTPR funcionalizadas con nanomateriales metálicos para su aplicación como herramientas nanotecnológicas en sensórica, imagen y bioelectrónica. Para ello, primero se establece un diseño de CTPR con residuos de coordinación de metales y se estudia en profundidad las propiedades fotoluminiscentes que emergen de nanocristales de oro coordinados a dichas CTPR. A continuación, se elaboran diseños de CTPR coordinando nanomateriales metálicos y se aplican como sensores de parámetros ambientales, como la temperatura o la presencia de iones metálicos; como sondas fluorescentes para detección correlativa de orgánulos celulares usando microscopía de fluorescencia y fluorescencia de rayos-X; y como bloques de construcción para elaborar biomateriales conductores