Communication Subsystems for Emerging Wireless Technologies

The paper describes a multi-disciplinary design of modern communication systems. The design starts with the analysis of a system in order to define requirements on its individual components. The design exploits proper models of communication channels to adapt the systems to expected transmission conditions. Input filtering of signals both in the frequency domain and in the spatial domain is ensured by a properly designed antenna. Further signal processing (amplification and further filtering) is done by electronics circuits. Finally, signal processing techniques are applied to yield information about current properties of frequency spectrum and to distribute the transmission over free subcarrier channels

Preliminary characterisation of the surface of cartilage following exposure to saturated and unsaturated synthetic lips

Articular cartilage is covered by a microscopic structure known as surface amorphous layer. This surface structure is often the first victim of attack during cartilage degeneration, thereby resulting in a gross impairment in cartilage function such as lubrication and load bearing. We hypothesize that incubation of degraded cartilage in solutions of different species of synthetic surface active phospholipids (saturated and unsaturated species) can remodel this lost surface structure. To test this hypothesis, the structural configuration of the surface of articular cartilage was studied and characterised with the lipid filled surface amorphous layer intact using the AFM. The results were then compared with those obtained following a systematic removal (delipidization) and replacement (relipidization) of this layer. Our results show that the unsaturated surfactant partially restored the lost surface amorphous layer while the saturated surfactant specie settled on the surface due to its poor solubility in aqueous solution

The value of information in a multi-agent market model

We present an experimental and simulated model of a multi-agent stock market driven by a double auction order matching mechanism. Studying the effect of cumulative information on the performance of traders, we find a non monotonic relationship of net returns of traders as a function of information levels, both in the experiments and in the simulations. Particularly, averagely informed traders perform worse than the non informed and only traders with high levels of information (insiders) are able to beat the market. The simulations and the experiments reproduce many stylized facts of stock markets, such as fast decay of autocorrelation of returns, volatility clustering and fat-tailed distribution of returns. These results have an important message for everyday life. They can give a possible explanation why, on average, professional fund managers perform worse than the market index.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, published in EPJ