A Cognitive TV White Space Access Framework

Given the current boom in applications and services for mobile devices, data traffic is rapidly expanding, with the consequence that increasing spectrum capacity is being mandated. Following the switchover from analogue to digital platforms, Television White Space (TVWS) affords a fertile opportunity to supplement existing licensed spectrum to ease this scarcity. There are however, a number of obstacles to wide-scale TVWS adoption, including the accurate detection of primary users (PU), the hidden node problem and bandwidth availability for unlicensed secondary users (SU). Regulatory and industry bodies have sought to address some of these issues using a static database for spectrum access decisions, though this involves manual maintenance and accuracy can be compromised due to a lack of real-time information. While the new IEEE802.11af wireless local area network (WLAN) standard attempts to resolve some SU access issues, there remain many challenges, such as the critical asymmetry between mobile and base station power resources. This thesis presents a new cognitive TVWS access framework encompassing a real-time sensing paradigm for TVWS deployment that uses a spectrum-efficient scheme to uphold quality-of-service (QoS) for both PU and SU. A novel dynamic spectrum allocation (DSA) model has been formulated allied with a resilient interference management system which exploits the unique way digital terrestrial TV channels are allocated in different geographical areas. A margin strategy has been framed to support efficient TVWS channel reuse, with an exclusion zone established to overcome the hidden node problem, while an innovative routing algorithm using cross-layer information, both extends coverage capacity and maximises QoS provision by ensuring a more balanced resource allocation. Critical evaluation of the new access framework confirms that significant QoS improvements for SU are achieved compared to existing TVWS techniques. It importantly embodies a generic, practical, resource-efficient solution for TVWS deployment, which is compliant with current PU regulatory requirements

Research and development for the data, trigger and control card in preparation for Hi-Lumi lhc

When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) increases its luminosity by an order of magnitude in the coming decade, the experiments that sit upon it must also be upgraded to continue to their physics performance in the increasingly demanding environment. To achieve this, the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment will make use of tracking information in the Level-1 trigger for the first time, meaning that track reconstruction must be achieved in less than 4 μs in an all-FPGA architecture. MUonE is an experiment aiming to make an accurate measurement of the the hadronic contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. It will achieve this by making use of similar apparatus to that designed for CMS and benefit from the research and development efforts there. This thesis presents both development and testing work for the readout chain from tracker module to back-end processing card, as well as the results and analysis of a beam test used to validate this chain for both CMS and the MUonE experiment.Open Acces

The LHCb Outer Tracker Front End Electronics

This note provides an overview of the front-end electronics used to readout the drift-times of the LHCb Outer Tracker straw tube chambers. The main functional components of the readout are the ASDBLR ASIC for amplification and signal digitization, the OTIS ASIC for the time measurement and for the L0 buffering, and the GOL ASIC to serialize the digital data for the optical data transmission. The L1 buffer board used to receive the data which is sent via the optical link is a common LHCb development and is not described here. This note supersedes an earlier document [1]

Subjective Logic and Arguing with Evidence

Peer reviewedPreprin