6,071 research outputs found
Planck-LFI: Design and Performance of the 4 Kelvin Reference Load Unit
The LFI radiometers use a pseudo-correlation design where the signal from the
sky is continuously compared with a stable reference signal, provided by a
cryogenic reference load system. The reference unit is composed by small
pyramidal horns, one for each radiometer, 22 in total, facing small absorbing
targets, made of a commercial resin ECCOSORB CR (TM), cooled to approximately
4.5 K. Horns and targets are separated by a small gap to allow thermal
decoupling. Target and horn design is optimized for each of the LFI bands,
centered at 70, 44 and 30 GHz. Pyramidal horns are either machined inside the
radiometer 20K module or connected via external electro-formed bended
waveguides. The requirement of high stability of the reference signal imposed a
careful design for the radiometric and thermal properties of the loads.
Materials used for the manufacturing have been characterized for thermal, RF
and mechanical properties. We describe in this paper the design and the
performance of the reference system.Comment: This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article
accepted for publication in JINST. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for
any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version
derived from it. The definitive publisher authenticated version is available
online at [10.1088/1748-0221/4/12/T12006]. 14 pages, 34 figure
Coverage and Connectivity in Three-Dimensional Networks
Most wireless terrestrial networks are designed based on the assumption that
the nodes are deployed on a two-dimensional (2D) plane. However, this 2D
assumption is not valid in underwater, atmospheric, or space communications. In
fact, recent interest in underwater acoustic ad hoc and sensor networks hints
at the need to understand how to design networks in 3D. Unfortunately, the
design of 3D networks is surprisingly more difficult than the design of 2D
networks. For example, proofs of Kelvin's conjecture and Kepler's conjecture
required centuries of research to achieve breakthroughs, whereas their 2D
counterparts are trivial to solve. In this paper, we consider the coverage and
connectivity issues of 3D networks, where the goal is to find a node placement
strategy with 100% sensing coverage of a 3D space, while minimizing the number
of nodes required for surveillance. Our results indicate that the use of the
Voronoi tessellation of 3D space to create truncated octahedral cells results
in the best strategy. In this truncated octahedron placement strategy, the
transmission range must be at least 1.7889 times the sensing range in order to
maintain connectivity among nodes. If the transmission range is between 1.4142
and 1.7889 times the sensing range, then a hexagonal prism placement strategy
or a rhombic dodecahedron placement strategy should be used. Although the
required number of nodes in the hexagonal prism and the rhombic dodecahedron
placement strategies is the same, this number is 43.25% higher than the number
of nodes required by the truncated octahedron placement strategy. We verify by
simulation that our placement strategies indeed guarantee ubiquitous coverage.
We believe that our approach and our results presented in this paper could be
used for extending the processes of 2D network design to 3D networks.Comment: To appear in ACM Mobicom 200
Practical figures of merit and thresholds for entanglement distribution in quantum networks
Before global-scale quantum networks become operational, it is important to
consider how to evaluate their performance so that they can be built to achieve
the desired performance. We propose two practical figures of merit for the
performance of a quantum network: the average connection time and the average
largest entanglement cluster size. These quantities are based on the generation
of elementary links in a quantum network, which is a crucial initial
requirement that must be met before any long-range entanglement distribution
can be achieved and is inherently probabilistic with current implementations.
We obtain bounds on these figures of merit for a particular class of quantum
repeater protocols consisting of repeat-until-success elementary link
generation followed by joining measurements at intermediate nodes that extend
the entanglement range. Our results lead to requirements on quantum memory
coherence times, requirements on repeater chain lengths in order to surpass the
repeaterless rate limit, and requirements on other aspects of quantum network
implementations. These requirements are based solely on the inherently
probabilistic nature of elementary link generation in quantum networks, and
they apply to networks with arbitrary topology.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures. v2: extensively revised and rewritten. Title and
abstract modified; added a section on overcoming the repeaterless rate limit;
modified statement of Theorem 1. v3: minor changes to match the published
versio
Development and evaluation of packet video schemes
Reflecting the two tasks proposed for the current year, namely a feasibility study of simulating the NASA network, and a study of progressive transmission schemes, are presented. The view of the NASA network, gleaned from the various technical reports made available to use, is provided. Also included is a brief overview of how the current simulator could be modified to accomplish the goal of simulating the NASA network. As the material in this section would be the basis for the actual simulation, it is important to make sure that it is an accurate reflection of the requirements on the simulator. Brief descriptions of the set of progressive transmission algorithms selected for the study are contained. The results available in the literature were obtained under a variety of different assumptions, not all of which are stated. As such, the only way to compare the efficiency and the implementational complexity of the various algorithms is to simulate them
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