Proceedings of the Second International Mobile Satellite Conference (IMSC 1990)

Presented here are the proceedings of the Second International Mobile Satellite Conference (IMSC), held June 17-20, 1990 in Ottawa, Canada. Topics covered include future mobile satellite communications concepts, aeronautical applications, modulation and coding, propagation and experimental systems, mobile terminal equipment, network architecture and control, regulatory and policy considerations, vehicle antennas, and speech compression

Low-Cost Air Quality Monitoring Tools: From Research to Practice (A Workshop Summary).

In May 2017, a two-day workshop was held in Los Angeles (California, U.S.A.) to gather practitioners who work with low-cost sensors used to make air quality measurements. The community of practice included individuals from academia, industry, non-profit groups, community-based organizations, and regulatory agencies. The group gathered to share knowledge developed from a variety of pilot projects in hopes of advancing the collective knowledge about how best to use low-cost air quality sensors. Panel discussion topics included: (1) best practices for deployment and calibration of low-cost sensor systems, (2) data standardization efforts and database design, (3) advances in sensor calibration, data management, and data analysis and visualization, and (4) lessons learned from research/community partnerships to encourage purposeful use of sensors and create change/action. Panel discussions summarized knowledge advances and project successes while also highlighting the questions, unresolved issues, and technological limitations that still remain within the low-cost air quality sensor arena

Internal report cluster 1: Urban freight innovations and solutions for sustainable deliveries (3/4)

Technical report about sustainable urban freight solutions, part 3 of

The future of laboratory medicine - A 2014 perspective.

Predicting the future is a difficult task. Not surprisingly, there are many examples and assumptions that have proved to be wrong. This review surveys the many predictions, beginning in 1887, about the future of laboratory medicine and its sub-specialties such as clinical chemistry and molecular pathology. It provides a commentary on the accuracy of the predictions and offers opinions on emerging technologies, economic factors and social developments that may play a role in shaping the future of laboratory medicine

Ten Frontier Technologies for International Development

The report finds clear evidence of the potential of frontier technologies to contribute to social, economic and political development gains in a number of ways, by: • Driving innovations in business models, products and processes that provide new goods and services to ‘bottom of the pyramid’ consumers; • Providing the means by which to make better use of existing underutilised household and productive assets; • Catalysing increases in demand, nationally and internationally, which create new industries and markets, leading to macro- and microeconomic growth; and • Changing demand for labour and capital, leading to direct job creation and transformation of the workforce. For all of the potential upsides, potential downsides must also be considered. While it will largely be the private sector that will drive deployment of these technologies, the public sector through national regulation, as well as development financing, will have a major role in mediating the pace and direction of technological change, both to achieve development objectives, and to protect potential losers.As new technologies and digital business models reshape economies and disrupt incumbencies, interest has surged in the potential of novel frontier technologies to also contribute to positive changes in international development and humanitarian contexts. Widespread adoption of new technologies is acknowledged as centrally important to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. But while frontier technologies can rapidly address large-scale economic, social or political challenges, they can also involve the displacement of existing technologies and carry considerable uncertainty and risk. Although there have been significant wins bringing the benefits of new technologies to poor consumers through examples such as mobile money or off-grid solar energy, there are many other areas where the applications may not yet have been developed into viable market solutions, or where opportunities have not yet been taken up in development practice

Taking connected mobile-health diagnostics of infectious diseases to the field.

Mobile Health or mHealth - The application of mobile devices, their components and related technologies to healthcare is improving patients’ access to treatment and advice. Now, in combination with connected diagnostic devices it offers new possibilities to diagnose, track and control infectious diseases and improve health system efficiencies. In this context we look at these technologies and highlight their promise but also the challenges in realising their potential to increase patient access to testing, aid in their treatment and improve the capability of public health authorities to monitor outbreaks, implement responses, and assess the impact of interventions across the world

Annual Report 2013

The 2013 Annual Report includes a review of the year, research highlights and activities across the School's three Faculties, and key facts and figures. The financial review provides an overview of the School's finances and activities during 2012-13

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

Mobile Water Payment Innovations in Urban Africa

This study assess mobile payment options for water service bills in four urban African contexts. Systems are evaluated to identify differences in adoption levels and motivations and barriers to uptake; how costs are distributed among water service providers, mobile network operators, and customers; and mobile payment applications and designs. Data was collected through interviews with water service providers, mobile network operators and service regulators, as well as a household survey in one of the study regions and the aid of World Bank and national water regulator data. Mobile water payment adoption rates were low, but there was also evidence that key barriers such as limited awareness, lack of physical proof of payment, and high transaction tariffs, could be overcome. Increased mobile water payment is found to result in considerable savings in time and money for consumers, revenue for mobile network operators, and perhaps most importantly, strengthened finances for water service providers to improve their ability to provide sustainable service

Volition versus feasibility: state aid when aid is looked upon favourably: the broadband example

The European Commission published on September 30, 2009, Guidelines for the application of State aid rules in relation to rapid deployment of broadband networks. These Guidelines are applicable to two markets that are connected, although somewhat different. In “traditional” or “first generation” broadband networks, public intervention mainly relates to rural communities or areas which are economically underdeveloped. Therefore, a corrective nature of the aid is maintained. However, the Guidelines are also applied to accelerate the deployment of next-generation access (NGA) networks, which implies a driving conception of State aid, as this is an emerging market and there are relatively few Europeans who have access to these networks. The analysis of these Guidelines thus seems relevant due to its novelty and, particularly, to the results that it can bring