Assessment of radio frequency exposures in schools, homes, and public places in Belgium

Characterization of exposure from emerging radio frequency (RF) technologies in areas where children are present is important. Exposure to RF electromagnetic fields (EMF) was assessed in three "sensitive" microenvironments; namely, schools, homes, and public places located in urban environments and compared to exposure in offices. In situ assessment was conducted by performing spatial broadband and accurate narrowband measurements, providing 6-min averaged electric-field strengths. A distinction between internal (transmitters that are located indoors) and external (outdoor sources from broadcasting and telecommunication) sources was made. Ninety-four percent of the broadband measurements were below 1 V m(-1). The average and maximal total electric-field values in schools, homes, and public places were 0.2 and 3.2 V m(-1) (WiFi), 0.1 and 1.1 V m(-1) (telecommunication), and 0.6 and 2.4 V m(-1) (telecommunication), respectively, while for offices, average and maximal exposure were 0.9 and 3.3 V m(-1) (telecommunication), satisfying the ICNIRP reference levels. In the schools considered, the highest maximal and average field values were due to internal signals (WiFi). In the homes, public places, and offices considered, the highestmaximal and average field values originated from telecommunication signals. Lowest exposures were obtained in homes. Internal sources contributed on average more indoors (31.2%) than outdoors (2.3%), while the average contributions of external sources (broadcast and telecommunication sources) were higher outdoors (97.7%) than at indoor positions (68.8%). FM, GSM, and UMTS dominate the total downlink exposure in the outdoor measurements. In indoor measurements, FM, GSM, and WiFi dominate the total exposure. The average contribution of the emerging technology LTE was only 0.6%

Mobile IP: state of the art report

Due to roaming, a mobile device may change its network attachment each time it moves to a new link. This might cause a disruption for the Internet data packets that have to reach the mobile node. Mobile IP is a protocol, developed by the Mobile IP Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working group, that is able to inform the network about this change in network attachment such that the Internet data packets will be delivered in a seamless way to the new point of attachment. This document presents current developments and research activities in the Mobile IP area

Technoligical Life Cycles Regional Clusters Facing Disruption

The phenomenon of technological life cycles is argued to be of great importance in the development of regional clusters. New 'disruptive' technologies may initiate the emergence of new regional industrial clusters and/or create new opportunities for further development of existing ones. However, they may also result in stagnation and decline of the latter. The term disruptive refers to such significant changes in the basic technologies that may change the industrial landscape, even in the shorter run. The paper examines the key features of a regional cluster, where the economic development patterns are quite closely related to the emergence of new key technologies.Technological life cycles, regional clusters, communication technology

From 6LoWPAN to 6Lo: expanding the universe of IPv6-supported technologies for the Internet of Things

© 2017 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other worksLeveraging 6LoWPAN, the IETF 6Lo Working Group has targeted adaptation of IPv6 over a new generation of communication technologies for the IoT. These comprise Bluetooth LE, ITU-T G.9959, DECT ULE, MS/TP, NFC, IEEE 1901.2, and IEEE 802.11ah. This article comprehensively analyzes the 6Lo technologies and adaptation layers, giving the motivation for critical design decisions, highlighting crucial aspects for performance, and presenting main challenges.Postprint (author's final draft

MIRAI Architecture for Heterogeneous Network

One of the keywords that describe next-generation wireless communications is "seamless." As part of the e-Japan Plan promoted by the Japanese Government, the Multimedia Integrated Network by Radio Access Innovation project has as its goal the development of new technologies to enable seamless integration of various wireless access systems for practical use by 2005. This article describes a heterogeneous network architecture including a common tool, a common platform, and a common access. In particular, software-defined radio technologies are used to develop a multiservice user terminal to access different wireless networks. The common platform for various wireless networks is based on a wireless-supporting IPv6 network. A basic access network, separated from other wireless access networks, is used as a means for wireless system discovery, signaling, and paging. A proof-of-concept experimental demonstration system is available

Spectrum Refarming in Sri Lanka: Lessons for Policy Makers and Regulators

The commercial potential of wireless applications has brought spectrum policies to the forefront of regulatory arena. In the context of rapidly increasing demands on spectrum, regulators have to adopt refarming so as to be able to provide spectrum for new services. A variety of models have been chosen by different countries. This paper documents the approach and process adopted by Telecom Regulatory Commission, Sri Lanka (TRCSL) for refarming of spectrum and draws lessons for policy makers and regulators. Sri Lanka was among the early countries in Asia not only to introduce telecom reforms, but also commercial wireless services (mobile and WLL). It may appear that TRCSL’s quick introduction of wireless services gave a head start to Sri Lanka, but the earlier ad-hoc processes led to a situation where spectrum refarming had to be done very quickly subsequently, imposing additional costs on operators and regulators. While realignment was triggered by the need for mobile operators to adopt standard technology, this opportunity could have been strategically used by TRCSL to review spectrum allocations across all the bands, thus allowing faster deployment of digital services. The open consultation process adopted by TRCSL had reduced the risk of “regulatory capture” and it was able to leverage the refarming initiative to bring equity in quantum of spectrum allocated between incumbent and new operators. The study highlights that for rapid proliferation of wireless technologies, a forward looking approach is required not only for managing spectrum but also removal of restrictions on handsets, whose price is a critical aspect for penetration in a developing country context.

DECT-2020 New Radio: The Next Step Towards 5G Massive Machine-Type Communications

Massive machine type communications (mMTC) is one of the cornerstone services that have to be supported by 5G systems. 3GPP has already introduced LTE-M and NB-IoT, often referred to as cellular IoT, in 3GPP Releases 13, 14, and 15 and submitted these technologies as part of 3GPP IMT-2020 (i.e., 5G) technology submission to ITU-R. Even though NB-IoT and LTE-M have shown to satisfy 5G mMTC requirements defined by ITU-R, it is expected that these cellular IoT solutions will not address all aspects of IoT and ongoing digitalization, including the support for direct communication between "things" with flexible deployments, different business models, as well as support for even higher node densities and enhanced coverage. In this paper, we introduce the DECT-2020 standard recently published by ETSI for mMTC communications. We evaluate its performance and compare it to the existing LPWAN solutions showing that it outperforms those in terms of supported density of nodes while still keeping delay and loss guarantees at the required level.Comment: Author-Submitted Paper to IEEE Communications Magazine, 7 pages, 4 figures, 2 table