Optimization of IEEE 802.11e access class parameters with cross-layer approach

The aim of this paper is to analyze the performance of diverse applications in a wireless scenario based on the IEEE 802.11e standard. In particular, TCP-based traffic (several TCP versions will be used, such as: TCP NewReno, SACK, and Westwood+) and UDP-based traffic will be considered referring to FTP download and VoIP applications, respectively. Tests carried out in the ns-2 environment have permitted to evaluate quality of service issues and the cross-layer impact on the transport layer due to EDCA parameters. The interest is here on the selection of the contention window sizes for different IEEE 802.11e access classes in order to guarantee a good performance for both TCP-based and UDP-based traffic flows

Proposal of a reliable multicast protocol in a HAP-satellite architecture

Terrestrial and satellite networks have dominated the telecommunications arena for years. In parallel with these two well-established technologies, a new alternative based on platforms located in the stratosphere, termed High Altitude Platforms (HAP's), has gained considerable interest in the past few years. In this paper, we consider an integrated HAP-satellite architecture and propose a reliable multicast protocol that capitalizes upon the HAP-layer to perform local retransmissions. Our protocol relies on a progressive packet-level Forward Error Correction (FEC) scheme. The performance of this multicast protocol has been supported thorough the comparison with a theoretical bound in the literature

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics' resources: focus on curated databases

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (www.isb-sib.ch) provides world-class bioinformatics databases, software tools, services and training to the international life science community in academia and industry. These solutions allow life scientists to turn the exponentially growing amount of data into knowledge. Here, we provide an overview of SIB's resources and competence areas, with a strong focus on curated databases and SIB's most popular and widely used resources. In particular, SIB's Bioinformatics resource portal ExPASy features over 150 resources, including UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot, ENZYME, PROSITE, neXtProt, STRING, UniCarbKB, SugarBindDB, SwissRegulon, EPD, arrayMap, Bgee, SWISS-MODEL Repository, OMA, OrthoDB and other databases, which are briefly described in this article