On the Calculation of the Incomplete MGF with Applications to Wireless Communications

(c) 20xx IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, 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 components of this work in other works. DOI: 10.1109/TCOMM.2016.2626440The incomplete moment generating function (IMGF) has paramount relevance in communication theory, since it appears in a plethora of scenarios when analyzing the performance of communication systems. We here present a general method for calculating the IMGF of any arbitrary fading distribution. Then, we provide exact closed-form expressions for the IMGF of the very general κ-μ shadowed fading model, which includes the popular κ-μ, η-μ, Rician shadowed, and other classical models as particular cases. We illustrate the practical applicability of this result by analyzing several scenarios of interest in wireless communications: 1) physical layer security in the presence of an eavesdropper; 2) outage probability analysis with interference and background noise; 3) channel capacity with side information at the transmitter and the receiver; and 4) average bit-error rate with adaptive modulation, when the fading on the desired link can be modeled by any of the aforementioned distributions.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Execelencia Internacional. Andalucía Tech

The κ-µ Shadowed Fading Model with Integer Fading Parameters

(c) 20xx IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, 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 components of this work in other works. DOI: 10.1109/TVT.2017.2678430We show that the popular and general κ-μ shadowed fading model with integer fading parameters μ and m can be represented as a mixture of squared Nakagami- m̂ (or Gamma) distributions. Thus, its PDF and CDF can be expressed in closed-form in terms of a finite number of elementary functions (powers and exponentials). The main implications arising from such connection are then discussed, which can be summarized as: (1) the performance evaluation of communication systems operating in κ-μ shadowed fading becomes as simple as if a Nakagami- m̂ fading channel was assumed; (2) the κ-μ shadowed distribution can be used to approximate the κ-μ distribution using a closed-form representation in terms of elementary functions, by choosing a sufficiently large value of m; and (3) restricting the parameters μ and m to take integer values has limited impact in practice when fitting the κ-μ shadowed fading model to field measurements. As an application example, the average channel capacity of communication systems operating under κ-μ shadowed fading is obtained in closed-form.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional. Andalucía Tech

The fluctuating two-ray fading model: exact and approximate statistical characterization

El congreso en el que se ha presentado este artículo no genera libro de actas, por lo que el copyright no se ha transferido a IEEE.We introduce the Fluctuating Two-Ray (FTR) fading model, a new statistical channel model that consists of two fluctuating specular components with random phases plus a diffuse component. The PDF and MGF are expressed in closed-form, having a functional form similar to other state-of-the-art fading models. We also provide an approximate closed-form expressions for the PDF, which allow for a simple evaluation of these statistics to an arbitrary level of precision. We show that the FTR fading model provides a much better fit than Rician fading for recent small-scale fading measurements in 28 GHz outdoor millimeter-wave channels.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. Proyecto MINECO-FEDER TEC2013-42711-R, TEC2014-57901-R y TEC2013-44442-P. Junta de Andalucía P2011-TIC-7109 y P2011-TIC-8238

The Fluctuating Two-Ray Fading Model: Statistical Characterization and Performance Analysis

(c) 20xx IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, 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 components of this work in other works.We introduce the fluctuating two-ray (FTR) fading model, a new statistical channel model that consists of two fluctuating specular components with random phases plus a diffuse component. The FTR model arises as the natural generalization of the two-wave with diffuse power (TWDP) fading model; this generalization allows its two specular components to exhibit a random amplitude fluctuation. Unlike the TWDP model, all the chief probability functions of the FTR fading model (PDF, CDF, and MGF) are expressed in closed-form, having a functional form similar to other state-of-the-art fading models. We also provide approximate closed-form expressions for the PDF and CDF in terms of a finite number of elementary functions, which allow for a simple evaluation of these statistics to an arbitrary level of precision. We show that the FTR fading model provides a much better fit than Rician fading for recent small-scale fading measurements in 28 GHz outdoor mm-wave channels. Finally, the performance of wireless communication systems over FTR fading is evaluated in terms of the bit error rate and the outage capacity, and the interplay between the FTR fading model parameters and the system performance is discussed. Monte Carlo simulations have been carried out in order to validate the obtained theoretical expressions.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional. Andalucía Tech

The Fluctuating Two-Ray Fading Model for mmWave Communications

We introduce the Fluctuating Two-Ray (FTR) fading model, a new statistical channel model that consists of two fluctuating specular components with random phases plus a diffuse component. The FTR model arises as a natural generalization of the two-wave with diffuse power (TWDP) fading model proposed by Durgin, Rappaport and de Wolf; in this extended model, the two specular components exhibit a random amplitude fluctuation. Unlike in the TWDP model, we show that all the chief probability functions of the FTR fading model (PDF, CDF and MGF) can be expressed in closed-form. We also show that the FTR fading model provides a much better fit than the Rician fading model for recent small-scale fading measurements of the 28 GHz outdoor millimeter-wave channels.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

A MATLAB program for the computation of the confluent hypergeometric function Φ2

We here present a sample MATLAB program for the numerical evaluation of the confluent hypergeometric function Φ2. This program is based on the calculation of the inverse Laplace transform using the algorithm suggested by Simon and Alouini in their reference textbook [1]

A Tractable Line-of-Sight Product Channel Model: Application to Wireless Powered Communications

We here present a general and tractable fading model for line-of-sight (LOS) scenarios, which is based on the product of two independent and non-identically distributed κ- μ shadowed random variables. Simple closed-form expressions for the probability density function and cumulative distribution function are derived, which are as tractable as the corresponding expressions derived from a product of Nakagami-m random variables. This newly proposed model simplifies the challenging characterization of LOS product channels, as well as combinations of LOS channels with non-LOS ones. Results are used to analyze performance measures of interest in the context of wireless powered communications.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Tailored Graphenic Structures Directly Grown on Titanium Oxide Boost the Interfacial Charge Transfer

The successful application of titanium oxide-graphene hybrids in the fields of photocatalysis, photovoltaics and photodetection strongly depends on the interfacial contact between both materials. The need to provide a good coupling between the enabling conductor and the photoactive phase prompted us to directly grow conducting graphenic structures on TiO2 crystals. We here report on the direct synthesis of tailored graphenic structures by using Plasma Assisted Chemical Vapour Deposition that present a clean junction with the prototypical titanium oxide (110) surface. Chemical analysis of the interface indicates chemical bonding between both materials. Photocurrent measurements under UV light illumination manifest that the charge transfer across the interface is efficient. Moreover, the influence of the synthesis atmosphere, gas precursor (C2H2) and diluents (Ar, O2), on the interface and on the structure of the as-grown graphenic material is assessed. The inclusion of O2 promotes vertical growth of partially oxidized carbon nanodots/rods with controllable height and density. The deposition with Ar results in continuous graphenic films with low resistivity (6.8x10-6 ohm x m). The synthesis protocols developed here are suitable to produce tailored carbon-semiconductor structures on a variety of practical substrates as thin films, pillars or nanoparticles.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures, original research pape

Detection of Pathogens Using Microfluidics and Biosensors

Point-of-care devices technology are a promising way towards the recognition of pathogens in early-stage diagnosis, which is critical for the success of inexpensive treatments as opposed to the high costs of managing the disease. The integration of immunoassays with read out circuitry allows the implementation of diagnostic devices for their use by untrained personnel, without compromising reliability. In the following chapter, three different biosensors based on lab-on-a-chip (LoC) and microfluidic technologies were designed, assembled and tested for pathogen diagnosis. The devices allowed the effective detection of the human papilloma virus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Chagas parasite in shorter times and with smaller sample volumes than those required by current clinical diagnosis techniques. All devices were benchmarked against commercial techniques in terms of cost and time requirement per test

Determination of heat wave definition temperatures in Spain at an isoclimatic level: time trend of heat wave duration and intensity across the decade 2009–2018

Background: In line with WHO guidelines for the implementation of public health prevention plans targeted at the impacts of high temperatures, a heat wave defnition temperature (Tthreshold) was calculated for 182 so called “isoclimatic zones” (IZ) in Spain. As the dependent variable for determining this Tthreshold, we analysed daily all-cause mortality data (ICD-10: A00-R99) for each IZ across the period 2009–2018. The independent variable used was the mean value of the maximum daily temperature of the summer months recorded at meteorological observatories in each IZ. We used Box–Jenkins models to ascertain mortality anomalies, and scatterplots to link these anomalies to the temperatures at which they occurred, thereby determining the Tthreshold for each IZ. We then calculated how many heat waves had occurred in each IZ, as well as their intensity, and analysed their time trend over this period. Results: The results showed that in 52.5% of the IZ, the percentile of the maximum temperatures series of the summer months to which Tthreshold corresponded was below the 95th percentile of the meteorological heat wave defnition in Spain: indeed, it only coincided in 30.7% of cases. The geographical distribution of these percentiles displayed great heterogeneity as a consequence of the local factors that infuence the temperature–mortality relationship. The trend in the number of heat waves analysed indicated an overall increase in Spain at a rate of 3.9 heat waves per decade, and a similar rise in mean annual intensity of 9.5 °C/decade. These time-trend values were higher than those yielded by analysing the trend in meteorological heat waves based on the 95th percentile. Conclusions: The results obtained in this study indicate the need to use a heat wave defnition based on epidemiological temperature–mortality studies, rather than on values based on meteorological percentiles. This could be minimising estimated health impacts in analyses of future impacts attributable to heat.Acknowledgements and funding The authors would like to express their gratitude for the following grants from the Carlos III Institute of Health (Instituto de Salud Carlos III/ISCIII) for the ENPY 304/20, and ENPY 436/21 projects.S