A systemic perspective on racism in football: the experience of the BRISWA project

The objective of this paper is to present the process for the development of a causal loop diagram that captures the relevant aspects of racism in football, through a holistic, top-down approach. To do so, a series of workshops/sessions has been organised with experts in the field and with the purpose of designing a tool that could be used to get better insights into how racism in football emerges and where are the potential areas where policymakers could use as leverage for effective counter-measures. The diagram demonstrated the multi-faceted nature of racism, the phenomena that might give rise to it and the elements that could serve as leverage in potential counter-measures. Some of the most interesting results include the following: the power structures of society and football should adapt to represent the actual demographic make-up of each country. Furthermore, policymakers should involve media more directly in every attempt to fight racism. Finally, racism in football is a mirror of racism in society. Hence, any attempt to combat racism in football should be interlinked with corresponding efforts to fight discrimination in society

Performance evaluation of LTE in unlicensed bands for indoor deployment of ultra-broadband mobile networks

The continuous growth of worldwide mobile subscriptions and the progress of mobile devices and telecommunications in the last few years has led to a tremendous increase of demand for high data rates. The scarcity of licensed spectrum and the high costs of this resource have encouraged mobile operators to move towards the unlicensed spectrum. LTE Licensed-Assisted Access is the proposed technology, that allows to work on the 5 GHz unlicensed band. To operate on these frequencies already occupied by Wi-Fi and radar systems, LTE must fairly coexist with the above. The aim of this paper is to analyze the downlink performance improvements, offered by the aggregation of unlicensed bands, in terms of user throughput

NB-IoT system deployment for smart metering: Evaluation of coverage and capacity performances

Internet of Things offers a wide spectrum of opportunities for innovative applications designed to improve our life quality. In the energy sector, the developing of smart metering networks allows operators and companies to improve the production efficiency and to offer an enhanced service to customers. 3GPP introduced in Release 13 Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) as a new cellular technology for providing wide-area coverage for Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Type Communication (MTC). In this paper, we propose a deployment analysis of a NB-IoT system for smart metering. Estimated number of UE that this system can serve and coverage enhancement considerations with respect to LTE technology are provided

Testing of the Carrier Aggregation Mode for a Live LTE Base Station in Reverberation Chamber

For the first time, the carrier aggregation feature of a live 4G-LTE base station (BS) is checked adopting a reverberation chamber as a propagating environment. To that purpose, two non adjacent bands were chosen: 800 and 1800 MHz and alternatively set as primary and secondary cells. The multipath conditions were tuned by adding the absorbing material inside the chamber and ranging from an empty condition with a rich multipath to a real environment like an indoor scenario. The latter is a very interesting and popular situation as it represents one in which people use mobile phones. The multipath variation effect on the BS performance was accurately verified by introducing power compensation in order to account for the variation of the chamber quality factor Q due to the insertion of absorbers. A complete over-the-air test was carried out by checking typical transmission quality parameters, that are of interest to manufacturers and mobile network operators. Results highlight differences between the performance of the two bands as a function of multipath degree and signal strength

Evaluation methodologies for the NB-IOT system: issues and ongoing efforts

The recently standardized Narrow Band Internet of Things (NB-IOT) is expected to become a disruptive technology in the IoT market. The low cost, manageability, and reliability offered by a Mobile Network Operator (MNO) can be the enabler for the widespread acceptance and deployment of IoT devices. In this market phase, network planning plays a crucial role in the possible services forecast, with obvious consequences on the market analysis by the MNO. Moreover, there are many possible improvements in the NB-IOT device management, which are intentionally left as implementation dependent elements. As a consequence, it is necessary to evaluate the performances of an NB-IOT system, both for scientific and deployment purposes. In this paper we will outline the various evaluation systems and the ongoing efforts to build a new and efficient NB-IOT simulation platform

Ultra-broadband mobile networks from LTE-Advanced to 5G: Evaluation of massive MIMO and multi-carrier aggregation effectiveness

LTE-Advanced networks are spreading widely across the world and they are continuing to evolve as new device features such MIMO 4×4, Carrier Aggregation are being released to move towards the peak data rates introduced by 3GPP Release 12 and 13. Mobile network Operators are looking for technologies that guarantee higher spectral efficiency and wider spectrum usage but they have to deal with limitations due to commercial devices' RF components. This paper analyzes several scenarios, compares them and suggests deployment strategies