Intelligent infrastructures systems for sustainable urban environment

Extensive research is now under way around the world to develop advanced technologies to enhance the performances of infrastructure systems. While these technological advances are incremental in nature, they will eventually lead to structures which are distinctly different from the actual infrastructure systems. These new structures will be therefore capable of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), involving applications of electronics and smart materials, aiming to assist engineers in realizing the full benefits of structural health monitoring.intelligent infrastructures, environment, optimization

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

5G UFMC Scheme Performance with Different Numerologies

5G is the latest mobile communications standard that is spreading fast across the world. Recently defined requirements for 5G systems have led to higher applications’ requirements regarding data rates, lower requirements for latency, and higher efficiency regarding the spectrum usage. Universal Filtered Multi-Carrier (UFMC) is one new candidate modulation scheme for emergent Fifth Generation (5G) communication systems. This paper focuses on Universal Filtered Multi-Carrier (UFMC) design aspects in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER) performance in relation to the filter length used in subband filtering. Simulation results show that BER and CCDF performance varies for different filter lengths and modulation schemes. The main achievement of this work is that the results show that different Dolph–Chebyshev FIR filter lengths do not affect the BER performance both for the 64 and 256 QAM

Implementation of a Topology Independent MAC (TiMAC) Policy on a Low-Cost IoT System

The emerging new paradigm under the fifth generation of wireless communications technologies (5G) and high expectations for massively expanding today’s Internet of Things (IoT) under 5G, are expected to support a large plurality of low-cost devices for an all-increasing number of new IoT applications. Many emerging IoT applications are going to take advantage of techniques and technologies that have high demands from low-cost devices in terms of processing large amounts of data and communication. For example, in systems based on fog computing technology, low-cost devices have to assign some of their limited resources for processing purposes. Considering the drawbacks emerging from using low-cost devices and the fact that many applications are in need for time-constrained approaches, TDMA-based Medium Access Control (MAC) policies need to be revisited and implemented in low-cost devices of today. In this sense, a policy independent of the underlying topology, TiMAC policy, is considered here and is implemented in low-cost devices using 433 MHz RF modules. Even though the implementation is limited by synchronization issues and a small number of nodes, the obtained experimental results demonstrate the potential for employing TDMA-based MAC policies on IoT systems consisting of low-cost devices

A Traffic-Load-Based Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks’ Lifetime Extension

It has been shown in the literature that the lifetime of a wireless sensor network is heavily connected to the number of transmissions that network nodes have to undertake. Considering this finding, along with the effects of the energy hole problem where nodes closer to the sink node transmit more than the more distant ones, a node close to the sink node will be the one that transmits the most, while it will also be the node that will deplete its battery first. Taking into consideration that the failure of a single network node to operate, due to its battery being discharged, can lead to a network stopping its operation, the most energy-consuming node in the network will also be the one that will be responsible for the network’s termination. In this sense, the most energy-consuming node’s energy consumption optimization is the main case in this paper. More specifically, in this work, it is firstly shown that the energy consumption of a wireless sensor network is closely related to each network node’s traffic load, that is the transmissions of the packets that are created or forwarded by a node. The minimization of the most energy-consuming node’s energy consumption was studied here, while the implementation of a traffic-load-based algorithm is also proposed. Under the proposed algorithm, given a simple shortest path approach that assigns a parent (i.e., the next hop towards the sink node) in each network node and the knowledge it provides regarding the distance (in hops in this paper’s case) of network nodes from the sink node, the proposed algorithm exploits the shortest path’s results in order to discover, for all network nodes, neighbors that are of the same distance (from the sink node) with the initially assigned parent. Then, if such neighbors exist, all these neighbors are equally burdened with the parenting role. As a result, the traffic load is shared by all of them. To evaluate the proposed algorithm, simulation results are provided, showing that the goals set were achieved; thus, the network lifetime was prolonged. In addition, it is shown that under the algorithm, a fairer distribution of the traffic load takes place

"Satellite coverage analysis for the investigation of real-time communication in selected areas", WSEAS Transactions on Communications, vol. 5, issue 10, pp. 1965-1972, 2006

In this paper we investigate real-time satellite communications through the evaluation of satellite coverage over Ioannina Airport in Greece for the purpose of generalizing the introduced method for selected areas on the surface of the Earth. The necessary simulation is performed using AGI's STK suite. This tool is available for all types of vehicles, facilities, targets and sensors. Specifically it is possible the calculation of single-object coverage to track the position of a vehicle or facility along Ioannina Airport in Greece. The survey describes the conclusions coming from the study of coverage on the airport of Ioannina not only from GPS satellites but also from other satellite categories specialized for civilian communications, military and science operations. Additionally new parameter values involving propagator issues of satellites are suggested taking into consideration the maximum coverage coming from the satellites that have been studied and belong to a large number of different categories

"Evaluation of Satellite Coverage over Ioannina Airport in Greece", In 10th WSEAS International Conference on Communications, Jul. 10-12, 2006, pp. 366-369.

In this paper we demonstrate the evaluation of the quality of satellite coverage over Ioannina Airport and consequently to various areas and objects on the surface of Earth. The necessary simulation is performed using AGI’s STK suite. This tool is available for all types of vehicles, facilities, targets and sensors. Specifically it is possible the calculation of single-object coverage to track the position of a vehicle or facility along Ioannina Airport in Greece. The survey describes the conclusions coming from the study of coverage on the airport of Ioannina not only from GPS satellites but also from other satellite categories specialized for civilian communications, military and science operations. Additionally new parameter values involving propagator issues of satellites are suggested taking into consideration the maximum coverage coming from the satellites that have been studied and belong to a large number of different categories

Training of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks to Identify Critical Liver Alterations in Histopathology Image Samples

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is responsible for a wide range of pathological disorders. It is characterized by the prevalence of steatosis, which results in excessive accumulation of triglyceride in the liver tissue. At high rates, it can lead to a partial or total occlusion of the organ. In contrast, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is a progressive form of NAFLD, with the inclusion of hepatocellular injury and inflammation histological diseases. Since there is no approved pharmacotherapeutic solution for both conditions, physicians and engineers are constantly in search for fast and accurate diagnostic methods. The proposed work introduces a fully automated classification approach, taking into consideration the high discrimination capability of four histological tissue alterations. The proposed work utilizes a deep supervised learning method, with a convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture achieving a classification accuracy of 95%. The classification capability of the new CNN model is compared with a pre-trained AlexNet model, a visual geometry group (VGG)-16 deep architecture and a conventional multilayer perceptron (MLP) artificial neural network. The results show that the constructed model can achieve better classification accuracy than VGG-16 (94%) and MLP (90.3%), while AlexNet emerges as the most efficient classifier (97%)

"A Realistic Smart Antenna with E-Shaped Patch for 3G Handsets", In: 10th WSEAS International Conference on Communications, Jul. 10-12, 2006, pp. 460-463.

In this paper we present and investigate the concept of a novel smart microstrip E-shaped patch antenna for 3G handsets. The total radiated power and the overall gain performance of the proposed smart antenna is presented, analyzed and compared with the smart antennas consisted of rectangular patch. The smart antenna configuration for both cases is a linear array. In order to reduce the size of the antenna, which is incorporated into the backside of the handset, two antenna elements are considered with an inter-element spacing of a quarter wavelength (λ/4). The computer simulation results confirm that the antenna has a gain bandwidth of 10% for VSWR≤4. Moreover, the return loss S11 at 2GHz of the proposed smart antenna system is –20dB, a value that allows the E-shaped antenna to match easily to 50Ω source