Miniature Antenna with Frequency Agility

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Dielectric Materials for Compact Dielectric Resonator Antenna Applications

Introduction Dielectric resonators using high-permittivity materials were originally developed for microwave circuits, such as filters or oscillators as tuning element [1]. Indeed, in the late nineteen sixties, the development of low-loss ceramic materials opened the way for their use as high-Q elements [2-4]. Then, making use of dielectric materials to create the dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) illustrates the ingenuity of Professor S. A. Long [5], who was the first to propose such a procedure in the early nineteen eighties. Indeed, it introduced the use of a dielectric resonator as an antenna by exciting different modes using multiple feeding mechanisms. During the nineties, emphasis was placed on applying analytical or numerical techniques for determining input impedance, fields inside the resonator and Q-factor [6]. Kishk, Junker, Glisson, Luk, Leung, Mongia, Bhartia, Petosa and so on, have described a significant amount of DRAs' analyses and characterizations [7-18]. Petosa and al. proposed both in literatures and book [6,12] many of the recent advances on DRAs. Current DRA literatures focus on compact designs to address portable wireless applications. Among them, new DRA shapes or hybrid antennas are developed to enhance the antenna impedance bandwidth [13-19] or for multiband antenna applications [20-22]. The first part will address a brief overview of the most common used DRA shapes and structures including both rectangular and cylindrical DRAs. The emphasis will be placed on better understanding what DRAs exactly are and how to develop such an antenna. This part will detail fundamental modes of DRAs, their resonant frequencies, fields inside the resonator and radiation patterns corresponding to these modes. A second part will focus on the relevant dielectric material properties having a significant contribution to achieve better antenna performances. It will detail the kind of materials DRAs can use, which is closely linked to the targeted application. Multiple techniques to miniaturize such an antenna will be presented in the third part, supported by concrete examples. At the same time, everyone will be able to appreciate that dielectric material properties have a major role to play in designing a DRA. It should be noted that the material choice is even more critical when the targeted challenge is the antenna size reduction. Therefore, depending on the intended applications, this part will enable to find the best trade-off between the material choice and its shape. Although some wideband or multiband DRA structures have been introduced in the third part, the fourth and last part will be dedicated to a new method to design a DRA. It will address engineering design data on hybrid modes creation to enhance the bandwidth or develop multiband antennas. This part will include many references to clearly explain this research method while highlighting their contribution to expand the use of DRA in new kind of mobile handheld devices (e.g. new tablets)

Compact Antennas — An overview

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Reconfigurable multi-slot antenna for bio-medical applications

© 2016 European Association of Antennas and Propagation. We present a polarization- reconfigurable multislot antenna with four switchable linear polarizations (as 0°, ± 45° and 90°) for implant communications. The design is based on four bow-tie shaped slots acting as radiators etched on a circular metallization plane with 45° rotated sequential arrangements. RF switches based on PIN diodes are connected across each slot in order to modify the radiators polarization. We apply a differential source to feed the slot antenna through a ground-tapered Balun. In order to obtain a broadside radiation pattern, a reflector is placed at the quarter-wave distance below the radiator. Measured results are showing that the realized multi-slot antenna can generate four switchable linear polarization states with wide bandwidth and stable gain. This polarization diversity feature makes the proposed antenna highly attractive for implant and body-centric wireless communication systems for minimizing the multi-path distortion and polarization mismatching in the wireless channels

Congestion and centrality in traffic flow on complex networks

The central points of communication network flow has often been identified using graph theoretical centrality measures. In real networks, the state of traffic density arises from an interplay between the dynamics of the flow and the underlying network structure. In this work we investigate the relationship between centrality measures and the density of traffic for some simple particle hopping models on networks with emerging scale-free degree distributions. We also study how the speed of the dynamics are affected by the underlying network structure. Among other conclusions, we find that, even at low traffic densities, the dynamical measure of traffic density (the occupation ratio) has a non-trivial dependence on the static centrality (quantified by "betweenness centrality"), which non-central vertices getting a comparatively large portion of the traffic.Comment: To appear in Advances in Complex System

Enhancing Transport Efficiency by Hybrid Routing Strategy

Traffic is essential for many dynamic processes on real networks, such as internet and urban traffic systems. The transport efficiency of the traffic system can be improved by taking full advantage of the resources in the system. In this paper, we propose a dual-strategy routing model for network traffic system, to realize the plenary utility of the whole network. The packets are delivered according to different "efficient routing strategies" [Yan, et al, Phys. Rev. E 73, 046108 (2006)]. We introduce the accumulate rate of packets, {\eta} to measure the performance of traffic system in the congested phase, and propose the so-called equivalent generation rate of packet to analyze the jamming processes. From analytical and numerical results, we find that, for suitable selection of strategies, the dual- strategy system performs better than the single-strategy system in a broad region of strategy mixing ratio. The analytical solution to the jamming processes is verified by estimating the number of jammed nodes, which coincides well with the result from simulation.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Are 3D-printed Models of Tibial Plateau Fractures a Useful Addition to Understanding Fractures for Junior Surgeons?

Background Tibial plateau fractures are often complex, and they can be challenging to treat. Classifying fractures is often part of the treatment process, but intra- and interobserver reliability of fracture classification systems often is inadequate to the task, and classifications that lack reliability can mislead providers and result in harm to patients. Three-dimensionally (3D)-printed models might help in this regard, but whether that is the case for the classification of tibial plateau fractures, and whether the utility of such models might vary by the experience of the individual classifying the fractures, is unknown. Questions/purposes (1) Does the overall interobserver agreement improve when fractures are classified with 3D-printed models compared with conventional radiology? (2) Does interobserver agreement vary among attending and consultant trauma surgeons, senior surgical residents, and junior surgical residents? (3) Do surgeons' and surgical residents' confidence and accuracy improve when tibial plateau fractures are classified with an additional 3D model compared with conventional radiology? Methods Between 2012 and 2020, 113 patients with tibial plateau fractures were treated at a Level 1 trauma center. Forty-four patients were excluded based on the presence of bone diseases (such as osteoporosis) and the absence of a CT scan. To increase the chance to detect an improvement or deterioration and to prevent observers from losing focus during the classification, we decided to include 40 patients with tibial plateau fractures. Nine trauma surgeons, eight senior surgical residents, and eight junior surgical residents-none of whom underwent any study-specific pretraining-classified these fractures according to three often-used classification systems (Schatzker, OA/OTA, and the Luo three-column concept), with and without 3D-printed models, and they indicated their overall confidence on a 10-point Likert scale, with 0 meaning not confident at all and 10 absolutely certainty. To set the gold standard, a panel of three experienced trauma surgeons who had special expertise in knee surgery and 10 years to 25 years of experience in practice also classified the fractures until consensus was reached. The Fleiss kappa was used to determine interobserver agreement for fracture classification. Differences in confidence in assessing fractures with and without the 3D-printed model were compared using a paired t-test. Accuracy was calculated by comparing the participants' observations with the gold standard. Results The overall interobserver agreement improved minimally for fracture classification according to two of three classification systems (Schatzker: kappa(conv) = 0.514 versus kappa(3Dprint) = 0.539; p = 0.005; AO/OTA:kappa(conv) = 0.359 versus kappa(3Dprint) = 0.372; p = 0.03). However, none of the classification systems, even when used by our most experienced group of trauma surgeons, achieved more than moderate interobserver agreement, meaning that a large proportion of fractures were misclassified by at least one observer. Overall, there was no improvement in self-assessed confidence in classifying fractures or accuracy with 3D-printed models; confidence was high (about 7 points on a 10-point scale) as rated by all observers, despite moderate or worse accuracy and interobserver agreement Conclusion Although 3D-printed models minimally improved the overall interobserver agreement for two of three classification systems, none of the classification systems achieved more than moderate interobserver agreement. This suggests that even with 3D-printed models, many fractures would be misclassified, which could result in misleading communication, inaccurate prognostic assessments, unclear research, and incorrect treatment choices. Therefore, we cannot recommend the use of 3D-printed models in practice and research for classification of tibial plateau fractures

Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia: Insights from Lymph Nodes & Bone Marrow and Clinical Perspectives

B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL) is characterized by highly variable distribution of tumor mass between peripheral blood, bone marrow and lymphoid organs which is important for staging, classification and prognosis. These clinical findings with novel data about importance of B-cell receptor and its stimulation with the support of microenvironment indicate important role of tissues (lymphoid organs and bone marrow) in the pathogenesis of B-CLL. Here is presented the novel approach of simultaneous characterization of B-CLL cells form peripheral blood, bone marrow and lymph nodes by flow cytometry and immunocytochemistry, defining inter- and intraclonal diversity with respect to various molecules. These include adhesion molecules (integrins, immunoglobulins, selectins), chemokine receptors (including CXCR-4), signaling molecules and prognostic factors (CD38 and ZAP-70), proliferation and apoptosis markers (including Ki67, AgNORs with PK index, survivin, bcl-2) and therapeutic targets (CD20 and CD52) and residual hematopoietic stem cells. A number of interesting significant interactions have been discovered, pointing to the important role of neoplastic cell microenvironment. These may in addition to insights in pathogenesis and roles of different microenvironments add to diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of B-CLL patients

Therapeutic drug monitoring of oral targeted antineoplastic drugs

Purpose This review provides an overview of the current challenges in oral targeted antineoplastic drug (OAD) dosing and outlines the unexploited value of therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM). Factors influencing the pharmacokinetic exposure in OAD therapy are depicted together with an overview of different TDM approaches. Finally, current evidence for TDM for all approved OADs is reviewed. Methods A comprehensive literature search (covering literature published until April 2020), including primary and secondary scientific literature on pharmacokinetics and dose individualisation strategies for OADs, together with US FDA Clinical Pharmacology and Biopharmaceutics Reviews and the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use European Public Assessment Reports was conducted. Results OADs are highly potent drugs, which have substantially changed treatment options for cancer patients. Nevertheless, high pharmacokinetic variability and low treatment adherence are risk factors for treatment failure. TDM is a powerful tool to individualise drug dosing, ensure drug concentrations within the therapeutic window and increase treatment success rates. After reviewing the literature for 71 approved OADs, we show that exposure-response and/or exposure-toxicity relationships have been established for the majority. Moreover, TDM has been proven to be feasible for individualised dosing of abiraterone, everolimus, imatinib, pazopanib, sunitinib and tamoxifen in prospective studies. There is a lack of experience in how to best implement TDM as part of clinical routine in OAD cancer therapy. Conclusion Sub-therapeutic concentrations and severe adverse events are current challenges in OAD treatment, which can both be addressed by the application of TDM-guided dosing, ensuring concentrations within the therapeutic window