Distributed Beamforming with Wirelessly Powered Relay Nodes

This paper studies a system where a set of $N$ relay nodes harvest energy from the signal received from a source to later utilize it when forwarding the source's data to a destination node via distributed beamforming. To this end, we derive (approximate) analytical expressions for the mean SNR at destination node when relays employ: i) time-switching based energy harvesting policy, ii) power-splitting based energy harvesting policy. The obtained results facilitate the study of the interplay between the energy harvesting parameters and the synchronization error, and their combined impact on mean SNR. Simulation results indicate that i) the derived approximate expressions are very accurate even for small $N$ (e.g., $N=15$), ii) time-switching policy by the relays outperforms power-splitting policy by at least $3$ dB.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for presentation at IEEE VTC 2017 Spring conferenc

Moderating effect of social support on personal financial constraints and job stress relationship

The aim of this paper is to examine the moderating effect of social support (which may be supervisory, friends, family and relatives) on the relationship of personal financial constraints and job stress relationship. Sample consists of 294 respondents from randomly selected 28 branches of 22 banks located across all major cities of Pakistan. Moderated regression analysis has been used to test the hypothesized relationships. Personal financial constraints enhance job stress and social support moderates this relationship. Job stress increases when an employee faces financial constraints but decreases in the presence of social support. Practical and theoretical implications are drawn. This research is conducted in banking industry, so its results can’t be generalized to other industries. This paper is the first which examines the impact of a non-work related variable, personal financial constraint on job stress along with buffering role of social support. Its findings have great implications for employers for increasing productivity of employees.Job stress, personal financial constraints, social support, moderating, banking, Pakistan

Exploiting Lack of Hardware Reciprocity for Sender-Node Authentication at the PHY Layer

This paper proposes to exploit the so-called reciprocity parameters (modelling non-reciprocal communication hardware) to use them as decision metric for binary hypothesis testing based authentication framework at a receiver node Bob. Specifically, Bob first learns the reciprocity parameters of the legitimate sender Alice via initial training. Then, during the test phase, Bob first obtains a measurement of reciprocity parameters of channel occupier (Alice, or, the intruder Eve). Then, with ground truth and current measurement both in hand, Bob carries out the hypothesis testing to automatically accept (reject) the packets sent by Alice (Eve). For the proposed scheme, we provide its success rate (the detection probability of Eve), and its performance comparison with other schemes

FEASIBILITY OF BAY SALAM FINANCE: A SURVEY OF THE OPINIONS OF STAKEHOLDERS

The present study aims to explore the potential application of Bai Salam (forward sale agreement) as substitute financial instrument in the agriculture sector of Pakistan. The conclusion is drawn through a survey questionnaire from 300 farmers and bankers in a district of Punjab. For analysis, we use SPSS software and presented the results by using descriptive methods. This study overall concludes the banker’s and farmer’s awareness, willingness, risks, hurdles and the role of institutions in the Salam promotion. The majority of the farmers are not aware of the Salam contract because the Islamic bank’s branch network is limited to urban areas and there is no proper promotion campaign launched by the Islamic banks for awareness about Salaam among the farmers. Bankers are reluctant to finance the tenants, orchards due to more operational risk for the bank. Bankers opinion that small farmers do not have personal securities which is not a solid reason because half of the sampled farmers take a loan from the formal system if they can provide securities to conventional interest-based institution why they can’t provide securities to Islamic financial institutions? There is a vast market for the Islamic Banks if they sincerely pay their attention towards forward sale contracts. The concept applies to all areas of agriculture and livestock farming to overcome financing problems and boost production.