Bringing Optical Communications to the General Public: an Innovative Bachelor Thesis

The United Nations “International year of light 2015” strives to highlight the importance of optical technologies in our everyday lives. Fibre optic communication is one such technology: the growth of internet and its associated services are enabled by the vast transmission bandwidth provided by optical networks. However, the general public is not well aware of the optical and electronic fundamentals of the underlying transmission systems. Here we present the development of a bachelor thesis in Telecommunication Engineering in which a small-scale fibre-optic link is built and the electronics required to transmit music over this link are implemented. The resulting system demonstrates, in a very intuitive way, how information is transmitted over an optical fibre.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Herramientas dinámicas para la gestión de una cartera de proyectos

Debido a la creciente necesidad que experimentan las empresas de trabajar por proyectos, en los últimos años han surgido varias asociaciones de Dirección de Proyectos que presentan una serie de herramientas para facilitar la gestión de Proyectos, Programas y Portafolios de Proyectos. Cada una de estas asociaciones ofrece su punto de vista único a la hora de realizar la dirección de proyectos, facilitando siempre una serie de buenas prácticas o recomendaciones que el Director de Proyectos debe adaptar al proyecto en cuestión. En este estudio se realiza una pequeña introducción a dichas metodologías y se presenta un marco de referencia particular, específicamente desarrollado para realizar la gestión de proyectos de I+D+i (pese a poder emplearse también en todo tipo de proyectos). La mayor parte de estas metodologías y herramientas no diferencian entre los proyectos, que se realizan en la organización de manera habitual, y los proyectos específicos de I+D+i, que requieren de requisitos especiales a la hora de realizar el seguimiento y control del avance del proyecto, lo que ha motivado la realización de este estudio.Departamento de Organización de Empresas y Comercialización e Investigación de MercadosMáster en Dirección de Proyecto

Asignación de Slots ferroviarios mediante subastas

Debido a las nuevas políticas de liberalización del sector ferroviario, en este estudio se tratará de investigar y desarrollar una metodología para la asignación de espacios y franjas horarias a las diferentes compañías de servicios. Para implementar esta política donde las compañías competirán entre ellas, debe desarrollarse un proceso de toma de decisiones de forma eficiente para asignar las vías a las compañías. Nuestro estudio presenta un mecanismo basado en subastas iterativas, particularmente de asignación mediante subastas y modelado basado en agentes, que proporcione resultados experimentales en un limitado entorno de trabajo. Otros estudios lo han mencionado anteriormente, pero sin adentrarse en profundidad en la problemática y sin resolver la subasta, optimizando únicamente el modelo de determinación del ganador, no el mecanismo en sí.Departamento de Organización de Empresas y Comercialización e Investigación de MercadosGrado en Ingeniería en Organización Industria

Dissipative solitons which cannot be trapped

In this paper we study the behavior of dissipative solitons in systems with high order nonlinear dissipation and show how they cannot survive under the effect of trapping potentials both of rigid wall type or asymptotically increasing ones. This provides an striking example of a soliton which cannot be trapped and only survives to the action of a weak potential

Experimental study of MIMO-OFDM transmissions at 94 GHz in indoor environments

Millimeter wave (mm-wave) frequencies have been proposed to achieve high capacity in 5G communications. Although meaningful research on the channel characteristics has been performed in the 28, 38and 60 GHz bands ─in both indoor and short-range scenarios─,only a small number of trials (experiments) have been carried out in other mm-wave bands. The objective of this work is to study the viability and evaluate the performance of the 94 GHz frequency band for MIMO-OFDM transmission in an indoor environment. Starting from a measurement campaign, the performance of MIMO algorithms is studied in terms of throughput for four different antenna configurations.This work was supported in part by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MINECO, Spain under Grant TEC2016-78028-C3-2-P, and in part by the European FEDER funds

Traffic noise mitigation using single and double barrier caps of different shapes for an extended frequency range

The primary function of noise barriers is to shield inhabitants of affected areas from excessive noise generated by road traffic. To enhance the performance of noise barriers while simultaneously adhering to height restrictions, the attachment of structures (caps) of different shapes to the tops of conventional screens can be considered. These caps can significantly impact the diffracted sound energy, thereby increasing the desired global acoustic losses. This work presents a comprehensive study of the acoustic performance of noise barriers with single and double attached caps of different shapes through a calculation of their insertion losses (IL). This study comprehensively addresses and compares different types, sizes, combinations, and numbers of noise barrier caps for different scenarios (including sloping and absorbent grounds) and sources (“car” and “ambulance”) for an extended frequency band up to 10 kHz. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is a range that has not previously been analyzed. A variety of different cap shapes were considered including cylinders, rectangles, trapezoids, and Y/T-shaped forms. To calculate the IL, an innovative and fast uniform theory of diffraction (UTD)-based method developed by the authors was applied in all simulations. The results showed that the Y-shaped single and double barrier caps were, in general, the most effective at increasing IL without raising the height of the barrier, thereby successfully managing the aesthetic impact. The results also showed how the consideration of sloping and absorbent floors could also contribute to improved noise abatement.This work was funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain (TEC2016-78028-C3-2-P and PID2019-107885GB-C33), and by the European Fonds Européen de Développement Économique et Régional (FEDER) funds

RadioEarth: herramienta de cálculo de cobertura radioeléctrica para Google Earth

RadioEarth es una herramienta que interacciona con Google Earth y permite realizar simulaciones de coberturas radioeléctricas de sistemas de radiocomunicaciones como GSM, UMTS, TETRA, LMDS, MMDS, Radio digital, TDT, WiFi, etc. utilizando diferentes modelos de propagación

On the relationship between optical variability, visual saliency, and eye fixations: a computational approach

A hierarchical definition of optical variability is proposed that links physical magnitudes to visual saliency and yields a more reductionist interpretation than previous approaches. This definition is shown to be grounded on the classical efficient coding hypothesis. Moreover, we propose that a major goal of contextual adaptation mechanisms is to ensure the invariance of the behavior that the contribution of an image point to optical variability elicits in the visual system. This hypothesis and the necessary assumptions are tested through the comparison with human fixations and state-of-the-art approaches to saliency in three open access eye-tracking datasets, including one devoted to images with faces, as well as in a novel experiment using hyperspectral representations of surface reflectance. The results on faces yield a significant reduction of the potential strength of semantic influences compared to previous works. The results on hyperspectral images support the assumptions to estimate optical variability. As well, the proposed approach explains quantitative results related to a visual illusion observed for images of corners, which does not involve eye movementsS

Desarrollo e implementación de una aplicación para la gestión de una red de sensores conectada remotamente vía el sistema GSM-GPRS

En este artículo se presenta una aplicación para gestionar integralmente una pequeña red de sensores conectada a un sistema remoto a través de GSM/GPRS. Para lograr dicha conexión, se integraron en un prototipo los diferentes dispositivos hardware necesarios. La aplicación, desarrollada sobre el Sistema de Información Geográfica (GIS) ArcGis 9.2, permite tanto planificar la red desde el punto de vista de cobertura radioeléctrica como visualizar todos los parámetros sensorizados

On the influence of diffuse scattering on multiple-plateau diffraction analysis at mm-wave frequencies

A study of the impact of the diffuse scattering phenomenon when calculating radio wave multiple-plateau diffraction losses at millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequencies is hereby presented. In this sense, measurements of the total attenuation caused by a series of either rough or polished brick blocks are properly compared with the theoretical multiplediffraction losses of an array of ideally smooth brick blocks predicted by a hybrid uniform theory of diffraction-physical optics (UTD-PO) formulation. The results show the influence of diffuse scattering phenomena when it comes to calculating radio wave multiple-plateau diffraction attenuation and can be applied to the obtaining of more realistic mm-wave propagation models when multiple diffraction over rectangular obstacles with irregular (rough) surfaces has to be considered.This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO), Spain (TEC2016-78028-C3-2-P) and in part by the European Fonds Européen de Développement Économique et Régional Fund