Cooperative and coordinated Mobile Femtocells technology in high-speed vehicular environments: mobility and interference management

In future networks, most users who will be accessing wireless broadband will be vehicular. Serving those users cost-effectively and improving their signal quality has been the main concern of many studies. Thus, the deployment of Mobile Femtocell (Mobile-Femto) technology on public transportation is seen to be one of the promising solutions. Mobile-Femto comes with its mobility and interference challenges. Therefore, eliminating the Vehicular Penetration Loss (VPL) and interference while improving signal quality and mobility for train passengers is the main concern of this paper. The initial system-level evaluation showed that the dedicated Mobile-Femto deployment has great potential in improving users’ experience inside public transportation. The Downlink (DL) results of the Proposed Interference Management Scheme (PIMS) showed significant improvement in Mobile-Femto User Equipment (UE) gains (up to 50%) without impacting the performance of macro UEs. In contrast, the Uplink (UL) results showed noticeable gains for both macro UEs and Mobile-Femto UEs

Health care and hospitalisation costs of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in Thailand

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) has become a leading cause of death and disability in Thailand due to the unhealthy lifestyle of the populace; triggering high risk of exposure to CVD, increase in the number of hospital admissions year on year. Objectives: The concerns generated by the inflation in the health care expenditure among service providers motivated this study to examine the costs of hospitalisation of inpatients with (CVD) conditions in Thailand, 2009. Methods: Anonymised secondary data of 327,435 CVD inpatients under “Universal Coverage” (UC) health care scheme were obtained from the National Health Security Office (NHSO), Thailand. The data(51.69%- women and 48.31% - men) were classified using International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) code, of which I20-I25 are Ischemic heart disease (IHD), I60-I69 are stroke and I00- I99areallCVD conditions. Results: Average costs of treatments for all CVD conditions, IHD and stroke were ฿21,921 (£1 = ฿50), ฿32,884 (highest) and ฿25,617.67per patient respectively. Absolute total cost increased with age and the cost of admission of male patients is higher than female. The average (three months) length of stay for stroke patients was found to be the highest. Conclusion: Providers generally spent a total of ฿7,177 million on the treatment of CVD with IHD and stroke taking ฿2,544 million and ฿1,920 million respectivel

Interference management for co-channel mobile femtocells technology in LTE networks

The dense deployment of Femtocells within the Macrocell's coverage is expected to dominate the future of Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks. While Mobile Femtocells (Mobile-Femtos) could be the solution for vehicular networks when there is a need to improve the vehicular User Equipment (UE) performance by mitigating the impact of penetration loss and path-loss issues. The deployed Femtocells have operated in a co-channel deployment due to the scarcity of spectrums. This issue causes interference between Femtocells and Macrocells as well it causes extra overhead on the LTE networks because of the co-tire interference between adjacent Femtocells. In this paper two interference scenarios are considered, the interference between Mobile-Femto and Macrocell, and the interference between the Mobile Femtos themselves. Therefore, to avoid the generated interference between Femtocells, the controlled transmission powers as well as the coverage planning techniques have been discussed. While in the worst-case scenarios, a frequency reuse scheme has been proposed to avoid the generated interference effectively and dynamically between the Mobile-Femtos as well as their UEs and between the Macrocell UEs

Flexural Strength Characteristics of Beams Reinforced with Fan Palm under Various Exposure Conditions

The relative high cost of man-made imported fibres like, glass, steel and plastics used in cement based composites as reinforcement calls for investigation into the use of locally available natural fibre as a substitute. Fan palm is locally available and has been studied as a suitable alternative to steel reinforcement. The need for durability of the fan palm under varying exposure conditions is the concern of this study. The ultimate flexural strength of beams reinforced with fan palm under diverse exposure conditions was determined to evaluate its possible usage, both on short and long term basis. Fan palm specimens were cut, shaped to desired flexural reinforcements sizes and coated with water repellants (epoxy, sulphur and bitumen) and  blocking agents (hydroxylamine, sodium sulphate magnesium sulphate) for 24 hours. They were then used as reinforcements for concrete beams (75 x 100 x 500 mm) of 1:2:4 mix ratio and cured in alkaline media (0.1N sodium hydroxide solution). Two sets of uncoated fan palm reinforced beams (in alkaline solution and in water) were used as control experiments. Flexural strength test was carried out on the specimen beams at ages 7, 14, 28, 56, 90, 180, 270, and 365 days. The results were subjected to ANOVA analysis using STATA soft ware. The results at 365 days indicated that out of the beams reinforced with water repellant agents, those reinforced with bitumen retained the ultimate flexural stress of 36.98N/mm2. For the beams reinforced with fan palm coated with blocking agents, those reinforced with hydroxylamine recorded the ultimate flexural stress of 25.59N/mm2. The ultimate flexural stress of beams reinforced with uncoated fan palm is 4.69N/mm2 and 18.07N/mm2 in alkaline and water media respectively. It was concluded that coating fan palm reinforcements with bitumen (a water repellant agent) improved the durability of fan palm reinforced concrete beams in alkaline media. Keywords: Fan palm, Flexural strength, Exposure conditions, Water repellant agents, Blocking agents

Performance evaluation of mobile users served by fixed and mobile femtocells in LTE networks

This paper investigates the concept of Mobile Femtocell with considering the feasibility of deploying Mobile Femtocells in public transportation vehicles such as trains, buses or private cars that form its own cell inside vehicles to serve vehicular and mobile User Equipments. This study is the launch of cell-edge mobile users who have always suffered degradation in the Quality of Service (QoS). Therefore, an investigation on the performance of LTE cell-edge mobile User Equipment e.g. users’ throughput, SINR, SNR, SIR, spectral efficiency and Handover performance, have been considered with deploying Fixed Femtocells and Mobile Femtocells in Long Term Evolution network. Two scenarios have been proposed in this study; Fixed Femtocells with mobile users and Mobile Femtocells with mobile users. More scenarios maybe considered in the case of Mobile Femtocell’s handover procedure. MATLAB simulation has been used for the purpose of simulating the designed scenarios and implementing the integrated mathematical equations. The simulated results have demonstrated the benefits of having Mobile Femtocells over the Fixed Femtocells in terms of mobile User Equipments’ performance

Mobility management for vehicular user equipment in LTE/mobile femtocell networks

Vehicular User Equipment (UE) performance during mobility faces two issues relating to signaling and transmission, namely Handover (HO) and link adaptation. This paper shows that both processes are experiencing degradation during mobility and that vehicular UEs suffer from call drops and loss of connections. Therefore, this work presents an effective technique using Mobile-Femtos to improve vehicular UEs' HO process and link quality. Results show that vehicular UEs attached to a Mobile-Femto achieved better signalling and Link Ergodic capacity and as a consequence the outage probability was reduced. The achieved results indicated that deploying Mobile-Femtos under 25dB Vehicular Penetration Loss (VPL) has improved the vehicular UE Link Ergodic capacity by 1% and reduced the signal outage probability by 1.8% compared to the eNB direct transmission. Consequently, Drop Calls Probability (DCP) and Block Calls Probability (BCP) have been reduced by 7% and 14% respectively compared to the direct transmission from the eNB

Tensile Strength Characteristics of Fanpalm under Various Exposure Conditions

Fanpalm is a prospective reinforcing material in structural elements. Fanpalm is locally available and has been studied as a suitable alternative to steel reinforcement which is usually imported and expensive. The need for durability of the fanpalm under varying exposure conditions is the concern of this study. The ultimate tensile strength of fanpalm was determined under various exposure conditions to evaluate its possible usage, both on short term and long term basis. Fanpalm specimens were cut, shaped and coated with various protective agents (sodium sulphate, magnesium sulphate, hydroxylamine, epoxy, and sulphur ) then cured in alkaline media(0.1N sodium hydroxide solution) for 3, 7, 14, 28 and 56 days. A set of uncoated Fanpalm were subjected to the same curing conditions as the coated specimens to serve as the control. Tensile strength tests were carried out to evaluate the ultimate tensile stress at various ages for each of the exposure conditions. The results showed that epoxy coated fanpalm specimens recorded the highest strength at 56 days of 80.83N/mm2 while magnesium sulphate coated specimens had the lowest strength of 66.25N/mm2 during the same period. The uncoated specimens had average strength of 65.00N/mm2 at 56 days in alkaline media. It could be said that the coating improves the tensile strength of fanpalm in alkaline media. It was concluded that fanpalm coated with epoxy could be used as a reinforcing material in concrete structures for short term usage. Further evaluation of the strength of epoxy coated specimens over longer duration (say one year) should be carried out to determine its usage as reinforcements on long term basis. Keywords: Fanpalm, tensile strength, reinforcing material, exposure conditions