Coverage measurements of NB-IoT technology

Abstract. The narrowband internet of things (NB-IoT) is a cellular radio access technology that provides seamless connectivity to wireless IoT devices with low latency, low power consumption, and long-range coverage. For long-range coverage, NB-IoT offers a coverage enhancement (CE) mechanism that is achieved by repeating the transmission of signals. Good network coverage is essential to reduce the battery usage and power consumption of IoT devices, while poor network coverage increases the number of repetitions in transmission, which causes high power consumption of IoT devices. The primary objective of this work is to determine the network coverage of NB-IoT technology under the University of Oulu’s 5G test network (5GTN) base station. In this thesis work, measurement results on key performance indicators such as reference signal received power (RSRP), reference signal received quality (RSRQ), received signal strength indicator (RSSI), and signal to noise plus interference (SINR) have been reported. The goal of the measurement is to find out the NB-IoT signal strength at different locations, which are served by the 5GTN cells configured with different parameters, e.g., Tx power levels, antenna tilt angles. The signal strength of NB-IoT technology has been measured at different places under the 5GTN base station in Oulu, Finland. Drive tests have been conducted to measure the signal strength of NB-IoT technology by using the Quectel BG96 module, Qualcomm kDC-5737 dongle and Keysight Nemo Outdoor software. The results have shown the values of RSRP, RSRQ, RSSI, and SINR at different locations within several kilometres of the 5GTN base stations. These values indicate the performance of the network and are used to assess the performance of network services to the end-users. In this work, the overall performance of the network has been checked to verify if network performance meets good signal levels and good network coverage. Relevant details of the NB-IoT technology, the theory behind the signal coverage and comparisons with the measurement results have also been discussed to check the relevance of the measurement results

Percutaneous transhepatic biliary stenting

Objective: Bilary stenting with endoprosthesis is a palliative procedure to relieve malignant biliary obstruction. Percutaneous transhepatic technique has been employed whenever endoscopic technique was not possible or had failed.SETTING: Angiography/intervention suite, department of radiology, Aga Khan University hospital, Karachi.Methods: We present retrospective analysis of 17 patients with malignant jaundice who were treated with percutaneous techniques after the endoscopic route had failed.Results: The success rate was 94% with placement of single plastic stent in 14 patients, double stents in 3 patients and self-expandable stent in one patient. The overall complication rate was 41% including sepsis, liver abscess, biloma formation, biliary leakage and stent occlusion. There was one procedure related death due to severe sepsis.CONCLUSION: Percutaneous transhepatic biliary stenting is an alternative procedure to relieve malignant biliary obstruction with high complication rate and should be reserved for selected patients in whom endoscopic route has failed

The decline of the Saljuqid Empire.

After a critical examination of the available sources and a chronological survey of the period, the thesis sets out to analyse the institutions of the Saljuqid State, so far as they can be identified. Among them are the royal family and Court including relations of princes and activities of wives, constitution of the armed forces, relations with amirs and Turkmen and Arab tribes, civil administration, relations with the caliphate, religious opposition, and economic factors. The bearing of each upon the fortunes of the dynasty and the conditions in the Middle East is examined as fully as possible. Finally, the political history of the period is surveyed in the light of the factors analysed above. The thesis thus aims at presenting for the first time a critical history of a period hitherto known only in general outline, and at isolating the features which marked the political life of the Eastern Islamic world during this period

A Parallel Tabu Search Strategy for Cell Placement in VLSI Circuit Design

—Tabu Search based cell placement approaches for VLSI circuit design have shown excellent results when executed on a single processor. However, they require signicant computation time. Of the various acceleration strategies attempted, parallelization has always exhibited the most potential. The parallel Tabu Search approach presented in this work can be classied as a synchronous master-slave p-control, RS and MPSS strategy. The approach is implemented on a dedicated Linux-based cluster of workstations, using MPI libraries for communication. Experimental results for ISCAS'89 benchmark circuits show excellent performance in terms of scalability & speed-up

Filtration and Synthesis of Different types of Human Voice Signals: An application of digital signal processing

An observation of the effect in audio signal by using digital filter plays an important role in the field of digital signal processing (DSP). Day by day the digital form of signal is becoming more preferable than the analog one which is increasing the need of DSP in the rapidly changing world. Yet, there are many attractive schemes for designing a digital filter; we adopt windowing technique for design a FIR low pass filter in the frequency domain for the short period. However, the main task of our work is to perform filtration of the different types of practical human voice signals by using digital filter and synthesis of those signals to reduce the memory size (kB) by remaining the same quality of the signal. We used MATLAB for the design of digital filter and synthesis of those audio signals. MATLAB provides different options for signal synthesis. Finally, this paper gives an idea about reconstructed signals and filtrated signals. Keywords: Digital filter, Cutoff frequency, Fourier transform, Inverse Fourier transforms, normalized frequency

Spatial distribution and catalytic mechanisms of β-glucosidase activity at the root-soil interface

© 2016 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg We compared modifications of soil zymography, a new in situ technique to visualize enzyme activities, based on contact of fluorgenic substrate-saturated membranes with soil either through the gel layer (gel zymography) or without gel application (direct zymography). We coupled zymography with quantitative measurements of enzyme kinetics to characterize catalytic mechanisms of β-glucosidase activity at the plant-soil interface including root surface (rhizoplane), rhizosphere, and bulk soil. Direct zymography refined and focused image resolution. The area of hotspots (i.e., spots with most intensive enzyme activity) as well as color intensity ratios estimated using direct zymography exceeded by a factor of 2 the corresponding values obtained with gel zymography. As determined by direct zymography, the percentage of hotspots associated to root surfaces was 58–68 % of total hotspot area. Hotspot area comprised only 6.8 ± 0.1 % of the total area of an image and 9.0 ± 3 % of the root surface area. The intensity of β-glucosidase activity, however, was up to 20 times higher in the hotspots versus bulk soil. The contribution of rhizosphere to β-glucosidase activity of the whole image (77–82 %) was four times higher than the contribution of the root surface. Enzyme kinetic parameters indicated different enzyme systems in bulk and rhizosphere soil. Higher substrate affinity and catalytic efficiency in bulk than in rhizosphere soil suggested relative domination of microorganisms with more efficient enzyme systems in the former. Coupling direct zymography and kinetic assays enabled mapping the two-dimensional (2D) distribution of enzyme activity at the root-soil interface and estimating the catalytic properties of root-associated and soil-associated enzymes

Spatial distribution and catalytic mechanisms of β-glucosidase activity at the root-soil interface

© 2016, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.We compared modifications of soil zymography, a new in situ technique to visualize enzyme activities, based on contact of fluorgenic substrate-saturated membranes with soil either through the gel layer (gel zymography) or without gel application (direct zymography). We coupled zymography with quantitative measurements of enzyme kinetics to characterize catalytic mechanisms of β-glucosidase activity at the plant-soil interface including root surface (rhizoplane), rhizosphere, and bulk soil. Direct zymography refined and focused image resolution. The area of hotspots (i.e., spots with most intensive enzyme activity) as well as color intensity ratios estimated using direct zymography exceeded by a factor of 2 the corresponding values obtained with gel zymography. As determined by direct zymography, the percentage of hotspots associated to root surfaces was 58–68 % of total hotspot area. Hotspot area comprised only 6.8 ± 0.1 % of the total area of an image and 9.0 ± 3 % of the root surface area. The intensity of β-glucosidase activity, however, was up to 20 times higher in the hotspots versus bulk soil. The contribution of rhizosphere to β-glucosidase activity of the whole image (77–82 %) was four times higher than the contribution of the root surface. Enzyme kinetic parameters indicated different enzyme systems in bulk and rhizosphere soil. Higher substrate affinity and catalytic efficiency in bulk than in rhizosphere soil suggested relative domination of microorganisms with more efficient enzyme systems in the former. Coupling direct zymography and kinetic assays enabled mapping the two-dimensional (2D) distribution of enzyme activity at the root-soil interface and estimating the catalytic properties of root-associated and soil-associated enzymes