Energy-Efficient selective activation in Femtocell Networks

Provisioning the capacity of wireless networks is difficult when peak load is significantly higher than average load, for example, in public spaces like airports or train stations. Service providers can use femtocells and small cells to increase local capacity, but deploying enough femtocells to serve peak loads requires a large number of femtocells that will remain idle most of the time, which wastes a significant amount of power. To reduce the energy consumption of over-provisioned femtocell networks, we formulate a femtocell selective activation problem, which we formalize as an integer nonlinear optimization problem. Then we introduce GREENFEMTO, a distributed femtocell selective activation algorithm that deactivates idle femtocells to save power and activates them on-the-fly as the number of users increases. We prove that GREENFEMTO converges to a locally Pareto optimal solution and demonstrate its performance using extensive simulations of an LTE wireless system. Overall, we find that GREENFEMTO requires up to 55% fewer femtocells to serve a given user load, relative to an existing femtocell power-saving procedure, and comes within 15% of a globally optimal solution

Fast network configuration in Software Defined Networking

Software Defined Networking (SDN) provides a framework to dynamically adjust and re-program the data plane with the use of flow rules. The realization of highly adaptive SDNs with the ability to respond to changing demands or recover after a network failure in a short period of time, hinges on efficient updates of flow rules. We model the time to deploy a set of flow rules by the update time at the bottleneck switch, and formulate the problem of selecting paths to minimize the deployment time under feasibility constraints as a mixed integer linear program (MILP). To reduce the computation time of determining flow rules, we propose efficient heuristics designed to approximate the minimum-deployment-time solution by relaxing the MILP or selecting the paths sequentially. Through extensive simulations we show that our algorithms outperform current, shortest path based solutions by reducing the total network configuration time up to 55% while having similar packet loss, in the considered scenarios. We also demonstrate that in a networked environment with a certain fraction of failed links, our algorithms are able to reduce the average time to reestablish disrupted flows by 40%

Push & Pull: autonomous deployment of mobile sensors for a complete coverage

Mobile sensor networks are important for several strategic applications devoted to monitoring critical areas. In such hostile scenarios, sensors cannot be deployed manually and are either sent from a safe location or dropped from an aircraft. Mobile devices permit a dynamic deployment reconfiguration that improves the coverage in terms of completeness and uniformity. In this paper we propose a distributed algorithm for the autonomous deployment of mobile sensors called Push&Pull. According to our proposal, movement decisions are made by each sensor on the basis of locally available information and do not require any prior knowledge of the operating conditions or any manual tuning of key parameters. We formally prove that, when a sufficient number of sensors are available, our approach guarantees a complete and uniform coverage. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the algorithm execution always terminates preventing movement oscillations. Numerous simulations show that our algorithm reaches a complete coverage within reasonable time with moderate energy consumption, even when the target area has irregular shapes. Performance comparisons between Push&Pull and one of the most acknowledged algorithms show how the former one can efficiently reach a more uniform and complete coverage under a wide range of working scenarios.Comment: Technical Report. This paper has been published on Wireless Networks, Springer. Animations and the complete code of the proposed algorithm are available for download at the address: http://www.dsi.uniroma1.it/~novella/mobile_sensors

Network recovery from massive failures under uncertain knowledge of damages

This paper addresses progressive network recovery under uncertain knowledge of damages. We formulate the problem as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP), and show that it is NP-Hard. We propose an iterative stochastic recovery algorithm (ISR) to recover the network in a progressive manner to satisfy the critical services. At each optimization step, we make a decision to repair a part of the network and gather more information iteratively, until critical services are completely restored. Three different algorithms are used to find a feasible set and determine which node to repair, namely, 1) an iterative shortest path algorithm (ISR-SRT), 2) an approximate branch and bound (ISR-BB) and 3) an iterative multi-commodity LP relaxation (ISR-MULT). Further, we have modified the state-of-the-Art iterative split and prune (ISP) algorithm to incorporate the uncertain failures. Our results show that ISR-BB and ISR- MULT outperform the state-of-the-Art 'progressive ISP' algorithm while we can configure our choice of trade-off between the execution time, number of repairs (cost) and the demand loss. We show that our recovery algorithm, on average, can reduce the total number of repairs by a factor of about 3 with respect to ISP, while satisfying all critical deman

Beam heat load analysis with COLDDIAG: a cold vacuum chamber for diagnostics

The knowledge of the heat intake from the electron beam is essential to design the cryogenic layout of superconducting insertion devices. With the aim of measuring the beam heat load to a cold bore and understanding the responsible mechanisms, a cold vacuum chamber for diagnostics (COLDDIAG) has been built. The instrumentation comprises temperature sensors, pressure gauges, mass spectrometers and retarding field analyzers, which allow to study the beam heat load and the influence of the cryosorbed gas layer. COLDDIAG was installed in the storage ring of the Diamond Light Source from September 2012 to August 2013. During this time measurements were performed for a wide range of machine conditions, employing the various measuring capabilities of the device. Here we report on the analysis of the measured beam heat load, pressure and gas content, as well as the low energy charged particle flux and spectrum as a function of the electron beam parameters

An optical study of the GRB 970111 field beginning 19 hours after the Gamma-Ray Burst

We present the results of the monitoring of the GRB 970111 field that started 19 hours after the event. This observation represents the fastest ground-based follow-up performed for GRB 970111 in all wavelengths. As soon as the detection of the possible GRB 970111 X-ray afterglow was reported by Feroci et al. (1998) we reanalyzed the optical data collected for the GRB 970111 field. Although we detect small magnitude variability in some objects, no convincing optical counterpart is found inside the WFC error box. Any change in brightness 19 hours after the GRB is less than 0.2 mag for objects with B < 21 and R < 20.8. The bluest object found in the field is coincident with 1SAXJ1528.8+1937. Spectroscopic observations revealed that this object is a Seyfert-1 galaxy with redshift z=0.657, which we propose as the optical counterpart of the X-ray source. Further observations allowed to perform multicolour photometry for objects in the GRB 970111 error box. The colour-colour diagrams do not show any object with unusual colours. We applied a photometric classification method to the objects inside the GRB error box, that can distinguish stars from galaxies and estimate redshifts. We were able to estimate photometric redshifts in the range 0.2 < z < 1.4 for several galaxies in this field and we did not find any conspicuous unusual object. We note that GRB 970111 and GRB 980329 could belong to the same class of GRBs, which may be related to nearby sources (z ~1) in which high intrinsic absorption leads to faint optical afterglows.Comment: 10 pages with 11 encapsulated PostScript figures included. Uses Astronomy & Astrophysics LaTeX macros. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Critical features of autonomous road transport from the perspective of technological regulation and law

Autonomous vehicular technology significantly stresses the issue of safety. Although the use of driverless cars raises considerable expectations of a general improvement in safety, new challenges concerning the safety aspects stem from the changing context. On the one hand, the paper addresses regulatory issues raised by the impact of technological changes, particularly standardization problems. On the other hand, the issue of liability questions is investigated as it might cause today’s main legal obstacle for the wide spreading of autonomous cars, especially as autonomous cars might jeopardize the existing approaches to vehicular liability. The aim of this paper is to scrutinize the basic problems in both fields. We provide what, at the current state-of-the-art, appear to be reasonable recommendations from the perspective of technological regulation and law, in order to deal with the main problems that might hamper the development of autonomous transport technology

Novel Double Triple Bend Achromat (DTBA) lattice design for a next generation 3 GeV Synchrotron Light Source

The Double Triple Bend Achromat (DTBA) lattice~\cite{DTBAipac16} is a novel lattice design for a next generation 3 GeV Synchrotron Light Source. Starting from a modification of the Hybrid Multi Bend Achromat (HMBA) lattice~\cite{ESRF} developed at ESRF and inspired by the Double-Double Bend Achromat (DDBA) lattice~\cite{Diamond1, Diamond2} developed at Diamond, DTBA combines the advantages of both cells. The typical MBA lattice cells have one straight section dedicated to an insertion device, whereas this new cell layout has two such drifts, thus increasing the fraction of available space for the installation of insertion devices. The DTBA lattice achieves an emittance of $\sim\mathrm{132~pm}$, a dynamic aperture of $\mathrm{\sim\pm10\pm1~mm}$ (calculated at the injection point), an injection efficiency of $\mathrm{\sim\mathrm88\pm5\%}$ and a lifetime of $\mathrm{1.4\pm0.2~h}$ with errors. The characteristics of DTBA, the methodology and results of the linear and non-linear optics optimisations, with and without the presence of errors, are presented in detail

Role of Microenvironment in Glioma Invasion. What We Learned from In Vitro Models

The invasion properties of glioblastoma hamper a radical surgery and are responsible for its recurrence. Understanding the invasion mechanisms is thus critical to devise new therapeutic strategies. Therefore, the creation of in vitro models that enable these mechanisms to be studied represents a crucial step. Since in vitro models represent an over-simplification of the in vivo system, in these years it has been attempted to increase the level of complexity of in vitro assays to create models that could better mimic the behaviour of the cells in vivo. These levels of complexity involved: 1. The dimension of the system, moving from two-dimensional to three-dimensional models; 2. The use of microfluidic systems; 3. The use of mixed cultures of tumour cells and cells of the tumour micro-environment in order to mimic the complex cross-talk between tumour cells and their micro-environment; 4. And the source of cells used in an attempt to move from commercial lines to patient-based models. In this review, we will summarize the evidence obtained exploring these different levels of complexity and highlighting advantages and limitations of each system used