Audience Response & Disability Representation in Four Film and Television Dramas: A Qualitative Audience Study

This dissertation examines the audiovisual representation of physical disability in a group of films produced for theatrical and television distribution. The films under study are: Prelude to Happiness (USA, 1974), Passion Fish (USA, 1992), The Sea Inside (Mar Adentro, Spain, 2004), and The Brooke Ellison Story (USA, 2004/TV). The study challenges the critique of media representations of disability as predominantly carriers of stereotypes and producers of harmful effects in the audience --a view emanating from a number of media and disability studies scholars-- with a more personal, hermeneutic approach based on the focus group methodology. It concludes with a discussion of the strategies of interpretation used by these viewers with disabilities to make sense of disability centered films, in the context of a cultural studies model of audience reception theory

Cost/Revenue Trade-Off of Small Cell Networks in the Millimetre Wavebands

In this work, we identify and discuss the potentialities of mobile cellular communications in the millimetre wavebands, showing that very high bit/data rates can be supported in small cells with short-range coverage. We study the behaviour of the carrier-to-noise-plus-interference ratio with the coverage distance (and the actual distance from users to the eNBs) in actual environments and the respective analysis of the impact in cellular planning and optimization process. We assess the equivalent supported throughput within cells with reuse pattern K=2, assuming, in this preliminary phase, the use of LTE. In terms of cell coverage and the computation of interference, LoS propagation models have been considered at the 28, 38, 60 and 73 GHz frequency bands. From these analytical computations, we conclude that, at 28 GHz, although lower system capacity is achieved for very short coverage distances of the order of 25 m, in comparison to the 73 GHz frequency band, there is an enhancement in the supported throughput for longer coverage ranges, and it is clearly more favourable for the lowest frequency band. Owing to the additional attenuation of oxygen, the 60 GHz frequency band is more challenging, as the lowest values of the cochannel interference due to the additional oxygen attenuation originate higher values for the supported throughput, even for lower values of the reuse pattern. Based on these results, costs and revenues are studied. Revenues are proportional to the supported throughput and the profit is generally a declining function with cell radii. The highest profit corresponds to the shortest cell radii, up to 80 m, and the best results occur for the 28 GHz band.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Multicarrier Waveform Candidates for Beyond 5G

To fulfil the requirements of 5G vision of “everything everywhere and always connected”, a new waveform must contain the features to support a greater number of users on high data rate. Although Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) has been widely used in the 4th generation, but it can hardly meet the needs of 5G vision. However, many waveforms have been proposed to cope with new challenges. In this paper, we have presented a comparative analysis of several waveform candidates (FBMC, GFDM, UFMC, F-OFDM) on the basis of complexity, hardware design and other valuable characteristics. Filter based waveforms have much better Out of Band Emission (OoBE) as compared to OFDM. However, F-OFDM has smaller filter length compared to filter-based waveforms and provides better transmission with multiple antenna system without any extra processing, while providing flexible frequency multiplexing, shorter latency and relaxed synchronization as compared to other waveforms.This work is funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) ITN TeamUp5G (813391), ORCIP, CONQUEST (CMU/ECE/0030/2017), by UIDB/EEA/50008/2020, and by COST CA 15104. TeamUp5G project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie project number 813391.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Deployment of Beyond 4G Wireless Communication Networks with Carrier Aggregation

With the growing demand for new blend of applications, the user’s dependency on the Internet is increasing day by day. Mobile Internet users are giving more attention to their own experience, especially in terms of communication reliability, high data rate and service stability on the move. This increase in the demand is causing saturation of existing radio frequency bands. To address these challenges, many researchers are finding the best approach, Carrier Aggregation (CA) is one of the newest innovations which seems to fulfil the demands of future spectrum, CA is one the most important feature for Long Term Evolution - Advanced. In direction to get the upcoming International Mobile Telecommunication Advanced (IMT-Advanced) mobile requirements 1 Gb/s peak data rate, the CA scheme is presented by 3GPP to sustain high data rate using widespread frequency bandwidth up to 100 MHz. Technical issues containing the aggregation structure, its implementation, deployment scenarios, control signal technique and challenges for CA technique in LTE-Advanced, with consideration backward compatibility are highlighted. Performance evaluation in macrocellular scenarios through a simulation approach shows the benefits of applying CA and low-complexity multi-band schedulers in service quality and system capacity enhancement. The Enhanced multi-band scheduler is less complex than the General multi-band scheduler and performs better for cell radius longer than 1800 m (and a PLR threshold of 2%).This work is funded by FCT/MCTES through national funds and when applicable co-funded EU funds under the project UIDB/EEA/50008/2020, COST CA 15104 IRACON, ORCIP and CONQUEST (CMU/ECE/0030/2017), TeamUp5G project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie project number 813391.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Impact of the Two-Slope Path Loss Model in the Service Quality of 4G and 5G Small Cells

Together with cell-free networks, small cells enable ultra-dense networks in 5G. Although small cell networks will be part of heterogeneous networks, the comparison of service quality of urban micro (UMi) small cells between 4G and 5G second phase scenarios is still of great relevance. Usage of video (VID), is considered. Quality of service (QoS) is determined by considering a packet loss ratio (PLR) lower than 2%, for different sub-6 GHz frequency bands. The aim is to compare the system capacity between 4G and 5G enhanced mobile broadband in different bands. ITU defined two UMi cell scenarios for urban micro cells that consider two-slope (TS) path loss models (PLMs). In this work, we have included TS-PLMs into the LTESim (4G) and 5G-air-simulator. The service quality and system performance bands have then been evaluated. Results shows that it is possible to support more user terminals (UTs) with 5G (up to 26 UTs) than with 4G (10 UTs only). When PLR<2%, the average delay decreases and the average goodput increases when 5G is considered. The maximum average goodput also increases with 5G.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

An Extensive Study on the Performance Evaluation and Scheduling of HeNBs

Since the dawn of mobile communication systems, reducing the cell size has been one option to increase the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) in both links. The impact of this reduction can be perfectly understood by considering Shannon’s law. This work studies in detail the performance of Home eNBs (HeNBs), nodes with a smaller coverage area. After a detailed theoretical study of the SINR, a simulation approach is used to extract performance results in small cell indoor scenarios. Results corresponding to the goodput, delay and packet loss ratio are analyzed. Based on an improved version of LTE-Sim, the proportional fair, frame level scheduler (FLS) and exponential rule are tested in an indoor environment. With the saturation conditions taken into consideration, the FLS performs better than the other schedulers. This work shows that with the considered applications, it is possible to achieve a reduction in the transmitter power of HeNBs without compromising the small cell network performance.This work was supported by Foundation for Science and Technology/Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education (FCT/MCTES) through national funds and, when applicable, co-funded EU funds under the project UIDB/50008/2020, COST CA 15104 Inclusive Radio Communication Networks for 5G and Beyond (IRACON), Optical Radio Convergence Infrastructure for Communications and Power Delivering (ORCIP, 22141-01/SAICT/2016), TeamUp5G and CONQUEST (CMU/ECE/0030/2017). The TeamUp5G project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie project number 813391.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Design of Coordinated HeNB Deployments

Uncoordinated deployment of HeNBs has been widely considered, in the research community. However, due to economic or physical constraints, a coordinated deployment of HeNBs can also be considered. This work studies a selected examples of HeNB deployment. We consider the deployment of four Enterprise HeNB which serve up to 8 simultaneous users, in a building, with a geometry of 5x5 apartments. From the theoretical study on the average SINR, we have learned that the smaller the apartment areas are the higher the values for the average SINR are. The performance evolution of the system focuses on the values obtained for the average goodput, Packet Loss Ratio (PLR) and delay for the Proportional Fair, Frame Level Scheduler (FLS) and Exponential Rule (EXPRule) schedulers, with users using a video and a best effort flows at the same time. For the video flows the maximum average goodput was obtained with the FLS scheduler, but when the PLR is taken into account the EXPRule present a slight advantage. In the case of the BE flows, the EXPRule present the best performance. But the main lesson learned is that it is possible to operate a coordinated HeNB deployments without setting the transmitter power of the HeNBs to the maximum value, which can be a step to achieve a greener system.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Performance Evaluation of Source Routing Minimum Cost Forwarding Protocol over 6TiSCH Applied to the OpenMote-B Platform

The aim of this work is the development of Source Routing Minimum Cost Forwarding (SRMCF) protocol over IPv6 over the TSCH mode of IEEE 802.15.4e (6TiSCH), evaluating the performance of these protocols for the Internet of Things (IoT). To perform this evaluation, this work is making use of the OpenWSN project platform, which implements IEEE 802.15.4e in an open source environment. The evaluation process is also being done in the most recent version of the OpenMote-B platform. Another goal of this collaboration is to give contribution to the investigation of the applicability of quality of service (QoS) applied to the IEEE 802.15.4e standard. In the present stage of development, the efforts are concentrated on the programming of the required code, and the adaptation of the OpenWSN stack. Once the programming code is implemented, the team will investigate the possibilities to apply quality of service over the stack developed. Next, the team will also investigate the possibilities to explore long range routing techniques using the OpenMote platforms. In this task, we will use xBee, LoraWAN, Raspberry PI and Arduino platforms.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Hybrid Matched Filter Detection Spectrum Sensing

The radio frequency spectrum is getting more congested day by day due to the growth of wireless devices, applications, and the arrival of fifth generation (5G) mobile communications. This happens because the radio spectrum is a natural resource that has a restricted existence. Access to all devices can be granted, but in a more efficient way. To resolve the issue, cognitive radio technology has come out as a way, because it is possible to sense the radio spectrum in the neighboring. Spectrum sensing has been recognized as an important technology, in cognitive radio networks, to allow secondary users (SUs) to detect spectrum holes and opportunistically access primary licensed spectrum band without harmful interference. This paper considers the Energy Detection (ED) and Matched Filter Detection (MFD) spectrum sensing techniques as the baseline for a study where the so-called Hybrid Matched Filter Detection (Hybrid MFD) was proposed. Apart from an analytical approach, Monte Carlo simulations have been performed in MATLAB. These simulations aimed at understanding how the variation of parameters like the probability of false alarm, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the number of samples, can affect the probability of miss-detection. Simulation results show that i) higher probability of miss-detection is achieved for the ED spectrum sensing technique when compared to the MFD and Hybrid MFD techniques; ii) More importantly, the proposed Hybrid MFD technique outperforms MFD in terms of the ability to detect the presence of a primary user in licensed spectrum, for a probability of false alarm slightly lower than 0.5, low number of samples and low signal-to-noise ratio.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Impact of considering the ITU-R two slope propagation model in the system capacity trade-off for LTE-A HetNets with small cells

This work aims at understanding and evaluating the impact of using different path loss models in the optimization trade-off of small cell (SC) networks. In LTE-A, the more realistic propagation models are the more efficient the radio and network optimization becomes. In this work we compare four urban path loss models: the urban/vehicular and pedestrian test environment from the ITU-R M. 1255 Report as well as the two slope Micro Urban Line-of-Sight (LoS) and Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) from the ITU-R 2135 Report. The two-slope model considers the existence of a breakpoint in the behaviour of the path loss and yields a significantly lower throughput per square km than a traditional one-slope model if and only if cell radius is small (coverage distances, R, up to breakpoint distance divided by the reuse pattern).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio