Efficiency diagnostic and advantages of procalcitonin and C-reactive protein in the early diagnosis of sepsis

The goal of our study is to assess the diagnostic profi tability of procalcitonin (PCT) in septic shock and another biomarker as C-reactive protein (CRP). Results: Fifty-four septic patients were assessed, 66% were males; mean age, 63 years. Eighty-eight percent was diagnosed as septic shock and 11% severe sepsis. Seventy-six percent were medical patients. Positive blood cultures in 42.5%. Sepsis origin: respiratory 46%, neurological 5%, digestive 37% and urinary 3%. Average SOFA score was 10.4. Conclusions: PCT and CRP have the same efficiency in early sepsis diagnosis. The PCT and CRP effi ciency diagnostic together is signifi cant but small. We suggest using both with the doubt of sepsis.Ye

Task scheduling for mobile edge computing using genetic algorithm and conflict graphs

In this paper, we consider parallel and sequential task offloading to multiple mobile edge computing servers. The task consists of a set of inter-dependent sub-tasks, which are scheduled to servers to minimize both offloading latency and failure probability. Two algorithms are proposed to solve the scheduling problem, which are based on genetic algorithm and conflict graph models, respectively. Simulation results show that these algorithms provide performance close to the optimal solution, which is obtained through exhaustive search. Furthermore, although parallel offloading uses orthogonal channels, results demonstrate that the sequential offloading yields a reduced offloading failure probability when compared to the parallel offloading. On the other hand, parallel offloading provides less latency. However, as the dependency among sub-tasks increases, the latency gap between parallel and sequential schemes decreases.This work was supported in part by the Memorial University Chair, in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) through its Discovery program, in part by the Chair of Excellence at UC3M, and in part by the Spanish National Project TERESA-ADA (TEC2017-90093-C3- 2-R) (MINECO/AEI/FEDER, UE).Publicad

Bender's Decomposition for Optimization Design Problems in Communication Networks

Various types of communication networks are constantly emerging to improve connectivity services and facilitate the interconnection of various types of devices. This involves the development of several technologies, such as device-to-device communications, wireless sensor networks and vehicular communications. The various services provided have heterogeneous requirements on the quality metrics such as throughput, end-to-end latency and jitter. Furthermore, different network technologies have inherently heterogeneous restrictions on resources, for example, power, interference management requirements, computational capabilities, and so on. As a result, different network operations such as spectrum management, routing, power control and offloading need to be performed differently. Mathematical optimization techniques have always been at the heart of such design problems to formulate and propose computationally efficient solution algorithms. One of the existing powerful techniques of mathematical optimization is Benders Decomposition (BD), which is the focus of this article. Here, we briefly review different BD variants that have been applied in various existing network types and different design problems. These main variants are the classical, the combinatorial, the multi-stage, and the generalized BD. We discuss compelling BD applications for various network types including heterogeneous cellular networks, infrastructure wired wide area networks, smart grids, wireless sensor networks, and wireless local area networks. Mainly, our goal is to assist the readers in refining the motivation, problem formulation, and methodology of this powerful optimization technique in the context of future networks. We also discuss the BD challenges and the prospective ways these can be addressed when applied to communication networks' design problems

Collision-Free Sequential Task Offloading for Mobile Edge Computing

In this letter, a collision-free sequential task offloading scheme to multiple mobile-edge computing servers is proposed. The problem is formulated as a multi-objective optimization of latency and offloading failure probability. An exact solution technique is developed to obtain a benchmark optimal solution for the problem. A more computationally efficient heuristic algorithm is additionally developed, whose sub-optimal solution yields a performance close to optimal. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed offloading scheme can effectively reduce both latency and offloading failure probability.This work has been supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), as well as the UC3M Chair of Excellence and the Spanish National Project TERESA-ADA (TEC2017-90093-C3-2-R) (MINECO/AEI/FEDER, UE)

SILO6: A six-legged robot for humanitarian de-mining tasks

Detection and removal of antipersonnel landmines in infested fields is an important worldwide problem. Around 100 million landmines have been deployed over the last two decades, and demining will take several more decades, even if no more mines were deployed in future. A high mine-clearance rate can only be accomplished by using new technologies such as improved sensors, efficient manipulators and mobile robots. This paper presents some basic ideas on the configuration and controller of a mobile system for detecting and locating antipersonnel landmines in an efficient and effective way. The whole system has been configured to work in a semi-autonomous mode with a view also to robot mobility and energy efficiency. The paper outlines the main features of the overall system and focuses on some aspects of the controller.This work has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology under Grant CICYT DPI2001-1595.Peer reviewe

Testbed for a LiFi system integrated in streetlights

Proceeding at: 2015 European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC) took place June 29 - July 2 in Paris, France.In this paper, a functional LiFi real-time testbed implemented on FPGAs is presented. The setup evaluates the performance of our design in a downlink scenario where the transmitter is embedded on the streetlights and a mobile phone’s camera is used as receiver, therefore achieving the goal of lighting and communicating simultaneously. To validate the design, simulations of the whole system are performed. where simulations of the channel between streetlight and mobile device show the scope of the reflection in an outdoor environment. The measurements are carried out to characterize the modulator, in particular the FPGA resources and latency due to the encoder blocks. In addition the feasibility of the communication function in presence of the ambient light is verified.This work has been partly funded by Ministerio de Industria, Energía y Turismo of Spain and the Company UVAX - CONCEPTS, within Plan Nacional de Investigación Científica, desarrollo e inovación Tecnológica 2013-2016 with project TSI-100502-2013-024

Energy efficient subchannel and power allocation in cooperative VLC systems

This letter studies the energy efficiency (EE) optimization of cooperative visible light communication (VLC) systems while considering the inter-cell interference and the lineof-sight blockage problems. Specifically, the optimization problem of subchannel and power allocation to maximize EE under transmit power budgets and users' minimum rate constraints is considered. The formulated problem turns out to be a difficult nonlinear fractional program for which a low-complexity iterative solution based on fractional programming theory and the quadratic transform approach is proposed. Extensive simulations are conducted to show the efficacy of the proposed scheme over conventional approaches. In addition, the outage analysis and impacts of varying the transmit power and the subchannel bandwidth on the EE performance are investigated.This work was supported by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) through its Discovery Program, the Memorial University VPR Program, and the Spanish National Project TERESA-ADA (TEC2017-90093-C3-2-R) (MINECO/AEI/FEDER, UE). The associate editor coordinating the review of this letter and approving it for publication was H. Zhang

Blind Interference Alignment for Cellular Networks

We propose a blind interference alignment scheme for partially connected cellular networks. The scheme cancels both intracell and intercell interference by relying on receivers with one reconfigurable antenna and by allowing users at the cell edge to be served by all the base stations in their proximity. An outer bound for the degrees of freedom is derived for general partially connected networks with single-antenna receivers when knowledge of the channel state information at the transmitter is not available. It is demonstrated that for symmetric scenarios, this outer bound is achieved by the proposed scheme. On the other hand, for asymmetric scenarios, the achievable degrees of freedom are not always equal to the outer bound. However, the penalty is typically small, and the proposed scheme outperforms other blind interference alignment schemes. Moreover, significant reduction of the supersymbol length is achieved compared with a standard blind interference alignment strategy designed for fully connected networks.This work has been partially funded by research projects COMONSENS (CSD2008-00010) and GRE3N (TEC2011-29006-C03-02). This research work was partly carried out at the ESAT Laboratory of KU Leuven in the frame of the Belgian Programme on Interuniversity Attractive Poles Programme initiated by the Belgian Science Policy Office: IUAP P7/23 ‘Belgian network on stochastic modeling analysis design and optimization of communication systems’ (BESTCOM) 2012–2017. The work of D. Toumpakaris was supported by the European Union (European Social Fund—ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program Education and Lifelong Learning of the National Strategic Reference Framework through the Research Funding Program Thales—Investing in knowledge society through the European Social Fund. The work of Syed Jafar was supported in part by NSFgrants CCF-1319104 and CCF-1317351.Publicad

Constellation design for multiuser non-coherent massive SIMO based on DMPSK modulation

Non-coherent (NC) schemes combined with massive antenna arrays are proposed to replace traditional coherent schemes in scenarios which require an excessive number of reference signals, since NC approaches avoid channel estimation and equalization. Differential M-ary phase shift keying is one of the most appealing NC schemes due to its implementation simplicity in realistic scenarios. However, the analytical constellation design for multiuser scenarios is intractable, as discussed in this paper. We propose to solve this problem by using optimization techniques relying on evolutionary computation. We design two approaches, namely Gaussian-approximated optimization and Monte-Carlo based optimization. They can provide both individual constellations for each user equipment and a bit mapping policy to minimize the bit error rate. We perform a complexity analysis and propose strategies for its reduction. We propose a set of constellations for different number of users and constellation sizes, and evaluate the link-level performance of some illustrative examples to verify that our solutions outperforms the existing ones. Finally, we show via simulations that NC outperforms the coherent schemes in high mobility and/or low signal-to-noise ratio scenarios.This work has received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie ETN TeamUp5G, grant agreement No.813391, and from Spanish National Project IRENE-EARTH (PID2020-115323RB-C33) (MINECO/AEI/FEDER, UE). The work of O. A. Dobre has been supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), through its Discovery program

VLC-Based Networking: Feasibility and Challenges

VLC has emerged as a prominent technology to address the radio spectrum shortage. It is characterized by the unlicensed and unexploited high bandwidth, and provides the system with cost-effective advantages because of the dual-use of light bulbs for illumination and communication and the low complexity design. It is considered to be utilized in various telecommunication systems, including 5G, and represents the key technology for light-fidelity. To this end, VLC has to be integrated into the existing telecommunication networks. Therefore, its analysis as a network technology is momentous. In this article, we consider the feasibility of using VLC as a network technology and discuss the challenges related to the implementation of a VLC-based network, as well as the integration of VLC into existing conventional networks and its inclusion in standards