The impact of mobility models on the performance of mobile Ad Hoc network routing protocol

A mobility model represents nodes distribution and movement over the network. Several research works have shown that a selection of mobility model can affect the outcome of routing performance simulation in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks. Thus, a routing protocol may only be effective in a particular mobility model or scenario but performs inferiorly in another. As a result, analyses of routing protocol performance are often based on inadequate information leading to inaccurate argument and conclusion. In this paper, three different mobility models have been selected, where each of them is highly distinctive in terms of nodes movement behavior. In addition, a new measurement technique called probability of route connectivity is introduced. The technique is used to quantify the success rate of route established by a routing protocol. Extensive simulation runs are done and results are compared between each mobility model

Enhanced Handover Mechanism in Long Term Evolution (LTE) Networks

Femtocell is a low power base station, wireless access point designed especially for homes and small organizations. It is promising technology for operators to improve their capacity and for users to give indoor coverage. As mobile users are increasing day by day so the legacy system is unable to provide such a high data rates to all these users. In this case femtocells play a key role to offload the data traffic from macro base station. The implementation of femtocell has posed so many challenges like interference, localization, access control and mobility management. The aim of this paper is to present an enhanced algorithm for handover in Hand-In scenario. In already existing algorithms handover is decided on the basis of a single parameter but here we have simulated an algorithm that considers multiple parameters instead of a single parameter for handover. Through this algorithm, the most suitable femtocell will be selected for handover, hence number of handovers will be decreased. Simulation results show that the system performance has been improved.

Antimicrobial Sensitivity Pattern for Urine Isolates in Urinary Tract Infection

Background: The increased frequency and management of antibiotic resistance pattern in urinary tract infection (UTI) is a challenging task for the clinicians. Therefore, the current study was planned to identify the microbial etiology of UTI and the most suitable antibiotics used. The objective of the study was to assess the frequency of antimicrobial sensitivity pattern in patients with urinary tract infection.Material and Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out at Al Sayed Hospital, Kidney Centre, Rawalpindi over a period of seven months i.e. June 30, 2018 to January 30, 2019. A total of 152 patients were enrolled according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the study. Urine culture proceedings were done as per latest recommended guidelines of Clinical and Laboratory Standard Institute (CLSI) for UTI.Results: Regarding overall sensitivity of antibiotics for the pathogens of urine culture, highest sensitivity was observed for carbapenems (83.5%), followed by polymyxin B (72.3%), phosphonic acid derivatives (65.8%), aminoglycoside group (65.7%), extended spectrum penicillin (63.1%), imidazolidinedione (59.9%) and tetracycline (59.9%) groups. The least sensitivity was observed for Oxazolidinone (linezolid) (14.5%), teicoplanin (13.8%), tigecycline (10.5%) and first-generation cephalosporins (1.3%).Conclusions: Carbapenems showed maximum sensitivity for all urine isolates. The second and third options were polymyxin B and phosphonic acid derivatives, respectively

Hybrid routing scheme for vehicular delay tolerant networks

In Vehicular Delay Tolerant Networks (VDTN) connection from source to destination at any required period is not necessarily available. Therefore, the node with the message, save it in its own buffer and carry it until an opportunity comes across for forwarding. Fix nodes enhances the performance of VDTN. It helps in message storage and relaying messages. Due to mobility the bit error rate is high in mobile nodes connection but it is not considered in any of the previous routing schemes for VDTN. The connection between fix nodes will always have low bit error rate as compared to connection involving mobile nodes. All the pervious schemes are one dimensional. Environmental hindrances are not taken under consideration as well. Its effect can be both negative and positive. In this paper, a scheme titled Hybrid routing scheme is suggested to overcome the above stated problems. Features of another vehicular network called Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are added to Maximum Priority (MaxProp) routing scheme for VDTN. Different propagation models of VANETs are implemented for both with and without mobile node communication for VDTN. The concept of bit error rate is also featured in Hybrid routing scheme. This makes Hybrid routing scheme two dimensional and more intelligent. The implementation and performance assessment of the proposed scheme is evaluated via Opportunistic Network Environment (ONE) Simulator. The Hybrid routing scheme outperform MaxProp in terms of the delivery probability and delivery delay

Smart Relay Selection Scheme Based on Fuzzy Logic with Optimal Power Allocation and Adaptive Data Rate Assignment

In this paper fuzzy logic-based algorithm with improved process of relay selection is presented which not only allocate optimal power for transmission but also help in choosing adaptive data rate. This algorithm utilizes channel gain, cooperative gain and signal to noise ratio with two cases considered in this paper: In case-I nodes do not have their geographical location information while in case-II nodes are having their geographical location information. From Monte Carlo simulations, it can be observed that both cases improve the selection process along with data rate assignment and power allocation, but case-II is the most reliable with almost zero probability of error at the cost of computational complexity which is 10 times more than case-I

Comparison of Surgical versus Conservative Management of Borderline Traumatic Extradural Hematomas Without Neurological Deficit

Objective:  To compare the outcome of surgical versus conservative treatment of traumatic extradural hematoma in the supratentorial regin. Material and Methods:  It was a prospective randomized controlled trial conducted in Departments of Neurosurgery, Allied Hospitals, Faisalabad between December 2019 to November, 2020. A total of 100 patients Supratentorial EDH; fulfilling the selection criteria were enrolled. All patients underwent clinical and radiological assessment of EDH volume by the same neurosurgical team. The patients were then divided randomly into two groups by using the lottery methods. Group A patients were conservatively managed. Group B underwent surgery. All surgeries were done by the same surgical team. Glasgow outcome scale was noted in 5 days after admission or surgery in both groups. Results:  The patients average age was 29.96 years, male to female ratio was 1.7:1. The mean volume of hematoma was 24.68 and 27.56 in group A (conservative group) and Group B (operated group) respectively. The favorable outcome was noted in all the patients and no mortality occurred in any patients. Conclusion:  Both surgical and conservative treatments are equally effective in terms of a favorable outcome and mortality occurrence in management of traumatic EDH <30ml without neurological deficit. The conservative treatment is safe and cost-effective in borderline patients

Spectral and Energy Efficient Low-Overhead Uplink and Downlink Channel Estimation for 5G Massive MIMO Systems

[EN] Uplink and Downlink channel estimation in massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems is an intricate issue because of the increasing channel matrix dimensions. The channel feedback overhead using traditional codebook schemes is very large, which consumes more bandwidth and decreases the overall system efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to decrease the channel estimation overhead by taking the advantage of sparse attributes and also to optimize the Energy Efficiency (EE) of the system. To cope with this issue, we propose a novel approach by using Compressed-Sensing (CS), Block Iterative-Support-Detection (Block-ISD), Angle-of-Departure (AoD) and Structured Compressive Sampling Matching Pursuit (S-CoSaMP) algorithms to reduce the channel estimation overhead and compare them with the traditional algorithms. The CS uses temporal-correlation of time-varying channels to produce Differential-Channel Impulse Response (DCIR) among two CIRs that are adjacent in time-slots. DCIR has greater sparsity than the conventional CIRs as it can be easily compressed. The Block-ISD uses spatial-correlation of the channels to obtain the block-sparsity which results in lower pilot-overhead. AoD quantizes the channels whose path-AoDs variation is slower than path-gains and such information is utilized for reducing the overhead. S-CoSaMP deploys structured-sparsity to obtain reliable Channel-State-Information (CSI). MATLAB simulation results show that the proposed CS based algorithms reduce the feedback and pilot-overhead by a significant percentage and also improve the system capacity as compared with the traditional algorithms. Moreover, the EE level increases with increasing Base Station (BS) density, UE density and lowering hardware impairments level.This research work is supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies research fund 2017.Khan, I.; Zafar, MH.; Jan, MT.; Lloret, J.; Basheri, M.; Singh, D. (2018). Spectral and Energy Efficient Low-Overhead Uplink and Downlink Channel Estimation for 5G Massive MIMO Systems. Entropy. 20(2). doi:10.3390/e20020092S20

Morphological Identification and Resistance Profile of Antibiotic and Heavy Metals-Resistant Bacteria in Hospital Sewage of Peshawar

Background: Increased resistance of microorganisms to commonly prescribed antibiotics has emerged as a significant hurdle in contemporary medical practice. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared antibiotic resistance as a " major threat to public health.". In the present study, bacterial isolates were selected based on high antibiotic and heavy metal tolerance from a water sample taken from hospital sewage.Methods: Antibiotic-resistant bacteria were isolated through the disk diffusion method. Gram staining was done for morphological identification. For molecular identification, the 16s rDNA PCR amplification was done with universal primers. Results: The strain BC1 was found resistant to ampicillin (10μg/ml), and cefixime (5μg/ml). While, susceptible to kanamycin (30μg/ml), azithromycin (15μg/ml) and intermediate in response to amoxicillin (30μg/ml). The strain BC2 was resistant to ampicillin (10μg/ml), cefixime (5μg/ml) and kanamycin (30μg/ml). While, Susceptible to amoxicillin (30μg/ml), and intermediate in response to azithromycin (15μg/ml). The strains were also found resistant to heavy metals.Conclusion: The recent investigation on bacterial strains from hospital effluent found interesting candidates for understanding the AMR bacteria and developing novel active biomolecules to combat the antibiotics problem. The isolated strains could be a source of novel resistant genes however; a comprehensive molecular analysis is needed for advanced studies

Investigating the environmental effect of globalization: insights from selected industrialized countries

Despite the burgeoning literature on the globalization-environmental degradation nexus, this area of empirical interest is still riddled with ambiguity. Thus, based on an extended Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology (STIRPAT) model, we re-investigate the effect of globalization on environmental degradation for 27 selected industrialized countries over the period 1991-2016. More specifically, we shed light into how overall globalization and its various components – economic, social and political globalization – affect environmental degradation. We advance existing literature by considering a measurement approach which disaggregates overall, economic, social and political globalization into their de facto and de jure aspects. Using the augmented mean group estimator, we find that overall and economic globalization reduce environmental degradation while social and political globalization do not exert any significant effect on globalization. With respect to the de facto and de jure aspects, we observe that, while only de facto economic globalization mitigates environmental degradation, de jure overall, economic and social globalization also dampen environmental degradation. We provide some policy implications in the end