Solutions for the flow of a micropolar fluid in a porous channel

How various additives can increase some cardio-vascular diseases and effects of transport for albumin and glucose through permeable membranes are some important studies in biomechanics. The rolling phenomena of the leucocytes gives rise to an inflammatory reaction along a vascular wall. Initiated by Eringen [5], a micropolar fluid is a satisfactory model for flows of fluids which contain micro-constituents which can undergo rotation.

Evaluating equal employment opportunity and its impact on the increased participation of men and women in the transport industry

This paper seeks to identify the approaches undertaken in implementing equal employment opportunity in the transport industry in Australia and the links between these approaches and indicators of increased participation of women. This male dominated industry employs limited numbers of women with fewer numbers of women in management. The study analyses data from a unique set of equal opportunity progress reports from all organisations in the transport industry that are required to provide public reports under Australian legislation. The findings indicate a correlation between some approaches to equal opportunity and increased numbers of women in some areas. The study is equally remarkable for what it does not find. Despite widespread equal opportunity implementation across a broad number of employment measures there are limited measures that predict increases in the numbers of women in management or in non-traditional roles. This study differs from others in that it identifies issues specific to one industry and links organisational approach to equal opportunity with the employment status of both women and men.

Variations in MIMO-OFDM channel capacity due to random human movement in an indoor environment

Channel measurements and simulations have been carried out to observe the effects of pedestrian movement on multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) channel capacity. An in-house built MIMO-OFDM packet transmission demonstrator equipped with four transmitters and four receivers has been utilized to perform channel measurements at 5.2 GHz. Variations in the channel capacity dynamic range have been analysed for 1 to 10 pedestrians and different antenna arrays (2 × 2, 3 × 3 and 4 × 4). Results show a predicted 5.5 bits/s/Hz and a measured 1.5 bits/s/Hz increment in the capacity dynamic range with the number of pedestrian and the number of antennas in the transmitter and receiver array.

Body-shadowing effects in indoor MIMO-OFDM channel capacity

We investigate Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) systems behavior in indoor populated environments that have line-of-site (LoS) between transmitter and receiver arrays. The in-house built MIMO-OFDM packet transmission demonstrator, equipped with four transmitters and four receivers, has been utilized to perform channel measurements at 5.2 GHz. Measurements have been performed using 0 to 3 pedestrians with different antenna arrays (2 £ 2, 3 £ 3 and 4 £ 4). The maximum average capacity for the 2x2 deterministic Fixed SNR scenario is 8.5 dB compared to the 4x4 deterministic scenario that has a maximum average capacity of 16.2 dB, thus an increment of 8 dB in average capacity has been measured when the array size increases from 2x2 to 4x4. In addition a regular variation has been observed for Random scenarios compared to the deterministic scenarios. An incremental trend in average channel capacity for both deterministic and random pedestrian movements has been observed with increasing number of pedestrian and antennas. In deterministic scenarios, the variations in average channel capacity are more noticeable than for the random scenarios due to a more prolonged and controlled body-shadowing effect. Moreover due to the frequent Los blocking and fixed transmission power a slight decrement have been observed in the spread between the maximum and minimum capacity with random fixed Tx power scenario.

A cost-based optimization of a fiberboard pressing plant using Monte-Carlo simulation (a reliability program)

In this research the reliability and availability of fiberboard pressing plant is assessed and a cost-based optimization of the system using the Monte- Carlo simulation method is performed. The woodchip and pulp or engineered wood industry in Australia and around the world is a lucrative industry. One such industry is hardboard. The pressing system is the main system, as it converts the wet pulp to fiberboard. The assessment identified the pressing system has the highest downtime throughout the plant plus it represents the bottleneck in the process. A survey in the late nineties revealed there are over one thousand plants around the world, with the pressing system being a common system among these plants. No work has been done to assess or estimate the reliability of such a pressing system; therefore this assessment can be used for assessing any plant of this type.

Wireless channel modelling for indoor populated environments : statistical characterization of narrowband channels at 2.45 Ghz and 5.2 Ghz

The recent development of indoor wireless local area network (WLAN) standards at 2.45 GHz and 5 GHz has led to increased interest in propagation studies at these frequency bands. Within the indoor environment, human body effects can strongly reduce the quality of wireless communication systems. Human body effects can cause temporal variations and shadowing due to pedestrian movement and antenna- body interaction with portable terminals. This book presents a statistical characterisation, based on measurements, of human body effects on indoor narrowband channels at 2.45 GHz and at 5.2 GHz. A novel cumulative distribution function (CDF) that models the 5 GHz narrowband channel in populated indoor environments is proposed. This novel CDF describes the received envelope in terms of pedestrian traffic. In addition, a novel channel model for the populated indoor environment is proposed for the Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) narrowband channel in presence of pedestrians at 2.45 GHz. Results suggest that practical MIMO systems must be sufficiently adaptive if they are to benefit from the capacity enhancement caused by pedestrian movement.

The diversity management approach to equal employment opportunity in Australian organisations

This article assesses the 'Managing Diversity' (MD) approach in Australia, examining its drivers, discussing its relationship to legislation designed to promote equity, and examining it as a set of management practices. It has been plausibly argued, on efficiency grounds, that responsibility for achieving equality objectives must be shifted to organisations as this links contextual conditions to organisational processes. However, even where there is some prescription and guidance such as that provided by Australian Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) legislation targeted specifically to women employees, both practice and outcomes are variable. This is even more the case with MD where there are no guiding principles or legislative support. The article examines the best practice EEO and MD programs of Australian organisations to demonstrate the approaches and programs that are being developed at the workplace and to highlight the limitations of the 'business case' approach underlying such programs.

Channel blurring and consumer expectations : evidence in Chile

An important trend in Chilean retailing industry is the increase in channel blurring. This investigation attempts to identify the relevant store attributes for different retail formats (grocery, department store, drug store, and home improvement). Do consumer store attribute saliency vary for different retail formats? Interviews identified twelve salient store attributes for the different retail formats. Survey results showed differences in store attribute saliencies for consumers when shopping at different formats. Seven of the twelve variables showed significant differences across formats. However, two attributes were relatively important for all four retail formats: product quality and responsiveness of employees.

Modelling the broadband wireless channel in rural Australia

The internet infrastructure which supports high data rates has a major impact on the Australian economy and the world. However, in rural Australia, the provision of broadband services to an internet dispersed population over a large geographical area with low population densities remains both an economic and technical challenge [1]. Furthermore, the implementation of currently available technologies such as fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP), 3G, 4G and WiMAX seems to be impractical, considering the low population density that is distributed in a large area. Therefore, new paradigms and innovative telecommunication technologies need to be explored to overcome the challenges of providing faster and more reliable broadband internet services to internet dispersed rural areas. The research project implements an innovative Multi-User- Single-Antenna for MIMO (MUSA-MIMO) technology using the spectrum currently allocated to analogue TV. MUSAMIMO technology can be considered as a special case of MIMO technology, which is beneficial when provisioning reliable and high-speed communication channels. Particularly, the abstract describes the development of a novel MUSA-MIMO channel model that takes into account temporal variations in the rural wireless environment. This can be considered as a novel approach tailor-made to rural Australia for provisioning efficient wireless broadband communications.

Channel tracking algorithms for highly efficient wireless broadband communications in rural areas

High-speed broadband internet access is widely recognised as a catalyst to social and economic development, having a significant impact on global economy. Rural Australia’s inherent dispersed population over a large geographical area make the delivery of efficient, well-maintained and cost-effective internet a challenging task. The novel and highly-efficient Multi-User-Single-Antenna for MIMO (MUSA-MIMO) broadband wireless communication technology can effectively be used to deliver wireless broadband access to rural areas. This research aims to develop for the first time, an efficient and accurate algorithm for the tracking and prediction of Channel State Information (CSI) at the transmitter, by characterising time variation effects of the wireless communication channel on the performance of a highly-efficient MUSA-MIMO technology particularly suited for rural communities, improving their quality of life and economic prosperity.

Effect of pedestrian movement on MIMO-OFDM channel capacity in an indoor environment

The rapid growth of mobile telephone use, satellite services, and now the wireless Internet and WLANs are generating tremendous changes in telecommunication and networking. As indoor wireless communications become more prevalent, modeling indoor radio wave propagation in populated environments is a topic of significant interest. Wireless MIMO communication exploits phenomena such as multipath propagation to increase data throughput and range, or reduce bit error rates, rather than attempting to eliminate effects of multipath propagation as traditional SISO communication systems seek to do. The MIMO approach can yield significant gains for both link and network capacities, with no additional transmitting power or bandwidth consumption when compared to conventional single-array diversity methods. When MIMO and OFDM systems are combined and deployed in a suitable rich scattering environment such as indoors, a significant capacity gain can be observed due to the assurance of multipath propagation. Channel variations can occur as a result of movement of personnel, industrial machinery, vehicles and other equipment moving within the indoor environment. The time-varying effects on the propagation channel in populated indoor environments depend on the different pedestrian traffic conditions and the particular type of environment considered. A systematic measurement campaign to study pedestrian movement effects in indoor MIMO-OFDM channels has not yet been fully undertaken. Measuring channel variations caused by the relative positioning of pedestrians is essential in the study of indoor MIMO-OFDM broadband wireless networks. Theoretically, due to high multipath scattering, an increase in MIMO-OFDM channel capacity is expected when pedestrians are present. However, measurements indicate that some reductions in channel capacity could be observed as the number of pedestrians approaches 10 due to a reduction in multipath conditions as more human bodies absorb the wireless signals. This dissertation presents a systematic characterization of the effects of pedestrians in indoor MIMO-OFDM channels. Measurement results, using the MIMO-OFDM channel sounder developed at the CSIRO ICT Centre, have been validated by a customized Geometric Optics-based ray tracing simulation. Based on measured and simulated MIMO-OFDM channel capacity and MIMO-OFDM capacity dynamic range, an improved deterministic model for MIMO-OFDM channels in indoor populated environments is presented. The model can be used for the design and analysis of future WLAN to be deployed in indoor environments. The results obtained show that, in both Fixed SNR and Fixed Tx for deterministic condition, the channel capacity dynamic range rose with the number of pedestrians as well as with the number of antenna combinations. In random scenarios with 10 pedestrians, an increment in channel capacity of up to 0.89 bits/sec/Hz in Fixed SNR and up to 1.52 bits/sec/Hz in Fixed Tx has been recorded compared to the one pedestrian scenario. In addition, from the results a maximum increase in average channel capacity of 49% has been measured while 4 antenna elements are used, compared with 2 antenna elements. The highest measured average capacity, 11.75 bits/sec/Hz, corresponds to the 4x4 array with 10 pedestrians moving randomly. Moreover, Additionally, the spread between the highest and lowest value of the the dynamic range is larger for Fixed Tx, predicted 5.5 bits/sec/Hz and measured 1.5 bits/sec/Hz, in comparison with Fixed SNR criteria, predicted 1.5 bits/sec/Hz and measured 0.7 bits/sec/Hz. This has been confirmed by both measurements and simulations ranging from 1 to 5, 7 and 10 pedestrians.