L'evoluzione dei sistemi wireless verso il 5g

Sintetizzare le caratteristiche dei sistemi wireless fino al 4G ed evidenziare le innovazioni che verranno introdotte dai sistemi 5G

Valutazione sperimentale delle prestazioni di un sistema di smart metering a 169 Mhz in ambiente urbano

Sono state valutate sperimentalmente le prestazioni di tre diversi collegamenti di Smart Metering in tre ambienti (urbano, sub-urbano e urbano denso) alla frequenza di 169 MHz. Grazie al calcolo del valore di Building Penetration Loss e dei valori di Path Loss è stato possibile stabilire le distanze massime di collegamento accentratore-meter al variare della probabilità di copertura.

Evaluating the Trade-off Between Energy Efficiency and QoE in Wireless Mesh Networks

The increasing usage of wireless networks creates new challenges for wireless access providers. On the one hand, providers want to satisfy the user demands but on the other hand, they try to reduce the operational costs by decreasing the energy consumption. In this paper, we evaluate the trade-off between energy efficiency and quality of experience for a wireless mesh testbed. The results show that by intelligent service control, resources can be better utilized and energy can be saved by reducing the number of active network components. However, care has to be taken because the channel bandwidth varies in wireless networks. In the second part of the paper, we analyze the trade-off between energy efficiency and quality of experience at the end user. The results reveal that a provider's service control measures do not only reduce the operational costs of the network but also bring a second benefit: they help maximize the battery lifetime of the end-user device.

XIAP Restricts TNF- and RIP3-Dependent Cell Death and Inflammasome Activation

X-linked inhibitor of apoptosis protein (XIAP) has been identified as a potent regulator of innate immune responses, and loss-of-function mutations in XIAP cause the development of the X-linked lymphoproliferative syndrome type 2 (XLP-2) in humans. Using gene-targeted mice, we show that loss of XIAP or deletion of its RING domain lead to excessive cell death and IL-1β secretion from dendritic cells triggered by diverse Toll-like receptor stimuli. Aberrant IL-1β secretion is TNF dependent and requires RIP3 but is independent of cIAP1/cIAP2. The observed cell death also requires TNF and RIP3 but proceeds independently of caspase-1/caspase-11 or caspase-8 function. Loss of XIAP results in aberrantly elevated ubiquitylation of RIP1 outside of TNFR complex I. Virally infected Xiap−/− mice present with symptoms reminiscent of XLP-2. Our data show that XIAP controls RIP3-dependent cell death and IL-1β secretion in response to TNF, which might contribute to hyperinflammation in patients with XLP-2.

A mixed-integer linear programming approach to the optimization of event-bus schedules: a scheduling application in the tourism sector

This paper deals with “The Enchanted Journey,” which is a daily event tour booked by Bollywood-film fans. During the tour, the participants visit original sites of famous Bollywood films at various locations in Switzerland; moreover, the tour includes stops for lunch and shopping. Each day, up to five buses operate the tour. For operational reasons, however, two or more buses cannot stay at the same location simultaneously. Further operative constraints include time windows for all activities and precedence constraints between some activities. The planning problem is how to compute a feasible schedule for each bus. We implement a two-step hierarchical approach. In the first step, we minimize the total waiting time; in the second step, we minimize the total travel time of all buses. We present a basic formulation of this problem as a mixed-integer linear program. We enhance this basic formulation by symmetry-breaking constraints, which reduces the search space without loss of generality. We report on computational results obtained with the Gurobi Solver. Our numerical results show that all relevant problem instances can be solved using the basic formulation within reasonable CPU time, and that the symmetry-breaking constraints reduce that CPU time considerably.

PEPSI: Privacy-Enhanced Participatory Sensing Infrastructure.

Participatory Sensing combines the ubiquity of mobile phones with sensing capabilities of Wireless Sensor Networks. It targets pervasive collection of information, e.g., temperature, traffic conditions, or health-related data. As users produce measurements from their mobile devices, voluntary participation becomes essential. However, a number of privacy concerns -- due to the personal information conveyed by data reports -- hinder large-scale deployment of participatory sensing applications. Prior work on privacy protection, for participatory sensing, has often relayed on unrealistic assumptions and with no provably-secure guarantees. The goal of this project is to introduce PEPSI: a Privacy-Enhanced Participatory Sensing Infrastructure. We explore realistic architectural assumptions and a minimal set of (formal) privacy requirements, aiming at protecting privacy of both data producers and consumers. We design a solution that attains privacy guarantees with provable security at very low additional computational cost and almost no extra communication overhead.

Glutathione-mediated destabilization in vitro of [2Fe-2S] centers in the SoxR regulatory protein.

SoxR is a transcription factor that governs a global defense against the oxidative stress caused by nitric oxide or excess superoxide in Escherichia coli. SoxR is a homodimer containing a pair of [2Fe-2S] clusters essential for its transcriptional activity, and changes in the stability of these metal centers could contribute to the activation or inactivation of SoxR in vivo. Herein we show that reduced glutathione (GSH) in aerobic solution disrupts the SoxR [2Fe-2S] clusters, releasing Fe from the protein and eliminating SoxR transcriptional activity. This disassembly process evidently involves oxygen-derived free radicals. The loss of [2Fe-2S] clusters does not occur in anaerobic solution and is blocked in aerobic solution by the addition of superoxide dismutase and catalase. Although H2O2 or xanthine oxidase and hypoxanthine (to generate superoxide) were insufficient on their own to cause [2Fe-2S] cluster loss, they did accelerate the rate of disassembly after GSH addition. Oxidized GSH alone was ineffective in disrupting the clusters, but the rate of [2Fe-2S] cluster disassembly was maximal when reduced and oxidized GSH were present at a ratio of approximately 1:3, which suggests the critical involvement of a GSH-based free radical in the disassembly process. Such a reaction might occur in vivo: we found that the induction by paraquat of SoxR-dependent soxS transcription was much higher in a GSH-deficient E. coli strain than in its GSH-containing parent. The results imply that GSH may play a significant role during the deactivation process of SoxR in vivo. Ironically, superoxide production seems both to activate SoxR and, in the GSH-dependent disassembly process, to switch off this transcription factor.

Loss fluctuations and temporal correlations in network queues

We consider data losses in a single node of a packet- switched Internet-like network. We employ two distinct models, one with discrete and the other with continuous one-dimensional random walks, representing the state of a queue in a router. Both models have a built-in critical behavior with a sharp transition from exponentially small to finite losses. It turns out that the finite capacity of a buffer and the packet-dropping procedure give rise to specific boundary conditions which lead to strong loss rate fluctuations at the critical point even in the absence of such fluctuations in the data arrival process.

A New Charging and Billing Model and Architecture for the Ubiquitous Consumer Wireless World

In a Ubiquitous Consumer Wireless World (UCWW) environment the provision, administration and management of the authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA) policies and business services are provided by third-party AAA service providers (3P-AAA-SPs) who are independent of the wireless access network providers (ANPs). In this environment the consumer can freely choose any suitable ANP, based on his/her own preferences. This new AAA infrastructural arrangement necessitates assessing the impact and re-thinking the design, structure and location of ‘charging and billing’ (C&B) functions and services. This paper addresses C&B issues in UCWW, proposing potential architectural solutions for C&B realization. Implementation approaches of these novel solutions together with a software testbed for validation and performance evaluation are addressed.

Autonomic and embedded wireless sensor protocols for critical infrastructures

The tragic events of September 11th ushered a new era of unprecedented challenges. Our nation has to be protected from the alarming threats of adversaries. These threats exploit the nation's critical infrastructures affecting all sectors of the economy. There is the need for pervasive monitoring and decentralized control of the nation's critical infrastructures. The communications needs of monitoring and control of critical infrastructures was traditionally catered for by wired communication systems. These technologies ensured high reliability and bandwidth but are however very expensive, inflexible and do not support mobility and pervasive monitoring. The communication protocols are Ethernet-based that used contention access protocols which results in high unsuccessful transmission and delay. An emerging class of wireless networks, named embedded wireless sensor and actuator networks has potential benefits for real-time monitoring and control of critical infrastructures. The use of embedded wireless networks for monitoring and control of critical infrastructures requires secure, reliable and timely exchange of information among controllers, distributed sensors and actuators. The exchange of information is over shared wireless media. However, wireless media is highly unpredictable due to path loss, shadow fading and ambient noise. Monitoring and control applications have stringent requirements on reliability, delay and security. The primary issue addressed in this dissertation is the impact of wireless media in harsh industrial environment on the reliable and timely delivery of critical data. In the first part of the dissertation, a combined networking and information theoretic approach was adopted to determine the transmit power required to maintain a minimum wireless channel capacity for reliable data transmission. The second part described a channel-aware scheduling scheme that ensured efficient utilization of the wireless link and guaranteed delay. Various analytical evaluations and simulations are used to evaluate and validate the feasibility of the methodologies and demonstrate that the protocols achieved reliable and real-time data delivery in wireless industrial networks.

Efectos del terreno en la propagación electromagnética en entornos urbanos sobre la región andina, usando el modelo COST 231-Walfisch-Ikegami y herramientas de planificación basadas en GIS

El presente artículo hace parte del desarrollo de un algoritmo que considera la influencia del relieve en la propagación electromagnética para un entorno semi-urbano, trabajando en la banda de UHF (300MHz-3GHz) utilizada en los actuales y futuros sistemas de comunicación inalámbricos (i.e. 800-900MHz en sistemas DAMPS/US-TDMA/IS-136 y GSM). El modelo base, el COST231-Walfisch- Ikegami, empleado en la investigación,demostró beneficios, junto con los Sistemas de Información Geográfica (SIG) y las Herramientas de Planificación, para el desarrollo de los estudios de propagación, estimación de coberturas y análisis de los principales factores que afectan la planificación de un sistema móvil celular. Aquí se describen los conceptos básicos utilizados para el desarrollo del algoritmo aplicado, las consideraciones sobre las cuales se llevaron a cabolas campañas de medidas y el proceso de validación de resultados que comprueban la utilidad del algoritmo desarrollado para la predicción de Path Loss. El trabajo se basó en la fusión del modelo de propagación COST231-Walfisch-Ikegami con laHerramienta de Planificación Cell-View (fundamentada en el SIG ArcView) y la realización de mediciones en la ciudad de Bucaramanga con una unidad móvil de radiocomunicacióny control del espectro radioeléctrico de propiedad del Ministerio de Comunicaciones de Colombia, seccional Bucaramanga. El estudio llevado a cabo para la banda del sistema IS- 136, mostró resultados de simulación y validación que permiten corroborarlas aproximaciones empleadas.

Características sociodemográficas del adulto mayor con deterioro auditivo en el centro de atención del IESS. Cuenca 2015

OBJETIVO GENERAL: Establecer las características sociodemográficas del adulto mayor con deterioro auditivo en el centro de atención del IESS. Cuenca 2015. METODOLOGÍA: Estudio de tipo descriptivo transversal. El universo compuesto por 1800 personas que se encontraron inscritos en el centro de atención del adulto mayor, en la ciudad de Cuenca, 2015. Se trabajó con una muestra de 317 adultos mayores. Este proyecto se realizó mediante: encuestas y audiometrías. Los datos que se obtuvieron fueron analizados en SPSS 20.00 y Excel 2010; para el análisis se utilizó la estadística descriptiva; además personal capacitado realizó la audiometría de tipo tonal, en el Centro de diagnóstico de la Universidad de Cuenca. RESULTADOS: Los resultados obtenidos de las encuestas y de las audiometrías realizadas son los siguientes. De los 317 encuestados (248 (78%) femeninos, 69 (22%) masculinos), las audiometrías realizadas a 160 adultos mayores, presentan algún tipo de deterioro auditivo destacando el grado de audición normal 11% (34), hipoacusia conductiva leve 7% (22), hipoacusia conductiva moderada 3% (11), hipoacusia mixta leve 8% (25), hipoacusia mixta moderada 3% (8), hipoacusia sensorioneural leve 9% (29), hipoacusia sensorioneural moderada 9% (27), hipoacusia sensorioneural severa 1% (3). La información obtenida de la investigación permite establecer una evaluación general del estado actual del grado de audición de los adultos mayores, permite evidenciar la importancia de una atención adecuada a partir de los 60 o más años, para evitar la pérdida de audición por envejecimiento