International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / An improved performance smart diversity was invented to improve the signal performance in a combined selective fading, Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN), Co-channel interference (CCI) and Doppler shift environment such as the LEO satellite channel. This system is also applicable to aeronautical and telemetry channels. Smart diversity is defined here as a mechanism that selects at each moment the best branch in a n-branch diversity system based on the error quality with no default branch and no prioritization. The predominant novelty of this discovery is the introduction of multi level analog based Pseudo Error Detectors (PSED) in every branch. One of the advantages of PSED is that it is a non redundant error detection system, with no requirement for overhead and no need for additional valuable spectrum. This research was motivated by problems in LEO satellite systems due to low orbit and high relative speed with respect to the ground stations. The system is independent of the modulation techniques and is applicable to both coherent and non-coherent detections. The results from simulations using dynamic simulation techniques and hardware measurements over dynamic channels show significant improvement of both the Bit Error Rate (BER) and the Block Error Rate (BLER).

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / Bit error rate (BER) and bandwidth efficiency of several variations of enhanced Feher patented quadrature phase shift keying (FQPSK) [1] are described. An enhanced FQPSK increases the channel packing density of that of the IRIG 106-00 standardized FQPSK-B by approximately 50% in adjacent channel interference (ACI) environment. As the bandwidth efficiency of FQPSK-B DOUBLES (2×) that of pulse code modulation/Frequency modulation (PCM/FM) [5], the enhanced FQPSK, with a simpler transceiver than FQPSK-B, has a channel packing density of TRIPLE (3×) that of PCM/FM. One of the other enhanced FQPSK prototypes has an end to end system loss of only 0.4 dB at BER=1x10^(-3) and 0.5 dB at BER=1x10^(-4) from ideal linearly amplified QPSK theory. The enhanced FQPSK has a simple architecture, thus is inexpensive and has small size, for ultra high bit rate implementation. With low redundancy forward error correction (FEC) coding which expands the spectrum by approximately 10%, further improvement of about 3-4.5dB E N b o is attained with NLA FQPSK-B and enhanced FQPSK at BER=1x10^(-5) .

Le système MIMO coopératif est une solution attrayante dans un environnement où les trajets multiples signalent s'avérer être une étape stimulante pour le lien paire communication émetteur-récepteur. En effet, la diversité spatiale fournis par les émetteurs et recievers peut être exploitée pour améliorer la qualité du signal. Cette thèse étudie l'application de la boucle fermée précodeur MIMO pour réduire encore plus l'énergie de transmission dans un tel environnement. La contribution de cette thèse est de proposer des approches globales qui conduisent à l'optimisation globale des transmissions dans le système MIMO coopératif. Tout d'abord, on exploite la diversité spatiale des noeuds, et proposons une technique de sélection de noeud pour réduire l'énergie de transmission. Les noeuds sont sélectionnées en utilisant le linéaire boucle fermée MIMO précodeur max-dmin qui optimise la distance minimale (dmin) de critère pour réduire le BER de la constellation reçue, ce qui abaisse le rapport requis signal sur bruit (SNR). Deuxièmement, nous sommes motivés par une obligation de rendre les paramètres d'évaluation des performances MIMO disponibles aux couches supérieures du protocole. Ainsi, nous proposons une méthode théorique pour obtenir la fonction de distribution de probabilité (pdf) de dmin pour le précodeur max-dmin, nous utilisons le résultat de rapprocher le BER et de la capacité ergodique pour un système MIMO et une valeur de M en utilisant deux sous-canaux dans d'une manière rapide. Nous présentons un scénario qui exige que l'information pertinente soit détectée à partir d'une variété de sources situées à l'intérieur de la haute tension (HT) environnement du poste de réseau intelligent (SG) des applications. Notre contribution comprend le développement d'un outil de simulation basé sur la technique de sélection de noeuds pour le max-dmin distribué MIMO précodage. Pour tenir compte des interactions entre les couches multiples de communication, nous proposons de concevoir un système de communication MIMO coopératif complet basé sur un protocole d'échange de base qui est liée à notre scénario de transmission supposé. On construit en outre toutes les trames de sous-couche MAC, qui sont transmis dans ce système limité par le coût de l'énergie et de la synchronisation. / Cooperative MIMO system worked from the spatial diversity provided by the transmitters and receivers locations to improve the quality of service in the communication exchange. In our work, we explored the application of closed-loop MIMO precoder to further limit the energy of transmission in such environment. Our contribution is to propose approaches that lead to global optimization of transmissions in cooperative MIMO system. Firstly, we exploit spatial diversity of nodes, and then a node selection technique to reduce the energy of transmission. The nodes are selected using the max-dmin linear closed-loop MIMO precoder which, optimizes the minimum distance (dmin) criterion to reduce the Bit Error Rate of the received constellation, thereby lowering the required signal-to-noise ratio. Secondly, we are motivated by a requirement to make the MIMO performance evaluation parameters available to higher protocol layers. Thus, we propose a theoretical method to derive the probability distribution function of dmin for the max-dmin precoder, then we use the result to approximate the Bit Error Rate and ergodic capacity for any MIMO system and any value of modulation size M using 2 subchannels in a rapid manner. To achieve our objective, we present a realistic scenario from an existing application case where data must be collected from a variety of sources located inside a high voltage substation environment (smart grid applications). Our contribution involves the development of a simulation tool based on node selection technique for the max-dmin distributed MIMO precoding. Finally, inside this transmission scenario, we propose a complete communication system based on a basic exchange protocol. We further construct all the MAC sub layer frames that are transmitted in this system constrained by energy and synchronization cost.

<p>To take advantage of the high speed in an optic fiber, one of the basic concept in fiber optic communication is to allow several users to simultaneously transmit data over the channel. One technique that provides multiple access is it fiber optic-code division multiple access (FO-CDMA). In FO-CDMA each user is assigned one or more signature sequences called codewords, which are subsets of a type of optical orthogonal code (OOC). The channel input/output consists of the superposition of several users codewords and at the receiver end an optical correlator extracts the information. </p><p>In the parallel code constructions, presented in this report, each user j is assigned a subset Cj from a code C. The subsets are disjoint and their union is the whole set C. A new way to map the information bits is to insert up to L zeros before each codeword from Cj and let this represent information aswell. This gives high rates for active users but an investigation is needed to ensure that this does not compromise the systems wanted property of sending information with a small probability of errors for all users. Therefore a simulation environment has been implemented in Matlab. </p><p>The result from these simulations shows that BER for the L parallel codes is acceptable and not much higher than for the traditional constructions. Because of the higher rate these construction should be preferred but an analysis if a hardware implementation is possible.</p>

Telomeres are the chromosome end structures consisting of telomere-associated proteins and short tandem repeat sequences, TTAGGG, in humans and mice. Telomeres prevent chromosome termini from being recognized as broken DNA ends. The structural integrity of DNA including telomeres is constantly threatened by a variety of DNA damaging agents on a daily basis. To counteract the constant threats from DNA damage, organisms have developed a number of DNA repair pathways to ensure that the integrity of genome remains intact. A number of DNA repair proteins localize to telomeres and contribute to telomere maintenance; however, it is still unclear as to what extent. Telomere shortening has been linked to rare human disorders that present with bone marrow failure including Fanconi anemia (FA). FANCC is one of the most commonly mutated FA genes in FA patients and the FANCC subtype tends to have a relatively early onset of bone marrow failure and hematologic malignancies. Here, we studied the role of Fancc in telomere length regulation in mice. We demonstrated that deletion of Fancc did not affect telomerase activity, telomere length or telomeric end-capping in mice with long telomeres. We also showed that Fancc deficiency accelerates telomere shortening during high turnover of hematopoietic cells and promotes telomere recombination initiated by short telomeres. Telomere shortening has also been linked to human aging and cancer development, with oxidative stress as a major contributing factor. 8-oxo-7, 8-dihydroguanine is among the most common oxidative DNA lesions, and is substrates for OGG1-initiated DNA base excision repair. Mammalian telomeres consist of triple guanine repeats and are subject to oxidative guanine damage. Here, we investigated the impact of oxidative guanine damage and its repair by OGG1 on telomere integrity. We demonstrated that oxidative guanine damage can arise in telomeres where it affects length homeostasis, recombination, DNA replication, and DNA breakage repair. We also examined if telomeric DNA is particularly susceptible to oxidative guanine damage and if telomere specific factors affect the incision of oxidized guanines by OGG1. We showed that the GGG sequence context of telomere repeats and certain telomere configurations may contribute to telomere vulnerability to oxidative DNA damage processing.

The purpose of this master thesis was to investigate how effiecient the extractionof radiofrequency quality metrics from digital video broadcast (DVB) streamscan become using software defined radio. Software defined radio (SDR) is a fairlynew technology that offers you the possibility of very flexible receivers and transmitters where it is possible to upgrade the modulation and demodulation overtime. Agama is interested in SDR for use in the Agama Analyzer, a widely deployedmonitoring probe running on top of standard services. Using SDR, Agama coulduse that in all deployments, such as DVB by cable/terrestrial/satellite (DVBC/T/S), which would simplify logistics. This thesis is an implementation of a SDR to be able to receive DVB-C. TheSDR must perform a number of adaptive algorithms in order to prevent the received symbols from being significantly different from the transmitted ones. Themain parts of the SDR include timing recovery, carrier recovery and equalization.Timing recovery performs synchronization between the transmitted and receivedsymbols and the carrier recovery performs synchronization between the carrierwave of the transmitter and the local oscillator in the receiver. The thesis discusses various methods to perform the different types of synchronizations andequalizations in order to find the most suitable methods.

There have been proposals of many parity inducing techniques like Forward ErrorCorrection (FEC) which try to cope the problem of channel induced errors to alarge extent if not completely eradicate. The convolutional codes have been widelyidentified to be very efficient among the known channel coding techniques. Theprocess of decoding the convolutionally encoded data stream at the receiving nodecan be quite complex, time consuming and memory inefficient.This thesis outlines the implementation of multistandard soft decision viterbidecoder and word length effects on it. Classic Viterbi algorithm and its variantsoft decision viterbi algorithm, Zero-tail termination and Tail-Biting terminationfor the trellis are discussed. For the final implementation in C language, the "Zero-Tail Termination" approach with soft decision Viterbi decoding is adopted. Thismemory efficient implementation approach is flexible for any code rate and anyconstraint length.The results obtained are compared with MATLAB reference decoder. Simulationresults have been provided which show the performance of the decoderand reveal the interesting trade-off of finite word length with system performance.Such investigation can be very beneficial for the hardware design of communicationsystems. This is of high interest for Viterbi algorithm as convolutional codes havebeen selected in several famous standards like WiMAX, EDGE, IEEE 802.11a,GPRS, WCDMA, GSM, CDMA 2000 and 3GPP-LTE.

In modern telecommunication there is the demand of high data rates using wideband component design. FCC has introduced the UWB spectrum for high speed data communication. UWB systems have attracted the attention of researchers.  Six-port transmitters and receivers are strong candidates for UWB systems and research is being done on six-port modulators and demodulators. In this work an effort is made to compare the performance of conventional single-ended six-port transmitter and receiver with differential six-port transmitters and receivers.    In this thesis, single ended and differential six-port correlators are designed on 7.5 GHz using Agilent Inc. EDA tool ADS and their performance is evaluated. A new wide-band differential six-port correlator is implemented using rat-race couplers and double-sided parallel strip-line phase inverter. The designed six-port correlators are used for 8-PSK modulation and demodulation. For transmitter-receiver system, mixed analog-DSP designing is used. The integral components of the system are evaluated individually and behavioral modeling is used to evaluate the complete transmitter-receiver system. The single-ended and differential systems are evaluated for noise-figure, dynamic range, bit error rate and data rate.

Multicarrier systems are widely used today due to their robustness to multipath effects and efficient implementation using FFT. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) system is a class of multicarrier modulation which consists of splitting up a wide-band signal at a high symbol rate into several lower rate signals, each one occupying a narrower band. System performance improves because subcarriers experience flat fading channels and are orthogonal to one another. Recently, a number of papers have focused on a new alternative called Filter bank based multicarrier system (FBMC) which can offer a number of advantages over CP-OFDM system such as the improved spectral efficiency by not using a redundant CP and by having much better control of the out-of-band emission due to the time-frequency localized shaping pulses.Furthermore, asynchronism inherently exists in several communication systems due to many factors e.g. the propagation delays and the spatial distribution of users. As one of the most challenging issue in design of communication systems, the asynchronism can harmfully affect the system performance by causing the so-called asynchronous interference.In this dissertation, we investigate the impact of asynchronism on the performance of OFDM FBMC systems. First, we present a unified framework for multicarrier interference characterization and analysis in asynchronous environments. We propose a new family of interference tables that model the correlation between a given interfering subcarrier and the victim one, not only as a function of the spectral distance separating both subcarriers but also with respect to the timing misalignment between the subcarriers holders. These tables are derived for CP-OFDM, PHYDYAS-FBMC and IOTA-FBMC systems. Furthermore, the impact of the asynchronous interference on the average error rate and the average spectral efficiency of OFDM and FBMC systems is addressed. Based on computing the moment generating functions of the asynchronous interference power, simple new expressions for the exact evaluation of the average error rate and the average spectral efficiency are derived considering the frequency correlation fading between adjacent interfering subcarriers. These expressions significantly reduce the computation complexity of the performance evaluation.For each technique two scenarios are examined: fully-loaded network and partially loaded ones. The accuracy of the obtained expressions has been validated through different simulation results. In contrast to OFDM, FBMC waveforms are demonstrated to be less sensitive to timing asynchronism, due to the better frequency localization of the used prototype filters.

Single cell gel electrophoresis (SCGE), more commonly known as the Comet assay, is an uncomplicated, affordable and versatile method for investigating DNA damage and repair. Existing comet–assay based methods were modified and applied in this study in order to examine the effects of different perturbations on the DNA repair capacity of different samples. Mitochondrial functioning has a vast effect on overall cell physiology and does not simply involve the production of energy in the form of ATP that sustains common biological processes, but is also associated with important cellular occurrences such as apoptosis and ROS production. It is suggested that a change in mitochondrial function may lead to extensive ROS production which may negatively affect macromolecules, including proteins involved in DNA repair pathways, and impaired energy formation which in turn may hamper the proper occurrence of energy driven processes. Complex I and ?III knock–down systems established in 143B cells are used to investigate the effect that perturbations of the energy metabolism may have on DNA repair capacity. Metallothioneins (MTs) are known to play an imperative role in trace element homeostasis and detoxification of metals and are effective ROS scavengers. The prooxidant environment that heavy metal imbalance causes may result in mutagenesis and transformation through DNA damage. It is suggested that an imbalance in the metal homeostasis caused by MT knock–out may create an environment favourable for DNA damage formation and at the same time impair DNA repair pathways. Because of the multi–functionality and involvement of metallothioneins in such a wide variety of biological processes, it was considered interesting and essential to extend the investigation on the effect of the absence of metallothioneins on DNA repair. A metallothionein I and ?II knock–out mouse model is employed to determine the effect of MT knock–out on DNA repair capacity. It was clear from the results obtained that transfection of cells, as used to investigate a perturbation in the energy metabolism in 143B cells, has an impairing effect on DRC. It was also confirmed that metallothioneins play an important and diverse role in cell biology since the absence thereof inhibits both BER and NER. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Biochemistry))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.