Search results for "Telecommunication"
showing 10 items of 1769 documents
Recent advances in the development of holey optical fibers based on sulfide glasses
2006
International audience; Microstructured optical fibers as new optical objects have been developed in the recent past years, firstly from silica glass and then from other oxide glasses such as tellurite or different heavy cations oxide glasses. However very few results have been reported concerning non-oxide glasses and more particularly chalcogenide glasses. In a photonic crystal fiber the arrangement of air holes along the transverse section of the fiber around a solid glassy core leads to unique optical properties, such as for example broadband single-mode guidance, adjustable dispersion, nonlinear properties. Since the effective modal area is adjustable thanks to geometrical parameters, …
A network model for the short-term prediction of the evolution of cocaine consumption in Spain
2010
Cocaine consumption is a social problem with acute consequences and its dependency can be regarded as a health concern of social transmission. This fact leads us to develop the idea that its transmission dynamics can be studied using epidemiological mathematical models. Under this point of view, in this paper we propose a network model to study the short-term evolution of the cocaine consumer subpopulations. The model parameters are obtained from data source and from an analogue continuous model. Sensitivity of the model parameters is studied. The parameters are associated with prevention and treatment policies and the sensitivity study gives us information about which parameters have more …
Smart energy users: ICT instruments for the consumer awareness
2015
The European Commission is supporting many projects in the field of energy saving, with the aim to improve user behavior and to help Europe to meet emission targets. In October 2012, the European Union adopted the Energy Efficiency Directive with the aim to reduce the primary energy consumption by 20% by 2020. One key point in the reduction of energy consumption energy is the awareness of final users about their usage of energy. At the same time, policies aimed at improving the efficiency of energy use, are a keystone in the strategies of leading Distribution System Operators (DSOs) and energy retail companies that started to offer, in addition to the energy supply, services and suggestions…
Breaking the Gender Gap in Rap/Hip-Hop Consumption
2021
AbstractSome music genres have traditionally and mainly been consumed by men. This is the case of rap/hip-hop. However, data on the consumption of this genre in recent years shows a relevant increase in the number of women interested in this type of music. It would therefore seem to be pertinent to analyse this new trend, not only as a question linked to gender studies but also to marketing decision-making for the music industry, which is struggling to attract new audiences, a factor compounded in the pandemic. To frame this analysis, literature on music consumption, specifically in relation to gender and rap as an alternative music genre, has been reviewed from different approaches. An exp…
Towards a Non-Intrusive Context-Aware Speech Quality Model
2020
Understanding how humans judge perceived speech quality while interacting through Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications in real-time is essential to build a robust and accurate speech quality prediction model. Speech quality is degraded in the presence of background noise reducing the Quality of Experience (QoE). Speech Enhancement (SE) algorithms can improve speech quality in noisy environments. The publicly available NOIZEUS speech corpus contains speech in environmental background noise babble, car, street, and train at two Signal-to-noise ratio (SNRs) 5dB and 10dB. Objective Speech Quality Metrics (OSQM) are used to monitor and measure speech quality for VoIP applications. Th…
A User-Centric Approach for Personalized Service Provisioning in Pervasive Environments
2011
Published version of an article published in Wireless Personal Communications (2011). Also available from the publisher at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11277-011-0387-3 The vision of pervasive environments is being realized more than ever with the proliferation of services and computing resources located in our surrounding environments. Identifying those services that deserve the attention of the user is becoming an increasingly-challenging task. In this paper, we present an adaptive multi-criteria decision making mechanism for recommending relevant services to the mobile user. In this context, "Relevance" is determined based on a user-centric approach that combines both the reputation of the…
Detection of power line insulators on digital images with the use of laser spots
2019
The massive growth of technologies used to register and process digital images allow for their application in evaluating the technical condition of power lines. However, it is not possible without a set of dedicated methods for obtaining diagnostic information based on registered video data. The method described here details the detection of power line insulators in digital images featuring diversified backgrounds using laser spots. The algorithm of detecting an insulator in analysed images is based on testing the digital signal of pixel intensity profiles read between subsequent pairs of laser points in the image. The method is comprised of the following stages: import the image with laser…
A novel strategy for solving the stochastic point location problem using a hierarchical searching scheme
2014
Stochastic point location (SPL) deals with the problem of a learning mechanism (LM) determining the optimal point on the line when the only input it receives are stochastic signals about the direction in which it should move. One can differentiate the SPL from the traditional class of optimization problems by the fact that the former considers the case where the directional information, for example, as inferred from an Oracle (which possibly computes the derivatives), suffices to achieve the optimization-without actually explicitly computing any derivatives. The SPL can be described in terms of a LM (algorithm) attempting to locate a point on a line. The LM interacts with a random environme…
Sensor Fusion Localization and Navigation for Visually Impaired People
2018
In this paper, we present an innovative cyber physical system for indoor and outdoor localization and navigation, based on the joint utilization of dead-reckoning and computer vision techniques on a smartphone-centric tracking system. The system is explicitly designed for visually impaired people, but it can be easily generalized to other users, and it is built under the assumption that special reference signals, such as colored tapes, painted lines, or tactile paving, are deployed in the environment for guiding visually impaired users along pre-defined paths. Differently from previous works on localization, which are focused only on the utilization of inertial sensors integrated into the s…
New High Voltage Interconnections with Islands in the Mediterranean Sea: Malta and Sicily. Analysis of the Effects on Renewable Energy Sources Integr…
2018
The present paper shows the benefits coming from the operation of the recent electrical high voltage (HV) interconnections between Sicily, Malta and mainland Italy. These new interconnections allow zonal prices of electricity considerably lower than in the past, ensuring greater flexibility to the system and a better integration of Renewable Energy Sources (RES). After briefly illustrating the two high-voltage electrical systems (Sicily and Malta), and having provided a description of the interconnection cable with Malta and its protection devices, the authors hypothesized two modes of operation (Sicily-Malta system islanded or interconnected to the rest of Europe). For the first case (isla…