EXPERT'S EDGE


"The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure"

by:Sven Goran Eriksson

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)

TDMA, or Time Division Multiple Access was one of the first cell phone digital standards available in the United States. It was the first successor to the original AMPS analog service that was popular throughout the country, and was in popular service from the early-mid 1990's up until roughly 2003 when the last of the TDMA carriers, Cingular and AT&T, switched to the GSM digital standard.

TDMA was a significant leap over the analog wireless service that was in place at the time, and it's chief benefit for carriers was that it used the available wireless spectrum much more efficiently than analog, allowing more phone calls to go through simultaneously. An additional benefit to carriers was that it virtually eliminated the criminal cell phone cloning that was popular at the time by encrypting the signal it's wireless signal.

The primary benefit for wireless users of the era was dramatically increased call quality over the scratchy, frequently garbled or "under water" sounds that analog users had become accustomed to. All manufacturers produced TDMA handsets during this period of time, but Nokia's ubiquitous model 5165 is probably the most popular example of TDMA technology.TDMA was replaced by GSM to permit the use of advanced, data intensive features such as text messaging and picture messaging, and to allow an even more efficient us
e of bandwidth.

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)

Definition
These computers include the entire spectrum of PCs, through professional workstations up to super-computers. As the performance of computers has increased, so too has the demand for communication between all systems for exchanging data, or between central servers and the associated host computer system.The replacement of copper with fiber and the advancement sin digital communication and encoding are at the heart of several developments that will change the communication infrastructure. The former development has provided us with huge amount of transmission bandwidth. While the latter has made the transmission of all information including voice and video through a packet switched network possible.

With continuously work sharing over large distances, including international communication, the systems must be interconnected via wide area networks with increasing demands for higher bit rates.
For the first time, a single communications technology meets LAN and WAN requirements and handles a wide variety of current and emerging applications. ATM is the first technology to provide a common format for bursts of high speed data and the ebb and flow of the typical voice phone call. Seamless ATM networks provide desktop-to-desktop multimedia networking over single technology, high bandwidth, low latency network, removing the boundary between LAN WAN.

ATM is simply a Data Link Layer protocol. It is asynchronous in the sense that the recurrence of the cells containing information from an individual user is not necessarily periodic. It is the technology of choice for evolving B-ISDN (Board Integrated Services Digital Network), for next generation LANs and WANs. ATM supports transmission speeds of 155Mbits / sec. In the future, Photonic approaches have made the advent of ATM switches feasible, and an evolution towards an all packetized, unified, broadband telecommunications and data communication world based on ATM is taking place.

These computers include the entire spectrum of PCs, through professional workstations upto super-computers. As the performance of computers has increased, so too has the demand for communication between all systems for exchanging data, or between central servers and the associated host computer system.
The replacement of copper with fiber and the advancement sin digital communication and encoding are at the heart of several developments that will change the communication infrastructure. The former development has provided us with huge amount of transmission bandwidth. While the latter has made the transmission of all information including voice and video through a packet switched network possible.

With continuously work sharing over large distances, including international communication, the systems must be interconnected via wide area networks with increasing demands for higher bit rates.For the first time, a single communications technology meets LAN and WAN requirements and handles a wide variety of current and emerging applications. ATM is the first technology to provide a common format for bursts of high speed data and the ebb and flow of the typical voice phone call. Seamless ATM networks provide desktop-to-desktop multimedia networking over single technology, high bandwidth, low latency network, removing the boundary between LAN WAN.

Analog-Digital Hybrid Modulation(electronics seminar topic)

This paper seeks to present ways to eliminate the inherent quantization noise component in digital communications, instead of conventionally making it minimal. It deals with a new concept of signaling called the Signal Code Modulation (SCM) Technique. The primary analog signal is represented by: a sample which is quantized and encoded digitally, and an analog component, which is a function of the quantization component of the digital sample. The advantages of such a system are two sided offering advantages of both analog and digital signaling. The presence of the analog residual allows for the system performance to improve when excess channel SNR is available. The digital component provides increased SNR and makes it possible for coding to be employed to achieve near error-free transmission.

Introduction

Let us consider the transmission of an analog signal over a band-limited channel. This could be possible by two conventional techniques: analog transmission, and digital transmission, of which the latter uses sampling and quantization principles. Analog Modulation techniques such as Frequency and Phase Modulations provide significant noise immunity as known and provide SNR improvement proportional to the square root of modulation index, and are thus able to trade off bandwidth for SNR.

The SCM Technique : An Analytical Approach
Suppose we are given a bandlimited signal of bandwidth B Hz, which needs to be transmitted over a channel of bandwidth Bc with Gaussian noise of spectral density N0 watts per Hz. Let the transmitter have an average power of P watts. We consider that the signal is sampled at the Nyquist rate of 2B samples per second, to produce a sampled signal x(n).

Next, let the signal be quantized to produce a discrete amplitude signal of M=2b levels. Where b is the no. of bits per sample of the digital symbol D, which is to be encoded. More explicitly, let the values of the 2b levels be, q1, q2, q3, q4…qM which are distributed over the range [-1, +1], where is the proportionality factor determined relative to the signal. Given a sample x(n) we find the nearest level qi(n). Here, qi(n) is the digital symbol and xa(n)= x(n)-qi(n) is the analog representation. The exact representation of the analog signal is given by x(n)=qi(n)+xa(n).

We can accomplish the transmission of this information over the noisy channel by dividing it into two channels: one for analog information and another for digital information. The analog channel bandwidth is Ba= aB, and the digital channel bandwidth being Bd= dB, where Ba+Bd=Bc, the channel bandwidth. Let =Bc/B, be the bandwidth expansion factor, i.e. the ratio of the bandwidth of the channel to the bandwidth of the signal.
Similarly, the variables a and d are the ratios of Ba/B and Bd/B. Here we will assume that a=1 so that d= -1. The total power is also divided amongst the two channels with fraction pa for the analog channel and fraction pd for the digital one,
so that pa+pd=1.

Multisensor Fusion and Integration(electronics seminar topic)

Introduction
Sensor is a device that detects or senses the value or changes of value of the variable being measured. The term sensor some times is used instead of the term detector, primary element or transducer.

The fusion of information from sensors with different physical characteristics, such as light, sound, etc enhances the understanding of our surroundings and provide the basis for planning, decision making, and control of autonomous and intelligent machines.

Sensors Evolution

A sensor is a device that responds to some external stimuli and then provides some useful output. With the concept of input and output, one can begin to understand how sensors play a critical role in both closed and open loops.

One problem is that sensors have not been specified. In other words they tend to respond variety of stimuli applied on it without being able to differentiate one from another. Neverthless, sensors and sensor technology are necessary ingredients in any control type application. Without the feedback from the environment that sensors provide, the system has no data or reference points, and thus no way of understanding what is right or wrong g with its various elements.

Sensors are so important in automated manufacturing particularly in robotics. Automated manufacturing is essentially the procedure of remo0ving human element as possible from the manufacturing process. Sensors in the condition measurement category sense various types of inputs, condition, or properties to help monitor and predict the performance of a machine or system.

Multisensor Fusion And Integration

Multisensor integration is the synergistic use of the information provided by multiple sensory devices to assist in the accomplishment of a task by a system.

Multisensor fusion refers to any stage in the integration process where there is an actual combination of different sources of sensory information into one representational format.

Multisensor Integration

The diagram represents multisensor integration as being a composite of basic functions. A group of n sensors provide input to the integration process. In order for the data from each sensor to be used for integration, it must first be effectively modelled. A sensor model represents the uncertainty and error in the data from each sensor and provides a measure of its quality that can be 7used by the subsequent integration functions.