We demonstrate the effectiveness of frequency selective surface filters in wireless communications at low terahertz (THz) frequencies. Full-wave simulations of pass-band filters designed at 270 GHz ...and 330 GHz are compared with measurements over 220-360 GHz, showing remarkable agreement. The filter spectral response is used to analytically model a THz filter-based wireless channel for modulated signals. In particular, numerical results and measurements for an OOK modulated signal are in good agreement for both free-space and filtered transmission at 14 Gb/s. In both cases, bit error rates (BER) as low as 10-10 are measured. This result demonstrates that the filters marginally affect the BER with respect to free-space, interference-free transmission, whereas interfering signals are strongly rejected. This result is demonstrated through a systematic evaluation of the BER in presence of an interfering signal with different carriers and amplitudes. Results confirm a strong filter rejection to interference carriers close to the filter central frequency. Conversely, without the filters the BER performance is fully compromised. Finally, we demonstrate numerically and experimentally that the constellation diagram for 104 Gb/s QAM-16 communication is not significantly affected by the filter. The investigated filters may provide a robust approach towards efficient spectrum management for future 6G wireless applications.
Electroencephalography (EEG) signal analysis is a fast, inexpensive, and accessible technique to detect the early stages of dementia, such as Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease ...(AD). In the last years, EEG signal analysis has become an important topic of research to extract suitable biomarkers to determine the subject’s cognitive impairment. In this work, we propose a novel simple and efficient method able to extract features with a finite response filter (FIR) in the double time domain in order to discriminate among patients affected by AD, MCI, and healthy controls (HC). Notably, we compute the power intensity for each high- and low-frequency band, using their absolute differences to distinguish among the three classes of subjects by means of different supervised machine learning methods. We use EEG recordings from a cohort of 105 subjects (48 AD, 37 MCI, and 20 HC) referred for dementia to the IRCCS Centro Neurolesi “Bonino-Pulejo” of Messina, Italy. The findings show that this method reaches 97%, 95%, and 83% accuracy when considering binary classifications (HC vs. AD, HC vs. MCI, and MCI vs. AD) and an accuracy of 75% when dealing with the three classes (HC vs. AD vs. MCI). These results improve upon those obtained in previous studies and demonstrate the validity of our approach. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed method might allow its future development on embedded devices for low-cost real-time diagnosis.
With the constant growth of devices connected to the internet, many researchers focus their interest on the development of Remote Laboratories, taking advantage of the numerous electronic open-source ...platforms. The aim of this work is to propose a compact solution (hardware and software) for the implementation of a low-cost open-access remote laboratory. The key concept is using Python, a programming language that is strong, flexible and rich of free external packages. Specifically, Python is used at the same time as: (i) a microframework with server functionalities, (ii) a control unit that drives an Arduino microcontroller and a Raspberry Pi microcomputer. The software to access the laboratory is realized as a web client interface by using HTML5 and JavaScript. This software is light enough to be run on an average personal computer. The concept of Remote Laboratory allows students to be able to carry out didactic experiences without constraints with regard to space and time, being it accessible from everywhere with just a PC or even a smart device (smartphone, tablet, etc.). With this remote laboratory, students can do real measurements of physical quantities and perform real activities while accessing the system from any place, thus allowing students of distance learning universities to do real experiments.
E2GPR is a new software tool, available free of charge for both academic and commercial use. It is conceived to ease the use of GprMax2D, a versatile and accurate Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) ...simulator that is well-known in the Ground-Penetrating Radar community and has been successfully used for a diverse range of applications in academia and industry. The main purposes of E2GPR are to: 1) assist in the creation, modification and analysis of GprMax2D models, through a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) system; 2) allow parallel and/or distributed computing with GprMax2D, on a network of computers; 3) automatically plot A-scans and B-scans generated by GprMax2D. The CAD and plotter parts of the tool are implemented in Java and can run on any Java Virtual Machine (JVM), regardless of computer architecture. Scripts devoted to supporting parallel and/or distributed computing, instead, require the set up of a Web-Service (on a server emulator or server); such scripts are currently configured for Windows Server and Internet Information Services (IIS). In this paper, E2GPR is presented and examples are provided which demonstrate its use. E2GPR is a contribution to COST Action TU1208 "Civil Engineering Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar" and can be currently obtained by contacting the authors at the dedicated address e2gpr@gpradar.eu; it will soon be possible to download it from the Action's website, www.GPRadar.eu.
The capabilities of frequency-selective surface (FSS) as free-space filters for wireless communications in the 300 GHz band are here demonstrated experimentally. The presence of a filter plays a key ...role to protect wireless communications from out-of-band interference without resorting to computation intensive forward error correction schemes. An FSS filter is suitably designed to exhibit an almost linear phase and a low insertion loss over a 20 GHz bandwidth centered around 270 GHz. A method based on both full-wave simulations and numerical techniques is developed to predict the bit-error rate (BER) performance of a filter-based wireless communication when an on-off keying modulated signal is sent at 14 Gb/s. Results are corroborated through measurements and confirm that the filters marginally affect the BER within the operating bandwidth while it is capable of strongly rejecting out-of-band interferences. In future works, the performance of more elaborated filters and modulations schemes will be investigated in detail.
This paper presents two electromagnetic simulators based on the Finite-Difference Time Domain (FDTD) technique and Boundary Element Method (BEM), for Ground Penetrating Radar applications. The first ...simulator is the new open-source version of the software gprMax, which employs Yee's algorithm to solve Maxwell's equations by using the FDTD method and includes advanced features allowing the accurate analysis of realistic scenarios. Additionally, E 2 GPR is a freeware package conceived to ease the use of gprMax: it assists in the creation, modification and analysis of two-dimensional models and can be used to plot results. The second simulator is TWiNS-II: this is free software for the analysis of multiple thin wires in the presence of two media, implementing the Galerkin-Bubnov Indirect BEM; calculations can be undertaken in the frequency or time domain. These tools have been developed by Members of the COST Action TU1208 "Civil Engineering Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar".
Body Sensor Networks (BSNs) have been recently introduced for the remote monitoring of human activities in a broad range of application domains, such as health care, emergency management, fitness and ...behavior surveillance. BSNs can be deployed in a community of people and can generate large amounts of contextual data that require a scalable approach for storage, processing and analysis. Cloud computing can provide a flexible storage and processing infrastructure to perform both online and offline analysis of data streams generated in BSNs. This paper proposes BodyCloud, a SaaS approach for community BSNs that supports the development and deployment of Cloud-assisted BSN applications. BodyCloud is a multi-tier application-level architecture that integrates a Cloud computing platform and BSN data streams middleware. BodyCloud provides programming abstractions that allow the rapid development of community BSN applications. This work describes the general architecture of the proposed approach and presents a case study for the real-time monitoring and analysis of cardiac data streams of many individuals.
•An integration of BSNs and Cloud Computing for the next generation large-scale BSN applications.•The BodyCloud SaaS approach enables the systematic development of Community BSNs.•ECGaaS is a novel Cloud service for the real-time monitoring and off-line analysis of the ECG of assisted livings.
Background
The TOPAZ‐1 phase III trial reported a survival benefit with the anti‐programmed death cell ligand 1 (anti‐PD‐L1) durvalumab in combination with gemcitabine and cisplatin in patients with ...advanced biliary tract cancer. The present study investigated the efficacy and safety of this new standard treatment in a real‐world setting.
Methods
The analysed population included patients with unresectable, locally advanced or metastatic adenocarcinoma of the biliary tract treated with durvalumab in combination with gemcitabine and cisplatin at 17 Italian centres. The primary endpoint of the study was progression‐free survival (PFS), whereas secondary endpoints included overall survival (OS), overall response rate (ORR) and safety. Unadjusted and adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) by baseline characteristics were calculated using the Cox proportional hazards model.
Results
From February 2022 to November 2022, 145 patients were enrolled. After a median follow‐up of 8.5 months (95% CI: 7.9–13.6), the median PFS was 8.9 months (95% CI: 7.4–11.7). Median OS was 12.9 months (95% CI: 10.9–12.9). The investigator‐assessed confirmed ORR was 34.5%, and the disease control rate was 87.6%. Any grade adverse events (AEs) occurred in 137 patients (94.5%). Grades 3–4 AEs occurred in 51 patients (35.2%). The rate of immune‐mediated AEs (imAEs) was 22.7%. Grades 3–4 imAEs occurred in 2.1% of the patients. In univariate analysis, non‐viral aetiology, ECOG PS >0 and NLR ≥3 correlated with shorter PFS.
Conclusion
The results reported in this first real‐world analysis mostly confirmed the results achieved in the TOPAZ‐1 trial in terms of PFS, ORR and safety.
PDF
