Neo Tech News

Pakistan can save a big chunk of budgetary allocations by using solid waste to generate electricity and gas that can help in overcome the persistent energy crisis in the country and the Capital Development Authority (CDA) is all set to launch a pilot project to act as a role model for other cities. The successful experiments of power and gas generation in western countries have opened a window of opportunities for Pakistan where solid waste management has emerged as a major issue negative impacting the human health as well as degrading environment.

These remarks were expressed at an International Symposium on ‘Solid Waste Management’, recently organized by the Pakistan Science Foundation. Purpose of the symposium was to highlight urban, hospital and industrial waste issues that need to be addressed urgently, as inefficient disposal of waste is the main source of pest attack on economic crops and related-health problems and environmental deterioration.

“Global environment can be well protected through established ways of solid waste management that can not only resolves this critical issue but also this waste can be used for power and gas generation. Pakistan can significantly get benefit of it,” said Dr. Giulia Costa, an international expert on waste management from University of Rome, Italy, during giving her presentation on waste management.

She elaborated types and composition of solid waste in different countries and methods being used for its management. She revealed that in year 2009 about four billion tons solid waste was produced across the world.

According to her, there are two types of solid waste – hazardous and non-hazardous – and said that the best management is firstly to avoid solid waste generation and if not possible we should reduce it, recycle and treat it.

Landfill sites, biological and thermal treatments are main methods to manage the solid waste, she explained and added after treatment only residues should be disposed of at landfill sites.

At the same time, she also mentioned that waste treatment plants failed in many countries as they made a lot of mistakes due to poor designing and lake of skills. However, she said that biological and thermal treatment methods can be used in Pakistan for solid waste management.

In his remarks, Federal Secretary for Science and Technology Ikhlaq Ahmad Tarar said, “It is very unfortunate that we are unable to handle the issue of solid waste management leaving hazardous effects on human health and environment.”

He was of the view that certain governance issues and mafia involved in business of solid waste are the main reasons for inappropriate solid waste management.

While addressing the symposium, PSF Chairman Prof. Dr. Manzoor H. Soomro said that the Foundation besides it functions to promote and popularize science and technology in the country through its programmes is also playing the role of a catalyst to take up initiative for resolving different issues of national importance by establishing linkages between academia, R&D organizations and industry.

He said that this symposium will lead them to formulate different projects on solid waste management. Dr. Soomro said that European Union is willing to work with PSF on different joint projects. He also made a mention to plan of MoU with University of Rome regarding collaboration in solid waste treatment projects.

The stakeholders, involved in waste management, from different organizations like Engineering Universities; CDA, LDA RDA, representatives from Ministry of Climate Change, PCSIR, COMSATS, NUST; UNIDO, UNDP, UNEP and UNESCO also participated in the symposium to share their experiences.

Evolution of Mobile Radio communication

 

Wireless devices are always interesting for common people it makes life easier within no times wireless devices are essential for life now a days. In recent times communication is complete dependent on mobile or wireless networks.

Let us discuss the brief history of the evolution of mobile communication through the whole world .wireless communication is experience faster growth period in history .this has been possible because of enabling technologies that permits widespread deployment.

As a matter of fact, in mobile communication, the growth has been slow and coupled to various technological improvements. To provide wireless communication to the whole world was a dream before the development of wireless communication or cellular concept by bell laboratories in the 1960s and 1970s, solid state radio frequency hardware in the 1970s,the wireless communication era came into existence. The world has been possible because of the new technologies developed in the 1970s,mobile and portable communication system will be coupled closely to the allocation of radio spectrum and various regulatory decisions. the signal process, access and networks areas.

In 1935, Armstrong invented and demonstrated the frequency modulation (FM) for the first time. The numbers of mobiles uses in us raise from several thousands in 1970s to 86,000 by 1948, and about 1.4 million users in1962.

As a mater of facts, the vast majority of mobile uses in the 1960s the public switched telephone networks (PTSN). However, with the boom in CB radio and cordless appliances such as garage door openers, the numbers of users of mobile and portable radio in 1995 was about 100 million, or 37% of theUSpopulation.

Reasons for Developing a Cellular Mobiles Telephone System

There are so many reasons for developing a cellular mobile telephone system. Let us discuss few main reasons as under:

(i) Limitations of conversational mobile telephone system

(ii) Spectrum efficiency considerations

(iii) Technology, feasibility and services affordability

Traditional mobile service was structured in a fashion similar to television broadcasting: One very powerful transmitter located at the highest spot in an area would broadcast in a radius of up to 50 kilometers. The cellular concept structured the mobile telephone network in a different way. Instead of using one powerful transmitter, many low-power transmitters were placed throughout a coverage area. For example, by dividing a metropolitan region into one hundred different areas (cells) with low-power transmitters using 12 conversations (channels) each, the system capacity theoretically could be increased from 12 conversations—or voice channels using one powerful transmitter—to 1,200 conversations (channels) using one hundred low-power transmitters.

Mobile Communications Principles

Each mobile uses a separate, temporary radio channel to talk to the cell site. The cell site talks to many mobiles at once, using one channel per mobile. Channels use a pair of frequencies for communication—one frequency (the forward link) for transmitting from the cell site and one frequency (the reverse link) for the cell site to receive calls from the users. Radio energy dissipates over distance, so mobiles must stay near the base station to maintain communications. The basic structure of mobile networks includes telephone systems and radio services. Where mobile radio service operates in a closed network and has no access to the telephone system, mobile telephone service allows interconnection to the telephone network.

Interference problems caused by mobile units using the same channel in adjacent areas proved that all channels could not be reused in every cell. Areas had to be skipped before the same channel could be reused. Even though this affected the efficiency of the original concept, frequency reuse was still a viable solution to the problems of mobile telephony systems.
Engineers discovered that the interference effects were not due to the distance between areas, but to the ratio of the distance between areas to the transmitter power (radius) of the areas. By reducing the radius of an area by 50 percent, service providers could increase the number of potential customers in an area fourfold. Systems based on areas with a one-kilometer radius would have one hundred times more channels than systems with areas 10 kilometers in radius. Speculation led to the conclusion that by reducing the radius of areas to a few hundred meters, millions of calls could be served.
The cellular concept employs variable low-power levels, which allow cells to be sized according to the subscriber density and demand of a given area. As the population grows, cells can be added to accommodate that growth. Frequencies used in one cell cluster can be reused in other cells. Conversations can be handed off from cell to cell to maintain constant phone service as the user moves betweencells.
The cellular radio equipment (base station) can communicate with mobiles as long as they are within range. Radio energy dissipates over distance, so the mobiles must be within the operating range of the base station. Like the early mobile radio system, the base station communicates with mobiles via a channel. The channel is made of two frequencies, one for transmitting to the base station and one to receive information from the base station.

Cellular System Architecture

Increases in demand and the poor quality of existing service led mobile service providers to research ways to improve the quality of service and to support more users in their systems. Because the amount of frequency spectrum available for mobile cellular use was limited, efficient use of the required frequencies was needed for mobile cellular coverage. In modern cellular telephony, rural and urban regions are divided into areas according to specific provisioning guidelines. Deployment parameters, such as amount of cell-splitting and cell sizes, are determined by engineers experienced in cellular system architecture.
Provisioning for each region is planned according to an engineering plan that includes cells, clusters, frequency reuse, and handovers.

A cell is the basic geographic unit of a cellular system. The term cellular comes from the honeycomb shape of the areas into which a coverage region is divided. Cells are base stations transmitting over small geographic areas that are represented as hexagons. Each cell size varies depending on the landscape. Because of constraints imposed by natural terrain and man-made structures, the true shape of cells is not a perfect hexagon.

A cluster is a group of cells. No channels are reused within a cluster.

Because only a small number of radio channel frequencies were available for mobile systems, engineers had to find a way to reuse radio channels to carry more than one conversation at a time. The solution the industry adopted was called frequency planning or frequency reuse. Frequency reuse was implemented by restructuring the mobile telephone system architecture into the cellular concept.

The concept of frequency reuse is based on assigning to each cell a group of radio channels used within a small geographic area. Cells are assigned a group of channels that is completely different from neighboring cells. The coverage area of cells is called the footprint. This footprint is limited by a boundary so that the same group of channels can be used in different cells that are far enough away from each other so that their frequencies do not interfere.

Cells with the same number have the same set of frequencies. Here, because the number of available frequencies is 7, the frequency reuse factor is 1/7. That is, each cell is using 1/7 of available cellular channels.

The final obstacle in the development of the cellular network involved the problem created when a mobile subscriber traveled from one cell to another during a call. As adjacent areas do not use the same radio channels, a call must either be dropped or transferred from one radio channel to another when a user crosses the line between adjacent cells. Because dropping the call is unacceptable, the process of handoff was created. Handoff occurs when the mobile telephone network automatically transfers a call from radio channel to radio channel as a mobile crosses adjacent cells.

During a call, two parties are on one voice channel. When the mobile unit moves out of the coverage area of a given cell site, the reception becomes weak. At this point, the cell site in use requests a handoff. The system switches the call to a stronger-frequency channel in a new site without interrupting the call or alerting the user. The call continues as long as the user is talking, and the user does not notice the handoff at all.