China's new players [mobile phone handset manufacture]

The Chinese mobile communications market is looking very attractive to multinationals faced with market saturation in regions like Western Europe, where penetration is expected to top 80% in the next few years. The Xinhua state news agency reports that mobile communications took 46% of the total telecoms revenue worth $26.5bn in the first half of 2003, when 28.5 million people signed up for mobile services-more than took up fixed lines. In terms of penetration, fixed-line still leads with coverage of 19.4 %, but at 18.3 % mobile phones are catching up fast. Demand for handsets is huge, but tough competition from local firms means that foreign manufacturers hoping to cash in on the boom can't afford to be complacent. China's Ministry of Information Industry reported that in the first half of 2003 the country's 37 mobile phone manufacturers produced just over 82 million handsets. Nokia and Motorola still take the lion's share, but 25 local firms grabbed a significant proportion of the market, with the biggest now among the country's top handset vendors.     

Pan European R&D: a perspective

New goals for Europe-wide technology policy are emerging, perhaps rather late in the day. In the early 1980s, Europe's leadership was seeking ways to help its large electronics producers hold their own against stiff US and Japanese competition. Now, nearly two decades later, many European companies still lack a competitive edge, and worry about unemployment has deepened. Yet, because of maturing views about the world economy, the focus of the policies of the European Union (EU) has changed. Large companies are seen as fighting for shares of intensely competitive global markets, in which uncertainty and innovation have become a way of life. While retaining a base in their home country, they conduct business around the world. Thus, most multinationals collaborate on the one hand at the regional and local levels, with many firms both large and small, and on the other hand at the global level, with other multinationals. Why, then, adopt technology policies that pay them to collaborate in conducting R&D, which they all do anyway. It would seem far more sensible to encourage the diffusion of new technologies and promote the health of smaller, under-capitalized companies. European technology policies have already influenced tendencies in this direction. They have encouraged collaboration among firms and research institutions across the European Community. Thanks to the Brussels-based R&D programs, companies have learned to work with firms beyond their national borders as a matter of routine, to seek new opportunities beyond their traditional home markets, and generally to think in European terms     

Environmental Factors Affecting Covid-19 Dynamics: A Study in Bengaluru City of Karnataka State of India

The horrifying and fast spreading COVID-19 pandemic has shocked India and in fact the entire world to its core. Indian Government has taken all the possible preventive steps to contain the wider spread of this highly contagious disease but the second wave in the month of April, 2021 has turned this strong country in a helpless position. In this paper, the effect of environmental factors like temperature and air quality index on the new confirmed cases along with recovered cases has been seen in Bengaluru Urban district of Karnataka State of India. Regression analysis has been carried out with the help of SPSS software. The outcomes from the paper will definitely give some valuable insights for the researchers around the world in their future combat measures.

     

手机市场呼唤召回制度

我国移动电话用户数已跃居世界第一位,且依然蕴藏着巨大的商机。由此不但引发了日趋激烈的市场竞争,而且造成了产品质量投诉量的居高不下,其中对于存在先天设计缺陷产品的处理目前在我国尚无法可依。国际上对缺陷产品实行的召回制度同样适用于我国。这是市场经济规则的需要,也是商家诚信作风的体现。我国已融入世界经济大潮之中,目前建立手机召回制度是必要和适时的。对生产企业而言,一旦发现缺陷产品流入市场,即刻确认并将其召回是明智之举。     

Money and the Internet: a strange new relationship

Electronic wallets, Internet-driven mail and electronic cash, credit cards that are debit cards capable of being refilled with electronic money that is spendable like pocket change, banks that not only have no branches but exist solely in cyberspace...indeed, we are entering a strange new world. Discount brokers want you to power up your computer, access your portfolio and trade your stocks-all electronically. Brokerage houses want to be your banker and banks want to be your broker. The author sees the electronic money revolution as inevitable, with “e-mail for money” becoming as ubiquitous in the future as e-mail messages are already today     

印度利用VSAT建立空中信息高速公路

ＶＳＡＴ卫星通信网能为那些经济角度来看不适合建立微波通信或光纤通信。但确需通信的地区提供通信服务。印度政府经过了认真论证，根据本国国情从９０年代初开始引入ＶＳＡＴ技术，建立了多个ＶＳＡＴ网络，并且利用ＶＳＡＴ卫星通信网建设印度特色的“空中信息高速公路”以满足其国内对高速通信的要求。     

Multinationals on the move

An overview is given of the steps being taken by the major Europe-based multinational technology firms to prepare for the post-1992 environment and to take advantage of opportunities opening in eastern Europe. The largest companies had been slower than US and Japanese companies to expand globally, but the past five years have seen a spate of mergers, joint ventures, and sales of business units as most of the continent's major players have become global operatives. Acquisitions have been made both on the continent and abroad, notably in the US. The aggressive pursuit of European opportunities by Japanese multinationals in the face of a potential US-European alliance is also examined     

电能表计量现状及其问题分析

随着社会经济的发展,我国每年用电量高达几亿千瓦,近几年内在世界用电量排名中始终排在前三位,且各种电能表的制造数量更是高达8000多万台。我国生产的电能表,不仅能够满足国内电能产业对电能表的需求,还可以出口到外国。作为与人们正常生活关系十分密切的电能表,如何确保准确的电能表计量是非常重要的。     

Clustering and scheduling methods based on SLNR in downlink CoMP system简

In downlink coordinated multi-point（CoMP） system, full cooperation is always not applicable in real world because of its high request in the backhaul. To deal with this problem, clustering decision is made to process transmission. In this paper clustering methods based on the metric signal-to-leakage-plus-noise（SLNR） is proposed. In addition, user scheduling schemes based on SLNR is also put up to make the scheduling set as large as possible. Simulation results show that the proposed clustering methods not only reduce the data sharing among the cooperating base stations（BSs）, but also improve the system throughput compared with the traditional clustering methods based on channel strength.     

Distributed self-tuning of sensor networks

This work is motivated by the need for an ad hoc sensor network to autonomously optimise its performance for given task objectives and constraints. Arguing that communication is the main bottleneck for distributed computation in a sensor network we formulate two approaches for optimisation of computing rates. The first is a team problem for maximising the minimum communication throughput of sensors and the second is a game problem in which cost for each sensor is a measure of its communication time with its neighbours. We investigate adaptive algorithms using which sensors can tune to the optimal channel attempt rates in a distributed fashion. For the team problem, the adaptive scheme is a stochastic gradient algorithm derived from the augmented Lagrangian formulation of the optimisation problem. The game formulation not only leads to an explicit characterisation of the Nash equilibrium but also to a simple iterative scheme by which sensors can learn the equilibrium attempt probabilities using only the estimates of transmission and reception times from their local measurements. Our approach is promising and should be seen as a step towards developing optimally self-organising architectures for sensor networks. Aditya Karnik obtained his B.E. from the University of Pune, Pune, India, and M.E. and Ph.D. (2004) in electrical communication engg. from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada. He was a recipient of the IBM Research Fellowship. His research interests are in performance evaluation, optimisation and control of communication networks. Anurag Kumar obtained his B.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, and the PhD degree from Cornell University, both in Electrical Engineering. He was then with Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, N.J., for over 6 years. Since 1988 he has been with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, in the Dept. of Electrical Communication Engineering, where he is now a Professor, and is also the Chairman of the department. From 1988 to 2003 he was the Coordinator at IISc of the Education and Research Network Project (ERNET), India’s first wide-area packet switching network. His area of research is communication networking, specifically, modeling, analysis, control and optimisation problems arising in communication networks and distributed systems. Recently his research has focused primarily on wireless networking. He has been elected Fellow of the IEEE, and the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), both from 2006, and has been a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) since 1998. He is an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Networking, and of IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials. He is a coauthor of the advanced text-book “Communication Networking: An Analytical Approach,” by Kumar, Majunath and Kuri, published by Morgan-Kaufman/Elsevier. Vivek Borkar got his B. Tech. (Elec. Engg.) from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, in 1976, M. S. (Systems and Control) from Case Western Reserve Uni. in 1977, and Ph.D. (Elec. Engg. and Computer Sci.) from the Uni. of California, Berkeley, in 1980. He was with TIFR Centre, Bangalore (1982–1989) and Indian Institute of Science (1989–1999) before taking up his present position at the School of Technology and Computer Science, Tata Inst. of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, Indian National Academy of Engineers and the IEEE. His research interests are stochastic control, stochastic algorithms and applications. He is on the editorial boards of Sadhana, Systems and Control Letters, SIAM J. Control and Optim., and Applicationes Mathematicae. He is the author of ‘Optimal Control of Diffusion Processes’ (Longman, 1989), ‘Topics in Controlled Markov Chains’ (Longman, 1991), ‘Probability Theory: An Advanced Course’ (Springer, 1995).     

One Europe, raring to go

11 of the European Union's 15 members will start phasing in a single currency, the Euro, on January 1st 1999. The exchange rates among the countries will be fixed as of 1 January. Each nation's central bank will become subject to Europe's newly established central bank rather as the regional Federal Reserve Banks in the United States report to the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC Transactions on all stock markets will be denominated exclusively in the new monetary unit. All large banks with Europe-wide pretensions will begin keeping at least one set of books in the Euro, and so, too, will all multinationals with serious European ambitions. Working from a common European foundation, corporate Europe, as well as political Europe, will have a much bigger world presence. The Euro is the vehicle for Europe to establish itself as a global actor. If the process of monetary unification proceeds more or less on schedule, and if it eventually embraces all the current members of the Common Market, their total economic product will exceed North America's. That prospect involves so many exciting opportunities for engineering innovators. In this article the authors begin to assess the opportunities     

Toward a hierarchical and architecture‐based virtual machine allocation in cloud data centers

Number of cloud data centers which consists of hundreds of hosts has increased tremendously around the world due to increase in demands for cloud services. It is expected energy consumption of data centers will reach 139.8 billion Kwh by 2020. Many algorithms are proposed to reduce energy consumption as well as service level agreement violationby minimizing the number of active hosts. Current proposed algorithms do not consider data center architecture, the physical position of hosts, and energy consumption of numerous switches that are in data centers. In this paper, a novel hierarchical cloud resource management is proposed that not only minimizes the number of hosts but also aggregates virtual machines on a limited subset of data center racks and modules to minimize energy consumption. Experimental results with Cloudsim show that our proposed algorithm reduces energy consumption up to 26% and service level agreement violation up to 96%.     

Analyseur scalaire de réseau millimétrique couvrant de 16 à 250 GHz

The growing needs to cover the millimeter range have hitherto been restrained by the heaviness and cost of the necessary devices. The problem of available sources is a difficult one : some (Gunn diodes) are small and workable, but very narrowly tunable ; others (bwo tubes) are quite widely tunable, but cumbersome and relying on high-voltage power supplies. The very high frequency range (over 100 GHz) requires klystrons (whose lifetime is short) or carcinotrons (which are powerful, but correspond to a huge investment in terms of money and space). We present here a recently marketed system based on an original idea. Very convenient, workable and lightweight, it is, up to now, the only device in the world which permits to work in the most extended millimeter range, from 16 to 250 GHz continuously, without a great number of sources or any removable drawers. The dynamic range measured is superior to 70 dB from 16 to 94 GHz, and better than 50 dB up to 170 GHz.     

Evaluation of relative merits/demerits of different signalingschemes used at a railway station for an approaching train in IndianRailways today

Indian Railways, one of the largest railway networks in the world today, has a peculiarity that a station exists almost every 5-7 km. Most trains do not stop at all stations and run through more stations than they stop at. The speed at which the trains run through the stations, therefore, is a crucial parameter that determines the run time of a train through a section and, hence, the total throughput (or carrying capacity of the railways). Indian Railways uses several signaling schemes to enable movement of trains in a safe manner. The signaling schemes play an important role in determining the action of the driver in terms of slowing down of trains and, consequently, on the throughput of the railway system. This paper examines the different signaling schemes used currently and in the recent past by Indian Railways from the point of view of information that they present to the train driver and the impact that it has on total throughput. The signaling schemes are compared using total signal entropy presented to the driver at each stage. Apart from theoretical computation of signal entropy, results of some experiments conducted to obtain the impact of signaling schemes on run time of trains are also presented     

Au revoir founding fathers

It is with some sadness that we conclude the year for III-Vs Review. Just as the Indian Summer we were enjoying came to an end so too did the lives of two distinguished contributors to the world of III-Vs. In October we lost Jim Turner and Seymour Cray. Both went too soon and the industry will be much the poorer without these popular characters. However, this editorial must also update on plans for the magazine for our 10th Anniversary next year so we bring some more cheery news too.     

Electronics and defense: turning setbacks into successes

Though it has its share of unique challenges, the Indian electronics industry is like those of more advanced countries in at least one way: a huge quantity of garden-variety electronics winds up in commercial and consumer products, but the most advanced applications are the almost exclusive province of Government establishments like defense. The authors describe how, interestingly, in electronics as in several other technologies, India has managed to respond to setbacks-the denial of technology by other countries or the exacting of extremely high prices for support and spare parts-by turning them into research or full-scale development opportunities     

拉美国家的电信改革及其启示

自20世纪80年代中叶起，拉美抛起了电信改革之潮。私有化和对外开放不仅使大量国内资金流向电信业，还吸引了许多欧美电信公司的大规模投资，相对于后开放的国家，率先开放的国家付出了相对较大的代价。中国的电信业应吸取拉美国家的经验，选择恰当进入时机开放市场，尽快创造良好的竞争环境，解决好普遍服务问题，并努力建立良好的投资环境。     

Integrating design and measurement

At the 2004 International Instrumentation and Measurement Conference in Italy, a number of us were discussing the growing importance of system-level design and the implications for simulation and measurement technologies. It was puzzling to us that technology continues to increase in complexity, yet the last two decades have seen the design world of simulation and modeling diverge from the world of measurement and testing. Today's systems, whether they are commercial products or scientific experiments, require a convergence of technologies that makes performance measurement and validation not only more critical but also more prone to error. In the discussions a point that came up repeatedly was the value of bringing the design and test communities closer together, and it was suggested that it was timely to highlight this issue. With that in mind, this note aims to stimulate community discussion by first examining some benefits and challenges of integration and then outlining possible directions for collaboration between the simulation and measurement communities.