Travelling-wave photodetectors with 172-GHz bandwidth and 76-GHzbandwidth-efficiency product

Results of the first fabrication and measurement of travelling-wave photodetectors are reported. The devices have bandwidths as high as 172 GHz, the highest reported for a p-i-n photodetector, and bandwidth-efficiency products as large as 76 GHz, the largest reported for any photodetector without gain. Comparisons with vertically illuminated and waveguide photodetectors fabricated on the same wafer establish the superior performance of travelling-wave photodetectors. Microwave loss on the travelling-wave photodetector structure is identified as a bandwidth limitation     

The impact of pre-clerking clinics on surgical operation cancellations: a prospective audit

Pre-clerking of all patients undergoing elective general surgical operations was introduced at our hospital in an attempt to reduce an unacceptably high operation cancellation rate. A prospective audit has been performed on the effect of this policy on the cancellation rate. Before the introduction of pre-clerking there was a marked seasonal variation in the number of patients who failed to attend for surgery, which could be explained by absence on holiday. This seasonal variation disappeared after the start of pre-clerking clinics, but there has been no reduction in the number of cancellations for medical reasons.     

Turbo multiuser detection with unknown interferers

We consider the problem of turbo multiuser detection for synchronous and asynchronous code-division multiple-access (CDMA) in the presence of unknown users. Turbo multiuser detectors, as previously developed, typically require knowledge of the signature waveforms of all of the users in the system and ignore users whose signature sequences are unknown, e.g., users outside the cell. We develop turbo multiuser detection for CDMA uplink systems and other environments in which the receiver has knowledge of the signature waveforms of only K˘⩽ K users. Subspace techniques are used to estimate the interference from the unknown-users and the interference estimate is subtracted from the received signal. We see that the new receiver significantly outperforms the conventional turbo multiuser receiver for moderate and high signal-to-noise ratios. It is also seen that the traditional turbo receiver provides little gain through iteration when unknown users are present