| 1. |
- Ademuyiwa, Adesoji O., et al.
(författare)
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Determinants of morbidity and mortality following emergency abdominal surgery in children in low-income and middle-income countries
- 2016
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Ingår i: BMJ Global Health. - : BMJ Publishing Group Ltd. - 2059-7908. ; 1:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Child health is a key priority on the global health agenda, yet the provision of essential and emergency surgery in children is patchy in resource-poor regions. This study was aimed to determine the mortality risk for emergency abdominal paediatric surgery in low-income countries globally.Methods: Multicentre, international, prospective, cohort study. Self-selected surgical units performing emergency abdominal surgery submitted prespecified data for consecutive children aged <16 years during a 2-week period between July and December 2014. The United Nation's Human Development Index (HDI) was used to stratify countries. The main outcome measure was 30-day postoperative mortality, analysed by multilevel logistic regression.Results: This study included 1409 patients from 253 centres in 43 countries; 282 children were under 2 years of age. Among them, 265 (18.8%) were from low-HDI, 450 (31.9%) from middle-HDI and 694 (49.3%) from high-HDI countries. The most common operations performed were appendectomy, small bowel resection, pyloromyotomy and correction of intussusception. After adjustment for patient and hospital risk factors, child mortality at 30 days was significantly higher in low-HDI (adjusted OR 7.14 (95% CI 2.52 to 20.23), p<0.001) and middle-HDI (4.42 (1.44 to 13.56), p=0.009) countries compared with high-HDI countries, translating to 40 excess deaths per 1000 procedures performed.Conclusions: Adjusted mortality in children following emergency abdominal surgery may be as high as 7 times greater in low-HDI and middle-HDI countries compared with high-HDI countries. Effective provision of emergency essential surgery should be a key priority for global child health agendas.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Ahmed Waqas, Hafiz, et al.
(författare)
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Performance Prediction of Hybrid Bamboo-Reinforced Concrete Beams Using Gene Expression Programming for Sustainable Construction
- 2023
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Ingår i: Materials. - : MDPI. - 1996-1944 .- 1996-1944. ; 16:20
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The building and construction industry’s demand for steel reinforcement bars has increased with the rapid growth and development in the world. However, steel production contributes to harmful waste and emissions that cause environmental pollution and climate change-related problems. In light of sustainable construction practices, bamboo, a readily accessible and ecofriendly building material, is suggested as a viable replacement for steel rebars. Its cost-effectiveness, environmental sustainability, and considerable tensile strength make it a promising option. In this research, hybrid beams underwent analysis through the use of thoroughly validated finite element models (FEMs), wherein the replacement of steel rebars with bamboo was explored as an alternative reinforcement material. The standard-size beams were subjected to three-point loading using FEMs to study parameters such as the load–deflection response, energy absorption, maximum capacity, and failure patterns. Then, gene expression programming was integrated to aid in developing a more straightforward equation for predicting the flexural strength of bamboo-reinforced concrete beams. The results of this study support the conclusion that the replacement of a portion of flexural steel with bamboo in reinforced concrete beams does not have a detrimental impact on the overall load-bearing capacity and energy absorption of the structure. Furthermore, it may offer a cost-effective and feasible alternative.
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| 4. |
- Amin, Shoaib, 1985-, et al.
(författare)
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Concurrent dual-band power amplifier model modification using dual two-tone test
- 2016
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Ingår i: 46th European Microwave Conference (EUMC) 2016. - : Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). - 9782874870439 - 9781509015146 ; , s. 186-189
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- A dual two-tone technique for the characterization of memory effects in concurrent dual-band transmitters is revisited to modify a 2D-DPD model for the linearization of concurrent dual-band transmitters. By taking into account the individual nonlinear memory effects of the self- and cross-kernels, a new 2D modified digital pre-distortion (2D-MDPD) model is proposed, which not only supersedes the linearization performance but also reduces the computational complexity compared to the 2D-DP Dmodel in terms of a number of floating point operations (FLOPs). Experimental results show an improvement of 1.7 dBin normalized mean square error (NMSE) and a 58% reduction in the number of FLOPs.
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| 5. |
- Khan, Wali Ullah, et al.
(författare)
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Opportunities for Physical Layer Security in UAV Communication Enhanced with Intelligent Reflective Surfaces
- 2022
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Ingår i: IEEE Wireless Communications. - : Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). - 1536-1284. ; 29:6, s. 22-28
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are an important component of next-generation wireless networks that can assist in high data rate communications and provide enhanced coverage.Their high mobility and aerial nature offer deployment flexibility and low-cost infrastructure support to existing cellular networks and provide many applications that rely on mobile wireless communications. However, security is a major challenge in UAV communications, and physical layer security (PLS) is an important technique to improve the reliability and security of data shared with the assistance of UAVs. Recently, the intelligent reflective surface (IRS) has emerged as a novel technology to extend and/or enhance wireless coverage by reconfiguring the propagation environment of communications. This article provides an overview of how the IRS can improve the PLS of UAV networks. We discuss different use cases of PLS for IRS-enhanced UAV communications and briefly review the recent advances in this area. Then, based on the recent advances, we also present a case study that utilizes alternate optimization to maximize the secrecy capacity for an IRS-enhanced UAV scenario in the presence of multiple Eves. Finally, we highlight several open issues and research challenges to realize PLS in IRS-enhanced UAV communications.
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| 6. |
- Khan, Zain Ahmed, 1987-, et al.
(författare)
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A Comparative Analysis of the Complexity/Accuracy Tradeoff in the Mitigation of RF MIMO Transmitter Impairments
- 2017
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Ingår i: 2017 89th ARFTG Microwave Measurement Conference (ARFTG). - : IEEE. - 9781538627471 - 9781538627488
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper presents a comparative analysis of the complexity accuracy tradeoff in state-of-the-art RF MIMO transmitter mitigation models. The complexity and accuracy of the candidate models depends on the basis functions considered in these models. Therefore, a brief description of the mitigation models is presented accompanied by derivations of the model complexities in terms of the number of FLOPs. Consequently, the complexity accuracy tradeoff in the candidate models is evaluated for a 2 × 2 RF MIMO transmitter. Furthermore, the model complexities are analyzed for increasing nonlinear orders and number of antennas.
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| 7. |
- Khan, Zain Ahmed, 1987-
(författare)
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Characterization and Compensation of Hardware Impairments in Transmitters for Wireless Communications
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Increasing demands for data rate, energy efficiency and reliability in wireless communications have resulted in the introduction of radio frequency (RF) multiple input multiple output (MIMO) transmitters. However, MIMO transmitters suffer from additional crosstalk impairments along with the power amplifier (PA) and I/Q imbalance distortions observed in single input single output (SISO) transmitters. Therefore, this thesis focuses on the characterization and compensation of these hardware impairments in RF SISO and MIMO transmitters.PA distortions are often compensated using the Volterra series, but it suffers from high computational complexity. Therefore, a non-parametric method based on density estimation has been proposed in this thesis to estimate the PA transfer function, from which pruned Volterra models can be developed. The method is validated for a Doherty PA and achieves competitive error performance at a lower complexity than its competitors.For MIMO transmitters, a characterization technique that uses multitone excitation signals has been proposed. Multitone signals yield non-overlapping tones at the outputs of the MIMO Volterra kernels. These kernel outputs are used to identify the dominant crosstalk impairments, from which block structure and base-band behavioral models are developed. The method is validated for 2x2 and 3x3 MIMO transmitters and it is shown that the derived models achieve a better complexity accuracy trade-off than the other pruned MIMO Volterra models considered in this thesis.Finally, the thesis presents compensation models for joint static I/Q imbalance and MIMO PA distortions based on conjugate pair and real-valued basis functions. The models are augmented with sub-sample resolution to compensate for dynamic I/Q imbalance distortions. The proposed models are validated for a 2x2 RF MIMO transmitter and achieve a better complexity accuracy trade-off than the other state-of-the-art models considered in this thesis.
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| 8. |
- Khan, Zain Ahmed, et al.
(författare)
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Density Estimation Models for Strong Nonlinearities in RF Power Amplifiers
- 2014
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Ingår i: 2014 Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference Proceedings, APMC 2014. - 9784902339314 ; , s. 116-118
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The paper presents a method for modeling strongnonlinear effects in power amplifiers based on the principlesof density estimation. The static nonlinear transfer function isobtained by averaging measured data. The performance obtainedwith density estimation is similar to the one using high ordernonlinear static polynomial models. The benefit of consideredmethod over the ones using polynomial models is that the formerestimates blindly the structure of the transfer function and doesnot suffer from numerical instabilities.
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| 9. |
- Khan, Zain Ahmed, 1987-, et al.
(författare)
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Digital Predistortion for Joint Mitigation of I/Q Imbalance and MIMO Power Amplifier Distortion
- 2016
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Ingår i: IEEE transactions on microwave theory and techniques. - : IEEE Press. - 0018-9480 .- 1557-9670. ; :99, s. 1-12
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper analyzes the joint effects of in-phase and quadrature (I/Q) imbalance and power amplifier (PA) distortion for RF multiple input multiple output (MIMO) transmitters in the presence of crosstalk. This paper proposes candidate models for the digital predistortion of static I/Q imbalanced sources exciting a dynamic MIMO Volterra system. The proposed models are enhanced using a novel technique based on subsample resolution to account for dynamic I/Q imbalance distortions. Finally, the computational complexity of the proposed models is analyzed for implementation suitability in digital platforms. It is shown that the error spectrum for the proposed models in subsample resolution reaches the noise floor of the measurements. The proposed models achieve a normalized mean squared error of -50 dB and an adjacent channel power ratio of -57 dB for signal bandwidths upto 65 MHz and crosstalk levels ranging to -10 dB. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques in the joint mitigation of I/Q imbalance and PA distortion with crosstalk for a typical 2x2 MIMO telecommunication setup.
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| 10. |
- Khan, Zain Ahmed, 1987-, et al.
(författare)
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Extraction of the Third-Order 3x3 MIMO VolterraKernel Outputs Using Multitone Signals
- 2018
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Ingår i: IEEE transactions on microwave theory and techniques. - : Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). - 0018-9480 .- 1557-9670. ; 66:11, s. 4985-4999
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper uses multitone signals to simplify theanalysis of 3×3 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Volterrasystems by isolating the third-order kernel outputs from eachother. Multitone signals fed to an MIMO Volterra system yielda spectrum that is a permutation of the sums of the inputsignal tones. This a priori knowledge is used to design multitonesignals such that the third-order kernel outputs are isolated inthe frequency domain. The signals are designed by deriving theconditions for the offset and spacing of the input frequency grids.The proposed technique is then validated for the six possibleconfigurations of a 3x3 RF MIMO transmitter impaired bycrosstalk effects. The proposed multitone signal design is usedto extract the third-order kernel outputs, and their relativecontributions are analyzed to determine the dominant crosstalkeffects for each configuration.
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