Michael Faraday Institution e.v. Newsletter

Transcription

1 Michael Faraday Institution e.v. Newsletter June 2012 The MFI returned to activity with its Annual Meeting on Saturday, April 21. The meeting was held in the Dorint hotel, Augsburg. It commenced with the formal Jahresversammlung (Minutes distributed separately). Major items for the future were: - there will be a further general meeting in October, - in 2016 there will be a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the MFI After the lunch break, we had the MFI Prestige Lecture given by Prof. Dr. Jan Hesselbarth of the Institut für Hochfrequenztechnik, University of Stuttgart. His subject was "Hardware aspects of Heterogeneous Cellular Networks". Prof. Hesselbarth commenced by recalling that mobile telephones for the private user have been available since 1972 in the USA. They are of course very popular in Europe now, bringing an enormous growth in traffic. This growth results in today s problems, which are technical and financial: technical problems: financial problems: - handling exponentially growing amounts of data, - how to reduce capital expenditure (capex) and operation expenditure (opex). The data traffic growth will have temporal and spatial variability, the eco footprint (CO 2 and use of rare earths) must be controlled, and the costs to users must be held in check. In the future we must expect that new applications will generate additional traffic growth, for example : - 3D and holographic video, - cloud usage (remote databases), - usage beyond voice and eye. There will be a tremendous need for higher data rates and throughput. The reality today : - for cellular use, there is little or no profit for operators and OEMs*, the network is overloaded and thus the user-experience is often poor, - for WiFi, the network is overloaded at both 2.45 GHz and 5-6 GHz bands, procedures of usage are often complicated and thus user-experience is often poor. *Original Equipment manufacturers Today s solutions are : - bundle messages, - provide new frequency bands, - provide new standards and modulations. These measures could increase throughput by 1.5 to 3 times. In addition : - new, smaller cells could increase throughput by up to 10 times. - dedicated focused short-range millimetre-wave connections will enable GBit/sec speed for the user. The smaller cells will take off hot-spot traffic from macro cells, which then can focus on broadly distributed traffic. However, small cells create new problems, such as large amounts Page 1

2 of signalling traffic generated by mobile users crossing cell borders, and costs related to the installation of the cells and their high-speed backward connections, the so-called backhaul. High-speed backhaul can only be realized by (potentially very expensive) optical fibre or by millimetre-wave point-to-point links. Hardware requirements were summarised on Prof. Hesselbarth s slides below: Page 2

3 Prof. Hesselbarth s forecast was that tomorrow s networks : - could have data rates greater than 1 GBit/sec for fixed and nomadic users, - very many small cells, - will have seamless transition between frequency bands and data rates when moving from cell to cell for mobile and nomadic traffic. Prof. Hesselbarth received strong applause, and was presented with a certificate and a small gift by Herr Banerjee. Presentation to Prof. Hesselbarth --o-- After a short break for refreshments, the meeting continued with the MFI Kelvin Lecture by Dr Harald Huening of Daimler AG, Sindelfingen. His subject was an "Introduction to Evolutionary Algorithms". Dr Huening went back to the days of Darwin 150 years ago, who showed that successful animal and plant types change continuously. Evolutionary Algorithms use Darwinian-like evolutionary processes to solve difficult programming problems. At the microscopic level, birth and death processes operate with purely random variations, where the variations are not directed at any goal. At the macroscopic level, Darwin understood the main mechanisms of evolution, selection and mutation/recombination, long before genetics and without knowing Mendel s rules of inheritance. He observed that successful life forms have more offspring than the parent generation. All environments have finite resources, and population size is constant on average, thus exerting selection pressure on the number of individuals. Question: Who is selected? Answer: individuals that compete favourably for resources have increased chances of proliferation. By means of mutations, there are small variations in phenotypic traits, the traits which are determined by genes. Traits are unique to each individual, and the offspring are more similar to their parents than to other members of their species. Page 3

4 With both selection and mutation, the population evolves such that after some generations the individuals are better adapted to their environment. For example, on the Galapagos islands, different species of birds and turtles have evolved on each of the islands. In technology, rather than adaptation, the evolutionary algorithms are often used for optimization. Example optimisation problems are engineering design problems or combinatorial optimisation problems in computer science. Dr Huening then gave us examples of optimisation, in the design of a jet nozzle and of a bridge. In a typical search and optimisation process, - the population contains random differences in the individuals, - each individual represents a candidate solution, - the problem at hand is represented by the notion of fitness of individuals, - the fitness can be a numerical value or a ranking from tournaments, - the candidate solutions are evaluated to be assigned a fitness value, - the best results are chosen for the next generation. Dr Huening gave an example of the mechanical design of a space satellite boom. It commenced like this: and with evolutionary optimisation progressed to something like this: Dr. Huening was roundly applauded, and also received a certificate and a small gift. Presentation to Dr. Huening That concluded the session. Those who stayed on enjoyed dinner with old friends and new. --o-- Page 4

5 Sunday 22 April, Tour of Augsburg On Sunday morning we were up bright and early to be ready for the tour of Augsburg, one of the oldest cities in Germany. We met our guide-to-be outside the Tourist Office before we embarked on a 2-hour tour of the city. Our first major port of call was the Rathaus especially the Golden Hall where we were able to take a group photograph. This building was completely gutted in 1944, but luckily a complete set of drawings, safely kept, allowed its full restoration beginning in 1955 but not finished until 1985 when the Golden Hall was completed to its original splendour. Following this, we then walked through the city where we were shown numerous other buildings and churches along with a short description of their history. A visit to the Maximilianmuseum presented us with a model of the city as it was in the Middle Ages. This museum also sported a glass roof weighing over 30 tons and protecting the original sculptures that had decorated several fountains in the city. The fountains now use copies of these sculptures. Our final destination was the world famous Fuggerei, founded in 1516 and being the world s very first social housing complex, where the residents still pay a yearly rental of 1 Euro! We spent quite some time wandering its streets and visiting a preserved house as the earlier occupants would have known it and then later into a nearby fully modernized version, as were most of the houses, with all the mod cons that are to be expected in this day and age. The tour ended back at the Rathaus, where we enjoyed our à-la-carte meals in the Rathauskeller before saying our goodbyes and making our way back to our cars or the railway station. Tour Group in the Rathaus --o-- Page 5

6 Acknowledgements : Saturday s Programme : Slides by Prof. Hesselbarth and text based on slides by Dr. Huening Sunday s Programme : Text and photo by C. Copplestone Editor responsible : Derek Mullinger tel : mail to derek.mullinger@t-online.de Page 6