SCHOOL ON RADIO USE FOR
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY

3rd - 21st February 2002, Trieste (Italy)


DAY FOUR
(6TH February 2003)
REVIEW
BY
HABIBU ATIB
(UGANDA)

The program of the 4th day of the school was divided into morning and afternoon.
Both the morning and afternoon had 3 sessions each.


MORNING SESSION

AFTERNOON SESSION
Information Technology & Telecommunications on developing economies (By Prof. Bill Luther, FCC-IB, Washington) Assembling and installing a Dish. (By Participants guided by C. Fonda)
Role Of Radio in Technology Applications (By Prof. Bill Luther, FCC-IB, Washington) Principles of digital Modulation (By Prof. R. Struzak)
OPEN Discussion brought by Otto Taking measurements of radio systems and GPS (By Participants guided by C. Fonda)

Today's program started by Dr. Radicella, introducing to the participants of the school and another famous scholar in the area of Telecommunication, Prof. Bill Luther from the United States. He has also presented in the same school for the last 3yrs.
Prof. Luther works with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
He has other responsibilities as well, such as:


The floor was handle over to Prof. Bill Luther.

He thanks Dr. Radicella, for his kind words, and being given another offer to exchange his idea with a new group in this school. He went further to say that this will make his work more easily since deals with international issues.

Before introducing his topic for the day, he hinted on education. He said education is a key to everything in the world and asks every participant in the school to continue reading even after the 3 weeks at Trieste, Italy.



His 1st part of the day's talk was on Information Technology & Telecommunications on developing economies and this included,

Briefly said that for spectrum management, there is need for:
He went further to define Radio & it's use.
He reminded about the Tragedy in Senegal which killed about 1800 peoples.
Also mentioned about the 1902 Titanic, which killed around 1500 people.

He quickly went on to mention that the Radio systems have really changed the world.

He said the economic development of any country depends on the 4 sectors he mentioned above, though he again stressed that to succeed in each of these sectors you need well qualified people. Hence it takes back to the key element of education.
He advice the participant to continue learning in there entire life period.
Details of this lectures you can visit the school websites, http://wireless.ictp.trieste.it

At point he displayed a frequency allocation chart for all countries in the world. It's agreed upon by the entire world states.
Here raised the concern of literacy rate of 18% in Burkina Faso, which calls for the entire world rescue.
He pointed out that in the US, for a period of 20yrs as per statistics 5% don't have Telephone.

He talked about Internet revolution, and pointed out that he doesn't remember when he last wrote a memo or received one.
Presented statistical data on the growth of email use in the US.








Internet Concern:

• Fraud • Cyberstalking
• Security • Gambling
• Money Laundering • Drug Trafficking
• Pornography • Taxes
• Spam • Quality
• IPR.

He also mentioned that it was until last year when India managed to join the family of IP Telephony.

He further mentioned that the goal for BANDWIDTH is 200mbs, which can be archived by use of fire optics.
He gave examples of downloadable free software such as:

Pointed out the significant drop in both K & C band. And this has been due to the high competition.

Finally he talked importance of S-Curves, which has three stages:
Saturation
Take Off


Launch



Then we break for Coffee at around 10 am, which served at the canteen.

Prof. Bill Luther introduced his 2nd talk of the day, and this was on the Role of Radio in Technology Applications.
He has several slides but he picked out the one on Forces Impacting Telecommunications.
He went on to remind people of the Radio Conference in June, which will address the element of allocation table among others.

Finally the morning session ended with a hot discussion on regulatory concerns.
Otto pointed out that back home in his country, government laws & policy and contracts with some companies doesn't allow same level of competition in terms of frequency allocation.
Carlo: It was also the case in Romania. The laws did allow people to use the 2.4GHz, which was only meant for Military purposes only. Though smart scholars used the advantage of University experiments to by pass this ban. Now almost the entire part of Romania is filled with wireless links.

Prof. Struzak: Each county is independent on how it manages it's spectrum, depending on there local laws, but at the same time companies have signed international treat to allow small frequency for every body.
He went further to advice participant and members present that the easy way to go about such ban or policy is to start with experiments and build on that further. This can be done at either research centres or universities.

Dr. Prakash: He said there was a period in India when the costs of wireless charge become lower than the one on landline. There was competition between Cellular, WLL and landlines.

Prof. Luther: Transparency and Accountability.
Where the state holder are accountable to the laws they make.
Decision need to be in the public interest.

That marked the end of morning session, at around 12:20pm.

THE AFTERNOON STARTED AT ROUND 2PM.

Carlo led the participant with equipment and tools for installation of a parabolic dish in the Adriantico Guest House (AGH). It was so exciting and challenging being the first time for most of the participants. We kept fixing and re-fixing until we got it right.
It took us (20 people) almost an hour to fix, though Carlo mentioned that experience engineer takes around 15min.
He also mentioned before installing these dish, it's always better to carry out plan/analysis 1st to get the measurement right otherwise you have keep dismantling what you had already fixed, and that is time consuming.

After the installation we had to configure Linux LILO (Linux loader) on some machine in the labs. It was a bit challenging for some participant who had no knowledge on Linux OS.





4:00pm

Prof. R. Struzak
Presented his talk on Principal of Modulation.
Keys things of concern in his presentation was

Some Popular Models of Propagation:
He finally demonstrated the simulation program, which the showed effect of temp against the distance between two masks at different height. One kept constant and varying the other.



Finally the day ended with participant taking some measurement from the earlier installed parabolic dish, with the help of Carlo.
He advice participant that to get some valid values u had to first take measurement of power before attaching the cable to dish and then when it's attached and take difference of the two. But this also depends on the type of the cable you are using.