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Diary of Tuesday, 7th February 2006
This second day has started with the talk dB: Units and Calculations of Prof.R. Struzak to give a common background to all participants about the most used dimensionless unit in electromagnetic communication. Some practical examples were given to help participants to be more confident with these units.
Also, the lecturer gave a talk about Interference and Coexistence, whose purpose was to review basic physics of interference issues in microwave radio links. Three topologies of networks were presented namely Point to Point network, Point to Multiplepoint network, and Mesh network. Some causes of interference were enumerated. The term coexistence even though not used in telecommunication standards is used to describe electromagnetic compatibility. Some experimental results about coverage map were presented to show the coverage loss upon the number of omnidirectional transmitters involved. Some characteristics on RF waves were presented.
After a break, C. Fonda and M. Zennaro talked about the Introduction to open source that underlines the open collaboration and the shared aspect of the source code, content, etc -not only softwares. Some concepts are compared regarding open source and science namely discovering and creation, replication and debugging. Some open softwares are listed in example but the school will focus on ubuntu linux.
T. Krag's talk was about Open source/Open content at ICTP school on wireless . He explained concepts of public domain, copyleft license, BSD-style license, content license. The four freedoms on free softwares were presented. Practical examples on contents license are about materials on the wireless networking we are using at this school while ubuntu linux distribution is a free software. Finally, one can realize linux boxes can replace any piece of device in the network showing the strong co-operation between linux and networking. 
After the afternoon coffee break, the session with C. Fonda was about Introduction to laboratory equipments. We learnt how RF measurements can be accomplished in dB and mW. The class is divided into three groups for competition session. Each group has to report all the experimental results. The lab session continued under T. Krag supervision with the Introduction to linux and linux installation. Ubuntu linux distribution is used as free software. A beautiful and well organized diner party closed the day. Participants came back in the lab to complete the measurements or installation. You can see, sometimes 24 hours a day is not enough to reach a defined goal. For instance, the movie visualisation is reported.
(photos added by carlo, from the PhotoArchive)