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"Dairy of the Second day of the Second Week - 14.02.2006"
Morning Session
The day started dot on 9.00am to-day, as most of the participants were on time, looking forward to meet fellow participant early in the morning ( of course it's the St. Valantine's day to-day :-)
As usual Prof.R.Struzak, started with welcome "Good Morning" and the attendance Sheet (good way to keep track of who's bunking the class).
Prof.R.Struzak also gave warm welcome and Introduction to a new faculty Prof. E.Pietrosemoli from Venezuela, who joined the team yesterday.
The format of the day was very good. i.e build the theoritical foundation (with practical relevance) to further build on with practical work till the end of day ( we can say begining of next day i.e. till very late in night), for every strong castle the foundation need to be strong, we are lucky to have none other than Prof.R.Struzak with such a vast experience of several decades in radio physics and its applications doing that job.
Radio wave Propagation Basics
To-day the Professor has started with a new topic "Radio-wave Propagation basic" with lighting (picture!) and went on with RP physics, EM interactions, latency and frequency shifts finally ended the lecture with zooming google earth from trieste to the whole world. Deserved and got a loud applause.
http://wireless.ictp.it/school_2006/lectures/Struzak/RadioPropBasics-ebook.pdf
Link budget calculation :
The next lecture was by Marco Zennaro, he started mildly and confidently to go on the calculations of link budget. ( of course not monetory gains but signal gain is result of this budgeting !!). He showed us how to play around with the 4 important variable
- Characteristics of Radios
- Characteristics of Antennas
- Distance Between the Radios
- and the Allowed Power
The topic has generated very good response from the participant, with very useful qurries from participant, which brought in all the teaching faculties ( Carlo fonda, Prof. R.S., Prof. E.P) join to-gether in explaining the facts of distance between the antennas, equating dBi, dbm , bringing in the anology of mean sea level attitude as reference level for dBm.
http://wireless.ictp.it/school_2006/lectures/Marco/LinkBudget/index.html
Carlo Fondo : is like a memory resident software, which monitor the activities going on and pop-up whenever some interventions are required, popping up with examples, display of equipments, providing context oriented guidence. Always alert for help ! Good work!
Marco went on to show the calculation for a 5Km link with master and clint calculations for the link budgeting. He has demontrated an useful software tool by Greenbay, (www.gbppr.org) in which we just feed the netwrok specifications and get the wireless network link analysis automatically done. - very good !!
Software for wireless link design : Radio Mobile
The next pre-lunch lecture was by Prof. E.Pietrosemoli on radio mobile. The radio mobile is a free software which uses digital maps and Gis and runs on windows as well as linux (with simulations. He explained the features of the software, terrain profiles, resolution of maps, DEM, what you need to create a network using the software, he also explain the software with examples, as well as the limitation that this is not an alternative to the site survery, we do need to do the site survey, for those obstacles which are missed by the maps & radio mobile
This is really a very good software for wireless netwrok design and implementation and simulation.
http://wireless.ictp.it/school_2006/lectures/Ermanno/Radio_Mobile4.pdf
Post lunch Session
The post lunch session started little late (by 10 min), as ussual we were ready for hands on session. Prof. Pietrosemoli continued the demonstration for using the radio mobile for wireless netwrok design, we all tried to follow with him but somehow some files did'nt click and the session went a bit long figuring out and collecting all the informations required for making the software operational, good excercise, then the prof. took us along with step by step procedure for using the software ( too many parameters !!). A step by step written guide on wiki or radio lab hand book would have saved 45 minutes. Finally all of us could get things working on the software - its really very good software. This excercise made us understand various parameters associated with wireless netwroking and use GIS for planning and simulation of the same. Thanks prof. for Introducing the same to us.
Its almost 6.45 pm now, Vibrant Carlo Fonda has started the next lecture on preparation for the very exiting filed activity for the next day. He listed the schedule, strategy for the field work, and asked us to prepare the list the equipement and realted tools for the next day. We are all excited about the same and looking forward for it.
The lab work continued configuring linksys access points, clints for the next day...
One Suggession : Though the groups enjoyed working to-gether some times they are lost solving problems, It may be useful to assign one of the faculty/volenteer as mentor for each group which will save time and make things lot clear and keep them on track.
What a long day.. still the work going on and on...
Oh.. its time for the cafeteria to close, let me run to have some food for stomach too, ( There is an Indian proverb that says, when there is nothting for the ears to listen, then only you need some thing for the stomach, since we had so much to learn and hear, we forgot about eating... ofcourse Carlo Fonda (Cheers Carlo!!) is still running around arranging for the next session, the 4kg Chocolate party with fun, music, love and sweetness.
The party began with all the decorations, colours, lots of juice, cookies, music and hot chocolate, at 9.00 pm.. Thanks to Carlo couple.
Its 11.00 pm Still some people are working in the lab busy discussing with Rob, Thomas still starring at his apple laptop, some are still dancing at the lobby, enjoying the music, tasting hot chocolate.
Oh what a day it was, we have just few hour to go, to start next days work.
S.N.Ragu Kumar, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, INDIA