Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is the modulation technology used in Fourth Generation (4G) and Fifth Generation (5G) wireless communication systems, and it will likely be essential to Sixth Generation (6G) wireless communication systems. However, OFDM introduces a high Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) in the time domain due to constructive interference among multiple subcarriers, increasing the complexity and cost of the amplifiers and, consequently, the cost and complexity of 6G networks. Therefore, the development of new solutions to reduce the PAPR in OFDM systems is crucial to 6G networks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMillimeter-wave (mmWave) radars attain high resolution without compromising privacy while being unaffected by environmental factors such as rain, dust, and fog. This study explores the challenges of using mmWave radars for the simultaneous detection of people and small animals, a critical concern in applications like indoor wireless energy transfer systems. This work proposes innovative methodologies for enhancing detection accuracy and overcoming the inherent difficulties posed by differences in target size and volume.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Levodopa has a short half-life and a limited window of opportunity for absorption in the proximal small intestine. IPX203 is an oral, extended-release formulation of carbidopa-levodopa developed to address these limitations.
Objective: To assess the efficacy and safety of IPX203 vs immediate-release carbidopa-levodopa in patients with Parkinson disease who are experiencing motor fluctuations.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a key technology to interconnect the real and digital worlds, enabling the development of smart cities and services. The timely collection of data is essential for IoT services. In scenarios such as agriculture, industry, transportation, public safety, and health, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) play a fundamental role in fulfilling this task.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: IPX203 is a novel oral extended-release (ER) formulation of carbidopa (CD) and levodopa (LD) developed to address the short half-life and limited area for absorption of LD in the gastrointestinal tract. This paper presents the formulation strategy of IPX203 and its relationship to the pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamic profile of IPX203 in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients.
Methods: IPX203 was developed with an innovative technology containing immediate-release (IR) granules and ER beads that provides rapid LD absorption to achieve desired plasma concentration and maintaining it within the therapeutic range for longer than can be achieved with current oral LD formulations.
The demand for wireless connectivity has grown exponentially over the last years. By 2030 there should be around 17 billion of mobile-connected devices, with monthly data traffic in the order of thousands of exabytes. Although the Fifth Generation (5G) communications systems present far more features than Fourth Generation (4G) systems, they will not be able to serve this growing demand and the requirements of innovative use cases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Renal denervation has been shown to lower blood pressure in the presence of antihypertensive medications; however, long-term safety and efficacy data from randomised trials of renal denervation are lacking. In this pre-specified analysis of the SPYRAL HTN-ON MED study, we compared changes in blood pressure, antihypertensive drug use, and safety up to 36 months in renal denervation versus a sham control group.
Methods: This randomised, single-blind, sham-controlled trial enrolled patients from 25 clinical centres in the USA, Germany, Japan, the UK, Australia, Austria, and Greece, with uncontrolled hypertension and office systolic blood pressure between 150 mm Hg and 180 mm Hg and diastolic blood pressure of 90 mm Hg or higher.
Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces (IRSs) are emerging as an effective technology capable of improving the spectral and energy efficiency of future wireless networks. The proposed scenario consists of a multi-antenna base station and a single-antenna user that is assisted by an IRS. The large number of reflecting elements at the IRS and its passive operation represent an important challenge in the acquisition of the instantaneous channel state information (I-CSI) of all links as it adds a very high overhead to the system and requires equipping the IRS with radio-frequency chains.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDirect-to-satellite Internet of Things (IoT) solutions have attracted a lot of attention from industry and academia recently, as promising alternatives for large scale coverage of a massive number of IoT devices. In this work, we considered that a cluster of IoT devices was under the coverage of a constellation of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, while slotted Aloha was used as a medium access control technique. Then, we analyzed the throughput and packet loss rate while considering potentially different erasure probabilities at each of the visible satellites within the constellation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe effective deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) applications such as smart cities, smart farming and smart transport systems must ensure the network robustness, scalability and longevity. Therefore, guaranteeing the successful delivery of information and extending the lifetime of the nodes that make up a wireless sensor network (WSN) are two essential aspects for IoT applications. This work evaluates the performance of a cooperative WSN by adopting two multiantenna schemes: antenna selection (AS) and beamforming transmission using the singular value decomposition (SVD) technique.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The introduction of carbidopa-levodopa extended-release (CD-LD ER) capsules (Rytary®) did not go as smoothly as expected, largely due to difficulty around dose conversion from available immediate-release (IR) levodopa (LD) formulations. The dose conversion table in the CD-LD ER prescribing information was similar to the table used in the pivotal clinical trial and is considered by many prescribing HCPs to be less than optimal. By the end of the dose conversion period in that trial, dosing in 76% of subjects was adjusted for symptom control; roughly 60% of patients required a higher dose and about half required more frequent administration than the recommended TID dosing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParkinsonism Relat Disord
January 2021
Background: For patients with Parkinson's disease, clinicians commonly assess duration of benefit for individual doses of levodopa in order to consider medication changes.
Objective: To determine the mean duration of ON time per dose and mean duration of ON time without troublesome dyskinesia (WoTD) per dose of CD-LD IR vs. CD-LD ER in the ADVANCE-PD trial.
Energy-efficiency is crucial for modern radio-frequency (RF) receivers dedicated to Internet of Things applications. Energy-efficiency enhancements could be achieved by lowering the power consumption of integrated circuits, using antenna diversity or even with an association of both strategies. This paper compares two wideband RF front-end architectures, based on conventional low-noise amplifiers (LNA) and low-noise transconductance amplifiers (LNTA) with N-path filters, operating with three transmission schemes: single antenna, antenna selection and singular value decomposition beamforming.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Carbidopa (CD) and levodopa (LD) extended release (CD-LD ER) capsules are designed to combine both immediate and extended release pharmacokinetics. In the phase 3, randomized, double-blind, ADVANCE-PD trial, patients randomized to CD-LD ER experienced a 1.17-hour greater reduction in OFF time compared to patients randomized to CD-LD IR (p < 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Catheter-based renal denervation has significantly reduced blood pressure in previous studies. Following a positive pilot trial, the SPYRAL HTN-OFF MED (SPYRAL Pivotal) trial was designed to assess the efficacy of renal denervation in the absence of antihypertensive medications.
Methods: In this international, prospective, single-blinded, sham-controlled trial, done at 44 study sites in Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Japan, the UK, and the USA, hypertensive patients with office systolic blood pressure of 150 mm Hg to less than 180 mm Hg were randomly assigned 1:1 to either a renal denervation or sham procedure.
Low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs) are emerging rapidly as a fundamental Internet of Things (IoT) technology because of their low-power consumption, long-range connectivity, and ability to support massive numbers of users. With its high growth rate, Long-Range (LoRa) is becoming the most adopted LPWAN technology. This research work contributes to the problem of LoRa spreading factor (SF) allocation by proposing an algorithm on the basis of K-means clustering.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWireless Sensors Networks (WSNs) are an essential element of the Internet of Things (IoT), and are the main producers of big data. Collecting a huge amount of data produced by a resource-constrained network is a very difficult task, presenting several challenges. Big data gathering involves not only periodic data sensing, but also the forwarding of queries and commands to the network.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDue to the unpredictability of natural disasters, whenever a catastrophe happens, it is vital that not only emergency rescue teams are prepared, but also that there is a functional communication network infrastructure. Hence, in order to prevent additional losses of human lives, it is crucial that network operators are able to deploy an emergency infrastructure as fast as possible. In this sense, the deployment of an intelligent, mobile, and adaptable network, through the usage of drones-unmanned aerial vehicles-is being considered as one possible alternative for emergency situations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderwater acoustic networks (UAN) allow for efficiently exploiting and monitoring the sub-aquatic environment. These networks are characterized by long propagation delays, error-prone channels and half-duplex communication. In this paper, we address the problem of energy-efficient communication through the use of optimized channel coding parameters.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Renal denervation (RDN) may lower blood pressure (BP); however, it is unclear whether medication changes may be confounding results. Furthermore, limited data exist on pattern of ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) response-particularly in those prescribed aldosterone antagonists at the time of RDN.
Methods: We examined all patients treated with RDN for treatment-resistant hypertension in 18 UK centres.
Background And Aims: Nephrotoxicity is a rare idiosyncratic reaction to 5-aminosalicylate (5-ASA) therapies. The aims of this study were to describe the clinical features of this complication and identify clinically useful genetic markers so that these drugs can be avoided or so that monitoring can be intensified in high-risk patients.
Methods: Inflammatory bowel disease patients were recruited from 89 sites around the world.
Background: Autoimmune haemolytic anaemia (AIHA) is a rare complication following kidney transplantation and usually occurs early in its course. It is characterised by autoantibodies or alloantibodies directed against red blood cells (RBCs).
Case Presentation: We describe a 44 year old woman who presented 5 years after kidney transplantation with profound transfusion dependent warm AIHA.
Monitoring and data collection are the two main functions in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Collected data are generally transmitted via multihop communication to a special node, called the sink. While in a typical WSN, nodes have a sink node as the final destination for the data traffic, in an ad hoc network, nodes need to communicate with each other.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: We report on the case of an established perinuclear antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (pANCA) associated renal vasculitis being treated with prednisolone and rituximab, where the patient presented with leg weakness, urinary and faecal incontinence and buttock pain consistent with transverse myelitis.
Case Presentation: The patient underwent MRI scanning showing patchy cord enhancement from T10 to the conus, which was suggestive of a cord malignancy. Prior to a cord biopsy, he was treated with steroids and a repeat MRI showed resolution of the original lesion with a new similar lesion from C7 to T3.