Wednesday, September 27, 2017

15 Years of Higher Education Commission (HEC) in Pakistan

A team comprising of Prof. Dr. Aijaz Hussain Soomro, Prof. Dr. Ismail Kumbhar, Mr. Asad Mari, myself and other colleagues visited IBA Sukkur on 26-09-2017 to attend 'Higher Education Commission (HEC)' regional showcasing event for universities of Sindh'. 

This even was organized to celebrate 15 years of Higher Education Commission. Regional Director of HEC in Karachi, Mr. Javed Memon inaugurated the event and various universities from all over Sindh except Karachi city participated in the event.   




Monday, May 2, 2016

Research Journals and Review Process


It has always been a challenge for new comers in the research field to know about getting their research finding published somewhere in reputable journal or conference.

There is a very informative presentation titled Deciding Where to Publish Telecommunications Research:  A discussion

by

Dr. Luiz DaSilva
Professor of Telecommunications


It worth reading for newbies in the filed of Telecommunications.

Friday, January 8, 2016

Cairns, Australia during ICSPCS-2015

Cairns, Australia during ICSPCS-2015

I had an opportunity to present my research article titled "Network Coding based Cooperative Device to Device Communications in the Uplink of Cellular Network" at 9th International Conference on Signal Processing and Communication Systems, ICSPCS-2015 held during 14-16 December, 2015 at a beautiful location in Cairns, Australia.






Sunday, November 29, 2015

Optisystem for Researcher/ Academician working in Optical Communication Systems


Optisystem is a very useful software tool for researcher and academician working in the field of optical communication systems.

You can drag, drop and connect various components available in optisystem and get your results instantly.


This software is available here to be used for one month without having any license. There are many examples available on the site to get a feeling of the working environment. New Optisystem Lab assignments are there which can accessed free of cost.



Above snapshots shows the layout of Optisystem. The hot topic optisystem examples are available on the following website.




Thursday, November 26, 2015

Funding Opportunities for Postdoctoral Scholars

After completing PhD, the scholars look for opportunities to continue their research and look for postdoctoral funding. On this page, I have tried to summarize some of the funding opportunities available to them throughout world.

It is recommended to all the prospective candidate of postdoc to make ready a research plan to be sent to the funding agencies.  Some of the fellowships even like to have some recommendation letter in hand before application for that particular fellowship.


1. Fulbright Fellowships

A program of the United States Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs


2. Fulbright Canada


Foundation for Educational Exchange between Canada and USA


3. Endeavour Scholarships and Fellowships


Merit-based scholarships provided by the Australian Government that supports overseas citizens to undertake study, research and professional development programmers in Australia and for Australians to undertake these programs overseas.

4. Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellowships

For junior post-docs 

5. Marie Curie Post-doctoral Research Fellowships


Post-doctoral Research Fellowships Programme  by the European Union (EU) 



In most of the cases, at the end of post-doc, the researcher is expected to submit a postdoctoral fellowship final report of 5-10 pages. 

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

The History of Mobile Communications in Pakistan


Instaphone - It was the first company which launched mobile services in Pakistan. It commercially launched its services on October 16, 1990; however, this company lost its license in January 2008 as Govt. of Pakistan cancelled its licences due to unpaid fees.


Mobilink: First GSM based mobile network in Pakistan was established by Mobilink and it was  started on June 11, 1994. It has extended its 3G services in around 200 major cities of Pakistan. It is the largest mobile operator in Pakistan.


Telenor: Thought present in many countries in Europe and Asia and founded in 1855, it entered in Pakistan only in April  2004  and started to offer GSM services in March 2005. Since than it has become the second largest cellular operator in Pakistan.


Zong: Zong is a subsidiary of China Mobile which is the largest mobile operator in the world. It started its services with brand name Zong on April 1, 2008. It now not only has 3G license but also has 4G license in hand.


Ufone: Its Pakistani cellular operator which started GSM services on January 29, 2001. Its the fourth largest mobile company in Pakistan in terms of subscribers. It also has 3G services offered in major cities of Pakistan.
Warid: Warid entered in Pakistani mobile market on May 23, 2005. It is the fifth largest mobile company in Pakistan. It has purchased both 3G and 4G spectrum from Govt. of Pakistan.

Wireless Ad hoc and Sensor Networks

Wireless Ad hoc and Sensor Networks
Wireless ad hoc networks differs from cellular/mobile network in the sense that ad hoc network does not have any infrastructure while cellular network has fixed infrastructure to support communication among them.
Example of an Ad hoc Network

Friday, November 20, 2015

Monday, November 16, 2015

Device to device communications (D2D)

Device to device communications (D2D)

The target data rate of 1Gbps for the next generation mobile communications called 5G can only be achieved by introducing many novel techniques into the existing wireless standards of cellular communications. 

These novelty may come in the form of massive MIMO, heterogeneous networks, cooperative relay, millimeter wave, cognitive radio, adaptive beam-forming, device to device communications etc.

Device to device communications (D2D) is a way of communications where the transmitting as well as receiving pair exchange their messages without getting assistance from any infrastructure as opposed to cellular communication where the transmitter has to get help from the infrastructure to send its information to final destination.  This infrastructure include base station tower, mobile switching centre and sometime the gateway.

D1-D2 are shown to be engaged in direct communications called D2D communications.
D2D communications offers many benefits like increased data rates, reliability, interference reduction, power saving, traffic  offloading and use of licensed spectrum.

However, there is no such thing as a free lunch, hence, this charming techniques also comes up with its own challenge. The challenge of authorization. In other words, the D2D communications has to take place somewhere in licensed spectrum and it may create interference for the primary users, therefore, it puts extra burden on the network to handle the issue of authorization and authentication.

The following are the resources to get in depth knowledge of the fascinating field of wireless communications.

D2D Communications – What Part Will It Play in 5G?


3GPP Tech. Report 22.803, “scenarios and requirements for general use cases and national security and public safety,” May 2015.

M. Tehrani, M. Uysal, and H. Yanikomeroglu, “Device-to-device communication in 5g cellular networks: challenges, solutions, and future directions,” Communications Magazine, IEEE, vol. 52, no. 5, pp. 86– 92, May 2014. 

A. Asadi, Q. Wang, and V. Mancuso, “A survey on device-to-device communication in cellular networks,” Communications Surveys Tutorials, IEEE, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 1801–1819, Fourthquarter 2014. 

D. Feng, L. Lu, Y. Yuan-Wu, G. Li, G. Feng, and S. Li, “Deviceto-device communications underlaying cellular networks,” Communications, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 61, no. 8, pp. 3541–3551, August 2013.  

R. Ahlswede, C. Ning, S.-Y. R. Li, and R. W. Yeung, “Network information flow,” IEEE Transaction on Information Theory, vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 1204–1216, July 2000. 

M. K. Frank H.P. Fitzek1 and Q. Zhang, “Cellular controlled short-range communication for cooperative p2p networking, vol. wg,” in Wireless World Research Forum 17, Nov 2006. 

M. Rodziewicz, “Network coding aided device-to-device communication,” in European Wireless, 2012. EW. 18th European Wireless Conference, April 2012, pp. 1–5. 

S. Shalmashi and S. Ben Slimane, “Cooperative device-to-device communications in the downlink of cellular networks,” in Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), 2014 IEEE, April 2014, pp. 2265–2270. 

J. G. Proakis, Digital communications, 4th ed. McGraw-Hill, New York :. 

J. N. Laneman, “Cooperative diversity in wireless networks: Algorithms and architectures,” Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, Aug 2002. 

J. N. Laneman, D. N. C. Tse, and G. W. Wornell, “Cooperative diversity in wireless networks: efficient protocols and outage behavior,” IEEE Transaction on Information Theory, vol. 50, no. 12, pp. 3062–3080, Dec 2004. 

G. D. Menghwar and C. F. Mecklenbra¨uker, “Network coding for cooperative communications,” Proceedings of Junior Scientist Conference 2008, Vienna, Austria, pp. 105– 106, Nov 2008. 

G.D. Menghwar, “Outage performance of two users cooperative network coding,” Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Communications and Information Technologies (ISCIT-2009), Sep 2009.


Friday, November 6, 2015

Cooperative Communications


Cooperative communications is a method of communications in which users in a common vicinity help each other for reliable transmission of their messages to the destination.


Friday, September 11, 2015

Scholarship in China for Pakistani Students




To promote bilateral relation and cultural exchange with rest of the world, China offers various scholarship to the prosperous students in various disciplines. China Scholarship Council (CSC) is the body who is responsible for distributing scholarships.

Following website gives extensive information to win scholarship.

http://en.csc.edu.cn/laihua/noticeen.html

Following steps are required for a successful application for Chinese scholarship. This picture has been taken from the above mentioned link.


Monday, September 7, 2015

Mobile Communications Standards

First Generation of Mobile Communications (1G)




Second Generation of Mobile Communications (2G)

The most popular mobile communication standard of the world.


Third Generation of Mobile Communications (3G)



Fourth Generation of Mobile Communications (4G)


Fifth Generation of Mobile Communications (5G)

Fifth Generation of mobile communications is set to provide data rate of 2Gbps on the move. The research community is focusing on many new degrees of freedom to meet this huge data rate requirement.
Some of the many research areas for upcoming 5G of mobile communications are as under:

1- massive MIMO
2- Device-to-device communications
3- cooperative relays
4- millimeter wave
5- Cognitive Radio
6- Adaptive beam-forming
etc.

Friday, September 4, 2015

My Trip to Thar



This was not the first time that I was going to Thar. I have been going to Thar since my birth because my maternal parents live in a small village named Goongio, Thar, some 55 kilometers away from Umerkot city. However, this time the major difference was that  I was going without any definite plan, because after celebration of Independence day on August 14, 2015 at the University, I was free to for two days, Saturday and Sunday. I just packed two suits in a plastic bag and headed to bus stop to go to the city of Kantio by Bus.  

After a wait of half an hour, I got a bus and it took me three hours to reach there. But still my destination was bit away and to get there I had three options. The first one was to go by foot and I did not want to go by foot because, previous time I had a very bad experience of going by foot as it is almost 5 Kilometer away from Kantio and after reaching there I got many blisters on my feet.   The second option was a taxi and for that I had to wait for three hours more and the last option was to go by motorcycle taxi which was available on spot and I opted for the last option.

On the way to my final destination on motorcycle, I saw the beautiful landscape of Thar which had become so beautiful after recent rains in the region. The road was broken and after almost every kilometer there was some part which was covered with sand and it was becoming difficult to cross it with motorcycle having two tires. Due to that,  for some times, I was compelled to take my eyes away from the beautiful landscape to concentrate on my balance on the motorcycle to avoid any accidental fall on the road.

me, Gordhan Das Menghwar
After a ride of 15 minutes, I was in the village where I wanted  to be. I was in the same streets where I have been coming since my childhood. Nothing was changed, everything was similar, same types of houses called chonras (Huts) in the same condition even in worse condition, same weak and innocent faces, and the most importantly the same sand of hill called Bhit in Sindhi, was standing in front of me which I have been seeing since last 35 years. Nothing was changed.


The sand hill  (Bhit)

Childhood of my cousins Dilip and Chaman and the Bhit behind them
After having late lunch with kari, it was already 5'o clock of the evening and wanted to go to the same Bhit and my cousin Chaman joined me. On the way to that Bhit, I was continuously thinking of all of my  visit to this same place, but I could only remember few years which were really very close to heart, my childhood visits, when everything was so beautiful and full of fun. This Bhit was same, I found same Bajra, Guar, Jowar in lush green color, there beauty was further aided by the combination of white and black clouds in clear blue sky. I sat on beautiful sand for a while to enjoy the natural moments. The purity was in full swing of beauty and I was completely enthralled by the scene.  I had not very much time so I moved further to the sour and salty water well where the family of maternal uncle come to draw water, I like the tea made from such water. I could see many people irrespective of gender who had come to draw water for drinking.

Marriage Ceremony of my cousin Ashok Kumar
It was getting dark and dark, I came back with my cousin Chaman to home and after having dinner I was on Khat (Sindhi bed) under very clear sky with so many stars along with milky way. More importantly, due to the moon light, I could still see the same Bhit across the Acacia jacquemontii made fence of my Uncle's home.  The goats, making the meeh meeh sound, were still free as they were not yet put into any fence and were moving here and there freely on the floor made from cow dung. At some distance there was also a donkey  which is used to carry water from well. This surrounding was so fascinating for me that I was feeling so lucky to be in such a natural environment.


My cousin Narain Das has 12 goats
The next day, I got up early in the morning in an euphoric atmosphere on the  beautiful sounds of sparrow and peacock along with the sounds of movement of goats along with very clear smiling blue sky right above. I felt blessed to have such moments.
Peacock on the roof my cousin Ramesh's Khud (room)
I had my breakfast with Lasi, took tea and packed to come back. The joint taxi was waiting for me which had to leave for Kantio. Without any delay I got on that taxi and started my journey back. On my way back, I wished to stay there longer to cherish the beauty of nature which still exist  more or less in the same form as it used to be for me 35 years ago.  But life does not always go as per our wishes, it takes you where sometime you may feel bored or restless. I stayed in Umarkot city with Bhagat Rai for couple of hours, had lunch and came back. 

In the last, I must not forget to mention, Lata Mangeshkar of Tharis, late Fozia Soomro who used to sing in their local language, who, even after 8 years of her death, is still very much popular among Tharis. In every, Keekro, Four Wheel, Taxi, Shop or chonro, one can still listen to the songs of Fozia Soomro. Being a thari, I also felt as if Thar and the beautiful voice of Fozia Soomro have such a strong bond that even after that many year time has failed to break that relationship of love and respect.

Fozia Soomro

I am back at my job but sometime, some blow of air coming from the sand of Thar reminds me every snap of Thar and its everlasting beauty.   

Munhija Nanana

 

 

My Uncle Kirpal Das

 


My friend Lekhraj in Sindhi Topi
My cousin Chaman Lal