ALBERT

Description: A very important task in Mobile Cognitive Radio Networks (MCRN) is to ensure that the system releases a given frequency when a Primary User (PU) is present, by maintaining the principle to not interfere with its activity within a cognitive radio system. Afterwards, a cognitive protocol must be set in order to change to another frequency channel that is available or shut down the service if there are no free channels to be found. The system must sense the frequency spectrum constantly through the energy detection method which is the most commonly used. However, this analysis takes place in the time domain and signals cannot be easily identified due to changes in modulation, power and distance from mobile users. The proposed system works with Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) for systems from Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) to 5G systems, the signals are analyzed in the frequency domain and the Rényi-Entropy method is used as a tool to distinguish the noise and the PU signal without prior knowledge of its features. The main contribution of this research is that uses a Software Defined Radio (SDR) system to implement a MCRN in order to measure the behavior of Primary and Secondary signals in both time and frequency using GNURadio and OpenBTS as software tools to allow a phone call service between two Secondary Users (SU). This allows to extract experimental results that are compared with simulations and theory using Rényi-entropy to detect signals from SU in GMSK and OFDM systems. It is concluded that the Rényi-Entropy detector has a higher performance than the conventional energy detector in the Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh channels. The system increases the detection probability (PD) to over 96% with a Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) of 10dB and starting 5 dB below energy sensing levels.

Description: Diabetic retinopathy is one of the leading causes of visual impairment and morbidity worldwide, being the number one cause of blindness in people between 27 and 75 years old. It is estimated that ~191 million people will be diagnosed with this microvascular complication by 2030. Its pathogenesis is due to alterations in the retinal microvasculature as a result of a high concentration of glucose in the blood for a long time which generates numerous molecular changes like oxidative stress. Therefore, this narrative review aims to approach various biomarkers associated with the development of diabetic retinopathy. Focusing on the molecules showing promise as detection tools, among them we consider markers of oxidative stress (TAC, LPO, MDA, 4-HNE, SOD, GPx, and catalase), inflammation (IL-6, IL-1ß, IL-8, IL-10, IL-17A, TNF-α, and MMPs), apoptosis (NF-kB, cyt-c, and caspases), and recently those that have to do with epigenetic modifications, their measurement in different biological matrices obtained from the eye, including importance, obtaining process, handling, and storage of these matrices in order to have the ability to detect the disease in its early stages.

Description: Mobile cognitive radio networks provide a new platform to implement and adapt wireless cellular communications, increasing the use of the electromagnetic spectrum by using it when the primary user is not using it and providing cellular service to secondary users. In these networks, there exist vulnerabilities that can be exploited, such as the malicious primary user emulation (PUE), which tries to imitate the primary user signal to make the cognitive network release the used channel, causing a denial of service to secondary users. We propose a support vector machine (SVM) technique, which classifies if the received signal is a primary user or a malicious primary user emulation signal by using the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and Rényi entropy of the energy signal as an input to the SVM. This model improves the detection of the malicious attacker presence in low SNR without the need for a threshold calculation, which can lead to false detection results, especially in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) where the threshold is more difficult to estimate because the signal limit values are very close in low SNR. It is implemented on a software-defined radio (SDR) testbed to emulate the environment of mobile system modulations, such as Gaussian minimum shift keying (GMSK) and OFDM. The SVM made a previous learning process to allow the SVM system to recognize the signal behavior of a primary user in modulations such as GMSK and OFDM and the SNR value, and then the received test signal is analyzed in real-time to decide if a malicious PUE is present. The results show that our solution increases the detection probability compared to traditional techniques such as energy or cyclostationary detection in low SNR values, and it detects malicious PUE signal in MCRN.