Land Mobile Research Articles

Attachment to land and its downfalls: Can policy encourage land mobility?

Sentimental ties to land in Ireland result in less than 1 percent of agricultural land being sold each year and land rental is among the lowest of countries in the European Union. The findings highlight that longer leases are associated with large farms and those with a high percentage of land rented in, but revised policies are required to encourage more landowners to rent out their land. Improved land mobility can reduce issues such as barriers to entry for farmers, the economic vulnerability of farms, low farm succession rates, low pensions and an ageing farmer population. The history of land in Ireland and the non-pecuniary benefits of farming are also discussed.

Subsurface mobility of land applied greenhouse nutrient feed water and environmental implications

Greenhouse nutrient feedwater (GNF) discharge is considered a potential contributor to eutrophication issues in Lake Erie, Ontario. Land application of GNF is an accepted legislated management response to mitigate the impact of such nutrient loads. To assess the potential environmental impacts of this management practice, field infiltration experiments were conducted at four different greenhouse operations near Leamington, Ontario. Over a three-year study, GNF was applied on agricultural land adjacent to the greenhouse operations in the fall during the first year, and along with a bromide tracer in the summer and fall in Years 2 and 3, respectively. The GNF was applied at the maximum allowable rates as defined in legislation. Chemical constituents (nutrients, metals and the conservative tracer bromide) were monitored within the soil profile matrix and pore water above the water table. The results showed that, even with the GNF being applied at the highest permissible rates, the species of interest remained within the unsaturated soil zone at low concentrations over three to six months sampling intervals. The bromide tracer test demonstrated that highly mobile species could move through permeable soils to the water table depth in a potential worst-case application scenario. However, considering the low initial concentrations, long vadose zone residence time and the low mass flux, it would appear that land application of GNF, when applied in accordance with Ontario's Regulations, is a feasible and environmentally reasonable treatment option for managing GNF.

Circular tooth based low profile 1x2 superlative MIMO antenna with high gain and isolation for fixed satellite service, and land mobile navigation applications

The 1 × 2 superlative MIMO antenna structure is proposed for multiband and broadband communication applications. The presented antenna is composed of two symmetrical circular-shaped patch elements. The circular-shaped Tooth is inserted in the outer periphery of the patch area. The Radius of the patch and Tooth varies to identify the behaviour of reflectance response, directivity, and total gain. The tooth-loaded circular patch attained a better gain of 8.44 dB, broader directivity of 163°, reflectance coefficients of −29.16 dB, and good isolation among transmittance and reflectance response. The comparison between simulated and measured results is included in the analysis. Performance of the presented design structure with previously published articles to identify performance improvement. Standard performance measurement parameters like TARC, ECC, and DG are also carried out. The low-profile material FR4 is used in the proposed design as a substrate. The presented structure is suitable for fixed satellite service and Land mobile navigation applications.

INVESTIGATING COMMERCIAL URBAN CORRIDORS - A PILOT STUDY IN BEIRUT LEBANON

Urban environments are multifaceted, varied, dynamic, complex, and evolving as are the underlying features for human health and wellbeing (Bai, Nath, Capon, Hasan & Jaron, 2020). Healthy and resilient cities can be entry points and platforms for change, adaptation and innovation to achieve optimal health for urban communities and the environment (Regional Framework for Urban Health in the Western Pacific 2016–2020: Healthy and Resilient Cities, 2016). Planners considered urban corridors, which are connection and access between urban districts, as major elements in shaping the city image and forming its identity and investigating them are vital for enhancing healthy and resilient cities. Narrowing the scope on commercial urban corridors, which are a concentration of retail stores that serve a common trade area and lie along a single street (Catherine Dyste, 2012). These corridors can be seen as a dynamic space, but at the same time, they are created to create a range of experiences (Shaban et al., 2018). Improving commercial urban corridors requires several indicators for reviving the companionable and sociable life of a street. Problems occur when space use is not driven. The society therefore uses the urban commercial corridor according to their own interests. This condition may generate conflict between users of the 'Link' and users of the 'Space’, may make the corridor an uncomfortable location, and may decreases its livability. Rapid urbanization and unplanned rapid changes of commercial activities in corridors that have an impact on the surrounding streets and users’ activities imposes burdens on surrounding land use and mobility. However, this problem has contributed to various issues such as traffic congestion, pollution, decrease in green areas and degradation of the urban quality of living. That’s why investigating these corridors is imperative to know its utilization and functioning to identify the existing problems and chaos in the corridor since they are facing significant challenges, which is the lack of reliable knowledge on their characteristics and development; important for local authorities to provide wealth of knowledge and data collection. The paper aims to investigate commercial urban corridors to identify and analyze livability aspects and indicators for reviving its companionable and sociable life that can be implemented in a way of a considerable checklist which acts as a systematic structure for communicating the data required, diagnosing issues, and defining the strengths and limitations of the efficiency of a commercial urban corridor to promote a healthy and resilient urban context. To achieve the aim, the research investigates a commercial urban corridor focusing on one of the urban corridors in Beirut, Lebanon. By using Geoportal Interactive Tool, conducted by UN-Habitat and UNICEF to create cartography of the existing conditions of the pilot study, and then analyzes the aspects and indicators of livability based on cartography, walk through analysis and face-to-face interviews with inhabitants in area. After analyzing the commercial urban corridor and identifying the effective indicators, the research resulted in proposing some guidelines for enhancing livability in commercial urban corridors, which were mainly related to the physical aspect since it defines the most inadequate quality and performance.

A Robust Algorithm for LTE D2D (Sidelink) Discovery for Public Safety Communications

As public safety migrates from existing digital land mobile radio networks to fourth generation (4G) long-term evolution (LTE), a novel feature in the latter is the enablement of direct communications between devices. In this article, we examine the performance of the LTE device-to-device direct discovery process in out-of-coverage scenarios (Mode 2). We model individual discovery periods as a slotted random access protocol with half-duplex user equipment (UE). We outline a simulation framework using the open-source network simulator 3 (ns-3) and evaluate the discovery process’s performance as a function of the size of the resource pool, UE density, and the transmission probability. We establish that there exists an optimal transmission probability that minimizes discovery time for a given network configuration. However, because a UE cannot know the number of neighbors when it goes off-network, we develop a method to allow UEs to learn the optimal transmission probability during discovery. We compare our algorithm’s performance to the 3rd Generation Partnership Project standards prescribed method and others to demonstrate its superiority.

Estimating Population Density Without Contravening Citizen’s Privacy: Warsaw Use Case

Spatial data on a cellular network load can be used to develop commercial and public services. However, such data is calculated based on individual users’ behavior and can contravene their privacy rights. Moreover, direct tracking of individual devices violates the European Union’s regulations. To solve this issue, we propose to use data aggregated in individual cells of the public land mobile network without tracking an individual mobile device in the entire process. To prove that the proposed data collection method is useful, we compared the obtained results with a closed-circuit television system in an estimation of the number of people. The proposed system is sensitive enough to detect untypical global events in an urban area and distinguish transport demand zones of various types as we showed on real data from the City of Warsaw.

Spatio-Temporal Variation-Induced Group Disparity of Intra-Urban NO2 Exposure.

Previous studies on exposure disparity have focused more on spatial variation but ignored the temporal variation of air pollution; thus, it is necessary to explore group disparity in terms of spatio-temporal variation to assist policy-making regarding public health. This study employed the dynamic land use regression (LUR) model and mobile phone signal data to illustrate the variation features of group disparity in Shanghai. The results showed that NO2 exposure followed a bimodal, diurnal variation pattern and remained at a high level on weekdays but decreased on weekends. The most critical at-risk areas were within the central city in areas with a high population density. Moreover, women and the elderly proved to be more exposed to NO2 pollution in Shanghai. Furthermore, the results of this study showed that it is vital to focus on land-use planning, transportation improvement programs, and population agglomeration to attenuate exposure inequality.

Determinants of Production Efficiency of Maize-Dominated Farmers in Western Parts of Ethiopia in Gudeya Bila District: Evidence under Shifting Cultivation Area

Background In Ethiopia, maize is produced as major food crop that is based on traditional methods of production, and there exists inefficiency in the use of available scarce resources. Thus, poor people are failing to achieve rapid economic growth, development, and food security still today in the country. Hence, the best possible means of achieving development is through increasing the production efficiency of farmers. Thus, to estimate the levels of production efficiency, this study specifically used only data of farmers who are producing without ploughing by oxen and without using fertilizers in the study area under shifting cultivation. Method Stochastic frontier production is used to estimate the technical efficiency score, and the cost frontier model is used to estimate production efficiency. To determine the determinants of production efficiency, the Tobit model was used in this study. Result The Tobit model results show that loss due to wild animals, experience of household, and off-farm income had a negative impact on production efficiency of farmers. Regarding the positive determinants of production efficiency, land conservation practice and mobile use have a positive influence. Conclusion and recommendation. The farmers in the study area are inefficient in the production of maize. Since the loss of maize products is high due to wild animals such as pigs, apes, and monkeys that results in production inefficiency, the agricultural policies and strategies of Ethiopian governments should be directed toward providing tourism to protect those wild animals. Additionally, to increase the production efficiency, construction of terraces and soil bunds to conserve land and supporting the farmers by providing network facilities for mobile usage that boost maize production efficiency of farmers is essential for policymakers.

The Laà 2 cave in Arudy (64). The Mesolithic and Final Neolithic occupations within their chrono-cultural contexts

Summary. Due to the important number of archaeological sites studied therein, the Arudy basin is a favored place for seeking improved understanding of settlement dynamics and cultural characteristics of the populations that occupied these sites since the Paleolithic. In this case, the Mesolithic and Final Neolithic archaeological levels of room 5 of the Laà 2 cave will be analyzed and then inserted within the larger context of the Béarn valleys, as well as the northwestern Pyrenees. Four Mesolithic levels allow us to address certain features of the mobility of small groups utilizing impermanent campsite installations. These provide new data for the analysis of modalities of land occupancy and mobility strategies of the last hunter-gatherer societies of the French Pyrenees and their outskirts. Four or five phases of occupation are also identified for the Final Neolithic, and likewise, provide evidence of short-lived encampments. When compared with what is currently known for the northwestern Pyrenees, analysis of the ceramic material allows us to highlight Véraza influences, the likes of which are already known to exist within the Toulouse region.

A Comprehensive Review of Channel Modeling for Land Mobile Satellite Communications

As demands on the network continue to grow, it is increasingly important to upgrade the existing infrastructure in order to offer higher bandwidth and service level guarantees to users. Next generation networks (NGNs) represent a fully IP-based architecture that is able to support different technologies. In this context, the satellite networks are considered a fundamental part for future hybrid architectures. In this scenario, knowing satellite channel propagation characteristics in order to be able to design a communication system to respond to new user needs is of fundamental importance. Many papers in the literature show channel models in different satellite scenarios both for fixed and mobile applications; however, to the best of our knowledge, nobody presents an overview on different satellite models based on Markov chains. This paper wants to present a comprehensive review of the most recent developments in satellite channel communications related to mobile services and, in particular, for the land mobile satellite systems. The work presents all different types of Markov models, from single-state to multi-state models, that have been proposed in the literature from the early 1980s.

Assessing the Potential of “Mobility as a Service” in Passenger Maritime Transport

This article assesses the potential of Mobility as a Service in passenger maritime transport from the supply perspective by collecting and analyzing data provided by interviews to key experts in passenger transport from both industry and academia. “Mobility as a service” in passenger maritime transport (also in this article referred as “Maritime MaaS”) describes the integration of passenger maritime services with land mobility into a single mobility service delivered through a unique platform for planning, booking, ticketing, and payment. The scope of this article is to explore the potential interest of mobility service providers to develop a MaaS that has as a backbone coastal shipping at the Aegean Archipelagos, in Greece. The Maritime MaaS ecosystem with its key actors is identified, while the perceived challenges, opportunities, and benefits envisaged by the adaptation of this innovative concept from urban transport to the maritime sector are recorded. Computer-assisted interviews were performed at a panel of 17 experts representing different types of decision makers. Participants were selected according to their current industry position or their academic profile. A content analysis with the use of NVIVO was conducted, followed by a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis based on the experts’ input, in order to assess the MaaS business environment. Results indicate that the maritime transport sector is relatively ready to adopt MaaS from a technological readiness perspective, while land transport seems to be in a lower level of technological readiness. PAYG (pay as you go) MaaS business model is preferred than a “MaaS package” model by most stakeholders. Finally, main challenges toward MaaS implementation are the discrepancies in reliability of service among different transport modes and the ferry fleet operational flexibility ceilings that are imposed by legal framework for ferry routings in Greece.

Land Security and Mobility Frictions

Land Security and Mobility Frictions

Railway Wireless Communications Channel Characterization

Railway applications are in continuous evolution with the aim of offering a more efficient, sustainable, and safer transportation system for the users. Generally, these applications are constantly exchanging information between the systems onboard the train and the trackside through a wireless communication. Nowadays, Global System for Mobile communications-Railway (GSM-R) is the technology used by European Train Control System (ETCS), but it is becoming obsolete. Therefore, alternatives for this technology have to be found for the different railway applications. Its natural evolution is to move forward with the latest technology deployed: Long-Term Evolution (LTE), which the Public Land Mobile Networks (PLMN) have already deployed. Therefore, testing the performance of this communication technology in the railway environment could be useful to assess its suitability and reduce the cost of railway network dedicated deployment. In order to do that, a methodology to characterize the communication environment is proposed. The main goal is to measure geolocated impairments of any communication channel in a railway environment being able to determine its behavior of the different communication technologies and find out possible coverage issues. Moreover, it could help in the selection of suitable communication technology for railway. This paper presents a brief description of the communication for railways and its QoS parameters for performance measuring. Afterward, the testing methodology is described, and then, the communication channel measurement campaign on a real track in Spain where the railway environment is variable is presented (tunnels, rural/urban area…). Finally, the measurements and results on this real track in Spain are shown. The results provide suitability of the 4G technologies based on the delay requirements for the implementation of ETCS over it.

RESEARCH OF THE PROCEDURE OF INITIAL ACCESS TO THE FIFTH GENERATION COMMUNICATION NETWORK

Traditional mobile networks have bandwidth and infrastructure limitations. Each base station has a limited number of users and data capacity. 5G technology uses advanced technologies, such as massive MIMO and beamforming, to increase data rates and spectrum efficiency. These features, and the large number of small cells, allow many 5G users to receive low latency and high traffic without overloading the base station. Small cells work the same way as regular cells, but use new technology and millimetre waves (5G New Radio). Low-power base stations can be easily deployed. Cell search is a procedure by which the user equipment (UE) obtains time and frequency synchronization with the base station and decodes the cell ID of the mobile device. System information is broadcast information that is periodically transmitted by the base station on the downlink. This is very important information for the mobile device (UE) needed to connect to the base station (gNB). The UE reads system information to determine the location of mobile devices when turned on, to select and re-select a cell. System information provides the following information: system frame number, system bandwidth, PLMN, mobile subscriber selection and redial thresholds, etc., required to access the network. Physical Cell ID (PCI) is used to distinguish mobile devices in the network radio communication. PLMN (Public land Mobile Network) – mobile network service area. Is a set of all mobile devices of one cellular network operator. The UE scans the bandwidth in the sync raster. The synchronization raster indicates the frequency positions of the synchronization unit that can be used by the UE to detect the system when there is no explicit indication of the position of the synchronization unit. In the next step, the UE decodes the primary and secondary synchronization signals to obtain the Physical Cell ID (PCI) and the DMRS PBCH. The base station transmits SSB packets that contain one SSB per beam. The beam direction changes for each SSB transmission. The following steps are performed to complete the synchronization procedure. The UE selects the preferred beam and decodes the PBCH MIB information, such as SFN, SSB index, raster offset, default DL numerology, RMSI configuration, DM-RS location, and cell prohibition information. If the cell is not locked, the UE attempts to decode the physical downlink control channels (PDCCH) to obtain the frequency location of the PDSCH resources. A study of the model of restoring the synchronization of symbols and frames in the QPSK system, caused by a variable synchronization error. A study of the formation of the radio channel at the physical level.

Evolution of Urban Transportation Policies in India: A Review and Analysis

India’s rising population and vehicular ownership have led to problems such as traffic congestion, pollution, and road accidents. The transportation sector is a crucial player in the country’s economy, but at the same time, it is also a significant contributor to climate change. Since climate change is a global threat, most transportation policies eventually lead to solving the climate change problem to achieve sustainable transportation. Despite commitments from various countries, the carbon emissions are still to come down and require the implementation of ambitious policies. Globally, countries are increasingly putting more effort towards sustainable transportation through various policy initiatives, and so does India. Given the growing transport-related externalities, the policy stance of India towards urban transportation is also gradually shifting to a systems approach from supply-oriented to demand-oriented policies. This paper highlights the significant transportation problems faced in India and how the Government of India’s transportation sector policy interventions for cities have evolved since its independence. The challenges and gaps in the existing policies are discussed, and possible ways to frame the policies are presented. This study finds that most government policy initiatives are still to see the intended level of success. This is majorly due to lack of monitoring, complex institutional capacities and urban governance, irregular zoning of land and inefficient comprehensive development and mobility plans.

Enabling Next-Generation Public Safety Operations with Mission-Critical Networks and Wearable Applications

Public safety agencies have been working on the modernization of their communication networks and the enhancement of their mission-critical capabilities with novel technologies and applications. As part of these efforts, migrating from traditional land mobile radio (LMR) systems toward cellular-enabled, next-generation, mission-critical networks is at the top of these agencies’ agendas. In this paper, we provide an overview of cellular technologies ratified by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) to enable next-generation public safety networks. On top of using wireless communication technologies, emergency first responders need to be equipped with advanced devices to develop situational awareness. Therefore, we introduce the concept of the Internet of Life-Saving Things (IoLST) and focus on the role of wearable devices—more precisely, cellular-enabled wearables, in creating new solutions for enhanced public safety operations. Finally, we conduct a performance evaluation of wearable-based, mission-critical applications. So far, most of the mission-critical service evaluations target latency performance without taking into account reliability requirements. In our evaluation, we examine the impact of device- and application-related parameters on the latency and the reliability performance. We also identify major future considerations for better support of the studied requirements in next-generation public safety networks.

Land transactions within rural society in the Middle Rhine Valley (ca. 1400–1535)

ABSTRACT The paper deals with families in villages on the bank of the river Rhine in the southwest of Germany (Rheingau, Rheinhessen, Mittelrhein). Starting with the observation that land changed hands often, although the situation in the Middle Rhine valley favoured tenants – wine was produced for export, personal serfdom was rare, and hereditary leasehold was typical for the region and landlords rarely interfered – I ask for the reasons why. The main reason for the vivid fluctuation was the importance of credit for the wine-growing society. Almost every piece of land was mortgaged. The debts could only be paid back after harvest when the wine was sold. Credits and also loans for investment could be secured on land only. The second most important reason for land change is inheritance rules. Property had to be divided among the children. Female and male children inherited equal shares, as soon as one of their parents died. Land was sold, burdened, leased, shared, swapped and divided – and it changed hands quite often without any hindrance. It is obvious that families were loaded with heavy burdens despite the good conditions for tenants. But, the high mobility of land is no proof for economic depression; it is a by–effect of this very specialised economic system. In the fifteenth century the ecological and economical system was fragile, but it was just working. So, mobile land could be seen as a sign of a vivid economic system in the fifteenth century and not as a sign of crisis.

Core-city climate leadership in metropolitan contractual management agreements

ABSTRACT Metropolitan governance and planning increasingly are understood as essential in managing urban growth and fostering a sustainable and climate-friendly metropolitan development. Lately, a contractual turn can be observed in metropolitan governance, in which traditional coordination tools are supplemented by contractual management tools between governmental layers and sectors. This article analyses two cases of metropolitan contractual management agreements, one in the Oslo region and one in the Gothenburg region. The article finds that both agreements build on regional strategies and plans to commit national authorities to invest in infrastructure in these metropolitan areas. The Oslo agreement has more layers than the Gothenburg case, in trying to align national, regional and local authorities’ efforts in both land use and mobility politics. The agreements require advanced leadership competence from the core-city, curbing centre-periphery tensions in metropolitan areas and building local alliances to pressure national authorities in agreement negotiations. We argue that this requires a co-creational leadership role, which, in a multilevel governance setting, must be extended to include dimensions such as distributional balance sensitivity, delineation sensitivity and upward pressure.

Going against the grain: Unravelling the habitus of older farmers to help facilitate generational renewal in agriculture

AbstractLimited uptake of financial incentives, designed to confront global trends of an ageing farming population and low levels of land mobility, reveal resistance or at best ambivalence, amongst farmers towards altering existing farm management and ownership structures in later life. To uncover facets governing the mindset, disposition and practices of older farmers towards succession and retirement, this study draws on Bourdieu's notion of habitus. A multi‐method triangulation methodology is employed to obtain in‐depth understandings of the senior generation's deeply embedded views, and the changes they perceive will occur upon their engagement in the process. Findings reveal that the attitudes and behaviour required to ‘step aside’ and retire from farming not only ‘go against the grain’ of the older farmers’ habitus, appearing to be instinctively ‘wrong’, they also appear incompatible with what is necessary to earn recognition as a ‘good farmer’. The article concludes by recommending that a shift in thinking towards succession and retirement must be confronted at an earlier life stage in order to inculcate a new farming habitus. In doing this, long‐term resolutions through generating a regularised, accepted and well‐regarded practice of intergenerational farm transfer within the farming community would be promoted.

Multi-Dimensional Polarized Modulation for Land Mobile Satellite Communications

In this article, a novel multiple-input multiple-out (MIMO) transmission scheme, called generalized polarized enhanced spatial modulation (GPESM), is proposed for dual-polarized land mobile satellite (LMS) communications. We first introduce the enhanced spatial modulation (ESM) technique for dual-polarized LMS communications, in which polarization dimension, spatial dimension and multiple signal constellations are used to transmit information and obtain substantial performance gain. Meanwhile, the theoretical upper bound for the average bit error probability (ABEP) of the proposed GPESM scheme is derived. In order to further improve the reliability of the system, we also propose two novel power allocation (PA) algorithms for GPESM system, which are the optimization-driven approximated max-min distance (AMMD)-based PA algorithm and the data-driven deep neural network (DNN)-based PA algorithm. To achieve an enhanced spatial diversity gain, we consider to apply a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to the GPESM system as a relay to assist in transmitting information. In this way, the user can receive the information transmitted by the satellite on one hand, and the information sent by the satellite via the RIS relay on the other hand. We also extend the above-mentioned two PA algorithms to the RIS-assisted GPESM systems. Our simulation results show that the RIS-assisted GPESM systems are capable of obtaining high bit error rate (BER) performance gain (up to 10 dB) compared to the standard GPESM system and two PA algorithms can further improve the performance to the systems.