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Adrenogenital syndrome is commonly associated with a deficiency in 21-hydroxylase but can be present in other rare enzymatic blocks. We report here the case of a 31-year-old man who presented with bilateral painful testicle lesions leading to bilateral partial orchiectomy as they were suspected for malignancy. These lesions were finally identified as benign testicle adrenal rest tumors (TARTs), and the patient was actually belatedly diagnosed with primary adrenal insufficiency due to 2 mutations of the CYP11A1 gene encoding the cholesterol side-chain cleavage enzyme (P450scc); the mutations were 940G > A (p.Glu314Lys) and c.1393C > T (p.Arg465Trp). The same mutations were found in his 29-year-old sister, who was then also diagnosed for primary adrenal insufficiency. Deficiency in P450scc is an extremely rare genetic autosomal recessive disorder with around 40 described families in the literature and 30 different mutations. As the diagnosis of delayed onset of P450Scc mutation is difficult, this case illustrates the need for a systematic endocrinological assessment in any case of bilateral testicle lesions, thus avoiding unnecessary surgery.

The packet error rate (PER) is a metric of choice to compute the practical performance of communication systems experiencing block fading , e.g., fading processes whose coherence time is relatively slow when compared to the symbol transmission rate. For these types of channels, we derive a closed-form asymptotic expression which approximates the value of the PER for high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We also provide another approximation based on a unit-step formulation of the symbol error rate (SER). We show that the two approximations are related and may be derived from one another, thereby allowing us to obtain closed-form approximations of the block fading PER in both coded and uncoded systems. We then show how these approximations may be used in practice, through the derivation of a packet error outage (PEO) metric covering the case where the links experience shadowing on top of block fading, as well as asymptotically optimal power allocations in relay channels under a block fading hypothesis.

This paper focuses on the the emerging transmission technologies dedicated to IoT networks.We first analyze the classical cellular network technologies when taking into account the IoT requirements, and point out the need of dedicated technologies for IoT. Then, we present the PHY and MAC layers of the technologies that are already deployed, or likely to be deployed: UNB by SigFox, CSS by LoRaTM,Weighless, and RPMA by Ingenu. We then compare their performances to highlight their pros and cons. Finally, we discuss on the open research challenges that still need to be addressed.

Detecting active users in a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) network poses a significant challenge for 5G/6G applications. Traditional algorithms tackling this task, relying on classical processors, have to make a compromise between performance and complexity. However, a quantum computing based strategy called quantum annealing (QA) can mitigate this trade-off. In this paper, we first propose a mapping between the AUD searching problem and the identification of the ground state of an Ising Hamiltonian. Then, we compare the execution times of our QA approach for several code domain multiple access (CDMA) scenarios. We evaluate the impact of the cross-correlation properties of the chosen codes in a NOMA network for detecting the active user's set.

Active user detection in a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) network is a major challenge for 5G/6G applications. However, classical algorithms that can perform this task suffer either from complexity or reduced performances. This work aims at proposing a quantum annealing approach to overcome this trade-off. Firstly, we show that the maximum a posteriori decoder of the activity pattern of the network can be seen as the ground state of an Ising Hamiltonian. For N users in a network with perfect channels, we propose a universal control function to schedule the annealing process. Our approach avoids to continuously compute the optimal control function but still ensures high success probability while demanding a lower annealing time than a linear control function. This advantage holds even in the presence of imperfections in the network.

Energy consumption remains the main limiting factors in many promising IoT applications. In particular, micro-controllers consume far too much power. In order to overcome this problem, new circuit designs have been proposed and the use of spiking neurons and analog computing has emerged as it allows a very significant consumption reduction. However, working in the analog domain brings difficulty to handle the sequential processing of incoming signals as is needed in many use cases.In this paper, we propose to use a bio-inspired phenomenon called Interacting Synapses to produce a time filter. We propose a model of synapses that makes the neuron fire for a specific range of delays between two incoming spikes, but not react when this Inter-Spike Timing is not in that range. We study the parameters of the model to understand how to adapt the Inter-Spike Timing. The originality of the paper is to propose a new way, in the analog domain, to deal with temporal sequences.

Energy consumption remains the main limiting factors in many IoT applications. In particular, micro-controllers consume far too much power. In order to overcome this problem, new circuit designs have been proposed and the use of spiking neurons and analog computing has emerged as it allows a very significant consumption reduction. However, working in the analog domain brings difficulty to handle the sequential processing of incoming signals as is needed in many use cases. In this paper, we use a bio-inspired phenomenon called Interacting Synapses to produce a time filter, without using non-biological techniques such as synaptic delays. We propose a model of neuron and synapses that fire for a specific range of delays between two incoming spikes, but do not react when this Inter-Spike Timing is not in that range. We study the parameters of the model to understand how to choose them and adapt the Inter-Spike Timing. The originality of the paper is to propose a new way, in the analog domain, to deal with temporal sequences.

Classical multi-wavelength optical orthogonal code (MWOOC) constructions impose several conditions on the code parameters. These limit the optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) system potentialities in terms of performance and practical implementation. A modified MWOOC construction is used to overcome these limitations. Indeed, this method permits the design of 2D codes with a low temporal code length value and a low number of wavelengths. Considering a multi-user receiver named parallel interference cancellation, the number of users and the data rate per user the system can provide for a low bit error rate value are evaluated. For a given performance, it is shown that the spectral efficiency using the modified MWOOC is significantly improved. Thus, the simplicity of the modified code design and the spectral efficiency increase constitute an advantage for practical implementation of OCDMA network.

This work addresses the problem of deriving fundamental trade-off bounds for a 1-relay and a 2-relay wireless network when multiple performance criteria are of interest. It proposes a simple MultiObjective (MO) performance evaluation framework composed of a broadcast and interference-limited network model; capacity, delay and energy performance metrics and an associated MO optimization problem. Pareto optimal performance bounds between end-to-end delay and energy for a capacity-achieving network are given for 1-relay and 2-relay topologies and assessed through simulations. Moreover, we also show in this paper that these bounds are tight since they can be reached by simple practical coding strategies performed by the source and the relays. Two different types of network coding strategies are investigated. Practical performance bounds for both strategies are compared to the theoretical upper bound. Results confirm that the proposed upper bound on delay and energy performance is tight and can be reached with the proposed combined source and network coding strategies.