The Story of a Widow in Kate Chopins The Story of an Hour...

â€Å"There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.† Kate Chopin’s â€Å"The Story of an Hour† is the story of a woman’s reaction to the news of her husband’s passing. Mrs. Louise Mallard is a young woman most would conclude to be saddened by the passing of her husband. Yet it is in that very moment we find her true feelings. Kate Chopin was born Katherine O’Flaherty on February 8, 1850 in St. Louis Missouri. She was the only child born to her parents to live past the age of twenty-five. It was at the age of twenty she met and married†¦show more content†¦Mallard’s sister Josephine was at the house that day as well. It is not until Louise retreats to an upstairs bedroom that something comes over her. She at first is unable to recognize the feeling that is overcoming her. Trying to suppress this strange emotion proves futile. â€Å"She said it over and over under her breath: free, free, free! The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.† Louise Mallard had realized the years left in her life were hers and hers alone. â€Å"Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer t hat life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.† Louise Mallard’s reaction to her husband’s passing may seem startling. Was this a woman so unhappy in her marriage that this was the response to hearing of his passing? â€Å"And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not.† In the time period of â€Å"The Story of an Hour† divorce was not considered acceptable. Louis herself struggles with her emotions.† She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and grayShow MoreRelatedKate Chopin s Story Of The Hour Essay982 Words   |  4 PagesKate Chopin was an American author who wrote two novels that got published and at least a hundred short stories. In Kate’s short story The Story of the Hour she uses some of her traumatic event that happened in her lifespan in the short story even though it the story is fictional. A lot of her fictions were set in Louisiana and her best-known works foc used on the lives of sensitive intelligent women. One-third of Mrs. Chopin’s stories are children’s stories. A lot of Mrs. Chopin’s novels were forgottenRead MoreKate Chopin, An American Writer1425 Words   |  6 PagesKate Chopin, an American writer, known for her vivid portrayals of women’s lives during the late 1800s. Her fiction works usually set in Louisiana, which contributed too much of her description of women’s roles. During Chopin’s time, Louisiana was in the midst of reconstruction and was having racial and economic issues. (Skaggs 4) Louisiana is the setting for many of Chopin’s stories, and they depict a realistic picture of Louisiana society. Kate Chopin published two novels and many short storiesRead MoreKate Chopin s Literary Creativity And Women s Independence1097 Words   |  5 Pages Kate Chopin has become one of the most influential feminist writers of the century. From Chopin’s literary rejection of The Awakening, the rejection sparked a fire in Chopin’s feminist side. Chopin began writing short stories that would become society’s lead in literary creativity and women’s independence. Kate Chopin’s biography is astonishingly intriguing and the importance Chopin plays to the feminist literature genre is exceptional. Critics either rave Chopin’s work or completely destroy itRead MoreKate Chopin Literary Analysis793 Words   |  4 PagesKate Chopin was an innovative influence in literature in the late 1800’s. Her stories and characters conflicted with the societal norms of inequality towards women. Women in the 1800’s were oppressed, and treated more like property than individuals. Living in the 1800s as a woman meant they had no rights, or power to create a life of their own. The men, in that period of hist ory, held all prestige positions, and formed the laws, and social norms of that time. Kate Chopin, and other writers of herRead MoreHow Did Kate Chopin Influence Literature949 Words   |  4 PagesKate Chopin’s distinct influence in literature Kate Chopin was an innovative influence for literature in the late 1800’s. Her stories and characters conflicted with the societal norms of inequality towards women. Women in the 1800’s were oppressed, and treated more like property than individuals. Living in the 1800’s as a woman meant they had no rights, or power to create a life of their own. The men, in that period of history, held all prestige positions; therefore, formed all of the laws, and socialRead MoreEssay on Structural Technique in The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin861 Words   |  4 Pagesshort story. Kate Chopin uses structural techniques to enhance â€Å"The Story of an Hour† from beginning to end. She follows formal structure to a certain degree, but occasionally strays to actual structure. Upon analysis of the organization of Chopin’s story, the reader understands the powerful meaning that is expressed in such a short piece. Initially, a short story begins with an exposition. This is the laying out of important background information, characters, and setting. Chopin’s story is onlyRead MoreThe Unique Style Of Kate Chopin s Writing1603 Words   |  7 PagesThe unique style of Kate Chopin’s writing has influenced and paved the way for many female authors. Although not verbally, Kate Chopin aired political and social issues affecting women and challenging the validity of such restrictions through fiction. Kate Chopin, a feminist in her time, prevailed against the notion that a woman’s purpose was to only be a housewife and nothing more. Kate Chopin fortified the importance of women empowerment, self-expression, self-assertion, and female sexuality throughRead MoreAn Examination Of How Kate Chopin s Work1298 Words   |  6 PagesENGL 1102 – Comp/Lit Essay 2 (Mulry) Sellers, James R – 920022413 Due Date: April 20, 2015 An Examination of How Kate Chopin’s Works Taken Together Contribute to our Understanding of Her Time and the Place of Women in Society Looking at themes present in his short stories and novels, Kate Chopin presents examples of female strength and an assertive rebellion to the social norms during the late 1800s. By seeking to transparently and boldly portray the risquà © behavior of her lead characters, whichRead MoreThe Life and Works of Kate Chopin1569 Words   |  6 PagesKate wrote two novels and hundreds of short stories. Few of her stories were â€Å"Story of an Hour† and â€Å"The Awakening†. One of Kate Chopins most famous stories is the Story of an Hour. In the story Chopin was brave enough to challenge the society in which she lived because in the first half of the 19th century, women were not allowed the freedoms men enjoyed in the judgments of the law, the church or the government. This famous short story showed the conflict between the social traditional requirementsRead MoreKate Chopin s The Awakening1198 Words   |  5 Pageswoman’s freedom is the driving force behind Kate Ch opin’s contextual objections to propriety. In particular, The Awakening and â€Å"The Story of an Hour† explore the lives of women seeking marital liberation and individuality. Mrs. Chopin, who was raised in a matriarchal household, expresses her opposition to the nineteenth century patriarchal society while using her personal experiences to exemplify her feminist views. Katherine O’Flaherty, later Kate Chopin, was born to Eliza and Thomas O’Flaherty

Theological Integrity and Having a Solid Understanding of...

Theological integrity is having a solid understanding of Scripture, including its contexts and interpretations. This does not necessarily mean understanding ancient languages, but certainly understanding the meaning of the Scriptures and the themes portrayed in them. Spiritual vitality is the connection of a person’s spirit with God and the results actions that flows from it. As our lectures point out, to connect the two of them together is to connect the heart (spiritual vitality) to the head (theological integrity). The connection here really is more vital than what many people give it credit for. Many modern pastors focus more on the heart reaction so they preach towards the spiritual vitality and offer encouraging words of hope, grace and love, but seldom reflect on sin, consequences, or suffering as shown in Scripture; you cannot adequately have one with the other. Spiritual vitality without theological integrity is much like having a table without legs. It is saying that we believe in God, but not really know who God is. The content of what we believe makes a huge difference on our personal spiritual life. How we view the Bible in terms of hermeneutics, as well as accuracy, shapes everything we do in our ministry and our lives. For example, if we believe that most of the Bible is pretty accurate, and we can accept the teachings of Jesus, but we reject the Genesis story because it does not match with known science, then we create a mindset that the Bible,Show MoreRelatedGod The Spirit By Beth Felker2164 Words   |  9 Pagesintroduction only style book, there is the risk of glossing over topics and not providing enough in depth discussion to fully understand and comprehend the doctrine discussed. A reader should feel confident that Jones has indeed provided us with a solid introduction to Wesleyan pneumatology that has the ability to bear fruit and initiate growth in the life of the believer. Jones begins in chapter one by establishing the Divinity of the Holy Spirit, something she recognizes cannot be assumedRead MoreMy Personal Experience Of God7569 Words   |  31 Pagestgsmith@umcsc.org Disciplinary Questions – Part I Describe your personal experience of God and the understanding of God you derive from biblical, theological and historical sources. I have a personal relationship with God the Father through the redemptive power of Jesus Christ and the keeping power of the Holy Spirit. I spend time daily in prayer, meditation and reading of the scriptures. My understanding of God is found in The Apostle Creed which states: I believe in God, the Father Almighty, makerRead MoreNatural And Cosmic Theodicy And The Call For A Trinitarian Panentheism Essay2373 Words   |  10 Pagesdimensions.† That is, â€Å"In the biblical and patristic traditions, ‘cosmic’ Christologies and pneumatologies are present,† and the retrieval of tradition is â€Å"important both for the sake of interfaith hospitality and improving Christianity’s self-understanding† in interdisciplinary dialogue. Kà ¤rkkà ¤inen points out that the cosmic Christology of the NT (John 1:1-14; Col. 1:15-19; Heb. 1:2-4) points to â€Å"the integral link between Christ’s role in creation and in reconciliation.† This universal ChristologyRead MoreMass Media and Evangelization in the Church8919 Words   |  36 Pagesup and transformed in to a community of brothers and sisters, a human community, a community of faith and love, witness and service, a community of salvation. Human beings are called to imitate God in their relationships. This constitutes the theological basis for any communication whether among human beings, or between human beings and God. This mission of the Church as building up in Christ a new humanity and a world community springs from within revelation, the pattern of authentic relationshipRead MoreTheology of the Body32011 Words   |  129 Pagesbeginning, seen in Genesis, which sets forth a proper understanding of the nature of man and woman, made in God’s image, as well as the unity and indissolubility of marriage. 2) Man is created by God in the image and likeness of God, not in the image of creatures. This image involves sexual differentiation: â€Å"God created man in his image †¦ male and female he created them.† God pronounced the human person â€Å"very good.† Genesis established a solid basis for metaphysics, anthropology and ethics, whichRead MoreSources of Ethics20199 Words   |  81 PagesNature of Islamic Ethics Islamic ethics is founded on two principles— human nature, and religious and legal grounds. The first principle, natural instinct (fitrah ), was imprinted in the human soul by God at the time of creation (Surah 91:7-8). Having natural instinct, the ordinary individual can, at least to some extent, distinguish not only between good and bad, but also between these and that which is neutral, neither good nor bad. However, an ethical conscience is not a sufficient personal

Perspective of an Indigenous Aboriginal-Free-Sample for Students

Question: Discuss about the perspective of an Indigenous Aboriginal Australian. Answer: Introduction The essay provides an overview about the perspective of an Indigenous (Aboriginal) Australian who has lived in the Northern Territories and is engaged in movement to preserve indigenous culture in hometown. The indigenous Australians have settled in the Northern Territory of Australia for near about 40,000 years. The second biggest indigenous community is Arrernte people residing in Arrernte land. The town chosen for this study is Alice Springs. This is the third biggest town situated in the Northern Territory of this nation. This region has been renowned for harsh and remote environment. Due to this, this region has been less affected by the European culture as compared with other regions of Australia. The culture of indigenous Australians still flourishes in several parts of this region, thereby creating traditional environment mainly for the visitors to explore (Dockery 2012). Indigenous (Aboriginal) communities are considered as the vital element of this Northern territory. Discussion One of the main challenges facing this nation in recent decades has been raising the standard of living of Indigenous Australians mainly in the remote communities of the Alice Spring region. There are huge numbers of Australians residing in this communities characterized by poor health, poverty, crime rates etc. Several people have been also caught in destructive welfare dependency cycle, youth suicide mainly that have exacted suffering on Indigenous people (Altman 2006). One of the indigenous Australian who has resided in Alice Springs has engaged in preserving their languages in order to maintain their cultural identity (Pechov 2012). This is because language being the basic marker of the indigenous Australians, it helps in identifying as well as communicating with each other easily. However, engaging in this movement helps them in promoting social interaction. Moreover, the government schools situated in this Alice Spring town also provides education to the students from remote lo cations to speak indigenous language as first language. This Australian has also engaged with the movement of implementing language specific programs in the schools as well as communities in order to keep their people united. Furthermore, most of these programs such as Indigenous Education Strategic initiatives program ( IESIP), Aboriginal Student Support and Parent Awareness ( ASSPA) program and so on were mainly funded from the existing budget of the schools. On the contrary, in some of the regions of young indigenous people rejects speaking their language, which in turn isolates their community from others. As art styles has been one of the pillars of the Indigenous cultures, this individual living in this town has engaged in the movement to preserve this culture, self-esteem and diversity. Historical evidences reflect that the indigenous people of this town have evolved as extremely varied spectrum of artistry. According to the perspective of this Australian living in this town, preserving art has been essential owing to several reasons (Alford and Muir 2004). Firstly, this has been utilized as mark territory and recording history. In addition, one of the vital reasons of engaging in this movement is to keep their traditional community alive. Apart from this, this indigenous individual has also engaged in the movement in keeping their traditional method of painting unchanged (Bandias, Fuller and Holmes 2012). The main reason behind this movement is to share their history through paintings, sculptures, which are similar to that of their ancestors. Regardless of several problems that occ urred from engagement of this movement, the aboriginal people tries to preserve this culture in order to preserve their self-esteem and maintain identity (Balkov 2005). Contemporary Aboriginal dance has been considered as one of the cultures of the Indigenous Australians as it embraces traditional stories as well as ritual and also helps in interpreting their identity. The indigenous people living in Alice Springs who engaged in the movement of preserving this culture in his hometown has stated that ritual dances were mainly performed for bringing their families ad well as communities together for celebration (Altman 2006). In addition, their dance has also been considered as traditional ceremony since it documents about the British invasion story as well as changes it has created. Moreover, the British tunes, words and actions were also sometimes introduced in their traditional dances. In the present years, the diversity of their culture is also expressed through their dance. In addition, the Aboriginal dance theatre that was formed in the year 1970 also provides training to the students from this community in various dance styles. This in turn als o helps in promoting the cultural exchange and keep physical as well mental health better (Biddle 2011). The ceremonies also play vital part of the cultures of Aboriginal people in Australia. The indigenous Australian who has resided in Alice Spring town is also engaged in several movements of preserving these ceremonies as it has huge significance in educating the youth people. For example, in different ceremonies these people usually wear headdress along with distinguishing body painting for indicating the kind of ceremony that is being performed. The Australian residing in this town also highlights that aboriginal people cultural and economic interest is also to harvest wild resources. However, these people adopt innovative approaches for preserving their culture as all these resources are mainly utilized for their personal consumption. In addition, non- commercial utilization of these wild resources by aboriginal people usually comprises of some productive activities, which are usually based on the cultural continuity since pre-colonial period (Gray and Altman 2006). Some of the uses includes- fishing, hunting, gathering and several other activities namely biodiversity maintenance, land as well as habitat management, species management and so on. The valuation of economic benefits to indigenous people occurring from utilization of the wild resources has been relatively simple. Conceptually, economic valuation of services or products is usually estimated in account of what customers are keen to pay for specific product less t he supply cost. The figure below reflects that customers keen in paying for commodity is reflected by marginal benefit (MB) curve while supply cost is reflected by marginal cost (MC) curve. As suggested by economic theory that the product is produced as well as consumed in the unregulated market until MC become equivalent to MB. Economic value is thereby generated by consumption of output as shown by Q. However, the economic value attained from non-commercial resource harvesting by aboriginal people can be explained as difference between consumption value and production cost. As doing harvesting helps to gain economic surplus, they have engaged in the movement to preserve this specific culture of harvesting resources until MB=MC. Figure 1: Economic surplus from harvesting resources Sources: (Gray and Altman 2006) The past Indigenous Australian culture in this specific town has led to lack of opportunities of employment for aboriginal youth, who are mainly aged between 22 and 26 year. Historical employment data reflects that near about 11-16000 adults as well as youth living in this territory were either not employed or not participating in labor force . In fact, the indigenous people unemployment rate was three times more than unemployment rate of non- Indigenous people. Furthermore, the low rate of employment associated with uneven number of these aboriginal Australians employed in low wage occupations signifies that the standard of living of indigenous population has been lower as compared to non-indigenous population (Dalley and Martin 2015). The Australian government should provide fund for the ranger programs relating to preservation of culture of indigenous people in order to improve their cultural preservation. In fact, they should double their total funding for the programs for reinforcing culture. Conclusion From the above essay, it can be concluded that Aboriginal people have varied relationships with the environment of Australia. This relationship mainly depends on cultural practices that pass down through their generation. The indigenous Australian tries to preserve their indigenous culture in order to place their identity before non- indigenous Australians. In the present era, continuing practices of culture of aboriginal people reflects relationship diversity that they have with this nations environment. References Alford, K., Muir, J. (2004).Dealing with unfinished Indigenous business: The need for historical reflection. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 63,101107. Altman, J 2006, 'The future of Indigenous Australia', Arena Magazine, vol. August-September, no. 84, pp. 8-10. Balkov, J., 2005.Preserving and Restoring Identity in Traditional and Communities of Aboriginal Australians; Assimilation Programs and Issues(Doctoral dissertation, Masarykova univerzita, Filozofick fakulta). Bandias, S., Fuller, D. and Holmes, S., 2012. Aboriginal Economic and Human Development in the Northern Territory of Australia: To Work or Not to Work. A Clash of Non?Indigenous Beliefs.Economic Papers: A journal of applied economics and policy,31(1), pp.50-62. Biddle, N. 2011. Physical and mental health, Measures of Indigenous Wellbeing and Their Determinants Across the Lifecourse, 2011 CAEPR Lecture Series (Lecture 3), ANU, Canberra. Dalley, C. and Martin, R.J., 2015. Dichotomous identities? Indigenous and non?Indigenous people and the intercultural in Australia.The Australian journal of anthropology,26(1), pp.1-23. Dockery, A.M., 2012. Do traditional culture and identity promote the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians? Evidence from the 2008 NATSISS.Survey analysis for Indigenous policy in Australia: Social science perspectives, pp.281-306. Gray, M. and Altman, J., 2006. The economic value of harvesting wild resources to the Indigenous community of the Wallis Lake Catchment, NSW.Family Matters, (75), p.24. Keogh, T., 2014. Psychoanalytic Reflections on An Experience of Australian Aboriginal Culture.International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies,11(3), pp.246-264. Pechov, M., 2012. Current relations between Aborigines and dominant Australian culture. Woodward, E., Jackson, S., Finn, M. and McTaggart, P.M., 2012. Utilising Indigenous seasonal knowledge to understand aquatic resource use and inform water resource management in northern Australia.Ecological Management Restoration,13(1), pp.58-64.

The State of Change in Healthcare Reforms

The current state of change in healthcare reforms and women’s health legislation is challenging in nature. This is because there are several factors that do not easily change though health care demands changes in order to meet the needs of patients, and especially women who are mostly disadvantaged. Health care change that addresses women’s concern has a lot and benefits to them in one way or another.Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on The State of Change in Healthcare Reforms specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More During this 21st century era, there is a need for change in health care delivery in various organizations. Apparently, there major factors that had affected change and reforms in health care for a long period of time. If this organization will not consider these factors and act accordingly, it will never experience positive reforms both currently and in future. This paper explores the hea lthcare change that has taken place in my organization recently. According to Halvorson (2007), there are about four major factors that made it cumbersome for health care to be reformed fully in the last few decades. First, there is unfair allocation of care costs. The second factor is weak delivery process. Thirdly, the impact of financial incentives affects health care in a negative way. Lastly, health care fail to apply systems thinking in the career. These factors are basic realities and failure to reconsider them can result into dilemma in heath care and women’s health in any given organization. In this case, health care plan in my organization had failed to consider these factors and at the same time was not ready to embrace organizational change of any nature. Let us consider women’s health in general. It is imperative to note that women still face numerous intricacies in health care deliveries. Many of them lack adequate health care insurance and generally do n ot have a good quality life irrespective of living long, they are sufferers of personal and collective cruelty and unfairness (Alexander et al., 2009). It is against this backdrop that these factors that my organization saw it necessary to inject relevant change in healthcare. It is imperative to initiate change in order to improve health care and its facilities. Notably, initiating change will meet current demands of reforms in health care.Advertising Looking for research paper on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Proper assessment of the organization was necessary before eventually embarking on the process of change. For instance, changing the model of formulating policies as well as exploring ways to maintain available finances was found to be integral in the health care reform process in my organization. The current state of change in my organization which is mostly touching on the area of women’s health is indeed a major breakthrough. It is worth noting that the organization lacks the necessary machinery to bring drastic changes in managing prevailing problems in health care and especially health care concerns on women. Some of the stumbling blocks include gender inequality in health care, low income among women as well as few trained and professional women in the organization. Consequently, women workers are more but only a few are professional. Worse still, those who are professional are discriminated. This is an example of a case in which organizational change has sometimes been resisted. Resistance exists because the organization fails to realize that women are more in terms of numbers but are discriminated when offering fringe benefits in healthcare. There are typical examples that demonstrate how the organization had failed to initiate organizational change. It had failed to change in several areas such as delivery system, financing women’s health and making po licies that will be able to meet women’s problems (Stanfield, Cross Hui, 2009). The unmet needs in health care and women’s health care are as the result of these factors which seem to stay irrespective of what is expected in the organization. The policies made in health care do not consider how to address the way in which provisions can be made to finance women’s health. The delivery systems do not have sufficient money. In this case, delivery systems demands drastic change in order to improve the services in health care and women’s health.Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on The State of Change in Healthcare Reforms specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More It is paramount to make some recommendations concerning the current research regarding change in health care organizations. First, there is a need to look for concrete solutions to make policies that will finance every health care de livery in various organizations. Finances will help to make sufficient health care treatment for all patients including neglected women. Those in management should look for ways on how to enhance health coverage to patients. The current research shows that many patients go home without full treatment due to minimal monetary from their places of work. As a matter of fact, the women’s health act has come in handy with the current healthcare change in this organization. This legislation is expected to offer special health care packages for women who work in this organization. It is recommendable to consider the need for improving research and delivery of services. Currently, the organization has not invested much on research on essential health issues that can bring positive reforms. However, it has been operating under poor delivery of services. This trend needs a drastic change. Notably, educating managerial leaders on how to offer better services will help to curb this proble m. However, change and reforms in healthcare delivery are unavoidable in this organization. References Alexander, L, LaRosa, J, Bader, H, Alexander, W Garfield, S. (2009). New Dimensions in Women’s Health. Sudbury, MA: Jones Bartlett Learning. Halvorson, G. (2007). Health Care Reform Now!: A Prescription for Change. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley Sons. Stanfield, P., Cross, N. Hui, Y. (2009). Introduction to the Health Professions. Sudbury, MA: Jones Bartlett Publishers.Advertising Looking for research paper on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More This research paper on The State of Change in Healthcare Reforms was written and submitted by user Mckenz1e to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Hitlers Influence on Germanys Youth essays

Hitlers Influence on Germanys Youth essays The young men in Germany had the option of becoming a part of Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth), and the young girls had the option of joining Bund Deutscher Madel (League of German Girls). Until December of 1936, the Hitler Youth organization was voluntary to join, but after that date became mandatory and was considered to be part, if not all, of the education of the youth. The organizations manipulated the educational system to emphasize physical education more than actual standard school work. Physical ability and commitment to Adolf Hitler were stressed in the youth as religion and history slowly disappeared and became racial history classes and pseudo- war games. The children were given requirements to meet such as how fast and long they could run, strength tests, and stamina exercises. The youngest members (Pimpf) of the organizations were 10 to 14 years of age and participated in activities like map- reading and were required to be able to recite the Nazi dogma and all verses of th e song Horst Wessel. At age 14 they graduated into the core (Kern) where they remained until the age of 18 and then were admitted into the Nazi army. The League of German Girls was separated into 2 divisions where until the age of 14 a girl was considered a Jungmadel and from the ages of 17 to 21, a girl could decide to join the Glaube und Schonheit, which translates to Faith and Beauty. Between the ages of 14 to 17 there was no organization for the girls to join. The girls had similar tasks to perform as the men; physical tests, learning the history of the Nazi party, and the memorization of the dogma and verses of the Horst Wessel. The organizations ultimately dominated Germanys youth and taught that the most important influence in their lives should be the organizations themselves, not family and school as was before. Baldur von Schirach, the leader of the Hitler Youth, made it so that the ways of the organi...

Kathryns Stocketts The Help and 1960s Feminism

Kathryns Stocketts The Help and 1960s Feminism The Help is set in Mississippi during the early 1960s, when the groundswell of feminisms second wave was still building. Kathryn Stocketts novel revolves around events in 1962-1963, before the womens liberation movement, before Betty Friedan and other feminist leaders founded the National Organization for Women, before the media invented the myth of bra-burning. Although The Help is an imperfect depiction of the 1960s and the author stifles the budding feminism of some of her characters, the novel does touch on many issues that were relevant to 1960s feminism.   Issues Worth Exploring Skeeters Rebelliousness/IndependenceA hint of feminism in The Help may be most evident in post-college Skeeter, the young woman who questions restrictions placed on her by societys traditions. Her Southern socialite best friends have conformed to expectations by marrying, having children (or trying to) and even questioning why Skeeter stayed four years at Ole Miss to finish her degree, while they were dropping out of school. Skeeter is still trapped and still trying to fit in, but her inability to do so is partly due to her discomfort with the myth of femininity she is expected to live. White Women and Women of ColorThe so-called second wave of feminism is often criticized for being too white. Betty Friedans classic The Feminine Mystique and other 1960s feminism accomplishments often came from a limited, white, middle-class point of view. Similar criticisms have been applied to The Help. This is partly because it is written by a white author who narrates in the black voices of Minny and Aibileen, and partly because of the way white voices in the U.S. continually tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement from a limited point of view. Many critics have questioned Kathryn Stocketts ability to speak for the help. Although the story is about white and black women working together, it is difficult and even dangerous for them to do so. The Help reminds readers that some 1960s feminists were perceived as busily organizing, protesting and advocating without bringing women from other races to the table. Women and Civil RightsWhich comes first for African-American women, civil rights as blacks or liberation as women? This theme was explored by many black feminist activists, with some theorists responding that it is clearly an unfair question. The either/or dichotomy is part of the problem. No woman should be asked to give up any part of her sense of self. SisterhoodThe term sisterhood became a theme and rallying cry of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s. Use of the word was criticized by some, in part because of the racist and classist assumptions ascribed to white womens liberation activists who used the word. The Help emphasizes the solidarity of women in many different situations, often crossing racial boundaries. MarriageDespite her independent streak, Skeeter feels the pressure to marry, and nearly does so even when both emotional and logical signs point toward no. The marriages of various characters in the book - Skeeters parents, her friends, Aibileen, Minny, Stuarts parents, Celia Foote - are nearly all presented with problems that are intertwined with gender power dynamics. Domestic ViolenceMinny faces abuse from her husband Leroy with some degree of resignation. However, author Kathryn Stockett does seem at times to approach it with an ironic awareness of the public attention that would soon come to the issue of domestic violence. Feminist organizations such as NOW addressed domestic violence as one of their priority issues. Women in PublishingElaine Stein, the editor from New York who helps Skeeter, freely states that she will help because she recognizes the need for a woman to have a mentor, a connection or some kind of in to the male-dominated publishing industry. Economics, Maids and the Pink-Collar GhettoAfrican-American women depicted in The Help had to earn a living as maids in white families homes. Few other opportunities were available to them - very few. Feminists of the 1960s are often remembered for getting women out of the home. The truth is, many women did work outside of the home already, but one of the chief concerns of feminists was that women were relegated to lower paying jobs of less prestige with less advancement opportunity and less satisfaction. The term pink-collar refers to the traditional, lower-paid womens jobs. Empowering the Help: How the Personal Is PoliticalThe books main plot is about women telling their stories in a society that has long refused to hear their voices. Whether or not the novel is flawed or the author can properly speak for African-American maids, the idea of women speaking their truth as a path to greater social enlightenment is considered the backbone of feminism.

The Preference of Music and its relationship to Culture, Personality, Annotated Bibliography

The Preference of Music and its relationship to Culture, Personality, and Mental Health - Annotated Bibliography Example The study indicates that there is a difference in the preference of culture, and the more one is familiar with the music you tend to like it. Furthermore, someone’s peer might affect the preference of music but it depends on his or her age. This source is important because it analyses the same subject that I want to write about. The author is writing detailed information about his research, with supporting tables and statistic numbers. The source is considered long but with credible information that is gathered from highly accurate measure called Continuous Response Digital Interface (CRDI). The paragraphs are organized with subtitles and celerity stating the facts and evidences. The objective of this study is to investigate if the preferred music can affect listener’s behaviors, self-harm, and drug use. It surveys and discusses the relevant literature on music preference and audience music listening behaviors, and their links ones mental health. It states that different genres of music have a different impact of antisocial and drug use in listeners, and it provides example regarding each genre. Also, it studies the link between music preference and suicide; it shows that music can indicate emotional tendencies to suicide but not a cause to it. Moreover, it describes listeners personalities depending on which music they prefer. For instance, it gives an established relationship between rap music and antisocial behaviors, vulnerability to suicide and drug use. The author uses events that have happened in the past to bring out the relationship existing between rap music for example and drug abuse for example, teens instigating a school shooting. This article is helpful in my work since it looks at the effects of the behaviors that might arise from lyrics incorporated in the music and how it is transforming our culture. The article talks about how we react to music and how it affects our

Reading Response Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 5

Reading Response - Essay Example In fact, most writers are hardly sure if they are going to get enough stuff for the number of pages required. Lamott refers to a time when, through experience in the writing process, she â€Å"eventually let [herself] trust the process, sort of, more or less† (1). This is because, even being an experienced writer, she still has to begin by putting down really shitty first drafts. After refining the initial draft a second and third time, she is able to come up with excellent pieces. She still gets wary of what she puts down and still worries about whether her work is good enough. Lamott wariness is not personal but rather a common trait among all writers. Getting the right words and knowing how to begin the first paragraph for a piece of work is a challenge to all writers. For every writer, writing is a process that begins with no order but ultimately ends with excellence. Writing a first draft is more about the process because it is not well organized. It rather serves as a form of reference for a writer’s initial ideas that could be forgotten if not scribbled down. Most first drafts can only be understood by the writer. Therefore a second and third draft is crucial. A second draft is significant because it incorporates corrections and new leads. This gives the work some direction. A third draft is the accurate draft; a writer ensures that the words and flow of work is accurate by reviewing every detail. Lamott says that â€Å"almost all good writing begins with terrible efforts† (2). Every writer has to begin somewhere and this can only be done by putting down information and thoughts on paper. According to Lamott, not one of the great writers â€Å"sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts† (1). As a writer, starting the first paragraph of a piece of work has always been a challenge. I get worried about the

Transitional Leadership Essay Example for Free

Transitional Leadership Essay Organizational Culture is defined as â€Å"a common perception held by the organization’s members; a system of shared meaning† (Robbins, 2004). It is the name given to the idea that an organization holds a set of values, beliefs and practices that are common to all the members of that organization. It is the idea that an organization cannot exist on its own without a dominant culture practiced within the boundaries of the organization. Due to the growing workplace diversity, it has become impossible for every member of a different culture to practice their own beliefs and values. Thus, organizational culture provides the framework and the behavioral guidelines on how to behave within an organization. The characteristics of organizational culture are: Innovation and risk taking Attention to detail Outcome orientation People orientation Team orientation Aggressiveness Stability (Robbins, 2004) There can be different types of organizational cultures depending on the hierarchy, the business it is in and the scope of the organization, It is not necessary that two identical organizations will have the same organizational culture. It all depends on the workforce and the mission and vision of the organization that determines the organizational culture. My organization has a customer-responsive culture. This means that the culture in my organization has a set of practices that are customer-centric. The characteristics of such a culture are very much different from any other traditional customer-focused organization. Since culture is the summation of values, beliefs, attitudes and practices, The customer-responsive culture is one where there is employee empowerment, involvement and continuous learning. Information sharing is an integral part of daily communication and the customer is the center of attention in all considerations. Religious practices and occasions are part of the organizational culture and employees are kept autonomous and happy to the maximum possible extent so that this results in a well-served customer. I believe that my organization’s culture is well-suited for future development and success. This is because of the fact that businesses all around the globe have become highly customer focused. Organizations are beginning to learn that the customer is the most important person and no amount of wooing will ensure a prolonged loyalty from the customer. They are now designing products and services keeping in view the demands of the customer. There has been a shift from the sales paradigm to the customer needs paradigm where organizations are constantly worried about what the customer wants and strive to meet those requirements. Future success depends on the ability to understand and meet customers’ requirements. Since the organizational culture is customer-centric, I am sure there are no problems posed to the organization in meeting them. In fact, the customer-focused organizational culture will also mean that the employees in the organization will be highly motivated towards achieving the goals assigned targets since the organizational culture ensures autonomy, employee empowerment and flexibility. These traits ensure that the employees feel part of the organization and take more pride and enthusiasm in working towards achieving its goals. In conclusion, I would like to state that an organizational culture which is customer-centric is bound to be successful in the future due to the fact that the global industry is moving towards understanding the needs of the customer and delivering products and services fulfilling those needs. Bibliography Robbins, S. P. (2004). Organizational Behavior. New York: Pearsons.

The Fictional Character Cleopatra Essays -- Cleopatra Shakespeare Play

The Fictional Character Cleopatra The fictional character of Cleopatra has captured the imaginations of people the world over. Helen of Troy was said to have had ‘the face that launched a thousand ships.’ Cleopatra was not simply a beautiful and passive face, but indeed commanded navies as well as the heart of the powerful Mark Antony. Looking at these two facts from the play one may see the political brilliance in her affections, but also the dichotomy. Which one of her loves is true, and which is of an illusory nature? There is a constant battle between her passion towards the mighty Roman and her yearning for sovereignty and the glory of Egypt on her own terms. This question certainly embroils the mind of Mark Antony, at least. All of this however, only adds to her enigmatic depth of character and mystique. Cleopatra, despite being cunning and even manipulative can be defined as one of literature’s great lovers. She was a lover of men and a lover of her country. A figure more driven in these categories would be hard to find. Yet parallels can be drawn with Queen Elizabeth I of England. Both were ardent, patriotic leaders descended from powerful rulers (in the case of Elizabeth, Henry VIII, and in Cleopatra’s instance the Ptolemeic dynasty). Wielding great authority themselves, Cleopatra also used her charms as a courtesan to bend the wills of her political peers. Elizabeth used her unmarried status to manage numerous suitors to her political advantage. Their intelligence is another common trait. â€Å"Elizabeth’s linguistic ability is well attested, not only by her tutor Ascham, but by visitors to the English court who speak of precisely this facility in replying to ambassadors either i... ...e. This simple carpenter preached transcendence and many believe he save the world by the surrender of his life. Cleopatra found release through surrendering as well. She broke the conflicting chains of passion, governance, and the other illusions of reality by surrendering her life. Bibliography Boyce, Charles. Shakespeare A to Z. Roundtable Press: New York, 1990 Chauveau, Michel. Egypt in the Age of Cleopatra. Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London, 1997 Falconer, Colin. When We Were Gods. Crown Publishers: New York, 2000 Greenblatt, Steven. ‘Antony and Cleopatra’. The Norton Shakespeare Tragedies. W.W. Norton & Company: New York, London, 1997 Neely, Carol Thomas. Broken Nuptials in Shakepeare’s Plays. University of Illinois Press: Urbana and Chicago, 1993 Smith, Marion Bodwell. Dualities in Shakespeare. University of Toronto Press, 1966

Hilton Customer Service Case Study

Customer Service in Travel and Tourism Hilton Hotels Case Study [pic] The ‘Understanding Travel and Tourism’ case study provides useful background information about Hilton Hotels. The first three sections of this case study are based on two presentations on the theme of ‘Reach Beyond’ given to employees of Hilton Hotels UK and Ireland as part of a major staff training programme. Benefits of Good Customer Service Guests tend to leave or defect from Hilton because: †¢ they become dissatisfied or †¢ a competitor is thought to be better or because a guest simply doesn’t care (in every market there are people who just don’t care about brand choice) or †¢ the guest has no choice e. g. the location is not right for the traveller or, for business travellers, because company policy is to use another hotel chain. What satisfies guests? Every guest is different, however research by Hilton Hotels has identified some ‘drivers’ th at influence whether a guest is satisfied with the stay or not. Drivers of Guest Satisfaction – UK Relative Impact on Overall Satisfaction [pic] The Importance of LoyaltyGuest survey research by Hilton suggests that in a typical year only 5% of existing customers remain loyal, however loyal customers tend to spend more and they account for 10% of revenue. Loyalty is important because satisfied and loyal guests: †¢ will make an effort to do business with Hilton †¢ give 80% or more of their business to Hilton †¢ ignore competitive offers, advertising and discounts †¢ tend to be willing to accept higher pricing structures †¢ remain with Hilton 8-10 times longer than unloyal guests †¢ are worth 100 times more than unloyal guests, in the long termIt is worth noting that the importance of loyal guests is recognised by most travel and tourism organisations, and many often carry out promotions aimed directly at repeat customers. One way Hilton Hotels rew ards loyalty and encourages repeat bookings is through the Hilton HHonors membership scheme, through which customers can receive points and other benefits. The more a customer uses Hilton Hotels, the bigger the rewards. Handling Complaints If no action is taken following a complaint, 52% of guests making a complaint are likely NOT to return.Once a complaint has been handled satisfactorily, 94% of customers making a complaint will return. This is almost the same percentage of customers likely to return when there is no problem and no complaint. This slide gives more detail about Hilton Hotels’ findings from research into the handling of problems and complaints. How may I help you? [pic]Source: VisualMedia Online ICT and Customer Service Hilton Hotels uses ICT in many ways. Just a few examples are: Hilton Hotels’ e-learning training programme that can be accessed by all staff members †¢ the use of powerful software programmes for analysing the results of research in to customer satisfaction levels †¢ providing excellent ICT amenities for business travellers †¢ making it easier to book the Hilton brand by improvements to websites and computerised reservations systems, and ‘fair deal’ agreements with external booking agencies. In 2002/3 Hilton developed a local language website for Hilton International in the UK – www. hilton. co. uk.The re-designed site featured lots more information. It was localised to make sure the offers were relevant and attractive for UK customers. The details on each hotel are updated at the hotel, rather than centrally, as is common practice. This ensures that the customer is getting all the most up-to-date and relevant details about the hotel and its offers as soon as possible. As part of the successful launch, the website www. hiltongroup. com promoted the new-look website www. hilton. co. uk. This included some examples of different types of potential customer and how they would use the n ew website.Below is the example of a customer travelling for leisure. Quality Here is a summary of the message to staff taking part in the Hilton ‘Reach Beyond’ training scheme: ———————– Importance of complaint handling No complaintComplaint (64%) (36%) Not reported Reported (8%) (28%) No actionAction Taken (8%) Not satisfied Satisfied (9%) (11%) Why is satisfaction important? Guest stays at HiltonNot satisfiedDefects to the competition Guest stays at HiltonSatisfiedVisits againBecomes loyal For further information about Hilton Hotels see: www. iltongroup. com or www. hilton. co. uk The Leisure Traveller â€Å"Whenever I go away I always stay in a Hilton,† says Rachel Martin â€Å"I love the fact that I always get the same high service standards no matter where I go in the world. † Rachel, a public relations consultant and a keen traveller, has been visiting Hilton hotels for over 10 years, and has be en to hotels all over the world, from the Middle East to Japan. â€Å"I've always wanted to book on the web, but I never felt comfortable with the old hilton. com site – it always felt too American, and a little impersonal. The new www. hilton. co. uk site, however, suits Rachel down to the ground. â€Å"All the special offers on the front page are priced in UK pounds, so I can directly see that I'm getting the best value I can from Hilton. I've also become aware of holiday packages I didn't know about before. † Rachel has just booked her 2003 summer holiday using the website â€Å"I'm looking forward to my next holiday – in the Hilton in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt – where I'm going to learn to dive, something I've always wanted to try, but didn't even know Hilton offered until I used www. ilton. co. uk. † 95%77%52%62% 94% Likelihood to return How can YOU influence satisfaction? Top 5 factors that influence guest satisfaction: 1. Have a positive †˜can do’ attitude 2. Overall quality of room 3. Staff efficiency 4. Staff friendliness 5. Comfort of room Hilton Reach Beyond Consistent, Quality Customer Service delivers the Brand Promise and recruits and keeps LOYAL Guests

Sociological Perpestives in Health and Social Care

In this assignment I am going to write a report explaining the patterns and trends of health and illness in three social groups: gender, ethnicity and social class. I am also going to explain the pattern and trends of health and illness which looks at measurement of health, morbidity rates, mortality rates, disease incidence, disease prevalence and health surveillance. Measurements of health Health is generally measured in negative terms, such as the level of disease and the number of deaths within a population, rather than by analysis of positive indicators, such as the presence of health.Epidemiology is the study of disease origins or cause and how much information about the number of people within a population. Epidemiological data provides valuable information about the number of people a population that are affected by ill health, who die as a result of particular health problems and which groups of individuals are most at risk of developing and dying from particular types of il lness or disease. This information is used to identify and plan appropriate health and social care services as well as health-promotion activities.The most commonly used indicators are morbidity (presence of illness or disease) and mortality (death). (Eleanor Landridge, 2007) Morbidity rates Morbidity is difficult to measure as the information is gathered from a range of different sources. Data is collected by the government as well as the NHS and local authority social services departments through direct surveys of the population such as specific health surveys, and as a result of administrative processes, for example, when an individual visits a GP or A&E department or has an assessment of needs.Some diseases are required to be reported, for example cancers and infectious diseases and so data is collected via this process. The problem with this information is that to some extent it reflects services that are available rather than the true picture of disease incidence. Individuals have to also express their needs through actively seeking medical or social care services. (Eleanor Landridge, 2007) The general household survey is a continuous government population survey this includes questions about peoples experience of llness both acute and chronic within the two weeks prior to the person completing the survey. The individual GHS 2002 interview includes questions regarding health and the use of health services; this provides information about the individual’s view of their health. The measurement of working days lost due to sickness can also provide a measure of morbidity for those who are in paid employment. As a measure, it is limited as it only relates to paid employment and this excludes many women who are at home caring for children or older people as well as those who are retired and unable to work through disability. Eleanor Landridge, 2007) Mortality rates The Office for national statistics is responsible for collecting and analysing data colle cted from a range of sources including the ten year national population census, the GHS and specific health information gathered through, for example, deaths and disease incidence reporting undertaken by GP’s and strategic health authorities. Mortality rates can be compared internationally because most countries hold similar information. Mortality rate are expressed in several different ways.A basis measurement is to express mortality as a number of deaths per 100 per year. However this does not allow the diversity of age within the population which varies over time and between geographical areas. For example, mortality rates in the south-east of England will appear high as there are a high percentage of older people living there. The standardised mortality ration (SMR) is the method used to compare mortality levels across different years or for different sub-populations within the same year.The SMR is useful because it can be used to identify and for comparisons. Infant mort ality rate (IMR) are also used as a measurement of health as this provides information about the number of deaths that occur in the first year of life per 1000 live births per year. The IMR is strongly associated with adult mortality rates as it is sensitive to changes in preventive medicine and improvements in health services. Gender, age, social class and cause of death are variables that can be assessed through analysis of the mortality rates. Eleanor Landridge, 2007) Disease incidence & prevalence Within epidemiology the term ‘disease incidence’ is the proportion of a group that is free of a condition but who develop it over a given period of time, such as a day, week, month, year or decade. It measures the number of new cases that occur in the population. The incidence of a disease will depends on the cause of the disease, for example, why it occurs.There might be an infectious agent which requires certain conditions for transmission, or it may be that the disease occurs due to some genetic factor, with or without certain predisposing environmental conditions. The prevalence of a disease depends not only on the incidence (how often new cases occur in a particular group of people), but also on the course of the disease, whether it can be treated, how long it would last and if people can die as a result of it.Prevalence studies therefore provide a snapshot of how many people in the given population have the specific disease being measured at a given point in time. Disease incidence and prevalence are related but measure different aspects of disease within the population. (Kelly Davis, 2010) Health surveillance Health surveillance is generally related to occupational health screening methods used to identify occupational health hazards for workers. The description has been widened to include the range of routine health screening strategies and methods which begin before birth and throughout an individuals life.Health surveillance is increasingly available, such as screening for specific cancers (breast, cervical, prostate), diabetes, high blood pressure, raised blood cholesterol levels and bone density. All of these are aimed at early detection of treatable conditions and may be targeted at specific ‘at risk’ groups within the population. In this course of carrying out this surveillance, information about the incidence and prevalence will be gathered as many of these treatable conditions may be without symptoms and so not alert the individual to the presence of a problem. Kelly Davis, 2010) 158,900 males and 156,300 females were newly diagnosed with cancer each year in the UK during 2007–09, equivalent to incidence rates of 427 per 100,000 males and 371 per 100,000 females Around 81,600 males and 74,600 females died from cancer in each of those years in the UK, corresponding to mortality rates of 209 per 100,000 males and 151 per 100,000 females Breast cancer had the highest incidence rate in females (1 24 cases per 100,000 females) and prostate cancer had the highest incidence rate for males (103 cases per 100,000 males) ttp://www. ons. gov. uk/ons/rel/cancer-unit/cancer-incidence-and-mortality/2007-2009/stb-cancer-incidence-and-mortality. html The Black report was a document published in 1980 by the Department of Health and Social Security in the United Kingdom, which was the report of the expert committee into health inequality chaired by Sir Douglas Black. It was demonstrated that although overall health had improved since the introduction of the welfare state, there were widespread health inequalities.It also found that the main cause of these inequalities was economic inequality. The result of the black report stated that risk on death increase with lower social classes. People in lower class were more likely to suffer from respiratory disease. Babies that were born to parents in social class V had a higher chance of death in the first month compared with babies of profession al class parents.The report showed that there had continued to be an improvement in health across all the classes, during the first 35 years of the National Health Service but there was still a co-relation between social class, and infant mortality rates, life expectancy and inequalities in the use of medical services The introduction of the NHS intended to present everyone with free healthcare despite of their income and social class status. The general household survey showed that patterns of morbidity were followed to a related class gradient to that of mortality.This showed that people in lower socioeconomic groups reported ill health more compared to those in higher socioeconomic groups. In addition the black report found that working class people did not use health care services often which resulted to them not receiving the care that they required, whereas middle class people used health services frequently and had better care compared to working class people (Jennie Nadioo/J ane Wills/2001) http://sonet. nottingham. ac. uk/rlos/ucel/blackinequalities/Default. html Ethnicity People from minority ethnic groups were found to self-report poor health more frequently and visit their GP more frequently.People from south Asia especially Bangladeshi and Pakistani origins have moderately higher incidence of coronary heart disease and poorer health than other ethnic groups as shown in the graph. There is also a higher prevalence of diagnosed non-insulin dependent diabetes among south Asians and people from the Caribbean, with mortality directly associated with diabetes amongst south Asia migrants around three and a half times that of the general population. Ethnicity refers to: culture, religion, language and history which are all shared by groups of people and are passed on generation by generation.Ethnicity can carry along barriers that can affect health, for example language barrier. People may find it hard to communicate and may find it difficult to explain ho w they are feeling if they are suffering from ill health, this may lead to illness and disease spreading and causing long term health problems. Language and cultural barriers can have major effect on someone’s live, as they will not be able to make full use of health care services. For example Asian women are sometime dependent to seek medical advice from male doctors or they may have problems in speaking English.Some people may be unwilling to seek medical advices as they have suffered from racism or the fear of racism is worrying to them. Diet can bring along factors that can cause health problems. For example someone people may eat food that is high in fat and cholesterol this can lead to ill health if safety measures are not taken. Lifestyle can also cause ill health for example leading an unhealthy lifestyle and not exercising can cause obesity which can lead to a number of illnesses such as coronary heart disease and diabetes. (Eleanor Landridge, 2007) – (Kelly D avis 2010) Social classEven though official statistics must be treated with care, there is overpowering evidence that health and ill-health and life expectancy vary according to social group and especially according to social class. People from higher social class are living longer and enjoying better health than the people from lower social class. (Kelly Davis/2010) The black report was mainly based around social class that middle class and upper class people have better standards of living, quality of life and health than working class and lower class people, as shown in the graph, people from lower class suffer from more illnesses than those in higher class.Today life expectancy at birth remains lower for those in the lower social classes than in the professional classes. Nearly every kind of illness is linked to class. Poverty is the major driver of ill health, and poorer people tend to get sick more often, to be ill for longer and to die younger than richer people. Those who di e younger are people who live on benefits or low wages, who work in unhealthy work places, live in poor workplaces, who live in poor quality housing, and who eat unhealthy food.In modern Britain, lung cancer and stomach cancer occur twice as often among men in manual jobs as among men in professional jobs, and death rates from heart disease and lung cancer, the two biggest causes of premature death, about twice as high for those from manual backgrounds. (Eleanor Landridge, 2007) Gender Gender is also a factor that can affect health. Men and women have different patterns of ill health but males have a higher rate of illnesses. This can be because men and women are expected to have roles which they adapt from society and because of this males are less likely to access routine screening.However women are seen as the carer of the family therefore is able to access them and other health care services. Because of this potential illnesses in women can be identified earlier. As shown in the graph women suffer from more illnesses then men do. Women are more likely to report physical and physiological problems to their GP so the studies that show that women get ill more often then men may not be accurate. The main reason women may be hospitalised is due to pregnancies, child birth, contraception, menopause and menstruation.They also constitute the majority of people suffering from neurosis. Psychosis, dementia and depressive disorders. Because women have higher life expectancy than men they are more likely to use health services longer/ more than me. Even if women do have higher morbidity rates then men or not they are more likely to suffer from cancer, arthritis and rheumatism then men, where as men are more likely to suffer from circulatory diseases and strokes. Life expectancy has gone up for both men and women in the last hundred years but has increased more for women.The main cause of death among men is heart disease, lung cancer, bronchitis, accidents and other vi olent deaths. For women the main causes of death are breast cancer, cervix cancer and uterus cancer also coronary heart disease. Although smoking prevalence has declined dramatically during the past ofur decades, men are still more likely to smoke then women across all ages. In 1974, 51% of men and 41% of women smoked whereas in 2007 these figures have dropped to 22% and 20% respectively. (office of national statistics 2006a, 2009) (Eleanor Landridge, 2007) – (Kelly Davis 2010)

buy custom Ireland in the 1790s essay

buy custom Ireland in the 1790's essay Ireland experienced a number of revolutions in the 1790s. These revolutions were led by various rebellion groups among them, was the United Irishmen which organized the bloodiest revolution in the history of Ireland in 1798 (Connolly 57). The United Irishmen through their revolutions brought political changes to their country. This organization was formed in 1791 by a group of Anglicans and Presbyterians. Their objective was to lobby for more representation of the people of Ireland irrespective of whether they were Protestants or Catholics. They were dedicated to reforming the countrys political life. It was not until 1793 that Catholics in Ireland were given the right to vote. For the last two centuries before the 1798 revolution, only Anglicans could be elected to political seats (Smyth 205). They were the landlords and owned large chunks of land. On the other hand, though large in population, many Catholics were peasants and had no voice in politics. The rebels were largely inspir ed by the success of the French Revolution which enhanced freedom and rights of its people. Another objective of the United Irishmen society was to persuade the government and the parliament to amend the constitution so as to ensure all Irish people are incorporated in governance. They pushed for an independent republic. The society became a secret revolution. It even tried to persuade the French government to send troops to aid their revolution. The society grew with time and by middle of their leaders mobilized them to overthrow the regime. They hoped for a bloodless coup but what turned out was a series of massacres around the country with the worst hit county being Wexford. As a result of the rebels, the government realized the danger such rebels could pose and it moved quickly to intervene. Most of the rebel leaders were captured but this did not deter the rebels from fighting for the rights of the minority. More rebellious groups were formed in the rural areas. Though the groups never worked together their main objective was to bring an end the system of government at the time. The groups were spread all over the country and more people were willing to join them in their fight for a republic Ireland. The United Irishmen society continued to push for economic and religious reforms. With the support of Prime Minister Pitt, catholic were allowed to vote but could not contest for high offices. The Protestants Orange Society emerges seeking for land and Protestant control. Competition for land around this time was fueled by the high population. There had been a high rate of population growth around this time with the majority being Catholics and Protestant s. Due to Religious divisions, Anglicans were the landowners and they occupied all elective posts in the parliament (Fintan 112) They discriminated other religious groups from power and wealth. Most of these people were peasants who worked for the Anglicans in their farms. They were treated as animals, their children unable to attend school as they had to work for a living. These are some of the problems non-Anglicans faced before they went into a revolution. The Anglicans levied high taxes on their lands making it even harder for Catholics to rent them. Instead they used them to graze their cows. Furthermore, the Catholics and other Protestants were not represented in parliament. This meant that there was no one to listen to their problems and fight for their rights at the National Assembly. The Catholics faced many problems forcing others to migrate to other countries such as United States. Many laws that were passed in Ireland were aimed at weakening the Catholics and Protestants. Ireland experienced religious divisions which determined the success of individual. The French Revolution enhanced the prospects of reform as attention focused on the government to change their aristocratic system. Leading opposition leaders such John Forbes, Henry Grattan and Whig Club fought hard for parliamentary reforms and Catholic enfranchisement. Catholic committee on the other hand appealed to the British government and this put pressure on the Irish administration. As a result, the Irish ministers removed most of the restrictions on Catholics in employment, education and politically. Despite all of this, the Catholics felt all their demands were not honored and so they organized a Catholic Convention to press for admission into politics. In 1793, the ministers agreed to allow Catholics participation in politics. Another rebellious movement that emerged during this period was the Defender. The Defender was a big movement and had links with France. They pressed for anti-tax and anti-tithe initiatives. Defenders originated from the rural areas and comprised of weavers, laborers, and tenant farmers. By 1795 there were more than 4000 Defenders with links to popular republican clubs in the city. The Defenders were led by successful Catholic families at the regional level. These families provided a link between the Defenders and the United Irishmen. Government troops led a number of attacks against the Catholics (Connolly 97). In the process, they created sectarianism among the Defenders, but this was noted later when most of their leaders were killed. The 1978 rebellion represented an anti-colonial struggle. People were now able to move to centre stage and ensure that the governments run according to their expectation. They were no longer the servants of the wealthy but instead a mob that could overthrow the government. So as to counter attack the Catholic movements, the British governnment introduced a strategy aimed at encouraging the growth of sectarianism in order to create division among the workers and peasants of Ireland. The government introduced barriers to the link between the United Irishmen and Defender territories; it put protestants together in a pro-government movement and it split the Catholic Presbyterian alliance. Orange Order was established around this time for groups loyal to the government. Its members were given immunity; almost all magistrates in Ulster belonged to the Orange Order, and thus justice was hindered. Cases were decided in favor of the Protestants at the expense of the Catholics. From 1796, the British government carried out a campaign of terror against the Irishmen and the Defenders. The rule of law was suspended and troops ordered to take action against the people. Hundreds of men were seized from their homes and sent to jail without trial while others were sim ply killed. The general population was terrorized in a number of ways; their houses were burnt, crops destroyed, food and goods confiscated, and rape. In 1801, the Irish parliament is absorbed by the Westminster parliament as Ireland gets into a union with Great Britain. Catholics are granted most of their demands giving them a voice in decision making processes. Over time, Catholics become powerful as most of them are elected to the parliament. Famine is common and secret societies continue their attacks against the British rule. As time passes, more Acts are passed to look into the land policy so as to ensure that equity prevails. The revolutions marked the start of a new system of government that respected its citizens irrespective of their religion and ethnicity. Such revolutions inspired other countries to demand for their independence. They motivated the minority groups to rise against the oppression of the wealthy. It is as a result of these revolutions that Irish people are treated equally. Currently, Ireland is a well established economy able to provide jobs and housing to its growing population. Its government is neutral to world affairs and its citizens are governed by the rule of law. Unlike in the past, freedom of expression is a fundamental right for its citizens. Being in the union with Great Britain has improved their relations with the outside world facilitating trade and industrialization in the country. Their parliament has all the religious groups well represented and issues raised listened and measures taken. The issue of discrimination is far gone from their lives and cases of racism are few. The government has well set up goals to improving the lives of its people through provision of good health, quality education and equal accessibility to opportunities. Most of the changes seen in Ireland are directly attributed to the revolutions that took place in the 1790s. Buy custom Ireland in the 1790's essay

How to Find Old SAT Scores

How to Find Old SAT Scores If you took the SAT a million years ago, you may have thought that by walking away from the testing site, you were done with that phase of your life forever. On the contrary, if you try to continue your education or nab an entry-level job, your SAT scores could be a big boost in your resume if your job history isnt substantial.   What if you went right into a trade, bypassed college, and are now considering enrolling in an undergraduate program? Do you even remember which college admissions test you took? (The ACT is often confused for the SAT) Or what a good SAT score  even is? If any of this sounds like you, then you will need those SAT score reports, and heres how to go about getting them.   Settling an Old Score Finding your old SAT scores only takes a few steps. Remember which college admissions test you took: ACT or SAT.  ACT: Your ACT score will be a two digit number from 0 to 36.SAT: Your SAT score will be a three or four digit score between 600 and 2400. The current scale started in March 2016 for the Redesigned SAT, which uses a different scoring system, with a maximum of 1600. Since the SAT has changed quite a bit in the last 20 years, the score you may have received in the 80s or 90s would be scaled a bit differently now.Request a score report from the College Board.  By mail:  Download the  request form  and mail it to SAT Program / P.O. Box 7503 / London, KY 40742-7503. Youll need to know your personal information at the time of testing, like your street address, and will also need to choose recipients to whom youd like the SAT scores sent.  By phone:  For an additional fee of $10, you can call to order archived SAT score reports at  (866) 756-7346 (domestic), (212) 713-7789 (international), (888) 857-2477 (TTY in th e U.S.), or (609) 882-4118 (TTY international). Pay the fee for your old SAT score reportThe archive retrieval fee for old SAT reports is currently $31.  Each report will cost you $12, so that amount needs to be multiplied by the number of recipients youre sending the report to.Additional fees ($31) apply for rush delivery.Wait for your score reports to arrive! Within five weeks of receiving your information, the College Board will mail your score reports to you and to the score recipients youve listed on the form.   Tips to Speed Up the Process Get some information together before you get on the phone or fill out the score request sheet. Youll need details like your name and address at the time of SAT testing, your approximate test date, college, and scholarship program codes for recipients of your scores, and your credit card number.  Write legibly on all required forms, preferably in all caps. Youll delay the scores if you choose to write sloppily.  Remember that since your scores are older, the tests may have changed and the score reporting services will send a letter stating that fact to the institution in which youre interested. So, even though you may have earned top ranks for the year you tested, your score back then may not mean the same thing as the scores of today. Contact the College Board to explain if youre confused about the scoring scale and differences.Pay an additional (optional) $31 rush service fee.

Investment in the Fashion Industry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Investment in the Fashion Industry - Essay Example The paper "Investment in the Fashion Industry" explores the fashion and investment in this industry. The opportunities are great although level of competition is tough. The area of Southampton has population of less than 2millions, but the potential buyers are more than 80percent of the population. The female population of the area is 52percent, whereas the teenagers comprise of more than 34percent of the entire population, and population of kids below 10yrs consists of 28percent. Significant percentage of the population can be regarded as the potential buyer within this region of Southampton. The fashion industry of Southampton has potential based upon financial standing of its population. More than 70percent of the population are working class, whereas 20percent of the population is involved in business related activities, however the remaining population is retired class and their earning is based upon pensions and public funds. The per capita income of this region is relatively b etter than other parts of United Kingdom, and the local population is attuned to contemporary customs and fashion. The region is therefore considered to be ideal for the investment in fashion industry, however risk does prevail. The risks associated with the investment are mainly related with the ongoing economic recession, the purchasing power of the local population has reduced, and people are reluctant to invest towards non-returnable and non-profitable items. The negative aspect of this investment is the profession itself., the fashion is considered to be commodity which can be sold but never re-sold. The fashion is consumer product, it is not business or commercial commodity which has re-sale in the market, the customer can never expect to make profit by investing in fashion consumables. The ongoing economic turmoil has therefore cautioned the public about their spending and savings. The unemployment in United Kingdom is expected to reach record high level, and it will take yea rs to create more earning opportunities for the public because the government savings and profit returns are restricted (Harald, 2000). PEST Analysis on Industry Political Analysis 1. The deregulation in the European market launched by the European Union created hindrances for the fashion industry. The industry has been accused of excessive profit margins, and labour law violations. 2. The stand of European Union has caused implication for the fashion industry within United Kingdom; the fashion industry therefore found it difficult to continue with the implementation of high tax cuts. 3. The restrictions imposed by the European Union offered opportunities to the remaining companies of the fashion industry, therefore the market shares of the rival fashion units increased significantly. Economic Analysis: 1. Fashion industry worldwide in general has played a central role in stirring the growth of the world economy. 2. In the current scenario the major concern for the industry comes from the rising tax cuts and ongoing economic turmoil. 3. In the midst of such economic crisis, the imposition from the European Union has reduced the profit making figures for the fashion units. 4. The financial penalties have halted the commercial activities of the company; unfortunately the company seldom enjoy enough revenue which can be utilized for such purpose. 5. The banking and financial institutes shall be referred for financial borrowing, and the credit facility shall be thoroughly evaluated with special emphasis upon the interest rate. 6. It is important for the company to evaluate the purchasing power of the customers inside Southampton. The economic power of the

See upload Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

See upload - Assignment Example Tax returns, copies thereof, or other records may be sufficient to establish the use of the method of accounting used in the preparation of the taxpayers income tax returns (i)  Cash receipts and disbursements method.  Generally, under the cash receipts and disbursements method in the computation of taxable income, all items which constitute gross income (whether in the form of cash, property, or services) are to be included for the taxable year in which actually or constructively received. Expenditures are to be deducted for the taxable year in which actually made. For rules relating to constructive receipt, see  §1.451-2. For treatment of an expenditure attributable to more than one taxable year, see section 461(a) and paragraph (a)(1) of  §1.461-1. (ii)  Accrual method.  (A) Generally, under an accrual method, income is to be included for the taxable year when all the events have occurred that fix the right to receive the income and the amount of the income can be determined with reasonable accuracy. Except as provided in section 5.02(2) of this revenue procedure for certain short taxable years, this revenue procedure does not permit deferral to a taxable year later than the next succeeding taxable year The court, distinguishing from the holding in Schlude v. Commissioner, held that accrual method taxpayers are not required to include prepayments in gross income when there is certainty as to when performance would occur. Verdict: the Court held that, under the accrual method, taxpayers must include as income in a particular year advance payments by way of cash, negotiable notes, and contract installments falling due but remaining unpaid during that year. Verdict: It was held that the Commissioner of Internal Revenue did not abuse his discretion in determining that the prepaid dues were taxable as income in the year in which they were actually received and in rejecting

Battered woman Syndrome Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Battered woman Syndrome - Essay Example Francine Hughes was married to an abusive man for thirteen years. She tried to leave, even divorcing her husband. However, her ex-husband moved back in. When Francine tried to go to school, her ex-husband would rip up her books. Francine would try to go back home, to the Department of Human Services, and even the police. No one could or would help. Finally, after her ex-husband raped her, Francine set his bed on fire. Francine was not verbally abused, but beaten, raped, and put in the hospital over and over for thirteen years. When she went to trial her defense was the Battered-woman Defense. A jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity. Francines case generated much interest in the United States, with the focus on domestic violence (Westervelt, 102). The book and movie The Burning Bed caused Americans to stop and think about abused women for the first time. This story happened in the late 1970s, with the book coming out in the early 1980s. At that time battered women needed a defense for protecting themselves from abusive spouses. Yet, as the 1980s wore on, the Battered-woman Defense started to be misused. Betty Broderick definitely misused this defense. Betty Broderick was not a battered woman, but a scorned one. It began when her husband, Dan, began an affair with his secretary. Betty felt that the deception was mental abuse. Finally, Bettys husband left her for his secretary. After a nasty legal battle, wherein she felt ganged up on, because Dan was an attorney, Betty was left with nothing. She had left her four children on Dans doorstep, so he could understand how she felt. It backfired. Dan kept the children. However, the courts did order him to pay $16,000 a month, plus insurance and other bills. Betty in the meantime started breaking into Dans home and vandalizing it. The final straw was when Dan married his secretary. Betty stole her daughters keys, let herself into Dans house, and

High Performance Wireless Telecommunications Modulation

High Performance Wireless Telecommunications Modulation Introduction The primary goal of the project is to analyze of OFDM system and to assess the suitability of OFDM as a modulation technique for wireless communications. In the part of project is covered two leading successfully implementation of OFDM based technologies are Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB-T and DVB-H) and Long Term Evolution (LTE advanced for 4G). Wireless communications is an emerging field, which has seen enormous growth in the last several years. The huge uptake rate of mobile phone technology, Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) and the exponential growth of the Internet have resulted in an increased demand for new methods of obtaining high capacity wireless networks. For cellular mobile applications, we will see in the near future a complete convergence of mobile phone technology, computing, Internet access, and potentially many multimedia applications such as video and high quality audio. In fact, some may argue that this convergence has already largely occurred, with the advent of being able to send and receive data using a notebook computer and a mobile phone. The goal of third and fourth generation mobile networks is to provide users with a high data rate, and to provide a wider range of services, such as voice communications, videophones, and high speed Internet access. The higher data rate of future mobile networks will be achieved by increasing the amount of spectrum allocated to the service and by improvements in the spectral efficiency. OFDM is a potential candidate for the physical layer of fourth generation mobile systems. Basic Principles of OFDM OFDM overview The Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a modulation technique where multiple low data rate carriers are combined by a transmitter to form a composite high data rate transmission. The first commercial use of OFDM in the communication field was in the 1980s, and it was later widely used in the broadcast audio and video field in the 1990s in such areas as, ADSL, VHDSL, ETSI standard digital audio broadcast (DAB), digital video broadcast (DVB), and high-definition digital TV (HDTV). Digital signal processing makes OFDM possible. To implement the multiple carrier scheme using a bank of parallel modulators would not be very efficient in analog hardware. However, in the digital domain, multi-carrier modulation can be done efficiently with currently available DSP hardware and software. Not only can it be done, but it can also be made very flexible and programmable. This allows OFDM to make maximum use of available bandwidth and to be able to adapt to changing system requirements. Figure 1 is illustrated, Instead of separate modulators; the outgoing waveform is created by executing a high-speed inverse DFT on a set of time-samples of the transmitted data (post modulation). The output of the DFT can be directly modulated onto the outgoing carrier, without requiring any other components. Each carrier in an OFDM system is a sinusoid with a frequency that is an integer multiple of a base or fundamental sinusoid frequency. Therefore, each carrier is like a Fourier series component of the composite signal. In fact, it will be shown later that an OFDM signal is created in the frequency domain, and then transformed into the time domain via the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT). Two periodic signals are orthogonal when the integral of their product, over one period, is equal to zero. This is true of certain sinusoids as illustrated in Equation 1. Definition of Orthogonal The carriers of an OFDM system are sinusoids that meet this requirement because each one is a multiple of a fundamental frequency. Each one has an integer number of cycles in the fundamental period. [2, 145-153; 6] The importantance of being orthogonal The main concept in OFDM is orthogonality of the sub-carriers.Since the carriers are all sine/cosine wave, we know that area under one period of a sine or a cosine wave is zero. Lets take a sine wave of frequency m and multiply it by a sinusoid (sine or a cosine) of a frequency n, where both m and n are integers. The integral or the area under this product is given by These two components are each a sinusoid, so the integral is equal to zero over one period. When we multiply a sinusoid of frequency n by a sinusoid of frequency m/n the area under the product is zero. In general for all integers n and m , sin(mx), cos(mx), cos(nx) , sin(nx) are all orthogonal to each other. These frequencies are called harmonics. Making the subcarriers mathematically orthogonal was a breakthrough for OFDM because it enables OFDM receivers to separate the subcarriers via an FFT and eliminate the guard bands. As figure 3 shows, OFDM subcarriers can overlap to make full use of the spectrum, but at the peak of each subcarrier spectrum, the power in all the other subcarriers is zero. OFDM therefore offers higher data capacity in a given spectrum while allowing a simpler system design. Creating orthogonal subcarriers in the transmitter is easy using an inverse FFT. To ensure that this orthogonality is maintained at the receiver (so that the subcarriers are not misaligned), the system must keep the transmitter and receiver clocks closely synchronizedwithin 2 parts per million in 802.11a systems. The 802.11a standard therefore dedicates four of its 52 subcarriers as pilots that enable phase-lock loops in the receiver to track the phase and frequency of the incoming signal. The 802.11a standard therefore dedicates four of its 52 subcarriers as pilots that enable phase-lock loops in the receiver to track the phase and frequency of the incoming signal. This method also eliminates low-frequency phase noise.Separating the subcarriers via an FFT require about an order of magnitude fewer multiply-accumulate operations than individually filtering each carrier. In general, an FFT implementation is much simpler than the RAKE receivers used for CDMA and the decision-feedback equalizers for TDMA.This idea are key to understanding OFDM. The orthogonality allows simultaneously transmission on a lot of sub- carriers in a tight frequency space without interference form each other. In essence this is similar to CDMA, where codes are used to make data sequences independent (also orthogonal) which allows many independent users to transmitin same space successfully.[2, 153-154; 6 ; 7] OFDM Operation Preliminary Concepts When the DFT (Discrete Fourier Transform) of a time signal is taken, the frequency domain results are a function of the time sampling period and the number of samples as shown in Figure 4. The fundamental frequency of the DFT is equal to 1/NT (1/total sample time). Each frequency represented in the DFT is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency. Parameter Mapping from Time to Frequency for the DFT The maximum frequency that can be represented by a time signal sampled at rate 1/T is fmax = 1/2T as given by the Nyquist sampling theorem. This frequency is located in the center of the DFT points. All frequencies beyond that point are images of the representative frequencies. The maximum frequency bin of the DFT is equal to the sampling frequency (1/T) minus one fundamental (1/NT).The IDFT (Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform) performs the opposite operation to the DFT. It takes a signal defined by frequency components and converts them to a time signal. The parameter mapping is the same as for the DFT. The time duration of the IDFT time signal is equal to the number of DFT bins (N) times the sampling period (T).It is perfectly valid to generate a signal in the frequency domain, and convert it to a time domain equivalent for practical use (The frequency domain is a mathematical tool used for analysis. Anything usable by the real world must be converted into a real, time domain signal). This is how modulation is applied in OFDM. In practice the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and IFFT are used in place of the DFT and IDFT, so all further references will be to FFT and IFFT.[1 ,118 ; 4] Definition of Carriers The maximum number of carriers used by OFDM is limited by the size of the IFFT. This is determined as follows in Equation 2. OFDM Carrier Count In order to generate a real-valued time signal, OFDM (frequency) carriers must be defined in complex conjugate pairs, which are symmetric about the Nyquist frequency (fmax). This puts the number of potential carriers equal to the IFFT size/2. The Nyquist frequency is the symmetry point, so it cannot be part of a complex conjugate pair. The DC component also has no complex conjugate. These two points cannot be used as carriers so they are subtracted from the total available. If the carriers are not defined in conjugate pairs, then the IFFT will result in a time domain signal that has imaginary components. This must be a viable option as there are OFDM systems defined with carrier counts that exceed the limit for real-valued time signals given in Equation 2.In general, a system with IFFT size 256 and carrier count 216. This design must result in a complex time waveform. Further processing would require some sort of quadrature technique (use of parallel sine and cosine processing paths). In this report, only real-value time signals will be treated, but in order to obtain maximum bandwidth efficiency from OFDM, the complex time signal may be preferred (possibly an analogous situation to QPSK vs. BPSK). Equation 2, for the complex time waveform, has all IFFT bins available as carriers except the DC bin. Both IFFT size and assignment (selection) of carriers can be dynamic. The transmitter and receiver just have to use the same parameters. This is one of the advantages of OFDM. Its bandwidth usage (and bit rate) can be varied according to varying user requirements. A simple control message from a base station can change a mobile units IFFT size and carrier selection.[2,199-206; 4] Modulation Binary data from a memory device or from a digital processing stream is used as the modulating (baseband) signal. The following steps may be carried out in order to apply modulation to the carriers in OFDM: combine the binary data into symbols according to the number of bits/symbol selected convert the serial symbol stream into parallel segments according to the number of carriers, and form carrier symbol sequences apply differential coding to each carrier symbol sequence convert each symbol into a complex phase representation assign each carrier sequence to the appropriate IFFT bin, including the complex conjugates take the IFFT of the result OFDM modulation is applied in the frequency domain. Figure 5 and Figure 6 give an example of modulated OFDM carriers for one symbol period, prior to IFFT. OFDM Carrier Magnitude prior to IFFT For this example, there are 4 carriers, the IFFT bin size is 64, and there is only 1 bit per symbol. The magnitude of each carrier is 1, but it could be scaled to any value. The phase for each carrier is either 0 or 180 degrees, according to the symbol being sent. The phase determines the value of the symbol (binary in this case, either a 1 or a 0). In the example, the first 3 bits (the first 3 carriers) are 0, and the 4th bit (4th carrier) is a 1. OFDM Carrier Phase prior to IFFT Note that the modulated OFDM signal is nothing more than a group of delta (impulse) functions, each with a phase determined by the modulating symbol. In addition, note that the frequency separation between each delta is proportional to 1/N where N is the number of IFFT bins. The frequency domain representation of the OFDM is described in Equation 3. OFDM Frequency Domain Representation (one symbol period) After the modulation is applied, an IFFT is performed to generate one symbol period in the time domain. The IFFT result is shown in 7. It is clear that the OFDM signal has varying amplitude. It is very important that the amplitude variations be kept intact as they define the content of the signal. If the amplitude is clipped or modified, then an FFT of the signal would no longer result in the original frequency characteristics, and the modulation may be lost. This is one of the drawbacks of OFDM, the fact that it requires linear amplification. In addition, very large amplitude peaks may occur depending on how the sinusoids line up, so the peak-to-average power ratio is high. This means that the linear amplifier has to have a large dynamic range to avoid distorting the peaks. The result is a linear amplifier with a constant, high bias current resulting in very poor power efficiency. OFDM Signal, 1 Symbol Period Figure 8 is provided to illustrate the time components of the OFDM signal. The IFFT transforms each complex conjugate pair of delta functions (each carrier) into a real-valued, pure sinusoid. Figure 8 shows the separate sinusoids that make up the composite OFDM waveform given in Figure 7. The one sinusoid with 180 phase shift is clearly visible as is the frequency difference between each of the 4 sinusoids. Transmission The key to the uniqueness and desirability of OFDM is the relationship between the carrier frequencies and the symbol rate. Each carrier frequency is separated by a multiple of 1/NT (Hz). The symbol rate (R) for each carrier is 1/NT (symbols/sec). The effect of the symbol rate on each OFDM carrier is to add a sin(x)/x shape to each carriers spectrum. The nulls of the sin(x)/x (for each carrier) are at integer multiples of 1/NT. The peak (for each carrier) is at the carrier frequency k/NT. Therefore, each carrier frequency is located at the nulls for all the other carriers. This means that none of the carriers will interfere with each other during transmission, although their spectrums overlap. The ability to space carriers so closely together is very bandwidth efficient. OFDM Time Waveform Figure 9 shows the OFDM time waveform for the same signal. There are 100 symbol periods in the signal. Each symbol period is 64 samples long (100 x 64 = 6400 total samples). Each symbol period contains 4 carriers each of which carries 1 symbol. Each symbol carries 1 bit. Note that Figure 9 again illustrates the large dynamic range of the OFDM waveform envelope. OFDM Spectrum Figure 10 shows the spectrum for of an OFDM signal with the following characteristics: 1 bit / symbol 100 symbols / carrier (i.e. a sequence of 100 symbol periods) 4 carriers 64 IFFT bins spectrum averaged for every 20 symbols (100/20 = 5 averages) Red diamonds mark all of the available carrier frequencies. Note that the nulls of the spectrums line up with the unused frequencies. The four active carriers each have peaks at carrier frequencies. It is clear that the active carriers have nulls in their spectrums at each of the unused frequencies (otherwise, the nulls would not exist). Although it cannot be seen in the figure, the active frequencies also have spectral nulls at the adjacent active frequencies. It is not currently practical to generate the OFDM signal directly at RF rates, so it must be up converted for transmission. To remain in the discrete domain, the OFDM could be upsampled and added to a discrete carrier frequency. This carrier could be an intermediate frequency whose sample rate is handled by current technology. It could then be converted to analog and increased to the final transmit frequency using analog frequency conversion methods. Alternatively, the OFDM modulation could be immediately converted to analog and directly increased to the desired RF transmits frequency. Either way, the selected technique would have to involve some form of linear AM (possibly implemented with a mixer). [1, 122-125; 6] Reception and Demodulation The received OFDM signal is down converted (in frequency) and taken from analog to digital. Demodulation is done in the frequency domain (just as modulation was). The following steps may be taken to demodulate the OFDM: partition the input stream into vectors representing each symbol period take the FFT of each symbol period vector extract the carrier FFT bins and calculate the phase of each calculate the phase difference, from one symbol period to the next, for each carrier decode each phase into binary data sort the data into the appropriate order OFDM Carrier Magnitude following FFT Figure 11 and Figure 12 show the magnitude and spectrum of the FFT for one received OFDM symbol period. For this example, there are 4 carriers, the IFFT bin size is 64, there is 1 bit per symbol, and the signal was sent through a channel with AWGN having an SNR of 8 dB. The figures show that, under these conditions, the modulated symbols are very easy to recover. OFDM Carrier Phase following FFT In Figure 12 that the unused frequency bins contain widely varying phase values. These bins are not decoded, so it does not matter, but the result is of interest. Even if the noise is removed from the channel, these phase variations still occur. It must be a result of the IFFT/FFT operations generating very small complex values (very close to 0) for the unused carriers. The phases are a result of these values. [1, 125 -128; 3] OFDM transceiver OFDM signals are typically generated digitally due to the difficulty in creating large banks of phase lock oscillators and receivers in the analog domain. Figure 13 shows the block diagram of a typical OFDM transceiver. The transmitter section converts digital data to be transmitted, into a mapping of subcarrier amplitude and phase. It then transforms this spectral representation of the data into the time domain using an Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform (IDFT). The Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) performs the same operations as an IDFT, except that it is much more computationally efficiency, and so is used in all practical systems. In order to transmit the OFDM signal the calculated time domain signal is then mixed up to the required frequency. Block diagram showing a basic OFDM transceiver [3] The receiver performs the reverse operation of the transmitter, mixing the RF signal to base band for processing, then using a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to analyze the signal in the frequency domain. The amplitude and phase of the subcarriers is then picked out and converted back to digital data. The IFFT and the FFT are complementary function and the most appropriate term depends on whether the signal is being received or generated. In cases where the Signal is independent of this distinction then the term FFT and IFFT is used interchangeably. [1, 125 -128, 3] Analysis of OFDM characteristics Guard Period OFDM demodulation must be synchronized with the start and end of the transmitted symbol period. If it is not, then ISI will occur (since information will be decoded and combined for 2 adjacent symbol periods). ICI will also occur because orthogonality will be lost (integrals of the carrier products will no longer be zero over the integration period), To help solve this problem, a guard interval is added to each OFDM symbol period. The first thought of how to do this might be to simply make the symbol period longer, so that the demodulator does not have to be so precise in picking the period beginning and end, and decoding is always done inside a single period. This would fix the ISI problem, but not the ICI problem. If a complete period is not integrated (via FFT), orthogonality will be lost. The effect of ISI on an OFDM signal can be further improved by the addition of a guard period to the start of each symbol. This guard period is a cyclic copy that extends the length of the symbol waveform. Each subcarrier, in the data section of the symbol, (i.e. the OFDM symbol with no guard period added, which is equal to the length of the IFFT size used to generate the signal) has an integer number of cycles. Because of this, placing copies of the symbol end-to-end results in a continuous signal, with no discontinuities at the joins. Thus by copying the end of a symbol and appending this to the start results in a longer symbol time. Addition of a guard period to an OFDM signal [3] In Figure 14, The total length of the symbol is Ts=TG + TFFT, where Ts is the total length of the symbol in samples, TG is the length of the guard period in samples, and TFFT is the size of the IFFT used to generate the OFDM signal. In addition to protecting the OFDM from ISI, the guard period also provides protection against time-offset errors in the receiver. For an OFDM system that has the same sample rate for both the transmitter and receiver, it must use the same FFT size at both the receiver and transmitted signal in order to maintain subcarrier orthogonality. Each received symbol has TG + TFFT samples due to the added guard period. The receiver only needs TFFT samples of the received symbol to decode the signal. The remaining TG samples are redundant and are not needed. For an ideal channel with no delay spread the receiver can pick any time offset, up to the length of the guard period, and still get the correct number of samples, without crossing a symbol boundary. Function of the guard period for protecting against ISI [3] Figure 15 shows this effect. Adding a guard period allows time for the transient part of the signal to decay, so that the FFT is taken from a steady state portion of the symbol. This eliminates the effect of ISI provided that the guard period is longer than the delay spread of the radio channel. The remaining effects caused by the multipath, such as amplitude scaling and phase rotation are corrected for by channel equalization. In order to avoid ISI and ICI, the guard period must be formed by a cyclic extension of the symbol period. This is done by taking symbol period samples from the end of the period and appending them to the front of the period. The concept of being able to do this, and what it means, comes from the nature of the IFFT/FFT process. When the IFFT is taken for a symbol period (during OFDM modulation), the resulting time sample sequence is technically periodic. This is because the IFFT/FFT is an extension of the Fourier Transform which is an extension of the Fourier Series for periodic waveforms. All of these transforms operate on signals with either real or manufactured periodicity. For the IFFT/FFT, the period is the number of samples used. Guard Period via Cyclic Extension With the cyclic extension, the symbol period is longer, but it represents the exact same frequency spectrum. As long as the correct number of samples are taken for the decode, they may be taken anywhere within the extended symbol. Since a complete period is integrated, orthogonality is maintained. Therefore, both ISI and ICI are eliminated. Note that some bandwidth efficiency is lost with the addition of the guard period (symbol period is increased and symbol rate is decreased) [2,154-160, 3] Windowing The OFDM signal is made up of a series of IFFTs that are concatenated to each other. At each symbol period boundary, there is a signal discontinuity due to the differences between the end of one period and the start of the next. These discontinuities can cause high frequency spectral noise to be generated (because they look like very fast transitions of the time waveform). To avoid this, a window function (Hamming, Hanning, Blackman, ) may be applied to each symbol period. The window function would attenuate the time waveform at the start and the end of each period, so that the discontinuities are smaller, and the high frequency noise is reduced. However, this attenuation distorts the signal and some of the desired frequency content is lost.[1, 121;2 154] Multipath Characteristics OFDM avoids frequency selective fading and ISI by providing relatively long symbol periods for a given data rate. This is illustrated in Figure 17. For a given transmission channel and a given source data rate, OFDM can provide better multipath characteristics than a single carrier. OFDM vs. Single Carrier, Multipath Characteristic Comparison However, since the OFDM carriers are spread over a frequency range, there still may be some frequency selective attenuation on a time-varying basis. A deep fade on a particular frequency may cause the loss of data on that frequency for a given time, but the use of Forward Error Coding can fix it. If a single carrier experienced a deep fade, too many consecutive symbols may be lost and correction coding may be ineffective. [8] Bandwidth A comparison of RF transmits bandwidth between OFDM and a single carrier is shown in Figure 18 (using the same example parameters as in Figure 17). OFDM Bandwidth Efficiency In Figure 18, the calculations show that OFDM is more bandwidth efficient than a single carrier. Note that another efficient aspect of OFDM is that a single transmitters bandwidth can be increased incrementally by addition of more adjacent carriers. In addition, no bandwidth buffers are needed between transmit bandwidths of separate transmitters as long as orthogonality can be maintained between all the carriers.[2, 161-163; 8; 9] Physical Implementation Since OFDM is carried out in the digital domain, there are many ways it can be implemented. Some options are provided in the following list. Each of these options should be viable given current technology: ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) ASICs are the fastest, smallest, and lowest power way to implement OFDM Cannot change the ASIC after it is built without designing a new chip General-purpose Microprocessor or MicroController PowerPC 7400 or other processor capable of fast vector operations Highly programmable Needs memory and other peripheral chips Uses the most power and space, and would be the slowest Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) An FPGA combines the speed, power, and density attributes of an ASIC with the programmability of a general purpose processor. An FPGA could be reprogrammed for new functions by a base station to meet future (currently unknown requirements).This should be the best choice.[9] OFDM uses in DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) DVB (Digital Video Broadcast) is a set of standards for the digital transmission of video and audio streams, and also data transmission. The DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, which is an industry-led consortium of over 260 broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators, software developers, regulatory bodies and others in over 35 countries. DVB has been implemented over satellite (DVB-S, DVB-S2), cable (DVB-C), terrestrial broadcasting (DVB-T), and handheld terminals (DVB-H). the DVB standard following the logical progression of signal processing steps, as well as source and channel coding, COFDM modulation, MPEG compression and multiplexing methods, conditional access and set-top box Technology. In this project is presented an investigation of two OFDM based DVB standards, DVB-T and DVB-H. DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting Terrestrial) The first Terrestrial Digital Video Broadcasting pilot transmissions were started in the late 90s, and the first commercial system was established in Great Britain. In the next few years the digital broadcasting system has been set up in many countries, and the boom of the digital terrestrial transmission is estimated in the next few years, while the analogue transmission will be cancelled within about 15 years. The greatest advantage of the digital system is the effective use of the frequency spectrum and its lower radiated power in comparison with the analogue transmission, while the covered area remains the same. Another key feature is the possibility of designing a so-called Single Frequency Network (SFN), which means that the neighboring broadcast stations use the same frequency and the adjacent signals dont get interfered. The digital system transmits a data stream, which means that not only television signals but data communication (e.g. Internet service) may be used according to the demands. The data stream consists of an MPEG-2 bit stream, which means a compression is used, enabling the transfer of even 4 or 5 television via the standard 8 MHz wide TV channel. For the viewer, the main advantages are the perfect, noise-free picture, CD quality sound, and easier handling, as well as services like Super Teletext, Electronic Programme Guide, interactivity and mobility.[11, 251-253] Modulation technique in DVB-T The DVB-T Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) modulation system uses multi-carrier transmission. There are 2 modes, the so-called 2k and 8k modes, using 1705 and 6817 carriers respectively, with each carrier modulated separately and transmitted in the 8 MHz TV channel. The common modulation for the carriers is typically QPSK, 16-QAM or 64-QAM. Each signal can be divided into two, so-called „In Phase (I) and „Quadrature Phase components, being a 90Â ° phase shift between them. The constellation diagram and the bit allocation is shown in bellow 16-QAM constellation diagram and bit allocation [6] This modulation can be demonstrated in the constellation diagram, where the 2 axes represent the 2 components (I and Q). In case of using 16-QAM modulation, the number of states is 16, so 1 symbol represents 4 bits. [11, 255; 6; 14] Bir errors If we simulate all the carriers in the constellation diagram we get not just 1 discrete point, but many points, forming a „cloud and representing each state. In case of additive noise the „cloud gets bigger and the receiver may decide incorrectly, resulting in bit errors. Figure 2 shows the measured constellation diagram without and with additive noise. Measured 16-QAM constellation diagram a) without additive noise b) with additive noise [6] To ensure perfect picture quality, the DVB-T system uses a 2 level error correction (Reed-Solomon and Viterbi). This corrects the bad bits at an even 10-4 Bit Error Rate (BER) and enables error-free data transmission. [13, 32-36] The multi-carrier structure The structure of carriers can be illustrated also in the function of time (Figure 20). The horizontal axis is the frequency and the vertical axis is the time. The 8 MHz channel consists of many carriers, placed 4462 Hz or 1116 Hz far from each other according to the modulation mode (2k or 8k). Structure of OFDM carriers [13] There are some reserved, so-called Transmission Parameter Signalling (TPS) carriers that do not transfer payload, just provide transmission mode information for the receiver, so the total number of useful carriers is 1512 and 6048 respectively in the two transmission modes, and the resultant bit rate is between 4,97 and 31,66 Mbit/s, depending on the modulation (QPSK, 16-QAM or 64-QAM), the transmission mode (2k or 8k), the Code Rate (CR) used for error correction and the selected Guard Interval (GI). This guard interval means that there is a small time gap between each symbol, so the transmission is not continuous. This guarding time enables perfect reception by eliminating the errors caused by multipath propagation.[4, 79-90; 13] Frequency spectrum In 2k mode, 1705 carriers are modulated in the 8 MHz TV channel, so each carrier is 4462 Hz far from its neighbor, while in 8k mode this distance is 1116 Hz. In digital broadcasting, there are no vision and sound carriers, so the power for each carrier is the same. This mean High Performance Wireless Telecommunications Modulation High Performance Wireless Telecommunications Modulation Introduction The primary goal of the project is to analyze of OFDM system and to assess the suitability of OFDM as a modulation technique for wireless communications. In the part of project is covered two leading successfully implementation of OFDM based technologies are Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB-T and DVB-H) and Long Term Evolution (LTE advanced for 4G). Wireless communications is an emerging field, which has seen enormous growth in the last several years. The huge uptake rate of mobile phone technology, Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) and the exponential growth of the Internet have resulted in an increased demand for new methods of obtaining high capacity wireless networks. For cellular mobile applications, we will see in the near future a complete convergence of mobile phone technology, computing, Internet access, and potentially many multimedia applications such as video and high quality audio. In fact, some may argue that this convergence has already largely occurred, with the advent of being able to send and receive data using a notebook computer and a mobile phone. The goal of third and fourth generation mobile networks is to provide users with a high data rate, and to provide a wider range of services, such as voice communications, videophones, and high speed Internet access. The higher data rate of future mobile networks will be achieved by increasing the amount of spectrum allocated to the service and by improvements in the spectral efficiency. OFDM is a potential candidate for the physical layer of fourth generation mobile systems. Basic Principles of OFDM OFDM overview The Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a modulation technique where multiple low data rate carriers are combined by a transmitter to form a composite high data rate transmission. The first commercial use of OFDM in the communication field was in the 1980s, and it was later widely used in the broadcast audio and video field in the 1990s in such areas as, ADSL, VHDSL, ETSI standard digital audio broadcast (DAB), digital video broadcast (DVB), and high-definition digital TV (HDTV). Digital signal processing makes OFDM possible. To implement the multiple carrier scheme using a bank of parallel modulators would not be very efficient in analog hardware. However, in the digital domain, multi-carrier modulation can be done efficiently with currently available DSP hardware and software. Not only can it be done, but it can also be made very flexible and programmable. This allows OFDM to make maximum use of available bandwidth and to be able to adapt to changing system requirements. Figure 1 is illustrated, Instead of separate modulators; the outgoing waveform is created by executing a high-speed inverse DFT on a set of time-samples of the transmitted data (post modulation). The output of the DFT can be directly modulated onto the outgoing carrier, without requiring any other components. Each carrier in an OFDM system is a sinusoid with a frequency that is an integer multiple of a base or fundamental sinusoid frequency. Therefore, each carrier is like a Fourier series component of the composite signal. In fact, it will be shown later that an OFDM signal is created in the frequency domain, and then transformed into the time domain via the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT). Two periodic signals are orthogonal when the integral of their product, over one period, is equal to zero. This is true of certain sinusoids as illustrated in Equation 1. Definition of Orthogonal The carriers of an OFDM system are sinusoids that meet this requirement because each one is a multiple of a fundamental frequency. Each one has an integer number of cycles in the fundamental period. [2, 145-153; 6] The importantance of being orthogonal The main concept in OFDM is orthogonality of the sub-carriers.Since the carriers are all sine/cosine wave, we know that area under one period of a sine or a cosine wave is zero. Lets take a sine wave of frequency m and multiply it by a sinusoid (sine or a cosine) of a frequency n, where both m and n are integers. The integral or the area under this product is given by These two components are each a sinusoid, so the integral is equal to zero over one period. When we multiply a sinusoid of frequency n by a sinusoid of frequency m/n the area under the product is zero. In general for all integers n and m , sin(mx), cos(mx), cos(nx) , sin(nx) are all orthogonal to each other. These frequencies are called harmonics. Making the subcarriers mathematically orthogonal was a breakthrough for OFDM because it enables OFDM receivers to separate the subcarriers via an FFT and eliminate the guard bands. As figure 3 shows, OFDM subcarriers can overlap to make full use of the spectrum, but at the peak of each subcarrier spectrum, the power in all the other subcarriers is zero. OFDM therefore offers higher data capacity in a given spectrum while allowing a simpler system design. Creating orthogonal subcarriers in the transmitter is easy using an inverse FFT. To ensure that this orthogonality is maintained at the receiver (so that the subcarriers are not misaligned), the system must keep the transmitter and receiver clocks closely synchronizedwithin 2 parts per million in 802.11a systems. The 802.11a standard therefore dedicates four of its 52 subcarriers as pilots that enable phase-lock loops in the receiver to track the phase and frequency of the incoming signal. The 802.11a standard therefore dedicates four of its 52 subcarriers as pilots that enable phase-lock loops in the receiver to track the phase and frequency of the incoming signal. This method also eliminates low-frequency phase noise.Separating the subcarriers via an FFT require about an order of magnitude fewer multiply-accumulate operations than individually filtering each carrier. In general, an FFT implementation is much simpler than the RAKE receivers used for CDMA and the decision-feedback equalizers for TDMA.This idea are key to understanding OFDM. The orthogonality allows simultaneously transmission on a lot of sub- carriers in a tight frequency space without interference form each other. In essence this is similar to CDMA, where codes are used to make data sequences independent (also orthogonal) which allows many independent users to transmitin same space successfully.[2, 153-154; 6 ; 7] OFDM Operation Preliminary Concepts When the DFT (Discrete Fourier Transform) of a time signal is taken, the frequency domain results are a function of the time sampling period and the number of samples as shown in Figure 4. The fundamental frequency of the DFT is equal to 1/NT (1/total sample time). Each frequency represented in the DFT is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency. Parameter Mapping from Time to Frequency for the DFT The maximum frequency that can be represented by a time signal sampled at rate 1/T is fmax = 1/2T as given by the Nyquist sampling theorem. This frequency is located in the center of the DFT points. All frequencies beyond that point are images of the representative frequencies. The maximum frequency bin of the DFT is equal to the sampling frequency (1/T) minus one fundamental (1/NT).The IDFT (Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform) performs the opposite operation to the DFT. It takes a signal defined by frequency components and converts them to a time signal. The parameter mapping is the same as for the DFT. The time duration of the IDFT time signal is equal to the number of DFT bins (N) times the sampling period (T).It is perfectly valid to generate a signal in the frequency domain, and convert it to a time domain equivalent for practical use (The frequency domain is a mathematical tool used for analysis. Anything usable by the real world must be converted into a real, time domain signal). This is how modulation is applied in OFDM. In practice the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and IFFT are used in place of the DFT and IDFT, so all further references will be to FFT and IFFT.[1 ,118 ; 4] Definition of Carriers The maximum number of carriers used by OFDM is limited by the size of the IFFT. This is determined as follows in Equation 2. OFDM Carrier Count In order to generate a real-valued time signal, OFDM (frequency) carriers must be defined in complex conjugate pairs, which are symmetric about the Nyquist frequency (fmax). This puts the number of potential carriers equal to the IFFT size/2. The Nyquist frequency is the symmetry point, so it cannot be part of a complex conjugate pair. The DC component also has no complex conjugate. These two points cannot be used as carriers so they are subtracted from the total available. If the carriers are not defined in conjugate pairs, then the IFFT will result in a time domain signal that has imaginary components. This must be a viable option as there are OFDM systems defined with carrier counts that exceed the limit for real-valued time signals given in Equation 2.In general, a system with IFFT size 256 and carrier count 216. This design must result in a complex time waveform. Further processing would require some sort of quadrature technique (use of parallel sine and cosine processing paths). In this report, only real-value time signals will be treated, but in order to obtain maximum bandwidth efficiency from OFDM, the complex time signal may be preferred (possibly an analogous situation to QPSK vs. BPSK). Equation 2, for the complex time waveform, has all IFFT bins available as carriers except the DC bin. Both IFFT size and assignment (selection) of carriers can be dynamic. The transmitter and receiver just have to use the same parameters. This is one of the advantages of OFDM. Its bandwidth usage (and bit rate) can be varied according to varying user requirements. A simple control message from a base station can change a mobile units IFFT size and carrier selection.[2,199-206; 4] Modulation Binary data from a memory device or from a digital processing stream is used as the modulating (baseband) signal. The following steps may be carried out in order to apply modulation to the carriers in OFDM: combine the binary data into symbols according to the number of bits/symbol selected convert the serial symbol stream into parallel segments according to the number of carriers, and form carrier symbol sequences apply differential coding to each carrier symbol sequence convert each symbol into a complex phase representation assign each carrier sequence to the appropriate IFFT bin, including the complex conjugates take the IFFT of the result OFDM modulation is applied in the frequency domain. Figure 5 and Figure 6 give an example of modulated OFDM carriers for one symbol period, prior to IFFT. OFDM Carrier Magnitude prior to IFFT For this example, there are 4 carriers, the IFFT bin size is 64, and there is only 1 bit per symbol. The magnitude of each carrier is 1, but it could be scaled to any value. The phase for each carrier is either 0 or 180 degrees, according to the symbol being sent. The phase determines the value of the symbol (binary in this case, either a 1 or a 0). In the example, the first 3 bits (the first 3 carriers) are 0, and the 4th bit (4th carrier) is a 1. OFDM Carrier Phase prior to IFFT Note that the modulated OFDM signal is nothing more than a group of delta (impulse) functions, each with a phase determined by the modulating symbol. In addition, note that the frequency separation between each delta is proportional to 1/N where N is the number of IFFT bins. The frequency domain representation of the OFDM is described in Equation 3. OFDM Frequency Domain Representation (one symbol period) After the modulation is applied, an IFFT is performed to generate one symbol period in the time domain. The IFFT result is shown in 7. It is clear that the OFDM signal has varying amplitude. It is very important that the amplitude variations be kept intact as they define the content of the signal. If the amplitude is clipped or modified, then an FFT of the signal would no longer result in the original frequency characteristics, and the modulation may be lost. This is one of the drawbacks of OFDM, the fact that it requires linear amplification. In addition, very large amplitude peaks may occur depending on how the sinusoids line up, so the peak-to-average power ratio is high. This means that the linear amplifier has to have a large dynamic range to avoid distorting the peaks. The result is a linear amplifier with a constant, high bias current resulting in very poor power efficiency. OFDM Signal, 1 Symbol Period Figure 8 is provided to illustrate the time components of the OFDM signal. The IFFT transforms each complex conjugate pair of delta functions (each carrier) into a real-valued, pure sinusoid. Figure 8 shows the separate sinusoids that make up the composite OFDM waveform given in Figure 7. The one sinusoid with 180 phase shift is clearly visible as is the frequency difference between each of the 4 sinusoids. Transmission The key to the uniqueness and desirability of OFDM is the relationship between the carrier frequencies and the symbol rate. Each carrier frequency is separated by a multiple of 1/NT (Hz). The symbol rate (R) for each carrier is 1/NT (symbols/sec). The effect of the symbol rate on each OFDM carrier is to add a sin(x)/x shape to each carriers spectrum. The nulls of the sin(x)/x (for each carrier) are at integer multiples of 1/NT. The peak (for each carrier) is at the carrier frequency k/NT. Therefore, each carrier frequency is located at the nulls for all the other carriers. This means that none of the carriers will interfere with each other during transmission, although their spectrums overlap. The ability to space carriers so closely together is very bandwidth efficient. OFDM Time Waveform Figure 9 shows the OFDM time waveform for the same signal. There are 100 symbol periods in the signal. Each symbol period is 64 samples long (100 x 64 = 6400 total samples). Each symbol period contains 4 carriers each of which carries 1 symbol. Each symbol carries 1 bit. Note that Figure 9 again illustrates the large dynamic range of the OFDM waveform envelope. OFDM Spectrum Figure 10 shows the spectrum for of an OFDM signal with the following characteristics: 1 bit / symbol 100 symbols / carrier (i.e. a sequence of 100 symbol periods) 4 carriers 64 IFFT bins spectrum averaged for every 20 symbols (100/20 = 5 averages) Red diamonds mark all of the available carrier frequencies. Note that the nulls of the spectrums line up with the unused frequencies. The four active carriers each have peaks at carrier frequencies. It is clear that the active carriers have nulls in their spectrums at each of the unused frequencies (otherwise, the nulls would not exist). Although it cannot be seen in the figure, the active frequencies also have spectral nulls at the adjacent active frequencies. It is not currently practical to generate the OFDM signal directly at RF rates, so it must be up converted for transmission. To remain in the discrete domain, the OFDM could be upsampled and added to a discrete carrier frequency. This carrier could be an intermediate frequency whose sample rate is handled by current technology. It could then be converted to analog and increased to the final transmit frequency using analog frequency conversion methods. Alternatively, the OFDM modulation could be immediately converted to analog and directly increased to the desired RF transmits frequency. Either way, the selected technique would have to involve some form of linear AM (possibly implemented with a mixer). [1, 122-125; 6] Reception and Demodulation The received OFDM signal is down converted (in frequency) and taken from analog to digital. Demodulation is done in the frequency domain (just as modulation was). The following steps may be taken to demodulate the OFDM: partition the input stream into vectors representing each symbol period take the FFT of each symbol period vector extract the carrier FFT bins and calculate the phase of each calculate the phase difference, from one symbol period to the next, for each carrier decode each phase into binary data sort the data into the appropriate order OFDM Carrier Magnitude following FFT Figure 11 and Figure 12 show the magnitude and spectrum of the FFT for one received OFDM symbol period. For this example, there are 4 carriers, the IFFT bin size is 64, there is 1 bit per symbol, and the signal was sent through a channel with AWGN having an SNR of 8 dB. The figures show that, under these conditions, the modulated symbols are very easy to recover. OFDM Carrier Phase following FFT In Figure 12 that the unused frequency bins contain widely varying phase values. These bins are not decoded, so it does not matter, but the result is of interest. Even if the noise is removed from the channel, these phase variations still occur. It must be a result of the IFFT/FFT operations generating very small complex values (very close to 0) for the unused carriers. The phases are a result of these values. [1, 125 -128; 3] OFDM transceiver OFDM signals are typically generated digitally due to the difficulty in creating large banks of phase lock oscillators and receivers in the analog domain. Figure 13 shows the block diagram of a typical OFDM transceiver. The transmitter section converts digital data to be transmitted, into a mapping of subcarrier amplitude and phase. It then transforms this spectral representation of the data into the time domain using an Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform (IDFT). The Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) performs the same operations as an IDFT, except that it is much more computationally efficiency, and so is used in all practical systems. In order to transmit the OFDM signal the calculated time domain signal is then mixed up to the required frequency. Block diagram showing a basic OFDM transceiver [3] The receiver performs the reverse operation of the transmitter, mixing the RF signal to base band for processing, then using a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to analyze the signal in the frequency domain. The amplitude and phase of the subcarriers is then picked out and converted back to digital data. The IFFT and the FFT are complementary function and the most appropriate term depends on whether the signal is being received or generated. In cases where the Signal is independent of this distinction then the term FFT and IFFT is used interchangeably. [1, 125 -128, 3] Analysis of OFDM characteristics Guard Period OFDM demodulation must be synchronized with the start and end of the transmitted symbol period. If it is not, then ISI will occur (since information will be decoded and combined for 2 adjacent symbol periods). ICI will also occur because orthogonality will be lost (integrals of the carrier products will no longer be zero over the integration period), To help solve this problem, a guard interval is added to each OFDM symbol period. The first thought of how to do this might be to simply make the symbol period longer, so that the demodulator does not have to be so precise in picking the period beginning and end, and decoding is always done inside a single period. This would fix the ISI problem, but not the ICI problem. If a complete period is not integrated (via FFT), orthogonality will be lost. The effect of ISI on an OFDM signal can be further improved by the addition of a guard period to the start of each symbol. This guard period is a cyclic copy that extends the length of the symbol waveform. Each subcarrier, in the data section of the symbol, (i.e. the OFDM symbol with no guard period added, which is equal to the length of the IFFT size used to generate the signal) has an integer number of cycles. Because of this, placing copies of the symbol end-to-end results in a continuous signal, with no discontinuities at the joins. Thus by copying the end of a symbol and appending this to the start results in a longer symbol time. Addition of a guard period to an OFDM signal [3] In Figure 14, The total length of the symbol is Ts=TG + TFFT, where Ts is the total length of the symbol in samples, TG is the length of the guard period in samples, and TFFT is the size of the IFFT used to generate the OFDM signal. In addition to protecting the OFDM from ISI, the guard period also provides protection against time-offset errors in the receiver. For an OFDM system that has the same sample rate for both the transmitter and receiver, it must use the same FFT size at both the receiver and transmitted signal in order to maintain subcarrier orthogonality. Each received symbol has TG + TFFT samples due to the added guard period. The receiver only needs TFFT samples of the received symbol to decode the signal. The remaining TG samples are redundant and are not needed. For an ideal channel with no delay spread the receiver can pick any time offset, up to the length of the guard period, and still get the correct number of samples, without crossing a symbol boundary. Function of the guard period for protecting against ISI [3] Figure 15 shows this effect. Adding a guard period allows time for the transient part of the signal to decay, so that the FFT is taken from a steady state portion of the symbol. This eliminates the effect of ISI provided that the guard period is longer than the delay spread of the radio channel. The remaining effects caused by the multipath, such as amplitude scaling and phase rotation are corrected for by channel equalization. In order to avoid ISI and ICI, the guard period must be formed by a cyclic extension of the symbol period. This is done by taking symbol period samples from the end of the period and appending them to the front of the period. The concept of being able to do this, and what it means, comes from the nature of the IFFT/FFT process. When the IFFT is taken for a symbol period (during OFDM modulation), the resulting time sample sequence is technically periodic. This is because the IFFT/FFT is an extension of the Fourier Transform which is an extension of the Fourier Series for periodic waveforms. All of these transforms operate on signals with either real or manufactured periodicity. For the IFFT/FFT, the period is the number of samples used. Guard Period via Cyclic Extension With the cyclic extension, the symbol period is longer, but it represents the exact same frequency spectrum. As long as the correct number of samples are taken for the decode, they may be taken anywhere within the extended symbol. Since a complete period is integrated, orthogonality is maintained. Therefore, both ISI and ICI are eliminated. Note that some bandwidth efficiency is lost with the addition of the guard period (symbol period is increased and symbol rate is decreased) [2,154-160, 3] Windowing The OFDM signal is made up of a series of IFFTs that are concatenated to each other. At each symbol period boundary, there is a signal discontinuity due to the differences between the end of one period and the start of the next. These discontinuities can cause high frequency spectral noise to be generated (because they look like very fast transitions of the time waveform). To avoid this, a window function (Hamming, Hanning, Blackman, ) may be applied to each symbol period. The window function would attenuate the time waveform at the start and the end of each period, so that the discontinuities are smaller, and the high frequency noise is reduced. However, this attenuation distorts the signal and some of the desired frequency content is lost.[1, 121;2 154] Multipath Characteristics OFDM avoids frequency selective fading and ISI by providing relatively long symbol periods for a given data rate. This is illustrated in Figure 17. For a given transmission channel and a given source data rate, OFDM can provide better multipath characteristics than a single carrier. OFDM vs. Single Carrier, Multipath Characteristic Comparison However, since the OFDM carriers are spread over a frequency range, there still may be some frequency selective attenuation on a time-varying basis. A deep fade on a particular frequency may cause the loss of data on that frequency for a given time, but the use of Forward Error Coding can fix it. If a single carrier experienced a deep fade, too many consecutive symbols may be lost and correction coding may be ineffective. [8] Bandwidth A comparison of RF transmits bandwidth between OFDM and a single carrier is shown in Figure 18 (using the same example parameters as in Figure 17). OFDM Bandwidth Efficiency In Figure 18, the calculations show that OFDM is more bandwidth efficient than a single carrier. Note that another efficient aspect of OFDM is that a single transmitters bandwidth can be increased incrementally by addition of more adjacent carriers. In addition, no bandwidth buffers are needed between transmit bandwidths of separate transmitters as long as orthogonality can be maintained between all the carriers.[2, 161-163; 8; 9] Physical Implementation Since OFDM is carried out in the digital domain, there are many ways it can be implemented. Some options are provided in the following list. Each of these options should be viable given current technology: ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) ASICs are the fastest, smallest, and lowest power way to implement OFDM Cannot change the ASIC after it is built without designing a new chip General-purpose Microprocessor or MicroController PowerPC 7400 or other processor capable of fast vector operations Highly programmable Needs memory and other peripheral chips Uses the most power and space, and would be the slowest Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) An FPGA combines the speed, power, and density attributes of an ASIC with the programmability of a general purpose processor. An FPGA could be reprogrammed for new functions by a base station to meet future (currently unknown requirements).This should be the best choice.[9] OFDM uses in DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) DVB (Digital Video Broadcast) is a set of standards for the digital transmission of video and audio streams, and also data transmission. The DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, which is an industry-led consortium of over 260 broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators, software developers, regulatory bodies and others in over 35 countries. DVB has been implemented over satellite (DVB-S, DVB-S2), cable (DVB-C), terrestrial broadcasting (DVB-T), and handheld terminals (DVB-H). the DVB standard following the logical progression of signal processing steps, as well as source and channel coding, COFDM modulation, MPEG compression and multiplexing methods, conditional access and set-top box Technology. In this project is presented an investigation of two OFDM based DVB standards, DVB-T and DVB-H. DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting Terrestrial) The first Terrestrial Digital Video Broadcasting pilot transmissions were started in the late 90s, and the first commercial system was established in Great Britain. In the next few years the digital broadcasting system has been set up in many countries, and the boom of the digital terrestrial transmission is estimated in the next few years, while the analogue transmission will be cancelled within about 15 years. The greatest advantage of the digital system is the effective use of the frequency spectrum and its lower radiated power in comparison with the analogue transmission, while the covered area remains the same. Another key feature is the possibility of designing a so-called Single Frequency Network (SFN), which means that the neighboring broadcast stations use the same frequency and the adjacent signals dont get interfered. The digital system transmits a data stream, which means that not only television signals but data communication (e.g. Internet service) may be used according to the demands. The data stream consists of an MPEG-2 bit stream, which means a compression is used, enabling the transfer of even 4 or 5 television via the standard 8 MHz wide TV channel. For the viewer, the main advantages are the perfect, noise-free picture, CD quality sound, and easier handling, as well as services like Super Teletext, Electronic Programme Guide, interactivity and mobility.[11, 251-253] Modulation technique in DVB-T The DVB-T Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) modulation system uses multi-carrier transmission. There are 2 modes, the so-called 2k and 8k modes, using 1705 and 6817 carriers respectively, with each carrier modulated separately and transmitted in the 8 MHz TV channel. The common modulation for the carriers is typically QPSK, 16-QAM or 64-QAM. Each signal can be divided into two, so-called „In Phase (I) and „Quadrature Phase components, being a 90Â ° phase shift between them. The constellation diagram and the bit allocation is shown in bellow 16-QAM constellation diagram and bit allocation [6] This modulation can be demonstrated in the constellation diagram, where the 2 axes represent the 2 components (I and Q). In case of using 16-QAM modulation, the number of states is 16, so 1 symbol represents 4 bits. [11, 255; 6; 14] Bir errors If we simulate all the carriers in the constellation diagram we get not just 1 discrete point, but many points, forming a „cloud and representing each state. In case of additive noise the „cloud gets bigger and the receiver may decide incorrectly, resulting in bit errors. Figure 2 shows the measured constellation diagram without and with additive noise. Measured 16-QAM constellation diagram a) without additive noise b) with additive noise [6] To ensure perfect picture quality, the DVB-T system uses a 2 level error correction (Reed-Solomon and Viterbi). This corrects the bad bits at an even 10-4 Bit Error Rate (BER) and enables error-free data transmission. [13, 32-36] The multi-carrier structure The structure of carriers can be illustrated also in the function of time (Figure 20). The horizontal axis is the frequency and the vertical axis is the time. The 8 MHz channel consists of many carriers, placed 4462 Hz or 1116 Hz far from each other according to the modulation mode (2k or 8k). Structure of OFDM carriers [13] There are some reserved, so-called Transmission Parameter Signalling (TPS) carriers that do not transfer payload, just provide transmission mode information for the receiver, so the total number of useful carriers is 1512 and 6048 respectively in the two transmission modes, and the resultant bit rate is between 4,97 and 31,66 Mbit/s, depending on the modulation (QPSK, 16-QAM or 64-QAM), the transmission mode (2k or 8k), the Code Rate (CR) used for error correction and the selected Guard Interval (GI). This guard interval means that there is a small time gap between each symbol, so the transmission is not continuous. This guarding time enables perfect reception by eliminating the errors caused by multipath propagation.[4, 79-90; 13] Frequency spectrum In 2k mode, 1705 carriers are modulated in the 8 MHz TV channel, so each carrier is 4462 Hz far from its neighbor, while in 8k mode this distance is 1116 Hz. In digital broadcasting, there are no vision and sound carriers, so the power for each carrier is the same. This mean