Fatimah Zaharah Ali

The development of beyond 5G (B5G) future wireless communication networks (FWCN) needs novel solutions to support high-speed, reliable, and low-latency communication. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are promising techniques that can enhance wireless connectivity in urban environments where tall buildings block line-of-sight (LoS) links. However, existing UAV-assisted communication strategies do not fully address key challenges like mobility management, handover failures (HOFs), and path disorders in dense urban environments. This paper introduces a deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG)-based UAV-RIS framework to overcome these limitations. The proposed framework jointly optimizes UAV trajectories and RIS phase shifts to improve throughput, energy efficiency (EE), and LoS probability while reducing outage probability (OP) and HOF. A modified K-means clustering algorithm is used to efficiently partition the ground users (GUs) considering the newly added GUs as well. The DDPG algorithm, based on reinforcement learning (RL), adapts UAV positioning and RIS configurations in a continuous action space. Simulation results show that the proposed approach significantly reduces HOF and OP, increases EE, enhances network throughput, and improves LoS probability compared to UAV-only, RIS-only, and without UAV-RIS deployments. Additionally, by dynamically adjusting UAV locations and RIS phase shifts based on GU mobility patterns, the framework further enhances connectivity and reliability. The findings highlight its potential to transform urban wireless communication by mitigating LoS blockages and ensuring uninterrupted connectivity in dense environments.

The statistic of student enrollment in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in Malaysia is declining every year. This scenario is quite worrisome by many stakeholders. One of the initiatives taken to increase students’ interests in the field of STEM is by using microcontroller in the school curriculum. However, schools in rural area might not have the appropriate kit for the purpose. Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate the relationship of attitude and perception of students in rural areas of Malaysia towards the microcontroller education. 200 students from 16 secondary schools located in rural areas of four districts of four different states had attended the microcontroller workshops conducted, namely, Arau, Perlis; Machang, Kelantan; Raub, Pahang; and Dengkil, Selangor. The instrument used in measuring the students’ attitude and perceptions is a questionnaire using five-point Likert scale, which was answered after the workshop completed. The result showed that the attitude and perception of rural area students towards microcontroller education are at a high level. Pearson correlation result obtained in attitude and perception of the students in microcontroller education poses the positive relationship with moderate strength. These findings reveal that when appropriate microcontroller kit is made available to students, this will promote students’ interest in STEM education and could mitigate the lack of enrollment in STEM related field in higher education.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a technology that leverages user channel gains, offers higher spectral efficiency, improves user fairness, better cell-edge throughput, increased reliability, and low latency, making it a potential technology for the next generation of cellular networks. The application of NOMA in the power domain (NOMA-PD) with multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and other emerging technologies allows to achieve the demand for higher data rates in next-generation networks. This survey aims to funnel down NOMA MIMO resource allocation issues and different optimization problems that exist in the literature to enhance the data rate. We examine the most recent NOMA-MIMO clustering, power allocation, and joint allocation schemes and analyze various parameters used in optimization methods to design 5G systems. We finally identify a promising research problem based on the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) parameter in the context of NOMA-PD with MIMO configuration.

One of the key features of mobile networks in this age of mobile communication is seamless communication. Handover (HO) is a critical component of next-generation (NG) cellular communication networks, which requires careful management since it poses several risks to quality-of-service (QoS), including a decrease in average throughput and service disruptions. Due to the dramatic rise in base stations (BSs) and connections per unit area brought about by new fifth-generation (5G) network enablers, such as Internet of things (IoT), network densification, and mm-wave communications, HO management has become more challenging. The degree of difficulty is increased in light of the strict criteria that were recently published in the specifications of 5G networks. In order to address these issues more successfully and efficiently, this study has explored and examined intelligent HO optimization strategies using machine learning models. Furthermore, the significant goal of this review is to present the state of cellular networks as they are now, as well as to talk about mobility and home office administration in 5G alongside the overall features of 5G networks. This work presents an overview of machine learning methods in handover optimization and of the various data availability for evaluations. In the final section, the challenges and future research directions are also detailed.

Few troubleshooting steps have been taken during the non-operation period of UiTM ground station (UiTMSAT) where some of the main equipment and systems were malfunction. After few resolutions performed, the root cause of the defect was detected. The issue occurred due to the lighting strike that has transferred abundant amount of electricity to the devices in the monitor room. This paper explains the resolution steps that were taken to resolve the issue in the ground station. The maintenance is performed on radio, rotator controller, rotator interface, terminal node controller (TNC) and the software used for the satellite operation. The issues on the radio and rotator devices made some difficulties in using the operation software which are the SatPC and BIRDS operation software. Several attempts have been done and through this, many lessons were learned by the ground station operator. These lessons were shared to other BIRDS members during the ground station workshop at Kyushu Institute of Technology (KYUTECH), Japan.