CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeiÃoamento de Pessoal de NÃvel Superior / Atualmente, a tecnologia celular està presente em todos os aspectos da vida cotidiana: lares, escritÃrios, indÃstrias, etc. Tal tecnologia teve um rÃpido crescimento durante as duas Ãltimas dÃcadas tentando acompanhar o aumento do volume de trÃfego nas redes de comunicaÃÃo sem-fio. Naturalmente, ao propor modelos mais realistas possÃveis, com o propÃsito de caracterizar fenÃmenos que afetam a qualidade do sinal ou o desempenho do sistema, novas ideias, concepÃÃes e outras ferramentas surgem para descrever tais situaÃÃes. Este à o caso da Geometria EstocÃstica ou, particularmente, o processo pontual de Poisson, o qual vem sendo frequentemente utilizado como um modelo de rede celular, a partir da localizaÃÃo aleatÃria dos nÃs na rede. Diante desta ferramenta matemÃtica, à possÃvel implantar estaÃÃes rÃdio base na rede externa celular, bem como pontos de acesso baseados em picocÃlulas, femtocÃlulas, etc. AlÃm disso, permite-se quantificar a interferÃncia, Ãrea de cobertura, probabilidade de outage, dentre outros. Estes resultados tambÃm levam em consideraÃÃo o impacto de mobilidade no desempenho de tais redes. Nesse contexto, este trabalho analisarà redes ad-hoc sem-fio propondo expressÃes analÃticas para as seguintes mÃtricas de caracterizaÃÃo de desempenho: interferÃncia e conectividade de transmissÃo. Essas mÃtricas levam em consideraÃÃo tanto a razÃo sinal-ruÃdo mais interferÃncia (signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR)) como a razÃo sinal-interferÃnca (signal-to-interference ratio (SIR)), em que neste caso, a potÃncia de ruÃdo à considerada nula. Especificamente, o fenÃmeno interferÃncia serà caracterizado via modelo shot-noise segundo um processo pontual chamado de processo pontual marcado (marked point process (MPP)), sendo este mais realista do que o tradicional modelo de Poisson. AlÃm disso, este tipo de modelo incorpora os efeitos de propagaÃÃo de rÃdio de pequena e larga escala e sobretudo as diferentes tecnologias de detecÃÃo e tratamento de sinal. Paralelamente, adotaremos um canal de rÃdio com desvanecimento Nakagami-m. Por fim, o tratamento matemÃtico para o modelo proposto torna-se um fator desafiador deste trabalho, visto que, tais resultados generalizam alguns jà publicados na literatura, os quais adotam alguns parÃmetros menos realistas. / Currently, cellular technology is present in all aspects of everyday life: homes, offices, industries, etc. Such technology had grown rapidly over the last two decades trying to follow up with the increased traffic volume on the networks of wireless communication. Naturally, to propose possible more realistic models, with the purpose of characterizing phenomena that affect the signal quality or performance system, new ideas, concepts and other tools to describe such situations arise. This is the case of Stochastic Geometry or, particularly, the point process Poisson, which has been often used as a model for cellular network from the random node locations in the network. Faced with this mathematical tool, it is possible deploy base stations in cellular external network and access points based picocells, femtocells, etc. Moreover, it allows to quantify the interference, coverage area, outage probability, among others. These results also consider the impact of mobility on the performance of such networks. In this context, this thesis will analyze ad-hoc wireless networks offering analytical expressions for the following metrics of performance characterization: interference and transmission connections. These metrics take into account both signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and signal-to-interference ratio (SIR), in which case, the noise power is considered null. Specifically, the interference phenomena will be characterized via shot-noise model according to a point process called marked point process (MPP), this being more realistic than the traditional Poisson model. Furthermore, this type of model incorporates effects of radio propagation small and large scale, mainly the different technologies for the detection and signal processing. In parallel, we will adopt a radio channel with Nakagami-m fading. Finally, the mathematical treatment for the proposed model becomes a challenging factor in this work, since such results generalize some already published in the literature, which adopt some less realistic parameters.

Children with autism often display deficits in social interaction, communication, and play. Unlike typical peers during free play with a variety of games and toys, they often do not initiate to others or engage in interactive game play for sustained periods of time. Previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of script-fading procedures in increasing initiations and conversational repertoires for children with autism. However, these procedures were examined in arranged environments using an activity schedule or in structured settings. In addition, the role of the conversation partner has not been studied. The use of activity schedules has also been effective in increasing independence and decreasing adult prompts. In particular, the use of a joint activity schedule increased independent game play between preschoolers with autism. Therefore, the current study investigated (a) the use of script-fading procedures and the use of manual guidance to teach four preschool children to initiate game play during free play without the aide of an activity schedule. Second, the study examined the effects of scripts and script-fading procedures on (b) the frequency of interactions, (c) the conversation partner's interactions on participants' interactions, (d) generalization across stimuli and people, (e) maintenance, and (f) independent free play. Results demonstrated participants' play initiations, engagement, number of games played, and frequency of interactions increased, skills generalized across games and peers, and maintained. Furthermore, the number of prompts decreased, indicating script- fading procedures with manual guidance alone may be effective in increasing independent free play and initiations.

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are wireless networks, which consist of a collection of mobile nodes with no fixed infrastructure, where each node acts as a router that participates in forwarding data packets. They are a new paradigm of wireless communications for mobile hosts that are resource-constrained with only limited energy, computing power and memory. Previous studies on MANETs concentrated more on energy conservation in an idealistic environment without taking into consideration, the effects of realistic mobility, interference and fading. The definition of realistic mobility models is one of the most critical and, at the same time, difficult aspects of the simulations of networks designed for real mobile ad hoc environments. The reason for this is that most scenarios for which ad hoc networks are used have features such as dynamicity and extreme uncertainties. Thus use of real life measurements is currently almost impossible and most certainly expensive. Hence the commonly used alternative is to simulate the movement patterns and hence the reproduction of movement traces quite similar to human mobility behavior is extremely important. The synthetic models used for movement pattern generation should reflect the movement of the real mobile devices, which are usually carried by humans, so the movement of such devices is necessarily based on human decisions. Regularity is an important characteristic of human movement patterns. All simulated movement models are suspect because there is no means of accessing to what extent they map reality. However it is not difficult to see that random mobility models such as Random Walk, Random Waypoint (default model used in almost all network simulations), etc., generate movements that are most non-humanlike. Hence we need to focus on more realistic mobility models such as Gauss Markov, Manhattan Grid, Reference Point Group Mobility Model (RPGM), Column, Pursue and other Hybrid mobility models. These models capture certain mobility characteristics that emulate the realistic MANETs movement, such as temporal dependency, spatial dependency and geographic restriction. Also a Rayleigh/Ricean fading channel is introduced to obtain a realistic fading environment. The energy consumed by the data, MAC, ARP and RTR packets using IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol with the various mobility models in fading and non-fading channel conditions are obtained using ns-2 simulations and AWK programs. The realistic movement patterns are generated using three different mobility generators BonnMotion Mobility Generator, Toilers Code and Scengen Mobility Generator. This thesis work performs an in-depth study on th eeffects of realistic mobility and fading on energy consumption, packet delivery ratio and control overhead of MANETs.

The concept of multihop communications (where the source communicates with the destination via many intermediate nodes) has been revisited and adapted to mitigate wireless channel impairments and ensure broader coverage. It has been shown in the literature that, in addition to extending coverage, overcoming shadowing and reducing the transmit power, multihop communications can increase the capacity of the network at a low additional cost. On the other hand, the problem of energy efficiency is one of the current biggest challenges towards green radio communications. Morevover, electromagnetic radiation is at its limit in many contexts, while for battery-powered devices, transmit and circuit energy consumption has to be minimized for better battery lifetime and performance. In this work, the performance of multihop communication over Nakagami-m fading is investigated for both cases without and with diversity combining. Closed form expressions of the average ergodic capacity are derived for each of these cases. Then, an expression of the outage probability is obtained using the inverse of Laplace transform and the average bit error rate is bounded using the Moment-Generating-Function approach. The energy efficiency is analyzed using the "consumption factor" as a metric, and it is derived in closed-form. And based on the obtained expressions, we propose a power allocation strategy maximizing this consumption factor.

In this thesis, we investigate the ergodic capacity under several power adaption schemes, including optimal power and rate algorithm (OPRA), optimal rate algo rithm (ORA), channel inversion (CI), and truncated channel inversion (TCI), over fluctuating two-ray (FTR) fading channels and Fisher-Snedecor F fading channels. After some mathematical manipulations, the exact expressions for the EC under those power adaption schemes are derived. To simplify the expressions and also get some insights from the analysis, the corresponding asymptotic expressions for the EC are also derived in order to show the slope and power offset of the EC in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region. These two metrics, i.e., slope and power offset, govern the EC behaviour in the high SNR region. Specifically, from the derived asymptotic expressions, we find that the slope of the EC of OPRA and ORA over FTR fading channels is always unity with respect to the average SNR in the log-scale in high SNRs, while the asymptotic EC of the TCI method is not a line function in the log-scale. For the Fisher-Snedecor F fading channel, the slope of asymptotic EC under OPRA, ORA, and CI (m > 1) schemes is unity in the log-scale, where m is the fading parameter. The slope of the TCI method depends on m, i.e., unity for m > 1 and m for m > 1, while the asymptotic EC of TCI is not a line function for m = 1. Finally, Monte-Carlo simulations are used to demonstrate the correctness of the derived expressions.

This thesis analyzes the wireless propagation modeling of a 2.6 GHz band channel around the Tampa Bay area. Different empirical models are compared against measured data, and an adapted model, specific for the Tampa Bay area, is presented that builds on the accuracy of existing models. The effects of the propagation characteristics along bridges are also discussed, and a two-slope model is presented. The proposed models are based on a simple linear regression method, and statistical tests are evaluated for reliability thereof. The analysis also investigates the statistical properties of shadowing effects imposed on the wireless channel. The spatial correlation properties of shadowing effects are investigated in detail, and an extension of existing correlation models for shadowing effects is suggested where the correlation properties are studied in different distance ranges rather than the whole service coverage area.

New approaches and algorithms are developed for the identification and estimation of low order models that represent multipath channel effects in Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) communication systems. Based on these parsimonious channel models, low complexity receivers such as RAKE receivers are considered to exploit these propagation effects and enhance the system performance. We consider the scenario where multipath is frequency selective slowly fading and where the channel components including delays and attenuation coefficients are assumed to be constant over one or few signalling intervals. We model the channel as a long FIR-like filter (or a tapped delay line filter) with the number of taps related to the ratio between the channel delay-spread and the chip duration. Due to the high data rate of new CDMA systems, the channel length in terms of the chip duration will be very large. With classical channel estimation techniques this will result in poor estimates of many of the channel parameters where most of them are zero leading to a reduction in the system performance. Unlike classical techniques which estimate directly the channel response given the number of taps or given an estimate of the channel length, the proposed techniques in this work will firstly identify the significant multipath parameters using model selection techniques, then estimate these identified parameters. Statistical tests are proposed to determine whether or not each individual parameter is significant. A low complexity RAKE receiver is then considered based on estimates of these identified parameters only. The level of significance with which we will make this assertion will be controlled based on statistical tests such as multiple hypothesis tests. Frequency and time domain based approaches and model selection techniques are proposed to achieve the above proposed objectives. / The frequency domain approach for parsimonious channel estimation results in an efficient implementation of RAKE receivers in DS-CDMA systems. In this approach, we consider a training based strategy and estimate the channel delays and attenuation using the averaged periodogram and modified time delay estimation techniques. We then use model selection techniques such as the sphericity test and multiple hypotheses tests based on F-Statistics to identify the model order and select the significant channel paths. Simulations show that for a pre-defined level of significance, the proposed technique correctly identifies the significant channel parameters and the parsimonious RAKE receiver shows improved statistical as well as computational performance over classical methods. The time domain approach is based on the Bootstrap which is appropriate for the case when the distribution of the test statistics required by the multiple hypothesis tests is unknown. In this approach we also use short training data and model the channel response as an FIR filter with unknown length. Model parameters are then estimated using low complexity algorithms in the time domain. Based on these estimates, bootstrap based multiple hypotheses tests are applied to identify the non-zero coefficients of the FIR filter. Simulation results demonstrate the power of this technique for RAKE receivers in unknown noise environments. Finally we propose adaptive blind channel estimation algorithms for CDMA systems. Using only the spreading code of the user of interest and the received data sequence, four different adaptive blind estimation algorithms are proposed to estimate the impulse response of frequency selective and frequency non-selective fading channels. Also the idea is based on minimum variance receiver techniques. Tracking of a frequency selective varying fading channel is also considered. / A blind based hierarchical MDL model selection method is also proposed to select non-zero parameters of the channel response. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms perform better than previously proposed algorithms. They have lower complexity and have a faster convergence rate. The proposed algorithms can also be applied to the design of adaptive blind channel estimation based RAKE receivers.

This study presents findings on the effect of domestic laundry detergents on the fastness to light of selected fibre reactive dyes applied to cotton. The study was carried out to elucidate the reasons for the accelerated colour loss of cotton garments washed under Australian domestic laundering conditions. Cotton fabric dyed with commonly used reactive dyes were laundered with water only, several domestic detergents and a laboratory formulated neutral detergent, and then exposed to light for two hours in the wet state. Quantities of detergent used were in accordance with the manufacturers recommendations. Exposures were repeated fifteen times equivalent to 30 hours exposure. Colour loss and colour difference were measured after 5, 10 and 15 wash cycles and 10, 20 and 30 hours exposure. When the fabric was exposed wet the colour faded more rapidly than when exposed dry to light. Detergents increased the colour loss even when the fabric was not exposed to light. The presence of an oxidizing bleach (sodium perborate) in the detergent increased colour loss during washing and wet exposure to light. Ultraviolet radiation from the light source, heat, moisture, alkali and oxidising bleach during exposure resulted in hydrolysis of the dye-fibre bond causing dye desorption during washing and rinsing. Water alone increased the fading of the dyes most likely due to presence of dissolved oxygen held within the fibre. The combination of ultraviolet radiation and oxidizing bleaches altered the chemistry of the dye and hence its shade. This was particularly evident on the black dye and one of the navy blue dyes.

Ce sujet de thèse concerne le développement et la mise au point d'un système de dosimétrie passive à base des détecteurs BaFBr:Eu2+ répondant aux nouvelles recommandations de la CIPR. Lorsqu'un film photostimulable est exposé aux rayonnements ionisants, il convertit l'énergie absorbée en une image latente. Cette énergie, emmagasinée par des électrons piégés, peut être ensuite libérée en différé sous l'effet d'une stimulation LASER sélective. Cette dernière provoque une luminescence proportionnelle à la dose reçue. Des mesures expérimentales de la fonction de réponse, en dose et en énergie, des neutrons et des rayonnements Γ ont été réalisées et complétées par des calculs de modélisation Monte-Carlo. Il ressort de cette étude que ce système peut être adapté à la dosimétrie passive des faibles et des fortes doses. Les résultats montrent un seuil de détection en équivalent de dose de 23 µSv pour les neutrons rapides et de 1,5 µGy pour les rayonnements Γ d'énergie 1,2 MeV. Destinés à la dosimétrie passive personnelle, les dosimètres mis au point ont été irradiés en conditions réelles d'utilisation, sous faisceaux de neutrons rapides et thermiques, à différents angles sur un fantôme selon les normes ISO. Ces études ont également montré la possibilité d'utiliser pour la première fois ces films pour d'autres applications en dosimétrie, notamment pour la détection du signal radon dans l'environnement. Malgré leurs avantages (facilité d'utilisation, rapidité de lecture, numérisation de l'image, remise à zéro, absence de traitement chimique) par rapport aux d'autres détecteurs passifs tels que les solides de traces nucléaires ou les thermoluminescents, les photostimulables présentent un inconvénient lié au fading. Nous présentons deux procédures pour la correction de ce fading pendant et après irradiation.

<p>The objective of this diploma work is to investigate a set of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) channel models compatible with the emerging IEEE 802.11n standard. This diploma work validates also advanced, innovative tools and wireless technologies that are necessary to facilitate wireless applications while maximizing spectral efficiency and throughput. </p><p>MIMO channel models can be used to evaluate new Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) proposals based on multiple antenna technologies. </p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to investigate means of channel models and their implementation in different environments such as: Matlab, C++ and Advanced Design Systems (ADS). The investigation considers also a comparison between the channel models based on theoretical data and parameter setup to the channel models based on statistical characteristics obtained from measured data. </p><p>Investigation and comparison of a MIMO channel models consider steering channel matrix H, spatial correlation coefficients, power delay profiles, fading characteristics and Doppler power spectrum.</p>