Nowadays, satellite-based localization is a well-established technical solution to support several navigation tasks in daily life. Besides the application inside of portable devices, satellite-based positioning is used for in-vehicle navigation systems as well. Moreover, due to its global coverage and the availability of inexpensive receiver hardware it is an appealing technology for numerous applications in the area of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs). However, it has to be admitted that most of the aforementioned examples either rely on modest accuracy requirements or are not sensitive to temporary integrity violations. Although technical concepts of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADASs) based on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs) have been successfully demonstrated under open sky conditions, practice reveals that such systems suffer from degraded satellite signal quality when put into urban areas. Thus, the main research objective of this thesis is to provide a reliable vehicle positioning concept which can be used in urban areas without the aforementioned limitations. Therefore, an integrated probabilistic approach which preforms fault detection & exclusion, localization and multi-sensor data fusion within one unified Bayesian framework is proposed. From an algorithmic perspective, the presented concept is based on a probabilistic data association technique with explicit handling of outlier measurements as present in urban areas. By that approach, the accuracy, integrity and availability are improved at the same time, that is, a consistent positioning solution is provided. In addition, a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of typical errors in urban areas within the pseudorange domain is performed. Based on this analysis, probabilistic models are proposed and later on used to facilitate the positioning algorithm. Moreover, the presented concept clearly targets towards mass-market applications based on low-cost receivers and hence aims to replace costly sensors by smart algorithms. The benefits of these theoretical contributions are implemented and demonstrated on the example of a real-time vehicle positioning prototype as used inside of the European research project GAlileo Interactive driviNg (GAIN). This work describes all necessary parts of this system including GNSS signal processing, fault detection and multi-sensor data fusion within one processing chain. Finally, the performance and benefits of the proposed concept are examined and validated both with simulated and comprehensive real-world sensor data from numerous test drives.

A wide range of services and applications become possible when accurate position information for a radio terminal is available. These include: location-based services; navigation; safety and security applications. The commercial, industrial and military value of radio-location is such that considerable research effort has been directed towards developing related technologies, using satellite, cellular or local area network infrastructures or stand-alone equipment. This work studies and investigates two location techniques. The first one presents an implementation scheme for a wideband transmission and direction finding system using OFDM multi-carrier communications systems. This approach takes advantage of delay discrimination to improve angle-of-arrival estimation in a multipath channel with high levels of additive white Gaussian noise. A new methodology is interpreted over the multi carrier modulation scheme in which the simulation results of the estimated channel improves the performance of OFDM signal by mitigating the effect of frequency offset synchronization to give error-free data at the receiver, good angle of arrival accuracy and improved SNR performance. The full system simulation to explore optimum values such as channel estimation and AoA including the antenna array model and prove the operational performance of the OFDM system as implemented in MATLAB. The second technique proposes a low cost-effective method of tracking and monitoring objects (examples: patient, device, medicine, document) by employing passive radio frequency identification (RFID) systems. A multi-tag, (totalling fifty-six tags) with known ID values are attached to the whole patient’s body to achieve better tracking and monitoring precision and higher accuracy. Several tests with different positions and movements are implemented on six patients. The aim is to be able to track the patient if he/she is walking or sitting; therefore, the tests considered six possible movements for the patient including walking, standing, sitting, resting, laying on the floor and laying on the bed, these placements are important to monitor the status of the patient like if he collapsed and fall on the ground so that the help will be quick. The collected data from the RFID Reader in terms of Time Stamp, RSS, Tag ID, and a number of channels are processed using the MATLAB code.

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As the demand for wireless communication systems has exploded over the past few years, many researchers have taken on the challenge to model wireless channels more accurately. These models are very useful for enhancing the design of all aspects of wireless communications. Smart antennas and systems used in position location are among the most popular new studies that require signal information such as the amplitude, phase, and angle-of-arrival (AOA) of multipath delay spreads. For proper and efficient implementation of future systems, emerging wireless systems must be able to exploit processing of spatial information. The goal of the work presented in this thesis is to further improve two channel modeling tools, SMRCIM and SIRCIM, by implementing new geometrical models that provide users with angle-of-arrival information as well as amplitude and phase data for wideband wireless communication channels. The new angle-of-arrival models are explained and pseudo code is provided to demonstrate the software implementation of the models. Likewise, the channel models are explained and the usage and results of the simulation tools are described. The SMRCIM and SIRCIM tools are currently being used by researchers throughout the world. <i>[Vita removed March 5, 2012. Gmc]</i> / Master of Science

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / Bit errors often occur in a wireless communications link when impairments alter the transmitted signal. It is advantageous to be able to predict how well a system will tolerate transmission problems. This paper details laboratory performance measurements and comparisons in terms of evaluating configurations of a digital receiver for Feher patented Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (FQPSK-B) demodulation. The transmitted signal is subjected to calibrated levels of impairments while the receiver performance is monitored in real-time.

Durant ces dernières années, de nombreux travaux de recherches ont été menés dans le domaine des réseaux multi-sauts sans fil à contraintes (MWNs: Multihop Wireless Networks). Grâce à l'évolution de la technologie des systèmes mico-electro-méchaniques (MEMS) et, depuis peu, les nanotechnologies, les MWNs sont une solution de choix pour une variété de problèmes. Le principal avantage de ces réseaux est leur faible coût de production qui permet de développer des applications ayant un unique cycle de vie. Cependant, si le coût de fabrication des nœuds constituant ce type de réseaux est assez faible, ces nœuds sont aussi limités en capacité en termes de: rayon de transmission radio, bande passante, puissance de calcul, mémoire, énergie, etc. Ainsi, les applications qui visent l'utilisation des MWNs doivent être conçues avec une grande précaution, et plus spécialement la conception de la fonction de routage, vu que les communications radio constituent la tâche la plus consommatrice d'énergie.Le but de cette thèse est d'analyser les différents défis et contraintes qui régissent la conception d'applications utilisant les MWNs. Ces contraintes se répartissent tout le long de la pile protocolaire. On trouve au niveau application des contraintes comme: la qualité de service, la tolérance aux pannes, le modèle de livraison de données au niveau application, etc. Au niveau réseau, on peut citer les problèmes de la dynamicité de la topologie réseau, la présence de trous, la mobilité, etc. Nos contributions dans cette thèse sont centrées sur l'optimisation de la fonction de routage en considérant les besoins de l'application et les contraintes du réseau. Premièrement, nous avons proposé un protocole de routage multi-chemin "en ligne" pour les applications orientées QoS utilisant des réseaux de capteurs multimédia. Ce protocole repose sur la construction de multiples chemins durant la transmission des paquets vers leur destination, c'est-à-dire sans découverte et construction des routes préalables. En permettant des transmissions parallèles, ce protocole améliore la transmission de bout-en-bout en maximisant la bande passante du chemin agrégé et en minimisant les délais. Ainsi, il permet de répondre aux exigences des applications orientées QoS.Deuxièmement, nous avons traité le problème du routage dans les réseaux mobiles tolérants aux délais. Nous avons commencé par étudier la connectivité intermittente entre les différents et nous avons extrait un modèle pour les contacts dans le but pouvoir prédire les future contacts entre les nœuds. En se basant sur ce modèle, nous avons proposé un protocole de routage, qui met à profit la position géographique des nœuds, leurs trajectoires, et la prédiction des futurs contacts dans le but d'améliorer les décisions de routage. Le protocole proposé permet la réduction des délais de bout-en-bout tout en utilisant d'une manière efficace les ressources limitées des nœuds que ce soit en termes de mémoire (pour le stockage des messages dans les files d'attentes) ou la puissance de calcul (pour l'exécution de l'algorithme de prédiction).Finalement, nous avons proposé un mécanisme de contrôle de la topologie avec un algorithme de routage des paquets pour les applications orientés évènement et qui utilisent des réseaux de capteurs sans fil statiques. Le contrôle de la topologie est réalisé à travers l'utilisation d'un algorithme distribué pour l'ordonnancement du cycle de service (sleep/awake). Les paramètres de l'algorithme proposé peuvent être réglés et ajustés en fonction de la taille du voisinage actif désiré (le nombre moyen de voisin actifs pour chaque nœud). Le mécanisme proposé assure un compromis entre le délai pour la notification d'un événement et la consommation d'énergie globale dans le réseau. / Great research efforts have been carried out in the field of challenged multihop wireless networks (MWNs). Thanks to the evolution of the Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology and nanotechnologies, multihop wireless networks have been the solution of choice for a plethora of problems. The main advantage of these networks is their low manufacturing cost that permits one-time application lifecycle. However, if nodes are low-costly to produce, they are also less capable in terms of radio range, bandwidth, processing power, memory, energy, etc. Thus, applications need to be carefully designed and especially the routing task because radio communication is the most energy-consuming functionality and energy is the main issue for challenged multihop wireless networks.The aim of this thesis is to analyse the different challenges that govern the design of challenged multihop wireless networks such as applications challenges in terms of quality of service (QoS), fault-tolerance, data delivery model, etc., but also networking challenges in terms of dynamic network topology, topology voids, etc. Our contributions in this thesis focus on the optimization of routing under different application requirements and network constraints. First, we propose an online multipath routing protocol for QoS-based applications using wireless multimedia sensor networks. The proposed protocol relies on the construction of multiple paths while transmitting data packets to their destination, i.e. without prior topology discovery and path establishment. This protocol achieves parallel transmissions and enhances the end-to-end transmission by maximizing path bandwidth and minimizing the delays, and thus meets the requirements of QoS-based applications. Second, we tackle the problem of routing in mobile delay-tolerant networks by studying the intermittent connectivity of nodes and deriving a contact model in order to forecast future nodes' contacts. Based upon this contact model, we propose a routing protocol that makes use of nodes' locations, nodes' trajectories, and inter-node contact prediction in order to perform forwarding decisions. The proposed routing protocol achieves low end-to-end delays while using efficiently constrained nodes' resources in terms of memory (packet queue occupancy) and processing power (forecasting algorithm). Finally, we present a topology control mechanism along a packet forwarding algorithm for event-driven applications using stationary wireless sensor networks. Topology control is achieved by using a distributed duty-cycle scheduling algorithm. Algorithm parameters can be tuned according to the desired node's awake neighbourhood size. The proposed topology control mechanism ensures trade-off between event-reporting delay and energy consumption.

SLAM (Simultaneous Localization And Mapping) has been a very active and almost ubiquitous problem in the field of mobile and autonomous robotics for over two decades. For many years, filter-based methods have dominated the SLAM literature, but a change of paradigms could be observed recently. Current state of the art solutions of the SLAM problem are based on efficient sparse least squares optimization techniques. However, it is commonly known that least squares methods are by default not robust against outliers. In SLAM, such outliers arise mostly from data association errors like false positive loop closures. Since the optimizers in current SLAM systems are not robust against outliers, they have to rely heavily on certain preprocessing steps to prevent or reject all data association errors. Especially false positive loop closures will lead to catastrophically wrong solutions with current solvers. The problem is commonly accepted in the literature, but no concise solution has been proposed so far. The main focus of this work is to develop a novel formulation of the optimization-based SLAM problem that is robust against such outliers. The developed approach allows the back-end part of the SLAM system to change parts of the topological structure of the problem\'s factor graph representation during the optimization process. The back-end can thereby discard individual constraints and converge towards correct solutions even in the presence of many false positive loop closures. This largely increases the overall robustness of the SLAM system and closes a gap between the sensor-driven front-end and the back-end optimizers. The approach is evaluated on both large scale synthetic and real-world datasets. This work furthermore shows that the developed approach is versatile and can be applied beyond SLAM, in other domains where least squares optimization problems are solved and outliers have to be expected. This is successfully demonstrated in the domain of GPS-based vehicle localization in urban areas where multipath satellite observations often impede high-precision position estimates.

Σκοπός της παρούσας διπλωματικής εργασίας είναι η μελέτη και ο προσδιορισμός, θεωρητικός και πειραματικός, του συντελεστή Κ της Rician κατανομής σε ένα κανάλι στα 2.4 GHz. Η κατανομή Rice χρησιμοποιείται για την περιγραφή του πλάτους του λαμβανόμενου σήματος σε ένα κανάλι μετάδοσης με ισχυρή επίδραση οπτικής επαφής (Line-of-Sight) μεταξύ κεραίας πομπού και δέκτη. Ο συντελεστής Κ Rice εκφράζει τον λόγο της συνεισφοράς της ισχύος της απευθείας συνιστώσας του σήματος ως προς την συνολική λαμβανόμενη ισχύ λόγω φαινομένων διάχυσης. Χρησιμοποιείται για τον χαρακτηρισμό του καναλιού καθώς και τον υπολογισμό του BER (bit-error-ratio) και της πλέον σημαντικής παραμέτρου των τηλεπικοινωνιών SNR (Signal-to-Noise-Ratio), δηλαδή του λόγου σήματος προς θόρυβο. Στο 1ο κεφάλαιο αναλύονται και περιγράφονται μερικές από τις σημαντικότερες τεχνολογίες ασυρμάτων δικτύων, από την πρώτη στιγμή της εμφάνισής τους (δίκτυα 1ης και 2ης γενιάς) έως τα πιο σύγχρονα δίκτυα 3ης και 4ης γενιάς, και παρουσιάζονται οι ζώνες συχνοτήτων που καταλαμβάνουν αυτές οι τεχνολογίες στο διαθέσιμο ηλεκτρομαγνητικό φάσμα. Στο 2ο κεφάλαιο μελετώνται οι 3 βασικότεροι μηχανισμοί διάδοσης του ηλεκτρομαγνητικού κύματος μέσα σε ένα ασύρματο κανάλι (ανάκλαση, περίθλαση, σκέδαση), περιγράφονται οι τύποι των απωλειών που υφίσταται ένα σήμα κατά την μετάδοση του και τα φαινόμενα των διαλείψεων, που παρατηρούνται πολύ έντονα σε ένα κινητό και μεταβαλλόμενο περιβάλλον διάδοσης. Στο 3ο κεφάλαιο γίνεται περιγραφή του μοντέλου ηλεκτρομαγνητικής μετάδοσης κατά Rice, δηλαδή όταν η απευθείας συνιστώσα του σήματος είναι η ισχυρότερη διαδρομή που ακολουθεί το εκπεμπόμενο σήμα κατά την πορεία του μέχρι τον δέκτη (LoS). Αναλύεται η σημαντικότερη παράμετρος αυτού του τύπου μετάδοσης, δηλαδή ο συντελεστής Κ, και παρουσιάζονται διάφορες μέθοδοι προσδιορισμού του τόσο θεωρητικά όσο και πειραματικά. Στο 4ο κεφάλαιο παρουσιάζονται τα αποτελέσματα των πειραματικών μας μετρήσεων σε διάφορες τοπολογίες μετάδοσης με LoS για ένα δίκτυο Wi-Fi, δηλαδή για συχνότητα λειτουργίας στα 2.4 GHz. Για κάθε τοπολογία, περιγράφεται πλήρως το περιβάλλον μετάδοσης καθώς και ολόκληρη η διαδικασία εκπόνησης των μετρήσεων (μετρητικά όργανα, απαραίτητο λογισμικό, τυχόν προσεγγίσεις κτλ.). Τέλος, στο 5ο και τελευταίο κεφάλαιο, παρουσιάζεται μια μέθοδος υπολογισμού του συντελεστή Κ μέσω των μετρήσεων και με τη βοήθεια του μοντέλου ελευθέρου χώρου, που χρησιμοποιείται για τον υπολογισμό των συνολικών απωλειών διαδρομής του σήματος. Τα αποτελέσματα των υπολογισμών χρησιμοποιήθηκαν, με την βοήθεια του Matlab, για την κατασκευή της CDF των τιμών του Κ αλλά και της γραφικής παράστασης της μεταβολής του Κ συναρτήσει της απόστασης. Οι εμπειρικές CDF συγκριθήκαν και προσεγγιστήκαν με γνωστές θεωρητικές CDF, και η συνάρτηση της μεταβολής του Κ με την απόσταση προσεγγίστηκε με όρους Goodness of Fit με την βοήθεια της γενικής μορφής γνωστών συναρτήσεων. Κλείνοντας, στην τελευταία παράγραφο της εργασίας αφήνεται περιθώριο και δίνεται τροφή για μελλοντική εργασία πάνω στην μελέτη και τον προσδιορισμό του συντελεστή Κ της Rice τόσο για εσωτερικούς όσο και για εξωτερικούς χώρους. / The main purpose of this thesis, is the analysis and estimation , theoretical and empirical, of the Rician K factor for a wireless channel at 2.4 GHz. The Rician power density function is used to describe the amplitude of the received signal when there is a strong LOS component. The Rician K factor expresses the ratio of the power component due to LOS signal propagation and the received signal power due to diffuse components (reflection, scattering, diffraction etc.). It is commonly used for the channel's characterization and the estimation of BER (bit error rate) and SNR (signal to noise ratio), a very important parameter for telecommunications. In the 1st chapter, some of the most important wireless systems are described, since their very first appearance (1G & 2G networks) until the latest 3rd and 4rth generation systems. We also present the current frequency bands and how they are spread at the given electromagnetic spectrum. In the 2nd chapter, the 3 basic propagation mechanisms (reflection, scattering, diffraction) are studied. In addition, we describe all types of signal attenuation within a wireless channel and the fading phenomena that are so commonly seen in mobile and continuously changing propagation environments. In the 3rd chapter, the Rician model of electromagnetic propagation, where LOS is the strongest path of signal components, is analyzed. The most important parameter of this propagation type, the Rician K factor, is also studied. Therefore, various methods of theoretical and empirical estimation of the K factor are presented. In the 4rth chapter, we include the results of our measurements in various LOS propagation topologies for a Wi-Fi system at 2.4 GHz. For each measurement topology, the propagation environment as well as the entire measurement procedure, are thoroughly described. Lastly, in the 5th and final chapter, a K factor estimation method based on the empirical set of data and the Free Space Model, used for the average path loss calculation, is presented. The results of our measurements via the help of the Matlab software were used in order to plot the CDF of K values as well as the K values versus d (distance) curve. Using curve fitting methods, the empirical CDFs and plots were compared to theoretical ones in terms of Goodness of Fit. In the closing section, possible future research in the aforementioned fields is proposed.