Escoamentos turbulentos têm sido por muitos anos o objetivo de importantes estudos para descobrir sua dinâmica. Dentre as características mais significativas, destaca-se a multiplicidade de escalas que os caracterizam, desde as maiores estruturas (baixas freqüências) controladas pela geometria que as geram, até as menores estruturas (altas freqüências) limitadas pela viscosidade do fluido. Uma idéia importante é o conceito de vórtices que está ligado a melhorias nas técnicas de visualização, tanto em laboratório quanto em experimentos numéricos. Estes vórtices têm um importante papel em numerosas aplicações tecnológicas, sendo necessário entender a dinâmica da organização de seus movimentos para controlar mecanicamente sua produção ou supressão. Neste contexto, a análise de um misturador de ar em um escoamento em tê é o principal objetivo de estudo deste trabalho. A geometria em tê é bastante simples, mas propicia o aparecimento de um escoamento com passagem de vórtices. Testes experimentais do escoamento, com duas entradas de ar com temperaturas diferentes, foram realizados no Laboratório de Engenharia Térmica e Fluidos da Escola de Engenharia de São Carlos da Universidade de São Paulo (LETeF - EESC - USP). As medidas de temperatura foram obtidas com termopares instalados ao longo da tubulação. Com o software CFX foram realizados estudos com métodos numéricos LES e DES aplicados ao escoamento. Estes resultados computacionais foram comparados com os dados experimentais, através da análise tempo-freqüência. Estudos preliminares do escoamento mostram regiões com passagem de vórtices, e a habilidade da técnica de análise tempo-freqüência em caracterizar a existência e a forma destas estruturas turbulentas. / Turbulent flows have been the objective of important studies to discover its dynamics. One important characteristic of these flows is the multiplicity of scales, since the large structures (low frequencies) controlled by the geometry that generates them, until the small structures (high frequencies) limited by the fluid viscosity. An important idea is the concept of vortices that it is associated with the improvements in the visualization techniques, in laboratory or numerical experiments. These vortices have an important function in many technological applications. In each one of these fields, it is necessary to understand the dynamics of its movements to control the mechanisms for producing or suppressing these vortices. In this context, the analysis of an air mixing in a tee junction is the main objective of this work. The tee geometry is sufficiently simple, but contributes for the appearance of a flow with vortices transition. Experimental tests with two different air temperatures inlets were done at the Thermal and Fluid Engineering Laboratory of the University of São Paulo at São Carlos (LETeF - EESC - USP). The measures of temperature were acquired with thermocouples installed along the pipe. Numerical studies with LES and DES methods using CFX software were applied to the flow. These computational results were compared with the experimental data through the time-frequency analysis. Preliminary studies of the flow show vortices transition regions and the ability of time-frequency technique in describing the existence and shape of turbulent structures.

In this thesis we study the short-time Fourier transform. The short-time Fourier transform of a function f(x) is obtained by restricting our function to a short time segment and take the Fourier transform of this restriction. This method gives information locally of f in both time and frequency simultaneously.To get a smooth frequency localization one wants to use a smooth window, whichmeans that the windows will overlap. The continuous short-time Fourier transform is not appropriate for practical purpose, therefore we want a discrete representation of f. Using Gabor theory, we can write a function f as a linear combination of time- and frequency shifts of a fixed window function g with integer parameters a; b > 0. We show that if the window function g has compact support, then g generates a Gabor frame G(g; a; b). We also show that for such a g there exists a dual frame such that both G(g; a; b) and its dual frame has compact support and decay fast in the Fourier domain. Based on [2], we show that B-splines generates a pair of Gabor frames.

This thesis studies the application of the wavelet filter bank (WFB) in perceptual audio coding by providing brief overviews of perceptual coding, psychoacoustics, wavelet theory, and existing wavelet coding algorithms. Furthermore, it describes the poor frequency localization property of the WFB and explores one filter design method, in particular, for improving channel separation between the wavelet bands. A wavelet audio coder has also been developed by the author to test the new filters. Preliminary tests indicate that the new filters provide some improvement over other wavelet filters when coding audio signals that are stationary-like and contain only a few harmonic components, and similar results for other types of audio signals that contain many spectral and temporal components. It has been found that the WFB provides a flexible decomposition scheme through the choice of the tree structure and basis filter, but at the cost of poor localization properties. This flexibility can be a benefit in the context of audio coding but the poor localization properties represent a drawback. Determining ways to fully utilize this flexibility, while minimizing the effects of poor time-frequency localization, is an area that is still very much open for research.

Blind source separation methods such as independent component analysis (ICA) and second order blind identification (SOBI) have shown considerable potential in the area of ambient vibration system identification. The objective of these methods is to separate the modal responses, or sources, from the measured output responses, without the knowledge of excitation. Several frequency domain and time domain methods have been proposed and successfully implemented in the literature. Whereas frequency-domain methods pose several challenges typical of dealing with signals in the frequency-domain, popular time-domain methods such as NExT/ERA and SSI pose limitations in dealing with noise, low sensor density, modes having low energy content, or in dealing with systems having closely-spaced modes, such as those found in structures with passive energy dissipation devices, for example, tuned mass dampers.Motivated by these challenges, the current research focuses on developing methods to address the problem of separability of sources with low energy content, closely-spaced modes, and under-determined blind identification, that is, when the number of response measurements is less than the number of sources. These methods, requiring the time and frequency diversities of the measured outputs, are referred to as hybrid time and time-frequency source separation methods. The hybrid methods are classified into two categories. In the first one, the basic principles of modified SOBI are extended using the stationary wavelet transform (SWT) in order to improve the separability of sources, thereby improving the quality of identification. In the second category, empirical mode decomposition is employed to extract the intrinsic mode functions from measurements, followed by an estimation of the mode shape matrix using iterative and/or non iterative procedures within the framework of modified-SOBI. Both experimental and large-scale structural simulation results are included to demonstrate the applicability of these hybrid approaches to structural system identification problems.

In this thesis a stepped-frequency Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) is employed to develop two-dimensional range-Doppler images of a small ghter aircraft which exhibits three dimensional rotational rotation. The simulation is designed such that the target can exhibit yaw, pitch and roll motions at the same time. First, radar returns from prominent scatterers of various parts of the target are processed and displayed using conventional Fourier transform. The eects of dierent complex motion types and scenarios are observed and discussed. Then, several linear and bi-linear time-frequency distributions including shorttime Fourier transform, Wigner-Ville, pseudo Wigner-Ville, smoothed pseudo Wigner-Ville, Choi-Williams, Born-Jordan and Zhao-Atlas-Marks distributions are applied to the same target and scenarios. The performance of the transforms is compared for each scenario. The reasons for success of the distributions are discussed thoroughly.

The development of low-frequency sonar systems, using for instance a network of autonomous systems in unmanned vehicles, provides a practical means for bistatic measurements (i.e. when the source and receiver are widely separated) allowing for multiple viewpoints of the target of interest. Time-frequency analysis, in particular Wigner-Ville analysis, takes advantage of the evolution time dependent aspect of the echo spectrum to differentiate a man-made target (e.g. elastic spherical shell) from a natural one of the similar shape (e.g. solid). A key energetic feature of fluid loaded and thin spherical shell is the coincidence pattern, or mid-frequency enhancement echoes (MFE), that result from antisymmetric Lamb-waves propagating around the circumference of the shell. This thesis investigates numerically the bistatic variations of the MFE (with respect to the monostatic configuration) using the Wigner-Ville analysis. The observed time-frequency shifts of the MFE are modeled using a previously derived quantitative ray theory for spherical shell's scattering. Additionally, the advantage of an optimal array beamformer, based on joint time delays and frequency shifts (over a conventional time-delay beamformer) is illustrated for enhancing the detection of the MFE recorded across a bistatic receiver array.

In this dissertation, multicarrier schemes are reviewed within the framework of Gabor Systems. Their fundamental elements; what to transmit, i.e., symbols, how to transmit, i.e., filters or pulse shape, and where/when to transmit, i.e., lattices are investigated extensively. The relations between different types of multicarrier schemes are discussed. Within the framework of Gabor systems, a new windowing approach, edge windowing, is developed to address the out-of-band (OOB) radiation problem of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based multicarrier schemes. To the best of our knowledge, for the first time, the diversity on the range of the users is exploited to suppress the sidelobes of OFDM. In addition to that, the concept of using different filters in OFDM structure is proposed. Besides the improvement on the OOB radiation performance of OFDM via edge windowing, conventional lattice structure of OFDM frame is enhanced considering the diversity in the network. The lattice structure of an OFDM frame is designed based on the statistical characteristics of the range of the users and the mobility. The concept of channel-aware frame structure is developed, which allows more efficient and reliable transmission. In addition to the aforementioned improvements on OFDM, interference issues in uncoordinated networks are addressed in this dissertation considering different multicarrier schemes. It is stressed that the interference from other links in the network sharing the same spectrum might degrade the link performance between the devices in an uncoordinated network, significantly. Considering the degradation due to other-user interference, the concept of partially overlapping tones (POT) is proposed. With the concept of partially overlapping tones, the interference energy observed at the victim receiver is mitigated via an intentional frequency offset between the links. The usefulness of intentional frequency offset to combat with the asynchronous nature of other-user interference without any timing constraint between interfering signals is emphasized. To the best of our knowledge, for the first time, the efficacy of non-orthogonal schemes are shown along with POT to address the other-user interference, which relies on the fact that self-interference problem is easier than other-user interference problem in an uncoordinated network. In the last part of this dissertation, required number of equalizer taps for multicarrier schemes is investigated to address the potential self-interference problems (e.g. due to the non-orthogonal multicarrier schemes with the concept of POT). Composite impact of transmit pulse shape, communication medium, and receive filter on the characteristics of the interference among the symbols in time and frequency is analyzed. It is emphasized that while taking less number of taps into account for the channel estimation causes lack of description of the composite effect, using more number of taps folds the noise into the estimated channel. The number of interfering symbols and their locations are obtained in both time and frequency for a given multicarrier scheme and signal-to-noise ratio. It is shown that correct number of taps yields not only improvement on BER performance but also less complex equalizer structures in practice.

Blind source separation methods such as independent component analysis (ICA) and second order blind identification (SOBI) have shown considerable potential in the area of ambient vibration system identification. The objective of these methods is to separate the modal responses, or sources, from the measured output responses, without the knowledge of excitation. Several frequency domain and time domain methods have been proposed and successfully implemented in the literature. Whereas frequency-domain methods pose several challenges typical of dealing with signals in the frequency-domain, popular time-domain methods such as NExT/ERA and SSI pose limitations in dealing with noise, low sensor density, modes having low energy content, or in dealing with systems having closely-spaced modes, such as those found in structures with passive energy dissipation devices, for example, tuned mass dampers.Motivated by these challenges, the current research focuses on developing methods to address the problem of separability of sources with low energy content, closely-spaced modes, and under-determined blind identification, that is, when the number of response measurements is less than the number of sources. These methods, requiring the time and frequency diversities of the measured outputs, are referred to as hybrid time and time-frequency source separation methods. The hybrid methods are classified into two categories. In the first one, the basic principles of modified SOBI are extended using the stationary wavelet transform (SWT) in order to improve the separability of sources, thereby improving the quality of identification. In the second category, empirical mode decomposition is employed to extract the intrinsic mode functions from measurements, followed by an estimation of the mode shape matrix using iterative and/or non iterative procedures within the framework of modified-SOBI. Both experimental and large-scale structural simulation results are included to demonstrate the applicability of these hybrid approaches to structural system identification problems.

No description available.

In our daily lives, we often make decisions that require the use of self-control, weighing trade-offs between various attributes: for example, selecting a food based on its health rather than its taste. Previous research suggests that re-weighting attributes may rely on selective attention, associated with decreased neural oscillations over posterior brain regions in the alpha (8-12 Hz) frequency range. Here, we utilized the high temporal resolution and whole-brain coverage of electroencephalography (EEG) to test this hypothesis in data collected from hungry human subjects exercising dietary self-control. Prior analysis of this data has found time-locked neural activity associated with each food’s perceived taste and health properties from approximately 400 to 650 ms after stimulus onset (Harris et al., 2013). We conducted time-frequency analyses to examine the role of alpha-band oscillations in this attribute weighting. Specifically, we predicted that there would be decreased alpha power in posterior electrodes beginning approximately 400 ms after stimulus onset for the presentation of healthy food relative to unhealthy food, reflecting shifts in selective attention. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found a significant decrease in alpha power for presentations of healthy relative to unhealthy foods. As predicted, this effect was most pronounced at posterior occipital and parietal electrodes and was significant from approximately 450 to 700 ms post-stimulus onset. Additionally, we found significant alpha-band decreases in right temporal electrodes during these times. These results extend previous attention research to multi-attribute choice, suggesting that the re-weighting of attributes can be measured neuro-computationally.