To support wireless-oriented services, a new generation of Web services called Mobile services (M-services) has emerged. M-services provide mobile users access to services through wireless networks. One of the important issues in M-service environment is how to discover and access M-services efficiently. In this dissertation, we propose time and power efficient access methods for M-services. We focus on methods for accessing broadcast based M-services from multiple wireless channels. We first discuss efficient access methods in data-oriented wireless broadcast systems. We then discuss how to extend current wireless broadcast systems to support simple M-services. We present a novel infrastructure that provides a multi-channel broadcast framework for mobile users to effectively discover and access composite M-services. Multi-channel algorithms are proposed for efficiently accessing composite services. We define a few semantics that have impact on access efficiency in the proposed infrastructure. We discuss semantic access to composite services. Broadcast channel organizations suitable for discovering and accessing composite services are proposed. We also derive analytical models for these channel organizations. To provide practical study for the proposed infrastructure and access methods, a testbed is developed for simulating accessing M-services in a broadcast-based environment. Extensive experiments have been conducted to study the proposed access methods and broadcast channel organizations. The experimental results are presented and discussed. / Ph. D.

Little research has been done in the humid mid-Atlantic region to develop full-season N fertilizer recommendations for dryland no-tillage grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) production. The objectives of this study were: (i) to determine the optimum rate of band-placed starter N fertilizer needed in combination with side-dress N applications to achieve economic grain yields, (ii) to investigate if pre-plant broadcast N applications are as efficient as band-placed plus side-dress N applications, (iii) to evaluate the response of grain sorghum yield to partitioned side-dress N applications, and (iv) to study the influence of residual soil profile mineral-N (nitrate and ammonium) on sorghum response to applied N fertilization. Multi-location field studies were conducted over three years. A range of N treatments of various starter-band and side-dress N rates were applied. The experimental data indicate that an optimum rate of N fertilization depends on residual soil mineral-N. Little or zero starter-band-N in conjunction with side-dress-N applications of 130 kg of N ha-1 for soils testing high in mineral-N ( 50 kg N ha-1 in the top 0.3m of surface soil) at planting, and a starter-band-N supplement of 40 kg N ha-1 in conjunction with 130 kg N ha-1 side-dress N for soils testing low in mineral-N at planting, optimized the grain sorghum yields in these experiments. Broadcast N applications were observed to be as efficient as band placed N applications when followed by rainfall soon after application. Grain sorghum yields did respond to the partitioned side-dress N applications. However, partitioning of side-dress N application again depends on the residual mineral-N level present in the soil. In order to consider residual soil mineral-N in making N fertilizer recommendations "Associated Nitrogen Fertilizer Equivalency" (ANFE) values were calculated. ANFE is the amount of applied N that has potential to produce the same yield as that produced by the residual soil mineral-N. The N fertilizer recommendations based on ANFE values were quite close for two out of four sites as compared to the N rates at which the maximum yields were obtained in this study. / Ph. D.

This dissertation focuses on downlink multi-antenna transmission with packet scheduling in a wireless packet data network. The topic is viewed as a critical system design problem for future high-speed packet networks requiring extremely high spectral efficiency. Our aim is to illustrate the interaction between transmission schemes at the physical layer and scheduling algorithms at the medium access control (MAC) layer from a sum-capacity perspective. Various roles of multiple antennas are studied under channel-aware scheduling, including diversity, beamforming and spatial multiplexing. At a system performance level, our work shows that downlink throughput can be optimized by joint precoding across multiple transmit antennas and exploiting small-scale fading of distributed multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) channels. There are three major results in this dissertation. First, it is shown that over a MIMO Gaussian broadcast channel, and under channel-aware scheduling, open-loop transmit antenna diversity actually reduces the achievable sum rate. This reveals a negative interaction between open-loop antenna diversity and the closed-loop multiuser diversity through scheduling. Second, a suboptimal dirty paper coding (DPC) approach benefits greatly from multiuser diversity by an efficient packet scheduling algorithm. Performance analysis of a suboptimal greedy scheduling algorithm indicates that, compared with the receiver-centric V-BLAST method, it can achieve a much larger scheduling gain over a distributed MIMO channel. Further, pre-interference cancellation allows for transmissions free of error propagation. A practical solution, termed Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (THP), is studied under this suboptimal scheduling algorithm. Similar to V-BLAST, a reordering is applied to minimize the average error rate, which introduces only a negligible sum-rate loss in the scenarios investigated. Third, for an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system using MIMO precoding, it is shown that a DPC-based approach is readily applicable and can be easily generalized to reduce the peak-to-average power ratio (PAR) up to 5 dB without affecting the receiver design. Simulations show that in an interference-limited multi-cell scenario, greater performance improvement can be achieved by interference avoidance through adaptive packet scheduling, rather than by interference diversity or averaging alone. These findings suggest that, coordinated with channel-aware scheduling, adaptive multiplexing in both spatial and frequency domains provides an attractive downlink solution from a total capacity point of view. / Ph. D.

The proliferation of connected embedded devices has driven wireless communications into commercial, military, industrial, and personal systems. It is unreasonable to expect privacy and security to be inherent in these networks given the spatial density of these devices, limited spectral resources, and the broadcast nature of wireless communications systems. Communications for these systems must have sufficient information capacity and secrecy capacity while typically maintaining small size, light weight, and minimized power consumption. With increasing crowding of the electromagnetic spectrum, interference must be leveraged as an available resource. This work develops a new beamforming method for direction-dependent modulation that provides wireless communications devices with enhanced physical layer security and the ability to simultaneously communicate and harvest energy by exploiting co-channel interference. We propose a method that optimizes a set of time-varying array steering vectors to enable direction-dependent modulation, thus exploiting a new degree of freedom in the space-time-frequency paradigm. We formulate steering vector selection as a convex optimization problem for rapid computation given arbitrarily positioned array antenna elements. We show that this method allows us to spectrally separate co-channel interference from an information-bearing signal in the analog domain, enabling the energy from the interference to be diverted for harvesting during the digitization and decoding of the information-bearing signal. We also show that this method provides wireless communications devices with not only enhanced information capacity, but also enhanced secrecy capacity in a broadcast channel. By using the proposed method, we can increase the overall channel capacity in a broadcast system beyond the current state-of-the-art for wireless broadcast channels, which is based on static coding techniques. Further, we also increase the overall secrecy capacity of the system by enabling secrecy for each user in the system. In practical terms, this results in higher-rate, confidential messages delivered to multiple devices in a broadcast channel for a given power constraint. Finally, we corroborate these claims with simulation and experimental results for the proposed method. / PHD

Previous research into sporting events and broadcast commentary have been consistent in showing that there are clear differences in prevalence of commentary topics when a commentator is describing a male athlete and a female athlete. Among these differences are sexualized and ambivalent language towards female athletes, gender marking, and language that suggests male athlete superiority to that of female athletes. Although sporting events such as the Summer and Winter Olympics and NCAA Men's and Women's Basketball Championship games have repeatedly been sites for exploration, the world's largest single-event sporting competition, the World Cup, remains relatively untouched. Keeping this in mind, using a systematic content analysis, this thesis analyzed the broadcast commentary provided by play-by-play and color commentators in FIFA World Cup and FIFA Women's World Cup final matches to discern whether or not the sex of the athlete competing resulted in a difference in the descriptive evaluations employed by commentators. Findings of this study revealed that there were few differences in the prevalence of descriptive evaluations based on the gender of the athletes competing. Implications of the results and recommendations for future research into broadcast commentary and World Cup final matches are addressed. / Master of Arts / Previous research into the role of broadcast commentary in sporting events has shown that not only are there differences in what sports commentators say about male and female athletes, but also in how often specific types of commentary occur. Through the examination of pinnacle athletic competitions, findings have revealed a higher frequency of sexualized and contradictory language towards female athletes, an increase in gender marking, and language that suggests the superiority of male athletes to that of female athletes, among other things. Despite the wide range of athletic competitions that have garnered research attention, one event that has remained relatively ignored is the FIFA World Cup. Because of this, by examining the broadcast commentary provided during FIFA World Cup and FIFA Women’s World Cup final matches, this study looked to discover if the sex of the athlete competing impacted how often certain evaluation types occurred during game action. Findings showed that there were few differences in the prevalence of these evaluations based on the sex of the athlete competing. In addition to discussing the findings of this study, recommendations for future research are also addressed.

An important problem for economists and policy-makers concerning the cable industry is whether the cable industry faces widespread direct competition. Only one roughly comparable, nation-wide competitor exists, Direct Broadcast Satellite ("DBS"), and there are some indications that DBS does not constrain cable prices. The model presented in this paper indicates that DBS and cable compete imperfectly in terms of monthly prices, if at all, but compete more directly in terms of the premium-level services they offer. Other factors may indicate whether a community is open to advanced services like DBS, such as whether the cable operators offers high-speed Internet access. / Master of Arts

Tornado warnings are life-threatening situations, and since the public uses television as the main source for tornado warning information, it is important to know how different visuals and messages are influencing the opinions and intentions of people. This research found that participants were more apt to say they would shelter if they were shown a tornado video than a radar video displaying storm-relative velocity or correlation coefficient, while seeing the tornado brought out a heightened level of anxiety and fear. Participants were most influenced by a call-to-action statement spoken by the meteorologist. Participants expressed negative feelings after being asked to both shelter and send in tornado footage at the same time. The standard call-to-action video and one with the addition of viewer-submitted tornado footage were statistically equivalent. Participants more correctly identified the location of a tornado on the radar product explained to them than one that was not.

The lack of interoperability between Pay‐TV service providers and a horizontally integrated business transaction model have compromised the competition in the Pay‐TV market. In addition, the lack of interactivity with customers has resulted in high churn rate and improper security measures have contributed into considerable business loss. These issues are the main cause of high operational costs and subscription fees in the Pay‐TV systems. This paper presents a novel end‐to‐end system architecture for Pay‐TV systems cooperating mobile and broadcasting technologies. It provides a cost‐effective, scalable, dynamic and secure access control mechanism supporting converged services and new business opportunities in Pay‐TV systems. It enhances interactivity, security and potentially reduces customer attrition and operational cost. In this platform, service providers can effectively interact with their customers, personalise their services and adopt appropriate security measures. It breaks up the rigid relationship between a viewer and set‐top box as imposed by traditional conditional access systems, thus, a viewer can fully enjoy his entitlements via an arbitrary set‐top box. Having thoroughly considered state‐of‐the‐art technologies currently being used across the world, the thesis highlights novel use cases and presents the full design and implementation aspects of the system. The design section is enriched by providing possible security structures supported thereby. A business collaboration structure is proposed, followed by a reference model for implementing the system. Finally, the security architectures are analysed to propose the best architecture on the basis of security, complexity and set‐top box production cost criteria.

Advancements in video coding, compact media display, and communication devices, particularly in emerging broadband wireless access networks, have created many foreseeable and exciting applications of video broadcast/multicast over the wireless meidum. For efficient and robust wireless video broadcast/multicast under fading, this thesis presents and examines a novel cross-layer framework that exploits the interplay between applying protections on a successively refinable video source and transmitting through a layered broadcast/multicast channel. The framework is realistically achieved and evaluated by using multiple description coding (MDC) on a scalable video source and using superposition coding (SPC) for layered broadcast/multicast transmissions. An analytical model using the total received/recovered video bitstreams from each coded wireless broadcast/multicast signal is developed, which serves as a metric of video quality for the system analysis and optimization. An efficient methodology has demonstrated that optimal power allocations and modulation selections can be practically determined to improve the broadcast/multicast video quality. From the information-theoretical perspective, a general closed-form formula is derived for the end-to-end distortion analysis of the proposed framework, which is applicable to any (n, k) protection code applied on a successive refinable source with a Gaussian distribution over layered Gaussian broadcast channels. The results reveal the scenarios for the proposed framework to lead to a lower distortion than a legacy system without any protection. By analyzing the characteristics of the closed-form formula, an efficient O(n log n) algorithm is developed to determine optimal k values in the (n, k) protection codes that minimize the distortion under the framework. Finally, a cross-layer design of logical SPC modulation is introduced to achieve layered broadcast/multicast for scalable video. It serves as an alternative for practically implementing the proposed framework of coded wireless video broadcast/multicast, if the hardware-based SPC component is not available in a wireless system. In summary, the thesis presents comprehensive analyses, simulations, and experiments to understand, investigate, and justify the effectiveness of the proposed cross-layer framework of coded wireless video broadcast/multicast. More importantly, this thesis contributes to the advancement in the related fields of communication engineering and information theory by introducing a new design dimension in terms of protection. This is unique when compared to previously-reported layered approaches that are often manipulating conventional parameters alone such as power and modulation scheme. The impact of this dimension was unapparent in the past, but is now proven as an effective means to enable high-quality, efficient, and robust wireless video broadcast/multicast for promising media applications.

Advancements in video coding, compact media display, and communication devices, particularly in emerging broadband wireless access networks, have created many foreseeable and exciting applications of video broadcast/multicast over the wireless meidum. For efficient and robust wireless video broadcast/multicast under fading, this thesis presents and examines a novel cross-layer framework that exploits the interplay between applying protections on a successively refinable video source and transmitting through a layered broadcast/multicast channel. The framework is realistically achieved and evaluated by using multiple description coding (MDC) on a scalable video source and using superposition coding (SPC) for layered broadcast/multicast transmissions. An analytical model using the total received/recovered video bitstreams from each coded wireless broadcast/multicast signal is developed, which serves as a metric of video quality for the system analysis and optimization. An efficient methodology has demonstrated that optimal power allocations and modulation selections can be practically determined to improve the broadcast/multicast video quality. From the information-theoretical perspective, a general closed-form formula is derived for the end-to-end distortion analysis of the proposed framework, which is applicable to any (n, k) protection code applied on a successive refinable source with a Gaussian distribution over layered Gaussian broadcast channels. The results reveal the scenarios for the proposed framework to lead to a lower distortion than a legacy system without any protection. By analyzing the characteristics of the closed-form formula, an efficient O(n log n) algorithm is developed to determine optimal k values in the (n, k) protection codes that minimize the distortion under the framework. Finally, a cross-layer design of logical SPC modulation is introduced to achieve layered broadcast/multicast for scalable video. It serves as an alternative for practically implementing the proposed framework of coded wireless video broadcast/multicast, if the hardware-based SPC component is not available in a wireless system. In summary, the thesis presents comprehensive analyses, simulations, and experiments to understand, investigate, and justify the effectiveness of the proposed cross-layer framework of coded wireless video broadcast/multicast. More importantly, this thesis contributes to the advancement in the related fields of communication engineering and information theory by introducing a new design dimension in terms of protection. This is unique when compared to previously-reported layered approaches that are often manipulating conventional parameters alone such as power and modulation scheme. The impact of this dimension was unapparent in the past, but is now proven as an effective means to enable high-quality, efficient, and robust wireless video broadcast/multicast for promising media applications.