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Arc Flash events occur due to faults in electrical equipment combined with a significant release of energy across an electrical arc. Due to the large energy release, plasma is generated, pressures increase, and the plasma expands. Under these conditions the plasma becomes excited enough to liquefy metal causing physical damage to equipment and any humans in the vicinity. This thesis investigates the state of art for detection of arc flash events and investigates a method of improving detection reliability, and speed by monitoring the high frequency voltage / current patterns utilizing methods similar to arc flash circuit interrupters (AFCI). A second alternative detection approach is determined through analysis of the physics of plasma development. The current state of art is based upon light detection. However this thesis experimentally investigates what happens before the arc event emits visible light. The results show that current flows to ground during an arc event slightly prior to the production of light. Further it shows through analysis of the physics of plasma that a high speed plasma detector has the potential to identify an arc event before the presence of visible light. Through the design and construction of experimental test setups, and physics analysis, this thesis provides new paths for detecting arc events that present opportunities to improve detection time.

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Lipid molecules are amphiphilic in nature consisting of a hydrophilic head group and hydrophobic hydrocarbon tails. The lipid bilayer consists of two layers of lipid molecules arranged with their hydrophobic tails facing each other and their hydrophilic head groups solvated by water. Lipid bilayers with hydrophilic polymer chains grafted onto the head groups have applications in various fields, such as stabilization of liposomes designed for targeted drug delivery, synthesis of supported bilayers for biomaterial applications, surface modification of implanted medical devices to prevent biological fouling and design of in vitro biosensors. The focus of this thesis lies in understanding the effects of polymer grafting on the thermodynamics and mechanical properties of lipid bilayers. Dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) has evolved as a promising method to study complex soft matter systems. The basic DPD algorithm, and its implementation are discussed in Chapter 2 of this thesis. It is important to achieve a tensionless state while studying phase transitions and deducing the mechanical properties of the bilayer. We proposed a modification of the Andersen barostat which can be incorporated in a DPD simulation to achieve the tensionless state as well as carry out simulations at a prescribed tension. In Chapter 3 of this thesis the effect of polymer grafting on single tailed lipid bilayers is studied. Simulations are carried out by varying the grafting fraction, Gf, defined as the ratio of the number of polymer molecules to the number of lipid molecules. At lowGf, the bilayer shows a sharp transition from the gel (Lβ) to the liquid crystalline (Lα) phase. This main melting transition temperature is lowered as Gf is increased. Corresponding to this, an increase in the area per head group is also observed. Above a critical value of Gf the interdigitated, LβI phase is observed prior to the main transition for the longer lipid tails. The analysis for two tailed lipids as a function of polymer chain length is extensively studied in Chapter 5. For the case of two tailed lipids, an intermediate interdigitated phase was not observed and the decrease in the melting temperature is more pronounced as the length of the polymer chain is increased. The scaling for fractional change in the area per head group, as well as the decrease in transition temperature as a function of polymer grafting are in good agreement with mean field theory predictions. The bending modulus (k) and area stretch modulus (kA) are essential for determining the shape and the mechanical stability of biological cells or lipid based vesicles. In simulations, the bending modulus k is evaluated from the Fourier transform of the out-of-plane fluctuations of the bilayer mid-plane. In Chapter 4 of this thesis, we illustrate that a surface representation based on Delanuay triangulation provides a robust parameter free representation of the bilayer surface. By evaluating the bending modulus for single tail lipids of different tail lengths, the continuum scaling relation d2 is verified. To our knowledge this is the first systematic investigation and verification of this scaling relationship using computer simulations. Using the continuum relation, =kAd2/ we find that α depends weakly on the tail lengths of the bilayer. Nevertheless we illustrate that a value of α=130 can be used to reliably estimate the bending modulus from the area stretch modulus for polymer free bilayers. Using our method, we are also able to capture the low q scalings and obtain the bending modulus of the gel (Lβ) phase. Grafted polymer was found to increase the value of the bending modulus for single tail lipids. Although the presence of polymer directly increases the area per head group, the suppressed height fluctuations dominate and the bending modulus increases for the single tail lipids. For two tail lipids a small decrease in the bending modulus was observed at low grafting fractions and short polymer chains. For large polymer lengths the bending modulus was found to increase monotonically.

Passive source localization is the estimation of the positions of the sources or emitters given the sensor data. In this thesis, some of the well known methods for passive source localization are investigated and compared in a stationary emitter sensor framework. These algorithms are discussed in detail in two and three dimensions for both single and multiple target cases. Passive source localization methods can be divided into two groups as two-step algorithms and single-step algorithms. Angle-of-Arrival (AOA) based Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Least Squares (LS) source localization algorithms, Time- Difference-of-Arrival (TDOA) based ML and LS methods, AOA-TDOA based hybrid ML methods are presented as conventional two step techniques. Direct Position Determination (DPD) method is a well known technique within the single step approaches. In thesis, a number of variants of DPD technique with better computational complexity (the proposed methods do not need eigen-decomposition in the grid search) are presented. These are the Direct Localization (DL) with Multiple Signal Classification (MUSIC), DL with Deterministic ML (DML) and DL with Stochastic ML (SML) methods. The evaluation of these algorithms is done by considering the Cramer Rao Lower Bound (CRLB). Some of the CRLB expressions given in two dimensions in the literature are presented for threedimensions. Extensive simulations are done and the effects of different parameters on the performances of the methods are investigated. It is shown that the performance of the single step algorithms is good even at low SNR. DL with MUSIC algorithm performs as good as the DPD while it has significant savings in computational complexity. AOA, TDOA and hybrid algorithms are compared in different scenarios. It is shown that the improvement achieved by single-step techniques may be acceptable when the system cost and complexity are ignored. The localization algorithms are compared for the multiple target case as well. The effect of sensor deployments on the location performance is investigated.

Les techniques multiporteuses de type OFDM sont aujourd'hui largement déployées dans tous les systèmes de communication sans fils notamment dans les réseaux cellulaires (L TE), les réseaux de diffusion (DVB) ou encore les réseaux WiFi. Cependant, les modulations multiporteuses se caractérisent par une très grande dynamique mesurée par le Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR), ce qui empêche d'alimenter l'amplificateur de puissance non linéaire (utilisé avant l'émission des signaux) à son point optimal et ainsi conduit à diminuer son efficacité énergétique. Des techniques de réduction du PAPR peuvent alors être mises en oeuvre pour réduire le PAPR du signal et des techniques de prédistorsion peuvent alors être utilisées pour compenser les non-linéarités de l'amplificateur de puissance. L'approche développée dans le cadre de cette thèse a pour objectif d'étudier une solution intelligente pour les implémentations futures pour contrôler la réduction du PAPR et les étapes de linéa risation de manière flexible en fonction de certains paramètres prédéfinis afin qu'ils deviennent adaptatifs et auto-configurables. Plus précisément, notre travail a principalement porté sur l'analyse des différentes distorsions dans la bande (in-band distortions)mesurées par I'EVM ou Error Vector Magnitude et en dehors de la bande de transmission (out-of-band distortions) mesurées par I'ACPR ou Adjacent Channel Power Ratio de signaux à porteuses multiples. En particulier de nombreux résultats analytiques complétés par des résultats de simulation permettant d'évaluer I'EVM et I'ACPR en fonction des caractéristiques de l'amplification nonlinéaire en prenant en compte ou pas l'effet mémoire de l'amplificateur et la mise en oeuvre de techniques d'écrêtage et de pré-distorsion ont été obtenus. Ces résultats constituent une étape importante dans l'optimisation globale de la complexité, de la linéarité et de l'efficacité énergétique des émetteurs aussi bien pour la diffusion de la télévision numérique que pour les réseaux cellulaires de 4 ème génération (L TE) ou de 5""' génération. / OFDM multicarrier techniques are now widely deployed in most wireless communication systems, in particular in cellularnetworks (L TE), broadcast networks (DVB) and WiFi networks. However, multi-carrier modulations are characterized by avery large dynamic amplitude measured by the Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR). which prevents radio frequencydesigners to feed the signal at the optimal point of the Power Amplifier (PA) which reduces the PA energy efficiency. Inliterature, the PAPR reduction and linearization techniques are the main approaches to solve the PAPR problem, the PAnonlinearities problem. as well as the low PA efficiency problem.The approach developed in this thesis was to study an intelligent solution for future implementations to control thereduction of PAPR and the linearization steps in a flexible way according to some predefined parameters so that theybecome adaptive and self-configurable. More specifically, our work focused on the analytical analysis of in-band measureby the Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) and out-of-band distortions measured by the Adjacent Chanel Power Ratio (ACPR)for clipped multicarrier signals taking into account the impact of non-linear amplification, memory effects and predistortion.In particular. many analytical results complemented by simulation results to evaluate the EVM and ACPR are proposed.These analytical expressions depend on the PA characteristics taking into account or not the PA memory effects and theuse of clipping and pre-distortion techniques. lt is worthwhile to note that our proposed theoretical analyses could be veryuseful for optimizing future transmitter efficiency and linearity in the field of broadcasting applications for the deployment oDVB-T2 transmitters as well as for L TE cellular networks.

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