Desenvolvemos uma estratégia natural e acessível aos estudantes do Ensino Médio para o cálculo de áreas planas sem as ferramentas mais avançadas do Cálculo Diferencial e Integral. / We developed a natural strategy, achievable by high school students, for the computation of area of limited regions of the cartesian plane, without making use of more advanced resources of Differential and Integral Calculus.

Submitted by Patrícia Cerveira (pcerveira1@gmail.com) on 2017-06-14T20:26:32Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Alex João.pdf: 2737215 bytes, checksum: 01f1f6dd1595e3849310212c302e540e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Biblioteca da Escola de Engenharia (bee@ndc.uff.br) on 2017-06-29T15:57:07Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Alex João.pdf: 2737215 bytes, checksum: 01f1f6dd1595e3849310212c302e540e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-29T15:57:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Alex João.pdf: 2737215 bytes, checksum: 01f1f6dd1595e3849310212c302e540e (MD5) / O advento do paradigma financeiras, ou outros tipos de limitações. Desta forma, redes com enlaces redundantes têm sua capacidade potencial desperdiçada pelo uso de protocolos de roteamento distribuídos que não conseguem lidar de forma adequada com todos os caminhos disponíveis. Em especial, as redes dos centros de dados que possuem um grande número de enlaces redundantes e têm que fornecer a comunicação de forma eficiente entre seus equipamentos. Nesta dissertação será apresentado o Equalize, um arcabouço criado segundo o paradigma RDS, que realiza o equilíbrio automático dos fluxos ingressantes na rede através dos enlaces disponíveis que estejam menos congestionados. A topologia da rede é "descoberta" de forma automática e a localização de um host é determinada pelo seu endereço de camada 2 (MAC), de forma que o mesmo pode migrar para qualquer ponto da rede mantendo seu endereço de camada 3 (IP) original. Para o cálculo do melhor caminho entre dois nós, o Equalize executa um algoritmo de Dijkstra adaptado, que emprega a utilização de cada enlace como parâmetro de custo. Assim, o Equalize estabelece na rede a funcionalidade de auto-balanceamento e também apresenta uma boa resiliência para falhas, além de suportar a migração de hosts (sejam eles físicos ou virtuais). Com essas características, Equalize é bastante adequado para redes com facilidade para um gerenciamento centralizado e com múltiplos caminhos entre seus equipamentos, como as redes dos centros de dados. Os resultados obtidos com a emulação de uma pequena rede mostram que a abordagem proposta é capaz de alcançar uma boa taxa de transferência na bissecção da rede, ao mesmo tempo em que garante o equilíbrio no uso dos enlaces contribuindo, assim, para o uso eficiente dos recursos de rede e melhorando a utilização de sua capacidade total disponível. / The advent of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is promoting innovation and faster network development. Even though network design demands for robust, more capable and flexible approaches to cope with increasingly complexity, system eficiency is often limited due to resource bounding as a consequence of physical, technical, financial, or other types of constraints. Though, networks with multiple redundant links have their potential capacity wasted due to the use of distributed routing protocols that cannot adequately deal with all available paths. In particular, the data center networks that have a large number of redundant links and must provide eficient communications among edges. In this dissertation we present Equalize, a framework built upon the SDN paradigm, that automatically balances the network incoming flows among the less congested available links. The network topology is automatically "discovered" and the location of a host is determined by its layer 2 (MAC) address, so that it can migrate to any point in the network while keeping its original layer 3 (IP) address. To calculate the best path between two nodes, Equalize runs an adapted Dijkstra's algorithm, employing each link utilization as the cost parameter. Thus, Equalize establishes the self-balancing functionality in the network and also presents a good resilience to failures, besides supporting the migration of hosts (whether physical or virtual). Having those characteristics, Equalize is well suited for networks with ease of centralized management and multiple paths among edges, such as data center networks. The results obtained by emulating a small network show that the proposed approach is able to achieve a good bisection throughput, while enforcing the balance in the use of links, thereby contributing to eficient use of network resources and improving the utilization of its total capacity available.

M.Com. (International Accounting) / Post-employment benefits under IAS 19 include defined benefit plans (DBP’s) and defined contribution plans. The accounting for defined contribution plans is fairly straightforward, since accrual accounting is applied and the employer entity’s legal or constructive obligation is limited to the amount the employer entity agrees to contribute to the defined contribution plan. In contrast, the accounting for DBP’s is complicated and provides a promise/guarantee of future benefits and the investment and actuarial risk of the plan lies with the employer entity. The literature review indicated that accounting and presentation of DBP’s is complicated because of the long-term nature of the liability/asset that is raised for the plan. There are many uncertainties involved in estimating the liability as this involves looking into the future and making estimates and assumptions about the future. The literature also indicated factors such as the market performance of assets, and inaccurate or unrealistic assumptions and decisions that delay making payments to DBP’s affects the funding status. Actuaries and accountants differ somewhat in the roles they play in determining the amount for DBP’s, with accountants choosing the accrued benefit method. The problem with DBP’s is that they are of a long-term nature and require estimates and assumptions to be made in calculating the DBP liability/asset. The long-term nature affects the adequacy of the liability/asset recognised for DBP’s and the related disclosure in the financial statements of large listed companies. The objective of the minor dissertation is to perform a content analysis on the presentation and disclosure of DBPs in the financial statements of a sample of Johannesburg Stock Exchange listed companies in South Africa. The research approach applied includes a broad assessment of the current status of DBP’s and defined contribution plans operated by the top 40 Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed companies, followed by a quantitative and qualitative assessment on the disclosures provided by these companies’ financial statements.

In todays fast evolving mobile communications the requirements of higher datarates are continuously increasing, pushing operators to upgrade the backhaul to support these speeds. A cost eective way of doing this is by using microwave links between base stations, but as the requirements of data rates increase, the capacity of the microwave links must be increased. This thesis was part of a funded research project with the objective of developing the next generation high speed microwave links for the E-band. In the research project there was a need for a testing system that was able to generate a series of test signals with selectable QAM modulations and adjustable properties to be able to measure and evaluate hardware within the research project. The developed system was designed in a digital domain using an FPGA platform from Altera, and had the ability of selecting several types of modulations and changing the properties of the output signals as requested. By using simulation in several steps and measurements of the complete system the functionality was verified and the system was delivered to the research project successfully. The developed system can be used to test several dierent modulators in other projects as well and is easily extended to provide further properties.

A variety of markup languages exist for formatting text and exporting to HTML. These languages are tailored to the needs in a specific context by specialising tags, selecting tags and limiting the number of possible distinctions to a subset of what is available in HTML. However, limiting the number of possible distinctions creates problems when changes occur in the context. The real world is ever-changing, thus that which models it must be able to reflect the changes in the operational environment to remain relevant and satisfactory. Incorporating new requirements and adjusting to the changes in requirements means adapting and evolving. This thesis explores giving document authors the possibility to extend and modify the repertoire of available markup tags when new user requirements demand it. What is presented is a prototype which allows the user to tailor the markup and also adapt it to changes in the environment. The system allows users to create their own set of markup tags, annotate their documents with them, and export a generated XML document. Users create the tag and assign a meaning to it, when changes occur in the requirements they can be implemented by modifying the tags, extending the repertoire by adding tags, or changing the meaning of a defined tag.

Satellite communication system designers are continuously struggling to improve the channel capacity. A critical challenge results from the limited power available aboard the satellite.Because of this constraint, the onboard power amplifier must work with a small power supply which limits its maximum output power. To ensure a sufficient Signal-to-Noise power Ratio (SNR) on the receiver side, the power amplifier must work close to its saturation point. This is power efficient but unfortunately adds non-linear distortions to the communication channel. The latters are very penalizing for high order modulations.In the literature, several equalization algorithms have been proposed to cope with the resulting non-linear communication channel. The most popular solution consists in using baseband Volterra series in order to build non-linear equalization filters. On the other hand, the Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), which come from the artificial neural network field, are also interesting candidates to generate such non-linear filters. But they are difficult to implement in practice due to the high complexity of their training. To simplify this task, the Echo State Network (ESN) paradigm has been proposed. It has the advantage of offering performances similar to classical RNNs but with a reduced complexity.The purpose of this work is, first, to compare this solution to the state-of-the-art baseband Volterra filters. We show that the classical ESN is able to reach the same performances, evaluated in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER), and has similar complexity. Secondly, we propose a new design for the ESN which achieves a strong reduction in complexity while conserving a similar BER.To compensate for the channel, the literature proposes to adapt the coefficients of these equalizers with the help of a training sequence in order to recover the transmitted constellation points. We show that, in such a case, the usual symbol detection criterion, based on Euclidean distances, is no longer optimal. For this reason, we first propose a new detection criterion which meets the Maximum Likelihood (ML) criterion. Secondly, we propose a modification of the equalizers training reference points in order to improve their performances and make the detection based on Euclidean distances optimal again. This last solution can offer a significant reduction of the BER without increasing the equalization and detection complexity. Only the new training reference points must be evaluated.In this work, we also explore the field of analog equalizers as different papers showed that the ESN is an interesting candidate for this purpose. It is a promising approach to reduce the equalizer complexity as the digital implementation is very challenging and power-hungry, in particular for high bandwidth communications. We numerically demonstrate that a dedicated analog optoelectronic implementation of the ESN can reach the state-of-the-art performance of digital equalizers. In addition, we show that it can reduce the required resolution of the Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs).Finally, a hardware demonstration of the digital solutions is proposed. For this purpose, we build a physical layer test bench which depicts a non-linear communication between two radios. We show that if we drive the transmitter power amplifier close to its saturation point, we can improve the communication range if the non-linear distortions are compensated for at the receiver. The transmitter and the receiver are implemented with Software Defined Radios (SDRs). / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

L'internet des objets vise à connecter des milliards d'objets physiques ainsi qu'à les rendre accessibles depuis le monde numérique que représente l'internet d'aujourd'hui. Pour ce faire, l'accès à ces objets sera majoritairement réalisé sans fil et sans utiliser d'infrastructures prédéfinies ou de normes spécifiques. Une telle technologie nécessite de définir et d'implémenter des nœuds radio intelligents capables de s'adapter à différents protocoles physiques de communication. Nos travaux de recherches ont consisté à définir un flot de conception pour ces nœuds intelligents partant de leur modélisation à haut niveau jusqu'à leur implémentation sur des cibles de types FPGA. Ce flot vise à améliorer la programmabilité des formes d'ondes par l'utilisation de spécification de haut niveau exécutables et synthétisables, il repose sur la synthèse de haut niveau (HLS pour High Level Synthesis) pour le prototypage rapide des briques de base ainsi que sur le modèle de calcul de types flot de données des formes d'ondes radio. Le point d'entrée du flot consiste en un langage à usage spécifique (DSL pour Domain Specific Language) qui permet de modéliser à haut niveau une forme d'onde tout en insérant des contraintes d'implémentation pour des architectures reconfigurables telles que les FPGA. Il est associé à un compilateur qui permet de générer du code synthétisable ainsi que des scripts de synthèse. La forme d'onde finale est composée d'un chemin de données et d'une entité de contrôle implémentée sous forme d'une machine d'état hiérarchique. / The Internet of Things (IoT) aims at connecting billions of communicating devices through an internet-like network. To this aim, the access to these things is expected to be performed via wireless technologies without using any predefined infrastructures or standards. This technology requires defining and implementing smart nodes capable to adapt to different radio communication protocols. In this thesis, we have defined a design methodology/flow, for such smart nodes, starting from their high-level specification down to their implementation in FPGA fabrics. This flow aims at improving the programmability of the waveforms by leveraging some high-level specifications. Thus, it relies on the High-Level Synthesis (HLS) for rapid prototyping of the waveforms functional blocks as well as the dataflow model of computation. Its entry point is Domain-Specific Language which enables modeling a waveform while inserting some implementation constraints for reconfigurable architectures such as the FPGAs. The flow is featured with a compiler which purpose is to produce some synthesis scripts and generate some RTL source code. The final waveform consists of a datapath and a control unit implemented as a Hierarchical Finite State Machine (HFSM).

Le grand nombre d’appareils connectés combiné au volume croissant de trafic ont poussé les réseaux dans leurs derniers retranchements. Pour résoudre ce problème, l’approche “Software-Defined Networking” (SDN) qui découple le plan de contrôle du plan de données a été proposée. OpenFlow est un nouveau protocole qui réalise le concept SDN. Pour traiter ces flux, OpenFlow utilise des listes de règles sur les commutateurs. Ces règles sont utilisées pour déterminer les actions dans le réseau. Ceci permet de simplifier la mise en place de services réseaux complexes mais soulève la question de savoir quelles règles définir et où les placer dans le réseau afin d’en respecter ses contraintes. Dans cette thèse, nous nous concentrons sur le problème de placement de règles dans OpenFlow (ORPP) et proposons une abstraction de type boite noire afin de masquer la gestion du réseau. Tout d'abord, nous formalisons le problème de placement de règles et faisons une étude des solutions existantes. Les solutions existantes sont cependant inefficaces car elles reposent majoritairement sur le concept du plus court chemin. Nous proposons de relaxer le problème en autorisant l’utilisation de chemins arbitraires et proposons deux algorithmes complémentaires : OFFICER et aOFFICER. L'idée générale d’OFFICER et aOFFICER est d’utiliser les chemins les plus efficaces pour le trafic de haute importance et autoriser le trafic de plus basse importance à suivre des détours. Ces deux propositions sont évaluées en utilisant des traces de trafic. Finalement, nous appliquons le principe de la boite noire pour améliorer les performances d'un service de diffusion de contenus dans les réseaux cellulaires / The massive number of connected devices combined with an increasing traffic push network operators to their limit by limiting their profitability. To tackle this problem, Software-Defined Networking (SDN), which decouples network control logic from forwarding devices, has been proposed. An important part of the SDN concepts is implemented by the OpenFlow protocol that abstracts network communications as flows and processes them using a prioritized list of rules on the network forwarding elements. While the abstraction offered by OpenFlow allows to implement many applications, it raises the new problem of how to define the rules and where to place them in the network while respecting all requirements, which we refer as the OpenFlow Rules Placement Problem (ORPP). In this thesis, we focus on the ORPP and hide the complexity of network management by proposing a black box abstraction. First, we formalize that problem, classify and discuss existing solutions. We discover that most of the solutions enforce the routing policy when placing rules, which is not memory efficient in some cases. Second, by trading routing for better resource efficiency, we propose OFFICER and aOFFICER, two frameworks that select OpenFlow rules satisfying policies and network constraints, while minimizing overheads. The main idea of OFFICER an aOFFICER is to give high priority for large flows to be installed on efficient paths, and let other flows follow default paths. These proposals are evaluated and compared to existing solutions in realistic scenarios. Finally, we study a use case of the black box abstraction, in which we improve the performance of content delivery services in cellular networks

Dans cette thèse, nous étudions plusieurs modèles de routage efficaces en énergie. Pour chaque modèle, nous présentons une formulation en programmation linéaire mixte permettant de trouver une solution exacte. En outre, comme il s’agit de problèmes NP-Difficiles, nous proposons des heuristiques efficaces pour des réseaux de grande taille. Dans la première partie de cette thèse, nous étudions une solution de routage efficace en énergie dans laquelle nous ajoutons la possibilité d’éliminer des redondances dans les paquets transmis sur le réseau. Nous montrons premièrement que l’ajout de l’élimination des redondances permet d’améliorer l’efficacité énergétique des réseaux en éteignant plus de liens. Ensuite, nous étendons le modèle afin qu’il prenne en compte un certain niveau d’incertitudes dans le volume de trafic et le taux de redondances. La deuxième partie de cette thèse est consacrée aux problèmes qui se posent lors du déploiement de tels protocoles dans les réseaux. Plus particulièrement, nous proposons de minimiser les changements entre deux configurations réseaux consécutives lorsque plusieurs matrices de trafic sont considérées. Le routage des demandes étant alors assuré avec le protocole de routage OSPF (Open Shortest Path First). Ensuite, nous abordons le problème de la limitation du nombre de règles de routage dans les routeurs en utilisant une technologie de type SDN (Software Defined Networks). Enfin, nous présentons en annexe des travaux complémentaires réalisés au cours de cette thèse concernant le routage multicast et le contrôle de congestion TCP. / In this thesis, we study several models of energy-Aware routing. For each model, we present a linear programming formulation to find the exact solution. Moreover, since energy-Aware routing is NP-Hard problem, we also propose efficient heuristic algorithms for large scale networks. In the first part of this thesis, we deal with GreenRE - a new energy-Aware routing model with the support of redundancy elimination. We first present a deterministic model in which we show how to combine energy-Aware routing and redundancy elimination to improve energy efficiency for backbone networks. Then, we extend the model in order to take into account uncertainties in traffic volumes and redundancy rates. The second part of this thesis is devoted to the deployment issues of energy- aware routing in practice. In detail, to avoid service deterioration for end-Users, we limit changes of network configurations in multi-Period traffic matrices in Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol. Next, we address the problem of limited rule space in OpenFlow switches when installing energy-Aware routing configurations. Finally, we present in the appendix other works developed during this thesis: multicast network protocol and TCP congestion control algorithm.

Atea Eskilstuna hade behovet av en plattform som kan förenkla och minska antalet konfigurationer vid implementation av kunder. Arbetet gick ut på att utvärdera plattformen VMware NSX och jämföra det mot traditionella nätverkslösningar. I dagens datacenter är virtualisering en viktig del av dess verksamhet. Användandet av virtualisering optimerar hanteringen av hårdvaru-resurser och kostnader. Virtualisering har hittills främst fokuserat på hantering av servrar och klienter, vilket har passerat nätverksutvecklingen, och därför har det uppstått vissa problem med traditionella datacenter gällande trafikflöden, säkerhet och implementering. Datacenter har tidigare varit optimerade för trafik som ska in eller ut ur datacentret. Detta har lett till att brandväggar och säkerhetspolicies ofta placerats vid datacentrets kant. I dagens datacenter har det däremot blivit en ökning på trafik mellan enheter inom datacentret som behöver skyddas. Denna typ av interna säkerhet kan uppnås av interna policies på samtliga nätverksenheter, dock blir det ohållbart vid implementation då antalet konfigurationspunkter i nätverket ökar. Dessa problem kan hanteras med hjälp av VMware NSX som virtualiserar nätverksenheter och centraliserar administration. NSX har en distribuerad brandväggs-funktion vilket medför att policies kan appliceras direkt på virtuella maskiner och virtuella routrar, från en central konfigurationspunkt. Detta ökar säkerheten och minskar implementationstiden jämfört med traditionella datacenter. Arbetet fokuserar på hur NSX arbetar till skillnad från fysiska nätverksenheter samt hur NSX hanterar frågor som trafikflöden, säkerhet och automation. För dessa ändamål byggdes en laborationsmiljö i Ravellos molntjänst med flertalet virtuella maskiner och en litteraturstudie utfördes. Laborationsmiljön användes för att sätta upp kunder med hjälp av virtuella nätverksenheter och virtuella maskiner. Laborationsmiljön användes som referens för hur implementation av NSX och dess funktioner går till. Litteraturstudien fokuserar på vad som är möjligt i NSX och vilka för- och nackdelar som finns med NSX jämfört med traditionella datacenter. Resultaten visade på att den enda nackdelen med NSX var dess licenskostnader. / Atea Eskilstuna had the need of a platform that simplify and reduce the number of configurations while implementing customer environments. The purpose of this thesis was to do a survey of VMware NSX networking platform and compare it to traditional networking solutions. The virtualization is an important part in data centers and its operations today. With the use of virtualization both hardware resources and costs optimizes. Virtualization has primary been focusing on servers and clients and the network evolution has been overlooked. Therefore, some problems have occurred within traditional data centers regarding traffic flows, security and management. Traditional datacenters have previously been optimized for traffic flows inbound or outbound of the datacenter. This optimization has led to implementation of firewalls and security policies at the datacenter edge. However, in the modern datacenters there’s been an increase of traffic flows between devices inside the datacenter, which needs to be secured. Securing these internal traffic flows can be accomplished through internal policies on the network devices. Implementing these policies however is not a scalable solution as the number of configuration points increases. These problems can be handled through VMware NSX which virtualize network units and centralizes administration. NSX provides a distributed firewall function that through a central management platform can be applied directly on groups of virtual machines and virtual routers. This approach increases security inside the datacenter as well as decreasing the implementation time compared to traditional datacenters. This thesis focus how NSX work unlike physical network units and how it handles issues like hairpinning, security and automation. A lab environment was built up in Ravellos cloud service with virtual machines and a literature study was made for this purpose. The lab environment was used to implement different customers with the help of virtual network components and virtual machines. This lab environment served as a reference point how implementation of NSX, its functions and components was made. The literature study focus on what is possible in NSX and which pros and cons that comes with NSX compared to traditional solutions in data centers. Results shows that the only cons with NSX is license costs.