Inaug. diss.--Gothenburg University. / Extra t.p., with thesis statement, inserted. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). "September 2009." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-96). Also available via the World Wide Web.

La performance de démodulation des signaux GNSS existants, GPS L1 C/A, L2C ou L5, est satisfaisante en environnements ouverts où le C/N0 disponible est assez élevé. Cependant, en milieu urbain, le niveau de C/N0 du signal reçu est souvent très bas et est affecté de variations rapides qui peuvent nuire la démodulation des messages GNSS. Donc, car les applications du marché de masse sont appelées à être déployées dans ces environnements, il est nécessaire d'étudier et de chercher des méthodes de démodulation/décodage qui améliorent la performance de démodulation des messages GNSS dans ces environnements. Il est aussi nécessaire de considérer les nouveaux signaux GPS L1C et GALILEO E1. Ces signaux doivent fournir un service de positionnement par satellite dans tout type d'environnement, et spécifiquement en milieu urbain. Ainsi, cette thèse analyse aussi les performances de démodulation des nouveaux signaux GNSS tels que définis dans les documents publics actuels. De plus, de nouvelles structures de message GALILEO E1 sont proposées et analysées afin d'optimiser la performance de démodulation ainsi que la quantité d'information diffusée. En conséquence, le but principal de cette thèse est d'analyser et améliorer la performance de démodulation des signaux GNSS ouverts au public, spécifiquement en milieu urbain, et de proposer de nouvelles structures de messages de navigation pour GALILEO E1. La structure détaillée des chapitres de cette thèse est donnée ci-après. En premier lieu, le sujet de cette thèse est introduit, ses contributions originales sont mises en avant, et le plan du rapport est présenté. Dans le 2ième chapitre, la thèse décrit la structure actuelle des signaux GNSS analysés, en se concentrant sur la structure du message de navigation, les codages canal implantés et leurs techniques de décodage. Dans le 3ième chapitre, deux types de modèles de canal de propagation sont présentés pour deux différents types de scénarios. D'un côté, un canal AWGN est choisi pour modéliser les environnements ouverts. De l'autre côté, le modèle mathématique de Perez-Fontan d'un canal mobile est choisi pour représenter les environnements urbains et indoor. Dans le 4ième chapitre, une tentative pour effectuer une prédiction binaire d'une partie du message de navigation GPS L1 C/A est présentée. La prédiction est essayée en utilisant les almanachs GPS L1 C/A, grâce à un programme de prédiction à long terme fourni par TAS-F, et des méthodes de traitement du signal: estimation spectrale, méthode de PRONY et réseau de neurones. Dans le 5ème chapitre, des améliorations à la performance de démodulation du message de GPS L2C et L5 sont apportées en utilisant leur codage canal de manière non traditionnelle. Deux méthodes sont analysées. La première méthode consiste à combiner les codages canal internes et externes du message afin de corriger davantage de mots reçus. La deuxième méthode consiste à utiliser les probabilités des données d'éphémérides afin d'améliorer le décodage traditionnel de Viterbi. Dans le 6ième chapitre, la performance de démodulation des messages de GPS L1C et du Open Service GALILEO E1 est analysée dans différents environnements. D'abord, une étude de la structure de ces deux signaux est présentée pour déterminer le C/N0 du signal utile reçu dans un canal AWGN. Puis, la performance de démodulation de ces signaux est analysée grâce à des simulations dans différents environnements, avec un récepteur se déplaçant à différentes vitesses et avec différentes techniques d'estimation de la phase porteuse du signal. / The demodulation performance achieved by any of the existing GPS signals, L1 C/A, L2C or L5, is satisfactory in open environments where the available C/N0 is quite high. However, in indoor/urban environments, the C/N0 level of the received signal is often very low and suffers fast variations which can further affect the GNSS messages demodulation. Therefore, since the mass-market applications being designed nowadays are aimed at these environments, it is necessary to study and to search alternative demodulation/decoding methods which improve the GNSS messages demodulation performance in these environments. Moreover, new GNSS signals recently developed, such as GPS L1C and GALILEO E1, must also be considered. These signals aim at providing satellite navigation positioning service in any kind of environment, giving special attention to indoor and urban environments. Therefore, the demodulation performances of the new GNSS signals as they are defined in the current public documents is also analysed. Moreover, new GALILEO E1 message structures are proposed and analysed in order to optimize the demodulation performance as well as the quantity of broadcasted information. Therefore, the main goal of this dissertation is to analyse and to improve the demodulation performance of the current open GNSS signals, specifically in indoor and urban environments, and to propose new navigation message structures for GALILEO E1. A detailed structure of this dissertation sections is given next. First, the subject of this thesis is introduced, original contributions are highlighted, and the outline of the report is presented. Second, this dissertation begins by a description of the current structure of the different analysed GNSS signals, paying special attention to the navigation message structure, implemented channel code and their decoding techniques. In the third section, two types of transmission channel models are presented for two different types of environments. On one hand, an AWGN channel is used to model the signal transmission in an open environments. On the other hand, the choice of a specific mobile channel, the Perez-Fontan channel model, is chosen to model the signal transmission in an urban environment. In the fourth section, a tentative to make a binary prediction of the broadcasted satellite ephemeris of the GPS L1 C/A navigation message is presented. The prediction is attempted using the GPS L1 C/A almanacs data, a long term orbital prediction program provided by TAS-F, and some signal processing methods: spectral estimation, the PRONY method, and a neural network. In the fifth section, improvements to the GPS L2C and GPS L5 navigation message demodulation performance are brought by using their channel codes in a non-traditional way. Two methods are inspected. The first method consists in sharing information between the message inner and outer channel codes in order to correct more received words. The second method consists in using the ephemeris data probabilities in order to improve the traditional Viterbi decoding. In the sixth section, the GPS L1C and GALILEO E1 Open Service demodulation performance is analysed in different environments. First, a brief study of the structure of both signals to determine the received C/N0 in an AWGN channel is presented. Second, their demodulation performance is analysed through simulations in different environments, with different receiver speeds and signal carrier phase estimation techniques.

Objektų klasterizavimas – tai viena iš duomenų gavybos (angl. data mining) sričių. Šių algoritmų pagrindinis privalumas – gebėjimas atpažinti grupavimo struktūrą be jokios išankstinės informacijos. Magistriniame darbe yra pristatomas vaizdų klasterizavimo algoritmas, naudojantis savaime susitvarkančius neuroninius tinklus (angl. Self-Organizing Map). Darbe analizuojami vaizdų apdorojimo, ypatingųjų taškų radimo bei palyginimo metodai. Nustatyta, kad SIFT (angl. Scale Invariant Feature Transform) ypatingųjų taškų radimas bei aprašymas veikia patikimiausiai, todėl būtent SIFT taškiniai požymiai yra naudojami klasterizavime. Darbe taip pat analizuojamas atstumo tarp paveikslėlių radimo algoritmas, tiriami skirtingi jo parametrai. Algoritmų palyginimui yra naudojamos ROC (angl. Receiver Operating Characteristic) kreivės ir EER (angl. Equal Error Rate) rodiklis. Vaizdų klasterizavimui yra naudojamas ESOM (Emergent Self-Organizing Map) neuroninis tinklas, jis vizualizuojamas U-Matrix (angl. Unified distance Matrix) pagalba ir tinklo neuronai skirstomi į klasterius vandenskyros algoritmu su skirtingu aukščio parinkimu. Magistriniame darbe demonstruojami klasterizavimo rezultatai su pavyzdinėmis paveikslėlių duomenų bazėmis bei realiais gyvenimiškais vaizdais. / Clustering algorithms – a field of data mining – aims at finding a grouping structure in the input data without any a-priori information. The master thesis is dedicated for image processing and clustering algorithms. There are point-feature detection, description and comparison methods analyzed in this paper. The SIFT (Scale Invariant Feature Transform) by D. Lowe has been shown to behave better than the other ones; hence it has been used for image to image distance calculation and undirectly in clustering phase. Finding distances between images is not a trivial task and it also has been analysed in this thesis. Several methods have been compared using ROC (Receiver Operating Curve) and EER measurements. Image clustering process is described as: (1) training of ESOM (Emergent Self-Organizing Map), (2) its visualization in U-Matrix, (3) neuron clustering using waterflood algorithm, and (4) image grouping according to their best-matching unit neurons. The paper demonstrates the image clustering algorithm on public object image databases and real life images from the Internet as well.

The cadastre contains parcel related data which must be up-to-date. The cadastral data in any country constitute a very big dataset. Therefore parcel related data should be carefully managed. Today, using a database is an effective way of data management. The relational database management system can be a good one for parcel related data. However when the information system concept is considered, just relational database management system is not enough. Some tools are needed in order to manipulate the data in the relational database management system. Object oriented analysis and design is a good choice to develop these tools. In this study, a parcel-based information system is developed and it is implemented for &Ccedil / ankaya Municipality. During the development relational database management system is used for attribute data management, and object-oriented analysis and design is used for development of application to manipulate the data in the relational database management system. The cadastral data are separated into two parts and each part is handled separately. The first part is the geographic or spatial data. These data are handled by the help of the MapInfo Professional Version 6.5. The other part is the attributes of these spatial data. For this part, relational database is designed and implemented on Microsoft SQL Server Version 2000. During the development of the relational database, conceptual database design is performed by enhanced entity-relationship (EER) model. Then in the logical design, the conceptual model is mapped into the relational model. After data storage area is created, the application is developed on that data by using principles of object-oriented design and analysis and unified modeling language. By the help of the software developed, the data management can be carried out easily. By this study, a solution is proposed for the cadastral data management problem of the municipalities, and this study is one of the first studies developed for parcel related data using object-oriented approach for municipalities.

The study, “Between honor and shame: Martyrdom in 2 Maccabees 6-7 within the socio-cultural arena”, presents a look at how the community viewed martyrdom in 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42 from the perspective of honor and shame. The chief objective is to determine whether or not the community supported or challenged the notion of the martyrs’ death being either honorable or shameful. In order to reach a satisfactory conclusion to this objective, this study set as goals the identification of key themes which shed light upon the views of the community in regard to the martyrs, as well as the investigation of the community’s understanding of honor and shame found in 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42. This study incorporates a contextual analytical method comprising of an analysis of sociocultural vocabulary, an analysis of the socio-cultural vocabulary within the Greek text of 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42 and a synthesis of the analysis of both the socio-cultural and the Greek context. As criteria for the study of the socio-cultural context the aspects of sacred-profane, pure-impure, the patron-client relationship and the relationship between individual and group(s) are implemented. Core-findings of this study may be divided into two main categories: evidence in defence of an honorable conduct during death, and evidence in defence of the dishonorable manner of death. Evidence in defence of honorable conduct during death, are: • The martyrs remain completely loyal and devoted to God (their Chief-Patron), His laws and • the customs of the forefathers. • They are portrayed as being bodily whole. • They safeguard their set-apartness. • They remain pure – especially in the ritualistic sense. • As individuals belonging to the collected identity of various groups, the martyrs prove themselves loyal and honorable. Evidence in defence for the dishonorable manner in which the martyrs die, are: • Torture was deemed disgraceful by the community and would therefore degrade honor. • Mutilation went into the very fabric of the wholeness of the body by destroying the bodily unity, thereby disqualifying a person to come into the realm of the sacred. • Certain members of the community would regard the martyrs’ rejection of the lesser patrons’ favor as disrespectful and therefore as dishonorable conduct. Despite this evidence, it is still found that the community could remain undecided on how to judge the martyrs and martyrdom. Therefore, it is proposed, and successfully implemented, that an emotional argument might be the key to tipping the scale toward viewing the martyrs and martyrdom as honorable. It must therefore be concluded that the community would have indeed challenged the notion of martyrdom being honorable, for torture and mutilations in themselves, were regarded as being disgraceful. Yet the community would have been persuaded to accept the honor of the martyrs because of their honorable conduct and the emotional appeal made by the author of Maccabees. / Thesis (MA (Greek))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

The study, “Between honor and shame: Martyrdom in 2 Maccabees 6-7 within the socio-cultural arena”, presents a look at how the community viewed martyrdom in 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42 from the perspective of honor and shame. The chief objective is to determine whether or not the community supported or challenged the notion of the martyrs’ death being either honorable or shameful. In order to reach a satisfactory conclusion to this objective, this study set as goals the identification of key themes which shed light upon the views of the community in regard to the martyrs, as well as the investigation of the community’s understanding of honor and shame found in 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42. This study incorporates a contextual analytical method comprising of an analysis of sociocultural vocabulary, an analysis of the socio-cultural vocabulary within the Greek text of 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42 and a synthesis of the analysis of both the socio-cultural and the Greek context. As criteria for the study of the socio-cultural context the aspects of sacred-profane, pure-impure, the patron-client relationship and the relationship between individual and group(s) are implemented. Core-findings of this study may be divided into two main categories: evidence in defence of an honorable conduct during death, and evidence in defence of the dishonorable manner of death. Evidence in defence of honorable conduct during death, are: • The martyrs remain completely loyal and devoted to God (their Chief-Patron), His laws and • the customs of the forefathers. • They are portrayed as being bodily whole. • They safeguard their set-apartness. • They remain pure – especially in the ritualistic sense. • As individuals belonging to the collected identity of various groups, the martyrs prove themselves loyal and honorable. Evidence in defence for the dishonorable manner in which the martyrs die, are: • Torture was deemed disgraceful by the community and would therefore degrade honor. • Mutilation went into the very fabric of the wholeness of the body by destroying the bodily unity, thereby disqualifying a person to come into the realm of the sacred. • Certain members of the community would regard the martyrs’ rejection of the lesser patrons’ favor as disrespectful and therefore as dishonorable conduct. Despite this evidence, it is still found that the community could remain undecided on how to judge the martyrs and martyrdom. Therefore, it is proposed, and successfully implemented, that an emotional argument might be the key to tipping the scale toward viewing the martyrs and martyrdom as honorable. It must therefore be concluded that the community would have indeed challenged the notion of martyrdom being honorable, for torture and mutilations in themselves, were regarded as being disgraceful. Yet the community would have been persuaded to accept the honor of the martyrs because of their honorable conduct and the emotional appeal made by the author of Maccabees. / Thesis (MA (Greek))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

Revised version of doctoral thesis, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [485]-501) and index.

Revised version of doctoral thesis, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [485]-501) and index.

Ce projet de recherche vise à étudier la production et la perception de la parole chez les apprenants francophones de l’allemand. Un corpus de parole de 7 heures correspondant à trois tâches (imitation, lecture, description) a été enregistré. Il comprend des germanophones natifs et des apprenants francophones. Nous avons analysée les productions des segments intéressants d'après le cadre du SLM. Une étude de perception en EEG utilisant [h-ʔ], [ʃ-ç] et les voyelles courtes et longues a été réalisée sur des germanophones natifs et des apprenants francophones. Enfin, l'impact de l'enseignement sur l'amélioration des production et perception a été examiné à travers une étude longitudinale. L'étude de production montre que, suivant les tâches, les apprenants produisent le [h] en début de mot sans problème majeur. De même, ils peuvent produire des voyelles de durée contrastive. Cependant, pour les trois tâches, les apprenants ont plus de difficultés pour la production de la qualité vocalique, de [ç] et [ŋ]. Fait notable, la perception ne reflète pas toujours la production. Les apprenants tendent à ne pas percevoir le [h] en début de mot alors que la production de ce segment en répétition est bonne. À l'inverse, les apprenants perçoivent le contraste [ʃ-ç] mais sa production reste difficile. Seulement dans les voyelles courtes et longues, la perception reflète la production.L'étude d'enseignement montre que la conscience linguistique affecte différemment perception et production : une conscience linguistique accrue permet d'affiner la perception de phonèmes à contenu acoustique complexe et la production des phonèmes faciles à produire du point de vue articulatoire. / This research project proposes to investigate the production and perception of German speech in French learners of German. A 7h speech corpus containing three production tasks (imitation, reading, description) produced by German natives and French learners was recorded. Segmental productions of challenging vowels and consonants were analysed according to the SLM. A perception experiment involving [h-ʔ], [ʃ-ç] and short and long vowels using EEG was carried out on German natives and French learners. Finally, the impact of pronunciation teaching on improved speech production and perception was investigated. Undergraduates following a stand-alone pronunciation class were recorded and performed perception tests before and at the end of the course. The production study showed that French learners may produce word-initial [h] faithfully. With regard to short and long vowels, contrasting vowel duration is produced. However, French learners encounter more difficulties with respect to vowel quality. This holds for the production of [ç] and [ŋ]. Interestingly, perception does not always mirror production. The EEG results showed that the perception of word-initial [h] is poor in French learners whereas production accuracy is good. On the contrary, French learners perceive the [ʃ-ç] contrast but its production remains difficult. Only in short and long vowels, perception mirrored production. The teaching study showed that the increased linguistic awareness may affect non-native speech perception and production in different ways: phones that are easy to produce from an articulatory point of view can benefit from teaching. Increased awareness helps to better perceive phones with rich acoustic information.