Autonomous vehicles and research pertaining to them have been an important topicin academia and industry in recent years. Developing controllers that enable vehiclesto performpath and trajectory following is a diverse topic where many differentcontrol strategies are available. In this thesis, we focus on lateral and longitudinalcontrol of autonomous vehicles and two different control strategies are considered:a standard decoupled control and a new suggested coupled control.In the decoupled control, the lateral controller consists of a linear time-varying modelpredictive controller (LTV-MPC) together with a PI-controller for the longitudinalcontrol. The coupled controller is a more complex LTV-MPC which handles bothlateral and longitudinal control. The objective is to develop both control strategiesand evaluate their design and performance through path following simulations in aMATLAB environment.When designing the LTV-MPC, two vehicle models are considered: a kinematic modelwithout tyre dynamics and a dynamic bicycle model with tyre forces derived froma linear Pacejka model. A research on how model complexity affects tracking performanceand solver times is also performed. In the end, the thesis presents thefindings of the different control strategies and evaluate them in terms of trackingperformance, solver time, and ease of implementation.

Present day market offers a large number of movies which overwhelm people with choices. In order to quickly navigate through all the possible movies and find the interesting ones, the user can take advantage of recommender systems for movies. This thesis studies a movie recommender system which uses image processing and computer vision algorithms. The amount of time taken to analyze movies using these computation intensive algorithms is in the order of years. However, exploiting parallel nature of these algorithms using GPUs (Graphics Processing Unit) can help reduce the time many-folds. The primary goal of the thesis is to build a heterogeneous GPU cluster and use it to accelerate the algorithms of the recommender system. The guidelines and steps to build a heterogeneous GPU cluster given in the thesis can be used by other organizations and researchers. Results indicate that the heterogeneous GPU cluster platform can accelerate algorithms of a movie recommender system up to 5 times. The secondary goal of this thesis is to investigate the benefits of using VirtualCL framework which enables remote access to the GPUs of the cluster. Remote access to the GPUs provides energy efficiency and ease of cluster management. Results show that VirtualCL framework provides remote GPU capability at the cost of degradation in performance. Therefore, VCL framework should be used just for application areas where performance can be traded off for physical portability and ease of management.

Maintenance is crucial in any industry to keep components in a reasonable functionalcondition, especially in electric power system, where maintenance is done so that thefrequency and the duration of a fault can be shortened, thus increasing the availability of acertain component. And the reliability of the whole electric power system can also beimproved. In the many deregulated electricity markets, reliability and economic drivingforces are the two aspects that system operators mainly consider. It is expected for thesystem operator to provide consumers with the electricity of highest reliability and lowestcost. Therefore, in order to achieve this goal, providing the most economic maintenanceschedule is vital in today’s power systems. One technique is Reliability CentredMaintenance (RCM), which is an effective method to maintain a certain level ofreliability while carrying out maintenance schedules in an economic way. This thesis proposes an optimization problem for implementing the RCM method for apower system with renewable energy generators such as hydro power, wind power andsolar panel generators. This aim is achieved through the following steps: 1- Literature review on power system reliability. 2- Literature review on maintenance scheduling methods by focus on RCM method. 3- Compare the difference of conventional generators and renewable generators andmodel renewable generators in the power system. 4- Formulating the RCM method as an optimization problem. 5- The formulated model in 4 should be simulated for a test system using MATLAB. 6- The developed model in 5 is solved for different sets of available maintenanceIIstrategies. 7- Summing all possible costs when different maintenance strategies are carried outand compare the costs. Choose the maintenance strategy with the lower cost tocarry out the maintenance.

While double ion populations, with a cold population originating from the solar windand a hotter one from the magnetosphere, are frequently observed in the Earth’s lowlatitudeboundary layers, similar double electron populations are seldom recorded.We performed a statistical study of ion and electron double populations near themagnetopause by using 7 years of THEMIS particle data. After a preliminary study ofmagnetopause crossings characteristics, in particular by determining the typicalenergies of ion and electron populations in regions near the magnetopause, we setup an automated detection algorithm for identifying regions with combined ion andelectron double populations.The statistical study carried out with respect to IMF conditions in the upstream solarwind during and just before the events suggests that such combined ion and electronDouble Population Boundary Layers (DPBL) form preferentially under northward IMFbut with a significant BY component.We interpret this trend as a result of reconnection of the same magnetosheath fieldline in both hemispheres, but with at least one end reconnecting in its hemisphere atlower latitude with a closed magnetospheric field line which already contains a hotelectron source.

Highly increased data traffic over the last few years has led to a need to improve the networkefficiency. One way to achieve this is by network coding. In this thesis two codes, namelyreplication code and regenerating codes, have been examined. Most other works in this area hasbeen theoretical, so we created a testbed to perform practical tests. Then these practical resultsare compared to the theoretical results with varying finite field size. It will be shown that thepractical studies verify the theoretical work. Furthermore, we observe the probability ofsuccessful repair after several stages of repair. More so, the achievability of exact repair of a failed node in a tandem network has beenexamined. This has been proven possible, and also the required finite field size is presented.Another issue at focus is the number of transfers required to achieve exact repair in such anetwork. The results show that 2*k transfers is required, which is comparable to functionalrepair.

Traditionally, many devices such as firewalls, secured servers, computer networks,hosts and routers. But with rapid technological advancements, securityfor the virtual world also needed improvement. As they say need is the motherof all inventions; such a need lead to the creation of Honey pots. Today,Honeypots are gaining attention and the usage of these systems is increasing.Honeypots are, essentially traps, set to detect, deflect, or in some manner counteractattempts to access and use information systems. They mostly consistof a network device that appears to be part of the network, but it is actuallyseparated and monitored by security researchers continuously to review theactivities.This thesis covers the commercial design, implementation and future directionsof these systems. An introduction to the topic is given, explaining basicsecurity concepts and vulnerabilities and flaws that lead to attacks.We set-up a set of vulnerable environment and virtual routers, where thelearners could practice offensive and defensive security techniques for cyberwarfare. A simulation was created; several machines and routers were connectedtogether. Each router is deliberately set-up so that it has (security) vulnerabilities.Practitioners will be required to penetrate in those routers and systems. Theseranges are specifically designed for the defense sector and it caters the internetand network security.

There has been a significant growth in Location-Based Services (LBS) on mobileapplications. These applications provide service to users based on theirgeographical locations. Emergency services, tracking, navigation, advertisingand social networking are examples of them. As the majority of today’s mobilephones are equipped with GPS receivers, GPS positioning has become one ofthe primary methods for obtaining users’ location. Moreover, GPS providesaccurate time service and many applications specially for time synchronizationare relying on GPS. Despite the good accuracy it provides, security is notconsidered from scratch in civilian GPS and its signals are weak, vulnerable tospoofing and prone to jamming. As it has become a more and more valuableresource, malicious agents have also become keener to identify and abuse theweaknesses in order to interrupt users or commit fraud. That is why therehave been continuous alerts about insecurity in civilian GPS in scholarly andacademic publications. A considerable amount of research has been conductedto tackle the problem of insecurity in GPS, but proposed solutions need eitherfundamental changes in GPS signal structure or more sophisticated types ofreceivers. As changes in GPS signal structure need time, money and politicalwill, this work works on a method to detect spoofing of GPS signals based onthe current GPS signal structure and receivers on mobile phones. We crosscheckpositioning and time information by comparing it with other sourcesof information. GPS positioning data are compared with the user’s positionderived from Wi-Fi positioning and cell positioning and the distance betweenthose is shown to the user. The system also keeps the recent distances and ifthose positions are moving away from each other, it notifies the user about thissuspicious behaviour. Regarding verification of the GPS time, it is comparedwith a time server on the internet. An Android application was designed anddeveloped to implement this method. Then experimental evaluations wereperformed in the urban area of the city of Stockholm. Results show that thesystem can perform positioning with mean value of 50 meter accuracy anddetect simulated spoofing attack. Moreover, it detects the suspicious behaviourif the calculated position and GPS position are gradually moving away fromeach other.

The rapid growth of population and the increasing number of vehicles haveled to high accident rates and cause frequently traffic congestion, especiallyin densely populated countries. There is an urgent need to develop and deployIntelligent Transport Systems (ITSs), in order to improve traffic efficiencyand reduce traffic accidents. The emergence and development of advancedtechnologies lays a good foundation for ITSs; for example, wireless communicationand sensing technologies. To promote the popularity of ITSs, we proposesmartphone-based ITSs, in which a smartphone is a part of the ITSs and actsas an interactive interface for users. We choose the widely used and openAndroid operating system as our platform and we demonstrate how to developvehicular applications in Android by making use of Android Interface DefinitionLanguage (AIDL). Security is a critical requirement in development of allkinds of distributed systems, and it should be taken into consideration in thedevelopment of ITSs as well. We studied several security schemes designed forITSs and improved them to better fit the limited computation capabilities andpower of smartphones. The security modules and the client applications areseparated, which makes the applications easier to maintain and use. The projectcarried out evaluation for the implemented security schemes. Our evaluationresults show the practicality of our implementation, which means the securityschemes fit the limited resource of smartphone.

The Smart Metering Systems are state of the art technologies and modern services integratedwith legacy metering systems. These systems are one of the most important parts of smart grids.Smart Grids are electrical power infrastructures that make intelligent decisions about the state ofthe electrical power devices. Smart Grids provide a stable electrical power environment. SmartGrids support all functionalities of traditional power systems in addition a Smart Grid bears newfunctionalities of intelligent power systems e.g. self-healing, resisting to attacks, increasingpower quality, motivating consumers to wisely use the electricity, enabling new business toelectrical markets, optimizing assets and operating efficiently and accommodating all generationand storages options. A smart home is usually a modern home that is equipped with some specialstructured wiring or wireless systems to enable inhabitants to remotely control or program any ofhome electronic devices supporting specific types of control functionalities by entering a singlecommand at their remote computer or smart phones. Privacy in smart spaces/environments is notonly confidentiality of data /connections but is the management of the complication of theseenvironments due to decentralised and dynamic nature of these spaces. General model of smarthome and smart metering systems have their specific considerations e.g. assumptions, threats,countermeasures and privacy preserving model. Both security architectures have their specificsecurity policies, considerations, authorization and authentication authorities, and encryption anddecryption strategies. Running two different security architectures in parallel may raise someissues, threats and considerations that are the main purpose of this thesis project. So, theprinciple goal of this research project is to define the secure model of collaboration between twodifferent security architectures in the smart space in which general smart home networkarchitecture is established in parallel to smart metering system architecture. Federatedauthentication systems e.g. SAML and OAuth, OpenID and federated authorization systems likeXACML are most common distributed standard protocols to manage distributed securitysystems. This thesis investigates issues and problems of two parallel security architectures andproposes a secure communication protocol in addition to a proof-of-concept of the final solution.All of most famous available protocols for authentication and authorization will be discussed andfinally will be implemented as a proof of concept. Encryption and decryption as basic securityfunctions is not considered in this project and will be postponed as a future work around thisresearch project.

Enabling communication among vehicles on the road has advantages, but it also introduces a number of security drawbacks. A Vehicular PKI (VPKI) provides an infrastructure that brings security and privacy within the VPKI domain. But when it comes to establishing a trust model among multiple VPKI domains, a new trust model is needed in order to facilitate travelling across domains. This project proposes an approach and partially implements a scalable and efficient Cross-Domain VPKI trust model that, first, enables VPKI domains to establish different levels of trust with each other and, second, it suggests that a Domain CA (DCA) in each domain to evaluate trustworthiness of vehicle’s Long Term Certificate (LTC). As result, CAs in VPKI domains will have more granular control over issuing pseudonym Foreign Certificates for a vehicle that travels into their domain.