As part of the InterNeg project, Inspire, which is an e-negotiation system to conduct bilateral negotiations, has been developed and deployed. INSS (InterNeg Support System) is an e-negotiation system that allows to use different negotiation strategies and tactics, and to negotiate over open and dynamically modifiable problems. It is based on Inspire but enhanced and expanded with some new features for more practical negotiations. The focus of this paper is on the design and implementation of INSS and its key features, including: (1) the construction of a negotiation protocol which allows negotiators to formulate their own negotiation case online, to specify the process and the permissible activities of its participants; (2) the introduction of the problem specification and modification components to construct INSS in the Invite platform; (3) the specification of different types of issues and options which can be introduced by the users and interpolated (or extrapolated) by the system; and (4) the establishment of a negotiation case library. To implement the system, we apply Fusebox technology prototyping and rapid application development (RAD). The INSS negotiation protocol and all its components are implemented in Invite system with database-driven approach. The system's usability will be tested with a small group of participants in different contexts defined by problem complexity and users' characteristics. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Because of their high performance, Metal-Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors (MESFETs) and High-Electron-Mobility Transistors (HEMTs) are widely used in microwave and millimeter wave communication systems, particularly in low noise applications. Therefore, accurate noise models are essential to ensure robust simulation and optimization during the design process. The sophistication of modern communication systems urged the need of monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs), which contain several MESFETs or HEMTs on the same chip. As the chip density increases, the request for accurate MESFET or HEMT noise models becomes more pronounced. In this study, a new method has been developed to extract a 15-element small signal model of MESFET and HEMT devices. This method uses three sets of S-parameter measurements at different bias conditions. The technique consists of two major steps; in the first step, part of the bias-independent extrinsic parameters is evaluated in preparation to the second step. In the second step, all other parameters should be extracted at the bias point of interest using an optimization method. This method has been tested on S-parameters of a hypothetical device model with ideal and noisy data, compared with other optimization-based techniques, and shows reliable results and a unique solution for all parameter values. Another method has been proposed to extract the noise parameters of a packaged device at any frequency. This technique has also been tested on S-parameters of a hypothetical device model with ideal and noisy data, and compared with other noise parameter extraction techniques. The study shows consistent results and demonstrates its accuracy, simplicity and efficiency as a noise parameter extraction method of microwave/millimeter-wave transistors.

The present thesis attempts to develop new techniques for testing analog parts of embedded cores-based mixed signal integrated circuits and systems. In particular, the oscillation based test methodologies have been investigated in the thesis. In the oscillation based test methods, the circuit under test (CUT) is first converted to an oscillator in the test mode and the oscillation parameters, viz. frequency, amplitude, etc. are then measured. Any deviation of these parameters causes either the oscillation frequency of the converted CUT to differ from its nominal value, or the converted CUT stops oscillation altogether. For evaluation purpose, a program has been written in C to help us in simulating our test methodologies. The program is used to inject faults to the circuit under test. The detailed experimental results provided give frequency and amplitude measurements data performed on the individual circuit blocks together with fault coverage. In this work, however, only catastrophic faults were considered. The simulation experiments carried out on different circuits not only demonstrate that the developed approaches are quite feasible but show in addition that the fault coverage is quite satisfactory (100%) in all cases.

E-business has been booming for years; however, transaction security is still the biggest worry in the E-business world. Public key infrastructure is introduced to protect electronic transactions, wherein digital signing plays an important role that provides authentication and non-repudiation services. A smart card-based hardware security module is able to provide signing service with strong tamper-resistant and mobility. However, since smart cards do not have I/O interfaces, a user may blindly sign a document that has been altered by a malicious application. Since mobile phones have user-friendly interfaces, strong computing power and short-distance wireless links, etc, they could be promising candidates for signing service. Some mobile phone-based signing solutions have been proposed as alternatives to smart cards. However, most of these solutions, including Zurich University's SIM based solution and Vodafone's mPKI, stick to GSM mobile networks. So far, there is no uniform standard for signing solution. In my thesis, a mobile phone-based signing solution that is based on the Personal Transaction Protocol (PTP) defined by MeT is proposed. However, the original PTP is designed to work in a personal environment, where all devices are trusted. My thesis proposed an improved PTP to allow it to work in a public environment. In addition, J2ME platform is chosen to be the development platform of the proposed solution. The J2ME's applicability is discussed according to the PTP server's development requirements. Finally, a PTP server's prototype is designed and developed to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed solution.

Searching for information on the Web is a relatively inefficient process. My goal is to develop a method that optimizes web search queries without user intervention. Developing intelligent ways to automate this process includes the development of algorithms that automatically manipulate the use of keywords to produce the desired output. Genetic algorithms (GA) provide a potentially useful approach in this area. However, these approaches have not fully exploited the biological concepts associated with genetic reproduction and evolution. I hypothesize that an approach that uses GA but modifies it to include the biological concepts of structural and regulatory gene types and the use of a combination of deletion operator and silent genes will improve GA performance in optimizing Web search. In this paper, I describe this approach and its implementation in simulations of Web search tasks using three popular Web search engines (Google, Yahoo and Netscape). The results of this implementation are presented and are compared to the performance of a similar, but unmodified GA in the same tasks. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Wireless networks were first developed in the 1970s, and people's interest in them has been growing ever since. A broad range of differing capabilities is covered by wireless technologies and is oriented toward different uses and needs. In this thesis, we propose a novel application architecture based on wireless networks and designed for museums to allow visitors, especially group of visitors, to have an attractive tour experience. While current museum visiting's approaches are largely interactive but have a number of disadvantages, this application utilizes mobile devices as facilities to help visitors benefit not only from visiting a real museum environment but at the same time enriching their ability to search for additional material. Moreover, as it provides powerful functions, the application will enable visitors to establish a virtual community platform by which they will be able to communicate and share information through wireless networks.

The increasing presence of ubiquitous mobile computing devices requiring uninterrupted Internet access has prompted a higher need to support efficient and seamless roaming. The introduction of micro mobility is an approach towards a more flexible, customizable and scalable mobility architecture that also reduces signaling load and handover latency. Micro-cell Mobile MPLS (MM-MPLS) is such a protocol. It extends MPLS, a successful routing/forwarding technology of the core of the Internet, to the micro-mobility environment. MM-MPLS reduces the delay and delay jitter of a roaming mobile host. This thesis describes the implementation of experimental MM-MPLS based network. The developed testbed is composed of seven desktop-PC running on the Linux operation system. Performance comparisons of MM-MPLS and the hierarchical mobile IP have confirmed the proper operation of the testbed and the superiority of the protocol.

Nowadays, the vast majority of programmable logic devices cannot be partially reprogrammed at run-time, preventing them to support real-time reconfigurable computing applications. A new family of computational logic blocks having a dynamic reconfigurable structure is introduced in the thesis. The presented architecture implements any combinational circuit with multiple outputs. The input/output relation of these circuits is expressed by logical equations in the sum-of-product form. Each product term is translated into context words which characterize the logical behaviour of the circuit and are arranged in an array of registers. A development software environment generating necessary data for programming the circuit is given. Finally an implementation of the product terms method on an existing reconfigurable device is given to demonstrate proven advantages of the work.

Bayesian network techniques have been used for discovering causal relationships among large number of variables in many applications. This thesis demonstrates how Bayesian techniques are used to build gene regulation networks. The contribution of this thesis is to find a novel way of combining pre-knowledge (biological domain information) into Bayesian network learning process for microarray data analysis. Such pre-knowledge includes biological process, cellular component and molecular function information and cell cycle information. Incorporating preexisting knowledge into the Bayesian network learning process significantly improves the accuracy and performance of learning. Another contribution of this thesis is the inference and validation of learning result based on the biological literature and biological knowledge. The learned network structure is presented graphically to make the results easy to understand. A yeast microarray dataset is used to test the performance of the learning process.

Project management is entering into every aspect of our work with high speed but a relatively low success rate. Based on research into the current project management literature, this thesis concludes that three elements - a competent project manager, right project definition and right project organization are the key factors that determine the project success. This study focuses on the first of these three factors: selection of a competent project manager. The research process uses a web formed questionnaire based on the 102 Project Management Institute competency elements designed to measure Project Manager Knowledge, Performance and Personal competency. This questionnaire was used to gather data concerning real-world experience of critical project management skills from 16 people who have professional project experiences. Based on this data, a new project management tool was developed to highlight effective project manager selection considerations and effective organizational use of project management analysis and problem solving processes. This new tool attempts to assist the combination of project manager capabilities and organizational capabilities to achieve more effective project success. As a pilot survey, 16 respondents who have project experiences using a project-management approach were invited to complete the study project management questionnaire. The responses concerning the importance of the various elements named in the questionnaire were analyzed. The analysis resulted in a profile representing the critical skills associated with project management from the view of the expert respondents. This thesis proposes this profile as a project manager selection method. It also analyzes organizational project management problems in light of the selection model proposed as a way of helping the project manager, project, and organization move toward more sustainable development. As a part of future research, the effectiveness of this tool in distinguishing between effective and less effective project managers will form the basis of potential future research.