International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 17-20, 1994 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / With the increased concerns for reducing cost and improving reliability in today's telemetry systems, many users are employing simulation and automation to guarantee reliable telemetry systems operation. Pre-Mission simulation of the telemetry system will reduce the cost associated with a loss of mission data. In order to guarantee the integrity of the receive system, the user must be able to simulate several conditions of the transmitted signal. These include Doppler shift and dynamic fade simulation. Additionally, the simulator should be capable of transmitting industry standard PCM data streams to allow pre-mission bit error rate testing of the receive system. Furthermore, the simulator should provide sufficient output power to allow use as a boresite transmitter to check all aspects of the receive link. Finally, the simulator must be able to operate at several frequency bands and modulation modes to keep cost to a minimum.

This thesis investigates the modelling of fade countermeasures (FCMs) for the design of geostationary Ka band digital satellite communication systems. The analysis focuses on a typical low-power low-rate very small aperture terminal application using adaptive forward error correction as a way of counteracting the high level of detected dynamic atmospheric fading. The management and performance of such systems is conditioned greatly by the ability of practical controllers at detecting the actual level of total signal attenuation. At 20 or 30 GHz, rain attenuation and tropospheric scintillation are the two major propagation effects of interest. Part of the solution relies on the consideration and integration of their random and dynamic nature in the design process. The finite response time of practical countermeasure systems is a source of performance degradation which can be minimised by the implementation of predictive control strategies. This is the focal point of this thesis. A novel on-line short-term predictor matched to the Ka band fading process is proposed. While the rain attenuation component is efficiently predicted, tropospheric scintillation is the source of the estimation error. To take this into account, a statistical model, based on an extension of the global fading model for rain and scintillation, is then developed so that long term performance of predictive countermeasures can be drawn. Two possible ways to compensate for scintillation-induced prediction errors, namely the fixed and variable detection margin approaches, are proposed, analysed and then compared. This is achieved by calculating the FCM utilisation factor, as well as the throughput and bit error rate performance of a typical Ka band system in the presence of dynamic fading within the context of predictive fade countermeasure control operations. In the last part of this thesis, the inclusion of instantaneous frequency scaling in the design of efficient FCM control schemes is investigated. This is applicable to systems using fade detection at a base frequency. In particular, a new statistical model, accounting for the impact of the stochastic temporal variations of rain drop size distribution on rain attenuation, is presented. This thesis further confirms that countermeasure systems are technologically viable. The consideration of more specific design problems does not change the overall validity of this statement. In this thesis, it is shown that a predictive FCM technique, based on readily available punctured convolutional codes, with their relatively modest coding gain, is sufficient to provide high link availability and user data throughput on a low-power low-rate in-bound VSAT link.

[pt] Este trabalho apresenta a base de um modelo matemático destinado a interpretar teoricamente o comportamento estatístico de sinais sujeitos a desvanecimentos rápidos em enlaces de microondas em visibilidade. As teorias existentes para explicar a dependência do fenômeno com as características de um lance são discutidas em função dos resultados experimentais disponíveis. Foi investigado com especial atenção o relacionamento entre as profundidades de desvanecimento e a rugosidade do relevo, demonstrando-se que a fórmula empírica atualmente em uso é perfeitamente adequada para quantificar este efeito. / [en] The purpose of this work is to present a mathematical model to interpret theoreticallly the statistical behavior of deep fades in line-of-sight microware paths. The previous theories are discussed and compared to the known experimental data. A simple model is used to obtain a theoretical dependence of the fades deepth with the path roughness. The results show that the empirical expression presently in use quantifies correctly this effect.

This work developed a novel experiment in order to determine the operational effects on a Lithium-ion battery (LIB) when a test resulting in non-catastrophic damage is performed. Accepted industry standards were used as a basis to develop a nail penetration test that would puncture a cell approximately halfway through during normal cycling at a rate of 1C, then allow the cell to continue cycling to determine how its operation was affected. The cells under test continued cycling after the punctures, showing that the experiment would be able to provide useful information on the topic. The experiment was found to be successful in simulating the operation of a cell in an abusive environment, such as those seen in electric vehicles and aerospace applications.<div><br></div><div>The results of these experiments showed that a sharp increase in temperature is observed immediately after the puncture, similar to cells that underwent tests with full penetrations. The temperatures then slowly decreased during the first few cycles after the puncture as the generated heat was dissipated through convection. The experiments also showed that it is possible for a LIB under test to continue operating for a short time after being punctured. However, the capacity and useful life of the cells were greatly reduced. The initial capacity of each cell decreased by approximately 11% after the initial impact, then continued decreasing at an accelerated rate during the ensuing cycling. The lifetime of the cells was also greatly reduced, with each cell reaching its end of life within approximately 15-75 cycles after the punctures. An analysis of the incremental capacity curves of the cells indicated that accelerated aging occurred due to both a loss of active material and a loss of lithium inventory. The information gained from the experiments gives insight into the operation of cells that experience abusive environments and will be useful in designing improved control systems, as well as promoting the development of more robust testing and safety standards for different types of cells.<br></div>

The expansion and diffusion of mobile phones globally has resulted in the provision of financial transactional services over the existing mobile phone platforms, generally referred to as mobile money. The supply end of mobile money services is an important factor in the success of the financial transactions offering. This research assessed vulnerabilities in the mobile money supply network that are inherently related to the existence of the principal – agent problem and their implications on availability and access to the services. The research study was conducted using a qualitative approach. Qualitative information was collected through interviews guided by open – ended questionnaires. Thematic analysis approach was followed to systematically analyse the data and generate findings of the study. Agent transactional data was analysed to complement the findings from qualitative analysis The findings suggest that the principal agent problem permeates the mobile money delivery network mainly after businesses joining as agents and manifests as moral hazard. Moral hazard is the dominant feature of the principal – agent problem, with adverse selection very low. Drivers of moral hazard are demonstrated by the influences and demands of agents’ core businesses and challenges in agent monitoring and training. The existence of the principal – agent problem has limited or no implications on access and availability of services. However, overtime the combined vulnerabilities identified related to the principal agent problem are likely to manifest into risks that are likely to affect access and availability of mobile money services. Regulators, Mobile Network Operators and agent enterprises must collectively review monitoring approaches for mobile money service providers to address challenges identified and increase the effectiveness of monitoring. Service provision standards should be reviewed to suit the various business environments the services are provided within. Mobile Network Operators and agent enterprises need to institute stronger partnership arrangements that enhance ownership and obligations for all parties, in particular agent enterprises. Agreements must enable application of different mobile money delivery models suitable to meet the demands and requirements of the agents’ core businesses. Innovations such as Near Field Communication (NFC) can be integrated with Point of sale (POS) applications and mobile money platforms to reduce the administration burden on agents and human error. Such applications must consider the cost implications of adoption from the agents’ business perspective.

No description available.

The performance of lasercom systems operating in the atmosphere is reduced by optical turbulence, which causes irradiance fluctuations in the received signal. The result is a randomly fading signal. Fade statistics for lasercom systems are determined from the probability density function (PDF) of the irradiance fluctuations. The expected number of fades per second and their mean fade time require the joint PDF of the fluctuating irradiance and its time derivative. Theoretical integral expressions, as well as closed form, analytical approximations, were developed for the joint PDF of a gamma-gamma distributed irradiance and its time derivative, and the corresponding expression for the expected number of fades per second. The new approximation for the conditional PDF of the time derivative of a gamma-gamma irradiance is a zero mean Gaussian distribution, with a complicated irradiance depending variance. Fade statistics obtained from experimental data were compared to theoretical predictions based on the lognormal and gamma-gamma distributions. A Gaussian beam wave was propagated through the atmosphere along a horizontal path, near ground, in the moderate-to-strong optical turbulence. To characterize the propagation path, a new method that infers atmospheric propagation parameters was developed. Scintillation theory combined with a numerical scheme was used to infer the structure constant, Cn2, the inner scale and the outer scale from the optical measurements. The inferred parameters were used in calculations for the theoretical PDFs. It was found that fade predictions made by the gamma-gamma and lognormal distributions provide an upper and lower bound, respectively, for the probability of fade and the number of fades per second for irradiance data collected in the moderate-to-strong fluctuation regime. Aperture averaging effects on the PDF of the irradiance fluctuations were investigated by comparing the irradiance distributions for the three receiver apertures at two different values of the structure parameter and, hence, different values of the coherence radius. For the moderate-to-strong fluctuation regime, the gamma-gamma distribution provides a good fit to the irradiance fluctuations collected by finite-sized apertures that are significantly smaller than the coherence radius. For apertures larger than or equal to the coherence radius, the irradiance fluctuations appear to be lognormally distributed.

Orientador: Michel Daoud Yacoub / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Eletrica e de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-06T02:52:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fraidenraich_Gustavo_M.pdf: 1838522 bytes, checksum: 4099008fa7bbc89eb2642a891bd64509 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Resumo: Neste trabalho, uma nova distribuição de probabilidade amplamente geral, a distribuição a-?-?-µ, é proposta. Esta distribuição contempla como casos particulares várias outras distribuições conhecidas na literatura, tais como Rayleigh, Rice, Nakagami-m, Hoyt, Weibull, a-? (Gamma Generalizada) ?-µ e ?-µ. Por conta de sua generalidade, todos os mais importantes ambientes de desvanecimento de curto prazo são modelados por esta distribuição. Além de prover a função densidade de probabilidade para o modelo a-?-?-µ, os momentos e a função cumulativa de probabilidade também são encontrados. Este modelo geral é então especializado para quatro casos particulares, para os quais distribuições mais simples, mas ainda gerais, são encontradas: a a-?-µ, a-?-µ, ?-? Simétrica e ?-? Assimétrica. Para esses casos, estimadores práticos baseados nos momentos são deduzidos. A aplicabilidade destes estimadores é verificada utilizando medidas de campo realizadas na Unicamp com um equipamento construído no laboratório Wisstek para este ?m. Em seguida, estatísticas de ordem superior, em particular a taxa de cruzamento de nível e a duração média de desvanecimento, são encontradas de forma exata para os ambientes Hoyt e Weibull em sistemas de diversidade com M ramos desbalanceados, não idênticos e independentes utilizando os combinadores por ganho igual e por razão máxima. Neste trabalho, o resultado geral é validado através de simulações e redução das expressões gerais para casos em que os resultados já são conhecidos. Além disso, para alguns destes casos particulares, as expressões gerais são simplificadas e reduzidas a fórmulas fechadas. Estendendo esse último campo de investigação e seguindo um pioneiro trabalho da literatura, o qual abordou o caso Rayleigh, a taxa de cruzamento de nível e a duração média de desvanecimento são obtidas para ambientes Hoyt com dois ramos correlacionados. Nesta investigação, reformula-se a metodologia da literatura e obtém-se um procedimento geral para a análise da taxa de cruzamento de nível e duração média de desvanecimento em ambientes com apenas um cluster, com aplicação direta aos canais Rice, Weibull, ?-? Simétrica e ?-? Assimétrica. Finalmente, este trabalho propõe, de forma precursora, uma distribuição para a fase do canal Nakagami-m. Ao contrário do que, convencionalmente e por simplicidade, se postulava, a distribuição de fase é não uniforme e dependente de m, o que torna o modelo compatível com aqueles aproximados por Nakagami-m, nomeadamente Hoyt e Rice / Abstract: In this work, a new, very general probability density function, the a-?-?-µ distribution, is proposed. This distribution comprises, as particular cases, several other well known distributions such as Rayleigh, Rice, Nakagami-m, Hoyt, Weibull, a-? (Generalized Gamma) ?-µ and ?-µ. Due to its generality, all of the most important short fading environments can be modeled by this distribution. Besides providing the probability density function for the a-?-?-µ model, the moments and the cumulative distribution function are also found. This general model is then specialized into four particular cases, for which new simpler, though still general, distributions, are found: the a-?-µ, a-?-µ, Symmetrical ?-?, and Asymmetrical ?-?. For these cases, practical moment-based estimators are derived. The applicability of these estimators is verified using field measurements obtained through an experiment conducted at the University of Campinas (Unicamp) with an equipment specially built for this end in the Wisstek laboratory. Higher order statistics, more specifically the level crossing rates and average fade durations, are then obtained in an exact form for the Hoyt and Weibull fading environments. The results are applicable to M unbalanced, non-identical, and independent channels using equal gain and maximal ratio combining techniques. The general results are thoroughly validated by means of simulation and also by reducing the general solution to some particular cases for which the solutions are known. Moreover, new closed form expressions are also achieved for some of these particular cases. Extending this field of investigation and following a pioneering work in the literature, which approached the Rayleigh case, the level crossing rate and average fade duration are obtained considering two correlated, unbalanced, and non-identical branches in a Hoyt fading environment. In this investigation, the methodology found in the literature is reformulated and generalized so as to comprise several other cases. The general procedure developed for this analysis can now be applied to other fading environment for which one cluster of mutipaths exists, i.e., Rice, Weibull, Symmetrical ?-?, and Asymmetrical ?-?. Finally, this work proposes, in a pioneering way, the phase distribution for the Nakagami-m channel. Contrary to what conventionally, and for simplicity, was usually postulated, the phase distribution is non-uniform and dependent on m, rendering this model compatible with those approximated by Nakagami-m, namely Hoyt and Rice / Mestrado / Telecomunicações e Telemática / Mestre em Engenharia Elétrica

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In the last years, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have become the most important energy storage system for consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and smart grids. The development of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) based on current practice allows an energy density increase estimated at 10% per year. However, the required power for portable electronic devices is predicted to increase at a much faster rate, namely 20% per year. Similarly, the global electric vehicle battery capacity is expected to increase from around 170 GWh per year today to 1.5 TWh per year in 2030--this is an increase of 125% per year. Without a breakthrough in battery design technology, it will be difficult to keep up with the increasing energy demand. To that end, a design methodology to accelerate the LIB development is needed. This can be achieved through the integration of electro-chemical numerical simulations and machine learning algorithms. To help this cause, this study develops a design methodology and framework using Simcenter Battery Design Studio® (BDS) and Bayesian optimization for design and optimization of cylindrical cell type 18650. The materials of the cathode are Nickel-Cobalt-Aluminum (NCA)/Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt-Aluminum (NMCA), anode is graphite, and electrolyte is Lithium hexafluorophosphate (LiPF6). Bayesian optimization has emerged as a powerful gradient-free optimization methodology to solve optimization problems that involve the evaluation of expensive black-box functions. The black-box functions are simulations of the cyclic performance test in Simcenter Battery Design Studio. The physics model used for this study is based on full system model described by Fuller and Newman. It uses Butler-Volmer Equation for ion-transportation across an interface and solvent diffusion model (Ploehn Model) for Aging of Lithium-Ion Battery Cells. The BDS model considers effects of SEI, cell electrode and microstructure dimensions, and charge-discharge rates to simulate battery degradation. Two objectives are optimized: maximization of the specific energy and minimization of the capacity fade. We perform global sensitivity analysis and see that thickness and porosity of the coating of the LIB electrodes that affect the objective functions the most. As such the design variables selected for this study are thickness and porosity of the electrodes. The thickness is restricted to vary from 22microns to 240microns and the porosity varies from 0.22 to 0.54. Two case studies are carried out using the above-mentioned objective functions and parameters. In the first study, cycling tests of 18650 NCA cathode Li-ion cells are simulated. The cells are charged and discharged using a constant 0.2C rate for 500 cycles. In the second case study a cathode active material more relevant to the electric vehicle industry, Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt-Aluminum (NMCA), is used. Here, the cells are cycled for 5 different charge-discharge scenarios to replicate charge-discharge scenario that an EVs battery module experiences. The results show that the design and optimization methodology can identify cells to satisfy the design objective that extend and improve the pareto front outside the original sampling plan for several practical charge-discharge scenarios which maximize energy density and minimize capacity fade.

[pt] Propõe-se alternativas para exploração da amostragem a taxas múltiplas da taxa símbolos (superamostragem) em receptores cegos com decisão de sequências de símbolos, a fim de se obter melhoria de desempenho em canais com desvanecimento rápido e seletivo em frequência. O trabalho se centra em esquemas de recepção do tipo MLSE/PSP (maximum likelihood sequence estimation/per-survivor processing) baseados na modelagem estocástica do canal. Deduz-se um modelo em espaço de estado para a geração das amostras do sinal recebido, cujos parâmetros podem ser facilmente associados ao sistema de transmissão. Investiga- se também uma estratégia de ataque ao problema de recepção diante de ruído colorido, intrinsecamente associado à superamostragem. O desempenho dos esquemas de recepção propostos é avaliado através de simulação computacional. Os resultados obtidos mostram que a exploração da superamostragem produz ganhos significativos de desempenho na recepção cega de sequências, em relação aos esquemas de recepção MLSE/PSP com amostragem síncrona (taxa de amostragem igual à taxa de símbolos). / [en] In this work we propose exploting the received signal oversampling in order to improve the performance of blind receivers over fast fequency selective fading channels.The work focus attention on MLSE/PSP (maximum-likelihood sequence estimation/per survivor processing) receivers and statistical modeling of the channel output. A state-space model for oversampled received signal in developed from a generic continous time transmission system model. Two MLSE/PSP receiving schemes relying on this model are proposed. One of them is specially suitable for dealing with the colored noise produced by oversampling. Computer simulations were conducted in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed blind receivers. The results thus obtained show that these schemes significantly outperform the synchronous MLSE/PSP receiver (for which the sampling rate is equal to the sysmbol rate).