The advent of new standards in wireless communication like the Long Term Evolution (LTE) has resulted in a need for newer and better design of receivers for wireless communication systems, the first step of which is to design a tunable integrated filter on the receiver front end. In this work we propose a new design for a passive tunable integrated Roofing filter for LTE bands. The role of the Roofing filter is to protect the rest of the circuitry from overloading and distortions caused due to large out-of-band signals. This filter protects the rest of the circuitry and hence it gets the name Roofing filter. The Roofing filter is present on the receiver front-end. The filter has a low insertion loss and a high return loss at the input. The bandwidth of the Roofing filter is around 200MHz at the highest values. The filter uses off-chip inductors. The filter has a continuous center frequency tuning range of 2GHz from 0.7GHz to 2.7GHz, which is the allocated frequency range for LTE bands. This continuous tuning is achieved by the use of MOSFET based varactors. The filter is a narrowband filter. The design is implemented in TSMC 65nm CMOS technology.

This objective of this project was to develop a new dewatering device that could produce a lower moisture content and better fine particle recovery than current technology. To meet this goal, a hyperbaric horizontal belt filter was designed and constructed over the course of 18 months. Once built, the filter was then thoroughly tested to determine operational capabilities. The test data showed that the lowest moisture content that could be achieved with a coarse feed (minus 1 mm screen-bowl centrifuge feed) was 8.8%. This value could be further reduced to 8.2% and capacity increased with the use of dewatering aids. When testing with a fine feed (minus 0.15 mm column product feed), the lowest moisture content was 35% without chemicals and 29% with chemicals. A 50/50 mixture by volume of coarse and fine feeds was artificially created and provided a moisture of 10.8%, which was reduced using reagents to 8.4%. The machine provided a very high recovery rate for all feed materials. Of the coal input, no less than 94% of it reported to the dry product. The pressure used to dewater the coal was the controlling factor for the air consumption of the unit. The data from these tests suggest that a full size production unit is feasible, although the power requirements for gas compression would be high. / Master of Science

Yes / Currently, several microwave filter designs contend for use in wireless communications. Among various microstrip filter designs, the reconfigurable planar filter presents more advantages and better prospects for communication applications, being compact in size, light-weight and cost-effective. Tuneable microwave filters can reduce the number of switches between electronic components. This paper presents a review of recent reconfigurable microwave filter designs, specifically on current advances in tuneable filters that involve high-quality factor resonator filters to control frequency, bandwidth and selectivity. The most important materials required for this field are also highlighted and surveyed. In addition, the main references for several types of tuneable microstrip filters are reported, especially related to new design technologies. Topics surveyed include microwave and millimetre wave designs for 4G and 5G applications, which use varactors and MEMSs technologies. / This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement H2020-MSCA-ITN-2016 SECRET-722424.

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Accurate hydrologic forecasting is vital for proper water resource management. Practices that are impacted by these forecasts include power generation, reservoir management, agricultural water use, and flood early warning systems. Despite these needs, the models largely used are simplifications of the real world and are therefore imperfect. The forecasters face other challenges in addition to the model uncertainty, which includes imperfect observations used for model calibration and validation, imperfect meteorological forecasts, and the ability to effectively communicate forecast results to decision-makers. Bayesian methods are commonly used to address some of these issues, and this thesis will be focused on improving methods related to recursive Bayesian estimation, more commonly known as data assimilation. Data assimilation is a means to optimally account for the uncertainties in observations, models, and forcing data. In the literature, data assimilation for urban hydrologic and flood forecasting is rare; therefore the main areas of study in this thesis are urban and semi-urban watersheds. By providing improvements to data assimilation methods, both hydrologic and flood forecasting can be enhanced in these areas. This work explored the use of alternative data products as a type of observation that can be assimilated to improve hydrologic forecasting in an urban watershed. The impact of impervious surfaces in urban and semi-urban watersheds was also evaluated in regards to its impact on remotely sensed soil moisture assimilation. Lack of observations is another issue when it comes to data assimilation, particularly in semi- or fully-distributed models; because of this, an improved method for updating locations which do not have observations was developed which utilizes information theory’s mutual information. Finally, we explored extending data assimilation into the short-term forecast by using prior knowledge of how a model will respond to forecasted forcing data. Results from this work found that using alternative data products such as those from the Snow Data Assimilation System or the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission, can be effective at improving hydrologic forecasting in urban watersheds. They also were effective at identifying a limiting imperviousness threshold for soil moisture assimilation into urban and semi-urban watersheds. Additionally, the inclusion of mutual information between gauged and ungauged locations in a semi-distributed hydrologic model was able to provide better state updates in models. Finally, by extending data assimilation into the short-term forecast, the reliability of the forecasts could be improved substantially. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The ability to accurately model hydrological systems is essential, as that allows for better planning and decision making in water resources management. The better we can forecast the hydrologic response to rain and snowmelt events, the better we can plan and manage our water resources. This includes better planning and usage of water for agricultural purposes, better planning and management of reservoirs for power generation, and better preparing for flood events. Unfortunately, hydrologic models primarily used are simplifications of the real world and are therefore imperfect. Additionally, our measurements of the physical system responses to atmospheric forcing can be prone to both systematic and random errors that need to be accounted for. To address these limitations, data assimilation can be used to improve hydrologic forecasts by optimally accounting for both model and observation uncertainties. The work in this thesis helps to further advance and improve data assimilation, with a focus on enhancing hydrologic forecasting in urban and semi-urban watersheds. The research presented herein can be used to provide better forecasts, which allow for better planning and decision making.

No / In this paper, a compact microstrip band-pass filter (BPF) covering the 3.4 to 3.8 GHz spectrum bandwidth for 5G wireless communications is presented. The planar filter uses three resonators, each terminated by a via to hole ground at one end and a capacitor at the other end with 50 Ω transmission line impedances for input and output terminals. The coupling between the lines is adjusted to resonate at the centre frequency with third-order band-pass Butterworth properties. The proposed combline filter is designed on an alumina substrate with a relative dielectric constant of 9.8 and a very small size of 9×5×1.2 mm3. The proposed filter is simulated and optimized using CST microwave studio software. / European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement H2020-MSCA-ITN-2016 SECRET-722424, UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant EP/E022936/1

This thesis examines the design and implementation of the navigation solution for an autonomous ground vehicle suited with global position system (GPS) receivers, an inertial measurement unit (IMU), and wheel speed sensors (WSS) using the framework of Kalman filtering (KF). To demonstrate the flexibility of the KF several methods are explored and implemented such as constraints, multi-rate data, and cascading filters to augment the measurement matrix of a main filter. GPS and IMU navigation are discussed, along with common errors and disadvantages of each type of navigation system. It is shown that the coupling of sensors, constraints, and self-alignment techniques provide an accurate solution to the navigation problem for an autonomous vehicle. Filter divergence is discussed during times when the states are unobservable. Post processed data is analyzed to demonstrate performance under several test cases, such as GPS outage, and the effect that the initial calibration and alignment has on the accuracy of the solution. / Master of Science

Motion and tilt have long hindered the accuracy, reliability, and response of magnetic detection systems. Perturbations in the magnetic field reading resulting from motion cause degradation of the output signal, compromising the performance and reliability of the magnetometer system. The purpose of this document is to describe the development, construction, and testing of a tilt-stabilized three-axis magnetic field sensor. The sensor is implemented as a three-axis general-purpose magnetic field sensor, with the additional capability of being implemented as a compass. Design and construction of system hardware is discussed, along with software development and implementation. Finite impulse response filters are designed and implemented in hardware to filter the acquired magnetic signals. Various designs of median filters are simulated and tested for smoothing inclination signal irregularities and noise. Trigonometric conversions necessary for tilt-compensation are calculated in software using traditional methods, as well as the Coordinate Rotation Digital Computer (CORDIC) algorithm. Both calculation methods are compared for execution time and efficiency. Successful incorporation of all design aspects leads to detection and output of stable earth magnetic fields, sinusoidal signals, and aperiodic signatures while the magnetometer system is subject to significant tilt motion. Optimized system execution time leads to a maximum detectable signal bandwidth of 410 Hz. Integration of azimuth angle calculation is incorporated and is successfully tested with minimal error, allowing the system to be used as a compass. Results of the compensated system tests are compared to non-compensated results to display system performance, including tilt-compensation effectiveness, noise attenuation, and operational speed. / Master of Science

No description available.

Since the introduction of online HTTP-cookies, the technology has been widely discussed, both in terms of its actual function, as well as what it can do to users’ behaviors on the Internet. Cookies are small unique text files found within websites on the Internet that can collect and store personal information in order to enhance the users’ experience, as well as to provide the website with essential information about the user. By a literature review that was conducted on the subject, an unawareness among Internet users of how websites use cookies was found. Most users do not know what kind of information a cookie can store and how their privacy today can be violated. With this in mind, we conducted a internet based survey and a focus group interview to study journalism students and media and communication students knowledge about websites usage of cookies and furthermore, how the students opine the technology. This, since they are expected to have a higher knowledge than the general student about the subject since they are studying to assumably work within branches where they may have important parts regarding ICT in the future. By applying Michel Foucault theory Panopticon, Jürgen Habermas The Public Sphere and Sandra Petronio’s Communication Privacy Management Theory to the result of the study, we could see that there is a general unawareness among the students about what kind of information a cookie can collect. Also, the students express negative opinions regarding this harvesting of information, yet little effort is made to obstruct or deny web sites’ use of cookies.