This thesis investigates the appropriateness of a simplified, open-source digital image correlation (DIC) software for use in quasi-static, structural testing utilizing two-dimensional (2D) DIC measurements. DIC is a non-contact optical measurement technique that uses computer vision to track unique attributes on the surface of an object. For structural testing, traditional instrumentation such as displacement sensors and strain gages are impractical for full field measurements due their limited ability to capture large amounts of data. However, over the past decade, DIC has proven a successful method for full-field kinematics measurements, making it an appealing tool for collecting high densities of accurate data. This thesis specifically studies the accuracy and limitations of the DIC software, MODEM, for various test specimens and loading conditions. This research work is part of an experimental program comprised of three phases. The first stage was conducted by another investigator on aluminum coupons tested in pure tension. These results were used to calibrate parameters (speckle pattern density, lighting, and camera settings) used with the DIC software. The second stage included pure compression tests on concrete cubes and concrete cylinders to compare the difference in results between: (i) surface curvature, (ii) camera distance, (iii) surface treatment, and (iv) speckle pattern color. The final stage involved analysis of a tension test of a concrete prism completed at the University of Auckland in an effort to assess how MODEM could be utilized to accurately detect onset and propagation of concrete cracking. Results showed the most accurate DIC strains were within 5% error when compared to traditional instrumentation for aluminum loaded in tension and within 6% error for concrete loaded in compression/tension. This level of accuracy is comparable to existing open source and commercial DIC software utilizing 2D DIC analysis. Therefore, MODEM can be used to provide accurate 2D DIC strain measurements for small and medium scale structural test specimens when using the following parameters: (i) the surface of the specimen is planar, (ii) the camera is placed accordingly so the maximum amount of zoom can be used, (iii) the surface of a test specimen is free of debris or imperfections, and (iv) a high contrast and evenly distributed speckle pattern is used. Computational analysis of the results showed that known material properties can be used to calibrate, or remove errors from, the DIC results when traditional instrumentation is not available. Additionally, results showed MODEM strain contours can be used for initial detection of cracks in concrete loaded in tension while MODEM tracking performance can be used to characterize the centerline and orientation of cracks. The experimental tests provide critical information on how to set up, run, and analyze DIC results when using MODEM. The full field measurements are of value in providing accurate data for structural testing to develop a better understanding of material response and structural performance, since large-scale tests are typically limited by a sparse number of data points when using traditional instrumentation.

abstract: Optical metasurfaces, i.e. artificially engineered arrays of subwavelength building blocks supporting abrupt and substantial light confinement, was employed to demonstrate a novel generation of devices for circularly polarized detection, full-Stokes polarimetry and all-optical modulation with ultra-compact footprint and chip-integrability. Optical chirality is essential for generation, manipulation and detection of circularly polarized light (CPL), thus finds many applications in quantum computing, communication, spectroscopy, biomedical diagnosis, imaging and sensing. Compared to natural chiral materials, chiral metamaterials and metasurfaces enable much stronger chirality on subwavelength scale; therefore, they are ideal for device miniaturization and system integration. However, they are usually associated with low performance due to limited fabrication tolerance and high dissipation mainly caused by plasmonic materials. Here, a bio-inspired submicron-thick chiral metamaterial structure was designed and demonstrated experimentally with high contrast (extinction ratio >35) detection of CPL with different handedness and high efficiency (>80%) of the overall device. Furthermore, integration of left- and right-handed CPL detection units with nanograting linear polarization filters enabled full-Stokes polarimetry of arbitrarily input polarization states with high accuracy and very low insertion loss, all on a submillimeter single chip. These unprecedented highly efficient and high extinction ratio devices pave the way for on-chip polarimetric measurements. All-optical modulation is widely used for optical interconnects, communication, information processing, and ultrafast spectroscopy. Yet, there’s deficiency of ultrafast, compact and energy-efficient solutions all in one device. Here, all-optical modulation of light in the near- and mid-infrared regimes were experimentally demonstrated based on a graphene-integrated plasmonic nanoantenna array. The remarkable feature of the device design is its simultaneous near-field enhancement for pump and probe (signal) beams, owing to the localized surface plasmon resonance excitation, while preserving the ultrafast photocarrier relaxation in graphene. Hence, a distinct modulation at 1560nm with record-low pump fluence (<8μJ/cm^2) was reported with ~1ps response time. Besides, relying on broadband interaction of graphene with incident light, a first-time demonstration of graphene-based all-optical modulation in mid-infrared spectral region (6-7μm) was reported based on the above double-enhancement design concept. Relying on the tunability of metasurface design, the proposed device can be used for ultrafast optical modulation from near-infrared to terahertz regime. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 2020

Improving spectral-utilization is a core focus to cater the ever-increasing demand in data rate and system capacity required for the development of 5G. This dissertation focuses on three spectrum-reuse technologies that are envisioned to play an important role in 5G networks: device-to-device (D2D), full-duplex (FD), and nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA). D2D allows proximal user-equipments (UEs) to bypass the cellular base-station and communicate with their intended receiver directly. In underlay D2D, the D2D UEs utilize the same spectral resources as the cellular UEs. FD communication allows a transmit-receive pair to transmit simultaneously on the same frequency channel. Due to the overwhelming self-interference encountered, FD was not possible until very recently courtesy of advances in transceiver design. NOMA allows multiple receivers (transmitters) to communicate with one transmitter (receiver) in one time-frequency resource-block by multiplexing in the power domain. Successive-interference cancellation is used for NOMA decoding. Each of these techniques significantly improves spectral efficiency and consequently data rate and throughput; however, the price paid is increased interference. Since each of these technologies allow multiple transmissions within a cell on a time-frequency resource-block, they result in interference within the cell (i.e., intracell interference). Additionally, due to the increased communication, they increase network interference from outside the cell under consideration as well (i.e., increased intercell interference). Real networks are becoming very dense; as a result, the impact of intercell interference coming from the entire network is significant. As such, using models that consider a single-cell/few-cell scenarios result in misleading conclusions. Hence, accurate modeling requires considering a large network. In this context, stochastic geometry is a powerful tool for analyzing random patterns of points such as those found in wireless networks. In this dissertation, stochastic geometry is used to model and analyze the different technologies that are to be deployed in 5G networks. This gives us insight into the network performance, showing us the impacts of deploying a certain technology into real 5G networks. Additionally, it allows us to propose schemes for integrating such technologies, mode-selection, parameter-selection, and resource-allocation that enhance the parameters of interest in the network such as data rate, coverage, and secure communication.

Full dimension (FD) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology has recently attracted substantial research attention in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) as a promising technique for the next-generation of wireless communication networks. FD-MIMO scenarios utilize a planar two-dimensional (2D) active antenna system (AAS) that not only allows a large number of antenna elements to be placed within feasible base station (BS) form factors, but also provides the ability of elevation beamforming. This dissertation presents the elevation beamforming analysis for cellular networks utilizing FD massive MIMO antenna arrays. In particular, two architectures are proposed for the AAS - the uniform linear array (ULA) and the uniform circular array (UCA) of antenna ports, where each port is mapped to a group of vertically arranged antenna elements with a corresponding downtilt weight vector. To support FD-MIMO techniques, this dissertation presents two different 3D ray-tracing channel modeling approaches, the ITU based ‘antenna port approach’ and the 3GPP technical report (TR) 36.873 based ‘antenna element approach’. The spatial correlation functions (SCF)s for both FD-MIMO arrays are characterized based on the antenna port approach. The resulting expressions depend on the underlying angular distributions and antenna patterns through the Fourier series coefficients of the power spectra and are therefore valid for any 3D propagation environment. Simulation results investigate the performance patterns of the two arrays as a function of several channel and array parameters. The SCF for the ULA of antenna ports is then characterized in terms of the downtilt weight vectors, based on the more recent antenna element approach. The derived SCFs are used to form the Rayleigh correlated 3D channel model. All these aspects are put together to provide a mathematical framework for the design of elevation beamforming schemes in single-cell and multi-cell scenarios. Finally, this dissertation proposes to use the double scattering channel to model limited scattering in realistic propagation environments and derives deterministic equivalents of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and ergodic rate with regularized zeroforcing (RZF) precoding. The performance of a massive MIMO system is shown to be limited by the number of scatterers. To this end, this dissertation points out future research directions

The subsurface flow is usually subject to uncertain porous media structures. However, in most cases we only have partial knowledge about the porous media properties. A common approach is to model the uncertain parameters as random fields, then the expectation of Quantity of Interest(QoI) can be evaluated by the Monte Carlo method. In this study, we develop a full multigrid-multilevel Monte Carlo (FMG-MLMC) method to speed up the evaluation of random parameters effects on single-phase porous flows. In general, MLMC method applies a series of discretization with increasing resolution and computes the QoI on each of them, the success of which lies in the effective variance reduction. We exploit the similar hierarchies of MLMC and multigrid methods, and obtain the solution on coarse mesh Qcl as a byproduct of the multigrid solution on fine mesh Qfl on each level l. In the cases considered in this thesis, the computational saving is 20% theoretically. In addition, a comparison of Monte Carlo and Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) methods reveals a smaller estimator variance and faster convergence rate of the latter method in this study.

The ever-expanding need for energy, including those related to fossil fuels, is behind the drive to explore more complicated regions, such as salt and subsalt provinces. This exploration quest relies heavily on recorded surface seismic data to provide precise and detailed subsurface properties. However, conventional seismic processing algorithms including the state-of-the-art full-waveform inversion (FWI) fail to recover those features in many areas of salt provinces. Even the industrial solution with substantial involvement of manual human-interpretation has faced challenges in many regions. In this thesis, I attempt to replace those manual, and somewhat erroneous, steps to the velocity building in salt provinces with a mathematically robust algorithm under the FWI machinery. I, specifically, regularize FWI by penalizing the velocity drops with depth with a new more flexible function. Although promising, FWI is computationally very expensive, especially for large 3D seismic data. It updates an initial guess of the model iteratively using the gradient of the misfit function, which requires lengthy computations and large memory space/disc storage. Based on the adjoint state method, gradient computation usually requires us to store the source wavefield, or include an additional extrapolation step to propagate the source wavefield from its temporary storage at the boundary. To mitigate this computational overburden, I propose an amplitude excitation gradient calculation based on representing the source wavefield history by a single, specifically the most energetic arrival. In this thesis, I also propose a novel-multiscale scheme based on ux-corrected transport (FCT) to reduce artifacts in the gradient direction due to the noise present in seismic data. FCT comprises of two finite difference schemes: a transport and a diffusion to compute the flux at a grid point. I observe a couple of benefits in FCT-based FWI. First, it yields a smooth gradient at the earlier iterations of FWI by promoting the lower frequency content of the seismic data. Second, it is easily compatible with the existing FWI code, and with any objective function. The multiscale strategy starts with a large smoothing parameter and relaxes it progressively to zero to achieve the final inverted model from traditional FWI.

The demand for wireless communication is ceaselessly increasing in terms of the number of subscribers and services. Future generations of cellular networks are expected to allow not only humans but also machines to be immersively connected. However, the radio frequency spectrum is already fully allocated. Therefore, developing techniques to increase spectrum efficiency has become necessary. This dissertation analyzes two spectrum sharing techniques that enable efficient utilization of the available radio resources in cellular networks. The first technique, called full-duplex (FD) communication, uses the same spectrum to transmit and receive simultaneously. Using stochastic geometry tools, we derive a closed-form expression of an upper-bound for the maximum achievable uplink ergodic rate in FD cellular networks. We show that the uplink transmission is vulnerable to the new interference introduced by FD communications (interference from the downlink transmission in other cells), especially when the disparity in transmission power between the uplink and downlink is considerable. We further show that adjusting the uplink transmission power according to the interference power level and the channel gain can improve the uplink performance in full-duplex cellular networks. Moreover, we propose an interference management technique that allows a flexible overlap between the spectra occupied by the downlink and uplink transmissions. The flexible overlap is optimized along with the user-to-base station association, the power allocation and the channel allocation in order to maximize a network-wide utility function. The second spectrum sharing technique, called non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), allows a transmitter to communicate with multiple receivers through the same frequency-time resource unit. We analyze the implementation of such a scheme in the downlink of cellular networks, more precisely, in the downlink of fog radio access networks (FogRANs). FogRAN is a network architecture that takes full advantage of the edge devices capability to process and store data. We propose managing the interference for NOMA-based FogRAN to improve the network performance by jointly optimizing user scheduling, the power allocated to each resource block and the division of power between the multiplexed users. The simulation results show that significant performance gains can be achieved through proper resource allocation with both studied spectrum sharing techniques.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(情報学) / 甲第22590号 / 情博第727号 / 新制||情||124(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院情報学研究科通信情報システム専攻 / (主査)教授 橋口 浩之, 教授 山本 衛, 准教授 村田 英一 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Informatics / Kyoto University / DFAM

Bakgrund: I samband med Covid-19 drastiska ökning under våren 2020 tvingades samhället genomgå stora förändringar för att minimera smittspridningen av den rådande pandemin. Försäkringsbranschen är en av de branscher som tvingats genomgå en omställning på arbetsplatsen. Omställningen på det svenskägda försäkringsaktiebolaget har lett till att majoriteten av de anställda tvingats arbeta hemifrån. Då försäkringsbranschen måste fungera väl oavsett samhällssituation är det av extra vikt att bolagets anställda känner sig motiverade till att prestera på arbetet. Eftersom motivation är ett styrmedel som stödjer prestation finner vi det intressant att studera hur ledningen aktivt arbetar med motivationsfrågor samt hur väl det fungerar hos anställda med olika anställningsform. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att studera hur cheferna upprätthåller motivationen på en avdelning inom ett svenskägt försäkringsaktiebolag i samband med en omställning till distansarbete som följd av pandemin. Metod: Studien präglas av en kvalitativ fallstudie där kvalitativa intervjuer har genomförts som metod för att bygga studiens empiriska material. Slutsats: De anställda känner sig mindre motiverade till arbetet i samband med omställningen. Vidare föreligger det skillnader mellan heltid- och deltidsanställda gällande motivation till arbetet, där deltidsanställda är mer motiverade till arbetet än heltidsanställda. Slutligen tillämpar cheferna digitala verktyg för att främja heltidsanställdas motivation. Arbetet med att främja deltidsanställdas motivation har således uteblivit. Cheferna medger att de hade kunnat arbeta mer med att främja motivationen hos heltid- och deltidsanställda. / Background: In connection to the drastic increase in Covid-19 during the spring of 2020, society was forced to undergo major changes to minimize the spread of the current pandemic. The insurance industry is one of the industries that has been forced to undergo a change in the workplace due to the current pandemic. Due to the adaption, the swedish insurance company forced the majority of employees to work from home. It's important that employees feel motivated to perform at work as the insurance industry must function well regardless of the societal situation. Due to the fact that motivation is a tool that supports performance, we find it interesting to study howmanagement actively works with motivation issues and how well it works with employees with different forms of employment.  Purpose: The purpose of the study is to analyze how managers maintain motivation of a department within a Swedish-owned insurance company, in connection with a transition to telework as a result of the pandemic.  Completion: The study is characterized by a qualitative case study where qualitative interviews have been conducted as a method for building the study's empirical material.  Conclusions: The employees feel less motivated to work in connection with the work change. Furthermore, there are differences between full-time and part-time employees regarding motivation for work, where part-time employees are more motivated to work than full-time employees. Finally, the management applies digital tools to promote the motivation of full-time employees. The work of promoting the motivation of part-time employees has thus failed. The management admits that they could have worked more to promote the motivation of the employees.

Beginner teachers’ identities are formed by past school experiences, the ideas, and approaches promoted by their teacher education programmes and an ideal of teachers they hope to become (Beauchamp and Thomas, 2011; Anspal, Eisenschmidt and Löfström, 2012). The focus of this study was to understand the possible influence of two different teacher education programmes on beginner teacher identity and the forming thereof during the early years of teaching. This study was underpinned by an Interpretivist epistemological paradigm, in line with the reiterative process of understanding which marks the fluid progressions of beginner teachers’ identities. The conceptual lens employed in this study consisted of the Possible Selves Theory (Markus and Nurius, 1986), combined with the metaphorical use of “threads”. This study employed a qualitative methodological paradigm, with a comparative case study as research design (Zartman and Goodrick, 2005). Participants were selected by purposive sampling and involved six beginner teachers within their first three years of teaching; three from each teacher education programme (full-time and part-time). Selection criteria stipulated participants had to be within their first three years of teaching, have graduated from either a full-time or part-time teacher education programme, and that part-time participants had to be employed full-time at a school while studying to be selected. Data collection methods comprised of semi-structured interviews, researcher’s journal and field notes. The process of data analysis was guided by thematic content analysis. Findings from this study attest that beginner teacher identities are unstable; classroom reality differs vastly from teacher education programme curricula; and teaching practice plays a significant role in the preparation of student teachers. The main finding of this study was that full-time participants only comprehended the reality of teaching once full-time employment commenced, compared to part-time participants who realised the realities of teaching considerably earlier. Recommendations were made regarding practice, policy, and future research. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Humanities Education / MEd / Unrestricted