La radio impulsionnelle UWB (IR-UWB) est une technologie de communication relativement récente, qui apporte une solution intéressante au problème de l’encombrement du spectre RF, et qui répond aux exigences de haut débit et localisation précise d’un nombre croissant d’applications, telles que les communications indoor, les réseaux de capteurs personnels et corporels, l’IoT, etc. Ses caractéristiques uniques sont obtenues par la transmission d’impulsions de très courte durée (inférieure à 1 ns), occupant une largeur de bande allant jusqu’à 7,5 GHz, et ayant une densité spectrale de puissance extrêmement faible (inférieure à -43 dBm/MHz). Les meilleures performances d’un système IR-UWB sont obtenues avec des récepteurs cohérents de type Rake, au prix d’une complexité accrue, due notamment à l’étape d’estimation du canal UWB, caractérisé par de nombreux trajets multiples. Cette étape de traitement nécessite l’estimation d’un ensemble de composantes spectrales du signal reçu, sans pouvoir faire appel aux techniques d’échantillonnage usuelles, en raison d’une limite de Nyquist particulièrement élevée (plusieurs GHz).Dans le cadre de cette thèse, nous proposons de nouvelles approches, à faible complexité, pour l’estimation du canal UWB, basées sur la représentation parcimonieuse du signal reçu, la théorie de l’acquisition compressée, et les méthodes de reconstruction des signaux à taux d’innovation fini. La réduction de complexité ainsi obtenue permet de diminuer de manière significative le coût d’implémentation du récepteur IR-UWB et sa consommation. D’abord, deux schémas d’échantillonnage compressé, monovoie (filtre SoS) et multivoie (MCMW) identifiés dans la littérature sont étendus au cas des signaux UWB ayant un spectre de type passe-bande, en tenant compte de leur implémentation réelle dans le circuit. Ces schémas permettent l’acquisition des coefficients spectraux du signal reçu et l’échantillonnage à des fréquences très réduites ne dépendant pas de la bande passante des signaux, mais seulement du nombre des trajets multiples du canal UWB. L’efficacité des approches proposées est démontrée au travers de deux applications : l’estimation du canal UWB pour un récepteur Rake cohérent à faible complexité, et la localisation précise en environnement intérieur dans un contexte d’aide à la dépendance.En outre, afin de réduire la complexité de l’approche multivoie en termes de nombre de voies nécessaires pour l’estimation du canal UWB, nous proposons une architecture à nombre de voies réduit, en augmentant le nombre d’impulsions pilotes émises.Cette même approche permet aussi la réduction de la fréquence d’échantillonnage associée au schéma MCMW. Un autre objectif important de la thèse est constitué par l’optimisation des performances des approches proposées. Ainsi, bien que l’acquisition des coefficients spectraux consécutifs permette une mise en oeuvre simple des schémas multivoie, nous montrons que les coefficients ainsi choisis, ne donnent pas les performances optimales des algorithmes de reconstruction. Ainsi, nous proposons une méthode basée sur la cohérence des matrices de mesure qui permet de trouver l’ensemble optimal des coefficients spectraux, ainsi qu’un ensemble sous-optimal contraint où les positions des coefficients spectraux sont structurées de façon à faciliter la conception du schéma MCMW. Enfin, les approches proposées dans le cadre de cette thèse sont validées expérimentalement à l’aide d’une plateforme expérimentale UWB du laboratoire Lab-STICC CNRS UMR 6285. / Ultra-wideband impulse radio (IR-UWB) is a relatively new communication technology that provides an interesting solution to the problem of RF spectrum scarcity and meets the high data rate and precise localization requirements of an increasing number of applications, such as indoor communications, personal and body sensor networks, IoT, etc. Its unique characteristics are obtained by transmitting pulses of very short duration (less than 1 ns), occupying a bandwidth up to 7.5 GHz, and having an extremely low power spectral density (less than -43 dBm / MHz). The best performances of an IR-UWB system are obtained with Rake coherent receivers, at the expense of increased complexity, mainly due to the estimation of UWB channel, which is characterized by a large number of multipath components. This processing step requires the estimation of a set of spectral components for the received signal, without being able to adopt usual sampling techniques, because of the extremely high Nyquist limit (several GHz).In this thesis, we propose new low-complexity approaches for the UWB channel estimation, relying on the sparse representation of the received signal, the compressed sampling theory, and the reconstruction of the signals with finite rate of innovation. The complexity reduction thus obtained makes it possible to significantly reduce the IR-UWB receiver cost and consumption. First, two existent compressed sampling schemes, single-channel (SoS) and multi-channel (MCMW), are extended to the case of UWB signals having a bandpass spectrum, by taking into account realistic implementation constraints. These schemes allow the acquisition of the spectral coefficients of the received signal at very low sampling frequencies, which are not related anymore to the signal bandwidth, but only to the number of UWB channel multipath components. The efficiency of the proposed approaches is demonstrated through two applications: UWB channel estimation for low complexity coherent Rake receivers, and precise indoor localization for personal assistance and home care.Furthermore, in order to reduce the complexity of the MCMW approach in terms of the number of channels required for UWB channel estimation, we propose a reduced number of channel architecture by increasing the number of transmitted pilot pulses. The same approach is proven to be also useful for reducing the sampling frequency associated to the MCMW scheme.Another important objective of this thesis is the performance optimization for the proposed approaches. Although the acquisition of consecutive spectral coefficients allows a simple implementation of the MCMW scheme, we demonstrate that it not results in the best performance of the reconstruction algorithms. We then propose to rely on the coherence of the measurement matrix to find the optimal set of spectral coefficients maximizing the signal reconstruction performance, as well as a constrained suboptimal set, where the positions of the spectral coefficients are structured so as to facilitate the design of the MCMW scheme. Finally, the approaches proposed in this thesis are experimentally validated using the UWB equipment of Lab-STICC CNRS UMR 6285.

The contribution of this thesis is to build a small macro-econometric model of the Namibian economy, which demonstrates that there is significant statistical support for the hypothesis that there is a contemporaneous relationship between real wage, productivity, unemployment and interest rates in Namibia. This phenomenon has not yet been exploited using macro-econometric modelling, and thus, represents a significant contribution to modelling literature in Namibia. The determination of the sources of unemployment also receives special attention given that high unemployment is a chronic problem in Namibia. All models specified and estimated in the study use the SVAR methodology for the period 1980 to 2013. The study develops a small macro-econometric model using three modular experiments, which include, a basic model, models that separately append demand and exchange rate channels variables to the basic model, and the specification of a small macro-econometric model. The ultimate aim is to find out if monetary policy plays a role in influencing labour market and nominal variables. The hypothesis that the basic real wage, productivity, unemployment rate and interest rate system can be estimated simultaneously is validated. Further, demand and exchange rate channels variables are found to have important additional information, which explains the monetary transmission process, and that shocks to labour market variables affect monetary policy in Namibia. The results also show that the demand channel (import prices and bank credit to the private sector) and the exchange rate channel (nominal exchange rate) variables have important additional information, which affects monetary transmission process in Namibia, which justifies their inclusion in the small macro-econometric model. In addition, shocks to the import price and exchange rate in the macro-econometric model significantly affect labour market variables. However, shocks to bank credit only partially perform as expected, implying that its results need to be considered cautiously. The study further finds that tight monetary policy shocks significantly affect real and nominal variables in Namibia. The results also show that shocks to all variables in the unemployment model significantly affect unemployment, suggesting that the hysteresis assumption is corroborated. This implies that long run aggregate demand is non-neutral in Namibia. / Economics / D. Litt. et Phil. (Economics)

Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro / O presente trabalho aborda o problema de identificação de danos em uma estrutura a partir de sua resposta impulsiva. No modelo adotado, a integridade estrutural é continuamente descrita por um parâmetro de coesão. Sendo assim, o Modelo de Elementos Finitos (MEF) é utilizado para discretizar tanto o campo de deslocamentos, quanto o campo de coesão. O problema de identificação de danos é, então, definido como um problema de otimização, cujo objetivo é minimizar, em relação a um vetor de parâmetros nodais de coesão, um funcional definido a partir da diferença entre a resposta impulsiva experimental e a correspondente resposta prevista por um MEF da estrutura. A identificação de danos estruturais baseadas no domínio do tempo apresenta como vantagens a aplicabilidade em sistemas lineares e/ou com elevados níveis de amortecimento, além de apresentar uma elevada sensibilidade à presença de pequenos danos. Estudos numéricos foram realizados considerando-se um modelo de viga de Euler-Bernoulli simplesmente apoiada. Para a determinação do posicionamento ótimo do sensor de deslocamento e do número de pontos da resposta impulsiva, a serem utilizados no processo de identificação de danos, foi considerado o Projeto Ótimo de Experimentos. A posição do sensor e o número de pontos foram determinados segundo o critério D-ótimo. Outros critérios complementares foram também analisados. Uma análise da sensibilidade foi realizada com o intuito de identificar as regiões da estrutura onde a resposta é mais sensível à presença de um dano em um estágio inicial. Para a resolução do problema inverso de identificação de danos foram considerados os métodos de otimização Evolução Diferencial e Levenberg-Marquardt. Simulações numéricas, considerando-se dados corrompidos com ruído aditivo, foram realizadas com o intuito de avaliar a potencialidade da metodologia de identificação de danos, assim como a influência da posição do sensor e do número de dados considerados no processo de identificação. Com os resultados obtidos, percebe-se que o Projeto Ótimo de Experimentos é de fundamental importância para a identificação de danos. / The present work deals with the damage identification problem in mechanical structures from their impulse response. In the adopted model, the structural integrity is continually described by a cohesion parameter and the finite element model (FEM) is used to spatially discretize both the displacement and cohesion fields. The damage identification problem is then posed as an optimization one, whose objective is to minimize, with respect to the vector of nodal cohesion parameters, a functional based on the difference between the experimentally obtained impulse response and the corresponding one predicted by an FEM of the structure. The damage identification problem built on the time domain presents some advantages, as the applicability in linear systems with high levels of damping an/or closed spaced modes, and in nonlinear systems. Besides, the time domain approaches present high sensitivities to the presence of small damages. Numerical studies were carried out considering a simply supported Euler-Bernoulli beam. Optimal experiment design techniques were considered with the aim at determining the optimal position of the displacement sensor and also the number of points of the impulse response to be considered in the identification process. The Differential Evolution optimization method and the Levenberg-Marquardt method were considered to solve the inverse problem of damage identification. Numerical analysis were carried out in order to assess the influence, on the identification results, of noise in the synthetic experimental data, of the sensor position, and of the number of points retained in the impulse response. The presented results shown the potentiality of the proposed damage identification approach and also the importance of the optimal experiment design for the quality of the identification. al importance for the identification of damage.

Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro / Neste trabalho é apresentada uma nova abordagem para obter as respostas impulsivas biauriculares (BIRs) para um sistema de aurilização utilizando um conjunto de redes neurais artificiais (RNAs). O método proposto é capaz de reconstruir as respostas impulsivas associadas à cabeça humana (HRIRs) por meio de modificação espectral e de interpolação espacial. A fim de cobrir todo o espaço auditivo de recepção, sem aumentar a complexidade da arquitetura da rede, uma estrutura com múltiplas RNAs (conjunto) foi adotada, onde cada rede opera uma região específica do espaço (gomo). Os três principais fatores que influenciam na precisão do modelo arquitetura da rede, ângulos de abertura da área de recepção e atrasos das HRIRs são investigados e uma configuração ideal é apresentada. O erro de modelagem no domínio da frequência é investigado considerando a natureza logarítmica da audição humana. Mais ainda, são propostos novos parâmetros para avaliação do erro, definidos em analogia com alguns dos bem conhecidos parâmetros de qualidade acústica de salas. Através da metodologia proposta obteve-se um ganho computacional, em redução do tempo de processamento, de aproximadamente 62% em relação ao método tradicional de processamento de sinais utilizado para aurilização. A aplicabilidade do novo método em sistemas de aurilização é reforçada mediante uma análise comparativa dos resultados, que incluem a geração das BIRs e o cálculo dos parâmetros acústicos biauriculares (IACF e IACC), os quais mostram erros de magnitudes reduzidas. / This work presents a new approach to obtain the Binaural Impulse Responses (BIRs) for an auralization system by using a committee of artificial neural networks (ANNs). The proposed method is capable to reconstruct the desired modified Head Related Impulse Responses (HRIRs) by means of spectral modification and spatial interpolation. In order to cover the entire auditory reception space, without increasing the networks architecture complexity, a structure with multiple RNAs (group) was adopted, where each network operates in a specific reception region (bud). The three major parameters that affect the models accuracy the networks architecture, the reception regions aperture angles and the HRIRs time shifts are investigated and an optimal setup is presented. The modeling error, in the frequency domain, is investigated considering the logarithmic nature of the human hearing. Moreover, new parameters are proposed for error evaluation in the time domain, defined in analogy with some of the well known acoustical quality parameters in rooms. It was observed that the proposed methodology obtained a computational gain of approximately 62%, in terms of processing time reduction, compared to the classical signal processing method used to obtain auralizations. The applicability of the new method in auralizations systems is validated by comparative analysis, which includes the BIRs generation and calculation of the binaural acoustic parameters (IACF and IACC), showing very low magnitude errors.

Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro / O presente trabalho aborda o problema de identificação de danos em uma estrutura a partir de sua resposta impulsiva. No modelo adotado, a integridade estrutural é continuamente descrita por um parâmetro de coesão. Sendo assim, o Modelo de Elementos Finitos (MEF) é utilizado para discretizar tanto o campo de deslocamentos, quanto o campo de coesão. O problema de identificação de danos é, então, definido como um problema de otimização, cujo objetivo é minimizar, em relação a um vetor de parâmetros nodais de coesão, um funcional definido a partir da diferença entre a resposta impulsiva experimental e a correspondente resposta prevista por um MEF da estrutura. A identificação de danos estruturais baseadas no domínio do tempo apresenta como vantagens a aplicabilidade em sistemas lineares e/ou com elevados níveis de amortecimento, além de apresentar uma elevada sensibilidade à presença de pequenos danos. Estudos numéricos foram realizados considerando-se um modelo de viga de Euler-Bernoulli simplesmente apoiada. Para a determinação do posicionamento ótimo do sensor de deslocamento e do número de pontos da resposta impulsiva, a serem utilizados no processo de identificação de danos, foi considerado o Projeto Ótimo de Experimentos. A posição do sensor e o número de pontos foram determinados segundo o critério D-ótimo. Outros critérios complementares foram também analisados. Uma análise da sensibilidade foi realizada com o intuito de identificar as regiões da estrutura onde a resposta é mais sensível à presença de um dano em um estágio inicial. Para a resolução do problema inverso de identificação de danos foram considerados os métodos de otimização Evolução Diferencial e Levenberg-Marquardt. Simulações numéricas, considerando-se dados corrompidos com ruído aditivo, foram realizadas com o intuito de avaliar a potencialidade da metodologia de identificação de danos, assim como a influência da posição do sensor e do número de dados considerados no processo de identificação. Com os resultados obtidos, percebe-se que o Projeto Ótimo de Experimentos é de fundamental importância para a identificação de danos. / The present work deals with the damage identification problem in mechanical structures from their impulse response. In the adopted model, the structural integrity is continually described by a cohesion parameter and the finite element model (FEM) is used to spatially discretize both the displacement and cohesion fields. The damage identification problem is then posed as an optimization one, whose objective is to minimize, with respect to the vector of nodal cohesion parameters, a functional based on the difference between the experimentally obtained impulse response and the corresponding one predicted by an FEM of the structure. The damage identification problem built on the time domain presents some advantages, as the applicability in linear systems with high levels of damping an/or closed spaced modes, and in nonlinear systems. Besides, the time domain approaches present high sensitivities to the presence of small damages. Numerical studies were carried out considering a simply supported Euler-Bernoulli beam. Optimal experiment design techniques were considered with the aim at determining the optimal position of the displacement sensor and also the number of points of the impulse response to be considered in the identification process. The Differential Evolution optimization method and the Levenberg-Marquardt method were considered to solve the inverse problem of damage identification. Numerical analysis were carried out in order to assess the influence, on the identification results, of noise in the synthetic experimental data, of the sensor position, and of the number of points retained in the impulse response. The presented results shown the potentiality of the proposed damage identification approach and also the importance of the optimal experiment design for the quality of the identification. al importance for the identification of damage.

De nombreuses études ont été menées lors des vingt dernières années dans le domaine de l’auralisation.Elles consistent à rendre audible les résultats d’une simulation acoustique. Ces études se sont majoritairementfocalisées sur les algorithmes de propagation et la restitution du champ acoustique dans desenvironnements complexes. Actuellement, de nombreux travaux portent sur le rendu sonore en tempsréel.Cette thèse aborde la problématique du rendu sonore dynamique d’environnements complexes selonquatre axes : la propagation des ondes sonores, le traitement du signal, la perception spatiale du son etl’optimisation informatique. Dans le domaine de la propagation, une méthode permettant d’analyser lavariété des algorithmes présents dans la bibliographie est proposée. A partir de cette méthode d’analyse,deux algorithmes dédiés à la restitution en temps réel des champs spéculaires et diffus ont été extraits.Dans le domaine du traitement du signal, la restitution est réalisée à l’aide d’un algorithme optimisé despatialisation binaurale pour les chemins spéculaires les plus significatifs et un algorithme de convolutionsur carte graphique pour la restitution du champ diffus. Les chemins les plus significatifs sont extraitsgrace à un modèle perceptif basé sur le masquage temporel et spatial des contributions spéculaires.Finalement, l’implémentation de ces algorithmes sur des architectures parallèles récentes en prenant encompte les nouvelles architectures multi-coeurs et les nouvelles cartes graphiques est présenté. / During the past twenty years many studies have been conducted in the field of auralization, which aimsat rendering audible the results of an acoustic simulation. These studies have mainly focused on thepropagation algorithms and the sound field audio rendering for complex environments. Currently, muchresearch concentrates on real-time audio rendering.This thesis addresses the problematic of real-time audio rendering of complex environments accordingto four axes: sound propagation, Digital Signal Processing (DSP), spatial perception of sound andcomputational optimizations. In the field of propagation, a method that aims at analyzing the varietyof existing algorithms is proposed. This method yields two algorithms dedicated to the real-time propagationof both specular and diffuse information. In the field of DSP, the auralization is performed withan efficient binaural spatialization module for the most significant specular information, and a GPUconvolution algorithm for the diffuse sound field auralization. The most significant paths are extractedthanks to a perceptive model based on temporal and spatial masking of the specular contributions.Finally, the implementation of these algorithms on recent computer architectures, taking advantage ofthe parallel processing of the new CPUs, and the benefits of GPUs for DSP calculations is presented.

INTRODUÇÃO: A dependência química engloba alterações comportamentais, cognitivas e fisiológicas. A impulsividade está presente em muitos transtornos psiquiátricos. Sobre a impulsividade na dependência química de cocaína, os estudos existentes são relativamente novos. A Estimulação Magnética Transcraniana de repetição (EMTr) é um método capaz de neuromodular o cérebro. Este estudo avaliou os efeitos da EMTr sobre a impulsividade em dependentes de cocaína. MÉTODOS: Em um estudo randomizado, duplamente encoberto, 25 pacientes diagnosticados pelo DSM-IV-TR foram tratados com EMTr de alta frequência ativa (1250 pulsos/dia) ou EMTr placebo. O tratamento consistiu em 1 mês de aplicação de EMTr seguido de 2 meses em acompanhamento ambulatorial semanal em um grupo de prevenção de recaídas. Os pacientes foram avaliados antes do início do tratamento com EMTr (T0) e após o término das aplicações (T1), através dos instrumentos: The Shorter PROMIS Questionnaire, The Schalling Impulsivity Scale e The Leeds Dependence Questionnaire. RESULTADOS: 25 pacientes foram tratados e a análise dos dados demonstraram redução nos índices de impulsividade em ambos os grupos ao longo do tempo, porém, quando comparados entre si, os valores de interação não se mostraram significativos. CONCLUSÃO: Os efeitos da EMTr não diferiram em eficácia terapêutica na redução da impulsividade em dependentes de cocaína, com o efeito ativo correspondendo com o placebo / INTRODUCTION: Chemical addiction involves behavioral, cognitive and physiological alterations. Impulsivity is present in many psychiatric disorders. Studies about impulsivity and cocaine chemical addiction are relatively new. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (EMTr) is a method capable of neuromodulation the brain. This study evaluated the effects of EMTr over impulsivity in cocaine addicts. METHODS: This is a randomized doubly covert study with 25 patients diagnosed by the DSM-IV-TR who were treated with active high frequency EMTr (1250 pulses/day) or placebo. Treatment was consisted of one month of application of EMTr followed by 2 months of clinical follow-up in a relapse prevention group. Patients were evaluated before the treatment with EMTr (T0) and after the end of the applications (T1), through the instruments: The Shorter PROMIS Questionnaire, The Schalling Impulsivity Scale and The Leeds Dependence Questionnaire. RESULTS: 25 patients were treated and data analysis showed a reduction in the levels of impulsivity in both groups throughout the time. However, group comparisons did not show statistical differences. CONCLUSION: EMTr\'s effects did not differ in terms of therapeutical efficacy in the reduction of impulsivity in cocaine addicts

Ultra Wideband (UWB) communication has recently drawn considerable attention from academia and industry. This is mainly owing to the ultra high speeds and cognitive features it could offer. The employability of UWB in numerous areas including but not limited to Wireless Personal Area Networks, WPAN's, Body Area Networks, BAN's, radar and medical imaging etc. has opened several avenues of research and development. However, still there is a disagreement on the standardization of UWB. Two contesting radios for UWB are Multiband Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MB-OFDM) and DS-UWB (Direct Sequence Ultra Wideband). As nearly all of the reported research on UWB hasbeen about a very narrow/specific area of the communication system, this thesis looks at the end-to-end performance of an MB-OFDM approach. The overall aim of this project has been to first focus on three different aspects i.e. interference, antenna and propagation aspects of an MB-OFDM system individually and then present a holistic or an end-to-end system analysis finally. In the first phase of the project the author investigated the performance of MB-OFDM system under the effect of his proposed generic or technology non-specific interference. Avoiding the conventional Gaussian approximation, the author has employed an advanced stochastic method. A total of two approaches have been presented in this phase of the project. The first approach is an indirect one which involves the Moment Generating Functions (MGF's) of the Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise-Ratio (SINR) and the Probability Density Function (pdf) of the SINR to calculate the Average Probabilities of Error of an MB-OFDM system under the influence of proposed generic interference. This approach assumed a specific two-dimensional Poisson spatial/geometric placement of interferers around the victim MB-OFDM receiver. The second approach is a direct approach and extends the first approach by employing a wider class of generic interference. In the second phase of the work the author designed, simulated, prototyped and tested novel compact monopole planar antennas for UWB application. In this phase of the research, compact antennas for the UWB application are presented. These designs employ low-loss Rogers duroid substrates and are fed by Copla-nar Waveguides. The antennas have a proposed feed-line to the main radiating element transition region. This transition region is formed by a special step-generating function-set called the "Inverse Parabolic Step Sequence" or IPSS. These IPSS-based antennas are simulated, prototyped and then tested in the ane-choic chamber. An empirical approach, aimed to further miniaturize IPSS-based antennas, was also derived in this phase of the project. The empirical approach has been applied to derive the design of a further miniaturized antenna. More-over, an electrical miniaturization limit has been concluded for the IPSS-based antennas. The third phase of the project has investigated the effect of the indoor furnishing on the distribution of the elevation Angle-of-Arrival (AOA) of the rays at the receiver. Previously, constant distributions for the AOA of the rays in the elevation direction had been reported. This phase of the research has proposed that the AOA distribution is not fixed. It is established by the author that the indoor elevation AOA distributions depend on the discrete levels of furnishing. A joint time-angle-furnishing channel model is presented in this research phase. In addition, this phase of the thesis proposes two vectorial or any direction AOA distributions for the UWB indoor environments. Finally, the last phase of this thesis is presented. As stated earlier, the overall aim of the project has been to look at three individual aspects of an MB-OFDM system, initially, and then look at the holistic system, finally. Therefore, this final phase of the research presents an end-to-end MB-OFDM system analysis. The interference analysis of the first phase of the project is revisited to re-calculate the probability of bit error with realistic/measured path loss exponents which have been reported in the existing literature. In this method, Gaussian Quadrature Rule based approximations are computed for the average probability of bit error. Last but not the least, an end-to-end or comprehensive system equation/impulse response is presented. The proposed system equation covers more aspects of an indoor UWB system than reported in the existing literature.

Du fait de la nature ouverte et partagée du canal radio, les communications sans fil souffrent de vulnérabilités sérieuses en terme de sécurité. Dans ces travaux de thèse, je me suis intéressé particulièrement à deux classes d’attaques à savoir l’attaque par relais et l’attaque par déni de service (brouillage). La technologie de couche physique UWB-IR a connu un grand essor au cours de cette dernière décennie et elle est une candidate intéressante pour les réseaux sans fil à courte portée. Mon objectif principal était d’exploiter les caractéristiques de la couche physique UWB-IR afin de renforcer la sécurité des communications sans fil. L’attaque par relais peut mettre à défaut les protocoles cryptographiques d’authentification. Pour remédier à cette menace, les protocoles de distance bounding ont été proposés. Dans ce cadre, je propose deux nouveaux protocoles (STHCP : Secret Time-Hopping Code Protocol et SMCP : Secret Mapping Code Protocol) qui améliorent considérablement la sécurité des protocoles de distance bounding au moyen des paramètres de la radio UWB-IR. Le brouillage consiste en l’émission intentionnelle d’un signal sur le canal lors du déroulement d’une communication. Mes contributions concernant le problème de brouillage sont triples. D’abord, j’ai déterminé les paramètres d’un brouilleur gaussien pire cas contre un récepteur UWB-IR non-cohérent. En second lieu, je propose un nouveau modèle de brouillage par analogie avec les attaques contre le système de chiffrement. Troisièmement, je propose une modification rendant la radio UWB-IR plus robuste au brouillage. Enfin, dans une dernière partie de mes travaux, je me suis intéressé au problème d’intégrer la sécurité à un réseau UWB-IR en suivant l’approche d’embedding. Le principe de cette approche consiste à superposer et à transmettre les informations de sécurité simultanément avec les données et avec une contrainte de compatibilité. Ainsi, je propose deux nouvelles techniques d’embedding pour la couche physique UWB-IR afin d’intégrer un service d’authentification. / Due to the shared nature of wireless medium, wireless communications are more vulnerable to security threats. In my PhD work, I focused on two types of threats: relay attacks and jamming. UWB-IR physical layer technology has seen a great development during the last decade which makes it a promising candidate for short range wireless communications. My main goal was to exploit UWB-IR physical layer characteristics in order to reinforce security of wireless communications. By the simple way of signal relaying, the adversary can defeat wireless authentication protocols. The first countermeasure proposed to thwart these relay attacks was distance bounding protocol. The concept of distance bounding relies on the combination of two sides: an authentication cryptographic side and a distance checking side. In this context, I propose two new distance bounding protocols that significantly improve the security of existing distance bounding protocols by means of UWB-IR physical layer parameters. The first protocol called STHCP is based on using secret time-hopping codes. Whereas, the second called SMCP is based on secret mapping codes. Security analysis and comparison to the state of the art highlight various figures of merit of my proposition. Jamming consists in the emission of noise over the channel while communication is taking place and constitutes a major problem to the security of wireless communications. In a first contribution, I have determined worst case Gaussian noise parameters (central frequency and bandwidth) against UWB-IR communication employing PPM modulation and a non-coherent receiver. The metric considered for jammer optimization is the signal-to-jamming ratio at the output of the receiver. In a second contribution, I propose a new jamming model by analogy to attacks against ciphering algorithms. The new model leads to distinguish various jamming scenarios ranging from the best case to the worst case. Moreover, I propose a modification of the UWB-IR physical layer which allows to restrict any jamming problem to the most favorable scenario. The modification is based on using a cryptographic modulation depending on a stream cipher. The new radio has the advantage to combine the resistance to jamming and the protection from eavesdropping. Finally, I focused on the problem of security embedding on an existing UWB-IR network. Security embedding consists in adding security features directly at the physical layer and sending them concurrently with data. The embedding mechanism should satisfy a compatibility concern to existing receivers in the network. I propose two new embedding techniques which rely on the superposition of a pulse orthogonal to the original pulse by the form or by the position. Performances analysis reveal that both embedding techniques satisfy all system design constraints.

Les réseaux corporels (WBAN) se réfère aux réseaux de capteurs (WSN) "portables" utilisés pour collecter des données personnelles, telles que la fréquence cardiaque ou l'activité humaine. Cette thèse a pour objectif de proposer des algorithmes coopératifs (PHY/MAC) pour effectuer des applications de localisation, tels que la capture de mouvement et la navigation de groupe. Pour cela, nous exploitons les avantages du WBAN avec différentes topologies et différents types de liens: on-body à l'échelle du corps, body-to-body entre les utilisateurs et off-body par rapport à l'infrastructure. La transmission repose sur une radio impulsionnelle (IR-UWB), afin d'obtenir des mesures de distance précises, basées sur l’estimation du temps d'arrivée (TOA). Ainsi, on s’intéresse au problème du positionnement à travers de la conception de stratégies coopératives et en considérant la mobilité du corps et les variations canal. Notre première contribution consiste en la création d'une base de données obtenue avec de scénarios réalistes pour la modélisation de la mobilité et du canal. Ensuite, nous introduisons un simulateur capable d'exploiter nos mesures pour la conception de protocoles. Grâce à ces outils, nous étudions d’abord l'impact de la mobilité et des variations de canal sur l'estimation de la distance avec le protocole "three way-ranging" (3-WR). Ainsi, nous quantifions et comparons l'erreur avec des modèles statistiques. Dans un second temps, nous analysons différentes algorithmes de gestion de ressources pour réduire l'impact de la mobilité sur l'estimation de position. Ensuite, nous proposons une optimisation avec un filtre de Kalman étendu (EKF) pour réduire l'erreur. Enfin, nous proposons un algorithme coopératif basé sur l'analyse d’estimateurs de qualité de lien (LQEs) pour améliorer la fiabilité. Pour cela, nous évaluons le taux de succès de positionnement en utilisant trois modèles de canaux (empirique, simulé et expérimental) avec un algorithme (basé sur la théorie des jeux) pour le choix des ancres virtuelles. / Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) refers to the family of “wearable” wireless sensor networks (WSN) used to collect personal data, such as human activity, heart rate, sleep sequences or geographical position. This thesis aims at proposing cooperative algorithms and cross-layer mechanisms with WBAN to perform large-scale individual motion capture and coordinated group navigation applications. For this purpose, we exploit the advantages of jointly cooperative and heterogeneous WBAN under full/half-mesh topologies for localization purposes, from on-body links at the body scale, body-to-body links between mobile users of a group and off-body links with respect to the environment and the infrastructure. The wireless transmission relies on an impulse radio Ultra-Wideband (IR-UWB) radio (based on the IEEE 802.15.6 standard), in order to obtain accurate peer-to-peer ranging measurements based on Time of Arrival (ToA) estimates. Thus, we address the problem of positioning and ranging estimation through the design of cross-layer strategies by considering realistic body mobility and channel variations. Our first contribution consists in the creation of an unprecedented WBAN measurement database obtained with real experimental scenarios for mobility and channel modelling. Then, we introduce a discrete-event (WSNet) and deterministic (PyLayers) co-simulator tool able to exploit our measurement database to help us on the design and validation of cooperative algorithms. Using these tools, we investigate the impact of nodes mobility and channel variations on the ranging estimation. In particular, we study the “three-way ranging” (3-WR) protocol and we observed that the delays of 3-WR packets have an impact on the distances estimated in function of the speed of nodes. Then, we quantify and compare the error with statistical models and we show that the error generated by the channel is bigger than the mobility error. In a second time, we extend our study for the position estimation. Thus, we analyze different strategies at MAC layer through scheduling and slot allocation algorithms to reduce the impact of mobility. Then, we propose to optimize our positioning algorithm with an extended Kalman filter (EKF), by using our scheduling strategies and the statistical models of mobility and channel errors. Finally, we propose a distributed-cooperative algorithm based on the analysis of long-term and short-term link quality estimators (LQEs) to improve the reliability of positioning. To do so, we evaluate the positioning success rate under three different channel models (empirical, simulated and experimental) along with a conditional algorithm (based on game theory) for virtual anchor choice. We show that our algorithm improve the number of positions estimated for the nodes with the worst localization performance.