Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2008. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 44 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 32-37).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington State University, May 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 4, 2009). "Department of Psychology." Includes bibliographical references (p. 50-55).

With the increasing demand for access to the crowded radio frequency spectrum, cognitive radios have been suggested as one solution. Cognitive radios would be frequency agile and able to sense their radio environment and opportunistically use empty spectrum. Spectrum sensing, monitoring a given band of spectrum to see if it is occupied, is an essential part of a cognitive radio. The preferred method of spectrum sensing is the energy detector, which does not require any a priori information about the signal to be detected and is computationally simple to implement. Man-made noise, impulsive in nature, has also become more prevalent with the widespread use of electronic devices. In this thesis, we took measurements of man-made impulsive noise in the broadcast digital television bands to measure its presence, power, and spatial correlation. The effects of impulsive noise on the detection performance of an energy detector were analyzed. Lastly, a wideband RF receiver was designed, built, and tested on the Virginia Tech campus, which would be well suited both to spectrum sensing and taking measurements of impulsive noise. / Master of Science

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When two or more chaotic systems are coupled, they may exhibit synchronized chaotic oscillations. The synchronization of chaos is usually understood as the regime of chaotic oscillations in which the corresponding variables or coupled systems are equal to each other. This kind of synchronized chaos is most frequently observed in systems specifically designed to be able to produce this behaviour. In this thesis, one particular type of synchronization, called impulsive synchronization, is investigated and applied to low dimensional chaotic, hyperchaotic and spatiotemporal chaotic systems. This synchronization technique requires driving one chaotic system, called response system, by samples of the state variables of the other chaotic system, called drive system, at discrete moments. Equi-Lagrange stability and equi-attractivity in the large property of the synchronization error become our major concerns when discussing the dynamics of synchronization to guarantee the convergence of the error dynamics to zero. Sufficient conditions for equi-Lagrange stability and equi-attractivity in the large are obtained for the different types of chaos-generating systems used. The issue of robustness of synchronized chaotic oscillations with respect to parameter variations and time delay, is also addressed and investigated when dealing with impulsive synchronization of low dimensional chaotic and hyperchaotic systems. Due to the fact that it is impossible to design two identical chaotic systems and that transmission and sampling delays in impulsive synchronization are inevitable, robustness becomes a fundamental issue in the models considered. Therefore it is established, in this thesis, that under relatively large parameter perturbations and bounded delay, impulsive synchronization still shows very desired behaviour. In fact, criteria for robustness of this particular type of synchronization are derived for both cases, especially in the case of time delay, where sufficient conditions for the synchronization error to be equi-attractivity in the large, are derived and an upper bound on the delay terms is also obtained in terms of the other parameters of the systems involved. The theoretical results, described above, regarding impulsive synchronization, are reconfirmed numerically. This is done by analyzing the Lyapunov exponents of the error dynamics and by showing the simulations of the different models discussed in each case. The application of the theory of synchronization, in general, and impulsive synchronization, in particular, to communication security, is also presented in this thesis. A new impulsive cryptosystem, called induced-message cryptosystem, is proposed and its properties are investigated. It was established that this cryptosystem does not require the transmission of the encrypted signal but instead the impulses will carry the information needed for synchronization and for retrieving the message signal. Thus the security of transmission is increased and the time-frame congestion problem, discussed in the literature, is also solved. Several other impulsive cryptosystems are also proposed to accommodate more solutions to several security issues and to illustrate the different properties of impulsive synchronization. Finally, extending the applications of impulsive synchronization to employ spatiotemporal chaotic systems, generated by partial differential equations, is addressed. Several possible models implementing this approach are suggested in this thesis and few questions are raised towards possible future research work in this area.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between child-oriented parental attitudes and resulting child behavior.

Nowadays most of the communications systems are designed considering only to work under AWGN (Additive White Gaussian Noise). But the implementation of wireless systems in industrial facilities brings different kind of interference from machines or any other kind of electronic devices. Some of them are sources of randomly and high power noise, which commonly is known as impulsive noise. The objective in this thesis is to study the impact of the impulsive noise on a communication using QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) and PSK (Phase-Shift Keying) schemes, by observing the BER (Bit Error Rate) and the APD (Amplitude Probability Distribution). For that, it is developed a measurement method that will be used in a real industrial environment in future work.      The content of this thesis is divided in two parts. In the first part is made a program in MATLAB to simulate the communication through a noisy channel. Then is developed a measurement method which is tested in three different ways corresponding to 3 different outputs of an spectrum analyzer, namely, 20,4 MHz IF output, video output and IQ data output.      The relation of impulsive noise is presented in the second part with different statistical properties in the BER and the APD, in the setup with the best performance. At the end of the thesis a concluding section summarizes the results obtained during the work and some lines of future work in a real industrial environment with the developed method.

When two or more chaotic systems are coupled, they may exhibit synchronized chaotic oscillations. The synchronization of chaos is usually understood as the regime of chaotic oscillations in which the corresponding variables or coupled systems are equal to each other. This kind of synchronized chaos is most frequently observed in systems specifically designed to be able to produce this behaviour. In this thesis, one particular type of synchronization, called impulsive synchronization, is investigated and applied to low dimensional chaotic, hyperchaotic and spatiotemporal chaotic systems. This synchronization technique requires driving one chaotic system, called response system, by samples of the state variables of the other chaotic system, called drive system, at discrete moments. Equi-Lagrange stability and equi-attractivity in the large property of the synchronization error become our major concerns when discussing the dynamics of synchronization to guarantee the convergence of the error dynamics to zero. Sufficient conditions for equi-Lagrange stability and equi-attractivity in the large are obtained for the different types of chaos-generating systems used. The issue of robustness of synchronized chaotic oscillations with respect to parameter variations and time delay, is also addressed and investigated when dealing with impulsive synchronization of low dimensional chaotic and hyperchaotic systems. Due to the fact that it is impossible to design two identical chaotic systems and that transmission and sampling delays in impulsive synchronization are inevitable, robustness becomes a fundamental issue in the models considered. Therefore it is established, in this thesis, that under relatively large parameter perturbations and bounded delay, impulsive synchronization still shows very desired behaviour. In fact, criteria for robustness of this particular type of synchronization are derived for both cases, especially in the case of time delay, where sufficient conditions for the synchronization error to be equi-attractivity in the large, are derived and an upper bound on the delay terms is also obtained in terms of the other parameters of the systems involved. The theoretical results, described above, regarding impulsive synchronization, are reconfirmed numerically. This is done by analyzing the Lyapunov exponents of the error dynamics and by showing the simulations of the different models discussed in each case. The application of the theory of synchronization, in general, and impulsive synchronization, in particular, to communication security, is also presented in this thesis. A new impulsive cryptosystem, called induced-message cryptosystem, is proposed and its properties are investigated. It was established that this cryptosystem does not require the transmission of the encrypted signal but instead the impulses will carry the information needed for synchronization and for retrieving the message signal. Thus the security of transmission is increased and the time-frame congestion problem, discussed in the literature, is also solved. Several other impulsive cryptosystems are also proposed to accommodate more solutions to several security issues and to illustrate the different properties of impulsive synchronization. Finally, extending the applications of impulsive synchronization to employ spatiotemporal chaotic systems, generated by partial differential equations, is addressed. Several possible models implementing this approach are suggested in this thesis and few questions are raised towards possible future research work in this area.

Psychopathological conditions in which decision making is impaired are common and include schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and addiction, among others. This dissertation aimed to investigate the role of cholinergic signaling in risky and impulsive decision making. Rats were trained in either a “probability discounting” task in which they chose between small guaranteed and large probabilistically delivered food rewards (a measure of risky decision making), or a “delay discounting” task in which they chose between small immediate and large delayed food rewards (a measure of impulsive decision making). Rats were also divided into high and low “risk-taking” or “impulsive” groups on the basis of their performance in the tasks. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effects of cholinergic drugs on performance in the probability and delay discounting task, respectively. In Experiment 1, acute administration of the acetylcholinesterase inhibitor donepezil decreased choice of the large risky reward in “risk-taking” rats. Acute administration of nicotine increased choice of the large risky reward in both groups, whereas administration of the nicotinic receptor antagonist mecamylamine decreased choice of the large risky reward in “risktaking” rats. In Experiment 2, nicotine increased choice of the large delayed reward and mecamylamine shifted impulsive choice in a non-specific manner in “impulsive” rats. The muscarinic receptor agonist oxotremorine decreased choice of the large delayed reward in “non-impulsive” rats and increased choice in “impulsive” rats, while treatment with the muscarinic receptor antagonist atropine increased impulsive choice in all rats. In Experiment 3, another group of rats was used to examine correlations between baseline performance in both discounting tasks and nicotinic receptor density levels in several brain regions. Impulsive choice was positively correlated with α4β2 receptor levels in ventral hippocampus and nucleus accumbens shell, and α7 receptor levels in the basolateral amygdala, such that greater impulsivity was associated with higher receptor levels. Additionally, risky choice was negatively correlated with α4β2 receptor levels in nucleus accumbens shell, such that greater risk was associated with lower receptor levels. These experiments suggest that cholinergic receptors are involved in cost-benefit decision making and that they may prove a useful target for treatment of psychopathological conditions in which decision-making deficits are present.

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