This thesis will examine the velocity structure of Austfonna, a large ice cap in the Svalbard archipelago. The remoteness of its location had previously hindered detailed observation by traditional methods, but indirect evidence suggested that it had the potential to be dynamically interesting. A recently developed remote sensing technique, SAR interferometry (inSAR), has allowed us to obtain the most detailed map of Austfonna's topography to date, plus unprecedented synoptic measurements of its velocity field. A four year time series of data acquired by the European Remote Sensing satellites ERS-1 and ERS-2 has been used to delineate active and inactive areas of the ice cap, which suggest that past ideas about Austfonna's thermal structure may need to be re-examined. It has also revealed large temporal velocity variations in one of its major drainage basins. These are difficult to classify because intermittent sampling has prevented us from determining their temporal wavelength, and also because globally the database of observed glacier velocity variations is so sparse that the range of possible variable flow scenarios is unknown. The work here demonstrates the huge potential for inSAR in helping to resolve such issues, and in providing an invaluable resource for scientists monitoring the stability of the world's ice fields.

Underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) has attracted increasing interest for data transfer in various underwater activities. However, the complexity of the water environment poses considerable challenges to establish aligned and reliable UWOC links. Therefore, solutions that are capable of relieving the requirements on positioning, acquisition and tracking (PAT) are highly demanded. Different from the conventional blue-green light band utilized in UWOC, ultraviolet (UV) light is featured with low solar background noise, non-line-of-sight (NLOS) and good secrecy. The proposed work is directed towards the demonstration and evaluating the feasibility of high- speed NLOS UWOC for easing the strict requirement on alignment, and thus circumvent the issues of scintillation, deep-fading, and complete signal blockage presented in conventional LOS UWOC. This work was first started with the investigation of proper NLOS configurations. Path loss (PL) was chosen as a figure-of-merit for link performance. With the understanding of favorable NLOS UWOC configurations, we established a 377-nm laser-based, the first-of-its-kind NLOS UWOC link. The practicality of such NLOS UWOC links has been further tested in a field trial. Besides the underwater communication links, UV-based NLOS is also appealing to be the link for direct communication across the wavy water-air interface. Investigations for such a direct communication link have been carried out to study data rate, coverage and robustness to the dynamic wave movement, based on the performance of different modulation schemes, including non-return-to-zero (NRZ)-OOK and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). Further this study, an in-Red Sea canal field in-situ test has been conducted, showing strong robustness of the system. In addition, an in-diving pool drone-aided real-application deployment has been carried on. The trial results indicate link stability, which alleviates the issues brought about by the misalignment and mobility in harsh environments, paving the way towards real applications. Our studies pave the way foreventual applications of UWOC byrelieving the strict requirements on PAT using UV-based NLOS. Such modality is much sought-after for implementing robust, secure, and high-speed UWOC links in harsh oceanic environments.

Position location has become one of the more important tasks for improving communication and networking performance for future commercial wireless systems. It is also the enabling technology for many control and sensing applications envisioned by the wireless sensor networks (WSN). Despite its meaningfulness and many algorithms being developed in the past several years, position location in harsh propagation environments remains to be a challenging issue, due mainly to the lack of sufficient infrastructure support and the prominent phenomenon of non-line-of-sight (NLOS) signal propagation. Recently, adopting the concept of collaborative position location has attracted much research interest due to its potential in overcoming the abovementioned two difficulties. In this work, we approach collaborative position location from two different angles. Specifically, we investigate the optimal performance of collaborative position location, which serves as a theoretical performance benchmark. In addition, we developed a computationally efficient algorithm for collaborative position location and incorporated an effective NLOS mitigation method to improve its performance in NLOS-dense environments. Overall, our work provides insight into both theoretical and practical aspects of collaborative position location. / Ph. D.

The uncountable number of tools for the creation of synthetic terrains poses as a challenge for simulation interoperability. The permutations of tools, elevation maps, and software settings leads to combinations of poorly correlated virtual terrains. An important issue in distributed simulations is the lack of line-of-sight correlation. For example, in military networked simulations, consistent intervisibility between simulated entities is crucial for a fair-fight, especially when simulations include direct-fire weapons. The literature review presented in the Chapter Two discusses a multitude of interoperability issues caused by discrepant terrain representations and rendering engines noncompliant to any standard image generation process. Furthermore, the literature review discusses past research that strived for measuring (or mitigating) the correlation issues between terrain databases. Based on previous research, this thesis proposes a methodology for analysis of line-of-sight correlation between a pair of terrain databases. All the mathematical theory involved in the methodology is discussed in the Chapter Three. In addition, this thesis proposes a new method for measuring the roughness of a visual terrain database. This method takes into account the 3D dispersion of the vectors normal to the polygons in the terrain's mesh. Because the vectors normal to the polygons are conveniently stored in most visual databases, the roughness calculation suggested here is fast and does not require sampling the terrain's elevation. In order to demonstrate the proposed method, twin terrain databases and a tool were created as part of this thesis. The goal of this tool is to extract data from the terrain databases for statistical analysis. The tool is open source and its source code is provided with this thesis. The Chapter Four includes an example of statistical analysis using an open source statistic software. The line-of-sight correlation analysis discussed here includes the terrain's geometry only (terrain's culture is not addressed). Human factors were not taken into consideration.

Traditional viewshed analyses distinguish between those areas which can be seen from a given observation point and those which cannot be seen. Given a surface digital elevation model (DEM) and observer properties (location and height), the algorithm computes whether or not each target cell is within the observer's line-of-sight. Just as significant and robust (although yet not commercially available) would be a tool that could search local neighborhoods of the observer to determine if different tower placements could achieve significantly improved viewsheds. This thesis customizes the popular ArcGIS software to demonstrate the implementation of such a tool. The use of different sampling methods specifies locations to site observation points throughout the Virginia Tech central campus, characterized by having large open areas in an otherwise urban environment. Analysis of the viewsheds calculated both before and after applying the optimization tool determined the amount of coverage gained by moving the observer short distances across the ground. In large open areas (Drillfield, parking lots), optimization achieved minimal gain, however in areas near buildings, significant increases in visible area were possible by moving the observer to the top of a nearby building. This research rejects the common belief that the best location for an observer or transmitter in open areas is always at the highest elevation point. However, in settings with tremendous vertical differences over small horizontal distances (ground to roof), the belief is justified. / Master of Science

Previous research into children’s understanding of line of sight has led to differing conclusions as to when and how children become able to appreciate that their view of an object will be different from another persons’ view of the same object. This is probably due to the diversity of response methods required from the children as well as different types of tasks and settings being used between the experiments. The aim of the present thesis is to investigate systematically how children will fare across various settings and whether their comprehension of line of sight can be biased by the task’s setting. The first experiment assessed children’s understanding of line of sight through a tube that was bent to varying degrees of curvature and whether their response pattern would change when feedback was provided. Results showed that children have great difficulty performing correctly on this task, especially when the degree of curvature is small. The older children corrected their response pattern when feedback was provided but the younger children tended to persevere in their response pattern regardless of contradictory feedback. The second experiment looked at children’s performance when walls were used - half the walls were smooth gradual curves while the other half was walls made up of two segments that met to form an angle. Again the children were asked to predict if two dolls placed at opposite ends of each wall would be able to see each other. Results showed that though even young children have no trouble in performing correctly on the “angled” walls, performance on the curved walls was significantly poorer with the older children performing better than the younger children. The third experiment sought to quantify the point at which children deemed line of sight became possible. To do this we used a single “U” shaped trench with the children being asked if one doll could see another in various configurations. The results showed a strong bias towards over estimating visibility. The fourth experiment repeated the second experiment but used wooden trenches instead of walls but also sought to quantify the “switchover” point at which the children deem vision becomes possible between the two dolls. The difference between angles and curves was once again replicated as was the age difference. The fifth experiment compared children’s appreciation of line of sight through/along tubes, trenches and walls. This performance level varied strongly depending on the type of task the child was asked to perform upon with the tube proving to be the most difficult and the angled trench the easiest. The overall findings of the experiment pointed to a context-dependent performance, implying a piece-meal development of childrens’ comprehension of line of sight.

abstract: Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging of objects not visible to either the camera or illumina- tion source is a challenging task with vital applications including surveillance and robotics. Recent NLOS reconstruction advances have been achieved using time-resolved measure- ments. Acquiring these time-resolved measurements requires expensive and specialized detectors and laser sources. In work proposes a data-driven approach for NLOS 3D local- ization requiring only a conventional camera and projector. The localisation is performed using a voxelisation and a regression problem. Accuracy of greater than 90% is achieved in localizing a NLOS object to a 5cm × 5cm × 5cm volume in real data. By adopting the regression approach an object of width 10cm to localised to approximately 1.5cm. To generalize to line-of-sight (LOS) scenes with non-planar surfaces, an adaptive lighting al- gorithm is adopted. This algorithm, based on radiosity, identifies and illuminates scene patches in the LOS which most contribute to the NLOS light paths, and can factor in sys- tem power constraints. Improvements ranging from 6%-15% in accuracy with a non-planar LOS wall using adaptive lighting is reported, demonstrating the advantage of combining the physics of light transport with active illumination for data-driven NLOS imaging. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Electrical Engineering 2019

<p>A MATLAB code for calculating neutron energy spectra from JET discharges was developed. The code uses the fuel ion distribution calculated by the computer code SELFO to generate the spectrum through a Monte-Carlo simulation. The calculated spectra were then compared against experimental results from the neutron spectrometer TOFOR. In the calculations, the exact orbits of the fuel ions are taken into account, in order to investigate what effects this has on the spectrum. The reason for this is that, for certain plasma heating scenarios, large populations of fast fuel ions are formed. These fast ions may have Larmor radii of the order of decimeters, which is comparable to the width of the sight line of TOFOR, and may therefore affect the recorded neutron spectrum. A JET discharge with both NBI and 3rd harmonic ICRF heating was analyzed. The results show that the details of the line of sight of the detector indeed affects the neutron spectrum. This effect is probably important for other diagnostics techniques, such as gamma-ray spectroscopy and neutral particle analysis, as well. Good agreement with TOFOR data is observed, but not for the exact same time slice of the discharge, which leaves some questions yet to be investigated.</p>

For the mass demands of personalized security services, such as tracking, supervision, and emergent rescue, the location technologies of mobile communication have drawn much attention of the governments, academia, and industries around the world. However, existing location methods cannot satisfy the requirements of low cost and high accuracy. We hypothesized that a new mobile location algorithm based on the current GSM system will effectively improve user satisfaction. In this study, a prototype system will be developed, implemented, and experimented by integrating the useful information such as the geometry of the cell layout, and the related mobile positioning technologies. The intersection of the regions formed by the communication space of the base stations will be explored. Furthermore, the density-based clustering algorithm (DCA) and GA-based algorithm will be designed to analyze the intersection region and estimate the most possible location of a mobile phone. Simulation results show that the location error of the GA-based is less than 0.075 km for 67% of the time, and less than 0.15 km for 95% of the time. The results of the experiments satisfy the location accuracy demand of E-911.

A MATLAB code for calculating neutron energy spectra from JET discharges was developed. The code uses the fuel ion distribution calculated by the computer code SELFO to generate the spectrum through a Monte-Carlo simulation. The calculated spectra were then compared against experimental results from the neutron spectrometer TOFOR. In the calculations, the exact orbits of the fuel ions are taken into account, in order to investigate what effects this has on the spectrum. The reason for this is that, for certain plasma heating scenarios, large populations of fast fuel ions are formed. These fast ions may have Larmor radii of the order of decimeters, which is comparable to the width of the sight line of TOFOR, and may therefore affect the recorded neutron spectrum. A JET discharge with both NBI and 3rd harmonic ICRF heating was analyzed. The results show that the details of the line of sight of the detector indeed affects the neutron spectrum. This effect is probably important for other diagnostics techniques, such as gamma-ray spectroscopy and neutral particle analysis, as well. Good agreement with TOFOR data is observed, but not for the exact same time slice of the discharge, which leaves some questions yet to be investigated.