Nowadays, the world is facing a lot of serious problems because of the population explosion and the resource shortage. Overcrowded living area creates economic and social issues, and the limitation of material choices not only lowers the quality of house holding merchandise, but also leads to the raise of the price. Due to all these complicated factors, multi-function furniture becomes one of the solutions for space sustainability. Multi-function furniture combines different functions into one piece to control the material consumption, creates opportunities for the interaction between the object and human, and effectively save user's space. At the same time, the price of multi-function furniture, by contrast, is usually more reasonable than purchasing several furniture pieces together. This kind of design becomes more and more popular among young generation, and it is the trend of today's furniture design. Through the exploration of human's living habits and the study of contemporary multi-function furniture, I designed a piece of furniture, Chinese Bench with the concept of space and material sustainability. This thesis is based on the field study of ergonomics and furniture design theory, illustrates the final prototypes of my multi-functional furniture. The design can be served as sit, table and storage, and it emphasizes the importance of space use and valuable customization for user at the same time. The design aims to provide a more efficient living mode in limited space, and reduce the material consumption. At the same time, the pattern and graphic forms are adapted in this design; they can meet people's need for beauty and function at the same time, let the user obtain the sympathy and entertainment from the design

Traditionally, power companies manage utility bills by sending agents to customer houses to take the consumption records by hand and send the records to data bank at the control center. It is difficult and in-efficient to keep track of these records. In addition, the possible man-made mistakes on information management may add extra personnel expenses. This thesis incorporates such techniques as AT90S8515 Imbedded Chip, electronic circuits, and GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) infrastructure into a comprehensive ¡¥Automatic Power Consumption Report System¡¦. The system provides an immediate transmission of the consumption records, which changes the traditional manual method to collect records. Meanwhile, the GSM and the SMS (Short Message Service) are also incorporated to provide the capability of informing the management of emergent messages such as unusual situations of the consumption records acquired. Through TCP/IP, the system integrates VB (Visual Basic) Communication Protocol, ASP (Active Server Pages), and SQL (Structure Query Language) to achieve the function of remote monitoring through the Internet and to enable the consumers the possibilities of checking their own consumption records with Internet Explorer remotely.

<p> One of the important objectives of a Radar Warning Receiver (RWR) aboard a tactical aircraft is to evaluate the level of threat posed by hostile radars in an extremely complex Electronic Warfare (EW) environment in reliable, robust and timely manner. For the RWR objective to be achieved, it passively collects electromagnetic signals emitted from potentially hostile radars. One class of such radar systems is the Multi-Function Radar (MFR) which presents a serious threat from the stand point of a RWR. MFRs perform multiple functions simultaneously employing complex hierarchical signal architecture. The purpose of this paper is to uncover the evolution of the operational mode (radar function) from the view point of a target carrying the RWR when provided with noisy observations and some prior knowledge about how the observed radar functions. The RWR estimates the radar's threat which is directly dependant on its current mode of operation. This paper presents a grid filter approach to estimate operational mode probabilities accurately with the aid of pre-trained Observable Operator Models (OOMs) and Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). Subsequently, the current mode of operation of a radar is estimated in the maximum a posteriori (MAP) sense. Practicality of this novel approach is tested for an EW scenario in this paper by means of a hypothetical MFR example. Finally, we conclude that the OOM-based grid filter tracks the mode of operation of a MFR more accurately than the corresponding HMM-based grid filter. </p> / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

Nowadays, physical inactivity has become a global problem. According to the research, about 5.3 million deaths all over the world in 2008 could be attributed to inactivity [1]. However, it is enough to do a little exercise every day to reduce the risk of premature deaths by as much as 30 percent. Due to the increasing working pressure, people do not have enough time to go to gym and do exercises, which means that the design of multi-functional fitness chair is necessary so that people can do exercise at home at any time.There have already been many similar household fitness products in the market, but most of them take up large space and the training part is very simple. In comparison, the multi-function fitness chair designed in this thesis combines several fitness equipment together in one chair, so it would save a lot of space, and yet provides possibility to perform versatile exercise.The product was designed in Autodesk Inventor 2015, and finite element analysis was performed in Inventor 2015 and for checking the strength and safety of the design.

The dissertation looks at the city as an emergent product of the lower-level activities of the city components. City components refer to the smaller elements which make up the fabric of a city like buildings, roads, inhabitants, cars etc. Lower-level activities refer to the interaction between these components, and define the consequential feedback into the city as a whole. An understanding of these aspects of emergence allows for the identification of tools and guidelines which, in turn, forms the basis for design and building performance criteria. / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Architecture / unrestricted

In this dissertation, some multi-function and flexible RF/microwave devices have been studied to solve the issues in the modern microwave system designs. First, a power divider with two functions is proposed. The first function is a zero-phase delay power divider using zero-phase impedance transformer. The second function is a power divider with impedance transforming property. To achieve the first function, the two arms are treated as zero-phase impedance transformers. When the phase requirement is relaxed, the second function is obtained. Shunt transmission line stubs are employed to connect the isolation resistor, which provides great flexibility in the design. Then, a balun with transparent termination impedance and flexible open arms is designed. The design parameters of the balun are independent to the port impedance. This property allows the balun to work with different system impedances. Furthermore, the two output ports of the balun do not need to be connected together, which enables the device to have a very flexible structure. Finally, the continuous research of a tunable/reconfigurable coupler with equal output impedance is presented. In addition to the tunable/reconfigurable responses, unequal output impedance property is added to the microstrip line coupler. To shrink the size at the low frequency and make it easy for fabrication at higher frequency, the coupler is redesigned using lumped components. To validate the design theories, simulations are carried out. Moreover, prototypes of the power divider and the balun are fabricated and characterized. The simulation and measurement results match well with the theoretical calculation.

No description available.

<p> This thesis presents a novel hybrid methodology using Recurrent Neural Network and Dynamic Time Warping to solve the mode estimation problem of a radar warning receiver (RWR). The RWR is an electronic support (ES) system with the primary objective to estimate the threat posed by an unfriendly (hostile) radar in an electronic warfare (EW) environment. One such radar is the multi-function radar (MFR), which employs complex signal architecture to perform multiple tasks. As the threat posed by the radar directly depends on its current mode of operation, it is vital to estimate and track the mode of the radar. The proposed method uses a recurrent neural network (echo state network and recurrent multi-layer perceptron) trained in a supervised manner, with the dynamic time warping algorithm as the post processor to estimate the mode of operation. A grid filter in Bayesian framework is then applied to the dynamic time warp estimate to provide an accurate posterior estimate of the operational mode of the MFR. This novel approach is tested on an EW scenario via simulation by employing a hypothetical MFR. Based on the simulation results, we conclude that the hybrid echo state network is more suitable than its recurrent multi-layer perceptron counterpart for the mode estimation problem of a RWR.</p> / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

The water's shore, used for defense, trade, transportation and industry, always plays an important role in a city's development. Buildings were built there to fulfill related practical functions, such as barns, factories or piers. However, at the present time, the functions mentioned above are not the only purpose of the shore, now more entertainment activies happen along the water's edge. Therefore, architecture's roles are changing. The site is in a small town called Riva San Vitale, which is located at the south end of Lake Lugano, Switzerland. For this small town, lake's shore is usually used by local people as a place for relaxation. Based on my four-month long living experiences there, I decided to design an art center on the lake to enrich residents' daily life. / Master of Architecture / A folding method was used in form processing to reflect the mountains' shapes surrounding the town. Through this whole process, my thesis explores how the architecture is used as an instrument to bring art into people's daily life and, at the same time, extend people's life into nature. As a result, the Art Center will become a new plaza of Riva San Vitale.

This dissertation defines and develops transitional space of housing, which is adaptable to the Chinese environment. It is the integration of community, culture element and sustainable development. Although the lifestyle is changing today, the concept of courtyard which comes from the Chinese vernacular building remains in peoples’ minds. It’s not only a form but also an expression of national culture and a sense of space. There are some attempts for Chinese architects to renovate or reconstruct the “courtyard”, but most of them are low-rise buildings. Facing with the high density, high volume urban living environment, Chinese architects only set vii the first floor yard and roof garden in multi-story or high-rise buildings. To improve the community environment, various levels courtyard space, such as the courtyard among units, community courtyard, are set. These courtyards are regarded as public space which not only plays the role of landscaping but also make people feel comfortable. However, there are still some problems, such as sustainable development, privacy. While there are some good attempts for foreign architects to design courtyard in terms of sustainable technology, the housing they design lack the Chinese culture character. So the design of multi-function transitional space raises the interesting questions for future research and development.