Modern society relies heavily on communication networks that in turn rely on both wired and wireless infrastructure. This work pertains to scenarios where a group of people or robots need to communicate in an environment where there is no preexisting communications infrastructure. These include sites of emergencies and disasters (e.g., inside burning buildings, search and rescue operations) and unexplored areas on Earth and other planets. Wireless ad hoc or mesh networks offer the ability to keep such entities connected, but they falter when any single entity wishes to leave the developed coverage area. Utilizing mobile repeater nodes can help, but is costly and complicated. By eliminating the need for repeater nodes to traverse the environment, their size and cost can be vastly reduced. This work explores the use of static "breadcrumb" repeater nodes to increase the reach of such a network. Determining when and where to place a static repeater node can be difficult in an environment where radio propagation characteristics are unknown. In this work, several algorithms for node placement are compared under the constraint that placement of a static repeater node should not dictate the entity's movement. The algorithms investigated range from calculating rolling averages to modeling channel parameters on-the-fly. The placement algorithms were configured to run in real-time on TP-Link MR-3040 portable WiFi routers and the approach is demonstrated in an outdoor uncharacterized environment.

With the addition of mesh capability to Bluetooth low energy(BLE) in 2017 new possibilities open up for the Internet of Things applications of Bluetooth. With the rapidly increasing number of connected devices a few new standards are competing for being the standard protocol for low power mesh communication. BLE is mostly aimed towards low bandwidth data such as sensor readings or light control. However, this thesis attempts to investigate the viability of adapting BLE mesh nodes to communicate DMX-data which is a protocol widely used in lightning and stage effects. The system is implemented on Bluetooth development kits and the latency and power consumption are measured. The results show that the latency is significant and with high variance if the full DMX frame is transmitted, rendering the application non-applicable on many real-time applications. It can however be justified in some applications due to Bluetooth's well established eco-system of devices and functionality where the nodes could extend their capabilities by implementing already established BLE models. By only transmitting the updated channels the latency can be lowered to values that would in some applications be indistinguishable from wired connection. The energy consumption of BLE mesh suffers greatly with the addition of mesh due to its constant scanning but by implementing low power nodes which keep the radio off during certain intervals this consumption could be greatly decreased. The results also show a high variance of latency depending on the node configuration regarding to the placements and the number of hops required to reach the intended recipient. / Bluetooth har länge varit standardprotokollet för kommunikation mellan två stycken enheter. 2017 kom tillägget med mesh till Bluetooth. Mesh innebär att andra enheten i närheten ska skicka vidare meddelanden och därigenom tillåta kommunikation mellan enheter som är utanför direkt radiokontakt. DMX är ett protokoll som används inom ljus- och sceneffekter. Bluetooth mesh är utformat för att skicka små datamängder som till exempel sensordata eller styra glödlampor. Denna uppsats kommer utvärdera om det är användbart att skicka DMX-data över Bluetooth mesh. En implementation gjordes på Bluetooth utvecklingskort och resultatet visar på en signifikant fördröjning och med hög varians vid överföring av alla DMX-kanaler, vilket innebär att denna implementation inte är användbar vid många användningsområden. Men trots det kan den vid vissa fall vara användningsbar, mycket till hjälp av Bluetooths billiga och utbyggda ekosystem av produkter och tilläggsfunktioner. Eftersom Bluetooth mesh byggs in i en del befintliga byggnader kan de uppoffringar man får göra vid överföringar av DMX-data vara acceptabel då man kan uttnyttja befintliga nät. Strömförbrukningen ökar avsevärt vid mesh jämfört med klassisk lågenergi Bluetooth då mesh måste skanna radiotrafiken konstant. Vid implementationen av lågenergi noder kan dock radio vara i stand-by och starta endast vid speciella tidpunkter och man kan därigenom få avsevärt lägre strömförbrukning, med uppoffringen att DMX-datan inte kan överföras omgående. Det visade sig också att noduppställningen kraftigt påverkade variansen i överföringshastighet och att detta måste ta i hänsyn vid valet om DMX över Bluetooth mesh är användbart i just det fallet.

This thesis summarizes my project in setting up a Thread network. The idea of this project was presented by the company ÅF in Karlstad, Sweden. ÅF wishes to upgrade their current demonstrator for IoT. The current demonstrator includes Azure Cloud component, Raspberry Pi, Bluetooth and Arduino components. The upgrade includes implementing Thread technology together with Thread verified hardware from Nordic semiconductor and the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Thread is an IoT mesh networking protocol that was released year 2014. Compared to Bluetooth it offers IP communication (including IPv6) combined with higher reliability, performance and security. The process of installing, compiling and configuring the Thread network is explained. The result is an operational thread network that has sensor devices sending data to an HTTP web server, where the data is stored and monitored. Though, there are many improvements and functions that can be implemented to make this demonstrator more appealing.

Simulation of the electromagnetic response of the human body relies heavily upon efficient computational CAD models or phantoms. The Visible Human Project (VHP)-Female v. 3.1 - a new platform-independent full-body electromagnetic computational model is revealed. This is a part of a significant international initiative to develop powerful computational models representing the human body. This model’s unique feature is full compatibility both with MATLAB and specialized FEM computational software packages such as ANSYS HFSS/Maxwell 3D and CST MWS. Various mesh processing algorithms such as automatic intersection resolver, Boolean operation on meshes, etc. used for the development of the Visible Human Project (VHP)-Female are presented. The VHP - Female CAD Model is applied to two specific low frequency applications: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS). TMS and tDCS are increasingly used as diagnostic and therapeutic tools for numerous neuropsychiatric disorders. The development of a CAD model based on an existing voxel model of a Japanese pregnant woman is also presented. TMS for treatment of depression is an appealing alternative to drugs which are teratogenic for pregnant women. This CAD model was used to study fetal wellbeing during induced peak currents by TMS in two possible scenarios: (i) pregnant woman as a patient; and (ii) pregnant woman as an operator. An insight into future work and potential areas of research such as a deformable phantom, implants, and RF applications will be presented.

Imaging modalities such as CT, MRI, and SPECT have had a tremendous impact on diagnosis and treatment planning. These imaging techniques have given doctors the capability to visualize 3D anatomy structures of human body and soft tissues while being non-invasive. Unfortunately, the 3D images produced by these modalities often have boundaries between the organs and soft tissues that are difficult to delineate due to low signal to noise ratios and other factors. Image segmentation is employed as a method for differentiating Regions of Interest in these images by creating artificial contours or boundaries in the images. There are many different techniques for performing segmentation and automating these methods is an active area of research, but currently there are no generalized methods for automatic segmentation due to the complexity of the problem. Therefore hand-segmentation is still widely used in the medical community and is the €œGold standard€� by which all other segmentation methods are measured. However, existing manual segmentation techniques have several drawbacks such as being time consuming, introduce slice interpolation errors when segmenting slice-by-slice, and are generally not reproducible. In this thesis, we present a novel semi-automated method for 3D hand-segmentation that uses mesh extraction and surface parameterization to project several 3D meshes to 2D plane . We hypothesize that allowing the user to better view the relationships between neighboring voxels will aid in delineating Regions of Interest resulting in reduced segmentation time, alleviating slice interpolation artifacts, and be more reproducible.

Cardiovascular disease is the number one reason for emergency room visits in the United States. Understanding the different pathologies of the cardiovascular system is crucial when trying to prescribe proper treatment or intervention. In order best understand these issues proper computer simulations would be necessary. Due to the fact that every patient is different. Being able to analysis and properly simulate each patients data individually to better understanding their specific case is necessary for patient specific interventions. In order to achieve such requirement we propose a new method of mesh generation to better map patient specific geometries. This new framework takes a set of points in a 3D space and generates a 2D NURBS mesh. Insuring a smooth and accurate representation of the patient specific geometry will allow for more specific incite to possible medical issues that may arise. This NURBS based mesh can be then used to run either finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, or even fluid solid interactions. Running these patient-specific valve simulations using isogementric modeling is what will allow us to have patient specific treatments and intervention.

Ces travaux se placent dans le cadre de l'étude des propriétés mécaniques des architectures à renforcement tridimensionnel dans les structures composites. Nous proposons une approche permettant de caractériser les propriétés mécaniques de structures composites Interlock et en particulier de résoudre les problèmes liés à la création de ces géométries complexes et leur discrétisation.Une des difficultés des approches méso-macro réside dans la manière de reproduire de façon fidèle la géométrie de ces architectures aux formes très complexes et d'obtenir en particulier un Volume Elémentaire Représentatif (VER) duquel on peut déduire par calcul éléments finis les propriétés mécaniques par homogénéisation. Cette pluralité des formes engendre des difficultés de mise en œuvre essentiellement géométriques et des difficultés de maillage bien connues : interpénétration et contact des mèches, maillage de fines couches de résines aux interfaces, détermination en tout point de l'orientation des fibres. Nous proposons une approche qui consiste à créer un modèle géométrique des mèches limitant ou contrôlant les intersections et les contacts, à définir un VER périodique et à mailler ce VER en tétraèdres avec des maillages conformes aux interfaces. Une fois le modèle maillé obtenu et les conditions de périodicités définies, les propriétés mécaniques effectives sont obtenues par homogénéisation. Les calculs par éléments finis sont réalisés avec le logiciel ABAQUS. Les tissages complexes ont été traités automatiquement avec cette technique. Les résultats sont confrontés à ceux d’autres modélisations, issus de la littérature et de l’expérience. / The work proposed here is devoted to the prediction and the characterization of the mechanical behavior of interlock woven composite structures. We propose an approach to characterize the mechanical properties of interlock woven composite structures and particularly to solve the problems associated with the creation of these complex geometries and their discretization into a conform mesh. One of the difficulties of this meso-macro approach is to reproduce faithfully the geometry of these architectures with complex shapes and to obtain a Representative Volume Element (RVE). Once this complex step is achieved, the mechanical properties of the composite can be thereafter obtained by homogenization from a finite element analysis. The difficulties to generate a RVE of such structures are well known: interpenetration and contacts between yarns, meshing of thin resin layers at interfaces, determination of the orientation of the fibers at all points of the structure. We propose an approach which consists of creating a geometric model of the yarns limiting or controlling the intersections and the contacts, defining a periodic RVE, meshing this RVE by tetrahedral with compatible meshes at the interfaces. Once the model is meshed and the symmetry conditions are defined, the properties are obtained by homogenization. The finite element calculations are performed on the ABAQUS software. Complex weaves can be automatically processed with this technique. The results are compared whit other modeling from the literature and with experimental data.

<p>This paper is a study of IEEE Standard 802.16 Medium Access Control (MAC) Layer in Distributed Mesh Networks. IEEE Standard 802.16 is a Wireless Metropolitan Area Network (WMAN) technology that can connect different IEEE 802.11 (Wifi) host post with each other and to other parts of internet. It can provide network for a wireless router and at the same time this router can be installed in the office, house or university.</p><p>WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a certification mark for products that pass conformity and interoperability tests for the IEEE 802.16 standards. Products that pass the conformity tests for WiMAX are capable of forming wireless connections between them to permit the carrying of internet packet data. The idea of WiMAX is similar than Wi-Fi but it is not the same. It is a step much higher than Wi-Fi because it is focused to offer internet for a whole city.</p><p>It has much higher capacity and longer distances. IEEE 802.16 defines a MAC Layer that supports multiple physical layer (PHY) Specifications and different topologies; Point to Multipoint (PMP) and Mesh Networks. In this first topology there exist a Base Station (BS) that have direct links with all the Subscriber Stations (SS). If any Subscriber Station requires transmitting to another SS, the message must convey the Base Station.</p>

<p>The present development of the demography of elderly people in the western world will generate a shortage of caregiver’s for elderly people in the near future. There are major risk that the lack of qualified caregivers will result in deterioration in the quality of elderly care. One possible </p><p>solution is the use of modern information and communication technology (ICT) to enable staff to work more efficiently. However, if ICT system is introduced into the elderly care it must done in a way which is acceptable from a humane perspective while at the same time increasing the efficiency of the personal that working in elderly care centers. This thesis investigates the </p><p>technical feasibility of using a wireless mesh network for a social alarm system, in the elderly care. The System as such is not intended to replace the staff at an elderly care center but instead is intended to reduce staff workloads while providing more time for elderly care.</p>

<p>Voice over IP (VoIP) traffic in a multi-hop wireless mesh network (WMN) suffers from a large overhead due to mac/IP/UDP/RTP headers and time collisions. A consequence of the large overhead is that only a small number of concurrent VoIP calls can be supported in a WMN[17]. Hop-to-hop packet aggregation can reduce network overhead and increase the capacity. Packet aggregation is a concept which combines several small packets, destined to a common next-hop destination, to one large packet. The goal of this thesis was to implement packet aggregation on a Linux distribution and to increase the number of concurrent VoIP calls. We use as testbed a two-hop WMN with a fixed data rate of 2Mbit/s. Traffic was generated between nodes using MGEN[20] to simulate VoIP behavior. The results from the tests show that the number of supported concurrent flows in the testbed is increased by 135% compared to unaggregated traffic.</p>