This thesis presents the design and implementation of control strategies for building energy management systems (BEMS). The controllers considered include the multi PI-loop controllers, state-space designs, constrained input and output MIMO adaptive controllers, fuzzy logic solutions and genetic algorithm techniques. The control performances of the designs developed using the various methods based on aspects such as regulation errors squared, energy consumptions and the settling periods are investigated for different designs. The aim of the control strategy is to regulate the room temperature and the humidity to required comfort levels. In this study the building system under study is a 3 input/ 2 output system subject to external disturbances/effects. The three inputs are heating, cooling and humidification, and the 2 outputs are room air temperature and relative humidity. The external disturbances consist of climatic effects and other stochastic influences. The study is carried out within a simulation environment using the mathematical model of the test room at Loughborough University and the designed control solutions are verified through experimental trials using the full-scale BMS facility at the University of Bradford.

This thesis present a new receiver framework for the cyclic-prefix free (CP-free) MIMO-OFDM system, equipped with the space-time block coded (ST-BC) uplink transmission over (slowly) time varying multipath channels. Usually, without CP in the OFDM system the inter-carrier interference (ICI) could not be removed, effectively, at the receiver, when the inter-symbol-interference (ISI) has to be taken into account. In this thesis, by exploiting the spatial and frequency resources, we propose a novel frequency-domain decision-feedback equalizer, associated with the oblique projection (OB), to combat the effects of ISI and ICI, simultaneously. The OB is a non-orthogonal projection and is very useful to deal with the structure noise (e.g., the ISI term). From computer simulations, we observe that the performance of propose scheme can perform very close to the conventional CP-based MMO-OFDM with the ST-BC.

A set of technical issues are addressed related to benchmarking best practice behavior in warehouses. In order to identify best practice, first performance needs to be measured. There are a variety of tools available to measure productivity and efficiency. One of the most common tools is data envelopment analysis (DEA). Given a system that consumes inputs to generate outputs, previous work has shown production theory can be used to develop basic postulates about the production possibility space and to construct an efficient frontier which is used to quantify efficiency. Beyond inputs and outputs warehouses typically have practices (techniques used in the warehouse) or attributes (characteristics of the environment of the warehouse including demand characteristics) which also influence efficiency. Previously in the literature, a two-stage method has been developed to investigate the impact of practices and attributes on efficiency. When applying this method, two issues arose: how to measure efficiency in small samples and how to identify outliers. The small sample efficiency measurement method developed in this thesis is called multi-input / multi-output quantile based approach (MQBA) and uses deleted residuals to estimate efficiency. The outlier detection method introduces the inefficient frontier. Both overly efficient and overly inefficient outliers can be identified by constructing an efficient and an inefficient frontier. The outlier detection method incorporates an iterative procedure previously described, but has not been implemented in the literature. Further, this thesis also discusses issues related to selecting an orientation in super efficiency models. Super efficiency models are used in outlier detection, but are also commonly used in measuring technical progress via the Malmquist index. These issues are addressed using two data sets recently collected in the warehousing industry. The first data set consists of 390 observations of various types of warehouses. The other data set has 25 observations from a specific industry. For both data sets, it is shown that significantly different results are realized if the methods suggested in this document are adopted.

In order to identify the weakest bus in a power system so that the Unified Power Flow Controller could be connected, an investigation of static and dynamic voltage stability is presented. Two stability indices, static and dynamic, have been proposed in the thesis. Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) analysis has been used for the dynamic stability analysis. Results based on the Western System Coordinate Council (WSCC) 3-machine, 9-bus test system and IEEE 14 bus Reliability Test System (RTS) shows that these indices detect with the degree of accuracy the weakest bus, the weakest line and the voltage stability margin in the test system before suffering from voltage collapse. Recently, Flexible Alternating Current Transmission systems (FACTs) have become significant due to the need to strengthen existing power systems. The UPFC has been identified in literature as the most comprehensive and complex FACTs equipment that has emerged for the control and optimization of power flow in AC transmission systems. Significant research has been done on the UPFC. However, the extent of UPFC capability, connected to the weakest bus in maintaining the power flows under fault conditions, not only in the line where it is installed, but also in adjacent parallel lines, remains to be studied. In the literature, it has normally been assumed the UPFC is disconnected during a fault period. In this investigation it has been shown that fault conditions can affect the UPFC significantly, even if it occurred on far buses of the power system. This forms the main contribution presented in this thesis. The impact of UPFC in minimizing the disturbances in voltages, currents and power flows under fault conditions are investigated. The WSCC 3-machine, 9-bus test system is used to investigate the effect of an unsymmetrical fault type and position on the operation of UPFC controller in accordance to the G59 protection, stability and regulation. Results show that it is necessary to disconnect the UPFC controller from the power system during unsymmetrical fault conditions.

Le problème de séparation aveugle de sources a but de retrouver un ensemble des sources signaux statistiquement indépendants à partir seulement d’un ensemble des observations du capteur. Ces observations peuvent être modélisées comme un mélanges linéaires instantané ou convolutifs de sources. Dans cette thèse, les sources signaux sont supposées être cyclostationnaire où leurs fréquences cycles peuvent être connues ou inconnu par avance. Premièrement, nous avons établi des relations entre le spectre, spectre de puissance d’un signal source et leurs composants, puis nous avons proposé deux nouveaux algorithmes pour estimer sa fréquences cycliques. Ensuite, pour la séparation aveugle de sources en mélanges instantanés, nous présentons quatre algorithmes basés sur diagonalisation conjoint approchées orthogonale (ou non-orthogonales) d’une famille des matrices cycliques multiples moment temporel, or l’approche matricielle crayon pour extraire les sources signaux. Nous introduisons aussi et prouver une nouvelle condition identifiabilité pour montrer quel type de sources cyclostationnaires d’entrée peuvent être séparées basées sur des statistiques cyclostationnarité à l’ordre deux. Pour la séparation aveugle de sources en mélanges convolutifs, nous présentons un algorithme en deux étapes basées sur une approche dans le domaine temporel pour récupérer les signaux source. Les simulations numériques sont utilisés dans cette thèse pour démontrer l’efficacité de nos approches proposées, et de comparer les performances avec leurs méthodes précédentes / Blind source separation problem aims to recover a set of statistically independent source signals from a set of sensor observations. These observations can be modeled as an instantaneous or convolutive mixture of the same sources. In this dissertation, the source signals are assumed to be cyclostationary where their cycle frequencies may be known or unknown a priori. First, we establish relations between the spectrum, power spectrum of a source signal and its component, then we propose two novel algorithms to estimate its cycle frequencies. Next, for blind separation of instantaneous mixtures of sources, we present four algorithms based on orthogonal (or non-orthogonal) approximate diagonalization of the multiple cyclic temporal moment matrices, and the matrix pencil approach to extract the source signal. We also introduce and prove a new identifiability condition to show which kind of input cyclostationary sources can be separated based on second-order cyclostationarity statistics. For blind separation of convolutive mixtures of sources signal or blind deconvolution of FIR MIMO systems, we present a two-steps algorithm based on time domain approach for recovering the source signals. Numerical simulations are used throughout this thesis to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approaches, and compare theirs performances with previous methods

Multi-user MIMO (MIMO-MU) communication techniques make use of available channel state information at the transmitter to mitigate the inter-user interference. The goal of these techniques is to provide the least interference at the mobile stations by applying a precoding operation. In this thesis a comparison of available techniques in the literature such as Channel Decomposition, SINR Balancing, Joint-MMSE optimization is presented. Novel techniques for the MIMO multi-user downlink communication systems, where a single stream is transmitted to each user are proposed. The proposed methods, different from the other methods in the literature, use a simple receiver to combat the interference. It has been shown that MRC based receivers are as good as more complicated joint MMSE receivers.

This thesis presents the design and implementation of control strategies for building energy management systems (BEMS). The controllers considered include the multi PI-loop controllers, state-space designs, constrained input and output MIMO adaptive controllers, fuzzy logic solutions and genetic algorithm techniques. The control performances of the designs developed using the various methods based on aspects such as regulation errors squared, energy consumptions and the settling periods are investigated for different designs. The aim of the control strategy is to regulate the room temperature and the humidity to required comfort levels. In this study the building system under study is a 3 input/ 2 output system subject to external disturbances/effects. The three inputs are heating, cooling and humidification, and the 2 outputs are room air temperature and relative humidity. The external disturbances consist of climatic effects and other stochastic influences. The study is carried out within a simulation environment using the mathematical model of the test room at Loughborough University and the designed control solutions are verified through experimental trials using the full-scale BMS facility at the University of Bradford.

In order to identify the weakest bus in a power system so that the Unified Power Flow Controller could be connected, an investigation of static and dynamic voltage stability is presented. Two stability indices, static and dynamic, have been proposed in the thesis. Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) analysis has been used for the dynamic stability analysis. Results based on the Western System Coordinate Council (WSCC) 3-machine, 9-bus test system and IEEE 14 bus Reliability Test System (RTS) shows that these indices detect with the degree of accuracy the weakest bus, the weakest line and the voltage stability margin in the test system before suffering from voltage collapse. Recently, Flexible Alternating Current Transmission systems (FACTs) have become significant due to the need to strengthen existing power systems. The UPFC has been identified in literature as the most comprehensive and complex FACTs equipment that has emerged for the control and optimization of power flow in AC transmission systems. Significant research has been done on the UPFC. However, the extent of UPFC capability, connected to the weakest bus in maintaining the power flows under fault conditions, not only in the line where it is installed, but also in adjacent parallel lines, remains to be studied. In the literature, it has normally been assumed the UPFC is disconnected during a fault period. In this investigation it has been shown that fault conditions can affect the UPFC significantly, even if it occurred on far buses of the power system. This forms the main contribution presented in this thesis. The impact of UPFC in minimizing the disturbances in voltages, currents and power flows under fault conditions are investigated. The WSCC 3-machine, 9-bus test system is used to investigate the effect of an unsymmetrical fault type and position on the operation of UPFC controller in accordance to the G59 protection, stability and regulation. Results show that it is necessary to disconnect the UPFC controller from the power system during unsymmetrical fault conditions. / Libyan Government

Au cours de la dernière décennie, les communications optiques en espace libre (FSO) ont pris de l’ampleur dans les deux domaines académiques et industriels. L’importance de FSO s’appuie sur la possibilité de faire un système de transmission économique et écologique avec un débit élevé et sans licence à l’opposition des systèmes de transmission radiofréquences (RF). Dans la plupart des travaux antécédents sur les systèmes multi-émetteurs, seulement les canaux décorrélés ont été considérés. Un canal décorrélé nécessite un espace suffisant entre les émetteurs. Cette condition devient difficile et non-réalisable dans certaines applications. Pour cette raison, nos études se focalisent sur les performances des codes à répétition RC (Repitition Codes) et les codes OSTBC (Orthogonal Space-Time Block Codes) dans des canaux log-normaux corrélés en utilisant une modulation d’intensité et une détection directe (IM/DD). En addition, les effets des différentes conditions météorologiques sur le taux d’erreur moyen (ABER) sont étudiés. Les systèmes FSO à multi-entrées/ multi-sorties MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) avec une modulation SSK (Space Shift Keying) ont été abordés. Les résultats obtenus montrent que la SSK est supérieure aux RC avec une modulation d’impulsion (Multiple Pulse Amplitude Modulation) pour toute efficacité spectrale égale ou supérieure à 4 bit/s/Hz. Nous avons aussi analysé les performances d’un système à sauts multiples (Multi-Hop) et des relais à transmission directe (forward relays). Nos simulations montrent que le système ainsi considéré est efficace pour atténuer les effets météorologiques et les pertes géométriques dans les systèmes de communication FSO. Nous avons montré qu’un tel système avec plusieurs entrées et une sortie (MISO, i.e. multiple-input single-output) à sauts multiples est supérieur à un système MISO avec un lien direct (direct link) avec une forte atténuation. Pour satisfaire la demande croissante des réseaux de communication à débits élevés, la communauté scientifique s'intéresse de plus en plus aux systèmes FSO avec des relais full-duplex (FD). Pour ces derniers systèmes, nous avons étudié la probabilité d'erreur moyenne (ABER) et nous avons analysé leurs performances. En considérant des différentes conditions de transmission, les performances de relais FD ont été comparées à celles d'un système avec un lien direct ou des relais half-duplex. Les résultats obtenus montrent que les relais FD ont le minimum ABER. En conséquence, les résultats obtenus dans cette thèse sont très prometteurs pour la prochaine génération de FSO. / Free-space optical (FSO) communication has been the subject of ongoing research activities and commercial attention in the past few years. Such attention is driven by the promise of high data rate, license-free operation, and cheap and ecological friendly means of communications alternative to congested radio frequency communications. In most previous work considering multiple transmitters, uncorrelated channel conditions have been considered. An uncorrelated channel requires sufficient spacing between transmitters. However, this can be difficult and may not be always feasible in some applications. Thereby, this thesis studies repetition codes (RCs) and orthogonal space-time block codes performance in correlated log-normal FSO channels using intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD). Furthermore, the effect of different weather conditions on the average bit error rate (ABER) performance of the FSO links is studied. Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) FSO communication systems using space shift keying (SSK) modulation have been also analyzed. Obtained results show that SSK is a potential technique for spectral efficiencies equal or greater than 4 bits/s/Hz as compared to RCs with multiple pulse amplitude modulations. The performance analysis of a multi-hop decode and forward relays for FSO communication system using IM/DD is also considered in this thesis. It is shown that multi-hop is an efficient technique to mitigate atmospheric turbulence and different weather attenuation effects and geometric losses in FSO communication systems. Our simulation results show that multiple-input single-output (MISO) multi-hop FSO systems are superior to direct link and MISO systems over links exhibiting high attenuation. Meeting the growing demand for higher data rates communication networks, a system with full-duplex (FD) relays is considered. For such a system, the outage probability and the ABER performance are analyzed under different turbulence conditions, misalignment error and path loss effects. FD relays are compared with the direct link and half-duplex relays. Obtained results show that FD relays have the lowest ABER and the outage probability as compared to the two other systems. Finally, the obtained results in this thesis are very promising towards the next generation of FSO systems.