Purpose: The main purpose of the study is to create an understanding of whether a company's development work with creating a high degree of integration is of relevance to consumers. This because there are shared opinions about consumer behaviour in a multi-channel environment. Method: The survey methodology used in this study is qualitative study. The collected data was made through focus group interviews which represent the primary data. The secondary data consists of previous research. Conclusion: The conclusion from this study shows that channel integration in many cases gives a positive attitude towards consumers. However, there are exceptions where channel integration is not attractive or sought after. Instead attributes are more in focus. But overall, channel integration has a positive impact on consumers / Syfte: Studiens huvudsakliga syfte är att skapa en förståelse kring huruvida ett företags utvecklingsarbete med att skapa en hög grad integration är av relevans enligt konsumenterna, då det råder skilda meningar från tidigare forskning. Metod: Den utförda undersökningsmetod som används i denna studie är en kvalitativ under-sökning. Där den insamlade datan gjordes genom fokusgruppsintervjuer, vilket representerar den primära datan. Den sekundära datan bestårav tidigare forskning. Det utfördes sedan en jämförelse mellan primär och sekundär data. Slutsats: Studiens slutsats visar på att konsumenter erhåller en positiv attitydtill kanal-integration, men det finns dock undantag där kanalintegration inte är lika eftertraktat och attraktivt där attribut står mer i fokus. Men överlag visas kanalintegration ha en positiv inverkan på konsumenters attityd.

Submitted by Johnny Rodrigues (johnnyrodrigues@ufcg.edu.br) on 2018-04-21T13:58:34Z No. of bitstreams: 1 SIDNEY ACIOLE RODRIGUES - DISSERTAÇÃO PPGEE 2014..pdf: 10747994 bytes, checksum: a201eceb35c011516f93accef0c024f9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-04-21T13:58:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 SIDNEY ACIOLE RODRIGUES - DISSERTAÇÃO PPGEE 2014..pdf: 10747994 bytes, checksum: a201eceb35c011516f93accef0c024f9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-09 / De acordo com a Administração Federal de Alimentos e Medicamentos estadunidense (Food and Drug Administration – FDA), bombas de infusão são consideradas atualmente os dispositivos médicos cuja segurança é a mais crítica, devido à natureza de suas operações e os riscos a elas associados. O projeto destes dispositivos ainda é uma questão em aberto e várias iniciativas de melhoria estão sob investigação. No entanto, as especificações de tais sistemas ainda não estão adaptadas ao estado-da-arte do desenvolvimento de sistemas arquiteturais. Por exemplo, nesta pesquisa não foi possível identificar qualquer projeto que atenda aos padrões, considerando as especificação e documentação de arquiteturas de sistemas e de software durante o processo de engenharia. Em face desta situação, nesta dissertação é apresentada a especificação funcional de uma arquitetura para bombas de infusão que pode ser realizada mediante o emprego de várias tendências tecnológicas para esses produtos, a fim de melhorar a segurança. A especificação arquitetural apresentada foi validada pelo desenvolvimento de um protótipo multicanal de uma bomba de infusão que pode ser programada utilizando dados obtidos a partir de um serviço web, usando um aplicativo de celular, como controle remoto, que permita mudar os parâmetros de infusão de acordo com dados da prescrição médica. Assim, a principal contribuição deste trabalho pode ser apresentada como uma arquitetura distribuída para esse tipo de dispositivo, permitindo a integração com registros eletrônicos de saúde para o domínio de sistemas embarcados que implicam em redução de erros durante a atividade de programação. / According to the Food and Drug Administration - FDA, infusion pumps are currently considered the most safety-critical medical device due to the nature of their operations and associated risks. Design of these devices is still an open question and several improvement initiatives are under research. However, the released specifications of such systems are not yet adapted to the current state-of-art systems architectural developments. For example, in this work, we could not identify any project meeting the patterns of views and viewpoints for specification and documentation of system and software architectures during the engineering process. Due to this, this dissertation proposes a functional specification of an architecture for infusion pumps that can be realized through several technological trends for these products in order to improve safety. The presented architectural specification was validated by the development of a multichannel prototype of an infusion pump that can be programmed through data retrieved from a web service using a mobile application as a remote control and changing the infusion parameters according to medical prescription. Thus, the main contribution of this paper can be presented as a distributed architecture for this sort of device, allowing early integration with Electronic Health Records for the embedded systems domain implying in risk reductions during the programming activity.

The usage of Wireless Local Area Networks is increasing rapidly throughout the world. The technology today is not quality proof for the market’s demands. We want to be able to completely wireless perform our demands, such as confer via video or IP-telephony. This is what we call multimedia real-time traffic. It may be achieved over the physical infrastructure in some areas with good results. The goal of this Master’s Thesis is to analyze the possibilities and give solutions and suggestions to achieve multimedia over the wireless networks, with emphasis on the protocol Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA). This Master’s Thesis is a theoretical study and the suggested solutions have not been tested in an actual wireless network. Instead they have been tested by computer simulation to give an indication of improvements. Basic configurations are set to the same as in the IEEE 802.11 standard. Different methods to reach possible improvements of a WLAN are studied, analyzed and simulated. Such methods are: priority, congestion management and multi-channel protocol. Simulations results show how the priority affects the wireless network and how a multi-channel protocol improves the latency and efficiency of the network. The simulation part is concentrated to show improvements of real-time traffic, which is time sensitive. With a multi- channel protocol the network can allow more users, i.e. more traffic. Also, the network will gain improvement in stability.

L'utilisation des canaux multiples améliore significativement les performances globales des réseaux de capteurs sans fil (RCSF) en permettant des transmissions parallèles sur plusieurs canaux. Cependant, la mise en place d’un protocole MAC multi-canal dans un réseau multisauts nécessite une méthode efficace d’allocation des canaux pour permettre une coordination entre les nœuds afin de partager les canaux disponibles. Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons à la conception d’un protocole MAC multi-canal qui répond aux exigences des applications de collecte de données à haut débit dans un réseau multi-saut. Pour ce faire, nous abordons d’abord les principales façons d’utiliser plusieurs canaux pour réaliser le partage du médium. Ensuite, nous proposons un protocole MAC multi-canal, répondant aux exigences des RCSF à haut débit, qui combine les trois techniques TDMA, CSMA et FDMA. En effet, nous utilisons une nouvelle méthode d’allocation des canaux qui permet aux nœuds de choisir le canal de réception le plus convenable dans leurs voisinages jusqu’à 3-sauts d’une façon distribuée afin de minimiser les effets des interférences et des collisions. Enfin, nous évaluons par simulation les performances de notre protocole et nous le comparons à d’autres protocoles proposés dans la littérature. Les résultats obtenus montrent l’efficacité de notre proposition dans les différents scénarios étudiés. / The use of multi-channel significantly improves the overall network performance of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) by allowing parallel transmissions over multiple channels. However, the design of a multi-channel MAC protocol in a multi-hop network requires an efficient channel allocation method that allows the coordination between the nodes in order to share available channels. In this thesis, we focus on the conception of a multi-channel MAC protocol that meets the requirements of high data collection applications in a multi-hop network. In order to achieve this goal, we first present the main techniques to use multiple channels to realize medium access sharing. Then, we propose a multi-channel MAC protocol that meets the requirements of high data rate WSNs, which combines three techniques TDMA, FDMA and CSMA. Indeed, we use a new channel assignment method that enables nodes to choose the most convenient channel in their 3-hop neighborhood in a distributed manner in order to minimize the effects of interferences and collisions. Finally, we evaluate by simulation the performance of our protocol and we compare it to other protocols proposed in the literature. The results show the efficiency of our proposition in the different studied scenarios.

That a consumer is going through multiple trade channels during a single purchase are being more normal than ever. A Danish bridal store has been in media saying that the owner will start to charge the consumers when they try on the dresses in the store. This since the consumer nowadays tries the fit of the dress in a physical store to later go home and order the exact same dress to a lower price online. This consumer behavior is called showrooming, it is when the actual store ends up to be just a showroom for the consumer. This possibility is since there is an endless amount of trade channels for consumer to go through. The opposite behavior when a consumer collects information about the product online to finalize the purchase in a physical store is called webrooming. Researchers have studied the behavior in a quantitative way and this study will be focusing on a qualitative research. The study will see how consumers interact between multiple trade channels in their process of purchasing products. The study was conducted with six students on a post-secondary education level with three student who study informatics and three students within textile. The conclusion of the study is that consumers are showrooming in different ways. A difference was shown out from the product and the education. And also if the students where focused on price or quality. Student discount and low prices where two aspects that where important for the students in informatics which is more likely for showrooming. While the majority of the textile students where more welcoming for using the internet to collect information about different products and finalizing the purchase in a physical store. Their choice was more motived since they did not trust the security online and they liked the fact to bring the product home immediately. The result of the study is important since the data that the behavior exists but there is also an importance to understand the behavior. This report is written in Swedish. / Att konsumenter går igenom flera handelskanaler vid ett och samma köp är något om blir allt vanligare idag. En brudklänningsåterförsäljare i Danmark gick nyligen ut i media om att butiksägaren kommer ta ut en avgift för att konsumenter ska få prova plaggen i dennes butik. Den underliggande faktorn var att konsumenter idag går in i fysiska butiker och provar för att senare köpa produkten online till ett lägre pris. Detta konsumentbeteende kan kallas för showrooming där butiken används som ett utställningsrum. Det är ett möjligt beteende för konsumenterna på grund av den oändligheten av handelskanaler som finns att tillgå idag. Det existerar en motpol till showrooming som benämns webrooming, där konsumenten använder internet för att samla information för att senare genomföra köpet i fysisk butik. Flera forskare har tidigare undersökt hur beteendet genomförs genom kvantitativ forskning. Denna studie utgår istället från att se hur konsumenter interagerar mellan multipla handelskanaler i sin köpprocess på individuell nivå utifrån showrooming fenomenet. Studien genomfördes med sex studenter på eftergymnasial nivå med tre respondenter inom informatik samt tre respondenter inom textil. Slutsatsen av studien var dels att konsumenterna utförde showrooming beteendet i olika utsträckningar men en skillnad uppstod beroende på produktkategori och utbildningsområde. En reflektion över pristillgänglighet och kvalitet skiljde studenter inom informatik gentemot studenter inom textil. Informatikstudenterna visade större belägenhet till showrooming beteendet där fysisk kontakt med produkten behövdes men köpet ändå slutade hos en konkurrerande digital återförsäljare. Detta grundades på studentrabatter och ett lägre pris. Majoriteten av textilstudenterna informationssökte hellre via digitala medel för att sedan köpa produkten i fysisk butik. Deras val motiverades på säkerheten med att beställa online samt möjligheten att ta hem produkten direkt. Resultatet i studien är viktigt för att visa på att även om siffrorna visar på att showrooming och webrooming är beteenden som konsumenter innehar så är det även viktigt att förstå varför beteendet existerar.

Dans un contexte de développement des stratégies marketing multi-canal lié principalement à l’évolution constante de l’outil Internet et des nouvelles technologies de diffusion (Dupuis, Prunet, 2001 ; Dabholkar, 1996), il convient de mieux comprendre les effets de ces stratégies sur la performance commerciale de l’entreprise via le processus de fidélisation client. Ainsi, ce projet de recherche propose d’investiguer, à travers diverses études quantitatives l’effet les relances multi-canal sur la fidélité envers les enseignes à travers une opération "chèque fidélité". l'étude permettra de construire un modèle de référence dont la duplicité sera vérifiée afin d'être exploité sur plusieurs secteurs d'activité commerciale. / In a context of development of the multi-channel marketing strategies bound mainly to the constant evolution of the Internet tools and the new technologies of distribution (Dupuis, Prunet, on 2001; Dabholkar, on 1996), it is advisable to understand the effects of these strategies on the companies' commercial performance through the process of customer loyalty development. So, this research project suggests investigating, through diverse quantitative studies, the effect the multi-channel relaunchings on loyalty programs to signs through an operation "check". The study will allow to build a benchmark model which the duplicity will be verified to be exploited on several business sectors.

The key requirements of a reliable neural signal recording system include low power to support long-term monitoring, low noise, minimum tissue damage, and wireless transmission. The neural spikes are also detected and sorted on-chip/off-chip to implement closed-loop neuromodulation in a high channel count setup. All these features together constitute an empirical neural recording system for neuroscience research. In this prospectus, we propose to develop a neural signal acquisition system with wireless transmission and feature extraction. We start by designing a prototype entirely built with commercial-off-the-shelf components, which includes recording and wireless transmission of synthetic neural data and feature extraction. We then conduct the CMOS implementation of the low-power multi-channel neural signal recording read-out circuit, which enables the in-vivo recording with a small form factor. Another direction of this thesis is to design a self-powered motion tracking read-out circuit for wearable sensors. As the wearable industry continues to advance, the need for self-powered medical devices is growing significantly. In this line of research, we propose a self-powered motion sensor based on reverse electrowetting-on-dielectric (REWOD) with low-power integrated electronics for remotely monitoring health conditions. We design the low-power read-out circuit for a wide range of input charges, which is generated from the REWOD sensor.

Industry 4.0 is a concept that emphasizes system and process automation, digitalization, and data interchange in the workplace. Its purpose is to create a smart factory that will cut lead times and increase system productivity by responding to client demand or unforeseen circumstances. Manufacturing, supply chain (SC), and logistics could all benefit from this notion. Industry 4.0 adoption in supply chain management (SCM) is a new and important topic that requires further investigation.  This study is to research the impact of Industry 4.0 on supply chains based on probable Industry 4.0 drivers and barriers. For future supply chains, Industry 4.0 is expected to introduce new difficulties and opportunities. The study addressed a number of issues and provided a method for effectively adapting and integrating the Industry 4.0 concept into supply chains. The research should help supply chain manager’s better grasp the challenges of integrating Industry 4.0 in their networks. Simulation study enables for the assessment of Industry 4.0 adoption in terms of its impact on SC performance, as well as the incorporation of both the drivers and impediments of this technological change. A conceptual framework for Industry 4.0 use in supply chains is proposed in addition to giving an empirical basis for this relationship.  Then we examined the 4.0 industry in Zagros Petrochemical Company. The statistical population in this study is the official employees of Zagros Petrochemical. Then, in order to evaluate the impact of Industry 4.0 on the supply chain management of Zagros Petrochemical Company, a supply chain management methods questionnaire was used. The tool of analysis in this research is a questionnaire which was converted into mathematical output through SPSS software and was statistically analyzed. Using inferential statistics (T-Test), it was found that Industry 4.0 has a significant effect on Zagros Petrochemical Company.  Then, using Friedman test, the rank of the studied features was compared. Cochran's sampling formula was used for sampling at 5% error level. In the end, based on inferential statistics, it was found that considering that in the first question of the research, the p-value obtained is more than 0.05, unlike the rest of the research questions, the null hypothesis is not rejected. Therefore, it can be inferred that Industry 4.0 is not effective in terms of strategic partnership with the supply chain management supplier of Zagros Petrochemical Company.

L'imagerie par résonance magnétique (IRM) est la technique d'imagerie médicale de référence pour sonder in vivo et non invasivement les tissus mous du corps humain, en particulier le cerveau.L'amélioration de la résolution de l'IRM en un temps d'acquisition standard (400µm isotrope en 15 minutes) permettrait aux médecins d'améliorer considérablement leur diagnostic et le suivi des patients. Cependant, le temps d'acquisition en IRM reste long. Pour réduire ce temps, la récente théorie de l'échantillonnage comprimée (EC) a révolutionné la façon d'acquérir des données dans plusieurs domaines dont l'IRM en surmontant le théorème de Shannon-Nyquist. Avec l'EC, les données peuvent alors être massivement sous-échantillonnées tout en assurant des conditions optimales de reconstruction des images.Dans ce contexte, les thèses de doctorat précédemment soutenue au sein du laboratoire ont été consacrées à la conception et à la mise en oeuvre de scénarios d'acquisition physiquement plausibles pour accélérer l'acquisitions. Un nouvel algorithme d'optimisation pour la conception de trajectoire non cartésienne avancée appelée SPARKLING pour Spreading Projection Algorithm for Rapid K-space samplING en est né. Les trajectoires SPARKLING générées ont conduit à des facteurs d'accélération allant jusqu'à 20 en 2D et 70 pour les acquisitions 3D sur des images à haute résolution pondérées en T*₂ acquises à 7 Tesla. Ces accélérations n'étaient accessibles que grâce au rapport signal/bruit d'entrée élevé fourni par l'utilisation de bobines de réception multi-canaux (IRMp). Cependant, ces résultats ont été obtenus au détriment d'une reconstruction longue et complexe. Dans cette thèse, l'objectif est de proposer une nouvelle approche de reconstruction en ligne d'images acquies par IRMp non cartésiennes. Pour atteindre cet objectif, nous nous appuyons sur une approche en ligne où reconstruction et acquisition s'entremèlent. Par conséquent, la reconstruction débute avant la fin de l'acquisition et un résultat partiel est délivré au cours de l'examen. L'ensemble du pipeline est compatible avec une implémentation réelle à travers l'interface Gadgetron pour produire les images reconstruites à la console du scanner.Ainsi, après avoir exposé la théorie de l'échantillonage comprimé, nous présentons l'état de l'art de la méthode dédiée à la reconstruction en imagerie multi-canaux. En particulier, nous nous concentrerons d'abord sur les méthodes d'autocalibration qui présentent l'avantage d'être adaptées à l'échantillonnage non cartésien et nous proposons une méthode simple mais efficace pour estimer le profil de sensibilité des différents cannaux. Cependant, en raison de leur dépendance au profil de sensibilité, ces méthodes ne sont pas adapatable à la reconstruction en ligne. Par conséquent, la deuxième partie se concentre sur la suppression des ces profils et celà grâce à l'utilisation de norme mixte promouvant une parcimonie structurée. Ensuite, nous adaptons différentes réularization basées sur la parcimonie structurée pour reconstruire ces images fortement corrélées. Enfin, la méthode retenue sera appliquée à l'imagerie en ligne. / Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the reference medical imaging technique for probing in vivo and non-invasively soft tissues in the human body, notably the brain. MR image resolution improvement in a standard scanning time (e.g., 400µm isotropic in 15 min) would allow medical doctors to significantly improve both their diagnosis and patients' follow-up. However the scanning time in MRI remains long, especially in the high resolution context. To reduce this time, the recent Compressed Sensing (CS) theory has revolutionized the way of acquiring data in several fields including MRI by overcoming the Shannon-Nyquist theorem. Using CS, data can then be massively under-sampled while ensuring conditions for optimal image recovery.In this context, previous Ph.D. thesis in the laboratory were dedicated to the design and implementation of physically plausible acquisition scenarios to accelerate the scan. Those projects deliver new optimization algorithm for the design of advanced non-Cartesian trajectory called SPARKLING: Spreading Projection Algorithm for Rapid K-space samplING. The generated SPARKLING trajectories led to acceleration factors up to 20 in 2D and 60 for 3D-acquisitions on highly resolved T₂* weighted images acquired at 7~Tesla.Those accelerations were only accessible thanks to the high input Signal-to-Noise Ratio delivered by the usage of multi-channel reception coils. However, those results are coming at a price of long and complex reconstruction.In this thesis, the objective is to propose an online approach for non-Cartesian multi-channel MR image reconstruction. To achieve this goal we rely on an online approach where the reconstruction starts from incomplete data.Hence acquisition and reconstruction are interleaved, and partial feedback is given during the scan. After exposing the Compressed Sensing theory, we present state-of the art method dedicated to multi-channel coil reconstruction. In particular, we will first focus on self-calibrating methods that presents the advantage to be adapted to non-Cartesian sampling and we propose a simple yet efficient method to estimate the coil sensitivity profile.However, owing to its dependence to user-defined parameters, this two-step approach (extraction of sensitivity maps and then image reconstruction) is not compatible with the timing constraints associated with online reconstruction. Then we studied the case of calibration-less reconstruction methods and splits them into two categories, the k-space based and the domain-based. While the k-space calibration-less method are sub-optimal for non-Cartesian reconstruction, due to the gridding procedure, we will retain the domain-based calibration-less reconstruction and prove theirs for online purposes. Hence in the second part, we first prove the advantage of mixed norm to improve the recovery guarantee in the pMRI setting. Then we studied the impact of structured sparse induced norm on the reconstruction multi-channel purposes, where then and adapt different penalty based on structured sparsity to handle those highly correlated images. Finally, the retained method will be applied to online purposes. The entire pipeline, is compatible with an implementation through the Gadgetron pipeline to deliver the reconstruction at the scanner console.

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