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.

Detection of multiple-lane markings (lane-line) on road surfaces is an essential aspect of autonomous vehicles. Although several approaches have been proposed to detect lanes, detecting multiple lane-lines consistently, particularly across a stream of frames and under varying lighting conditions is still a challenging problem. Since the road's markings are designed to be smooth and parallel, lane-line sampled features tend to be spatially and temporally correlated inside and between frames. In this thesis, we develop novel methods to model these spatial and temporal dependencies in the form of the target tracking problem. In fact, instead of resorting to the conventional method of processing each frame to detect lanes only in the space domain, we treat the overall problem as a Multiple Extended Target Tracking (METT) problem. In the first step, we modelled lane-lines as multiple "independent" extended targets and developed a spline mathematical model for the shape of the targets. We showed that expanding the estimations across the time domain could improve the result of estimation. We identify a set of control points for each spline, which will track over time. To overcome the clutter problem, we developed an integrated probabilistic data association fi lter (IPDAF) as our basis, and formulated a METT algorithm to track multiple splines corresponding to each lane-line.In the second part of our work, we investigated the coupling between multiple extended targets. We considered the non-parametric case and modeled target dependency using the Multi-Output Gaussian Process. We showed that considering dependency between extended targets could improve shape estimation results. We exploit the dependency between extended targets by proposing a novel recursive approach called the Multi-Output Spatio-Temporal Gaussian Process Kalman Filter (MO-STGP-KF). We used MO-STGP-KF to estimate and track multiple dependent lane markings that are possibly degraded or obscured by traffic. Our method tested for tracking multiple lane-lines but can be employed to track multiple dependent rigid-shape targets by using the measurement model in the radial space In the third section, we developed a Spatio-Temporal Joint Probabilistic Data Association Filter (ST-JPDAF). In multiple extended target tracking problems with clutter, sometimes extended targets share measurements: for example, in lane-line detection, when two-lane markings pass or merge together. In single-point target tracking, this problem can be solved using the famous Joint Probabilistic Data Association (JPDA) filter. In the single-point case, even when measurements are dependent, we can stack them in the coupled form of JPDA. In this last chapter, we expanded JPDA for tracking multiple dependent extended targets using an approach called ST-JPDAF. We managed dependency of measurements in space (inside a frame) and time (between frames) using different kernel functions, which can be learned using the trained data. This extension can be used to track the shape and dynamic of dependent extended targets within clutter when targets share measurements. The performance of the proposed methods in all three chapters are quanti ed on real data scenarios and their results are compared against well-known model-based, semi-supervised, and fully-supervised methods. The proposed methods offer very promising results. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

No description available.

<p>Practical design problems in engineering and science involve the evaluation of expensive black-box functions, the optimization of multiple—often conflicting—targets, and the integration of data generated by multiple sources of information, e.g., numerical models with different levels of fidelity. If not properly handled, the complexity of these design problems can lead to lengthy and costly development cycles. In the last years, Bayesian optimization has emerged as a powerful alternative to solve optimization problems that involve the evaluation of expensive black-box functions. Bayesian optimization has two main components: a probabilistic surrogate model of the black-box function and an acquisition function that drives the optimization. Its ability to find high-performance designs within a limited number of function evaluations has attracted the attention of many fields including the engineering design community. The practical relevance of strategies with the ability to fuse information emerging from different sources and the need to optimize multiple targets has motivated the development of multi-fidelity modeling techniques and multi-objective Bayesian optimization methods. A key component in the vast majority of these methods is the Gaussian process (GP) due to its flexibility and mathematical properties.</p> <p><br></p> <p>The objective of this dissertation is to develop new approaches in the areas of multi-fidelity modeling and multi-objective Bayesian optimization. To achieve this goal, this study explores the use of linear and non-linear compositions of GPs to build probabilistic models for Bayesian optimization. Additionally, motivated by the rationale behind well-established multi-objective methods, this study presents a novel acquisition function to solve multi-objective optimization problems in a Bayesian framework. This dissertation presents four contributions. First, the auto-regressive model, one of the most prominent multi-fidelity models in engineering design, is extended to include informative mean functions that capture prior knowledge about the global trend of the sources. This additional information enhances the predictive capabilities of the surrogate. Second, the non-linear auto-regressive Gaussian process (NARGP) model, a non-linear multi-fidelity model, is integrated into a multi-objective Bayesian optimization framework. The NARGP model offers the possibility to leverage sources that present non-linear cross-correlations to enhance the performance of the optimization process. Third, GP classifiers, which employ non-linear compositions of GPs, and conditional probabilities are combined to solve multi-objective problems. Finally, a new multi-objective acquisition function is presented. This function employs two terms: a distance-based metric—the expected Pareto distance change—that captures the optimality of a given design, and a diversity index that prevents the evaluation of non-informative designs. The proposed acquisition function generates informative landscapes that produce Pareto front approximations that are both broad and diverse.</p>

No description available.

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.