Thesis (M.E.)--University of Florida, 2004. / Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 60 pages. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S. in Computer Science)--Naval Postgraduate School, Dec. 2004. / Thesis Advisor(s): Cynthia E. Irvine, Thuy D. Nguyen. Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-202). Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 125-131). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Report (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1993. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 37). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Dept. of Communication, University of Utah, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references p. [255]-268).

Currently, the IEEE 802.11 standard is the leading technology in the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) market. It provides flexibility and mobility to users, which in turn, increase productivity. Opposed to traditional fixed Local Area Network (LAN) technologies, WLANs are easier to deploy and have lower installation costs. Unfortunately, there are problems inherent within the technology and standard that inhibits its performance. Technological problems can be attributed to the physical medium of a WLAN, the electromagnetic (EM) wave. Standards based problems include security issues and the MAC layer design. However the impact of these problems can be mitigated with proper planning and design of the WLAN. To do this, an understanding of WLAN issues and the use of WLAN software tools are necessary. This thesis discusses WLAN issues such as security and electromagnetic wave propagation and introduces software that can aid the planning, deployment and maintenance of a WLAN. Furthermore the planning, implementation and auditing phases of a WLAN lifecylce are discussed. The aim being to provide an understanding of the complexities involved to deploy and maintain a secure and reliable WLAN.

M.Sc. / Social networks are evolving as mobile devices are able to establish direct communication with each other. The success of social networking sites such as FaceBook is prompting mobile phone vendors and operators to focus on providing a real human experience, as the presence of others who are in close proximity can be detected, enabling the formation of real as opposed to virtual friendships. Mobile devices are considered to be the next logical step in social networking, as they become more pervasive. Mobile social networking is a new movement in social networking, as people have membership of both a virtual community through an online social network environment, and a physical community where they are located. This research has the aim of extending the social networking experience between the virtual and physical worlds, to allow people to form real relationships with each other by using concepts from the virtual world. A move in mobile social networking is the decentralised exploration of friendships. Short-range wireless protocols like Bluetooth enable collaborative applications between mobile devices of users. Unlike conventional centralised social networks that rely upon a central authority to organise the opinions of each member of the social network and protect their personal information, members of a decentralised network are completely autonomous and responsible for their own individual behaviour. When people meet for the first time, they thus need help to determine if they can trust each other. The dissertation presents BlueTrust, a trust model for use in decentralised mobile social networks. The BlueFOAF prototype application demonstrates the operation of the BlueTrust mechanism. This application investigates the underlying technologies researched, as well as the implementation of BlueTrust to determine how others who are in close proximity can be trusted. It focuses on establishing trust between users by computing trust levels to support face-to-face user interaction.

Unidirectional broadcast structures constitute a class of high performance local network architectures. They are very flexible and well suited for fiber optic implementation. The access methods used in these networks are often based on certain implicit token-passing mechanisms to provide superior delay-vs-throughput characteristics. The performance of these unidirectional broadcast protocols is evaluated in this thesis via a study on the classical token-ring system. Emphasis is placed on the analysis of mean delay-vs-throughput performance for the gated exhaustive service discipline under asymmetric traffic. The analysis involves examination of the statistical behaviour of interacting queues. A number of exact results are derived and based on these results, a very good approximation for the average delays is developed. The approximation agrees closely with exact numerical solutions over a wide range of system parameters. The implications of the approximation are also discussed. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of / Graduate

This thesis presents the development and implementation of two fundamental communication sublayers, medium access and logical link, for a new Local Area Network (LAN) which utilizes the intra-building power distribution circuit as physical transmission medium. This medium provides a low cost means for data communications with a high degree of portability. A low-to-medium data rate and a relatively high error rate are two of the major disadvantages associated with the use of the medium. The Logical Link Control (LLC) protocol adopted is a modified version of the IEEE 802.2 protocol; whereas, the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol used is a simple hub polling scheme. For efficiency reason, both LLC and MAC sublayers are implemented in the kernel of the UNIX¹ operating system. The schemes used, justifications for the decisions made and their implementations are discussed in details in the thesis. The performance of the power line LAN formed with four Sun workstations² using modems with a data rate of 14.4 kilo-bit per second is measured and analyzed. ¹UNIX is a trademark of AT & T Bell laboratories. ²Sun workstation is a trademark of Sun Microsystems. / Science, Faculty of / Computer Science, Department of / Graduate

A high-speed local area communication network--the Expressnet--is investigated in this thesis with regard to voice and data transmissions. Performance criteria, such as channel utilizations, delay characteristics, and queue lengths are determined from computer simulation and numerical calculation approaches. The protocol is particularly suitable for the transmission of packetized voice as it is able to guarantee an upper bound on the transmission delay for each packet. The network under study thus will find major application in future office automation, where large amounts of voice will be integrated with data. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of / Graduate