ITC/USA 2011 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Seventh Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2011 / Bally's Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada / A novel dual-band S and C band antenna for high-performance autotracking applications is described. The antenna provides simultaneous dual band coverage for targets with circular or linear polarization. A vertex mounted C-band multi-mode common aperture feed is added in a Cassegrain configuration augmenting the existing ViaSat patented [1-4] ESCAN® S-band prime focus feed. A dichroic subreflector is also added allowing simultaneous dual band operation for the prime focus and Cassegrain configurations with minimal interaction. Existing S-band antennas are easily upgraded for dual band capability with only the additions of the vertex mounted C-band feed and dichroic subreflector.

ITC/USA 2013 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Ninth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 21-24, 2013 / Bally's Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV / The tracking modulation index (Km) is a key performance parameter for any autotracking antenna and should especially be considered for classically difficult targets such as missiles and/or fast moving aircraft. Antenna subsystems are typically characterized by their gain to temperature ratio (G/T) to optimize receive data bit error rates (BER) for distant targets. One important parameter often overlooked for telemetry autotracking antennas is a graded value for the available tracking modulation index (Km) that is common in radar autotracking applications. Tracking modulation performance is a major contributor for minimizing the antenna pointing error during an autotrack mission. Autotracking radar antenna specifications typically include tracking modulation as a major design parameter, many receive-only autotrack antennas used for telemetry applications do not consider this important parameter for the intended tracking mission which may result in poor autotracking performance. This paper investigates the effects of tracking modulation levels on system pointing errors for various classes of feed topologies.

ITC/USA 2012 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Eighth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 22-25, 2012 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / A new common aperture autotracking C-band feed, specifically designed to accurately track fast moving targets such as the Lance missile, is reviewed. Measured data demonstrates exceptional tracking modulation required for good tracking performance while simultaneously providing excellent data channel performance for high G/T over the entire 4.40-5.25 GHz band. The new patent applied for feed design allows users to maintain existing L/S-band capability with a cost effective field upgrade which adds high performance C-band capability to an existing telemetry tracking system.

An improved model for reducing the cost of long-term monitoring in Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) lighting retrofit projects is proposed. Cost-effective longitudinal sampling designs use the minimum number of meters required to report yearly savings at the 90% confidence and 10% relative precision level for duration of the project (up to 10 years) as stipulated by the CDM. Improvements to the existing model include a new non-linear Compact Fluorescent Lamp population decay model based on the results of the Polish Efficient Lighting Project, and a cumulative sampling function modified to weight samples exponentially by recency. An economic model altering the cost function to a nett present value calculation is also incorporated. The search space for such sampling models are investigated and found to be discontinuous and stepped, requiring a heuristic for optimisation; in this case the Genetic Algorithm was used. Assuming an exponential smoothing rate of 0.25, an inflation rate of 6.44%, and an interest rate of 10%, results show that sampling should be more evenly distributed over the study duration than is currently considered optimal, and that the proposed improvements in model accuracy increase expected project costs in nett present value terms by approximately 20%. A sensitivity analysis reveals that the expected project cost is most sensitive to the reporting precision level, coefficient of variance, and reporting / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / gm2014 / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / Unrestricted

Software testing is a crucial development technique to capture defects and slow code. When testing 3D graphics, it is hard to create automatic tests that detect errors or slow performance. Finding performance issues in game maps is a complex task that requires much manual work. Gaming companies such as EA DICE could benefit from automating the process of finding these performance issues in their game maps. This thesis tries to solve the problem by creating automatic tests where the camera is placed in a top-down perspective and flies over the in-game map, recording the time it takes to create render and client simulation frames for each map segment. The resulting trace is then visualised as a heatmap, where the mean frame creation times are rendered with pseudo colouring techniques to help pinpoint possible issues for the test engineers. The key findings of this thesis are that a heatmap visualisation of frame creation times saves much time for the developers trying to find these issues; it also lowers the amount of knowledge needed to find performance issues. This tool automates a process that formerly needed considerable manual work to get the same result. Now, artists with low coding experience can find performance issues without the technical knowledge of a Quality Assurance engineer. The thesis also highlights the drawbacks of a top-down perspective of camera trace since this is not how EA DICE games are usually rendered for the player in runtime. With this thesis as a base, other tests could be made with other ways of moving the camera and visualising the trace. / Mjukvarutestning är en viktig programvaruutvecklings teknik för att fånga felaktig eller långsam kod. Det är svårt att skapa automatiska tester för 3D grafik som hittar fel eller dålig prestanda i koden. Att hitta prestandaproblem i spelkartor är en komplex uppgift som kräver mycket manuellt arbete. Spelföretag såsom EA DICE skulle dra fördel av att automatisera processen att hitta dessa prestandaproblem i spelkartor. Denna uppsats försöker lösa detta genom att skapa automatiska tester där kameran placeras i ett uppifrån-och-ned-perspektiv och sedan flyger genom banan i spelet samtidigt som den samlar in data på hur lång tid det tar för renderings-bildrutor och klient-simulerings-bildrutor att skapas för varje ban-segment. Den resulterande datan är därefter visualiserade som ett färgdiagram, där medelvärdet på tiden för att skapa varje bildruta ritas upp med en psuedofärgningsteknik för att markera möjliga problemområden för testingenjörerna. Nyckelupptäckter för denna uppsats är att färgdiagramsvisualiseringen av bildruta-skapande-tider sparar mycket tid för utvecklare som försöker hitta prestandaproblem. Det minskar också kunskapströskeln som behövs för att lokalisera prestandaproblem. Detta verktyg automatiserar en process som tidigare krävde omfattande manuellt arbete för att få samma resultat. Numera kan game artists med låg koderfarenhet hitta dessa prestandaproblem utan den tekniska kunskapen hos en kvalitetskontroll-ingenjör. Den här uppsatsen visar också nackdelar med ett uppifrån-och-ned-perspektiv för kameran då det inte är så EA DICE spel normalt renderas för spelarna. Den här uppsatsen kan användas som utgångspunkt för andra som vill utveckla testverktyg och med fördel ta i beaktning de utvecklingspunkter denna uppsats belyser.

Personal Informatics (PI) are information systems that allow people to process activities with the usage of information technology, aiming to produce informational products (data) either for themselves or for others. Technologies that enable PI are becoming increasingly popular, assisting people in collecting personally relevant information about their body and their behaviour. In sports industry nowadays, a great variety of PI wearable tools offer support to athletes and training staff to improve their performance. An example of such tool is the Electronic Performance and Tracking Systems (EPTS), which are a combination of hardware and software that facilitates the collection, storage, analysis and management of professional athletes’ fitness and health data. Although significant and broadly used, EPTS have not yet received much attention from researchers and, thus, understudied. Therefore, the master’s thesis explores the perceptions of professional football athletes and training staff regarding the use of EPTS in their everyday training and work. Furthermore, the master’s thesis research explores the benefits and challenges that professional football athletes and training staff experience when using EPTS in their everyday training and work. The master’s thesis study adopts the interpretive paradigm and qualitative ethnographic approach. The research data was collectedthrough direct observations in the field and semi-structured interviews from Greek professional football athletes and Greek training staff that use wearable EPTS in their everyday training and work and was analysed thematically. A theoretical framework, which is built upon relevant literature from the informatics field and along with the theory of sensemaking, is used to understand, interpret and discuss the research findings. The research outcome of the master’s thesis shows that communication is at the core of EPTS enabling football players and training staff to improve individual and team performance. Organizing of every day starts and ends with EPTS analysis and evaluation and better organized and daily evaluated football methodology appears as key benefit for the club. Coaches and trainers are now more data driven and accurate and analysts and trainers that conduct analysisof the data provided by EPTS are new members of the training staff. Evidence provided by EPTS build trust between staff and players and in the training staff. Visualization tools for presenting insights need to be further improved with the addition of in-field monitors and 3D presentations. Furthermore, it is important for training staff members to have ethical and consistent strategy on how data derived from EPTS are used on how data are communicated.  The research complements previous research on personal informatics and adjusts them to elite team sport context and adds to the theory of sensemaking regarding how users make sense of PI tools that are related with their everyday routines at work. In addition, it offers football training staff members a model for efficient use of EPTS technology into the everyday football practices and a model of sustainable use aiming the overall improvement of team performance.