LOW power operation for wireless radio receivers has been gaining importance lately on account of the recent spurt of growth in the usage of ubiquitous embedded mobile devices. These devices are becoming relevant in all domains of human influence. In most cases battery life for these devices continue to be an us-age bottleneck as energy storage techniques have not kept pace with the growing demand of such mobile computing devices. Many applications of these radios have limitations on recharge cycle, i.e. the radio needs to last out of a battery for long duration. This will specially be true for sensor network applications and for im-plantable medical devices. The search for low power wireless receivers has become quite advanced with a plethora of techniques, ranging from circuit to architecture to system level approaches being formulated as part of standard design procedures. However the next level of optimization towards “Smart” receiver systems has been gaining credence and may prove to be the next challenge in receiver design and de-velopment. We aim to proceed further on this journey by proposing Power Scalable Wireless Receivers (PSRX) which have the capability to respond to instantaneous performance requirements to lower power even further. Traditionally low power receivers were designed for worst-case input conditions, namely low signal and high interference, leading to large dynamic range of operation which directly im-pacts the power consumption. We propose to take into account the variation in performance required out of the receiver, under varying Signal and Interference conditions, to trade-off power. We have analyzed, designed and implemented a Power Scalable Receiver tar-geted towards low data-rate receivers which can work for Zigbee or Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) type standards. Each block of such a receiver system was evaluated for performance-power trade-offs leading to identification of tuning/control knobs at the circuit architecture level of the receiver blocks. Then we developed an usage algorithm for finding power optimal operational settings for the tuning knobs, while guaranteeing receiver reception performance in terms of Bit-Error-Rate (BER). We have proposed and demonstrated a novel signal measurement system to gen-erate digitized estimates of signal and interference strength in the received signal, called Received Signal Quality Indicator (RSQI). We achieve a RSQI average energy consumption of 8.1nJ with a peak energy consumption of 9.4nJ which is quite low compared to the packet reception energy consumption for low power receivers, and will be substantially lower than the energy savings which will be achieved from a power scalable receiver employing a RSQI. The full PSRX system was fabricated in UMC 130nm RF-CMOS process to test out our concepts and to formally quantify the power savings achieved by following the design methodology. The test chip occupied an area of 2.7mm2 with a peak power consumption of 5.5mW for the receiver chain and 18mW for the complete PSRX. We were able to meet the receiver performance requirements for Zigbee standard and achieved about 5X power savings for the range of input condition variations.

L'objectif de la thèse est d'étudier la variation temporelle de la qualité des liens dans les réseaux de capteurs sans fil à grande échelle, de concevoir des estimateurs permettant la différenciation, à court terme et long terme, entre liens de qualité hétérogène. Tout d'abord, nous étudions les caractéristiques de deux paramètres de la couche physique: RSSI (l'indicateur de puissance du signal reçu) et LQI (l'indicateur de la qualité de liaison) sur SensLab, une plateforme expérimentale de réseau de capteurs à grande échelle situé à l'intérieur de bâtiments. Nous observons que le RSSI et le LQI permettent de discriminer des liens de différentes qualités. Ensuite, pour obtenir un estimateur de PRR, nous avons approximé le diagramme de dispersion de la moyenne et de l'écart-type du LQI et RSSI par une fonction Fermi-Dirac. La fonction nous permet de trouver le PRR à partir d'un niveau donné de LQI. Nous avons évalué l'estimateur en calculant le PRR sur des fenêtres de tailles variables et en le comparant aux valeurs obtenues avec l'estimateur. Par ailleurs, nous montrons en utilisant le modèle de Gilbert-Elliot (chaîne de Markov à deux états) que la corrélation des pertes de paquets dépend de la catégorie de lien. Le modèle permet de distinguer avec précision les différentes qualités des liens, en se basant sur les probabilités de transition dérivées de la moyenne et de l'écart-type du LQI. Enfin, nous proposons un modèle de routage basé sur la qualité de lien déduite de la fonction de Fermi-Dirac approximant le PRR et du modèle Markov Gilbert-Elliot à deux états. Notre modèle est capable de distinguer avec précision les différentes catégories de liens ainsi que les liens fortement variables. / The goal of the thesis is to investigate the issues related to the temporal link quality variation in large scale WSN environments, to design energy efficient link quality estimators able to distinguish among links with different quality on a short and a long term. First, we investigate the characteristics of two physical layer metrics: RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indication) and LQI (Link Quality Indication) on SensLAB, an indoor large scale wireless sensor network testbed. We observe that RSSI and LQI have distinct values that can discriminate the quality of links. Second, to obtain an estimator of PRR, we have fitted a Fermi-Dirac function to the scatter diagram of the average and standard variation of LQI and RSSI. The function enables us to find PRR for a given level of LQI. We evaluate the estimator by computing PRR over a varying size window of transmissions and comparing with the estimator. Furthermore, we show using the Gilbert-Elliot two-state Markov model that the correlation of packet losses and successful receptions depend on the link category. The model allows to accurately distinguish among strongly varying intermediate links based on transition probabilities derived from the average and the standard variation of LQI. Finally, we propose a link quality routing model driven from the F-D fitting functions and the Markov model able to discriminate accurately link categories as well as high variable links.

Välfärdsomsorg som i Sverige bedrivs enligt hälso- och sjukvårdslagen samt socialtjänstlagen är enligt lag skyldig att bedriva en systematisk kvalitetsutveckling. I denna kvalitetsutveckling inkluderas att arbeta med identifiering av brister samt risker för brister. Detta sker genom att personal i omsorgsverksamheter systematiskt ska rapportera avvikelser varpå ett avvikelsearbete påbörjas. Avvikelsearbetet leder till åtgärder i verksamheter och är därmed ett relativt omedelbart kvalitetsutvecklande. Samtidigt fyller avvikelsearbetet en funktion på en mer aggregerad nivå då det i statistiska sammanställningar kan ge fingervisning om hur verksamheter bedrivs samt att brister, och eventuella behov, tydliggörs. Statistiskt underlag samt tydliggjorda brister och behov kan i sin tur användas för att underbygga beslut som berör verksamheterna, både beslut inom verksamheter men också politiska beslut som sätter ramar och förutsättningar för organisationer och verksamheter. Således kan avvikelsearbete mynna ut i ett av de flera kvalitetsmått vilka i vårt samhälle idag är avgörande för att kunna utvärdera att offentligt bekostad välfärd dels är effektiv men också av god kvalité. Det finns idag en utbredd kritik av den samhälleliga styrmodell som kallas New Public Management. Kritiken riktar bland annat in sig på de stora krav av uppföljning och utvärdering som är både resurskrävande och riskfyllda i den mening att utvärdering och mätning av kvalité kan innehålla skevheter och föra med sig missvisande resultat. Kritik förs också fram mot att det administrativa arbetet tar över tid och resurser från kärnverksamheten, i den här studien äldreomsorg. Föreliggande studie syftar till att undersöka hur personal inom äldreomsorgens särskilda boende upplever deras avvikelsearbete utifrån begreppet organisationskultur. Det är av relevans att höra hur den personal som arbetar med avvikelsearbete upplever sitt arbete med kvalitetsutveckling. Avvikelsearbete som arbetsuppgift medför nämligen möjliga utmaningar: personal inom äldreomsorg är en av de personalgrupper i samhället som är mest belastad arbetsmiljömässigt, avvikelsearbete kan vara laddat med en känsla av utpekande av syndabockar, det finns incitament för organisationer att visa upp en yta av att kvalitetsarbete pågår. Studien har genomförts som en fallstudie med kvalitativ ansats där sju semistrukturerade intervjuer med vårdbiträden samt undersköterskor från en och samma arbetsgrupp har gjorts under våren 2018. Resultatet går i linje med tidigare forskning som lyfter fram olika aspekter som relevanta för ett framgångsrikt avvikelsearbete: kommunikation och dialog med kollegor och chef, uppmuntran från chef, tydlig struktur för hur avvikelsearbetet bedrivs. Resultatet visar också på aspekter som kan lyftas fram som brister i avvikelsearbetet: hur personal kompenserar för att hinna med sitt arbete, att avvikelser gällande vissa brister inte alltid rapporteras. För att tolka och analysera studiens resultat används socialpsykologen Edgar Scheins arbete om organisationskultur samt företagsekonomen Mats Alvessons arbete om mekanismer inom organisationer. / Welfare Care that in Sweden is given according to laws regulating health care and social services is obligated to secure systematic quality improvement. Risk management through deviation reports is a part of this quality improvement which can affect the welfare care rather immediate. Deviation reports can also be used in statistical overviews where both risks and needs within the given care can be accentuated. As a consequence, information about risk, needs and statistical overviews can also be used for decision-making in both care organisations and in policy decisions that sets the framework for the welfare care given. Hence, deviation reports can be used as one of several quality indicators that today is fundamental in the evaluation of the quality of publicly financed welfare care. Criticism of New Public Management as a control model in welfare address the heavy demands of evaluation, auditing and monitoring which implicates risks of skewness and misguiding results. Criticism also points out that the administrative work that follows with NPM takes time and resources from the welfare cares main focus which in this paper is care for the elderly. This paper aims to examine how staff within elderly care homes experience their work with deviation reports regarding the concept of organizational culture. It is of relevance to examine this since these staff are the ones producing the evidence on which decisions are based. Also, statistics shows that staff within elder care is highly over represented in regard to risk in the work environment. Deviation reporting is also filled with challenges like avoiding the sensation of pointing out a scapegoat or someone to blame. There are also incentives for organisations to keep a facade that their operations are fully functional. This study has been completed as a case study through a qualitative approach where seven semi-structured interviews with assistant nurses and nurses aides from a single work group has been made during spring 2018. The result is in line with earlier research that points out different aspects that are of relevance for successful work with deviation reports. The results also point out aspects that can be regarded as flaws within the work of deviation reports. To interpret and analyse the result of this study two main perspectives has been used; social psychologist Edgar Scheins work on organizational culture and professor of business administration Mats Alvessonswork on mechanisms within organizations.

Introductory part of this thesis concludes the development of air traffic, division of airports in the Czech Republic according to the Ministry of Transport, according to the Law on Civil Aviation and according to the Coding of the airports (Requirement L 14). The aim was to realize theoretical definition and division of output and economic indicators. After that comes choice of appropriate airports from the European Union. The choice has been made on the basis of the number of check-in passengers at the airport in Prague-Ruzyně. Eight most suitable airports have been chosen from all twenty-seven member countries of the EU. The following step is comparative analysis of these chosen airports on the basis of specified output and economic indicators for the years 2005-2009. The year 2010 has not been included, because the chosen airports did not complete their annual reports, balances and statements of profit and loss. From these sources the values for calculation of individual indicators have been chosen. These indicators have been shown in charts, evaluated by means of graphs in Excel Programme and further they have been characterized in words. The aim of the thesis was also the evaluation and comparison of output and economic indicators of effectiveness and after evaluation, proposal of methods of evaluations has followed.