In recent years, ultra-wideband (UWB) communications has gained tremendous popularity in both research community and industry. The large bandwidth of UWB systems raises new wireless channel effects and consequently unique advantages as well as challenges to be dealt with, compared to conventional wireless systems. One of these advantages is the ability to resolve dense multipath components and use Rake combining at the receiver in order to significantly reduce the negative effects of fading. However, implementing a Rake receiver with a sufficiently large number of fingers to make use of this advantage is an evident challenge for most UWB devices with limited signal processing capabilities. A possible approach to overcome this problem is to move computational complexity from the receiver to the more powerful transmitter, which is the main focus of the present work. In this thesis, we propose two novel pre-equalization schemes for multiple- input single-output (MISO) direct-sequence ultra-wideband (DS-UWB) systems with pre-Rake combining and symbol-by-symbol detection. The first pre-equalization filter (PEF) scheme employs one PEF per transmit antenna, whereas in the second, simplified PEF (S-PEF) scheme all transmit antennas share the same PEF. For both schemes the optimum finite impulse response (FIR) and infinite impulse response (IIR) PEFs are calculated based on the minimum mean squared error (MMSE) criterion. We show that in contrast to previously proposed schemes for DS-UWB, both our proposed PEF schemes efficiently exploit the channel shortening properties of the pre-Rake filter. In particular, our proposed PEF schemes operate at the symbol level. We also show that under certain conditions the S-PEF scheme achieves the same performance as the more complex PEF scheme. Finally, we demonstrate that a single-input multiple-output (SIMO) DS-UWB system with post-Rake combining and MMSE post-equalization is the dual system to the considered MISO DS–UWB system with pre-Rake combining and MMSE pre-equalization. This uplink-downlink duality can be exploited for efficient calculation of the PEFs and for complexity reduction. Our simulation results show that the proposed PEF schemes achieve significant performance gains over pre-Rake combining without equalization even if only short PEFs are employed, and this is the case even for long UWB channel impulse responses. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of / Graduate

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Smart antenna technology is a promising means to overcome signal impairments in wireless personal communications. When spatial signal processing achieved through smart antennas is combined with temporal signal processing, the space-time processing can mitigate interference and multipath to yield higher network capacity, coverage, and quality. In this dissertation, we propose a dual smart antenna system incorporated into handsets for the third generation wireless personal communication systems in which the two antennas are separated by a quarter wavelength (3.5 cm). We examine the effectiveness of a dual smart antenna system with diversity and adaptive combining schemes and propose a new combining scheme called hybrid combining. The proposed hybrid combiner combines diversity combiner and adaptive combiner outputs using maximal ratio combining (MRC). Since these diversity combining and adaptive combining schemes exhibit somewhat opposite and complementary characteristics, the proposed hybrid combining scheme aims to exploit the advantages of the two schemes. To model dual antenna signals, we consider three channel models: loosely correlated fading channel model (LCFCM), spatially correlated fading channel model (SCFCM), and envelope correlated fading channel model (ECFCM). Each antenna signal is assumed to have independent Rayleigh fading in the LCFCM. In the SCFCM, each antenna signal is subject to the same Rayleigh fading, but is different in the phase due to a non-zero angle of arrival (AOA). The LCFCM and the SCFCM are useful to evaluate the upper and the lower bounds of the system performance. To model the actual channel of dual antenna signals lying in between these two channel models, the ECFCM is considered. In this model, two Rayleigh fading antenna signals for each multipath are assumed to have an envelope correlation and a phase difference due to a non-zero AOA. To obtain the channel profile, we adopted not only the geometrically based single bounce (GBSB) circular and elliptical models, but also the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) channel model. In this dissertation, we also propose a new generalized selection combining (GSC) method called minimum selection GSC (MS-GSC) and an adaptive rake combining scheme to reduce the power consumption of mobile rake receivers. The proposed MS-GSC selects a minimum number of branches as long as the combined SNR is maintained larger than a given threshold. The proposed adaptive rake combining scheme which dynamically determines the threshold values is applicable to the three GSC methods: the absolute threshold GSC, the normalized threshold GSC, and the proposed MS-GSC. Through simulation, we estimated the effectiveness of the proposed scheme for a mobile rake receiver for a wideband CDMA system. We also suggest a new power control strategy to maximize the benefit of the proposed adaptive scheme. / Ph. D.

A rake receiver, which resolves multipath signals corrupted by a fading channel, is the most complex and power consuming block of a modem chip. Therefore, it is essential to design a rake receiver be efficient in hardware and power. We investigated a design of a rake receiver for the WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) system, which is a third generation wireless communication system. Our rake receiver design is targeted for mobile units, in which low-power consumption is highly important. We made judicious judgments throughout our design process to reduce the overall circuit complexity by trading with the performance. The reduction of the circuit complexity results in low power dissipation for our rake receiver. As the first step in the design of a rake receiver, we generated a software prototype in MATLAB. The prototype included a transmitter and a multipath Rayleigh fading channel, as well as a rake receiver with four fingers. Using the software prototype, we verified the functionality of all blocks of our rake receiver, estimated the performance in terms of bit error rate, and investigated trade-offs between hardware complexity and performance. After the verification and design trade-offs were completed, we manually developed a rake receiver at the RT (Register Transfer) level in VHDL. We proposed and incorporated several schemes in the RT level design to enhance the performance of our rake receiver. As the final step, the RT level design was synthesized to gate level circuits targeting TSMC 0.18 mm CMOS technology under the supply voltage of 1.8 V. We estimated the performance of our rake receiver in area and power dissipation. Our experimental results indicate that the total power dissipation for our rake receiver is 56 mW and the equivalent NAND2 circuit complexity is 983,482. We believe that the performance of our rake receiver is quite satisfactory. / Master of Science

Voice Personal Assistant (VPA) is a software agent, which can interpret the user's voice commands and respond with appropriate information or action. The users can operate the VPA by voice to complete multiple tasks, such as read the message, order coffee, send an email, check the news, and so on. Although this new technique brings in interesting and useful features, they also pose new privacy and security risks. The current researches have focused on proof-of-concept attacks by pointing out the potential ways of launching the attacks, e.g., craft hidden voice commands to trigger malicious actions without noticing the user, fool the VPA to invoke the wrong applications. However, lacking a comprehensive understanding of the functionality of the skills and its commands prevents us from analyzing the potential threats of these attacks systematically. In this project, we developed convolutional neural networks with active learning and keyword-based approach to investigate the commands according to their capability (information retrieval or action injection) and sensitivity (sensitive or nonsensitive). Through these two levels of analysis, we will provide a complete view of VPA skills, and their susceptibility to the existing attacks. / M.S. / Voice Personal Assistant (VPA) is a software agent, which can interpret the users' voice commands and respond with appropriate information or action. The current popular VPAs are Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple Siri and Microsoft Cortana. The developers can build and publish third-party applications, called skills in Amazon Alex and actions in Google Homes on the VPA server. The users simply "talk" to the VPA devices to complete different tasks, like read the message, order coffee, send an email, check the news, and so on. Although this new technique brings in interesting and useful features, they also pose new potential security threats. Recent researches revealed that the vulnerabilities exist in the VPA ecosystems. The users can incorrectly invoke the malicious skill whose name has similar pronunciations to the user-intended skill. The inaudible voice triggers the unintended actions without noticing users. All the current researches focused on the potential ways of launching the attacks. The lack of a comprehensive understanding of the functionality of the skills and its commands prevents us from analyzing the potential consequences of these attacks systematically. In this project, we carried out an extensive analysis of third-party applications from Amazon Alexa and Google Home to characterize the attack surfaces. First, we developed a convolutional neural network with active learning framework to categorize the commands according to their capability, whether they are information retrieval or action injection commands. Second, we employed the keyword-based approach to classifying the commands into sensitive and nonsensitive classes. Through these two levels of analysis, we will provide a complete view of VPA skills' functionality, and their susceptibility to the existing attacks.

Ce travail s’intéresse aux transmissions ultralarge bande (ULB) dans les réseaux sans fils. La diversité spatiale est introduite par l’utilisation du système multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) comme une technique efficace pour lutter contre l’évanouissement dû aux trajets multiples dans les communications sans fils. Mais, souvent l’intégration d’antennes multiples au niveau de l’émetteur ou du récepteur est coûteuse. Comme alternative, nous proposons d’utiliser la diversité coopérative qui garantit des gains de diversité spatiale en exploitant les techniques MIMO traditionnelles sans avoir besoin d’antennes multiples. L’objectif est d’introduire la diversité coopérative aux systèmes de transmission ULB. Nous considérons deux techniques d’accès multiple avec des schémas de modulation différents (time hopping pulse position modulation TH-PPM et direct sequence binary phase shift keying DSBPSK) avec le protocole de coopération decode-and-forward (DF). Nous utilisons le récepteur Rake afin d’exploiter la diversité de trajet multiple et analysons les statistiques de variable de décision à la sortie de ce récepteur. Nous présentons des résultats de simulation de la performance en termes de taux d’erreur binaire (TER) du système étudié sous différents canaux UWB compte tenu de la norme IEEE 802.15.4a. Ces résultats montrent que la coopération avec des relais améliore significativement les performances de transmission ULB, et que le gain de diversité augmente proportionnellement avec le nombre de relais. En présence d’IAM, la performance du système se dégrade de manière significative, mais l’avantage de la coopération est encore modérément efficace. La performance dans ce cas est limitée en termes de diversité achevée parce que le canal entre la source et le relais en présence d’IAM devient moins favorable. C’est pourquoi nous proposons d’utiliser la technique de sélection d’antenne au relais afin d’améliorer la fiabilité du canal source-relais. Cette solution permet d’améliorer la performance grâce au gain de la diversité d’antennes multiples disponibles au relais toute en n’utilisant qu’une seule chaîne radiofréquence (RF), qui conduit à une réduction des coûts et de la complexité. / This work focuses on the ultra wideband (UWB) transmission in wireless networks. Spatial diversity is introduced by the use of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system as an effective technique to overcome multipath fading in wireless communications. But the integration of multiple antennas at the transmitter or receiver is often costly. As an alternative, we propose to use the cooperative diversity that provides spatial diversity gains by exploiting the traditional MIMO techniques without the need for multiple antennas. The objective is to introduce cooperative diversity to UWB transmission systems. We consider two multiple access techniques with different modulation schemes (time hopping pulse position modulation TH-PPM and direct sequence binary Phase Shift Keying DS-BPSK) with the cooperation protocol decode-and-forward (DF). We use the Rake receiver to exploit multipath diversity and analyze the decision variable statistics at the output of the receiver. We present simulation results of the BER performance of the proposed system under different UWB channel given the IEEE 802.15.4a standard. Our results show that the cooperation with the relay significantly improves the performance of UWB transmission, and that the diversity gain increases with the number of relays. In the presence of MAI, the overall system performance degrades significantly, but the benefit of cooperation is still moderately effective. The performance in this case is limited in terms of attainable diversity that the source-relay link becomes worse when MAI is present. That is why we propose to use antenna selection at the relay receiver in order to improve the reliability of the source-relay link. This solution is shown to improve the performance by exploiting the diversity of the available antennas at the relay, while using a single Radio Frequency (RF) chains. This leads to reduced cost and complexity.

Ny lagstiftning har lagt fokus på den tociska naturen av bly som legeringselement I mässingsprodukter. Vattenförsörjningssystem är av största oro där misstänkt blyläckage från mässingsprodukter hotar människors hälsa, världen över. Denna studie har utförts i syfte att karaktärisera bearbetbarheten av blyfria mässingslegeringar för att förse industrin med nödvändig information och underlätta att ersätta dagens blyade alternativ. Karaktäriseringen har fokuserat på två specifika bearbetningsprocesser, nämligen svarvning och borrning där intresset har legat hos skärkraftsgenerering och spånbildning. Svarvtesterna riktade sig mot att jämföra tre olika legeringar, CW511L, AquaNordicÒ och CW625N. De två förstnämnda är blyfria och CW625N är en medelblyhaltig mässingslegering. Borrtesterna riktade sig mot att karaktärisera vilken effekt borrgeometrier har på skärkraftsgenerering och spånbildning. Huvudfokus lades på inverkan av spånvinkel och borrdiameter. Borrtesterna utfördes endast på AquaNordicÒ. Resultaten har visat att, signifikant högre skärkrafter genereras vid svarvning av blyfria legeringar jämfört med blyfria. Det fanns emellertid ingen signifikant skillnad mellan de båda blyfria legeringarna avseende skärkrafter, medan spånbildning förbättrades för AquaNordicÒ . Borrtesterna har å andra sidan visat att bearbetningen hos den blyfria AquaNordicÒ -legeringen kan förbättras genom att öka på spånvinkeln och minska borrdiameter. Baserat på resultaten från det här avhandlingsarbetet har man dragit slutsatsen att bearbetningen av blyfria mässingslegeringar är tillräckligt bra för att kunna antas av industrin. Förbättring är dock nödvändig för att ersätta de blyeade alternativen helt. / Recent legislation has put focus on the toxic nature of lead as an alloying element in brass products. Watersupply systems are of biggest concern where suspected lead leakages from brass products are threatening human health. A comprehensive study has been conducted in order to characterize the machinability of lead-free brass alloys to provide the industry with necessary information to assist a replacement of the leaded alternatives. The characterization has focused on two particular machining processes, namely turning and drilling and has been based on cutting force generation and chip formation. While the turning tests aimed to characterize the machinability by comparing two lead-free alloys (CW511L and AquaNordic®) with a leaded alloy (CW625N), drilling tests aimed to characterize machinability of the lead-free AquaNordic® alloy particularly, with the main focus put on the impact of tool geometry on machinability. The results have shown that significantly higher cutting forces are generated during turning of lead-free alloys as compared to the leaded. There was, however, no significant difference between the two lead-free alloys regarding cutting forces while chip formation is improved for AquaNordic®. Drilling tests have shown that the machinability of the lead-free AquaNordic® alloy can be improved by increasing the tool rake angle and decreasing tool diameter. Based on the results from this thesis work, it has been concluded that the machinability of lead-free brass alloys is sufficiently good to be able to be adopted by the industry. However, improvement is necessary inorder to fulfill the requirement needed to replace the leaded alternatives.

Ce mémoire porte sur la conception de l'interface numérique s'occupant, lors de la réception au sein d'un système de transmission de données, des problèmes d'accès au canal dans les protocoles large bande de type W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access / Multiplexage à large bande par code). Le cœur de la problématique se situe dans la partie numérique en bande de base, le récepteur RAKE. Ce récepteur est responsable de la démodulation du signal et de l'exploitation de la diversité du signal en identifiant et combinant les composantes de trajets multiples d'un même signal. En effet, cette dernière fonction est particulièrement importante d’une part de son rôle pour contrer les effets d'évanouissement causés par les trajets multiples, et d’autre part du rôle central du récepteur RAKE. La conception et l'implantation de celui-ci revêtent un caractère primordial. Dans ce mémoire, nous proposons une nouvelle architecture pour le récepteur RAKE : CodeRAKE. Les caractéristiques architecturales principales recherchées sont une grande flexibilité et une extensibilité aisée, tout en préservant la fonctionnalité et un bon équilibre entre ressources utilisées (et donc surface consommée) et performances (vitesse de fonctionnement). Pour satisfaire les contraintes de flexibilité et d'extensibilité, l'architecture CodeRAKE est partitionnée (pour être modulaire) en fonction du nombre d'utilisateurs et du nombre de codes par utilisateur, sans perdre de vue les contraintes de limitions de ressources utilisées et de préservation des performances. La modularité élevée de CodeRAKE permet l'application aisée de techniques de parallélisation permettant d'augmenter facilement les performances pour satisfaire notamment les besoins du côté de la station de base. L'approche architecturale mise en œuvre est souple et peut être facilement adaptée à d'autres protocoles existants ou futurs. Elle répond ainsi au défi des années à venir, où les récepteurs devront être capables de supporter de multiples protocoles et interfaces d'accès, notamment sous le contrôle de couches logicielles / This thesis focuses on the design of the air interface of W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) systems, particularly on the aspects related to the channel access problems at the reception side. The main concern herein is the design of the baseband digital parts, that is, the RAKE receiver. This receiver is in charge of the signal demodulation and responsible for making profit of signal diversity. This late functionality is particularly important as it allows to counter signal fading by detecting and combining multipath components (leading to signal reinforcement) Given the central role of the RAKE receiver, its design and implementation are of paramount importance. In this thesis, we propose a new architecture for the RAKE receiver: CodeRAKE. The main architectural characteristics being aimed are high flexibility and scalability, yet preserving a good trade-off between resource use (and hence, area consumption) and performance (operation speed). In order to satisfy the flexibility and scalability constraints, the CodeRAKE architecture is modular and partitioned according to the number of users and the number of codes per user, with the resource limitation and performance preservation constraints in mind. The high levels of modularity of the CodeRAKE architecture allow an easy use of parallelisation techniques, which in turn allow an easy increase of performances, particularly at the base station side.The architectural approach proposed herein are versatile and can be easily adapted to other existing or future protocols. It responds to the challenge of the coming years, where the receiver will have to support multiple protocols and access interfaces, including control software layers