Today wireless transmission of data is becoming more and more popular and the need for faster transmission rates is increasing. Since the bandwidth is limited it is important to try to use it to the fullest. CDMA is a technology that allows multiple accesses on the same frequency and time thus making it very bandwidth efficient. The CDMA technology was first introduced in the second generation’s cellular systems but has since then been improved and is reused in today’s 3G systems as Wideband CDMA. ISY is interested in getting a behavioural model of a W-CDMA system since they had developed a DSP processor called BBP1 and were thinking about adding W-CDMA support for it. Even though our system is not implemented on the BBP1 it should provide a good base for future implementations. This thesis project will describe the construction of a behavioural model of a W-CDMA system following the standard specified by 3GPP. The system simulates W-CDMA transmission and reception and has an optional channel used to simulate real world interference. The receiver uses a rake combiner to improve the performance of the system.

<div>The ambient pressure fluctuations within a wind tunnel test environment can severely affect the boundary layer transition witnessed on test articles The Boeing/AFOSR Mach 6 Quiet Tunnel was designed to minimize these fluctuations, also referred to as noise, and is the world's premier facility for studying hypersonic boundary layer transition in a quiet flow environment. All experiments performed for this work were conducted at this facility.</div><div><br></div><div> </div><div> The freestream flow field of this tunnel has been characterized multiple times since its creation, however an extensive three-dimensional spatial sweep has never been conducted. A pitot rake model was designed to allow for an extensive spatial survey of tunnel noise. This model created measurement capabilities that were previously unknown to the BAM6QT facility, including the ability to take concurrent freestream pitot probe measurements. The performance of this new measurement method was evaluated, and suggestions for future verification tests are made. The pitot rake appears to suffer from probe-probe interactions in certain configurations, and has demonstrated variation in measurements that depends on the individual sensor used.</div><div><br></div><div> </div><div> This new measurement apparatus was used to investigate the effect that cavities in the tunnel wall created by the installation of new optical windows had on the freestream noise level. A control dataset corresponding to a perfectly conformal tunnel wall was not collected during this work. The experiments conducted provide evidence that the tunnel wall cavities do increase the noise downstream of their location by approximately 100%, however a control dataset is needed to verify this finding.</div><div><br></div><div> </div><div> In addition to tunnel characterization, a novel flat plate model was evaluated for use in the BAM6QT. This model was intended for use as a platform for observing second mode instability growth. These experiments show that the initial flat plate geometry proved incompatible with the BAM6QT as the tunnel could not achieve nominal flow conditions with the model installed. The flat plate model was streamlined to rectify the startup issue, but no evidence of the second mode instability was found. A 2.5° half angle cone is being designed to replace the flat plate model as a platform for the continuation of this project.</div>

Turbulent boundary layers flowing over a smooth surface were studied to understand the influence of varying pressure gradients and flow Reynolds number on the boundary layer growth and mean turbulent properties. The test was conducted in the Virginia Tech Stability Wind Tunnel with a 0.914 m chord length, NACA 0012 Airfoil in the test section. This airfoil was rotated to different angles of attack to induce varying pressure gradients on the boundary layer developing on the test section walls. Mean pressure measurements, boundary layer pressure measurements, and time-resolved, wall-normal, stereoscopic particle image velocimetry (TR-PIV) measurements were made. The TR-PIV data was acquired at a chord-based Reynolds number of 1.2 million, 2 million, and 3.5 million, at a sampling rate of 1 kHz, in two different camera configurations. The boundary layer pressure measurements were acquired at different flow Reynolds numbers ranging between 0.76 million and 3.5 million. Both adverse and favorable pressure gradients of varying intensities were imposed on the boundary layer by rotating a 0.914 m chord NACA 0012 airfoil to angles of attacks between -{10}^o and {12}^o. Measurements at varying streamwise locations enabled the study of boundary layer flow development under changing pressure gradients. The pressure gradient influences were observed in the boundary layer characteristic properties, on the mean velocities, and on the Reynolds stresses present in the flow. The pressure gradient influences were found to be consistent at varying Reynolds numbers, but the intensity of their effects was influenced by the flow Reynolds number. Moreover, the influence of pressure gradients and flow Reynolds numbers was evident in both outer and inner scales. The test data acquired was also validated with previous works. / M.S. / The interaction of turbulent boundary layers and smooth surfaces is prevalent in our world. It plays a vital role in various phenomena, such as, aircraft stall, cabin noise, and structural vibrations. Varying flow conditions influence the behavior of boundary layers and the extent of their implications. The effects of pressure gradients and the level of turbulence, described by the Reynolds numbers, on turbulent boundary layer flow was studied. This was done through an experiment conducted at the Virginia Tech Stability Wind Tunnel facility. The test data was acquired through boundary layer pressure measurements and Time-Resolved, Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry (TR-PIV) at varying streamwise locations in the test section. A 0.914 m chord, NACA 0012 airfoil was placed in the test section and its angle of attack was varied to -{10}^o,0^o,\ \ and\ {12}^o to induce a favorable, minimum, and an adverse pressure gradient, respectively. The TR-PIV measurements were acquired at a sampling rate of 1 kHz and in two different camera configurations. The flow Reynolds number was based on the airfoil chord length (Re_c) and was varied to 1.2 million, 2 million, and 3.5 million for the TR-PIV tests. The boundary layer pressure measurements were acquired using an array of 30 Pitot probes placed in the boundary layer of the flow. The flow Reynolds number for these test runs ranged between 0.76 million and 3.5 million. The acquired data was used to analyze the mean statistical properties of turbulent boundary layers primarily focusing on the mean velocities, boundary characteristic parameters, Reynolds normal stresses, and Reynolds shear stresses. The results showed that the nature of pressure gradient influences on the mean properties of turbulent boundary layers remained consistent regardless of the flow Reynolds number. However, the intensity of the pressure gradient effects was influenced by the flow Reynolds number. These observations were made at various streamwise data acquisition locations through which the evolution of the flow was also studied. Lastly, the results obtained in this experiment were validated with previous works.

Ultra wide band (UWB) is an extremely promising wireless technology for researchers and industrials. One of the most interesting is its high data rate and fading robustness due to selective frequency fading. However, beside such advantages, UWB system performance is highly affected by existing narrowband interference (NBI), undesired UWB signals and tone/multi-tone noises. For this reason, research about NBI cancellation is still a challenge to improve the system performance vs. receiver complexity, power consumption, linearity, etc. In this work, the two major receiver sections, i.e., analog (radiofrequency or RF) and digital (digital signal processing or DSP), were considered and new techniques proposed to reduce circuit complexity and power consumption, while improving signal parameters. In the RF section, different multiband UWB low-noise amplifier key design parameters were investigated like circuit configuration, input matching and desired/undesired frequency band filtering, highlighting the most suitable filtering package for efficient UWB NBI cancellation. In the DSP section, due to pulse transmitter signals, different issues like modulation type and level, pulse variety, shape and color noise/tone noise assumptions, were addressed for efficient NBI cancelation. A comparison was performed in terms of bit-error rate, signal-to-interference ratio, signal-to-noise ratio, and channel capacity to highlight the most suitable parameters for efficient DSP design. The optimum number of filters that allows the filter bandwidth to be reduced by following the required low sampling rate and thus improving the system bit error rate was also investigated.

This thesis presents a detailed analysis of the plane rake faced drill design, its grinding method and grinding wheel geometry. A fundamental geometrical analysis has then been carried out on the major cutting edges of the modified drills according to the national and international standards. It has been shown that this new drill design results in a significant increase in the normal rake angle at lips as well as point relieving at the chisel edge region. Geometrical models for the various drill point features have been established which uniquely define the drill point features of the modified drill design. A comprehensive experimental investigation has been carried out to study the drilling performance of the modified drills, when drilling a high tensile steel, ASSAB 4340, with TiN coated high speed steel drills over a wide range of drilling conditions. Comparing to the drilling performance with conventional twist drills under the corresponding conditions, it has been found that the modified drills can reduce the thrust force by as much as 46.9% with the average of 23.8%; the reduction of drilling torque is also significant at an average of 13.2% and the maximum of 24.9%. Similarly, the new drill design shows great superiorities over the conventional drills in terms of drill-life. In the drill-life tests, a few conventional drills were broken, but all plane rake faced drills performed very well. In order to estimate the cutting performance in process planning on a mathematical and quantitative basis when drilling with the modified drills, predictive cutting force models have been developed based on the unified-generalized mechanics of cutting approach. The models have been assessed qualitatively and quantitatively and showed good agreements with the experimental thrust, torque and power. Empirical-type force equations have also been developed to provide simple alternatives for practical applications.

Ultra wide band (UWB) is an extremely promising wireless technology for researchers and industrials. One of the most interesting is its high data rate and fading robustness due to selective frequency fading. However, beside such advantages, UWB system performance is highly affected by existing narrowband interference (NBI), undesired UWB signals and tone/multi-tone noises. For this reason, research about NBI cancellation is still a challenge to improve the system performance vs. receiver complexity, power consumption, linearity, etc. In this work, the two major receiver sections, i.e., analog (radiofrequency or RF) and digital (digital signal processing or DSP), were considered and new techniques proposed to reduce circuit complexity and power consumption, while improving signal parameters. In the RF section, different multiband UWB low-noise amplifier key design parameters were investigated like circuit configuration, input matching and desired/undesired frequency band filtering, highlighting the most suitable filtering package for efficient UWB NBI cancellation. In the DSP section, due to pulse transmitter signals, different issues like modulation type and level, pulse variety, shape and color noise/tone noise assumptions, were addressed for efficient NBI cancelation. A comparison was performed in terms of bit-error rate, signal-to-interference ratio, signal-to-noise ratio, and channel capacity to highlight the most suitable parameters for efficient DSP design. The optimum number of filters that allows the filter bandwidth to be reduced by following the required low sampling rate and thus improving the system bit error rate was also investigated.

The Ultra-Wideband (UWB) channel is a dense multipath channel. The system performance and design complexity issues of selective-Rake receiver (SRake) are studied. Rake receiver has difficulties achieving desired system performance in the dense multipath environment. The main ideas of SRake receiver are to obtain the SNR level on known multipath channel and determine the desired number of Rake fingers. In the implementation of the SRake, the CLEAN algorithm is used in selecting the paths with relatively high energy. We can improve the performance of SRake receiver by increasing the accuracy of path selection. By the property of local maximum peak within the smaller partition, Two-Stage CLEAN algorithm acquires the more accurate delay time of multipath. In order to mitigate the sidelobe effect and noise interference, the key assumption in the Deng¡¦s Modified CLEAN algorithm is that using average amplitude around the considered data change as the criterion to determine if the data value is a true path. In this thesis, we investigate CLEAN, Two-Stage CLEAN and Deng¡¦s Modified CLEAN algorithm in three different systems including UWB-Impulse Radio, Pulse Radar and DS-UWB. From the performance comparison, it can be seen that the Two-Stage CLEAN algorithm that has the highest accuracy of path selection in UWB system.

In this thesis, multiuser receivers for code division multiple-access (CDMA) downlink are studied under frequency selective fading channel conditions. The receivers investigated in this thesis attempt to estimate desired symbol as a linear combination of chip-rate sampled received signal sequence. A common matrix-vector representation of signals, which is similar to the model given by Paulraj et. al. is constructed in order to analyze the receivers studied in this thesis. Two receivers already well known in the literature are introduced and derived by using the common signal model. One of the receivers uses traditional matched filter and the other uses symbol-level linear minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimation. The receiver that uses traditional matched filter, also known as the conventional RAKE receiver, benefits from time diversity by combining the signal energy from multiple paths. The conventional RAKE receiver is optimal when multiple-access interference (MAI) is absent. Linear MMSE based receivers are known to suppress MAI and to be more robust to noise enhancement. The optimal symbol-level linear MMSE based receiver requires inversion of large matrices whose size is determined by either number of active users or spreading factor. These two parameters can be quite large in many practical systems and hence the computational load of this receiver can be a problem. In this thesis, two alternative low-complexity receivers, which are chip-level linear MMSE equalizer proposed by Krauss et. al. and interference-suppressing RAKE receiver proposed by Paulraj et. al., are compared with the linear full-rank MMSE based receiver and with the conventional RAKE receiver in terms of bit-error-rate performance. Various simulations are performed to evaluate the performance of the receivers and the parameters affecting the receiver performance are investigated.

PN code tracking plays a very important role in CDMA communication systems. In literature, the influences of multipath fading and of multiuser interference on PN code tracking are studied separately. The multipath fading influence is mitigated by combining a rake receiver and a channel estimator in the Delay-Locked Loop (DLL). The multiuser interference is overcome by incorporating a data estimator into the DLL. In the downlink, PN code tracking may suffer from the multipath fading influence. However, the multipath fading and the multiuser interference influences exist in the uplink. Unfortunately, sole use of the aforementioned methods cannot solve out both influences simultaneously. In this thesis, two new Coherent Decision-Directed Delay-Locked Loop (CDD-DLL) PN-Code tracking schemes are developed and either can overcome both influences. First, a channel and a data estimators are incorporated into the DLL inherent with a rake receiver. This new scheme works properly in an environment with multipath fading and multiuser interference. Second, the original CDD-DLL is combined with a multipath interference canceller (MPI) to reduce both influences. Analytical results are derived for the two schemes proposed and are validated with numerical simulations. Simulation results show that the conventional DLLs working in a multipath fading and multiuser interference environment can be significantly improved using the new schemes. Moreover, the latter outperforms the former because the multipath interference is cancelled completely.

The system capacity of the direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) system is limited mainly due to the multiple access interference (MAI), this is basically due to the incomplete orthogonality of spreading codes between different users. In wireless communication environments, the use of DS-CDMA system over multipath channels will introduce the effect of inter-symbol interference (ISI), thus the system performance might degrade, dramatically. To circumvent the above-mentioned problems many adaptive multiuser detectors are proposed, such as the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criteria subject to certain constraints. Unfortunately, with the MMSE receiver it requires an extra training sequence, which decreases the spectral efficiency. To increase the spectral efficiency, the blind adaptive receivers are adopted. In the conventional approach the blind adaptive receiver is developed based on the linear constrained minimum variance (LCMV) criteria, which can be viewed as the constrained version of the minimum output energy (MOE) criteria. Other alternative of designing the blind adaptive receiver is to use the linear constrained constant modulus (LCCM) criteria. In general, the LCCM receiver could achieve better robustness due to the changing environment of channel. With the above-mentioned adaptive linearly constrained multi-user receivers, we are able to reduce the effects of ISI and MAI and achieve desired system performance. However, for worse communication link, the conventional adaptive multi-user detector might not achieve desired performance and suppress interference effectively. In this thesis, we consider a new approach, in which the pre-coder similar to the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems is introduced in the transmitter of the DS-CDMA system. In the receiver, by using the characteristics of pre-coder we could remove the effect of ISI, effectively, and follows by the adaptive multi-user detector to suppress the MAI. Two most common use pre-coders of the OFDM systems are the Cyclic Prefix (CP) or Zero Padding (ZP). Thus the pre-coded DS-CDMA systems associated with the adaptive blind linearly constrained receiver could be employed to further improve the system performance with the cost of decreasing the spectral efficiency.