The performance of commercial Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags is primarily limited by present techniques used for tag antenna design. Currently, industry techniques rely on identifying the RFID tag application (books, clothing, etc.) and then building antenna prototypes of different configurations in order to satisfy minimum read range requirements. However, these techniques inherently lack an electromagnetic basis and are unable to provide a low cost solution to the tag antenna design process. RFID tag performance characteristics (read-range, chip-antenna impedance matching, surrounding environment) can be very complex, and a thorough understanding of the RFID tag antenna design may be gained through an electromagnetic approach in order to reduce the tag antenna size and the overall cost of the RFID system. The research presented in this thesis addresses RFID tag antenna design process for passive RFID tags. With the growing number of applications (inventory, supply-chain, pharmaceuticals, etc), the proposed RFID antenna design process demonstrates procedures to design tag antennas for such applications. Electrical/geometrical properties of the antennas designed were investigated with the help of computer electromagnetic simulations in order to achieve optimal tag performance criteria such as read range, chip-impedance matching, antenna efficiency, etc. Experimental results were performed on the proposed antenna designs to compliment computer simulations and analytical modelling.

This report is a technical verification and validation of Traffic Information Service Broadcast (TIS-B) using the data link VDL Mode 4. The main objective of the report is to examine the usefulness of TIS-B considering the results from tests performed in the Stockholm Terminal Area and for the Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control System (A-SMGCS) at Arlanda airport. The results are compared with the requirements that have been set by the standardisation organisations ICAO, RTCA, Eurocontrol and Eurocae. TIS-B is however such a new concept, so most of the operational requirements have not yet been defined. The process for performing the evaluation of TIS-B involves three stages: · Study the requirements on TIS-B, ADS-B, radar and A-SMGCS. · Verify TIS-B by performing tests at Arlanda airport. · Validate the test results through analysis. A theoretical study of slot allocation optimisation is performed to decide how the slot allocation is to be implemented. The report includes a Functional Hazard Analysis (FHA). The FHA is done to see if the applications for TIS-B are ready for implementation or if more hazard preventing actions has to be taken, before any operational actions can be performed. The report also involves a theoretical introduction to Air Traffic Management (ATM), Surveillance techniques and TIS-B. All parts included in the report results in conclusions and recommendations regarding the TIS-B service.

The studies in this dissertation mainly utilize planar antennas for ultra-wideband antenna designs not only on the investigation of antenna performance but also towards exploiting attractive features of ultra-wideband antennas for practical applications, such as WMAN access-point antennas, omnidirectional WiMAX access-point antennas, band-notched UWB (Ultra-wideband, 3.1 ~ 10.6 GHz) antennas, and so on. To begin with, the effects of the ground-plane size and the asymmetrical ground plane on ultra-wideband antennas are studied in Chapter 2. Following up, from the conclusive results, an antenna for WMAN operation in access-point applications and an omnidirectional monopole for USB wireless network card device are proposed and analyzed. Characteristics of ultra-wideband antenna radiation in relation to the antenna's width for obtaining omnidirectional radiation are addressed. In Chapter 3, several ultra-wideband access-point antennas are presented for achieving good omnidirectional radiation in the azimuthal plane across the bandwidth. Furthermore, in Chapter 4, band-notching techniques are applied to ultra-wideband antennas for avoiding the interference between the UWB and the WLAN systems.

This thesis consists of two parts addressing two different problems in fading channels. The first part deals with asynchronous cooperative relay communication. The assumption of nodes in a cooperative communication relay network operating in synchronous fashion is often unrealistic. In this work we consider two different models of asynchronous operation in cooperative-diversity networks experiencing slow fading and examine the corresponding Diversity-Multiplexing Tradeoffs (DMT). For both models, we propose protocols and distributed space-time codes that asymptotically achieve the transmit diversity bound on DMT for all multiplexing gains and for number of relays N ≥ 2. The distributed space-time codes for all the protocols considered are based on Cyclic Division Algebras (CDA). The second part of the work addresses the DMT analysis of diversity embedded codes for MIMO channels. Diversity embedded codes are high rate codes that are designed so that they have a high diversity code embedded within them. This allows a form of opportunistic communication depending on the channel conditions. The high diversity code ensures that at least a part of the information is received reliably, whereas the embedded high rate code allows additional information to be transferred if the channel is good. This can be thought of coding the data into two streams: high priority and low priority streams so that the high priority stream gets a better reliability than the lower priority stream. We show that superposition based diversity embedded codes in conjunction with naive single stream decoding is sub-optimal in terms of the DM tradeoff. We then construct explicit diversity embedded codes by the superposition of approximately universal space-time codes from CDAs. The relationship between broadcast channels and the diversity embedded setting is then utilized to provide some achievable Diversity Gain Region (DGR) for MIMO broadcast Channels.

This thesis explores the part gambling plays in an urban setting in Highland Papua New Guinea. Gambling did not exist in (what is now) Goroka Town before European contact, nor Papua New Guinea more broadly, but when I conducted fieldwork in 2009-2010 it was an inescapable part of everyday life. One card game proliferated into a multitude of games for different situations and participants, and was supplemented with slot machines, sports betting, darts, and bingo and lottery games. One could well imagine gambling becoming popular in societies new to it, especially coming on the back of money, wage-work and towns. Yet the popularity of gambling in the region is surprising to social scientists because the peoples now so enamoured by gambling are famous for their love of competitively giving things away, not competing for them. Gambling spread while gifting remained a central part of the way people did transactions. This thesis resists juxtaposing gifting and selfish acquisition. It shows how their opposition is false; that gambling is instead a new analytic technique for manipulating the value of gifts and acquisitions alike, through the medium of money. Too often gambling takes a familiar form in analyses: as the sharp end of capitalism, or the benign, chance-led redistributor of wealth in egalitarian societies. The thesis builds an ethnographic understanding of gambling, and uses it to interrogate theories of gambling, money, and Melanesian anthropology. In so doing, the thesis speaks to a trend in Melanesian anthropology to debate whether monetisation and urbanisation has brought about a radical split in peoples' understandings of the world. Dealing with some of the most starkly ‘modern' material I find a process of inclusive indigenous materialism that consumes the old and the new alike, turning them into a model for action in a dynamic money-led world.

Today, owners of small communicating device are interested in transmitting or receiving various multimedia data. By increasing the number of antennas at the transmitter and/or the receiver side of the wireless link, the diversity/Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) techniques can increase wireless channel capacity without the need for additional power or spectrum in rich scattering environments. However, due to the limited space of small mobile devices, the correlation coefficients between MIMO antenna elements are very high and the total efficiencies of MIMO elements degrade severely. Furthermore, the human body causes high losses on electromagnetic wave. During the applications, the presence of users may result in the significant reduction of the antenna total efficiencies and highly affects the correlations of MIMO antenna systems. The aims of this thesis are to investigate and enhance the MIMO/diversity performance of multiple antenna systems in the free space and the presence of users. The background and theory of multiple antenna systems are introduced briefly first. Several figures of merits are provided and discussed to evaluate the multiple antenna systems. The decoupling techniques are investigated in the multiple antenna systems operating at the higher frequencies (above 1.7 GHz) and with high radiation efficiency. The single, dual and wide band isolation enhancements are realized through the half-wavelength decoupling slot, quarter-wavelength decoupling slot with T-shaped impedance transformer, tree-like parasitic element with multiple resonances, as well as the different polarizations and radiation patterns of multiple antennas. In the lower bands (lower than 960 MHz), due to the low radiation efficiency and strong chassis mode, the work mainly focused on how to directly reduce the correlations and enlarge the total efficiency. A new mode of mutual scattering mode is introduced. By increasing the Q factors, the radiation patterns of multiple antennas are separated automatically to reduce the correlations. With the inter-element distance larger than a certain distance, a higher Q factor also improved the total efficiency apart from the low correlation. A wideband LTE MIMO antenna with multiple resonances is proposed in mobile terminals. The high Q factors required for the low correlation and high efficiencies in mutual scattering mode is reduced with another mode of diagonal antenna-chassis mode. Hence, the bandwidth of wideband LTE MIMO antenna with multiple resonances mentioned above can be further enlarged while maintaining the good MIMO/diversity performance. The user effects are studied in different MIMO antenna types, chassis lengths, frequencies, port phases and operating modes. Utilizing these usefully information, an adaptive quad-element MAS has been proposed to reduce the user effects and the some geranial rules not limited to the designed MAS have also been given. / <p>QC 20130121</p> / EU Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window TANDEM

Nowadays, silicon photonics is a widely studied research topic. Its high-index-contrast and compatibility with the complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology make it a promising platform for low cost high density integration. Several general problems have been brought up, including the lack of silicon active devices, the difficulty of light coupling, the polarization dependence, etc. This thesis aims to give new attempts to novel solutions for some of these problems. Both theoretical modeling and experimental work have been done. Several numerical methods are reviewed first. The semi-vectorial finite-difference mode solver in cylindrical coordinate system is developed and it is mainly used for calculating the eigenmodes of the waveguide structures employed in this thesis. The finite-difference time-domain method and beam propagation method are also used to analyze the light propagation in complex structures. The fabrication and characterization technologies are studied. The fabrication is mainly based on clean room facilities, including plasma assisted film deposition, electron beam lithography and dry etching. The vertical coupling system is mainly used for characterization in this thesis. Compared with conventional butt-coupling system, it can provide much higher coupling efficiency and larger alignment tolerance. Two novel couplers related to silicon photonic wires are studied. In order to improve the coupling efficiency of a grating coupler, a nonuniform grating is theoretically designed to maximize the overlap between the radiated light profile and the optical fiber mode. Over 60% coupling efficiency is obtained experimentally. Another coupler facilitating the light coupling between silicon photonic wires and slot waveguides is demonstrated, both theoretically and experimentally. Almost lossless coupling is achieved in experiments. Two approaches are studied to realize polarization insensitive devices based on silicon photonic wires. The first one is the use of a sandwich waveguide structure to eliminate the polarization dependent wavelength of a microring resonator. By optimizing the multilayer structure, we successfully eliminate the large birefringence in an ultrasmall ring resonator. Another approach is to use polarization diversity scheme. Two key components of the scheme are studied. An efficient polarization beam splitter based on a one-dimensional grating coupler is theoretically designed and experimentally demonstrated. This polarization beam splitter can also serve as an efficient light coupler between silicon-on-insulator waveguides and optical fibers. Over 50% coupling efficiency for both polarizations and -20dB extinction ratio between them are experimentally obtained. A compact polarization rotator based on silicon photonic wire is theoretically analyzed. 100% polarization conversion is achievable and the fabrication tolerance is relatively large by using a compensation method. A novel integration platform based on nano-epitaxial lateral overgrowth technology is investigated to realize monolithic integration of III-V materials on silicon. A silica mask is used to block the threading dislocations from the InP seed layer on silicon. Technologies such as hydride vapor phase epitaxy and chemical-mechanical polishing are developed. A thin dislocation free InP layer on silicon is obtained experimentally. / QC20100705

[Truncated abstract] This thesis develops a scheduled protocol (time division multiple access, TDMA) called flexible-schedule-based TDMA Protocol (FlexiTP), to address the problem of providing end-to-end guarantees on data delivery, whilst also respecting severe resource constraints of wireless sensor networks. FlexiTP achieves this balance through a distributed, synchronised, and loose slot structure in which sensor nodes can build, modify, or extend their schedules based on their local information. In FlexiTP, it is not necessary to predetermine the number of slots required for a network. FlexiTP's local repair scheme allows nodes to adjust their schedules dynamically and autonomously to recover from node and communication faults. Hence, it maintains a reliable and selforganising multihop network. Most sensor network protocols designed for data gathering applications implicitly assume a periodic rate of data collection from all nodes in the network to the base station. However, nodes may want to report their data more rapidly or slowly depending on the significance and importance of their data to the end-user. The problem is that traditional TDMA-based protocols are not flexible to changes in traffic patterns because of their rigid slot structure schemes. This thesis aims to solve this problem by developing an ondemand TDMA slot transfer method that leverages the flexible-slot structure algorithm of FlexiTP to transfer time slots from one part of the network to another part. ... While these communication patterns are sufficient for monitoring applications, individual sensor nodes may need to send their data to multiple destination nodes across the network in order to execute a distributed cooperative-function based on their local environment. This peer-to-peer communication pattern makes sensor networks more reactive to triggers from the environment. This thesis attempts to solve the problem of lack of peer-to-peer communication in the design of a TDMA-driven protocol by extending the idea of on-demand TDMA slot transfer method to allow each sensor node in the network to claim extra time slots to communicate with any other nodes (peers) in the network, without going through the base station. Nodes in the network may have different priorities of data because of event-triggering sensor readings or various types of sensor readings (e.g., light, temperature, and humidity) they provide. When nodes with high priority packets increase the frequency of their data collections, the network bandwidth may be dominated by these nodes. It is desirable to allow nodes with low priority packets to aggregate their packets and so enabling these nodes to send their data to the base station under the current available network bandwidth. This thesis proposes an on-demand data aggregation algorithm that enables sensor nodes to perform an in-network-aggregation based on their current sensing requirements and network capacity constraints. In summary, this thesis describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of protocols for wireless sensor networks that focus on achieving energy-efficiency, provisioning performance assurances, and supporting reactivity and adaptability in constantly changing environment.

Proefschrift Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1998. / Met lit. opg., reg. - Met een samenvatting in het Frans.

The velocity dimension of Big Data refers to the need to rapidly process data that arrives continuously as streams of messages or events. Distributed Stream Processing Systems (DSPS) refer to distributed programming and runtime platforms that allow users to define a composition of dataflow logic that are executed on distributed resources over streams of incoming messages. A DSPS uses commodity clusters and Cloud Virtual Machines (VMs) for its execution. In order to meet the required performance for these applications, the DSPS needs to schedule these dataßows efficiently over the resources. Despite their growing use, resource scheduling for DSPSÕs tends to be done in an ad hoc manner, favoring empirical and reactive approaches, rather than a model-driven and analytical approach. Such empirical strategies may arrive at an approximate schedule for the dataflow that needs further tuning to meet the quality of service. We propose a model-based scheduling approach that makes use of performance profiles and benchmarks developed for tasks in the dataßow to plan both the resource allocation and the resource mapping that together form the schedule planning process. We propose the Model Based Allocation (MBA) and the Slot Aware Mapping (SAM) approaches that efectively utilize knowledge of the performance model of logic tasks to provide an efficient and predictable scheduling behavior. We implemented and validate these algorithms using the popular open source Apache Storm DSPS for several micro and application dataflows. The results show that our model-driven approach is able to reduce the amount of required resources (VMs) by 30% − 50% relative to existing techniques. Also we see that our strategies o↵er a predictable behavior that ensures that the expected and actual rates supported and resources used match closely. This can enable deterministic schedule planning even under dynamic conditions. Besides this static scheduling, we also examine the ability to dynamically consolidate tasks onto fewer VMs when the load on the dataßow decreases or the VMs get fragmented. We propose reliable task migration models for Apache Storm dataßows that are able to rapidly move the task assignment in the cluster, and resume the dataflow execution without any message loss.