The wavefronts of high frequency (HF) radio waves received after reflection from the ionosphere exhibit both spatial non-linearities and temporal variations which limit the performance of large aperture receiving arrays. The objective of this investigation was to measure the phase and amplitude of ionospherically propagated signals in order to relate these parameters to the reflection process. This thesis describes the design and construction of a large aperture multi-element array and its implementation for wavefrot investigations. The hardware and software developed to control the equipment and to record the measurements are described. The procedures required to verify the performance of the experimental system are discussed and results are presented which demonstrate the accuracy of the measurements. The array was utilised for studies of signals received from several transmitters situated throughout Western Europe. The results obtained demonstrate the widely different behaviour of signals received over the various propagation paths and these have been related to the modal content of the received signals. Limited periods existed during which a single ionospheric mode was received and data corresponding to this condition have been compared with those which would be expected if the signal consisted of both a specular component and a cone of diffracted rays. This model is unable to explain the experimental results. Numerical models of the received signal were therefore developed. Results of these and comparisons with experimental results suggest that the measured parameters can be explained by the existence of a specular component with a varying direction of arrival (DOA), plus some contribution from random components. The experimental results indicate that the random or diffracted components normally contribute less than 10% of the received power in a single moded signal.

The wavefronts of high frequency (HF) radio waves received after reflection from the ionosphere exhibit both spatial non-linearities and temporal variations which limit the performance of large aperture receiving arrays. The first objective of this investigation was to measure the phase and amplitude of ionospherically propagated signals at several widely spaced antennas in order to relate these parameters to the reflection process. From the amplitudes and phases measured at pairs of spaced antennas, the direction of arrival (DOA) of the signal in both azimuth and elevation was determined. Furthermore. by combining the DOA and reflection height measurements the transmitter location can be estimated from a single receiving site. The second objective of this study was to investigate the ability of the system to determine DOA and transmitter locations correctly. Two seven element antenna arrays were employed with maximum apertures of 1526 m and 294 m respectively. The associated multi-channel receiving and data logging equipment is described together with a pulsed sounding system employed for mode identification. Signals received from several European transmitters exhibited widely differing behaviour and this was interpreted in terms of their modal content. For predominantly single moded signals the observations indicate that the diffracted components normally contribute less than 10% of the received power, moreover the DOA varies in both azimuth and elevation by approximately 1-2° over time periods of several minutes. The use of the smaller array for DF and SSL applications is discussed in detail. In particular, the performance of the system was severly affected by multi-moded propagation. Techniques were developed for recognising periods of single moded propagation, when accurate measurements are to be expected. Good position fixes were obtained when measurements were restricted to these periods provided accurate reflection height information was also available.

With an increased demand on productivity and safety in industry, new issues in terms of automated material handling arise. This results in industries not having a homogenous fleet of trucks and driven and driverless trucks are mixed in a dynamic environment. Driven trucks are more flexible than driverless trucks, but are also involved in more accidents. A transition from driven to driverless trucks can increase safety, but also productivity in terms of fewer accidents and more accurate delivery. Hence, reliable and standardized solutions that avoid accidents are important to achieve high productivity and safety. There are two different safety standards for driverless trucks for Europe (EN1525) and U.S. (B56.5–2012) and they have developed differently. In terms of obstacles, they both consider contact with humans. However, a machinery-shaped object has recently been added to the U.S. standard (B56.5–2012). The U.S. standard also considers different materials for different sensors and non-contact sensors. For obstacle detection, the historical contact-sensitive mechanical bumpers as well as the traditional laser scanner used today both have limitations – they do not detect hanging objects. In this work we have identified several thin objects that are of interest in an industrial environment. A test apparatus with a thin structure is introduced for a more uniform way to evaluate sensors. To detect thin obstacles, we used a standard setup of a stereo system and developed this further to a trinocular system (a stereo system with three cameras). We also propose a method to evaluate 3D sensors based on the information from a 2D range sensor. The 3D model is created by measuring the position of a reflector with known position to an object with a known size. The trinocular system, a 3D TOF camera and a Kinect sensor are evaluated with this method. The results showed that the method can be used to evaluate sensors. It also showed that 3D sensor systems have potential to be used on driverless trucks to detect obstacles, initially as a complement to existing safety classed sensors. To improve safety and productivity, there is a need for harmonization of the European and the U.S. safety standards. Furthermore, parallel development of sensor systems and standards is needed to make use of state-of-the-art technology for sensors.

Aspects of modern communication systems is the overall theme of this thesis with emphasis placed on multicarrier modulation. The work considers four facets of such systems; namely duplexing design, interference mitigation, channel estimation and multiuser detection. The first area deals with duplexing design for very high bit rate digital subscriber lines (VDSL) using discrete multitone modulation (DMT). We present a novel method based on DMT - the Zipper duplex method. Zipper is proposed for VDSL in different standardization bodies worldwide - International (ITU), North America (ANSI) and in Europe (ETSI) where it also has been accepted as a part of the VDSL standard. Zipper has superior flexibility and spectrum efficiency. This is obtained by freely assigning different subcarriers for the up- and downstream direction. In one design Zipper operates fully network synchronized by using a masterclock. In an asynchronous design Zipper operates without any reference to a masterclock which is a requirement for unbundled networks but reduces some of the flexibility. To obtain highest flexibility in unbundled networks, without using a masterclock, an algorithm is derived that self-synchronizes all Zipper modems. Another area deals with interference- and distortion mitigation. Narrowband interference (NBI) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing- (OFDM) and DMT-based systems is considered. NBI can be very harmful for both radio- and wireline systems. We introduce two efficient NBI cancellers for OFDM and DMT. One canceller is based on a deterministic polynomial model of the NBI. The other canceller models it as a narrowband stochastic process and use the linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) criterion for the cancellation. We lower its complexity by using the theory of optimal rank reduction. Impulse noise is a different type of harmful interference that can be encountered in VDSL. In this thesis we study the effects of impulse noise in DMT-based VDSL systems and present a robust generalized likelihood ratio test for detecting impulse noise. It is used for obtaining reliable erasures in a Reed-Solomon decoding scheme which reduces the probability of symbol errors significantly. Pilot symbol assisted modulation (PSAM) can be used in OFDM for tracking the distortion variations in a fading radio channel. We analyze the pilot symbol spacing in PSAM as a trade-off between high effective SNR and good channel tracking capabilities for two channel estimators with different complexities. Code division multiple access (CDMA) is part of the standard for the third generation of mobile phones. In this thesis we present a low complexity multiuser detector for a wireless DS-CDMA system. With a pipelined structure it can produce maximum likelihood sequence detector (MLSD) decisions on many of the received bits by only performing additions after the front end matched filters. / Godkänd; 2001; 20061113 (haneit)

This thesis consists of an introduction and five parts dealing with digital communication. Three parts address Discrete Multi-Tone modulation (DMT), a wireline form of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). One part addresses channel estimation in wireless OFDM and one addresses multiuser detection in wireless Direct Sequence-Code Division Multiple Access (DS- CDMA).The first part presents a new duplex method, called Zipper, for Very High bit rate Digital Subscriber Lines (VDSL). It is a duplex method that offer high flexibility and compatibility with existing services in the access network. The second part presents a digital Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) suppression method. It is located in the frequency domain and it can be used by any DMT-based VDSL system. The third part presents a method to run Zipper in an asynchronous mode with only a small performance loss. This can be of interest for telecom operators when constructing a VDSL system. The fourth part examines the trade-off between pilot symbol spacing and symbol error rate in a wireless OFDM system using Pilot Symbol Assisted Modulation (PSAM). The last part presents a low complexity multiuser detector for wireless DS-CDMA. It consists of a pipelined detector structure that produces Maximum Likelihood Secence Detector (MLSD) decisions on some of the received bits in the sequence. The remaining, previously undetected bits, are fed to a secondary post-processor. / Godkänd; 1999; 20070404 (ysko)

Abstract Designing energy-efficient multiprocessing hardware for applications such as video decoding or MIMO-OFDM baseband processing is challenging because these applications require high throughput, as well as flexibility for efficient use of the processing resources. Application specific hardwired accelerator circuits are the most energy-efficient processing resources, but are inflexible by nature. Furthermore, designing an application specific circuit is expensive and time-consuming. A solution that maintains the energy-efficiency of accelerator circuits, but makes them flexible as well, is to make the accelerator circuits fine-grained. Fine-grained application specific processing elements can be designed to implement general purpose functions that can be used in several applications and their small size makes the design and verification times reasonable. This thesis proposes an efficient method for orchestrating the use of heterogeneous fine-grained processing elements in dynamic applications without introducing tremendous orchestration overheads. Furthermore, the thesis presents a processing element management unit which performs scheduling and independent dispatching, and works with such low overheads that the use of low latency processing elements becomes worthwhile and efficient. Dynamic orchestration of processing elements requires run-time scheduling that has to be done very fast and with as few resources as possible, for which this work proposes dividing the application into short static parts, whose schedules can be determined at system design time. This approach, often called quasi-static scheduling, captures the dynamic nature of the application, as well as minimizes the computations of run-time scheduling. Enabling low overhead quasi-static scheduling required studying simultaneously the computational complexity and performance of simple but efficient scheduling algorithms. The requirements lead to the use of flow-shop scheduling. This thesis is the first work that adapts the flow-shop scheduling algorithms to different multiprocessor memory architectures. An extension to the flow-shop model is also presented, which enables modeling a wider scope of applications than traditional flow-shop. The feasibility of the proposed approach is demonstrated with a real multiprocessor solution that is instantiated on a field-programmable gate array.

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Traffic signal control systems have been tremendously improved since the first colored traffic signal light was installed in London in December 1868. There are many different types of traffic signal control systems that can be categorized into three major control types: fixed-time, actuated, and adaptive. Choosing a proper traffic signal system is very important since there exists no perfect signal control strategy that fits every traffic network. One example is traffic signal coordination, which is the most widely used traffic signal control system. It is believed that performance measures, such as travel times, vehicle delay, and number of stops, can be enhanced by synchronizing traffic signals over a corridor. However, it is not always true that the coordination will have the same benefits for all the traffic in the network. Most of the research on coordination has focused only on strengthening the major movement along the coordinated routes without considering system-wide impacts on other traffic. Therefore, before implementing a signal control system to a specific traffic network, a thorough investigation should be conducted to see how the control strategy may impact the entire network in terms of the objectives of each type of traffic control system. This dissertation first considers two different kinds of systematic performance analyses for traffic signal control systems. Then, it presents two types of signal control strategies that account for current issues in coordination and priority control systems, respectively. First, quantitative analysis of smooth progression for traffic flow is investigated using connected vehicle technology. Many studies have been conducted to measure the quality of progression, but none has directly considered smooth progression as the significant factor of coordination, despite the fact that the definition of coordination states that the goal is to have smooth traffic flow. None of the existing studies concentrated on measuring a continuous smooth driving pattern for each vehicle in terms of speed. In order to quantify the smoothness, this dissertation conducts an analysis of the speed variation of vehicles traveling along a corridor. A new measure is introduced and evaluated for different kinds of traffic control systems. The measure can be used to evaluate how smoothly vehicles flow along a corridor based on the frequency content of vehicle speed. To better understand the impact of vehicle mode, a multi-modal analysis is conducted using the new measure. Second, a multi-modal system-wide evaluation of traffic signal systems is conducted. This analysis is performed for traffic signal coordination, which is compared with fully actuated control in terms of a systematic assessment. Many optimization models for coordination focus mainly on the objective of the coordinated route and do not account for the impacts on side street movements or other system-wide impacts. In addition, multi-modality is not considered in most optimized coordination plans. Thus, a systematic investigation of traffic signal coordination is conducted to analyze the benefits and impacts on the entire system. The vehicle time spent in the system is measured as the basis of the analysis. The first analysis evaluates the effect of coordination on each route based on a single vehicle mode (regular passenger vehicles). The second analysis reveals that how multi-modality affects the performance of the entire system. Third, in order to address traffic demand fluctuation and traffic pattern changes during coordination periods, this dissertation presents an adaptive optimization algorithm that integrates coordination with adaptive signal control using data from connected vehicles. Through the algorithm, the coordination plan can be updated to accommodate the traffic demand variation and remain optimal over the coordination period. The optimization framework consists of two levels: intersection and corridor. The intersection level handles phase allocation in real time based on connected vehicle trajectory data, while the corridor level deals with the offsets optimization. The corridor level optimization focuses on the performance of the vehicle movement along the coordinated phase, while at the intersection level, all movements are considered to create the optimal signal plan. The two levels of optimizations apply different objective functions and modeling methodologies. The objective function at the intersection level is to minimize individual vehicle delay for both coordinated and non-coordinated phases using dynamic programming (DP). At the corridor level, a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) is formulated to minimize platoon delay for the coordinated phase. Lastly, a peer priority control strategy, which is a methodology that enhances the multi modal intelligent traffic signal system (MMITSS) priority control model, is presented based on peer-to-peer (P2P) and dedicated short range communication (DSRC) in a connected vehicle environment. The peer priority control strategy makes it possible for a signal controller to have a flexible long-term plan for prioritized vehicles. They can benefit from the long-term plan within a secured flexible region and it can prevent the near-term priority actions from having a negative impact on other traffic by providing more flexibility for phase actuation. The strategy can be applied to all different modes of vehicles such as transit, freight, and emergency vehicles. Consideration for far side bus stops is included for transit vehicles. The research that is presented in this dissertation is constructed based on Standard DSRC messages from connected vehicles such as Basic Safety Messages (BSMs), Signal Phasing and Timing Messages (SPaTs), Signal Request Messages (SRMs), and MAP Messages, defined by Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) (SAE International 2016).

Many industries are dealing with composite materials and multi-layered structures of various materials. Errors in the manufacturing process may lead to defects in the final product, and hence, avoiding imperfections is crucial. The importance of repeated quality assurance online is therefore essential during the process. For quality assurance the industry needs accurate and cost-effective diagnostic methods. Ultrasonic measurement techniques are familiar to most people from their medical applications, such as looking for the fetus in the mother's womb or imaging tissue anomalies in order to detect e.g. tumours. However, applications for ultrasound are widely used in the industry today, as a nondestructive evaluation technique for many different media. In the aircraft industry for example, components are inspected before they are assembled into the aircraft and also periodically inspected throughout their useful life, by using for example ultrasonic techniques. Ultrasonic inspection is extensively used to locate tiny cracks and to measure the thickness of the aircraft skin from the outside. The objectives of this thesis is to address the advancement of methods for ultrasonic characterization of layered media. The research problem addressed is stated as: How can methods for Nondestructive Evaluation of layered media using ultrasound be developed or improved? To easier approach this question it can be divided into smaller parts which are addressed separately and in combinations. The approach to answer the research question and the project objectives is chosen to be in the field of ultrasound, because of its superior penetrating properties in solid materials. When using ultrasound and ultrasonic measurement techniques we are restricted to measure frequency dependent phase velocity and attenuation. However, these properties can be used to calculate material properties of interest in the investigated medium. The focus of the work in this thesis is on the development of a parametric model for multi-layered materials. The model is used to describe ultrasonic signals reflected from a multi-layered structure in a successive way. Results show that the proposed model can be used to deal with the research problem in this thesis. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part contains an introduction to the research area together with a summary of thecontributions, and the second part is a collection of four papers describing the research. / <p>Godkänd; 2007; 20070528 (ysko)</p>

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