The decreasing sizes in complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) transistor technology requires the replacement of SiO2 with gate dielectrics that have a high dielectric constant (k). When the SiO2 gate thickness was reduced below 1.4 nm, electron tunneling effects and high leakage currents occurred which presented serious obstacles for the reliability issue in terms of metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) devices. In recent years, various alternative gate dielectrics have been researched. Following the introduction of HfO2 into the 45 nm process by Intel in 2007, the screening and selection of high-k gate stacks, understanding their properties, and their integration into CMOS technology has been a very active research area. Frequency dispersion of high-k dielectrics was commonly observed and classified into two parts: extrinsic and intrinsic causes. The frequency dependence of the dielectric constant (k-value), that is the intrinsic frequency dispersion, could not be assessed before suppressing the effects of extrinsic frequency dispersion, such as the effects of the lossy interfacial layer (between the high-k thin film and silicon substrate) and the parasitic effects. The significance of parasitic effects (including series resistance and the back metal contact of the metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitor) on frequency dispersion was studied. The effect of the lossy interfacial layer on frequency dispersion was investigated and modeled using a dual frequency technique. The effect of surface roughness on frequency dispersion is also investigated. Several mathematical models were discussed to describe the dielectric relaxation of high-k dielectrics. Some of the relaxation behavior can be modeled using the Curie-von Schweidler (CS) law, the Kohlrausch-Williams-Watts (KWW) relationship and the Havriliak-Negami (HN) relationship. Other relaxation models were also introduced. For the physical mechanism, dielectric relaxation was found to be related to the degree of polarization, which was dependent on the structure of the high-k material. The degree of polarization was attributed to the enhancement of the correlations among polar nano-scale size domain within the materials. The effect of grain size for the high-k materials' structure mainly originated from higher surface stress in smaller grain size due to its higher concentration of grain boundary.

Reactive HiPIMS discharges have been investigated by employing a selection of plasma diagnostic techniques. Plasma dynamics in a reactive HiPIMS discharge were studied by means of a single Langmuir probe which revealed electron and positive ion densities of the order of 10^17 to 10^18 m^-3 in typical substrate positions, the temporal evolutions of which exhibited a dual-peak structure attributed to the propagation of an ion acoustic wave or the compression and subsequent rarefaction of the process gas caused by the intense 'sputter wind'. The compression phase is also thought to be the cause of the quenching of the effective electron temperature observed during the on-time with the rarefaction phase being responsible for the increase in the effective electron temperature toward the end of the voltage pulse. Negative ion dynamics in the afterglow of a reactive HiPIMS discharge were also studied by means of a Langmuir probe for a range of oxygen partial pressures. The extended afterglow was found to be highly electronegative with the negative ion-to-electron ratio (alpha) at 3 milliseconds after the pulse termination reaching values of almost 400 for the highest oxygen partial pressures. By comparing results to a simple plasma-chemical model, it is speculated that increased negative ion formation occurs for higher oxygen partial pressures due to the increased availability of oxygen metastables that are formed in the active phase. Despite exhibiting a strong correlation, a comparison to the alpha values determined by photodetachment revealed an overestimation by a factor of 8-15 when employing the Langmuir probe method. Furthermore, from photodetachment measurements the O- ion density was observed to peak in the early afterglow at values of the order of 10^17 m^-3. It was also concluded that a negative ion flux of approximately 10^17-10^18 m^-2 s^-1 could be expected at the chamber walls and substrate surface once the plasma afterglow transitions into an ion-ion state, which could have implications for many plasma processing methods. Time-averaged energy distributions of oxygen negative ions obtained using energy-resolved mass spectrometry during reactive HiPIMS of Ti in an Ar/O2 gas mixture revealed three distinct populations of O- ions at varying energies. The peak of the high-energy population was found to correspond to the value of average applied target potential during the pulse on-time. Comparison to a Thompson energy distribution of sputtered particles suggested that O- ions are sputtered from the target surface before undergoing acceleration in the cathode sheath. A study of the attenuation of the high-energy O- ion population as a function of the pressure-distance product yielded an effective total cross section of 2 x 10^-19 m^2 for O- interacting with the background Ar/O2 gas mixture for both Ti and Nb targets. During reactive HiPIMS of different target materials, a correlation between O- emission and the ion-induced secondary electron emission coefficient was found. In addition, large differences in the high-energy O- yield were also observed when employing different inert gases mixed with O2, which was also attributed to changes in the ion-induced secondary electron emission coefficient. The deposition rates in reactive HiPIMS of TiO2 using different inert gases were measured by means of a quartz crystal microbalance. In contrast to the trends predicted by SRIM as well as those measured in DCMS, the power normalized deposition rate, D_n, was found to increase with the mass of inert gas in both metallic and reactive modes, with the exception of the Xe/O2 gas mixture. The observed increase of D_n with the mass of inert gas was partially attributed to a decreased return effect in the heavier gases. For the case of Kr/O2, the normalized deposition rate measured in HiPIMS was found to be 87% of that measured in equivalent DCMS operation despite no attempt at optimization.

In the last decade there has been increased interest in the study of molecular motors. Motor proteins in particular have gained a large following due to their high efficiency of force generation and the ability to incorporate the motors into linear device designs. Much of the recent research centres on using these protein systems to transport cargo around the surface of a device. The studies carried out in this thesis aim to investigate the use of molecular motors in lab-on-a-chip devices. Two distinct motor protein systems are used to show the viability of utilising these nanoscale machines as a highly specific and controllable method of transporting molecules around the surface of a lab-on-a-chip device. Improved reaction kinetics and increased detection sensitivity are just two advantages that could be achieved if a motor protein system could be incorporated and appropriately controlled within a device such as an immunoassay or microarray technologies. The first study focuses on the motor protein system Kinesin. This highly processive motor is able to propel microtubules across a surface and has shown promise as an in vitro nanoscale transport system. A novel device design is presented where the motility of microtubules is controlled using the combination of a structured surface and a thermoresponsive polymer. Both topographic confinement of the motility and the creation of localised ‘gates’ are used to show a method for the control and guidance of microtubules. Two further studies use the actin myosin motor protein system. Both concentrate on the manipulation of actin filaments, gliding on immobilised myosin, by DC electrical fields. Motor protein is adsorbed onto several surface chemistries with varying protein adsorption properties. A range of electrical fields are applied to the motility assay and the performance is analysed in terms of the directionality and any changes in the average velocity of filaments on each surface. This enables us to attribute surface properties to particular motility characteristics and hypothesise as to the nature of protein adsorption. The same electrical motility device is used with an alternative method to allow a more detailed study of the effect of surface chemistry on the motility function and the response of the motility after exposure to an electrical field. The movement of actin filaments on myosin motors is accelerated by a DC electrical field. Upon termination of the field the motility is allowed to return to pre-field function and this section of the procedure is analysed together with the data from the previous study to draw conclusions on the protein adsorption properties of each surface. Both chapters are used to draw conclusions on the response of the motor protein system when it is adsorbed on different surface chemistries. The investigations carried out in this thesis are used to show both novel ways of controlling motor protein motility and also to highlight aspects of design that need to be taken into consideration when incorporating motor proteins into lab-on-a-chip devices. The electrical motility device in particular has proved to be a dynamic and inexpensive tool in investigating motor protein motility.

Detailed characterisation of the structure of subsurface fractures is greatly facilitated by digital borehole logging instruments, however, the interpretation of which is typically time-consuming and labour-intensive. Despite recent advances towards autonomy and automation, the final interpretation remains heavily dependent on the skill, experience, alertness and consistency of a human operator. Existing computational tools fail to detect layers between rocks that do not exhibit distinct fracture boundaries, and often struggle characterising cross-cutting layers and partial fractures. This research proposes a novel approach to the characterisation of planar rock discontinuities from digital images of borehole logs by using visual texture segmentation and pattern recognition techniques with an iterative adaptation of the Hough transform. This approach has successfully detected non-distinct, partial, distorted and steep fractures and layers in a fully automated fashion and at a relatively low computational cost. Borehole geometry or breakouts (e.g.borehole wall elongation or compression) and imaging tool decentralisation problem affect fracture characterisation and the quality of extracted geological parameters. This research presents a novel approach to the characterisation of distorted fracture in deformed borehole geometry by using least square ellipse fitting and modified Hough transform. This approach approach has successfully detected distorted fractures in deformed borehole geometry using simulated data. To increase the fracture detection accuracy, this research uses multi-sensor data combination by combining extracted edges from different borehole data. This approach has successfully increased true positive detection rate. Performance of the developed algorithms and the results of their application have been promising in terms of speed, accuracy and consistency when compared to manual interpretation by an expert operator. It is highly anticipated that the findings of this research will increase significantly the reliance on automatic interpretation.

Recently, the interest in implantable devices for biomedical telemetry has significantly increased. Amongst the different components of the implantable device, the antenna plays the most significant role in the wireless data transmission. However, the human body around the antenna alters its overall characteristics and absorbs most of its radiation. Therefore, this thesis is mainly focused on improving the antenna characteristics (bandwidth and radiation efficiency) to overcome the human body effect and investigating new structures that reduce the power absorption by the human body tissues. A novel antenna design methodology is developed and used to design new flexible implantable antennas of much lighter weight, larger radiation efficiency, and wider bandwidth than existing embedded antennas. These antennas work for multiple ((401-406 MHz) MedRadio, 433 MHz and 2.45 GHz ISM) bands which satisfy the requirements of low power consumption and wireless power transfer. This has been combined with thorough investigations of the antenna performance in the anatomical human body. New effective evaluation parameters such as the antenna orientation are investigated for the first time. New structures inspired by complementary and multiple split ring resonators (CSRRs and MSRRs) are designed. The structures are found to reduce the electric near field and hence the absorbed power which increases the radiated power accordingly. This new promising function of metamaterial based structures for implantable applications is investigated for the first time. The path loss (between pacemaker and glucose monitoring implantable antennas inside the anatomical body model) and (between an implantable and external antennas for a wireless power channel at 433 MHz) are estimated. Moreover, the optimum antenna type for on-in body communication is investigated. Loop antennas are found to outperform patch antennas in close proximity to the human body.

Recent evolutions in wireless mobile communications have shown that by employing multiple inputs and multiple outputs (MIMO) technology at both the transmitter and receiver, both the wireless system capacity and reliability can be enhanced without the need for increasing the power transmitted or using more spectrum. Despite a considerable amount of research have been done on the design of MIMO and diversity handset antennas, the design of low profile, small footprint and multi-standard (wideband or multiband) diversity antennas on handset devices remains a challenging issue. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to present new antenna structures for handset MIMO and diversity applications. As the MIMO antenna design can be conducted either using multiple element antennas (MEA) or isolated mode antenna technology (IMAT), the work in this thesis is fallen in these two general design themes (areas). The first area under investigation concerns multiport antennas (IMAT antennas). It has the following two contributions: • A novel dual-feed water-based antenna is designed from a low cost liquid material with a very high dielectric constant (pure water ). The isolation between feeds is achieved by two back to back L-shaped ground plane strips. A prototype is made and the optimised diversity parameters are obtained, the results show that this design has a good diversity performance over the frequency range of 2.4 – 2.7 GHz. • A new and low profile (h = 3 mm) planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) with a coplanar-feed is presented. It has a wideband response over the frequency range of 2.35 – 3.25 GHz. The design is based on a comparative study on the mutual coupling between different feed arrangements. As a result, the coplanar feed is employed in the proposed antenna; the polarization diversity is achieved by exciting two orthogonal radiation modes. The isolation between the feeds is achieved by an L-shaped ground plane slot. Both simulated and measured results demonstrate that the design is a very good candidate for mobile diversity and MIMO applications. The second investigation area concerns multiple element antenna (MEA) systems for wideband and multiband handset applications. It includes the following contributions: • Three antenna systems of the planar inverted-L (PILA) antenna (h = 5 mm) are employed for wideband handset diversity applications over the frequency range of 1.7 – 2.85 GHz: 1) The first design has a dual-element PILA in which both the pattern and spatial diversities are employed; one antenna element is located on the upper edge of the ground plane while the other is located on the lower edge. 2) The second design represents a more compact dual-element PILA antenna in which the two elements are placed on the same ground plane edge (collocated on the same edge). The antenna isolation is achieved using a parasitic decoupling element inserted between the two elements. A novel approach for the design of the parasitic decoupling element is proposed. It is based on stepped impedance resonator circuit theory. As a result, more space is saved with this design (footprint = 385 mm2) over the first design (footprint = 702 mm2). 3) The third design is a four-element PILA system in which two antenna pairs (one pair at the upper edge which the other pair is located on the lower edge on the system PCB). All the prototypes are made and evaluated; the results show excellent diversity performance over the applications in the frequency range of 1.7-2.7 GHz. • A dual-element hexa-band antenna is proposed for smartphone MIMO applications. It consists of two elements: a hexa-band metallic frame antenna and a hepta-band PILA antenna coupled with a meandered shorted strip as an internal antenna. The isolation is achieved due to the resulted orthogonal radiation patterns, especially, at 0.85 GHz. The optimized antenna is made and tested and the results show that this design covers a hexa-band and is particularly suitable for GSM850/ DCS1800/ PCS1900/ UMTS2100/ LTE2500/ LTE3600 smartphone applications.

According to Cisco's latest forecast, two-thirds of the world's mobile data traffic and 62 percent of the consumer Internet traffic will be video data by the end of 2016. However, the wireless networks and Internet are unreliable, where the video traffic may undergo packet loss and delay. Thus robust video streaming over unreliable networks, i.e., Internet, wireless networks, is of great importance in facing this challenge. Specifically, for the real-time interactive video streaming applications, such as video conference and video telephony, the allowed end-to-end delay is limited, which makes the robust video streaming an even more difficult task. In this thesis, we are going to investigate robust video streaming for real-time interactive applications, where the tolerated end-to-end delay is limited. Intra macroblock refreshment is an effective tool to stop error propagations in the prediction loop of video decoder, whereas redundant coding is a commonly used method to prevent error from happening for video transmission over lossy networks. In this thesis two schemes that jointly use intra macroblock refreshment and redundant coding are proposed. In these schemes, in addition to intra coding, we proposed to add two redundant coding methods to enhance the transmission robustness of the coded bitstreams. The selection of error resilient coding tools, i.e., intra coding and/or redundant coding, and the parameters for redundant coding are determined using the end-to-end rate-distortion optimization. Another category of methods to provide error resilient capacity is using forward error correction (FEC) codes. FEC is widely studied to protect streamed video over unreliable networks, with Reed-Solomon (RS) erasure codes as its commonly used implementation method. As a block-based error correcting code, on the one hand, enlarging the block size can enhance the performance of the RS codes; on the other hand, large block size leads to long delay which is not tolerable for real-time video applications. In this thesis two sub-GOP (Group of Pictures, formed by I-frame and all the following P/B-frames) based FEC schemes are proposed to improve the performance of Reed-Solomon codes for real-time interactive video applications. The first one, named DSGF (Dynamic sub-GOP FEC Coding), is designed for the ideal case, where no transmission network delay is taken into consideration. The second one, named RVS-LE (Real-time Video Streaming scheme exploiting the Late- and Early-arrival packets), is more practical, where the video transmission network delay is considered, and the late- and early-arrival packets are fully exploited. Of the two approaches, the sub-GOP, which contains more than one video frame, is dynamically tuned and used as the RS coding block to get the optimal performance. For the proposed DSGF approach, although the overall error resilient performance is higher than the conventional FEC schemes, that protect the streamed video frame by frame, its video quality fluctuates within the Sub-GOP. To mitigate this problem, in this thesis, another real-time video streaming scheme using randomized expanding Reed-Solomon code is proposed. In this scheme, the Reed-Solomon coding block includes not only the video packets of the current frame, but also all the video packets of previous frames in the current group of pictures (GOP). At the decoding side, the parity-check equations of the current frameare jointly solved with all the parity-check equations of the previous frames. Since video packets of the following frames are not encompassed in the RS coding block, no delay will be caused for waiting for the video or parity packets of the following frames both at encoding and decoding sides. The main contribution of this thesis is investigating the trade-off between the video transmission delay caused by FEC encoding/decoding dependency, the FEC error-resilient performance, and the computational complexity. By leveraging the methods proposed in this thesis, proper error-resilient tools and system parameters could be selected based on the video sequence characteristics, the application requirements, and the available channel bandwidth and computational resources. For example, for the applications that can tolerate relatively long delay, sub-GOP based approach is a suitable solution. For the applications where the end-to-end delay is stringent and the computational resource is sufficient (e.g. CPU is fast), it could be a wise choice to use the randomized expanding Reed-Solomon code.

As a result of decades of research and innovation in the renewable energy industry, advanced technologies have been developed for both wind and solar energy conversion systems. However, there are still some aspects of the systems that need to be enhanced to enable maximum and cost effective energy conversion. Wind is emerging as an alternative source for electrical power generation. Small-scale wind power generation system applications are becoming widespread because of rising fuel prices and the demand for reducing carbon emission. For such applications, vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) appeal due to their ability to capture wind from different directions and their low noise-pollution. Wind energy and its conversion system are studied first. The need for advanced maximum power point tracking (MPPT) controllers is discussed in literature focusing on widely implemented algorithms. Sliding mode control theory has been studied and implemented in controlling wind power generation system (WPGS). The dynamic performance of the WPGS using sliding mode control has shown improved dynamic performance, overshoot errors eliminations and higher energy conversion ratios than the widely used proportional integral (PI) control. A new approach in WPGS control strategy by development of a novel soft control strategy based on the mathematical residue theorem has been introduced. The idea of using the residue theorem is to set a soft dynamic boundary for controlled variables around a reference point, so that controlled variables lie on a point inside this boundary. The stability of the system has been ensured by following the Forward Euler method. The developed control strategy has been implemented in different control techniques of a small-scale permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) based WPGS. The introduction of the new control approach based on residue theorem has further improved the energy conversion ratio by 2:5%. Moreover, a wind speed estimation algorithm is provided and implemented to the proposed controllers to overcome the wind speed measurements issues, i.e. cost and accuracy. Furthermore, an improved back-EMF observer based on residual theorem has been designed to estimate the mechanical rotor speed of the PMSG using the stator current and voltage measurements. The improved back-EMF observer has overcome the well-known limitation of the classical back-EMF at low speed observation. In addition, the wind speed has been estimated using the calculated power obtained from the PMSG voltage and current measurements as well as the estimated rotor speed. Based on the wind and rotor speeds, the tip speed ratio (TSR) is calculated and controlled to its optimal value. A MPPT controller has been developed for photovoltaic power generation systems based on a sliding mode control scheme in stand-alone configuration. The developed controller provides a solution to atmospheric conditions measurement issues and it enhances the efficiency of the PV power system. In addition, the developed controller overcomes the power oscillation around the operating point which appears in most implemented MPPT techniques. The MPPT operation is achieved by regulating the input voltage of the PV system using DC-DC boost converter topology. Moreover, a single-ended primary inductor converter (SEPIC) topology has been employed in PV power systems. The restrictions on the application of SEPIC have been solved based on sliding mode control. The efficiency of the PV system has significantly improved.

The technology of voltage source converter based high voltage direct current (VSC-HVDC) system and devices used in flexible AC transmission systems (FACTS) has evolved significantly over the past two decades. It is used to effectively enhance power system stability. One of the important issues is how to design an applicable nonlinear adaptive controller for these devices to effectively handle the system nonlinearities and uncertainties. Passive control (PC) has been proposed for the control of nonlinear systems based on Lyapunov theory, which has the potential to improve the system damping as the beneficial system nonlinearities are remained instead of being fully cancelled. However, PC is not applicable in practice as it requires an accurate system model. Adaptive passive control (APC) and robust passive control (RPC) have been developed to handle some specific type of system uncertainties based on strict assumptions on system structure and uncertainty. However, their applications are limited as various system uncertainties exist. This thesis aims to develop a perturbation observer based adaptive passive control (POAPC) to make PC applicable in practice. The combinatorial effect of system nonlinearities, parameter uncertainties, unmodelled dynamics and time-varying external disturbances is aggregated into a perturbation, which is estimated by a perturbation observer (PO). The proposed approach does not require an accurate system model and can handle various system uncertainties. POAPC is applied to two-terminal VSC-HVDC systems to handle various system uncertainties. The VSC-HVDC system model is firstly developed, the proposed controller can inject an extra system damping and only the measurement of direct current (DC) voltage, active and reactive power is needed. The effectiveness ofPOAPC is verified by simulation in comparison with that of passive control (PC) and proportional-integral (PI) control. Moreover, a hardware experiment is carried out to verify its implementation feasibility and applicability. A passive controller is designed for multi-terminal VSC-HVDC (VSC-MTDC) systems via energy shaping, in which the dynamics related to the active power, reactive power, and DC cable voltage is transformed into an output strictly passive form. Then the remained internal dynamics related to DC cable current and common DC voltage is proved to be asymptotically stable in the context of Lyapunov criterion. PC is applied on a four-terminal VSC-MTDC system under eight cases to evaluate its control performance. POAPC is developed on the VSC-MTDC system to maintain a consistent control performance under different operating points and provide a significant robustness to parameter uncertainties, together with other unmodelled dynamics and time-varying external disturbances. Simulation results are provided to evaluate the control performance of POAPC in comparison to that of PI control and PC. Perturbation observer based coordinated adaptive passive control (POCAPC) is proposed for excitation controller (EC) and FACTS controller on both single machine infinite bus (SMIB) systems and multi-machine power systems. Only the range of control Lyapunov function (CLF) is needed and the dependence of an accurate system model can be partially reduced, thus POCAPC can be easily applied to multi-machine power systems. Its control performance is compared with that of conventional proportional-integral-derivative and lead-lag (PID+LL) control, coordinated passive control (CPC) and coordinated adaptive passive control (CAPC) on both an SMIB system and a three-machine power system by simulation. Then a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test is undertaken to verify the implementation feasibility of the proposed controller.

The potential of optically monitoring complex composite liquids such as honey has been demonstrated using optical light properties. The novel approach has the potential for distinguishing between various honey samples to quantify and discriminate for deviations from the norm and for early warning of contamination/adulteration in honey using readily available, cost effective and portable instrumentation that can be used robustly on the field, which replaces individual absolute measuring instruments. The novel approach was developed based upon chromatically processing test data with three different optical methods simultaneously (transmission, polarization and fluorescence) for use as primary, secondary chromatic maps and an assessment flow chart to provide a rapid decision capability on the condition of the honey according to quality attributes. As such it can provide insight into conditions important to the food industry. Novel methods for compensation, calibration, normalization and ambient light rejection procedures have been developed to allow operation in a range of lightening conditions such as in the field and factory. The chromatic approach sensitivity for identifying the correct classification of high quality honey samples was 91% and the sensitivity for identifying very poor quality samples was 75%. The portable honey monitoring system was tested for field trials at various locations across Yemen for monitoring the condition of honey samples. The sensitivity for correct classifications of the high quality honey sample samples was 88% and the sensitivity for identifying very poor quality honey samples was 63%. Chromatic methodology provided robustness for field use.