La RFID sans puce, en raison du très faible coût des tags, a ouvert une nouvelle voie pour les systèmes d'identification. Les étiquettes RFID sans puce fonctionnant dans le domaine temporel ont l'avantage d'être compatibles avec de grandes distances de lecture, de l'ordre de quelques mètres, et de pouvoir fonctionner dans les bandes de fréquence ISM. Cependant, les tags de ce type développés jusqu'à lors n'offraient qu'une faible capacité de codage. Cette thèse propose une nouvelle méthode pour augmenter la capacité de codage des tags fonctionnant dans le domaine temporel en utilisant des C-sections, c'est-à-dire des lignes de transmission repliées de manière à avoir des zones fortement couplées, ce qui leur donne un caractère dispersif. Une autre approche basée sur une technique multi-couches a également été introduite de façon à augmenter considérablement la capacité de codage. Pour terminer, la preuve de concept d'un tag-capteur d'humidité, basé sur l'utilisation de nano fils de silicium, est également présentée.

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) is a contactless, automatic identification wireless technology primarily used for identifying and tracking of objects, goods and humans. RFID is not only limited to identification and tracking applications. This proliferating wireless technology has been deployed in numerous securities sensitive applications e.g. access control, e-passports, contactless payments, driver license, transport ticking and health cards. RFID inherits all the security and privacy problems that are related to wireless technology and in addition to those that are specific to RFID systems. The security and privacy protection schemes proposed in literature for wireless devices are mostly secured through symmetric/asymmetric keys encryption/decryption and hash functions. The security of all these cryptographic algorithms depends on computationally complex problems that are hard to compute using available resources. However, these algorithms require cryptographic operations on RFID tags which contradict the low cost demand of RFID tags. Due to limited number of logic gates in tags, i.e., 5K-10K, these methods are not practical. Much research effort has done in attempt to solve consumer's privacy and security problem. Solutions that prevent clandestine inventory are mostly application layer techniques. To solve this problem, a new RFID physical layer scheme has been proposed namely Direct Sequence Backscatter Encryption (DSB Enc). The proposed scheme uses level generator to produce different levels before transmitting the signal to the tag. The tag response to the signal sent by the reader using backscatter communications on the same signal which looks random to the eavesdropper. Therefore eavesdropper cannot extract the information from reader to tag and tag to reader communication using passive eavesdropping. As reader knows the different generated levels added to the carrier signal, it can remove the levels and retrieve the tag's messages. We proposed a lightweight, low-cost and practically secure physical layer security to the RFID system, for a supply chain processing application, without increasing the computational power and tag's cost. The proposed scheme was validated by simulations on GNU Radio and experimentation using SDR and a WISP tag. Our implementation and experimental results validate that DSB Enc is secure against passive eavesdropping, replay and relay attacks. It provides better results in the presence of AWGN channel.

As the Enlightenment took hold in Europe, all aspects of eighteenth-century society felt its effects. Musical tastes, caught in this ideological shift, began to move from the more codified complexity of counterpoint toward the more simplified aesthetic known as galant. Johann Sebastian Bach, now in the most mature phase of a musical career rooted in the contrapuntal style, came under growing public criticism from proponents of galant who were increasingly dismissive of counterpoint as an out-dated compositional method. In 1741, during this time of growing censure, Bach created the wedding cantata BWV 210, O holder Tag erwünschte Zeit, based on an earlier cantata but with significant changes that are unique within this oeuvre. Rather than the typical celebratory libretto characteristic of his other wedding cantatas, Bach mounted a strong rhetorical argument in defense of music, deftly combining irony, humour, and pointed barbs to make his point. The rationale for this has not received significant scholarly attention. This dissertation explores the idea that Bach used BWV 210 as a specific personal response to his critics who favoured the changing musical aesthetic of the era, and as a defense of a contrapuntal style cherished by him but no longer valued by many advocates of the galant. This claim is supported through an aggregation of extant research linking the cantata to the circumstances in which it was created. Particular attention is given to the ideological conflict represented in the aesthetic shift of the eighteenth century, and Bach’s reactions evident in written documents, his compositions and in his unique synthesis of compositional styles intersecting the aesthetics of his era. The circumstances under which the cantata was written provide context for the significant libretto revisions undertaken to adapt the cantata from its closest known counterpart, BWV 210a. Finally, Johann Scheibe’s published criticism against Bach is explored as an important flashpoint for Bach’s use of BWV 210 as a musical rebuttal. Not only is a better understanding of a lesser-known cantata achieved, but a glimpse into the mindset of Bach is also realized through the unusually personal response included in BWV 210.

As the Enlightenment took hold in Europe, all aspects of eighteenth-century society felt its effects. Musical tastes, caught in this ideological shift, began to move from the more codified complexity of counterpoint toward the more simplified aesthetic known as galant. Johann Sebastian Bach, now in the most mature phase of a musical career rooted in the contrapuntal style, came under growing public criticism from proponents of galant who were increasingly dismissive of counterpoint as an out-dated compositional method. In 1741, during this time of growing censure, Bach created the wedding cantata BWV 210, O holder Tag erwünschte Zeit, based on an earlier cantata but with significant changes that are unique within this oeuvre. Rather than the typical celebratory libretto characteristic of his other wedding cantatas, Bach mounted a strong rhetorical argument in defense of music, deftly combining irony, humour, and pointed barbs to make his point. The rationale for this has not received significant scholarly attention. This dissertation explores the idea that Bach used BWV 210 as a specific personal response to his critics who favoured the changing musical aesthetic of the era, and as a defense of a contrapuntal style cherished by him but no longer valued by many advocates of the galant. This claim is supported through an aggregation of extant research linking the cantata to the circumstances in which it was created. Particular attention is given to the ideological conflict represented in the aesthetic shift of the eighteenth century, and Bach’s reactions evident in written documents, his compositions and in his unique synthesis of compositional styles intersecting the aesthetics of his era. The circumstances under which the cantata was written provide context for the significant libretto revisions undertaken to adapt the cantata from its closest known counterpart, BWV 210a. Finally, Johann Scheibe’s published criticism against Bach is explored as an important flashpoint for Bach’s use of BWV 210 as a musical rebuttal. Not only is a better understanding of a lesser-known cantata achieved, but a glimpse into the mindset of Bach is also realized through the unusually personal response included in BWV 210.

A decline in the size of fish within a population is concerning. Large-sized fish are ecologically important and valued for social and economic reasons. Following widespread collapses from angling overharvest, the densities of Walleyes Sander vitreus in Albertas lakes increased rapidly with large-minimum-size limits. Anglers were unhappy, however, as catch rates increased (>1 Walleyes*hour-1) but fish remained small and did not exceed the minimum size limit. The two alternate explanations for the small, yet old Walleyes were either compensatory growth because of high density (stunting) or size-selective mortality (overfishing). Size-selective mortality has evolutionary consequences. Paradoxically, the management solutions for these problems are in opposition (more harvest versus less harvest), and a wrong diagnosis could exacerbate the problem. I used nested hypotheses, and implemented active adaptive management at several Alberta lakes, to diagnose the causal mechanism creating the small fish problem. For inferences on the source of the mortality, I analysed backcalculated growth rates from pelvic fins. Walleyes that had fast-growth to an early maturity, and then subsequent slow-growth, had greater survival. This hockey stick-shaped growth allows for successful reproduction while the Walleyes remain below the minimum size limit, avoiding harvest. Using changes to sport fishing regulations, I then modified angler effort and harvest at four different Alberta lakes to increase or decrease size-selective harvest and Walleye densities. I found that size-selective mortality from angling rapidly truncated the population-size structure. With concerns of evolutionary consequences because of evidence of size selective harvest, I used an age- and size-structured, single-species model, parameterized with data from Albertas Walleye fisheries, to evaluate the selectiveness of various management regulations. I found that the 50-cm minimum size limit used to recover Albertas Walleye populations did indeed select for the hockey stick life history, although this regulation allowed for sustainable populations (>5 Walleyes*hectare-1) and angler effort up to 16 angler-hours*ha-1*year-1. The optimal regulation to reduce life history selection and allow for population sustainability was a 40-50 cm harvest-tag regulation. This regulation reversed the selection for the hockey stick life history, yet produced sustainable fish densities and allowed angler effort up to 30 angler-hours*ha-1*year-1. However, increasing angler-noncompliance reduced the sustainability of this regulation. / Wildlife Ecology and Management

El consum de la música ha canviat dràsticament en els últims anys. Amb l’arribada de la música digital, el cost de producció s’ha reduït considerablement. L’expansió de la Web ha ajudat a promoure l’exploració de molt més contingut musical. Algunes botigues musicals on-line, com iTunes o Amazon, posseeixen milions de cançons a les seves col.leccions. No obstant, accedir a aquestes col.leccions d’una manera eficient és encara un gran repte. En aquesta tesis ens centrem en el problema d’anotar col.leccions musicals amb paraules semàntiques, també conegudes com tags. Els mètodes utilitzats en aquesta tesi estan fonamentats sobre els camps de recuperació de la informació, l’inteligència artificial, i el procesament del senyal. Proposem un algorisme per anotar música automàticament, utilitzant similitud d’audio a nivell de contingut per propagar tags entre cançons. L’algorisme s’avalua extensament utilitzant múltiples col.leccions musicals de diferent mida i qualitat de les dades, incloent una col.lecció de més de mig milió de cançons, anotades amb tags socials derivats d’una comunitat musical. Avaluem la qualitat del nostre algorisme mitjançant una comparació amb algorismes de l’estat de l’art. Addicionalment, discutim la importància d’utilitzar mesures de avaluació que cobreixen diferents dimensions, és a dir, avaluacions a nivell de cançó i a nivell de tag. El nostre algorisme ha estat avaluat i s’ha classificat en altes posicions en el concurs d’avaluació internacional MIREX 2011. Els resultats obtinguts també demostren algunes limitacions de l’anotació automàtica, relacionades amb les inconsistències en les dades, la correlació de conceptes i la dificultat de capturar alguns tags personals amb informació del contingut. Això és més evident en les comunitats musicals, on els usuaris poden anotar cançons amb qualsevol paraula, sigui aquesta contextual o no. Per tal d’abordar aquestes limitacions, presentem un ampli estudi sobre la naturalesa de les folksonomies musicals. Concretament, estudiem si les anotacions fetes per una gran comunitat d’usuaris coincideixen amb un vocabulari més controlat i estructurat per part d’experts en el camp. Els resultats revelen que alguns tags estan clarament definits i compresos tant des del punt de vista dels experts com el de la saviesa popular, mentre que n’hi ha d’altres sobre els quals és difícil trobar un consens. Finalment, estenem el nostre previ treball a un ampli ventall de conceptes semàntics. Presentem un nou métode per a descobrir conceptes semàntics implícits en els tags socials, i classificar aquests tags pel que fa als conceptes semàntics. Les darreres troballes poden ajudar a entendre la naturalesa dels tags socials, i per tant ser beneficials per a una addicional millora de la anotació automàtica de la música. / Music consumption has changed drastically in the last few years. With the arrival of digital music, the cost of production has substantially dropped. The expansion of the World Wide Web has helped to promote the exploration of many more music content. Online stores, such as iTunes or Amazon, own music collections in the order of millions of songs. Accessing these large collections in an effective manner is still a big challenge. In this dissertation we focus on the problem of annotating music collections with semantic words, also called tags. The foundations of all the methods used in this dissertation are based on techniques from the fields of information retrieval, machine learning, and signal processing. We propose an automatic music annotation algorithm that uses content-based audio similarity to propagate tags among songs. The algorithm is evaluated extensively using multiple music collections of varying size and quality of the data, including a large music collection of more than a half million songs, annotated with social tags derived from a music community. We assess the quality of our proposed algorithm by comparing it with several state of the art approaches. We also discuss the importance of using evaluation measures that cover different dimensions; per– song and per–tag evaluation. Our proposal achieves state of the art results, and has ranked high in the MIREX 2011 evaluation campaign. The obtained results also show some limitations of automatic tagging, related to data inconsistencies, correlation of concepts and the difficulty to capture some personal tags with content information. This is more evident in music communites, where users can annotate songs with any free text word. In order to tackle these issues, we present an in-depth study of the nature of music folksonomies. We concretely study whether tag annotations made by a large community (i.e. a folksonomy) correspond with a more controlled, structured vocabulary by experts in the music and the psychology fields. Results reveal that some tags are clearly defined and understood both by the experts and the wisdom of crowds, while it is difficult to achieve a common consensus on the meaning of other tags. Finally, we extend our previous work to a wide range of semantic concepts. We present a novel way to uncover facets implicit in social tagging, and classify the tags with respect to these semantic facets. The latter findings can help to understand the nature of social tags, and thus be beneficial for further improvement of semantic tagging of music. Our findings have significant implications for music information retrieval systems that assist users to explore large music collections, digging for content they might like. / El consumo de la música ha cambiado drásticamente en los últimos años. Con la llegada de la música digital, el coste de producción se ha reducido considerablemente. La expansión de la Web ha ayudado a promover la exploración de mucho más contenido musical. Algunas tiendas musicales on-line, como iTunes o Amazon, poseen millones de canciones en sus colecciones. Sin embargo, acceder a estas colecciones de una manera eficiente es todavía un gran reto. En esta tesis nos centramos en el problema de anotar colecciones musicales con palabras semánticas, también conocidas como tags. Los métodos utilizados en esta tesis están cimentados sobre los campos de recuperación de la información, la inteligencia artifical, y el procesamiento del señal. Proponemos un algoritmo para anotar música automáticamente, usando similitud de audio a nivel de contenido para propagar tags entre canciones. El algoritmo se evalúa extensamente usando múltiples colecciones musicales de distinto tamaño y calidad de los datos, incluyendo una colección de más de medio millón de canciones, anotadas con tags sociales derivados de una comunidad musical. Evaluamos la calidad de nuestro algoritmo mediante una comparación con algoritmos del estado del arte. Adicionalmente, discutimos la importancia de usar medidas de evaluación que cubren diferentes dimensiones; es decir, evaluaciones a nivel de canción y a nivel de tag. Nuestro algoritmo ha sido evaluado y se clasificado en altas posiciones en el concurso de evaluación internacional MIREX 2011. Los resultados obtenidos también demuestran algunas limitaciones de la anotación automática, relacionadas con las inconsistencias en los datos, la correlación de conceptos y la dificultad de capturar algunos tags personales con información del contenido. Esto es más evidente en las comunidades musicales, donde los usuarios pueden anotar canciones con cualquier palabra, sea esta contextual o no. Con el fin de abordar estas limitaciones, presentamos un amplio estudio sobre la naturaleza de las folksonomías musicales. Concretamente, estudiamos si las anotaciones hechas por una gran comunidad de usuarios concuerdan con un vocabulario más controlado y estructurado por parte de expertos en el campo. Los resultados revelan que algunos tags están claramente definidos y comprendidos tanto desde el punto de vista de los expertos como el de la sabiduría popular, mientras que hay otros tags sobre los cuales es difícil encontrar un consenso. Por último, extendemos nuestro previo trabajo a un amplio abanico de conceptos semánticos. Presentamos un método novedoso para descubrir conceptos semánticos implícitos en los tags sociales, y clasificar dichos tags con respecto a los conceptos semánticos. Los últimos hallazgos pueden ayudar a entender la naturaleza de los tags sociales, y por consiguiente ser beneficiales para una adicional mejora para la anotación automática de la música.

This study focuses on a guitar duo transcription of four keyboard sonatas composed by the north German Cantor, Christian Gotthilf Tag (1735-1811). While the works were never published and the original manuscripts are lost, the music survives in manuscript copies made by K.H.L. Pölitz, which have served as the source. After a brief discussion of the composer and his life, the author explores transcription techniques used in previous duo transcriptions. The study gives a detailed rationale for the editorial methodology used, with examples from the present transcriptions. A separate volume includes the sonata transcriptions laid out in parallel to the keyboard edition, and provides brief performance instructions, mostly regarding ornamentation. The four sonatas add up to a collective length (including repeats) of approximately 60 to 70 minutes of music.

L’essor considérable de la RFID s’accompagne actuellement par le développement de nombreuses technologies qui viennent compléter l’offre déjà présente tout en cherchant à répondre à de nouvelles problématiques. La RFID sans puce (ou chipless) en est un exemple ; l’objectif affiché est de réduire considérablement le prix du tag ainsi que d’augmenter significativement la quantité d’information qu’il contient de manière à pouvoir concurrencer le code à barres tout en conservant les bénéfices d’une approche de lecture flexible basée sur une communication par ondes radio. Pour répondre à la problématique de la quantité d’information d’un tag, ce travail de thèse propose une nouvelle méthode de codage basée sur la forme globale du RCS du tag. Pour ce faire, il faut être capable de réaliser des tags dont le RCS est donné, ce qui consiste à résoudre un problème inverse. Une méthode de conception basée sur l’assemblage de motifs résonants est proposée. Les principales caractéristiques de ces éléments de base (amplitude, fréquence, coefficient de qualités) sont contrôlées par des paramètres géométriques. / The important growth of RFID goes along with the development of many technologies which complement the current offer by adding new possibilities. The chipless RFID is a perfect example of such technology. The purpose of the approach is to considerably reduce the price of the tag while increasing the data encoding capacity in order to compete with the barcode. The RF link between the tag and the reader also permit a flexible reading. In order to increase the coding capacity of a chipless tag, this PHD work proposes a new coding method based on the overall shape of the electromagnetic signature. To do this, we must be able design tags for which the RCS is given in advance, which amounts to the resolution of an inverse problem. A method based on the decomposition of the RCS on a base of resonators is proposed. The main characteristics of these base elements (amplitude, frequency, quality factor) are controlled by geometric parameters.

No description available.

La RFID sans puce, en raison du très faible coût des tags, a ouvert une nouvelle voie pour les systèmes d'identification. Les étiquettes RFID sans puce fonctionnant dans le domaine temporel ont l'avantage d'être compatibles avec de grandes distances de lecture, de l'ordre de quelques mètres, et de pouvoir fonctionner dans les bandes de fréquence ISM. Cependant, les tags de ce type développés jusqu'à lors n'offraient qu'une faible capacité de codage. Cette thèse propose une nouvelle méthode pour augmenter la capacité de codage des tags fonctionnant dans le domaine temporel en utilisant des C-sections, c'est-à-dire des lignes de transmission repliées de manière à avoir des zones fortement couplées, ce qui leur donne un caractère dispersif. Une autre approche basée sur une technique multi-couches a également été introduite de façon à augmenter considérablement la capacité de codage. Pour terminer, la preuve de concept d'un tag-capteur d'humidité, basé sur l'utilisation de nano fils de silicium, est également présentée. / Chipless RFID tags, owing to their low cost, have opened a new way to the identification systems. Chipless RFID tags operating in the time domain have the advantage of being compatible with large reading distances of the order of a few meters, and also can operate in the ISM frequency bands. However, time domain tags developed until now offer poor coding capacity. This thesis proposes a new method to increase the coding capacity of tags operating in time domain by using C-sections, i.e. the transmission lines are folded so as to have tightly coupled zones that give them a dispersive nature. Another approach based on a multi-layer technique was also introduced, in order to increase the coding capacity considerably. Finally, the proof of concept of a humidity sensor tag based on silicon nanowires is also presented.