Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Le contrat à distance a connu un véritable essor avec l'intrusion des nouvelles technologies de l'information et de la communication qui ont suscité un passage accéléré du catalogue à l'écran et une révolution commerciale dont la vente à distance et essentiellement la cyber-vente constitue son point d'observation privilégié. L'initiative législative européenne, française et libanaise existante n'a pas été, malheureusement, à la hauteur du progrès technologique. D'une part, elle délimite le contrat à distance en tant qu'un contrat de droit de la consommation et non en tant qu'un contrat de droit commun. D'autre part, elle relie le rapport de force économique déséquilibré entre les parties contractantes à leurs qualités respectives (consommateur et professionnel) et non au défaut de négociation qui précède la conclusion du contrat à distance. Il convient, dès lors, de proposer une étude comparative simultanée qui permet de reconsidérer le contrat à distance à la lumière de la période qui précède sa conclusion en fournissant des solutions pour les lacunes et disparités juridiques existantes dans les droits positifs français et libanais et dans les directives européennes, afin de démontrer que le contrat à distance en tant qu'un contrat d'adhésion ou de gré à gré est un contrat de droit commun qui bénéficie d'un régime propre. En mettant en jeu diverses branches du droit, cette étude comparative permet ainsi de cerner ce régime juridique propre du contrat à distance afin de dégager sa notion. / The distance contract knew a real development with the intervention of the new information and communication technologies which aroused an accelerated passage from the catalog to the screen and a commercial revolution of which the remote sale and essentially the e-commerce establish its privileged point of observation. The existing European, French and Lebanese legislative initiative was not, unfortunately, as high as the technological progress. On one hand, it bounds the distance contract as a contract of consumer law and not as a contract of common law. On the other hand, it connects the economic balance of power unbalanced between the contracting parties to their respective qualities (consumer and professional) and not to the defect of negotiation which precedes the conclusion of the distance contract. It is advisable, from then on, to propose a simultaneous comparative study which allows to reconsider the distance contract in the light of the period which precedes its conclusion by supplying solutions for the gaps and the existing legal disparities in the French and Lebanese substantive laws and in the European directives, to demonstrate that the distance contract as a contract of membership or by mutual agreement is a contract of common law which benefits from a appropriate regime. By involving diverse branches of the law, this comparative study allows to encircle this appropriate legal regime of the distance contract to release its notion.

<p> This thesis addresses the design of fractionally-spaced equalizers for a digital communication system which is susceptible to Adjacent Channel Interference (ACI). ACI can render an otherwise well designed system prone to excess bit errors. Algorithms for a trained adaptive FIR linear fractionally-spaced equalizer (FSE) with explicit sidelobe control are developed in order to provide robustness to ACI. The explicit sidelobe control is achieved by imposing a quadratic inequality constraint on the frequency response of the equalizer at a discrete set of frequency points in the sidelobe region.</p> <p> Algorithms are developed for both block adaptive and symbol-by-symbol adaptive modes. These algorithms use interior point optimization techniques to find the optimal equalizer coefficients. In the block adaptive mode, the problem is reformulated as a Second Order Cone Program (SOCP). In the symbol-by-symbol adaptive mode, the philosophy of the barrier approach to interior point methods is adopted. The concept of a central path and the Method of Analytic Centers (MAC) are used to develop two practically implementable algorithms, namely IPM2 and SBM, for performing symbol-by-symbol adaptive, fractionally-spaced equalization, with multiple quadratic inequality constraints.</p> <p> The performance of the proposed algorithms is compared to that of the Wiener filter, and the standard RLS algorithm with explicit diagonal loading. In the computer simulations, the proposed algorithms perform better in the sense that they provide the desired robustness when the communication model is prone to intermittent interferers in the sidelobe region of the frequency response of the FSE. Although the proposed algorithms have a moderately higher computational cost, their insensitivity to the deleterious effects of ACI make them an attractive choice in certain applications.</p> / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)