There is a dearth of decision-support models or frameworks to aid managers in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry in uniformly assessing the key factors in the decision to standardize innovative technologies. Making the proper decision is consequential and potentially fraught with risks for the firm such as competitive exposure, high expenditures with inadequate returns, restrictive inbound or outbound patent licensing obligations, and related complications. This study presents a framework to guide managers in the ICT industry in assessing the factors that inform the decision to participate in the development of technology standards. Using multi-criteria decision analysis and judgment data from panels of experts, a robust model is developed that comprehends the essential criteria and outcomes within the context of computer interconnect technologies. The resultant, generalizable model is validated against the case of the extant Universal Serial Bus (USB) interconnect standard and found to be congruent with the assessment of the experts. Scholarship on technology standards development is rich and multifaceted--spanning numerous streams of inquiry. This research contextualizes technology standardization within the economic, strategic, organizational, and legal perspectives. The resultant model demonstrates that strategic planning is regarded by the experts as the principal driver in the decision to participate in a technology standardization effort. Furthermore, the primacy of commitment and leadership within the standards-setting organization is unambiguously established through rigorous quantitative analysis. The proposed model verifies that the firm's desire to align its product roadmap to the emerging standard is the chief criterion in the decision to contribute to the standards development effort. Other criteria of high interest include the leveraging of network externalities to glean disruptive trends within the ecosystem, the exploration of opportunities to expand the total available market for the firm, and the availability and terms of IP licenses. Sensitivity analysis affirms the overall predictive strength and robustness of the model and its widespread applicability. Future research on model expansion and application to other technologies, as well as the development of uniform patent valuation methods will further enrich the knowledge base.

Cooperative traffic safety applications such as lane change or overtaking assistance have the potential to reduce the number of road fatalities. Many emerging traffic safety applications are based on IEEE 802.11p and periodic position messages, so-called cooperative awareness messages (CAM) being broadcasted by all vehicles. In Europe, ETSI defines a periodic report rate of 2 Hz for CAMs. Although a high report rate is the key to early hazard detection, the 2 Hz rate has been chosen to avoid congestion in settings where the vehicle density is high, e.g., on major highways and in urban scenarios. However, on rural roads with a limited number of communicating vehicles, a report rate of 2 Hz leads to unnecessary delay in cooperative awareness. By adapting the CAM report rate depending on the specific application and road traffic density, and by making use of the priority levels provided by the 802.11p quality of service mechanism, we show that hazards can be detected earlier and the available bandwidth is used more efficiently, while not overexploiting the network resources. / <p>©2011 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.</p><p></p><p>Category number CFP11VTF-ART; Code 87844</p>

Résumé : L’audio numérique s’est déployé de façon phénoménale au cours des dernières décennies, notamment grâce à l’établissement de standards internationaux. En revanche, l’imposition de normes introduit forcément une certaine rigidité qui peut constituer un frein à l’amélioration des technologies déjà déployées et pousser vers une multiplication de nouveaux standards. Cette thèse établit que les codecs existants peuvent être davantage valorisés en améliorant leur qualité ou leur débit, même à l’intérieur du cadre rigide posé par les standards établis. Trois volets sont étudiés, soit le rehaussement à l’encodeur, au décodeur et au niveau du train binaire. Dans tous les cas, la compatibilité est préservée avec les éléments existants. Ainsi, il est démontré que le signal audio peut être amélioré au décodeur sans transmettre de nouvelles informations, qu’un encodeur peut produire un signal amélioré sans ajout au décodeur et qu’un train binaire peut être mieux optimisé pour une nouvelle application. En particulier, cette thèse démontre que même un standard déployé depuis plusieurs décennies comme le G.711 a le potentiel d’être significativement amélioré à postériori, servant même de cœur à un nouveau standard de codage par couches qui devait préserver cette compatibilité. Ensuite, les travaux menés mettent en lumière que la qualité subjective et même objective d’un décodeur AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) peut être améliorée sans l’ajout d’information supplémentaire de la part de l’encodeur. Ces résultats ouvrent la voie à davantage de recherches sur les traitements qui exploitent une connaissance des limites des modèles de codage employés. Enfin, cette thèse établit que le train binaire à débit fixe de l’AMR WB+ (Extended Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband) peut être compressé davantage pour le cas des applications à débit variable. Cela démontre qu’il est profitable d’adapter un codec au contexte dans lequel il est employé. / Abstract : Digital audio applications have grown exponentially during the last decades, in good part because of the establishment of international standards. However, imposing such norms necessarily introduces hurdles that can impede the improvement of technologies that have already been deployed, potentially leading to a proliferation of new standards. This thesis shows that existent coders can be better exploited by improving their quality or their bitrate, even within the rigid constraints posed by established standards. Three aspects are studied, being the enhancement of the encoder, the decoder and the bit stream. In every case, the compatibility with the other elements of the existent coder is maintained. Thus, it is shown that the audio signal can be improved at the decoder without transmitting new information, that an encoder can produce an improved signal without modifying its decoder, and that a bit stream can be optimized for a new application. In particular, this thesis shows that even a standard like G.711, which has been deployed for decades, has the potential to be significantly improved after the fact. This contribution has even served as the core for a new standard embedded coder that had to maintain that compatibility. It is also shown that the subjective and objective audio quality of the AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) decoder can be improved, without adding any extra information from the encoder, by better exploiting the knowledge of the coder model’s limitations. Finally, it is shown that the fixed rate bit stream of the AMR-WB+ (Extended Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband) can be compressed more efficiently when considering a variable bit rate scenario, showing the need to adapt a coder to its use case.