Este trabalho analisa as principais questões referentes à modernização do território brasileiro no início do século XX, a partir dos projetos idealizados por Francisco Bhering (1867-1924). Formado na Escola Politécnica do Rio de Janeiro, membro do Apostolado Positivista, professor das escolas politécnicas de São Paulo e do Rio de Janeiro e diretor da Repartição Geral dos Telégrafos, este engenheiro civil que completou seus estudos em Astronomia no Observatório de Paris atuou no sentido de promover o efetivo reconhecimento das áreas consideradas incógnitas do País. Para isto contou com o apoio de instituições como o Clube de Engenharia e a Sociedade de Geografia do Rio de Janeiro e de personalidades como o engenheiro militar Candido Rondon que tiveram efetiva participação na defesa da realização de seus dois grandes projetos a expansão da rede telegráfica até o Amazonas e a elaboração da Carta do Brasil ao milionésimo. Estes planos visavam atender à ânsia modernizadora do Estado republicano e das classes dominantes como parte do projeto de dominação e controle do território e de sua população. / This paper analyzes the main issues concerning of Brazil modernization in the early twentieth century, from the projects devised by Francisco Bhering (1867-1924). Formed at the Rio de Janeiro Polytechnic School, a member of the Positivist Apostolate, a professor of the São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro Polytechnic Schools and a Telegraph General Bureau director, the civil engineer who completed his studies in astronomy at the Paris Observatory acted to promote the effective recognition of the considered country \"unknown\" areas. That had the support of institutions like Engineering Club and Rio de Janeiro Geography Society and personalities as the military engineer Candido Rondon who have effective participation in the defense of his two major projects accomplish - the telegraph expansion to the Amazon and the Charter of Brazil to the millionth drafting. These plans were intended to satisfy the Republican State and master classes urge modernizing as part of the territory and its population domination and control project.

The design and life cycle cost of commercially available data communication networks for the Federal Aviation Administration’s Weather Message Switching Center Replacement (WMSCR) were analyzed. Only existing commercial networks large enough to handle the WMSCR traffic load were considered. The recommendation is to proceed into a full and open competitive government procurement. In a competitive environment, this type of procurement will allow the government to receive the lowest possible life cycle cost. A description of the existing system, the end-state system, the interim network design, the commercial networks analyzed, and their associated life cycle costs are included. / Master of Science / incomplete_metadata

A prevailing urban phenomenon of the 21st century is that more people than ever before are living in informal settlements. As residents of informal settlements, the majority of shack dwellers can be considered socially, economically and politically marginalised citizens. The combination of poverty, marginalisation, and precarious living conditions has in many cases given rise to a vicious cycle. In this cycle, shack dwellers lack an effective voice and are unable to participate in political decision-making processes that affect their lives, leading to deepening deprivation and marginalisation. To break this cycle, the development of a genuine political voice of shack dwellers is essential. However, the process of developing a political voice in shack dwellers has only received scant academic attention and is poorly understood. One aspect of this process is the role of information communication technologies (ICTs) in enabling political voice. This has received some attention and has become a salient topic in academic study and development policy. Despite growing adoption of certain ICT tools by marginalised individuals, there is little evidence of their meaningful use for political voice. Access to ICTs is not the same as meaningful use of ICTs for political voice. Only a few studies have examined the issue of meaningful use of ICTs for political voice. This dissertation explores the factors influencing the processes by which marginalised individuals are able to develop a political voice, with a particular focus on the role of two increasingly ubiquitous ICTs – mobile phones and internet. A qualitative case study of a shack dweller grassroots organisation in South Africa (Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM)) is used to explore different types of political voice. The case study looks at the circumstances under which members of AbM are able to develop individual and collective forms of political expression, and the role that the use of ICTs play in this development. Data collected from semi-structured interviews and participant observation for this study suggests that, individual differences in combination with entrenched traditions and social structures based on patronage may undermine the development and or expression of political voice. However, active engagement in a grassroots organisation was found to be useful to overcome these limitations and for some individuals to develop their political voices. AbM members were able to engage in collective processes which led to the development of social bonds, trust, self-confidence, and critical reflection. Both the internet and mobile phones were found to play an important role in the development of political voice of AbM members. However, interaction between the use of ICTs and the development of a political voice is complex. In many instances the technology has enabled mobilization, as well as given individuals a feeling of security. Where this has happened, the appropriation and re-purposing of ICTs to fit the needs of AbM members has come about as a result of attaching meaning to these technologies, which did not exist before AbM. ICTs can facilitate the development of political voice, in particular by facilitating collective processes (e.g. mobilization), channelling support and trust, as well as raising self-confidence. Yet, as the case of AbM demonstrates, ICTs have not operated as a political equalizer within AbM. The use of ICTs for political voice might have even created new barriers for the development of political voice of some members. This dissertation brings together disparate stands of literature dealing with ICTs, political voice, social movements, empowerment, community psychology, and participation to conceptualise the development of a political voice. Moreover, a framework is devised to analyse the nature and the process of this development in marginalised individuals, as well as the role played by ICTs in this process. This dissertation aims to bring an understanding of the complex relationship between ICTs and political voice of marginalised individuals. An understanding of the process can provide important inputs to devise more effective design and implementation of policies and projects aimed at increasing political participation of an ever-growing population of disenfranchised and marginalised people living in informal settlements.

In airborne radar systems with Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI) mode, it is desired to detect the presence of targets in the interference consisting of noise, ground clutter, and jamming signals. These interference components usually mask the target return signal, such that the detection requires suppression of the interference signals. Space-time adaptive processing is a widely used interference suppression technique which uses temporal and spatial information to eliminate the effects of clutter and jamming and enables the detection of moving targets with small radial velocity. However, adaptive estimation of the interference requires high computation capacity as well as large secondary sample data support. The available secondary range cells may be fewer than required due to non-homogeneity problems and computational capacity of the radar system may not be sufficient for the computations required. In order to reduce the computational load and the required number of secondary data for estimation, parametric methods use a priori information on the structure of the clutter covariance matrix. Space Time Auto-regressive (STAR) filtering, which is a parametric adaptive method, and full parametric model-based approaches for interference suppression are proposed as alternatives to STAP in the literature. In this work, space time auto-regressive filtering and model-based GMTI approaches are investigated. Performance of these approaches are evaluated by both simulated and flight test data and compared with the performance of sample matrix inversion space time adaptive processing.

In this thesis, a new stack architecture for sensor networks is proposed. The stack consists of the following layers: application, query, aggregation, network, MAC and physical. Various algorithms are implemented using this stack and it is shown that this stack is modular. Following an overview of sensor networks, the previous protocol stack suggestions for sensor networks are examined. Sensor network algorithms that can be classified as sensor data management systems are surveyed and compared with each other. Four of the surveyed algorithms, namely, TAG, Synopsis Diffusion, Tributary-Delta and Directed Diffusion are implemented using the introduced stack. The implementation is performed using a sensor network model developed with OMNeT++ simulator. The simulation results are compared to the original results of these algorithms. Obtaining similar results, the stack and algorithm implementations are validated, moreover, it is shown that the stack does not induce any performance degradation. Using the implementation details of the algorithms, the modularity of the suggested stack is demonstrated. Finally, additional benefits of the stack are discussed.

Many radars suffer from masking of weaker targets by stronger ones due to range sidelobes of pulse compression codes. We propose a method to prevent this by successively detecting targets and canceling their effects. Performance of the proposed method will be investigated in various scenarios with regard to existence of noise, targets, and the Doppler effect.

In this thesis, improvement of Cell Averaging Constant False Alarm Rate (CA CFAR) radar processors is studied. A new improvement method is proposed that will reduce probability of false alarm while keeping probability of detection at good values. This method makes use of Doppler spreading patterns that appear after Doppler processing. Therefore this method is called Doppler Pattern Matching (DPM). Performance of the algorithm has been investigated by Monte Carlo simulations. In order to evaluate the performance, improvement factor is calculated which is the ratio of the probability of false alarm of original detector to the false alarm of improved detector. It is observed that improvement factor changes depending on the simulation scenario. Almost in every case, good improvement factor can be obtained. Moreover, in most of the cases, there has been no reduction in probability of detection after DPM is applied to CA CFAR detector.

In recent years the need for multimedia packet data services in wireless networks has grown rapidly. To overcome that need third generation (3G) mobile services have been proposed. The fast growing demands multimedia services in 3G services brought the need for higher capacity. As a result of this, the improvement on throughput, traffic serving performance has become necessary in 3G systems. Code division multiple access (CDMA) technique is one of the most important 3G wireless mobile techniques that has been defined. The scheduling mechanisms used in CDMA plays an important role on the efficiency of the system. The power, rate and capacity parameters are variable and dependent to each other in designing a scheduling mechanism. The schedulers for CDMA decide which user will use the frequency band at which time interval with what power and rate. In this thesis different type of algorithms used in time slotted CDMA are studied and a new algorithm which supports Quality of Service (QoS) is proposed. The performance analysis of this proposed algorithm is done via simulation in comparison to selected CDMA schedulers.

This study considers the average system throughput and the average delay performances of subcarrier allocation algorithms in OFDMA systems. The effects of varying the number of users, the number of subcarriers, and the statistical characteristics of incoming packets are investigated on the throughput and delay performances of the algorithms. Moreover, a new subcarrier allocation algorithm with low-order computational complexity, which performs very well almost all cases, is proposed. With the aid of the simulations, the significance of channel v.s. queue state information varying with the statistical characteristic of incoming packets is examined and reached some results which can be very valuable for channel estimation and feedback systems. Finally, the stability issue is considered in OFDMA systems and a new heuristic simulation-based method for obtaining the stability region of an OFDMA subcarrier allocation algorithm is proposed.

In this thesis, an ultrasound testbed is designed in order to practice the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) techniques. The thesis work is built on the fundamentals of SAR theory. In this respect, four different methods for the reconstruction of SAR image are considered. The ultrasonic testbed is composed of a mobile vehicle where the ultrasound transmitter and receiver are mounted. An analog circuit is designed in order to condition the transmitted and received signals. The receiving signal is processed in a personal computer using MATLAB routines. A GUI is designed for user friendly operation. Different experiments are done with the designed system. The theoretical and practical results for SAR imaging are compared. It is shown that the designed system functions properly with a good approximation to the theoretical results. The deviations from the theoretical results are caused by the idealistic assumptions as well as the distortions introduced by the practical system. More specifically, some of the distortions are generated by the nonuniform velocity of the moving platform, the phase distortion due to the analog filters and imperfect filtering during down-conversion. While the sources of distortions certainly affect the SAR system response, the implemented system is valuable for the practical analysis of SAR system performance.