Sjukvårdsrådgivning via telefon har blivit allt vanligare i västvärlden. Tekniska lösningar har utarbetas som underlättar för de döva att själva kontakta sjukvården via telefon. Sjuksköterskor inom primärvården kommunicerar då med de döva via text- eller bildtelefoni. Studiens syfte var att beskriva döva och sjuksköterskors erfarenheter och upplevelser av sjukvårdsrådgivning via telefon. Sex sjuksköterskor och fem döva intervjuades med öppna frågor. Resultatet analyserades med konventionell innehållsanalys. Resultatet visar att för sjuksköterskorna är det mest framträdande upplevelsen av svårigheter att förstå och bli förstådd. För de dövas är det viktigaste att de, trots olika tekniska lösningar, har svårigheter att få kontakt med vårdcentralerna. Båda grupperna är eniga om att språket, den skrivna svenskan, kan vara en svårighet, särskilt för de äldre döva. För att komma förbi hindren och nå målen har båda grupperna utvecklat olika strategier. En gemensam strategi är att då kommunikationen via telefon upplevs som otillräcklig, planeras för ett personligt möte tillsammans med tolk. Svårigheterna att få kontakt gjorde att de döva ibland dröjde med att söka vård. Sjuksköterskorna upplevde att de döva som grupp, ibland var sjukare då de tog kontakt, än patientgruppen i stort. Båda grupperna framförde en oro för vad som kan hända vid allvarliga tillstånd om kontakt och förståelse inte fungerar tillfredställande. Konklusionen indikerar att kontaktvägarna till primärvården måste förbättras för de döva. Möjligheten förden döve och sjuksköterskan att kommunicera på sitt förstaspråk underlättar förståelsen och den möjligheten behöver utvecklas. Vårt resultat bör kunna utgöra ett underlag för förbättringsarbete och fortsatt forskning inom området.

In this work, a novel method is proposed to optimize the array geometry for DOA estimation. The method is based on minimization of fine error variances with the constraint that the gross error probability is below a certain threshold. For this purpose, a metric function that reflects the gross and fine error characteristics of the array is offered. Theoretical analyses show that the minimization of this metric function leads to small DOA estimation error variance and small gross error probability. Analyses have been carried out under the assumptions of planar array geometry, isotropic array elements and AWGN. Genetic algorithm is used as an optimization tool and performance simulation is performed by comparing the DOA estimation errors of optimized array to a uniform circular array (UCA). Computer simulations support the theoretical analyses and show that the method proposed leads to significant improvement in array geometry in terms of DOA estimation performance.

In coherent receivers, the effect of the multipath fading channel on the transmitted signal must be estimated to recover the transmitted data. In this thesis, the channel phase and data estimation problems are investigated in a transmitted data sequence when the channel is modeled as slowly fading, frequency non-selective channel. Channel phase estimation in a transmitted data sequence is investigated and data estimation is obtained in a symbol-by-symbol MAP receiver that is designed for minimum symbol error probability criterion. The channel phase is quantized in an interval of interest, the trellis diagram is constructed and Viterbi decoding algorithm is applied that uses the phase transition and observation models for channel phase estimation. The optimum coherent and noncoherent detectors for binary orthogonal and PSK signals are derived and the modulated signals in a sequence are detected in symbol-by-symbol MAP receivers.Simulation results have shown that the performance of the receiver with phase estimation is between the performance of the optimum coherent and noncoherent receiver.

The demand for faster data transmission has been increasing since the wide acceptance of the Internet. To meet this ever increasing demand, optical communication systems use Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) to transport more information per fiber by utilizing multiple wavelength channels. Multi-wavelength laser sources are one of the most important components of such WDM systems. In this thesis a multi-wavelength laser source is proposed. A fiber Sagnac loop filter is used to produce a grid pattern with peaks at a certain set of wavelengths. Then any desired channel is chosen from the grid by using an adjustable Fiber Bragg Grating.

In this study, emitter identification techniques have been investigated and a schema has been proposed to solve the emitter identification problem in Electronic Warfare systems. Clustering technique, histogram based deinterleaving techniques and a continuous wavelet transform based deinterleaving technique have been reviewed. A receiver simulator software has been developed to test the performance of these techniques and to compare them against each other. To compensate the disadvantages of these techniques, a schema utilizing the beneficial points of them has been developed. With the modifications proposed a resultant schema has been obtained. Proposed schema uses clustering and deinterleaving together with other proposed modifications. Tests made through out this study have shown that this usage improves performance of emitter identification system. Hence, proposed schema can be used to identify the emitters in real EW systems.

In this thesis work, the implementations of the monopulse amplitude comparison and phase comparison DF algorithms are performed on an FPGA platform. After the mathematical formulation of the algorithms using maximum-likelihood approach is done, software simulations are carried out to validate and find the DF accuracies of the algorithms under various conditions. Then the algorithms are implemented on an FPGA platform by utilizing platform specific software tools. Block diagrams of the hardware implementations are given and explained in detail. Then simulations of hardware implementation of both algorithms are performed. Using the results of the simulations, DF accuracies under certain conditions are evaluated and compared to software simulations results.

The characteristics of slotted circular waveguides with different dimensions, including cutoff frequencies of TE and TM modes, impedance and modal field distributions will be analyzed using the generalized spectral domain approach. The Method of Moment will be applied, basis functions that include the edge conditions will be used and a computer program will be developed. Obtained results will be presented for different number, depth and thickness of coupling slots, and compared with available data to demonstrate the accuracy and the efficiency of the approach. Plots of the electric and magnetic field lines corresponding to the dominant as well as a number of higher order modes will be presented for quadruple ridge case.

Many wireless sensor network (WSN) applications require efficient multimedia communication capabilities. However, the existing communication protocols in the literature mainly aim to achieve energy efficiency and reliability objectives and do not address the multimedia communication challenges in WSN. In this thesis, comprehensive performance evaluation of the existing transport protocols is performed and it has been shown that the existing proposals achieve very poor performance in terms of large set of metrics such as packet delivery rate, end-to-end packet delay, bandwidth and energy efficiency, frame peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), delay-bounded frame PSNR, frame delivery probability, frame end-to-end delay and jitter. Based on these results, an energy-efficient real-time and reliable video sensor communication protocol (VSCP) is introduced for WSN. VSCP estimates video quality perceived by sink using lost segments of video frames and aims to maintain the overall reliability at a given level with minimum energy expenditure. Source data rates are adjusted in a quality adaptable manner according to the network conditions and the overall reliability computed by sink. QSC (quality scalable coding) encoding technique is used to produce a nearly constant quality video at a given maximum data rate during adjustment of source data rates. Performance evaluations show that VSCP protocol significantly outperforms the existing proposals in terms of multimedia communication performance metrics in WSN.

This thesis considers the real-time implementation phases of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communication system. The parts which are related to the implementation detail the blocks realized on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) board and define the connections between these blocks and typical radio frequency front-end modules assisting the wireless communication. Two sides of the implemented communication testbed are discussed separately as the transmitter and the receiver parts. In addition to usual building blocks of the transmitter and the receiver blocks, a special type of iterative parallelized decoding architecture has also been implemented on the testbed to demonstrate its potential in low-latency communication systems. In addition to practical aspects, this thesis also presents theoretical findings for an improved version of the built system using analytical tools and simulation results for possible extensions to orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM).

The dominant natural electromagnetic (EM) radiation in the extremely low frequency (ELF) range is due to global lightning activity. Radio waves of ELF band traveling along the surface of the ground are able to circle the globe and return to the starting point. Schumann Resonances (SR) are the EM phenomena which occur in the cavity formed by the conducting Earth and the ionosphere, with peak frequencies close to 8, 14, 20, 26 Hz, etc. The spectral characteristics of the SR modes are defined by their resonant mode amplitudes, center frequencies and half-widths. The characteristics of the SR became important in aerospace, marine applications, atmospheric studies, in addition to their relevance to global lightning studies due to their frequency band. The objective of this work is two fold: (i) to investigate the characteristics of SR parameters obtained at Sarkoy in Turkey / (ii) to model the nonlinear characteristics of the Near Earth Space Processes by forecasting the 1st SR mode intensities different time steps in advance using neural network modeling approach. The results show that the SR amplitudes exhibit the characteristics of Tropical African lightning activity and have maxima around 1400 UT. The neural network results show that the proposed model is able to forecast SR amplitudes from 0,5 to 36 hours in advance within reasonable error limits. Furthermore, a fuzzy neural network model with a non&ndash / linear optimization algorithm for the training phase is proposed and tested for the future work.