In an energy harvesting communication system, energy is derived from outside sources and becomes partially available at different points in time. The constraints induced by this property on energy consumption plays an active role in the design of efficient communication systems. This thesis focuses on the optimal design of transmission and networking schemes for energy harvesting wireless communication systems. In particular, an energy harvesting transmitter broadcasting data to two receivers in an AWGN broadcast channel assuming that energy harvests and data arrivals occur at known instants is considered. In this system, optimal packet scheduling that achieves minimum delay is analyzed. An iterative algorithm, DuOpt, that achieves the same structural properties as the optimal schedule is proposed. DuOpt is proved to obtain the optimal solution when weaker user data is ready at the beginning. A dual problem is defined and shown to be strictly convex. Taking advantage of the dual problem, uniqueness of the solution of the main problem is proved. Finally, it is observed that DuOpt is almost two orders of magnitude faster than the SUMT (sequential unconstrained minimization technique) algorithm that solves the same problem.

This thesis proposes a complete framework of an end-to-end transmission of stereo video to mobile devices using DVB-H. Block diagram of the system is presented and operations conducted on the video at each layer are explained. Parameters and methodologies that may make a robust transmission possible are discussed. The transmission performance is analyzed in terms of error robustness under various coding methods, prediction structures, layering and protection strategies for different contents and channel conditions. It also investigates the effect of rate allocation between video quality and protection over robust transmission in erroneous environment. This works provides directive conclusions on the selection of the mentioned parameters and methods.

Ground based radars often experience difficulties in target detection and direction finding (DF) applications due to the interference between the direct and surface reflected signals when the targets fly at low altitudes. In this thesis, the phenomena governing the low angle propagation are overviewed and a multipath signal model including the effects of refraction, specular reflection, diffuse reflection, curvature of the earth and antenna polarization is presented. Then, the model is utilized to develop detection and DF algorithms for the targets at low altitudes. The target detection algorithm aims to increase signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to overcome the effects of signal fading caused by surface reflections. The algorithm is based on diversity combining and the combining weight vector is calculated by maximizing average value of SNR. The technique is compared with Maximum Ratio Combining (MRC) algorithm which is optimal in terms of SNR. In direction finding, it is the height of the target that is explored since the target range information is obtained from the time delay. The target height is estimated by utilizing Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE). The performance of our algorithm is compared with that of the technique that is known in the literature as Refined Maximum Likelihood (RML).

An antenna array is an indispensable portion of a direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation operation. A number of error sources in the arrays degrade the DOA estimation accuracy. Mutual coupling effect is one of the main error sources and should be corrected for any antenna array. In this thesis, a system theoretic approach is presented for mutual coupling characterization of antenna arrays. In this approach, the idea is to model the mutual coupling effect through a simple linear transformation between the measured and the ideal array data. In this context, a measurement reduction method (MRM) is proposed to decrease the number of calibration measurements. This new method dramatically reduces the number of calibration measurements for omnidirectional antennas. It is shown that a single calibration measurement is sufficient for uniform circular arrays when MRM is used. The method is extended for the arrays composed of non-omnidirectional (NOD) antennas. It is shown that a single calibration matrix can not properly model the mutual coupling effect in an NOD antenna array. Therefore, a sectorized calibration approach is proposed for NOD antenna arrays where the mutual coupling calibration is done in angular sectors. Furthermore, mutual coupling problem is also investigated for antenna arrays over a perfect electric conductor plate. In this case, reflections from the plate lead to gain/phase mismatches in the antenna elements. In this context, a composite matrix approach is proposed where mutual coupling and gain/phase mismatch are jointly modelled by using a single composite calibration matrix. The proposed methods are evaluated over DOA estimation accuracies using Multiple Signal Classification (MUSIC) algorithm. The calibration measurements are obtained using the numerical electromagnetic simulation tool FEKO. The evaluation results show that the proposed methods effectively realize the mutual coupling calibration of antenna arrays.

Subjective video quality and video decoding complexity are jointly optimized in order to determine the video encoding parameters that will result in the best Quality of Experience (QoE) for an end user watching a video clip on a mobile device. Subjective video quality is estimated by an objective criteria, video quality metric (VQM), and a method for predicting the video quality of a test sequence from the available training sequences with similar content characteristics is presented. Standardized spatial index and temporal index metrics are utilized in order to measure content similarity. A statistical approach for modeling decoding complexity on a hardware platform using content features extracted from video clips is presented. The overall decoding complexity is modeled as the sum of component complexities that are associated with the computation intensive code blocks present in state-of-the-art hybrid video decoders. The content features and decoding complexities are modeled as random parameters and their joint probability density function is predicted as Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM). These GMMs are obtained off-line using a large training set comprised of video clips. Subsequently, decoding complexity of a new video clip is estimated by using the available GMM and the content features extracted in real time. A novel method to determine the video decoding capacity of mobile terminals by using a set of subjective decodability experiments that are performed once for each device is also proposed. Finally, the estimated video quality of a content and the decoding capacity of a device are combined in a utility-complexity framework that optimizes complexity-quality trade-off to determine video coding parameters that result in highest video quality without exceeding the hardware capabilities of a client device. The simulation results indicate that this approach is capable of predicting the user viewing satisfaction on a mobile device.

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Elections are one of the most fundamental activities of a democratic society. As is the case in any other aspect of life, developments in technology have resulted changes in the voting procedure from using the traditional paper-based voting to voting by use of electronic means, or e-voting. E-voting involves using different forms of electronic means like / voting machines, voting via the Internet, telephone, SMS and digital interactive television. This thesis concerns voting by telephone, or televoting, it starts by giving a brief overview and evaluation of various models and technologies that are implemented within such systems. The aspects of televoting that have been investigated are technologies that provide a voice interface to the voter and conduct the voting process, namely the Election Markup Language (EML), Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text-to-Speech (TTS).

The issues involved in Internet telephony (Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) device) can be best understood by actually implementing a VoIP device and studying its performance. In this regard, an Internet telephony device, providing full duplex voice communication over internet, and a user interface program have been developed. In the process, a number of implementation issues came into focus, which we have touched upon in this thesis. Transport layer network protocols are discussed in the concept of real time streaming applications and Real Time Protocol (RTP) is modified to use as transport layer protocol in developed VoIP device. Adaptive playout buffering algorithms are studied and compared with each other by trace driven simulation experiments with objective measures. A method to solve clock synchronization problem in streaming internet applications is presented. One way and round trip delay measurement functionalities are added to the VoIP device, so that device can be used to investigate the network characteristics.

In this thesis, optimization of the geometry of non-uniform arrays for direction finding yielding unambiguous results is studied. A measure of similarity between the array response vectors is defined. In this measure, the effects of antenna array geometry, source placements and antenna gains are included as variable parameters. Then, assuming that the antenna gains are known and constant, constraints on the similarity function are developed and described to result in unambiguous configurations and maximum resolution. The problem stated is solved with two different methods, the MATLAB optimization toolbox, and genetic algorithm in which different genetic codings are also studied. The performance of the MUSIC algorithm with the optimized array geometries are investigated through computer simulations. The direction of arrival estimates are obtained using the optimized array geometry on the MUSIC algorithm along with the effects of different parameters. Statistics of the true and probable erroneous arrival angles and the probability of gross error are obtained as a measure of performance. It is observed that the proposed optimization process for the array geometry gave rise to unambiguous results for direction finding.

Array processing involves manipulation of signals induced on various antenna elements. In an adaptive array system, the radiation pattern is formed according to the signal environment by using signal processing techniques. Adaptive arrays improve the capacity of mobile communication systems by placing nulls in the direction of interfering sources and by directing independent beams toward various users. Adaptive beamforming algorithms process signals induced on each array element that are assumed not to be affected by mutual coupling between the elements. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the effects of mutual coupling on the performance of various adaptive beamforming algorithms. The performance parameters such as signal to interference plus noise ratio and speed of convergence of the adaptive algorithms are studied and compared by both neglecting and considering the mutual coupling for the least mean squares, recursive least squares, conjugate gradient and constant modulus algorithms. Finally, it is concluded that the effect of mutual coupling is major in the performance of blind algorithms rather than non-blind algorithms. The results are obtained by simulations carried out on MATLAB.