Silt fence is one of the most widely used perimeter control devices and is considered an industry standard for use in the control of sediment transport from construction sites. Numerous research studies have been conducted on the use of silt fence as a perimeter control, including a number of studies involving controlled laboratory flume tests and outdoor tests performed in the field on construction sites with actual monitored storm events. In field tests, due to the random and uncontrollable nature of real storm events and field conditions, studies have shown difficulty in evaluating silt fence performance. These field studies have shown the need for performance testing of silt fence in a more controlled environment, which can also simulate the actual use and performance in the field. This research, which is a continuation of ongoing research on silt fence fabrics at UCF Stormwater and Management Academy, was conducted in order to evaluate silt fence performance under simulated field conditions. Presented in this thesis are evaluation of two silt fence fabrics, a woven (ASR 1400) fabric and nonwoven (BSRF) fabric. Both fabrics were installed separately on a tilted test bed filled with a silty-sand soil and subjected to simulated rainfall. Previous field studies on the performance of silt fence fabrics have evaluated the turbidity and sediment removal efficiencies only after the rain event, with the assumption that the efficiency values represent the true overall performance of silt fence. The results of this study revealed that the turbidity and suspended sediment performance efficiencies of silt fence were significantly affected by the time of sampling. The performance efficiencies during rainfall remained less than 55 percent, however, after the rainfall event ended, the performance efficiencies increased over time, reaching performance efficiency upwards of 90 percent. The increase in efficiency after rainfall was due to the constant or decreasing ponding depth behind the silt fence, increased filtration due to fabric clogging, and sedimentation of suspended particles. The nonwoven fabric was found to achieve higher removal efficiencies and flow-through rates both during and after the rain event when compared with the woven fabric. However, over the entire test duration (during and after rainfall combined), the projected overall efficiencies of both fabrics were similar. The projected overall average turbidity performance efficiencies of the woven and nonwoven silt fence fabrics was 80 and 78 percent, respectively. Both fabric types also achieved comparable overall average suspended sediment concentration efficiencies of 79 percent. This result leads to the conclusion that silt fence performance in the field is dependent on three main processes: filtration efficiency occurring during the rain event, filtration and sedimentation efficiency occurring after the rainfall event, and flow-through rate of the silt fence fabrics. Decreases in the flow-through rate lead to increases in the overall efficiency. This thesis quantifies the different mechanisms by which these processes contribute to the overall efficiency of the silt fence system and shows how these processes are affected by different conditions such as the degree of embankment slope and rainfall intensity.

The development of innovative propulsion systems requires testing in suitable facilities that reveal the efficacy of design models and allow for design refinement. The qualification process starts from ground tests and ends in vacuum chambers. The aim of this project is to design a versatile space propulsion facility capable of hosting different rocket engine architectures and providing an adequate supply line for different types of oxidizers and fuels in gaseous form. Identifying the key and critical components and implementing such components for the development of the facility and study the state of the art on safety standards and good practices for rocket engine testing. The test bed should be designed to withstand the structural stresses generated by the engine during static tests, while the supply line system should provide the mass flow required by the engine to deliver the design thrust (maximum thrust of 5kN). In this project, different types of rocket engines and their testing, fuel and oxidizers feed supply, risks involved and safety precautions in working of rocket test facilities are studied. A list of components for the development of such a rocket test facility and design of a logical layout plan consisting of various critical components for the propellant and oxidizer feed system is carried out. A total budget for the rocket test facility by evaluating the costs of various high quality and reliable components involved is produced. By accommodating different rocket architectures to withstand a maximum load of 5kN, an efficient design of the rocket test bed was realized and a static structural analysis of the same was performed that suffice for the objectives of the project.

Free Space Optical (FSO) satellite communications is proving to be a key enabling technology for global connectivity with the ability to provide connection across Europe with only 12 ground stations. For this, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) is working on implementing a robust communication system for FSO on a Xilinx RFSoC Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)( ZU28DR). However, FSO is susceptible to deep fades and atmospheric turbulence affecting the quality of the communication system. Thus, measuring the performance of the communication system is crucial for choosing system parameters and designing new blocks to enhance the performance. In this thesis, a high speed test-bed implementation exploiting Parallel Pseudo Random Binary Sequence (PRBS) to measure the performance of the system is implemented. The test-bed is designed to mitigate channel fading problems to correctly calculate the Bit Error Rate (BER). The test-bed is designed to allow for online adjustment of the communication system to facilitate parameter optimizations. / FSO-satellitkommunikation visar sig vara en viktig teknologi för global anslutning med förmågan att tillhandahålla anslutning över Europa med endast 12 markstationer. För detta arbetar DLR med att implementera ett robust kommunikationssystem för FSO på en Xilinx RFSoC FPGA (ZU28DR). Men FSO är känsligt för djupa fades och atmosfärisk turbulens som påverkar kvaliteten på kommunikationssystemet. Därför är mätningen av systemets prestanda avgörande för att välja systemparametrar och designa nya block för att förbättra prestanda. I denna avhandling implementeras en höghastighets testbädd som utnyttjar parallel PRBS för att mäta systemets prestanda. Testbädden är designad för att motverka kanalförlustproblem för att korrekt beräkna BER. Testbädden är designad för att tillåta justering av kommunikationssystemet online för att underlätta optimering av parametrar

No description available.

Τα πλεονεκτήματα που προκύπτουν από τη χρησιμοποίηση πολλαπλών κεραιών εκπομπής και πολλαπλών κεραιών λήψης (Multiple Input Multiple Output, MIMO) στις τηλεπικοινωνίες προκάλεσαν εκτεταμένο ενδιαφέρον μελέτης από την επιστημονική κοινότητα και υιοθετήθηκαν σε πολλές εφαρμογές της καθημερινής μας ζωής. Στο Κεφάλαιο 2 περιγράφονται με συντομία τα πλεονεκτήματα της τεχνολογία MIMO και πώς μπορεί να βελτιώσει τη ποιότητα επικοινωνίας. Όπως σε κάθε τεχνολογία υπάρχουν και οι αντίστοιχοι περιορισμοί που δημιουργούνται λόγω διαφόρων φαινομένων μετάδοσης των ηλεκτρομαγνητικών κυμάτων όπως διαλείψεις (fading), σκίαση (shadowing) και απώλειες διαδρομής (path loss). Τα φαινόμενα αυτά είναι απαραίτητο να μελετηθούν προκειμένου να αναπτυχθούν καλύτεροι αλγόριθμοι επικοινωνίας πομπού και δέκτη βελτιώνοντας τη ποιότητα επικοινωνίας. Για τη μελέτη αυτών των φαινομένων είναι απαραίτητη η ανάπτυξη διάταξης πομπού - δέκτη (test-bed) που υιοθετεί τη τεχνολογία MIMO και επιτρέπει τη περεταίρω μελέτη του συστήματος. Στο Κεφάλαιο 3 αναφέρονται τα βασικά χαρακτηριστικά της σχεδίασης ενός ασύρματου συστήματος. Αναλύεται η δημιουργία των προδιαγραφών βάσει των απαιτήσεων της εφαρμογής και η επιλογή των χαρακτηριστικών στο πομπό και στο δέκτη. Επιπλέον γίνεται εκτεταμένη αναφορά στους περιορισμούς και στα προβλήματα που δημιουργούνται σε αναλογικά συστήματα πομπών – δεκτών και τρόποι αύξησης της απόδοσής τους. Στο Κεφάλαιο 4 περιγράφεται το υλοποιημένο ενσύρματο σύστημα τεχνολογίας ΜΙΜΟ και οι τροποποιήσεις που έγιναν για την ενσωμάτωση του ασύρματου RF υποσυστήματος. Στη συνέχεια αναλύεται η αρχική μελέτη του RF υποσυστήματος και τα αναμενόμενα χαρακτηριστικά του με τη βοήθεια προσομοιώσεων (simulations). Τέλος παρατίθεται η τελική συσκευή που αναπτύχθηκε, τα θέματα που παρουσιάστηκαν κατά τη διάρκεια κατασκευής τους αλλά και τρόποι αντιμετώπισής τους και παραδοχές που έγιναν. Το Κεφάλαιο 5 αναφέρεται στις μετρήσεις που έγιναν σε πραγματικές συνθήκες. Οι μετρήσεις αφορούν αξιολόγηση των αναλογικών συσκευών πομπού – δέκτη ξεχωριστά αλλά και όλο το σύστημα μαζί. Το Κεφάλαιο 6 κάνει αναφορά στο τελικό χαμηλοπερατό ενεργό φίλτρο που αναπτύχτηκε για τη συγκεκριμένη εφαρμογή ενώ το Κεφάλαιο 7 περιγράφει το σχεδιασμό ενός αποκλειστικού, ειδικά σχεδιασμένου, τροφοδοτικού για τις ανάγκες τροφοδοσίας των συσκευών. / The benefits arising from the use of multiple transmitter antennas and multiple receiver antennas (Multiple Input Multiple Output, MIMO) in the field of telecommunications caused extensive interest and became subject of study by the scientific community and adopted in many applications in our daily life. Chapter 2 describes briefly the advantages of MIMO technology and how it can improve the quality of communication. As with any technology there are restrictions caused by various transmission phenomena of electromagnetic waves such as fading, shadowing and path loss. These phenomena need to be studied in order better algorithms can be developped and improve communication quality. A transmitter – receiver set up which adopts MIMO technology (test-bed) is necessary in order to study these phenomena and enable further research in the system. In chapter 3 the basic design concepts of a wireless system are presented. Thorough analysis has been made in many issues such as the creation of specifications based on application requirements, the selection of features in the transmitter and receiver, the limitations and problems arising in analog systems and ways to increase their performance. Chapter 4 describes the implemented wired MIMO system, the changes made to integrate the wireless RF subsystem, the initial study of the RF subsystem and the expected characteristics according the simulations. Finally the device developped is presented along with the issues encountered during construction and the solutions found to resolve them. Chapter 5 refers to measurements made in the field (indoor conditions). The evaluation of the analog devices transmitter and receiver has been done both separately and the whole system. Chapter 6 refers to the final low pass active filter that was developed for the specific application while Chapter 7 describes the design of a unique, specially designed, power supply for the power needs of the devices.

Insecure cyber behavior of end users may expose their computers to cyber-attack. A first step to improve their cyber behavior is to identify their tendency toward insecure cyber behavior. Unfortunately, not much work has been done in this area. In particular, the relationship between end users cyber behavior and their personality traits is much less explored. This paper presents a comprehensive review of a newly developed, easily configurable, and flexible software SPICE for psychologist and cognitive scientists to study personality traits and insecure cyber behavior of end users. The software utilizes well-established cognitive methods (such as dot-probe) to identify number of personality traits, and further allows researchers to design and conduct experiments and detailed quantitative study on the cyber behavior of end users. The software collects fine-grained data on users for analysis.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technologies are becoming widely used since they provide more flexibility and availability. Unfortunately, it is possible for WLANs to be implemented with security flaws which are not addressed in the original 802.11 specification. IEEE formed a working group (TGi) to provide a complete solution (code named 802.11i standard) to all the security problems of the WLANs. The group proposed using 802.1X as an interim solution to the deficiencies in WLAN authentication and key management. The full 802.11i standard is expected to be finalized by the end of 2004. Although 802.1X provides a better authentication scheme than the original 802.11 security solution, it is still vulnerable to denial-of-service, session hijacking, and man-in-the- middle attacks. Using an open-source 802.1X test-bed, this thesis evaluates various session hijacking mechanisms through experimentation. The main conclusion is that the risk of session hijacking attack is significantly reduced with the new security standard (802.11i); however, the new standard will not resolve all of the problems. An attempt to launch a session hijacking attack against the new security standard will not succeed, although it will result in a denial-of-service attack against the user. / Lieutenant Junior Grade, Turkish Navy

Die Marktbedingungen in der Automobilindustrie sind durch kürzere Entwicklungszeiträume, eine zunehmende Anzahl an Komfortfunktionen und Fahrzeugderivaten sowie steigende Erwartungen an Qualität, Effizienz und Sicherheit geprägt. Die reale Erprobung ist ein kritischer Pfad im Entwicklungsprozess. Die vorliegende Arbeit beschreibt ein neues Prüfsystemkonzept für die Komponentenerprobung, welches diesen Anforderungen Rechnung trägt. Das Herzstück ist eine softwarebasierte Systemarchitektur zur Automatisierung von Prototypentests. Schwerpunkte sind die Flexibilität in der Praxisanwendung, die Ausweitung der Messdatenerfassung mit zweckmäßiger Verwaltung zur Bauteilüberwachung und Fehlerrekonstruktion sowie eine aufgabenorientierte Schnittstelle zur Integration von Robotern. Diese übernehmen die mechanische Betätigung von beweglichen Fahrzeugkomponenten. Anhand von zwei konkreten Beispielen, einem Prüfstand zur Absicherung von Fahrzeugtüren sowie einem Prüfstand für Steifigkeitsmessungen wird die Praxistauglichkeit nachgewiesen.

La tesis propone un marco de trabajo para el soporte de la toma de decisiones adecuado para soportar la ejecución distribuida de acciones cooperativas en entornos multi-agente dinámicos y complejos. Soporte para la toma de decisiones es un proceso que intenta mejorar la ejecución de la toma de decisiones en escenarios cooperativos. Este proceso ocurre continuamente en la vida diaria. Los humanos, por ejemplo, deben tomar decisiones acerca de que ropa usar, que comida comer, etc. En este sentido, un agente es definido como cualquier cosa que está situada en un entorno y que actúa, basado en su observación, su interpretación y su conocimiento acerca de su situación en tal entorno para lograr una acción en particular.Por lo tanto, para tomar decisiones, los agentes deben considerar el conocimiento que les permita ser consientes en que acciones pueden o no ejecutar. Aquí, tal proceso toma en cuenta tres parámetros de información con la intención de personificar a un agente en un entorno típicamente físico. Así, el mencionado conjunto de información es conocido como ejes de decisión, los cuales deben ser tomados por los agentes para decidir si pueden ejecutar correctamente una tarea propuesta por otro agente o humano. Los agentes, por lo tanto, pueden hacer mejores decisiones considerando y representando apropiadamente tal información. Los ejes de decisión, principalmente basados en: las condiciones ambientales, el conocimiento físico y el valor de confianza del agente, provee a los sistemas multi-agente un confiable razonamiento para alcanzar un factible y exitoso rendimiento cooperativo.Actualmente, muchos investigadores tienden a generar nuevos avances en la tecnología agente para incrementar la inteligencia, autonomía, comunicación y auto-adaptación en escenarios agentes típicamente abierto y distribuidos. En este sentido, esta investigación intenta contribuir en el desarrollo de un nuevo método que impacte tanto en las decisiones individuales como colectivas de los sistemas multi-agente. Por lo tanto, el marco de trabajo propuesto ha sido utilizado para implementar las acciones concretas involucradas en el campo de pruebas del fútbol robótico. Este campo emula los juegos de fútbol real, donde los agentes deben coordinarse, interactuar y cooperar entre ellos para solucionar tareas complejas dentro de un escenario dinámicamente cambiante y competitivo, tanto para manejar el diseño de los requerimientos involucrados en las tareas como para demostrar su efectividad en trabajos colectivos. Es así que los resultados obtenidos tanto en el simulador como en el campo real de experimentación, muestran que el marco de trabajo para el soporte de decisiones propuesto para agentes situados es capaz de mejorar la interacción y la comunicación, reflejando en un adecuad y confiable trabajo en equipo dentro de entornos impredecibles, dinámicos y competitivos. Además, los experimentos y resultados también muestran que la información seleccionada para generar los ejes de decisión para situar a los agentes, es útil cuando tales agentes deben ejecutar una acción o hacer un compromiso en cada momento con la intención de cumplir exitosamente un objetivo colectivo. Finalmente, algunas conclusiones enfatizando las ventajas y utilidades del trabajo propuesto en la mejora del rendimiento colectivo de los sistemas multi-agente en situaciones tales como tareas coordinadas y asignación de tareas son presentadas. / This thesis proposes a framework to decision support suitable for supporting the distributed performing of cooperative actions in dynamic and complex multi-agent environments. Decision support is a process aiming to improve the decision-making performance in cooperative scenarios. Simply stated, decision-making is the process of selecting a specific action out of multiple alternatives. This process occurs continuously in daily life. Humans, for instance, have to take decisions about what cloths to wear, what food to eat, etc. In this sense, an agent is defined as anything that is situated in an environment and acts, based on its observation, its interpretation and its knowledge about its situation on such environment to fulfil a particular action. Therefore, to take decisions, agents must get knowledge that allow them to be aware on what actions can or cannot perform. Here, such process takes three information parameters trying to embody an agent in a typically physical world. This set of information is known as decision axes, which it any agent must take into account to decide if it can perform correctly the task proposed by other agent or human. Agents can make better decision by considering and representing properly such information. Decision axes, mainly based on the agents' environmental condition, the agents' physical knowledge and the agents' trust value, provide multi-agent systems a reliable reasoning for achieving feasible and successful cooperative performance. Currently, many researches tend to generate news advances in agent technology to increase the intelligence, autonomy, communication and self-adaptation in open and distributed agent scenarios. In this sense, this research aims to contribute to the development of a new path to impact on both individual and cooperative decisions in multi-agent environments In this light, the thesis was used to implement the concrete actions involved in the robot soccer both in simulated as in real scenarios. It emulates a soccer game where agents must communicate; interact and cooperate among them to perform complex actions within a dynamic and competitive scenario, both to drive the design of the involved actions' requirements as to demonstrate its effectiveness in cooperative jobs. Therefore, the thesis has obtained results, both on simulation and on real experimentations, showing that the framework to decision support for situated agents presented is capable to improve the interaction and the communication, reflect in a suitable and reliable agent's team-work within an unpredictable, dynamic and competitive environment. The experimentation also showed that the selected information to generate the decision axes to situate agents are useful when these agents must perform the proper action or made sure commitments at each moment in order to reach successfully a goal. Conclusions emphasizing the advantages and usefulness of the introduced approach, in the improvement of multi-agent performance in coordinated task and task allocation problems are presented.

Le monde des réseaux de capteurs sans fil ‘RCSF’ a connu de grands progrès au cours de ces dernières années. Ainsi, les RCSF ont pu intégrer divers champs d’application (environnement, militaire, médecine, domotique ...) dont quelques-uns ayant des exigences en termes de qualité de service ‘QdS’. Cependant, la garantie de la QdS dans un RCSF pose des problèmes de recherche non triviaux, à cause de la nature peu fiable de la communication sans fil et des limitations des ressources des nœuds RCSF (processeur, mémoire, énergie ...). Dans le cadre de cette thèse, nous nous sommes focalisés sur les protocoles MAC afin d’améliorer le support de QdS dans les RCSF. Plus particulièrement, le standard IEEE 802.15.4. Les mécanismes de conservation d’énergie proposés par ce standard sont efficaces et présentent une flexibilité par rapport aux besoins des applications. Néanmoins, le temps de sommeil des nœuds affecte considérablement le délai de communication, donnant naissance à un compromis énergie/délai. Pour résoudre ce problème, nous avons amélioré ce standard pour un meilleur support des applications temps-réel. L’approche proposée permet de réduire le délai de communication de manière significative, même pour de faibles rapports cycliques, grâce au nouveau format de la supertrame. Les performances ont été validées par simulation et sur des plateformes de nœuds RCSF réelles. Nous avons proposé également un modèle de simulation pour le standard IEEE 802.15.4 sous le simulateur NS-3. / In the last years, Wireless Sensor Networks ‘WSN’ knew a tremendous evolution which attracted many applications. WSN has several characteristics that make it a unique research field, such as, WSN nodes’ constraints and the unreliable (lossy) wireless communication. The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is the first standard designed for this type of networks known as LR-WPANs ‘Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Network’. The energy conservation mechanism proposed by the current standard is quite efficient and very flexible. This flexibility comes from the ability to configure different duty cycles to meet specific applications’ requirements. However, this mechanism has a considerable impact on the end-to-end delay. Our approach resolves the energy/delay trade-off by avoiding the storage of the real-time data in the coordinator during sleep time, more particularly in Multi-source Multi-sink networks. A new superframe structure is adopted and a deterministic reception scheduling is used. In this thesis, we also proposed a new WPAN model for the Network Simulator 3 ‘NS-3’.