In this thesis new methods are presented to achieve performance enhancement in wireless cooperative networks. In particular, techniques to improve diversity gain, throughput and minimise the transmission delay are described. A buffer-aided amplify-and-forward max-link relay selection scheme for both symmetric and asymmetric channels is introduced. This approach shows that the max-link scheme is most effective over the traditional max-SNR scheme when the source-to-relay and relay-to-destination links are symmetric. The closed form expressions for the outage probability and average packet delay of the proposed scheme under both symmetric and asymmetric channel configurations is derived. The diversity order and the coding gain of the AF max-link scheme is analytically provided. Then a novel relay selection scheme with significantly reduced packet delay is proposed. Both the outage performance and average packet delay of the proposed scheme are analysed. The analysis shows that, besides the diversity and coding gains, the proposed scheme has average packet delay similar to that of a non buffer-aided relay system when the channel SNR is sufficiently high thereby. A novel buffer-aided link selection scheme based on network-coding in a multiple hop relay network is proposed. Compared with existing approaches, the proposed scheme significantly increases the system throughput. This is achieved by applying data buffers at the relays to decrease the outage probability and using network-coding to increase the data rate. The closed-form expressions of both the average throughput and packet delay are derived. The proposed scheme has not only significantly higher throughput than both the traditional and existing buffer-aided max-link scheme, but also smaller average packet delay than the max-link scheme. A decode-and-forward buffer-aided relay selection for the underlay cognitive relay networks in the presence of both primary transmitter and receiver is presented. A novel buffer aided relay selection scheme for the cognitive relay network is proposed, where the best relay is selected with the highest signal-to-interference-ratio among all available source-to-relay and relay-to-destination links while keeping the interference to the primary destination within a certain level. A closed-form expression for the outage probability of the proposed relay selection scheme is obtained. Finally, A novel security buffer-aided decode-and-forward cooperative wireless networks is considered. An eavesdropper which can intercept the data transmission from both the source and relay nodes is considered to threaten the security of transmission. Finite size data buffers are assumed to be available at every relay in order to avoid having to select concurrently the best source-to-relay and relay-to-destination links. A new max-ratio relay selection policy is proposed to optimise the secrecy transmission by considering all the possible source-to-relay and relay-to-destination links and selecting the relay having the link which maximises the signal to eavesdropper channel gain ratio. Two cases are considered in terms of knowledge of the eavesdropper channel strengths: exact and average gains, respectively. Closed-form expressions for the secrecy outage probability for both cases are obtained. The proposed max-ratio relay selection scheme is shown to outperform one based on max-min-ratio relay scheme.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / This thesis is an analysis of the link-layer and network-layer performance of an experimental Seaweb undersea acoustic network. The objective is to statistically determine RTS/CTS handshaking and ARQ retransmission performance during the Fleet Battle Experiment-India, executed in June 2001. Many factors constrain or impair undersea acoustic communications. Analysis of a sample portion of the data reveals insights about the overall throughput, latency, and reliability of the Seaweb network. / Lieutenant, United States Navy

Thesis advisor: Julia E. Grigsby / We use the Birman-Ko-Lee presentation of the braid group to show that all closures of strongly quasipositive braids whose normal form contains a positive power of the dual Garside element δ are fibered. We classify links which admit such a braid representative in geometric terms as boundaries of plumbings of positive Hopf bands to a disk. Rudolph constructed fibered strongly quasipositive links as closures of positive words on certain generating sets of Bₙ and we prove that Rudolph’s condition is equivalent to ours. We compute the sutured Khovanov homology groups of positive braid closures in homological degrees i = 0,1 as sl₂(ℂ)-modules. Given a condition on the sutured Khovanov homology of strongly quasipositive braids, we show that the sutured Khovanov homology of the closure of strongly quasipositive braids whose normal form contains a positive power of the dual Garside element agrees with that of positive braid closures in homological degrees i ≤ 1 and show this holds for the class of such braids on three strands. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Mathematics.

A predição de links em redes é uma tarefa com aplicações em diversos cenários. Com a automatização de processos, as redes sociais, redes tecnológicas e outras cresceram muito em número de vértices e arestas. Portanto, a utilização de preditores de links em redes com alta complexidade estrutural não é trivial, mesmo considerando algoritmos de baixa complexidade computacional. A grande quantidade de operações necessárias para que os preditores possam escolher quais arestas são promissoras torna o processo de considerar a rede toda inviável na maioria dos casos. As abordagens existentes enfrentam essa característica de diversas formas, sendo que as mais populares são as que limitam o conjunto de pares de vértices que serão considerados para existência de arestas promissoras. Este projeto aborda a criação de uma estratégia que utiliza otimização multinível para contrair as redes, executar os algoritmos de predição de links nas redes contraídas e projetar os resultados de predição para a rede original, para reduzir o número de operações necessárias à predição de links. Os resultados mostram que a abordagem consegue reduzir o tempo necessário para predição, apesar de perdas esperadas na qualidade na predição. / Link prediction in networks is a task with applications in several scenarios. With the automation of processes, social networks, technological networks, and others have grown considerably in the number of vertices and edges. Therefore, the creation of systems for link prediction in networks of high structural complexity is not a trivial process, even considering low-complexity algorithms. The large number of operations required for predicting which edges are promising makes the considering of the whole network impracticable in many cases. The existing approaches face this characteristic in several ways, and the most popular are those that limit the set of vertex pairs that will be considered for the existence of promising edges. This project addresses a strategy that uses multilevel optimization to coarse networks, execute prediction algorithms on coarsened networks and project the results back to the original network, in order to reduce the number of operations for link prediction. The experiments show that the approach can reduce the time despite some expected losses of accuracy.

O GPS é um sistema de radio navegação baseado em satélites operando 24 horas por dia no fornecimento de sinais de rádio para determinação de coordenadas em todo o globo terrestre. Estas coordenadas apresentam uma precisão de 10 metros, que em muitas aplicações é inadequada. O DGPS ou GPS diferencial é uma técnica que permite passar a precisão para o nível do metro por meio da recepção de informações adicionais. Estas informações são recebidas pelo receptor de GPS por meio de rádio a partir de satélites geo-estacionários ou enlaces locais. Este trabalho apresenta um sistema DGPS com enlace local para aplicações urbanas com a utilização de um receptor de mensagens de texto, e de baixo custo, pager Motoro-la Creatalink operando na faixa de 931 MHz. Foi montado um projeto piloto na Escola de Engenharia de São Carlos (EESC) com a Base de Referência no Departamento de Engenharia Elétrica. Os resultados mostram que o método apresenta uma sensível melhora na qualidade das coordenadas e que apresenta um grande potencial para aplicação em cidades de médio porte. / GPS is a radio navigation system base on a satellite network providing 24 hours radio data to determine point coordinates and world wide coverage. The precision is in the decametric range which is not adequate to many applications. DGPS or Differential GPS is a technique used to improve this precision down to metric level adding informa-tion to the receiver. The GPS receiver can receive the information from geostationary satellites or radio links. This work presents a DGPS system with local radio link to support urban applications based on the low price pager Motorola Creatalink, operating in 931 MHz band. A pilot project was developed at the Engineering School of Sao Carlos (EESC) with the Refer-ence Station at the roof of Electrical Engineering Department. The results show a good improvement in the precision of the coordinates, presenting a high potential usage in medium size cities.

Thesis advisor: Julia Elisenda Grigsby / Thesis advisor: David Treumann / In 2010, Seidel and Smith used their localization framework for Floer homologies to prove a Smith-type rank inequality for the symplectic Khovanov homology of 2-periodic links in the 3-sphere. Hendricks later used similar geometric techniques to prove analogous rank inequalities for the knot Floer homology of 2-periodic links. We use combinatorial and space-level techniques to prove analogous Smith-type inequalities for various flavors of Khovanov homology for periodic links in the 3-sphere of any prime periodicity. First, we prove a graded rank inequality for the annular Khovanov homology of 2-periodic links by showing grading obstructions to longer differentials in a localization spectral sequence. We remark that the same method can be extended to p-periodic links. Second, in joint work with Matthew Stoffregen, we construct a Z/p-equivariant stable homotopy type for odd and even, annular and non-annular Khovanov homologies, using Lawson, Lipshitz, and Sarkar's Burnside functor construction of a Khovanov stable homotopy type. Then, we identify the fixed-point sets and apply a version of the classical Smith inequality to obtain spectral sequences and rank inequalities relating the Khovanov homology of a periodic link with the annular Khovanov homology of the quotient link. As a corollary, we recover a rank inequality for Khovanov homology conjectured by Seidel and Smith's work on localization and symplectic Khovanov homology. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Mathematics.

Muitos links entre páginas na Web podem ser vistos como indicadores de qualidade e importância para as páginas que eles apontam. A partir desta ideia, vários estudos propuseram métricas baseadas na estrutura de links para inferir qualidade de conteúdo em páginas da web. Contudo, até onde sabemos, o único trabalho que examinou a correlação entre tais métricas e qualidade de conteúdo consistiu de um estudo limitado que deixou várias questões em aberto. Embora tais métricas sejam muito bem sucedidas na tarefa de ranquear páginas que foram fornecidas como respostas para consultas submetidas para máquinas de busca, não é possível determinar a contribuição específica de fatores como qualidade, popularidade e importância para os resultados. Esta dificuldade se deve em parte ao fato de que a informação sobre qualidade, popularidade e importância é difícil de obter para páginas da web em geral. Ao contrário de páginas da web, estas informações podem ser obtidas para artigos da Wikipédia, uma vez que qualidade e importância são avaliadas por especialistas humanos, enquanto a popularidade pode ser estimada com base nas visualizações dos artigos. Isso torna possível a verificação da relação existente entre estes fatores e métricas de análise de links, nosso objetivo neste trabalho. Para fazer isto, nós implementamos vários algoritmos de análise de links e comparamos os rankings obtidos com eles com os obtidos considerando a avaliação humana feita na Wikipédia com relação aos fatores qualidade, popularidade e importância. Nós observamos que métricas de análise de links são mais relacionadas com qualidade e popularidade que com importância e a correlação é moderada / Many links between Web pages can be viewed as indicative of the quality and importance of the pages pointed to. Accordingly, several studies have proposed metrics based on links to infer web page content quality. However, as far as we know, the only work that has examined the correlation between such metrics and content quality consisted of a limited study that left many open questions. In spite of these metrics having been shown successful in the task of ranking pages which were provided as answers to queries submitted to search machines, it is not possible to determine the specific contribution of factors such as quality, popularity, and importance to the results. This difficulty is partially due to the fact that such information is hard to obtain for Web pages in general. Unlike ordinary Web pages, the content quality of Wikipedia articles is evaluated by human experts, which makes it feasible to verify the relation between such link analysis metrics and the quality of Wikipedia articles, our goal in this work. To accomplish that, we implemented several link analysis algorithms and compared their resulting rankings with the ones created by human evaluators regarding factors such as quality, popularity and importance. We found that the metrics are more correlated to quality and popularity than to importance, and the correlation is moderate

Chapas de poli(metacrilato de metila) podem ser modificadas por meio da adição de um agente promotor de ligações cruzadas e um plastificante objetivando incrementar seu desempenho durante a termoformagem. A interação intermolecular, modificada com a adição de diferentes quantidades de um agente promotor de ligações cruzadas (TEGDMA) e pela presença de um plastificante (DOP) faz com que as macromoléculas sejam ancoradas e afastadas respectivamente. O desenvolvimento deste trabalho objetivou, avaliar as propriedades físicas, mecânicas, térmicas e o processamento via termoformagem para duas diferentes temperaturas de termoformagem em um molde cilíndrico, a uma mesma taxa de deformação e determinado a influência da formulação, para cinco chapas que se diferenciaram nas quantidades de TEGDMA e uma quantidade fixada de DOP para duas das formulações. Os resultados mostraram que há incremento na deformação com as modificações introduzidas quando comparado a uma chapa sem adição de TEGDMA ou DOP e as propriedades destas chapas como dureza superficial, módulo de rigidez e temperatura de transição vítrea apresentaram mudanças sensíveis, que caracterizam vantagens no uso dos dois componentes. / Poly(methyl methacrylate) sheets can be modified adding a cross-linking agent and a plasticizer, to increase performance during thermoforming. The intermolecular interaction modification can be achieved adding different amount of cross-linking agent (TEGDMA) and a plasticizer (DOP). They have an effect on the network polymer system improving the intermolecular interaction and increasing the macromolecular distances, respectively. The aim of this study was to prepare acrylic sheets formulations with differents amounts of TEGDMA and a fixed amount of DOP, and thermoformed using at differents process temperatures and a mould cylinder at the same strain rate. Samples were carried out and their properties physical, mechanical, thermal and thermoformability was characterized. The results have shown strain increases, changes in surface hardness, Young moduli and glass transition temperature, compared to a reference acrylic sheet.

L'objectif de cette thèse est de développer des outils de prédiction d'interactions entre protéines qui puissent être appliqués en particulier sur le réseau d’interaction autour de la protéine CFTR, qui est impliquée dans la mucoviscidose. Le développement de méthodes de prédiction in silico peut s'avérer utile pour suggérer aux biologistes de nouvelles cibles d'interaction. Nous proposons une nouvelle méthode pour la prédiction de liens dans un réseau. Afin de bénéficier de l'information des données non étiquetées, nous nous plaçons dans le cadre de l'apprentissage semi-supervisé. Nous abordons ce problème de prédiction comme une tâche d'apprentissage d'un noyau de sortie. Un noyau de sortie est supposé coder les proximités existantes entres les nœuds du graphe et l'objectif est d'approcher ce noyau à partir de descriptions appropriées en entrée. L'utilisation de l'astuce du noyau dans l'ensemble de sortie permet de réduire le problème d'apprentissage à celui d'une fonction d'une seule variable à valeurs dans un espace de Hilbert. En choisissant les fonctions candidates pour la régression dans un espace de Hilbert à noyau reproduisant à valeur opérateur, nous développons, comme dans le cas de fonctions à valeurs scalaires, des outils de régularisation. Nous établissons en particulier des théorèmes de représentation, qui permettent de définir de nouveaux modèles de régression. Nous avons testé l'approche développée sur des données artificielles, des problèmes test ainsi que sur un réseau d'interaction chez la levure et obtenu de très bons résultats. Puis nous l'avons appliquée à la prédiction d'interactions entre protéines dans le cas d'un réseau construit autour de CFTR. / The aim of this thesis is to develop tools for predicting interactions between proteins that can be applied to the human proteins forming a network with the CFTR protein. This protein, when defective, is involved in cystic fibrosis. The development of in silico prediction methods can be useful for biologists to suggest new interaction targets. We propose a new method to solve the link prediction problem. To benefit from the information of unlabeled data, we place ourselves in the semi-supervised learning framework. Link prediction is addressed as an output kernel learning task, referred as Output Kernel Regression. An output kernel is assumed to encode the proximities of nodes in the target graph and the goal is to approximate this kernel by using appropriate input features. Using the kernel trick in the output space allows one to reduce the problem of learning from pairs to learning a single variable function with output values in a Hilbert space. By choosing candidates for regression functions in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space with operator valued kernels, we develop tools for regularization as for scalar-valued functions. We establish representer theorems in the supervised and semi-supervised cases and use them to define new regression models for different cost functions. We first tested the developed approach on transductive link prediction using artificial data, benchmark data as well as a protein-protein interaction network of the yeast and we obtained very good results. Then we applied it to the prediction of protein interactions in a network built around the CFTR protein.

A closed, orientable, splitting surface in an oriented 3-manifold is a topologically minimal surface of index n if its associated disk complex is (n-2)-connected but not (n-1)-connected. A critical surface is a topologically minimal surface of index 2. In this thesis, we use an equivalent combinatorial definition of critical surfaces to construct the first known critical bridge spheres for nontrivial links.