<p>There have been a number of methods proposed for increasing the precision of mobile positioning systems. One of the latest methods is Assisted GPS, A-GPS, on the Secure User Plane for Location, SUPL, platform, which seems to be a very interesting alternative from TeliaSoneras perspective, thanks to minimal infrastructural investment costs.</p><p>According to theory and lab testing A-GPS has the potential of providing a very good customer value in relation to the investment needed.</p><p>There is, however, a great need to see the performance when used in real user environments and with real user equipment. This is the basis for the choice of field testing as the method used in this thesis.</p><p>The result from the field tests conducted in this thesis shows that the performance of A-GPS is very good in outdoor environments, but when used in indoor environments, poor signal strength in combination with multipath and fading becomes a problem with low accuracy and long response times as a result.</p><p>Using a hosted mapping service, in combination with A-GPS, provides the possibilities of launching location based services even outside the home network. TeliaSonera had already found such a hosted mapping service that matched their compatibility, and reliability, requirements. This thesis investigates this hosted mapping service further and finds that the quality of the cartographic presentation of the map information is very poor.</p><p>The conclusion is that A-GPS performance, today, is limited by the hardware and algorithms used. If these are further adapted to indoor conditions, A-GPS has the potential of providing the customer value promised by the theoretical performance. For a successful launch of A-GPS services there is a great need of better cartographic presentation of map information, than what is currently is provided by the investigated hosted mapping service.</p>

Das Basalzellkarzinom (BZK) der Haut gilt als einer der häufigsten semimalignen Tumoren. Trotz der niedrigen Metastasierungsrate von < 0,1 % können BZK schwerwiegende Infiltrationen und Destruktionen knorpeliger sowie knöcherner Strukturen verursachen. Für die Tumorentstehung ist vor allem die kumulative UVB-Dosis in Kindheit und Adoleszenz bedeutsam. Aber auch die Embryonalentwicklung scheint eine Rolle in der Pathogenese von Tumoren zu spielen. Die so genannte embryonale Fusionszone (eFZ) entsteht zwischen der 5-10 Entwicklungswoche durch die Verschmelzung der fünf Gesichtswülste. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass BZK innerhalb dieses Kompartiments nicht nur gehäuft auftreten sondern auch durch ein ausgeprägtes Tiefenwachstum charakterisiert sind. Als mögliche Ursache für das verstärkt invasive Wachstum von BZK innerhalb der eFZ wurden Änderungen im Hyaluronsäure (HA)-Stoffwechsel der Stromazellen angenommen. Neben der Bedeutung in der Embryonalentwicklung und bei der Geweberegeneration zeigten verschiedene Studien zudem die essentielle Rolle von HA im Rahmen von malignen Zelltransformationen. Vermehrte HA-Ablagerungen in der Tumorumgebung oder erhöhte HA-Serumkonzentrationen wurden bei einer Vielzahl von Tumoren als Zeichen einer fortschreitenden Tumorprogression beschrieben. Um den HA-Stoffwechsel von Stromafibroblasten um BZK gezielt zu untersuchen, wurden der HA-Gehalt, die HA-Größe und die exprimierten Enzyme des HA-Stoffwechsels in Abhängigkeit von ihrer Lokalisationen miteinander verglichen. Dabei zeigte sich, dass sowohl innerhalb als auch außerhalb der eFZ vergleichbare Mengen und Polymergrößen von HA sezerniert werden. Molekularbiologische Untersuchungen an expandierten Fibroblasten aus Biopsien verschiedener Lokalisationen zeigten ebenfalls keine Unterschiede in der Expression von mRNA der HA Stoffwechselenzyme nach Herkunft der Fibroblasten. Somit wird geschlussfolgert, dass HA zwar auch im Stroma von BZK gebildet wird, der HA-Stoffwechsel von Stromafibroblasten jedoch kein Merkmal ist, das mit dem vermehrten Auftreten und invasiven Wachstum von BZK im Bereich der embryonalen Fusionszone des Mittelgesichts korreliert.

In many wireless devices, antennas occupy the majority of the overall size. As compact device sizes become a greater focus in industry, the demand for small antennas escalates. In this thesis, detailed investigations on the design of a planar meandered line antenna with truncated ground plane and 3D dipole antenna at 2.4 GHz (ISM band) are presented. The primary goal of this research is to develop small, low coast, and low profile antennas for wireless sensor applications. The planar meandered line antenna was designed based on a study of different miniaturization techniques and a study of the ground plane effect. The study of the ground plane effect proved that it has a pivotal role on balancing the antenna current. The study of the miniaturization process proved that it affects directly the gain, bandwidth, and efficiency. The antenna efficiency and gain were improved using the truncated ground plane. This antenna has a measured gain of -0.86 dBi and measured efficiency of 49.7%, making it one of the efficient and high gain small antennas. The 3D dipole antenna was designed using a novel method for efficiently exploiting the available volume. This method consists of fabricating the dipole on a cube configuration with opening up the internal volume for other uses. This antenna was tested, and it was found that this antenna has good radiation characteristics according to its occupied volume. Ka of this antenna is 0.55, its measured gain is 1.69 dBi with 64.2% measured efficiency. Therefore, this design is very promising in low-power sensing applications. A Wheeler Cap was designed for measuring the efficiency and the 3-antenna method was used for measuring the designed antennas gain.

This thesis improves a previous kinematic analysis and develops the elastic portion of the analysis of a curved compliant beam. This analysis is used to develop a Pseudo-Rigid-Body Model for the curved compliant beam. The Pseudo-Rigid-Body Model consist of kinematic and elastic parameters which can be used to simplify the computation of the large deflections of the beam as it undergoes spherical motion. The kinematic parameters that are developed are the characteristic radius, Gamma*length, the parametric angle coefficient, c_theta, and the kinematic parametrization limit, Capital_theta_max(Gamma). The elastic parameters developed are the stiffness coefficient, K_theta, and the elastic parameterization limit, Capital_theta_max(K). Additionally, curve fit parameters are developed which enable the calculation of the stress in curved beam as it deflects.

Compliant mechanism theory permits a procedure called rigidbody replacement, in which two or more rigid links of the mechanism are replaced by a compliant flexure with equivalent motion. Methods for designing flexure with equivalent motion to replace rigid links are detailed in Pseudo-Rigid-Body Models (PRBMs). Such models have previously been developed for planar mechanisms. This thesis develops the first PRBM for spherical mechanisms. In formulating this PRBM for a spherical mechanism, we begin by applying displacements are applied to a curved beam that cause it todeflect in a manner consistent with spherical kinematics. The motion of the beam is calculated using Finite Element Analysis. These results areanalyzed to give the PRBM parameters. These PRBM parameters vary with the arc length and the aspect ratio of the curved beam.

The failed anchoring systems of mobile offshore drilling units from hurricanes occurring in 2004 and 2005 established a need to better understand the ultimate pullout capacity and trajectory of scaled model anchors under typical and out-of-plane loading conditions. The six degrees of freedom of small scale drag embedment anchors were studied in a laboratory testing environment with the intent that reasonable trends in anchor behavior will be found. Investigations within this experimental research program demonstrated the in-plane and out-of-plane loading behavior of conventional and prototype scaled model anchors embedded to predetermined depths in two different test beds of kaolinite clay with undrained shear strength profiles constant and increasing with depth. The anchors were loaded to failure in concentric, normal, concentric, shear, eccentric, normal, eccentric, shear, inclined, and drag embedment loading configurations. This series of pullout and drag embedment tests provided a suite of test results indicating behavioral trends of the varying holding capacities and anchor trajectories. Results were compared with similar research presented in the literature and an analytical model predicting out-of-plane loading behavior of similar anchors. It was concluded that increasing eccentricities from both concentric, normal and concentric, shear loading configurations resulted in decreasing bearing capacity factors, confirming the predicted trend from the analytical model for these loading configurations. Trajectories observed for the concentric, normal, concentric, shear, and eccentric, shear loading configurations showed that the anchors tracked straight out of the soil without deviation, but eccentric, normal loading found the anchor tending to track away from the initial loading location. For inclined loads, both anchors to track to whichever direction the anchor faced upon loading. Drag embedment trajectory was found to vary depending on the anchor, as the conventional anchor dove with an applied load and the prototype anchor rose towards the surface. / text

Information anytime and anywhere has ushered in a new technological age where massive amounts of ‘big data’ combined with self-aware and ubiquitous interactive computing systems is shaping our daily lives. As society gravitates towards a smart living environment and a sustainable future, the demand for faster and more computationally efficient electronics will continue to rise. Keeping up with this demand requires extensive innovation at the transistor level, which is at the core of all electronics. Up until recently, classical silicon transistor technology has traditionally been weary of disruptive innovation. But with the aggressive scaling trend, there has been two dramatic changes to the transistor landscape. The first was the re-introduction of metal/high-K gate stacks with strain engineering in the 45 nm technology node, which enabled further scaling on silicon to smaller nodes by alleviating the problem of gate leakage and improving the channel mobility. The second innovation was the use of non-planar 3D silicon fins as opposed to classical planar architectures for stronger electrostatic control leading to significantly lower off-state leakage and other short-channel effects. Both these innovations have prolonged the life of silicon based electronics by at least another 1-2 decades. The next generation 14 nm technology node will utilize silicon fin channels that have gate lengths of 14 nm and fin thicknesses of 7 nm. These dimensions are almost at the extreme end of current lithographic capabilities. Moreover, as fins become smaller, the parasitic capacitances and resistances increase significantly resulting in degraded performance. It is of popular consensus that the next evolutionary step in transistor technology is in the form of gate-all-around silicon nanowires (GAA NWFETs), which offer the tightest electrostatic configuration leading to the lowest possible leakage and short channel characteristics in over-the-barrier type devices. However, to keep scaling on silicon, the amount of current generated per device has to be increased while keeping short channel effects and off-state leakage at bay. The objective of this doctoral thesis is the investigation of an innovative vertical silicon based architecture called the silicon nanotube field effect transistor (Si NTFET). This topology incorporates a dual inner/outer core/shell gate stack strategy to control the volume inversion properties in a hollow silicon 1D quasi-nanotube under a tight electrostatic configuration. Together with vertically aligned source and drain, the Si NTFET is capable of very high on-state performance (drive current) in an area-efficient configuration as opposed to arrays of gate-all-around nanowires, while maintaining leakage characteristics similar to a single nanowire. Such a device architecture offsets the need of device arraying that is needed with fin and nanowire architectures. Extensive simulations are used to validate the potential benefits of Si NTFETs over GAA NWFETs on a variety of platforms such as conventional MOSFETs, tunnel FETs, junction-less FETs. This thesis demonstrates a novel CMOS compatible process flow to fabricate vertical nanotube transistors that offer a variety of advantages such as lithography-independent gate length definition, integration of epitaxially grown silicon nanotubes with spacer based gate dielectrics and abrupt in-situ doped source/drain junctions. Experimental measurement data will showcase the various materials and processing challenges in fabricating these devices. Finally, an extension of this work to topologically transformed wavy channel FinFETs is also demonstrated keeping in line with the theme of area efficient high-performance electronics.

No description available.

In this abstract, we present a nonlinear curvelet-based sparsitypromoting formulation for the primary-multiple separation problem. We show that these coherent signal components can be separated robustly by explicitly exploting the locality of curvelets in phase space (space-spatial frequency plane) and their ability to compress data volumes that contain wavefronts. This work is an extension of earlier results and the presented algorithms are shown to be stable under noise and moderately erroneous multiple predictions.

The present research program is a renewed attempt at explaining the transformation mechanisms. The experimental investigations has focused on a model analysis of transformations which occur in single crystals, with stable orientations, i.e. Goss{110}<001> and brass{110}<112>, the deformation is carried out by channel-die compression to simulate the rolling process of thin sheets. Next, the samples were annealed at temperatures of primary recrystallization. The analysis of crystallographic transformations was conducted on metals from a wide spectrum of stacking fault energy: low - Cu-2%Al, average- Cu and Ni to high Al and Al-1%Mn. At work were analyzed the mechanisms controlling the initial stages of recrystallization. Detailed analysis of disorientation across the recrystallization front clearly showed that the initial grain orientations were not accidental. The axes of disorientation in the relationship across the front of recrystallization were near normal in {111} planes, but only sporadically covered with the <111> direction. The distribution of the recrystallization angle rotation in relation to the preferences presented through the formation of two maxima values near 30 ° and 45-55 °.