Patch antennas are fundamental elements in many microwave communications systems. However, patch antennas receive/transmit signals over a very narrow bandwidth (typically a maximum of 3% bandwidth). Design modifications directed toward bandwidth expansion generally yield 10% to 40% bandwidth. The series varactor tuned patch antenna configuration was the bandwidth enhancement method explored in this research; this configuration is implemented by dividing a patch antenna into multiple sections and placing varactors across the resultant gaps. In addition to yielding a large bandwidth, the configuration has a number of ancillary benefits, including straightforward integration and design flexibility. Through the research represented by this work, the properties of the series varactor tuned patch antenna, herein referred to as the Fragmented Patch Antenna (or FPA), were explored and optimized. As a result, an innovative patch antenna was produced that yielded 63.4% frequency tuning bandwidth and covered a frequency range between 2.8 and 5.4 GHz. The wide bandwidth was achieved through a detailed parametric study. The products of this study were the discovery of multiple tuning resonances that were used to expand the tuning bandwidth and the understanding/documentation of the significance of specific antenna dimensions. Measurement results were obtained through the fabrication of a prototype antenna using semiconductor varactors. In the second research phase, the construction of capacitors using the tunable permittivity material Barium Strontium Titanate (BST) was investigated. Using this material in conjunction with nano-fabrication techniques, varactors were developed that had good estimated performance characteristics and were considered appropriate for integration into adaptive microwave circuitry, such as the tunable antenna system. The varactors were constructed by using Focused Ion Beam (FIB) milling to create a nano-scale capacitive gap in a transmission line. A combination of end-point current detection (EPD) and cross-section scanning electron (SEM) and ion beam (FIB) microscope images were used to optimize the milling procedure. The future extensions of this work include the integration of the BST varactors with the antenna design; the configuration of the developed BST varactors lends itself to a straightforward integration with the FPA antenna.

[pt] O trabalho a seguir apresenta uma proposta de metodologia de gerência de projetos de software aderente a pequenos projetos e fortemente inspirada em metodologias já consagradas como Unified Process e eXtreme Programming. O objetivo é prover um processo ágil, adaptável porém prescritivo. Chegaremos a um processo de fácil implantação e controle e menos dependente da qualidade técnica da equipe de desenvolvimento. A seguir, será apresentado um estudo de caso conduzido em ambiente real, por uma equipe de um pequeno empreendimento que consiste no relato do processo de amadurecimento e implantação do processo proposto, com uma análise do trabalho de implantação de processos de desenvolvimento em empreendimentos emergentes na área de TI. / [en] The following work presents a proposal of software project management methodology applicable to small projects and strongly inspired by already well established methodologies such as the Unified Process and eXtreme Programming. The objective of this proposal is to provide an agile process that is adaptable yet prescriptive. Through this one plans to arrive at a process of easy implementation and control, and less dependent on the technical quality of the development team. Subsequently, a case study will be presented that was conducted in a real environment, on a small enterprise development team. It consists of a report on the maturing and implementation of the proposed process and an analysis of the work of implementing development procedures in emerging enterprises in the IT area.

全球化使得軟體開發活動轉移至新興或開發中國家，快速變動的商業環境則趨使軟體開發朝向敏捷開發演進，然而軟體境外開發產生工作分離現象，負面影響軟體開發績效，此外敏捷開發法與境外開發環境存在衝突，本研究將軟體開發方法視為一連續漸變的光譜，包含規劃導向、風險導向及敏捷開發等三階段，探討在境外開發的環境下，哪一類型的開發方法能夠擁有較好的績效表現，並能減緩工作分離的負面影響，其中軟體開發方法光譜與績效表現呈現曲線關係，工作分離負面影響敏捷開發端之績效表現，需求變動則負面影響規劃導向端績效表現，結論將從工作分離與需求變動程度觀點，分別探討不同情況下所應採取的專案執行方式。 / Affected by globalization, software development activities have transferred to developing country. On the other hand, driven by turbulent business environments, software development methods have become more flexible like agile method. However, work dispersion derived from offshore software development has negative impact on performance. Besides, offshore environments have conflict with agile method in some aspect. There is a need to know the fit of between development methods and offshore modes. This research view development methods as a continuous spectrum, consisting of plan-driven, risk-driven and agile methods, and will probe which part of the spectrum perform better in offshore context and can alleviate the negative work dispersion effect on performance. The result shows that software development spectrum and offshore software development performance have curvilinear relationship. Work dispersion has negative impact on agile method, while requirements change has negative impact on plan-driven part. We’ll conclude from work dispersion and requirements change perspective, discussing how should practitioners conduct offshore project in different situations respectively.

<p>Denna rapport är en fallstudie som återspeglar framtagandet av en webbplats åt det norska Diabetesforbundet. Webbplatsen är ett community där personer skapar användarkonton och interagerar med varandra med hjälp av ett antal funktioner som finns att tillgå. Då själva utvecklingen av webbplatsen har varit huvudmålet med examensarbetet fokuserar denna rapport på att förklara den praktiska implementeringen. De tekniker och metoder som använts i det praktiska arbetet såsom kontextuellt utforskande och användbarhet definieras och förklaras för att sedan användas vid argumentation kring designval för webbplatsen. Den utvecklingsmetod som använts i det praktiska arbetet har varit en Agile Software Development-metod som kallas Extreme Programming. Denna metod fokuserar på parprogrammering, kontinuerlig testning och utveckling med många delmål. Slutsatser om bland annat webbstandarder, webbläsarkompatibilitet, användbarhet och säkerhet kommer även att presenteras och all kod följer de standarder som satts upp av W3C för XHTML 1.0 Strict och CSS Level 3.</p> / <p>This thesis takes form of a case study which reflects on the development of a website for Diabetesforbundet, the Norwegian Diabetes Association. The website is a community where people can create accounts and use a number of different functions to interact with each other. The focus of this thesis lies in explaining the practical implementation of the website since this aspect is the main purpose of our degree project. We define and explain the techniques and methods used in the practical work like Contextual Inquiry and usability and thereafter put them to use to explain our design choices on the website. The development methodology we have chosen for the practical aspect of this degree project is Extreme Programming. This software development methodology focuses on pair programming, continual testing and incremental implementation. Conclusions made on web standards, web browser compatibility, usability and security will be presented and all written code follows the standards set by W3C for XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS Level 3.</p>

Requirements are features or attributes which we discover at the initial stage of building a product. Requirements describe the system functionality that satisfies customer needs. An incomplete and inconsistent requirement of the project leads to exceeding cost or devastating the project. So there should be a process for obtaining sufficient, accurate and refining requirements such a process is known as requirement elicitation. Software requirement elicitation process is regarded as one of the most important parts of software development. During this stage it is decided precisely what should be built. There are many requirements elicitation techniques however selecting the appropriate technique according to the nature of the project is important for the successful development of the project. Traditional software development and agile approaches to requirements elicitation are suitable in their own context. With agile approaches a high-level, low formal form of requirement specification is produced and the team is fully prepared to respond unavoidable changes in these requirements. On the other hand in traditional approach project could be done more satisfactory with a plan driven well documented specification. Agile processes introduced their most broadly applicable technique with user stories to express the requirements of the project. A user story is a simple and short written description of desired functionality from the perspective of user or owner. User stories play an effective role on all time constrained projects and a good way to introducing a bit of agility to the projects. Personas can be used to fill the gap of user stories.

Pattern discovery in protein structures is a fundamental task in computational biology, with important applications in protein structure prediction, profiling and alignment. We propose a novel approach for pattern discovery in protein structures using Particle Swarm-based flying windows over potentially promising regions of the search space. Using a heuristic search, based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is, however, easily trapped in local optima due to the sparse nature of the problem search space. Thus, we introduce a novel fitness-based stagnation detection technique that effectively and efficiently restarts the search process to escape potential local optima. The proposed fitness-based method significantly outperforms the commonly-used distance-based method when tested on eight classical and advanced (shifted/rotated) benchmark functions, as well as on two other applications for proteomic pattern matching and discovery. The main idea is to make use of the already-calculated fitness values of swarm particles, instead of their pairwise distance values, to predict an imminent stagnation situation. That is, the proposed fitness-based method does not require any computational overhead of repeatedly calculating pairwise distances between all particles at each iteration. Moreover, the fitness-based method is less dependent on the problem search space, compared with the distance-based method. The proposed pattern discovery algorithms are first applied to protein contact maps, which are the 2D compact representation of protein structures. Then, they are extended to work on actual protein 3D structures and interaction networks, offering a novel and low-cost approach to protein structure classification and interaction prediction. Concerning protein structure classification, the proposed PSO-based approach correctly distinguishes between the positive and negative examples in two protein datasets over 50 trials. As for protein interaction prediction, the proposed approach works effectively on complex, mostly sparse protein interaction networks, and predicts high-confidence protein-protein interactions — validated by more than one computational and experimental source — through knowledge transfer between topologically-similar interaction patterns of close proximity. Such encouraging results demonstrate that pattern discovery in protein structures and interaction networks are promising new applications of the fast-growing and far-reaching PSO algorithms, which is the main argument of this thesis. / Thesis (Ph.D, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2014-04-21 12:54:03.37

The business environment of the 21st century is rapidly changing. Customers demand are diversifying, governments enforce stricter environmental regulations and start-ups are entering with disruptive business models. Traditional industrial organisations need to adapt to compete on a market revolving around time-to-market actions. One solution for this is to do an agile transformation. This thesis investigates the agile transformation process of traditional organisations through a case study. The objective is to identify find the main success drivers and key challenges in stated transformation. The research was designed to do a qualitative, interview based case study in the automotive and aerospace industries involving four companies from an interpretivistic paradigm. In addition, two companies from insurance and banking and four agile coaches were also part of the case study to establish generalisability. The theoretical and empirical findings succeed to find three main success drivers: management support, identifying the “Why?” and “How?”, and three key challenges: structural legacies, cultural legacies and configuration of transformation process. Additionally, it was found that current transformations in the selected industries are diverging from change management theories, which emphasises a greater focus on changing mindset, behaviour and culture. Finally, the study contributes with actions as to help companies pursuing agile transformation as well identifying a continuous need for research of agile methods in non-software environments. / Marknaden har under 2000-talet ändrats snabbt. Kunders krav på produkter ökar, statliga miljöregleringar träder i kraft och start-ups går in med disruptiva affärsmodeller. I detta läge behöver traditionella industribolag anpassa för att kunna konkurrera på den nya marknaden som kräver en kortare tid till marknaden. En lösning på detta problem är en agil transformation. Den här uppsatsen undersöker de agila transformationsprocesserna genom en fallstudie. Målsättningen är att identifiera de huvudsakliga framgångsfaktorer samt utmaningar som återfinns i nämnda transformationer. Forskningen designades genom en kvalitativ intervjufallstudie hos fyra företag inom vägfordons- och flygplansindustrin från ett interpretivistiskt forskningsparadigm. Vidare deltog två företag från försäkring och bank samt fyra agila coacher för att kunna etablera generaliserbarhet. De teoretiska och empiriska ramverken lyckades hitta tre stycken framgångsfaktorer: ledarstöd, identifierandet and “Varför?” samt ”Hur?”, samt tre primära utmaningar: strukturella och kulturella arv samt konfigurationen av transformationsprocessen. Vidare fann studien att de nuvarande transformationerna som finns i valda branscher divergerar från förändringsledningsteorierna, som i sin tur betonar ett större fokus på förändring av mindset, beteende och kultur. Slutligen bidrar denna studie med föreslagna åtgärder som hjälper företag som genomgår en transformation och identifierar ett fortsatt behov av att forska kring användandet av agila metoder in icke-mjukvaruområden.

Avec le développement de l’internet des objets et l’augmentation des applications sans fil, les antennes sont de plus en plus présentes au quotidien. Cependant, l’implantation de ces antennes est un challenge tant d’un point de vue technologique (intégration des antennes dans les dispositifs), que psychologique (acceptabilité des antennes par le grand public). Dans ce contexte, le développement d’antennes optiquement transparentes permet non seulement leur implantation sur de nouvelles surfaces (vitrages d’immeubles, écrans de smartphones ...), mais promeut aussi leur acceptabilité par le grand public grâce à leur faible impact visuel. Ce travail présente la conception, la fabrication et la caractérisation d’antennes actives optiquement transparentes. Le matériau transparent et conducteur utilisé est un maillage métallique à pas micrométrique développé spécifiquement, alliant conductivité électrique et transparence optique élevées. Dans ce cadre, un premier prototype d’antenne transparente et miniature en bande FM utilisant un transistor MESFET de dimensions sub-millimétriques a été réalisé. Des antennes agiles en fréquence en bande X (~10 GHz) couplées, soit à une diode varicap localisée (agilité ~10%), soit à un matériau ferroélectrique (agilité ~2%), ont été développées et étudiées. Une antenne passive transparente a été conçue en bande V (~60 GHz). Enfin, une transition optique (1540 nm) / hyperfréquence (1,4 GHz) a été réalisée et caractérisée, basée sur la transmission optique d’un faisceau laser au travers du matériau constitutif de l’antenne. Pour l’ensemble des prototypes réalisés, une transparence optique supérieure à 80% dans le domaine du visible associée à une résistance par carré inférieure à 0,1 ohm/sq ont été utilisées. / Within the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the increase of the wireless communications, antennas are even more present on everyday life. However, antenna implementation is a real challenge, from a technological point of view (antenna integration into the devices) and from a psychological point of view (acceptability by the general public). Within this framework, the development of optically transparent antennas on new surfaces (glass windows, smartphone screens . . . ) is of great interest to improve the network coverage and to assist the general public in acceptability thanks to the low visual impact of such printed antennas. The present work deals with the design, the fabrication and the characterization of optically transparent and active antennas. The transparent and conducting material used is a micrometric mesh metal film specifically developed, associating high electrical conductivity and high optical transparency. A first optically transparent and miniature FM antenna based on a MESFET transistor with micrometric size has been designed and fabricated. Frequency agile antennas operating in X-band (~10 GHz), based on a beam-lead varactor (agility ~10%) and on a ferroelectric material agility ~2%), have been developed and characterized. An optically transparent and passive antenna has been studied in V-band (~60 GHz). At last, optics (1540 nm) / microwave (1.4 GHz) transition has been performed based on the transmission of a laser beam through the transparent antenna. For all prototypes, an optical transparency level higher than 80% coupled with a sheet resistance value lower than 0.1 ohm/sq have been used.

Este trabalho descreve a definição e institucionalização de um processo de engenharia de requisitos que está em conformidade com as áreas de processo do CMMI (Capability Maturity Model) de Gerência de Requisitos e Desenvolvimento de Requisitos e cujos componentes (atividades, papéis, produtos de trabalho) são baseados em RUP (Rational Unified Process). A principal contribuição deste estudo é a definição de um processo de engenharia de requisitos baseado em abordagens de desenvolvimento diferenciadas, que foi implantado em uma organização específica, com foco em praticidade, eficiência e retorno do investimento. A implantação do processo em projetos reais permitiu sua experimentação, avaliação e refinamento, validando as alternativas de integração utilizadas para empregar as abordagens de desenvolvimento escolhidas. Complementando o processo proposto, como decorrência do foco em eficiência, são consideradas possibilidades de emprego de práticas de métodos ágeis na execução do processo, com o intuito de aumentar a produtividade do mesmo, sustentando sua garantia de qualidade. O processo proposto é descrito, do método de concepção aos passos envolvidos e artefatos gerados em cada atividade. Também são comentadas as etapas e áreas de trabalho envolvidas na institucionalização do trabalho. / This research depicts the definition and institutionalization of a requirements engineering process which is in conformance to CMMI (Capability Maturity Model) Requirements Management and Requirements Development process areas. The proposed process components (activities, roles, work products) are based on Rational Unified Process (RUP) process framework. The proposed process main contribution is the definition of a requirements engineering process, leveraging such diverse development approaches, which was implemented in a specific organization, focusing on practicality, efficiency and return on investment. Implementing such process in real projects has promoted its experimentation, evaluation and refinement, validating the integration alternatives used to bring together the chosen development approaches. The possibility of employing agile methods practices through the process execution is discussed, aiming at increasing the process productivity, while assuring product quality. The proposed process details are described, from method conception to each activity steps and generated artifacts. The process institutionalization phases and work areas are also commented.

A tecnologia de agentes tem sido reconhecida como um paradigma promissor em sistemas educacionais da nova geração. Entretanto, o esforço e inflexibilidade de algumas metodologias próprias para agentesacarretam num alto custo, tempo e adaptação de escopo. Este trabalho visaavaliar alternativas de desenvolvimento de um jogo educacional médico orientado a agentes, através da aplicação de um estudo de caso, com o intuito de verificar se metodologias próprias para implementação de sistemas multiagentes trazem benefícios no resultado final da implementação do jogo, e também se os resultados alcançados na comparação de processos de desenvolvimento de cunho tradicional e ágil fazem diferença no resultado final. Desta forma, este trabalho compara três metodologias baseadas nos conceitos da Engenharia de Software através de um estudo de caso, sendo elas: O-MaSE que é uma metodologiatradicional de desenvolvimento de sistemas multiagentes e utiliza um processo de desenvolvimento tradicional; AgilePASSI que é baseada no processo de desenvolvimento ágil e específica para sistemas multiagentes; e, por último, Scrum que é uma metodologia ágil, não sendo específica para implementação de sistemas multiagentes / The agent technology has been recognized as a promising paradigm in educational systems of the new generation. However, the effort and inflexibility of some specific methodologies entail a high cost, time and adaptation scope. This work aims to validate options for developing an educational medical game oriented agents by applying an experiment in order to verify that methodologies specific to implement multi-agent systems provide benefits in the result of the implementation of the game, and also the results achieved by comparison of traditional and agile development processes makes a difference in the outcome. Thus, this paper compares three approaches based on the concepts of software engineering through an experiment, as follows: O-MaSE is a traditional methodology for the development of multi-agent systems and uses a traditional development process; AgilePASSI which is based on agile and specific development for multi-agent systems; and finally, Scrum that is an agile methodology, not specific to implementation of multi-agent systems.