The research recorded in this thesis tells the story of developing and implementing a user-centred intranet in the organisation where I work in a senior management position. My management support of the process led to adopting a networked model in our organisation, and also to my embracing the role of communications management.The organisation in which I work has a high rate of change and an entrepreneurial culture which is sometimes chaotic. This challenging environment was a good testing ground for the project, which sought to explore a number of propositions affirming the value of user-centred intranets.Developing and implementing the intranet encouraged collaboration amongst staff members. The intranet became a new channel of communication, which usefully enhanced the staff's ability to share and find out what was going on, who did what and how to contact them. My interventions as a manager, which occurred in parallel with the technological development of the intranet, led to spin-off organisational improvements such as an improved collaborative reporting system, the restructuring of the organisation manual files, and the establishment of a collaboratively-focussed full monthly staff meeting. Developing and implementing a user-centred intranet was a dynamic way to effect change in the organisation and orient it towards a networked organisational model, one which is communication rich, both collaborative and participative.The project was driven by my belief that a user-centred emphasis in intranet design is necessary in today's knowledge-based global economy, where there is a high rate of change. The networked organisational model should be embraced as a flexible model catering for change by promoting organic and dynamic networking within an organisation. This environment is communication-rich and collaborative, and a user-centred intranet is a communication channel well suited to support this model.A user-centred intranet should not be seen merely as an organisational artefact, but also as the a process of developing and implementing it will open up an organisation's culture, communication, and knowledge management in a participatory way. However, the degree that this will be achieved depends on a number of factors. For instance, the leaders of an organisation need to embrace a networked organisational model, encouraging and resourcing communication management for a culture of participation and collaboration.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Missouri--Rolla, 2007. / Vita. The entire thesis text is included in file. Title from title screen of thesis/dissertation PDF file (viewed December 4, 2007) Includes bibliographical references (p. 74-80).

MANETs are known to be useful in situations where mobile nodes need to communicate and coordinate in dynamic environments with no access to fixed network infrastructure. However, connectivity problems can occur when sub-groups within a MANET move out of communication range from one another. The increasingly prolific use of UAVs in military and civilian contexts suggests that UAVs may be very useful for facilitating connectivity between otherwise disconnected mobile nodes. Network Centric Warfare (NCW) theory makes heavy use of MANETs, and UAVs also fit well into the NCW theory; this paper describes the work involved in integrating network enabled UAVs into a previously-developed simulation of ground troop mobility called UMOMM. Specifically, we created a simple decision model for constrained, constant-radius UAV movements, and developed a target-based method by which UAVs can distribute themselves in order to improve the connectivity of the ground members of the MANET. / Graduation date: 2012

An important objective of tactical ad hoc networks is to deliver threat information from sensors to shooters efficiently and quickly. The information sent to a particular shooter should contain warnings about threats that are within some distance and/or within some time of the shooter's current location. In this thesis we develop a novel multicast model that distributes this form of threat information in a message efficient manner. In addition, information about allied force can also be distributed in a similar way. We present results from extensive simulations that demonstrate the efficiency of our protocol and discuss the scalability of this model to larger networks. / Graduation date: 2001

The most important part of parallel computation is communication. Except in the most embarassingly parallel examples, processors cannot work cooperatively to solve a problem unless they can communicate. One way to solve the problem of communication is to use an interconnection network. Processors are located at nodes of the network, which are joined by communication channels. Desirable aspects of an interconnection network include low maximum and average routing distances (as measured in the number of communication channels crossed), a large number of processors, and low number of communication channels per processor. A number of published networks are created from the hypercube by rearranging the hypercube's communication links in a systematic way [23] [28] [30] [33] [50]. These networks maintain the same number of processors, communication links, and links per processor as the hypercube, but have dramatically smaller maximum and average routing distances. This thesis derives one formal mathematical description for this family of networks. This formal description is used to derive graph-theoretic properties of existing networks, and to design new networks. The description is also used to design generalized routing and other communications algorithms for these networks, and to show that these networks can embed and simulate other standard networks, for instance, ring and mesh networks. A network simulator is used to model the dynamic behavior of this family of networks under both store-and-forward and wormhole routing strategies for message-passing. The simulation results are used to study and compare the networks' behavior under various message-passing loads, and to determine what properties are desirable in a network that exists in this model. / Graduation date: 1995

Graduation date: 1994

Thesis (M.S.)--Baylor University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-81).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Missouri--Rolla, 2007. / Vita. The entire thesis text is included in file. Title from title screen of thesis/dissertation PDF file (viewed April 11, 2007) Includes bibliographical references (p. 54-55).

In this thesis, a new transport protocol, the Concurrent Multi-Path Real-time Transmission Control Protocol (cmpRTCP) is proposed. The proposed protocol has been designed to handle real-time streams (video and audio) over IP-networks. One of the key strengths of this protocol lies in its ability to intelligently exploit the availability of multiple paths between multi-homed hosts for concurrent transmission of unicast real-time streams. This work describes the architecture and operation of cmpRTCP in detail. In addition, the limitations of currently used transport protocols in handling real-time streams are also discussed. These limitations of other protocols have played a vital role in the design process of the proposed protocol. Experiments to evaluate the performance of cmpRTCP against other protocols and the results obtained therein are also documented in this work. Results show that cmpRTCP is a best effort protocol that tries to maximize the amount of data that is successfully delivered to the destination in a timely manner under varying drop and delay conditions of the network.

Thesis (M.S.)--Worcester Polytechnic Institute. / Keywords: Multi-tiered; routing; optimization; multi-objective; networks. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-78).