Bibliography: leaf 54. / Beginning with the developed version of a shaded pole motor a contour of the area concerned is defined which follows the boundary between rotor iron and rotor conducting medium, the pole gap, figure 1. In this case the analysis is restricted to a region which is given in y-direction as the distance between rotor –and stator iron over half a pole pitch in x-direction. Due to the shading ring it is not possible to define boundary conditions for the contour parts along the pole –and the pole-gap axis

Bibliography: leaves 99-101. / Automatic ore sorting machines are in common use in the mining industry. These machines generally separate valuable mineral-bearing rocks from waste rocks. At the Premier Diamond Mine in South Africa kimberlite, a diamond-bearing rock is separated from gabbro which is a waste rock. Work had been conducted previously in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Cape Town to find a viable method for discriminating between gabbro and kimberlite. A technique using microwave irradiation attenuation was successful when using parallel-sided smooth-surfaced rocks. This technique used linearly polarized square antennas at 35GHz. Problems were experienced, however, with irregu1arly shaped rock s. The aim of the present study was therefore to deve1op a technique which will sort irregularly shaped rocks and eliminate the problems associated with them.

Includes bibliography. / The objective of this thesis is to determine whether Adaptive Noise Cancelling can be used successfully in determining the state of machine elements. In addition, this thesis was used to gain experience in real-time computing. This was done by designing and building a real-time machine monitoring package using an IBM PC and a TMS 320C25 digital signal-processing chip manufactured by Texas Instruments. To determine which adaptive algorithm should be used in the package, experiments were carried out on a computer with different types of adaptive noise cancelling algorithms, the two main ones being the Least-Mean-Squares (LMS) and Recursive-Least-Squares (RLS) algorithms.

Bibliography: leaves 58-62. / Registration of two or more images of the same scene is an important step in image processing that seeks to extract information not obtainable from one of the images in question. This process is required in many Engineering, Scientific and Medical applications. The accuracy of this step is crucial to the reliability of subsequent image processing and or decisions made on its basis. The huge size of the date to be processed, the speed at which the processing is required and the accuracy requirements necessitates a quick, efficient, robust and in some respects automatic program which efficiently harnesses available computing resources. This is the object of this project - the design of an image registration algorithm with a bias for SAR/InSAR applications but also applicable for other registration purposes, implemented on a parallel cluster of computing nodes.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-115). / Under certain conditions Iterative Feedback Tuning (IFT) may produce a controller that cancels the poles of the process and as a result can give a closed loop that has poor internal performance. The disadvantage of this is that the closed loop will have poor input disturbance rejection. A solution for ensuring that IFT does not have poor internal performance is to make sure that the disturbance rejection is adequate. However an adequate input disturbance may lead to other undesirable dynamics in the closed loop performance. These are such as overshoot in the response for setpoint tracking and that for output disturbance rejection. On the other hand the advantage of pole shifting is that for a one degree of freedom control structure all the characteristic equations of the loop transfer functions will be the same. Four methods are proposed for avoiding pole-zero cancellation by concentrating on the input disturbance. These methods are using: a model for input disturbance rejection, time-weighted IFT for disturbance rejection, a setpoint-tracking model with overshoot and approximate pole placement IFT. Approximate pole placement IFT was chosen as the best method. The reason is that the dynamics of the closed loop can be specified with the choice of characteristic equation. This method was then investigated further to establish its feasibility on a physical system. After the evaluation of this method, it was applied on a DC motor for speed control to show that is viable in practice. Multiple experiments were done to show that this method does not produce a controller that cancels the process poles, confirming it as a good solution to prevent poor internal performance.

The quality of control provided by what is termed "short-sighted" stochastic optimal controllers controlling a linear heating system subjected to a random disturbance is evaluated by computer simulation and by experimentation.

Includes bibliographical references. / A market has been identified for 23 GHz, short-haul, low-capacity, digital radio. The dissertation presents the development of the varactor controlled Gunn oscillators that constitute the crystal locked microwave sources of the radio. An accurate description of a design procedure for Gunn oscillators at 23 GHz is presented. With reference to advanced modulation methods which require constant modulation indices, a method of linearising the voltage/frequency characteristic of the varactor controlled Gunn oscillator is described, which allows direct modulation of the source at 23 GHz. Due to the wide operating temperature of the radio a technique to temperature compensate the oscillator is presented. The dissertation ends with an investigation how the semiconductor device's spread affects the oscillator characteristics and an evaluation of the noise performance of the Gunn oscillator.

Bibliography:leaves 203-205. / Decentralised control schemes are becoming more common in industry as the advantages of decentralised control become more apparent. These advantages include fewer tuning parameters than centralised controllers, the simplification and cost reduction of hardware requirements and greater reliability. In addition the application of decentralised controller design to large scale systems allows established CAD methods to be implemented easily and efficiently. When the control engineer designs a distributed controller the system is divided up into a number of subsystems and a controller designed for each subsystem. The controllers are designed independently for each subsystem ignoring any interaction that may occur between the different subsystems. In terms of the input-output representation of the system this means that the matrix representing the controller will be in a block diagonal form. In general the interactions between the different subsystems will not be negligible. In some cases the interactions will be such that stabilising the individual subsystems will not be sufficient to stabilise the system as a whole. Stability theorems are required to enable the designer to check if the decentralised controller that he has designed will in fact stabilise the system as a whole. Such stability theorems have been devised although at present they are too conservative. However even with such theorems available the designer must still select the subsystems to be controlled in such a way as to satisfy the conditions laid down for stability. The stability theories usually are based on a particular matrix structure. If the matrix representing the system possesses a structure detailed by the stability theorem in question then, subject to various conditions, the system as a whole will be stable under decentralised control. In this thesis a number of different matrix structures are considered that give information as to the stability of the closed loop system. Methods are developed that allow the designer to rearrange the matrix in such a way as to obtain a particular structure, if this is possible.

Bibliography: p. 102-103. / It was the objective of this project to design and build a transmitter/receiver unit that indicates when the ore level in a vertical ore chute falls below the level of the signal path. The design was commissioned by De Beers Consolidated Mines to be implemented in South Africa's largest diamond producing mine, the Finsch Mine at Limeacres in the north-western Cape. The system requirements laid out'by de Beers stressed that the unit is to be used as a backup system, and thus its absolute reliability was of highest importance.

Bibliography: leaves 78-79. / Partial response signaling ( PRS) has been used successfully to improve the spectral properties of Pulse Amplitude Modulated (PAM) digital transmission systems. This thesis investigation studied the effect of PRS on frequency- and phase-modulated carrier systems, in particular on their spectral performance and their maintenance of constant envelope.