There is a little doubt that, for a decade, risk measurement has become one of the most important topics in finance. Indeed, it is natural to observe such a development, since in the last ten years, huge amounts of financial transactions ended with severe losses due to severe convulsions in financial markets. Value at risk, as the most widely used risk measure, fails to quantify the risk of a position accurately in many situations. For this reason a number of consistent risk measures have been introduced in the literature. The main aim of this study is to present and compare coherent, convex, conditional convex and some other risk measures both in theoretical and practical settings.

Ce travail porte sur la conception, la fabrication et la caractérisation d’un photorécepteur cohérent en filière PIC InP pour les applications 100-400 Gbit/s. La solution retenue est un récepteur cohérent pré-amplifié par un SOA pour permettre d’améliorer la responsivité du récepteur par rapport à un récepteur cohérent classique. De plus, ce récepteur est réalisé en technologie enterrée pour permettre un fonctionnement sur une plus grande gamme de longueurs d’onde. Enfin, un récepteur cohérent non pré-amplifié est aussi réalisé pour pouvoir évaluer l’impact de l’intégration du SOA sur le fonctionnement de notre récepteur. La première partie de cette étude est consacrée à des rappels sur les transmissions optiques à très haut débit, à un état de l’art sur les récepteurs cohérents, à une présentation des différents photodétecteurs et à une présentation de l’hybrid 90° qui est le composant coeur des récepteurs cohérents. Dans un second temps, nous présentons les différents choix retenus pour la conception de notre récepteur. L’étude de deux hybrid 90° simulés en technologie ridge et en technologie enterrée est détaillée. Nous commentons également le choix des photodiodes ainsi que le choix du SOA utilisé pour notre composant. Le troisième chapitre est consacré aux différentes étapes technologiques permettant la fabrication de notre récepteur cohérent pré amplifié. Nous commençons par une description des différentes techniques d’épitaxie utilisées. Ensuite, nous présentons en détails les 22 étapes technologiques nécessaires pour réaliser notre récepteur. Enfin, nous regroupons l’ensemble des caractérisations réalisées sur notre récepteur cohérent. Après un rappel sur les différentes parties de celui-ci et de leurs performances clés, nous caractérisons les composants unitaires formant notre récepteur (mixeur cohérent, photodiodes UTC et SOA). Enfin nous présentons les caractéristiques statiques et dynamiques de notre récepteur et nous comparons ses performances avec celles de l’état de l’art. Ces travaux de thèse ont permis de démontrer la faisabilité d’un récepteur pré-amplifié utilisant un SOA intégré en technologie InP enterrée avec un record de responsivité de 5 A/W. Ceci représente un gain de 12,5 dB par rapport à un récepteur cohérent non amplifié idéal et un gain de 15,5 dB par rapport à l’état de l’art des récepteurs cohérents. De plus, la consommation engendrée par cette intégration reste très faible (240 mW). Enfin, nous avons démontré une démodulation à 32 Gbauds avec un facteur Q de 14 dB. La bande passante de 40 GHz de nos diodes est compatible avec des applications à 56 Gbauds et peut être améliorée pour des applications à 100 Gbauds en réduisant la taille des photodiodes. Ce travail de thèse ouvre donc le chemin pour de nouveaux récepteurs pré-amplifés par un SOA pour des applications à 400 Gbit/s / This work focuses on the design, manufacturing and characterization of a coherent photoreceptor in PiC InP for 100-400 Gbit/s applications. The chosen solution is a preamplified coherent receiver with an SOA to improve the responsivity compared to a conventional coherent receiver. In addition, this receiver is made in buried technology to allow operation over a wider range of wavelengths. Finally, a coherent receiver without SOA is also produced to be able to evaluate its impact on the performances of our receiver. The first part of this study is devoted to reminders about very high speed optical transmissions, about state of the art on coherent receivers, about a presentation of the different photodetectors and a presentation of the 90° hybrid which is the core component in coherent receivers. Secondly, we present the various choices made for the design of our receiver. The study of two 90° hybrids simulated in ridge or in buried technology is detailed. We also comment the choices of photodiodes and SOA used for our component. The third chapter is devoted to the different technological steps used to build our preamplified receiver. We start with a description of the different epitaxial techniques used. Then, we present in detail the 22 technological steps required to realize our receiver. Finally, we group all the characterizations preformed on our coherent receiver. We characterize the unitary components of our receiver (hybrid 90°, UTC photodiodes and SOA). Finally we present the static and dynamic characteristics of our receiver and we compare its performances with the state of the art. This thesis demonstrates the feasibility of a preamplified receiver using a SOA in buried InP technology with a record of reponsivity of 5 A/W. This represents a gain of 12.5 dB compared to an ideal coherent receiver and a gain of 15,5 dB compared to the state of the art. In addition, the consumption generated by this integration remains very low (240 mW). Finally, we have demonstrated a 32 Gbauds demodulation with a Q factor of 14dB and the 40 GHz bandwidth of our photodiodes is compatible with 56 Gbauds applications. It can be improved for 100 Gbauds applications by reducing the size of our photodiodes. This thesis opens the way for a new preamplified coherent receiver for 400 Gbit/s applications

The success of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm relies on, among other things, developing energy-efficient communication techniques that can enable information exchange among billions of battery-operated IoT devices. With its technological capability of simultaneous information and energy transfer, ambient backscatter is quickly emerging as an appealing solution for this communication paradigm, especially for the links with low data rate requirements. However, many challenges and limitations of ambient backscatter have to be overcome for widespread adoption of the technology in future wireless networks. Motivated by this, we study the design and implementation of ambient backscatter systems, including non-coherent detection and encoding schemes, and investigate techniques such as multiple antenna interference cancellation and frequency-shift backscatter to improve the bit error rate performance of the designed ambient backscatter systems. First, the problem of coherent and semi-coherent ambient backscatter is investigated by evaluating the exact bit error rate (BER) of the system. The test statistic used for the signal detection is based on the averaging of energy of the received signal samples. It is important to highlight that the conditional distributions of this test statistic are derived using the central limit theorem (CLT) approximation in the literature. The characterization of the exact conditional distributions of the test statistic as non-central chi-squared random variable for the binary hypothesis testing problem is first handled in our study, which is a key contribution of this particular work. The evaluation of the maximum likelihood (ML) detection threshold is also explored which is found to be intractable. To overcome this, alternate strategies to approximate the ML threshold are proposed. In addition, several insights for system design and implementation are provided both from analytical and numerical standpoints. Second, the highly appealing non-coherent signal detection is explored in the context of ambient backscatter for a time-selective channel. Modeling the time-selective fading as a first-order autoregressive (AR) process, we implement a new detection architecture at the receiver based on the direct averaging of the received signal samples, which departs significantly from the energy averaging-based receivers considered in the literature. For the proposed setup, we characterize the exact asymptotic BER for both single-antenna (SA) and multi-antenna (MA) receivers, and demonstrate the robustness of the new architecture to timing errors. Our results demonstrate that the direct-link (DL) interference from the ambient power source leads to a BER floor in the SA receiver, which the MA receiver can avoid by estimating the angle of arrival (AoA) of the DL. The analysis further quantifies the effect of improved angular resolution on the BER as a function of the number of receive antennas. Third, the advantages of utilizing Manchester encoding for the data transmission in the context of non-coherent ambient backscatter have been explored. Specifically, encoding is shown to simplify the detection procedure at the receiver since the optimal decision rule is found to be independent of the system parameters. Through extensive numerical results, it is further shown that a backscatter system with Manchester encoding can achieve a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain compared to the commonly used uncoded direct on-off keying (OOK) modulation, when used in conjunction with a multi-antenna receiver employing the direct-link cancellation. Fourth, the BER performance of frequency-shift ambient backscatter, which achieves the self-interference mitigation by spatially separating the reflected backscatter signal from the impending source signal, is investigated. The performance of the system is evaluated for a non-coherent receiver under slow fading in two different network setups: 1) a single interfering link coming from the ambient transmission occurring in the shifted frequency region, and 2) a large-scale network with multiple interfering signals coming from the backscatter nodes and ambient source devices transmitting in the band of interest. Modeling the interfering devices as a two dimensional Poisson point process (PPP), tools from stochastic geometry are utilized to evaluate the bit error rate for the large-scale network setup. / Doctor of Philosophy / The emerging paradigm of Internet-of-Things (IoT) has the capability of radically transforming the human experience. At the heart of this technology are the smart edge devices that will monitor everyday physical processes, communicate regularly with the other nodes in the network chain, and automatically take appropriate actions when necessary. Naturally, many challenges need to be tackled in order to realize the true potential of this technology. Most relevant to this dissertation are the problems of powering potentially billions of such devices and enabling low-power communication among them. Ambient backscatter has emerged as a useful technology to handle the aforementioned challenges of the IoT networks due to its capability to support the simultaneous transfer of information and energy. This technology allows devices to harvest energy from the ambient signals in the environment thereby making them self-sustainable, and in addition provide carrier signals for information exchange. Using these attributes of ambient backscatter, the devices can operate at very low power which is an important feature when considering the reliability requirements of the IoT networks. That said, the ambient backscatter technology needs to overcome many challenges before its widespread adoption in IoT networks. For example, the range of backscatter is limited in comparison to the conventional communication systems due to self-interference from the power source at a receiver. In addition, the probability of detecting the data in error at the receiver, characterized by the bit error rate (BER) metric, in the presence of wireless multipath is generally poor in ambient backscatter due to double path loss and fading effects observed for the backscatter link. Inspired by this, the aim of this dissertation is to come up with new architecture designs for the transmitter and receiver devices that can improve the BER performance. The key contributions of the dissertation include the analytical derivations of BER which provide insights on the system design and the main parameters impacting the system performance. The exact design of the optimal detection technique for a communication system is dependent on the channel behavior, mainly the time-varying nature in the case of a flat fading channel. Depending on the mobility of devices and scatterers present in the wireless channel, it can either be described as time-selective or time-nonselective. In the time-nonselective channels, coherent detection that requires channel state information (CSI) estimation using pilot signals can be implemented for ambient backscatter. On the other hand, non-coherent detection is preferred when the channel is time-selective since the CSI estimation is not feasible in such scenarios. In the first part of this dissertation, we analyze the performance of ambient backscatter in a point-to-point single-link system for both time-nonselective and time-selective channels. In particular, we determine the BER performance of coherent and non-coherent detection techniques for ambient backscatter systems in this line of work. In addition, we investigate the possibility of improving the BER performance using multi-antenna and coding techniques. Our analyses demonstrate that the use of multi-antenna and coding can result in tremendous improvement of the performance and simplification of the detection procedure, respectively. In the second part of the dissertation, we study the performance of ambient backscatter in a large-scale network and compare it to that of the point-to-point single-link system. By leveraging tools from stochastic geometry, we analytically characterize the BER performance of ambient backscatter in a field of interfering devices modeled as a Poisson point process.

Master of Science / Department of Physics / Brett D. Esry / In the last 20 years, advancements in laser technology have allowed for the production of intense laser pulses with durations in the femtosecond (10⁻¹⁵ second) regime, giving scientists the ability to probe nuclear dynamics on their natural time scale. Study of the dissociated fragments created by these intense fields can be used to learn about the molecular structure and dynamics. The work presented in this thesis focuses on controlling this light–molecule interaction in such a way that we can preferentially dissociate the molecule to a desired final product. The hydrogen molecular ion, HD⁺, as well as LiF serve as simple systems that can be studied theoretically for a broad range of laser parameters. Our goal in using these relatively simple systems is to capture the essential physics of the light–molecule interaction and develop general methods to describe these interactions in more complex systems.

<p>The advent of resonant metamaterials with strongly dispersive behavior allowed scientists to design new electromagnetic devices -- including (but not limited to) absorbers, antennas, lenses, holograms, and arguably the most well-known of them all, invisibility cloaks -- exhibiting properties that would otherwise be difficult to obtain. At the heart of these breakthrough designs is our ability to model the behavior of individual metamaterial elements as Lorentzian dipoles, and -- in applications that call for it -- collectively model an entire array of such elements as a homogenous medium with effective electromagnetic properties retrieved from measurements or simulations. </p><p>Of particular interest in the context of this dissertation is a certain type of metamaterials elements which -- while composed entirely of essentially non-magnetic materials -- respond to a magnetic field, can be modeled as magnetic dipoles, and are able to form a material with effective magnetic response. This thesis describes how such ``magnetic metamaterials'' have been utilized by the author when designing devices for applications in wireless power transfer (WPT) and computational imaging. For the former, I discuss in the thesis a metamaterial implementation of a magnetic `superlens' for wireless power transfer enhancements, and a magnetic reflector for near field shielding. For the latter I detail how we model the imaging capabilities of a recently-introduced class of dispersive metamaterial-based leaky apertures that produce pseudo-random measurement modes, and demonstration of novel Lorentzian-constrained holograms able to tailor their radiation patterns. </p><p>To design a magnetic superlens for WPT enhancements, we first demonstrate how an array comprising resonant metamaterial elements can act as an effective medium with negative permeability ($\mu$) and enhance near-field transmission of quasi-static non-resonant coil antennas. We implement a new technique to retrieve all diagonal components of our superlens' permeability, including its normal component, which standard techniques cannot retrieve. We study the effect of different components of the $\mu$ tensor on field enhancements using analytical solutions as well as 2D rotationally-symmetric full-wave simulations which approximate the lens as a disc of equal diameter, enabling highly efficient axisymmetric description of the problem. Our studies indicate enhancements are strongest when all three diagonal components of Re$(\mu)$ are negative, which we attribute to the excitation of surface waves.</p><p>The ability to retrieve permeability's normal component, awarded to us with the implementation of the aforementioned retrieval technique, directly enabled the design of a near field magnetic shield, which -- in contrast to the tripple-negative superlens -- relies on the normal component of $\mu$ assuming values near zero. The thesis discusses the theory behind this phenomenon and explains why such an anisotropic slab is capable of reflecting magnetic fields with component of their wave vector parallel to the slab's surface (fields which contain significant portions of the energy transferred in WPT systems with dipole-like coils). Furthermore, the dispersive nature of the resonant metamaterials used to realize the shield grants us the ability to block certain frequencies while allowing the transmission of other, which can be particularly useful in certain applications; conventional materials used for shielding or electromagnetic interference (EMI) suppression, on the other hand, block frequencies indiscriminately. </p><p>The thesis also discusses a single-pixel, metamaterial-based aperture we designed for computational imaging purposes. This aperture, termed \textit{metaimager}, forms pseudo-random radiation patterns that vary with frequency by leaking energy from a guided mode via a collection of randomly distributed resonant metamaterial elements. The metaimager, then, is able to interrogate a scene without any moving parts or expensive auxiliary hardware (both are common problems which plague synthetic aperture and phased array systems, respectively). While such a structure cannot be homogenized, when modeling its imaging capabilities we still rely on the fact each of its irises can be modeled analytically as a magnetic dipole using a relatively simple Lorentzian expression. Accurate qualitative modeling of such apertures is of paramount importance in the design and optimization stages, since it allows us to save time and money by avoiding prohibitively slow full-wave simulations of such complex structures and unnecessary fabrication processes. </p><p>Lastly, the thesis discusses how such an aperture can be viewed as a hologram in which pixels are realized by the metamaterial elements and the reference wave is realized by the fields that excite them. While the current metaimager implementation produces pseudo-random modes, the last section of the thesis discusses how, by accounting for the Lorentzian constraints of each pixel, a novel metamaterial hologram can be designed to yield tailored radiation patterns. An experiment utilizing a Fraunhofer hologram excited in a free-space illumination configuration indicates tailored modes can indeed be formed by carefully choosing the resonance frequency and location of each metamaterial. While this proof-of-concept example is relatively simple, more sophisticated realizations of such holograms can be explored in future works.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis questions the coherence of modes of fabrication that introduce materials to a living context, in forms that resist the processes of biological change. In doing so this project explores the ideologies embedded in fabrication that have led to this current position. The implications of an accumulation of materials being recognized as an autonomous object, and treated as if they are detached from their environment are also expanded. The sculptural methodology used to undertake this investigation has used the feature of materiality and it’s behaviours, of both human fabrication and the living environment, as a means to explore processes outside the limitations of specialist human categories of knowledge. The vocabularies of dematerialization, expansion and relational exchange in the critique of sculpture, have provided a starting point to articulate what is implied or “mapped out but not socially recognized”1 by the structure of specialist categories. The practice-based work that has driven this project, documents an extension of sculptural fabrication, which incorporates the literal processes of growth and erosion, illustrating a radical inclusivity of all living phenomena. Engaging with fabrication through this plural and complex methodology allows for a new valuing that recognizes accumulation as a result of employing reductive specialist categories and as inherently problematic for complex living systems. This identifies coherent fabrication as that which merges its engagement with processes of biological change and utility for humans.

The design, simulation, and initial fabrication of a novel ultra-compact 2x2 silicon multimode-interference device evanescently coupled to a dual germanium metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) photodetector is presented. For operation at the standard telecom wavelength of 1.5 µm, the simulations demonstrate high-speed operation at 30 GHz, low dark current in the nanoamp range, and external quantum efficiency of 80%. Error analysis was performed for possible tilt error introduced by hybrid integration of the MSM layer on top of the MMI waveguides by use of surface mount technology (SMT) and direct wafer bonding.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 28-31, 1996 / Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / Aerospace Report No. TOR-0059(6110-01)-3, section 1.3.3 outlines the design and performance requirements of SGLS (Space Ground Link Subsystem) services. GDP Space Systems has developed a single card slot FSK (Frequency Shift Keying)/AM (Amplitude Modulation) demodulator. An application of this service is the US Air Force Satellite Command and Ranging System. The SGLS signal is tri-tone-FSK, amplitude modulated by a modified triangle wave at half the data rate. First generation FSK/AM demodulators had poor noise performance because the signal tones were filtered and processed at IF frequencies (65, 76 and 95 kHz). Second generation demodulators suffer from "threshold" due to non-linear devices in the signal path before the primary noise filtering. The GDP Space Systems demodulator uses a 0-Hz- IF topology and avoids both of these shortcomings. In this approach, the signal is first noncoherently down converted to baseband by linear devices, then it is filtered and processed. This paper will discuss the GDP 0-Hz-IF FSK/AM (SGLS) demodulator.

ITC/USA 2015 Conference Proceedings / The Fifty-First Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 26-29, 2015 / Bally's Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV / SOQPSK-TG is a highly bandwidth-efficient constant-envelope modulation so that it has been applied in airspace telemetry widely. We compare four types of coherent detectors for SOQPSK-TG, which are optimal detector, pulse truncation (PT) detector, standard OQPSK detector and modified OQPSK detector. The simulation and analysis results indicate that PT detector has the advantages of low complexity and good performance, so it has more practicality value.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 21, 2002 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / For faster acquisition in bursted environments for SMS (Short Messaging Service) and other lower-bit rate applications, non-coherent detection techniques are proposed. Non-Coherent detection demodulators are proposed because faster acquisition capability in bursted environments can result in a reduced amount of preamble bits in the messaging frame, i.e. less overhead, resulting in an effective increase in spectral efficiency. Reducing the preamble can also provide performance enhancement opportunities for Feher Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (FQPSK) [1] and for other systems. The preamble can also be varied to provide for better Bit Error Rate (BER) performance. The lower bit rate environment also gives the opportunity to employ simpler architectures in lieu of preamble modification. Several non-coherent detection alternatives are described.