The thesis analyses the accuracy and fluency exhibited in the spoken advanced-learner English of Czech students of English philology. It draws its data from a learner corpus comprising fifty 15-minute interviews with these learners and from a parallel native-speaker corpus of forty-nine 15-minute interviews. As regards accuracy, the learner data is analysed using techniques of error analysis. Salient features of advanced learner English are identified and the subsequent quantitative analyses reveal that throughout the entire group of students (which is characterized by what revealed itself to be a wide proficiency span) two groups of error types are found to be much more frequent than any other, namely errors in the use of articles and tenses. For the fluency measurements a small selection of variables has been chosen to describe speed fluency (speech rate) and breakdown fluency (the frequency of unfilled and filled pauses), and the results are compared with those for the parallel native-speaker corpus. The analysed native speakers are found to produce speech at a generally much higher rate than the majority of the learners. There does not appear - at least in the light of the given sample - to be any direct correlation between fluency and the frequency of errors. Moreover, the learners are found...

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-18T21:39:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 4 Erik Aceiro Antonio1.pdf: 1548083 bytes, checksum: 089690da04ba664ec23f802cb3975826 (MD5) Erik Aceiro Antonio2.pdf: 1618157 bytes, checksum: efefcd4d6d658d457615e8757d4175d8 (MD5) Erik Aceiro Antonio3.pdf: 2722615 bytes, checksum: a3f70f5fd3c8b07408a62f1d5a6cfbc2 (MD5) Erik Aceiro Antonio4.pdf: 1214557 bytes, checksum: 8bf6858d70baeb72941ce7c5cc104437 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-06-30 / The advent of the Internet and the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT s)generated new spaces for communication and collaboration between groups of people in geographically distinct regions. The association of Web technology with instrument automation and control by computer has made possible the development of the so called Remote Laboratories or WebLabs - distributed environments that allow to access and control experiments remotely through a network or the Internet in real time and with the sensation of presence. In this work, a WebLab was developed for the study and caracterization of a WDM (Wave Division Multiplexing) system, aiming to support and complement activities in faceto-face and distance courses on Optical Communications. Drivers and graphic user interfaces (GUI s) were developed with the software LabVIEW for control and data acquisition of instruments used in a remote experiment to measure the basic features of a WDM system. An application was also developed with the software VPI for the numerical simulation of Bit Error Rate (BER) measurements. This work is part of the activities related to the participation of the Mackenzie Photonics Laboratory in the KyaTera Project of FAPESP s TIDIA Program. / O advento da Internet e o desenvolvimento das Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação (TIC s) geraram novos espaços para a comunicação e colaboração entre grupos de pessoas localizadas em regiões geograficamente distintas. A associação da tecnologiaWeb com a automação e controle de instrumentos por computador tornou possível o desenvolvimento dos chamados Laboratórios Remotos ou WebLabs - ambientes distribuídos que permitem o acesso e controle remoto de experimentos através de uma rede de comunicação ou da Internet em tempo real e com sensação de presença. Neste trabalho, foi desenvolvido um WebLab para estudo e caracterização de um sistema WDM (Wave Division Multiplexing), destinado a apoiar e complementar atividades em cursos de Comunicações Ópticas presenciais e a distância. Foram desenvolvidos drivers e interfaces gráficas de usuário (GUI s) com o software LabVIEW para o controle e aquisição de dados dos instrumentos utilizados em um experimento remoto de medida das características básicas de um sistema WDM. Também foi desenvolvido um aplicativo com o software VPI que permite simular a medida da Taxa de Erro de Bit (BER) do sistema. Este trabalho é parte das atividades relacionadas à participação do Laboratório de Fotônica Mackenzie no Projeto KyaTera do Programa TIDIA da FAPESP.

Ce travail vise la modélisation au niveau système, en langage SystemC-AMS, et la simulation d'un émetteur-récepteur au standard Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). L'objectif est d'analyser la relation entre les performances, en termes de BER et la consommation d'énergie du transceiver. Le temps de simulation d’un tel système, à partir de cas d’étude (use case) réaliste, est un facteur clé pour le développement d’une telle plateforme. De plus, afin d’obtenir des résultats de simulation le plus précis possible, les modèles « haut niveau » doivent être raffinés à partir de modèles plus bas niveau où de mesure. L'approche dite Meet-in-the-Middle, associée à la méthode de modélisation équivalente en Bande Base (BBE, BaseBand Equivalent), a été choisie pour atteindre les deux conditions requises, à savoir temps de simulation « faible » et précision des résultats. Une simulation globale d'un système de BLE est obtenue en intégrant le modèle de l'émetteur-récepteur dans une plateforme existante développée en SystemC-TLM. La simulation est basée sur un système de communication de deux dispositifs BLE, en utilisant différents scénarios (différents cas d'utilisation de BLE). Dans un premier temps nous avons modélisé et validé chaque bloc d’un transceiver BT. Devant le temps de simulation prohibitif, les blocs RF sont réécrits en utilisant la méthodologie BB, puis raffinés afin de prendre en compte les non-linéarités qui vont impacter le couple consommation, BER. Chaque circuit (chaque modèle) est vérifié séparément, puis une première simulation système (point à point entre un émetteur et un récepteur) est effectuée / This work aims at system-level modelling a defined transceiver for Bluetooth Low energy (BLE) system using SystemC-AMS. The goal is to analyze the relationship between the transceiver performance and the accurate energy consumption. This requires the transceiver model contains system-level simulation speed and the low-level design block power consumption and other RF specifications. The Meet-in-the-Middle approach and the Baseband Equivalent method are chosen to achieve the two requirements above. A global simulation of a complete BLE system is achieved by integrating the transceiver model into a SystemC-TLM described BLE system model which contains the higher-than-PHY levels. The simulation is based on a two BLE devices communication system and is run with different BLE use cases. The transceiver Bit-Error-Rate and the energy estimation are obtained at the end of the simulation. First, we modelled and validated each block of a BT transceiver. In front of the prohibitive simulation time, the RF blocks are rewritten by using the BBE methodology, and then refined in order to take into account the non-linearities, which are going to impact the couple consumption, BER. Each circuit (each model) is separately verified, and then a first BLE system simulation (point-to-point between a transmitter and a receiver) has been executed. Finally, the BER is finally estimated. This platform fulfills our expectations, the simulation time is suitable and the results have been validated with the circuit measurement offered by Riviera Waves Company. Finally, two versions of the same transceiver architecture are modelled, simulated and compared

Cette thèse s’inscrit dans le domaine de la caractérisation des systèmes de communication sans fil utilisant la diversité des antennes. En effet, ces systèmes permettent de lutter contre les évanouissements des signaux, lorsque le terminal est placé dans un environnement riche en multi-trajets. L’objectif d'une telle recherche est : d’étudier l'association de plusieurs antennes à l'émission et / ou la réception pour améliorer le bilan de liaison, et la capacité des systèmes sans fil, (diminution de BER (Bit Error Rate), augmentation de débit ...). Cette thèse s’intéresse à l'aspect électromagnétique et traitement du signal. Afin de comprendre les phénomènes mis en jeu, et de caractériser les performances du terminal, il doit être placé dans un environnement de propagation multi-trajets contrôlable dans le temps et dans l'espace.Cela nous amène à trouver des méthodes de mesures capables de reproduire des modèles de canaux de propagation réalistes. Dans le cadre de cette thèse la méthode utilisée est la chambre réverbérante. Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons à l'aspect temporel. La chambre réverbérante (RC) est considérée comme un outil utile pour émuler des environnements riches en multi-trajets. Dans cette contribution, ce dispositif est utilisé pour émuler des modèles canaux multi-trajets, et évaluer la performance des systèmes de communication sans fil. Cette évaluation est effectuée avec des mesures en temps réel et non temps réel. Parmi les objectifs de cette thèse est d'obtenir un modèle de simulation électromagnétique de la chambre réverbérante basé sur une approche circuit, afin de déterminer la fonction de transfert de canal en fonction des pertes. / This thesis is part of the field of the characterization of wireless communication systems using antennas diversity. Indeed, such systems allow fighting against the signals fading, when the terminal is inside a strong multipath environment. The issue of such research is: to study the association of multiple antennas at transmitting and/or receiving sides to improve the link budget, and the capacity of wireless systems, (decrease of BER (Bit Error Rate), increase of throughput …). This thesis takes an interest to the electromagnetic aspect, and signal processing. In order to understand the involved phenomena, and to characterize the terminal performance, it should be placed in a controlled multipath propagation environment in time, and in space. This brings us to find measurement methodologies able to reproduce models of realistic propagation channels. As part of this thesis the method used is the reverberation chamber. In this thesis we are interested in the time aspect. Reverberation chamber (RC) is considered as a useful tool to emulate rich multipath environments. In this contribution, this device is employed to emulate multi clusters channel models (cluster is defined as a group of multipath), and evaluate performance of wireless communication systems. This evaluation is performed with real time and not-real time measurements. It remains to note that among the objectives set out in this PhD thesis is to obtain electromagnetic simulation model of the reverberation chamber based on circuit approach, in order to determine the channel transfer function versus losses quantities.

Opportunistic selection and rate adaptation play a vital role in improving the spectral and power efficiency of current multi-node wireless systems. However, time-variations in wireless channels affect the performance of opportunistic selection and rate-adaptation in the following ways. Firstly, the selected node can become sub-optimal by the time data transmission commences. Secondly, the choice of transmission parameters such as rate and power for the selected node become sub-optimal. Lastly, the channel changes during data transmission. In this thesis, we develop a comprehensive and tractable analytical framework that accurately accounts for these effects. It differs from the extensive existing literature that primarily focuses on time-variations until the data transmission starts. Firstly, we develop a novel concept of a time-invariant effective signal-to-noise ratio (TIESNR), which tractably and accurately captures the time-variations during the data transmission phase with partial channel state information available at the receiver. Secondly, we model the joint distribution of the signal-to-noise ratio at the time of selection and TIESNR during the data transmission using generalized bivariate gamma distribution. The above analytical steps facilitate the analysis of the outage probability and average packet error rate (PER) for a given modulation and coding scheme and average throughput with rate adaptation. We also present extensive numerical results to verify the accuracy of each step of our approach and show that ignoring the correlated time variations during the data transmission phase can significantly underestimate the outage probability and average PER, whereas it overestimates the average throughput even for packet durations as low as 1 msec.

In spite of the SAPS having a dedicated polygraph capacity since 1998, little research has been conducted with regard to the use of the polygraph in criminal investigations. Consequently, the aim of this research was to focus on the perceptions and experiences of investigators in the SAPS regarding the application of polygraph testing in criminal investigations, the application of the polygraph as an investigative aid, the extent to which it is used by SAPS investigators to resolve criminal cases opened by the general public and/or in internal departmental criminal investigations; and whether or not it has helped to solve cases by giving direction and/or focus to the investigator when an investigation is at an impasse. A qualitative research approach was conducted among investigators within the SAPS. The research design selected for this study was grounded theory. The sample consisted of twenty investigators, ten of whom had previously used polygraph examinations in their investigations and ten of whom had not. Data was collected from interviews, document analysis, field notes and memoranda which presented and detailed the perceptions and experiences of investigators in the SAPS regarding the application of polygraph tests in criminal investigations. / Criminology and Security Science / M.A. (Criminology)

Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) is the technology used in all third generation cellular communications networks, and it is a promising candidate for the definition of fourth generation standards. The wireless mobile channel is usually frequency-selective causing interference among the users in one CDMA cell. Multiuser Transmission (MUT) algorithms for the downlink can increase the number of supportable users per cell, or decrease the necessary transmit power to guarantee a certain quality-of-service. Transmitter-based algorithms exploiting the channel knowledge in the transmitter are also motivated by information theoretic results like the Writing-on-Dirty-Paper theorem. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is a reasonable performance criterion for noise-dominated scenarios. Using linear filters in the transmitter and the receiver, the SNR can be maximized with the proposed Eigenprecoder. Using multiple transmit and receive antennas, the performance can be significantly improved. The Generalized Selection Combining (GSC) MIMO Eigenprecoder concept enables reduced complexity transceivers. Methods eliminating the interference completely or minimizing the mean squared error exist for both the transmitter and the receiver. The maximum likelihood sequence detector in the receiver minimizes the bit error rate (BER), but it has no direct transmitter counterpart. The proposed Minimum Bit Error Rate Multiuser Transmission (TxMinBer) minimizes the BER at the detectors by transmit signal processing. This nonlinear approach uses the knowledge of the transmit data symbols and the wireless channel to calculate a transmit signal optimizing the BER with a transmit power constraint by nonlinear optimization methods like sequential quadratic programming (SQP). The performance of linear and nonlinear MUT algorithms with linear receivers is compared at the example of the TD-SCDMA standard. The interference problem can be solved with all MUT algorithms, but the TxMinBer approach requires less transmit power to support a certain number of users. The high computational complexity of MUT algorithms is also an important issue for their practical real-time application. The exploitation of structural properties of the system matrix reduces the complexity of the linear MUT mthods significantly. Several efficient methods to invert the ystem matrix are shown and compared. Proposals to reduce the omplexity of the Minimum Bit Error Rate Multiuser Transmission mehod are made, including a method avoiding the constraint by pase-only optimization. The complexity of the nonlinear methods i still some magnitudes higher than that of the linear MUT lgorithms, but further research on this topic and the increasing processing power of integrated circuits will eventually allow to exploit their better performance. / Der codegeteilte Mehrfachzugriff (CDMA) wird bei allen zellularen Mobilfunksystemen der dritten Generation verwendet und ist ein aussichtsreicher Kandidat für zukünftige Technologien. Die Netzkapazität, also die Anzahl der Nutzer je Funkzelle, ist durch auftretende Interferenzen zwischen den Nutzern begrenzt. Für die Aufwärtsstrecke von den mobilen Endgeräten zur Basisstation können die Interferenzen durch Verfahren der Mehrnutzerdetektion im Empfänger verringert werden. Für die Abwärtsstrecke, die höhere Datenraten bei Multimedia-Anwendungen transportiert, kann das Sendesignal im Sender so vorverzerrt werden, dass der Einfluß der Interferenzen minimiert wird. Die informationstheoretische Motivation liefert dazu das Writing-on-Dirty-Paper Theorem. Das Signal-zu-Rausch-Verhältnis ist ein geeignetes Kriterium für die Performanz in rauschdominierten Szenarien. Mit Sende- und Empfangsfiltern kann das SNR durch den vorgeschlagenen Eigenprecoder maximiert werden. Durch den Einsatz von Mehrfachantennen im Sender und Empfänger kann die Performanz signifikant erhöht werden. Mit dem Generalized Selection MIMO Eigenprecoder können Transceiver mit reduzierter Komplexität ermöglicht werden. Sowohl für den Empfänger als auch für den Sender existieren Methoden, die Interferenzen vollständig zu eliminieren, oder den mittleren quadratischen Fehler zu minimieren. Der Maximum-Likelihood-Empfänger minimiert die Bitfehlerwahrscheinlichkeit (BER), hat jedoch kein entsprechendes Gegenstück im Sender. Die in dieser Arbeit vorgeschlagene Minimum Bit Error Rate Multiuser Transmission (TxMinBer) minimiert die BER am Detektor durch Sendesignalverarbeitung. Dieses nichtlineare Verfahren nutzt die Kenntnis der Datensymbole und des Mobilfunkkanals, um ein Sendesignal zu generieren, dass die BER unter Berücksichtigung einer Sendeleistungsnebenbedingung minimiert. Dabei werden nichtlineare Optimierungsverfahren wie Sequentielle Quadratische Programmierung (SQP) verwendet. Die Performanz linearer und nichtlinearer MUT-Verfahren MUT-Algorithmen mit linearen Empfängern wird am Beispiel des TD-SCDMA-Standards verglichen. Das Problem der Interferenzen kann mit allen untersuchten Verfahren gelöst werden, die TxMinBer-Methode benötigt jedoch die geringste Sendeleistung, um eine bestimmt Anzahl von Nutzern zu unterstützen. Die hohe Rechenkomplexität der MUT-Algorithmen ist ein wichtiges Problem bei der Implementierung in Real-Zeit-Systemen. Durch die Ausnutzung von Struktureigenschaften der Systemmatrizen kann die Komplexität der linearen MUT-Verfahren signifikant reduziert werden. Verschiedene Verfahren zur Invertierung der Systemmatrizen werden aufgezeigt und verglichen. Es werden Vorschläge gemacht, die Komplexität der Minimum Bit Error Rate Multiuser Transmission zu reduzieren, u.a. durch Vermeidung der Sendeleistungsnebenbedingung durch eine Beschränkung der Optimierung auf die Phasen des Sendesignalvektors. Die Komplexität der nichtlinearen Methoden ist um einige Größenordungen höher als die der linearen Verfahren. Weitere Forschungsanstrengungen an diesem Thema sowie die wachsende Rechenleistung von integrierten Halbleitern werden künftig die Ausnutzung der besseren Leistungsfähigkeit der nichtlinearen MUT-Verfahren erlauben.

Diploma thesis focuses on simultaneous transmission of selected photonic services by one single-mode optical fiber. The thesis deals with the problem of common transmission of multiple photonic services by one optical fiber using the wavelength division multiplex technology. Furthermore, the origin and influence of nonlinear phenomena accompanying the simultaneous transmission of photonic services are described. Except common data transmission with a bitrate of 10 Gbit/s, a common high-speed data signal transmission with a bitrate of 200 Gbit/s, accurate time transmission and high-power sensor signal are considered. During the aimultaneous transmission of selected photonic services, the measurement of the transmission parameters was performed for various variants of the simultaneous transmission arrangement. In particular, the influence of nonlinear phenomena and possible mutual interference of individual transmission channels at 50 and 100 GHz between signals was analyzed.

The work explores ways to generate the OFDM signal and LDPC channel coding methods. Describes the creation of basic modules of the communication system in Matlab and simulation methods for atmospheric transmission environment, including effects of turbulence, attenuation along the route and weather conditions on the transmitted signal.

Most modern clock and data recovery circuits (CDR) are based on analog blocks that need to be redesigned whenever the technology process is to be changed. On the other hand, CDR based blind oversampling architecture (BO-CDR) can be completely designed in a digital process which makes its migration very simple. The main disadvantages of the BO-CDR that are usually mentioned in a literature are complexity of its digital circuitry and finite phase resolution resulting in larger jitter sensitivity and higher error rate. This thesis will show that those problems can be solved by designing a new algorithm of BO-CDR and subsequent optimization. For this task an FPGA was selected as simulation and verification platform. This enables to change parameters of the optimized circuit in real time while measuring on real links (unlike a simulation using inaccurate link models). The output of this optimization is a new BO-CDR algorithm with heavily reduced complexity and very low error rate. A new FPGA-based method of jitter measurement was developed (primary for CDR analysis), which enables a quick link characterization without using probing or additional equipment. The new method requires only a minimum usage of FPGA resources. Finally, new measurement equipment was developed to measure bit error distribution on FSO links to be able to develop a suitable error correction scheme based on ARQ protocol.