Yes / This paper presented a planar printed multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna with a dimension of 100 x 45 mm2. It composed of two crescent shaped radiators placed symmetrically with respect to the ground plane. Neutralization line applied to suppress mutual coupling. The proposed antenna examined both theoretically and experimentally, which achieves an impedance bandwidth of 18.67% (over 2.04-2.46 GHz) with a reflection coefficient < -10 dB and mutual coupling minimization of < -20 dB. An evaluation of MIMO antennas is presented, with analysis of correlation coefficient, total active reflection coefficient (TARC), capacity loss and channel capacity. These characteristics indicate that the proposed antenna suitable for some wireless applications.

<p> A multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system has the potential to provide reliable transmissions at high data rates. However, the computational cost of achieving this promising performance can be quite substantial. With an emphasis on practical implementations, the MIMO systems employing the low cost linear receivers are studied in this thesis. The optimum space-time block codes (STBC) that enable a linear receiver to achieve its best possible performance are proposed for various MIMO systems. These codes satisfy an intra and inter orthogonality property, and are called unitary trace-orthogonal codes. In addition, several novel transmission schemes are specially designed for linear receivers with the use of the proposed code structure. The applications of the unitary trace-orthogonal code are not restricted to systems employing linear receivers. The proposed code structure can be also applied to the systems employing other types of receivers where several originally intractable code design problems are successfully solved.</p> <p>The communication schemes presented in this thesis are outlined as follows: •For a MIMO system with N ≥ M, where M and N are the number of transmitter and receiver antennas, respectively, the optimal full rate linear STBC for linear receivers is proposed and named unitary trace-orthogonal code. The proposed code structure is proved to be necessary and sufficient to achieve the minimum detection error probability for the system. • When applied to a multiple input single output (MISO) communication system, a special linear unitary trace-orthogonal code, named the Toeplitz STBC, is proposed. The code enables a linear receiver to provide full diversity and to achieve the optimal tradeoff between the detection error and the data transmission rate. This is, thus far, the first code that possesses such properties for an arbitrary MISO system that employs a linear receiver. • In MIMO systems in which N ≥ M and the signals are transmitted at full symbol rate, the highest diversity gain achievable by linear receivers is analyzed and shown to be N - M + 1. To improve the performance of a linear receiver, a multi-block transmission scheme is proposed, in which signals are coded so that they span multiple independent channel realizations. An optimal full rate linear STBC for this system that minimizes the detection error probability is presented. The code is named multi-block unitary trace-orthogonal code. The resulting system has an improved diversity gain. Furthermore, by relaxing the code from the full symbol rate constraint, a special multi-block transmission scheme is proposed. This scheme achieves a much improved diversity gain than those with full symbol rate. • The unitary trace-orthogonal code can also be applied to a system that employs a maximum-likelihood (ML) receiver rather than the simple linear receiver. For such a system, a systematic design of full diversity unitary trace-orthogonal code is presented for an arbitrary data transmission rate. </p> <p>In summary, when a simple linear receiver is employed, unitary trace-orthogonal codes and their optimality properties are exploited for various multiple antenna communication systems. Some members from this code family can also enable an optimal performance of ML detection. </P> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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The purpose of this study is to explore the influence on urban employment patterns of changes in demand for commodities by foreign and domestic consumers. Foreign induced changes in commodity demand are reflected in this study by assumed changes in exports of selected comma-· dity groupss ranging from relatively unprocessed groups such as grain, to sophisticated groups such as electrical products and chemicals. The domestic sources of commodity demand change considered in this study are various components of current expenditure by the federal government on health, education and defense programs, as well as on total government expenditure. The influence of these sources of final demand change is traced to the employed populations of Montreal and Toronto metropolitan areas, and the component districts of these urban areas. An important concern is with whether or not some shocks tend to alleviate or accentuate existing unemployment rate disparities between the central city and fringe of Montreal and Toronto. A national input-output system, together with an appended employment allocation matrix is utilized to estimate the urban employment impacts. The area impacts differ because, on the one hand, employment in some industries is affected more than in others, depending on the particular source of final demand change assumed, and on the other hand the proportion of an area's employed population affiliated with a given industry tends to differ from that of other areas. Before implementing the model the latter proposition~ concerning inter-area differences in industrial affiliation pattern of the employed) is supported by theoretical reasoning and empirical analysis. Theoretically different industries have different locational preferences in an urban area, as a result of factors related to technology, cost of production, and market access. Combined with the theoretical assumption concerning minimization of cost and/or distance of travel to work, area differences in the proportion of workers affiliated with a given industry is implied. This hypothesis is not rejected by analysis of variance experiments based on the pattern of male and female employed populations residing in districts of Montreal and Toronto. Adjusted census statistics on the employed population are used in these experiments the adjustment being required in order to make the urban portion of the model consistent with the 1961 input-output system. Implementation of the model reveals that the metropolitan areas of Montreal and Toronto are influenced to similar degrees by the assumed changes in various components of final demand, but that certain sub-metro areas were affected more than others. There is a tendency for suburban and wealthier areas to be affected more than central and less affluent districts though there are important exceptions. Some components of final demand change tend to accentuate existing intra-urban unemployment disparities. It is finally shown how the area impact disaggregated by subpopulation can be used to identify structural factors responsible for inter-area differences in the total impact. The disaggregated impacts also reveal qualitative, or distributional aspects of the aggregate impacts and thus may be of interest to urban planners. It is possibles for example, to check if female or male employees, affiliated with a lower paying industry group, and resident in a relatively poor district of the city, is influenced more than average by a particular type of final demand change. The limitations and possible extensions are finally reviewed. One limitation involves the assumption that given the industry, subpopulations of the employed are discharged at similar rates when there is a fall in product demand. The theory treating labour as a quasifixed factor implies that the lower grades of labour would be discharged at higher rates than the higher grades. Any bias due to the omission of this effect would reinforce the results related to intra-urban unemployment rate disparities, however. Future research suggested by this study include incorporation of the discriminatory discharge effect into the model and further disaggregation of the work force of industries according to occupation or income group. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

A novel printed diversity monopole antenna is presented for WiFi/WiMAX applications. The antenna comprises two crescent shaped radiators placed symmetrically with respect to a defected ground plane and a neutralization lines is connected between them to achieve good impedance matching and low mutual coupling. Theoretical and experimental characteristics are illustrated for this antenna, which achieves an impedance bandwidth of 54.5% (over 2.4-4.2 GHz), with a reflection coefficient <;-10 dB and mutual coupling <;-17 dB. An acceptable agreement is obtained for the computed and measured gain, radiation patterns, envelope correlation coefficient, and channel capacity loss. These characteristics demonstrate that the proposed antenna is an attractive candidate for multiple-input multiple-output portable or mobile devices

Yes / Recent studies suggest that multicarrier systems using wavelets outperform conventional OFDM systems using the FFT, in that they have well-contained side lobes, improved spectral efficiency and BER performance, and they do not require a cyclic prefix. Here we study the wavelet packet and discrete wavelet transforms, comparing the BER performance of wavelet transform-based multicarrier systems and Fourier based OFDM systems, for multipath Rayleigh channels with AWGN. In the proposed system zero-forcing channel estimation in the frequency domain has been used. Results confirm that discrete wavelet-based systems using Daubechies wavelets outperform both wavelet packet transform- based systems and FFT-OFDM systems in terms of BER. Finally, Alamouti coding and maximal ratio combining schemes were employed in MIMO environments, where results show that the effects of multipath fading were greatly reduced by the antenna diversity.

Yes / This article presents a unique technique to enhance isolation between transmit/receive radiating elements in densely packed array antenna by embedding a metamaterial (MTM) electromagnetic bandgap (EMBG) structure in the space between the radiating elements to suppress surface currents that would otherwise contribute towards mutual coupling between the array elements. The proposed MTM-EMBG structure is a cross-shaped microstrip transmission line on which are imprinted two outward facing E-shaped slits. Unlike other MTM structures there is no short-circuit grounding using via-holes. With this approach, the maximum measured mutual coupling achieved is -60 dB @ 9.18 GHz between the transmit patches (#1 & #2) and receive patches (#3 & #4) in a four-element array antenna. Across the antenna’s measured operating frequency range of 9.12 to 9.96 GHz, the minimum measured isolation between each element of the array is 34.2 dB @ 9.48 GHz, and there is no degradation in radiation patterns. The average measured isolation over this frequency range is 47 dB. The results presented confirm the proposed technique is suitable in applications such as synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. / H2020-MSCA-ITN-2016 SECRET-722424 and the financial support from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant EP/E0/22936/1

Yes / A four-element compact dual-band patch antenna having a common ground plane operating at 28/38 GHz is proposed for millimeter-wave communication systems in this paper. The multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna geometry consists of a slotted ellipse enclosed within a hollow circle which is orthogonally rotated with a connected partial ground at the back. The overall size of the four elements MIMO antenna is 2.24λ × 2.24λ (at 27.12 GHz). The prototype of four-element MIMO resonator is designed and printed using Rogers RT Duroid 5880 with εr = 2.2 and loss tangent = 0.0009 and having a thickness of 0.8 mm. It covers dual-band having a fractional bandwidth of 15.7% (27.12–31.34 GHz) and 4.2% (37.21–38.81 GHz) for millimeter-wave applications with a gain of more than 4 dBi at both bands. The proposed antenna analysis in terms of MIMO diversity parameters (Envelope Correlation Coefficient (ECC) and Diversity Gain (DG)) is also carried out. The experimental result in terms of reflection coefficient, radiation pattern, gain and MIMO diversity parameter correlates very well with the simulated ones that show the potential of the proposed design for MIMO applications at millimeter-wave frequencies. / This work is supported by the Moore4Medical Project, funded within ECSEL JU in collaboration with the EU H2020 Framework Programme (H2020/2014-2020) under Grant Agreement H2020-ECSEL-2019-IA-876190, and Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (ECSEL/0006/2019). This work is also funded by the FCT/MEC through national funds and when applicable co-financed by the ERDF, under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement under the UID/EEA/50008/2020 Project.

The proposed vibration energy harvesting IC harvests energy from a piezoelectric transducer (PZT) to provide power for a wireless sensor node (WSN). With a traditional rectification stage, a two-path three-switch dual-input dual-output architecture is adopted to extract power and regulate the output voltage for the load with one stage. The power stage is controlled with a new maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm, which integrates both fraction open circuit voltage (FOCV) and perturb and observe (PandO). The proposed algorithm was able to extract maximum power from a transducer due to high accuracy on the maxim power point (MPP) and low power dissipation. The proposed circuit is implemented in TSMC 180 nm BCD technology and the post-layout simulation verifies the functionality of the proposed design. The simulation results show that the circuit operates under the maximum power point to extract maximum power from a PZT. / Master of Science / The battery life has always been problematic ever since electronic devices exist. As semiconductor technology advances, more transistors could fit in the same area. Resultantly, portable, and mobile devices become more powerful but usually dissipate more power. Unfortunately, the development of the batteries has not been improved significantly. So, it is necessary to charge portable and mobile devices often or replace batteries frequently. In some applications where a device is hard to reach once installed, charging or replacing the battery is difficult. Under these circumstances, energy harvesting from ambient sources is an effective alternative. There are many types of sources of energy widely available in the environment such as vibration, thermal, solar, RF and etc. Solar energy harvesting is the most popular owing to high power density. However, sunlight is unavailable during night time. Vibration energy, although the power density is lower compared with solar, is a viable solution when solar is not a good source of energy. The proposed work utilizes abundant vibration energy at factories to power wireless sensor nodes (WSNs), which can monitor the temperature, light intensity, pressure, etc.