Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2006. / Principal faculty advisor: Dennis Prather, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

The reasons for choosing or promoting a certain way of transporting goods are dependent on a multitude of factors. Shippers will be interested in reliable logistics and low cost, while authorities are in general more concerned with relieving congestion and minimizing the environmental impact of transport in general. Historically, transport analysts have mainly focused on either economic or environmental aspects, but have hardly ever joined the two. This thesis aims to achieve an integrated approach to the assessment of transport, in this case focused on intermodal chains at a micro level. This means we focus on the performance of the entire intermodal logistic chain as a whole and not on the performance of each transport mode. During the three last years, we have participated in the European funded 6th framework project CREATING, where we have been the leader of the work package in charge of the assessment activities. To achieve this task, we developed an integrated assessment framework that can translate quantitative and qualitative values into a single performance indicator. This model is implemented in usable software, quite easily understandable by the users. The impacts considered in the integrated assessment framework are related to various performance areas: the economy, the environment, the logistics and the safety. The logistics and the safety are directly taken in charge by the software while the economy and the environment require the use of an underlying model developed by colleagues from Delft University, working in close relation with the model developed within this thesis: LODA stating for Logistic Optimization and Decision Aiding. The Delft model provides outputs related to the costs and the environmental impacts of transport chains based on technical aspects of transport means. These outputs are directly imported in LODA to perform the integrated evaluation. A list of indicators is elaborated for each performance domain. After a first aggregation step, the model provides four global indexes presenting the performance of transport projects related to the four above-mentioned fields. These four aggregations are realized by means of a multicriteria decision aiding method named PROMETHEE stating for Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment and Evaluation and other aggregation methods such as a sum and an average. Then, a final indicator provides the global performance of transport projects by aggregating the indexes into one global score by using the PROMETHEE method. This single indicator makes possible to rank the scenarios on the basis of the aggregated performances. In addition, it is possible to test the robustness of the ranking on the basis of different weights. The assessment framework developed in this thesis is demonstrated by means of cases under evaluation in the CREATING project. The first case covers the transport of cargo from Germany to South-Eastern Europe by road and by intermodal scenarios featuring RORO (stating for Roll-on / Roll-off) waterborne transport along the Danube. This case highlights the major benefits of an intermodal transport compared to an all-road transport regarding the pollution, the reduction of accidents as well as the positive impacts on the costs and the logistics. iii The second case revolves around the transport of biomass on a lake in the Paijanne area in Finland. The woodchips are used as an important source of energy by a local power plant which plans to increase its activity in the coming years. The increase demand of biomass will generate a lot of traffic which can not be absorbed by the only road transport. So, regarding the lake system, the waterborne transport alternative could be an efficient solution to ensure the sustainable development of biomass transport in that area. The third case is dedicated to the study of conditioned banana transport (temperature controlled and kept under an atmosphere with reduced amounts of oxygen). The bananas arrive in Antwerp, from South America, by seagoing reefer ships and have to be transported to ripening houses in Strasbourg. This transport is currently realized by truck. The impacts of intermodal transport alternatives are studied and show that intermodal transport can perform better than an all-road transport. Finally, the integrated assessment framework is applied to the transport of chemicals over the inland waterways in the Netherlands. This transport is currently done by single hulled ships which need to be replaced by double hulled ships in the near future while the transport by road could take a slight shortcut. Once again, the model demonstrates the competitiveness of inland navigation. The above-mentioned cases highlight the possible application of our model in real conditions while possible further developments can be identified regarding the internalization of external transport impacts. On the basis of the case studies, it appears that intermodal transport represents a pertinent alternative to all-road transport allowing a better modal balancing.

In the recent year, System-on-Chip (SoC) has become a popular and important issue. As the environment of the SoC design becomes more and more complex. The issue of system verification becomes more important. In previous, the intellectual property (IP) was developed dependently. Every designer just designed the IP without integrated with others. But with the complexity of the environment increasing, more and more IPs are integrated into a system. Even though the verification plans are more complex, but some protocol errors can also not found by designers. Some incautious behavior may cause the system deadlock or in a jam. Some research use protocol checker to verify bus protocol, but they can¡¦t synthesize, so we propose a rule-based and synthesizable style protocol checker(AXIChecker) to verify the transactions on the AXI bus conform the AMBA 3.0(AXI) protocol or not.

An integrated full-field study was conducted on the Monument Northwest field located in Kansas. The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility and profitability of a waterflood using numerical simulation. Outlined in this thesis is a methodology for a deterministic approach. The data history of the wells in the field beginning from spud date were gathered and analyzed into information necessary for building an upscaled reservoir model of the field. Means of increasing production and recovery from the field via a waterflood was implemented. Usually, at the time of such a redevelopment plan or scheme to improve field performance, a tangible amount of information about the reservoir is already known. Therefore it is very useful incorporating knowledge about the field in predicting future behavior of the field under certain conditions. The need for an integrated reservoir study cannot be over-emphasized. Information known about the reservoir from different segments of the field exploration and production are coupled and harnessed into developing a representative 3D reservoir model of the field. An integrated approach is used in developing a 3D reservoir model of the Monument Northwest field and a waterflood is evaluated and analyzed by a simulation of the reservoir model. From the results of the reservoir simulation it was concluded that the waterflood project for the Monument Northwest field is a viable and economic project.

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Many modern communication systems use orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and discrete multi-tone (DMT) as modulation schemes where high data rates are transmitted over a wide frequency band in multiple orthogonal subcarriers. Due to the many advantages, such as flexibility, good noise immunity and the ability to be optimized for medium conditions, the use of DMT and OFDM can be found in digital video broadcasting, local area wireless network (IEEE 802.11a), asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), very high bit rate DSL (VDSL) and power line communications (PLC). However, a major challenge is the design of the analog frontend; for these systems a large dynamic range is required due to the significant peak to average ratio of the resulting signals. In receivers, very demanding high-performance analog filters are typically used to block interferers and provide anti-aliasing before the subsequent analog to digital conversion stage. For frequencies higher than 10MHz, Gm-C filter implementations are generally preferred due to the more efficient operation of wide-band operational transconductance amplifiers (OTA). Nevertheless, the inherent low-linearity of open-loop operated OTA limits the dynamic range. In this dissertation, three different proposed OTA linearity enhancement techniques for the design of high frequency and high dynamic range are presented. The techniques are applied to two filter implementations: a 20MHz second order tunable filter and a 30MHz fifth order elliptical low-pass filter. Simulation and experimental results show a spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) of 65dB with a power consumption of 85mW. In a figure of merit where SFDR is normalized to the power consumption, this filter is 6dB above the trend-line of recently reported continuous time filters.

An integrated full-field study was conducted on the Monument Northwest field located in Kansas. The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility and profitability of a waterflood using numerical simulation. Outlined in this thesis is a methodology for a deterministic approach. The data history of the wells in the field beginning from spud date were gathered and analyzed into information necessary for building an upscaled reservoir model of the field. Means of increasing production and recovery from the field via a waterflood was implemented. Usually, at the time of such a redevelopment plan or scheme to improve field performance, a tangible amount of information about the reservoir is already known. Therefore it is very useful incorporating knowledge about the field in predicting future behavior of the field under certain conditions. The need for an integrated reservoir study cannot be over-emphasized. Information known about the reservoir from different segments of the field exploration and production are coupled and harnessed into developing a representative 3D reservoir model of the field. An integrated approach is used in developing a 3D reservoir model of the Monument Northwest field and a waterflood is evaluated and analyzed by a simulation of the reservoir model. From the results of the reservoir simulation it was concluded that the waterflood project for the Monument Northwest field is a viable and economic project.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2000. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-106).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 122-130). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.