Wireless cellular networks, which serve a large area by geographically partitioning users, suffer from interference from adjacent cells transmitting in the same frequency band. This interference can theoretically be completely mitigated via transceiver cooperation in both the uplink and downlink. Optimally, base stations serving the users can utilize high-capacity backbones. to jointly transmit and receive all the data in the network across all the base stations. In reality, the backbone connecting the base stations is of finite capacity, limiting joint processing to localized clusters. Even with joint processing on a small scale, the overhead involved in sharing data between multiple base stations is large and time-sensitive. Other forms of cooperation have been shown to require less overhead while exhibiting much of the performance benefit from interference mitigation. One particular strategy, called interference alignment (IA), has been shown to exploit all the spatial degrees of freedom in the channel provided data cannot be shared among base stations. Interference alignment was developed for the multi-user interference channel to exploit independent channel observations when all of the links in the network have high signal-to-noise ratio, and assumes all the nodes utilizing the physical resources are participating in the cooperative protocol. When some or all of the links are at moderate signal-to-noise ratio, or when there are non-cooperating users, IA is suboptimal. In this dissertation, I take three approaches to addressing the drawbacks of IA. First, I develop cooperative transmission strategies that outperform IA in various operationg regimes, including at low-to-moderate SNR and in the presence of non-cooperating users. These strategies have the same complexity and overhead as IA. I then develop algorithms for network partitioning by directly considering the overhead of cooperative strategies. Partitioning balances the capacity gains of cooperation with the overhead required to achieve them. Finally, I develop the shared relaying model, which is equivalent to the interference channel but with a single multi-antenna relay mediating communications between transceivers. The shared relay requires less overhead and cooperation than interference alignment but requires added infrastructure. It is shown to outperform conventional relaying strategies in cellular networks with a fixed number of total relay antennas. / text

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M.Ing. / The use of electronically controlled electrical power equipment, specifically power converters, has rapidly increased in recent years. It has subsequently been found that different electrical equipment, placed or working in close proximity, can negatively influences each other's performance. The degradation in performance could be attributed to mutual electromagnetic interference (EMI). Traditional methods of testing conducted EMI usually follow a black box approach with additional filter elements being added to the converter input to bring it within specification. This study focuses on the conducted electromagnetic interference of a specially built experimental boost converter that would typically be used as a preregulator to improve the power factor. The converter circuit was constructed in a number of functional circuit sections in order to assess an individual section's contribution to the emission and propagation of conducted EMI throughout the converter. The operational behaviour of the converter can thus be systematically studied and improved before additional filter components are added. The measurement standards require that conducted EMI measurements are made at the power source input of the equipment under test. These measurement techniques do not allow a systematic tracing of the propagation of conducted EMI throughout a converter circuit. Since no frequency spectrum measurement is available at any other measurement point in the converter. Part of this thesis was thus devoted to the development of an enhancement to current measurement techniques that enables EMI frequency measurements throughout a converter. A special EMI probe was developed for this purpose. Using this EMI probe conducted EMI propagation can be traced from its source throughout a converter to the power input. An analytical analysis of the boost converter's behaviour, with emphasis placed on its switching transients, was initially undertaken. This was continued with PSPICE® circuit simulation. Various aspects of the converters operational behaviour were considered. The simulation results suggested modifications to the converter switch circuit, which would improve the boost converter's conducted EMI characteristics. These were then evaluated with corresponding practical measurements carried out on the boost converter. The practical results confirm that the converters switching behaviour can be directly related to the parasitic and other components. Improvement of the converter switching behaviour lead to an improvement of the conducted EMI emissions of the boost converter.

The diploma thesis deals with the influence of magnetic and electromagnetic fields on signals transmitted by optical fibers. Subsequently, the results of individual measured values are evaluated and analyzed, which were measured using an interferometer and a polarimeter. The first part deals with the theoretical analysis of the principles of interference and polarization of light. It further explains the basic operation of the above-mentioned devices as well as the immunity of the optical fiber to EMI. The second part of the work presents selected devices and technologies that were used as a source of electromagnetic or magnetic radiation. Subsequently, individual phenomena are plotted both in the course of time and with the help of a spectrogram or Poincaré sphere. From the measured results we can conclude that the commonly available technologies, which were selected for the diploma thesis, will not cause greater negative problems to the signal on measured frequencies in optical fibre, that could degrade the transmitted signal.

Recent literature suggests that typical forms of encoding (i.e., elaboration) are obsolete as compared to rating words based on survival relevance (Nairne, Thompson, and Pandeirada, 2007). Information encoded using survival ratings have produced superior recall despite manipulations to quell its effect. The current study examined whether survival processing is protected against forgetting. Our results suggest that targets studied under survival processing are not immune from retrieval blocking and RI effects. No effects of survival processing were obtained.

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Yes / The quasi-orthogonal space time block coding (QO-STBC) over orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is investigated. Traditionally, QO-STBC does not achieve full diversity since the detection matrix of QO-STBC scheme is not a diagonal matrix. In STBC, the decoding matrix is a diagonal matrix which enables linear decoding whereas the decoding matrix in traditional QO-STBC does not enable linear decoding. In this paper it is shown that there are some interfering terms in terms of non-diagonal elements that result from the decoding process which limit the linear decoding. As a result, interference from the application of the QO-STBC decoding matrix depletes the performance of the scheme such that full diversity is not attained. A method of eliminating this interference in QO-STBC is investigated by nulling the interfering terms towards full diversity for an OFDM system. It was found that the interference reduction technique permits circa 2dB BER performance gain in QO-STBC. The theoretical and simulation results are presented, for both traditional QO-STBC and interference-free QO-STBC applying OFDM

Reproductive interference occurs when individuals direct sexual behaviours towards other species and this causes a reduction in the fitness of one or both of the participants. While initially considered to be little more than an aberration, reproductive interference is increasingly recognised, not just as a factor in determining species co-existence and community dynamics, but also as an opportunity to further our understanding of sexual selection. In this thesis I investigate the causes and consequences of reproductive interference between several species of true bugs (Order: Hemiptera) in the family Lygaeidae. These species have a polgynandrous mating system, in which both males and females mate multiple times. I found that the interspecific mating attempts often witnessed in these bugs is likely a consequence of this mating system, as potential cues for species discrimination, in the form of cuticular hydrocarbons, are available and can be utilised by the bugs in some contexts. This is further supported by the finding that pre-copulatory selection on factors such as diet and chemical protection are weak in these insects. Furthermore, my work highlights the context-dependant nature of both the fitness costs associated with reproductive interference, and also of the bugs' intra-specific behaviour. When housed in groups, female Lygaeus equestris did not show consistent fitness losses in response to harassment by either conspecific or heterospecific males, despite previous evidence showing that such males inflict costs on both egg production and longevity when interacting one-to-one. This, combined with the finding that male L. equestris alter their mate-guarding behaviour in the presence of other males, highlights the potential of behavioural flexibility to influence the outcome of inter-species interactions, and the importance of context when attempting to measure phenomena such as reproductive interference.

In this thesis, advanced interference management techniques are designed and evaluated for large-scale wireless networks with realistic assumptions, such as signal propagation loss, random node distribution and non-instantaneous channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). In the first part of the thesis, the Maddah-Ali and Tse (MAT) scheme for the 2-user and 2-antenna base station (BS) broadcast channel (BC) is generalised and optimised using the probabilistic-constrained optimisation approach. With consideration of the unknown channel entries, the proposed optimisation approach guarantees a high probability that the interference leakage power is below a certain threshold in the presence of minimum interference leakage receivers. The desired signal detectability is maximised at the same time and the closed-form solution for the receiving matrices is provided. Afterwards, the proposed optimisation approach is extended to the 3-user BC with 2-antenna BS. Simulation results show substantial sum rate gain over the MAT scheme, especially with a large spatial correlation at the receiver side. In the second part, the MAT scheme is extended to the time-correlated channels in three scenarios, in which degrees of freedom (DoF) regions as well as achievability schemes are studied: 1) 2-user interference channel (IC) using imperfect current and imperfect delayed CSIT; 2) K-user BC with K-antenna BS using imperfect current and perfect delayed CSIT; 3) 3-user BC with 2-antenna BS using imperfect current and perfect delayed CSIT. Notably, the consistency of the proposed DoF regions with the MAT scheme and the ZF beamforming schemes using perfect current CSIT consents to the optimality of the proposed achievability schemes. In the third part, the performance of the ZF receiver is evaluated in Poisson distributed wireless networks. Simple static networks as well as dynamic networks are studied. For the static network, transmission capacity is derived whereby the receiver can eliminate interference from nearby transmitters. It is shown that more spatial receive degrees of freedom (SRDoF) should be allocated to decode the desired symbol in the presence of low transmitter intensity. For the dynamic network, in which the data traffic is modelled by queueing theory, interference alignment (IA) beamforming is considered and implemented sequentially. Interestingly, transmitting one data stream achieves the highest area spectrum efficiency. Finally, a distance-dependent IA beamforming scheme is designed for a generic 2-tier heterogeneous wireless network. Second-tier transmitters partially align their interferences to the dominant cross-tier interference overheard by the receivers in the same cluster. Essentially, the proposed IA scheme compromises between enhancing the signal-to-interference ratio and increasing the multiplexing gain. It is shown that acquiring accurate distance knowledge brings insignificant throughput gain compared to statistical distance knowledge. Simulation results validate the derived expressions of success probabilities as well as throughput, and show that the distance-dependent IA scheme significantly outperforms the traditional IA scheme in the presence of path-loss effect.