Audio networking is a rapidly increasing field which introduces new exiting possibilities for the professional audio industry. When well established, it will drastically change the way live sound systems will be designed, built and used. Today's networks have enough bandwidth that enables them to transfer hundreds of high quality audio channels, replacing analogue cables and intricate installations of conventional analogue audio systems. Currently there are many systems in the market that distribute audio over networks for live music and studio applications, but this technology is not yet widespread. The reasons that audio networks are not as popular as it was expected are mainly the lack of interoperability between different vendors and still, the need of a wired network infrastructure. Therefore, the development of a wireless digital audio networking system based on the existing widespread wireless technology is a major research challenge. However, the ΙΕΕΕ 802.11 standard, which is the primary wireless networking technology today, appears to be unable to handle this type of application despite the large bandwidth available. Apart from the well-known drawbacks of interference and security, encountered in all wireless data transmission systems, the way that ΙΕΕΕ 802.11 arbitrates the wireless channel access causes significantly high collision rate, low throughput and long overall delay. The aim of this research was to identify the causes that impede this technology to support real time wireless audio networks and to propose possible solutions. Initially the standard was tested thoroughly using a data traffic model which emulates a multi-channel real time audio environment. Broadcasting was found to be the optimal communication method, in order to satisfy the intolerance of live audio, when it comes to delay. The results were analysed and the drawback was identified in the hereditary weakness of the IEEE 802.11 standard to manage broadcasting, from multiple sources in the same network. To resolve this, a series of modifications was proposed for the Medium Access Control algorithm of the standard. First, the extended use of the "CTS-to-Self" control message was introduced in order to act as a protection mechanism in broadcasting, similar to the RTC/CTS protection mechanism, already used in unicast transmission. Then, an alternative "random backoff" method was proposed taking into account the characteristics of live audio wireless networks. For this method a novel "Exclusive Backoff Number Allocation" (EBNA) algorithm was designed aiming to minimize collisions. The results showed that significant improvement in throughput can be achieved using the above modifications but further improvement was needed, when it comes to delay, in order to reach the internationally accepted standards for real time audio delivery. Thus, a traffic adaptive version of the EBNA algorithm was designed. This algorithm monitors the traffic in the network, calculates the probability of collision and accordingly switches between classic IEEE 802.11 MAC and EBNA which is applied only between active stations, rather than to all stations in the network. All amendments were designed to operate as an alternative mode of the existing technology rather as an independent proprietary system. For this reason interoperability with classic IEEE 802.11 was also tested and analysed at the last part of this research. The results showed that the IEEE 802.11 standard, suitably modified, is able to support multiple broadcasting transmission and therefore it can be the platform upon which, the future wireless audio networks will be developed.

The contributions of this thesis include designing and analyzing novel medium access control (MAC) protocols for two types of wireless networks: (1) duty-cycling cooperative multi-hop wireless sensor networks (MHWSNs), and (2) single-hop Terahertz networks (TeraNets). For MHWSNs, the specific contributions are two new scalable MAC protocols for alleviating the “energy-hole” problem with cooperative transmission (CT). The energy-hole is known to limit the life of battery-powered MHWSNs. The hole occurs when nodes near the Sink exhaust their energy first because their load is heavier: they must transmit packets they originate and relay packets from and to other nodes farther from the Sink. Effective techniques for extending lifetime in MHWSNs include duty cycling (DC) and, more recently introduced, cooperative transmission (CT) range extension. However, a scalable MAC protocol has not been presented that combines both. From the MAC perspective, conducting CT in an asynchronous duty-cycling network is extremely challenging. On the one hand, the source, the cooperators and the destination need to reach consensus about a wake-up period, during which CT can be performed. This dissertation develops novel MAC protocols that solve the challenge and enable CT in an asynchronous duty-cycling network. On the other hand, the question arises, “Does the energy cost of the MAC cancel out the lifetime benefits of CT range extension?” We show that CT still gives as much as 200% increase in lifetime, in spite of the MAC overhead. The second contribution of this dissertation is a comprehensive analytical framework for MHWSNs. The network performance of a MHWSN is a complex function of the traffic volume, routing protocol, MAC technique, and sensors' harvested energy if sensors are energy-harvesting (EH) enabled. The optimum performance provides a benchmark for heuristic routing and MAC protocols. However, there does not exist such an optimization framework that is able to capture all of these protocol aspects. The problems and performance metrics of non-EH networks and EH networks are different. Because the non-EH nodes depend on a battery, a suitable performance metric is the lifetime, defined as the number of packets delivered upon the first or a portion of nodes' death. Thus, the lifetime is governed by the absorbing states in a controlled dynamic system with finite decision horizon. On the other hand, the lifetime of an EH network is theoretically infinite unless the sensors are broken or destroyed. Therefore, an infinite horizon problem is formulated towards the performance of EH networks. The proposed model departs significantly from past analyses for single-hop networks that do not capture routing and past analyses for multi-hop networks that miss MAC aspects. To our knowledge, this is the first work to model the optimal performance of MHWSNs, by jointly considering MAC layer link admission, routing queuing, energy evolution, and cooperative transmission. The third contribution of this dissertation is a novel MAC protocol for Terahertz (THz) Band wireless networks, which captures the peculiarities of the THz channel and takes advantage of large antenna arrays with fast beam steering capabilities. Communication in THz Band (0.1-10THz) is envisioned as a key wireless technology in the next decade to provide Terabits-per-second links, however, the enabling technology is still in its infancy. Existing MAC protocols designed for classical wireless networks that provide Megabits-per-second to Gigabits-per-second do not scale to THz networks, because they do not capture the peculiarities of the THz Band, e.g., the very high molecular absorption loss or the very high reflection loss at THz Band frequencies. In addition, to overcome the high path loss and extend communication range, the proposed MAC design takes advantage of fast beam steering capabilities provided by the large antenna arrays, in particular, beam-switching at the pulse level.

In this thesis we have focused in the wireless environment and how to run voice application over it. Conducive environment that makes it possible for the voice services to run in wireless is necessary. As we know this well that wireless is a contemporary technology due to it low cost and its effectiveness, and one major advantage of it is the mobility that is one fell free to move anywhere but have the access to the resource. So this makes wireless networks of great value, we in this thesis have focused on wireless LAN’s. In second part of the thesis we have shed some light on the VoIP showing how it works in the wireless environment. Analysis phase is relatively more important phase then the previous section which shows issues or hindrances in carrying voice over wireless environment. This analysis shows that these issues still prevails and should be addresses and the corresponding results are also discussed and by looking at those results we have derived a summery out of it. Next chapter we firstly tried to explain why we have chosen specific protocols and then showing some graphical representation measurements that are to address the problem based on the work done. We tried to evaluate EDCF and DCF as these play important role in handling real time applications like voice. After that we proposed a scheme through which these effects can be minimized and to enhance the method is necessary to avoid the issues still in effect. / Thesis is Part for Master program in Electrical Engineering with Emphasis on Telecommunication(2007-2009).We have had a very nice time doing this thesis as there was alot of learning. Our examinator was allways there to help us, we are thankfull to Richard for his endless support.

<p>This master thesis has been carried out on behalf of Volvo Construction Equipment. A front frame of an</p><p>articulated hauler should be analysed according to the Finite Element Method and vibration tests should be</p><p>made. The results from the experimental tests should be correlated with the analytical test results here using</p><p>MAC-values. These values will show if the FE-model represents the physical structure correctly.</p><p>Visualisations are made on both the experimental and analytical results to get a better understanding about the</p><p>eigenmodes of the frame.</p><p>The final results showed that the FE-model was not a match to the physical structure which the experimental</p><p>tests were made on. It should be noted that the final result only states the present situation. The CAD-model had</p><p>not been completed when this thesis was performed and therefore some deviation occurred in the results. Some</p><p>actions are needed in order to reach a better result and they are stated in this report. When they are made, the</p><p>results can be improved by following the work that has been done in this master thesis.</p>

Trends in wireless networks are increasingly pointing towards a future with multi-hop networks deployed in multi-channel environments. In this thesis, we present the design for iMAC—a protocol targeted at medium access control in such environments. iMAC uses control packets on a common control channel to faciliate a three-way handshake between the sender and receiver for every packet transmission. This handshake enables the sender and receiver to come to consensus on a channel to use for data transmission and also signals to neighboring nodes about the contention on that channel. iMAC then uses a mechanism similar to 802.11 for data communication. Our evaluation of iMAC shows that it provides significant gains in throughput in comparison with uninformed channel selection, especially when contention for channel bandwidth is neither too low nor too high; intelligent selection of channels by iMAC is necessary to harness available bandwidth resources in the presence of medium levels of contention. / Graduation date: 2011

IEEE 802.11n Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) employ Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO), which significantly boosts the raw data rate at the Physical layer (PHY). But the potential of enhancing Medium Access Control (MAC) layer efficiencies by MIMO is still in its early stage and is the aim of the research in this thesis. Many existing works in this field mainly employ distributed MIMO spatial multiplexing/Multi-User Detection (MUD) technique and stream sharing to enable multiple simultaneous transmissions. Most works require synchronization among multiple transmissions, split the channel, and aim for single-hop networks. In this thesis, a novel Hybrid Carrier Sense (HCS) framework is proposed, mainly at the MAC layer to exploit the power of MIMO. HCS senses the channel availability jointly by the virtual carrier sense and physical carrier sense. HCS does not require synchronization among nodes; each node independently and locally determines when to start its transmission. HCS not only shares the channel, but also exploits the bi-directional handshakes of the wireless transmissions and increases the number of simultaneous stream transmissions. For a network with M antennas in each node, HCS can accommodate 2x(M-1) streams instead of M streams achieved by all other existing works. Moreover, HCS is aimed for multi-hop wireless ad hoc networks, in which the hidden terminal, exposed terminal, and deafness problems greatly degrade network performance. The HCS framework incorporates solutions to these problems. HCS is implemented in an NS2 network simulator and the performance evaluation shows that HCS significantly outperforms MIMO-enabled IEEE 802.11 (in which MIMO is only used for enhancing the raw data rate in the physical layer), resulting in higher aggregate throughput, packet delivery ratio and fairness in multi-hop wireless ad hoc networks. The HCS framework will be in wide use in the future generation of wireless networks and opens up more research possibilities. Some ideas in the HCS framework can be applied not only for MIMO, but also for many other techniques surveyed in this thesis; or we may combine them with HCS to further boost the network performance. / Thesis (Ph.D, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2013-10-15 21:46:15.983

The research initiatives addressed in this thesis are geared towards improving the performance of passive optical networks through the development of advanced dynamic bandwidth allocation protocols. In particular, the aim of the research undertaken is to enhance the quality of service offered by standard passive optical networks with reduced network costs. To that extent, a dynamic multi-wavelength protocol has been developed to increase the network upstream bandwidth and introduce multiple service levels to a fibre to the home-based giga-bit passive optical network. Simulation results have confirmed the reduction of the mean packet delay by adjusting the ITU-T standard G984 giga-bit passive optical network frame format by means of the introduction of extended wavelength band overlay based on the ITU-T Coarse- Wavelength Division Multiplexing grid to support the multi-wavelength functionality. To evaluate the multi-wavelength upstream operation of the newly implemented models in OPNET, 2-dimensional Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation algorithms have been introduced to manage the network resources in both the time and wavelength domains. Furthermore, the enhanced traffic allocation among the supported wavelengths in new protocol confirmed a performance improvement in the network total capacity and the mean packet delay, which demonstrates the network reliability and improves the quality of the provided service according to the subscriber service level agreement, with a minimum guaranteed bandwidth of 100 Mbit/s to fulfil applications and associated bandwidth requirements for the next generation access network.

In computer networks, congestion is a condition in which one or more egressinterfaces are offered more packets than are forwarded at any given instant [1]. In wireless sensor networks, congestion can cause a number of problems including packet loss, lower throughput and poor energy efficiency. These problems can potentially result in a reduced deployment lifetime and underperforming applications. Moreover, idle radio listening is a major source of energy consumption therefore low-power wireless devices must keep their radio transceivers off to maximise their battery lifetime. In order to minimise energy consumption and thus maximise the lifetime of wireless sensor networks, the research community has made significant efforts towards power saving medium access control protocols with Radio Duty Cycling. However, careful study of previous work reveals that radio duty cycle schemes are often neglected during the design and evaluation of congestion control algorithms. This thesis argues that the presence (or lack) of radio duty cycle can drastically influence the performance of congestion control mechanisms. To investigate if previous findings regarding congestion control are still applicable in IPv6 over low power wireless personal area and duty cycling networks; some of the most commonly used congestion detection algorithms are evaluated through simulations. The research aims to develop duty cycle aware congestion control schemes for IPv6 over low power wireless personal area networks. The proposed schemes must be able to maximise the networks goodput, while minimising packet loss, energy consumption and packet delay. Two congestion control schemes, namely DCCC6 (Duty Cycle-Aware Congestion Control for 6LoWPAN Networks) and CADC (Congestion Aware Duty Cycle MAC) are proposed to realise this claim. DCCC6 performs congestion detection based on a dynamic buffer. When congestion occurs, parent nodes will inform the nodes contributing to congestion and rates will be readjusted based on a new rate adaptation scheme aiming for local fairness. The child notification procedure is decided by DCCC6 and will be different when the network is duty cycling. When the network is duty cycling the child notification will be made through unicast frames. On the contrary broadcast frames will be used for congestion notification when the network is not duty cycling. Simulation and test-bed experiments have shown that DCCC6 achieved higher goodput and lower packet loss than previous works. Moreover, simulations show that DCCC6 maintained low energy consumption, with average delay times while it achieved a high degree of fairness. CADC, uses a new mechanism for duty cycle adaptation that reacts quickly to changing traffic loads and patterns. CADC is the first dynamic duty cycle pro- tocol implemented in Contiki Operating system (OS) as well as one of the first schemes designed based on the arbitrary traffic characteristics of IPv6 wireless sensor networks. Furthermore, CADC is designed as a stand alone medium access control scheme and thus it can easily be transfered to any wireless sensor network architecture. Additionally, CADC does not require any time synchronisation algorithms to operate at the nodes and does not use any additional packets for the exchange of information between the nodes (For example no overhead). In this research, 10000 simulation experiments and 700 test-bed experiments have been conducted for the evaluation of CADC. These experiments demonstrate that CADC can successfully adapt its cycle based on traffic patterns in every traffic scenario. Moreover, CADC consistently achieved the lowest energy consumption, very low packet delay times and packet loss, while its goodput performance was better than other dynamic duty cycle protocols and similar to the highest goodput observed among static duty cycle configurations.

In a collaboration between Kolmården Zoo and Linköping University, supported by the Norrköping municipality’s fund for research and innovation, mobility measurements have been performed inside the zoo. These measurements have been done by six WiFi sniffers collecting anonymised MAC addresses from the visitors smartphones. The aim of this thesis is to analyse these data to understand visitor flows in the park and other statistics using a model based mobility analysis. The work implies that one can make a rather good prediction of the geographical visitor distribution using this equipment and statistical models. / I ett samarbete mellan Kolmården djurpark och Linköpings universitet, sponsrat av Norrköpingskommuns fond för forskning och utveckling, har rörelsemätningar gjorts inuti parken. Mätningarna har utgjorts av sex WiFi-sniffers som samlar in anonymiserade MAC-adresser från besökares smartphones. Målet med detta arbete är att analysera denna data för att förstå besökarflöden i parken och annan statistik genom att använda en modellbaserad rörelseanalys. Arbetet visar att man med denna utrsutning och statistiska metoder kan skapa en god prediktion av hur den geografiska besökardistributionen ser ut över tid.

Thesis (MBA) --University of Limpopo, 2010 / This research report is based on integration of strategy formulation and implementation in the Greater Sekhukhune District Department of Basic Education, Limpopo Province. The purpose of this research is to investigate the key drivers in the formulation and implementation of strategies and how can they be integrated to achieve the formulated goals and objectives of Greater Sekhukhune District Department of Basic Education. This report deals only with qualitative research method. The major findings of the study are that there are key drivers of strategy formulation and key drivers of strategy implementation and their outcomes. The key drivers of strategy formulation are the vision and mission statements, long-term objectives, and generation and selection of grand strategies; whereas the key drivers of strategy implementation are leadership, organizational culture and organizational structure .The integration of these key drivers is essential for the implementation of strategies, leading to improved service delivery to various stakeholders. The report concludes that in order to approach strategy formulation and strategy implementation in an integrated manner, the following should take place : (1) managers and staff members who are responsible for strategy implementation should also be involved in strategy formulation processes ; (2)organizational culture should be changed to create a conducive environment for the managers and the employees to be motivated to render quality services at service points ; (3) leadership and management to guide vision and mission of the district; (4) organizational structure to ‘fit’ implementation of strategies for efficiency and effectiveness of the integration of strategy formulation and implementation to achieve formulated goals and objectives.