The manipulation of photons, especially the control of spontaneous emission, has become a core area of photonics research in the 21st century. One of the key challenges is the control of the broadband emission profile of thermal emitters. Recently, attention has focused on resonant nanophotonic structures to control the thermal emission with most of the work concentrating on the mid-infrared wavelength range and/or based on metallic nanostructures. However, the realisation of a high temperature, single wavelength, narrowband and efficient thermal source, remains a challenge. In this project, four individual nanophotonic resonant structures are presented for the control of thermal emission, all operating in the near-infrared (≈ 1.5 μm) wavelength range. The work is split over two different emission materials; gold and doped silicon. While I present two successful designs of narrowband thermal emitters from gold, the main backbone of the research is concentrated on doped silicon as the emission material. By combining the weak broadband absorption of doped silicon with a photonic crystal resonator, resonantly enhanced narrowband absorption is achieved. Using Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation which equates the absorptivity and emissivity, narrowband absorption leads to narrowband emission, which is the underlying principle used throughout the work presented in this thesis to achieve narrowband thermal emission. One common oversight in many of the presented thermal emitter designs is the angular emission dependence, i.e. how the emission wavelength behaves away from surface normal. Typically, since the majority of the devices are based on periodic structures, the resonant emission wavelength changes with emission angle, which is not ideal. Here, the angular sensitivity is considered and addressed, by constructing a device that is based on localised confined resonances and not on propagating resonances, it is possible to achieve a truly monochromatic source i.e. one with the same emission wavelength in all directions, all the way up to an angle of 90°. Finally, the devices presented here demonstrate that weak absorption together with photonic resonances can be used as a wavelength-selection mechanism for thermal emitters, both for the enhancement and the suppression of emission away from the resonant wavelength.

The phase and amplitude gradient estimator (PAGE) method has proven successful in improving the accuracy of measured energy quantities over the p-p method, which has traditionally been used, in several applications. One advantage of the PAGE method is the use of phase unwrapping, which allows for increased measurement bandwidth above the spatial Nyquist frequency. However, phase unwrapping works best for broadband sources in free-field environments with high coherence. Narrowband sources often do not have coherent phase information over a sufficient bandwidth for a phase unwrapping algorithm to unwrap properly. In fact, phase unwrapping processing can cause significant error when there is no coherent signal near and above the spatial Nyquist frequency. However, for signals at any frequencies up to the spatial Nyquist frequency, the PAGE method provides correct intensity measurements regardless of the bandwidth of the signal. This is an improved bandwidth over the traditional method. For narrowband sources above the spatial Nyquist frequency, additional information is necessary for the PAGE method to provide accurate acoustic intensity. With sufficient bandwidth and a coherence of at least 0.1 at the spatial Nyquist frequency, a relatively narrowband source above the spatial Nyquist frequency can be unwrapped accurately. One way of using extra information, called the extrapolated PAGE method, uses the phase of a tone below the spatial Nyquist frequency and an assumption of a propagating field, and therefore linear phase, to extrapolate the phase above the spatial Nyquist frequency. Also, within certain angular and amplitude constraints, low-level broadband noise can be added to the field near a source emitting a narrowband signal above the spatial Nyquist frequency. The low-level additive broadband noise can then provide enough phase information for the phase to be correct at the frequencies of the narrowband signal. All of these methods have been shown to work in a free-field environment.

Most existing telephone networks transmit narrowband coded speech which has been bandlimited to 4 kHz. Compared with normal speech, this speech has a muffled quality and reduced intelligibility, which is particularly noticeable in sounds such as /s/, /f/ and /sh/. Speech which has been bandlimited to 8 kHz is often coded for this reason, but this requires an increase in the bit rate. Wideband enhancement is a scheme that adds a synthesized highband signal to narrowband speech to produce a higher quality wideband speech signal. The synthesized highband signal is based entirely on information contained in the narrowband speech, and is thus achieved at zero increase in the bit rate from a coding perspective. Wideband enhancement can function as a post-processor to any narrowband telephone receiver, or alternatively it can be combined with any narrowband speech coder to produce a very low bit rate wideband speech coder. Applications include higher quality mobile, teleconferencing, and internet telephony. This thesis examines in detail each component of the wideband enhancement scheme: highband excitation synthesis, highband envelope estimation, and narrowband-highband envelope continuity. Objective and subjective test measures are formulated to assess existing and new methods for all components, and the likely limitations to the performance of wideband enhancement are also investigated. A new method for highband excitation synthesis is proposed that uses a combination of sinusoidal transform coding-based excitation and random excitation. Several new techniques for highband spectral envelope estimation are also developed. The performance of these techniques is shown to be approaching the limit likely to be achieved. Subjective tests demonstrate that wideband speech synthesized using these techniques has higher quality than the input narrowband speech. Finally, a new paradigm for very low bit rate wideband speech coding is presented in which the quality of the wideband enhancement scheme is improved further by allocating a very small bitstream for highband envelope and gain coding. Thus, this thesis demonstrates that wideband speech can be communicated at or near the bit rate of a narrowband speech coder.

Ce travail de thèse s'intéresse à la conférence audio en Voix sur IP et plus précisément à son enrichissement au travers de l'amélioration de la qualité (bande élargie et traitement d'amélioration) et de la spatialisation sonore. Cette évolution de la conférence audio sera examinée à la lumière des architectures centralisée et distribuée de la conférence sur IP standard. L'objectif est d'étudier des solutions en termes d'architecture intégrant la spatialisation et des extensions pour gérer et contrôler cette spatialisation. Il conviendra aussi d'effectuer les tests montrant les qualités audio et de spatialisation résultantes. Notre première contribution a été de proposer des architectures permettant d'allier la conférence audio en voix sur IP, les méthodes de spatialisation retenues, les terminaux ou pont de conférence ainsi que les traitements d'améliorations connus (annulation d'écho ou de bruit, etc.). Nous avons montré qu'il semblait difficile par exemple d'utiliser conjointement la spatialisation et la commutation de flux. Par contre la solution utilisant un pont mixeur ne présentait pas d'inconvénient pour inclure la spatialisation tout en conservant l'ensemble des traitements de qualité. Par cette configuration, nous garantissons en plus l'interopérabilité avec les réseaux voix existants. Les solutions distribuées sont tout autant réalisables dans la théorie mais pâtissent actuellement des limites des terminaux. Pour une interopérabilité avec les autres réseaux voix, il est en plus nécessaire d'avoir une entité de mixage pour créer un contenu monophonique. Par la suite, nous avons souligné les avantages et les inconvénients de l'utilisation de pont de conférence de type mixeur et de type répliquant pour proposer une solution de pont mixte. Cette solution fonctionne tantôt en mode répliquant, tantôt en mode mixeur suivant les capacités des terminaux. Par ailleurs, nous avons validé une méthode de réduction de la bande passante d'un pont répliquant vers un terminal, basée sur le masquage auditif. La seconde contribution de nos travaux consiste en de nouvelles solutions protocolaires adaptées à la gestion et au contrôle de la spatialisation. Nous avons donc défini les extensions nécessaires à la gestion et au transport du son spatialisé. Nous avons tout d'abord défini les spécifications permettant de commander un positionnement de locuteurs dans une conférence audio spatialisée. Nous avons cherché à présenter toutes les solutions possibles pour les gestions automatique ou manuelle. Dans le cas de la spatialisation sur un pont de conférence, nous avons ainsi souligné le fait que cette gestion ne pouvait se faire par l'intermédiaire du protocole SIP, car ce n'est pas le rôle de ce dernier de transporter dans ses messages des informations sur les contenus ou des commandes de spatialisation. Nous avons proposé une solution basée sur ce qui se fait dans les conférences audio standard : une solution de web-pilotage certes propriétaire à chaque fournisseur de services mais en cohérence avec la gestion des protocoles de Voix sur IP. Pour la conférence avec un pont mixeur, nous avons établi les paramètres du protocole de signalisation SIP nécessaires au transport de flux asymétriques tout en garantissant une interopérabilité avec les terminaux existants. La nécessité de transporter ces flux asymétriques est due à notre hypothèse de départ concernant l'équipement des terminaux : prise de son monophonique et restitution sur casque ou deux haut-parleurs. Notre troisième contribution s'exprime au travers d'une campagne de tests pour valider nos solutions en termes de qualité audio et de qualité de spatialisation. Ces tests nous ont amené à définir des nouveaux protocoles adaptés à ces architectures audio spatialisées. Nous justifions dans un premier temps nos choix de codeurs et dans un second temps nos choix de tests. Nous avons montré dans un premier temps que les codeurs n'étaient pas perçus de la même façon suivant que l'on écoute en écoute monaurale ou en écoute diotique. Il ressort de ces tests que les codeurs G.711 (PCM) et G.722 (ADPCM) sont les plus adaptés à la conférence audio centralisée avec une qualité jugée nettement supérieure aux codeurs CELP. Ces deux codeurs sont de plus de faible complexité, robustes au transcodage, à la perte de trames, au transport de contenu binaural et au transport de contenus multi-locuteur. Quant aux codeurs CELP, ils sont à utiliser uniquement lorsque les contraintes de débit sont fortes. Concernant la conférence audio distribuée wideband, les codeurs AMR-WB à 23.85 kbits/s, G.729.1 à 32 kbits/s et G.722 à 64 kbits/s semblent les plus adaptés quelle que soit la perte de trames. Ils ont une qualité jugée équivalente. En narrowband, les codeurs G.711, AMR à 12.2 kbits/s et G.729.1 à 12 kbits/s obtiennent les meilleures notes de qualité, quelle que soit la perte de trames. Au final, dans tous les cas distribués, le choix du codeur dépendra des contraintes de l'application suivant un compromis complexité/débit.

A new class of micromachined devices called thin-film piezoelectric-on-substrate (TPoS) resonators is introduced, and the performance of these devices in RF and sensor applications is studied. TPoS resonators benefit from high electromechanical coupling of piezoelectric transduction mechanism and superior acoustic properties of a substrate such as single crystal silicon. Therefore, the motional impedance of these resonators are significantly smaller compared to typical capacitively-transduced counterparts while they exhibit relatively high quality factor and power handling and can be operated in air. The combination of all these features suggests TPoS resonators as a viable alternative for current acoustic devices. In this thesis, design and fabrication methods to realize dispersed-frequency lateral-extensional TPoS resonators are discussed. TPoS devices are fabricated on both silicon-on-insulator and thin-film nanocrystalline diamond substrates. The performance of these resonators in simple and low-power oscillators is measured and compared. Furthermore, a unique coupling technique for implementation of high frequency filters is introduced in which dual resonance modes of a single resonant structure are coupled. The measured results of this work show that these filters are suitable candidates for single-chip implementation of multiple-frequency narrow-band filters with high out-of-band rejection in a small footprint.

The diploma´s thesis is focussed on principles and characteristics of Powerline Communication. Powerline communication is a technology using powerlines for transmitting information. Its narrowband variant is developing in the field of remote data reading nowadays. There is a lot of solutions that need to be tested and simulated prior ro putting into practice. This thesis deals with preparing the OMNeT++ simulation enviroment for purposes of simulating the narrowband service PLC.

Abstract The value of wearable market is booming, especially in the healthcare application segment. This segment is driven by an increasing need for regular monitoring and early diagnosis of patients with growing prevalence of chronic diseases. Wireless communications worn in the close proximity of the body, the variety of applications, and their requirements set design considerations and challenges. In addition to the technical requirements, coexistence with adjacent wireless body area networks (WBANs) and other wireless systems need to be taken into account. A WBAN system needs to be highly reliable, low power, fast, and interference-immune. This thesis studies the performance of two different PHY layer implementations in interfered fading channels. The systems are the frequency modulated ultra wideband (FM-UWB), defined in the IEEE 802.15.6 standard, and narrowband SmartBAN physical layer. The performance of the systems was analyzed by using software simulators developed in Matlab. The author developed the SmartBAN simulator for the ETSI Technical Committee (TC) SmartBAN to study the performance of the new SmartBAN system. This is the first physical layer performance study of the SmartBAN system. In addition, the open literature does not offer similar results on the FM-UWB as presented in this thesis. Based on the results, it can be concluded that the FM-UWB is performing well in situations where high reliability and high interference tolerance is needed. In addition, the simplicity of the FM-UWB transceiver makes it more suitable than the direct sequence UWB (DS-UWB) for applications with data rates of hundreds of kbps. SmartBAN has the best performance in cases where more relaxed requirements for reliability and interference tolerance can be applied. Nevertheless, it became obvious that both systems need proper coexistence and interference mitigation mechanisms to ensure reliability in all scenarios. / Tiivistelmä Puettavien laitteiden markkina-arvo on voimakkaassa kasvussa erityisesti terveydenhuollon sovellusalueella. Tämän sovellusalueen kiihdyttimenä toimii yhä suurempi tarve potilaiden kunnon jatkuvalle tarkkailulle sekä kroonisille taudeille alttiimpien potilaiden varhaiselle diagnosoinnille. Langattoman kehoverkon (WBAN) suunnittelun suurimpia haasteita ovat langaton tiedonsiirto kehon läheisyydessä, erilaiset sovellustyypit sekä niiden vaatimukset. Teknisten vaatimusten lisäksi on myös huomioitava rinnakkaiset kehoverkot sekä muut langattomat järjestelmät. Kehoverkkojärjestelmän on oltava todella luotettava, matalatehoinen, nopea ja häiriösietoinen. Väitöskirjassa tutkitaan kahta kehoverkon fyysisen kerroksen toteutusta häipyvissä ja häirityissä kanavissa. Nämä toteutukset ovat IEEE 802.15.6 -standardissa määritelty taajuusmoduloitu ultralaajakaista (FM-UWB) sekä kapeakaistainen SmartBAN. Järjestelmien suorituskykyä analysoitiin Matlab-ohjelmistosimulaattoreiden avulla. Työssä kehitettiin SmartBAN-simulaattori ETSI Technical Committee (TC) SmartBAN -työryhmälle järjestelmän suorityskykytutkimukseen. Tässä työssä esitetään SmartBAN-järjestelmän fyysisen kerroksen suorituskykytulokset, jotka ovat ensimmäiset laatuaan. Lisäksi kirjallisuudesta ei löydy vastaavia tuloksia FM-UWB:n osalta, kuten tässä työssä on esitetty. Tuloksien pohjalta voidaan päätellä, että FM-UWB suoriutuu hyvin tilanteissa, joissa vaaditaan suurta luotettavuutta sekä suurta häiriönsietokykyä. Lisäksi yksinkertainen lähetin-vastaanotinrakenne tekee siitä kiinnostavamman vaihtoehdon kuin suorahajotettu UWB (DS-UWB) sovelluksille, jotka vaativat satojen kbps:n tiedonsiirtonopeutta. SmartBAN toimii hyvin tilanteissa, joissa näistä vaatimuksista voidaan hieman joustaa. Kuitenkin on selvää, että molemmat järjestelmät tarvitsevat sopivan rinnakkais- ja häiriönvaimennustekniikan taatakseen luotettavuuden kaikissa tapauksissa.

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This master's thesis deals with a narrowband power line communication technology (PLC) and focuses on the potential use in the sensor networks. This thesis addresses both the structure and basic properties of PLC standard and possible use of this application in practice. The main part of this work is implementation of the PLC networks with IC ST7570 of STMicroelectronics. As an example of practical use of PLC technology, this network is connected to the computer where the data from the sensor (meter) connected to a PLC modem, stored in a database using a PHP script as presented by the Internet. Problem solving in this thesis focuses primarily on the simplicity and universality of the resulting applications.

This semestral thesis focuses on the circuit design of the repeater for PLC communication in order to achieve greater distance in communication. It can also serve as a bridge for a separate modem device power grid. In this work we discuss the involvement of individual assembly parts repeater and proposed method of connection.