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Energy harvesting (EH) nodes, which harvest energy from the environment in order to communicate over a wireless link, promise perpetual operation of wireless networks. The primary focus of the communication system design shifts from being as energy conservative as possible to judiciously handling the randomness in the energy harvesting process in order to enhance the system performance. This engenders a significant redesign of the physical and multiple access layers of communication. In this thesis, we address the problem of maximizing the throughput of a system that consists of rate-adaptive EH nodes that transmit data to a common sink node. We consider the practical case of discrete rate adaptation in which a node selects its transmission power from a set of finitely many rates and adjusts its transmit power to meet a bit error rate (BER) constraint. When there is only one EH node in the network, the problem involves determining the rate and power at which the node should transmit as a function of its channel gain and battery state. For the system with multiple EH nodes, which node should be selected also needs to be determined. We first prove that the energy neutrality constraint, which governs the operation of an EH node, is tighter than the average power constraint. We then propose a simple rate and power adaptation scheme for a system with a single EH node and prove that its throughput approaches the optimal throughput arbitrarily closely. We then arrive at the optimal selection and rate adaptation rules for a multi-EH node system that opportunistically selects at most one node to transmit at any time. The optimal scheme is shown to significantly outperform other ad hoc selection and transmission schemes. The effect of energy overheads, such as battery storage inefficiencies and the energy required for sensing and processing, on the transmission scheme and its overall throughput is also analytically characterized. Further, we show how the time and energy overheads incurred by the opportunistic selection process itself affect the adaptation and selection rules and the overall system throughput. Insights into the scaling behavior of the average system throughput in the asymptotic regime, in which the number of nodes tend to infinity, are also obtained. We also optimize the maximum time allotted for selection, so as to maximize the overall system throughput. For systems with EH nodes or non-EH nodes, which are subject to an average power constraint, the optimal rate and power adaptation depends on a power control parameter, which hitherto has been calculated numerically. We derive novel asymptotically tight bounds and approximations for the same, when the average rate of energy harvesting is large. These new expressions are analytically insightful, computationally useful, and are also quite accurate even in the non-asymptotic regime when average rate of energy harvesting is relatively small. In summary, this work develops several useful insights into the design of selection and transmission schemes for a wireless network with rate-adaptive EH nodes.

With National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) Advanced Wireless Services (AWS-3) auction of frequencies in the 1695-1710 MHz, 1755-1780MHz, and 2155- 2180MHz bands, users of the Aeronautical Mobile Telemetry (AMT) band from 1755- 1850MHz, known as Upper L-Band, could be greatly affected. This paper takes an initial look at how the 1755-1780MHz band will be used by the cellular carriers and presents some preliminary testing results of adjacent channel (band) interference that could be experienced by AMT users. This paper should be considered as the stepping off point for future interference discussions, required analysis, and further testing.

The popularity of the wireless networks is so great that we will soon reach the point where most of the devices work based on that, but new challenges in wireless channel access will be created with these increasingly widespread wireless communications. Multi-channel CSMA protocols have been designed to enhance the throughput of the next generation wireless networks compared to single-channel protocols. However, their performance analysis still needs careful considerations. In this thesis, a set of techniques are proposed to model and analyse the CSMA protocols in terms of channel sensing and channel access. In that respect, the performance analysis of un-slotted multi-channel CSMA protocols is studied through considering the hidden terminals. In the modelling phase, important parameters such as shadowing and path loss impairments are being considered. Following that, due to the high importance of spectrum sensing in CSMA protocols, the Double-Threshold Energy Detector (DTED) is thoroughly investigated in this thesis. An iterative algorithm is also proposed to determine optimum values of detection parameters in a sensing-throughput problem formulation. Vehicle-to-Roadside (V2R) communication, as a part of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), over multi-channel wireless networks is also modelled and analysed in this thesis. In this respect, through proposing a novel mathematical model, the connectivity level which an arbitrary vehicle experiences during its packet transmission with a RSU is also investigated.

Morphological and anatomical studies demonstrated the root formation characteristics of sweet potato. The presence and importance of preformed root primordia is recorded for the first time. On the vines root primordia are present in sets of four to ten adjacent to the leaf bases. These roots originate from the procambium on both sides of the leaf gap. Macroscopically the root tips of preformed root primordia protruding through the cortex and epidermis of the stems are prominent. The preformed root primordia produce adventitious roots, with pentarch, hexarch or septarch steles. Storage roots will under normal circumstances only originate from undamaged root primordia on the nodes of cuttings, or on nodes of newly formed vines, or from wound roots originating from the cut ends of the stem or leaf cuttings. Lateral roots originating from damaged root primordia, or directly from the adventitious roots, exhibit tetrarch steles and develop into fibrous roots without the potential to develop into storage roots. This understanding of the origin, anatomy and morphology of sweet potato roots should improve production practices, which will contribute to improved crop establishment and increased yield. Differences in the contribution of individual subterranean nodes to storage root yield were studied. On average cuttings with three subterranean nodes produced 3.7 storage roots, with 33.2% on subterranean node 1, 30.0% on node 2 and 36.8% on node3. However, in terms of fresh mass of the storage roots node 1 contributed 45.4%, node 2 contributed 27.1% and node 3 contributed 27.4%. The effect of temperature (20, 24, 28 and 32oC constant), orientation of cuttings (vertical vs. horizontal) and size of cuttings (1 or 3 nodes) on the development of adventitious roots was observed in plant growth chambers. Twenty-one days after planting, the longest total root length of 4m per plant was recorded from the 24oC growth chamber. The effect of soil moisture content on early root development was investigated by wetting and equilibrating sandy soil to 100, 80, 60 and 40% of field capacity. Although the 80% of field capacity treatment resulted in the best root development, differences among treatments were small, demonstrating the capacity of cuttings to successfully establish under a range of soil moisture contents. Changes in dry mass of storage roots, stems, and leaves of three sweet potato cultivars (Awasa-83, Bareda and Falaha) were studied at Awasa and Melkassa. At the final sampling the early maturing cultivar Falaha had diverted a higher proportion of the total dry mass into storage roots at Melkassa because of the early initiation and growth of storage roots. The late maturing cultivar Awasa-83 had a smaller proportion of the total dry mass diverted into the storage roots at both locations because of late root initiation and growth. The high yielding cultivars Bareda at Melkassa, and Awasa-83 at Awasa, had higher crop growth rates and higher net assimilation rates than the other cultivars. The effects of cultivar (Kudadie, Bareda and Awasa-83), planting position (horizontal and vertical), type of planting material (terminal cuttings with and without leaves) and cutting length (20, 25 and 30 cm) on the number and yield of storage roots were quantified in field trials at Awasa and Melkassa. Cultivar Kudadie produced the highest storage root yield at both locations. Horizontal planting of cuttings resulted in the highest total storage root yield at both locations. Cutting length did not affect storage root number and yield. The effect of population density (50,000, 55,555, 75,000, and 100,000 cuttings per hectare) on the performance of the three Ethiopian sweet potato cultivars was studied at Awasa. The highest planting density consistently produced the best root yield, indicating the potential to increase yields with plant populations much higher than normally used. Early maturing cultivar Falaha produced more small and medium storage roots per plant, while the intermediate cultivar Bareda produced more large storage roots. Copyright 2003, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Belehu, T 2003, Agronomical and physiological factors affecting growth, development and yield of sweet potato in Ethiopia, PhD thesis, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-07262004-141704 / > / Thesis (PhD (Plant Production and Soil Science))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Plant Production and Soil Science / unrestricted

Diversos problemas do mundo real estão relacionados ao projeto de redes, tais como projeto de circuitos de energia elétrica, roteamento de veículos, planejamento de redes de telecomunicações e reconstrução filogenética. Em geral, esses problemas podem ser modelados por meio de grafos, que manipulam milhares ou milhões de nós (correspondendo às variáveis de entrada), dificultando a obtenção de soluções em tempo real. O Projeto de uma Rede é um problema combinatório, em que se busca encontrar a rede mais adequada segundo um critério como, por exemplo, menor custo, menor caminho e tempo de percurso. A solução desses problemas é, em geral, computacionalmente complexa. Nesse sentido, metaheurísticas como Algoritmos Evolutivos têm sido amplamente investigadas. Diversas pesquisas mostram que o desempenho de Algoritmos Evolutivos para Problemas de Projetos de Redes pode ser aumentado significativamente por meio de representações mais apropriadas. Este trabalho investiga a paralelização da Representação Nó-Profundidade (RNP) em hardware, com o objetivo de encontrar melhores soluções para Problemas de Projetos de Redes. Para implementar a arquitetura de hardware, denominada de HP-RNP (Hardware Parallelized RNP), foi utilizada a tecnologia de FPGA para explorar o alto grau de paralelismo que essa plataforma pode proporcionar. Os resultados experimentais mostraram que o HP-RNP é capaz de gerar e avaliar novas redes em tempo médio limitado por uma constante (O(1)) / Many problems related to network design can be found in real world applications, such as design of electric circuits, vehicle routing, telecommunication network planning and phylogeny reconstruction. In general, these problems can be modelled using graphs that handle thousands or millions of nodes (input variables), making it hard to obtain solutions in real-time. The Network Design is the combinatorial problem of finding the most suitable network subject to a evaluation criterion as, for example, lower cost, minimal path and time to traverse the network. The solution of those problems is in general computationally complex. Metaheuristics as Evolutionary Algorithms have been widely investigated for such problems. Several researches have shown that the performance of Evolutionary Algorithms for the Network Design Problems can be significantly increased through more appropriated dynamic data structures (encodings). This work investigates the parallelization of Node-Depth Encoding (NDE) in hardware in order to find better solutions for Network Design Problems. To implement the proposed hardware architecture, called HP-NDE (Hardware Parallellized NDE), the FPGA technology was used to explore the high degree of parallelism that such platform can provide. The experimental results have shown that the HP-NDE can generate and evaluate new networks in average time constrained by a constant (O(1))

We study one-parameter families of quasi-periodically forced monotone interval maps and provide sufficient conditions for the existence of a parameter at which the respective system possesses a non-uniformly hyperbolic attractor. This is equivalent to the existence of a sink-source orbit, that is, an orbit with positive Lyapunov exponent both forwards and backwards in time. The attractor itself is a non-continuous invariant graph with negative Lyapunov exponent, often referred to as ‘SNA’. In contrast to former results in this direction, our conditions are C² -open in the fibre maps. By applying a general result about saddle-node bifurcations in skew-products, we obtain a conclusion on the occurrence of non-smooth bifurcations in the respective families. Explicit examples show the applicability of the derived statements.

We study the geometric and topological properties of strange non-chaotic attractors created in non-smooth saddle-node bifurcations of quasiperiodically forced interval maps. By interpreting the attractors as limit objects of the iterates of a continuous curve and controlling the geometry of the latter, we determine their Hausdorff and box-counting dimension and show that these take distinct values. Moreover, the same approach allows us to describe the topological structure of the attractors and to prove their minimality.

Nanodiamanty (250 nm) boli podrobené oxidácií, a tiež separované podľa veľkosti. Následne bola na povrch nanodiamantov adsorbovaná rozvetvená vrstva polyglycerolu. Táto vrstva vzniká kyslo katalyzovanou ,,ring opening“ polymeráciou glycidolu s hydroxylovými a karboxylovými skupinami povrchu nanodiamantov. Vzniknutá polyglycerolová vrstva zvyšuje stabilitu a biokompatibilitu nanodiamantov. Po vytvorení polyglycerolovej vrstvy bol do reakcie pridaný glycidyl propargyl éter, čím došlo k terminácií polymerácie, v dôsledku zavedenia propargylu do reakcie. Prítomná trojná väzba umožňuje nové modifikácie povrchu, napr. prostredníctvom CuAAC reakcie. S využitím CuAAC reakcie je možné na povrch fluorescenčných nanodiamantov pripojiť manózu (so spojkou obsahujúcou azidoskupinu). Pripravené nanočastice boli charakterizované použitím fyzikálno chemických metód. Distribúcia veľkosti častíc bola meraná pomocou dynamického rozptylu svetla (DLS), a taktiež bola potvrdená obrazovou analýzou mikrografov z elektrónového transmisného mikroskopu (TEM). Vyhodnotené bolo aj správanie sa nanodiamantov v biologických podmienkach (stabilitné testy v 1xPBS, 10xPBS a 100 % FBS) a bol meraný aj zeta potenciál. Nakoniec boli pripravené fluorescenčné diamanty (250 nm) s naviazanou manózou. Vzhľadom k výsledkom termogravimetrie, meraniam DLS a pozorovania pomocou TEM môžeme povedať, pripravené nanodiamanty sú pokryté tenkou vrstvou polyglycerolu. Prítomnosť manózy bola zistená na základe FTIR spektier. Nami pripravené fluorescenčné nanodiamanty obalené vrstvou polyglycerolu sú vhodné pre ďalšie testovanie in vitro a in vivo vďaka ich stabilite v médiách s vysokým obsahom solí ako napr. fosfátový pufor (PBS) a nízkemu viazaniu proteínov vo fetalnom bovinnom sere (FBS).

Stereo vision is one of the most popular elements in the field of mobile robots and significantly contributes to their autonomous behaviour. The aim of the diploma thesis was to design and implement a camera module as a hardware sensor input, which is independent, with the possibility of supplementing the system with other cameras, and to create a depth map from a pair of cameras. The diploma thesis consists of theoretical and practical part, including the conclusion of results. The theoretical part introduces the ROS framework, discusses methods of creating depth maps, and provides an overview of the most popular stereo cameras in robotics. The practical part describes in detail the preparation of the experiment and its implementation. It also describes the camera calibration and the depth map creating. The last chapter contains an evaluation of the experiment.