The aim of this Master’s thesis is to develop a theoretical introduction to the issue of the image flow time sampling, taking into account the various factors that affect sampling. Furthermore, there is proposed idea diagram of the model, which will simulate the events described, and created the model in the programming environment Matlab. Finally, there are defined the labs that will support teaching dealing with the imaging systems.

Recently, conductive polymer/carbon nanomaterials have drawn attention for use in corrosion inhibition, sensors, energy storage devices, and coatings for electromagnetic shielding applications due to their good mechanical properties and electronic conductivity. Therefore, efforts have been made to find fast and facile methods for the synthesis and development of these hybrids that allow control over key parameters, such as the thickness of the conductive polymer coating. In this study, such hybrids were prepared using polyaniline (PANI) as the conductive polymer and vapor-grown carbon nanofibers (VGCNFs) as the carbon nanomaterial or filler by a semi-dilute in situ polymerization method to be evaluated for their effectiveness as corrosion inhibitory additives to alkyd paints. Spectroscopic, colorimetric, and electric properties of PANI-coated VGCNFs were investigated. The thickness of the PANI coating, along with other parameters, impacts the behavior and mechanisms by which the nanomaterial performs its role in a given application, particularly in the corrosion inhibition processes. Thus, different synthesis conditions, including pretreatment of the nanofibers, the presence of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) surfactant, PreT-VGCNF/ANI ratios (w/w), and polymerization times were tested and their effects on the PANI thickness were microscopically and statistically evaluated. It was found that only different PreT-VGCNF/ANI ratios allowed definite control of the PANI thickness. No clear effect on the thickness was observed after three hours of polymerization. The presence of SDS and pretreatment of VGCNFs displayed a synergistic effect on the appearance and thickness of the PANI film. PANI-coated VGCNF additives, with PANI in the leucoemeraldine base (LEB) and emeraldine base (EB) forms, were synthesized using a PreT-VGCNF/ANI ratio of 0.4 in the presence of SDS. Cold-rolled steel coupons were coated with 20-30 ìm thick alkyd paint coatings, and their electrochemical behavior was investigated by open circuit potential (OCP) and electrochemical impedance (EIS) measurements. The results indicate that, overall, EB/VGCNF additive performed better as a corrosion inhibitor, followed by PreT-VGCNF and LEB/VGCNF additives.

Electrical bioimpedance spectroscopy (EBIS) has been used to assess the status or composition of various types of tissue, and examples of EBIS include body composition analysis (BCA) and tissue characterisation for skin cancer detection. EBIS is a non-invasive method that has the potential to provide a large amount of information for diagnosis or monitoring purposes, such as the monitoring of pulmonary oedema, i.e., fluid accumulation in the lungs. However, in many cases, systems based on EBIS have not become generally accepted in clinical practice. Possible reasons behind the low acceptance of EBIS could involve inaccurate models; artefacts, such as those from movements; measurement errors; and estimation errors. Previous thoracic EBIS measurements aimed at pulmonary oedema have shown some uncertainties in their results, making it difficult to produce trustworthy monitoring methods. The current research hypothesis was that these uncertainties mostly originate from estimation errors. In particular, time-varying behaviours of the thorax, e.g., respiratory and cardiac activity, can cause estimation errors, which make it tricky to detect the slowly varying behaviour of this system, i.e., pulmonary oedema. The aim of this thesis is to investigate potential sources of estimation error in transthoracic impedance spectroscopy (TIS) for pulmonary oedema detection and to propose methods to prevent or compensate for these errors.   This work is mainly focused on two aspects of impedance spectrum estimation: first, the problems associated with the delay between estimations of spectrum samples in the frequency-sweep technique and second, the influence of undersampling (a result of impedance estimation times) when estimating an EBIS spectrum. The delay between frequency sweeps can produce huge errors when analysing EBIS spectra, but its effect decreases with averaging or low-pass filtering, which is a common and simple method for monitoring the time-invariant behaviour of a system. The results show the importance of the undersampling effect as the main estimation error that can cause uncertainty in TIS measurements.  The best time for dealing with this error is during the design process, when the system can be designed to avoid this error or with the possibility to compensate for the error during analysis. A case study of monitoring pulmonary oedema is used to assess the effect of these two estimation errors. However, the results can be generalised to any case for identifying the slowly varying behaviour of physiological systems that also display higher frequency variations.  Finally, some suggestions for designing an EBIS measurement system and analysis methods to avoid or compensate for these estimation errors are discussed. / <p>QC 20140604</p>

No description available.

One way of reducing the examination time in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is to reduce the amount of raw data acquired, by performing so-called undersampling. Conventionally, MRI data is acquired line-by-line on a Cartesian grid. In the field of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (CMR), however, radial k-space sampling is seen as a promising emerging technique for rapid image acquisitions, mainly due to its robustness against motion disturbances occurring from the beating heart. Whereas Cartesian undersampling will result in image aliasing, radial undersampling will introduce streak artifacts. The objective of this work was to train the deep learning architecture, CycleGAN, to reduce streak artifacts in radially undersampled CMR images, and to evaluate the model performance. A benefit of using CycleGAN over other deep learning techniques for this application is that it can be trained on unpaired data. In this work, CycleGAN network was trained on 3060 radial and 2775 Cartesian unpaired CMR images acquired in human subjects to learn a mapping between the two image domains. The model was evaluated in comparison to images reconstructed using another emerging technique called GRASP. Whereas more investigation is warranted, the results are promising, suggesting that CycleGAN could be a viable method for effective streak-reduction in clinical applications.

This research considers the problem of cooperatively identifying the active bands in a wideband spectrum using the sparse Fast Fourier Transform (sFFT). Existing research has focused primarily on Compressed Sensing (CS) and Multi-Coset (MC) sampling, but recent developments in the sFFT have shown that a sparsely occupied spectrum can be efficiently reconstructed using multiple co-prime analog-to-digital converters (ADC) that sample below the Nyquist rate. Specifically, this research utilizes the Robust Fast Fourier Aliasing-based Sparse Transform (R-FFAST) and extends this algorithm for use in cooperative wideband spectrum sensing (CWSS). Unlike previous approaches that implement the sFFT for spectrum sensing, the R-FFAST framework was developed and analyzed using the mutual coherence and the restricted isometry property (RIP) from CS theory. This leads to reliable support estimation in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) while mitigating the computational complexity of CS reconstruction algorithms. This research makes the following contributions. First, this research extends the signal model from single tones to multi-band signals with clustered support. Second, it shows that each stage in the R-FFAST front-end can be decomposed into individual nodes that form a fully distributed cooperative network. Lastly, this research empirically develops a constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detector that is used to identify the active frequency bins during the reconstruction process. The primary result of this research is showing that reliable spectrum detection is only possible when the average sampling rate of the cooperative network is greater than or equal to the sparsity of the spectrum. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework and validate the findings of this research. / Electrical and Computer Engineering

[pt] IoT refere-se a um sistema de dispositivos de computação inter-relacionados que visa transferir dados através de uma rede sem exigir interação humanohumano ou humano-para-computador. Esses sistemas de comunicação modernos, exigem restrições de baixo consumo de energia e baixa complexidade no receptor. Nesse sentido, o conversor analógico-digital representa um gargalo para o desenvolvimento das aplicações dessas novas tecnologias, pois apresenta alto consumo de energia devido à sua alta resolução. A pesquisa realizada em relação aos conversores analógico-digitais com quantização grosseira mostrou que esses dispositivos são promissores para o projeto de futuros sistemas de comunicação. Para equilibrar a perda de informações, devido à quantização grosseira, a resolução no tempo é aumentada através da superamostragem. Esta tese considera um sistema com quantização de 1 bit e superamostragem no receptor com um canal de downlink MIMO multiusuário com banda ilimitada e apresenta, como principal contribuição, a nova modulação de cruzamento de zeros que implica que a informação é transmitida no instante de tempo zero-crossings. Este método é usado para a pré-codificação temporal através da otimização do design da forma de onda para dois pré-codificadores diferentes, a maximização temporal da distância mínima até o limiar de decisão com forçamento a zero espacial e a pré-codificação MMSE no espácio-temporal. Os resultados da simulação mostram que a abordagem de cruzamento de zeros proposta supera o estado da arte em termos da taxa de erro de bits para os dois pré-codificadores estudados. Além disso, essa nova modulação reduz a complexidade computacional, permite dispositivos de complexidade muito baixa e economiza recursos de banda em comparação com o método mais avançado. Análises adicionais mostram que a abordagem do cruzamento de zeros é benéfica em comparação com o método mais avançado em termos de maior distância mínima até o limiar de decisão e menor MSE para sistemas com limitações de banda. Além disso, foi desenvolvido um esquema de mapeamento de bits para modulação de cruzamento por zero, semelhante à codificação de Gray para reduzir ainda mais a taxa de erro de bits. / [en] The IoT refers to a system of interrelated computing devises which aims to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or humanto- computer interaction. This Modern communication systems demand restrictions of low energy consumption and low complexity in the receiver. In this sense, the analog-to-digital converter represents a bottleneck for the development of the applications of these new technologies since it has a high energy consumption due to its high resolution. The research carried out concerning to the analog-to-digital converters with coarse quantization has shown that such devices are promising for the design of future communication systems. To balance the loss of information, due to the coarse quantization, the resolution in time is increased through oversampling. This thesis considers a system with 1-bit quantization and oversampling at the receiver with a bandlimited multiuser MIMO downlink channel and introduces, as the main contribution, the novel zero-crossing modulation which implies that the information is conveyed within the time instant of the zero-crossings. This method is used for the temporal precoding through the waveform design optimization for two different precoders, the temporal maximization of the minimum distance to the decision threshold with spatial zero forcing and the space-time MMSE precoding. The simulation results show that the proposed zero-crossing approach outperforms the state-of-theart in terms of the bit error rate for both precoders studied. In addition, this novel modulation reduces the computational complexity, allows very low complexity devices and saves band resources in comparison to the state-ofthe- art method. Additional analyses show that the zero-crossing approach is beneficial in comparison to the state-of-the-art method in terms of greater minimum distance to the decision threshold and lower MSE for systems with band limitations. Moreover, it was devised a bit-mapping scheme for zero-crossing modulation, similar to Gray-coding to further reduce the bit error rate.

Les centres de données deviennent de plus en plus importants, allant de petites fermes de serveurs distribuées à des grandes fermes dédiées à des tâches spécifiques. La diffusion de services "dans le nuage" conduit à une augmentation incessante de la demande de trafic dans les centres de données. Dans cette thèse, nous étudions l'évolution des réseaux dans les centres de données et proposons des solutions à court et à long terme pour leur intra-connexion physique. Aujourd'hui, la croissance de la demande de trafic met en lumière la nécessité urgente d’interfaces à grande vitesse capables de faire face à la bande passante exigeant de nouvelles applications. Ainsi, à court terme, nous proposons de nouveaux transpondeurs optiques à haut débit, mais à faible coût, permettant la transmission de 200 Gb /s utilisant des schémas de modulation en intensité et à détection directe. Plusieurs types de modulations d’impulsions en amplitude avancées sont explorés, tout en augmentant la vitesse à des débits symboles allant jusqu’à 100 GBd. La génération électrique à haute vitesse est réalisé grâce à un nouveau convertisseur analogique-numérique intégré, capable de doubler les vitesses des entrées et de générer des signaux à plusieurs niveaux d’amplitude. Cependant, le trafic continuera sa croissance. Les centres de données actuels reposent sur plusieurs niveaux de commutateurs électroniques pour construire un réseau d'interconnexion capable de supporter une telle grande quantité de trafic. Dans une telle architecture, la croissance du trafic est directement liée à une augmentation du nombre des composants du réseau, y-compris les commutateurs avec plus de ports, les interfaces et les câbles. Le coût et la consommation d'énergie qui peut être attendus à l'avenir est intenable, ce qui appelle à une réévaluation du réseau. Par conséquent, nous présentons ensuite un nouveau concept fondé sur la commutation de "slots" optiques (Burst Optical Slot Switching, i.e. BOSS) dans lequel les serveurs sont connectés via des nœuds BOSS à travers des anneaux de fibres multiplexé en longueur d'onde et en temps, et organisés dans une topologie en tore. Au cours de cette thèse, nous étudions la mise en œuvre des nœuds BOSS; en particulier, la matrice de commutation et les transpondeurs optiques. L'élément principal au sein de la matrice de commutation est le bloqueur de slots, qui est capable d'effacer n’importe quel paquet (slot) sur n’importe quelle longueur d'onde en quelques nanosecondes seulement. D'une part, nous explorons l'utilisation d'amplificateurs optiques à semi-conducteurs comme portes optiques à utiliser dans le bloqueur des slots, et étudier leur cascade. D'autre part, nous développons un bloqueur de slots intégré monolithiquement capable de gérer jusqu'à seize longueurs d'onde avec la diversité de polarisation. Ensuite, nous présentons plusieurs architectures de transpondeur et nous étudions leur performance. La signalisation des transpondeurs doit répondre à deux exigences principales: le fonctionnement en mode paquet et la résistance au filtrage serré. D'abord, nous utilisons des transpondeurs élastiques qui utilisent des modulations Nyquist N-QAM, et qui adaptent le format de modulation en fonction du nombre de nœuds à traverser. Ensuite, nous proposons l'utilisation du multiplexage par répartition orthogonale de la fréquence en cohérence optique (CO-OFDM). Avec une structure de paquet inhérente et leur grande adaptabilité fréquentielle, nous démontrons que les transpondeurs CO-OFDM offrent une capacité plus élevée et une meilleure portée que leurs homologues Nyquist. Finalement, nous comparons notre solution BOSS avec la topologie Clos replié utilisée aujourd'hui. Nous montrons que notre architecture BOSS nécessite 400 fois moins de transpondeurs et de câbles que les réseaux de commutation électronique d'aujourd'hui, ce qui ouvre la voie à des centres de données hautement évolutifs et durables / Data centers are becoming increasingly important and ubiquitous, ranging from large server farms dedicated to various tasks such as data processing, computing, data storage or the combination thereof, to small distributed server farms. The spread of cloud services is driving a relentless increase of traffic demand in datacenters, which is doubling every 12 to 15 months. Along this thesis we study the evolution of data center networks and present short- and long-term solutions for their physical intra-connection. Today, rapidly-growing traffic in data centers spotlights the urgent need for high-speed low-cost interfaces capable to cope with hungry-bandwidth demanding new applications. Thereby, in the short-term we propose novel high-datarate low-cost optical transceivers enabling up to 200 Gb/s transmission using intensity-modulation and direct-detection schemes. Several advanced pulse amplitude modulation schemes are explored while increasing speeds towards record symbol-rates, as high as 100 GBd. High-speed electrical signaling is enabled by an integrated selector-power digital-to- analog converter, capable of doubling input baud-rates while outputting advance multi-level pulse amplitude modulations. Notwithstanding, data centers’ global traffic will continue increasing incessantly. Current datacenters rely on high-radix all-electronic Ethernet switches to build an interconnecting network capable to pave with such vast amount of traffic. In such architecture, traffic growth directly relates to an increase of networking components, including switches with higher port-count, interfaces and cables. Unsustainable cost and energy consumption that can be expected in the future calls for a network reassessment. Therefore, we subsequently present a novel concept for intra-datacenter networks called burst optical slot switching (BOSS); in which servers are connected via BOSS nodes through wavelength- and time-division multiplexed fiber rings organized in a Torus topology. Along this thesis we investigate on the implementation of BOSS nodes; in particular, the switching fabric and the optical transceivers. The main element within the switching fabric is the slot blocker, which is capable of erasing any packet of any wavelength in a nanosecond time-scale. On the one hand, we explore the use of semiconductor optical amplifiers as means of gating element to be used within the slot blocker and study their cascadability. On the other hand we develop a monolithically integrated slot blocker capable of handling up to sixteen wavelength channels with dual-polarization diversity. Then we present several transceiver architectures and study their performances. Transceivers’ signaling needs to fulfill two main requirements: packet-mode operation, i.e. being capable of recovering few microsecond –long bursts; and resiliency to tight filtering, which occurs when cascading many nodes (e.g. up to 100). First we build packet-mode Nyquist-pulse-shaped N-QAM transceivers, which adapt the modulation format as a function of the number of nodes to traverse. Later we propose the use of coherent-optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CO-OFDM). With inherent packet structure and high spectral tailoring capabilities, we demonstrate that CO-OFDM-based transceivers offer higher capacity and enhanced reach than its Nyquist counterpart. Finally, we compare our BOSS solution to today’s Folded Clos topology, and show that our BOSS architecture requires x400 fewer transponders and cables than today’s electronic switching networks, which paves the way to highly scalable and sustainable datacenters

Les systèmes de communications optiques jouent un role important pour satisfaire la demande incessante de trafics de données. Cette demande, induite par des applications gourmandes en termes de bande passante et débit, necéssite une augmentation de la capacité des réseaux optiques d’accès et par conséquent une augmentation des capacités de réseaux de transports métropolitains et longues distances. La prochaine génération de systèmes WDM longue distance devrait opérée à des débits de 400Gbps ou 1Tbps. Cette montée en débit s’appuiera sur des nouvelles formes d’ondes avancées de type mono-porteuse (Nyquist-WDM) ou multi-porteuse (OFDM multi-bande). Ces approches sont basées sur le multipléxage de plusieurs porteuses espacées par des intervalles de garde réduits. D’autre part, pour générer ces très haut débits, des modulations multi-états sont utilisées pour chaque porteuse grâce à leur efficacité spectrale élevée. Ces types de systèmes, qui combinent à la fois les approches multi-bande et les modulations multi-états, sont extrêmement vulnérables aux effets nonlinéaires de la fibre optique. En fait, les effets nonlinéaires sont dépendants de la puissance de transmission et inversement proportionels à l’intervalle de garde. Cela rend leur compensation indispensable pour maintenir des bonnes performances des systèmes en terme de distance de transmission. Grâce à l’emploi de récepteurs à détection cohérente, des techniques de traitement du signal numérique sont utlisées pour combattre les effets nonlinéaires. Dans cette thèse, nous avons proposé des nouvelles techniques basées sur les séries de Volterra et les égaliseurs à retour de decision pour compenser respectivement les effets nonlinéaires intrabande et les interférences nonlinéaires inter-bande. / Optical communication systems have evolved since their deployment to meet the growing demand for high-speed communications. Over the past decades, the global demand for communication capacity has increased exponentially and the most of the growth has occurred in the last few years when data started dominating network traffic. In order to meet the increase of traffic demands fueled by the growth of internet services, an increase of access network capacity and consequently metro and long-haul network capacities is required. Next generation of long-haul WDM transmission systems is expected to operate at 400Gbps or 1Tbps bit rate. Superchannel approaches, such as Nyquist WDM and multi-band OFDM, allow both high spectral efficiency and small guardband which makes them promising candidates to generate these high bit rates in combination with multi-level modulations formats. Such transmission systems are strongly disturbed by fiber nonlinear effects which increase with the data rate and the small guard band. Therefore, fiber nonlinearities compensation is required to get the desired performance in terms of transmission reach. DSP based approaches such as digital back propagation and third-order Volterra based nonlinear equalizer have been already proposed to deal with intra-channel or intra-band nonlinear effects. In the context of superchannel systems, we have proposed two new compensation techniques to deal with fiber nonlinear effects. The first one, called fifth-order inverse Volterra based nonlinear equalizer, compensate for intra-band nonlinear effects. The second approach, which is the interband/ subcarrier nonlinear interference canceler, is proposed to combat the nonlinear interference insuperchannel systems.

Cette thèse a pour objet l'étude du transport électronique dans les nanotubes de carbone monoparois par l'intermédiaire des fluctuations du courant. L'étude se place dans le cadre de la physique mésoscopique dans des conducteurs balistiques. Dans ce type de conducteur, plusieurs régimes diff´erents peuvent apparaître : blocage de Coulomb, transport modulé par les interférences quantiques, effet Kondo. Nous avons étudié les fluctuations du courant dans un régime d'interféromètre de type Fabry-Pérot électronique qui se présente comme une situation id´eale afin de sonder le régime où l'effet des interactions est faible. Les fluctuations du courant ont été analysées dans le formalisme de Landauer-Büttiker et nous obtenons une bonne correspondance entre la théorie et l'expérience. Nous avons ainsi observé la suppression du bruit dans les régimes de transmission unitaire et, par le biais des données combinées de la conductance et du bruit, nous avons pu déterminer les transmissions pour des canaux de conduction non dégénérés. Par ailleurs, le régime de l'effet Kondo a fait l'objet d'une étude dans laquelle nous avons observé des comportements universels dans la conductance et le bruit. Nous avons ajusté ces différentes grandeurs avec une théorie de bosons esclaves de champ moyen. Finalement, nous avons étudié une configuration de type Hanbury Brown et Twiss : un nanotube monoparoi sur lequel nous avons déposé un multiparoi qui nous sert de sonde afin d'injecter des électrons sur le conducteur.