Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) is a new wireless packet data communications system which was developed by a consortium of U.S. cellular service providers to augment their voice communications systems. The main goal of the CDPD system design was to provide wireless packet data connectivity to mobile data communications customers. This thesis presents fundamental information required to successfully implement CDPD base station or mobile equipment. This information includes an introduction to the operation of data networks, a discussion of Gaussian Filtered Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK), and a detailed analysis of Reed-Solomon error correction codes. / Master of Science

Cellular digital packet data (CDPD) is a new service for wide-area data communication with wireless mobile users. CDPD system uses the existing infrastructure of the analog Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) cellular telephone network to transmit data with a channel hopping technique. The CDPD system employs Gaussian minimum shift keying (GMSK) as a modulation scheme and a Reed-Solomon code for error control to transmit high-quality data in the mobile and wireless environment. Most current CDPD receivers use errors only decoding of the Reed-Solomon code, although an improved errors and erasures decoding technique would also be possible. This thesis undertakes a performance evaluation of the CDPD system with an errors and erasures decoder for the Reed-Solomon coding. A thorough system simulation is conducted for both white Gaussian noise and flat Rayleigh fading channel environments. Results show that improved coding gains of 0.5 ~ 1 dB are possible for the additive white Gaussian noise channel and improved coding gains of 1.9 ~ 2.7 dB are possible for the fading channel. / Master of Science

No / It is known that cells within the inflammatory background in classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) provide signals essential for the continual survival of the neoplastic Hodgkin and Reed-Sternberg (HRS) cells. However, the mechanisms underlying the recruitment of this inflammatory infiltrate into the involved lymph nodes are less well understood. In this study, we show in vitro that HRS cells secrete lymphotoxin-α (LTα) which acts on endothelial cells to upregulate the expression of adhesion molecules that are important for T cell recruitment. LTα also enhances the expression of hyaluronan which preferentially contributes to the recruitment of CD4+ CD45RA+ naïve T cells under in vitro defined flow conditions. Enhanced expression of LTα in HRS cells and tissue stroma; and hyaluronan on endothelial cells are readily detected in involved lymph nodes from cHL patients. Our study also shows that although NF-κB and AP-1 are involved, the cyclooxygenase (COX) pathway is the dominant regulator of LTα production in HRS cells. Using pharmacological inhibitors, our data suggest that activity of COX1, but not of COX2, directly regulates the expression of nuclear c-Fos in HRS cells. Our findings suggest that HRS cell-derived LTα is an important mediator that contributes to T cell recruitment into lesional lymph nodes in cHL.

Este trabalho investiga a decodificação turbo de códigos produto construídos a partir de códigos de Reed-Solomon sobre constelações QAM. Por meio da geometria euclidiana da constelação utilizada e das relações dos elementos de campo de Galois utilizados na codificação Reed-Solomon com os símbolos pertencentes ao alfabeto de modulação, é proposto um algoritmo de decodificação que utiliza a localização geométrica dos símbolos recebidos no processo de decodificação turbo. Tanto a primeira etapa da decodificação SISO baseada no algoritmo de Chase, como a extração da informação extrínseca baseada no algoritmo proposto por Pyndiah, são tratadas pelo uso de uma abordagem geométrica sobre o espaço euclidiano. Os resultados de simulação utilizando o algoritmo proposto coincidem com aqueles usando a decomposição e análise pragmática binária, sendo que a abordagem apresentada conduz a simplificações e otimizações em relação à metodologia binária no que ser refere à implementação dos possíveis esquemas de decodificação. / This work investigates the turbo decoding of product codes built using Reed- Solomon codes in QAM constellations. Using the euclidian geometry of the constellation and the relations of the Galois field elements used in the Reed-Solomon code and the modulation alphabet, a decoding algorithm for the turbo decoding process is proposed using the geometric localization of the received symbol. Both the first stage of the SISO decoding based on the Chase algorithm, as the calculation of the extrinsic information based on the Pyndiah algorithm, are treated using the geometric approach in the euclidian space. The simulations show that this algorithm gives similar performance results as the pragmatic binary decomposition approach, and leads to simplifications and optimizations in decoding implementations schemes compared to the former.

In 1958, actress Donna Reed formed her own production company to create The Donna Reed Show, which ran successfully until 1966. One of only two female television producers working in Hollywood, Reed’s show foreshadowed much of the discontent illustrated in Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. The series explored Donna’s frustrations with housework, her interest in professional activities outside the home, and her determination to be an equal in her marriage. However, The Donna Reed Show also diverged from Friedan on key issues by elevating the housewife and establishing her moral authority, thus foreshadowing more conservative “maternal” feminism as identified by Christina Hoff Sommers. The Donna Reed Show has been falsely grouped with other family sit-coms as conformist and has been largely overlooked for its contributions to the feminist movement by scholars, when in fact Reed created the most complex mother character on television at the time.

Η εργασία αφορά ένα ειδικό είδος κωδικοποίησης εντοπισμού και διόρθωσης λαθών, την κωδικοποίση Reed-Solomon. Οι κώδικες αυτού του είδους χρησιμοποιούνται σε τηλεπικοινωνιακές εφαρμογές (ενσύρματη τηλεφωνία, ψηφιακή τηλεόραση, ευρυζωνικές ασύρματες επικοινωνίες) και σε συστήματα ψηφιακής αποθήκευσης (οπτικοί, μαγνητικοί δίσκοι). Η κωδικοποίηση Reed-Solomon βασίζεται σε μία ειδική κατηγορία αριθμητικών πεδίων τα πεδία Galois (Galois Field). Στα πλαίσια της εργασίας πραγματοποιήθηκε μελέτη των ιδιοτήτων των πεδίων Galois. και σχεδιάστηκε κωδικοποιητής-αποκωδικοποιητής για κώδικες Reed Solomon. Η σχεδίαση υλοποιήθηκε σε υλικό (hardware) σε γλώσσα Verilog HDL. Η σύνθεση των κυκλωμάτων πραγματοποιήθηκε με τεχνολογία Πεδίων Προγραμματιζόμενων Πινάκων Πυλών (τεχνολογία FPGA) και τεχνολογία Ολοκληρωμένων Κυκλωμάτων Ειδικού Σκοπού (τεχνολογία ASIC). Ακολουθήθηκε η μεθοδολογία σχεδιασμού Μονάδων Διανοητικής Ιδιοκτησίας για ολοκληρωμένα κυκλώματα (IP core), σύμφωνα με την οποία η σχεδίαση είναι ανεξάρτητη της πλατφόμας υλοποίησης και μπορεί να υλοποιηθεί με καθόλου ή ελάχιστες αλλαγές σε διαφορετικές τεχνολογίες. Η έννοια των IP core βρίσκει ιδιαίτερη εφαρμογή σε Συστήματα σε Ολοκληρωμένα Κυκλώματα (System on Chip). / The present work is about a specific group of error detection and correction codes, the Reed-Solomon codes. Such codes are used in telecommunications applications (wire telephony, digital television, broadband wireless communications) and digital storage systems (optical, magnetic disks). The Reed Solomon codes are based on a specific category of numerical fields, called Galois Fields. The Work consists of the study of the properties of Galois fields and of the design of an codec for Reed Solomon codes. The design was implemented in hardware with the use of Verilog HDL language. The synthesis of the circuit targets Field programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and Applications Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) technologies. The design methodology for Intellectual Property Units for integrated circuits (IP cores) was used. According to that methodology the design is platform independent and consequently the implementation can be achieved with minimal or no changes in different technologies. The IP cores model is widely applied in Systems on Integrated Circuits (System on Chips).

Mass., Massachusetts Inst. of Technology, Diss.--Cambridge, 2001. / Literaturverz. S. [337] - 347.

Στην εργασία αυτή, μελετώνται διαφορετικοί αποκωδικοποιητές για κώδικες Reed-Solomon. Αφού γίνει μια εισαγωγή στο σύστημα επικοινωνίας, στα πεπερασμένα σώματα και στη θεωρία κωδίκων, παρουσιάζονται αλγόριθμοι που υλοποιούν αποκωδικοποιητές περιορισμένης απόστασης, λίστας και soft decoders. Συγκεκριμένα, μελετώνται κλασσικοί αποκωδικοποιητές, αποκωδικοποιητές βασισμένοι στον αλγόριθμο Guruswami-Sudan, και αποκωδικοποιητές βασισμένοι στον αλγόριθμο Koetter-Vardy. Η σύγκριση γίνεται ως προς τη διορθωτική ικανότητα και τη χρονική πολυπλοκότητα. Στα πλαίσια της εργασίας αυτής, σε συνέχεια της μελέτης υπαρχόντων αποκωδικοποιητών προτείνεται ένα είδος προσαρμοστικού αποκωδικοποιητή: φέρει την ίδια διορθωτική ικανότητα με έναν αποκωδικοποιητή λίστας, αλλά σε ορισμένες περιπτώσεις έχει ικανοποιητικά μικρότερη χρονική πολυπλοκότητα. Επίσης γίνεται μία ποιοτική διερεύνηση για το πότε πρέπει να προτιμάται ο προσαρμοστικός αποκωδικοποιητής. Προτείνονται δύο διαφορετικοί προσαρμοστικοί αποκωδικοποιητές. Η πρώτη εκδοχή, είναι μία διάταξη με δύο αποκωδικοποιητές. Αρχικά το ληφθέν διάνυσμα από το κανάλι, εισέρχεται ως είσοδος σε έναν κλασσικό αποκωδικοποιητή. Αν ο κλασσικός παρουσιάσει αδυναμία αποκωδικοποίησης, τότε επιχειρεί να διορθώσει το ίδιο διάνυσμα ένας αποκωδικοποιητής λίστας. Η δέυτερη εκδοχή, μοιάζει με την πρώτη, με τη διαφορά ότι ο δεύτερος αποκωδικοποιητής χρησιμοποιεί αποτελέσματα που έχουν ήδη υπολογιστεί από τον πρώτο, μειώνοντας έτσι την συνολική χρονική πολυπλοκότητα, σχετικά με την πρώτη εκδοχή. / In this thesis we study a family of linear block codes, the Reed-Solomon(RS) codes. RS codes are q-ary codes over some finite field GF(q). Therefore, they have strong burst-error correction capability, because they deal with groups of bits instead of single bits. Initially, we describe the employed communication system model, and introduce basic from finite field theory (construction and identities) and coding theory. After describing the RS encoding process, we describe different RS decoders (bounded distance decoder, list decoder and soft-input decoder). Specifically, in addition to traditional approaches, we focus on decoders based on Guruswami-Sudan and Koetter – Vardy algorithms. We compare them according to their complexity and performance, both in theory and experimentally. Furthermore, in this thesis, we propose an adaptive decoder, which has the same performance as a list decoder but in some cases it achieves much lower average time complexity. We present the experimental results, highlighting the cases where the adaptive decoder outperforms conventional decoders. The adaptive decoder comes in two different types. The first type is a system with two different decoders: the low complexity decoder attempts to decode a received vector and in case of decoding failure the subsequent decoder tries to decode the same received vector. The second type resembles the general organization of the above system; the second decoder re-uses intermediate results, previously computed by the first one.

Este trabalho investiga a decodificação turbo de códigos produto construídos a partir de códigos de Reed-Solomon sobre constelações QAM. Por meio da geometria euclidiana da constelação utilizada e das relações dos elementos de campo de Galois utilizados na codificação Reed-Solomon com os símbolos pertencentes ao alfabeto de modulação, é proposto um algoritmo de decodificação que utiliza a localização geométrica dos símbolos recebidos no processo de decodificação turbo. Tanto a primeira etapa da decodificação SISO baseada no algoritmo de Chase, como a extração da informação extrínseca baseada no algoritmo proposto por Pyndiah, são tratadas pelo uso de uma abordagem geométrica sobre o espaço euclidiano. Os resultados de simulação utilizando o algoritmo proposto coincidem com aqueles usando a decomposição e análise pragmática binária, sendo que a abordagem apresentada conduz a simplificações e otimizações em relação à metodologia binária no que ser refere à implementação dos possíveis esquemas de decodificação. / This work investigates the turbo decoding of product codes built using Reed- Solomon codes in QAM constellations. Using the euclidian geometry of the constellation and the relations of the Galois field elements used in the Reed-Solomon code and the modulation alphabet, a decoding algorithm for the turbo decoding process is proposed using the geometric localization of the received symbol. Both the first stage of the SISO decoding based on the Chase algorithm, as the calculation of the extrinsic information based on the Pyndiah algorithm, are treated using the geometric approach in the euclidian space. The simulations show that this algorithm gives similar performance results as the pragmatic binary decomposition approach, and leads to simplifications and optimizations in decoding implementations schemes compared to the former.

Parmi les différents critères qu'une fonction booléenne doit satisfaire en cryptographie, on s'intéresse à la non-linéarité. Pour une fonction booléenne donnée, cette notion mesure la distance de Hamming qui la sépare des fonctions de degré au plus 1. C'est un critère naturel pour évaluer la complexité d'une fonction cryptographique, celle-ci ne devant pas admettreune approximation qui soit simple, comme par une fonction de degré 1, ou plus généralement une fonction de bas degré. Ainsi, il est important de considérer plus généralement, la non-linéarité d'ordre supérieur, qui pour un ordre donné r, mesure la distance d'une fonction donnée à l'ensemble des fonctions de degré au plus r. Cette notion est également importante pour les fonctions vectorielles, i.e., celles à plusieurs sorties. Quand le nombre de variables est grand, presque toutes les fonctions ont une non-linéarité (d'ordre 1) voisine d'une certaine valeur, assez élevée. Dans un premier travail, on étend ce résultat à l'ordre 2. Cette méthode qui consiste à observer comment les boules de Hamming recouvrent l'hypercube des fonctions booléennes, nous conduit naturellement vers une borne de décodage théorique des codes de Reed-Muller d'ordre 1, coïncidant au même endroit où se concentre la non-linéarité de presque toutes les fonctions ; une approche nouvelle pour un résultat pas entièrement nouveau. On étudie aussi la non-linéarité des fonctions vectorielles. On montre avec une approche différente, que le comportement asymptotique est le même que celui des fonctions booléennes: une concentration de la non-linéarité autour d'une valeur assez élevée. / Among the different criteria that a Boolean function must satisfy in symmetric cryptography, we focus on the nonlinearity of these. This notion measures the Hamming distance between a given function and the set of functions with degree at most 1. It is a natural criterion to evaluate the complexity of a cryptographic function that must not have a simple approximation as by a function of degree 1, or more generally, a function of low degree. Hence, it is important to consider the higher order nonlinearity, which for a given order r, measures the distance between a given function and the set of all functions of degree at most r. This notion is equally important for multi-output Boolean functions. When the number of variables is large enough, almost all Boolean functions have nonlinearities lying in a small neighbourhood of a certain high value. We prove that this fact holds when considering the second-order nonlinearity. Our method which consists in observing how the Hamming balls pack the hypercube of Boolean functions led quite naturally to a theoretical decoding bound for the first-order Reed-Muller code, coinciding with the concentration point of the nonlinearity of almost all functions. This was a new approach for a result which is not entirely new. We also studied the nonlinearity of multi-output functions. We proved with a different approach, that the asymptotic behaviour of multi-output functions is the same as the single-output ones: a concentration of the nonlinearity around a certain large value.