D. Tech. (Department of Process Control and Computer Systems, Faculty of Engineering and Technology), Vaal University of Technology. / In this research study, a scheme to minimise interference in converged mobile cellular networks (MCNs) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) was designed and implemented. The focus was the mitigation of interference that arises when proximity service (ProSe)-enabled sensors engage in a device-to device (D2D) communication to alert smartphone users upon the detection of explosives at highly crowded areas like shopping malls. D2D is a technology that academia and industry experts believe will play a prominent role in the implementation of the next generation of mobile networks, specifically, the fifth generation (5G). However, the full roll out of D2D is being impeded by the interference that the technology introduces to the cellular network. D2D devices cause a significant amount of interference to the primary cellular network especially when radio resources are shared. In the downlink phase, primary user equipment is likely to suffer from interference emanating from a D2D transmitter. On the other hand, the immobile base station is affected by interference caused by the D2D transmitter in the uplink phase. This type of interference can be avoided or reduced if radio resources are allocated intelligently under strict coordination of the base station. An NP-hard optimisation problem was formulated and finding a solution to this problem in 1 ms is not possible. 5G has a frame structure duration of 10 ms with 10 subframes of 1 ms each. Heuristic algorithms were then developed to mitigate the interference affecting the primary network that could carry out resource allocation within the fast-scheduling period of 1 ms. Smartphones have progressed into devices capable of generating massive volumes of data. The challenge is that battery technology is not keeping up with the pace of smartphone technology, so any additional feature that designers want to add, is met with a lot of contempt from customers who are concerned about their smartphone batteries depleting rapidly. In this context, the strategy must be energy-efficient for smartphone users to embrace it. A system level simulator was developed using MATLAB to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed design. Extensive simulation results showed that ProSe-enabled sensors can safely be integrated into cellular networks participating in D2D communication with smart phones, without introducing significant harm to the primary cellular network. The results showed that after implementing the proposed strategy, overall user throughput decreased by 3.63 %. In cellular networks, this is a modest figure since a reduction of up to 5% is acceptable to both users and network providers. The figure generally capped in service level agreements signed between network providers and users is 5%. The proposed technique also resulted in a 0 % reduction in SINR of CUEs in a cellular network, according to the findings. In terms of D2D link throughput for different D2D transmit levels, the method proposed in this research work surpassed a similar scheme proposed in literature by an average of 18.3%.

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the Masters Degree of Technology: Public Relations Management, Durban University of Technology, 2013. / In South Africa, the competition between shopping centres has increased significantly over the years due to the increase in the number of shopping centres and the changing shopping behaviour. The success of any shopping centre depends on the revenue generated by customers who frequent the mall to make purchases or use the services of the retail/entertainment outlets. To attract customers to shopping centres, management has to ensure that malls are effectively promoted to relevant stakeholders. Communication is important in any promotional, public relations or marketing activity and should be effective, persuasive and managed in a formal and structured way which fits into the overall goals of the mall. Shopping centre management may use a number of communication tools such as (and are not limited to) advertising, sales promotions, public relations, personal selling and sponsorship. However, do these strategies play a role in generating revenue to promote the overall success of a shopping centre? This dissertation, therefore, sets out to identify and examine the communication tools used by shopping centre managers within the greater Durban area in South Africa. It does so by interviewing marketing managers and the tenant mix of five competitive shopping centres within the greater Durban area in South Africa. Data will be collected from the respondents through questionnaires and an interview schedule. One of the significant results emerging from this study is that the function of tenant relations; promotions; publicity; and public relations plays an integral part in the effective functioning of a shopping centre.

In this Thesis, from the disciplinary vantage point of English Studies, I explore some of the complex meanings that may be attributed to several forms and practices of South African consumer culture: magazines, malls and themed leisure. While these contemporary cultural 'texts' are often ephemeral, and people's attachments to them fractured, transient or at least ambivalent rather than unproblematic, my argument takes issue with the pessimism that informs much local and international criticism of consumer culture. My Thesis turns to concepts of affect, image, sign and discourse which have become features of current English Studies in order to generate readings of commercial culture more nuanced than the 'hard analyses' favoured by dominant practitioners of 'radical' South African cultural studies. At the same time, though, my analyses have learnt through disparate forms of local cultural study the necessity of grounding textuality in the structures of political economy. By means of manageable yet conceptually-suggestive South African instances, I consider how commodities and commodified experiences - generated in the first instance by the vested interests of Capital and related ideologies - may nevertheless be experienced by people in a plethora of ways not directly tied to the commercially-expedient construct of the 'target audience'. This experiential process entails a rampant volatility typical of a mass-mediated lexicon which challenges boundaries between high and low, formal and unofficial, propriety and the improper. While advertising and promotion, for instance, function as corporate attempts to contain proliferating signifiers and to secure a preferred, 'authorised' meaning for cultural goods or services, it is also the case that consumers themselves, perhaps creatively and certainly in clandestine ways that escape the supposed authorities of either market researcher or academic intelligence, author meanings that rework the limitations of what still tends to be construed within the university as a culture industry at once banal and insidious. The meanings of the contemporary cultures with which I deal, then, are highly mediated and many-layered, rather than constituting the mere surface announcement often imagined by scholars of both literary culture and of media- and cultural studies. The contexts of my Thesis are particular: it was completed in 1998, and has been produced from a university in KwaZulu-Natal by an academic formally trained in English Studies. In some respects, then, the interpretations I offer are narrow: geographically, historically and disciplinarily focussed. Yet in working on South African examples of commoditised forms and practices that derive from metropolitan vectors and have convoluted international genealogies, I have also sought to theorise the shifting interrelations of regional and national, local and global, discipline-specific and interdisciplinary knowledge. Drawing widely on studies into consumer relations - and at apposite points identifying conceptual connections and differences between 'foreign' figures like Michel de Certeau and influential South African thinkers such as Njabulo S. Ndebele - I suggest that for all its shortcomings consumerism needs to be understood as active process rather than as passive effect. My argument implies that such a rethinking of the conventional binaries of production and consumption is appropriate in a South Africa which is gradually giving substance to a democratic social order. Even within a politics premised on the individual, forms of consumption such as magazine reading and shopping need not necessarily be scorned as the selfish, even hedonistic pursuits caricatured by ideological purists: the Thesis seeks to demonstrate that people are at once citizens and consumers, individuals searching after distinctive identity and style as well as desirous of achieving a variety of community inflected bonds. Overall, the commercial culture examined in the Thesis is represented not as inevitably marred by cultural deficiency and degraded value - despite the dissatisfactions, irritations and deferred pleasures which for many of us form at least one facet of consumption - but as an everyday spectacle which is available for symbolic interpretation and aesthetic investment. This investment may be emotional as well as cognitive, sensuous as well as critical, mundane as well as exceptional, since individuals come to commodity culture with a range of longings, dreams, fears and sedimented allegiances. As my readings demonstrate, it is such diversity of response - provisional and elusive rather than predictable and guaranteed - which gives the lie to theories which are 'always-already' premised on the prior inscription and encoding of consumerism as manipulation. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1998.

It is well established that national retail chains impact small, single location retail businesses in terms of revenue generation, retail structure, retail type diversity, and location. This study examines the retail structure and diversity of five retail districts in the City of Denton, Texas. The analysis focuses on one central business district (CBD), one traditional retail strip center (University Drive, also known as US HWY 380), one special retail district (Fry Street District), one traditional enclosed shopping mall and associated development (Golden Triangle Mall), and one power retail center (Denton Crossing). The empirical foundation for the investigation is a historical business database covering years 1997 to 2010, obtained from Info Group's Reference USA. This Reference USA database includes location, industry, and status (single versus chain location) information for each business. Retail diversity and evenness were measured for each of the five retail districts using the Simpson's Diversity Index and the Simpsons Measure of Evenness, leading to specification of the differences that exist in retail structure and diversity among the districts. Golden Triangle Mall and Denton Crossing were primarily chain location in composition while Fry Street District, the CBD, and University Drive were primarily single location in composition. Across all years, the single versus chain status of the local business communities did not substantially change within any of the districts. The Fry Street District exhibited the most change in diversity as well as the lowest overall diversity among the retail districts, followed by University Drive and Golden Triangle Mall. The CBD did not experience any major change in retail type diversity. However, all retail districts experienced major changes in retail evenness. Overall for the city, single location retail businesses accounted for the majority of all the retail businesses, however, chain locations employed more people. In total, these findings indicate that the development of retail districts composed primarily of chain location retailer's affects retail district diversity and evenness but not retail structure.

The private security industry is tasked with protecting lives and property against an evolving array of personal and property threats. Rendering such services comes with many market related challenges for private security providers. These services are rendered to various types of clients like government departments, hospitals, universities and shopping malls amongst others. These clients have unique and different needs and expectations, therefore shopping malls as clients of the private security industry were selected for the purpose of this research. The qualitative research approach was used for this study wherein a questionnaire was used to obtain information from private security and shopping mall personnel working in shopping malls in Gauteng. The findings of this study reveals that there are indeed client retention challenges that are facing private security companies providing services to shopping malls. Based on the findings, recommendations for the private security providers and further research in shopping mall security management are made. / Security Risk Management / M.Tech. (Security Management)

The specified area is located in the city district Brno - Židenice, near the railway station. The theme of the thesis is the architectural study of selected part of the multifunctional intense urban structure, which was solved in the pre-diploma project. Draft uses the building site intensively, provides high plot ratio and density of population, a wide range of functions in a relatively small area is related to the elimination of transportation. By using topography the proposal creates a permeable areas, buildings with relations to the surroundings and with quality public spaces and attractive housing. Pick-up railway cancels barrier and makes a space with landscaping. Readability is achieved by linking the territory from east to west by straight streets and from north to south by passages. The development creates three centers, the commercial center of the north, center of culture in the heart of the area and the center of relaxation and sport in the south. Basic grid of development has a checkerboard plan, which reflects the grid of surrounding structure. The new development varies in its scale, from large scale buildings in the parterre decays into smaller scale. Function division is horrizontal. There are underground parking, a parterre with shops and services, a floor with offices and work study open to the courtyard and housing on the upper floors. Thus formed structure provides enough light in the courtyards and flats. The segmentation is supported by materials, bricks in the parterre contrast with the monotone plaster on the upper floors.