One of the important topics in sleep medicine is sleep structure. Normal sleep consists of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and nonrapid eye movement (NRME) sleep states. NREM sleep can be further classified into stage 1, 2 and slow wave sleep (SWS) according to the current sleep scoring standard. Among them, SWS has been considered to be very important due to its r restorative value. The goal of this research is to detect SWS by using a single channel EEG signal. Its applications can be divided into two phases. In the first phase, a personalized SWS detector is designed for each individuals By combining these personalized SWS detectors, the second phase develops a general SWS detection method that can be applied to general population with any personalized training process. By applying the proposed method to 62 persons, the experimental results show that the proposed method, in average, achieves 90.69% classification accuracy 90.09% sensitivity and 93.97% specificity. Our experimental results also demonstrate, when applied to persons with higher AHI (apnoea-hypopnea index) values, the proposed method can still provided satisfactory results.

This study aims at sleep stage classification problem via EOG signals. The classification problem consists of four steps. The first step is to distinguish slow wave sleep from the rest of the sleep periods. Wake periods are identified in the second step. The third step finds REM sleep and the last step classifies stage 2 and stage1 sleep. By using different EOG signal features in different steps of the classification process, this work uses back-propagation trained neural networks to perform classification. With the exception of stage 1 sleep, the sensitivity and positive predictive value ranges from 70% to 80%. The overall classification accuracy is 74.80%.

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Sleep staging can be used to assess whether sleep structure is abnormal. According to the R&K rule, human sleep can be divided into four different stages: Awake, Light Sleep, Deep Sleep and Rapid-Eye-Movement (REM) Sleep. Conventionally, sleep staging are scored mainly by EEG signals and complementally by EOG and EMG signals. The goal of this study is to detect slow wave sleep (SWS) automatically by using different combinations of EEG, EOG, and EMG signals. In particular, a total of 16 combinations of channels have been studied. Based on high amplitude slow wave characteristics of SWS, this study develops many of feature variables to characterize SWS. A subset of these features are employed to design neural network classifier to detect SWS. This study has noted interpersonal-differences in physiological signals between people and proposes solutions to this problem to improve the performance of SWS detection. The number of tested subjects from two different sleep centers is 1318 and 947 subjects, respectively. These subjects were divided into five groups for training and testing data in order to test performance of our proposed approach. By applying the proposed approach to 1318 subjects, the experimental results show that the proposed method achieves kappa of 0.63 by using a single EEG channel, kappa of 0.6 by using two channels EOG and kappa of 0.66 by using the best combination of multi-channel singals. The size of dataset used in this work is significantly large than those of previous studies and thus provide more reliable experimental results. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can provide satisfactory performance in dealing with dataset with more than 1000 subjects.

No description available.

Our ability to recall information and events is astounding and dependent on the medial temporal lobe (MTL) memory system. The synaptic interconnections between the neocortex (nCTX), entorhinal cortex (EC), and hippocampus (HPC) are the anatomical basis of this memory system. The electrophysiological basis of memory formation in this system is largely unknown, but the activity patterns that occur during slow wave sleep (SWS) are thought to play an important role. One prominent activity pattern that occurs during SWS is the slow oscillation (SO). It is a large-amplitude rhythm of ~1Hz that was first described in the nCTX and only occurs during SWS and deep anaesthesia. Using the urethane-anaesthetised rat, I provide the first description of the SO in the HPC in Chapter 2. I found that the SO in the HPC was dynamically coordinated with that in the nCTX. Because the EC is the anatomical interface between the nCTX and HPC, I hypothesised that it could be responsible for this coordination. Chapter 3 characterises the SO in the EC and its coordination with both the nCTX and HPC. My results suggested that the synaptic interconnections between the nCTX and HPC via the EC were not solely responsible for SO coordination across these structures. Another possibility is that SO coordination across the nCTX, EC, and HPC occurs via the nucleus reuniens thalami (NReu). In Chapter 4, I delivered trains of electrical stimulation to the frontal cortex (fCTX) to enhance the SO in the nCTX and assess any effect in the HPC. In addition, I delivered the same stimulation trains directly to the medial prefrontal cortex (mpfCTX) and NReu. I found that repeated stimulation in each structure entrained the hippocampal SO. I also found that repeated stimulation of the fCTX and mpfCTX enhanced SO coordination across the nCTX and HPC, but repeated stimulation of the NReu did not. My results suggested that SO coordination across the nCTX and HPC occurs via both the EC and NReu. Understanding the coordination of SO activity across these structures will provide insight to the electrophysiological basis of the MTL memory system and the role of SWS in its function.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosphy, Centre for Neuroscience. Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on November 6, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation details the development of the star spiral antenna and demonstrates the advantages of the star spiral when used in a wideband array with variable element sizes. The wideband array with variable element sizes (WAVES) is a multi-octave array that uses different sized circular Archimedean spirals for each octave of frequency coverage. A two-octave WAVES array has been presented in the literature, but a gap in the two-octave frequency coverage exists along the principal axes. The star spiral antenna was developed to eliminate the performance gap in the WAVES array. The star spiral is a type of slow-wave spiral that also offers array-packing advantages, particularly for the WAVES array. The size reduction that can be achieved with the star spiral is comparable to that of the square spiral, but the star spiral is much more efficient in terms of its expected size reduction compared to its circumference. The far-field patterns, gain, and scan performance of the star spiral are similar to that of the circular Archimedean spiral. The use of the star spiral to eliminate the performance gap in a WAVES array of circular Archimedean spirals is detailed. Furthermore, a three-octave WAVES array of star spirals is built and measured, and the scan performance of the array is investigated via simulation. / Ph. D.

Through continued innovation and growth, traveling wave tube amplifiers (TWTAs) remains the microwave power amplifiers of choice in a wide range of high power microwave and millimeter-wave applications specifically for aerospace applications with the volume, weight, bandwidth and power constraints. These advances can be credited to device innovation, improved modeling and design and development of advanced materials and construction techniques. This thesis aims at advancing the present technology of TWTs with coupled resonator slow-wave structures (SWSs) by a combination of device innovation, development of enhanced analytical and field analysis codes and understanding gained through improved modeling, simulation and experimentation. In a TWT, the SWS that slows the RF wave velocity down to near the electron beam velocity for interaction with the electron beam primarily determines the microwave performances of the tube. As compared to helix SWS, the coupled resonator SWS is capable of handling high peak and average powers with higher efficiency and TWTs based on these SWS are well suited for air-borne or space-borne radar systems and the major focus of this thesis is on the analysis and design of coupled resonator SWSs. As a part of this thesis, improved analytical codes based on quasi-TEM analysis and equivalent circuit analysis have been developed. The technical formulation is explained and the improvements made for enhanced accuracy and for incorporation of different types of coupled resonator SWSs detailed. Using these models new variants of coupled resonator SWSs have been investigated. The SWSs proposed are the ladder-core inverted slot mode SWS and the inductively loaded inter digital SWS (ILID-SWS). The possibility of achieving both coalesced mode design that gives wide bandwidth and multi beam design that improves the peak power and gain using rectangular ILID-SWS is presented. The properties of these proposed SWSs have been compared with the existing SWSs and found to give superior performance. Also an improved modeling and simulation technique using 3-D electromagnetic codes has been proposed and the conventional cold test measurement procedure has been modified for more accurate results. Numerous illustrative examples are presented throughout the thesis highlighting the analytical model and simulation code validation with experimental results. The experimentations have been carried out on the real SWS model that have been fabricated and assembled. Further, the contribution of the thesis is towards the development of a field analysis model for analysis of a corrugated waveguide SWS, based on the coupled integral equation technique (CIET), which is a combination of mode matching technique (MMT) and method of moments. The technical formulation and computational methodology employed in the model are explained and some of the most important aspects of implementation like the handling of singularities and choice of parameters controlling the accuracy is discussed. The accuracy and speed of the code is demonstrated by comparing CIET with MMT and 3-D electro magnetic simulators based on finite difference time domain (FDTD) method and finite element method (FEM). The CIET code developed is quite faster than the existing numerical methods and helps in solving the convergence problem associated with the MMT.

Vacuum microwave tubes, such as klystron, traveling-wave tube, gyrotron are high efficiency devices, where the RF interaction structure facilitates efficient energy transfer from the kinetic energy of the high energy electron beam to the electromagnetic wave. Traveling-wave Tube is the most versatile microwave power amplifier widely used for terrestrial communication, radar and aerospace applications. The waveguide based slow-wave structures like Millman, Karp, inter digital, grated waveguide, ring-plane, ring-bar, millitron and folded-waveguide structure gathered importance for application in millimeter-wave traveling-wave tubes. Among these millimeter-wave interaction structures, the folded-waveguide slow-wave structure became the most popular due to its robust structure, high power capability, low RF loss, simpler coupling, reasonably wide bandwidth and ease of fabrication for millimeter-wave to terahertz frequencies. Hence this thesis aims to analyse the folded-waveguide slow-wave structure for broad-banding and efficiency enhancement. The existing approaches for the analysis of cold circuit parameters (dispersion and interaction impedance characteristics) of folded-waveguide slow-wave structure are reinvestigated and found that these have limitation, as the effects of E-plane bend and beam-hole discontinuities are ignored in the parametric analysis. A cascaded matrix equivalent circuit model includes the effect of E-plane and beam-hole discontinuities for the analysis, but reported only for the serpentine folded-waveguide slow-wave structure. The cold test measurement technique was reported only for the dispersion characteristics. Hence the measurement technique has to be extended for the measurement of interaction impedance. The author proposes to orient the present doctoral work to (i) extend the proposed cascaded transmission matrix equivalent model for the analysis of rectangular folded-waveguide slow-wave structure, (ii) develop a non-resonant perturbation technique for the measurement of interaction impedance characteristics of the folded-waveguide slow-wave structure and also to (iii) establish new analysis models for the folded-waveguide slow-wave structure. The effect of E-plane bend and beam-hole discontinuities on the RF characteristics have been considered and simple, yet accurate closed form expressions for the computation of dispersion and interaction impedance characteristics have been established by three different approaches namely: transmission line equivalent circuit model, conformal mapping equivalent circuit model and quasi-TEM approach. The analysis results are benchmarked against 3-D electromagnetic modeling. The non-resonant perturbation theory is developed for the interaction impedance measurement. Typical Ka-band structures are fabricated by wire-EDM process and cold test measurements are carried out to benchmark the analysis approaches. The equivalent circuit models based on lumped circuit model are simpler than the cascaded matrix equivalent circuit model and can give closed form expressions for the prediction of dispersion and interaction impedance characteristics. The quasi-TEM approach can be extended for the complicated structure like ridge-loaded FWG-SWS. Broad-banding of the conventional folded-waveguide slow-wave structure is attempted by ridge-loading on the broad wall of the structure. The ridge-loaded folded-waveguide slow-wave structure is analyzed by parametric approach, cascaded transmission matrix equivalent circuit model and quasi-TEM approach and validated against numerical simulation. The analysis is extended for exploring the efficacy of the ridge-loading on broad-banding of the traveling-wave tube. Finally efficiency enhancement of the folded-waveguide slow-wave structure is attempted by introducing grating on the broad wall of the structure. The analysis is carried out by numerical simulation for exploring the efficacy of the grating on efficiency enhancement of the traveling-wave tube.