The traditional start-to-finish playback model is not suitable for all modern interactive video streams. Users expect support for higher levels of interactivity such as fast forward and rewind or the ability to arbitrary seek within their media quickly and efficiently. By conduc…
In electronic devices solder joints form a mechanical as well as an electrical connection between the circuit board and the component (e.g. a chip or a resistor). Temperature variations occurring during field use cause crack initiation and crack growth inside the joints. Accurat…
Adriaan de Groot, the Dutch psychologist and chess Master, argued that “perception and memory are more important differentiators of chess expertise than the ability to look ahead in selecting a chess move” (Groot 1978). A component of expertise in chess has been attributed to th…
Within our physical world lies a digital world populated with an ever increasing number of sizeable data collections. Exploring these large datasets for patterns or trends is a difficult and complex task, especially when users do not always know what they are looking for. Inform…
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are a newly deployed networking technology consisting of multifunctional sensor nodes that are small in size and communicate over short distances. These sensor nodes are mainly in large numbers and are densely deployed either inside the phenomenon…
The purpose of the research described in this thesis was to develop a design methodology for Wearable Computing concepts that could potentially embody authenticity. The Wearables community, still firmly rooted in the disciplines of engineering and ergonomics, had made clear its …
The research questions posed for this work were as follows: Can speech recognition and techniques for topic spotting be used to identify spoken intent in unconstrained natural speech? Can gesture recognition systems based on statistical speech recognition techniques be used to b…
Computerised regulation for disturbed traffic in metro-type railways is proposed. Previous work has used optimisation techniques to minimise disbenefits to passengers, such as waiting time and journey time, in the objective function. The particular disbenefit of trains being hal…
Extensible Markup Language (XML) nowadays is one of the most important standard media used for exchanging and representing data through the Internet. Storing, updating and retrieving the huge amount of web services data such as XML is an attractive area of research for researche…
Evolutionary dynamic optimisation (EDO), or the study of applying evolutionary algorithms to dynamic optimisation problems (DOPs) is the focus of this thesis. Based on two comprehensive literature reviews on existing academic EDO research and real-world DOPs, this thesis for the…
In this thesis we present two different models of Complex Social Systems. The first model represents a vector-borne disease that takes place in a heterogeneous environment composed of areas of different types. Two populations take part in the epidemic process: humans and vectors…
Cooperative behaviours can be defined as those that benefit others at an apparent cost to self. How these kinds of behaviours can evolve has been a topic of great interest in evolutionary biology, for at first sight we would not expect one organism to evolve to help another. Exp…
The growing academic interest in carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as a promising novel class of electronic materials has led to significant progress in the understanding of CNT physics including ballistic and non-ballistic electron transport characteristics. Together with the increasing …
The aim of this thesis is to study the design of closed-loop multiple antenna aided wireless communications relying on limited feedback. Multiple antennas may be employed either/both at the transmitter or/and at the receiver, here the latter periodically feeds back some informat…
The purpose of this work was to investigate the relationship between a number of influential factors, including cognitive style and approach to learning, and students’ processing behaviour during their use of a particular Web-based resource for Electronics and Electrical Enginee…
This thesis presents a novel market-based method, inspired by retail markets for resource allocation in fully decentralised computational systems where agents are self-interested. The posted offer mechanism used requires no central or regional coordinator or complex negotiation …
A large number of approaches have been developed to simplify construction of, and to reduce errors in, data-driven applications. However, these approaches have not been particularly concerned with compile-time type safety. Type mismatch errors between program and the database sc…
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks share computer resources or services through the exchange of information between participating nodes. These nodes form a virtual network overlay by creating a number of connections with one another. Due to the transient nature of nodes within these sy…
Wireless sensor nodes are devices that perform measurements (of parameters such as temperature or vibration) and communicate over a wireless medium. A key benefit is that they can operate autonomously. Nodes are commonly battery-powered so that they can be deployed rapidly witho…