Development and integration of Honeywell’s One-Wireless network

The purpose of this project has been to develop upon the Honeywell One-Wireless network in the Murdoch University Pilot Plant and integrate it into the Distributed Control System. This will give future students exposure to developing process control schemes around industrial wireless technology in a small plant setting. Industrial Wireless is still on the cutting edge of technology and it will challenge the status quo in Industry with its many advantages. A brief review of Industrial wireless technology has been included in this thesis report to provide the reader a background to the communications technology. Also included is Honeywell’s One-Wireless Network solution which was used in this project. There, where significant challenges in getting the network operational, and as a result a systematic troubleshooting process was followed. Once the network was operational additional wireless instruments where added to expand the network and set up in the system. From here the One-Wireless network was integrated into the Distributive Control System which operates the pilot plant, this was done using Modbus TCP/IP. To determine the effectiveness of the network a post Radio Frequency assessment was carried out to determine the impact of the network and ensure that it was following best practices. Relevant documentation on the network was developed as a handover for future students to build upon the work carried out

Three Essays On The Marketing Strategies Of A Durable Goods Manufacturer

When purchasing durable goods, consumers not only pay for current but also future consumption; consequently, forward looking behavior is an important consideration in durable goods markets. For example, anticipating that prices will go down in the future, consumers may delay the purchase today; such behavior has a significant impact on the firm’s marketing strategies. This dissertation investigates the impact of durability on two marketing strategies: new product introductions and supply chain design. The first part of this dissertation (Chapter 3) examines a durable goods manufacturer’s new product introduction strategy under different market environments where network effects and product compatibility are important. More specifically, this part explores the incentives of a firm to use either a replacement strategy or a skipping strategy—in the former, the firm commercializes the existing technology, while in the latter, it does not; in either case, an improved technology will be available in the future and the firm will introduce a new product at that time. Using a two-period analytical model with network effects, the analysis shows how the level of improvement in the new product, along with the type of compatibility between the products, interacts with network strength to determine the manufacturer’s optimal strategy. Under gradual new product improvement, there is a strict preference for replacement. In contrast, under rapid new product improvement, that preference only holds in markets with relatively high levels of the network strength; at lower levels of the network strength, skipping is preferred; interestingly, for moderate values of the network strength, the level of product improvement affects the manufacturer’s optimal choice differently under varying types of compatibility. The second part of this dissertation (Chapters 4 and 5) focuses on the supply chain design decisions of a durable goods manufacturer who is a sole supplier of an essential proprietary component for making the end product. Three different supply chain structures iii are considered. In the first, the manufacturer operates as a “component supplier” and sells the component to a downstream firm who then makes the end product. In the second structure, the manufacturer produces the end product using its component but does not make that component available to any other firms; here, the manufacturer operates as a “sole entrant”. Finally, the manufacturer can operate as a “dual distributor” who not only makes the end product using its own component, but sells the component to a downstream firm who then competes against the manufacturer in the end product market. The extant literature on the optimal choice among the above supply chain structures has focused mainly on static settings in a framework of price competition. By contrast, researchers predominantly use quantity competition to examine durable goods markets in dynamic (i.e., multiple time period) settings. Moreover, the literature notes diversity in optimal firm behavior under the two types of (i.e., price and quantity) competition. Therefore, to transition from supply chain design in a static setting to a more dynamic one where consumers are forward-looking, this part utilizes Chapter 4 to analyze the manufacturer’s choice using quantity competition in a static setting. This analysis (in Chapter 4) identifies precisely the shift in the manufacturer’s choice of supply chain structure when moving from price competition to a quantity competition framework. With that analysis as a benchmark, the next chapter focuses on the manufacturer’s choice in a dynamic setting. More specifically, Chapter 5 investigates the impact of durability on the optimality of the supply chain structures identified above. Using a two period setting, the analysis explores how the manufacturer’s preference for different supply chain structures is modified. The findings reveal that, e.g., when durability is taken into account, the manufacturer’s preference for the sole entrant role goes up, while the preference for the component supplier role goes down. Further, under certain conditions, the manufacturer may opt to be a dual distributor in the first period and then choose to become only a component supplier in the second period. The underlying rationale for such shifts in preference iv is directly linked to durability, which creates future competition and substantially reduces the manufacturer’s profitability in the long run. Interestingly, this negative impact varies across different supply chain structures. Overall, this dissertation contributes to the current literature on durable goods and enhances our understanding of the impact of durability on the optimality of distinct marketing strategies, and provides insights that are valuable to both academics and managers

Muistikeskeisen radioverkon vaikutus tietopääsyjen suoritusnopeuteen

Future 5G-based mobile networks will be largely defined by virtualized network functions (VNF). The related computing is being moved to cloud where a set of servers is provided to run all the software components of the VNFs. Such software component can be run on any server in the mobile network cloud infrastructure. The servers conventionally communicate via TCP/IP -network. To realize planned low-latency use cases in 5G, some servers are placed to data centers near the end users (edge clouds). Many of these use cases involve data accesses from one VNF to another, or to other network elements. The accesses are desired to take as little time as possible to stay within the stringent latency requirements of the new use cases. As a possible approach for reaching this, a novel memory-centric platform was studied. The main ideas of the memory-centric platform are to collapse the hierarchy between volatile and persistent memory by utilizing non-volatile memory (NVM) and use memory-semantic communication between computer components. In this work, a surrogate memory-centric platform was set up as a storage for VNFs and the latency of data accesses from VNF application was measured in different experiments. Measurements against a current platform showed that memory-centric platform was significantly faster to access than the current, TCP/IP using platform. Measurements for accessing RAM with different memory bandwidths within the memory-centric platform showed that the order of latency was roughly independent of the available memory bandwidth. These results mean that memory-centric platform is a promising alternative to be used as a storage system for edge clouds. However, more research is needed to study how other service qualities, such as low latency variation, are fulfilled in memory-centric platform in a VNF environment.Tulevaisuuden 5G:hen perustuvissa mobiiliverkoissa verkkolaitteisto on pääosin virtualisoitu. Tällaisen verkon virtuaaliverkkolaite (VNF) koostuu ohjelmistokomponenteista, joita ajetaan tarkoitukseen määrätyiltä mobiiliverkon pilven palvelimilta. Ohjelmistokomponentti voi olla ajossa millä vain mobiiliverkon näistä pilvi-infrastruktuurin palvelimista. Palvelimet on tavallisesti yhdistetty TCP/IP-verkolla. Jotta suunnitellut alhaisen viiveen käyttötapaukset voisivat toteutua 5G-verkoissa, pilvipalvelimia on sijoitettu niin kutsuttuihin reunadatakeskuksiin lähelle loppukäyttäjiä. Monet näistä käyttötapauksista sisältävät tietopääsyjä virtuaaliverkkolaitteesta toisiin tai muihin verkkoelementteihin. Tietopääsyviiveen halutaan olevan mahdollisimman pieni, jotta käyttötapausten tiukoissa viiverajoissa pysytään. Mahdollisena lähestymistapana tietopääsyviiveen minimoimiseen tutkittiin muistikeskeistä laitteistoalustaa. Tämän laitteistoalustan pääperiaatteita on korvata nykyiset lyhytkestoiset ja pysyvät muistit haihtumattomalla muistilla sekä kommunikoida muistisemanttisilla viesteillä tietokonekomponenttien kesken. Tässä työssä muistikeskeisyyttä hyödyntävää sijaislaitteistoa käytettiin VNF-datan varastona ja ohjelmistokomponenttien tietopääsyviivettä sinne mitattiin erilaisilla kokeilla. Kokeet osoittivat nykyisen, TCP/IP-pohjaisen alustan huomattavasti muistikeskeistä alustaa hitaammaksi. Toiseksi, kokeet osoittivat tietopääsyviiveiden olevan saman suuruisia muistikeskeisen alustan sisällä, riippumatta saatavilla olevasta muistikaistasta. Tulokset merkitsevät, että muistikeskeinen alusta on lupaava vaihtoehto reunadatakeskuksen tietovarastojärjestelmäksi. Lisää tutkimusta alustasta kuitenkin tarvitaan, jotta muiden palvelun laatukriteerien, kuten matalan viivevaihtelun, toteutumisesta saadaan tietoa

Fog-Assisted Caching Employing Solar Renewable Energy and Energy Storage Devices for Video on Demand Services

This paper examines the reduction in the non-renewable power consumption of transport networks including core, metro and access layers when Video-on-Demand (VoD) content is cached in solar-powered fog data centres with Energy Storage Devices (ESDs). The effects of considering optical bypass routing and Mixed Line Rate (MLR) in the core network, the availability of solar renewable energy in the access network, and optimising the use of ESDs were addressed. A Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model that considers the above factors was developed to optimise delivering VoD content from cloud data centres in the core network or fog data centres in the access network

Efficient parallel processing with optical interconnections

With the advances in VLSI technology, it is now possible to build chips which can each contain thousands of processors. The efficiency of such chips in executing parallel algorithms heavily depends on the interconnection topology of the processors. It is not possible to build a fully interconnected network of processors with constant fan-in/fan-out using electrical interconnections. Free space optics is a remedy to this limitation. Qualities exclusive to the optical medium are its ability to be directed for propagation in free space and the property that optical channels can cross in space without any interference. In this thesis, we present an electro-optical interconnected architecture named Optical Reconfigurable Mesh (ORM). It is based on an existing optical model of computation. There are two layers in the architecture. The processing layer is a reconfigurable mesh and the deflecting layer contains optical devices to deflect light beams. ORM provides three types of communication mechanisms. The first is for arbitrary planar connections among sets of locally connected processors using the reconfigurable mesh. The second is for arbitrary connections among N of the processors using the electrical buses on the processing layer and N2 fixed passive deflecting units on the deflection layer. The third is for arbitrary connections among any of the N2 processors using the N2 mechanically reconfigurable deflectors in the deflection layer. The third type of communication mechanisms is significantly slower than the other two. Therefore, it is desirable to avoid reconfiguring this type of communication during the execution of the algorithms. Instead, the optical reconfiguration can be done before the execution of each algorithm begins. Determining a right configuration that would be suitable for the entire configuration of a task execution is studied in this thesis. The basic data movements for each of the mechanisms are studied. Finally, to show the power of ORM, we use all three types of communication mechanisms in the first O(logN) time algorithm for finding the convex hulls of all figures in an N x N binary image presented in this thesis

Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2004, nr 2

kwartalni

Potential markets for advanced satellite communications

This report identifies trends in the volume and type of traffic offered to the U.S. domestic communications infrastructure and extrapolates these trends through the year 2011. To describe how telecommunications service providers are adapting to the identified trends, this report assesses the status, plans, and capacity of the domestic communications infrastructure. Cable, satellite, and radio components of the infrastructure are examined separately. The report also assesses the following major applications making use of the infrastructure: (1) Broadband services, including Broadband Integrated Services Digital Network (BISDN), Switched Multimegabit Data Service (SMDS), and frame relay; (2) mobile services, including voice, location, and paging; (3) Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSAT), including mesh VSAT; and (4) Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) for audio and video. The report associates satellite implementation of specific applications with market segments appropriate to their features and capabilities. The volume and dollar value of these market segments are estimated. For the satellite applications able to address the needs of significant market segments, the report also examines the potential of each satellite-based application to capture business from alternative technologies