3D to 2D surface mesh parameterisation for the purposes of unstructured transmission line modelling method simulations

Small scale fabrication processes have led to the advent of very thin flexible devices such as RFID tags, flexible PCBs and smart clothing. In a geometrical sense, these present themselves as curved two dimensional surfaces embedded in a three dimensional domain. When simulating electromagnetic behaviour on these surfaces at low frequencies, a full 3D field model is not always necessary. Using 3D algorithms to solve these problems can result in a large portion of the computer memory and runtime being used to mesh and simulate areas of the domain that present little electromagnetic activity. The theme of this thesis is concerned with the improvement of the runtime and memory consumption of electromagnetic simulations of these surfaces. The main contributions of this work are presented as an investigation into the feasibility of applying a 2D Unstructured Transmission Line Modelling method (UTLM) simulation to open, curved surfaces embedded in 3D space, by providing a one-to-one mapping of the geometry to a 2D flat plane. First, an investigation into the various methods of how a computer represents unstructured meshes in its memory is presented, and how this affects the runtime of the simulation. The underlying mesh data structures used to represent the geometrical problem space can have a huge impact on the efficiency and memory consumption of the simulation. This investigation served to demonstrate that it is not just simply the optimisation of the simulation algorithms that facilitate improvements to the runtime and memory consumption of a simulation. How a computer understands the connectivity of the mesh can have far greater impacts to the computational resources available. The concepts of surface parameterisation are then introduced; a process of mapping curved surfaces embedded in a three dimensional domain to a flat two dimensional plane. By providing a one-to-one mapping of the geometry from the 3D domain to the 2D flat plane, a low frequency 2D unstructured TLM simulation can be applied, negating the need for 3D algorithms. Because this mapping is one-to-one, the results of the simulation can then be mapped back to 3D space for visualisation. Parameterisations will almost always introduce distortion to angle and area, and minimising this distortion is paramount to maintaining an accurate simulation. Test cases were used to measure the extent of this distortion, and the investigation concluded that Angle Based Flattening (ABF) and Least Squares Conformal Mapping (LSCM) methods resulted in the best quality parameterisations. Simulations were then conducted on these test cases as a demonstration of how UTLM can be performed on 2D surfaces, embedded in a 3D domain

3D to 2D surface mesh parameterisation for the purposes of unstructured transmission line modelling method simulations

Small scale fabrication processes have led to the advent of very thin flexible devices such as RFID tags, flexible PCBs and smart clothing. In a geometrical sense, these present themselves as curved two dimensional surfaces embedded in a three dimensional domain. When simulating electromagnetic behaviour on these surfaces at low frequencies, a full 3D field model is not always necessary. Using 3D algorithms to solve these problems can result in a large portion of the computer memory and runtime being used to mesh and simulate areas of the domain that present little electromagnetic activity. The theme of this thesis is concerned with the improvement of the runtime and memory consumption of electromagnetic simulations of these surfaces. The main contributions of this work are presented as an investigation into the feasibility of applying a 2D Unstructured Transmission Line Modelling method (UTLM) simulation to open, curved surfaces embedded in 3D space, by providing a one-to-one mapping of the geometry to a 2D flat plane. First, an investigation into the various methods of how a computer represents unstructured meshes in its memory is presented, and how this affects the runtime of the simulation. The underlying mesh data structures used to represent the geometrical problem space can have a huge impact on the efficiency and memory consumption of the simulation. This investigation served to demonstrate that it is not just simply the optimisation of the simulation algorithms that facilitate improvements to the runtime and memory consumption of a simulation. How a computer understands the connectivity of the mesh can have far greater impacts to the computational resources available. The concepts of surface parameterisation are then introduced; a process of mapping curved surfaces embedded in a three dimensional domain to a flat two dimensional plane. By providing a one-to-one mapping of the geometry from the 3D domain to the 2D flat plane, a low frequency 2D unstructured TLM simulation can be applied, negating the need for 3D algorithms. Because this mapping is one-to-one, the results of the simulation can then be mapped back to 3D space for visualisation. Parameterisations will almost always introduce distortion to angle and area, and minimising this distortion is paramount to maintaining an accurate simulation. Test cases were used to measure the extent of this distortion, and the investigation concluded that Angle Based Flattening (ABF) and Least Squares Conformal Mapping (LSCM) methods resulted in the best quality parameterisations. Simulations were then conducted on these test cases as a demonstration of how UTLM can be performed on 2D surfaces, embedded in a 3D domain

Strategic leadership, strategic performance and core competencies in Lebanon’s education

The study examines a relationship among strategic leadership, strategic performance and core competence among teachers from Lebanon educational sector. Using sample size of 106 observations, with convenient sampling method, result showed that core competence has a direct effect on strategic performance and strategic leadership. Conversely, strategic leadership has not shown its significant mediation role in effecting strategic performance through the core competence. Examination of the data is performed using mediation regression model. Other implications, limitations, and future works are further discussed

A Secure Waveform Format for Interference Mitigation in Heterogeneous Uplink Networks

In heterogeneous networks (HetNets), providing reliable and secure transmission uplinks to combat the potential interference is a major challenge. We address the multi-tier uplink interference issue, inspired by the secure waveform design in spatial and spectral domains to improve the system reliability and capacity. A system combining a beamforming (BF) technique based on uniform circle array and a frequency-hopping (FH) technique has been developed under an orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) scheme (i.e., OFDM/FH-BF system). The modified receiver structure is designed for the hopped multicarrier signals. The convergence of the adaptive FH-BF system, which is critical for supporting highly mobile users in HetNets, is investigated. The combined effects of FH and BF techniques on system performance, in terms of output signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and bit-error-rate (BER), are fully studied. The simulation results show that the proposed OFDM/FH-BF system converges in a reasonably low number of snapshots, which meets the strict requirement for serving rapidly moving users. The combination of BF and FH techniques can offer reliable uplinks by mitigating the potential interference. In particular, at the cell edge with multiple interferers K, the FH technique becomes the dominant anti-interference approach and the BER decreases with increasing size of the frequency slots set q

Near-field scanning and propagation of correlated low-frequency radiated emissions

Electromagnetic radiation from complex printed circuit boards can occur over a broad frequency bandwidth, ranging from hundreds of MHz to tens of GHz. This is becoming a critical issue for assessment of EMC and interoperability as electronic components become more and more integrated. We use emissions from an enclosure with a single-slot aperture and equipped with operating electronics to exemplify and model such sources. Spatial correlation functions obtained from two-probe measurements are used both to characterise the source and to propagate the emissions. We examine emissions in the submicrowave frequency range, where evanescent decay dominates the measured correlation function at the distances measured. We find that an approximate, diffusion-like propagator describes the measured emissions well. A phase-space approach based on Wigner functions is exploited to develop this approximation and to provide enhanced understanding of the emissions

High frequency propagation in large and multiply connected electromagnetic environments

Emergent wireless telecommunications and 5G mobile networks will operate at very high frequencies, ranging from microwave (5GHz) to mmWave (28GHz and beyond) regimes. Indoor coverage is challenging at these frequencies, where environments are expected to be highly overmoded. We perform full-wave Transmission Line Matrix simulations of a test electromagnetic environment. For electrically large, multiply connected rooms with simple polygonal irregularities, e.g. blades, we show that different regimes occur in the spatial field pattern as the frequency increases. From 1 GHz to 5 GHz the pattern is speckled. At 8 and 12 GHz we observe the emergence of specular components existing on a noisy background. The statistics of fields in the background are important for small scale fading in non-line-of-sight conditions. We characterize the spatial statistics of the test environment. Because of coupling and partially regular boundary, fluctuations acquire non-generic features, and they result in non-Rayleigh distribution functions at the investigated frequencies. The resurgence of directionality in the high microwave regime has an effect in fading statistics in a similar way of shadowing, from which background field statistics are fitted by fat tail (Bessel K) distribution. However, since the transition from low to high microwave regimes has no defined separation between specular and noisy components, generated by reflection and diffraction, ray tracing algorithms - more appropriate to predict energy of specular components - need to be extended to cope with noisy fields. We envisage these methods to be fundamental in the description of mmWave propagation. The achieved results are useful to create channel models for the outdoor-to-indoor transition and to extend mobile signal coverage to indoor regions