Digital Commons Network^™

Reduction Of Ground-Plane-Dependent Effects On Microstrip-Fed Printed Rectangular Monopoles, Matthias John, Jonathan Evans, Max Ammann, J. C. Modro, Z. N. Chen

Articles

Methods to mitigate the strong dependence of impedance bandwidth on the ground- plane size for a rectangular printed planar monopole is described. It is shown that the bandwidth limitation may be overcome by introducing feed-line asymmetry, which alters the purity and the Q of the higher frequency modes and by ground-plane augmentation, which effects the lower frequency modes. A method of extending the ground plane without increasing the overall antenna size is shown to improve both the bandwidth and gain and also to enable the use of significantly smaller ground planes. The effects of these techniques on radiation pattern are …

Temperature Dependence Of Macrobending Loss In All-Fiber Bend Loss Edge Filter, Pengfei Wang, Yuliya Semenova, Gerald Farrell

Articles

A theoretical model for macrobending-induced temperature dependent loss (TDL) for a standard singlemode fiber (SMF28) with dual coating layers is presented, with good agreement demonstrated between theoretical calculations and experimental results. The impact of temperature on two examples of an all-fiber based edge filter is also investigated theoretically and experimentally and using the developed model, it is shown that it is possible to predict the impact of temperature variations on an all-fiber based edge filter.

Structural Division Procedure For Efficient Ic Analysis, Michael Brutscheck, St. Berger, M. Franke, Andreas Schwarzbacher, St. Becker

Conference papers

The efficient and structured analysis of unknown CMOS integrated circuits (ICs) has become a topic of great relevance in recent years. Up until now, different invasive [1], [2] and non-invasive [3], [4] strategies have been developed for procedure of analysis. However, invasive procedures always lead to the destruction of system under investigation. The non-invasive approaches published so far have the disadvantage that ICs are analysed by using complex algorithms. Here, no subdivision exists to avoid extensive analysis times in the case that only simple structures are investigated. Moreover, traditional procedures cannot automatically distinguish between input and output pin types, which …

Fast And Simple High Resolution Optical Spectrum Analyser, Kai-Uwe Lauterback, Thomas Schneider, Ronny Henker, Max Ammann, Andreas Schwarzbacher

Conference papers

A simple method for fast optical spectroscopy with high resolution is shown. The method is based on the narrowband Brillouin gain process in optical fibers.

A Microstrip Printed Dipole Solar Antenna Using Polycrystalline Silicon Solar Cells, S. Shynu, Maria Roo Ons, Giuseppe Ruvio, Max Ammann, Sarah Mccormack, Brian Norton

Conference papers

A novel printed dipole solar antenna design with an integrated balun is proposed for the first time with high efficiency polycrystalline silicon solar cells is presented in this paper. The optimum orientation of the silver DC bus bars of the solar cell is determined in order to achieve best antenna performance. Good solar antenna performance similar to that of ordinary printed dipoles with PEC reflectors is achieved.

Uwb Vivaldi Antenna Based On A Spline Geometry With Frequency Band-Notch, Matthias John, Max Ammann, Patrick Mcevoy

Conference papers

A printed UWB Vivaldi antenna is presented in this paper. Its geometry is based on a novel spline shape and optimised by an efficient global optimisation algorithm. A U-shaped slot is introduced into the geometry to notch out the 5.1 GHz to 5.8 GHz WLAN band. This can be used to mitigate interference between WLAN and UWB systems.

Responses Of Engineering Students To Lectures Using Powerpoint, Aidan O'Dwyer

Conference papers

This contribution reports on, reflects on and evaluates engineering students responses to the use of PowerPoint in a lecture environment, compared to a more traditional lecturing approach. The contribution concludes that, on average, students value PowerPoint based lectures both as a means of better understanding the material and for the mediums structural and organisational advantages. Students also strongly favour the PowerPoint lectures being available on-line and that a paper copy of the PowerPoint presentation be distributed at the lecture.

Learning Styles Of First Year Level 7 Electrical And Mechanical Engineering Students At Dit, Aidan O'Dwyer

Conference papers

This paper investigates the learning styles of first year, Level 7, mechanical and electrical engineering students at DIT, using the index of learning styles survey as developed by Felder and Soloman [1]. Student learning styles on these programmes are compared with the results from other such surveys. The correlation between student performance and their individual learning styles is examined in outline. Knowledge of the strongly visual learning style of these cohorts of students may be used to improve the learning environment.

Using Student Presentations For Learning And Assessment: Some Experiences, Aidan O'Dwyer

Conference papers

This contribution reports on, reflects on and evaluates the author’s experiences, over a number of academic years, of using formal student presentations as a means of learning and assessment in a taught postgraduate programme in engineering at Dublin Institute of Technology. Students were asked to prepare PowerPoint presentations on individual engineering topics; relevant references in books and technical papers were provided as assistance. Peer assessment of the presentations was employed, following a structured guideline agreed with the students. The contribution discusses the peer assessment experience in detail, including formal student feedback on the process. Some analysis work suggests that there …

Electric-Powered Wheelchairs As An Assistive Technology, Aidan O'Dwyer, Malabika Basu, Eugene Coyle

Conference papers

This paper briefly outlines recent work done, particularly in control systems, for electric powered wheelchairs. These mobility aids, first developed in the 1950’s [1], were improved with the incorporation of microprocessors. The requirement for mobility aids in general is rising; for example, it is reckoned that 1.5% of the U.K. population require such aids. As an assistive technology, electric powered wheelchairs have many benefits. Nevertheless, a reliable and robust such wheelchair has still to evolve.

Enhancing Learning On A First Year Engineering Programme With A Student Design Project, Aidan O'Dwyer

Conference papers

This contribution reports on, and evaluates, the use of a design project for enhancing student learning on a first year module in electrical engineering at Dublin Institute of Technology. The project objective, as outlined to the students, was to design and build a, possibly innovative, everyday device that can generate electricity from sources of “free energy”, so as to encourage first year engineering students to use their natural design creativity in a freeform, brainstorming manner. The project allows students to further develop their academic interests, assists student retention and facilitates student interaction, among other advantages. The work encourages students to …

Portfolio Diversification Using Subspace Factorizations, Ruairí De Fréin, Konstantinos Drakakis, Scott Rickard

Conference papers

Successful investment management relies on allocating assets so as to beat the stock market. Asset classes are affected by different market dynamics or latent trends. These interactions are crucial to the successful allocation of monies. The seminal work on portfolio management by Markowitz prompts the adroit investment manager to consider the correlation between the assets in his portfolio and to vary his selection so as to optimize his riskreturn profile. The factor model, a popular model for the return generating process has been used for portfolio construction and assumes that there is a low rank representation of the stocks. In …

The Research And Implementation Of Maintenance Excellence On Clean Utility Systems In The Pharmaceutical Indusry, Padraig Liggan

Dissertations

Maintenance Excellence is the implementation of best maintenance practices within industry; it is the balance of performance, risk, and cost to achieve an optimal solution. This thesis has been structured around the 5 main areas of maintenance excellence; it has documented all the important functions of the maintenance department that contributes towards maintenance excellence. Demonstrating maintenance excellence is a big achievement however demonstrating it on pharmaceutical clean utility systems with strict regulatory controls is a major challenge. Pharmaceutical production is one of the most heavily regulated industries. With such an emphasis on product quality in the pharmaceutical industry, and with …

Effect Of Carbon Black On The Mechanical Performances Of Magnetorheological Elastomers, Lin Chen

Articles

Several magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) samples, with different weight percentages of carbon black, were fabricated under a constant magnetic field. Their microstructures were observed by using an environmental scanning electron microscope (SEM), and their mechanical performance including magnetorheological (MR) effect, damping ratio and tensile strength were measured with a dynamic mechanical analyzer (DMA) system and an electronic tensile machine. The experimental results demonstrate that carbon black plays a significant role in improving the mechanical performance of MR elastomers. Besides the merits of high MR effect and good tensile strength, the damping ratio of such materials is much reduced. This is expected …

Fabrication Of Switchable Liquid Crystal Devices Using Surface Relief Gratings In Photopolymer, Pavani Kotakonda, Izabela Naydenova, Robert Howard, Suzanne Martin, Vincent Toal

Articles

Holographically recorded surface relief gratings in dry, self-developing acrylamide based photopolymer were used to fabricate two types of switchable liquid crystal (LC) device. One is an electrically switchable LC diffraction grating and the other is an electrically switchable polarization rotator. The electrically switchable diffraction grating was characterized by measuring the dependence of the intensity in the first diffracted order on the applied electric field. The polarization rotator was characterized by studying the influence of the applied electric field on the twist angle and the variation of intensity in the zero and the first orders of diffraction.

Media Literacy And The Public Sphere: A Contextual Study For Public Media Literacy Promotion In Ireland, Brian O'Neill, Cliona Barnes

Reports

This research documents the background to the development of media literacy as a matter of public policy, both within the European Union and internationally, and examines considerations that may be important in the emerging Irish debate on media literacy.

Quarter-Wave Metal Plate Solar Antenna, S. Shynu, Max Ammann, Brian Norton

Articles

A novel design of a quarter-wave shorted trapezoidal metal plate solar antenna using high efficiency polycrystalline silicon solar cells is presented. Using the DC conductive parts of the cell as RF antenna elements as well as choosing the radiating element to be a small base trapezoid, better coupling between the feed and shorting plates is ensured and 40.3% size reduction compared to a conventional shorted quarter-wave patch is obtained. The trapezoidal radiating element covers merely 2.7% of the total available illumination area of the solar cell, leaving its efficiency essentially unaffected. The proposed design strategy has been verified by an …

Engineering: An Inherently Philosophical Enterprise, William Grimson

Level 3

This chapter first sets out the arguments for considering engineering from a philosophical point of view with specific reference to the main branches of Philosophy. Additionally within the single branch of Epistemology, the relevance of Empiricism, Rationalism, Existentialism, Logical Positivist, and Post-Modernism to engineering is briefly outlined. The general proposition advanced is that Engineering is itself fundamentally philosophical in nature, attempting in its own way to make sense of the world in which we live.

Supply Chain Management And Logistics In The Xxi Century, Edward Sweeney

Other Resources

No abstract provided.

Masterplan And Masterplan Design Guidelines : 2008, Grangegorman Development Agency

Design/Planning

The GDA determined that in order to articulate the Vision for the Project and to test the project viability a comprehensive spatial masterplan of the highest standard needed to be developed. A spatial masterplan is a sophisticated model which:

• Shows how streets, squares and open spaces of a neighbourhood are to be connected.
• Defines the height, bulk and massing of buildings.
• Sets out suggested relationships between buildings and public spaces.
• Identifies the movement patterns for people on foot, or by bicycle, car or public transport, as well as looking at the needs of service and refuse vehicles.
• Sets out the …

Activity Systems Within Blended Problem-Based Learning In Academic Professional Development, Roisin Donnelly

Journal Articles

Blending face-to-face and online problem-based learning environments presents opportunities for both learners and lecturers to take part in collaborative knowledge construction. Activity theory is a suitable framework to investigate such environments and the learning processes that both sets of participants experience when engaging in these complementary environments. This paper attempts to map out the potential for activity systems using a blended problem-based learning approach through the exploration of an accredited academic staff development programme in Ireland. Firstly, an analysis of tool use and the discourse that participants and tutors engage in is presented. Secondly, tutor reflections about the evolution of …

Encouraging Student Creativity In Higher Education, Roisin Donnelly, Terry Barrett

Journal Articles

This chapter focuses on how teachers encourage the development of creative states of flow in their students and in themselves. The chapter aims to stimulate educators in higher education to think freshly about creativity and to widen their range of strategies for encouraging student creativity.

Linguatag: An Emotional Speech Analysis Application, Charlie Cullen, Brian Vaughan, Spyros Kousidis

Conference papers

The analysis of speech, particularly for emotional content, is an open area of current research. Ongoing work has developed an emotional speech corpus for analysis, and defined a vowel stress method by which this analysis may be performed. This paper documents the development of LinguaTag, an open source speech analysis software application which implements this vowel stress emotional speech analysis method developed as part of research into the acoustic and linguistic correlates of emotional speech. The analysis output is contained within a file format combining SMIL and SSML markup tags, to facilitate search and retrieval methods within an emotional speech …

Augmented Control Of Hands Free Voice Prostheses, Brian Madden, James Condron, Ted Burke, Eugene Coyle

Conference Papers

Laryngectomy patients often use an electrolarynx to facilitate speech following a tracheotomy. Devices of this type provide the most intelligible means of communication for tracheotomy patients. However, the electro-larynx has inherent drawbacks such as the buzzing monotonic sound emitted, the need for a free hand to operate the device, and the difficulty experienced by many tracheotomy patients in adapting to use it. The most effective means of addressing the shortcomings of existing electro-larynges is to provide the user with a hands-free facility. This allows the user to perform other manual tasks whilst speaking, or simply to communicate more effectively through …

Communication Of Medical Information Using Agents, John Mcgrory, Jane Grimson, Frank Clarke, Peter Gaffney

Conference Papers

Agents are self-contained software entities which act faithfully and autonomously on behalf of a body of knowledge. They can operate in a standalone capacity, or as part of a social group collaborating and

coordinating activities with other software agents. To access their knowledge, agents are interfaced with

using message passing communication. The principle behind medical communications is to provide a means

for exchanging information and knowledge from one computerised location to another, whilst preserving its

true meaning and understanding between the listener and sender. Agent communication is similar to medical

communications, but must provide an additional framework element to allow …

C-Saw---Contextual Semantic Alignment Of Ontologies: Using Negative Semantic Reinforcement, Brendan Tierney, Mike Jackson

Conference papers

Understanding the meaning of each term in an ontology is essential for successfully integrating and aligning ontologies. Much ontology integration research to date is focused on syntactic, structural and semantic matching where the actual meaning of the concepts is disregarded. The C-SAW approach to ontology alignment is based on the Contextualizing the concepts by using a set of Semantic Alignment Words (C-SAW). The C-SAW approach is enhanced by Negative Semantic Reinforcement (NSR), where additional semantic meaning can be added to the set of Semantic Alignment Words, by considering words which are unrelated to the concept.

Knowledge Visualisation Of Wikipedia, Jinhui Wang

Dissertations

Wikipedia is a popular online encyclopaedia, in which articles are created together by anyone who is willing to contribute. There is debate on the quality, reliability and consistency of articles due to its openness. Besides, it is hard to see the growing path of articles because there is no centralised control in Wikipedia. The history of articles is available but in form that is difficult to process to get a picture of article evolution. Knowledge visualisation addresses the problem by providing analysis and comprehension of large amounts of data to gain insights and to facilitate knowledge creation and sharing. However, …

Building Organisationally Sensitive Technological Solutions For Knowledge Management In It Support Services, David Tonade

Dissertations

With the advent of the internet, information and communications technology has changed the way organisations operate and do business. There now exist an extremely dynamic and competitive business landscape, where information and knowledge are continuously created, used and distributed across business units. People have become more involved with the use of technology to aid them in their business tasks. In the course of generating and transmitting information comes the realization that knowledge is a vital asset of the company. Thus, most firms embark on various initiatives to enable Knowledge Management (KM). This study revolves around the IT tools involved in …

Assessing The Impact Of Organisational Culture When Introducing Web.2.0 Technologies Into A Non-Profit Organisation For Knowledge Managment, Heather Madden

Dissertations

Some of the key challenges that any organisation faces today are those of knowledge sharing and collaboration. This research investigates knowledge sharing in existing communities of practice in a non-profit organisation and the challenges that are faced by attempting to facilitate online interactions for these communities. Organisation culture can either incentivise or impede this process and this research will describe how people and culture are two of the most important factors when considering a knowledge management initiative. Given that the impact of culture is such a key issue, a number of organisations are interviewed and evaluated to compare and contrast …

2008 - 2009 : Dit Staff Handbook, Dublin Institute Of Technology

DIT Publications

Booklet or staff containing general information on support services, central services, student services and faculties and campus.