Engineering Commons^™

Covert Encryption And Document Authentication Using Texture Coding, Jonathan Blackledge, Mary Hallot

Articles

With the improvements in the quality of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) printing and scanning devices, the ability to counterfeit documents has become a widespread problem. Consequently, there has been an increasing demand to develop digital watermarking techniques which can be applied to both electronic and printed images (and documents) that can be authenticated, prevent unauthorized copying and withstand abuse and degradation. In this paper , a new approach to digital watermarking is presented and a range of possible applications are considered. The process is defined by using concepts and techniques borrowed from Cryptography. It is based on computing a 'scramble image' by …

Proposal For A Construction Industry Digital Competency Centre For Ireland, Alan V. Hore

Conference papers

The Irish construction industry is facing a series of fundamental challenges that is affecting every player in the AEC lifecycle from architects to owners to tenants. Despite technology advances in recent years, the Irish construction industry lags behind other industries in respect to Information Communications Technology (ICT) investments. Despite a pressing need for innovation, procurement and tendering procedures in Ireland largely discourages new ideas and puts further pressure on wafer-thin margins that characterise the construction sector. This paper will reflect on the deliverables of the Construction Information Technology Alliance (CITA) in Ireland, which was formed in partnership between the Technological …

Implementing Ecommerce In The Irish Construction Industry, Alan V. Hore, Roger West

Conference papers

The current methods of ordering, delivering and invoicing of materials in the construction in-dustry is enormously inefficient, with vast quantities of paperwork, duplication of effort, scanning, re-keying and resolving mismatches between invoices, delivery dockets and purchase orders. The objective of this pa-per is to set out the progress that is being made by the Construction IT Alliance (CITA) in Ireland to support the implementation of eCommerce in the Irish construction industry. The authors will present the result of a pilot project in 2006 which demonstrated that the technology necessary for implementing an electronic supply chain exists and could be deployed …

Citax: A Collaborative Ict Standards Model For The Irish Construction Industry, Alan V. Hore, Roger West

Conference papers

The Irish construction industry is facing a series of fundamental challenges that is affecting every player in the AEC lifecycle, from architects to engineers to quantity surveyors to owners to tenants. Despite technological advances in recent years, the Irish construction industry lags behind other industries in respect to ICT investments. Although there is a pressing need for innovation, existing procurement and tendering procedures in Ireland largely discourage new ideas and put further pressure on thin margins that characterise the competitiveness of the construction sector. The low level of inter-company ICT connectivity reflects the general fragmented and adversarial nature of the …

Preparation And Accreditation Of Level 7 Engineering Programmes, Mark Mcgrath

Conference Papers

Accreditation of 3^rd level educational programmes by a suitably recognised professional body is of particular relevance in relation to engineering. The completion of a sequence of modules which leads to the attainment of this professionally recognised award is viewed as integral to the undertaking. The engineering technology fields are developing and expanding rapidly and the third level sector must keep abreast of these changes. This is essential if the third level institutions wish to continue delivering programmes which produce graduates who can successfully complete the transition from 3rd. Level to the various engineering sectors.

This paper outlines various aspects …

Design Issues For Therapeutic Ultrasound Angioplasty Waveguides, Declan Noone, Graham Gavin, Garrett Mcguinness

Conference Papers

Therapeutic ultrasound angioplasty is a new minimally invasive cardiovascular procedure for disrupting atherosclerotic lesions. Mechanical energy is transmitted in the form of ultrasound waves via long, flexible wire waveguides navigated to the lesion site through the vascular system. The underpinning principle of this technology is that plaque may be disrupted through a combination of direct contact ablation, pressure waves, cavitation and acoustic streaming, which all depend on the amplitude and frequency of displacements at the distal tip of the wire waveguide. This study identifies a number of key design issues for clinical devices of this type, and describes testing procedures …

A System For Automatically Annotating Traditional Irish Music Field Recordings, Bryan Duggan, Brendan O'Shea, Padraig Cunningham

Conference papers

This paper presents MATT2 (Machine Annotation of Traditional Tunes). MATT2 is a novel system which can automatically annotate field recordings of traditional Irish music with useful metadata such as tune name, key signature, time signature, composer and discography. MATT2 works by using a number of algorithms to automatically transcribe digital audio to be annotated to the ABC music notation language. It then compares these transcriptions against a corpus of 860 human made transcriptions in ABC using a variation of the edit distance algorithm. Results using MATT2 to annotate fifty recordings of flute and fiddle tunes demonstrate a high success rate …

Back To The Future:Knowledge Light Case Base Cookery, Qian Zhang, Rong Hu, Brian Mac Namee, Sarah Jane Delany

Conference papers

The domain of cookery has been of interest for Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) research for many years since the CHEF case-based planning system in the mid 1980s. This paper returns to look at this domain, emphasising a knowledge-light approach. Our approach focuses on; the design of a structured case representation which encapsulates the details of a recipe, on leveraging WordNet for identifying food items and the relationships between them, and on using Active Learning to assist in labelling recipes with meal and cuisine types. Users can search for recipes by specifying the ingredients they wish to include in, or exclude from, …

Structure Property Relationships In Electron Donating Systems For Potential Photovoltaic Applications., Jonathan Moghal

Doctoral

Conjugated polymers are considered to be one-dimensional semiconductors. In conjugated polymers single and double bonds alternatively bond the carbon atoms along the polymer chain. The loosely bound electrons determine the electronic properties of conjugated polymers. In order to utilise the properties of conjugated polymers in terms of a photovoltaic (PV) device application an acceptor material must be added. The acceptor material used in this study is used in buckminsterfullerence (C60). C60 was selected for this purpose due to its size and the fact that it can accept up to six additional electrons. Ultrafast charge transfers from a conducting polymer onto …

Drop Photometer Design., Kevin Tiernan

Doctoral

The tensiograph drop analyser, operating in the mode of ultraviolet-visual absorption photometer, was re-engineered to improve measurement accuracy. As well as instrumentation re-design, the other objective of the research was to analyse tensiograph signals to explore how their features are defined by drop properties. Using fibre optic technology, the tensiograph emits a light beam into a growing pendant drop whereupon it undergoes a number of internal reflections. A portion of the reflected light energy is coupled to a photodiode producing a proportional current that is electronically processed and transferred to a computer for analysis. The signal produced, known as the …

Development Of Fiber Bend Loss Edge Filter, Pengfei Wang

Doctoral

This PhD thesis addresses several aspects of macrobending loss in single-mode optical fibers. The context for the work is the development of an edge filter for a rapid wavelength measurement system. Based on scalar approximation theory and the beam propagation method, a simulation platform is developed and used to predict the macrobending loss of singlemode fiber with single or multiple coating layers. A single-mode step index fiber macrobending loss edge filter is investigated theoretically in terms of baseline loss, discrimination range and polarization dependent loss (PDL). The theoretical analysis is supported by a range of experimental investigations and results. The …

A Macro-Bend Fiber Based Wavelength Demodulation System For Optical Fiber Sensing Applications, Ginu Rajan

Doctoral

This thesis considers the design and development of a wide range allfiber interrogation system with a rapid measurement capability for extracting reliable measurand information from fiber Bragg grating sensors. Existing passive and active interrogation systems have certain limitations and do not satisfy all requirements. In this thesis a wavelength demodulation system is proposed, based on a macro-bend fiber filter employed in a ratiometric detection scheme. A theoretical model and analysis of an edge filter based ratiometric wavelength measurement (RWM) system is presented. A fiber edge filter is realized by carefully selecting an appropriate bend radius and number of bend turns …

Interaction Of Rf-Hyperthermia Applicator With High Fidelity Human Body Model, Sergio Curto, T.S. P. See, Z. N. Chen, Patrick Mcevoy, Max Ammann

Conference papers

A compact patch antenna working at the 434 MHz ISM frequency band is proposed as an RF-Hyperthermia applicator. The electromagnetic interaction in terms of S11, SAR and E-Field distribution of the antenna with a High Fidelity human body model is investigated. This analysis provides useful information for engineers and clinical staff to develop more efficient and smaller antennas for medical applications, in particular for RF-Hyperthermia cancer therapy, where the size of the antenna determines tumor accessibility.

1 Gbit/S Radio Over Fiber Downlink At A 32 Ghz Carrier, Marcus Junker, Thomas Schneider, Kai-Uwe Lauterbach, Ronny Henker, Max Ammann, Andreas Schwarzbacher

Conference papers

The carrier frequency of the presented radio over fiber downlink at 32 GHz is generated by stimulated Brillouin scattering and an error free 1 Gbit/s data transmission is realized.

Spatial Group Delay Patterns For Three Ultra Wideband Spline Antennas, Patrick Mcevoy, Matthias John, Sergio Curto, Max Ammann

Conference papers

The IEEE ultra wideband (UWB) standard includes both a multiple frequency carrier (MB-OFDM) and an impulse spectrum (DS-UWB) method, for which application antennas should be appropriately optimized. Small printed monopoles with outline features that can be defined by a Bezier-spline [1] have good matched impedance performance across the 3.1 - 10.6 GHz band. For communications applications, an omni-directional pattern, where the gain pattern varies by less than plusmn5 dBi, and a stable frequency-gain profile in the azimuth plane, allow for an even spatial coverage in all directions. In the case of an impulse system, any non-linear phase transfer performance in …

Optimization Of The Brillouin Spectrum For Fiber Based Slow Light Systems, Ronny Henker, Andrzej Wiatrek, Kai-Uwe Lauterbach, Thomas Schneider, Max Ammann, Andreas Schwarzbacher

Conference papers

This article shows simulation results and first practical investigations of the optimization of a Brillouin spectrum with the natural bandwidth superimposed with two losses for fiber based slow light systems.

Temperature Dependence Of A Macrobending Edge Filter Based On A High-Bend Loss Fiber, Pengfei Wang, Ginu Rajan, Yuliya Semenova, Gerald Farrell

Articles

The temperature dependence of a macrobending bare fiber based edge filter is investigated both theoretically and experimentally. The fiber used is a high bend loss fiber, type 1060XP. The experimental results show a good agreement with the proposed theoretical model over a temperature range from 0 to 80oC. It is shown that the strong temperature dependence of a high-bend loss fiber has a significant influence on the performance of a fiber edge filter used in a wavelength measurement application. However it is also concluded that such a temperature dependent performance can be beneficially utilized in a fiber temperature sensing application.

Evaluation Of Robocode As A Teaching Tool For Computer Programming, Arnold Hensman

Conference Papers

Robocode began as an educational tool to aid in learning Java programming. It has since evolved into something of a phenomenon, as the prospect of creating simple to complex virtual tanks appears to pose an attractive challenge to both novice and expert programmers alike. What started out as a teaching tool has grown into a worldwide network of competitors, all keen to prove that their ‘bot’ stands out from the crowd. Competitions are well organised and many Robocode events are a PR dream for the computing companies that sponsor them. Without a doubt, this easy to use application has sparked …

A Coupled Fluid-Structure Model Of A Therapeutic Ultrasound Angioplasty Wire Waveguide, Graham Gavin, Finbar Dolan, M.S. Hashmi, Garrett Mcguinness

Articles

Ultrasonic longitudinal displacements, delivered to the distal tips of small diameter wire waveguides, have been shown to be capable of disrupting complicated atherosclerotic plaques during vascular interventions. These ultrasonic displacements can disrupt plaques by direct contact ablation but also by pressure waves, associated cavitation and acoustic streaming developed in the surrounding blood and tissue cavities. The pressure waves developed within the arterial lumen appear to play a major role but are complex to predict as they are determined by the distal tip output of the wire waveguide (both displacement and frequency), the geometric features of the waveguide tip and the …

Bs News

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Practical Sensor For Measurement Of Nitrogen, Dusan Popovic, Vladimir Milosavljevic, Steven Daniels

Articles

This paper presents a method for precise measurement of atomic and molecular nitrogen in an oxygen-nitrogen dc plasma. This is achieved by monitoring the intensities of the atomic nitrogen spectral line at 821.6 nm and the molecular nitrogen bandhead at 337.1 nm, relative to the atomic oxygen spectral line at 844.7 nm. Oxygen is one of the most frequently used gases for surface chemical treatment, including deposition and etching, therefore the ability to measure and control the process and chemical composition of the process is essential. To validate this oxygen actimometry method for N2-xO2 (where x varies from 0 to …

Experimental Measurement Of Overhead Associated With Active Probing Of Wireless Mesh Networks, Brian Keegan, Karol Kowalik

Conference papers

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) represent the next generation wireless networks. The increased capacity of WMNs means that they are now capable of providing backhaul services traditionally maintained by wired networks. The attraction of WMNs is their ease of deployment and ability to self organise, self configure, and self heal. In order to successfully achieve this objective careful consideration must be applied when constructing a WMN. In order to optimise the operation of the network, data should traverse the network by means of the most efficient route. Characterisation and path selection will be determined by the routing algorithm coupled with the …

Wireless Positioning Techniques: A Developer's Update, Seamus Rooney, Keith Gardiner, James Carswell

Conference papers

This paper describes the current efforts to develop an open source, privacy sensitive, location determination software component for mobile devices. Currently in mobile computing, the ability of a mobile device to determine its own location is becoming increasingly desirable as the usefulness of such a feature enhances many commercial applications. There have been numerous attempts to achieve this from both the network positioning perspective and also from the wireless beacon angle not to mention the integration of GPS into mobile devices. There are two important aspects to consider when using such a system which are privacy and cost. This paper …

An Experimental Investigation Of Real-Time Video Transmission Over Ieee 802.11e Wlan Networks Using Txop, Nicola Cranley, Mark Davis

Conference papers

Real-time multimedia streaming applications require a strict bounded end-to-end delay and are considered to be bursty as each video frame is typically transmitted as a burst of packets. In this paper we show how the distribution of video frame sizes can be used to efficiently dimension the IEEE 802.11e TXOP limit parameter to efficiently deal with this burstiness in order to enhance the transmission of real-time video streaming services. Through experimental investigation, we show that by using the mean video frame size to dimension the TXOP limit parameter, the transmission delay for the video frame is reduced by 67% under …

Thermal Testing Of Building Insulation Materials, Eoghan Frawley, David Kennedy

Articles

This article explores the testing of building insulation materials and the development of a suitable testing apparatus.

Bs News

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Optical Reading And Playing Of Sound Signals From Vinyl Records, Arnold Hensman, Kevin Casey

Conference Papers

While advanced digital music systems such as compact disk players and MP3 have become the standard in sound reproduction technology, critics claim that conversion to digital often results in a loss of sound quality and richness. For this reason, vinyl records remain the medium of choice for many audiophiles involved in specialist areas. The waveform cut into a vinyl record is an exact replica of the analogue version from the original source. However, while some perceive this media as reproducing a more authentic quality then its digital counterpart, there is an absence a safe playback system. Contact with the stylus …

The Effects Of Contention Among Stations On Video Streaming Applications Over Wireless Local Area Networks: An Experimental Approach, Nicola Cranley, Tanmoy Debnath

Conference papers

Multimedia streaming applications have a large impact on the resource requirements of the WLAN. There are many variables involved in video streaming, such as the video content being streamed, how the video is encoded and how it is sent. This makes the role of radio resource management and the provision of QoS guarantees extremely difficult. For video streaming applications, packet loss and packets dropped due to excessive delay are the primary factors that affect the received video quality. In this paper, we experimentally analyse the effects of contention on the performance of video streaming applications with a given delay constraint …

The Capability Of The Edca Mechanism To Support Voice Traffic In A Mixed Voice/Data Transmission Over 802.11e Wlans: An Experimental Investigation, Miroslaw Narbutt, Mark Davis

Conference papers

In this paper we experimentally evaluate the capability of the EDCA mechanism to support voice traffic in a mixed voice/data transmission over 802.11e WLANs. In particular we investigate how real-time voice transmission can be supported by tuning four EDCA parameters, namely AIFSN, CWmin, CWmax and TXOP and how this impacts on background data transmission. The experimental set-up involves fifteen VoIP terminals sending bi-directional traffic between wired and wireless subnets and another station injecting various types of heavy background load to the wireless subnet. End-to-end voice transmission quality is predicted from time-varying transmission impairments with the use of the latest Appendix …

Ict And Innovation Processes In Small Italian Logistics Companies, Edward Sweeney

Conference papers

No abstract provided.