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Annealing-induced solid phase crystallization of In₂O₃:H leads to a significantly improved electron mobility, which is confirmed by Hall measurements. Indium hydroxide dehydroxylation occurs in In₂O₃:H during annealing, which is well responsible for the structural transformation and a high electron mobility with a decreased carrier concentration in crystallized In₂O₃:H. A significant decrease in the intensity of occupied gap states is observed in crystallized In₂O₃:H, possibly due to a decrease in carrier concentration. Doped In₂O₃ variants have been found to have a quite deeper allowed transition level below the valence-band edge than undoped In₂O₃, which in particular applies to crystallized In₂O₃:H, but most likely attributed to a change of the crystal structure upon annealing and/or a different O 2p-In 4d coupling near the VBM compared to amorphous In₂O₃:H.
To well understand the interface properties of Ag/In₂O₃:H upon annealing, a thin Ag film was grown on the In₂O₃:H substrate and annealed in vacuum up to 300 °C. During annealing, the potential Ag diffusion into the bulk In₂O₃:H and/or a change of an annealing-induced Ag topography (i.e., cluster formation) occurs, with a small Ag oxidation (i.e., Ag₂O and AgO). With Ag deposition, an initial downward band bending of (0.11±0.05) eV was present in In₂O₃:H, attributed to a Schottky contact formed at the Ag/In₂O₃:H interface. Upon annealing, the downward band bending reduces gradually, and the Schottky-barrier height at the Ag/In₂O₃:H interface also decreases.
A thickness series of the individual materials on the respective “substrate” (i.e., MnS/Si, GaN/MnS, and ZnO/GaN) was epitaxially grown on Si (100) wafer, and the interfacial chemistry and energy-level alignment at the respective interfaces are examined using photoelectron spectroscopy. At the MnS/Si interface, an interface-induced band bending (IIBB) appears in Si, which of values are found to be (0.15±0.07) and (0.23±0.07) eV for 4 and 15 nm MnS/Si stacks, respectively. The MnS/Si heterointerface shows a type-II (staggered) band lineup with a VBO of (-0.37±0.10) eV and the corresponding CBO of (2.27±0.10) eV. For the GaN/MnS interface, a significant diffusion of Mn into the GaN layer takes place during GaN deposition. In addition, an interface-induced band bending (IIBB) by ~0.30 eV is observed in MnS. The GaN/MnS interface shows a type-II (staggered) band lineup with a VBO of (1.46±0.10) eV and the corresponding CBO of (-1.09±0.10) eV. At the ZnO/GaN interface, a significant N diffusion from GaN into ZsnO takes place, i.e., Zn-N bonds, when ZnO is grown on the GaN layer. Also, an interfacial oxide (GaOx) layer was formed during ZnO deposited on GaN films. The ZnO/GaN heterointerface shows a type-II (staggered) band lineup with a VBO of (2.48±0.10) eV and the corresponding CBO of (-2.50±0.10) eV, respectively.
The license-free 60 GHz band enables a new breed of wireless networks offering data rates in the range of one to a few Gigabit per second over short distances. This thesis investigates the performance of a 60 GHz system using coded OFDM modulation and directive antennas for the transmitter and receiver. The study includes the impact of the 60 GHz propagation channel, impairments of a frontend in Si-Ge technology and considerations with respect to an efficient implementation. A major part of the work consists in the specification of a physical layer, which is optimized for the given wireless link and enables an implementation with programmable logic devices at moderate clock speed. For the selection of a channel code, the performance of two coding schemes is compared for the 60 GHz channel. The first scheme consists of a standard convolutional code and an outer Reed-Solomon code, whereas the second scheme is made up of an LDPC code with similar complexity. The interleaving scheme for the convolutional code is optimized to yield best performance. Furthermore, algorithms are developed and simulated for all essential system components of the OFDM receiver. The implementation of these components is also considered. A new synchronization scheme is introduced, which offers a high degree of robustness at low complexity. In this scheme, the fine timing synchronization shares the same hardware resources as the channel estimator. This approach results in a significant reduction of chip area. A new tracking algorithm is developed, which adequately compensates for the fluctuations of carrier phase, timing and channel impulse response. Finally, the implementation of the FFT and Viterbi decoder is discussed. The system architecture of the receiver requires a high degree of parallel processing and uses a deep processing pipeline to keep the clock frequency low. It is shown how to combine the system components into an efficient system under these conditions. The performance of the complete system is investigated for the static and time-variant channel. It is shown that despite the low complexity and high latency, the system achieves good performance. The baseband processor has been realized as a narrowband version with 400 MHz channels and broadband version with 2 GHz channels and improved algorithms. This has been done on an FPGA platform.
Water pollution is a major issue in developing countries. 2.2 of the 2.3 billion people who suffer annually from waterborne diseases live in this part of the world. Moreover, it causes the deterioration of aquatic ecosystems the living of billions of poor people depend on. A major source of water pollution is the discharge of untreated municipal wastewater. On average, cities in developing countries discharge 80-90% of their sewage untreated. Though treatment of municipal wastewater remains a huge challenge in developing countries, the situation is not equally adverse all over the place. Treatment rates vary substantially across localities. From this observation, the question arises what drives and what impairs wastewater treatment. No quantitative analysis of this topic has been performed yet at the municipal level in a developing country.
Therefore, this thesis investigates the impact of social factors on municipal wastewater treatment in Mexican municipalities in order to gain insights on what improves wastewater treatment in a developing country. 846 of 2,456 Mexican municipalities treat a share of their municipal wastewater that ranges from single-digit percentages to full coverage while the majority of municipalities treats no wastewater. The study relies on econometric techniques to scrutinize 10 hypotheses on the relationship between social factors and wastewater treatment. More precisely, it applies binary outcome models to estimate the conditional probability wastewater treatment takes place in a municipality for a sample of 2,290 Mexican municipalities. In addition, it applies the Tobit and Fractional logit model to estimate the percentage of treated municipal wastewater depending on social factors for 425 municipalities.
The thesis identifies geographic spillovers, environmental federalism, institutional aspects like the corporatization of municipal water service, urbanization, per capita income and its distribution as significant influencing factors. A significant effect of education, ethnic heterogeneity, female participation in municipal politics and water scarcity is not found. In addition, the involvement of superior government tiers of a developing country in the funding of municipal wastewater treatment infrastructure seems to mitigate the influence of social factors on wastewater treatment. Based on these findings, the thesis develops policy recommendations to improve municipal wastewater treatment in developing countries.
Water scarcity is a global phenomenon which affects close to 2.8 billion people worldwide especially in developing countries. Buea (Cameroon) is blessed with abundant water resources but paradoxically the inhabitants of this region are facing a serious water crisis. The increase in population and rapid urbanization exert tremendous pressure on the water resources of this community. Also, the capacity of the main water supply authority CAMWATER (Cameroon Water Utilities Corporation) is insufficient to cater for the 90000 inhabitants. This thesis explores the potential of domestic rainwater harvesting (rooftop rainwater harvesting) as the best alternative to fulfill the water demand of the population. It also promotes artificial groundwater recharge as the best way to sustainably deal with excess rainwater to decrease surface runoff and avoid flooding especially in the high altitude villages on the eastern slopes of Mount Cameroon during the rainy season. Furthermore, it examines the willingness of the community to accept this innovative alternative which will solve their water supply problems. In an effort to combat water scarcity and decrease poverty in this region, this research analyses the possibility of domestic rainwater harvesting as a worthwhile alternative to augment the present conventional water supply systems to stabilize the water demand and create avenues for economic development. Buea has high rainfall (4000mm/year); harvesting the rainwater during the rainy season, storing it for usage in the dry season and using the excess to recharge groundwater aquifers will definitely ameliorate the status quo. To realize these objectives, a series of double ring infiltration tests were carried out in 9 different locations. The aim of these tests was to measure infiltration rates and therefore locate areas of good artificial groundwater recharge potential. Also, 220 questionnaires were distributed in 10 villages within the municipality in an effort to characterize the water consumption pattern of the population. The study confirms that the Buea water crisis is mainly as a result of poor water management and not due to physical or economic water scarcity. It reveals that about 86% of the population experience water shortages and CAMWATER has to double up its present capacity in order to meet up with demand. Over 80% of the population is willing to consider rainwater harvesting as a good alternative to augment their domestic water supply if government provides subventions to cover half of the installation costs. Conclusively, domestic rainwater harvesting if carried out extensively will rescue the Buea population from a disastrous water deficiency leading to detrimental environmental problems.
This work refers to water in oil emulsion formulation, characterization and destabilization. These topics were studied in order to generate knowledge that could be used as a base for the treatment of highly stable W/O emulsions. Two types of emulsions were studied: synthetics and naturals; the last ones come from the crude oil production process of different Venezuelan regions. In this book, chapters 1 and 2 give an introduction to the research area and the theoretical background related with it, respectively. In chapter 3, the effect of surfactant content, water content, HLB value, alcohol content, salinity, emulsion volume, and mixing properties on water in paraffin emulsion stability was studied. Emulsion stability was determined by the amount of water and oil separated after 30 days. After finishing the variables scans, the most appropriate formulation conditions were established, and a formulation protocol was defined. Emulsion density and apparent viscosity were measured, and viscosity was modeled by the Power Law considering both shear rate and water content. Chapter 4 deals with emulsion characterization. Although some particle sizing devices have gained a lot of popularity, none of them is able to distinguish between drops and solids, and few are able to handle viscous oily samples. In this chapter the use of optical microscopy, enhanced by the use of digital video capabilities and image analysis software, to characterize oil production wastes is discussed. Several thousands of particles were counted and their projected areas were measured. A discussion is given about the different corrections required in order to extract the most reliable information from the image, overcoming some of the drawbacks of this kind of measurements. A new technique the so-called cross-linked method was developed to offer unique features like the determination of the fraction of droplets that exist in the form of non-coalesced agglomerates. When cross-linked with the results obtained by standard ASTM procedures, it is calculated the amount of disperse phase that exists in the form of submicron droplets or large free water drops that are usually not sampled for microscope slides. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with emulsion destabilization. In chapter 5, a variety of materials were used to investigate their applicability as so-called collector materials, to improve the destabilization and separation of water in oil emulsions stabilized by a non-ionic surfactant. The emulsion destabilization degree was determined by the amount of water and oil separated after centrifugation. The recovery of both phases was strongly dependent on the nature of the material, material/emulsion ratio, particle size, and contact time. By varying conditions, it was possible to increase the water separation from 0 (without material) up to 95%. In chapter 6, the effect of a DC electric field on W/O emulsions was evaluated. Electric field magnitude, water content, cell size, electrode design, and electrode coating were considered. Emulsion destabilization was improved by combining electric field, collector material and centrifugation. A comparison is given about the emulsion characteristics in terms of microscopy between both, synthetic and crude oil emulsions.
Verification of software for Contiki-based low-power embedded systems using software model checking
(2017)
The main building blocks for the internet of things are connected embedded systems. Often these systems are also used in safety critical applications. Therefore, it is particularly important that these devices work according to their specification i.e. they behave as intended. Nowadays, even for simple devices embedded operating systems as Contiki are used to simplify application development and to increase portability between different hardware platforms.
The main objective of this thesis is to present a methodology for the verification of software applications written for the operation system Contiki, taking the system hardware into account. Therefore, software model checking and especially bounded model checking [BCC⁺03] is used as a technique, which allows to formally verify software for embedded systems.
For verifying the software against its specification, it is also necessary to build a model of the system hardware. Thereby, the difficulty is to create a model which is detailed enough to capture the hardware behavior so that the software performs correctly, while keeping the computation effort for the verification process manageable. In this work, the drivers which communicate with the hardware are therefore replaced with abstract models during the verification process. This enables the verification based on an abstract hardware platform independent of specific hardware.
A special role within embedded systems play interrupts. Interrupts are used to save power and can also be used to react on external events. Current methods for verification of interrupt driven software are based on the interleaving model and partial order reduction to reduce the size of the verification problem. This thesis argues that this method is not sufficient for software, whose behavior relies on periodically occurring interrupts. Therefore, in this thesis, a new approach called periodic interrupt modeling is introduced. This approach can be applied automatically and reduces the number of incorrect verification results due to inaccurate modeling. In addition, properties can be proven that depend on the number of occurring interrupts.
Using applications for the Contiki operating system, and based on a verification flow, the approaches toward interrupt modeling are compared.
The existence of large deposit of crude oil in the Nigerian Niger-Delta accords the region a strategic position in the country’s economy. However, activities associated with the oil and gas industry have resulted in extensive and in some instances indelible damages on the ecosystems. The destructive effect of hydrocarbon on bionetwork necessitated this study that aimed at evaluating the potential of adopting microbial and biosurfactant technology as tools for bioremediation. The research involved gas chromatography monitoring of hydrocarbon degradation in polluted soil, microbiological/molecular identification of hydrocarbon degraders and the evaluation of biosurfactant production by indigenous bacteria. The performance of four treatments involving; co-treatment with mixed bacterial consortium and close-to-nature surfactants (Bioversal QF and Bioversal UK), treatments with mixed bacteria culture, single bacteria culture and treatment with close-to-nature surfactants only were evaluated for the mineralization of hydrocarbons contained in 500g of 2% crude oil contaminated soil supplemented with Na2HPO4*2H2O, KH2PO4 and NH4Cl as nutrient sources over a period of 20 weeks. Six indigenous biosurfactant producing and/or hydrocarbon degrading bacteria strains were isolated namely: Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus sp, Achromobacter sp, Stenotrophonas sp, Lysinibacillus sp. and Delftia sp. Molecular characterization of sequenced polymerase chain reaction products of these cultured bacteria using Nucleotide Basic Local Alignment Search Tool confirmed close relationships ranging from 98.83% to 100% with those on the NCBI databank. Co-treatment with mixed bacteria culture and Bioversal UK/Bioversal QF yielded synergetic impact that enhanced 73.35% and 71.52% degradation of total petroleum hydrocarbon respectively. Treatments with close-to-nature surfactants and with mix bacterial culture recorded 53.61% and 54.58%. The use of single bacteria strains resulted in the mineralization of 46% - 62.26% total petroleum hydrocarbon while their use as a consortium yielded 54%. Liquid chromatography-Mass spectrometry assessment of extracellular polymeric substances produced by cultured bacteria strains indicated the presence of rhamnolipids (L-rhamnosyl-3-hydroxydecanoyl-3-hydroxydecanoic acid with a mass of 504.654 Da) and lipopeptides (2-(Hydroxymethyl) phenyl 6-O-palmitoyl-β-D-glucopyranoside with a mass of 524.687 Da). Extracellular polymeric substances produced yielded emulsion index ranging from 70.70% to 75% and 39% to 65% with crude oil and heptane respectively. EPS yields ranging from 1.34 g/ml to 1.5 g/ml were recorded.
The dissertation at hand employs the concept of Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) for understanding the process of urban change and continuity within the context of the historic city of Isfahan and further investigates its application as an analytic tool for guiding urban conservation and development procedures. With regard to the inefficiency of urban conservation approaches in Isfahan during the last three decades, this study aims at identifying context-based problems and potentials that would lead to conceptualising a new framework. Therefore, drawing on the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation, the notion of HUL is hereby explored and a preliminary framework is provided for analysing the urban intervention cases within the historic core of Isfahan.
How good is a given graph clustering, graph layout, or graph ordering --specifically, how well does it group densely connected vertices and separate sparsely connected vertices? How good is a given software design -- specifically, how well does it minimize the interdependence of the subsystems? This work introduces and validates simple and uniform measures for these two properties. Together with existing optimization algorithms, the introduced measures enable the automatic computation e.g. of communities in social networks and of design flaws in software systems. The first part derives, validates, and unifies quality measures for graph clusterings, graph layouts, and graph orderings, with the following results: - Identical quality measures can be applied to clusterings, layouts, and orderings; this enables the computation of consistent clusterings, layouts, and orderings. - Diverse existing and new measures can be unified into few general measures; this facilitates their comparison and validation. - Many existing measures are biased towards certain clusterings, layouts, or orderings, even for graphs without particularly dense or sparse subgraphs, and thus do not (only) measure quality in the above sense. - For example graphs, the minimization of new, unbiased (or weakly biased) measures reveals nonobvious groups, e.g. communities in social networks, subject areas in hypertexts, or closely interlocked countries in international trade. The second part derives, validates, and unifies dependency-based indicators of software design quality. It applies two quality measures for graph clusterings as measures for the coupling of software subsystems -- specifically for the coupling indicated by common changes and for the coupling indicated by references -- and shows: - The measures quantify the dependency-caused development costs, under well-defined simplifying assumptions. - The minimization of the measures conforms to existing dependency-related design principles (like locality of change, acyclicity of references, and stability of references), design rules, and design patterns. - For example software systems, the incremental minimization of the measures reveals nonobvious design flaws, like the distribution of coherent responsibilities over several subsystems, or references from low-level to high-level subsystems. In summary, this work shows that - simple measures can suffice to capture important aspects of graph clustering quality, graph layout quality, graph ordering quality, and software design quality, and - the optimization of simple measures can suffice to detect nonobvious and often useful structure in various real-world systems.
Experiments with wireless sensor networks have shown that unidirectional communication links are quite common. What is even more, they have also shown that the range of a unidirectional link can exceed that of a bidirectional one by far. Still, most of todays routing protocols do not use them, they only eliminate their implications. Those protocols that do use unidirectional links introduce a lot of protocol overhead. One possible conclusion that is often drawn from this fact is that it does not pay to use unidirectional links in a routing protocol. An alternative one is that the overhead produced by the protocols needs to be reduced. This thesis follows the second line of reasoning, and introduces, describes and evaluates five new routing protocols for wireless sensor networks with unidirectional links.