TY - THES A1 - Marterer, Verena T1 - A Characterisation of Motives and Barriers to Taking up Academic Study in the Field of Electrical Engineering N2 - The problem description comes to the fore when the wide-ranging subject area of electrical engineering is combined and analyzed with different types of schools. It is becoming increasingly rare for elementary school children to come to grips with technology in the sense of recognizing functional interrelationships and understanding modes of action in the context of technical-practical confrontation. The picture at secondary schools is also rather sobering. Here, a strong focus on facts and knowledge and too little emphasis on modeling, application and problem solving lead to insufficient results in the cognitive area. In addition, a massive shortage of engineers and specialists with a technical and scientific orientation has been predicted for years and is being increasingly observed. The motivation of students in traditional lectures is decreasing and in general there is a decline of university students in technical subjects. These problems are not only known throughout Germany, but also internationally. Especially in developing countries, additional problems make technical education more difficult, regardless of the type of school. Therefore, this master thesis is evaluated in South Africa in order to consider as many influencing factors as possible. "Learning is experience. Everything else is simply information." - Methods and concepts developed in the thesis build upon this quote of Albert Einstein. Teaching methods are elaborated and applied for three different age groups and school types, depending on known influencing factors. The aim of this thesis is not to produce further findings in the sense of basic research, but to show ways in which the current situation can be steered in a different direction. It has been shown that technology lessons in elementary/secondary schools inspire interest in technical professions in the field of electrical engineering. Furthermore, the combination of frontal teaching, for a necessary theoretical background, together with student-active, action-oriented teaching shows advantages in terms of learning efficiency and an increase in performance levels for all three age groups. However, it could also be observed that factors such as social background, family influence and gender have partial effects on the promotion and education in the field of electrical engineering. Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:898-opus4-62550 CY - Regensburg ER - TY - THES A1 - Vokkethur, Rachana T1 - Design, simulation, fabrication, measurement, and analysis of 3D-printed radio frequency conductive structures N2 - Additive manufacturing has emerged as a disruptive technology in the field of electronics, offering new possibilities for the fabrication of complex, lightweight, and customizable components. Conventional PCB manufacturing relies on multi-step processes and is limited to planar geometries, making it less suitable for rapid prototyping or integration into non-standard surfaces. In contrast, Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) provides a cost-effective and accessible approach to directly fabricate functional electronic structures by combining conductive and dielectric materials within a single printing process. This thesis examines the design, simulation, fabrication, measurement and analysis of 3D-printed conductive transmission lines utilising FDM technology. A conductive filament and a dielectric filament are employed to realise fully integrated microstrip and coaxial structures. Electromagnetic simulations are performed to optimise the geometry for RF performance, and the printed prototypes are experimentally characterised using vector network analyser measurements. The analysis focuses on the transmission coefficients and the reflection coefficients, providing insights into impedance matching, insertion loss, and frequency-dependent behaviour. These findings confirm that FDM-based additive manufacturing can produce functional RF structures with reliable performance, despite material and fabrication limitations. The work demonstrates the potential of 3D printing as a flexible and low-cost method for prototyping radio frequency components, highlighting future directions that include improved material characterisation, connector integration, and the design of more advanced components, such as filters and antennas. Y1 - 2026 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:898-opus4-87809 CY - Regensburg ER - TY - THES A1 - Schön, Matthias T1 - Implementation and Evaluation of the ESPRIT Algorithm for DoA Estimation on an FPGA-based SDR Platform N2 - Environmental sensing using smart antennas and antenna arrays is a broad field with many applications in different areas. This thesis is part of the initial stage of a longer research project at the OTH Regensburg, with the goal of enhancing the antenna-array-based sensing capabilities of base stations. Existing technologies that utilize radio waves, such as radar, often require the generation of special signals to scan the environment. This project aims to utilize the existing mobile communication traffic instead, making the benefits of sensing capabilities available to a wider range of applications. Many of the array processing methods require high computational power and are used in environments with real-time constraints. Therefore, the use of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) for hardware acceleration of these methods will be investigated, evaluating which methods are suitable for implementation on FPGAs. The focus in this thesis lies on the Estimation of Signal Parameters Via Rotational Invariance Techniques (ESPRIT) method for direction of arrival (DoA) estimation, as it is a popular and highly accurate method that does not rely on calibration. The accelerator is implemented for the RFSoC4x2 software-defined radio (SDR), using Vitis High-Level Synthesis (HLS) for implementation of the algorithm itself, Vivado for the hardware configuration, and Python Productivity on Zynq (PYNQ) for drivers and application code. Simulations for evaluation and verification, as well as test data generation, are implemented in Julia, using a custom array signal processing package. A measurement setup is used to collect experimental data for simulation and evaluation of the performance of the implemented ESPRIT. It is shown that the underlying assumption of equal subarrays does not hold for the array used for the measurements. This causes the estimates to be erroneous and can only be addressed by employing other algorithms that allow for the required calibration. KW - Field programmable gate array KW - Digitale Signalverarbeitung KW - Array signal processing KW - Direction-of-arrival estimation Y1 - 2025 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:898-opus4-86883 CY - Regensburg ER - TY - THES A1 - Bachl, Hannes T1 - Initial 5G synchronisation using a time-domain correlator N2 - The following Bachelor’s thesis explores the implementation of a fre- quency correlator in the time-domain as required for the initial synchro- nisation in 5G mobile networks. Exact time domain synchronisation is required for modern mobile networks to allow reconstruction of the em- ployed physical modulations schemes without producing excessive amounts of interference. This is the first step in the discovery process of mobile radio cells. Initial the theoretical foundations of time synchronisation mechanisms as used in 5G networks are explored, including the physical modulation schemes employed. The different implementations of the synchronisa- tion algorithms are considered and a single algorithm is chosen for im- plementation. The chosen algorithm is then implemented and the implementation and findings are discussed. The hardware basis for the implementation is a Xilinx RFSoC, a high speed FPGA with associated analog-to-digital con- verts designed for RF signal processing. Finally there will be a discussion of possible optimisations and problems encountered during implementation. Y1 - 2026 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:898-opus4-89048 CY - Regensburg ER -