Books/Book chapters

A Doctoral Thesis Examining Change in a HEI in Ireland: Changing Universities and the Response of Academics to Change in the Dublin Institute of Technology

Kevin Kelly — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:18:58 PST

This is doctoral thesis undertaken by an experienced academic in the Engineering Faculty of a Higher Education Institute in Ireland. It examines the demand for universities to change in response to a fast changing external environment. This research explores how stakeholders are responding to the demands for change and how a bureaucratic organisation is attempting to become more responsive and innovative.

Lighting Controls and Their Associated Problems: an Investigation Into Why Lighting Controls Fail in Buildings

Bernard Doyle et al. — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:31:44 PST

This research arose out of a project began as a post occupancy evaluation of lighting controls installed in a range of buildings. Actual controlled lighting consumption was to be compared against past billing or simulated energy consumption. However, when the research began it was found that the controls had been removed from two out of three buildings. This raised a much bigger research question as to why were the controls disconnected and what were the factors governing success or failure of these systems? A whole new methodology from that first envisaged had to be established. To find out what people know, or think, it is necessary to ask them. A framework was created to determine if there was correlation between past findings and the reasons for failure in the case studies. The research that followed posed many difficult challenges including the use of qualitative data in an engineering environment. Some of the findings included comparatively high maintenance costs, misinterpretations of commissioning processes, incomplete analysis prior to installation and the requirement for post occupancy evaluation in current engineering practices.

Evaluting Domestic Lighting: an Investigation into the Use of Compact Fluorescent Lamps in the Domestic Environment

James Thomas Duff et al. — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:24:42 PST

The Irish government, UK Government and European Commission have recently passed a ban on the sale of all incandescent/GLS lamps above 100W, which commenced in September 209 with smaller Wattages to be phased out by 2012. This paper sets out to investigate if CFLs are an adequate, suitable and appropriate replacement for GLS lamps in domestic environments. The main areas examined are power factor and total harmonic distortion, but other CFL characteristics are also investigated by means of literature review, to provide a complete overview of CFL performance. The measured power factor of all CFLS averaged 0.57 and ranged between 0.52 and 0.62. The effects of harmonic distortion on the current waveform of CFL circuit was significant and reached levels up to 80% of the fundamental frequency. However, this large harmonic distortion is returned on the waveform of a smaller current than would be drawn by a GLS lamp and hence, effects on the national grid and risks of an overloaded three phase neutral conductor are less than sometimes claimed by researchers.

Digital Signal Processing (Second Edition)

Jonathan Blackledge — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 02:03:41 PST

This book provides an account of the mathematical background, computational methods and software engineering associated with digital signal processing. The aim has been to provide the reader with the mathematical methods required for signal analysis which are then used to develop models and algorithms for processing digital signals and finally to encourage the reader to design software solutions for Digital Signal Processing (DSP). In this way, the reader is invited to develop a small DSP library that can then be expanded further with a focus on his/her research interests and applications.

There are of course many excellent books and software systems available on this subject area. However, in many of these publications, the relationship between the mathematical methods associated with signal analysis and the software available for processing data is not always clear. Either the publications concentrate on mathematical aspects that are not focused on practical programming solutions or elaborate on the software development of solutions in terms of working ‘black-boxes’ without covering the mathematical background and analysis associated with the design of these software solutions. Thus, this book has been written with the aim of giving the reader a technical overview of the mathematics and software associated with the ‘art’ of developing numerical algorithms and designing software solutions for DSP, all of which is built on firm mathematical foundations. For this reason, the work is, by necessity, rather lengthy and covers a wide range of subjects compounded in four principal parts. Part I provides the mathematical background for the analysis of signals, Part II considers the computational techniques (principally those associated with linear algebra and the linear eigenvalue problem) required for array processing and associated analysis (error analysis for example). Part III introduces the reader to the essential elements of software engineering using the C programming language, tailored to those features that are used for developing C functions or modules for building a DSP library.

The material associated with parts I, II and III is then used to build up a DSP system by defining a number of ‘problems’ and then addressing the solutions in terms of presenting an appropriate mathematical model, undertaking the necessary analysis, developing an appropriate algorithm and then coding the solution in C. This material forms the basis for part IV of this work.

In most chapters, a series of tutorial problems is given for the reader to attempt with answers provided in Appendix A. These problems include theoretical, computational and programming exercises. Part II of this work is relatively long and arguably contains too much material on the computational methods for linear algebra. However, this material and the complementary material on vector and matrix norms forms the computational basis for many methods of digital signal processing. Moreover, this important and widely researched subject area forms the foundations, not only of digital signal processing and control engineering for example, but also of numerical analysis in general.

The material presented in this book is based on the lecture notes and supplementary material developed by the author for an advanced Masters course ‘Digital Signal Processing’ which was first established at Cranfield University, Bedford in 1990 and modified when the author moved to De Montfort University, Leicester in 1994.
The programmes are still operating at these universities and the material has been used by some 700++ graduates since its establishment and development in the early 1990s. The material was enhanced and developed further when the author moved to the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at Loughborough University in 2003 and now forms part of the Department’s post-graduate programmes in Communication Systems Engineering. The original Masters programme included a taught component covering a period of six months based on two semesters, each Semester being composed of four modules. The material in this work covers the first Semester and its four parts reflect the four modules delivered. The material delivered in the second Semester is published as a companion volume to this work entitled Digital Image Processing, Horwood Publishing, 2005 which covers the mathematical modelling of imaging systems and the techniques that have been developed to process and analyse the data such systems provide.

Since the publication of the first edition of this work in 2003, a number of minor changes and some additions have been made. The material on programming and software engineering in Chapters 11 and 12 has been extended. This includes some additions and further solved and supplementary questions which are included throughout the text. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out, that while every effort has been made by the author and publisher to provide a work that is error free, it is inevitable that typing errors and various ‘bugs’ will occur. If so, and in particular, if the reader starts to suffer from a lack of comprehension over certain aspects of the material (due to errors or otherwise) then he/she should not assume that there is something wrong with themselves, but with the author!

Digital Image Processing

Jonathan Blackledge — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 02:03:40 PST

Newspapers and the popular scientific press today publish many examples of highly impressive images. These images range, for example, from those showing regions of star birth in the distant Universe to the extent of the stratospheric ozone depletion over Antarctica in springtime, and to those regions of the human brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease. Processed digitally to generate spectacular images, often in false colour, they all make an immediate and deep impact on the viewer’s imagination and understanding.

Professor Jonathan Blackledge’s erudite but very useful new treatise Digital Image Processing: Mathematical and Computational Methods explains both the underlying theory and the techniques used to produce such images in considerable detail. It also provides many valuable example problems - and their solutions - so that the reader can test his/her grasp of the physical, mathematical and numerical aspects of the particular topics and methods discussed. As such, this magnum opus complements the author’s earlier work Digital Signal Processing. Both books are a wonderful resource for students who wish to make their careers in this fascinating and rapidly developing field which has an ever increasing number of areas of application.

The strengths of this large book lie in:
• excellent explanatory introduction to the subject;
• thorough treatment of the theoretical foundations, dealing with both electromagnetic and acoustic wave scattering and allied techniques;
• comprehensive discussion of all the basic principles, the mathematical transforms (e.g. the Fourier and Radon transforms), their interrelationships and, in particular, Born scattering theory and its application to imaging systems modelling;
discussion in detail - including the assumptions and limitations - of optical imaging, seismic imaging, medical imaging (using ultrasound), X-ray computer aided tomography, tomography when the wavelength of the probing radiation is of the same order as the dimensions of the scatterer, Synthetic Aperture Radar (airborne or spaceborne), digital watermarking and holography;
detail devoted to the methods of implementation of the analytical schemes in various case studies and also as numerical packages (especially in C/C++);
• coverage of deconvolution, de-blurring (or sharpening) an image, maximum entropy techniques, Bayesian estimators, techniques for enhancing the dynamic range of an image, methods of filtering images and techniques for noise reduction;
• discussion of thresholding, techniques for detecting edges in an image and for contrast stretching, stochastic scattering (random walk models) and models for characterizing an image statistically;
• investigation of fractal images, fractal dimension segmentation, image texture, the coding and storing of large quantities of data, and image compression such as JPEG;
• valuable summary of the important results obtained in each Chapter given at its end;
• suggestions for further reading at the end of each Chapter.

I warmly commend this text to all readers, and trust that they will find it to be invaluable.

Professor Michael J Rycroft
Visiting Professor at the International Space University, Strasbourg, France, and at Cranfield University, England.

Engineering Science as Opposed to Natural and Applied Science

Eugene Coyle et al. — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 03:29:51 PST

In exploring the epistemology of engineering science we propose a model of engineering. This model incorporates the goals of engineering, the approach to engineering (also called the engineering method) and the role of experience in engi-neering. The basis for understanding the nature of engineering science will be ex-plored, and will be contrasted with natural science. To begin, a large-scale engi-neering project that was successfully completed in Ireland many years ago is dis-cussed - specifically, the development of a megalithic passage tomb as an exemplar of the engineering method in structural design, project management and aesthetics. This exemplar firmly demonstrates that engineering method existed before the de-velopment and understanding of the relevant natural science. We next contrast the nature of engineering or engineering science and natural science. This discussion will further develop the engineering model, but will contrast the philosophical dif-ferences between engineering and science. We then return to build upon the ‘engi-neering model’ through the modern day exemplar of the development of the jet engine, demonstrating that invariably multiple factors, including creative design initiatives from different sources, global, political, economic and cultural circum-stance, and the passage of time contribute to the evolution and success (or failure) of large sustainable scientific and engineering projects. In conclusion, the engineering model is mapped to a philosophical model demonstrating that philosophy is as rele¬vant to engineering as it is to other fields.

Universities Changing in Response to a Volatile Environment: a Case Study from Ireland

Kevin Kelly — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:49:30 PST

This paper is a short summary of a research thesis submitted for a doctoral degree in education in late 2008. The substantive issue investigated was the response of a large higher education institute (HEI) in Ireland, the Dublin Institute of Technology and hereafter referred to as the Institute, to the demands for change. The research was undertaken by an experienced academic from inside the organisation. What is happening in this institute may be significant to others because change in higher education is a key debate throughout the world at present. The research study shows that stakeholders in the Institute acknowledge that change is necessary and some of the practices from both entrepreneurial and corporate universities are seen to be appropriate for certain activities. But an HEI contemplating change cannot simply lift a model that may have proven successful elsewhere and transplant it into its own organisation. The culture and power residing within the organisation must be acknowledged. The US entrepreneurial model is shown to be unlikely to be successful in this HEI because of its inability to raise money on the scale of the successful US model. The corporate model using managerialist practice used in parts of the UK, Australia and at least one university in Ireland is also firmly rejected by stakeholders in this case study. It is concluded that a European style of University with Collegial Innovation may well be appropriate to this HEI. Innovation and collegiality would increase with bureaucracy seriously reduced but retained within a couple of specified activities. It was thought that some of the financial aspects, particularly budgetary allocations needed to become more businesslike or corporate. The qualitative methodology undertaken for this research may also be of interest to readers and is described briefly in this paper.