Organic semiconductors are used in many fields of photonics. Displays fabricated using organic light emitting diodes (OLED) can be found in modern smartphones and tablets, whereas organic solar cells (OPV - organic photovoltaics) are emerging with demonstrated efficiencies above 10%. Organic photodetectors (OPD) are another very interesting domain, with ultrathin active layers (order of tens of nanometers) providing performance comparable to bulk inorganic devices. Thanks to a multitude of possible compounds, parameters such as response spectrum, cut-off wavelength etc. can be easily tuned. Because of very high absorption coefficient and low refractive index, issues such as crosstalk or reflection can be minimized. Another exciting feature is the low processing temperature and thus feasibility of using a flexible foil as substrate, leading to rollable or curved photodetector arrays.The performance of organic based photodetectors has grown considerably in the recent years in terms of high speed, high frequency response and detectivity so as to match the required custom specifications for practical applications such as imaging. However, further attention needs to go towards the understanding of the effects of scaling during miniaturization of these devices, while looking for the preservation and/or optimization of their opto-electrical properties. Therefore, in this thesis, emphasis is given on the photodetectors based on organic conjugated polymer materials for imaging applications. These organic photodetector devices normally suffer from a perimeter-to-area dark current density scaling, hence, special attention is on the understanding of this scaling effect as well as optimization of the fabrication process in order to get low leakage (dark) current, and therefore, large dynamic range of the OPDs. Photodetectors with different geometries and sizes from 0.08 cm2 down to 1.95E ?5 cm2 were fabricated, using two types of edge cover layer. Isolated islands of two different organic films were patterned with photolithography in order to study the dark current mechanisms. Electrical, optical and morphological properties were characterized for both patterned and non-patterned devices. The patterning process used to fabricate the isolated devices does not affect the optoelectrical and morphological characteristics of the photodetectors, and therefore their performance. Moreover, it does not induce or accelerate degradation of the organic films. The dark current density further decreases after full patterning is performed, while preserving all device characteristics. It is proposed to replace the semitransparent edge cover layer by the opaque, if thicker films can be achieved, as it might be possible to decrease the contribution of the perimeter leakage. Once the patterning process is performed, it is possible to implement these isolated devices as photodetectors arrays for imaging applications with an Ion/Ioff ratio of 6 orders of magnitude. It is proposed to perform a theoretical study of the dark current mechanism at the interface between the polymer and the metallic contact edges to model and simulate the perimeter recombination at reverse bias conditions. Moreover, further measurements such as electroluminescent and spectroscopy might aid to characterize the carrier transport in the OPDs. The project was aimed within the R&D department of large area electronics. Moreover, all the fabrication and characterization were performed in the facilities of IMEC.

One of the effects of the globalisation of our society is that people travel more covering longer distances, live far from their work place and consume goods from all around the world. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the transport of people and goods represents more than 25\% of the energy consumption and is one of the principal sources of pollution worldwide. Several efforts must be done to reduce the oil dependence, the energy consumption and the environmental impact of transport systems. In this perspective, the French Army (DGA) has designed and constructed the Electrical Chain Components Evaluation vehicle (ECCE). It is a mobile laboratory to evaluate under real conditions the electric components of Hybrid Electrical Vehicles (HEVs) that reduce the energy consumption and the pollution emission of conventional vehicles. ECCE permits evaluating different energy sources such as batteries, fuel cells, internal combustion engines, ultracapacitors or flywheels. The ECCE project, nowadays in a second phase\footnote{The first phase of the ECCE project is explained in Chapter 1} is developed in joint cooperation with the FEMTO-ST laboratory of the University of Franche-Comté and two industrial partners, HELION and PANHARD General Defense. It aims to study the implementation, control and energy management of different hybrid sources. As a research developed along the second phase of the ECCE project, the principal objective of this thesis is to design, to implement and to evaluate an energy management supervision system in the ECCE HEV. This thesis proposes an original energy management strategy based on expert knowledge and type-2 fuzzy logic. The design of the fuzzy logic controller is done by using knowledge engineering. This technique allows extracting knowledge from several experts using surveys. The consideration of type-2 fuzzy logic systems enables modelling the uncertainty in the answers of the experts. This thesis presents a second application of type-2 fuzzy logic: the voltage regulation of a DC/DC power converter. The principal motivation for developing this application is that it is easier to implement in laboratory at a relatively low cost and it permits a viability evaluation of type-2 fuzzy logic before an implementation in the ECCE mobile laboratory. This is useful because one of the main challenges of this thesis is to reduce the time to experimentally validate the energy management system. This is required to respect the time schedule constraints and to reduce the costs associated to gather the partners of the project at PANHARD locations in Saint-Germain Laval.

Vectoring is a novel technology created to expand the capacity boundaries of Veryhigh- bit-rate DSL 2 (VDSL2) systems. It mitigates the reduction of data rate and reach in VDSL2 systems caused by the crosstalk interference that appears when multiple services share the telephone network’s infrastructure. However, the implementation of vectoring on real systems faces numerous challenges that limit its potential to enhance the data rate and reach of VDSL2 systems. Therefore, evaluating its performance in close-to-real scenarios considering different technological aspects has turned into an interesting field of research that also helps in the development of new and faster technologies. This thesis evaluates quantitatively the performance of vectoring on VDSL2 systems. It proposes the extension and parametrization of performance indicators to compare and measure the impact of six different aspects on vectoring systems: network topology, binder occupancy, background noise, channel estimation errors, complexity constraints, and precoding and canceling schemes. Their evaluation requires numerical results that are obtained through a simulation tool, which is designed and implemented as part of this thesis. The obtained results and the conducted analyses give concluding guidelines for the vectoring technology and can be taken into account by manufactures and service providers for the deployment of real systems. In addition, and as a result of the objective of providing an accurate evaluation that represents well the real systems’ performance, this thesis contributes with the statistical characterization of the Far-end Crosstalk (FEXT) in a 50-pair cable binder commonly used in Germany (DTAG-40) and constructs its stochastic model. The model and the results are verified through real systems measurements, reference documents of the Broadband Forum and existing literature. Thus, the simulation tool and the characterized channel model constitute a contribution for the evaluation of DSL systems that can be used in future works.

The present thesis work is motivated in the recent developments of wireless access technologies, which have given noticeable changes on both operator and end-user side. From the operator side, the wireless access networks have evolved from 1st generation technologies (1G) up to 3rd generation technologies (3G) during the last three decades. Additionally, 4th generation networks (4G) based in advanced radio technologies are already in development phases. The proliferation of wireless access networks yields opportunities to the end-user, however it can also induce a additional problematic due to the complexity of the network to be operated. Therefore, the end-user has the possibility to choose dynamically which access technology (access network) to connect to, in order to obtain the required service. From the moment the decisions from the users occur in a distributed, non-coordinated and generally opportunistic way, the access to wireless networks process dynamics are in a need to be studied. The present thesis work, analyses the competitive access problem by means of game theory. In particular, non-cooperative game models in which the users tend to maximize their individual utility from the access problem are considered. The thesis work presents the development and implementation of a software instrument capable of simulating game dynamics individualizing equilibria conditions and measuring the transition length to reach such equilibria (convergence time). The second part of the thesis work includes the analysis of different realistic wireless access networks considering different access strategies which are selected by the end-users and different utility function formulations with which the players “play” the game.

Incorporating different kinds of micro-theories of cognition and modulating several mechanisms to unify all the recommended actions and outputs of an Intelligent System when a huge amount of environmental variables are changing continuously with increasing complexity, may become a very comprehensive task. The presented framework proposes an Hybrid Cognitive Architecture that relies on integrating of emergent systems approaches —connectionist and autopoietic systems—, and cognitivist approaches, in order to combine implicit and explicit processes necessary in developing cognitive skills. The proposed architecture includes different kinds of learning capabilities at each cognitive level which grant to the architecture a big plasticity. In addition, the propounded attention module includes an evolutionary mechanism based on gene expression programming to evolve a set of eligibility conditions in charge of modulating the coalition/ subordination of specialized behaviours, taking into consideration the theatre metaphor for consciousness. Finally, a co-evolutionary mechanism is proposed to propagate behaviours and knowledge between cognitive systems —Agents— on the basis of memetic engineering. The proposed architecture was proved in an animat environment using a multi-agent platform where several emergent properties of self-organization arose.

There are several theories of cognition, each taking a different position on the nature of cognition, what a cognitive system should do, and how a cognitive system should be analyzed and synthesized. From these, it is possible to discern three broad classes: the cognitivist approach based on symbolic information processing representational systems; the emergent systems approach embracing connectionist systems, dynamical systems, and enactive systems, all based on a lesser or greater extent of principles of self-organization, and the hybrid approach which combine the best of the emergent systems and cognitivist systems. Our research focuses on implementing a hybrid architecture for cognitive agents supported by both cognitivist and emergent approaches. On the one hand, the cognitivist approach provides an explicit knowledge representation through the use of symbolic AI techniques. On the other hand, the emergent approach defines three evolutionary strategies as observed in nature: Epigenesis, Ontogenesis, and Phylogenesis, endowing the architecture with implicit knowledge learning, sub-symbolic representations, and emergent behavior guided by bio-inspired computational intelligence techniques.

hina’s air pollution has reached a critical state, and is characterized by heavy coal smoke and a wide presence of ozone and particulate matter (PM2.5). From 2011, through the 12th five year plan, the prevention and control of air pollution entered a new ‘transition stage’ guided by the principles of sustainability and energy conservation, and also intensified by pressure from the society. This article is divided into two parts: first, it introduces the most important changes, problems and advances during this transition, including a brief explanation of the policy mechanisms. Second, it illustrates how research in the area of Science and Technology Studies (STS) can bring about new ways to understand the problems of the knowledge-policy and public engagement of air pollution in China.

The Interaction of electromagnetic waves with dielectric bodies and metals has been extensively studied because of its importance to problems including propagation through rain or snow, scattering by and detection of air borne particles, coupling to missiles with plasma plumes or dielectric-filled apertures, performance of communication antennas in the presence of dielectric and magnetic inhomogeneities, and medical diagnostics and power absorption in biological bodies. Computational electromagnetics methods (CEM) offer and indispensable tool for calculating the electromagnetic scattering from an internal field distribution of arbitrarily shaped, inhomogeneous, dielectric bodies. The aim of this thesis is the study and simulation of a RF coils system design by developing a novel parallel fast Method of Moments (MoM) modeling approach suitable for the simulation of dielectric bodies and metals. The parallel fast MoM implementation uses volume and surface basis functions with special properties appropriate for the representation of flux current densities for perfect electric conductors (PEC) and dielectrics. The results obtained with our modeling method were confirmed by comparisons with analytical solutions and other commercial software results, yielding very good agreement. The RF coil is employed in high field Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to obtain high quality brain images. Among all the clinical imaging techniques, MRI stands as a noninvasive technique that provides accurate, detailed anatomic images, which has had a major impact in the diagnosis of human diseases. MRI is a widely use soft-tissue imaging modality that has involved over the past several years into a powerful and versatile medical diagnostic tool capable of providing in-vivo diagnostic images of human anatomy. Current research areas in MRI system design are driven by the need to obtain detailed high resolution images with improved image signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at a given magnetic field strength. One of the most critical factor that influences the quality and resolution of the MRI is the homogeneity of the RF field. To this end, this requirement demands the development of high performance MRI radio frequency (RF) coils and a standard procedure for enhancing the uniformity of the field directly at the modeling stage of the RF Coil.

El trabajo describe la necesidad de la implementación del sistema de gestión de calidad, y se establece como por medio de la ejecución del sistema de gestión de calidad la empresa puede lograr mejores rendimientos, minimizar externalidades y entregar servicios con calidad y continuidad. Se inicia con la revisión literaria de fuentes primarias, secundarias y otras fuentes, de investigaciones realizadas con el fin de detectar, obtener y consultar la trayectoria de los sistemas de gestión de calidad, que pueden ser útiles a los propósitos del trabajo de investigación, así como extraer y recopilar la información relevante y necesaria que atañe a nuestro problema de investigación. El trabajo de investigación continua con una revisión de los antecedentes normativos de los sistemas de gestión de calidad del sector público, las generalidades del servicio público de acueducto; y luego se describe la situación técnica y financiera que presenta la SEMSEP ES.P. SA contextualizando la situación objeto de investigación. Se continua con la propuesta para la implementación del sistema de gestión de la calidad del macro proceso de acueducto, que inicia con un diagnóstico del macro proceso de acueducto, la evaluación financiera de la propuesta, y la planeación para la implementación de la propuesta

The purpose of this report is to investigate the performance, measured in terms of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of a UMTS radio network (UTRAN) under different traffic and mobility scenarios and develop general guidelines for dimensioning the UMTS network optimally. In this work, simulations are performed using Wines tool, which is a dynamic simulator that models all the radio-resource management functionality of the UTRAN. Two main series of experiments have been performed. In the first series, the distribution of the traffic is homogeneous and the main purpose is to find capacity figures when increasing the traffic density of one of the four possible defined services (WWW, FTP, voice and video-call) and also with a given traffic mix involving all services together. Two mobility profiles are used (pedestrian and vehicular). In the second series of experiments, a more realistic scenario, based on detailed geographical characteristics relevant for signal propagation, and traffic densities based on traffic maps (non homogeneous scenario), has been simulated. The purpose was to analyze the possible differences in capacity between the “ideal” model and the more “realistic” model. For the single-service scenario analysis, circuit-switched services (speech and video-call), it can be observed that the capacity is mainly uplink-limited. The corresponding results for the packet-switched services (FTP, WEB) have shown that capacity is mostly downlink-limited, as it was expected due to the more asymmetrical data rates in the downlink compared to the uplink for both services. For the service mix analysis in both scenarios (homogeneous and non homogeneous) it was found that the capacity is mostly downlink-limited (i.e. the downlink power target level is exceeded before the uplink load target level).