The aim of this study is to improve the monitoring and controlling of heating systems located at customer buildings through the use of a decision support system. To achieve this, the proposed system applies a two-step classifier to detect manual changes of the temperature of the heating system. We apply data from the Swedish company NODA, active in energy optimization and services for energy efficiency, to train and test the suggested system. The decision support system is evaluated through an experiment and the results are validated by experts at NODA. The results show that the decision support system can detect changes within three days after their occurrence and only by considering daily average measurements.

In order to reach an acceptable level of confidence in the quality of a software product, testing of the software is paramount. To obtain "good" quality software it is essential to rely on "good" test cases. To define the criteria for what make up for a "good" test case is not a trivial task. Over the past 15 years, a short list of publications have presented criteria for "good" test cases but without ranking them based on their importance. This paper presents a non-exhaustive and non-authoritative tentative list of 15 criteria and a ranking of their relative importance. A number of the criteria come from previous publications but also from discussions with our industrial partners. The ranking is based on results collected via a questionnaire that was sent out to a limited number of randomly chosen respondents in the Swedish software industry. This means that the results are more indicative than conclusive.

Information visualization can be valuable in a wide range of applications, it deals with abstract, non-spatial data and with the representation of data elements in a meaningful form irrespective of the size of the data, because sometimes visualization itself focuses on the certain key aspects of the data in the representation and thus it helps by providing ease for the goal oriented interpretation. Information visualization focuses on providing a spontaneous and deeper level of the understanding of the data.

Research collaboration enhances sharing knowledge and also enhances an individual’s talent. New ideas are generated when knowledge is shared and transferred among each other. According to (He et al, 2009) Research collaboration has been considered as a phenomenon of growing importance for the researchers, also it should be encouraged and is considered to be a “good thing” among the researchers.

The main purpose of this thesis work is to prepare a model for the competence profile visualization purpose. For this purpose the study of different visualization techniques that exist in the field of information visualization are discussed in this thesis work. The study and discussion about the visualization techniques motivates in selecting appropriate visualization techniques for the visualization of Ontology-based competence profiles for research collaboration purpose. A proof of concept is developed which shows how these visualization techniques are applied to visualize several components of competence profile.

Kitron had wishes to be able to test and measure how disturbance affects their vehicle electronic units before they have been verified by SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden in Borås. This work started with the writing of a demand specification together with Kitron for a product PSQS, Power Supply Quality Simulator, which can generate some test pulses according to a standard for electronic units to Volvos vehicles. A design proposal was developed with the help the demand specification and was verified with the help of simulations. All electric schematics was designed with the guide of the design proposal. The pulses realized in the works of this thesis are those which Kitron experienced that they have a need to test in their own premises and which are possible to generate with the means available. All work took place at Kitron in Jönköping, the restriction of the work has been the cost of components not to be to high as well as the finished product shall be easily managed. This thesis work resulted in a unit which is possible to produce a number of disturbances on the voltage feed to a unit under test. Some pulses have not been completely correct according to Volvos standard. There are large possibilities to further develop PSQS to a unit that follows Volvos standard and even other vehicle producer’s standards.

Insulators play a critical role in healthy transmission under the influence of operational stresses (OSs). OSs include environmental stresses (ultraviolet-radiations, seasonal heat and humidity variations, and pollution (inert and active), etc.) and electrical stresses (electric field distribution, corona, etc.). OSs can deteriorate insulators, jeopardizing the healthy transmission. In this experimental study, four silicon rubber (SiR) insulators with different concentrations of micro and nano-silica fillers are tested in a specially designed and fabricated compact environmental chamber for 1920 h under OSs, un-scheduled load shedding, and night factors for more realistic field insulators deterioration characteristics. Insulators' potential distribution, electrical field distribution, hydrophobicity, and leakage current characteristics are considered. Experimental results reveal OSs affected insulators' leakage current profile due to hydrophobicity loss and electric field distribution variations. Moreover, SiR insulators under OSs regained insulation characteristics due to heavier inner molecule replacement to the dissipated and degraded outer lower weight insulating molecules. This property provides a reusability opportunity for SiR insulators in power system networks, unlike traditional insulators. 

The importance of managing organizational knowledge of enterprises has been recognized for decades. The systematic development and reuse of organizational knowledge is expected to improve the competitiveness of the enterprise. While the practice of “reuse” is common in general computer science there is still a lack of surveys in regard to reuse in enterprise modeling. This document reviews four different papers presented at information systems conferences over the last seven years: CAISE, EMMSAD, ICIS, and INCOM. Our analysis indicates that the majority of research is realized by case studies, theoretical frameworks and mostly on business process modeling aspects of enterprise models.

Wireless technology has increased in popularity since its invention, being embedded in many devices, such as smartphones, laptops, earphones etcetera. One of those technologies is Bluetooth, which is a short-range technology that is widely used worldwide. While being a popular and important technology, it is not as optimized as it could be, especially the standard Bluetooth 4.2. According to (Bluetooth, 2023)Bluetooth version 5 has four times the range of Bluetooth version 4.2 which is one area of improvement in Bluetooth. While limited Forward Error Correction (FEC)functionality in terms of (15,10) Hamming codes is present in the Bluetooth classic4.2 stack, however, it is not utilized in that version of Bluetooth. This thesis aims to implement a functionality in Bluetooth that uses FEC to increase the range. Before the experiments were conducted, multiple measurements were done in order to check if the hardware, such as the Bluetooth modules, antennas, air sniffer, could provide reliable and valid data. The experiments were conducted by streaming an audio sample of 48 kHz via Bluetooth and increasing the range until a certain percentage of fail rate in data transmission has occurred. FEC was then enabled, and the same experiment was repeated. The results from the experiments show that the range can be increased up to a few meters. Not only that, but the transmission without FEC allows a high level of errors without a connection cut-off. With FEC, the connection does not allow high levels of errors which means that the audio quality would not drop as low as it would have without FEC which means that a certain audio quality is preserved. This also makes the case for the implementation of higher modes of FEC into the Bluetooth stack to potentially increase the range of Bluetooth classic multiple times, but that implementation is beyond the scope of this thesis. 

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to examine the market conditions for automation providers in Sweden and address the skills shortage associated with the expansion of automated production. The study aims to explore how automation providers can support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in overcoming the skills gap to enhance their adoption of advanced automation technologies.

Method: This research employs an exploratory qualitative approach, utilizing multiple-case studies. Data collection is conducted through in-depth interviews with industry experts and representatives from various companies in the Swedish manufacturing sector.

Findings: The findings reveal significant opportunities and challenges in the Swedish automation market. Key challenges include the skills shortage and the high demand for automation solutions among SMEs. The study identifies that tailored training programs, comprehensive support services, and collaborative initiatives with educational institutions are crucial strategies for addressing these challenges. Additionally, the adoption of user-friendly technologies can help SMEs integrate automation more effectively.

Practical Implications: The insights from this study can be used by automation providers to develop strategies that support SMEs in bridging the skills gap. Practical implications include the need for targeted training programs, enhanced support services, and strategic partnerships with educational institutions to ensure a skilled workforce capable of handling advanced automation technologies.

Theoretical Implications: This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by providing a detailed analysis of the skills gap in the automation sector and proposing actionable strategies to address it. The research highlights the importance of workforce development in the successful adoption of automation technologies.

Delimitations: This thesis is delimited to the Swedish manufacturing sector, focusing on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and automation providers. The scope includes examining the current market conditions, skills gap, and potential strategies for addressing these challenges.

This thesis investigates the application of machine learning techniques to predict rotor temperature in induction motors, a crucial parameter for enhancing the safety, efficiency, and longevity of electric machines. It focuses on the development, training, and evaluation of three neural network models: Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), Thermal Neural Network (TNN), and 1-D Convolutional Neural Network (1-D CNN). These models are assessed for their ability to predict rotor temperature using measurable inputs such as rotor speed, slip speed, current, voltage, and cooling conditions, both with and without stator temperature measurements.

Experimental results show that the TNN model, which incorporates heat-transfer principles, outperforms other models in terms of accuracy and reliability. The analysis is based on a comprehensive dataset comprising 2,876,126 data points collected over approximately 82 hours, covering various operational scenarios represented by 87 profile IDs. The models were trained on rotor temperatures ranging from 21.6°C to 259.6°C, with 22°C representing idle room temperature and 250°C the rotor's critical threshold.

The findings suggest that machine learning models offer a more adaptable and precise approach to temperature estimation in electric motors, with significant potential to improve operational efficiency and safety protocols in the automotive and industrial sectors. The TNN model was particularly effective, achieving mean squared errors of 4.2 and 23.3 in two different normal driving scenarios. Additionally, including motor housing temperature data, both inside and outside, significantly enhanced rotor temperature prediction accuracy, potentially reducing costs by eliminating the need for stator temperature sensors.

Data collection and preprocessing were done in collaboration with Volvo Cars. Including motor housing temperature significantly improved rotor temperature estimation accuracy, suggesting cost savings by eliminating the need for stator temperature sensors. This research highlights the superiority of ML models over deterministic models for predicting EM temperature, enhancing safety, efficiency, and reliability. The TNN model’s versatility in various driving conditions sets the groundwork for future ML integration into real-time Motor Control Systems.

This research demonstrates the superiority of machine learning models over deterministic models for induction motor temperature prediction, improving safety, efficiency, and reliability. The TNN model's ability to accurately predict rotor temperature under various conditions highlights the potential for integrating machine learning into real-time motor control systems, setting the stage for future advancements in this field.

This master thesis is about investigation a power efficient anti-moisture device thatcan be implemented in electronic enclosures in severe climatic environments.First, some of the existing knowledge and previous works were introduced. Then arelevant theoretical background including three main approaches in humiditymanagement are described, comparison between the enclosure heaters and localheaters, some psychrometics concepts that have been used in the project, heattransfer fundamentals, environmental test basics, some humidity and temperaturesensing techniques, computational fluid dynamics, programmable logic controlfundamentals, comparison PLCs with microcontrollers was provided.A series experiments have been performed in order to find the power efficient andmost effective anti-moisture method. Based on the analysis of the experiment data,the local heater system has been designed. CFD assisted parametric study of thelocal heater has been performed in order to find the best feasible design includingthe size and location. The local heater has been built based on the results ofparametric study. Different materials have been tested in laboratory in order tofind the proper material for final prototype of heater. The implemented localheater has been integrated with programmable logic control device. The controlalgorithm has been developed for activation/deactivation of local heater. The logiccontrolled PCB local heater has been experimentally evaluated.In the end the results achieved from environmental test have been presented andanalyzed. Some conclusions on the results and also future work have been discussed.

The lubrication and tension levels are two important parameters when running a chainsaw, both impacting the cutting performance and lifespan of the tool. An appropriate level of lubrication and tension leads to maximum performance of the chainsaw and direct benefits for the end-user. This thesis addresses the problem of detecting the lubrication status and the tension level using the information contained in the acoustic emissions captured in the guidebar of the chainsaw. Data was collected by running controlled experiments using an acoustic emissions sensor.Information was extracted from acoustic emissions by using a number of features computed on different frequency ranges.Three machine learning models were trained and evaluated on data corresponding to different combinations of lubrication status and tension levels. The models' performances were evaluated using the well-known metrics accuracy, precision, and recall. A pattern was found for each lubrication and tension setup, and the model that registered the highest performance was the Random Forest. The impact of temperature, guidebar, and chain on acoustic emissions is also analyzed. The detection of different lubrication levels using the information contained by acoustic signals is also addressed, the patterns in data being determined by computing features in the time and frequency domains. The analysis shows that the temperature does not have an impact when the running time is less than 10 minutes, and the chain has a bigger impact than the guidebar for the specific setup of the experiments. Moreover, a pattern dependent on the guidebar and chain combination correlated with the lubrication level was identified. The main contribution of this thesis consists of detecting a pattern representative of lubrication and tension setup in acoustic emission using a number of features computed in different frequency ranges.

How can Linux reduce the time required for development in embedded systems, and what makes Linux appealing to embedded developers despite the loss in overall control? Through qualitative interviews with industry professionals and a systematic literature review, challenges and benefits of using Linux in embedded systems development were identified and discussed. Three hypotheses were formulated based on recurring topic agreement among the interview subjects: Reduced development time through the use of open-source solutions, struggles with real-time and security requirements, and challenges within troubleshooting and dependency management. The empirical data observed primarily aligned with the professional perception indicating the potential for development time reduction leveraging resources properly. However also highlighting additional challenges that are not present in traditional embedded system development. Several trade-offs were observed from the findings, including increased overhead and licensing concerns. Further research is required to fully understand the advantages, challenges and limits associated with Linux in an embedded system environment. This study provides valuable insights for future exploration within the field. 

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of these theses is to build a deep understanding of CAN-FD and how does it work in the network.

Method:The methods are literature studies that build on scientific books, data sheets, white papers, articles and interviews. 

Findings: This research shows that the scalability of CAN-FD is the same in Classic CAN. Supporting high bit rate and increasing the bandwidth for CAN-FD is the only gap between them. In addition, the result shows that the CAN-FD doesn’t work on Partial Networks.

Implications: The idea of this report was interesting for the companies that have needs for CAN-FD, which help to increase their knowledge about CAN-FD.

Limitations: A Qualitative method was a useful method to reach the needs of this study. This method leads to real results that have been done in the other studies. The only missing for the authors is the scientific research that could build on real experiments and measurements on the hardware or software was not available under this research and this could lead to more clear results.

Limitations: A Qualitative method was a useful method to reach the needs of this study. This method leads to real results that have been done in the other studies. The only missing for the authors is the scientific research that could build on real experiments and measurements on the hardware or software was not available under this research and this could lead to more clear results.

This thesis aims to enhance analysis of Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) data in context of professional forestry operations. The experiment involved mounting an IMU on a passive exoskeleton, capturing real-time movement data during forestry activity, and then the data was analysed both with and without machine learning.

As a result, different back angle movement patterns has been identified using graphs on Euler angles which came from IMU sensor. And also AI model had over 60% of accuracy for all movements except for one, indicating a need for refinement, through more participants, better sensor attachment and combining other sensors. The findings from this thesis will guide future research, particularly for ergonomic specialist students and also mechanical students to develop an active exoskeleton. In conclusion, using IMU data with exoskeletons can improve worker safety and reduce ergonomic risks in forestry by informing the user of  their posture.

The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a new eye-controlled infotainmentsystem that worked differently compared to similar systems. What differs this new system is that personal calibration is not necessary to be performed before each time the system is to be used.

The method Design Science Research (DSR) has been used where an artifact has been developed and then investigated. Experiments have been conducted to find out how well the infotainment system works when it uses a relative gaze towards an absolute, but also to find out how users should confirm their gaze in the best way. For confirmation of gaze, three different methods have been used; button press, blink, and gazing. The collected data from the experiments have been matched to evaluate how well they stand against each other.

The result of the study shows that when the infotainment system used relative gaze, it worked in as many attempts as it did using absolute. The result times were very similar to each other which shows that the both methods works well even when face calibration is not used, but the collected data was uneven which made it difficult to draw conclusions about which one was faster. The study also shows that keystroke was the best-suited method to use to confirm gaze.This method was much faster than other methods.

A limitation of the study has been that data collection was only done on two occasions. On more occasions more data could have been generated, which would have made it easier to draw more conclusions about the response times.

Syfte – Syftet för denna studie var att utveckla en sensorlös modell som beräknar en estimeradtemperatur i en BLDC-motors statorlindningar, detta för att undersöka hur väl det går attskydda handhållna produkter mot oaktsam användning och för att kunna motverka körningunder höga temperaturer, vilket skulle kunna förlänga livslängden för handhållna produkter.

Metod – Denna studie har använt forskningsmetoden Design Science Research för att utvecklaen artefakt som sensorlöst estimerar temperatur i en BLDC-motors statorlindningar.Artefaktens prestanda för den estimerade temperaturen var noggrannhet, precision ochkonvergeringstid, vilket utvärderats genom analys av kvantitativa data som samlats in underolika experiment.

Resultat – Den utvecklade artefakten i studien baserades på en kombination av CurrentInjection och Lumped Parameter Thermal Network samt ett Kalman Filter, artefaktensprestanda uppfyllde inte Husqvarna AB:s krav.

Artefaktens precision och noggrannhet för att estimera temperatur i en BLDCmotorsstatorlindningar blev 7,2 °C ± 23,8 °C och dess konvergeringstid blev 7,3 sför dess medelvärde och 18,4 s för dess precision.

Implikationer – Denna studie och dess resultat kan användas som en hänvisning på hur välen kombination av Current Injection, Lumped Parameter Thermal Network och Kalman Filterkan estimera temperaturen i statorlindningar för BLDC-motorer med en resistans på 20 mΩ,induktans på 10 uH, nominell hastighet på ~20 000 RPM med terminering av typen Delta ochsom är icke salient.

Begränsningar – Studiens begränsningar listas nedan.

1. Utvecklingstiden för artefakten utfördes under begränsad tid.
• Vilket bidragit till mindre optimering av artefakterna.
• Vilket bidragit till färre iterationer av artefakter.
2. Artefakten utvärderas endast på VESC hårdvara och dess mjukvara som grund.
   • Artefaktens prestanda påverkas av noggrannheten samt precisionen vidmätning av ström och spänning.
3. Experimenten som utfördes var begränsade.
• Hade intervallen som experimenten utfördes gällande temperatur, hastighetoch dynamisk last varit större skulle artefaktens prestanda kunna bli undersökti mer verkliga förhållanden. En bättre bromsbänk och en klimatkammareskulle använts.
4. Endast en BLDC motor utvärderades.
• Utvärdering av fler motorer skulle kunna visa på skillnader i prestanda förartefakten mellan olika mindre motorer, det vill säga visa på dess generellatillämpbarhet.
5. Analys av artefaktens prestanda vid enbart konvergerande tillstånd utfördes inte.
• Vilket skulle kunna visa på om artefaktens prestanda vid enbart konvergeradetillstånd hade uppfyllt Husqvarna AB:s krav.

Nyckelord – Estimera Temperatur, BLDC-motor, Statorlindningar, Current Injection,Lumped Parameter Thermal Network, Kalman Filter, VESC

This research paper studies the extent of how microinteractions are utilized in Microsoft Teams and the impact that they have on workflow efficiencies, specifically in the creative industry. In a novel time where Covid-19 virus has increased the demand of digital platforms, the importance of research within remote meeting utilization, and the interaction possibilities within, is of utter importance. Also, since we are missing out on the spontaneous interactions that occur when meeting face-to-face, the microinteractions within digital meeting platforms now carry a heavier weight when interactions are solely occuring remotely.

The data collection was achieved through a qualitative approach consisting of participant observations and semi-structured interviews. The results of this research proved that microinteractions are used frequently within digital meetings in Microsoft Teams, but in different contexts and in different constellations. The results also identified that microinteractions, which hold the right conditions, can streamline workflows in certain scenarios. This study concluded in interesting data that answered the research questions but also opened up for further research due to the topic being of a novel field and in a special time, in this case referring to the pandemic and Covid-19.

There is a lack of data-driven training instructions for sports shooters, as instruction has commonly been based on subjective assessments. Many studies have correlated body posture and balance to shooting performance in rifle shooting tasks, but most of them have focused on single aspects of postural control. This thesis has focused on finding relevant rifle shooting factors by examining the entire body over sequences of time. We performed a data collection with 13 human participants who carried out live rifle shooting scenarios while being recorded with multiple biometric sensors, including several body trackers. An experiment was conducted to identify what aspects of rifle shooting could be predicted and explained using these data. We employed a pre-processing pipeline to produce a novel skeleton sequence representation, and used it to train a transformer model. The predictions from this model could be explained on a per sample basis using the attention mechanism, and visualised in an interactive format for humans to interpret. It was possible to separate the different phases of a shooting scenario from body posture with a high classification accuracy (81%). However, no correlation could be shown between shooting performance and body posture from our data. Future work could focus on novel feature engineering, and on examining alternative machine learning approaches. The dataset and pre-processing pipeline, as well as the techniques for generating explainable predictions presented in this thesis has laid the groundwork for future research in the sports shooting domain.

Detta examensarbete behandlar problemet med att testa inbyggda system i kontorsmiljö. För att göra detta och därigenom kunna göra anrop på det inbyggda systemets API, måste detta anrop skickas som ett seriellt datapaket över en seriell kommunikationslänk som TCP/IP.

Detta möjliggjordes genom att först upprätta en kommunikationslänk med protokollet TCP/IP, där användningen av POSIX-sockets tillämpades. För att packa ner och packa upp funktionsanropen till seriell data implementerades ett protokoll som följdes när detta utfördes. Hantering av data i samband med överföring över TCP/IP sköttes av ett protokoll vid namn BGSFP, ett protokoll som bygger på det tidigare protokollet TSFP.

Network-on-Chip (NoC) is a new on-chip communication paradigm for future IP-core based System-on-Chip (SoC), designed to remove a number of limitations of today’s on-chip interconnect solutions. A NoC interconnects cores by means of a packet switched micro-network, which improves scalability and reusability, resulting in a shorter time to market. A typical NoC will be running many applications concurrently, which results in shared network capacity between different kinds of traffic flows. Due to the diverse characteristic of applications, some traffic flows will require real-time communication guarantees while others are tolerant to even some loss of data. In order to provide different levels of Quality-of-Service (QoS) for traffic flows, the communication traffic is separated into different service classes. Traffic in NoC is typically classified into two service classes: the guaranteed throughput (GT) and the best-effort (BE) service class. The GT class offers strict QoS guarantees by setting up a virtual path with reserved bandwidth between the source (GT-producer) and destination (GT-consumer), called a GT-path. The BE class offers no strict QoS guarantees, but tries to efficiently use any network capacity which may become available from the GT traffic. The GT traffic may not fully utilize its bandwidth reservation if its communication volume varies, leading to time intervals where there is no GT traffic using the bandwidth reservation. These intervals are referred to as slack-time. If the slack can not be used this leads to unnecessarily reduced performance of BE traffic, since a part of the available network capacity becomes blocked. This thesis deals with methods to efficiently use the slack-time for BE traffic. The contributions include three new dynamic schemes for slack distribution in NoC. First, a scheme to inform the routers of a GT-path about available slack is evaluated. The GT-producer plans its traffic using a special playout buffer, and issues control packets containing the actual amount of slack-time available. The results show that this scheme leads to decreased latency, jitter and packet drops for BE traffic. Secondly, an extension to this scheme is evaluated, where slack is distributed among multiple GT-paths (slack distribution in space). This opens up the possibility to balance the QoS of BE traffic flows which overlap with the GT-paths. Thirdly, a scheme to distribute slack among the links of a GT-path (slack distribution in time) is proposed. In this approach, arriving GT-packets, at a certain router along the GT-path, can wait for a maximum defined amount of time. During this time, any waiting BE traffic in the buffers can be forwarded over the GT-path. The results confirm that this is especially important during high BE-traffic load, where this technique decreases the jitter of BE traffic considerably.

Original equipment suppliers (OES) that develop unique products are continuously faced with changing requirements during both the quotation and product development processes. This challenge is a different reality from companies that develop off-the-shelf products for the end consumer, which use fixed specifications and where product platforms have been a strong enabler for efficient mass customization. However, product platforms cannot adequately support companies working as OES. The reason is that a high level of customization is required which means that interfaces cannot be standardized, the performance is not negotiable, requirements are not initially fixed, and the specific system interacts with, is affected by, or affects other systems that are simultaneously developed in a transdisciplinary environment. The design platform (DP) approach provides a coherent environment for heterogeneous and transdisciplinary design resources to be used in product development by supporting both designing and off-the-shelf solutions. This research describes the introduction, application and further development of the DP approach at an automotive supplier to support the development of customized solutions when traditional modularity or platform scalability do not suffice. A computer tool called Design Platform Manager has been developed to support the creation and visualization of the DP. The support tool has a connection to a product data management database to link the platform model to the various kinds of engineering assets needed or intended to support variant creation. Finally, the support tool was evaluated by the case company representatives showing promising results. 

Purpose – The aim of the study is to identify, from an operational and strategic perspective, the impact of a digital information system on SME in the logistics industry.Based on the purpose of the study, two questions have been formulated.

• What effects can a digital information system provide on an information flow at an operational level?• What strategic benefits can a digital information system give?

Method – A case study has been conducted on a small logistics company that manages, repairs and manufactures pallets. The data collection was conducted through interviews and observations. Based on the data collection, a literature study has been conducted where an inductive approach has been used. A comparison and analysis between the literature study and empirical data has generated the results of the study.

Findings – With regards to operational and strategic perspective, a digital information system may have different types of impact on SMEs. From an operational perspective, a digital information system can have the following effects:• Operations can be reduced• Reduction of lead time• Enables increased quality of information and information may be available in real time• Creates prerequisites for forecasts, which in return creates a good basis for planning and decision making

The benefits identified at a strategic level of implementing a digital information system are:• Competitive advantage• Decision can be taken based on correct information• Creates new opportunities• Better customer relations

Implications – This study highlights the impact of digitization on companies and provides evidence that digitalization of information systems can lead to shorter lead times, reduced documents and safer information in the flows. The study's findings reinforce and confirm the existing theories that a digital information system can help a company to create more effective processes and a smoother management of its information. The case company illustrate a problem that more logistics companies may experience and where an information system can be a solution for easier management and more up-to-date information.

Limitations – The purpose of the study is to investigate a company's information flow linked to a specific product category. The economic aspects of information management are not considered in this study.

An Experimental Diagnostic Tool (EDT) was developed to increase the efficiency of the diagnostic process of robotic lawn mowers which resulted in a 200% productivity increase when utilizing a proposed formula specifically designed for the diagnostic process of robotic lawn mowers. The tool does not only extract and process data from the robotic lawn mower wirelessly but also highlights potential faults through an intuitive and easy-to-use interface - empowering servicing technicians who perform the diagnostics to perform at a higher level.

Further, efficiency is a term widely used in various domains and contexts when measuring the capacity of a process. Proposed general definitions of the term have been given by previous authors and researchers. However, due to a lack of universally set definitions which fit all situations, the term remains ambiguous when improvements to a specific process are needed. The unclear definition is due to the variations within each process affecting the definition of both the term itself, but also similar terms fundamentally connected to it such as productivity, performance, and profitability. The following report contains an investigation of exploratory research where the understanding of efficiency and its related concepts are analyzed within the after-sales diagnostic process of robotic lawn mowers.

This paper studies the effects of the Firmware Over-The-Air update process done through Bluetooth Low Energy using a compression-based update solution compared to a non-compressed update solution.

The method that is used in this study is an experimental method using a Nordic semiconductor board as an IoT device. To this, a firmware was sent Over-The-Air and energy consumption along with time was measured using a measuring tool. The firmware was sent compressed and uncompressed. The compression algorithm that was used in the experiment was LZ4. Different sizes of firmware were tested and decompressed through the update process, and by using the measuring tool, the time taken, and average current were measured to get the results of the study. 

The result of this study is that time taken increases as firmware gets larger on both compressed and non-compressed firmware, and the increase in firmware file sizes had no effect on the average current. At the same time, including decompression into the FOTA solution increases the average current and time taken, which led to the conclusion that a compressed FOTA update has a higher total time and average current on the hardware setup tested on. It was also concluded that an embedded system with a faster processor, in conjunction with a higher compression ratio, would be needed to reach a threshold value where a compression based FOTA process is preferable.

In forestry, natural forests are forest areas with high biodiversity, in need of preservation. The current mapping of natural forests is a tedious task that requires manual labor that could possibly be automated.

In this paper we explore the main features used by a random forest algorithm to classify natural forest and managed forest in northern Sweden. The goal was to create a model with a substantial strength of agreement, meaning a Kappa value of 0.61 or higher, placing the model in the same range as models produced in previous research.

We used raster data gathered from airborne LiDAR, combined with labeled sample areas, both supplied by the Swedish Forest Agency. Two experiments were performed with different features. Experiment 1 used features extracted using methods inspired from previous research while Experiment 2 further added upon those features. From the total number of used sample areas (n=2882), 70% was used to train the models and 30% was used for evaluation.

The result was a Kappa value of 0.26 for Experiment 1 and 0.32 for Experiment 2. Features shown to be prominent are features derived from canopy height, where the supplied data also had the highest resolution. Percentiles, kurtosis and canopy crown areas derived from the canopy height were shown to be the most important for classification. The results fell short of our goal, possibly indicating a range of flaws in the data used. The size of the sample areas and resolution of raster data are likely important factors when extracting features, playing a large role in the produced model’s performance.

Introduction: Number of strata (NoS) is an informative descriptor of forest structure and is therefore useful in forest management. Collection of NoS as well as other forest properties is performed by fieldworkers and could benefit from automation.

Objectives: This study investigates automated prediction of NoS from airborne laser scanned point clouds over Swedish forest plots.Methods: A previously suggested approach of using vertical gap probability is compared through experimentation against the geometric neural network PointNet++ configured for ordinal prediction. For both approaches, the mean accuracy is measured for three datasets: coniferous forest, deciduous forest, and a combination of all forests.

Results: PointNet++ displayed a better point performance for two out of three datasets, attaining a top mean accuracy of 46.2%. However only the coniferous subset displayed a statistically significant superiority for PointNet++.

Conclusion: This study demonstrates the potential of geometric neural networks for data mining of forest properties. The results show that impediments in the data may need to be addressed for further improvements.

Indoor occupancy prediction is a prerequisite for the management of energy consumption, security, health, and other systems in smart buildings. Previous studies have shown that buildings that automatize their heating, lighting, air conditioning, and ventilation systems through considering the occupancy and activity information might reduce energy consumption by more than 50%. However, it is difficult to use high-resolution sensors and cameras for occupancy prediction due to privacy concerns. In this paper, we propose a novel solution for predicting occupancy using multiple low-cost and low-resolution heat sensors. We suggest two different methods for fusing and processing the data captured from multiple heat sensors and we use a Convolutional Neural Network for predicting occupancy. We conduct experiments to assess both the performance of the proposed solutions and analyze the impact of sensor field view overlaps on the prediction results. In summary, our experimental results show that the implemented solutions show high occupancy prediction accuracy and real-time processing capabilities.

As manufacturing industry seeks different strategies and technologies to respond to the ever-increasing demands in markets that prioritize versatility of products with low-volume productions, certain technologies and strategies gain more attraction and form higher acceptance levels among different sectors. Individual firms are driven by their market requirements. Various factors including product specification, assembly sequence, and manufacturing operations are central to the decisions that are made with respect to the type of technology to respond to market dynamics. Additive Manufacturing (AM) is one of the technology alternatives that has exhibited remarkable strengths in countering market disruptions. Although AM can be utilized along conventional technologies (i.e., subtracting and forming) in a hybrid context to combine advantages and offset weaknesses of each category, the arguments supporting its applications would need to be formulated rigorously to ensure investments are rightfully justified. Another alternative continuously investigated by companies is automation and more specifically, using robotics for various purposes e.g., operations like welding and painting, material handling, machine tending, etc. Both industrial robots and the applications that require a collaboration between humans and robots can be valid in this context. Considering advancements in AM and Automation and their potentials in increasing flexibility, expediting operations, and leveraging cost advantages, this paper explores how AM and automation in tandem could improve flexibility in productions. Results of this study can be used for proposing a conceptual model which will be further developed and then tested on industrial cases in future studies. While this study incorporates raw data about processing requirements in production that has been obtained via interviews with industrial companies, inputs about the technologies i.e., AM and robotics are derived from literature.

The increase in the number of cores that can be integrated on a single chip has forced the designer to use computer network concepts for design of System on Chip (SoC). This idea led to development of Network on Chip (NoC) to deal with more cores on a single chip. NoC has three main parts, namely routers, link and network interface through which cores are connected to NoC. Router is one of the most important parts because cores communicate with other cores through routers. One of the important tasks for a NoC designer is to design router with low latency.Router design depends on the routing protocol and routing algorithm used. Two kinds of routing algorithms are source routing and distributed routing. In source routing, complete route information is available in Head flit while in distributed routing, routing decisions are taken inside every router on the path. Source routing has speed advantage over distributed routing because the packet itself contains the routing information. But source routing leads to overhead to store complete path information in the header of each packet. To overcome this flaw, junction based source routing has been introduced. If destination is far away from the source then first packet will go to a junction and get the new path information from the junction to the destination. Thus we need to store the path information only for a few hops in the packet header. This idea has been taken from the daily experience of train journey. In this thesis we have developed design of a router for junction based source routing. Main component of simple router includes buffering, header modification and making route decision. Router includes a table called Path Table which stores information about paths from junction to various destinations. JB router also includes, picking up the new path information from Path Table and modify the header by adding new path information.We have developed VHDL designs of two versions of the routers for Junction Based Routing. The delay performance of routers have been analysed through simulation. A simple prototype of the router has also been implemented in Altera FPGA to find out the resource requirements of the new router designs.

Exploratory Testing (ET) is a software testing practice characterized by simultaneous activities: test design, test execution and learning from the test results. Recently ET has received much attention from testing practitioners and researchers as well as software testing standardization bodies. Nevertheless, scientific evidence and knowledge about ET’s application in software industry are little. This multi case study conducted in three software companies, provides insights into the real perception of Exploratory Testing and the role of this practice in the whole testing process of them. This study identifies three distinct applications of Exploratory Testing in these software companies: ET as a standard process; ET as a discretionary, formalized process; ET as an informal, ad hoc process. Also, a number of key factors that affect the choice of Exploratory Testing in an organization have been identified: product characteristics and features; the products market; pressure for faster product release.

Det finns ett behov av att utveckla en sensorlösning som kan bidra JU Solar Team med kördata från körning. Detta för att skapa underlag för mer verklighetstrogna statiska och dynamiska simuleringar av bilen. Arbetet har utförts vid Jönköpings Tekniska Högskola.

I studien ingår utförda experiment samt programmering av ett flertal diverse sensorer och kretskort, både individuellt och sammansatt kopplade.

Resultatet från arbetet visar att det är möjligt att skapa ett batteridrivet system som kan mäta samt lagra data från accelerometer, gyroskop, luftkvalitetssensor och lastceller oavbrutet under 24 timmar. Systemets kombination av lågt vikt och kompakt storlek gör att det inte stör föraren under tävling och skapar möjlighet att i framtiden bygga in systemet som en permanent del av solbilen.

Studien avgränsar sig till att utvärdera möjligheten för att skapa ett konceptsystem som är tänkt att lägga grunden för vidareutveckling av framtida studenter.

This thesis work deals with the most actual topic in Computer Vision field which is scene understanding and this using matching of 3D feature point images. The objective is to make use of Saab’s latest breakthrough in extraction of 3D feature points, to identify the best alignment of at least two 3D feature point images.

The thesis gives a theoretical overview of the latest algorithms used for feature detection, description and matching. The work continues with a brief description of the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) technique, ending with a case study on evaluation of the newly developed software solution for SLAM, called slam6d.

Slam6d is a tool that registers point clouds into a common coordinate system. It does an automatic high-accurate registration of the laser scans. In the case study the use of slam6d is extended in registering 3D feature point images extracted from a stereo camera and the results of registration are analyzed.

In the case study we start with registration of one single 3D feature point image captured from stationary image sensor continuing with registration of multiple images following a trail.

Finally the conclusion from the case study results is that slam6d can register non-laser scan extracted feature point images with high-accuracy in case of single image but it introduces some overlapping results in the case of multiple images following a trail.

Detta examensarbete är genomfört i samarbete med Thorbjörn Birging. Birging arbetar med RFID[1] och är även VD för CombiQ på Science Park i Jönköping. Under lång tid har han velat skapa en produkt som hjälper människor med sömnproblem, depression, ångest och stress. Författarens roll som ingenjörsstudent blev att utveckla hans ide till en färdig produkt. Birging upptäckte efter att ha läst en artikel om sömnproblem att det finns studier som visar att det är enklare att somna med ett svagt ljud i rummet för att andra personer i rummet inte skall störas. Birging fokuserade på att skapa en ny ljudkudde med denna teori som grund.

 Målet med detta examensarbete blev att skapa en kudde med fokus på utmärkt stereoljud som hjälpredskap för människor med sömnproblem. Med ljudets användning blir insomningen betydligt lättare. Många människor söker hjälp för sina problem på sjukhus, men ofta får de bara recept på lugnande och antidepressiva mediciner. Ett annat problem med sömntabletter är risken för att utveckla ett beroende och en längre tids användning av medicinerna kan störa kroppens normala sömnfunktion, vilket läkaren Anders Isaksson som driver en privatklinik i Örebro kan intyga. Birging har haft kontakt med Anders under detta arbete och kan intyga detta.

 Ett sätt att lindra sömnproblem är genom att patienten får lyssna till lugnande musik före insomnandet, vilket alltså är tanken med denna kudde. Författaren genomförde en undersökning för att ta reda på vad som är bra och dåligt med dagens ljudkuddar. En idégenerering och kravspecifikation påbörjades med hjälp av Birging. För att kunna veta vad kunderna önskar sig med denna nya produkt gjordes bland annat en designbrief, funktionsanalys och en QFD-matris. Designbriefen skapades både verbalt och visuellt för att se hur den nya produkten skall se ut på markanden. QFD-matrisen rangordnar kraven och konkurrenternas kuddar i förhållande till Birgings krav på den nya prototypen. QFD ger inte svar på vad kunden får för upplevelse med produkten vilket designbriefen kan åstadkomma. Konstruerandet av prototypen kan börja först när designbriefen och funktionsanalysen är klara. Materialvalet gjordes genom testfaser som ljudåtergivning och komfort. Skumplast materialen kommer ifrån Recticel AB i Gislaved och ett intresse för denna nya produkt finns i den framtida utvecklingen.

 Denna nya produkt blev betydligt bättre än de ljudkuddar som finns på marknaden. Den nya produkten har egenskaper som tryckavlastning samt bättre ljudkvalitet vilket innebär att volymen inte behöver vara hög, vilket gör att omgivningen inte störs. Orsaken till att ljudet inte stör är att spridningen av ljudet mestadels riktas upp mot användaren. Kuddens mått är B50*H40*T5 cm innebär att man enkelt kan köpa vanliga örngott och att den inte ta onödig plats i sängen.

[1] Radio Frequency IDentification

ITIL - Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a widely acclaimed practice framework. It is a framework for Information technology service management (ITSM), which provides IT, business alignment, improved IT services and helps to resolve business issues. ITIL does not function to generate business strategies but to support them. ITIL as a framework describes a lifecycle that includes five stages, which are not technological specific or organization specific. It can be adopted by any organization to meet its goals. Five stages of ITIL lifecycle are; Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual service improvement.

The primary purpose of this thesis is to elaborate upon the ITIL problem management process with particular regard to challenges that hinder its application and to further supplement this analysis with insights of ITIL professionals about overcoming these challenges. As this research’s data collection is based on semi-structured interviews with IT professionals, gathering their views on ITIL implementation challenges, so expected data to be collected from these interviews is to be non-numerical, therefore; this thesis will follow qualitative research. This thesis will employ deductive approach. As the researcher of this thesis will gather in-depth knowledge of ITIL framework and challenges in implementing ITIL problem management by extensive literature review. As a result, a list of twenty-six challenges, categorized into six categories, was the first outcome of this study by extensive literature review. The literature review didn’t only help to generate a list of challenges but also helped this study to recognize the importance of ITIL framework in the organizations, by contributing to IT governance. To fulfil the purpose of this thesis a detailed guideline for the ITIL implementation was gathered by interviewing the IT professionals.

The nature of software development has changed in last decade. Waterfall or traditional command and control methods have been replaced by Agile methodologies. Agile came as a “solution” to the disadvantages of the waterfall methodology, but using Agile has its own challenges. Due to the attractive characteristics of Agile such as flexibility and short time-to-market, Agile development has been increasingly popular and the number of organisations which have started to move to Agile is growing every day. Implementing new methodologies in any organisation is always a big challenge, especially for large-scale organisations due to their complexity, many different interacting interfaces, strong organisational culture, etc.

The nature of these challenges and obstacles changes from different perspectives within an organisation, and each of these perspectives needs to be studied and investigated to ensure a successful transition from traditional approaches to Agile. In this thesis we focus on the project manager and project governance perspectives. We aim to define the success and failure factors that play a key role in moving from traditional approaches to Agile approaches in large-scale organisations.

To address these challenges we conducted literature reviews on the latest research in implementing Agile methodologies. To collect our data we used a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. We explored both IT project manager and Chief project manager opinions and experiences of the organisations by conducting interviews and questionnaires in our research.

The results reveals the difficulty to find proper product owners in the Agile projects. It is challenging to set a product owner who has Agile knowledge and is expert in the project domain. Specialized training and coaching for product owners is mentioned as one of the solutions that could be provided for this challenge. “Distributed teams”, “Lack of focus on the business side” and “Weak coaching and support” are some of the other critical areas which have been presented by the participants in the interviews and survey in this study.

The main conclusion is that in order to have a successful transition to Agile approaches, the Agile mind-set should be set in all different part in an organizations, not only the development side and also that everyone have to understand “Why” Agile is beneficial. Also the communication of lessons learnt and feedback should be strong and effective in order to avoid repetition of the same mistakes. In addition, specialized training and coaching for different roles within the period of the development is necessary to ensure the successful adoption of Agile.

Sedan en lång tid tillbaka har vägbelysning varit en central faktor för att säkerställa trygghet och säkra trafikmiljöer. I takt med en åldrande befolkning upplever äldre förändring i synsinnet vilket kan komma att påverka deras förmåga att köra i mörker. Tidigare forskning visar att äldre personer över 40 år har ett ökat ljusbehov som skapar problem vid mörkerkörning på grund av åldersrelaterade förändringar. Studiens syfte är att studera potentiella förbättringsmöjligheter av belysningskraven i VGU. Resultatet ska kunna tillämpas av Trafikverket för utveckling av belysningskriterierna i VGU, för att främja äldres synbehov och tillgodose en mer säker trafikmiljö vid mörkerkörning. Studien är utformad som en survey för att skapa en översiktlig kartläggning av ämnet. Empirin består av kvantitativ och kvalitativ data från datainsamlingsteknikerna enkät och dokumentstudie. En webbaserad enkät användes och utformades med flervalsalternativ och fritextfrågor. Enkäten analyserades genom en deskriptiv analys för att beskriva statistiken och tydligt kunna dra slutsatser. Dokumentstudien var ett externt originaldokument från Trafikverket.  Studien visade att en betydande andel av de tillfrågade har svårare att utföra visuella uppgifter i mörkerkörning jämfört med tidigare år. En specifik svårighet under mörkning var att urskilja hinder och vägmarkeringar vilket berodde på väg- och väderförhållanden. Avgörande faktorer som framkom i studien var luminans på vägbanan, bländning och jämnhet som orsakar problem för äldre bilförare. Resultatet indikerar att det finns förbättringsmöjligheter när det gäller belysningskriterierna i VGU, som kan anpassas för att bättre tillgodose äldres synbehov i takt med den åldrande befolkningen.  

I takt med att marknaden för robotgräsklippare ökar så är pressen högre på företag att deras produkt ska vara robust. Detta kan uppnås genom att testerna som görs på robotgräsklipparen testas så fort som möjligt. Genom att skapa en simulering där alla tester genomförs istället för att köra testerna på en fysisk robotgräsklippare kan detta uppnås och utifrån detta utformades forskningsfrågan. För att skapa simuleringen undersöktes först mjukvaror vilket ansågs lämpliga för att utveckla en simulator, detta gjordes via en fallstudie. Dessa har sedan analyserats och jämförts för att till slut bestämma de som ansetts bäst att använda. Med hjälp av de så startade en utveckling av en simulator där hjul- och kollisionsdata hämtades från en fysisk robotgräsklippare och skickades till en virtuell robotgräsklippare. Den färdigställda simulatorn utvärderades vid slutet av arbetet med hjälp av experiment där författarna observerade och jämförde rörelsen hos den fysiska och virtuella robotgräsklipparen. För att utföra denna uppgift så tillämpade arbetet metoden Design science research där det arbetades iterativt vid utvecklingen av simulatorn. Resultatet visar på att det är möjligt att skapa en simulator med de valda mjukvarorna ROS och Gazebo där man kan genomföra simulerade tester. Arbetet visar på ökad kunskap där data från en fysisk robotgräsklippare kan implementeras i 3D-simulatorn Gazebo via ramverket ROS. Studien kan användas som riktlinje i liknande projekt när det kommer till val av mjukvaror och om de är lämpliga. Arbetet begränsas till enbart hjul- och kollisionsdata från den fysiska robotgräsklipparen.

Abstract

To support communication among hundreds of cores on a chip, on-chip

communication must be well organized. In the embedded systems using such a chip,

the communication patterns can be profiled and routing can be well planned off-line.

Source routing, with many advantages over distributed routing, will be very suitable

in such contexts. However, source routing has one serious drawback of overhead for

storing the path information in header of every packet. This disadvantage becomes

worse as the size of the network grows. In this thesis we propose a technique, called

Junction Based Routing (JBR), to remove this limitation. In the proposed technique,

path information for only a few hops is stored in the packet header. With this

information, either the packet reaches the destination, or reaches a junction from

where the path information for on-ward path is picked up.

There are many interesting issues related to this approach. Two important issues

related to JBR, namely, number and position of junctions and path computation for

efficient deadlock free routing are discussed and solved in this thesis work. Increase

in path length by using the minimum number of junctions, link load distribution while

computing paths, path encoding for JBR and packet format in JBR are also discussed.

A few tools have been developed in MATLAB to analyze the various aspects of JBR.

A simulator has been also developed to evaluate the performance of JBR with simple

source routing. Outline of the architecture for a junction is also proposed.

The results of simulation-based experiments show that the performance of JBR is

similar to source routing. JBR is compared with source routing and the simulationbased

results show that latency does not increase so much using junctions.

Throughput also does not level off significantly. Header flit in JBR can carry payload

data and this improves the performance of JBR in terms of throughput and latency

compared to source routing which needs to store large path information. We observe

improvement in throughput as compared to basic source routing when payload is very

small.

Key Words

System on Chip (SoC)

Core-Based Design

On Chip Communication

Network on Chip (NoC)

Packet Switched Network

Routing Algorithms

Source Routing

Junction-Based Routing

Specification and Description Language (SDL)

HLA, stands for High Level Architecture, is an IEEE standard to provide interoperability among Modeling and Simulation (M&S) systems. HLA defines an XML-based format, called Object Model Template (OMT), to represent data and information exchange between systems. The problem with XML representation, though, is that it is incapable of providing semantic interoperability. On the contrary, using representations like ontology languages (OWL) is one practical approach to provide such interoperability. This thesis studies the state of the art of the generic XML to OWL mapping strategies, aims to identify the shortcoming in those strategies to accomplish a translation between HLA XML-based object model and OWL ontology, and, eventually, introduces a framework for such translation. The framework proposed in this study is implemented and evaluated using HLA object models defined in WISE, which is an M&S integration platform developed by SAAB.

The study examines the light level's influence on the visual experience in a clothing store. The survey should, with empirical data and theory, contribute to increased knowledge of the level of light in store environments. The question that the study answers is "How does the visual experience of a store change when the light level changes?" Based on previous studies and own observations, stores have relatively high visual light levels. The room experience of a store is influenced by various factors such as interior design, materials, colors and design, and our senses. Several studies have shown that the visual conditions for our experience have a strong impact on the stay in a store. The survey is based on field observations in existing stores located in Jönköping's shopping center, Asecs. A field observation was performed to gather information and create an idea of what visual light levels and physical aspects such as the illuminance are present in today's stores. The stores design, materials and surface colors were documented. With the support of the field observation results and standards from Ljus & Rum (2013), an experiment was designed to mimic a store environment in order to be able to evaluate and study the light level's influence on the visual experience. The 16 participants had to evaluate three different light scenes with the average illuminances of 300 lux, 700 lux and 2700 lux. The evaluation was performed by using a psychological instrument from a well-proven method, BELUPP. The results of the experiment show that the participants preferred 700 lux, which is not fully in line with the generally recommended 300 lux for stores. The results show that in the planning of lighting, the light level, distribution and character should interact to create a light environment with a pleasant visual experience. Higher light levels are more acceptable in rooms with darker surface colors and materials. Light levels are a significant factor in retail environments and have a major impact on ecological, social and economic sustainability. Lighting in the shop should be adapted to the situation as there are a number of factors that affect the perceived light level.

Organizations that have come to depend on legacy systems face quite a paradoxical problem. Maintaining the system might prove ineffective in accommodating necessary changes, but a system migration project is expensive and incurs a high amount of risk. Organizations are therefore hesitant to respond to the legacy system problem by undertaking action. Legacy system are often not causing their organization any problems at present, but a focus on the future with regard to the legacy system problem is lacking. This results in IT systems reaching an end-of-life state. The research therefore set out to explore a future-oriented perspective on legacy systems by means of observation, a literature review and a survey. The researcher found the key concept of a future-oriented perspective to be that any system that is limiting an organization to grow and innovate can be regarded as a legacy system. A framework to designate legacy status to IT systems is proposed in order to guide practitioners to acknowledge a problematic IT system to facilitate appropriate response at the right time. In relation to a future-oriented perspective, when to designate legacy status is best determined according to the system’s flexibility towards change and the alignment of the system with the business. In that regard, IT systems are end-of-life systems when they are too inflexible to change, and as a result become unaligned with either current operations or a future business opportunity or need.

The induced current in a wire placed inside a conducting box due to field penetration through apertures has been studied using FDTD simulations. Two box configurations have been investigated in order to evaluate the difference in coupling with one large aperture and the combination of a large and a narrow aperture. The coupling to a wire placed above a ground plane has also been studied to compare it with the test cases involving the box.

Humidity management of commercial-of-the-shelf electronic components in non-controlled climatic environments can be realized e.g. by introducing a local printed circuit board heater. By choosing appropriate size and location of the heater plate in the vicinity of the critical electronic packages, and utilizing logic control function, it is possible to improve the quality of local humidity management and reduce power consumption of the heater, which is important especially in case of battery driven portable or vehicle mounted devices. A computational fluid dynamics assisted methodology has been developed to determine the best feasible design of the heater, followed by experimental verification of the constructed logic controlled heater. The experiment has been performed in a harsh climatic environment including temperature variation from +33°C to +40°C, and relative humidity variation from 54% to 80%. Analysis of the experimental %RH and temperature curves as well as power profile of the heater has confirmed the feasibility of the chosen approach to maintain greater than 9°C difference between the electronics package surface temperature and the local dew point temperature, by applying discrete power pulses with the amplitude less than 6 W.