The Front Office Manager: Key To Hotel Communications

The Front Office Manager: Key to Hotel Communications is a written study by Denney G. Rutherford, Department of Hotel and Restaurant Administration, College of Business and Economics at Washington State University. In it he initially observes, “Since the front office manager is usually viewed as the key to the efficient and orderly operation of a hotel, the author has researched the job and activities of this individual in an attempt to provide data about an area which he says was "intuitively known" but never "empirically explored." “Current literature implies that the activities of the front office are so important to the daily operations of the hotel that it occupies a preeminent position among other departments,” Rutherford says. He also references, Gray and Liguori, who describe the front office as: “the nerve center of the hote1,” echoing an early work by Heldenbrand indicating that it “becomes a sort of listening post for management.” The quotes are cited. The primary stage of the article relies on a seven-page, two-part questionnaire, which was used to collect data regarding the FOM – front office manager - position. Even though the position is considered a crucial one, it seems there is a significant lack of pragmatic data regarding it. Rutherford graphs the studies. Good communication skills are imperative. “Other recent research has suggested that the skills of effective communication are among the most vital a manager at any level can bring to his/her endeavors in the service industries,” Rutherford notes. He provides a detailed – front office communications model – to illustrate the functions. In, Table 4, for example - Office Manager as Facilitator – Rutherford provides Likert Rating Scale values for a comprehensive list of front office tasks. Rutherford informs you that the communicative skills of a front office manager flow across the board, encompassing variables from guest relation exchanges to all the disparate components of employee relations. Not withstanding and compared to technical knowledge, such as computer and fiscal skills, Rutherford suggests: “The most powerful message derived from analysis of the data on the FOM's job is that communication in its various forms is clearly central to the successful mission of the front office.”

Extended Coverage for Public Safety and Critical Communications Using Multi-hop and D2D Communications

In this thesis, we proposed the use of device-to-device (D2D) communications for extending the coverage area of active base stations, for public safety communications with partial coverage. A 3GPP standard compliant D2D system level simulator is developed for HetNets and public safety scenarios and used to evaluate the performance of D2D discovery and communications underlying cellular networks. For D2D discovery, the benefits of time-domain inter-cell interference coordi- nation (ICIC) approaches by using almost blank subframes were evaluated. Also, the use of multi-hop is proposed to improve, even further, the performance of the D2D discovery process. Finally, the possibility of using multi-hop D2D communications for extending the coverage area of active base stations was evaluated. Improvements in energy and spectral efficiency, when compared with the case of direct UE-eNB communi- cations, were demonstrated. Moreover, UE power control techniques were applied to reduce the effects of interference from neighboring D2D links.

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing Based Air Interfaces and Multiple Input Multiple Output Techniques in Cooperative Satellite Communications for 4th Generation Mobile Systems

Recently, wireless network technology has grown at such a pace that scientific research has become a practical reality in a very short time span. One mobile system that features high data rates and open network architecture is 4G. Currently, the research community and industry, in the field of wireless networks, are working on possible choices for solutions in the 4G system. The researcher considers one of the most important characteristics of future 4G mobile systems the ability to guarantee reliable communications at high data rates, in addition to high efficiency in the spectrum usage. On mobile wireless communication networks, one important factor is the coverage of large geographical areas. In 4G systems, a hybrid satellite/terrestrial network is crucial to providing users with coverage wherever needed. Subscribers thus require a reliable satellite link to access their services when they are in remote locations where a terrestrial infrastructure is unavailable. The results show that good modulation and access technique are also required in order to transmit high data rates over satellite links to mobile users. The dissertation proposes the use of OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Multiple Access) for the satellite link by increasing the time diversity. This technique will allow for an increase of the data rate, as primarily required by multimedia applications, and will also optimally use the available bandwidth. In addition, this dissertation approaches the use of Cooperative Satellite Communications for hybrid satellite/terrestrial networks. By using this technique, the satellite coverage can be extended to areas where there is no direct link to the satellite. The issue of Cooperative Satellite Communications is solved through a new algorithm that forwards the received data from the fixed node to the mobile node. This algorithm is very efficient because it does not allow unnecessary transmissions and is based on signal to noise ratio (SNR) measures.

Optimal kernel development for real-time communications

The purpose of this research is to develop an optimal kernel which would be used in a real-time engineering and communications system. Since the application is a real-time system, relevant real-time issues are studied in conjunction with kernel related issues. The emphasis of the research is the development of a kernel which would not only adhere to the criteria of a real-time environment, namely determinism and performance, but also provide the flexibility and portability associated with non-real-time environments. The essence of the research is to study how the features found in non-real-time systems could be applied to the real-time system in order to generate an optimal kernel which would provide flexibility and architecture independence while maintaining the performance needed by most of the engineering applications. Traditionally, development of real-time kernels has been done using assembly language. By utilizing the powerful constructs of the C language, a real-time kernel was developed which addressed the goals of flexibility and portability while still meeting the real-time criteria. The implementation of the kernel is carried out using the powerful 68010/20/30/40 microprocessor based systems.

Automatic and adaptable registration of live RGBD video streams sharing partially overlapping views

In this thesis, we introduce DeReEs-4v, an algorithm for unsupervised and automatic registration of two video frames captured depth-sensing cameras. DeReEs-4V receives two RGBD video streams from two depth-sensing cameras arbitrary located in an indoor space that share a minimum amount of 25% overlap between their captured scenes. The motivation of this research is to employ multiple depth-sensing cameras to enlarge the field of view and acquire a more complete and accurate 3D information of the environment. A typical way to combine multiple views from different cameras is through manual calibration. However, this process is time-consuming and may require some technical knowledge. Moreover, calibration has to be repeated when the location or position of the cameras change. In this research, we demonstrate how DeReEs-4V registration can be used to find the transformation of the view of one camera with respect to the other at interactive rates. Our algorithm automatically finds the 3D transformation to match the views from two cameras, requires no human interference, and is robust to camera movements while capturing. To validate this approach, a thorough examination of the system performance under different scenarios is presented. The system presented here supports any application that might benefit from the wider field-of-view provided by the combined scene from both cameras, including applications in 3D telepresence, gaming, people tracking, videoconferencing and computer vision.

Asthma in Asia : Physician perspectives on control, inhaler use and patient communications

Peer reviewed

Un modèle de validation automatique de mécanismes de sécurisation des communications

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Periodic nonlinear Fourier transform for fiber-optic communications, Part I:theory and numerical methods

In this work, we introduce the periodic nonlinear Fourier transform (PNFT) method as an alternative and efficacious tool for compensation of the nonlinear transmission effects in optical fiber links. In the Part I, we introduce the algorithmic platform of the technique, describing in details the direct and inverse PNFT operations, also known as the inverse scattering transform for periodic (in time variable) nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE). We pay a special attention to explaining the potential advantages of the PNFT-based processing over the previously studied nonlinear Fourier transform (NFT) based methods. Further, we elucidate the issue of the numerical PNFT computation: we compare the performance of four known numerical methods applicable for the calculation of nonlinear spectral data (the direct PNFT), in particular, taking the main spectrum (utilized further in Part II for the modulation and transmission) associated with some simple example waveforms as the quality indicator for each method. We show that the Ablowitz-Ladik discretization approach for the direct PNFT provides the best performance in terms of the accuracy and computational time consumption.

Periodic nonlinear Fourier transform for fiber-optic communications, Part II:eigenvalue communication

In this paper we propose the design of communication systems based on using periodic nonlinear Fourier transform (PNFT), following the introduction of the method in the Part I. We show that the famous "eigenvalue communication" idea [A. Hasegawa and T. Nyu, J. Lightwave Technol. 11, 395 (1993)] can also be generalized for the PNFT application: In this case, the main spectrum attributed to the PNFT signal decomposition remains constant with the propagation down the optical fiber link. Therefore, the main PNFT spectrum can be encoded with data in the same way as soliton eigenvalues in the original proposal. The results are presented in terms of the bit-error rate (BER) values for different modulation techniques and different constellation sizes vs. the propagation distance, showing a good potential of the technique.

Suppression of patterning effects in digital communications by an adaptive constrained coding

We quantify the error statistics and patterning effects in a 5x 40 Gbit/s WDM RZ-DBPSK SMF/DCF fibre link using hybrid Raman/EDFA amplification. We propose an adaptive constrained coding for the suppression of errors due to patterning effects. It is established, that this coding technique can greatly reduce the bit error rate (BER) value even for large BER (BER > 101). The proposed approach can be used in the combination with the forward error correction schemes (FEC) to correct the errors even when real channel BER is outside the FEC workspace.

Un modèle de validation automatique de mécanismes de sécurisation des communications

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Joint Power Amplifiers and I/Q Modulator Impairments Modelling and Compensation for LTE Transmitters Using Artificial Neural Networks

This work introduces joint power amplifier (PA) and I/Q modulator modelling and compensation for LongTerm Evolution (LTE) transmitters using artificial neural networks (ANNs). The proposed solution util-izes a powerful nonlinear autoregressive with exogenous inputs (NARX) ANN architecture, which yieldsnoticeable results for high peak to average power ratio (PAPR) LTE signals. Given the ANNs learning capa-bilities, this one-step solution, which includes the mitigation of both PA nonlinearity and I/Q modulatorimpairments, is both accurate and adaptable

Secure 5G Wireless Communications: A Joint Relay Selection and Wireless Power Transfer Approach

In this paper, we investigate the secrecy performance of an energy harvesting relay system, where a legitimate source communicates with a legitimate destination via the assistance of multiple trusted relays. In the considered system, the source and relays deploy the time-switching-based radio frequency energy harvesting technique to harvest energy from a multi-antenna beacon. Different antenna selection and relay selection schemes are applied to enhance the security of the system. Specifically, two relay selection schemes based on the partial and full knowledge of channel state information, i.e., optimal relay selection and partial relay selection, and two antenna selection schemes for harvesting energy at source and relays, i.e., maximizing energy harvesting channel for the source and maximizing energy harvesting channel for the selected relay, are proposed. The exact and asymptotic expressions of secrecy outage probability in these schemes are derived. We demonstrate that applying relay selection approaches in the considered energy harvesting system can enhance the security performance. In particular, optimal relay selection scheme outperforms partial relay selection scheme and achieves full secrecy diversity order, regardless of energy harvesting scenarios.

Experimental Study on Key Generation for Physical Layer Security in Wireless Communications

This paper presents a thorough experimental study on key generation principles, i.e. temporal variation, channel reciprocity, and spatial decorrelation, via a testbed constructed by using wireless open-access research platform (WARP). It is the first comprehensive study through (i) carrying out a number of experiments in different multipath environments, including an anechoic chamber, a reverberation chamber and an indoor office environment, which represents little, rich, and moderate multipath, respectively; (ii) considering static, object moving, and mobile scenarios in these environments, which represents different levels of channel dynamicity; (iii) studying two most popular channel parameters, i.e., channel state information and received signal strength. Through results collected from over a hundred tests, this paper offers insights to the design of a secure and efficient key generation system. We show that multipath is essential and beneficial for key generation as it increases the channel randomness. We also find that the movement of users/objects can help introduce temporal variation/randomness and help users reach an agreement on the keys. This paper complements existing research by experiments constructed by a new hardware platform.