Stuart Berry

The Design and Optimisation of Surround Sound Decoders Using Heuristic Methods

Since the introduction of the DVD (both video and audio) surround sound has become an affordable luxury, surround sound mixing and reproduction equipment is also in widespread use.

Appendix C: What to Simulate to Evaluate Production Planning and Control Methods in Small Manufacturing Firm’s

A set of case studies confirmed that there exists a group of small (micro-sized) manufacturing firms (SMFs) that operate similar production systems and have similar requirements from a production planning and control system (PP&C). The features common to all the case study firms are the small number of production stages together with the fact that all jobs follow the same route through the factory.

Evaluation of a Framework for Measuring Efficency in Opportunistic Ad-hoc Networks

Opportunistic networks are the manifestation of wireless ad-hoc networks where there is no continuous end-to-end path. The forwarding of messages takes place via any nodes that are encountered, and therefore the measurement of message passing efficiency between nodes becomes challenging if a number of different protocols are to be compared and evaluated. Prior work has identified an evaluation framework that addresses this challenge. This article describes the construction of a simulation tool to assist the assessment of efficiency in opportunistic networks, and by way of an exemplar case study, a set of experimental results are discussed and evaluated. From this we conclude that Spray and Focus may be the way forward in this case.

Peer-to-peer networks and collective intelligence: the case for agency

The vast quantity of data contributed and consumed via the Internet provides an environment where Collective Intelligence (CI) can emerge. This article considers CI in relation to the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) paradigm, an environment that has the necessary conditions for the generation of large data sets through frequent peer interactions. We then examine the characteristics of agency and relate agent computing to the conditions required to facilitate CI in P2P systems. Furthermore, we present a key research challenge for the community and propose an approach to scrutinise CI in a P2P scenario that makes use of local primitive behaviours to infer the likely collective emergent behaviours for a particular system.

Traffic assignment: Methods and simulations for an alternative formulation of the fixed demand problem

Abstract Motorists often face the dilemma of choosing the route enabling them to realise the fastest (i.e., shortest) journey time. In this paper we examine discrete and continuous optimisation and equilibrium-type problems for a simplified parallel link traffic model using a variance based approach. Various methodologies used for solving these problems (brute force, dynamic programming, tabu search, steepest descent) are explored and comparison is made with the Beckmann cost function employed in transport modelling.

System Dynamics Case Studies

When going green is not a green policy, this case study is used to demonstrate how a modelling can develop an understanding of a problem (planners continually make the same mistakes!).

Appendix E: Assessing the Reinstated Waverly Line

Travel within London. Data from travel-in-london-report-7 within this report travellers have been categorised.

Heuristic Techniques in Optimisation

These approaches can be useful when the problem to be solved is large and/or complex, when a timely good solution is considered to be better than a late optimal solution.

Appendix A: Queueing Theory

The usual introductory models are to derive in the situation where both arrivals and service times are random, and there are n-like servers—the M/M/n model.

Further Use of Heuristic Methods

The next section shows not only how a heuristic approach can be employed to solve hard problems but also how an investigation of the mathematical model can lead to a simpler solution technique.