Sharif Digital Repository

In this research, an electromagnetic wave absorber based on metamaterial structures is designed and built that is able to absorb a significant part of the wave power (up to 90%) in the millimeter wave band. The characteristics of this absorber are very low thickness (about a quarter of the wavelength compared to the central frequency) and high absorption bandwidth (up to 50% compared to the central frequency). Among the various structures studied, the structure of mesh arrays or conductive loops was selected for design. Using the Babinet principle, a transmission line model was proposed to analyze the behavior of this structure and became the basis for the design of the electromagnetic... 

In wave theory, it is conventional to divide media into reciprocal and non-reciprocal types. The Lorentz reciprocity theorem is the most prominent theorem in electromagnetic theory. One wave phenomenon that can be explained by the reciprocity theorem is unidirectional waves. These waves are well-known in the literature and have diverse practical applications. However, in this research, we explore some curiosity-driven questions regarding their behavior near barriers. We hypothesize that new applications might be discovered for these waves. In summary, we analyze the behavior of unidirectional waves when they encounter barriers. The main question is: if unidirectional waves cannot propagate... 

An important issue in High-Frequency circuits is the transmission of electrical signals in Integrated Circuits and Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs). At high frequencies, however, the often used transmission lines suffer from high conductor and substrate loss as well as unwanted electromagnetic coupling to other circuit elements caused by parasitic substrate surface. One method through which both of the above problems may be solved is utilizing waveguide structures on PCBs and ICs. In this way, due to the reduction of conductor loss, a large proportion of signal passes easily. Moreover, and because of closed nature of cavity waveguides, neighboring circuits are protected against electromagnetic... 

Lorentz reciprocity theorem is one of the most fundamental concepts in electromagnetism. Although, in specific conditions, for example in nonlinear systems or systems with broken time-reversal symmetry it can be violated. In recent years, many interests have been attracted towards such systems. With a proper design, they can support nonreciprocal or at specific conditions unidirectional propagation behavior. For example, despite ordinary dielectrics, in ferrite layers, the propagation constant of surface waves on ferrite edge, depends on the direction of propagation with respect to magnetization direction. Furthermore, in the specific interval of frequencies, ferrite structures allow... 

Due to the gyrotropic properties of ferrites, they have the ability to create nonreciprocal structures and have been used in microwave frequencies for a long time. Despite the use of these magnetic materials in ferrite devices, circulators, antennas, insulators, etc. The investigation of wave scattering by ferrite materials has been very limited and has only been limited to finding the radar cross-section. On the other hand, metasurfaes have been the subject of many studies in recent years in order to control propagation waves and create unusual scattering (reflection or propagation) from a surface.In this thesis, electromagnetic wave scattering by a grounded ferrite disk and the phenomena... 

Complex waves possess complex propagation constants even in the absence of losses. Such waves may be excited in open- or closed-guided wave structures such as inhomogeneously or anisotropically filled waveguides, coupled right-handed/left-handed transmission lines, and periodic structures. In the absence of losses, complex modes appear in pairs with complex conjugate propagation constants. In open-guided wave configurations, complex modes will be of either the proper or improper (leaky wave) type. Proper complex modes are accompanied by an electromagnetic field that decays exponentially in the transverse direction, away from the waveguide. By contrast, electromagnetic fields associated with... 

Train scheduling is one of the most complicated stages of railway planning. In this stage, the arrival and departure times of trains at stations are determined. In this thesis, we studied train scheduling on a two-way and single track railway in order to minimize the total travel times of trains subject to a set of operational constraints and prayer time related constraints that determines the optimal station for prayer. In this project, we tried to simulate the real constraints exist in IRAN railway network and the objective function considers customer’s and railway management’s satisfaction, simultaneously. First, a mathematical programming is proposed for this problem. After demonstrating... 

Nurse scheduling problem has received a great amount of attention during recent years. In this problem number of needed nurses from different skill levels is given for each Location-shift during planning horizon, and the goal is to allocate each nurse to shifts, such that the demand of each location-shift is satisfied. Many researches have been done with the aim of minimizing the number of needed nurses to satisfy the demand of locationshifts or maximizing nurses preferences to work in desired shifts. In this research an integer programming model is proposed to minimize the number of needed nurses and maximize nurses preferences simultaneously. The proposed mathematical model is appropriate... 

In this research the risk of oil price for Iran and Opec basket is studied. Several methods in order to estimate Value at Risk (VaR) such as Standard Historical Simulation, Historical Simulation with Autoregressive Forecast, Historical Simulation with moving average forecast, and ARMA are examined. The experiment is performed based on daily oil prices, from January 2005 to December 2009. The data is divided into two smaller time periods. The first, from 2005 to 2008, was used to estimate the model coefficients. The second part of data, i.e., the data gathered in 2009, was used for forecasting purposes. The result of experiment show that Historical Simulation with Autoregressive Forecasts... 

In the present work, the problem of Olympic Games scheduling is investigated. Due to the high number of matches and limited number of resources, scheduling of the Olympic Games is a difficult and time consuming job. Also a balanced distribution of medals on the days of Olympic Games keep each day attractive for the people and prevent sudden changes in the medal ranking of countries. So, in regard to the limitations of the problem and to balance the distribution of medals, the Olympic Games are scheduled. In order to do that, at first, two mathematical models are presented. One of them is for obtaining the feasible and optimum solution in a specified period of time. The other model presents a... 

Sequencing and scheduling of jobs are decision making processes that are used in many manufacturing and service industries. In the traditional scheduling models, it is assumed that the values for all the problem parameters are constant and known in advance. However, production environments in the real world are subject to many sources of uncertainty or randomness. This research investigates three different types of stochastic scheduling problems. In the first case, the problem is minimizing the number of tardy jobs in the class of static list policies, where the job processing times are random variables. For this case, the stochastic problems in single machine and flow shop environments are... 

This study strives to minimize a two-criterion objective function of a flexible flow shop scheduling problem with receipt and delivery of jobs in groups and processing them individually. Every group of jobs has a release time, which means that all jobs are not available at the beginning of the planning horizon. Moreover, due to the special characteristics of every job in a group, only a subset of machines at each stage are eligible to process that job. This problem has many applications in production and service industries, such as restaurants and ceramic tile manufacturing companies. The objective function is determined based on the practical applications of the problem. It deals with... 

In this research sequence-dependent flowshop and flexible flowshop group scheduling problems are investigated. Several upper and lower bounding methods are proposed for the research problems. Permutation flowshop sequence-dependent group scheduling problem with minimization of total completion time is considered. Since the problem is shown to be strongly NP-hard, a Memetic algorithm (MA) is proposed. A lower bounding method base on the Branch-and-Price algrithm is also proposed. A statistical comparison shows that both the proposed MA and the proposed lower bounding method have better performance than the other methods from the literature with an average 5.96% percentage gap. Flexible... 

This research investigates permutation flow shop scheduling problems with sequence-dependent setup times with minimizing the number of tardy jobs as criterion (Fm|prmu, Sijk|ΣUj). A mixed integer linear programming model has been developed for the research problem. As the problem is shown to be NP-hard, several meta-heuristic algorithms based on tabu search (TS) and imperialist competitive algorithm are developed to heuristically solve the problem. In order to find the best meta-heuristic algorithm, random test problems, ranging in size from small, medium, to large are created and solved by the meta-heuristic algorithms. Then, a detailed statistical experiment, based on split-plot design is... 

Data mining is the one of top ten developing knowledge in the world. This study followed three fold objectives; Firstly, An efficient model based on data mining algorithms is proposed to predict the duration of hospitalization time for patients of digestive system disease that need short term care. Duration of hospitalization is an important criterion to be used for predicting the hospital resources. In order to, a combined model based on CHAID and C.5 decision trees and a neural network is suggested. The suggested model predict the duration of hospitalization with 82% accuracy. The second object of this study is to propose an algorithm based on likelihood ratio. The suggested algorithm... 

One of the most applicable fields in data mining is customer relationship management (CRM). CRM process includes four aspects: Customer identification, Customer attraction, Customer retention, and Customer development. Data mining can be a supportive tool for decision making in each of these CRM aspects. Huge volume of data and information corresponding to CRM that exists in companies' databases, has made sufficient potential for data mining process and discovering hidden knowledge. Importance of concepts like customer needs identification, customer retention, and increasing customer value for companies has made the need to use of data mining techniques more valuable. Saipa Yadak Co., as a... 

Due to increasing competition, Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) take more attention in the new world. This flexibility is generally considered to fall into two categories, which both contain numerous subcategories. The first category, machine flexibility, covers the system's ability to be changed to produce new product types, and ability to change the order of operations executed on a part. The second category is called routing flexibility. Due to high variation in parts and low production volume, setup times are important. In this research, Flexible Jobshop Scheduling Problem with Sequence Dependent Setup Time (SDST-FJSP), as an extension of classical Jobshop scheduling problem (JSP), is... 

The traditional point of view on the scheduling of the healthcare systems, which is in common with the scheduling of other service and manufacturing systems, has contributed to inattention to patients’ psychological status and has given rise to many negative effects not only on them, but also on hospitals. However, this perspective has not been modified yet with respect to the features of healthcare systems, in which patients, rather that machines, are the main entities of the system. In this study, to address this draw back, a new concept, psyche-based optimization, as well as a new scheduling problem, anxiety-based scheduling of operating rooms, as the advent of this concept, have been... 

Due to the undeniable importance and applicability of both "batch processing" and "parallel machines" in service and industry, this survey strives to solve a real-world problem in which some identical parallel machine, capable of processing jobs in batches, are available. In batch processing the process of jobs starts and ends simultaneously. In real world the processing time of the batch is a function of some characteristics of the jobs in the batch. in this survey, for simplicity (as calculating the mentioned function is so difficult), we assume that the processing time of a batch equals the sum of the processing time of the jobs in the batch. we also have assumed that the capacity of a... 

This research deals with the Unrelated Parallel Machine Scheduling (UPMS) problem with sequence dependent setup times and release dates and machines eligibility. The studied objective is the minimization of total tardiness and earliness.The due dates and release times of the jobs are distinct which complicates the problem. Two mixed linear integer programming models proposed to solve the research problem optimally in small size instances.The problem is shown to be NP-hard in the strong sense.As it is not possible to solve medium and large size instances in approporaite time, a metaheuristic algorithm based on tabu search developed. Several versions of algorithm are obtained based on...