@phdthesis{Betz2005, author = {Betz, Christian}, title = {Scalable authoring of diagnostic case based training systems}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-17885}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2005}, abstract = {Diagnostic Case Based Training Systems (D-CBT) provide learners with a means to learn and exercise knowledge in a realistic context. In medical education, D-CBT Systems present virtual patients to the learners who are asked to examine, diagnose and state therapies for these patients. Due a number of conflicting and changing requirements, e.g. time for learning, authoring effort, several systems were developed so far. These systems range from simple, easy-to-use presentation systems to highly complex knowledge based systems supporting explorative learning. This thesis presents an approach and tools to create D-CBT systems from existing sources (documents, e.g. dismissal records) using existing tools (word processors): Authors annotate and extend the documents to model the knowledge. A scalable knowledge representation is able to capture the content on multiple levels, from simple to highly structured knowledge. Thus, authoring of D-CBT systems requires less prerequisites and pre-knowledge and is faster than approaches using specialized authoring environments. Also, authors can iteratively add and structure more knowledge to adapt training cases to their learners needs. The theses also discusses the application of the same approach to other domains, especially to knowledge acquisition for the Semantic Web.}, subject = {Computerunterst{\"u}tztes Lernen}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Boehler2005, author = {B{\"o}hler, Elmar}, title = {Algebraic closures in complexity theory}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-16106}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2005}, abstract = {We use algebraic closures and structures which are derived from these in complexity theory. We classify problems with Boolean circuits and Boolean constraints according to their complexity. We transfer algebraic structures to structural complexity. We use the generation problem to classify important complexity classes.}, subject = {Komplexit{\"a}tstheorie}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Heck2005, author = {Heck, Klaus}, title = {Wireless LAN performance studies in the context of 4G networks}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-14896}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2005}, abstract = {Wireless communication is nothing new. The first data transmissions based on electromagnetic waves have been successfully performed at the end of the 19th century. However, it took almost another century until the technology was ripe for mass market. The first mobile communication systems based on the transmission of digital data were introduced in the late 1980s. Within just a couple of years they have caused a revolution in the way people communicate. The number of cellular phones started to outnumber the fixed telephone lines in many countries and is still rising. New technologies in 3G systems, such as UMTS, allow higher data rates and support various kinds of multimedia services. Nevertheless, the end of the road in wireless communication is far from being reached. In the near future, the Internet and cellular phone systems are expected to be integrated to a new form of wireless system. Bandwidth requirements for a rich set of wireless services, e.g.\ video telephony, video streaming, online gaming, will be easily met. The transmission of voice data will just be another IP based service. On the other hand, building such a system is by far not an easy task. The problems in the development of the UMTS system showed the high complexity of wireless systems with support for bandwidth-hungry, IP-based services. But the technological challenges are just one difficulty. Telecommunication systems are planned on a world-wide basis, such that standard bodies, governments, institutions, hardware vendors, and service providers have to find agreements and compromises on a number of different topics. In this work, we provide the reader with a discussion of many of the topics involved in the planning of a Wireless LAN system that is capable of being integrated into the 4th generation mobile networks (4G) that is being discussed nowadays. Therefore, it has to be able to cope with interactive voice and video traffic while still offering high data rates for best effort traffic. Let us assume a scenario where a huge office complex is completely covered with Wireless LAN access points. Different antenna systems are applied in order to reduce the number of access points that are needed on the one hand, while optimizing the coverage on the other. No additional infrastructure is implemented. Our goal is to evaluate whether the Wireless LAN technology is capable of dealing with the various demands of such a scenario. First, each single access point has to be capable of supporting best-effort and Quality of Service (QoS) demanding applications simultaneously. The IT infrastructure in our scenario consists solely of Wireless LAN, such that it has to allow users surfing the Web, while others are involved in voice calls or video conferences. Then, there is the problem of overlapping cells. Users attached to one access point produce interference for others. However, the QoS support has to be maintained, which is not an easy task. Finally, there are nomadic users, which roam from one Wireless LAN cell to another even during a voice call. There are mechanisms in the standard that allow for mobility, but their capabilities for QoS support are yet to be studied. This shows the large number of unresolved issues when it comes to Wireless LAN in the context of 4G networks. In this work we want to tackle some of the problems.}, subject = {Drahtloses lokales Netz}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Eichelberger2005, author = {Eichelberger, Holger}, title = {Aesthetics and automatic layout of UML class diagrams}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-14831}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2005}, abstract = {In the last years, visual methods have been introduced in industrial software production and teaching of software engineering. In particular, the international standardization of a graphical software engineering language, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) was a reason for this tendency. Unfortunately, various problems exist in concrete realizations of tools, e.g. due to a missing compliance to the standard. One problem is the automatic layout, which is required for a consistent automatic software design. The thesis derives reasons and criteria for an automatic layout method, which produces drawings of UML class diagrams according to the UML specification and issues of human computer interaction, e.g. readability. A unique set of aesthetic criteria is combined from four different disciplines involved in this topic. Based on these aethetic rules, a hierarchical layout algorithm is developed, analyzed, measured by specialized measuring techniques and compared to related work. Then, the realization of the algorithm as a Java framework is given as an architectural description. Finally, adaptions to anticipated future changes of the UML, improvements of the framework and example drawings of the implementation are given.}, subject = {URL}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Menth2004, author = {Menth, Michael}, title = {Efficient admission control and routing for resilient communication networks}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-846}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-9949}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2004}, abstract = {This work is subdivided into two main areas: resilient admission control and resilient routing. The work gives an overview of the state of the art of quality of service mechanisms in communication networks and proposes a categorization of admission control (AC) methods. These approaches are investigated regarding performance, more precisely, regarding the potential resource utilization by dimensioning the capacity for a network with a given topology, traffic matrix, and a required flow blocking probability. In case of a failure, the affected traffic is rerouted over backup paths which increases the traffic rate on the respective links. To guarantee the effectiveness of admission control also in failure scenarios, the increased traffic rate must be taken into account for capacity dimensioning and leads to resilient AC. Capacity dimensioning is not feasible for existing networks with already given link capacities. For the application of resilient NAC in this case, the size of distributed AC budgets must be adapted according to the traffic matrix in such a way that the maximum blocking probability for all flows is minimized and that the capacity of all links is not exceeded by the admissible traffic rate in any failure scenario. Several algorithms for the solution of that problem are presented and compared regarding their efficiency and fairness. A prototype for resilient AC was implemented in the laboratories of Siemens AG in Munich within the scope of the project KING. Resilience requires additional capacity on the backup paths for failure scenarios. The amount of this backup capacity depends on the routing and can be minimized by routing optimization. New protection switching mechanisms are presented that deviate the traffic quickly around outage locations. They are simple and can be implemented, e.g, by MPLS technology. The Self-Protecting Multi-Path (SPM) is a multi-path consisting of disjoint partial paths. The traffic is distributed over all faultless partial paths according to an optimized load balancing function both in the working case and in failure scenarios. Performance studies show that the network topology and the traffic matrix also influence the amount of required backup capacity significantly. The example of the COST-239 network illustrates that conventional shortest path routing may need 50\% more capacity than the optimized SPM if all single link and node failures are protected.}, subject = {Kommunikation}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Baumeister2004, author = {Baumeister, Joachim}, title = {Agile development of diagnostic knowledge systems}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-9698}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2004}, abstract = {The success of diagnostic knowledge systems has been proved over the last decades. Nowadays, intelligent systems are embedded in machines within various domains or are used in interaction with a user for solving problems. However, although such systems have been applied very successfully the development of a knowledge system is still a critical issue. Similarly to projects dealing with customized software at a highly innovative level a precise specification often cannot be given in advance. Moreover, necessary requirements of the knowledge system can be defined not until the project has been started or are changing during the development phase. Many success factors depend on the feedback given by users, which can be provided if preliminary demonstrations of the system can be delivered as soon as possible, e.g., for interactive systems validation the duration of the system dialog. This thesis motivates that classical, document-centered approaches cannot be applied in such a setting. We cope with this problem by introducing an agile process model for developing diagnostic knowledge systems, mainly inspired by the ideas of the eXtreme Programming methodology known in software engineering. The main aim of the presented work is to simplify the engineering process for domain specialists formalizing the knowledge themselves. The engineering process is supported at a primary level by the introduction of knowledge containers, that define an organized view of knowledge contained in the system. Consequently, we provide structured procedures as a recommendation for filling these containers. The actual knowledge is acquired and formalized right from start, and the integration to runnable knowledge systems is done continuously in order to allow for an early and concrete feedback. In contrast to related prototyping approaches the validity and maintainability of the collected knowledge is ensured by appropriate test methods and restructuring techniques, respectively. Additionally, we propose learning methods to support the knowledge acquisition process sufficiently. The practical significance of the process model strongly depends on the available tools supporting the application of the process model. We present the system family d3web and especially the system d3web.KnowME as a highly integrated development environment for diagnostic knowledge systems. The process model and its activities, respectively, are evaluated in two real life applications: in a medical and in an environmental project the benefits of the agile development are clearly demonstrated.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Karch2002, author = {Karch, Oliver}, title = {Where am I? - Indoor localization based on range measurements}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-8442}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2002}, abstract = {Nowadays, robotics plays an important role in increasing fields of application. There exist many environments or situations where mobile robots instead of human beings are used, since the tasks are too hazardous, uncomfortable, repetitive, or costly for humans to perform. The autonomy and the mobility of the robot are often essential for a good solution of these problems. Thus, such a robot should at least be able to answer the question "Where am I?". This thesis investigates the problem of self-localizing a robot in an indoor environment using range measurements. That is, a robot equipped with a range sensor wakes up inside a building and has to determine its position using only its sensor data and a map of its environment. We examine this problem from an idealizing point of view (reducing it into a pure geometric one) and further investigate a method of Guibas, Motwani, and Raghavan from the field of computational geometry to solving it. Here, so-called visibility skeletons, which can be seen as coarsened representations of visibility polygons, play a decisive role. In the major part of this thesis we analyze the structures and the occurring complexities in the framework of this scheme. It turns out that the main source of complication are so-called overlapping embeddings of skeletons into the map polygon, for which we derive some restrictive visibility constraints. Based on these results we are able to improve one of the occurring complexity bounds in the sense that we can formulate it with respect to the number of reflex vertices instead of the total number of map vertices. This also affects the worst-case bound on the preprocessing complexity of the method. The second part of this thesis compares the previous idealizing assumptions with the properties of real-world environments and discusses the occurring problems. In order to circumvent these problems, we use the concept of distance functions, which model the resemblance between the sensor data and the map, and appropriately adapt the above method to the needs of realistic scenarios. In particular, we introduce a distance function, namely the polar coordinate metric, which seems to be well suited to the localization problem. Finally, we present the RoLoPro software where most of the discussed algorithms are implemented (including the polar coordinate metric).}, subject = {Autonomer Roboter}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Wirth2001, author = {Wirth, Hans-Christoph}, title = {Multicriteria Approximation of Network Design and Network Upgrade Problems}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-2845}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2001}, abstract = {Network planning has come to great importance during the past decades. Today's telecommunication, traffic systems, and logistics would not have been evolved to the current state without careful analysis of the underlying network problems and precise implementation of the results obtained from those examinations. Graphs with node and arc attributes are a very useful tool to model realistic applications, while on the other hand they are well understood in theory. We investigate network design problems which are motivated particularly from applications in communication networks and logistics. Those problems include the search for homogeneous subgraphs in edge labeled graphs where either the total number of labels or the reload cost are subject to optimize. Further, we investigate some variants of the dial a ride problem. On the other hand, we use node and edge upgrade models to deal with the fact that in many cases one prefers to change existing networks rather than implementing a newly computed solution from scratch. We investigate the construction of bottleneck constrained forests under a node upgrade model, as well as several flow cost problems under a edge based upgrade model. All problems are examined within a framework of multi-criteria optimization. Many of the problems can be shown to be NP-hard, with the consequence that, under the widely accepted assumption that P is not equal to NP, there cannot exist efficient algorithms for solving the problems. This motivates the development of approximation algorithms which compute near-optimal solutions with provable performance guarantee in polynomial time.}, subject = {Netzplantechnik}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Schmitz2000, author = {Schmitz, Heinz}, title = {The Forbidden Pattern Approach to Concatenation Hierarchies}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-2832}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2000}, abstract = {The thesis looks at the question asking for the computability of the dot-depth of star-free regular languages. Here one has to determine for a given star-free regular language the minimal number of alternations between concatenation on one hand, and intersection, union, complement on the other hand. This question was first raised in 1971 (Brzozowski/Cohen) and besides the extended star-heights problem usually refered to as one of the most difficult open questions on regular languages. The dot-depth problem can be captured formally by hierarchies of classes of star-free regular languages B(0), B(1/2), B(1), B(3/2),... and L(0), L(1/2), L(1), L(3/2),.... which are defined via alternating the closure under concatenation and Boolean operations, beginning with single alphabet letters. Now the question of dot-depth is the question whether these hierarchy classes have decidable membership problems. The thesis makes progress on this question using the so-called forbidden pattern approach: Classes of regular languages are characterized in terms of patterns in finite automata (subgraphs in the transition graph) that are not allowed. Such a characterization immediately implies the decidability of the respective class, since the absence of a certain pattern in a given automaton can be effectively verified. Before this work, the decidability of B(0), B(1/2), B(1) and L(0), L(1/2), L(1), L(3/2) were known. Here a detailed study of these classes with help of forbidden patterns is given which leads to new insights into their inner structure. Furthermore, the decidability of B(3/2) is proven. Based on these results a theory of pattern iteration is developed which leads to the introduction of two new hierarchies of star-free regular languages. These hierarchies are decidable on one hand, on the other hand they are in close connection to the classes B(n) and L(n). It remains an open question here whether they may in fact coincide. Some evidence is given in favour of this conjecture which opens a new way to attack the dot-depth problem. Moreover, it is shown that the class L(5/2) is decidable in the restricted case of a two-letter alphabet.}, subject = {Sternfreie Sprache}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Kosub2001, author = {Kosub, Sven}, title = {Complexity and Partitions}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-2808}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2001}, abstract = {Computational complexity theory usually investigates the complexity of sets, i.e., the complexity of partitions into two parts. But often it is more appropriate to represent natural problems by partitions into more than two parts. A particularly interesting class of such problems consists of classification problems for relations. For instance, a binary relation R typically defines a partitioning of the set of all pairs (x,y) into four parts, classifiable according to the cases where R(x,y) and R(y,x) hold, only R(x,y) or only R(y,x) holds or even neither R(x,y) nor R(y,x) is true. By means of concrete classification problems such as Graph Embedding or Entailment (for propositional logic), this thesis systematically develops tools, in shape of the boolean hierarchy of NP-partitions and its refinements, for the qualitative analysis of the complexity of partitions generated by NP-relations. The Boolean hierarchy of NP-partitions is introduced as a generalization of the well-known and well-studied Boolean hierarchy (of sets) over NP. Whereas the latter hierarchy has a very simple structure, the situation is much more complicated for the case of partitions into at least three parts. To get an idea of this hierarchy, alternative descriptions of the partition classes are given in terms of finite, labeled lattices. Based on these characterizations the Embedding Conjecture is established providing the complete information on the structure of the hierarchy. This conjecture is supported by several results. A natural extension of the Boolean hierarchy of NP-partitions emerges from the lattice-characterization of its classes by considering partition classes generated by finite, labeled posets. It turns out that all significant ideas translate from the case of lattices. The induced refined Boolean hierarchy of NP-partitions enables us more accuratly capturing the complexity of certain relations (such as Graph Embedding) and a description of projectively closed partition classes.}, subject = {Partition }, language = {en} }