First and foremost I would like to thank Dr. Noble for his guidance and support not only during this research but also throughout my coursework. This would not have been possible without his invaluable knowledge and time for which he was always willing and available. I would like to acknowledge Dr. Crowe whose knowledge and ideas helped me learn and work with simulation concepts and software Arena ® which is a key component of this research. I also thank Dr. Stam and Dr. Klein for their time and valuable input. I would like to extend special thanks to Dr. Chang for his priceless contribution towards my academic training and for introducing me to Dr. Noble. My gratitude is also extended towards Sally Schwartz for her help throughout my graduate study. I thank my friends Prashanth Meka Verma and Viral Mehta for their help and support. Last but not the least I would like to acknowledge my mom, dad and family for their perpetual love and support. ii

Abstract—Overall cost is a significant consideration in any decision-making process. Although many studies were carried out on overall cost in construction, little has treated the uncertainties of real life cycle development. On the basis of several case studies, a feedback process was performed

models. The results presented prove that the right choice of planning method is very important for overall cost of the supply chain. In contrast to the previous research, it turned out that information sharing without full coordination may even lead to increase in the overall cost. For some companies

We survey 392 CFOs about the cost of capital, capital budgeting, and capital structure. Large firms rely heavily on present value techniques and the capital asset pricing model, while small firms are relatively likely to use the payback criterion. We find that a surprising number of firms use

phase. The best overall solution is kept as the result. In this chapter, we first describe the basic components of GRASP. Successful implementation techniques and parameter tuning strategies are discussed and illustrated by numerical results obtained for different applications. Enhanced or alternative

from the original sender, end-to-end latency is significantly reduced, and the overall throughput is improved as well. Also, since only the DRs send their acknowledgments to the sender, instead of all receivers sending their acknowledgments to the sender, a single acknowledgement is generated per local

, it is reasonable to design a more efficient authentication protocol despite its loss of efficiency in dishonest communication situations. In such a way, an overall cost-effective solution can be obtained. In this paper, the BGSW protocol is redesigned under the concept and a cost-effective solution is shown

. Unfortunately, even when deploying the highest-end IP switches/routers, resulting topologies may only support 50 % of the aggregate bandwidth available at the edge of the network, while still incurring tremendous cost. Nonuniform bandwidth among data center nodes complicates application design and limits

Advances in microsensor and radio technology will enable small but smart sensors to be deployed for a wide range of environmental monitoring applications. The low per-node cost will allow these wireless networks of sensors and actuators to be densely distributed. The nodes in these dense networks

Multi-hop infrastructure wireless mesh networks offer increased reliability, coverage and reduced equipment costs over their singlehop counterpart, wireless LANs. Equipping wireless routers with multiple radios further improves the capacity by transmitting over multiple radios simultaneously using