Due to the accelerated growth in digital music distribution, it becomes easy to modify, intercept, and distribute material illegally. To overcome the urgent need for copyright protection against piracy, several audio watermarking schemes have been proposed and implemented. These digital audio watermarking schemes have the purpose of embedding inaudible information within the host file to cover copyright and authentication issues. This thesis proposes an audio watermarking model using MATLAB® and Simulink® software for 1K and 2K fast Fourier transform (FFT) lengths. The watermark insertion process is performed in the frequency domain to guarantee the imperceptibility of the watermark to the human auditory system. Additionally, the proposed audio watermarking model was implemented in a Cyclone® II FPGA device from Altera® using the Altera® DSP Builder tool and MATLAB/Simulink® software. To evaluate the performance of the proposed audio watermarking scheme, effectiveness and fidelity performance tests were conducted for the proposed software and hardware-in-the-loop based audio watermarking model.

Currently, ASHRAE has determined the zone method and modified zone method are appropriate calculation methods for materials with a high difference in conductivity, such as cold-formed steel (CFS) walls. Because there is currently no standard U-Factor calculation method for CFS walls, designers and code officials alike tend to resort to the zone method. However, the zone method is restricted to larger span assemblies because the zone factor coefficient is 2.0. This tends to overestimate the amount of surface area influenced by CFS. The modified zone method is restricted to C-shaped stud, clear wall assemblies with framing factors between 9 and 15%. The objective of the research is to narrow the gap of knowledge by re-examining the modified zone method in order to more accurately determine R-Values and U-Factors for CFS wall assemblies with whole wall framing factor percentages of 22% and above.