Add to ORKGDedicated to my parents. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Prof. Catherine Rosenberg for her constant support and encouragement during the course of my PhD. I would also like to thank other mem-bers on my PhD advisory committee, Prof. Ravi Mazumdar, Prof. Ness Shroff and Prof. Sonia Fahmy for their guidance. I would also like to thank Dr. Daniel Kof-man (ENST, France) for his guidance. Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues: Sunil Kulkarni, Yu Ying, Aravind Iyer and Gaurav Sharma for all the interesting discussions, both technical and philosophical, that we had in our office MSEE 318. I would also like to thank other students in Prof. Rosenberg’s research group for their support. ii