Selecting a route is the first step in building a new electrical transmission line. The most common practice in selecting a route involves ranking possible route options, which is a complex process demanding many decision considerations be taken into account. Even to this day, the ranking process is mainly done manually by humans using printed maps and field surveys, making it time-consuming and prone to errors. This thesis studies the most common decision considerations that affect the process of ranking a set of route options and classifies them into four main categories. Then, the work proposes a methodology to automate the process of ranking routes for an electrical transmission line and implements it using Geographic Information System (GIS), image processing techniques, and Weighted Sum Model (WSM). It evaluates the effectiveness of the methodology by comparing the results obtained with industrial results of an actual project in Saskatoon, Canada. The preliminary results are very promising. Out of five route options, the proposed methodology ranks the top two options accurately, and it successfully identifies the least-preferred route options. To validate the methodology further, the thesis generates synthetic data and tests it with various simulated scenarios. The work generates random routes and hypothetical features, using perturbation and image processing techniques, to test the methodology with more route options and decision considerations, respectively. In the process of validation, it also improves the accuracy of the methodology by refining the WSM. The methodology with refined WSM successfully outputs expected results when tested with one hundred and fifty five routes and taking six decision considerations into account. The thesis also implements and tests the methodology using Fuzzy Inference System (FIS), instead of WSM, to mimic the human decision process and to allow users to dictate the importance of different decision considerations using linguistic variables. It then compares the two methods and discusses their advantages and disadvantages. Both methods perform well and have around 80% similarity in the outputs produced. However, they are both unique in their own ways. FIS allows users to describe their preferences using linguistic variables making it more user friendly, while, WSM is more predictable and easier to fine tune results. Thus, the thesis presents two ways of automating the process of ranking routes for an electrical transmission line.

The theory of transmission lines is a classical topic of electrical engineering. Recently this topic has received renewed attention and has been a focus of considerable research. This is because the transmisson line theory has found new and important applications in the area of high-speed VLSI interconnects, while it has retained its significance in the area of power transmission. In many applications, transmission lines are connected to nonlinear circuits. For instance, interconnects of high-speed VLSI chips can be modelled as transmission lines loaded with nonlinear elements. These nonlinearities may lead to many new effects such as instability, chaos, generation of higher order harmonics, etc. The mathematical models of transmission lines with nonlinear loads consist of the linear partial differential equations describing the current and voltage dynamics along the lines together with the nonlinear boundary conditions imposed by the nonlinear loads connected to the lines. These nonlinear boundary conditions make the mathematical treatment very difficult. For this reason, the analysis of transmission lines with nonlinear loads has not been addressed adequately in the existing literature. The unique and distinct feature of the proposed book is that it will present systematic, comprehensive, and in-depth analysis of transmission lines with nonlinear loads. A unified approach for the analysis of networks composed of distributed and lumped circuits A simple, concise and completely general way to present the wave propagation on transmission lines, including a thorough study of the line equations in characteristic form Frequency and time domain multiport representations of any linear transmission line A detailed analysis of the influence on the line characterization of the frequency and space dependence of the line parameters A rigorous study of the properties of the analytical and numerical solutions of the network equations The associated discrete circuits and the associated resisitive circuits of transmission lines Periodic solutions, bifurcations and chaos in transmission lines connected to noninear lumped circuits