Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons^™

Command, Control And Telemetry For Utah State University's Scintillation Prediction Observation Research Task (Sport) Mission, Jordan Haws

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Scintillation Prediction Observation Research Task (SPORT) is a joint United States of America (USA) and Brazil small satellite mission to address the further under-standing of the preconditions leading to equatorial plasma bubbles. Utah State University (USU) is supplying four instruments towards this SPORT mission. These four instruments will allow measurements of the electric field and plasma density in the ionosphere which will help understand what gives rise to plasma bubbles in the ionosphere.

This thesis will discuss the command, control, and telemetry communications needed to operate the SPORT USU instruments. It will cover an overview of the instruments involved ...

A Study Of Potential Security And Safety Vulnerabilities In Cyber-Physical Systems, Ali Al-Hashimi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The work in this dissertation focuses on two examples of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), integrations of communication and monitoring capabilities to control a physical system, that operate in adversarial environments. That is to say, it is possible for individuals with malicious intent to gain access to various components of the CPS, disrupt normal operation, and induce harmful impacts. Such a deliberate action will be referred to as an attack. Therefore, some possible attacks against two CPSs will be studied in this dissertation and, when possible, solutions to handle such attacks will also be suggested.

The first CPS of interest is vehicular ...

A Computationally-Efficient Bound For The Variance Of Measuring The Orientation Of Single Molecules, Tingting Wu, Tianben Ding, Hesam Mazidi, Oumeng Zhang, Matthew D. Lew

Electrical & Systems Engineering Publications and Presentations

Modulating the polarization of excitation light, resolving the polarization of emitted fluorescence, and point spread function (PSF) engineering have been widely leveraged for measuring the orientation of single molecules. Typically, the performance of these techniques is optimized and quantified using the Cramér-Rao bound (CRB), which describes the best possible measurement variance of an unbiased estimator. However, CRB is a local measure and requires exhaustive sampling across the measurement space to fully characterize measurement precision. We develop a global variance upper bound (VUB) for fast quantification and comparison of orientation measurement techniques. Our VUB tightly bounds the diagonal elements of the ...

Measuring Localization Confidence For Quantifying Accuracy And Heterogeneity In Single-Molecule Super-Resolution Microscopy, Hesam Mazidi, Tianben Ding, Arye Nehorai, Matthew D. Lew

Electrical & Systems Engineering Publications and Presentations

We present a computational method, termed Wasserstein-induced flux (WIF), to robustly quantify the accuracy of individual localizations within a single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM) dataset without ground- truth knowledge of the sample. WIF relies on the observation that accurate localizations are stable with respect to an arbitrary computational perturbation. Inspired by optimal transport theory, we measure the stability of individual localizations and develop an efficient optimization algorithm to compute WIF. We demonstrate the advantage of WIF in accurately quantifying imaging artifacts in high-density reconstruction of a tubulin network. WIF represents an advance in quantifying systematic errors with unknown and complex distributions ...

Wireless Underground Communications In Sewer And Stormwater Overflow Monitoring: Radio Waves Through Soil And Asphalt Medium, Usman Raza, Abdul Salam

Faculty Publications

Storm drains and sanitary sewers are prone to backups and overflows due to extra amount wastewater entering the pipes. To prevent that, it is imperative to efficiently monitor the urban underground infrastructure. The combination of sensors system and wireless underground communication system can be used to realize urban underground IoT applications, e.g., storm water and wastewater overflow monitoring systems. The aim of this article is to establish a feasibility of the use of wireless underground communications techniques, and wave propagation through the subsurface soil and asphalt layers, in an underground pavement system for storm water and sewer overflow monitoring ...

Geometric State Observers For Autonomous Navigation Systems, Miaomiao Wang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The development of reliable state estimation algorithms for autonomous navigation systems is of great interest in the control and robotics communities. This thesis studies the state estimation problem for autonomous navigation systems. The first part of this thesis is devoted to the pose estimation on the Special Euclidean group $\SE(3)$. A generic globally exponentially stable hybrid estimation scheme for pose (orientation and position) and velocity-bias estimation on $\SE(3)\times \mathbb{R}^6$ is proposed. Moreover, an explicit hybrid observer, using inertial and landmark position measurements, is provided.

The second part of this thesis is devoted to the problem ...

Generating Electromagnetic Dark And Antidark Partially Coherent Sources, Milo W. Hyde Iv

Faculty Publications

We present two methods to generate an electromagnetic dark and antidark partially coherent source. The first generalizes a recently published scalar approach by representing the stochastic electric field vector components as sums of randomly weighted, randomly tilted plane waves. The second method expands the field’s vector components in series of randomly weighted dark and antidark coherent modes. The statistical moments of the random weights—plane waves in the former method, coherent modes in the latter—are found by comparing the resulting means and covariances to those of the desired electromagnetic dark and antidark source. We validate both methods by ...

A Markovian Influence Graph Formed From Utility Line Outage Data To Mitigate Large Cascades, Kai Zhou, Ian Dobson, Zhaoyu Wang, Alexander Roitershtein, Arka P. Ghosh

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

We use observed transmission line outage data to make a Markovian influence graph that describes the probabilities of transitions between generations of cascading line outages. Each generation of a cascade consists of a single line outage or multiple line outages. The new influence graph defines a Markov chain and generalizes previous influence graphs by including multiple line outages as Markov chain states. The generalized influence graph can reproduce the distribution of cascade size in the utility data. In particular, it can estimate the probabilities of small, medium and large cascades. The influence graph has the key advantage of allowing the ...

Residential Thermal Storage And Cooling, Joao Marcelo Rocha Belmonte, Jacob Anderson, Andrew Clarke, Daphne Forester, Bianca Hardtke, Josh Hartman, Marc D. Compere

Sustainability Conference

No abstract provided.

A Weigh-In-Motion Characterization Algorithm For Smart Pavements Based On Conductive Cementitious Materials, Hasan Borke Birgin, Simon Laflamme, Antonella D’Alessandro, Enrique Garcia-Macias, Filippo Ubertini

Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering Publications

Smart materials are promising technologies for reducing the instrumentation cost required to continuously monitor road infrastructures, by transforming roadways into multifunctional elements capable of self-sensing. This study investigates a novel algorithm empowering smart pavements with weigh-in-motion (WIM) characterization capabilities. The application domain of interest is a cementitious-based smart pavement installed on a bridge over separate sections. Each section transduces axial strain provoked by the passage of a vehicle into a measurable change in electrical resistance arising from the piezoresistive effect of the smart material. The WIM characterization algorithm is as follows. First, basis signals from axles are generated from a ...

Noble-Transition Alloy Absorbers For Near-Infrared Hot-Carrier Optoelectronics, Sara Karoline Figueiredo Stofela

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Optoelectronics is the field of technology concerned with the study and application of electronic devices that source, detect and control light. Here we focus on the optical communications field which relies on optical fiber systems to carry signals to their destinations operating in the near-infrared range. To improve the performance of current optical fiber systems, one of the paths is to develop better near-infrared photodetectors.

The current group of materials used for near-infrared photodetection relies in the III-V semiconductor family. Although their spectral photosensitivity correlates well with the near-infrared, response time performance and electronic circuit integration remain limited for this ...

Classifying Seabed Parameters From Normal Incidence Reflections; Model Comparison And Inversion Technique, Megan Frantz

Dissertations and Theses

As of the year 2019, only about five percent of the seafloor has been topologically mapped and classified for type (e.g., sand, silt, gravel). To rapidly survey the seabed from surface ships or underwater vehicles, acoustic remote sensing methods are needed. In this thesis, acoustic measurements and inverse modeling is investigated as a way to classify seabed type based on estimating parameters such as density, sound speed, and interface roughness. The method uses normal incident acoustic measurements that can be made using either a single beam echo sounder or the normal incident beams from a side scan sonar. The ...

A Programmably Compliant Origami Mechanism For Dynamically Dexterous Robots, Wei-Hsi Chen, Shivangi Mishra, Yuchong Gao, Young-Joo Lee, Daniel Koditschek, Shu Yang, Cynthia R. Sung

Departmental Papers (ESE)

We present an approach to overcoming challenges in dynamical dexterity for robots through programmably compliant origami mechanisms. Our work leverages a one-parameter family of flat sheet crease patterns that folds into origami bellows, whose axial compliance can be tuned to select desired stiffness. Concentrically arranged cylinder pairs reliably manifest additive stiffness, extending the programmable range by nearly an order of magnitude and achieving bulk axial stiffness spanning 200–1500 N/m using 8 mil thick polyester-coated paper. Accordingly, we design origami energy-storing springs with a stiffness of 1035 N/m each and incorporate them into a three degree-of-freedom (DOF) tendon-driven ...

Electricity Without Fuel, Nikolai A. Zarkevich

Ames Laboratory Accepted Manuscripts

Most power plants produce electricity by converting a mechanical motion into alternating current (AC). Photovoltaic solar panels convert an electromagnetic flux of light into direct current (DC). In general, electric energy can be harvested from a flux in the environment or from a change of the environment itself. One can produce electricity from mechanical, chemical, thermal, electromagnetic (light), or another physical flux, or from a change of temperature, chemical composition, or a physical field: gravitational, magnetic, electric, mechanical stress and strain, etc. Flux examples are mechanical motions of air and water, surface waves and tides, heat fluxes due to a ...

Teaching Autonomous Systems At 1/10th-Scale, Abhijeet Agnihotri, Matthew O'Kelly, Rahul Mangharam, Houssam Abbas

Real-Time and Embedded Systems Lab (mLAB)

Teaching autonomous systems is challenging because it is a rapidly advancing cross-disciplinary field that requires theory to be continually validated on physical platforms. For an autonomous vehicle (AV) to operate correctly, it needs to satisfy safety and performance properties that depend on the operational context and interaction with environmental agents, which can be difficult to anticipate and capture. This paper describes a senior undergraduate level course on the design, programming and racing of 1/10th-scale autonomous race cars. We explore AV safety and performance concepts at the limits of perception, planning, and control, in a highly interactive and competitive environment ...

The Current Practices Of Changing Secure Software: An Empirical Study, Ameerah Muhsina Jamil, Lotfi Ben Othmane, Altaz Valani, Moataz Abdelkhalek, Ayhan Tek

Electrical and Computer Engineering Conference Papers, Posters and Presentations

Developers change the code of their software to add new features, fix bugs, or enhance its structure. Such frequent changes impact occasionally the security of the software. This paper reports a qualitative study of the practices of changing secure-software in the industry. The study involves interviews with eleven developers and security experts working on banking software, software for control systems, and software consultation companies. Through these interviews, we identified that the main security aspects are: dependency vulnerabilities, authentication and authorization, and OWASP 10 vulnerabilities. The common techniques used to assess software after code change are: code review, code analysis, testing ...

Design Of Subsurface Phased Array Antennas For Digital Agriculture Application, Abdul Salam

Faculty Publications

With the advancement in subsurface communications technology, an overarching solution to a underground phased array antenna design for digital agriculture requires interdisciplinary research involving topics ranging from insights on the constitutive parameters of the soil medium and impact of soil moisture on the array factor to antenna measurements and subsurface communication system design. In this paper, based on the analysis of underground radio wave propagation in subsurface radio channel, a phased array antenna design is presented that uses water content information and beam steering mechanisms to improve efficiency and communication range of wireless underground communications. It is shown the subsurface ...

Economic Efficiency And Carbon Emissions In Mes With Flexible Buildings, Zach Lawrence Hurwitz

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Multi-energy systems offer an opportunity to leverage energy conversion processes and temporary energy storage mechanisms to reduce costs and emissions during operation of campuses, cities, and buildings. With increasing options for flexibility in demand-side resources it is possible to meet demand without sacrificing comfort and convenience of MES occupants.

This Thesis develops a multi-period, linear optimization model of an MES with flexible buildings that captures nonlinearities in the efficiency of energy conversion processes. The flexible buildings are parametrized, in part, based on historical data from a college campus in Vermont, USA. The idea of the MES model is to investigate ...

Utilizing Machine Learning For Respiratory Rate Detection Via Radar Sensor, Anwar Elhadad

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

In this research, we investigate a data processing method to capture the respiratory rate of a person by utilizing a doppler radar to monitor their body movement during respiration. We utilize a machine learning algorithm with a radar sensor to capture the chest movement of a person while breathing and determine the respiratory rate according to that movement. We are using a Random Forest classifier to distinguish between different classes of pulses. After that, the algorithm constructs a sinusoidal signal representing the breathing rate of the sample. By applying this technique, we can detect the breathing rate accurately for different ...

Nurbs-Based Microstructure Design For Organic Photovoltaics, Ramin Noruzi, Sambit Ghadai, Onur Rauf Bingol, Adarsh Krishnamurthy, Baskar Ganapathysubramanian

Mechanical Engineering Publications

The microstructure – spatial distribution of electron donor and acceptor domains – plays an important role in determining the photo current in thin film organic solar cells (OSCs). Optimizing the microstructure can lead to higher photo current generation, and is an active area of experimental research. There has been recent progress in framing OSC microstructure design as a computational design problem. However, most current approaches to microstructure optimization are based on volumetric distribution of material, which makes the design space very large. In contrast, we frame the microstructure design optimization problem in terms of designing the interface between the donor and acceptor ...