Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons^™

Development Of A Placement Exam To Increase Student Success In A Junior Level Circuits And Systems Class, David Parent

Faculty Publications

In this work, which is intended to be a Full Paper in the Innovative Practice Category, the implementation of an improved placement exam that increased the pass rate in a junior level systems course in the author’s electrical engineering department by 15% is presented. For almost 30 years the author’s EE department has used a face to face exam to place students in a junior level circuits and systems course or into a review workshop. The details of the exam and suggestions about future use in conjunction MyOpenMath analytics to increase student success are also given.

Examination The Impact Of Various Factors On Student Success In An Introduction To Circuit Analysis Course, David Parent

Faculty Publications

In this work in progress, several models to predict student success in a sophomore introduction to circuit analysis class were created based on prior grade point average, grade in a pre-requisite physics class, the semester the pre-requisite physics class was taken, the number of units a student was taking, the number of times a student repeated the circuits class, and the number of times a student repeated any class prior to enrollment. While all models were statistically significant, the model that included prior GPA and the grade in a pre-requisite physics was the most significant for the data collection effort. …

Effect Of Wireless Communication Delay On Dc Microgrids Performance, Mahmoud Saleh, Yusef Esa, Ahmed Mohamed

Publications and Research

This paper investigates the effect of wireless communication technologies latency on the converters and the bus voltage of centrally communication based controlled DC microgrids (MGs) during islanding. A DC microgrid with its communication based control scheme was modeled to show the impact of latency. Simulation results show that the impact may be severe depending on the design, and the operational condition of the microgrid before latency occurs.

Impact Of Communication Latency On The Bus Voltage Of Centrally Controlled Dc Microgrid During Islanding, Mahmoud Saleh, Yusef Esa, Ahmed Mohamed

Publications and Research

Maintaining a sustainable and reliable source of energy to supply critical loads within a renewable energy based microgrid (MG) during blackouts is directly related to its bus voltage variations. For example, voltage variation might trigger protection devices and disconnect DERs within the MG. Centrally controlled MGs (CCMGs) type is dependent on communication. Therefore, it is very important to analyze the impact of communication networks performance degradation, such as latency, on the bus voltage of CCMGs. This paper investigates the effect of wireless communication technologies latency on the bus voltage and performance of centralized DC MGs. Two mathematical models were developed …

Electrochemical Hydrogenation Of Acetone To Produce Isopropanol Using A Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Reactor, Chen Li, Ashanti M. Sallee, Xiaoyu Zhang, Sandeep Kumar

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Electrochemical hydrogenation (ECH) of acetone is a relatively new method to produce isopropanol. It provides an alternative way of upgrading bio-fuels with less energy consumption and chemical waste as compared to conventional methods. In this paper, Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) hardware was used as an electrochemical reactor to hydrogenate acetone to produce isopropanol and diisopropyl ether as a byproduct. High current efficiency (59.7%) and selectivity (>90%) were achieved, while ECH was carried out in mild conditions (65 degrees C and atmospheric pressure). Various operating parameters were evaluated to determine their effects on the yield of acetone and …

Interface Model Of Pem Fuel Cell Membrane Steady-Dtate Behavior, Russell L. Edwards, Ayodeji Demuren

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

Modeling works which simulate the proton-exchange membrane fuel cell with the computational fluid dynamics approach involve the simultaneous solution of multiple, interconnected physics equations for fluid flows, heat transport, electrochemical reactions, and both protonic and electronic conduction. Modeling efforts vary by how they treat the physics within and adjacent to the membrane-electrode assembly (MEA). Certain approaches treat the MEA not as part of the computational domain, but rather an interface connecting the anode and cathode computational domains. These approaches may lack the ability to consistently model catalyst layer losses and MEA ohmic resistance. This work presents an upgraded interface formulation …

An Efficient Mode-Based Domain Decomposition Hybrid 2-D/Q-2d Finite-Element Time-Domain Method For Power/Ground Plate-Pair Analysis, Ping Li, Li (Lijun) Jun Jiang, Yao Jiang Zhang, Shuai Xu, Hakan Bagci

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Generally, with a surface magnetic current excitation, only the TM zmn modes are activated between the power/ground plate pair. As a result, the magnetic field only has azimuthal component while the longitude component is zero. To make full use of this quasi-2-D (Q-2D) property, a Q-2D finite-element time-domain (FETD) method combined with the basic 3-D triangular prism mesh elements is firstly proposed to solve the magnetic field wave equation. It is further noted that the higher order modes are confined in the proximity of the antipads (labeled as via domain) due to the exponential attenuation property along the propagating direction. …

Investigating The Effect Of Detecting And Mitigating A Ring Oscillator-Based Hardware Trojan, Lakshmi Ramakrishnan

Electrical Engineering Theses and Dissertations

The outsourcing of the manufacturing process of integrated circuits to fabrications plants all over the world has exposed these chips to several security threats, especially at the hardware level. There have been instances of malicious circuitry, such as backdoors, being added to circuits without the knowledge of the chip designers or vendors. Such threats could be immensely powerful and dangerous against confidentiality, among other vulnerabilities.

Defense mechanisms against such attacks have been probed and defense techniques have been developed. But with the passage of time, attack techniques have improved immensely as well. From directly observing the inputs or outputs, adversaries …

Personalized Health Knowledge Graph, Amelie Gyrard, Manas Gaur, Saeedeh Shekarpour, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Amit Sheth

Publications

Our current health applications do not adequately take into account contextual and personalized knowledge about patients. In order to design “Personalized Coach for Healthcare” applications to manage chronic diseases, there is a need to create a Personalized Healthcare Knowledge Graph (PHKG) that takes into consideration a patient’s health condition (personalized knowledge) and enriches that with contextualized knowledge from environmental sensors and Web of Data (e.g., symptoms and treatments for diseases). To develop PHKG, aggregating knowledge from various heterogeneous sources such as the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, clinical notes, and Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) is necessary. In this paper, we …

What Do You Have That Others Don't?: Succeeding In Academia Or Industry, Amit Sheth

Publications

No abstract provided.

Improving A Transient Stability Control Scheme With Wide-Area Synchrophasors And The Microwecc, A Reduced-Order Model Of The Western Interconnect, Robin Hallett

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

This thesis is composed of two research projects. The first project investigated the feasibility of improving a generator tripping control scheme using wide-area synchrophasors and the second project focused on building a reduced-order model of the western North American power system (wNAPS) for use in a real-time digital simulator.

Transient stability is a major reliability issue for power systems. Radially-connected power plants are especially prone to transient stability problems. An example of this is the fourgenerator Colstrip power plant located in southeast Montana, USA. The Colstrip generators are protected by a tripping control system called the Acceleration Trend Relay (ATR) …

Simulation Studies For A Multi-Mw Hybrid Wind-Solar Pv System For Desalination Plants, Vandana Rallabandi, Nasser Alawhali, Oluwaseun M. Akeyo, Dan M. Ionel

Power and Energy Institute of Kentucky Faculty Publications

This paper presents a power system configuration and control schemes for a Multi-MW wind-solar hybrid system, which includes multiple wind turbines and solar panels to support a desalination plant. The wind and solar systems are sized such that the desalination plant obtains, as far as possible, its power from the renewable sources, to minimize the dependence on the utility grid. Each section of the wind turbine system includes a variable speed permanent magnet synchronous generator connected to the grid via a back-to-back voltage source converter. The rectifier operates the wind system at the maximum power point, and the inverter provides …

Real Time Operation Of Smart Homes With Pv And Battery Systems Under Variable Electricity Rate Schedules And Transactive Power Flow, Huangjie Gong, Oluwaseun M. Akeyo, Vandana Rallabandi, Dan M. Ionel

Power and Energy Institute of Kentucky Faculty Publications

According to some utility schedules, the electricity rate is variable such that homes may be encouraged to buy and store power in a battery when it is inexpensive, and self-consume or sell to the grid during other times. Power arbitrage through a battery energy storage (BES), can help maintain consumer comfort and minimize residential electricity bills. This paper reports the calculated daily energy costs incurred by different types of homes for a given utility electricity rate schedule. The homes exchange power among each other behind a section of the distribution network. A free market system is formed and the electricity …

No2- And No3- Enhance Cold Atmospheric Plasma Induced Cancer Cell Death By Generation Of Onoo-, Dehui Xu, Qingjie Cui, Yujing Xu, Zhijie Liu, Zeyu Chen, Wenjie Xia, Hao Zhang, Dingxin Liu, Hailan Chen, Michael G. Kong

Bioelectrics Publications

Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) is a rapidly developed technology that has been widely applied in biomedicine especially in cancer treatment. Due to the generation of various active species in plasma, CAP could induce various tumor cells death and showed a promising potential in cancer therapy. To enhance the biological effects of gas plasma, changing the discharging parameters is the most commonly used method, yet increasing discharging power will lead to a higher possibility of simultaneously damage surrounding tissues. In this study, by adding nontoxic concentration of additional nitrite and nitrate in the medium, we found that anti-tumor effect of CAP …

Low-Profile Diplexing Filter/Antenna Based On Common Radiating Cavity With Quasi-Elliptic Response, Kirti Dhwaj, Xiaoqiang Li, Li (Lijun) Jun Jiang, Tatsuo Itoh

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A low-profile single-layer substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) diplexing filtering antenna with two-pole response in each channel is presented. Synthesis technique is proposed, which allows independent design of the filtering networks for the two channels. A common slot loaded SIW cavity is used to obtain the desired radiation in both channels. The diplexing filtering antenna provides quasi-elliptic response in both channels due to source-load coupling. The filtering antenna provides a maximum broadside gain of 2.65 and 2.7 dBi at operating frequencies of 5.25 (lower channel) and 5.8 GHz (upper channel), respectively. The interchannel isolation is more than 29 dB with a …

Circuitry Design And Magnetic Susceptibility Evaluation Of 7t Fmri Implantable Rf Coil, Rong Wang, Celia M. Dong, Ed X. Wu, Robert C. Roberts, Li (Lijun) Jun Jiang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Implantable coils have been widely utilized in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) owing to their superior signal to noise ratio. To effectively minimize the magnetic field distortion and image artifacts, the magnetic susceptibility of the implantable coil needs to be evaluated before practical use. In this work, we experimentally identify the magnetic susceptibility of each component of the implantable coil with the 7T Bruker NMR imaging scanner and provide useful guidelines for the following manufacturing. A 5 5 mm 2 implantable surface coil with a tunable frequency range is subsequently introduced for the 7T fMRI of the rat primary somatosensory …

Ion-Sensitive Field-Effect Transistors With Micropillared Gates For Measuring Cell Ion Exchange At Molecular Levels, Mohammad G. Abdallah, Rayan Khan, Christian Garcia, Young-Tae Kim, Samir M. Iqbal

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The detection of small concentrations of cancer cells before cancer takes over the primary organ completely, or metastasizes to other areas of the body is important for early screening of cancer. One approach to address cancer early screening is through cell ion exchange bioelectricity, which characterizes voltage potential in non-neuronal cells to regulate shape changing, proliferation, differentiation, migration, and cancer formation. Herein, novel ion-sensitive field-effective transistor (ISFET) modality is shown to measure cell behavior during the change of cell properties at molecular levels. ISFETs produce low resistance signals and consume low power. The small size of ISFETs enables miniature diagnosis …

Integration Of An Electrical Engineering Capstone Course With Social Justice And Global Studies, David Parent, Patricia Backer

Faculty Publications

A four course package (six units total) consisting of two general education (GE) classes and two electrical engineering capstone classes that are taught in a highly integrated manner, that not only meets university GE requirements, but also meets the new ABET criteria in which the need to address a societal need is embedded with design criteria. The prompts for the new integrated GE/capstone Assessment results are also presented, along with methods to increase student motivation for studying GE.

Parallel Implementation Of Facial Detection Using Graphics Processing Units, Russell Marineau

Master's Theses (2009 -)

This thesis proposes to study parallelization methods to improve the computational runtime of the popular Viola-Jones face detection algorithm. These methods employ multithreaded programming and CUDA programming approaches. The thesis provides a discussion of background information on all relevant topics, which is then followed by a presentation of the code architecture changes that are proposed. Specific implementation details are then discussed in more details followed by a discussion and comparison of results obtained through various tests. This thesis first begins by presenting a history and description of the Viola-Jones algorithm. Detailed explanations of each step in the process used to …

Development Of Mr Clutch For A Prospective 5-Dof Robot, Sergey Pisetskiy, Mehrdad Kermani Ph.D., P.Eng.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

This paper presents an improved design approach for the construction of a Magneto-Rheological (MR) clutch intended to be used in a prospective 5 degrees of freedom robot. The MR clutch features embedded Hall sensors for intrinsic torque control. After a brief description of the MR clutch principles, the details of the mechanical design are discussed. Simulation and preliminary experimental results demonstrate the main characteristics and advantages of the proposed MR clutch.