Digital Commons Network^™

Software Porting Of A 3d Reconstruction Algorithm To Razorcam Embedded System On Chip, Kevin Curtis Gunn

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A method is presented to calculate depth information for a UAV navigation system from Keypoints in two consecutive image frames using a monocular camera sensor as input and the OpenCV library. This method was first implemented in software and run on a general-purpose Intel CPU, then ported to the RazorCam Embedded Smart-Camera System and run on an ARM CPU onboard the Xilinx Zynq-7000. The results of performance and accuracy testing of the software implementation are then shown and analyzed, demonstrating a successful port of the software to the RazorCam embedded system on chip that could potentially be used onboard a …

Radiation-Hardened Delay-Insensitive Asynchronous Circuits For Multi-Bit Seu Mitigation And Data-Retaining Sel Protection, John Davis Brady

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Radiation can have highly damaging effects on circuitry, especially for space applications, if designed without radiation-hardening mechanisms. Delay-insensitive asynchronous circuits inherently have promising potentials in mitigating the effects of radiation due to their delay insensitivity. This thesis proposes the use of two delay-insensitive asynchronous logic architectures to mitigate the effects of up to two single-event upsets (SEU) and a single-event latch-up (SEL). The multi-bit SEU mitigation with SEL protection architecture improves the original design by providing more integrity against data corruption and lock-ups caused by multi-bit SEUs, and it is expanded to simultaneously provide protection against SEL. The multi-bit SEU …

An Innovative Approach Towards Applying Chaum Mixing To Sms, Matthew Patrick Rothmeyer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Currently there are few user-friendly applications for anonymous communication across multiple platforms, leaving data that is often both personal and private vulnerable to malicious activity. Mobile devices such as smartphones are prime candidates for such an application as they are pervasive and have standardized communication protocols. Through the application of mixing techniques, these devices can provide anonymity for groups of individuals numbering 30 to 40 members. In this work, a Chaum mix inspired, smartphone based network that uses the Short Message Service (SMS) is described first in theory and then in implementation. This system leverages both techniques used by current …

Designing Customizable Network-On-Chip With Support For Embedded Private Memory For Multi-Processor System-On-Chips, Azad Fakhari

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The computer industry's transition to multiprocessor systems on chip (MPSoC) architectures is increasing the need for new scalable high-bandwidth on-chip communication

backbones. Network-on-Chip (NoC) interconnects are gaining interest for serving as the on-chip communication infrastructure. The most important issues to be considered in designing a NoC are topology, routing algorithm, flow control, and buffering and also the trade-offs between performance, power, and area.

This research proposes a custom-designed NoC specifically for MPSoCs on FPGAs. The proposed design allows the communication infrastructure to seamlessly scale as the numbers of processors within the chip increases. The design adds a new level of …

An Open Source, Line Rate Datagram Protocol Facilitating Message Resiliency Over An Imperfect Channel, Christina Marie Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) is the transfer of data into buffers between two compute nodes that does not require the involvement of a CPU or Operating System (OS). The idea is borrowed from Direct Memory Access (DMA) which allows memory within a compute node to be transferred without transiting through the CPU. RDMA is termed a zero-copy protocol as it eliminates the need to copy data between buffers within the protocol stack. Because of this and other features, RDMA promotes reliable, high throughput and low latency transfer for packet-switched networking. While the benefits of RMDA are well known and …

Identifying Emerging Researchers Using Social Network Analysis, Syed Masum Billah

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Finding rising stars in academia early in their careers has many implications when hiring new faculty, applying for promotion, and/or requesting grants. Typically, the impact and productivity of a researcher are assessed by a popular measurement called the h-index that grows linearly with the academic age of a researcher. Therefore, h-indices of researchers in the early stages of their careers are almost uniformly low, making it difficult to identify those who will, in future, emerge as influential leaders in their field. To overcome this problem, we make use of Social network analysis to identify young researchers most likely to become …

Analysis Of Social Networks In A Virtual World, Gregory Thomas Stafford

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As three-dimensional virtual environments become both more prevalent and more fragmented, studying how users are connected via their avatars and how they benefit from the virtual world community has become a significant area of research. An in-depth analysis of virtual world Social networks is needed to evaluate how users interact in virtual worlds, to better understand the impact of avatar Social networks on the virtual worlds, and to improve future online Social networks.

Our current efforts are focused on building and exploring the Social network aspects of virtual worlds. In this thesis, we build a Social network of avatars based …

Attitudes And Behaviors In Online Communities: Empirical Studies Of The Effects Of Social, Community, And Individual Characteristics, Richard Kumi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Online communities and communities of practice bring people together to promote and support shared goals and exchange information. Personal interactions are important to many of these communities and one of the important outcomes of personal interactions in online communities and communities of practice is user-generated content. The three essays in the current study examines behavior motivation in online communities and communities of practice to understand how Social and personal psychological factors, and user-generated influence attitudes, intentions and behaviors in online communities.

The first essay addresses two research questions. First, how does Social capital influence exchange and combination behaviors in online …

Analysis Of Parameter Tuning On Energy Efficiency In Asynchronous Circuits, Justin Thomas Roark

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Power and energy consumption are the primary concern of the digital integrated circuit (IC) industry. Asynchronous logic, in the past several years, has increased in popularity due to its low power nature. This thesis analyzes a collection of array multipliers with different parameters to compare two asynchronous design paradigms, NULL Convention Logic (NCL) and Multi-Threshold NULL Convention Logic (MTNCL). Several commercially available pieces of software and custom scripts are used to analyze the asynchronous circuits and their components to provide the energy consumption estimation on various parts of each circuit. The analysis of the software results revealed that MTNCL circuits …

Cad Tool Design For Ncl And Mtncl Asynchronous Circuits, Vijay Mani Pillai

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents an implementation of a method developed to readily convert Boolean designs into an ultra-low power asynchronous design methodology called MTNCL, which combines multi-threshold CMOS (MTCMOS) with NULL Convention Logic (NCL) systems. MTNCL provides the leakage power advantages of an all high-Vt implementation with a reasonable speed penalty compared to the all low-Vt implementation, and has negligible area overhead. The proposed tool utilizes industry-standard CAD tools. This research also presents an Automated Gate-Level Pipelining with Bit-Wise Completion (AGLPBW) method to maximize throughput of delay-insensitive full-word pipelined NCL circuits. These methods have been integrated into the Mentor Graphics and …

Cad Tools For Synthesis Of Sleep Convention Logic, Parviz Palangpour

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation proposes an automated flow for the Sleep Convention Logic (SCL) asynchronous design style. The proposed flow synthesizes synchronous RTL into an SCL netlist. The flow utilizes commercial design tools, while supplementing missing functionality using custom tools. A method for determining the performance bottleneck in an SCL design is proposed. A constraint-driven method to increase the performance of linear SCL pipelines is proposed. Several enhancements to SCL are proposed, including techniques to reduce the number of registers and total sleep capacitance in an SCL design.

Gesture Based Home Automation For The Physically Disabled, Alexander Hugh Nelson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Paralysis and motor-impairments can greatly reduce the autonomy and quality of life of a patient while presenting a major recurring cost in home-healthcare. Augmented with a non-invasive wearable sensor system and home-automation equipment, the patient can regain a level of autonomy at a fraction of the cost of home nurses. A system which utilizes sensor fusion, low-power digital components, and smartphone cellular capabilities can extend the usefulness of such a system to allow greater adaptivity for patients with various needs. This thesis develops such a system as a Bluetooth enabled glove device which communicates with a remote web server to …

Extending The Hybridthread Smp Model For Distributed Memory Systems, Eugene Anthony Cartwright Iii

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Memory Hierarchy is of growing importance in system design today. As Moore's Law allows system designers to include more processors within their designs, data locality becomes a priority. Traditional multiprocessor systems on chip (MPSoC) experience difficulty scaling as the quantity of processors increases. This challenge is common behavior of memory accesses in a shared memory environment and causes a decrease in memory bandwidth as processor numbers increase. In order to provide the necessary levels of scalability, the computer architecture community has sought to decentralize memory accesses by distributing memory throughout the system. Distributed memory offers greater bandwidth due to decoupled …

Application Of The Empirical Mode Decomposition On The Characterization And Forecasting Of The Arrival Data Of An Enterprise Cluster, Linh Bao Ngo

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Characterization and forecasting are two important processes in capacity planning. While they are closely related, their approaches have been different. In this research, a decomposition method called Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) has been applied as a preprocessing tool in order to bridge the input of both characterization and forecasting processes of the job arrivals of an enterprise cluster. Based on the facts that an enterprise cluster follows a standard preset working schedule and that EMD has the capability to extract hidden patterns within a data stream, we have developed a set of procedures that can preprocess the data for characterization …

Location-Aware Traffic Management On Mobile Phones, Sarath Krishna Mandava

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The growing number of mobile phone users is a primary cause of congestion in cellular networks. Therefore, cellular network providers have turned to expensive and differentiated data plans. Unfortunately, as the number of smartphone users keeps increasing, changing data plans only provides a temporary solution. A more permanent solution is offloading 3G traffic to networks in orthogonal frequency bands. One such plausible network is open Wi-Fi, which is free by definition. As Wi-Fi networks become ubiquitous, there are several areas where there is simultaneous Wi-Fi and 3G coverage. In this thesis, we study the feasibility of offloading 3G traffic to …

On The Complexity Of Grid Coloring, Daniel Christopher Apon

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies problems at the intersection of Ramsey-theoretic mathematics, computational complexity, and communication complexity. The prototypical example of such a problem is Monochromatic-Rectangle-Free Grid Coloring. In an instance of Monochromatic-Rectangle-Free Grid Coloring, we are given a chessboard-like grid graph of dimensions n and m, where the vertices of the graph correspond to squares in the chessboard, and a number of allowed colors, c. The goal is to assign one of the allowed colors to each vertex of the grid graph so that no four vertices arranged in an axis-parallel rectangle are colored monochromatically. Our results include: 1. A conditional, …

File System Simulation: Hierarchical Performance Measurement And Modeling, Hai Quang Nguyen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

File systems are very important components in a computer system. File system simulation can help to predict the performance of new system designs. It offers the advantages of the flexibility of modeling and the cost and time savings of utilizing simulation instead of full implementation. Being able to predict end-to-end file system performance against a pre-defined workload can help system designers to make decisions that could affect their entire product line, involving several million dollars of investment. This dissertation presents detailed simulation-based performance models of the Linux ext3 file system and the PVFS parallel file system. The models are developed …

Multi-Threshold Cmos Circuit Design Methodology From 2d To 3d, Ross Josiah Thian

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A new and exciting approach in digital IC design in order to accommodate the Moore's law is 3D chip stacking. Chip stacking offers more transistors per chip, reduced wire lengths, and increased memory access bandwidths. This thesis demonstrates that traditional 2D design flow can be adapted for 3D chip stacking. 3D chip stacking has a serious drawback: heat generation. Die-on-die architecture reduces exposed surface area for heat dissipation. In order to reduce heat generation, a low power technique named Multi-Threshold CMOS (MTCMOS) was incorporated in this work. MTCMOS required designing a power management unit (to control when and which gates …