Digital Commons Network^™

Sel4 On Risc-V - Developing High Assurance Platforms With Modular Open-Source Architectures, Michael A. Doran Jr

Masters Theses

Virtualization is now becoming an industry standard for modern embedded systems. Modern embedded systems can now support multiple applications on a single hardware platform while meeting power and cost requirements. Virtualization on an embedded system is achieved through the design of the hardware-software interface. Instruction set architecture, ISA, defines the hardware-software interface for an embedded system. At the hardware level the ISA, provides extensions to support virtualization.

In addition to an ISA that supports hypervisor extensions it is equally important to provide a hypervisor completely capable of exploiting the benefits of virtualization for securing modern embedded systems. Currently there does …

Infrastructure-As-Code: Automating The Deployment On Aws Using Terraform, Srikar Pratap

Culminating Experience Projects

In my master’s project, I used Terraform to create a scalable infrastructure on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for my personal website. Terraform is an open-source infrastructure-as-code (IAC) tool that allows you to create, manage and provision infrastructure resources, such as virtual machines, storage accounts, networks, and more, across multiple cloud providers and on-premises data centers using a declarative configuration language. A scalable infrastructure is important because it enables a system or application to handle increasing amounts of traffic or workload without experiencing performance issues or downtime. It ensures that the system remains responsive, available, and reliable as an organization grows …

Hybrid Life Cycles In Software Development, Eric Vincent Schoenborn

Culminating Experience Projects

This project applied software specification gathering, architecture, work planning, and development to a real-world development effort for a local business. This project began with a feasibility meeting with the owner of Zeal Aerial Fitness. After feasibility was assessed the intended users, needed functionality, and expected user restrictions were identified with the stakeholders. A hybrid software lifecycle was selected to allow a focus on base functionality up front followed by an iterative development of expectations of the stakeholders. I was able to create various specification diagrams that express the end projects goals to both developers and non-tech individuals using a standard …

Hardware Acceleration In Image Stitching: Gpu Vs Fpga, Joshua David Edgcombe

Masters Theses

Image stitching is a process where two or more images with an overlapping field of view are combined. This process is commonly used to increase the field of view or image quality of a system. While this process is not particularly difficult for modern personal computers, hardware acceleration is often required to achieve real-time performance in low-power image stitching solutions. In this thesis, two separate hardware accelerated image stitching solutions are developed and compared. One solution is accelerated using a Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ ZU3EG FPGA and the other solution is accelerated using an Nvidia RTX 2070 Super GPU. The image …

Optimization Study Of An Image Classification Deep Neural Network, Rose Ault

Honors Projects

Machine Learning is an important and growing field within Artificial Intelligence. It is particularly useful in situations where developing an algorithm to perform the task in a conventional way would be extremely difficult. Instead of being programmed specifically to complete a task, a program embodies a trained model that can recognize patterns present in given example data, and is able use that model to make predictions on future data. Neural networks are a prominent example of machine learning models used for this purpose. Neural networks are models that are based on how brains work, with massive numbers of connected processing …

Developing 5gl Concepts From User Interactions, David Stuckless Meyer

Masters Theses

In the fulfilling of the contracts generated in Test Driven Development, a developer could be said to act as a constraint solver, similar to those used by a 5th Generation Language(5GL). This thesis presents the hypothesis that 5GL linguistic mechanics, such as facts, rules and goals, will be emergent in the communications of developer pairs performing Test Driven Development, validating that 5GL syntax is congruent with the ways that practitioners communicate. Along the way, nomenclatures and linguistic patterns may be observed that could inform the design of future 5GL languages.

A Comparative Study Of Wireless Star Networks Implemented With Current Wireless Protocols, Sizen Neupane

Masters Theses

Wireless communication is one of the most advanced technological developments of this era. Wireless technology enables both short-range and long-range services. Today, there are several different wireless communication technologies in existence. Each has its characteristics different from another one. This thesis will implement three short-range wireless technologies in star connection and compare the performance in the wireless network.

For this thesis, the performance of three different RF protocols - a proprietary packet protocol called Enhanced ShockBurst in nRF24L01+, Bluetooth Low Energy, and a special Wi- Fi protocol ESP-Now was compared. The general concept was to establish a star network for …

Query Expansion Techniques For Enterprise Search, Eric M. Domke

Masters Theses

Although web search remains an active research area, interest in enterprise search has waned. This is despite the fact that the market for enterprise search applications is expected to triple within the next six years, and that knowledge workers spend an average of 1.6 to 2.5 hours each day searching for information. To improve search relevancy, and hence reduce this time, an enterprise- focused application must be able to handle the unique queries and constraints of the enterprise environment. The goal of this thesis research was to develop, implement, and study query expansion techniques that are most effective at improving …

An Empirical Study To Investigate The Effect Of Air Density Changes On The Dsrc Performance, Mostafa El-Said, Vijay Bhuse, Alexander Arendsen

Peer-Reviewed Publications

The primary role of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) system is to implement Advanced Driver Assistance Services (ADAS) such as pedestrian detection, fog detection and collisions avoidance. These services rely on detecting and communicating the environment conditions such as heavy rain or snow with nearby vehicles to improve the driver's visibility. ITS systems rely on DSRC to communicate this information via a Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) or Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications architectures. DSCR performance may be susceptible to environmental changes such as air density, gravitation (gravitational acceleration), air temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, and precipitation.

The goal of this research is to investigate whether the …

A Lightweight Message Authentication Framework In The Intelligent Vehicles System, Mostafa El-Said, Alexander Arendsen, Samah Mansour

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Intelligent Vehicles System (IVS) supports a wide variety of Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) services such as vehicle visibility detection. In implementing this service, the message authentication is a vital design parameter that protects victim vehicles from being tricked into accepting false messages as legitimate ones and make a false decision based on the incoming message. However, implementing message authentication service is too expensive especially if vehicles, initially, don’t trust each others or there is no certificate of authority in place.

In this research, we investigate the use of the Basic Safety Message (BSM) behavior over time as a metric …

Dsrc Performance Analysis In Foggy Environment For Intelligent Vehicles System, Mostafa El-Said, Samah Mansour, Alexander Arendsen

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) is one of the fastest growing areas in the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Research efforts has focused on developing a driver assistant alert system to warn driver in foggy environment. However, there is a lack of which effective V2V/V2I communication technology would be the best to extend and disseminate this information to nearby vehicles. In this paper, we examine the use of Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) as a V2V communication mechanism to share the foggy conditions to nearby vehicles. The study also investigates the effect of changing the fog/air density on the DSRC performance …

Computer Software Release: Open Photo Roster, Szymon Machajewski

Open Teaching Tools

Learning student names in a classroom course is important to creating an inclusive learning environment. Some Learning Management Systems, like Blackboard Learn, provide tools for student images, but such tools are insufficient. This software project creates a consistent and reliable way of identifying students for the needs of proctored exams as well as for learning student names.

Computational Nutrition: An Algorithm To Generate A Diet Plan To Meet Specific Nutritional Requirements, Thomas Pikes, Robert Adams

Funded Articles

Many methods have been proposed to generate meal plans, but most of them only consider proximates. However, the human body requires a combination of proximates and several macronutrients, micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals. Furthermore, the models designed to generate these meal plans do not take into account an individual’s specific nutritional needs. These needs are often expressed as a combination of lower bound amount (LBA), ideal amount (IA), and upper bound amount (UBA) necessary for the human body to thrive. The aim of this project is to generate an algorithm to produce a list of food items that will meet specific …

Zion File System Simulator, Robert Adams, Frederic Paladin

Funded Articles

File systems are fundamental for computers and devices with data storage units. They allow operating systems to understand and organize streams of bytes and obtain readable files from them. There are numerous file systems available in the industry, all with their own unique features. Understanding how these file systems work is essential for computer science students, but their complex nature can be difficult and challenging to grasp, especially for students at the beginning of their career. The Zion File System Simulator was designed with this in mind. Zion is a teaching and experimenting tool, in the form of a small …

Set Lister, Cyril Casapao

Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Anaglym: A Graphics Engine Providing Secure Execution Of Applications, Josh Holtrop

Culminating Experience Projects

"The Anaglym graphics engine uses the Lua programming language as the high-level language in which to interpret Anaglym applications. Applications running inside Anaglym are Lua scripts that have a particular environment exposed to them. By default, when Lua is embedded inside a C or C++ host application, no Lua functions are available to the hosted script. Lua functions must be exported by the host environment to be callable by a Lua script."

Binary Usenet Application, Alexander J. Patterson

Culminating Experience Projects

ANZBC software was written as a prototype to download small‐encoded files form Usenet servers. This software allows anything from a text document to a HD movie to be downloaded and decoded into a single file. Often this is a single file that is split into multiple small files and then compressed.

Microsoft Silverlight Photography Framework: Comparing Component Based Designs In Adobe Flex And Microsoft Silverlight, David Roossien

Culminating Experience Projects

Flex and Silverlight provide large Application Programming Interfaces (API’s). Applications can be designed using a variety of architectures. The purpose of this paper is not to perform a complete comparison between Flex and Silverlight. To do such a comparison would require massive amounts of time and research. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and implementation of the Silverlight photography framework project. Along the way this paper compares the Silverlight project to the Adobe Flex project and discusses the goals of each product. During the comparison many important similarities and differences between Silverlight and Flex technologies are …

Program Assessment System, Dyana Polderdyk

Culminating Experience Projects

Today’s world is experiencing constant and rapid change in all areas of life. Progress and technology are the catalysts for the change, and the result is a continuous turnover of knowledge. It is essential for educational institutions to keep pace with the changes in order to turn out students that meet local and national employment requirements. Educational institutions are in need of an assessment system to measure the ongoing effectiveness of disciplines, curricula, programs and courses. The assessment system will provide the tools to develop, implement, manage, maintain and evaluate the efficiencies of educational programs. The input will include past …