Digital Commons Network^™

Modelling And Analysis Of Smart Grids For Critical Data Communication, Abdulfattah Noorwali

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Practical models for the subnetworks of smart grid are presented and analyzed. Critical packet-delay bounds for these subnetworks are determined, with the overall objective of identifying parameters that would help in the design of smart grid with least end-to-end delay.

A single-server non-preemptive queueing model with prioritized critical packets is presented for Home Area Network (HAN). Closed-form expressions for critical packet delay are derived and illustrated as a function of: i) critical packet arrival rate, ii) service rate, iii) utilization factor, and iv) rate of arrival of non-critical packets. Next, wireless HANs using FDMA and TDMA are presented. Upper and …

Safe Haptics-Enabled Patient-Robot Interaction For Robotic And Telerobotic Rehabilitation Of Neuromuscular Disorders: Control Design And Analysis, Seyed Farokh Atashzar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Motivation: Current statistics show that the population of seniors and the incidence rate of age-related neuromuscular disorders are rapidly increasing worldwide. Improving medical care is likely to increase the survival rate but will result in even more patients in need of Assistive, Rehabilitation and Assessment (ARA) services for extended periods which will place a significant burden on the world's healthcare systems. In many cases, the only alternative is limited and often delayed outpatient therapy. The situation will be worse for patients in remote areas. One potential solution is to develop technologies that provide efficient and safe means of in-hospital and …

Investigation Of Model Predictive Control (Mpc) For Steam Generator Level Control In Nuclear Power Plants, Ahmad Taemiriosgouee

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The capabilities and potential of Model Predictive Control (MPC) based strategies for steam generator level (SGL) controls in nuclear power plants (NPPs) have been investigated. The performance has been evaluated for all operating conditions that also include start-ups, low power operations and load rejections. These evaluations have been done for MPC controllers based on existing advanced methodologies, as well as for any potential performance improvement that can be achieved by fine tuning some of the parameters (based on the characteristics of the SGL) of the existing MPC approaches.

Two version of MPC have been designed and implemented. The Standard MPC …

Improved Localization Algorithms In Indoor Wireless Environment, Fei Long

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Localization has been considered as an important precondition for the location-dependent applications such as mobile tracking and navigation.To obtain specific location information, we usually make use of Global Positioning System(GPS), which is the most common plat- form to acquire localization information in outdoor environments. When targets are in indoor environment, however, the GPS signal is usually blocked, so we also consider other assisted positioning techniques in order to obtain accurate position of targets. In this thesis, three different schemes in indoor environment are proposed to minimize localization error by placing refer- ence nodes in optimum locations, combining the localization information …

Leveraging Smartphone Sensor Data For Human Activity Recognition, Xizhe Yin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Using smartphones for human activity recognition (HAR) has a wide range of applications including healthcare, daily fitness recording, and anomalous situations alerting. This study focuses on human activity recognition based on smartphone embedded sensors. The proposed human activity recognition system recognizes activities including walking, running, sitting, going upstairs, and going downstairs. Embedded sensors (a tri-axial accelerometer and a gyroscope sensor) are employed for motion data collection. Both time-domain and frequency-domain features are extracted and analyzed. Our experiment results show that time-domain features are good enough to recognize basic human activities. The system is implemented in an Android smartphone platform.

While …

Radio Resource Management Optimization For Next Generation Wireless Networks, Karim Ahmed Hammad

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The prominent versatility of today’s mobile broadband services and the rapid advancements in the cellular phones industry have led to a tremendous expansion in the wireless market volume. Despite the continuous progress in the radio-access technologies to cope with that expansion, many challenges still remain that need to be addressed by both the research and industrial sectors. One of the many remaining challenges is the efficient allocation and management of wireless network resources when using the latest cellular radio technologies (e.g., 4G). The importance of the problem stems from the scarcity of the wireless spectral resources, the large number of …

Automatic Fracture Orientation Extraction From Sfm Point Clouds, Jon Kissi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Geology seeks to understand the history of the Earth and its surface processes through charac- terisation of surface formations and rock units. Chief among the geologists’ tools are rock unit orientation measurements, such as Strike, Dip and Dip Direction. These allow an understanding of both surface and sub-structure on both the local and macro scale.

Although the way these techniques can be used to characterise geology are well understood, the need to collect these measurements by hand adds time and expense to the work of the geologist, precludes spontaneity in field work, and coverage is limited to where the geologist …

Efficient Macromodeling Techniques Of Distributed Networks Using Tabulated Data, Mohamed Sahouli

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Efficient macromodeling techniques used to model multi-port distributed systems using tabulated data are presented. First a method to macromodel large multiport systems characterized by noisy frequency domain data is shown. The proposed method is based on the vector fitting algorithm and uses an instrumental variable approach and QR decomposition to formulate the least squares equations. The instrumental variable method minimizes the biasing effect of the least squares solution caused by the noise of the data samples while QR decomposition decouples the least squares equations of multiport systems described by common set of poles. It is illustrated, that the proposed approach …

Controlling And Processing Core For Wireless Implantable Telemetry System, Naeeme Modir

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Wireless implantable telemetry systems are suitable choices for monitoring various physiological parameters such as blood pressure and volume. These systems typically compose of an internal device implanted into a living body captures the physiological data and sends them to an external base station located outside of the body for further processing. The internal device usually consists of a sensor interface to convert the collected data to electrical signals; a digital core to digitize the analog signals, process them and prepare them for transmission; an RF front-end to transmit the data outside the body and to receive the required commands from …

Highly Efficient Resource Allocation Techniques In 5g For Noma-Based Massive Mimo And Relaying Systems, Xin Liu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The explosive proliferation of smart devices in the 5-th generation (5G) network expects 1,000-fold capacity enhancement, leading to the urgent need of highly resource-efficient technologies. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), a promising spectral efficient technology for 5G to serve multiple users concurrently, can be combined with massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) and relaying technology, to achieve highly efficient communications. Hence, this thesis studies the design and resource allocation of NOMA-based massive MIMO and relaying systems.

Due to hardware constraints and channel condition variation, the first topic of the thesis develops efficient antenna selection and user scheduling algorithms for sum rate …

Shape Memory Alloy Actuators And Sensors For Applications In Minimally Invasive Interventions, Amit Srivastava

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Reduced access size in minimally invasive surgery and therapy (MIST) poses several restriction on the design of the dexterous robotic instruments. The instruments should be developed that are slender enough to pass through the small sized incisions and able to effectively operate in a compact workspace. Most existing robotic instruments are operated by big actuators, located outside the patient’s body, that transfer forces to the end effector via cables or magnetically controlled actuation mechanism. These instruments are certainly far from optimal in terms of their cost and the space they require in operating room. The lack of adequate sensing technologies …

Numerical And Experimental Study Of The Trichel Pulses In Needle-Plane Geometry, Peyman Dordizadeh Basirabad

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

One of the unique aspects of the negative corona discharges in the air is the regular train of pulses that form the discharge current, called Trichel pulses. These pulses are the result of the combination of several phenomena such as the avalanche ionization of the neutral molecules by the impact of the energized electrons, formation of the cloud of positive ions close to the cathode, and formation of the cloud of negative ions at a farther distance from the corona electrode compared to their positive counterparts. In this thesis, the results of a detailed numerical investigation of the formation of …

Collective Contextual Anomaly Detection For Building Energy Consumption, Daniel Berhane Araya

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Commercial and residential buildings are responsible for a substantial portion of total global energy consumption and as a result make a significant contribution to global carbon emissions. Hence, energy-saving goals that target buildings can have a major impact in reducing environmental damage. During building operation, a significant amount of energy is wasted due to equipment and human-related faults. To reduce waste, today's smart buildings monitor energy usage with the aim of identifying abnormal consumption behaviour and notifying the building manager to implement appropriate energy-saving procedures. To this end, this research proposes the \textit{ensemble anomaly detection} (EAD) framework. The EAD is …

Hidden Markov Model Based Intrusion Alert Prediction, Udaya Sampath Karunathilaka Perera Miriya Thanthrige

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Intrusion detection is only a starting step in securing IT infrastructure. Prediction of intrusions is the next step to provide an active defense against incoming attacks.

Most of the existing intrusion prediction methods mainly focus on prediction of either intrusion type or intrusion category. Also, most of them are built based on domain knowledge and specific scenario knowledge. This thesis proposes an alert prediction framework which provides more detailed information than just the intrusion type or category to initiate possible defensive measures. The proposed algorithm is based on hidden Markov model and it does not depend on specific domain knowledge. …

Analysis And Mitigation Of Temporary Over-Voltage (Tov) Phenomenon In Unintentionally Islanded Grid-Connected Photovoltaic (Pv) Inverters, Md Maruful Islam

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) solar systems, like other inverter-based distributed generators, can cause temporary over-voltages (TOVs), especially subsequent to faults and unintentional islanding incidents, and can damage equipment and customers within the host distribution network. Thus, this thesis aims to study the phenomenon and propose corrective measures for it. Thus, the thesis first presents detailed models for a conventional single-stage PV system and a modified single-stage PV system. The conventional system uses a Δ/YG isolation transformer, whereas the modified system, proposed in the literature, assumes a Y/YG isolation transformer that is effectively grounded by an additional half-bridge leg energized by the …

Efficient And Virtualized Scheduling For Ofdm-Based High Mobility Wireless Communications Objects, Mohamed Hussein Abdelwahab Ahmed

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Services providers (SPs) in the radio platform technology standard long term evolution (LTE) systems are enduring many challenges in order to accommodate the rapid expansion of mobile data usage. The modern technologies demonstrate new challenges to SPs, for example, reducing the cost of the capital and operating expenditures while supporting high data throughput per customer, extending battery life-per-charge of the cell phone devices, and supporting high mobility communications with fast and seamless handover (HO) networking architecture. In this thesis, a variety of optimized techniques aimed at providing innovative solutions for such challenges are explored. The thesis is divided into three …

Optimal Scheduling Of Energy Storage For Energy Shifting And Ancillary Services To The Grid, Hadi Khani

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis is mainly focused on developing optimization-based models for scheduling of energy storage units. At first, a real-time optimal scheduling algorithm is developed seeking to maximize the storage revenue by exploiting arbitrage opportunities available due to the inter-temporal variation of electricity prices. The electricity price modulation is proposed as an approach to competitively offer incentive by the utility regulator to storage to fill the gap between current and a stable rate of return. Subsequently, the application of large-scale storage for congestion relief in transmission systems as an ancillary service to the grid is investigated. An algorithm is proposed for …

Hybrid Magneto-Rheological Actuators For Human Friendly Robotic Manipulators, Masoud Moghani

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In recent years, many developments in the field of the physical human robot interaction (pHRI) have been witnessed and significant attentions have been given to the subject of safety within the interactive environments. Ensuring the safety has led to the design of the robots that are physically unable to hurt humans. However, Such systems commonly suffer from the safety-performance trade-off. Magneto-Rheological (MR) fluids are a special class of fluids that exhibit variable yield stress with respect to an applied magnetic field. Devices developed with such fluids are known to provide the prerequisite requirements of intrinsic safe actuation while maintaining the …

A Digital Game Maturity Model, Saiqa Aleem

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Game development is an interdisciplinary concept that embraces artistic, software engineering, management, and business disciplines. Game development is considered as one of the most complex tasks in software engineering. Hence, for successful development of good-quality games, the game developers must consider and explore all related dimensions as well as discussing them with the stakeholders involved.

This research facilitates a better understanding of important dimensions of digital game development methodology. The increased popularity of digital games, the challenges faced by game development organizations in developing quality games, and severe competition in the digital game industry demand a game development process maturity …

Optimal Grasp Synthesis To Apply Normal And Shear Stresses Of Failure In Beams, Mehrdad Kermani Ph.D., P.Eng., Mahyar Abdeetedal

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

This paper investigates the less-studied problem of failing/yielding an object purposefully by a robotic hand. A grasp synthesis capable of using the whole limb surface of the robotic hand is designed based on internal force decomposition. The introduced approach is based on quasistatic assumption and optimization of active internal forces in order to counterbalance the formulated task wrench/load of yielding. As different geometrical constraints are dictated by the manipulation circumstances (e.g. metallic sheet shaping or robotic harvesting), the yielding wrench optimization is developed to be not only sufficient for yielding the object but also effective in meeting all motion restrictions …

Energy Consumption Prediction With Big Data: Balancing Prediction Accuracy And Computational Resources, Katarina Grolinger, Miriam Am Capretz, Luke Seewald

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

In recent years, advances in sensor technologies and expansion of smart meters have resulted in massive growth of energy data sets. These Big Data have created new opportunities for energy prediction, but at the same time, they impose new challenges for traditional technologies. On the other hand, new approaches for handling and processing these Big Data have emerged, such as MapReduce, Spark, Storm, and Oxdata H2O. This paper explores how findings from machine learning with Big Data can benefit energy consumption prediction. An approach based on local learning with support vector regression (SVR) is presented. Although local learning itself is …

Spectrally Efficient Cooperative Relay Networks Using Signal Space Diversity, Muhammad Ajmal Khan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Cooperative relaying has received widespread attention in recent years from both academic and industrial communities. It offers significant benefits in enabling connectivity as well as in increasing coverage, power saving, spatial diversity and channel capacity. However, one of the main limitations of the conventional cooperative relaying system is the repetition of the received data by the relays, which reduces the spectral efficiency and the data rate. In this thesis, signal space diversity (SSD) based technique is proposed to incorporate into the conventional relaying system to enhance spectral efficiency, data rate and system performance.

Firstly, SSD is introduced into a two-way …

State Space Modeling Of Smart Pv Inverter As Statcom (Pv-Statcom) For Voltage Control In A Distribution System, Sridhar Bala Subramanian

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The grid integration of photovoltaic (PV) systems in distribution networks is facing challenges such as transient changes in voltage due to fluctuations in generated real power and tripping of PV systems. Smart PV inverters with functions such as dynamic reactive current injection and low voltage ride through are available to mitigate these challenges. This thesis shows that a better stable performance can be obtained if these functions are implemented using the novel patent-pending technology of PV system as a dynamic reactive power compensator (PV-STATCOM). A linearized state space model of PV-STATCOM is developed to show the benefits of PV-STATCOM controls …

Sensorless Rotor Position Estimation For Brushless Dc Motors, Iram G. Raza

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Brushless DC motor speed is controlled by synchronizing the stator coil current with rotor position in order to acquire an accurate alignment of stator rotating field with rotor permanent-magnet field for efficient transfer of energy. In order to accomplish this goal, a motor shaft is instantly tracked by using rotating rotor position sensors such as Hall effect sensors, optical encoders or resolvers etc. Adding sensors to detect rotor position affects the overall reliability and mechanical robustness of the system. Therefore, a whole new trend of replacing position sensors with sensorless rotor position estimation techniques have a promising demand.

Among the …

Constant-Envelope Multi-Level Chirp Modulation: Properties, Receivers, And Performance, Mohammad A. Alsharef

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Constant envelope multi-level chirp modulations, with and without memory, are considered for data transmission. Specifically, three sub-classes referred to as symbol-by-symbol multi-level chirp modulation, full-response phase-continuous multi-level chirp modulation and full-response multi-mode phase-continuous multi-level chirp modulation are considered. These modulated signals are described, illustrated, and examined for their properties. The ability of these signals to operate over AWGN is assessed using upper bounds on minimum Euclidean distance as a function of modulation parameters. Coherent and non-coherent detection of multi-level chirp signals in AWGN are considered and optimum and sub-optimum receiver structures are derived. The performance of these receivers have been …

Development Of An Autonomous Robotic Mushroom Harvester, Nikita Alexeevich Kuchinskiy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The process of development of a new robot is one of the modern technological arts. This process involves multiple complex steps and recursive approach. In this project, a solution for automatic harvesting of mushrooms is developed. In order to design an effective solution, it is necessary to explore and take into consideration the limitations of grasping very soft and fragile objects (particularly mushrooms). We will elaborate several strategies of picking and analyze each strategy to formulate the design requirements, develop a solution, and finally, evaluate the efficiency of the proposed solution in actual farm conditions for real mushrooms. The mushroom …

Design And Performance Evaluation Of A Prototype Mrf-Based Haptic Interface For Medical Applications, Mehrdad Kermani Ph.D., P.Eng., Nima Najmaei, Ali Asadian, Rajni Patel

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

This paper describes the construction and stability and transparency evaluation of a prototype two degrees-of-freedom (DoF) haptic interface, which takes ad-vantage of magneto-rheological fluid (MRF)-based clutches for actuation. These small-scale clutches were designed in our lab, and their evaluation were reported previously [1],[2]. MRF-based actuators exhibit superior characteristics,which can significantly contribute to transparency and stability of haptic devices. Based on these actuators, a distributed antagonistic configuration is used to develop the2-DoF haptic interface. This device is incorporated in a master–slave teleoperation setup intended for medical per-cutaneous interventions and soft-tissue palpation. Preliminary studies on the stability and transparency of the haptic …

Enhanced Indoor Localization System Based On Inertial Navigation, Rasika Lakmal Hettiarachchige Don

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

An algorithm for indoor localization of pedestrians using an improved Inertial Navigation system is presented for smartphone based applications. When using standard inertial navigation algorithm, errors in sensors due to random noise and bias result in a large drift from the actual location with time. Novel corrections are introduced for the basic system to increase the accuracy by counteracting the accumulation of this drift error, which are applied using a Kalman filter framework.

A generalized velocity model was applied to correct the walking velocity and the accuracy of the algorithm was investigated with three different velocity models which were derived …

Application Of Simultaneous Localization And Mapping Algorithms For Haptic Teleoperation Of Aerial Vehicles, Bandar Hulayyil Aldhafeeri

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis, a new type of haptic teleoperator system for remote control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has been developed, where the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithms are implemented for the purpose of generating the haptic feedback. Specifically, the haptic feedback is provided to the human operator through interaction with artificial potential field built around the obstacles in the virtual environment which is located at the master site of the teleoperator system. The obstacles in the virtual environment replicate essential features of the actual remote environment where the UAV executes its tasks. The state of the virtual environment …

Cepsim: Modelling And Simulation Of Complex Event Processing Systems In Cloud Environments, Wilson A. Higashino, Miriam Am Capretz, Luiz F. Bittencourt

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

The emergence of Big Data has had profound impacts on how data are stored and processed. As technologies created to process continuous streams of data with low latency, Complex Event Processing (CEP) and Stream Processing (SP) have often been related to the Big Data velocity dimension and used in this context. Many modern CEP and SP systems leverage cloud environments to provide the low latency and scalability required by Big Data applications, yet validating these systems at the required scale is a research problem per se. Cloud computing simulators have been used as a tool to facilitate reproducible and repeatable …