Engineering Commons^™

Towards Optimal Operation And Control Of Emerging Electric Distribution Networks, Jimiao Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

The growing integration of power-electronics converters enabled components causes low inertia in the evolving electric distribution networks, which also suffer from uncertainties due to renewable energy sources, electric demands, and anomalies caused by physical or cyber attacks, etc. These issues are addressed in this dissertation. First, a virtual synchronous generator (VSG) solution is provided for solar photovoltaics (PVs) to address the issues of low inertia and system uncertainties. Furthermore, for a campus AC microgrid, coordinated control of the PV-VSG and a combined heat and power (CHP) unit is proposed and validated. Second, for islanded AC microgrids composed of SGs and …

A Novel Graph Neural Network-Based Framework For Automatic Modulation Classification In Mobile Environments, Pejman Ghasemzadeh

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Automatic modulation classification (AMC) refers to a signal processing procedure through which the modulation type and order of an observed signal are identified without any prior information about the communications setup. AMC has been recognized as one of the essential measures in various communications research fields such as intelligent modem design, spectrum sensing and management, and threat detection. The research literature in AMC is limited to accounting only for the noise that affects the received signal, which makes their models applicable for stationary environments. However, a more practical and real-world application of AMC can be found in mobile environments where …

Tech Time

DePaul Magazine

DePaul is embracing tech more than ever, incorporating innovative devices and approaches into education in all corners of the university. Here are seven ways DePaul provides hands-on experiences with cutting-edge tools that position students and faculty in the forefront of their industries and disciplines.

Security-Enhanced Serial Communications, John White, Alexander Beall, Joseph Maurio, Dane Fichter, Dr. Matthew Davis, Dr. Zachary Birnbaum

Military Cyber Affairs

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are widely used by critical infrastructure and are ubiquitous in numerous industries including telecommunications, petrochemical, and manufacturing. ICS are at a high risk of cyber attack given their internet accessibility, inherent lack of security, deployment timelines, and criticality. A unique challenge in ICS security is the prevalence of serial communication buses and other non-TCP/IP communications protocols. The communication protocols used within serial buses often lack authentication and integrity protections, leaving them vulnerable to spoofing and replay attacks. The bandwidth constraints and prevalence of legacy hardware in these systems prevent the use of modern message authentication and …

A Graph-Based Approach For Adaptive Serious Games, Nidhi G. Patel

Theses and Dissertations

Traditional education systems are based on the one-size-fits-all approach, which lacks personalization, engagement, and flexibility necessary to meet the diverse needs and learning styles of students. This encouraged researchers to focus on exploring automated, personalized instructional systems to enhance students’ learning experiences. Motivated by this remark, this thesis proposes a personalized instructional system using a graph method to enhance a player’s learning process by preventing frustration and avoiding a monotonous experience. Our system uses a directional graph, called an action graph, for representing solutions to in-game problems based on possible player actions. Through our proposed algorithm, a serious game integrated …

Modern Practices For Responsive Web Design And Web Accessibility, Keyaun Washington

Honors Theses

Responsive web design and web accessibility play crucial roles in ensuring an optimal user experience on the web. By designing websites with responsiveness and accessibility in mind, more opportunities are opened up for a wider audience to access and interact with our content. Through modern practices, responsive web design allows websites to reach several different devices ranging from compact smartwatches to expansive television screens. Designing for accessibility provides accommodations for individuals with impairments while also providing benefits for individuals without impairments. However, designing for responsiveness and accessibility can present challenges; a poor attempt at providing accessibility features can worsen a …

Targeted Adversarial Attacks Against Neural Network Trajectory Predictors, Kaiyuan Tan

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Trajectory prediction is an integral component of modern autonomous systems as it allows for envisioning future intentions of nearby moving agents. Due to the lack of other agents' dynamics and control policies, deep neural network (DNN) models are often employed for trajectory forecasting tasks. Although there exists an extensive literature on improving the accuracy of these models, there is a very limited number of works studying their robustness against adversarially crafted input trajectories. To bridge this gap, in this paper, we propose a targeted adversarial attack against DNN models for trajectory forecasting tasks. We call the proposed attack TA4TP for …

Enabling The Integration Of Sustainable Design Methodological Frameworks And Computational Life Cycle Assessment Tools Into Product Development Practice, Tejaswini Chatty

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Environmental sustainability has gained critical importance in product development (PD) due to increased regulation, market competition, and consumer awareness, leading companies to set ambitious climate targets . To meet these goals, PD practitioners (engineers and designers) are often left to adapt their practices to reduce the impacts of the products they manufacture. Literature review and interviews with practitioners show that they highly valued using quantitative life cycle assessment (LCA) results to inform decision making.

LCA is a technique to measure the environmental impacts across various stages of a product life cycle. Existing LCA software tools, however, are designed for dedicated …

Adversarial Patch Attacks On Deep Reinforcement Learning Algorithms, Peizhen Tong

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Adversarial patch attack has demonstrated that it can cause the misclassification of deep neural networks to the target label when the size of patch is relatively small to the size of input image; however, the effectiveness of adversarial patch attack has never been experimented on deep reinforcement learning algorithms. We design algorithms to generate adversarial patches to attack two types of deep reinforcement learning algorithms, including deep Q-networks (DQN) and proximal policy optimization (PPO). Our algorithms of generating adversarial patch consist of two parts: choosing attack position and training adversarial patch on that position. Under the same bound of total …

Software-Defined Networking Security Techniques And The Digital Forensics Of The Sdn Control Plane, Abdullah Alshaya

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an efficient networking design that decouples the network's control plane from the data plane. When compared to the traditional network architecture, the SDN architecture shares many of the same security issues. The centralized SDN controller makes it easier to control, easier to program in real-time, and more flexible, but this comes at the cost of more security risks. An attack on the control plane layer of the SDN controller is a major security concern.

First, centralized design and the existence of a single point of failure in the control plane compromise the accessibility and availability of …

Grammatical Triples Extraction For The Distant Reading Of Textual Corpora, Stephanie Buongiorno, Stephanie Buongiorno

Multidisciplinary Studies Theses and Dissertations

Grammatical triples extraction has become increasingly important for the analysis of large, textual corpora. By providing insight into the sentence-level linguistic features of a corpus, extracted triples have supported interpretations of some of the most relevant problems of our time. The growing importance of triples extraction for analyzing large corpora has put the quality of extracted triples under new scrutiny, however. Triples outputs are known to have large amounts of erroneous triples. The extraction of erroneous triples poses a risk for understanding a textual corpus because erroneous triples can be nonfactual and even analogous to misinformation. Disciplines such as the …

Vi Energy-Efficient Memristor-Based Neuromorphic Computing Circuits And Systems For Radiation Detection Applications, Jorge Iván Canales Verdial

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Radionuclide spectroscopic sensor data is analyzed with minimal power consumption through the use of neuromorphic computing architectures. Memristor crossbars are harnessed as the computational substrate in this non-conventional computing platform and integrated with CMOS-based neurons to mimic the computational dynamics observed in the mammalian brain’s visual cortex. Functional prototypes using spiking sparse locally competitive approximations are presented. The architectures are evaluated for classification accuracy and energy efficiency. The proposed systems achieve a 90% true positive accuracy with a high-resolution detector and 86% with a low-resolution detector.

Secure And Efficient Federated Learning, Xingyu Li

Theses and Dissertations

In the past 10 years, the growth of machine learning technology has been significant, largely due to the availability of large datasets for training. However, gathering a sufficient amount of data on a central server can be challenging. Additionally, with the rise of mobile networking and the large amounts of data generated by IoT devices, privacy and security issues have become a concern, resulting in government regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, and ADPPA. Under these circumstances, traditional centralized machine learning methods face a problem in that sensitive data must be kept locally for privacy reasons, making it difficult to …

Enabling Security Analysis And Education Of The Ethereum Platform: A Network Traffic Dissection Tool, Joshua Mason Kemp

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Ethereum, the decentralized global software platform powered by blockchain technology known for its native cryptocurrency, Ether (ETH), provides a technology stack for building apps, holding assets, transacting, and communicating without control by a central authority. At the core of Ethereum’s network is a suite of purpose-built protocols known as DEVP2P, which provides the underlying nodes in an Ethereum network the ability to discover, authenticate and communicate confidentiality. This document discusses the creation of a new Wireshark dissector for DEVP2P’s discovery protocols, DiscoveryV4 and DiscoveryV5, and a dissector for RLPx, an extensible TCP transport protocol for a range of Ethereum node …

Sensitive And Makeable Computational Materials For The Creation Of Smart Everyday Objects, Te-Yen Wu Mr

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

The vision of computational materials is to create smart everyday objects using the materi- als that have sensing and computational capabilities embedded into them. However, today’s development of computational materials is limited because its interfaces (i.e. sensors) are unable to support wide ranges of human interactions , and withstand the fabrication meth- ods of everyday objects (e.g. cutting and assembling). These barriers hinder citizens from creating smart every day objects using computational materials on a large scale.

To overcome the barriers, this dissertation presents the approaches to develop compu- tational materials to be 1) sensitive to a wide variety of …

Detection Of Crypto-Ransomware Attack Using Deep Learning, Muna Jemal

Master of Science in Computer Science Theses

The number one threat to the digital world is the exponential increase in ransomware attacks. Ransomware is malware that prevents victims from accessing their resources by locking or encrypting the data until a ransom is paid. With individuals and businesses growing dependencies on technology and the Internet, researchers in the cyber security field are looking for different measures to prevent malicious attackers from having a successful campaign. A new ransomware variant is being introduced daily, thus behavior-based analysis of detecting ransomware attacks is more effective than the traditional static analysis. This paper proposes a multi-variant classification to detect ransomware I/O …

When Ai Moves Downstream, Frances S. Grodzinsky, Keith W. Miller, Marty J. Wolf

School of Computer Science & Engineering Faculty Publications

After computing professionals design, develop, and deploy software, what is their responsibility for subsequent uses of that software “downstream” by others? Furthermore, does it matter ethically if the software in question is considered to be artificial intelligent (AI)? The authors have previously developed a model to explore downstream accountability, called the Software Responsibility Attribution System (SRAS). In this paper, we explore three recent publications relevant to downstream accountability, and focus particularly on examples of AI software. Based on our understanding of the three papers, we suggest refinements of SRAS.

Predicting Suicide Risk Among Youths Using Machine Learning Methods, Saswati Bhattacharjee

Master's Theses

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among youths in the USA. Although machine learning approaches have provided great potential for predicting suicide risk using survey data, prediction accuracy may not meet the need for clinical diagnosis due to the intrinsic characteristics of datasets. In this study, I perform a comparative study of six classification algorithms including naïve Bayes (NB), logistic regression (LR), multilayer perceptron (MLP), AdaBoost (Ada), random forest (RF), and bagging using YRBSS dataset and investigate the effectiveness of several data handling techniques to improve the overall performance of suicide risk prediction.

The dataset consists of 76 …

Blockchain Security: Double-Spending Attack And Prevention, William Henry Scott Iii

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis shows that distributed consensus systems based on proof of work are vulnerable to hashrate-based double-spending attacks due to abuse of majority rule. Through building a private fork of Litecoin and executing a double-spending attack this thesis examines the mechanics and principles behind the attack. This thesis also conducts a survey of preventative measures used to deter double-spending attacks, concluding that a decentralized peer-to-peer network using proof of work is best protected by the addition of an observer system whether internal or external.

Is Realt Reality? Investigating The Use Of Blockchain Technology And Tokenization In Real Estate Transactions, Caroline Moriarty

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

An Investigation On The Resilience Of Long Short-Term Memory Deep Neural Networks, Christopher Vasquez

LSU Master's Theses

In a world of continuously advancing technology, the reliance on these technologies continues to increase. Recently, transformer networks [22] have been implemented through various projects such as ChatGPT. These networks are extremely computationally demanding and require cutting-edge hardware to explore. However, with the growing increase and popularity of these neural networks, a question of reliability and resilience comes about, especially as the dependency and research on these networks grow. Given the computational demand of transformer networks, we investigate the resilience of the weights and biases of the predecessor of these networks, i.e. the Long Short-Term (LSTM) neural network, through four …

Osmosis: Asymmetries In Telematic Performance, Matthias Ziegler

Journal of Network Music and Arts

For the 2022 edition of the NowNet Arts Conference on October 31st, the telematic research team of the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) presented a project entitled OSMOSIS. OSMOSIS was a concert event, highlighting how telematically connected spaces always confront each other asymmetrically. Their telematic connection is part of a continuous space in which information is fragmented and selectively reassembled. Like the biochemical process of osmosis in which molecules diffuse across a cell membrane from one level of concentration to another, in telematic connections certain elements such as sound, physicality, movement, and empathy are diffused across spaces, each being …

Synthesis: Works Of Sarah Weaver And Collaborations (2020-2022), Sarah Weaver

Journal of Network Music and Arts

Synthesis Series is a set of contemplative contemporary network arts works for solo, chamber, and large ensemble performance. The works are my compositions and collaborations from the years 2020 to 2022. The concept of synthesis is conceived as an activation of synchrony. Synthesis Series follows my prior works in Synchrony Series and Source Series as sequences of compositions since 1998 proliferating into a networked system of artistic realization. In Synchrony Series I defined synchrony as the perceptual alignment of distributed time and space components. Synthesis builds on this to activate the alignment as a networked state of composite resultants, networked …

Distributed Networks Of Listening And Sounding: 20 Years Of Telematic Musicking, Doug Van Nort

Journal of Network Music and Arts

This paper traces a twenty-year arc of my performance and compositional practice in the medium of telematic music, focusing on a distinct approach to fostering interdependence and emergence through the integration of listening strategies, electroacoustic improvisation, pre-composed structures, blended real/virtual acoustics, networked mutual-influence, shared signal transformations, gesture-concepts and machine agencies. Communities of collaboration and exchange over this time period are discussed, which span both pre- and post-pandemic approaches to the medium that range from metaphors of immersion and dispersion to diffraction.

An Overview Of Immersive Virtual Reality Music Experiences In Online Platforms, Ben Loveridge

Journal of Network Music and Arts

As the field of Virtual Reality (VR) continues to mature, so too does the potential for creative and immersive musical experiences in the medium. However, of the thousands of applications now available across the major VR platforms, only a small number of titles focus on the ability to create or explore musical content. This article outlines the current state of music games, experiences, and creative applications across the current VR ecosystem. Firstly, it surveys the quantity of commercial titles currently available across the major VR platforms with a music-related focus. Secondly, the article classifies music applications into the following subcategories: …

Musical Time In Network Interaction: The Case Of Unfinished Line, Silvio Ferraz, William Teixeira

Journal of Network Music and Arts

Considering recent world events, art and music could not be unmoved by the dramatic turn of directions in both the way people relate and the place of technology in their lives. An ongoing project of both the authors in writing a new piece for cello and Disklavier operated by interactions in real-time gave place to a new kind of composition, mixing written music to improvisation and replacing real-time for something we are calling remote time. This paper presents such walking of resilience, first reviewing some relevant points of view about musical interaction in real-time and the importance of synchrony for …

The Entanglement: Volumetric Music Performances In A Virtual Metaverse Environment, Damian Dziwis, Henrik Von Coler

Journal of Network Music and Arts

Telematic music performances are an established performance practice in contemporary music. Performing music pieces with geographically distributed musicians is both a technological challenge and an artistic one. These challenges and the resulting possibilities can lead to innovative aesthetic realizations. This paper presents the implementation and realization of “The Entanglement,” a telematic concert performance in a metaverse environment. The system is realized using web-based frameworks to implement a platform-independent online multi-user environment with volumetric, three- dimensional, streaming of audio and video. This allows live performance of this improvisation piece based on an algorithmic quantum computer composition within a freely explorational virtual …

Adventures In [A]Synchrony: Tools And Strategies For The Network Arts-Curious Music Educator, Seth Adams

Journal of Network Music and Arts

Networked Music Performance (NMP) is ensemble music mediated by a network such as the internet. NMP can be usefully divided into asynchronous and synchronous formats. Prototypical examples of the asynchronous format familiar to music educators are Eric Whitacre’s virtual choirs that began in 2009. A decade later, the virtual ensemble format exploded in popularity due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the format does not allow participants to interact with one another, virtual ensembles nonetheless provide ample opportunities for both musical and nonmusical benefits. Synchronous NMP is, by comparison, little known and rarely practiced by music educators. However, both types of …

Editorial, Sarah Weaver

Journal of Network Music and Arts

No abstract provided.

Sensor Module Network For Monitoring Trace Gases In The International Space Station, Aaron Beck, Drake Provost, Christopher English, Kamrin Gustave

Honors Capstones

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) aims to develop a sensor network for the International Space Station (ISS) to ensure a comprehensive understanding of air quality within the station. The accumulation of carbon dioxide (CO­­­­­₂) can lead to cognitive impairment, headaches, and potentially dangerous situations at high concentrations. Monitoring air content at the ISS is critical to maintaining a healthy environment for crew onboard. Exposure to harmful gases causes negative side effects that make crew sick, which may interfere with their responsibilities. CO₂ is a gas that should be monitored …