Engineering Commons^™

Machine Learning For Intrusion Detection Into Unmanned Aerial System 6g Networks, Faisal Alrefaei

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Progress in the development of wireless network technology has played a crucial role in the evolution of societies and provided remarkable services over the past decades. It remotely offers the ability to execute critical missions and effective services that meet the user's needs. This advanced technology integrates cyber and physical layers to form cyber-physical systems (CPS), such as the Unmanned Aerial System (UAS), which consists of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), ground network infrastructure, communication link, etc. Furthermore, it plays a crucial role in connecting objects to create and develop the Internet of Things (IoT) technology. Therefore, the emergence of …

Optimization Of Human Interactions In The College Campus Model Via Simio Integration, Benjamin E. Chaback

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

College campuses are a significant part of life in some cities. Many students each year attend university, pursuing additional knowledge from faculty members. Both staff and faculty members rely on these students to have successful jobs and to ensure the university functions. Yet recently, more and more students are attending, leading to overcrowding, lower admission rates, and difficulty getting into good programs. Previous work exists on qualitative student affairs and quantitative retention data, yet little on using simulations to model this problem. This work aimed to (a) Determine the ability to successfully model human interactions/people flow on a college campus, …

State Omniscience For Cooperative Local Catalog Maintenance Of Close Proximity Satellite Systems, Chris Hays

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Resiliency in multi-agent system navigation is reliant on the inherent ability of the system to withstand, overcome, or recover from adverse conditions and disturbances. In large part, resiliency is achieved through reducing the impact of critical failure points to the success and/or performance of the system. In this view, decentralized multi-agent architectures have become an attractive solution for multi-agent navigation, but decentralized architectures place the burden of information acquisition directly on the agents themselves. In fact, the design of distributed estimators has been a growing interest to enable complex multi-sensor/multi-agent tasks. In such scenarios, it is important that each local …

Low Cost Magnetometer Calibration And Distributed Simultaneous Multipoint Ionospheric Measurements From A Sounding Rocket Platform, Joshua W. Milford

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Low-cost and low-size-weight-and-power (SWaP) magnetometers can provide greater accessibility for distributed simultaneous measurements in the ionosphere, either onboard sounding rockets or on CubeSats. The Space and Atmospheric Instrumentation Laboratory (SAIL) at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has launched a multitude of sounding rockets in recent history: one night-time mid-latitude rocket from Wallops Flight Facility in August 2022 and three mid-latitude rockets from White Sands Missile Range during the October 2023 annular solar eclipse. All rockets had a comprehensive suite of instruments for electrodynamics and neutral dynamics measurements. Among this suite was one science-grade three-axis fluxgate magnetometer (Billingsley TFM65VQS / TFM100G2) and up …

Spoken Language Processing And Modeling For Aviation Communications, Aaron Van De Brook

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

With recent advances in machine learning and deep learning technologies and the creation of larger aviation-specific corpora, applying natural language processing technologies, especially those based on transformer neural networks, to aviation communications is becoming increasingly feasible. Previous work has focused on machine learning applications to natural language processing, such as N-grams and word lattices. This thesis experiments with a process for pretraining transformer-based language models on aviation English corpora and compare the effectiveness and performance of language models transfer learned from pretrained checkpoints and those trained from their base weight initializations (trained from scratch). The results suggest that transformer language …

Resilience Model For Teams Of Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Uav) Executing Surveillance Missions, Robert Koeneke

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Teams of low-cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have gained acceptance as an alternative for cooperatively searching and surveilling terrains. These UAVs are assembled with low-reliability components, so unit failures are possible. Losing UAVs to failures decreases the team's coverage efficiency and impacts communication, given that UAVs are also communication nodes. Such is the case of a Flying Ad Hoc Network (FANET), where the failure of a communication node may isolate segments of the network covering several nodes. The main goal of this study is to develop a resilience model that would allow us to analyze the effects of individual UAV …

On-Board Artificial Intelligence For Failure Detection And Safe Trajectory Generation, Eduardo Morillo

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The use of autonomous flight vehicles has recently increased due to their versatility and capability of carrying out different type of missions in a wide range of flight conditions. Adequate commanded trajectory generation and modification, as well as high-performance trajectory tracking control laws have been an essential focus of researchers given that integration into the National Air Space (NAS) is becoming a primary need. However, the operational safety of these systems can be easily affected if abnormal flight conditions are present, thereby compromising the nominal bounds of design of the system's flight envelop and trajectory following. This thesis focuses on …

Wireless Coupled Feed Structure For Additively Manufactured Conformal Antennas, Blake Roberts

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Due to advancements in additive manufacturing, it is possible to create electromagnetic devices that can be conformally printed directly onto 3D surfaces using conductive inks and dielectric pastes. Instance, the traditional antenna radomes that had the purpose of protecting the antenna on its inside can now become the antenna itself. With the components on the surface of the structure, instead of inside if it, a direct feed line would require cutting through dielectric layers and creating a direct electrical connection, also called vertical interconnect access (VIA). Such interconnects are frequent sources of failures, especially in applications that are subject to …

Hardware Security For Wireless Communications Systems Using Antenna-Based Radio Frequency Fingerprint Engineering, Noemi Miguelez Gomez

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The design and application of novel physical-layer security techniques have been increasing in the last decades as means to enhance the security that more traditional techniques provide to wireless communications systems. Well-known hardware security techniques, such as radio frequency fingerprinting, use unintended manufacturing process variations and unique hardware structures in the semiconductors for applications such as identification and classification of the source of different transmitted signals, and detection of hardware modifications. The uniqueness of the features that two different modules present, even maintaining the same design, can be used for modules characterization at a lower cost and complexity than other …

A Design Flow For Additively Manufactured 3d Metasurface Antennas​, Justin Parkhurst

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Metasurface (MTS) antennas are complex arrays consisting of hundreds or thousands of individual elements that each exert their own influence on the performance of the antenna. Due to this, the process of designing and developing a MTS antenna can be intensive in terms of both the time to understand the how these antennas operate and time running calculations that achieve optimal performance. Through the use of automation for geometry creation in ANSYS HFSS, the work involved in making a MTS antenna can be greatly simplified. The overall objective of this thesis is to reduce the burden of constructing a MTS …

Advanced Manufacturing And Dielectric Material Characterization Techniques For High-Temperature Mm-Wave Antennas, Seng Loong Yu

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

As traditional monitoring data sensors in high temperature environments such as gas turbine engines and aerospace applications are being replaced by wireless equivalents in recent years, there is a need for low-cost, low-time, and low-infrastructure alternatives to further push the state of the art. In this work, two aspects of high temperature materials in the above context are explored: (a) the development of advanced manufacturing techniques for high temperature materials that is lowcost, low-time, and low-infrastructure, and (b) the development of material characterization techniques that can be integrated with the manufacturing processes of high temperature materials. Additive manufacturing has been …

Design, Development, And Calibration Of An Electric Field Probe For Use On Sounding Rockets, Anthony Oreo

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Earth’s ionosphere is a dynamic environment that has yet to be fully understood. Interactions of high-energy particles from space with atmospheric plasma and the Earth’s natural magnetic field create many interesting interactions, many of which have direct impacts on the planet and human life. Understanding the dynamics of the upper atmosphere is a compelling endeavor, with much of the research being conducted through high-altitude sounding rockets. These rockets allow for in-situ measurements of the physical parameters of the upper atmosphere which in turn helps in the answering of important questions in space science. In order to quantify the force a …

Airspace Integration Of New Entrants And Safety Risk Management Models, Fadjimata Issoufou Anaroua

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

In recent years, the demand for airspace access of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) increased significantly and is continuously increasing for different altitude-types UAS. A similar evolution is expected from Commercial Space Operations (CSO) in the next years. These aviation/aerospace systems will need to be seamlessly integrated into the National Airspace System (NAS), at their operational altitude levels, and accounted for from all perspectives, including proactively addressing their safety hazards. This thesis captures the requirements for the new entrants’ integration, and then identifies and analyzes the safety risks added to the NAS operations by its new entrants, the future omnipresent UAS …

Machine Learning For Unmanned Aerial System (Uas) Networking, Jian Wang

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Fueled by the advancement of 5G new radio (5G NR), rapid development has occurred in many fields. Compared with the conventional approaches, beamforming and network slicing enable 5G NR to have ten times decrease in latency, connection density, and experienced throughput than 4G long term evolution (4G LTE). These advantages pave the way for the evolution of Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) on a large scale. The reduction of consumption, the advancement of control engineering, and the simplification of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) enable the UAS networking deployment on a large scale to become feasible. The UAS networking can finish multiple complex …

Rf Fingerprinting Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Norah Ondus

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

As unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) continue to become more readily available, their use in civil, military, and commercial applications is growing significantly. From aerial surveillance to search-and-rescue to package delivery the use cases of UAVs are accelerating. This accelerating popularity gives rise to numerous attack possibilities for example impersonation attacks in drone-based delivery, in a UAV swarm, etc. In order to ensure drone security, in this project we propose an authentication system based on RF fingerprinting. Specifically, we extract and use the device-specific hardware impairments embedded in the transmitted RF signal to separate the identity of each UAV. To achieve …

Real-Time Machine Learning For Quickest Detection, Yongxin Liu

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Safety-critical Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) require real-time machine learning for control and decision making. One promising solution is to use deep learning to discover useful patterns for event detection from heterogeneous data. However, deep learning algorithms encounter challenges in CPS with assurability requirements: 1) Decision explainability, 2) Real-time and quickest event detection, and 3) Time-eficient incremental learning.

To address these obstacles, I developed a real-time Machine Learning Framework for Quickest Detection (MLQD). To be specific, I first propose the zero-bias neural network, which removes decision bias and preferabilities from regular neural networks and provides an interpretable decision process. Second, I discover …

Thruster Communication For Subsurface Environments; Turning Waste Noise Into Useful Data, Stephen Cronin

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Acoustic communication serves as one of the primary means of wirelessly communicating underwater. Whereas much of the developments in the field of wireless communication have focused on radio frequency technology, water highly absorbs radio waves rendering the link not feasible for most all subsurface operations. While acoustic links have enabled new capabilities for systems operating in this challenging environment, it has yet to reach the commodity availability of radio systems, meaning that an entire class of small, low-cost systems have been unable to make use of these links. The systems in question are primarily autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), as they …

A Framework To Detect The Susceptibility Of Employees To Social Engineering Attacks, Hashim H. Alneami

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Social engineering attacks (SE-attacks) in enterprises are hastily growing and are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Generally, SE-attacks involve the psychological manipulation of employees into revealing confidential and valuable company data to cybercriminals. The ramifications could bring devastating financial and irreparable reputation loss to the companies. Because SE-attacks involve a human element, preventing these attacks can be tricky and challenging and has become a topic of interest for many researchers and security experts. While methods exist for detecting SE-attacks, our literature review of existing methods identified many crucial factors such as the national cultural, organizational, and personality traits of employees that enable …

Data-Efficient Machine Learning With Focus On Transfer Learning, Shuteng Niu

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Machine learning (ML) has attracted a significant amount of attention from the artifi- cial intelligence community. ML has shown state-of-art performance in various fields, such as signal processing, healthcare system, and natural language processing (NLP). However, most conventional ML algorithms suffer from three significant difficulties: 1) insufficient high-quality training data, 2) costly training process, and 3) domain dis- crepancy. Therefore, it is important to develop solutions for these problems, so the future of ML will be more sustainable. Recently, a new concept, data-efficient ma- chine learning (DEML), has been proposed to deal with the current bottlenecks of ML. Moreover, transfer …

Scenario-Based Development And Verification Of Domain-Specific Languages, Bharvi Chhaya

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The use of domain-specific languages (DSLs) has increased manifold for problem solving in specific domain areas as they allow for a wider variety of expressions within their domain. Modeling using DSLs has shown high increases in productivity after accounting for the time and cost expended in developing them, making them a suitable target for improvement in order to reap higher rewards. The currently used approach for domain modeling involves the creation of an ontology which is then used to describe the domain model. This ontology encapsulates all domain knowledge and can be cumbersome to create, requiring external sources of information …

Drones Detection Using Smart Sensors, Aishah Moafa

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Drones are modern and sophisticated technology that have been used in numerous fields. Nowadays, many countries use them in exploration, reconnaissance operations, and espionage in military operations. Drones also have many uses that are not limited to only daily life. For example, drones are used for home delivery, safety monitoring, and others. However, the use of drones is a double-edged sword. Drones can be used for positive purposes to improve the quality of human lives, but they can also be used for criminal purposes and other detrimental purposes. In fact, many countries have been attacked by terrorists using smart drones. …

Close Formation Flight Missions Using Vision-Based Position Detection System, Ashok Sarath Chandra Reddy Irigireddy

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

In this thesis, a formation flight architecture is described along with the implementation and evaluation of a state-of-the-art vision-based algorithm for solving the problem of estimating and tracking a leader vehicle within a close-formation configuration. A vision-based algorithm that uses Darknet architecture and a formation flight control law to track and follow a leader with desired clearance in forward, lateral directions are developed and implemented. The architecture is run on a flight computer that handles the process in real-time while integrating navigation sensors and a stereo camera. Numerical simulations along with indoor and outdoor actual flight tests demonstrate the capabilities …

Efficient Privacy-Aware Imagery Data Analysis, Yifan Tian

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The widespread use of smartphones and camera-coupled Internet of Thing (IoT) devices triggers an explosive growth of imagery data. To extract and process the rich contents contained in imagery data, various image analysis techniques have been investigated and applied to a spectrum of application scenarios. In recent years, breakthroughs in deep learning have powered a new revolution for image analysis in terms of effectiveness with high resource consumption. Given the fact that most smartphones and IoT devices have limited computational capability and battery life, they are not ready for the processing of computational intensive analytics over imagery data collected by …

Design And Performance Of A Communications System For A Low-Cost High Altitude Balloon Platform For Troposphere And Stratosphere Research, Noemí Miguélez Gómez

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

AFOSR Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI), "Integrated Measurement and Modeling Characterization of Stratospheric Turbulence", is a 5-year effort to resolve significant operational issues concerning hypersonic vehicle aerothermodynamics, boundary layer stability, and aero-optical propagation. In situ turbulence measurements along with modeling will quantify spatiotemporal statistics and the dependence of stratospheric turbulence on underlying meteorology to a degree not previously possible. Data from high altitude balloons sampling up to kHz is required to characterize turbulence to the inner-scale, or smaller, over paltitudes from 20 km to 35+ km.

This thesis presents the development of a standard balloon bus, based on reliable COTS …

A Remote Observatory For Geocoronal Hydrogen Emissions, Margaret A. Gallant

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The Investigating Near Space Interaction Regions (INSpIRe) observatory is an adapt- able research facility that is designed to use Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) to study the faint Balmer series emissions of the terrestrial upper thermosphere and exosphere, collectively known as the geocorona. This instrumentation is designed to be deployable to a clear-air site, necessitating remote operations of the entire observatory, including control and monitoring. The facility currently employs a siderostat to allow for pointing at sky targets, a pressure-tuned dual-etalon FPI to allow for high spectral resolution (R_80,000) measurements, and several charge-coupled device (CCD) imagers for guiding and collecting data. The …

A Gps Signal Generator Using A Roach Fpga Board, Kurt L. Pedrosa

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

A Global Positioning System (GPS) signal simulator is a valuable testing tool. It allows for testing of GPS receivers, systems, and anti-spoofing algorithms. With the increased popularity of software defined radios (SDRs) merging GPS signal simulators and SDRs is a natural choice. A detailed review of the construction of a GPS signal generator using the ROACH processing board is presented herein. The ROACH, developed by the Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research (CASPER) team, is a processing board that can be configure to function as a SDR. In this research, the ROACH was transformed to function as a …

Time-Modulated Array Testbed Prototype For Multibeam Spectrometry, Addison J. Ford

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The radio spectrum is becoming increasingly crowded. Researchers are putting efforts into finding ways to increase spectrum utilization. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is funding research to study various methods to improve utilization of the spectrum and reduce the influence of interference. In the Radar & Microwaves Laboratory at Embry-Riddle, research is being conducted for the applications of passive radar and radio astronomy. As interference is a major threat to both of these applications, interference mitigation is a requirement. More commonly, antenna arrays are used for research in both applications as they can improve performance and reduce cost.

The focus …

Robust Optimization And Groundwork For Problem Mapping, Leo Austin Ghelarducci

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Goals of this research were to develop a conceptual algorithm that can optimize execution time for generating a solution set and demonstrate that a solution set of one sub-problem can be applied to another sub-problem within the same problem set. To achieve the proposed goals, GloPro was developed to generate rule sets for different sub-problems within a problem set, as well as identifying which rule sets are to be utilized for a given instance of the problem. The algorithm was to be robust, as to be applicable to a wide array of problems without radical re-design per problem. This idea …

Electrical Optimization Of A Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle, Andre J. Napier

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Hybrid electric vehicles electrification and optimization is a prominent part of today’s automotive industry. GM and the Department of Energy challenge 16 universities across North America to redesign a Chevrolet Camaro into a hybrid electric vehicle. This thesis will address how Embry Riddle Aeronautical University’s EcoCAR team electrified and optimized the vehicle. The objective of the thesis is to optimize the electric portion of the vehicle, particularly the low voltage circuitry. Prior work is discussed in detail on the vehicle communication bus, building the power distribution unit and the approach the electrical team took when building the electric portion of …

Application Of Neural Networks To Acoustic Localization, Stephen Cronin

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The intent of the work conducted was to build a neural network for the purposes of acoustic localization. The target of this localization is a sound source underwater. For our purposes, it is an acoustic pinger, as it produces consistent sound at a fixed rate making it ideal for testing. The network was intended to ingest raw data streams and output location information based on the arrangement of sensors employed. To achieve an accurate network, a simulation factoring in the environment was to be created to produce a data set large and diverse enough to describe the unique parameters of …