Engineering Commons^™

Miniature Embedded Module For Prognostic Health Monitoring (Phm) Of Electronic Systems, Liam Moore

Theses

Sensing systems for reliability prognostics are used extensively in life- and mission- critical electronics systems. They allow monitoring of reliability stresses in real time and scheduling of preventative maintenance before system failure. However, reliability prognostics systems are, in general, large and expensive and cannot be used in lower cost, small sized or portable products.

This thesis presents a sensing module for reliability prognostics which is only 1cm in volume and uses only commercial off-the-shelf components. In its 1cm package, the module combines all the necessary elements to act as an embedded prognostic sensor system for multi axial strain, vibration, humidity …

Protection Of Embedded Systems For Applications Involving High Loading Rate Mechanical Forces, Amjad Alsakarneh

Theses

This thesis describes the development of a methodology to optimise the dimensions and mechanical properties of force-absorbing layers surrounding miniaturised embedded electronic modules subject to high mechanical compressive/impact forces and vibration. While much has been published on the mechanical protection of electronic systems in larger scale applications, where traditional mechanical shock absorbers and springs can be used to protect the electronics, little has been published on the mechanical protection of miniature electronic modules embedded in smart structures and materials where traditional methods of mechanical protection are not feasible. The generalised system concept used in this thesis is of module encapsulation …

Ultra Wideband Pulse Shaping, Pawel Rulikowski

Theses

Methods for shaping of sophisticated, transient, ultra wideband (UWB) waveforms and pulses are presented. The methods include novel circuits based on step recovery diodes (SRDs) and quasi-transversal filter concepts but the majority of the work focuses on UWB pulse shaping using completely passive nonuniform transmission lines (NUTLs). It is shown, for the first time, that NUTLs can be used to generate highly sophisticated arbitrary UWB pulse shapes, including modified Hermite polynomial (MHP) and approximate spheroidal wave function (APSWF) pulses which are not known to have been previously generated in practice, and a generalized methodology, verified by experiments, for design of …

Power Cable Fault Finding Using Pseudo Random Binary Sequences, Holger Geisler

Theses

The work that is presented in this thesis documents the results obtained from the pseudo random binary sequence (PRBS) cable testing method which utilises a pseudo noise (pN) sequence as a test stimulus to localise faults on a transmission line. The work targets the proof of concept of the PRBS method in a Coaxial cable as well as its eventual evaluation for fault testing accuracy and performance on a real-world underground steel wired armour (SWA) cable. Further, a novel hardware implementation of the method utilising a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is presented. The theory of the PRBS test method …