Engineering Commons^™

Built-In Return-Oriented Programs In Embedded Systems And Deep Learning For Hardware Trojan Detection, Nathanael R. Weidler

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Microcontrollers and integrated circuits in general have become ubiquitous in the world today. All aspects of our lives depend on them from driving to work, to calling our friends, to checking our bank account balance. People who would do harm to individuals, corporations and nation states are aware of this and for that reason they seek to find or create and exploit vulnerabilities in integrated circuits. This dissertation contains three papers dealing with these types of vulnerabilities. The first paper talks about a vulnerability that was found on a microcontroller, which is a type of integrated circuit. The final two …

Gpu-Accelerated Demodulation For A Satellite Ground Station, Emily Clark Young

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

One consequence of the increasing number of small satellite missions is an increasing demand for high data rate downlinks. As the satellites transmit at high data rates, ground-side receivers need to demodulate the transmitted data as quickly as possible. While application specific hardware can be designed, software defined radio solutions for ground stations are attractive for their flexibility, adaptability, and portability.

Another industry trend is the increasing use of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) in general-purpose processing. By performing many operations simultaneously, GPUs are capable of accelerating processing when given a problem that can be implemented in a parallel manner. Furthermore, …

Energy Management Of Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer Systems For Electric Vehicle Applications, Ahmed N. Azad

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Wireless power transfer is a method of transferring electric power from a transmitter to a receiver without requiring any physical connection between the two. Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer (DWPT) entails having the transmitters buried under the roadway and the receiver unit being installed on the Electric Vehicle (EV). In this method, EVs are charged while driving over the transmitters as they receive bursts of electric energy at the time of significant alignment between transmitters and receivers. Compared to the stationary charging method which involves parking the EV for long hours for a full charge, the dynamic charging method (i.e., DWPT) …

Foreground Removal In A Multi-Camera System, Daniel T. Mortensen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Traditionally, whiteboards have been used to brainstorm, teach, and convey ideas with others. However distributing whiteboard content remotely can be challenging. To solve this problem, A multi-camera system was developed which can be scaled to broadcast an arbitrarily large writing surface while removing objects not related to the whiteboard content. Related research has been performed previously to combine multiple images together, identify and remove unrelated objects, also referred to as foreground, in a single image and correct for warping differences in camera frames. However, this is the first time anyone has attempted to solve this problem using a multi-camera system. …

Toward Reliable, Secure, And Energy-Efficient Multi-Core System Design, Prabal Basu

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Computer hardware researchers have perennially focussed on improving the performance of computers while stipulating the energy consumption under a strict budget. While several innovations over the years have led to high performance and energy efficient computers, more challenges have also emerged as a fallout. For example, smaller transistor devices in modern multi-core systems are afflicted with several reliability and security concerns, which were inconceivable even a decade ago. Tackling these bottlenecks happens to negatively impact the power and performance of the computers. This dissertation explores novel techniques to gracefully solve some of the pressing challenges of the modern computer design. …

Robust Resource Allocation To Secure Physical Layer Using Uav-Assisted Mobile Relay Communications In 5g Technology, Shakil Ahmed

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are also known as drones. Recently, UAVs have attracted the next generation researchers due to their flexible, dynamic, and cost-effective deployment, etc. Moreover, the UAVs have a wide range of application domains, such as rescue operation in the remote area, military surveillance, emergency application, etc. Given the UAVs are appropriately deployed, the UAVs provide continuous and reliable connectivity, on-demand, and cost-effective features to the desired destination in the wireless communication system. Thus, the UAVs can be a great choice to deploy as a mobile relay in co-existence with the base stations (BSs) on the ground …

Generalization Of Signal Point Target Code, Md Munibun Billah

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Detecting and correcting errors occurring in the transmitted data through a channel is a task of great importance in digital communication. In Error Correction Coding (ECC), some redundant data is added with the original data while transmitting. By exploiting the properties of the redundant data, the errors occurring in the data from the transmission can be detected and corrected. In this thesis, a new coding algorithm named Signal Point Target Code has been studied and various properties of the proposed code have been extended.

Signal Point Target Code (SPTC) uses a predefined shape within a given signal constellation to generate …

Edge Caching For Small Cell Networks, Md Ferdous Pervej

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

An idea of storing contents, such as media files, music files, movie clips, etc. is simple yet challenging in terms of required effort to make it count. Some of the benefits of pre-storing the contents are reduced delay of accessing/downloading a content, reduced load to the centralized servers and of course, a higher data rate. However, several challenges need to be addressed to achieve these benefits. Among many, some of the fundamentals are limited storage capacity, storing the right content and minimizing the costs. This thesis aims to address these challenges. First, a framework for predicting the proper contents that …

Design Of Capacitive Wireless Power Transfer Systems With Enhanced Power Density And Stray Field Shielding, Ujjwal Pratik

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Wireless power transfer is becoming relevant today because of its effectiveness and convenience. It has been employed into consumer electronics such as cellular charging and electric vehicle charging. In general, inductive wireless power transfer (IPT) is mostly used for WPT. IPT requires coils and power transfer enhancing material such as ferrite to transfer power. However, Capacitive wireless Power Transfer (CPT) appears as an alternative because it requires cost effective and light metal plate couplers. Among CPT couplers, Vertical (stacked) Four-Plate Coupler (V4PC) structure offers the advantage of higher input and output self-capacitances, rotational misalignment.

Safety is one of the most …

Radiation Pattern Reconfigurable Horn Antenna Based On Parasitic Layer Concept, Mehmet Tanagardi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In recent years, multi-functional reconfigurable antennas (MRA) has attracted much attention in wireless communication. The reconfigurable antenna can adapt itself with changing system conditions, and it can provide different multi-functionalities which can give better system performances. Instead of using multiple antennas, a single reconfigurable antenna can provide the same performance and occupy less space. By using the parasitic layer technique, an antenna can be turned into a reconfigurable antenna. The main objective of this thesis is to study radiation pattern reconfiguration of the horn antenna by using the parasitic layer concept. The MRA consists of a single horn, dielectric loaded …

Full-Pose Estimation And Tracking Control For A Multi-Rotor Aircraft Package Exchange, Trent P. Smith

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In this work, research to develop algorithms for a package exchange maneuver between two quad-rotor aircraft is presented. First, the development of tools used for this research is discussed. Second, a controller is designed that synchronizes the flight paths and motion of two quad-rotor robots. The controller is used to guide a designated follower quad-rotor to follow a leader aircraft’s position and orientation. The follower aircraft is equipped with a simple mechanical manipulator to compensate for limitations in the aircrafts maneuverability. finally, a sensor architecture study for relative navigation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) is presented. The architecture study presents …

Spectral, Energy And Computation Efficiency In Future 5g Wireless Networks, Haijian Sun

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Wireless technology has revolutionized the way people communicate. From first generation, or 1G, in the 1980s to current, largely deployed 4G in the 2010s, we have witnessed not only a technological leap, but also the reformation of associated applications. It is expected that 5G will become commercially available in 2020. 5G is driven by ever-increasing demands for high mobile traffic, low transmission delay, and massive numbers of connected devices. Today, with the popularity of smart phones, intelligent appliances, autonomous cars, and tablets, communication demands are higher than ever, especially when it comes to low-cost and easy-access solutions.

Existing communication architecture …

Statistical Analysis Of A Channel Emulator For Noisy Gradient Descent Low Density Parity Check Decoder, Rakin Muhammad Shadab

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of a channel emulator is to emulate a communication channel in real-life use case scenario. These emulators are often used in the domains of research in digital and wireless communication. One such area is error correction coding, where transmitted data bits over a channel are decoded and corrected to prevent data loss. A channel emulator that does not follow the properties of the channel it is intended to replicate can lead to mistakes while analyzing the performance of an error-correcting decoder. Hence, it is crucial to validate an emulator for a particular communication channel. This work delves into …

Investigation Of Graphene Interconnections For Multifunctional Reconfigurable Antenna Beam Steering, Joshua R. Perkins

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In high frequency, high-performance wireless communications, direct line of sight antennas are common. The issue with the line of sight antennas is the need to redirect the physical antenna to achieve the best possible reception. Classical redirections are done by mechanical movements: hand tuning and motors. Our multi-functional re-configurable antenna (MRA) concept allows for electrical and non-mechanical antenna reorientation. This work investigates two important concepts in the development and enhancement of future MRA devices: special, non-interfering, control signal circuitry and nano-sized switching devices that are controlled by the special circuitry. The investigation was conducted with the use of commercially available …

Stamina: Stochastic Approximate Model-Checker For Infinite-State Analysis, Thackur Neupane, Chris J. Myers, Curtis Madsen, Hao Zheng, Zhen Zhang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Stochastic model checking is a technique for analyzing systems that possess probabilistic characteristics. However, its scalability is limited as probabilistic models of real-world applications typically have very large or infinite state space. This paper presents a new infinite state CTMC model checker, STAMINA, with improved scalability. It uses a novel state space approximation method to reduce large and possibly infinite state CTMC models to finite state representations that are amenable to existing stochastic model checkers. It is integrated with a new property-guided state expansion approach that improves the analysis accuracy. Demonstration of the tool on several benchmark examples shows promising …

Approximation Techniques For Stochastic Analysis Of Biological Systems, Thakur Neupane, Zhen Zhang, Curtis Madsen, Hao Zheng, Chris J. Myers

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

There has been an increasing demand for formal methods in the design process of safety-critical synthetic genetic circuits. Probabilistic model checking techniques have demonstrated significant potential in analyzing the intrinsic probabilistic behaviors of complex genetic circuit designs. However, its inability to scale limits its applicability in practice. This chapter addresses the scalability problem by presenting a state-space approximation method to remove unlikely states resulting in a reduced, finite state representation of the infinite-state continuous-time Markov chain that is amenable to probabilistic model checking. The proposed method is evaluated on a design of a genetic toggle switch. Comparisons with another state-of-the-art …

Exploration Vs. Data Refinement Via Multiple Mobile Sensors, Mohammad Shekaramiz, Todd K. Moon, Jacob H. Gunther

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We examine the deployment of multiple mobile sensors to explore an unknown region to map regions containing concentration of a physical quantity such as heat, electron density, and so on. The exploration trades off between two desiderata: to continue taking data in a region known to contain the quantity of interest with the intent of refining the measurements vs. taking data in unobserved areas to attempt to discover new regions where the quantity may exist. Making reasonable and practical decisions to simultaneously fulfill both goals of exploration and data refinement seem to be hard and contradictory. For this purpose, we …

Energy Efficient Network-On-Chip Architectures For Many-Core Near-Threshold Computing System, Chidhambaranathan Rajamanikkam, Jayashankara S. Rajesh, Koushik Chakraborty, Meher Samineni

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Near threshold computing has unraveled a promising design space for energy efficient computing. However, it is still plagued by sub-optimal system performance. Application characteristics and hardware non-idealities of conventional architectures (those optimized for nominal voltage) prevent us from fully leveraging the potential of NTC systems. Increasing the computational core count still forms the bedrock of a multitude of contemporary works that address the problem of performance degradation in NTC systems. However, these works do not categorically address the shortcomings of the conventional on-chip interconnect fabric in a many core environment. In this work, we quantitatively demonstrate the performance bottleneck created …

A Swimming Open-Water Navigation Assistive Headset And Receiver, Zakk B. Rhodes

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Open water swimming is a common activity dating back to ancient times. One challenge with open water swimming is navigation because while maintaining proper swimming technique suggests the head be in the water, it is difficult to see where one is going. Thus swimmers must bring their head out of the water periodically to sight landmarks. This work describes a solution to this problem by a design for a GPS device to assist swimmers with navigation. The swimmer can plan their own route, send it to the device, and then be guided by the device. They then will not have …

Security Of Vehicular Platooning, Soodeh Dadras

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Platooning concept involves a group of vehicles acting as a single unit through coordination of movements. While Platooning as an evolving trend in mobility and transportation diminishes the individual and manual driving concerns, it creates new risks. New technologies and passenger’s safety and security further complicate matters and make platooning attractive target for the malicious minds. To improve the security of the vehicular platooning, threats and their potential impacts on vehicular platooning should be identified to protect the system against security risks. Furthermore, algorithms should be proposed to detect intrusions and mitigate the effects in case of attack. This dissertation …

Error-Floors Of The 802.3an Ldpc Code For Noise Assisted Decoding, Tasnuva Tarannum Tithi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In digital communication, information is sent as bits, which is corrupted by the noise present in wired/wireless medium known as the channel. The Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes are a family of error correction codes used in communication systems to detect and correct erroneous data at the receiver. Data is encoded with error correction coding at the transmitter and decoded at the receiver. The Noisy Gradient Descent BitFlip (NGDBF) decoding algorithm is a new algorithm with excellent decoding performance with relatively low implementation requirements. This dissertation aims to characterize the performance of the NGDBF algorithm. A simple improvement over …

Stochastic Geometry Based Performance Study In 5g Wireless Networks, Zekun Zhang

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As the complexity of modern cellular networks continuously increases along with the evolution of technologies and the quick explosion of mobile data traffic, conventional large scale system level simulations and analytical tools become either too complicated or less tractable and accurate. Therefore, novel analytical models are actively pursued. In recent years, stochastic geometry models have been recognized as powerful tools to analyze the key performance metrics of cellular networks. In this dissertation, stochastic geometry based analytical models are developed to analyze the performance of some key technologies proposed for 5G mobile networks. Particularly, Device-to-Device (D2D) communication, Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), …

Emerging Security Threats In Modern Digital Computing Systems: A Power Management Perspective, Rajesh Jayashankara Shridevi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Design of computing systems — from pocket-sized smart phones to massive cloud based data-centers — have one common daunting challenge : minimizing the power consumption. In this effort, power management sector is undergoing a rapid and profound transformation to promote clean and energy proportional computing. At the hardware end of system design, there is proliferation of specialized, feature rich and complex power management hardware components. Similarly, in the software design layer complex power management suites are growing rapidly. Concurrent to this development, there has been an upsurge in the integration of third-party components to counter the pressures of shorter time-to-market. …

Revamping Timing Error Resilience To Tackle Choke Points At Ntc, Aatreyi Bal

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The growing market of portable devices and smart wearables has contributed to innovation and development of systems with longer battery-life. While Near Threshold Computing (NTC) systems address the need for longer battery-life, they have certain limitations. NTC systems are prone to be significantly affected by variations in the fabrication process, commonly called process variation (PV). This dissertation explores an intriguing effect of PV, called choke points. Choke points are especially important due to their multifarious influence on the functional correctness of an NTC system. This work shows why novel research is required in this direction and proposes two techniques to …

Reducing Road Wear While Ensuring Comfort And Charging Constraints For Dynamically Charged Passenger Vehicles Through Noise Shaped Control Inputs, Clint Jay Ferrin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Dynamically charged vehicles suffer from power-loss during wireless power transfer due to vehicle coil misalignment while driving. Autonomous dynamically charged vehicles can maximize wireless power transfer by following an optimal charging path, but the repeated precision increases road wear. To avoid unnecessary road wear and rutting, a path planner can intentionally inject variability into an autonomous vehicle’s path. However, introducing variability into an optimal charging path risks depleting battery life prior to destination arrival, and it increases rider discomfort. Therefore, a path planner is proposed that guarantees average charging criteria and ensures rider comfort while reducing road wear.

Understanding Security Threats Of Emerging Computing Architectures And Mitigating Performance Bottlenecks Of On-Chip Interconnects In Manycore Ntc System, Chidhambaranathan Rajamanikkam

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Emerging computing architectures such as, neuromorphic computing and third party intellectual property (3PIP) cores, have attracted significant attention in the recent past. Neuromorphic Computing introduces an unorthodox non-von neumann architecture that mimics the abstract behavior of neuron activity of the human brain. They can execute more complex applications, such as image processing, object recognition, more efficiently in terms of performance and energy than the traditional microprocessors. However, focus on the hardware security aspects of the neuromorphic computing at its nascent stage. 3PIP core, on the other hand, have covertly inserted malicious functional behavior that can inflict range of harms at …

Details On Csa-Sbl: An Algorithm For Sparse Bayesian Learning Boosted By Partial Erroneous Support Knowledge, Mohammad Shekaramiz, Todd K. Moon, Jacob H. Gunther

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

This report provides details on CSA-SBL(VB) algorithm for the recovery of sparse signals with unknown clustering pattern. More specifically, we deal with the recovery of sparse signals with unknown clustering pattern in the case of having partial erroneous prior knowledge on the supports of the signal. In [1], we provided a modified sparse Bayesian learning model to incorporate prior knowledge and simultaneously learn the unknown clustering pattern. For this purpose, we added one more layer to support-aided sparse Bayesian learning algorithm (SA-SBL) that was proposed in [2]. This layer adds a prior on the shape parameters of Gamma distributions, those …

Bayesian Compressive Sensing Of Sparse Signals With Unknown Clustering Patterns, Mohammad Shekaramiz, Todd K. Moon, Jacob H. Gunther

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We consider the sparse recovery problem of signals with an unknown clustering pattern in the context of multiple measurement vectors (MMVs) using the compressive sensing (CS) technique. For many MMVs in practice, the solution matrix exhibits some sort of clustered sparsity pattern, or clumpy behavior, along each column, as well as joint sparsity across the columns. In this paper, we propose a new sparse Bayesian learning (SBL) method that incorporates a total variation-like prior as a measure of the overall clustering pattern in the solution. We further incorporate a parameter in this prior to account for the emphasis on the …

Extensive Review On Laminated Bus Bar For Low And High Power Applications, Prashant B. T. Singh, Phaneendra Babu Bobba, K. Suresh, Benny J. Varghese

Electrical and Computer Engineering Student Research

This paper explains about wide range of applications for Laminated Bus Bar used for high and low power applications. Authors also explains ways to effective utilize laminated bus bar when compared to conventional bus bar. Laminated bus bars are designed with low stray inductance and high capacitance with a uniform current distribution in conducting plate. Parameters like Length, Width, material thickness and other miscellaneous parameters effect Laminated bus bar performance. With a proper design of Laminated bus bar it can best utilized, laminated bus bar are suitable for many low and high power applications which are discussed in this paper. …

Details On O-Sbl(Mcmc): A Compressive Sensing Algorithm For Sparse Signal Recovery For The Smv/Mmv Problem Using Sparse Bayesian Learning And Markov Chain Monte Carlo Inference, Mohammad Shekaramiz, Todd K. Moon, Jacob H. Gunther

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

This report provides details on O-SBL(MCMC) algorithm for the recovery of jointly-sparse signals for the multiple measurement vector (MMV) problem. For the MMVs with this structure, the solution matrix, which is a collection of sparse vectors, is expected to exhibit joint sparsity across the columns. The notion of joint sparsity here means that the columns of the solution matrix share common supports. This algorithm employs a sparse Bayesian learning (SBL) model to encourage the joint sparsity structure across the columns of the solution. While the proposed algorithm is constructed for the MMV problems, it can also be applied to the …