Engineering Commons^™

Multispectral Imaging For Face Recognition Over Varying Illumination, Hong Chang

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the advantage of using multispectral narrow-band images over conventional broad-band images for improved face recognition under varying illumination. To verify the effectiveness of multispectral images for improving face recognition performance, three sequential procedures are taken into action: multispectral face image acquisition, image fusion for multispectral and spectral band selection to remove information redundancy.

Several efficient image fusion algorithms are proposed and conducted on spectral narrow-band face images in comparison to conventional images. Physics-based weighted fusion and illumination adjustment fusion make good use of spectral information in multispectral imaging process. The results demonstrate that fused narrow-band images outperform …

Modeling Of Algan/Gan High Electron Mobility Transistor For Sensors And High-Temperature Circuit Applications, Sazia Afreen Eliza

Doctoral Dissertations

With the most advanced and mature technology for electronic devices, silicon (Si) based devices can be processed with practically no material defects. However, Si technology has difficulty meeting the demand for some high-power, high-speed, and high-temperature applications due to limitations in its intrinsic properties. Wide bandgap semiconductors have greater prospects compared to Si based devices. The wide band gap material system shows higher breakdown voltage, lower leakage, higher saturation velocity, larger thermal conductivity and better thermal stability suitable for high-power, high-speed, and high-temperature operations of the devices. In recent years, GaN based devices have drawn much research attention due to …

Uncertainty Minimization In Robotic 3d Mapping Systems Operating In Dynamic Large-Scale Environments, Sreenivas Rangan Sukumar

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation research is motivated by the potential and promise of 3D sensing technologies in safety and security applications. With specific focus on unmanned robotic mapping to aid clean-up of hazardous environments, under-vehicle inspection, automatic runway/pavement inspection and modeling of urban environments, we develop modular, multi-sensor, multi-modality robotic 3D imaging prototypes using localization/navigation hardware, laser range scanners and video cameras.

While deploying our multi-modality complementary approach to pose and structure recovery in dynamic real-world operating conditions, we observe several data fusion issues that state-of-the-art methodologies are not able to handle. Different bounds on the noise model of heterogeneous sensors, the …

Investigation Of Propagation Characteristics Of Twisted Hollow Waveguides For Particle Accelerator Applications, Joshua Lee Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

A new class of accelerating structures employing a uniformly twisted waveguide is investigated. Twisted waveguides of various cross-sectional geometries are considered and analyzed. It is shown that such a twisted waveguide can support waves that travel at a speed slower than the speed of light c. The slow-wave properties of twisted structures are of interest because these slow-wave electromagnetic fields can be used in applications such as electron traveling wave tubes and linear particle accelerators.

Since there is no exact closed form solution for the electromagnetic fields within a twisted waveguide or cavity, several previously proposed approximate methods are examined, …

System-On-Package Low-Power Telemetry And Signal Conditioning Unit For Biomedical Applications, Mohammad Rafiqul Haider

Doctoral Dissertations

Recent advancements in healthcare monitoring equipments and wireless communication technologies have led to the integration of specialized medical technology with the pervasive wireless networks. Intensive research has been focused on the development of medical wireless networks (MWN) for telemedicine and smart home care services. Wireless technology also shows potential promises in surgical applications. Unlike conventional surgery, an expert surgeon can perform the surgery from a remote location using robot manipulators and monitor the status of the real surgery through wireless communication link. To provide this service each surgical tool must be facilitated with smart electronics to accrue data and transmit …

Hardware Development Of An Ultra-Wideband System For High Precision Localization Applications, Cemin Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

A precise localization system in an indoor environment has been developed. The developed system is based on transmitting and receiving picosecond pulses and carrying out a complete narrow-pulse, signal detection and processing scheme in the time domain. The challenges in developing such a system include: generating ultra wideband (UWB) pulses, pulse dispersion due to antennas, modeling of complex propagation channels with severe multipath effects, need for extremely high sampling rates for digital processing, synchronization between the tag and receivers’ clocks, clock jitter, local oscillator (LO) phase noise, frequency offset between tag and receivers’ LOs, and antenna phase center variation. For …

Mrf Stereo Matching With Statistical Estimation Of Parameters, Mohammad Shafikul Huq

Doctoral Dissertations

For about the last ten years, stereo matching in computer vision has been treated as a combinatorial optimization problem. Assuming that the points in stereo images form a Markov Random Field (MRF), a variety of combinatorial optimization algorithms has been developed to optimize their underlying cost functions. In many of these algorithms, the MRF parameters of the cost functions have often been manually tuned or heuristically determined for achieving good performance results. Recently, several algorithms for statistical, hence, automatic estimation of the parameters have been published. Overall, these algorithms perform well in labeling, but they lack in performance for handling …

Stochastic Modeling And Estimation Of Wireless Channels With Application To Ultra Wide Band Systems, Yanyan Li

Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis is concerned with modeling of both space and time variations of Ultra Wide Band (UWB) indoor channels. The most common empirically determined amplitude distribution in many UWB environments is Nakagami distribution. The latter is generalized to stochastic diffusion processes which capture the dynamics of UWB channels. In contrast with the traditional models, the statistics of the proposed models are shown to be time varying, but converge in steady state to their static counterparts.

System identification algorithms are used to extract various channel parameters using received signal measurement data, which are usually available at the receiver. The expectation maximization …

Imaging Of Buried Utilities By Ultra Wideband Sensory Systems, Arun Prakash Jaganathan

Doctoral Dissertations

Third-party damage to the buried infrastructure like natural gas pipelines, water distribution pipelines and fiber optic cables are estimated at $10 billion annually across the US. Also, the needed investment in upgrading our water and wastewater infrastructure over the next 20 years is estimated by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at $400 billion, however, non-destructive condition assessment technologies capable of providing quantifiable data regarding the structural integrity of our buried assets in a cost-effective manner are lacking. Both of these areas were recently identified several U.S. federal agencies as 'critical national need'. In this research ultra wideband (UWB) time-domain radar technology …

Antennas And Arrays For Mobile Platforms -- Direct Broadcast Satellite And Wireless Communication, Songnan Yang

Doctoral Dissertations

Flexibility of any proposed communication links is becoming one of the most challenging features. Direct broadcasting satellite services, for example, will be greatly enhanced by providing service-on-the-move. This market is very demanding as it necessitates the development of a low cost, low profile antenna that can be mounted on top of SUVs and minivans, which is capable of continuously tracking the satellite. Another example is the wireless antennas for laptops and smart-phones, where the antennas should fit within an extremely small volume and should be capable of addressing many services over wide frequency range. In this dissertation, both DBS and …

Tin Dioxide Nanoparticle Based Sensor Integrated With Microstrip Antenna For Passive Wireless Ethylene Sensing, Mercyma Deeba Balachandran

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, we present the development and integration of a passive ethylene gas sensor with triangular microstrip patch antenna for wireless monitoring of climacteric fruit freshness. The existing ethylene sensors are mostly SnO2 resistor based active sensors, fabricated on rigid substrates requiring high fabrication temperatures and cannot be used for wireless applications. The proposed passive ethylene gas sensor is a novel nanoparticle based SnO2 capacitive sensor which, unlike the other existing SnO2resistor based active thick film and thin film sensors, consists of 10 nm to 15 nm SnO2 nanoparticles coated as a thin dielectric film of 1300 nm thickness. …

Poly(Ethylenedioxythiophene) Based Electronic Devices For Sensor Applications, Jie Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

Organic electronic devices, based on Poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)-Poly (styrene sulfonic acid) (PEDOT-PSS) as the active layer for sensor applications, have been studied. Two sets of sensors have been developed. In one case, sensors consisting of PEDOT-PSS resistors have been realized and demonstrated for soil moisture monitoring. The resistor model for the soil moisture sensor enables the sensor device to be fabricated at low cost and easily tested with a simple structure. Unlike the large dimension device used in Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR), the sensors are small and are capable of capturing microscale behavior of moisture in soil which is useful for …

High Performance Reconfigurable Computing For Linear Algebra: Design And Performance Analysis, Junqing Sun

Doctoral Dissertations

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) enable powerful performance acceleration for scientific computations because of their intrinsic parallelism, pipeline ability, and flexible architecture. This dissertation explores the computational power of FPGAs for an important scientific application: linear algebra. First of all, optimized linear algebra subroutines are presented based on enhancements to both algorithms and hardware architectures. Compared to microprocessors, these routines achieve significant speedup. Second, computing with mixed-precision data on FPGAs is proposed for higher performance. Experimental analysis shows that mixed-precision algorithms on FPGAs can achieve the high performance of using lower-precision data while keeping higher-precision accuracy for finding solutions of …

Implantable Piezoresistive Microcantilever-Based Wireless Cocaine Biosensors, Bernadeta Resti Widhiyatni Srijanto

Doctoral Dissertations

Cocaine is a well-known, illegal, recreational drug that is addictive due to its effects on the mesolimbic reward pathway in the human body. Accurate and real-time measurement of the concentration of cocaine in the body as a function of time and physiological factors is a key requirement for the understanding of the use of this drug. Current methods for such measurements involve taking samples from the human body (such as blood, urine, and hair) and performing analytical chemistry tests on these samples. This techniques are relatively expensive, time consuming, and labor intensive. To address this issue, a new implantable sensor …

An Analog Multiphase Self-Calibrating Dll To Minimize The Effects Of Process, Supply Voltage, And Temperature Variations, James D. Vandersand

Doctoral Dissertations

Delay locked loops have been found to be useful tools in such applications as computing, TDCs, and communications. These system can be found in space exploration vehicles and satellites, which operate in extreme environments. Unfortunately, in these environments supply voltage and temperature will not be constant, therefore they must be under consideration when designing a DLL. Furthermore, solar radiation in conjunction with the varying environmental aspects, could cause the delay locked loop to lose it locked state.

Delay locked loops are inherently good at tracking these environmental aspects, but in order to do so, the voltage controlled delay line must …

Long Range Automated Persistent Surveillance, Yi Yao

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses long range automated persistent surveillance with focus on three topics: sensor planning, size preserving tracking, and high magnification imaging.

field of view should be reserved so that camera handoff can be executed successfully before the object of interest becomes unidentifiable or untraceable. We design a sensor planning algorithm that not only maximizes coverage but also ensures uniform and sufficient overlapped camera’s field of view for an optimal handoff success rate. This algorithm works for environments with multiple dynamic targets using different types of cameras. Significantly improved handoff success rates are illustrated via experiments using floor plans of …

Mutual Coupling Considerations In The Development Of Multi-Feed Antenna Systems, Sung-Woo Lee

Doctoral Dissertations

In the design of any multi-port network with more than one antenna, mutual coupling between these different ports must be accounted for. In an effort to investigate and control these mutual coupling effects, we have selected three structures to be thoroughly analyzed. Furthermore, they have been fabricated and tested to develop relevant design guides for these selected structures to have minimal mutual coupling effects.

These selected structures included a feed network for a multi-port antenna, a dual feedhorn for a large reflector antenna, as well as a set of Multi- Input Multi-Output (MIMO) laptop antennas. In the first study, we …

Detail Enhancing Denoising Of Digitized 3d Models From A Mobile Scanning System, Bradley I. Grinstead

Doctoral Dissertations

The acquisition process of digitizing a large-scale environment produces an enormous amount of raw geometry data. This data is corrupted by system noise, which leads to 3D surfaces that are not smooth and details that are distorted. Any scanning system has noise associate with the scanning hardware, both digital quantization errors and measurement inaccuracies, but a mobile scanning system has additional system noise introduced by the pose estimation of the hardware during data acquisition. The combined system noise generates data that is not handled well by existing noise reduction and smoothing techniques.

This research is focused on enhancing the 3D …

Wireless Sensor Network Modeling Using Modified Recurrent Neural Network: Application To Fault Detection, Azzam Issam Moustapha

Doctoral Dissertations

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of a large number of sensors, which in turn have their own dynamics. They interact with each other and the base station, which controls the network. In multi-hop wireless sensor networks, information hops from one node to another and finally to the network gateway or base station. Dynamic Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) consist of a set of dynamic nodes that provide internal feedback to their own inputs. They can be used to simulate and model dynamic systems such as a network of sensors.

In this dissertation, a dynamic model of wireless sensor networks and its …

System And Ic Level Analysis Of Electrostatic Discharge (Esd) And Electrical Fast Transient (Eft) Immunity And Associated Coupling Mechanisms, Jayong Koo

Doctoral Dissertations

"The exposure of electronic circuits to lightning, electrostatic discharge (ESD), electrical fast transients (EFT) or sine wave signals can reveal RF immunity problems. Typical problems include temporary malfunctions or permanent damage of integrated circuits (ICs). In an effort to reproduce those disturbances, a series of electromagnetic compatibility standards has been developed. However, a complete understanding of the root cause of the immunity problems has yet to be established. This dissertation discusses immunity problems in three papers, starting at the system level, via the coupling path into the IC"--Abstract, page iv.

Inter-Area Oscillation Damping In Large Scale Power Systems With Unified Power Flow Controllers, Mahyar Zarghami

Doctoral Dissertations

"Power system oscillations occur in power networks as a result of contingencies such as faults or sudden changes in load or generation. They are detrimental to the operation of the system since they affect system stability and the optimal power flow through it. These oscillations do not usually damp out in tie-lines unless certain controls are applied to the system. Local and inter-area oscillations have traditionally been controlled by Power System Stabilizers (PSS). However, Flexible Alternating Current Transmission Controllers (FACTS) have significant potential as alternatives to PSS. The main goal of this research is to damp inter-area oscillations by Unified …

Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Wireless Communications With Imperfect Channel Knowledge, Christopher Potter

Doctoral Dissertations

"In the first work a recurrent neural network (RNN) is employed for MIMO channel prediction. A novel PSO-EA-DEPSO off-line training algorithm is presented and is shown to outperform PSO, PSO-EA, and DEPSO. This predictor is shown to be robust to varying channel scenarios. New expressions for the received SNR, array gain, average probability of error, and diversity gain are derived. Next, a new expression for the outage capacity of a MIMO system with no CSI at the transmitter and an estimate at the receiver is presented. Since the outage capacity is a function of the first and second moments of …

Enabling Wind Turbine Generators To Participate In Power Grid Frequency Regulation For Enhanced Stability, Hongtao Ma

Doctoral Dissertations

"This dissertation focuses on wind farm frequency regulation capability to maintain the grid frequency stability. Wind plant power controllers are designed and tested for participation in grid frequency restoration. The small signal stability on sub-optimal operating points is analyzed and a de-loaded operating point is proposed.

In the first paper, a new frequency regulation scheme is developed for the wind turbine/generator/converter trio that will provide the capability to participate in restoring frequency in a way similar to the droop response of conventional generators. Output active power adjustment can be realized by both converter and pitch angle control in addition to …

Energy Efficient Wireless Sensor Network Protocols For Monitoring And Prognostics Of Large Scale Systems, James W. Fonda

Doctoral Dissertations

"In this work, energy-efficient protocols for wireless sensor networks (WSN) with applications to prognostics are investigated. Both analytical methods and verification are shown for the proposed methods via either hardware experiments or simulation. This work is presented in five papers. Energy-efficiency methods for WSN include distributed algorithms for i) optimal routing, ii) adaptive scheduling, iii) adaptive transmission power and data-rate control"--Abstract, page iv.