Engineering Commons^™

Wide-Area Measurement Application And Power System Dynamics, Lang Chen

Doctoral Dissertations

Frequency monitoring network (FNET) is a GPS-synchronized distribution-level phasor measurement system. It is a powerful synchronized monitoring network for large-area power systems that provides significant information and data for power system situational awareness, real time and post-event analysis, and other important aspects of bulk systems. This work explored FNET measurements and utilized them for different applications and power system analysis.

An island system was built and validated with FNET measurements to study the stability of the OTEC integration. FNET measurements were also used to validate a large system model like the U.S. Eastern Interconnection. It tries to match the simulation …

Design Of Wireless Power Transfer And Data Telemetry System For Biomedical Applications, Ashraf Bin Islam

Doctoral Dissertations

With the advancement of biomedical instrumentation technologies sensor based remote healthcare monitoring system is gaining more attention day by day. In this system wearable and implantable sensors are placed outside or inside of the human body. Certain sensors are needed to be placed inside the human body to acquire the information on the vital physiological phenomena such as glucose, lactate, pH, oxygen, etc. These implantable sensors have associated circuits for sensor signal processing and data transmission. Powering the circuit is always a crucial design issue. Batteries cannot be used in implantable sensors which can come in contact with the blood …

In Situ Preconcentration By Ac Electrokinetics For Rapid And Sensitive Nanoparticle Detection, Kai Yang

Doctoral Dissertations

Reducing cost and time is a major concern in clinical diagnostics. Current molecular diagnostics are multi-step processes that usually take at least several hours or even days to complete multiple reagents delivery, incubations and several washing processes. This highly labor-intensive work and lack of automation could result in reduced reliability and low efficiency. The Laboratory-on-a-chip (LOC), taking advantage of the merger and development of microfluidics and biosensor technology, has shown promise towards a solution for performing analytical tests in a self-contained and compact unit, enabling earlier and decentralized testing. However, challenges are to integrate the fluid regulatory elements on a …

Design Of A High-Voltage, Differential Drive Bradbury-Nielsen Gate Amplifier With Ultra-High Slew Rate And Input Isolation, Kevin Christopher Omoumi

Masters Theses

To isolate and study various components of a nuclear reaction, elaborate equipment must be developed to aid in this process. This thesis presents the design and implementation of an ultra-high slew rate Bradbury-Nielsen gate driver circuit with high-voltage input isolation. This design will be used in a multi-pass time-of-flight isomer spectrometer and separator application integrated into an overall instrument called the Oak Ridge Isomer Spectrometer and Separator (ORISS). The output drive signals of this circuit are transmitted through a vacuum feed-through system to supply the necessary signals to the Bradbury-Nielsen gate contained within the vacuum. A differential driving signal with …

Classification System For Impedance Spectra, Carl Gordon Sapp

Masters Theses

This thesis documents research, methods, and results to satisfy the requirements for the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Tennessee. This thesis explores two primary steps for proper classification of impedance spectra: data dimension reduction and effectiveness of similarity/dissimilarity measure comparison in classification. To understand the data characteristics and classification thresholds, a circuit model analysis for simulation and unclassifiable determination is studied. The research is conducted using previously collected data of complex valued impedance measurements taken from 1844 similar devices. The results show a classification system capable of proper classification of 99% of data samples with well-separated …

Design And Implementation Of A Signal Conditioning Operational Amplifier For A Reflective Object Sensor, Ankit Master

Masters Theses

Industrial systems often require the acquisition of real-world analog signals for several applications. Various physical phenomena such as displacement, pressure, temperature, light intensity, etc. are measured by sensors, which is a type of transducer, and then converted into a corresponding electrical signal. The electrical signal obtained from the sensor, usually a few tens mV in magnitude, is subsequently conditioned by means of amplification, filtering, range matching, isolation etc., so that the signal can be rendered for further processing and data extraction.

This thesis presents the design and implementation of a general purpose op amp used to condition a reflective object …

A High -Temperature, High-Voltage, Fast Response Time Linear Regulator In 0.8um Bcd-On-Soi, Chia Hung Su

Doctoral Dissertations

The sale of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) has increased tenfold from the year 2001 to 2009 [1]. With this the demand for high temperature electronics has also increased dramatically making, high temperature electronics for HEV applications desirable in the engine compartment, power train, and brakes where the ambient temperature normally exceeds 150°C. Power converters (i.e. DC-DC converter, DC-AC inverter) inside the HEVs require gate drivers to control the power switches. An integrated gate driver circuit has been realized in 0.8-um BCD-on-SOI process. This gate driver IC needs a step-down voltage regulator to convert the unregulated high input DC voltage (VDDH) …

High Order Contingency Selection Using Particle Swarm Optimization And Tabu Search, Ashwini Chegu

Masters Theses

There is a growing interest in investigating the high order contingency events that may result in large blackouts, which have been a great concern for power grid secure operation. The actual number of high order contingency is too huge for operators and planner to apply a brute-force enumerative analysis. This thesis presents a heuristic searching method based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) and tabu search to select severe high order contingencies. The original PSO algorithm gives an intelligent strategy to search the feasible solution space, but tends to find the best solution only. The proposed method combines the original PSO …

Optimization Of Alternating Current Electrothermal Micropump By Numerical Simulation, Quan Yuan

Masters Theses

Microfluidic technology has been grown rapidly in the past decade. Microfluidics can find wide applications in multiple fields such as medicine, electronics, chemical and biology. Micro-pumping is an essential part of a microfluidic system. This thesis presents the optimization process of AC electro-thermal micropump with respect to the geometry of electrode array and channel height.

The thesis first introduces the theories of AC electrokinetic including dielectrophoresis, AC electro-osmosis (ACEO) and AC electro-thermal (ACET). Also presented are the basic theory and governing equations of microfluidics, the continuity equation, the Navier-Stokes equation, and the conservation of energy equation. AC electro-thermal effect results …

A High Voltage Charge-Coupled Device (Ccd) Controller Asic For The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (Lsst), Ross F. Chun

Masters Theses

This thesis will present the design, implementation, and testing of a high voltage Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) controller ASIC for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which will be used to study dark energy and dark matter. The LSST observatory, which includes a 3.2-gigapixel camera, will cover the entire sky every three nights by taking continuous 15-second exposures. The CCD controller ASIC, or Sensor Control Chip (SCC), will provide five CCD driver channels that are capable of generating serial or parallel clock signals for the LSST’s imaging sensors during readout mode. The SCC will also provide three programmable bias voltages for …

Design Of A Highly Constrained Test System For A 12-Bit, 16-Channel Wilkinson Adc, Zachary William Pannell

Masters Theses

Outer space is a very harsh environment that can cause electronics to not operate as they were originally intended. Aside from the extreme amount of radiation found in space, temperatures can also change very dramatically in a relatively small time frame. In order to test electronics that will be used in this environment, they first need to be tested on Earth under replicated conditions. Vanderbilt University designed a dewar that allows devices to be tested at these extreme temperatures while being radiated. For this thesis, a test setup that met all of the dewar's constraints was designed that would allow …

A Novel Frequency Based Current-To-Digital Converter With Programmable Dynamic Range, Xiaoyan Yu

Doctoral Dissertations

This work describes a novel frequency based Current to Digital converter, which would be fully realizable on a single chip.

Biological systems make use of delay line techniques to compute many things critical to the life of an animal. Seeking to build up such a system, we are adapting the auditory localization circuit found in barn owls to detect and compute the magnitude of an input current.

The increasing drive to produce ultra low-power circuits necessitates the use of very small currents. Frequently these currents need to accurately measured, but current solutions typically involve off-chip measurements. These are usually slow, …

Reconfigurable Rf Front End Components For Multi-Radio Platform Applications, Chunna Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

The multi-service requirements of the 3G and 4G communication systems, and their backward compatibility requirements, create challenges for the antenna and RF front-end designs with multi-band and wide-band techniques. These challenges include: multiple filters, which are lossy, bulky, and expensive, are needed in the system; device board size limitation and the associated isolation problems caused by the limited space and crowd circuits; and the insertion loss issues created by the single-pole-multi-through antenna switch.

As will be shown, reconfigurable antennas can perform portions of the filter functions, which can help solve the multiple filters problem. Additionally, reconfigurable RF circuits can decrease …

Plume Source Localization And Boundary Prediction, Samir Sahyoun

Masters Theses

Plume location and prediction using mobile sensors is the main contribution of this thesis. Plume concentration values measured by chemical sensors at different locations are used to estimate the source of the plume. This is achieved by employing a stochastic approximation technique to localize the source and compare its performance to the nonlinear least squares method. The source location is then used as the initial estimate for the boundary tracking problem. Sensor measurements are used to estimate the parameters and the states of the state space model of the dynamics of the plume boundary. The predicted locations are the reference …

A Dynamic Ampacity Model For The Testing Of Advanced Conductors, Matthew Benjamin Sooter

Masters Theses

Advanced Conductors are an intriguing new technology that promises to help the utility industry increase the transmission capacity available in the United States. Manufacturers of advanced conductors promise double the current carrying capacity of normal Aluminum Clad Steel Reinforced conductor through a combination of increased thermal limits and decreased thermal elongation.

This thesis will outline a control developed for the Power Line Conductor Accelerated Test Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This custom facility is designed for the testing and rapid aging of advanced overhead conductors as part of a U.S. Department of Energy initiative to assist the development and …

Low-Voltage Analog Circuit Design Using The Adaptively Biased Body-Driven Circuit Technique, Stephen Christopher Terry

Doctoral Dissertations

The scaling of MOSFET dimensions and power supply voltage, in conjunction with an increase in system- and circuit-level performance requirements, are the most important factors driving the development of new technologies and design techniques for analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits. Though scaling has been a fact of life for analog circuit designers for many years, the approaching 1-V and sub-1-V power supplies, combined with applications that have increasingly divergent technology requirements, means that the analog and mixed-signal IC designs of the future will probably look quite different from those of the past. Foremost among the challenges that analog designers will …

Pitot Tube And Wind Tunnel Studies Of The Flow Induced By One Atmosphere Uniform Glow Discharge (Oaugdp ®) Plasma Actuators Using A Conventional And An Economical High Voltage Power Supply, Manish Yadav

Masters Theses

The aerodynamic applications of plasma science is a field of growing interest. Investigations using various approaches have been initiated by several research groups that are designed to manipulate the aerodynamic boundary layer and to re-attach the flow to airfoils. EHD (ElectroHydroDynamic) flow control has proven at least as effective as other methods of boundary layer flow control. In the EHD approach, glow discharge plasma actuators are placed on the wings and fuselage of the aircraft, or on the turbine blades in the engine, to influence the boundary layer flow. This thesis is concerned with plasma actuators based on the OAUGDP …

The Design Of Medium Access Control (Mac) Protocols For Energy Efficient And Qos Provision In Wireless Sensor Networks, Yang Liu

Masters Theses

This thesis work focuses on innovative design of media access control (MAC) protocols in wireless sensor networks (WNSs). The characteristics of the WSN inquire that the network service design considers both energy efficiency and the associated application requirement. However, most existing protocols address only the issue of energy efficiency.

In this thesis, a MAC protocol has been proposed (referred to as Q-MAC) that not only minimized the energy consumption in multi-hop WSNs, but also provides Quality of Service (QoS) by differentiating network services based on priority levels prescribed by different applications. The priority levels reflect the state of system resources …

Curvature Variation As Measure Of Shape Information, Sreenivas Rangan Sukumar

Masters Theses

In this thesis, we present the Curvature Variation Measure (CVM) as our informational approach to shape description. We base our algorithm on shape curvature, and extract shape information as the entropic measure of the curvature. We present definitions to estimate curvature for both discrete 2D curves and 3D surfaces and then formulate our theory of shape information from these definitions.

With focus on reverse engineering and under vehicle inspection, we document our research efforts in constructing a scanning mechanism to model real world objects. We use a laser-based range sensor for the data collection and discuss view-fusion and integration to …

A Characteristic Study Of The Atmospheric Pressure Nonthermal Resistive Barrier Plasma Discharge For Biological Decontamination, Magesh Thiyagarajan

Masters Theses

Steady-state atmospheric pressure nonthermal plasmas can splendidly debilitate bacteria in liquids, gases and on surfaces, as well as can disintegrate hazardous chemicals. The nonthermal gas discharge at atmospheric pressure, such as resistive barrier discharge is investigated for low temperature sterilization purposes. In specific, exploring and understanding the hidden secrets of the plasma sterilization mechanisms and the intensification of the main microbial reduction pathways are the objectives of the research.

A dual-mode steady-state atmospheric pressure resistive barrier ionized gas (plasma) generator has been designed and developed to meet the environmental health and federally mandated safety standards. Electrical, chemical, optical, and biological …

An Experimental Model Of Ball Lightning, Madras Parameswaran Sriram

Masters Theses

A form of ball lightning was generated in the laboratory. Plasma spheres several centimeters in diameter were produced in atmospheric pressure air. These spheres persisted up to ½ a second after power turn –off. A mathematical model was derived that predicts the observed lifetime. The theory predicts that the sphere lifetime should scale as the radius squared, which means large spheres should exist for many seconds. We also generated ball lightning in a zero gravity environment. The object was to eliminate convection, which had been observed to reduce the size of a ball generated by a two – dimensional electric …

A 1.8 Ghz Lc-Voltage Controlled Oscillator Using On-Chip Inductors And Body Driven Varactors In Cmos 0.35 Μm Process, Lakshmipriya Seshan

Masters Theses

In an era dominated by the highly demanding wireless communication system, there is a great need for developing small, cheap, and low power RF sub-systems. This demand has lead to significant research on completely integrated transceiver systems. One of the great challenges in an integrated transceiver system is the frequency synthesizer. Frequency synthesizers are usually implemented using a phase locked loop (PLL) and low frequency highly stable crystal oscillator. The spectral purity of a synthesized carrier signal depends on the kind of Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) used. Hence successful implementation of a low phase noise, completely integrated VCO in standard …

Eliminating Harmonics In A Cascaded H-Bridges Multilevel Inverter Using Resultant Theory, Symmetric Polynomials, And Power Sums, Keith Jeremy Mckenzie

Masters Theses

This thesis studies a multilevel converter with assumed equal dc sources. The multilevel fundamental switching scheme is used to control the needed power electronics switches. Also, a method is presented where switching angles are computed such that a desired fundamental sinusoidal voltage is produced while at the same time certain higher order harmonics are eliminated.

Using Fourier Series theory, the transcendental equations eliminating certain higher order harmonics were derived in terms of the switching angles. Furthermore, these transcendental equations were transformed into polynomial equations by making some simple changes of variables. Resultant theory was used to solve the polynomial equations. …

Design And Analysis Of A Wide Loop-Bandwidth Rf Synthesizer Using Ring Oscillator For Dect Receiver, Md. Hafijur Rahman

Masters Theses

Wireless communication devices including cordless phones and modern digital cellular systems (DCSs) use portable transceiver systems. The frequency synthesis of this type of transceiver system is done using a phase-locked loop oscillator. Traditional on-chip implementation of a complete phase-locked loop using a ring type voltage controlled oscillator contributes higher noise at the output. An alternative architecture, phase-locked loop (PLL) with wide loop-bandwidth, is proposed in this research to suppress the noise from the traditional ring oscillator. The proposed PLL is amendable to on-chip integration as well as commercially suitable for a Digital Enhancement Cordless Telephone (DECT) system which needs flexible …

A Lock-In Amplifier For Fluorescent Light Detection, Osman Oguz

Masters Theses

An integrated on-chip lock-in amplifier has been developed for fluorescent light detection for biological applications. The system includes 2.1 mm x 2.1 mm tiny chip using a photodiode transimpedance amplifier topology for the pre-amp, followed by gain amplifier, demodulator and filtering stages. Synchronous demodulator or phase sensitive detector stage has two different architectures to demonstrate the difference between the results. The recommended transmitting light frequency is between 0.5 kHz to 5 kHz. We used 1 kHz frequency for the test.

Complementary Bodydriving - A Low-Voltage Analog Circuit Technique Realized In 0.35um Soi Process, Yong Leekee

Masters Theses

This thesis presents a study of several analog circuit primitives that utilize the body terminal as a signal port to achieve low-voltage operation and high performance. Several issues relating to low-voltage applications as well as the trends of technology scaling in the near future are presented. Principles of the body-driven transistor for both PMOS and NMOS in PDSOI technology are described, and critical design considerations are discussed. The design of low-voltage analog primitives (cascode current mirror and differential pair) are described and analyzed in detail. A discussion of the design and analysis of a 4-quadrant analog multiplier is also presented. …

Investigation Of Various Shaping Methods For The Development Of A Fully-Monolithic Cmos Constant-Fraction Discriminator, Robert Gentry Jackson

Masters Theses

In this work the design of a constant-fraction discriminator (CFD) fabricated in the Orbit Semiconductor l.2-Jl n-well CMOS process is presented. This timing pick-off circuit is designed for use in the readout electronics of the Lead-Scintillator subsystem of the Pioneering High Eenergy Nuclear Ion eXperiment (PHENIX) Electromagnetic Calorimeter at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The design was driven by stringent requirements including low power consumption, small area, arrayable, low cost and a fully integratable shaping network. Various integratable CFD shaping methods are investigated, and the candidate methods chosen for fabrication were the distributed R-C delay-line shaping, lumped-element R-C shaping …

A High Performance Detector Electronics System For Positron Tomography, John Clifton Moyers, Jr.

Masters Theses

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) has been a very useful laboratory tool for the noninvasive study of dynamic physiological processes within the human body. Its clinical worth in cardiology, neurology, and oncology has been verified for well over a decade. Only with the most recent introduction of high performance analog and VLSI digital components yielding higher scanner resolutions at reduced costs, has clinical PET truly become a reality. The High Performance Detector Electronics System presented here represents indubitably the most advanced processing system available in the clinical PET market.

The Design And Application Of An Electronic Phase Angle Meter, Will Otis Leffell

Masters Theses

Introduction [Abbreviated]:

The purpose of this paper is to consider some problems that are involved in the design and application of an electronic phase angle meter. A phase angle meter is a device that has long been used in power work. However, the meters used take considerable energy from the circuits, and will not respond to very rapid changes in the phase angle. Most of these meters work on the principle of the Tuma phase meter, and commonly indicate the angle between a current and a voltage. In power work, while the energy consumption is not so important, a meter …

A Theoretical Discussion Of The Variation In Temperature Of A Gas Flame That Occurs When The Proportion Of Air Supplied, And The Temperature Of This Air, Varies, C. L. Henderson

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.