Engineering Commons^™

A Novel Passive Islanding Detection Method Based On Phase-Locked Loop, Hoda Zamani

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The ever-increasing penetration of distributed energy resources in power distribution systems has led to challenges in the detection of islanding. Among different islanding detection methods (IDMs), passive methods are the least intrusive and typically require the lowest investment cost. However, they generally suffer from larger non-detection zones (NDZs) and higher nuisance detection ratios as compared to active, hybrid, and remote IDMs. This study provides an overview of the criteria outlined in the existing technical literature for the performance evaluation of IDMs, a review and comparison of the existing passive IDMs, and an analysis of the phase-locked loop (PLL) behaviour under …

Modelling And Evaluation Of Piezoelectric Actuators For Wearable Neck Rehabilitation Devices, Shaemus D. Tracey

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Neck pain is the most common neck musculoskeletal disorder, and the fourth leading cause of healthy years lost due to disability in the world. Due to the need of hands-on physical therapy and Canada’s aging population, access to treatment will become highly constrained. Wearable devices that allow at-home rehabilitation address this future limitation. However, few have emerged from the laboratory setting because they are limited by the use of conventional actuators. An overlooked type of actuation technology is that of piezoelectric actuators, more specifically, travelling wave ultrasonic motors (TWUM).

In this work, a clear procedure that outlines how the required …

The Development Of A Motion Sensing Device For Use In A Home Setting, Jaspreet K. Kalsi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disease, with over 10 million individuals diagnosed with PD world-wide. The most common symptom characterized by PD is tremor. Tremor is an involuntary oscillatory motion that most prominently occurs in upper limb, specifically in the hand and wrist that has a measurable frequency and amplitude. This thesis aims to evaluate the usability and functionality of a tremor sensing device designed to collect quantitative data on individuals with PD. The designed device uses 23 commercially-available inertial measuring units (IMUs) located between 21 joints: distal interphalangeal (DIP) joints, proximal interphalangeal (PIP) joints, Interphalangeal …

Deep Learning For Load Forecasting With Smart Meter Data: Online And Federated Learning, Mohammad Navid Fekri

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Electricity load forecasting has been attracting increasing attention because of its importance for energy management, infrastructure planning, and budgeting. In recent years, the proliferation of smart meters has created new opportunities for forecasting on the building and even individual household levels. Machine learning (ML) has achieved great successes in this domain; however, conventional ML techniques require data transfer to a centralized location for model training, therefore, increasing network traffic and exposing data to privacy and security risks. Also, traditional approaches employ offline learning, which means that they are only trained once and miss out on the possibility to learn from …

Data And Sensor Fusion Using Fmg, Semg And Imu Sensors For Upper Limb Prosthesis Control, Jason S. Gharibo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Whether someone is born with a missing limb or an amputation occurs later in life, living with this disability can be extremely challenging. The robotic prosthetic devices available today are capable of giving users more functionality, but the methods available to control these prostheses restrict their use to simple actions, and are part of the reason why users often reject prosthetic technologies. Using multiple myography modalities has been a promising approach to address these control limitations; however, only two myography modalities have been rigorously tested so far, and while the results have shown improvements, they have not been robust enough …

Novel Zcs Pwm Methods For Industrial Applications, Ramtin Rasoulinezhad

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Pulse width modulation (PWM) converters that consist of two or more interleaved boost/buck converter modules are used widely in industry. Soft-switching approaches for these converters can either be zero-voltage switching (ZVS) if implemented with MOSFETs or zero-current switching (ZCS) if implemented with IGBTs. The main idea of this thesis is to implement ZCS for IGBT turn-on and turn-off. Most converters use an auxiliary circuit that is activated whenever a main converter switch is about to be turned off, gradually diverting current away from the switch so that it can turn off with ZCS.

ZCS-PWM converters that use an auxiliary circuit …

Power Management And Control To Balance Residential Microgrids With Individual Phase-Wise Generation And Storage, Syed Ahmed Raza Naqvi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The past decade has seen a significant rise in proliferation of roof-top photovoltaic (PV) systems with storage units at residential sites. This has affected the way power system engineers and researchers have previously studied distribution systems as passive networks. With the introduction of these local distributed energy resources, a distribution system has become part of an active network. This modernization of the power distribution network, brings along with itself a number of key issues that need to be pro-actively tackled by the local utilities.

In North America, with family-owned roof-top PV systems, storage devices and electric vehicles, the concept of …

Design, Development, And Evaluation Of Customized Electronics For Controlling A 5-Dof Magneto-Rheological Actuator Collaborative Robot, Ziqi Yang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In recent years, Magneto-Rheological (MR) fluids has been used in various fields such as robotics, automotive, aerospace, etc. The most common use of the MR fluids is within a clutch-like mechanism, namely an MR clutch. When mechanical input is coupled to the input part of the MR clutch, the MR clutch provides a means of delivering this mechanical input to its output, through the MR fluids. The combination of the mechanical input device and the MR clutch is called an MR actuator. The MR actuator features inherently compliance owing to the characteristic of the MR fluids while also offering higher …

Radiometric Correction Of Multispectral Cameras Using Photosensor Irradiance For Agronomy Applications, Nicholas S. Mitchell

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Cloud coverage has a significant impact on the reflectance maps generated by multispectral cameras mounted on UAV's in small farm settings. The current approach is to calibrate the camera once before every flight and use the radiometric calibration map for the entire flight. In this work we have designed and built a downwelling and upwelling photosensor to work in sync with our custom multispectral camera. A dual reflectance panel implementation for the time dependent radiometric calibration of the multispectral camera is completed. The solar spectral irradiance curve is approximated using the current measurements from the downwelling photosensor and the ground …

Efficient Hardware Architectures For Public-Key Cryptosystems, Mohammadamin Saburruhmonfared

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Finite field arithmetic plays an essential role in public-key cryptography as all the underlying operations are performed in these fields. The finite fields are either prime fields or binary fields. Binary field elements can mainly be represented on a polynomial basis or a normal basis (NB). NB representation offers a simple squaring operation, especially in hardware. However, multiplication is typically complex, and a particular subset of NB called Gaussian Normal Basis (GNB) features an efficient multiplication operation used in this work. The first part of this thesis has focused on improving finite field arithmetic architectures over GNB. Among different arithmetic …

Towards Efficient And Secure Iiot: Solutions For The Sensing Domain, Elena Uchiteleva

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This work explores reduced complexity solutions for the increased efficiency and safety of the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) sensing domain. Resource virtualization, security, and predictive modeling are the main subjects of these studies.

The first solution is a joint throughput and time-resource allocation scheme for virtualization of IEEE 802.15.4-based wireless sensor networks. Virtualization is realized through the utilization of the guaranteed time slot mechanism for scheduling on the medium access control (MAC) layer. The solution abstracts resources into logical units that are allocated to segregated applications with different service requirements. The problem is formulated in a linear optimization framework …

Longitudinal Partitioning Waveform Relaxation Methods For The Analysis Of Transmission Line Circuits, Tarik Menkad

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Three research projects are presented in this manuscript. Projects one and two describe two waveform relaxation algorithms (WR) with longitudinal partitioning for the time-domain analysis of transmission line circuits. Project three presents theoretical results about the convergence of WR for chains of general circuits.

The first WR algorithm uses a assignment-partition procedure that relies on inserting external series combinations of positive and negative resistances into the circuit to control the speed of convergence of the algorithm. The convergence of the subsequent WR method is examined, and fast convergence is cast as a generic optimization problem in the frequency-domain. An automatic …

An Investigation Of The Interleaved Operation Of A Stacked Ac-Dc Single-Stage Flyback Converter, Mengkai Xiong

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Low power AC-DC power conversion is typically done with a two-stage converter that consists of an AC-DC front-end boost converter that also performs input power factor correction and an isolated DC-DC back-end converter that is either a flyback or a forward converter. In applications where cost is an overriding factor, single-stage AC-DC converters that use a single power converter to simultaneously perform input power factor correction and AC-DC conversion can be used. In applications where output filtering and hold-up time are important considerations, single-stage AC-DC converters are implemented with a DC bus capacitor.

The main objective of this thesis is …

Terramechanics And Machine Learning For The Characterization Of Terrain, Bryan W. Southwell

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

An instrumented rover wheel can collect vast amounts of data about a planetary surface. Planetary surfaces are changed by complex geological processes which can be better understood with an abundance of surface data and the use of terramechanics. Identifying terrain parameters such as cohesion and angle of friction hold importance for both the rover driver and the planetary scientist. Knowledge of terrain characteristics can warn of unsafe terrain and flag potential interesting scientific sites. The instrumented wheel in this research utilizes a pressure pad to sense load and sinkage, a string potentiometer to measure slip, and records motor current draw. …

Advanced Hardware And Software Approach To Seismic Site Response Investigations, Aleksandar Dimitrov Mihaylov

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Vibration measurement is an essential aspect of modern geotechnical engineering. It is particularly vital task for measuring the dynamic soil parameters, estimating seismic hazards and evaluating influence of industrial, traffic and construction vibrations on the surrounding buildings, structures and their elements. Meanwhile, commercial exploration seismic stations and data acquisition systems require significant professional knowledge and training in geophysics or vibration measurement, as well as practical skills and experience in adjusting data acquisition parameters. Furthermore, available seismological investigation and vibrometry sensors are not universally suitable for field applications in geophysical studies, soil-structure interaction investigations or structural vibrations. The frequency range suitable …

A Wearable Mechatronic Device For Hand Tremor Monitoring And Suppression: Development And Evaluation, Yue Zhou

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Tremor, one of the most disabling symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD), significantly affects the quality of life of the individuals who suffer from it. These people live with difficulties with fine motor tasks, such as eating and writing, and suffer from social embarrassment. Traditional medicines are often ineffective, and surgery is highly invasive and risky. The emergence of wearable technology facilitates an externally worn mechatronic tremor suppression device as a potential alternative approach for tremor management. However, no device has been developed for the suppression of finger tremor that has been validated on a human.

It has been reported in …

Novel Control Of Pv Solar Farms As Statcom (Pv-Statcom) For Frequency Control And Power Oscillation Damping, Mohammad Akbari Kelishadi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Frequency stability and low-frequency power oscillations are two major concerns in modern power systems. PV-STATCOM is a patented concept which enables PV inverters to provide STATCOM functions, during day and night, as well as real power modulation during daytime. This thesis aims to utilize PV-STATCOM capability effectively for enhancing frequency stability and power oscillations damping.

A novel, simultaneous real power-based Fast Frequency Response (FFR) and reactive power-based Power Oscillation Damping (POD) control is proposed for PV-STATCOMs. This control not only significantly reduces system under- and over-frequency deviations, but also uses the unutilized capacity of PV inverters to enhance damping of …

Design, Implementation And Evaluation Of A Redundancy Management System For Fault-Tolerant Wireless Devices In Harsh Environments, Madison Mccarthy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs), when deployed in harsh environments, can fail prematurely due to elevated rates of component failures. To counteract this problem, fault-tolerant techniques, such as redundancy, may be used. A redundant design requires a management system. Built-in tests (BITs) are one of the most commonly used approaches for managing redundancy, but it suffers from issues such as imperfect fault coverage and common-cause failures (CCFs). In this work, a BIT based redundancy management system has been designed that makes use of a supervisory unit and a modular architecture to address issues with imperfect fault coverage and CCFs. The design …

Investigation Of Radiation-Hardened Design Of Electronic Systems With Applications To Post-Accident Monitoring For Nuclear Power Plants, Qiang Huang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research aims at improving the robustness of electronic systems used-in high level radiation environments by combining with radiation-hardened (rad-hardened) design and fault-tolerant techniques based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components. A specific of the research is to use such systems for wireless post-accident monitoring in nuclear power plants (NPPs). More specifically, the following methods and systems are developed and investigated to accomplish expected research objectives: analysis of radiation responses, design of a radiation-tolerant system, implementation of a wireless post-accident monitoring system for NPPs, performance evaluation without repeat physical tests, and experimental validation in a radiation environment.

A method is developed …

Current Implementation Of The Flooding Time Synchronization Protocol In Wireless Sensor Networks, Asma Khalil

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Time synchronization is an issue that affects data accuracy within wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This issue is due to the complex nature of the wireless medium and can be mitigated with accurate time synchronization. This research focuses on the Flooding Time Synchronization Protocol (FTSP) since it is considered as the gold standard for accuracy in WSNs. FTSP minimizes the synchronization error by executing an algorithm that creates a unified time for the network reporting micro-second accuracy. Most synchronization protocols use the FTSP implementation as a benchmark for comparison. The current and only FTSP implementation runs on the TinyOS platform and …

Transformerless High-Power Medium-Voltage Multi-Module Pv Converters, Hasan Bayat

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis is focused on the modular multilevel converter (MMC) for Photovoltaic (PV) applications. It is an attempt to address the issues associated with the modeling, control, and power mismatch elimination of the MMC-based PV systems. Firstly, a new real power reference generation scheme is proposed that creates a linear relationship between the real power reference of the system and the dc link voltage of the submodules. Further, a new power mismatch elimination strategy is proposed for the MMC-based PV system which ensures balanced currents are delivered to the host grid regardless of leg and arm power mismatches. The thesis …

Integration Of Rfid And Industrial Wsns To Create A Smart Industrial Environment, Ning Pan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

A smart environment is a physical space that is seamlessly embedded with sensors, actuators, displays, and computing devices, connected through communication networks for data collection, to enable various pervasive applications. Radio frequency identification (RFID) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) can be used to create such smart environments, performing sensing, data acquisition, and communication functions, and thus connecting physical devices together to form a smart environment.

This thesis first examines the features and requirements a smart industrial environment. It then focuses on the realization of such an environment by integrating RFID and industrial WSNs. ISA100.11a protocol is considered in particular for …

Fabrication Of 3d Conjugated Polymer Structures Via Vat Polymerization Additive Manufacturing, Andrew T. Cullen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Conjugated polymers are a class of electromechanically active materials that can produce motion in response to an electric potential. This motion can be harnessed to perform mechanical work, and therefore these materials are particularly well suited for use as sensors and actuators in microelectromechanical systems. Conventional methods to fabricate conjugated polymer actuators result in planar morphologies that limit fabricated devices to simplistic linear or bending actuation modes. To overcome this limitation, this work develops a conjugated polymer formulation and associated additive manufacturing method capable of realizing three-dimensional conductive polymer structures. A light-based additive manufacturing technique known as vat polymerization is …

Numerical Studies Of Electrohydrodynamic Flow Induced By Corona And Dielectric Barrier Discharges, Chaoao Shi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Electrohyrodynamic (EHD) flow produced by gas discharges allows the control of airflow through electrostatic forces. Various promising applications of EHD can be considered, but this requires a deeper understanding of the physical mechanisms involved.

This thesis investigates the EHD flow generated by three forms of gas discharge. First, a multiple pin-plate EHD dryer associated with the positive corona discharge is studied using a stationary model. Second, the dynamics of a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma actuator is simulated with a time-dependent solver. Third, different configurations of the extended DBD are explored to enhance the EHD flow.

The results of the …

Design And Implementation Of Smart Sensors With Capabilities Of Process Fault Detection And Variable Prediction, An He

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

A typical sensor consists of a sensing element and a transmitter. The major functions of a transmitter are limited to data acquisition and communication. The recently developed transmitters with ‘smart’ functions have been focused on easy setup/maintenance of the transmitter itself such as self-calibration and self-configuration. Recognizing the growing computational capabilities of microcontroller units (MCUs) used in these transmitters and underutilized computational resources, this thesis investigates the feasibility of adding additional functionalities to a transmitter to make it ‘smart’ without modifying its foot-print, nor adding supplementary hardware. Hence, a smart sensor is defined as sensing elements combined with a smart …

Efficient Macromodeling And Fast Transient Simulation Of High Speed Distributed Interconnects, Sadia Wahid

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In the first part of the thesis, an efficient macromodeling technique based on Loewner Matrix (LM) approach has been presented to model multi-port distributed systems using tabulated noisy data. In the proposed method, Loewner Model data from previous rational approximation are used to create less noisy eigenvectors in an iterative manner. As a result, the biasing effect of the LM model approximated by the noisy data is reduced. It is illustrated that this method improves the accuracy of the Loewner Matrix modeling for noisy frequency data.

In the second part, a fast and robust algorithm is introduced for time-domain simulation …

Design Of Radio-Frequency Arrays For Ultra-High Field Mri, Ian R O Connell

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is an indispensable, non-invasive diagnostic tool for the assessment of disease and function. As an investigational device, MRI has found routine use in both basic science research and medicine for both human and non-human subjects.

Due to the potential increase in spatial resolution, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and the ability to exploit novel tissue contrasts, the main magnetic field strength of human MRI scanners has steadily increased since inception. Beginning in the early 1980’s, 0.15 T human MRI scanners have steadily risen in main magnetic field strength with ultra-high field (UHF) 8 T MRI systems deemed to …

Controlling And Processing Core For Wireless Implantable Telemetry System, Naeeme Modir

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Wireless implantable telemetry systems are suitable choices for monitoring various physiological parameters such as blood pressure and volume. These systems typically compose of an internal device implanted into a living body captures the physiological data and sends them to an external base station located outside of the body for further processing. The internal device usually consists of a sensor interface to convert the collected data to electrical signals; a digital core to digitize the analog signals, process them and prepare them for transmission; an RF front-end to transmit the data outside the body and to receive the required commands from …

Analysis And Mitigation Of Temporary Over-Voltage (Tov) Phenomenon In Unintentionally Islanded Grid-Connected Photovoltaic (Pv) Inverters, Md Maruful Islam

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) solar systems, like other inverter-based distributed generators, can cause temporary over-voltages (TOVs), especially subsequent to faults and unintentional islanding incidents, and can damage equipment and customers within the host distribution network. Thus, this thesis aims to study the phenomenon and propose corrective measures for it. Thus, the thesis first presents detailed models for a conventional single-stage PV system and a modified single-stage PV system. The conventional system uses a Δ/YG isolation transformer, whereas the modified system, proposed in the literature, assumes a Y/YG isolation transformer that is effectively grounded by an additional half-bridge leg energized by the …

Sensorless Rotor Position Estimation For Brushless Dc Motors, Iram G. Raza

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Brushless DC motor speed is controlled by synchronizing the stator coil current with rotor position in order to acquire an accurate alignment of stator rotating field with rotor permanent-magnet field for efficient transfer of energy. In order to accomplish this goal, a motor shaft is instantly tracked by using rotating rotor position sensors such as Hall effect sensors, optical encoders or resolvers etc. Adding sensors to detect rotor position affects the overall reliability and mechanical robustness of the system. Therefore, a whole new trend of replacing position sensors with sensorless rotor position estimation techniques have a promising demand.

Among the …