Engineering Commons^™

Data Logging System For A Synthetic Aperture Radar Unit, Nicholas J. Testin, Philip Davis, Ian Dorell, Alexander Gillespie

KSU Journey Honors College Capstones and Theses

A small, existing radar unit lacked the ability to automatically store the data it was receiving, which made its use clunky and cumbersome. A system was constructed to allow an on-board microprocessor to track distance traveled, and automatically store the data output from the radar unit to a portable memory unit for later data processing. Distance traveled is determined using a specially designed mobile cart, which electronically converts the rotation of a wheel into an electrical signal while also providing stability for taking accurate radar measurements. The output data from the radar unit is stored as a properly-formatted sound file …

A Quantitative Measure Of Mono-Componentness For Time-Frequency Analysis, Austin P. Albright

Doctoral Dissertations

Joint time-frequency (TF) analysis is an ideal method for analyzing non-stationary signals, but is challenging to use leading to it often being neglected. The exceptions being the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) and spectrogram. Even then, the inability to have simultaneously high time and frequency resolution is a frustrating issue with the STFT and spectrogram. However, there is a family of joint TF analysis techniques that do have simultaneously high time and frequency resolution – the quadratic TF distribution (QTFD) family. Unfortunately, QTFDs are often more troublesome than beneficial. The issue is interference/cross-terms that causes these methods to become so difficult …

Electronic Deer Warning System, David Zhuo, Anlang Lu

Computer Engineering

Deer-vehicle collisions (DVCs) are extremely dangerous, often injuring or even killing drivers. Unfortunately, this form of automotive accident is commonplace in the United States. According to the NHTSA, DVCs result in 200 human deaths a year.2

Despite these deadly incidents, there currently are no deployed federal or state systems for preventing DVCs. There are many consumer electronic deer deterrent products, but their long-term effectiveness is questionable.3 In fact, there does not appear to be much research into electronic deer deterrent systems. Aside from constant audio output and electric shock, no other means of electronic deterrent exist. Even if fixed deterrents …

Psychophysiological Analysis Of A Pedagogical Agent And Robotic Peer For Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders., Mohammad Nasser Saadatzi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by ongoing problems in social interaction and communication, and engagement in repetitive behaviors. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 1 in 68 children in the United States has ASD. Mounting evidence shows that many of these individuals display an interest in social interaction with computers and robots and, in general, feel comfortable spending time in such environments. It is known that the subtlety and unpredictability of people’s social behavior are intimidating and confusing for many individuals with ASD. Computerized learning environments and robots, however, prepare a predictable, …

Single Carrier Frequency Domain Equalization And Energy Efficiency Optimization For Mimo Cognitive Radio., Xiaohui Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studies two separate topics in wireless communication systems. One topic focuses on the Single Carrier Frequency Domain Equalization (SC-FDE), which is a promising technique to mitigate the multipath effect in the broadband wireless communication. Another topic targets on the energy efficiency optimization in a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) cognitive radio network. For SC-FDE, the conventional linear receivers suffer from the noise amplification in deep fading channel. To overcome this, a fractional spaced frequency domain (FSFD) receiver based on frequency domain oversampling (FDO) is proposed for SC-FDE to improve the performance of the linear receiver under deep fading …

New Approaches For Estimating Hemispheric Lateralization From Resting State Fmri Data With Relationship To Age, Gender And Mental Disorders, Oktay Agcaoglu

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Lateralization is specialization of the brain hemispheres in certain tasks, such as language, mathematics, cognition and motor skills. It is one of the most queried topics related to the human brain. After the invention of modern medical imaging techniques including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), scientific research about the human brain, including lateralization, gained huge momentum. There have been a remarkable numbers of studies about lateralization and most of these studies focused on investigating which part of the brain dominates in which tasks. However, there have been very few lateralization studies on brain intrinsic activity, i.e., resting state activity where …

Power-Weighted Divergences For Relative Attenuation And Delay Estimation, Ruairí De Fréin, Scott T. Rickard Prof

Articles

Power-weighted estimators have recently been proposed for relative attenuation and delay estimation in blind source separation. Their provenance lies in the observation that speech is approximately windowed-disjoint orthogonal (WDO) in the time-frequency (TF) domain; it has been reported that using WDO, derived from TF representations of speech, improves mixing parameter estimation. We show that power-weighted relative attenuation and delay estimators can be derived from a particular case of a weighted Bregman divergence. We then propose a wider class of estimators, which we tune to give better parameter estimates for speech.

Multi-Classifier Fusion Strategy For Activity And Intent Recognition Of Torso Movements, Abhijit Kadrolkar

Doctoral Dissertations

As assistive, wearable robotic devices are being developed to physically assist their users, it has become crucial to develop safe, reliable methods to coordinate the device with the intentions and motions of the wearer. This dissertation investigates the recognition of user intent during flexion and extension of the human torso in the sagittal plane to be used for control of an assistive exoskeleton for the human torso. A multi-sensor intent recognition approach is developed that combines information from surface electromyogram (sEMG) signals from the user’s muscles and inertial sensors mounted on the user’s body. Intent recognition is implemented by following …

Channel And Noise Variance Estimation For Future 5g Cellular Networks, Jorge Iscar Vergara

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Future fifth generation (5G) cellular networks have to cope with the expected ten-fold increase in mobile data traffic between 2015 and 2021. To achieve this goal, new technologies are being considered, including massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems and millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications. Massive MIMO involves the use of large antenna array sizes at the base station, while mmWave communications employ frequencies between 30 and 300 GHz. In this thesis we study the impact of these technologies on the performance of channel estimators.

Our results show that the characteristics of the propagation channel at mmWave frequencies improve the channel estimation performance in …

A Biologically Plausible Supervised Learning Method For Spiking Neurons With Real-World Applications, Lilin Guo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Learning is central to infusing intelligence to any biologically inspired system. This study introduces a novel Cross-Correlated Delay Shift (CCDS) learning method for spiking neurons with the ability to learn and reproduce arbitrary spike patterns in a supervised fashion with applicability tospatiotemporalinformation encoded at the precise timing of spikes. By integrating the cross-correlated term,axonaland synapse delays, the CCDS rule is proven to be both biologically plausible and computationally efficient. The proposed learning algorithm is evaluated in terms of reliability, adaptive learning performance, generality to different neuron models, learning in the presence of noise, effects of its learning parameters and classification …

Gaussian Nonlinear Line Attractor For Learning Multidimensional Data, Theus H. Aspiras, Vijayan K. Asari, Wesam Sakla

Vijayan K. Asari

The human brain’s ability to extract information from multidimensional data modeled by the Nonlinear Line Attractor (NLA), where nodes are connected by polynomial weight sets. Neuron connections in this architecture assumes complete connectivity with all other neurons, thus creating a huge web of connections. We envision that each neuron should be connected to a group of surrounding neurons with weighted connection strengths that reduces with proximity to the neuron. To develop the weighted NLA architecture, we use a Gaussian weighting strategy to model the proximity, which will also reduce the computation times significantly. Once all data has been trained in …

Brain Machine Interface Using Emotiv Epoc To Control Robai Cyton Robotic Arm, Daniel P. Prince, Mark J. Edmonds, Andrew J. Sutter, Matthew Thomas Cusumano, Wenjie Lu, Vijayan K. Asari

Vijayan K. Asari

The initial framework for an electroencephalography (EEG) thought recognition software suite is developed, built, and tested. This suite is designed to recognize human thoughts and pair them to actions for controlling a robotic arm. Raw EEG brain activity data is collected using an Emotiv EPOC headset. The EEG data is processed through linear discriminant analysis (LDA), where an intended action is identified. The EEG classification suite is being developed to increase the number of distinct actions that can be identified compared to the Emotiv recognition software. The EEG classifier was able to correctly distinguish between two separate physical movements. Future …

Nondestructive Testing And Structural Health Monitoring Based On Adams And Svm Techniques, Gang Jiang, Yi Ming Deng, Ji Tai Niu

The 8th International Conference on Physical and Numerical Simulation of Materials Processing

No abstract provided.

The Simulation For Ultrasonic Testing Based On Frequency-Phase Coded Excitation, Jiaying Zhang, Wenlong Tian, Tie Gang, Sen Cong, Zhaoyang Sheng

The 8th International Conference on Physical and Numerical Simulation of Materials Processing

No abstract provided.

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 …

Nonlinear Dynamics, Bifurcation Maps, Signal Encryption And Decryption Using Acousto-Optic Chaos Under A Variable Aperture Illumination, Monish Ranjan Chatterjee, Suman Chaparala

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Bragg cell nonlinear dynamics and bifurcation properties under first-order feedback with variable aperture are examined. Chaotic encryption and recovery of low-bandwidth signals, and optimal performance are evaluated for fixed and variable apertures.

Physical Layer Defenses Against Primary User Emulation Attacks, Joan A. Betances

Theses and Dissertations

Cognitive Radio (CR) is a promising technology that works by detecting unused parts of the spectrum and automatically reconfiguring the communication system's parameters in order to operate in the available communication channels while minimizing interference. CR enables efficient use of the Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum by generating waveforms that can coexist with existing users in licensed spectrum bands. Spectrum sensing is one of the most important components of CR systems because it provides awareness of its operating environment, as well as detecting the presence of primary (licensed) users of the spectrum.

Digital Image Processing, Russell C. Hardie, Majeed M. Hayat

Russell C. Hardie

In recent years, digital images and digital image processing have become part of everyday life. This growth has been primarily fueled by advances in digital computers and the advent and growth of the Internet. Furthermore, commercially available digital cameras, scanners, and other equipment for acquiring, storing, and displaying digital imagery have become very inexpensive and increasingly powerful. An excellent treatment of digital images and digital image processing can be found in Ref. [1]. A digital image is simply a two-dimensional array of finite-precision numerical values called picture elements (or pixels). Thus a digital image is a spatially discrete (or discrete-space) …

A Comparison Of Wavelet And Simplicity-Based Heart Sound And Murmur Segmentation Methods, Joshua David Korven

Master's Theses

Stethoscopes are the most commonly used medical devices for diagnosing heart conditions because they are inexpensive, noninvasive, and light enough to be carried around by a clinician. Auscultation with a stethoscope requires considerable skill and experience, but the introduction of digital stethoscopes allows for the automation of this task. Auscultation waveform segmentation, which is the process of determining the boundaries of heart sound and murmur segments, is the primary challenge in automating the diagnosis of various heart conditions. The purpose of this thesis is to improve the accuracy and efficiency of established techniques for detecting, segmenting, and classifying heart sounds …

Scaled Synthetic Aperture Rader Development, Jason Garvey Schray

Master's Theses

Several previous Cal Poly thesis projects involve synthetic aperture radar (SAR), automatic target recognition (ATR), and tracking. SAR data was either accessed from a publicly available database or generated using complex computer modeling software. The motivation for this dual thesis project is to design and construct a scaled SAR system to support Cal Poly radar projects. Ideally this is a low-cost, high resolution SAR architecture that produces raw range Doppler data for any desired target area. To that end, a scaled SAR system was successfully designed, built, and tested. The current SAR system, however, does not perform azimuthal compression and …

On Quality-Of-Service Provisioning In Ieee 802.11ax Wlans, Der-Jiunn Deng, Shao-Yu Lien, Jordan Lee, Kwang-Cheng Chen

Electrical Engineering Faculty Publications

A revolutionary effort to seek fundamental improvement of 802.11, known as IEEE 802.11ax, has been approved to deliver the next-generation wireless local area network (WLAN) technologies. In WLANs, medium access control protocol is the key component that enables efficient sharing the common radio channel while satisfying the quality of service (QoS) requirements for multimedia applications. With the new physical layer design and subsequent new medium access control functions under more demands on QoS and user experience, in this paper, we first survey the QoS support in legacy 802.11. Then, we summarize the IEEE 802.11ax standardization activities in progress and present …

Experimental Testing And Validation Of P-Band Bi-Static Remote Sensing Of Soil Moisture In 137-138mhz Range, Xiangyu Qu, Yao-Cheng Lin, James L. Garrison

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Remote sensing using readily available communication signal transmitted by ORBCOMM satellites at very high frequency (VHF) range (137-138MHz) is a promising method for detecting the root zone soil moisture content. The radio wave reflectivity of soil is strongly correlated to soil moisture content. Therefore, if we were able to measure the reflectivity, we might be able to estimate the soil moisture content. In this preliminary study, we analyze direct signal data from the satellites to investigate and verify communication channels in frequency range of interest and their characteristics (bandwidth, pattern, etc.). The analysis of direct signal data is also used …

An Innovative Approach To Johnson Noise Thermometry By Means Of Spectral Estimation, Nora Dianne Bull

Doctoral Dissertations

Instrumentation in a nuclear power plant is critical in monitoring the stability and safety levels of a reactor. Temperature is a key measurement performed on the core of a reactor to control the power output and sustain a safe thermal margin. If there is a dramatic change in temperature, failure is likely to follow if action is not taken to cool the system. Traditionally, to measure the temperature of a reactor, several resistance temperature detectors are placed in predefined locations on the system. Resistance temperature detectors (RTD) are typically platinum coiled wire wrapped around a ceramic cylinder and encased in …

Face Centered Image Analysis Using Saliency And Deep Learning Based Techniques, Rui Guo

Doctoral Dissertations

Image analysis starts with the purpose of configuring vision machines that can perceive like human to intelligently infer general principles and sense the surrounding situations from imagery. This dissertation studies the face centered image analysis as the core problem in high level computer vision research and addresses the problem by tackling three challenging subjects: Are there anything interesting in the image? If there is, what is/are that/they? If there is a person presenting, who is he/she? What kind of expression he/she is performing? Can we know his/her age? Answering these problems results in the saliency-based object detection, deep learning structured …

Electromagnetic Scattering Models For Insar Correlation Measurements Of Vegetation And Snow, Yang Lei

Doctoral Dissertations

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) has proved successful and efficient in measuring the vertical structure of the distributed targets such as vegetation and snow, which are dominated by volume scattering. In particular, the InSAR correlation measurement has been utilized to retrieve the target vertical structural information. One existing and well-known electromagnetic scattering model of the InSAR correlation was first brought forward focusing on the single-pass InSAR observation of a sparse random medium like vegetation. However, the lack of the adaption of this InSAR scattering model for repeat-pass InSAR observation of vegetation as well as for single-pass InSAR observation of snow …

Communications System Using Signal Modulation, William C. Barott

Publications

A communication method and system for communication utilizing modulation of digital signals, such as by targets and/or by use of low-complexity tags is presented. Targets may include any device or object that may alter signals, and tags can include a device with the ability to reflect and/or alter the properties of the signals and, in doing so, impose specific modulations on or alterations of such signals. Modulations can be sensed or detected using a receiver or receivers imple­menting processing algorithms derived from passive radar detection operations or other processes.

Prosense, Johnny Favazza Ii, Casey Glasgow, Matt Epperson

Computer Engineering

This project aims to gather advanced data sets from MEMS sensors and GPS and deliver it to the user, who can capitalize on the data. The once negligible half-degree difference of your board barreling down a wave can be recorded from a gyro and exploited for the perfect turn. The exact speed dreaded by longboarders where speed wobbles turn into a road rash can be analysed and consequently avoided. Ascertaining the summit of your flight using combined GPS sensors from the ski ramp allows for the correct timing of tricks. When it comes to pursuing excellence in professional sports, amateur …

El Capitán: Cal Poly Rose Float Digital Drive System, Gregory Raffi Baghdikian

Computer Engineering

In today’s world of smartphones, self-driving cars, and internet-connected coffee makers, it seems as if computers are contained in everything around us. These “embedded systems” have become critical components of our lives, improving everything about the things they control, from cost, to speed, to simplicity. One area that embedded systems has hardly gained a foothold is in the world of floatbuilding. Most of the floats in the Tournament of Roses Parade, including the one built jointly by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal Poly Pomona, are technologically very simple, using mostly analog components and rudimentary discrete digital logic to …

Bitrate Classification Of Twice-Encoded Audio Using Objective Quality Features, Colm Sloan, Damien Kelly, Naomi Harte, Anil C. Kokaram, Andrew Hines

Conference papers

When a user uploads audio files to a music stream- ing service, these files are subsequently re-encoded to lower bitrates to target different devices, e.g. low bitrate for mobile. To save time and bandwidth uploading files, some users encode their original files using a lossy codec. The metadata for these files cannot always be trusted as users might have encoded their files more than once. Determining the lowest bitrate of the files allows the streaming service to skip the process of encoding the files to bitrates higher than that of the uploaded files, saving on processing and storage space. This …

Analysis Of Various Algorithmic Approaches To Software-Based 1200 Baud Audio Frequency Shift Keying Demodulation For Aprs, Robert F. Campbell

Master's Theses

Digital communications continues to be a relevant Field of study as new technologies appear and old methodologies get revisited or renovated. The goal of this research is to look into the old digital communication scheme of Bell 202 [67] used by APRS and improve software based demodulation performance. Improved performance is defined by being able to correctly decode more packets in an efficient, real time, manner. Most APRS demodulation is currently done using specialized hardware since that yields the best performance. This research shows that through using Sivan Toledo's javAX25 [72] software package, new demodulation algorithms can be implemented that …