Engineering Commons^™

System Design And Implementation For Hybrid Network Function Virtualization, Xuzhi Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

With the application of virtualization technology in computer networks, many new research areas and techniques have been explored, such as network function virtualization (NFV). A significant benefit of virtualization is that it reduces the cost of a network system and increases its flexibility. Due to the increasing complexity of the network environment and constantly improving network scale and bandwidth, it is imperative to aim for higher performance, extensibility, and flexibility in the future network systems. In this dissertation, hybrid NFV platforms applying virtualization technology are proposed. We further explore the techniques used to improve the performance, scalability and resilience of …

Design And Implementation Of An Isfet Sensor With Integration Of An On-Chip Processor, Shaghayegh Aslanzadeh

Doctoral Dissertations

Portable sensors are used in many applications. Among them, pH sensors are suitable for quantifying and identifying various analytes in real-time and doing so non-invasively. The analytes may have environmental impact such as in water quality monitoring. The analytes may also have biological impact such as monitoring cell culture or remote patient health assessment. CMOS based sensors are compact and enable low power consumption suitable for these portable applications.

This work reports on the development of a portable CMOS based pH sensor. The contributions of this dissertation are as follows. First, a differential pH sensor, with two different sized electrodes …

State Estimation For Vsc-Mtdc Power Systems Considering Droop Control And Operating Limits, Wei Feng

Doctoral Dissertations

Power systems with voltage source converter-based multi-terminal DC (VSC-MTDC) have received great interest in both the academic and industrial worlds in recent years. The introduction of VSC-MTDC systems into the power system industry brings not only significant benefits but also severe challenges due to the complex structures, different operating behaviors, and dynamic features of VSC-MTDC. State estimation (SE), an important function in the Energy Management System (EMS) for real-time monitoring, has become a challenging issue for VSC-MTDC systems. The traditional approach to dealing with this problem only considers the quasi-steady status of a VSC and ignores its dynamic features. Therefore, …

Information-Theoretic Limits On Statistical Matching With Applications To Privacy, Nazanin Takbiri

Doctoral Dissertations

Modern applications significantly enhance the user experience by adapting to each user's individual condition and/or preferences. While this adaptation can greatly improve a user's experience or be essential for the application to work, the exposure of user data to the application presents a significant privacy threat to the users- even when the traces are anonymized (since the statistical matching of an anonymized trace to prior user behavior can identify a user and their habits). Because of the current and growing algorithmic and computational capabilities of adversaries, provable privacy guarantees as a function of the degree of anonymization and obfuscation of …