Engineering Commons^™

Vessel Trajectory Prediction Using Historical Ais Data, Jagir Laxmichand Charla

Dissertations and Theses

Maritime vessel position coordinates are important information for maritime situational planning and organization. A better estimate of future locations of the maritime vessels, from their current locations, can help maritime authorities to make planned decisions, which can be helpful to avoid traffic congestion and longer waiting times. This thesis develops a method for estimating future locations of the vessels using their current and previous locations and other data.

The motivating scenario for this work is that of determining the future locations of the vessels based on their current location and previous locations for accurate modelling of underwater acoustic noise. As …

Clustered Hyperspectral Target Detection, Sean Onufer Stalley

Dissertations and Theses

Aerial target detection is often used to search for relatively small things over large areas of land. Depending on the size and signature of the target, detection can be a very easy or very difficult task. By capturing images with several hundred color channels, hyperspectral sensors provide a new way of looking at this task, both literally and figuratively. Hyperspectral sensors can be used in many aerial target detection tasks such as identifying unhealthy trees in a forest, searching for minerals at a mining site, or finding the sources of chemical leaks at a factory. The high spectral resolution of …

Approximate Pattern Matching Using Hierarchical Graph Construction And Sparse Distributed Representation, Aakanksha Mathuria

Dissertations and Theses

With recent developments in deep networks, there have been significant advances in visual object detection and recognition. However, some of these networks are still easily fooled/hacked and have shown "bag of features" kinds of failures. Some of this is due to the fact that even deep networks make only marginal use of the complex structure that exists in real-world images. Primate visual systems appear to capture the structure in images, but how?

In the research presented here, we are studying approaches for robust pattern matching using static, 2D Blocks World images based on graphical representations of the various components of …

Theoretical And Experimental Validation Of A Cubesat's L-Band Communication System, Evangelos Mastrogiannis

Dissertations and Theses

An L-band uplink communication system was designed and validated in the lab for a CubeSat satellite operating in low Earth orbit (LEO). This paper investigates communication link analysis, discusses the design strategy for an inexpensive CubeSat receiver operating in L-band with a moderate power Earth station transmitter, and validates the link budget with prototype hardware using an anechoic chamber.

A receiver's required carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) establishes the basis for a link budget. The requirement for a digital communication link is set by the bit-error-rate (BER) requirement of a chosen communication protocol which is inversely related to the energy per bit …

Analog Statistical Design For Manufacturability, Yu-Shan Wang

Dissertations and Theses

The manufacturing yield, overkill, and defect level limit the feasibility of analog circuits in SoCs. The conventional method of handling process and environmental variation is to assign a design margin such that the design meets specifications at several processes and environmental corners. However, checking only extreme corners limits performance in comparison to the more rigorous statistical approach of the computing manufacturing and quality figure of merit. The statistical approach requires transistor-level simulation of hundreds or even thousands of samples, not just a few corners, and thus is very time consuming.

This research offers a method for reducing the time required …

Dynamic Through-Silicon Via Clustering In 3d Ic Floorplanning For Early Performance Optimization, Sucheta Mohapatra

Dissertations and Theses

Through-silicon via (TSV)-based three-dimensional integrated circuits (3D ICs) are expected to be the breakthrough technology for keeping up with the scaling trends of Moore's law, while also offering the unique opportunity for functional diversification through heterogenous integration. TSVs are vertical metal interconnects enabling communication across stacked and thinned dies. The dramatic reduction in global wirelength and chip footprint in 3DICs, directly improves delay, device density, bandwidth and routing congestion. Even with the current maturation of TSV process, the roadmap for industry adoption of 3DICs remains largely uncertain due to lack of standardized 3D tools capable of handling the sheer complexity …

Memristive Architectures And Algorithms For Approximate Graph-Based Inference, Mohammad M.A. Taha

Dissertations and Theses

The goal of this thesis is to design fast, low-power, robust graph-based inference systems. Our approach to this is by using (1) in-memory computing, (2) approximate computing principles, and (3) memristive devices.

This work is motivated by the fact that conventional von Neumann architectures are not efficient for inference applications, mainly due to the data transfer bottleneck. Adding cache memories and using GPUs is a remedy, however, does not eliminate this bottleneck. In-memory computing is an alternative approach that performs all computations inside the memory, thus eliminating the data transfer bottleneck.

The memristor, which is a passive two-terminal device, is …

Evaluating R&D Projects In Regulated Utilities: The Case Of Power Transmission Utilities, Edwin Garces

Dissertations and Theses

R&D project selection is essential for many organizations; however, it is a complex decision since it is affected by many factors. These factors vary among organizations because of their different objectives and conditions. There are limited budgets for the investments, and the current R&D project selection methods are focused on financial analysis or complex mathematical probabilistic calculations. Therefore, the main motivation of this research is to create a method to help improve the ex-ante selection of R&D projects in regulated organizations. More importantly, the case application is the electric transmission utilities sector, which plays one of the most critical roles …

Design Of A 7-Mhz Portable Direct Conversion Transceiver With Digitally Controlled Keying, Abram Morphew

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis outlines the design of a portable direct conversion transceiver system for the 7-MHz (or 40m) band. This band is popular due to its propagation characteristics which allow for world-wide communication with very low power. The transceiver utilizes a crystal-stabilized local oscillator optimized for frequency agility, low power consumption, and an optimal drive level of +7 dBm. A low power 8-bit microcontroller acts as an interface for either a straight key providing manual Morse code operation or digital logic control from a personal computer. It also acts as a side tone oscillator providing audio feedback to the operator during …

Designing Gates And Architectures For Superconducting Quantum Systems, Sahar Daraeizadeh

Dissertations and Theses

Large-scale quantum computers can solve certain problems that are not tractable by currently available classical computational resources. The building blocks of quantum computers are qubits. Among many different physical realizations for qubits, superconducting qubits are one of the promising candidates to realize gate model quantum computers. In this dissertation, we present new multi-qubit gates for nearest-neighbor superconducting quantum systems. In the absence of a physical hardware, we simulate the dynamics of the quantum system and use the simulated environment as a framework for test, design, and optimization of quantum gates and architectures. We explore three different simulation-based gate design methodologies: …

Aggregated Water Heater System (Awhs) Optimization For Ancillary Services, Manasseh Obi

Dissertations and Theses

In this dissertation, I present a two-stage optimization routine that schedules an Aggregated Water Heater System (AWHS) to concurrently provide three utility ancillary services, namely, frequency regulation, frequency response, and peak demand mitigation.

Water heaters can be controlled to manage their energy take, the amount of energy a water heater can absorb upon command. The AWHS is a model aggregation of thousands of water heaters, the energy take and power characteristics of which are based on U.S Census household data and usage behavior patterns. The aggregate energy take available in the AWHS may be dispatched en masse for participation in …

Absorptive Reflectionless Filters, Guy Barry Lemire

Dissertations and Theses

For many applications requiring some sort of signal filtering or signal conditioning, the filter requirements are usually approached with a single purpose in mind, which is to maximize both passband signal amplitude and stop band signal attenuation to the load with little to no thought given to what happens to the stop band signal energy. Many conventional filters have very poor impedance matching in the stopband resulting in reflected energy or large return loss (S₁₁). This reflected energy can then cause interactions with adjoining system components which do not in general respond well to spurious reflected energy and …

Power Efficiency Enhancement And Linearization Techniques For Power Amplifiers In Wireless Communications, Haider Al-Kanan

Dissertations and Theses

Wireless communication systems require Power Amplifiers (PAs) for signal transmissions. The trade-off between power efficiency and nonlinear distortion in PAs degrades the communication performance. Thus, power efficiency and nonlinearity are two main concerns of operating PAs in communication systems. Nonlinear behavioral models are typically used to quantify and mitigate the distortion effects of PAs on communication systems. This dissertation presents an estimation approach for modeling and linearizing the PA Amplitude-to-Amplitude (AM/AM) nonlinearity using the design specifications of PAs, such as gain, the third-order intercept point, and 1dB compression point. Furthermore, an enhanced approach for modeling solid-state power amplifiers is developed …

Classifying Seabed Parameters From Normal Incidence Reflections: Model Comparison And Inversion Technique, Megan Frantz

Dissertations and Theses

As of the year 2019, only about five percent of the seafloor has been topologically mapped and classified for type (e.g., sand, silt, gravel). To rapidly survey the seabed from surface ships or underwater vehicles, acoustic remote sensing methods are needed. In this thesis, acoustic measurements and inverse modeling is investigated as a way to classify seabed type based on estimating parameters such as density, sound speed, and interface roughness. The method uses normal incident acoustic measurements that can be made using either a single beam echo sounder or the normal incident beams from a side scan sonar. The inverse …

Optimal Boundary Detection Using Autonomous Mobile Sensors, Phillip Justin Kearns

Dissertations and Theses

A fundamental challenge to modern science and engineering is the ability to rapidly and accurately determine the spatial extent of environmental phenomena. In monitoring the spread of hazardous pollution, for example, all points with pollutant concentration above or below a fixed threshold can be considered as two classes in a binary classification problem. In this instance, the goal is to accurately estimate the decision boundary as quickly as possible. To generate models and predictions, scientists must choose their sampling locations from a vast array of possibilities. This thesis develops a policy for determining the optimal sample locations for a fixed …