Engineering Commons^™

Real Time Simulation And Hardware In The Loop Methods For Power Electronics Power Distribution Systems, Michele Difronzo

Theses and Dissertations

System level testing of Power Electronics Power Distribution Systems (PEPDS) can be challenging when fine temporal resolution is required (time step below 100-200ns). In the recent years, our research group has proposed various methods to simulate in real-time PEPDS using FPGAs and time step as small as 50ns. While the proposed methods allow achieving the desired temporal resolution, they are extremely demanding in terms of resources usage and the size of the PEPDS that can be simulated on a single FPGA is strongly limited.

In this dissertation -work that takes as an example application the US Navy electric Ship Zonal …

The Hybridization Of A Graphene And Silicon Carbide Schottky Optoelectronic Device By The Incorporation Of A Lead Sulfide Quantum Dot Film, Joshua Letton

Theses and Dissertations

The work that follows examines the impact of lead sulfide quantum dots on a native epitaxial graphene (EG) SiC Schottky device, resulting in a hybrid optoelectronic device which presents a possible avenue towards a novel hybrid carbide-based Schottky solar cell. The active (n-type SiC) and contact (graphene) layers for the Schottky junction of the device were grown epitaxially using a novel technique incorporating tetrafluorosilane (TFS) as a precursor gas. The bare EG/SiC device was characterized based on its I-V behavior in dark and under illumination for both forward and reverse bias conditions. The initial characterization demonstrated the expected Schottky diode …

Ku-Band Ag Channel Modeling, Albert Smith

Theses and Dissertations

With the rise in use of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), there is a need for safe and reliable integration into existing infrastructure. A proposed system for beyond line of sight control links for UAS is a Ku-band air-to-satellite communication system. To ensure this proposed system does not interfere with existing terrestrial infrastructure that operates in the Ku band, an examination of the Ku-band air-to-ground channel is required. The focus of this thesis is the modeling of the Ku-band AG channel. Tests consisting of transmitting a single tone continuous wave signal were conducted with a signal generator onboard NASA’s Viking S-3 …

Novel Wideband Ebg Structures For Isolation Improvement Between Cosite Antennas, Paul John Czeresko Iii

Theses and Dissertations

As the number of installed antennas increases on a structure, the available real estate to do so without each antenna interfering with the others diminishes. Electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structures are one way to mitigate this cosite interference with compact antenna installations. While a host of EBG structures and types (3-D, planar etc.) have been proposed and studied historically, it has been found that planar EBG structures tend to provide very narrow bandwidths for both antenna design and cosite interference reduction. This research focuses on the design of EBG structures intended to achieve greater than 20 dB of isolation improvement …

Growth And Characterization Of Anisotropic Gase Semiconductor For Radiation Detection And Thz Applications, Haseeb Nazir

Theses and Dissertations

Anisotropic wide-bandgap gallium selenide (GaSe) crystals were grown using high purity (7N) Ga and zone refined (ZR) Se precursor materials. The crystal growth was performed using a modified vertical Bridgman method (VBM) with a slow crystallization from the melt and with a pre-determined temperature profile. The structure, surface morphology, and the composition of the grown crystals were characterized using x-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy dispersive analysis by x-rays (EDAX), respectively. Optical absorption and transmission properties were characterized and optical bandgap was determined. Electrical resistivity has been determined using current-voltage (I V) measurements using van der Pauw …

Software Modelling For Real World Faults On Ac Transmission Protective Systems Analysis And Effects, Iandale Tualla

Theses and Dissertations

The Electric Power Utilities serves many diverse customers from regular households to major processing plants that develop parts for gasoline vehicles. Those varying customer usages has adverse effects on the Electric Grid in many ways, that requires continuing analysis by the engineers and technical skills specialists who keep the Electric Grid stable. Several papers have been written about harmonics and Non- Sinusoidal waveforms and its effect on the Electric Grid. This thesis will exam a realworld fault event on a transmission line, its effects on the AC Transmission Protection Systems (TPS) that provides electrical energy to a nonlinear load, specifically …

Improved N-Type 4h-Sic Epitaxial Layer Radiation Detectors And Noise Analysis Of Front-End Readout Electronics, Khai V. Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations

Schottky barrier radiation detectors were fabricated on n-type 4H-SiC epitaxial layers (12 – 50 μm) grown by hot wall CVD process on highly nitrogen doped 4H-SiC (0001) substrates with 4-8º off-cut towards the ̅ direction. Ni/4H-SiC Schottky barrier radiation detectors, a very low leakage current of 0.18 nA at 250 V bias, revealing low thermal noise, was observed in current-voltage (I-V) measurements. Using a thermionic emission model, junction properties such as barrier height of ≥1.10 eV and an ideality factor of ≤1.29 were determined. An effective carrier concentration of 1.03×1015 cm-3 was calculated by capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurement. Deep level transient …

Cable Health Monitoring System Built Into Power Converter Using Time Domain Reflectometry, Hossein Baninajar

Theses and Dissertations

Aging cables are a critical reliability concern for many electrical systems. Cables run over long distances, are often exposed to harsh environments and are intended to work for several decades. Cable faults can be a serious problem because cables are usually hard to repair or replace. Condition based maintenance is a popular approach that provides high reliability and low maintenance cost at the same time. This is a non-destructive method that collects information about the health condition of the cable under test without causing any potential damage.

Nowadays, in several applications power cables are connected to power converters and it …

Ray-Based Statistical Propagation Modeling For Indoor Corridor Scenarios At 15 Ghz, Qi Wang, Bo Ai, David W. Matolak, Ruisi He, Xin Zhou

Faculty Publications

According to the demands for fifth-generation (5G) communication systems, high frequency bands (above 6 GHz) need to be adopted to provide additional spectrum. This paper investigates the characteristics of indoor corridor channels at 15 GHz. Channel measurements with a vector network analyzer in two corridors were conducted. Based on a ray-optical approach, a deterministic channel model covering both antenna and propagation characteristic is presented. The channel model is evaluated by comparing simulated results of received power and root mean square delay spread with the corresponding measurements. By removing the impact of directional antennas from the transmitter and receiver, a path …

High Gain Pattern Reconfigurable Antenna Arrays For Portable And Body-Centric Wireless Applications, Nowrin Hasan Chamok

Theses and Dissertations

Wireless devices such as smartphones, tablet computers, smartwatches etc. have become ubiquitous. With that, the demand for high speed data has increased tremendously. Designing antennas for such applications is challenging because of limited availability of space, shadowing or blockage from the human body, and signal loss from multipath fading. Conventional broad, fixed beam low gain antennas result in poor reception, faster battery drainage, and low data rate. Compressed footprint high gain pattern reconfigurable antenna arrays can solve these problems which is the focus of this dissertation. Two innovative high gain pattern reconfiguration techniques, the switched beam parasitic array and the …

Simulation Of Gan Based Mis Varactor, Bojidha Babu

Theses and Dissertations

This work deals with novel microwave switches based on III-Nitride varactors. RF switches, power limiters and other control devices are important components of various RF systems, such as wireless modules of laptops, tablets, cell phones etc., satellites communication systems, radars, multi-band wireless and aerospace communications, phased array antennas and so worth. Traditional RF switches are fabricated using pin diodes or MEMS, Si MOSFETs or GaAs HEMTs. These devices have a number of fundamental limitations. Si or GaAs based devices suffer from a low breakdown voltage and cannot handle high RF power. Pin-diodes require large forward currents and do not allow …

Distributed Optimization And Control Of Islanded Microgrids, Md Rishad Hossain

Theses and Dissertations

A microgrid may have numerous multi-functional power electronic converters connecting sources, loads, and storage to the system. Systems where converters are the interface between many of the main sources of energy and load centers have the ability to direct the flow of energy if the control of the converters is coordinated. The influence of energy flow in a microgrid by coordinated action of converters is referred to here as ‘energy routing’. Energy routing allows for reduction of systems losses by optimizing source operating points and reducing transmission and distribution path losses. Energy ramp rates at various points in the system …

Miniaturized Rf Components With A Novel Tunable Engineered Substrate For Wireless Communication Systems, Yujia Peng

Theses and Dissertations

There is an increasing demand for reliable sensor system capable of remote sensing and measuring interesting data. Although large communication range can be achieved, active wireless communication systems are still suboptimal in longtime applications due to their harmful battery supply. Inductively coupled passive devices, with the advantages in safe long-term implanting, structural simplicity, small fabrication footprint and low-cost production, are preferred in chronic monitoring, but little work has been done to optimize the performance of these systems, especially under some design constraints.

The model and optimization of an inductively coupled wireless pressure sensor system is presented in this dissertation. With …

System Level Analysis And Design For Wireless Inter-Chip Interconnection Communication Systems By Applying Advanced Wireless Communication Technologies, Xin Zheng

Theses and Dissertations

As the dramatic development of high speed integrated circuits has progressed, the 60 GHz silicon technology has been introduced to enable much faster computer systems and their corresponding applications. However, when signals are propagating at 60 GHz or higher frequencies on a PCB (Printed Circuit Board), the crosstalk among signal buses and devices, trace losses, and introduced parasitic capacitance and inductance between high density traces, become significant and may be severe enough such that the inter-chip communications will not be able to meet computer system signal specifications. High speed circuit signal integrity researchers in both electronic industries and academia have …

Estimating Local Average Power In A Line-Of-Sight Indoor Channel: Spatial Sampling And Processing, Israt Jahan Disha

Theses and Dissertations

Modeling of indoor radio channels has been a dynamic area of research in recent years because of the increasing demand for indoor wireless communications. In order to efficiently deploy such indoor systems, a good knowledge of the indoor wireless channel’s characteristics are required. One important characteristic is an accurate propagation path loss model. For developing such models various measurements have been carried out. In modeling propagation path loss in complex indoor environments, accurate and fast algorithms for estimating the local mean signal level are essential; these are also of use for power control and handoff decisions. These local mean power …

Applications Of Impedance Identification To Electric Ship System Control And Power Hardware-In-The-Loop Simulation, Jonathan Siegers

Theses and Dissertations

Recent advances in semiconductor technology, controls, and switching converter topologies have resulted in the increasing application of power electronics in power distribution systems. Power electronic enabled distribution systems have inspired a renewed interest in DC distribution architectures as an appealing alternative to traditional AC methods due to the significant performance and efficiency gains they offer. However, the notional power electronic based DC distribution system is a complex and extensively interconnected system consisting of multiple power converters. As a result, a number of system-level challenges related to stability arise due to interaction among multiple power converters. In addition, the power distribution …

A Comparison Of Fpga Implementation Of Latency-Based Solvers For Power Electronic System Real-Time Simulation, Matthew Aaron Milton

Theses and Dissertations

In the design of power systems, real-time simulation is a powerful tool to evaluate and validate designs before dedicating resources to develop such systems. Through use of real-time simulation, one can study the behavior of a power system in interaction with real, physical elements, all while avoiding the cost and risk in constructing and testing such systems before a design is finalized. In recent decades, effort has been made in the industry and academia to apply real-time simulation to that of switching power converters through use of high-speed digital signal processors (DSPs) and field programmable gate array (FPGA) devices. With …

Wireless Channel Modeling For Networks On Chips, William Rayess

Theses and Dissertations

The advent of integrated circuit (chip) multiprocessors (CMPs) combined with the continuous reduction in device physical size (technology scaling) to the sub-nanometer regime will result in an exponential increase in the number of processing cores that can be integrated within a single chip. Today’s CMPs already support tens to low hundreds of cores and both industry and academic roadmaps project that future chips will have thousands of cores. Therefore, while there are open questions on how to harness the computing power offered by CMPs, the design of power-efficient and compact on-chip interconnection networks that connects cores, caches and memory controllers …

Engineering Model Of Iii-Nitride Power Heterostructure Field Effect Transistor On Silicon Substrate, Mohammad Mirwazul Islam

Theses and Dissertations

In modern society, the demand for power consumption is increasing rapidly and the need of energy savings is now an issue of global importance. Highly efficient power converters and power conditioning systems operating with wide range of traditional as well as novel renewable and clean energy sources, are playing crucial role in energy saving. Si converters have already reached their limitation in terms of switching frequency and breakdown voltage/on-resistance ratio. Research is going on all around the world and it is now well accepted that significant improvement in power conversion efficiency and speed can only be achieved using beyond Si …

Investigation Of Wide Bandgap Semiconductor Devices For Radiation Detection Applications, Rahmi Orhon Pak

Theses and Dissertations

Radioactive materials, as they decay, generate different high-frequency electromagnetic radiation such as alpha particles, beta particles, x-rays, gamma-rays, and neutrons. Nuclear detectors could stop these high-energy ionizing radiations, collect and transport the charges generated to an external circuit, and produce an electrical signal which is amplified by readout electronics to measure the energy of nuclear interaction. Thus, nuclear detectors are important tools for accounting of radioactive materials and have widespread applications in nuclear power plants, nuclear waste management, in national security, in medical imaging such as x-ray mammography, digital chest radiography, CT scan, and in high energy astronomy for NASA …

Project Labyrinth: Exploration Of Modulating Guitar Signals, Joseph Andrews, Andrew Patterson

Senior Theses

The overall objective of this project is to create a guitar pre-amplifier in the casing of an effects pedal. The pedal must be able to modulate amplitude and pitch. More specifically, the design for this pedal will include floating frequency filtering, phase shifting, and amplitude modulation.

Experimental Characterization And Correlation Analysis Of Indoor Channels At 15 Ghz, Xin Zhou, Zhangdui Zhong, Bei Zhang, Ruisi He, Ke Guan, Qi Wang, David W. Matolak

Faculty Publications

The indoor radio channels at 15 GHz are investigated based on measurements. The large- and small-scale fading behaviors as well as the delay dispersion characteristics are discussed. It is found that the large-scale fading, Ricean -factor, and delay spread can be described by log-normal distributions. Furthermore, both autocorrelation and cross correlation properties of the above parameters are analyzed and modeled. These parameters characterize fading and delay behaviors as well as their mutual dependency and can be used as empirical values for future wireless system design and simulation in 15 GHz short-range indoor channels.

Iii-V Nitride Based Microcantilever Heaters For Unique Multimodal Detection Of Volatile Organic Compounds At Low Temperature, Ifat Jahangir

Theses and Dissertations

Detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are widely used in industrial processes and household products, is very important due to significant health hazards associated with them. VOCs are commonly detected using photo-ionization detectors (PIDs), suspended hot bead pellistors, or heated metal oxide semiconductor functionalization layers. However, these techniques used for detecting VOCs often suffer from one or more of the following issues - high power consumption, limited selectivity, complicated functionalization technique and expensive characterization tools. On the other hand, microcantilevers offer excellent avenues for molecular sensing that arises out of their high sensitivity to various physical parameter changes induced …

Quantitative Comparison Of Time-Frequency Decomposed Gait Emg Signals, L. Patrick Mitchell

Theses and Dissertations

Falls in the senior population represent an immediate threat to both current and future generations’ quality of life. The results of falls can be disastrous, create a long road to recovery, and in many cases result in death. Hypertension represents a difficult-to-quantify condition which is known to contribute to gait and balance dysfunction. Accurate assessment of conditions such as these represents an area of primary investigative need. In order to meet this need, a new experimental setup is developed which combines time-frequency analysis with surface electromyography (sEMG) signals obtained during ambulation. 3-bit pressure data is acquired using a pressure-sensitive mat, …

Effect Of Z1/2, Eh5, And Ci1 Deep Defects On The Performance Of N-Type 4h-Sic Epitaxial Layers Schottky Detectors: Alpha Spectroscopy And Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy Studies, M. A. Mannan, S. K. Chaudhuri, K. V. Nguyen, K. C. Mandal

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Biparametric Analyses Of Charge Trapping In Cd0.9Zn0.1Te Based Virtual Frisch Grid Detectors, S. K. Chaudhuri, K. J. Zavalla, R. M. Krishna, K. C. Mandal

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Optical Down-Conversion In Doped Znse:Tb3+ Nanocrystals, Sandip Das, K. C. Mandal

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Experimental Determination Of Electron-Hole Pair Creation Energy In 4h-Sic Epitaxial Layer: An Absolute Calibration Approach, S. K. Chaudhuri, K. J. Zavalla, K. C. Mandal

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

High Performance Rf Control Devices Using Capacitively Coupled Contacts (C3) Over Iii-N Heterostructures, Faisal Jahan

Theses and Dissertations

RF switches, power limiters and other control devices are essential components of modern RF systems. RF switches are important parts of wireless modules of various devices such as laptops, tablets, cell phones etc. and key components of satellites communication systems, radars, multi-band wireless and aerospace communications, phased array antennas. RF Power limiters (PL) are also important components of RF systems protecting linear amplifiers, detectors etc. from high-power stress. Traditionally, RF switches are fabricated using pin diodes or MEMS, Si MOSFETs or GaAs HEMTs. RF PLs are typically implemented using Schottky or pin-diodes. Traditional devices used in RF switch and PLs …

Iii-V Nitride Micro- And Nano-Scale Cantilevers For Multimodal Sensing Applications, Ehtesham Bin Quddus

Theses and Dissertations

Recent research trends in chemical and biological sensing have been geared toward developing molecular sensor devices that are fast, label free, miniaturized and portable. The performance of these devices can be dramatically improved by utilizing multimodal detection techniques, new materials and micro-/nanofabrication technologies. This is especially true for micro-/nanoscale cantilever sensors, which undergo changes in mechanical or electrical properties upon the specific binding of molecules. To develop the sensor devices with the above attributes, we utilized III-V nitride materials: InN nanowires for realizing nanoscale cantilevers and AlGaN/GaN heterostuctures with or without embedded HFETs, for developing microcantilevers. There are mainly two …