Engineering Commons^™

Smooth Ternary Signaling For Deep-Submicron(Dsm) Buses, Robert Endicott Hanson, Ryan Ian Fullerton

Electrical Engineering

This project demonstrates the error mitigating effects of using a three-level “smooth ternary” signal on a Deep-Submicron(DSM) bus with large inter-wire capacitance. An RC circuit used to simulate and exaggerate (for easier testing) the charging and discharging of the DSM bus. An encoder stage translates binary input data into a three-level signal before sending it to the bus. A decoder stage then translates the three-level signal back to binary that is ideally identical to the original signal. Our results show that the three-level signal has much cleaner transitions than a traditional binary signal. A few glitches that appeared when decoding …

Design And Simulation Of V2g Bidirectional Inverter And Dc-Dc Converter, Allan Agatep, Mason Ung

Electrical Engineering

As plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) become more popular, the utility companies are forced to feed the grid more electricity. However, these PHEVs are capable of providing power to the grid when they are parked serving as ancillary systems for grid regulation (V2G). Using a system based on photovoltaic (PV) technology, a design for a bidirectional inverter with LCL filter, and a bidirectional dc-dc with a constant current controller, was constructed using LTspice. Various papers were researched and analyzed to determine applicable designs for components. Simulations show the designs are capable of bidirectional power transfer. ETAP simulations show that delivering …

Integrating Embedded Computing Systems Into High School And Early Undergraduate Education, Bridget Benson, Arash Arfaee, Choon Kim, Ryan Kastner, Rajesh K. Gupta

Electrical Engineering

Early exposure to embedded computing systems is crucial for students to be prepared for the embedded computing demands of today's world. However, exposure to systems knowledge often comes too late in the curriculum to stimulate students' interests and to provide a meaningful difference in how they direct their choice of electives for future education and careers. This paper describes an experience with integrating embedded computing systems education into high school and early undergraduate curricula to give students that needed early exposure. It provides assessment data that illustrates the success and limitations of the efforts described as well as the lessons …

Elliptical Machine Dc-Dc Converter For The Energy Harvesting From Exercise Machines Project, Greg Hollister

Electrical Engineering

Designing a DC/DC Converter for the Cal Poly Energy Harvesting from Exercise Machines project requires special attention to the unique operating characteristics of the source and the load. An elliptical machine powered by a person exercising comprises the source, while an AC Inverter makes up the load. This project attempts to integrate the two devices with a custom DC/DC Converter in order to ultimately deliver power back into the power grid.

Digital Control Of Parallel-Connected Dc-Dc Converters, Taufik, Daniel Forbes, Dale Dolan, Ratna Ika Putri

Electrical Engineering

This paper presents a digitally-controlled paralleled DC-DC converter. The main objective of the digital control is to achieve load sharing while operating at close to peak efficiency over an extremely wide load range. Results from computer simulations using Simulink show the digital control could indeed accomplish the objectives, but the improvements over a single converter depend on the original efficiency characteristics of the converters. An application for a high-power electric vehicle charger utilizing this converter setup is considered.

Led Spotlight, Eric Toussaint

Electrical Engineering

This report details the development and construction of an LED spotlight useable in a theatrical or architectural setting. In depth background information, initial design concepts, lighting instrument specifications, assembly, testing, and conclusions from results are highlighted in this document. Project goals include efforts to support more energy efficient lighting in the arts and general lighting applications and a decrease in overall costs for energy used in all dramatic and architectural lighting applications.

Off-Grid Photovoltaic System Design Project, Brian Duffy

Electrical Engineering

This project uses the BP SX 150S solar panel to charge a 12 V battery. This battery powers an AIMS 400 W Modified Sine Wave Inverter to provide 120 V RMS AC power to a load of up to 40 W. Inverter efficiency was measured at different load conditions. A control circuit was implemented to prevent overcharging or over-discharging of the battery, by disconnecting it from the panel or the load, respectively. The control circuit turn-on and cutoff voltages were measured versus battery voltage, and the on-resistance of the MOSFET switches was measured for various load currents. A table of …

Multiple-View Planetary Photogrammetry And Its Visualization, Kyle D. Husmann

Electrical Engineering

During the summer of 2010, Dr. Taemin Kim and Kyle Husmann jointly developed a novel new algorithm to generate topographical maps of planetary surfaces using a multiple-view photogrammetry approach. To evaluate and debug the algorithm, a program called mvpgui was developed to visualize and examine the objective function. After verifying the correct operation of the algorithm and mvpgui with synthetic data, it is run with real orbital data from the Apollo 15 mission. The results confirm the validity of the multiple-view algorithm as well as demonstrate the value of objective function visualization.

Top Transmission Grating Gan Led Simulations For Light Extraction Improvement, Simeon Trieu, Xiaomin Jin, Ashton Ellaboudy, Bei Zhang, Xiang-Ning Kang, Guo-Yi Zhang, Xiong Chang, Wei Wei, Sun Yong Jian, Fu Xing Xing

Electrical Engineering

We study the top transmission grating’s improvement on GaN LED light extraction efficiency. We use the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method, a computational electromagnetic solution to Maxwell’s equations, to measure light extraction efficiency improvements of the various grating structures. Also, since FDTD can freely define materials for any layer or shape, we choose three particular materials to represent our transmission grating: 1) nonlossy p-GaN, 2) lossy indium tin oxide (ITO), and 3) non-lossy ITO (α=0). We define a regular spacing between unit cells in a crystal lattice arrangement by employing the following three parameters: grating cell period (Α), grating …

A New Hardware Design Scheme Of Symbol Synchronization For An Underwater Acoustic Receiver, Li Ying, Bridget Benson, Ryan Kastner, Chen Lan

Electrical Engineering

Conventional time domain symbol synchronizer uses static predefined threshold to evaluate the level of environment noise and extract synchronization signal, but is less feasible to apply in underwater acoustic channel because of the great delay and noise variance make the threshold definition inaccurate. The paper provides a new hardware scheme using real time orthogonal sliding correlation as adaptive threshold to build a symbol synchronizer suitable for an underwater FSK acoustic receiver. The design has been implemented and evaluated on FPGA board. Both the simulation and real data experimental results show that the design provides accurate synchronization which consumes 9% of …

Pipe Flow – A Tutorial For Electrical Engineers, William Ahlgren

Electrical Engineering

Energy is transported over long distances primarily by electric power transmission lines and by pipelines carrying gas or liquid fuel. Electric power engineers need to compare these two energy transmission methods, but often lack knowledge of fluid mechanics pre‐requisite to understanding pipeline transmission. This article provides a focused tutorial to provide the necessary background in the fluid mechanics of pipe flow.

Building A Visual Front-End For Audio-Visual Automatic Speech Recognition In Vehicle Environments, Robert Hursig, Jane Zhang

Electrical Engineering

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) holds the promise of providing a natural, efficient, and safer means for communication between humans and computers and can profoundly change the way we live. Since its invention in the 1950s, ASR has witnessed considerable research activities and in recent years is finding its way into practical applications as evidenced by more and more consumer devices such as PDAs and mobile phones adding ASR features. While mainstream ASR has focused almost exclusively on the acoustic signal, the performance of these systems degrades considerably in the real-world in the presence of noise. One way to overcome this …

Micro-Forest Fire Detection (Mffd) Lwir Detector And Principle Component Analysis For Fire Detection, Bryce Du

Electrical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Audio-To-Optical Conversion And Transmission, Jason Moritz

Electrical Engineering

The purpose of this project is to understand free-space optical transmission of signals in the application of transmitting an audio signal. An audio signal will be taken from the headphone output of a computer and used to modulate a current source driving an LED and a laser diode. The optical signal will then be transmitted through free space as well as two different focal length lenses and converted back to an audio signal to measure any attenuation or gain in the original signal. My experimental results showed that the LED was able to transmit up to 10 dB more power …

Hydro-Electric Generation System For The Dc House Project, Dennis Kwan, Mitchell Krug

Electrical Engineering

This paper focuses on the design, integration, and construction of a system that harnesses energy from flowing water. The system will be used in conjunction with the DC House Project. The proposed system employs a DC generator and DC-DC Boost-converter to provide electricity to the DC House at approximately 200-300W. Results of the testing and measurement show that the goal of the system is feasible, but currently limited. The generator could not output the specified power. Details of the design, along with ideas for further improvement, are presented in this report.

Aether, Thomas Cameron, Kristine Colton, Daren Childers

Electrical Engineering

Aether is a RC-style autonomous air vehicle that utilizes GPS positioning along with a wireless communication system to achieve a computer-controlled flight.

This report will incorporate the acquisition, design, integration, implementation and testing phases of the UAV development. Furthermore a discussion of troubleshooting as well as improvements for future projects will be included.

10-Band Graphic Equalizer, Sean William Michel

Electrical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Multicore, Multithreaded, Phase-Synchronous Fm Sound Synthesizer, Justin Tomlin

Electrical Engineering

This project implements a phase-synchronous FM synthesis algorithm in hardware. Envelope and low frequency oscillator modulation of oscillator parameters is implemented. The microcontroller the system is based on, the XMOS XS1-G4, allows for physical parallelism including features such as multiple cores, multiple hardware threads on each core, a hardware event-driven thread scheduler, and channel, channel ends, and link switches for thread and core communication. The event-driven architecture of this device was ideal for implementing this synthesis algorithm. The final product is portable, durable, has a simple, intuitive user interface, and allows for extensive spectral shaping capabilities. The basic functional requirements …

Wireless Energy Transfer, Ryan Sasur

Electrical Engineering

Phones are now an integral component in the daily lives of people. Smartphones give access to movies, internet, and even books. This versatility and increased use can also lead to a shorter battery life. A phone with video viewing capabilities will be a heavy load on the unit’s battery. With phones utilizing 3G and 4G technology, even heavier demands are placed on the battery. As technology improves even further to provide for a larger entertainment experience on the phone, this could also lead to further battery degradation if the current battery situation isn’t addressed. To have a fully operational phone …