Engineering Commons^™

Modeling And Experimental Demonstration Of A Hopfield Network Analog-To-Digital Converter With Hybrid Cmos/Memristor Circuits, Xinjie Guo, Farnood Merrikh-Bayat, Ligang Gao, Brian D. Hoskins, Fabien Alibart, Bernabe Linares-Barranco, Luke Theogarajan, Christof Teuscher, Dmitri B. Strukov

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of this work was to demonstrate the feasibility of building recurrent artificial neural networks with hybrid complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS)/memristor circuits. To do so, we modeled a Hopfield network implementing an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with up to 8 bits of precision. Major shortcomings affecting the ADC's precision, such as the non-ideal behavior of CMOS circuitry and the specific limitations of memristors, were investigated and an effective solution was proposed, capitalizing on the in-field programmability of memristors. The theoretical work was validated experimentally by demonstrating the successful operation of a 4-bit ADC circuit implemented with discrete Pt/TiO_{2− …}

Computational Capacity And Energy Consumption Of Complex Resistive Switch Networks, Jens Bürger, Alireza Goudarzi, Darko Stefanovic, Christof Teuscher

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Resistive switches are a class of emerging nanoelectronics devices that exhibit a wide variety of switching characteristics closely resembling behaviors of biological synapses. Assembled into random networks, such resistive switches produce emerging behaviors far more complex than that of individual devices. This was previously demonstrated in simulations that exploit information processing within these random networks to solve tasks that require nonlinear computation as well as memory. Physical assemblies of such networks manifest complex spatial structures and basic processing capabilities often related to biologically-inspired computing. We model and simulate random resistive switch networks and analyze their computational capacities. We provide a …

Optical Imaging Of Finger For Blood Pressure Monitoring Of The Driver, Mohammad Motasim Bellah, Mohammad Raziul Hasan, Samir M. Iqbal

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are number one reason for human mortality around the world (Fig. 1) [1]. Pulse pressure (PP) and pulse rate (PR) are considered as the two most vital physiological markers for CVDs like myocardial infarction, cardiac arrhythmia, and heart failure. Currently, long-term PP and PR analysis is not possible due to the lack of systems that can frequently measure the data over a period of time. Motor vehicle drivers with known CVDs are at higher risk due to traffic air pollution.

This paper presents our work on an inexpensive and readily deployable approach that keeps track of PP …

A Cmos Spiking Neuron For Brain-Inspired Neural Networks With Resistive Synapses And In-Situ Learning, Xinyu Wu, Vishal Saxena, Kehan Zhu, Sakkarapani Balagopal

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Nano-scale resistive memories are expected to fuel dense integration of electronic synapses for large-scale neuromorphic system. To realize such a brain-inspired computing chip, a compact CMOS spiking neuron that performs in-situ learning and computing while driving a large number of resistive synapses is desired. This work presents a novel leaky integrate-and-fire neuron design which implements the dual-mode operation of current integration and synaptic drive, with a single opamp and enables in-situ learning with crossbar resistive synapses. The proposed design was implemented in a 0.18μm CMOS 􀀃technology. Measurements show neuron’s ability to drive a thousand resistive synapses, and demonstrate an in-situ …

Fast Sequence Component Analysis For Attack Detection In Synchrophasor Networks, Jordan Landford, Rich Meier, Richard Barella, Xinghui Zhao, Robert B. Bass, Scott Wallace

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Modern power systems have begun integrating synchrophasor technologies into part of daily operations. Given the amount of solutions offered and the maturity rate of application development it is not a matter of "if" but a matter of "when" in regards to these technologies becoming ubiquitous in control centers around the world. While the benefits are numerous, the functionality of operator-level applications can easily be nullified by injection of deceptive data signals disguised as genuine measurements. Such deceptive action is a common precursor to nefarious, often malicious activity. A correlation coefficient characterization and machine learning methodology are proposed to detect and …

Project-Based Rf/Microwave Education, Richard L. Campbell, Branimir Pejcinovic

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Immediate application of learned fundamentals to laboratory work is standard practice in Electrical Engineering Education, but student explorations of basic RF/Microwave circuits at the transistor-electromagnetics level are particularly challenging. This paper describes an interconnected set of basic electromagnetic and transistor-level RF/Microwave modules that may be assembled into a short range wireless link or modulated scatterer radar system. These Analog/RF/Microwave building blocks are used across the Senior and Graduate Level curriculum.

Spectrum Sensing Of Ofdm Signals In The Presence Of Carrier Frequency Offset, Weiyang Xu, Wei Xiang, Maged Elkashlan, Hani Mehrpouyan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper addresses the important issue of detecting orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) signals in the presence of carrier frequency offset (CFO). The proposed algorithm utilizes the characteristics of the covariance matrix of the discrete Fourier transform of the input signal to the detector to determine the presence of the primary user’s signal. This algorithm can be exploited to differentiate OFDM signals from the noise through the proposal of a new decision metric, which measures the off-diagonal elements of the input signal’s covariance matrix. The decision threshold subject to a given probability of false alarm is derived, while performance analysis is …

A Computational Method To Predict And Study Underwater Noise Due To Pile Driving, Scott Schecklman, Nathan Laws, Lisa M. Zurk, Martin Siderius

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A hybrid modeling approach that uses the parabolic equation (PE) with an empirical source model is presented to study and predict the underwater noise due to pile driving in shallow, inhomogeneous environments over long propagation ranges. The empirical source model uses a phased point source array to simulate the time-dependent pile source. The pile source is coupled with a broadband application of a PE wave propagation model that includes range dependent geoacoustic properties and bathymetry. Simulation results are shown to be in good agreement with several acoustic observations of pile driving in the Columbia River between Portland, OR and Vancouver, …

Enhancing Freshman Engineering Instruction With In-Class Interaction Systems And E-Books, Branimir Pejcinovic, Phillip K. Wong

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Electrical engineering students in our department take a year-long series of courses which introduces electrical engineering as a discipline and provides good grounding in engineering problem solving and programing. We have recently attempted to make the second course in the sequence more engaging by applying active learning techniques, including assigned reading and exercises prior to lectures, in-class exercises using a classroom interaction system, and programming exercises during lectures. Our results are mixed: while we think that students have learned more than if we had not used these techniques, we have not completely won over our students. While using an e-book …

Hierarchical Composition Of Memristive Networks For Real-Time Computing, Jens Bürger, Alireza Goudarzi, Darko Stefanovic, Christof Teuscher

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Advances in materials science have led to physical instantiations of self-assembled networks of memristive devices and demonstrations of their computational capability through reservoir computing. Reservoir computing is an approach that takes advantage of collective system dynamics for real-time computing. A dynamical system, called a reservoir, is excited with a time-varying signal and observations of its states are used to reconstruct a desired output signal. However, such a monolithic assembly limits the computational power due to signal interdependency and the resulting correlated readouts. Here, we introduce an approach that hierarchically composes a set of interconnected memristive networks into a larger reservoir. …

Development And Uses Of Iterative Systematic Literature Reviews In Electrical Engineering Education, Branimir Pejcinovic

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

It is expected that most, if not all, graduate students will posses skills necessary for doing literature reviews. It is less clear how to teach these skills most effectively especially to students who are area novices and unfamiliar with review process. Systematic literature reviews offer a solid instructional framework which can be implemented across curriculum and offer an opportunity to teach course material differently so that student learn not just the literature review technique itself but also some segment of the course material. Our pilot study investigated issues related to practical implementation of systematic literature reviews in two classes, with …

Evolution Of A First-Year Engineering Course, Noah Salzman, Janet Callahan, Gary Leroy Hunt, Carol Sevier, Amy J. Moll

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The first-year engineering course at Boise State University has evolved significantly over the past decade as a result of continuous improvement with a particular focus on student retention. The course was originally created in 1999-2001 as an “Introduction to Engineering” course in order to recruit students to one of the fields of engineering, by introducing those fields of engineering as topics across the semester. Over the first ten years, the course continued that introductory-to-field focus while also introducing a significant design element solving openended engineering problems. As a result of a five-year grant aimed toward improving first-year retention, the first-year …

Energy Harvesting Potential Of Terfenol-D For On-Board Bearing Health Monitoring Applications, Raul Estrada, Heinrich D. Foltz, Constantine Tarawneh, Rene Moreno

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

One of the limiting factors in on-board bearing health monitoring systems is the life of the batteries used to power the system. Thus, any device that can extend the life of the battery, or entirely replace it, is a notable improvement on any currently available systems. Existing on-board monitoring systems, not optimized for low power, are designed to run on approximately 300 mW of power. Current bearing health monitoring systems have proven effective with as few as one reading every four minutes. The environment under which railroad bearings operate is a harsh one, making most forms of energy harvesting very …

Homogeneous Spiking Neuromorphic System For Real-World Pattern Recognition, Xinyu Wu, Vishal Saxena, Kehan Zhu

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A neuromorphic chip that combines CMOS analog spiking neurons and memristive synapses offers a promising solution to brain-inspired computing, as it can provide massive neural network parallelism and density. Previous hybrid analog CMOS-memristor approaches required extensive CMOS circuitry for training, and thus eliminated most of the density advantages gained by the adoption of memristor synapses. Further, they used different waveforms for pre and post-synaptic spikes that added undesirable circuit overhead. Here we describe a hardware architecture that can feature a large number of memristor synapses to learn real-world patterns. We present a versatile CMOS neuron that combines integrate-and-fire behavior, drives …

Teaching Matlab And C Programming In First Year Electrical Engineering Courses Using A Data Acquisition Device, Phillip Wong, Branimir Pejcinovic

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Our industry partners often voice a complaint that our newly graduated electrical engineering (EE) students do not have sufficient programming skills. This is not a new concern. In a traditional undergraduate EE curriculum, one or two programming courses compose the entirety of the student’s training in programming. The courses may be taught by the computer science department without significant emphasis on engineering fundamentals. While the principles of computer science may be well covered, the ability to apply the knowledge to practical engineering problems is frequently lacking. To compound the problem, teaching novices the basics of programming can be very challenging …

Using Systematic Literature Reviews To Enhance Student Learning, Branimir Pejcinovic

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Literature review is a skill assumed to be in the arsenal of all graduate students pursuing thesis options at the MS or PhD level. There are many resources on writing literature reviews, from campus writing centers to books such as Machi and McEvoy. One would also assume that this is among the very first tasks that research-oriented students would undertake. However, our brief and preliminary survey of graduate students in our electrical and computer engineering department showed that they have very little to no experience in performing literature reviews, and discussions with other faculty confirmed this observation. Unlike some other …

Phase-Control Of A Rising Sun Magnetron Using A Modulated, Addressable, Current Source, Sulmer Fernandez-Gutierrez, Jim Browning, Ming-Chieh Lin, David N. Smithe, Jack Watrous

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

It has been proposed that the use of gated field emitters with a faceted cathode in place of the conventional thermionic cathode could be used to control the current injection in a magnetron, both temporally and spatially. In this work, this concept is studied using the particle-in-cell code VORPAL. The magnetron studied is a ten-cavity, rising sun magnetron, which can be modeled easily using a 2D simulation. The magnetron has a ten-sided faceted cathode. The electrons are injected from three emitter elements on each of the ten facets. Each emitter is turned ON and OFF in sequence at the oscillating …

Channel Estimation And Optimal Training Design For Correlated Mimo Two-Way Relay Systems In Colored Environment, Rui Wang, Meixia Tao, Hani Mehrpouyan, Yingbo Hua

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this paper, while considering the impact of antenna correlation and the interference from neighboring users, we analyze channel estimation and training sequence design for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) two-way relay (TWR) systems. To this end, we propose to decompose the bidirectional transmission links into two phases, i.e., the multiple access (MAC) phase and the broadcasting (BC) phase. By considering the Kronecker-structured channel model, we derive the optimal linear minimum mean-square-error (LMMSE) channel estimators. The corresponding training designs for the MAC and BC phases are then formulated and solved to improve channel estimation accuracy. For the general scenario of training sequence …

Thermodynamics And Kinetics Of Dna Nanotube Polymerization From Single-Filament Measurements, Rizal F. Hariadi, Bernard Yurke, Erik Winfree

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

DNA nanotubes provide a programmable architecture for molecular self-assembly and can serve as model systems for one-dimensional biomolecular assemblies. While a variety of DNA nanotubes have been synthesized and employed as models for natural biopolymers, an extensive investigation of DNA nanotube kinetics and thermodynamics has been lacking. Using total internal reflection microscopy, DNA nanotube polymerization was monitored in real time at the single filament level over a wide range of free monomer concentrations and temperatures. The measured polymerization rates were subjected to a global nonlinear fit based on polymerization theory in order to simultaneously extract kinetic and thermodynamic parameters. For …

Design Considerations For Traveling-Wave Modulator-Based Cmos Photonic Transmitters, Kehan Zhu, Vishal Saxena, Xinyu Wu, Wan Kuang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Systematic design and simulation methodology for hybrid optical transmitters that combine CMOS circuits in a 130 nm process, and a traveling-wave Mach-Zehnder modulator (TWMZM) in 130 nm SOI CMOS process, is presented. A compact Verilog-A model for the TWMZM is adopted for the electrooptical simulation. A bond wire model using a high-frequency solver is included for accurate package simulation. Transmitter post-layout simulation result exhibits 5.48 dB extinction ratio, 9.6 ps peak-to-peak jitter, and the best power efficiency of 5.81 pJ/bit when operating up to 12.5 Gb/s non-return-to-zero data. A pulse amplitude modulation 4-level transmitter with detailed linearity design procedure is …

Tracking Of Rhythmical Biomedical Signals Using The Maximum A Posteriori Adaptive Marginalized Particle Filter, Sunghan Kim, Lars Andreas Holmstrom, James Mcnames

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Biomedical signals are often rhythmical and their morphologies change slowly over time. Arterial blood pressure and electrocardiogram signals are good examples with such property. It is of great interest to extract clinically useful information such as the instantaneous frequency (i.e. heart rate) and morphological changes (e.g. pulse pressure variation) from these signals. Conventional filtering methods such as the Kalman filter are not suitable for estimating the instantaneous frequency of quasiperiodic signals due to the non-Gaussian multi-modal property of its posterior distribution. One possible alternative is particle filters that are increasingly used for nonlinear systems and non-Gaussian posterior state distributions. However, …

A Two-Hydrophone Range And Bearing Localization With Performance Analysis, John Thomas Gebbie, Martin Siderius, John S. Allen Iii

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

An automated, passive algorithm for detecting and localizing small boats using two hydrophones mounted on the seabed is outlined. This extends previous work by Gebbie et al. [(2013). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 134, EL77 − EL83] in which a similar two-hydrophone approach is used to produce an ambiguity surface of likely target locations leveraging multipath analysis and knowledge of the local bathymetry. The work presented here improves upon the prior approach using particle filtering to automate detection and localization processing. A detailed analysis has also been conducted to determine the conditions and limits under which the improved approach can be …

Semi-Modular Delay Model Revisited In Context Of Relative Timing, Hoon Park, Anping He, Marly Roncken, Xiaoyu Song

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A new definition of semi-modularity to accommodate relative timing constraints in self-timed circuits is presented. While previous definitions ignore such constraints, the new definition takes them into account. The difference on a design solution for a well-known speed-independent circuit implementation of the Muller C element and a set of relative timing constraints that renders the implementation hazard free is illustrated. The old definition produces a false semi-modularity conflict that cannot exist due to the set of imposed constraints. The new definition correctly accepts the solution.

Measuring The Effects Of Pre-College Engineering Experiences, Year 2, Noah Salzman, Matthew W. Ohland, Monica E. Cardella

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The implementation of co-curricular and extracurricular pre-college engineering programs has expanded dramatically in recent years. Many states now include engineering as part of their education standards for both students and teachers, reflecting the increasing acceptance of engineering at the K-12 level and its potential value to students. In addition to promoting outcomes that benefit all students regardless of career aspirations such as increased math and science achievement and greater technological literacy, K-12 engineering programs have been identified as a means of recruiting and retaining potential students in engineering.

The growth of pre-college engineering programs means that increasing numbers of incoming …

Effects Of Clustering Algorithms On Typographic Reconstruction, Elisa H. Barney Smith, Bart Lamiroy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Type designers and historians studying the typefaces and fonts used in historical documents can usually only rely on available printed material. The initial wooden or metal cast fonts have mostly disappeared. In this paper we address the creation of character templates from printed documents. Images of characters scanned from Renaissance era documents are segmented, then clustered. A template is created from each obtained cluster of similar appearance characters. In order for subsequent typeface analysis tools to operate, the template should reduce the noise present in the individual instances by using information from the set of samples, but the samples must …

Design Analysis Of A 12.5 Ghz Pll In 130 Nm Sige Bicmos Process, Kehan Zhu, Vishal Saxena, Xinyu Wu, Sakkarapani Balagopal

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A systematic design method is applied to study and analyze the loop stability and phase noise of a type-II 3^rd-order charge pump PLL. The designed PLL outputs at 12.5 GHz, which is intended to provide a clock for a silicon photonic transmitter prototype. The charge pump current and loop filter resistor are made tunable to cover process and temperature variations. The PLL is designed in a 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS process. The rms jitter of the studied PLL output is about 5 ps with a 97.7 MHz reference clock with 4.9 ps rms jitter from a 0.05 to …

Template Generation From Postmarks Using Cascaded Unsupervised Learning, Elisa H. Barney Smith, Gernot Fink

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Information in historical datasets comes in many forms. We are working with a set of World War I era postcards that contain hand written text, some preprinted text, postage stamps and postmark/cancellation stamps. The postmarks are of considerable interest to collectors looking for images of samples they had not previously seen. The postmarks also provide information on the originating location of the card that complements the information in the address block.

The postmarks vary considerably with towns and dates, but also styles. The styles can be grouped into categories. A method for automatically extracting templates for each category of these …

Modular Timing Constraints For Delay-Insensitive Systems, Hoon Park, Anping He, Marly Roncken, Xiaoyu Song, Ivan Sutherland

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper introduces ARCtimer, a framework for modeling, generating, verifying, and enforcing timing constraints for individual self-timed handshake components. The constraints guarantee that the component’s gate-level circuit implementation obeys the component’s handshake protocol specification. Because the handshake protocols are delayinsensitive, self-timed systems built using ARCtimer-verified components are also delay-insensitive. By carefully considering time locally, we can ignore time globally. ARCtimer comes early in the design process as part of building a library of verified components for later system use. The library also stores static timing analysis (STA) code to validate and enforce the component’s constraints in any self-timed system built …

Coupled-Oscillator Associative Memory Array Operation For Pattern Recognition, Dmitri E. Nikonov, Gyorgy Csaba, Wolfgang Porod, Tadashi Shibata, Danny Voils, Dan Hammerstrom, Ian A. Young, George I. Bourianoff

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Operation of the array of coupled oscillators underlying the associative memory function is demonstrated for various interconnection schemes (cross-connect, star phase keying and star frequency keying) and various physical implementation of oscillators (van der Pol, phase-locked loop, spin torque). The speed of synchronization of oscillators and the evolution of the degree of matching is studied as a function of device parameters. The dependence of errors in association on the number of the memorized patterns and the distance between the test and the memorized pattern is determined for Palm, Furber and Hopfield association algorithms.

Continuous Monitoring Of Movement In Patients With Parkinson's Disease Using Inertial Sensors, Mahmoud Ahmed El-Gohary, Sean Pearson, James Mcnames, Martina Mancini, Fay Horak

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Gait impairment is a hallmark of Parkinson's disease (PD). The assessment of gait and balance in the clinic may not adequately reflect mobility in daily life. It is often reported that patients with PD walk better when they are examined in an outpatient clinic or in a research laboratory than at home. Continuous monitoring of mobility during spontaneous daily activities may provide clinicians and patients with objective measures of the quality of their mobility. We show that continuous monitoring of spontaneous gait with wearable inertial sensors during daily activities is feasible for patients with PD. We tested 13 patients with …