Engineering Commons^™

Seasonal Hidden Markov Models For Stochastic Time Series With Periodically Varying Characteristics, Arthur M. Lewis

Dissertations and Theses

Novel seasonal hidden Markov models (SHMMs) for stochastic time series with periodically varying characteristics are developed. Nonlinear interactions among SHMM parameters prevent the use of the forward-backward algorithms which are usually used to fit hidden Markov models to a data sequence. Instead, Powell's direction set method for optimizing a function is repeatedly applied to adjust SHMM parameters to fit a data sequence. SHMMs are applied to a set of meteorological data consisting of 9 years of daily rain gauge readings from four sites. The fitted models capture both the annual patterns and the short term persistence of rainfall patterns across …

Automatic Synthesis Of Vlsi Layout For Analog Continuous-Time Filters, David Lyle Robinson

Dissertations and Theses

Automatic synthesis of digital VLSI layout has been available for many years. It has become a necessary part of the design industry as the window of time from conception to production shrinks with ever increasing competition. However, automatic synthesis of analog VLSI layout remains rare.

With digital circuits, there is often room for signal drift. In a digital circuit, a signal can drift within a range before hitting the threshold which triggers a change in logic state. The effect of parasitic capacitances for the most part, hinders the timing margins of the signal, but not its functionality. The logic functionality …