Engineering Commons^™

Lazy Preservation: Reconstructing Websites From The Web Infrastructure, Frank Mccown

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Backup or preservation of websites is often not considered until after a catastrophic event has occurred. In the face of complete website loss, webmasters or concerned third parties have attempted to recover some of their websites from the Internet Archive. Still others have sought to retrieve missing resources from the caches of commercial search engines. Inspired by these post hoc reconstruction attempts, this dissertation introduces the concept of lazy preservation{ digital preservation performed as a result of the normal operations of the Web Infrastructure (web archives, search engines and caches). First, the Web Infrastructure (WI) is characterized by its preservation …

Integrating Game Technology And Discrete Event Simulation To Analyze Mass Casualty Scenarios, Jason Loveland

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In the last 10 years, video games have become complex simulation environments with high resolution 3D graphics enabled by powerhouse rendering engines, multi-player client server networks, user friendly displays and graphical user interface , while remaining relatively inexpensive. There is a critical need for systems engineering analysis and rapid trade studies due to changes in operations caused by current events such as terrorist attacks, asymmetric threats, natural disasters, etc. Modem games provide a unique way to visualize and interact with these complex environments, scenarios, missions, and operations. A discrete event simulator (DES) provides an environment to model system architecture behavior, …

Channel Management In Heterogeneous Cellular Networks, Mohammad Hadi Arbabi

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Motivated by the need to increase system capacity in the face of tight FCC regulations, modem cellular systems are under constant pressure to increase the sharing of the frequency spectrum among the users of the network.

Key to increasing system capacity is an efficient channel management strategy that provides higher capacity for the system while, at the same time, providing the users with Quality of Service guarantees. Not surprisingly, dynamic channel management has become a high profile topic in wireless communications. Consider a highly populated urban area, where mobile traffic loads are increased due to highway backups or sporting events. …

A Finite Difference Method For Studying Thermal Deformation In A Three-Dimensional Microsphere Exposed To Ultrashort-Pulsed Lasers, Xudong Du

Doctoral Dissertations

Ultrashort-pulsed lasers with pulse durations on the order of sub-picoseconds to femtoseconds possess the capabilities in limiting the undesirable spread of the thermal process zone in a heated sample which have been attracting worldwide interest in science and engineering. Success of ultrashort-pulsed lasers in real application relies on: (1) well characterized pulse width, intensity and experimental techniques; (2) reliable microscale heat transfer models; and (3) prevention of thermal damage. Laser damage by ultrashort-pulsed lasers occurs after the heating pulse is over since the pulse duration time is extremely short and the heat flux is essentially limited to the region within …

Distributed Knowledge Discovery In Large Scale Peer-To-Peer Networks, Sachin Shetty

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Explosive growth in the availability of various kinds of data in distributed locations has resulted in unprecedented opportunity to develop distributed knowledge discovery (DKD) techniques. DKD embraces the growing trend of merging computation with communication by performing distributed data analysis and modeling with minimal communication of data. Most of the current state-of-the-art DKD systems suffer from the lack of scalability, robustness and adaptability due to their dependence on a centralized model for building the knowledge discovery model. Peer-to-Peer networks offer a better scalable and fault-tolerant computing platform for building distributed knowledge discovery models than client-server based platforms. Algorithms and communication …

An Exploratory Study Of Iso 9001:2000 Quality Management Systems Using The Iso/Iec 15504 Architecture, Paul Richard Shimp

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is to provide an exploratory study on the implementation and issues regarding Quality Management Systems as defined by ISO 9001 :2000 using the architecture of ISO/IEC 15504. The recently published ISO/IEC 15504 series of standards provides a framework to assess processes and determine levels of capability. With the use of this framework, the study will focus on the assessment and identification of problem areas requiring focus for continual improvement within an ISO 9001 :2000 quality management system.

The structure of this paper is as follows: Section 1 provides a background discussion of ISO 9001 :2000. …

A Structured Systemic Framework For Software Development, Kevin Macgregor Adams

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to develop and apply a systems-based framework for the analysis of software development project performance. Software development project performance is measured at the project level; that is, cost, schedule, and product quality that affect the overall project. To date, most performance improvement efforts have been focused on individual processes within the overall software development system. Making improvements to sub-elements, processes, or sub-systems without regard for the overall project is a classic misbehavior entered into by practitioners who fail to use a holistic, systemic approach. Attempts to improve sub-system behavior are at odds with The …

Wide Area Search And Engagement Simulation Validation, Michael J. Marlin

Theses and Dissertations

As unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) increase in capability, the ability to refuel them in the air is becoming more critical. Aerial refueling will extend the range, shorten the response times, and extend loiter time of UAVs. Executing aerial refueling autonomously will reduce the command and control, logistics, and training efforts associated with fielding UAV systems. Currently, the Air Force Research Lab is researching the various technologies required to conduct automated aerial refueling (AAR). One of the required technologies is the ability to autonomously rendezvous with the tanker. The goal of this research is to determine the control required to fly …

Internet Protocol Geolocation: Development Of A Delay-Based Hybrid Methodology For Locating The Geographic Location Of A Network Node, John M. Roehl

Theses and Dissertations

Internet Protocol Geolocation (IP Geolocation), the process of determining the approximate geographic location of an IP addressable node, has proven useful in a wide variety of commercial applications. Commercial applications of IP Geolocation include market research, redirection for performance enhancement, restricting content, and combating fraud. The potential for military applications include securing remote access via geographic authentication, intelligence collection, and cyber attack attribution. IP Geolocation methods can be divided into three basic categories based upon what information is used to determine the geographic location of the given IP address: 1) Information contained in databases, 2) information that is leaked during …

Use Of Tabu Search In A Solver To Map Complex Networks Onto Emulab Testbeds, Jason E. Macdonald

Theses and Dissertations

The University of Utah's solver for the testbed mapping problem uses a simulated annealing metaheuristic algorithm to map a researcher's experimental network topology onto available testbed resources. This research uses tabu search to find near-optimal physical topology solutions to user experiments consisting of scale-free complex networks. While simulated annealing arrives at solutions almost exclusively by chance, tabu search incorporates the use of memory and other techniques to guide the search towards good solutions. Both search algorithms are compared to determine whether tabu search can produce equal or higher quality solutions than simulated annealing in a shorter amount of time. It …

Using Concept Maps To More Efficiently Create Intelligence Information Models, Christopher E. Coryell

Theses and Dissertations

Information models are a critical tool that enables intelligence customers to quickly and accurately comprehend U.S. intelligence agency products. The Knowledge Pre-positioning System (KPS) is the standard repository for information models at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC). The current approach used by NASIC to build a KPS information model is laborious and costly. Intelligence analysts design an information model using a manual, butcher-paper-based process. The output of their work is then entered into KPS by either a single NASIC KPS "database modeler" or a contractor (at a cost of roughly $100K to the organization). This thesis proposes …

Hardware Virtualization Applied To Rootkit Defense, Douglas P. Medley

Theses and Dissertations

This research effort examines the idea of applying virtualization hardware to enhance operating system security against rootkits. Rootkits are sets of tools used to hide code and/or functionality from the user and operating system. Rootkits can accomplish this feat through using access to one part of an operating system to change another part that resides at the same privilege level. Hardware assisted virtualization (HAV) provides an opportunity to defeat this tactic through the introduction of a new operating mode. Created to aid operating system virtualization, HAV provides hardware support for managing and saving multiple states of the processor. This hardware …

Beyond Passswords: Usage And Policy Transformation, Alan S. Alsop

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to determine whether the transition to a two-factor authentication system is more secure than a system that relied only on what users “know” for authentication. While we found that factors that made passwords inherently vulnerable did not transfer to the PIN portion of a two-factor authentication system, we did find significant problems relating to usability, worker productivity, and the loss and theft of smart cards. The new authentication method has disrupted our ability to stay connected to ongoing mission issues, forced some installations to cut off remote access for their users and in one …

Implementation And Optimization Of The Advanced Encryption Standard Algorithm On An 8-Bit Field Programmable Gate Array Hardware Platform, Ryan J. Silva

Theses and Dissertations

The contribution of this research is three-fold. The first is a method of converting the area occupied by a circuit implemented on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to an equivalent as a measure of total gate count. This allows direct comparison between two FPGA implementations independent of the manufacturer or chip family. The second contribution improves the performance of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) on an 8-bit computing platform. This research develops an AES design that occupies less than three quarters of the area reported by the smallest design in current literature as well as significantly increases area efficiency. …

Towards The Development Of A Defensive Cyber Damage And Mission Impact Methodology, Larry W. Fortson Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to establish a conceptual methodological framework that will facilitate effective cyber damage and mission impact assessment and reporting following a cyber-based information incidents. Joint and service guidance requires mission impact reporting, but current efforts to implement such reporting have proven ineffective. This research seeks to understand the impediments existing in the current implementation and to propose an improved methodology. The research employed a hybrid historical analysis and case study methodology for data collection through extensive literature review, examination of existing case study research and interviews with Air Force members and civilian personnel employed as …

Analysis Of Routing Worm Infection Rates On An Ipv4 Network, James Gorsuch

Theses and Dissertations

Malicious logic, specifically worms, has caused monetary expenditure problems to network users in the past. Worms, like Slammer and Code Red, have infected thousands of systems and brought the Internet to a standstill. This research examines the ability of the original Slammer worm, the Slammer based routing worm proposed by Zou et al, and a new Single Slash Eight (SSE) routing worm proposed by this research to infect vulnerable systems within a given address space. This research investigates the Slammer worm's ability to generate a uniform random IP addresses in a given address space. Finally, a comparison of the speed …

Recommendations For A Standardized Program Management Office (Pmo) Time Compliance Network Order (Tcno) Patching Process, Michael Czumak Iii

Theses and Dissertations

Network security is a paramount concern for organizations utilizing computer technology, and the Air Force is no exception. Network software vulnerability patching is a critical determinant of network security. The Air Force deploys these patches as Time Compliance Network Orders (TCNOs), which together with associated processes and enforced timelines ensure network compliance. While the majority of the network assets affected by this process are Air Force owned and operated, a large number are maintained by external entities known as Program Management Offices (PMOs). Although these externally controlled systems provide a service to the Air Force and reside on its network, …

Stochastic Estimation And Control Of Queues Within A Computer Network, Nathan C. Stuckey

Theses and Dissertations

An extended Kalman filter is used to estimate size and packet arrival rate of network queues. These estimates are used by a LQG steady state linear perturbation PI controller to regulate queue size within a computer network. This paper presents the derivation of the transient queue behavior for a system with Poisson traffic and exponential service times. This result is then validated for ideal traffic using a network simulated in OPNET. A more complex OPNET model is then used to test the adequacy of the transient queue size model when non-Poisson traffic is combined. The extended Kalman filter theory is …

Performance Evaluation Of Ad Hoc Routing In A Swarm Of Autonomous Aerial Vehicles, Matthew T. Hyland

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the performance of three mobile ad hoc routing protocols in the context of a swarm of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It is proposed that a wireless network of nodes having an average of 5.1774 log n neighbors, where n is the total number of nodes in the network, has a high probability of having no partitions. By decreasing transmission range while ensuring network connectivity, and implementing multi-hop routing between nodes, spatial multiplexing is exploited whereby multiple pairs of nodes simultaneously transmit on the same channel. The proposal is evaluated using the Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR), …

On-Demand Key Distribution For Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks, Daniel F. Graham

Theses and Dissertations

Mobile ad-hoc networks offer dynamic portable communication with little or no infrastructure. While this has many benefits, there are additional shortcomings specific to wireless communication that must be addressed. This research proposes gossip-based on-demand key distribution as a means to provide data encryption for mobile ad-hoc networks. This technique uses message keys to avoid encrypting and decrypting a message at every node. Other optimizations used include secure channel caching and joint rekey messages. The use of gossip makes the scheme robust to node failure. Experimental results show only a 15% increase in end-to-end delay with a node failure rate of …

Learning Geometry-Free Face Re-Lighting, Thomas Brendan Moore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The accurate modeling of the variability of illumination in a class of images is a fundamental problem that occurs in many areas of computer vision and graphics. For instance, in computer vision there is the problem of facial recognition. Simply, one would hope to be able to identify a known face under any illumination. On the other hand, in graphics one could imagine a system that, given an image, the illumination model could be identified and then used to create new images. In this thesis we describe a method for learning the illumination model for a class of images. Once …

Image-Space Approach To Real-Time Realistic Rendering, Musawir Shah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

One of the main goals of computer graphics is the fast synthesis of photorealistic image of virtual 3D scenes. The work presented in this thesis addresses this goal of speed and realism. In real-time realistic rendering, we encounter certain problems that are difficult to solve in the traditional 3-dimensional geometric space. We show that using an image-space approach can provide effective solutions to these problems. Unlike geometric space algorithms that operate on 3D primitives such as points, edges, and polygons, image-space algorithms operate on 2D snapshot images of the 3D geometric data. Operating in image-space effectively decouples the geometric complexity …

Behavior Of Variable-Length Genetic Algorithms Under Random Selection, Harold Stringer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this work, we show how a variable-length genetic algorithm naturally evolves populations whose mean chromosome length grows shorter over time. A reduction in chromosome length occurs when selection is absent from the GA. Specifically, we divide the mating space into five distinct areas and provide a probabilistic and empirical analysis of the ability of matings in each area to produce children whose size is shorter than the parent generation's average size. Diversity of size within a GA's population is shown to be a necessary condition for a reduction in mean chromosome length to take place. We show how a …

Augmentation In Visual Reality (Avr), Yunjun Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Human eyes, as the organs for sensing light and processing visual information, enable us to see the real world. Though invaluable, they give us no way to "edit" the received visual stream or to "switch" to a different channel. The invention of motion pictures and computer technologies in the last century enables us to add an extra layer of modifications between the real world and our eyes. There are two major approaches to modifications that we consider here, offline augmentation and online augmentation. The movie industry has pushed offline augmentation to an extreme level; audiences can experience visual surprises that …

Optimizing The High Dynamic Range Imaging Pipeline, Ahmet Oguz Akyuz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

High dynamic range (HDR) imaging is a rapidly growing field in computer graphics and image processing. It allows capture, storage, processing, and display of photographic information within a scene-referred framework. The HDR imaging pipeline consists of the major steps an HDR image is expected to go through from capture to display. It involves various techniques to create HDR images, pixel encodings and file formats for storage, tone mapping for display on conventional display devices and direct display on HDR capable screens. Each of these stages have important open problems, which need to be addressed for a smoother transition to an …

Medium Access Control Protocols And Routing Algorithms For Wireless Sensor Networks, Anirban Bag

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the development of a large variety of mobile computing devices has led to wide scale deployment and use of wireless ad hoc and sensor networks. Wireless Sensor Networks consist of battery powered, tiny and cheap "motes", having sensing and wireless communication capabilities. Although wireless motes have limited battery power, communication and computation capabilities, the range of their application is vast. In the first part of the dissertation, we have addressed the specific application of Biomedical Sensor Networks. To solve the problem of data routing in these networks, we have proposed the Adaptive Least Temperature Routing (ALTR) algorithm …

Learning, Detection, Representation, Indexing And Retrieval Of Multi-Agent Events In Videos, Asaad Hakeem

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The world that we live in is a complex network of agents and their interactions which are termed as events. An instance of an event is composed of directly measurable low-level actions (which I term sub-events) having a temporal order. Also, the agents can act independently (e.g. voting) as well as collectively (e.g. scoring a touch-down in a football game) to perform an event. With the dawn of the new millennium, the low-level vision tasks such as segmentation, object classification, and tracking have become fairly robust. But a representational gap still exists between low-level measurements and high-level understanding of video …

Predicting Class Life Cycle Maintenance Effort Based On Class Complexity, Lindsey B. Hays

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the software industry today many programmers spend countless hours maintaining existing Java programs. The cost of code maintenance affects a company in many ways such as the budget, time management and resources. Making management decisions regarding these issues could be assisted, if maintenance cost of Java classes could be predicted.

The goal of this thesis was to create a new model predicting the maintenance effort based on the Java class complexity. It seems clear the complexity of a Java class can directly relate to the amount of time it will take to perform maintenance on the class.

To develop …

Web-Based Library For Student Projects/Theses And Faculty Research Papers, Rudy Senjaya

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project is to make available a Web-based Library, a web application developed for the Department of Computer Science at CSUSB to manage student projects/theses and faculty papers. The project is designed in accordance with Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern using the Jakarta Struts framework and iBATIS Data Mapper framework from Apache Software Foundation, JavaServer Pages (JSP), and MySQL database.

Multi-View Geometric Constraints For Human Action Recognition And Tracking, Alexei Gritai

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Human actions are the essence of a human life and a natural product of the human mind. Analysis of human activities by a machine has attracted the attention of many researchers. This analysis is very important in a variety of domains including surveillance, video retrieval, human-computer interaction, athlete performance investigation, etc. This dissertation makes three major contributions to automatic analysis of human actions. First, we conjecture that the relationship between body joints of two actors in the same posture can be described by a 3D rigid transformation. This transformation simultaneously captures different poses and various sizes and proportions. As a …