Engineering Commons^™

Vulnerability Analysis And Security Framework For Zigbee Communication In Iot, Charbel Azzi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Securing IoT (Internet of Things) systems in general, regardless of the communication technology used, has been the concern of many researchers and private companies. As for ZigBee security concerns, much research and many experiments have been conducted to better predict the nature of potential security threats. In this research we are addressing several ZigBee vulnerabilities by performing first hand experiments and attack simulations on ZigBee protocol. This will allow us to better understand the security issues surveyed and find ways to mitigate them. Based on the attack simulations performed and the survey conducted, we have developed a ZigBee IoT framework …

Radiation Therapy And Dosing Material Transport Methodology, Robert O'Brien

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A technique is examined here that utilizes high energy beta decays from a short lived radioisotope to treat medical conditions such as shallow cancerous lesions. A major benefit of beta particle interaction in tissue is a fixed penetration depth for the charged particle, with dose limited to the ultimate range of the beta particle. This method improves on some current techniques of radioactive brachytherapy, where "seeds" are placed inside patients through temporary or permanent implantation in order to kill cancerous cells or inhibit growth of tissue. The use of low energy gamma-rays is the most common method of treatment currently …

An Emg-Based Patient Monitoring System Using Zynq Soc Device, Farhad Fallahlalehzari

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis describes the design, development, and testing of an EMG-based patient monitoring system using the Zynq device. Zynq is a system on chip device designed by Xilinx which consists of an ARM dual cortex-A9 processor as well as an FPGA integrated into one chip. This work also analyzes the performance of image-processing algorithms on this system and compares that performance to more traditional PC-based systems. Image processing algorithms, such as Sobel edge detection, dilation and erosion, could be used in conjunction with a camera for the patient monitoring purposes. These algorithms often perform sub-optimally on processors because of their …

Acoustic Detection, Source Separation, And Classification Algorithms For Unmanned Aerial Vehicles In Wildlife Monitoring And Poaching, Carlo Lopez-Tello

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This work focuses on the problem of acoustic detection, source separation, and classification under noisy conditions. The goal of this work is to develop a system that is able to detect poachers and animals in the wild by using microphones mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The classes of signals used to detect wildlife and poachers include: mammals, birds, vehicles and firearms. The noise signals under consideration include: colored noises, UAV propeller and wind noises.

The system consists of three sub-systems: source separation (SS), signal detection, and signal classification. Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) is used for source separation, and random …

Process Development For The Fabrication Of Semiconductor Devices And Circuits Using Spin-On Dopant, Richard R. Ryan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Traditional approaches to semiconductor device fabrication are expensive and time consuming, making them out of reach for most universities and colleges. The objective of this thesis is to develop a process by which semiconductor devices and circuits can be implemented completely in-house using spin-on dopants (SODs), and low-cost transparency masks, to significantly reduce the lead time, complexity, and cost associated with device fabrication. This will allow hands on fabrication experience for students at universities and colleges without the traditional expensive device fabrication facilities. In addition, it will also allow students and professors to design, fabricate and test semiconductor devices and …

The Effects Of Cryopreservation On Human Dental Pulp-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells, Allison Elaine Tomlin

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Many studies have demonstrated clinical applications for the use of dental pulp stem cells (DPSC) for the treatment of various conditions. This has driven medical and scientific interest in the collection, isolation and banking of DPSC tissues for research into these potential therapies. Few studies to date have evaluated the viability of DPSC following long-term cryopreservation. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of cryopreservation on dental pulp-derived stem cells (DPSC) viability over a period of three years. Dental pulp-derived stem cells were isolated and cultured from thirty-one healthy teeth. DPSC isolates were assessed for doubling-time and …

Design And Implementation Of Benes/Clos On-Chip Interconnection Networks, Yikun Jiang

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) have emerged as the key on-chip communication architecture for multiprocessor systems-on-chip and chip multiprocessors. Single-hop non-blocking networks have the advantage of providing uniform latency and throughput, which is important for cachecoherent NoC systems. Existing work shows that Benes networks have much lower transistor count and smaller circuit area but longer delay than crossbars. To reduce the delay, we propose to design the Clos network built with larger size switches. Using less than half number of stages than the Benes network, the Clos network with 4x4 switches can significantly reduce the delay. This dissertation focuses on designing high performance …

Design, Fabrication And Testing Of Monolithic Low-Power Passive Sigma-Delta Analog-To-Digital Converters, Angsuman Roy

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Analog-to-digital converters are critically important in electronic systems. The

difficulty in meeting high performance parameters increases as integrated circuit design

process technologies advance into the deep nanometer region. Sigma-delta analog-todigital

converters are an attractive option to fulfill many data converter requirements.

These data converters offer high performance while relaxing requirements on the precision

of components within an integrated circuit. Despite this, the active integrators found within

sigma-delta analog-to-digital converters present two main challenges. These challenges are

the power consumption of the active amplifier and achieving gain-bandwidth necessary for

sigma-delta data converters in deep nanometer process technologies. Both of these

challenges …

Complex Traffic Network Modeling & Area-Wide Hierarchical Control, Saumya Gupta

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis presents a novel methodology to divide a traffic region into subregions such that in each subregion a Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram (MFD) can be used to determine the state of that subregion. The region division is based on the theory of complex networks. We exploit the inherent network characteristics through PageRank centrality algorithm to identify the most significant nodes in the traffic network. We use these significant nodes as the seeds for a Voronoi diagram based partitioning mechanism of the network. A network wide hierarchical control framework is then presented which controls these sub regions individually and the network …

Vision-Based Intersection Monitoring: Behavior Analysis & Safety Issues, Mohammad Shokrolah Shirazi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The main objective of my dissertation is to provide a vision-based system to automatically understands traffic patterns and analyze intersections. The system leverages the existing traffic cameras to provide safety and behavior analysis of intersection participants including behavior and safety. The first step is to provide a robust detection and tracking system for vehicles and pedestrians of intersection videos. The appearance and motion based detectors are evaluated on test videos and public available datasets are prepared and evaluated. The contextual fusion method is proposed for detecting pedestrians and motion-based technique is proposed for vehicles based on evaluation results. The detections …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Graphene, Ashok Em Sudhakar

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Graphene is an important nanoscale material with unique electronic and optical properties. Due to its many potential applications, grapheme was the subject of a Nobel Prize in physics 2010; Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov of Manchester University received the Nobel Prize for demonstrating the ability to create single atom thick graphene layers from bulk graphite. Since then, many alternative synthesis techniques and device applications of graphene have been explored. An important and unique property of graphene is its excellent thermal properties. Graphene has a two dimensional structure and the thermal properties are significantly different than three dimensional bulk materials. Using …

A Study On Automated Process For Extracting White Blood Cellular Data From Microscopic Digital Injured Skeletal Muscle Images, Bibek Karki

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Skeletal muscle injury is one of the common injuries caused by high-intensity sports activities, military related works, and natural disasters. In order to discover better therapies, it is important to study muscle regeneration process. Muscle regeneration process tracking is the act of monitoring injured tissue section over time, noting white blood cell behavior and cell-fiber relations. A large number of microscopic images are taken for tracking muscle regeneration process over multiple time instances. Currently, manual approach is widely used to analyze a microscopic image of muscle cross section, which is time consuming, tedious and buggy.

Automation of this research methodology …

Mcnp6 Computational-Based Sensitivity Propagation Analysis Of Continuous Neutron Cross-Sections Using The Godiva (Hmf-001) And The Godiver (Hmf-004) Benchmark Criticality Study Cases, Lawrence James Lakeotes

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

There has been a reduction in funding for theoretical and applied research for improving the nation's database of continuous neutron cross-sections at BNL-NNDC. From 1940 through the late 1980s, research and applied development produced volumes of reliable neutron continuous cross-sections for many isotopes. Currently, the cross-section work has been mainly computational. The focus of this research is mainly centered on the requirements for improving thermal cross-sections to support reactor operations and fuel storage. The research efforts will also helpfully aid in the fast fission spectrum in order to support fast reactor designs for improving safety analysis and feedback coefficients.

This …

Portable High Throughput Digital Microfluidics And On-Chip Bacteria Cultures, Yiyan Li

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

An intelligent, portable, and high throughput digital microfluidic (DMF) system is developed. Chapter 1 introduces microfluidics and DMF systems. In Chapter 2, a low-cost and high resolution capacitive-to-digital converter integrated circuit is used for droplet position detection. A field-programmable gate array FPGA is used as the integrated logic hub of the system for highly reliable and efficient control of the circuit. In this chapter a fast-fabricating PCB (printed circuit board) substrate microfluidic system is proposed. Smaller actuation threshold voltages than those previously reported are obtained. Droplets (3 µL) are actuated using 200 V, 500 Hz DC pulses. Droplet positions can …