Engineering Commons^™

A Multi-Agent System For Adaptive Control Of A Flapping-Wing Micro Air Vehicle, Michal Podhradský

Dissertations and Theses

Biomimetic flapping-wing vehicles have attracted recent interest because of their numerous potential military and civilian applications. In this dissertation is described the design of a multi-agent adaptive controller for such a vehicle. This controller is responsible for estimating the vehicle pose (position and orientation) and then generating four parameters needed for split-cycle control of wing movements to correct pose errors. These parameters are produced via a subsumption architecture rule base. The control strategy is fault tolerant. Using an online learning process, an agent continuously monitors the vehicle's behavior and initiates diagnostics if the behavior has degraded. This agent can then …

Algorithm For Premature Ventricular Contraction Detection From A Subcutaneous Electrocardiogram Signal, Iris Lynn Shelly

Dissertations and Theses

Cardiac arrhythmias occur when the normal pattern of electrical signals in the heart breaks down. A premature ventricular contraction (PVC) is a common type of arrhythmia that occurs when a heartbeat originates from an ectopic focus within the ventricles rather than from the sinus node in the right atrium. This and other arrhythmias are often diagnosed with the help of an electrocardiogram, or ECG, which records the electrical activity of the heart using electrodes placed on the skin. In an ECG signal, a PVC is characterized by both timing and morphological differences from a normal sinus beat.

An implantable cardiac …

Task And Participant Scheduling Of Trading Platforms In Vehicular Participatory Sensing Networks, Heyuan Shi, Xiaoyu Song, Ming Gu, Jiaguang Sun

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The vehicular participatory sensing network (VPSN) is now becoming more and more prevalent, and additionally has shown its great potential in various applications. A general VPSN consists of many tasks from task, publishers, trading platforms and a crowd of participants. Some literature treats publishers and the trading platform as a whole, which is impractical since they are two independent economic entities with respective purposes. For a trading platform in markets, its purpose is to maximize the profit by selecting tasks and recruiting participants who satisfy the requirements of accepted tasks, rather than to improve the quality of each task. This …

Using Blind Source Separation And A Compact Microphone Array To Improve The Error Rate Of Speech Recognition, Jeffrey Dean Hoffman

Dissertations and Theses

Automatic speech recognition has become a standard feature on many consumer electronics and automotive products, and the accuracy of the decoded speech has improved dramatically over time. Often, designers of these products achieve accuracy by employing microphone arrays and beamforming algorithms to reduce interference. However, beamforming microphone arrays are too large for small form factor products such as smart watches. Yet these small form factor products, which have precious little space for tactile user input (i.e. knobs, buttons and touch screens), would benefit immensely from a user interface based on reliably accurate automatic speech recognition.

This thesis proposes a solution …

Designing A Continuously Variable Magnetic Gear, J. Pritchard, Pavithra Padmanathan, Jonathan Z. Bird

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper investigates the performance capabilities of a continuously variable magnetic gearbox that utilizes a flux focusing rotor structure. A fractional slot stator winding is designed to couple to the outer rotor of an existing magnetic gearbox in order to enable the magnetic gearbox to operate with a variable gear ratio.

Memristor-Based Volistor Gates Compute Logic With Low Power Consumption, Muayad Aljafar, Marek Perkowski

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

We introduce a novel volistor logic gate which uses voltage as input and resistance as output. Volistors rely on the diode-like behavior of rectifying memristors. We show how to realize the first logic level, counted from the input, of any Boolean function with volistor gates in a memristive crossbar network. Unlike stateful logic, there is no need to store the inputs as resistances, and computation is performed directly. The fan-in and fan-out of volistor gates are large and different from traditional memristor circuits. Compared to solely memristive stateful logic, a combination of volistors and stateful inhibition gates can significantly reduce …

Configuring The Urban Smart Grid: Transitions, Experimentation, And Governance, Anthony Michael Levenda

Dissertations and Theses

In the face of challenges of energy security, decarbonization, resilience, and the replacement of aging infrastructure systems, federal, state, and local actors are facilitating the development of smart electricity networks to transition towards a more sustainable electricity system. In the United States, development of "smart grids" is being pursued as a national policy mandate and goal, promising that the deployment of smart grid technologies -- referring in general to digital information and communication technologies that sense, monitor, control and manage the electric grid -- will make electricity systems more environmentally sustainable and reliable, and at the same time, provide opportunities …

Single-Sensor, Cue-Counting Population Density Estimation: Average Probability Of Detection Of Broadband Clicks, Elizabeth T. Küsel, Martin Siderius, David K. Mellinger

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Odontocete echolocation clicks have been used as a preferred cue for density estimation using single-sensor data sets, requiring estimation of detection probability as a function of range. Many such clicks can be very broadband in nature, with 10-dB bandwidths of 20-40 kHz or more. Detection distances are not readily obtained from single-sensor data. Here, the average detection probability is estimated in a Monte Carlo simulation using the passive sonar equation along with transmission loss calculations to estimate the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of tens of thousands of click realizations. Continuous-wave (CW) analysis, i.e., single-frequency analysis, is inherent to basic forms of …

Frequency Based Noise Coherence-Function Extension And Application To Passive Bottom-Loss Estimation, Lanfranco Muzi, Martin Siderius, Peter L. Nielsen

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Accurate modeling of acoustic propagation in the ocean waveguide is important to SONAR-performance prediction. Particularly in shallow waters, a crucial contribution to the total transmission loss is the bottom refection loss, which can be estimated passively by beamforming the natural surface-noise acoustic field recorded by a vertical line array of hydrophones. However, the performance in this task of arrays below 2 m of length is problematic for frequencies below 10 kHz" role="presentation" style="display: inline; line-height: normal; word-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; padding: 0px 2px 0px …

Exploitation Of Frequency Information In Continuous Active Sonar, Lisa Zurk, Daniel Rouseff, Scott Schecklman

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In pulsed active sonar, short duration coded waveforms insonify the area of interest. The low duty cycle limits detection opportunities and decreases average energy. A recent concept is continuous active sonar (CAS), which has continuous source transmission over a broad frequency band. The low duty cycle limits detection opportunities and decreases average energy. A recent concept is continuous active sonar (CAS), which has continuous source transmission over a broad frequency band. Previous work by the authors has investigated the utility of extracting the propagation-induced frequency structure in pulsed sonar. The broadband, continuous CAS waveforms particularly lend themselves to this approach. …

Practical Wired Digital Communications Link Analysis, Raymond Matthew Schmelzer

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis deals with the analysis of a Wired High Speed Serial Data Link (PAM2) which is commonly used throughout the data-communications and tele-communications industry. The goal of this study is to build a scalable simulation tool using Matlab that ultimately uses Receiver Bit Error Ratio (BER) as the metric for data link health. This study is also designed to aid in link specification development.

The Matlab and theoretical development is broken up into three sections being Transmitter (TX), Channel (Hs) and Receiver (RX). Realistic noise impairments can be added to each section along the signal path creating signal stresses …

Architectures And Algorithms For Intrinsic Computation With Memristive Devices, Jens Bürger

Dissertations and Theses

Neuromorphic engineering is the research field dedicated to the study and design of brain-inspired hardware and software tools. Recent advances in emerging nanoelectronics promote the implementation of synaptic connections based on memristive devices. Their non-volatile modifiable conductance was shown to exhibit the synaptic properties often used in connecting and training neural layers. With their nanoscale size and non-volatile memory property, they promise a next step in designing more area and energy efficient neuromorphic hardware.

My research deals with the challenges of harnessing memristive device properties that go beyond the behaviors utilized for synaptic weight storage. Based on devices that exhibit …

A Novel Particle Filtering Method For Estimation Of Pulse Pressure Variation During Spontaneous Breathing, Sunghan Kim, Fouzia Noor, Mateo Aboy, James Mcnames

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: We describe the first automatic algorithm designed to estimate the pulse pressure variation ([Formula: see text]) from arterial blood pressure (ABP) signals under spontaneous breathing conditions. While currently there are a few publicly available algorithms to automatically estimate [Formula: see text] accurately and reliably in mechanically ventilated subjects, at the moment there is no automatic algorithm for estimating [Formula: see text] on spontaneously breathing subjects. The algorithm utilizes our recently developed sequential Monte Carlo method (SMCM), which is called a maximum a-posteriori adaptive marginalized particle filter (MAM-PF). We report the performance assessment results of the proposed algorithm on …

Determining The Power And Energy Capacity Of A Battery Energy Storage System Utilizing A Smoothing Feeder Profile To Accommodate High Photovoltaic Penetration On A Distribution Feeder, Osama Mohammed Abbas Aly Mansour

Dissertations and Theses

Electricity is a perishable commodity; once it is generated it needs to be consumed or stored. Electric energy storage provides both power and energy capacity. Power capacity applications reduce the need for generation, while energy capacity allows for energy consumption to be decoupled from generation. Previous research was done to develop an algorithm for determining the power (MW) and energy (MWh) capacities of a battery energy storage system (BESS) to mitigate the adverse impacts of high levels of photovoltaic (PV) generation. The algorithm used a flat feeder profile, and its performance was demonstrated on the equinoxes and solstices.

Managing feeder …

The Design, Implementation, Evaluation And Results Of A Race Car For The Collegiate Formula Sae Electric Competition, Quinn Jasha Bryan Sullivan

Dissertations and Theses

The Formula SAE Electric competition is a collegiate autocross event in which teams design, build, and race an open-wheeled electric race car. The main motivation is the efficiency advantage of electric motors over internal combustion motors. This thesis presents the design and evaluation of two generations of Portland State University electric race cars.

The constraints are the competition rules, finances, human resources, and time required to complete a race car in one year. The design includes the implementation of existing components: battery cells, controllers, electric motors, drivetrains, and tire data for an optimized race car. Also, several circuits were designed …

Determining The Power And Energy Capacities Of A Battery Energy Storage System To Accommodate High Photovoltaic Penetration On A Distribution Feeder, Robert B. Bass, Jennifer Carr, José Aguilar, Kevin Whitener

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The integration of distributed energy generation systems has begun to impact the operation of distribution feeders within the balancing areas of numerous electrical utilities. Battery energy storage systems may be used to facilitate greater integration of renewable energy generation. This paper describes a method for determining the power and energy capacities a battery energy storage system would need in order to accommodate a particular photovoltaic penetration level within a distribution feeder, or conversely, the amount of photovoltaic that could be installed on a feeder with a minimal investment in power and energy battery energy storage system (BESS) capacities. This method …

Wake Character In The Wind Turbine Array: (Dis-)Organization, Spatial And Dynamic Evolution And Low-Dimensional Modeling, Nicholas Michael Hamilton

Dissertations and Theses

To maximize the effectiveness of the rapidly increasing capacity of installed wind energy resources, new models must be developed that are capable of more nuanced control of each wind turbine so that each device is more responsive to inflow events. Models used to plan wind turbine arrays and control behavior of devices within the farm currently make questionable estimates of the incoming atmospheric flow and update turbine configurations infrequently. As a result, wind turbines often operate at diminished capacities, especially in arrays where wind turbine wakes interact and inflow conditions are far from ideal. New turbine control and wake prediction …

Exploring Proficiency Testing Of Programming Skills In Lower-Division Computer Science And Electrical Engineering Courses, Karla Steinbrugge Fant, Branimir Pejcinovic, Phillip Wong

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

It is generally accepted that all engineering students should be able to perform some programming tasks. For example, ABET calls for electrical engineering (EE) curricula to include “engineering topics (including computing science) necessary to analyze and design complex electrical and electronic devices, software, and systems containing hardware and software components.” In most disciplines, programming plays a supporting role as one of the tools that future engineers will need to tackle problem solving and design projects. Because it is considered such a basic tool, programming is typically taught in freshman or sophomore courses. Many engineering students get their first exposure to …

The Investigation And Optimization Of A Two-Heat-Pump System Incorporating Thermal Storage For Shaping Residential Heating Load, Emily Lord Barrett

Dissertations and Theses

Portland General Electric has proposed coupling one or more water tanks with two heat pumps in order to perform load-shifting in residential customer heating and cooling applications. By using the water tanks as a thermal storage unit, this project attempts to partially decouple energy consumption from generation to provide peak demand reduction and to better facilitate the integration of variable renewable energy resources. A scoping study was performed to evaluate the potential impact of this project if implemented in single family homes in Portland, Oregon. This study revealed that the system could provide meaningful savings in the cost of electricity …

A Utility-Scale Deployment Project Of Behind-The-Meter Energy Storage For Use In Ancillary Services, Energy Resiliency, Grid Infrastructure Investment Deferment, And Demand-Response Integration, Joseph Nathanael Wilson

Dissertations and Theses

Electric utilities are increasingly incentivized to integrate new renewable energy generation resources to their systems; however, operations-related issues arise due to the non-dispatchable and stochastic nature of these renewable energy sources. These characteristics lead to a variety of issues for utilities, among which are voltage fluctuations, balancing dispatch against ramping events, short-duration power fluctuations, and the need to invest in peaking generation facilities just to accommodate the renewable energy. A traditional solution to these issues is to employ renewable generation-following techniques using either newly constructed gas peaking plants, or by shifting existing generation resources to this following responsibility. Unfortunately, use …

Complete Design Methodology Of A Massively Parallel And Pipelined Memristive Stateful Imply Logic Based Reconfigurable Architecture, Kamela Choudhury Rahman

Dissertations and Theses

Continued dimensional scaling of CMOS processes is approaching fundamental limits and therefore, alternate new devices and microarchitectures are explored to address the growing need of area scaling and performance gain. New nanotechnologies, such as memristors, emerge. Memristors can be used to perform stateful logic with nanowire crossbars, which allows for implementation of very large binary networks that can be easily reconfigured. This research involves the design of a memristor-based massively parallel datapath for various applications, specifically SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) like architecture, and parallel pipelines. The dissertation develops a new model of massively parallel memristor-CMOS hybrid datapath architectures at …

The Effects Of Phosphonic Acids In Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells, Keith Edward James

Dissertations and Theses

Novel methods for the construction of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) were developed. A thin dense underlayer of TiO₂ was applied on fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) glass using as a precursor Tyzor AA-105. Subsequently a mesoporous film of P-25 TiO₂ was applied by spreading a suspension uniformly over the surface of the underlayer and allowing the plate to slowly dry while resting on a level surface. After sintering at 500° C slides were treated with TCPP as a sensitizing dye and assembled into DSSCs. A novel method was used to seal the cells; strips of Parafilm® were used as …

Event Detection Using Correlation Within Arrays Of Streaming Pmu Data, Jordan Landford

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis provides a synchrophasor data analysis methodology that leverages both statistical correlation techniques and a statistical distribution in order to identify data inconsistencies, as well as power system contingencies. This research utilizes archived Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) data obtained from the Bonneville Power Administration in order to show that this methodology is not only feasible, but extremely useful for power systems monitoring, decision support, and planning purposes.

By analyzing positive sequence voltage angles between a pair of PMUs at two different substation locations, an historic record of correlation is established. From this record, a Rayleigh distribution of correlation coefficients …

Physics-Based Imaging Methods For Terahertz Nondestructive Evaluation Applications, Gabriel Paul Kniffin

Dissertations and Theses

Lying between the microwave and far infrared (IR) regions, the "terahertz gap" is a relatively unexplored frequency band in the electromagnetic spectrum that exhibits a unique combination of properties from its neighbors. Like in IR, many materials have characteristic absorption spectra in the terahertz (THz) band, facilitating the spectroscopic "fingerprinting" of compounds such as drugs and explosives. In addition, non-polar dielectric materials such as clothing, paper, and plastic are transparent to THz, just as they are to microwaves and millimeter waves. These factors, combined with sub-millimeter wavelengths and non-ionizing energy levels, makes sensing in the THz band uniquely suited for …

Using Portable Transducers To Measure Tremor Severity, Rodger J. Elble, James Mcnames

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Portable motion transducers, suitable for measuring tremor, are now available at a reasonable cost. The use of these transducers requires knowledge of their limitations and data analysis. The purpose of this review is to provide a practical overview and example software for using portable motion transducers in the quantification of tremor.

Methods: Medline was searched via PubMed.gov in December 2015 using the Boolean expression “tremor AND (accelerometer OR accelerometry OR gyroscope OR inertial measurement unit OR digitizing tablet OR transducer).” Abstracts of 419 papers dating back to 1964 were reviewed for relevant portable transducers and methods of tremor analysis, …

A Backend Framework For The Efficient Management Of Power System Measurements, Benjamin Mccamish, Rich Meier, Jordan Landford, Robert B. Bass, David Chiu, Eduardo Cotilla-Sanchez

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Increased adoption and deployment of phasor measurement units (PMU) has provided valuable fine-grained data over the grid. Analysis over these data can provide insight into the health of the grid, thereby improving control over operations. Realizing this data-driven control, however, requires validating, processing and storing massive amounts of PMU data. This paper describes a PMU data management system that supports input from multiple PMU data streams, features an event-detection algorithm, and provides an efficient method for retrieving archival data. The event-detection algorithm rapidly correlates multiple PMU data streams, providing details on events occurring within the power system. The event-detection algorithm …

Memory And Information Processing In Recurrent Neural Networks, Alireza Goudarzi, Sarah Marzen, Peter Banda, Guy Feldman, Matthew R. Lakin, Christof Teuscher, Darko Stefanovic

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recurrent neural networks (RNN) are simple dynamical systems whose computational power has been attributed to their short-term memory. Short-term memory of RNNs has been previously studied analytically only for the case of orthogonal networks, and only under annealed approximation, and uncorrelated input. Here for the first time, we present an exact solution to the memory capacity and the task-solving performance as a function of the structure of a given network instance, enabling direct determination of the function-structure relation in RNNs. We calculate the memory capacity for arbitrary networks with exponentially correlated input and further related it to the performance of …

Coel: A Cloud-Based Reaction Network Simulator, Peter Banda, Christof Teuscher

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Chemical Reaction Networks (CRNs) are a formalism to describe the macroscopic behavior of chemical systems. We introduce COEL, a web- and cloud-based CRN simulation framework, which does not require a local installation, runs simulations on a large computational grid, provides reliable database storage, and offers a visually pleasing and intuitive user interface. We present an overview of the underlying software, the technologies, and the main architectural approaches employed. Some of COEL’s key features include ODE-based simulations of CRNs and multicompartment reaction networks with rich interaction options, a built-in plotting engine, automatic DNA-strand displacement transformation and visualization, SBML/Octave/Matlab export, and a …

Assembly Of A 3d Cellular Computer Using Folded E-Blocks, Shivendra Pandey, Nicholas J. Macias, Carmen Ciobanu, Changkyu Yoon, Christof Teuscher, David H. Gracias

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The assembly of integrated circuits in three dimensions (3D) provides a possible solution to address the ever-increasing demands of modern day electronic devices. It has been suggested that by using the third dimension, devices with high density, defect tolerance, short interconnects and small overall form factors could be created. However, apart from pseudo 3D architecture, such as monolithic integration, die, or wafer stacking, the creation of paradigms to integrate electronic low-complexity cellular building blocks in architecture that has tile space in all three dimensions has remained elusive. Here, we present software and hardware foundations for a truly 3D cellular computational …

The Design Of A Simple, Spiking Sparse Coding Algorithm For Memristive Hardware, Walt Woods

Dissertations and Theses

Calculating a sparse code for signals with high dimensionality, such as high-resolution images, takes substantial time to compute on a traditional computer architecture. Memristors present the opportunity to combine storage and computing elements into a single, compact device, drastically reducing the area required to perform these calculations. This work focused on the analysis of two existing sparse coding architectures, one of which utilizes memristors, as well as the design of a new, third architecture that employs a memristive crossbar. These architectures implement either a non-spiking or spiking variety of sparse coding based on the Locally Competitive Algorithm (LCA) introduced by …