Engineering Commons^™

A Parallel Direct Method For Finite Element Electromagnetic Computations Based On Domain Decomposition, Javad Moshfegh

Doctoral Dissertations

High performance parallel computing and direct (factorization-based) solution methods have been the two main trends in electromagnetic computations in recent years. When time-harmonic (frequency-domain) Maxwell's equation are directly discretized with the Finite Element Method (FEM) or other Partial Differential Equation (PDE) methods, the resulting linear system of equations is sparse and indefinite, thus harder to efficiently factorize serially or in parallel than alternative methods e.g. integral equation solutions, that result in dense linear systems. State-of-the-art sparse matrix direct solvers such as MUMPS and PARDISO don't scale favorably, have low parallel efficiency and high memory footprint. This work introduces a new …

Time-Difference Circuits: Methodology, Design, And Digital Realization, Shuo Li

Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis presents innovations for a special class of circuits called Time Difference (TD) circuits. We introduce a signal processing methodology with TD signals that alters the target signal from a magnitude perspective to time interval between two time events and systematically organizes the primary TD functions abstracted from existing TD circuits and systems. The TD circuits draw attention from a broad range of application fields. In addition, highly evolved complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology suffers from various problems related to voltage and current amplitude signal processing methods. Compared to traditional analog and digital circuits, TD circuits bring several compelling features: …

Software-Defined Infrastructure For Iot-Based Energy Systems, Stephen Lee

Doctoral Dissertations

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are becoming an essential part of our everyday lives. These physical devices are connected to the internet and can measure or control the environment around us. Further, IoT devices are increasingly being used to monitor buildings, farms, health, and transportation. As these connected devices become more pervasive, these devices will generate vast amounts of data that can be used to gain insights and build intelligence into the system. At the same time, large-scale deployment of these devices will raise new challenges in efficiently managing and controlling them. In this thesis, I argue that the IoT …

Function And Dissipation In Finite State Automata - From Computing To Intelligence And Back, Natesh Ganesh

Doctoral Dissertations

Society has benefited from the technological revolution and the tremendous growth in computing powered by Moore's law. However, we are fast approaching the ultimate physical limits in terms of both device sizes and the associated energy dissipation. It is important to characterize these limits in a physically grounded and implementation-agnostic manner, in order to capture the fundamental energy dissipation costs associated with performing computing operations with classical information in nano-scale quantum systems. It is also necessary to identify and understand the effect of quantum in-distinguishability, noise, and device variability on these dissipation limits. Identifying these parameters is crucial to designing …

A Multicarrier Technique For Monte Carlo Simulation Of Electrothermal Transport In Nanoelectronics, Tyler J. Spence

Doctoral Dissertations

The field of microelectronics plays an important role in many areas of engineering and science, being ubiquitous in aerospace, industrial manufacturing, biotechnology, and many other fields. Today, many micro- and nanoscale electronic devices are integrated into one package. e capacity to simulate new devices accurately is critical to the engineering design process, as device engineers use simulations to predict performance characteristics and identify potential issues before fabrication. A problem of particular interest is the simulation of devices which exhibit exotic behaviors due to non-equilibrium thermodynamics and thermal effects such as self-heating. Frequently, it is desirable to predict the level of …

Sparsity In Machine Learning: An Information Selecting Perspective, Siwei Feng

Doctoral Dissertations

Today we are living in a world awash with data. Large volumes of data are acquired, analyzed and applied to tasks through machine learning algorithms in nearly every area of science, business, and industry. For example, medical scientists analyze the gene expression data from a single specimen to learn the underlying causes of disease (e.g. cancer) and choose the best treatment; retailers can know more about customers' shopping habits from retail data to adjust their business strategies to better appeal to customers; suppliers can enhance supply chain success through supply chain systems built on knowledge sharing. However, it is also …

A Discrete-Time Technique For Linearity Enhancement Of Wideband Receivers, Mohammad Ghadiri Sadrabadi

Doctoral Dissertations

A new signal processing technique is introduced to enhance the linearity performance of wideband radio frequency (RF) receivers. The proposed technique combines the advancements in mixer first architectures with a library of binary sequences as local oscillator signals to enable wide instantaneous bandwidth and high linearity for the RF receiver. To do so, N-bit pseudo-random-binary-sequences (PRBS) are used as local oscillator signals. The RF input signal is multiplied with the PRBS at the mixer and then averaged over the full sequence. This in effect reduces the amplitude of the signal and improves the overall linearity of the system. In order …

Direct Printing Of Conductive Inks For Organic Electronics And Wearable Microfluidics, Aditi Naik

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the direct printing of conductive inks on polymeric substrates for applications in organic electronics, microfluidic valving systems, and wearable sweat sensors. The inexpensive production of solution-based electrodes with high electrical conductivity is necessary to enable the next-generation of printed, flexible, and organic electronics. Specifically, the optimization and printing of liquid-phase graphene ink and nanoparticle-based silver ink by soft nanoimprint lithography and inkjet-printing is discussed to achieve printed functional devices. Using scalable low-cost patterning systems, these flexible applications are compatible with roll-to-roll processing, enabling large-scale manufacturing. This research expands the knowledge of high-resolution printing optimization for the direct …

Sequence Design Via Semidefinite Programming Relaxation And Randomized Projection, Dian Mo

Doctoral Dissertations

Wideband is a booming technology in the field of wireless communications. The receivers in wideband communication systems are expected to cover a very wide spectrum and adaptively extract the parts of interest. The literature has focused on mixing the input spectrum to baseband using a pseudorandom sequence modulation and recovering the received signals from linearly independent measurements by parallel branches to mitigate the pressures from required extreme high sampling frequency. However, a pseudorandom sequence provides no rejection for the strong interferers received together with weak signals from distant sources. The interferers cause significant distortion due to the nonlinearity of the …

Fundamental Limits Of Covert Communication In Packet Channels, Ramin Soltani

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on covert communication in channels where the communication takes place by the transmission of packets. Consider a channel where authorized transmitter Jack sends packets to authorized receiver Steve according to a Poisson process with rate $\lambda$ packets per second for a time period $T$. Jack's transmitted packet visit Alice, Willie, Bob and Steve, respectively. Suppose that covert transmitter Alice wishes to communicate information to covert receiver Bob without being detected by a watchful adversary Willie. We consider three sets of assumptions for this channel. For each set of assumptions, we present a technique for establishing covert communication …

Ferrite Characterization Techniques & Particle Simulations For Semiconductor Devices, Nicholas Erickson

Doctoral Dissertations

"This dissertation is divided into three papers, covering two major topics. The first topic, techniques for ferrite characterization, is discussed over the course of two papers. The second topic, particle simulations for semiconductor devices, is discussed in the last paper. In the first paper, the method for extracting permeability from ferrite materials is discussed for the Keysight 16454A permeability extraction fixture, where the ferrite material to be characterized is assumed to be homogeneous. Then the method is updated to account for layered materials. The updated method is verified through full-wave simulations. In the second paper, a planar printed circuit board …

Deep Neural Network Learning-Based Classifier Design For Big-Data Analytics, Krishnan Raghavan

Doctoral Dissertations

"In this digital age, big-data sets are commonly found in the field of healthcare, manufacturing and others where sustainable analysis is necessary to create useful information. Big-data sets are often characterized by high-dimensionality and massive sample size. High dimensionality refers to the presence of unwanted dimensions in the data where challenges such as noise, spurious correlation and incidental endogeneity are observed. Massive sample size, on the other hand, introduces the problem of heterogeneity because complex and unstructured data types must analyzed. To mitigate the impact of these challenges while considering the application of classification, a two step analysis approach is …

Non-Invasive Microwave And Millimeter Wave Reflectometry And Imaging For Human Skin Diagnosis And Materials Characterization, Yuan Gao

Doctoral Dissertations

"Microwave and millimeter wave reflectometry and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging techniques have been successfully applied in many applications, such as nondestructive testing and evaluation (NDT&E), security inspection and medical diagnosis. In this dissertation, the feasibility of using microwave and millimeter reflectometry and SAR imaging for burn diagnosis is investigated through both simulations and measurements, with promising results. To correctly model the interaction between electromagnetic waves and skin, the proper knowledge of the complex permittivity of healthy skin is critically important. To this end, the common used measurement methods for in vivo skin complex permittivity are reviewed and analyzed in …

Modeling Strategies For Estimating And Suppressing Electromagnetic Interference And Improving Power Integrity, Tamar Makharashvili

Doctoral Dissertations

"Decoupling capacitors are used to suppress high-frequency noise in power distribution networks. The inductance associated with a mounted decoupling capacitor can vary by 26% depending on characteristics of the printed circuit board. Here, simple and accurate inductance models of 2- and 8-terminal capacitors including connections to the power and return plane are developed. Circuit models of the capacitors and layout are created using the partial equivalent element circuit method which provide options for circuit-level simulations as well as analytic estimation of inductance. The circuit solution matches results from the full-wave simulation model within 9% for the 8-terminal capacitor and within …

Design And Prototyping Of A Real-Time Millimeter Wave Imaging System, Zahra Manzoor

Doctoral Dissertations

"The goal of this work is to design, prototype and test an innovative millimeter wave imaging system that operates in the frequency range of 33-35 GHz and is capable of producing rapid images of various diverse scenes. In particular, the imaging system includes two main sections, one is related to the hardware design of the system, and the other focuses on the development of a novel comprehensive image reconstruction algorithm. The hardware design includes custom transmitter and receiver sub-systems, and a sparse switched array which was optimized for 320 mm x 220 mm aperture plane, and also included an improved …

Characterization And Modeling Of Esd Events And Near-Field Scanning Calibration Structures, Shubhankar Kashinath Marathe

Doctoral Dissertations

"This research is divided into three papers that cover, two major topics. The first topic, system-level electrostatic discharge (ESD), is discussed over the course of two papers. The second topic, a calibration structure for near-field scanning probe calibration application, is discussed in the last paper. In the first paper, software-assisted detection methods are proposed for secondary ESD discharges. The measured waveforms are analyzed with respect to waveform parameters, such as the vertical threshold of the rising edge, the derivative of the current waveform, and total charge delivered. These parameters enable automatic detection of secondary ESD while monitoring the discharge waveform …

Smart Control Architecture For Microgrid Application, Vikram Roy Chowdhury

Doctoral Dissertations

"This research proposes non-linear control architectures dedicated towards improving transient response, reliability and computational burden for grid connected inverters applicable for ac micro-grids. Also this work proposes an optimization procedure applied to a small microgrid to reduce the billing cost for power incorporating battery degradation mechanism.

Three works are discussed in this research that discusses methodologies to improve the operation of a three phase grid connected inverters. The first work discusses a globally stable estimation architecture for estimating the plant parameters for a grid connected inverter during its operation. Then a Lyapunov based control architecture is utilized and online parameter …

The Tabu Ant Colony Optimizer And Its Application In An Energy Market, David Donald Haynes

Doctoral Dissertations

"A new ant colony optimizer, the 'tabu ant colony optimizer' (TabuACO) is introduced, tested, and applied to a contemporary problem. The TabuACO uses both attractive and repulsive pheromones to speed convergence to a solution. The dual pheromone TabuACO is benchmarked against several other solvers using the traveling salesman problem (TSP), the quadratic assignment problem (QAP), and the Steiner tree problem. In tree-shaped puzzles, the dual pheromone TabuACO was able to demonstrate a significant improvement in performance over a conventional ACO. As the amount of connectedness in the network increased, the dual pheromone TabuACO offered less improvement in performance over the …

Hardware Architectures For Compact Microwave And Millimeter Wave Cameras, Matthew Jared Horst

Doctoral Dissertations

"Millimeter wave SAR imaging has shown promise as an inspection tool for human skin for characterizing burns and skin cancers. However, the current state-of-the-art in microwave camera technology is not yet suited for developing a millimeter wave camera for human skin inspection. Consequently, the objective of this dissertation has been to build the necessary foundation of research to achieve such a millimeter wave camera. First, frequency uncertainty in signals generated by a practical microwave source, which is prone to drift in output frequency, was studied to determine its effect on SAR-generated images. A direct relationship was found between the level …

Underwater Acoustic Communications And Adaptive Signal Processing, Mohammadhossein Behgam

Doctoral Dissertations

"This dissertation proposes three new algorithms for underwater acoustic wireless communications. One is a new tail-biting circular MAP decoder for full tail-biting convolution (FTBC) codes for very short data blocks intended for Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT). The proposed algorithm was evaluated by ocean experiments and computer simulations on both Physical (PHY) and Media access control (MAC) layers. The ocean experimental results show that without channel equalization, the full tail-biting convolution (FTBC) codes with short packet lengths not only can perform similarly to zero-tailing convolution (ZTC) codes in terms of bit error rate (BER) in the PHY layer. Computer simulation …

2x-Thru, 1x-Reflection, And Thru-Line De-Embedding: Theory, Sensitivity Analysis, And Error Corrections, Bichen Chen

Doctoral Dissertations

"Due to the simplicity of design and measurement, as well as the accuracy of results, the 2X-Thru de-embedding (2XTD), 1X-Reflection de-embedding (1XRD), and Thru-Line de-embedding (TLD) have been replaced the traditional de-embedding algorithms, such as TRL and SOLT. In this dissertation, theory of 2ⁿ-port 2XTD, 1XRD, and TLD are completely derived first. The self-error reduction schemes is introduced to mitigate the de-embedding errors due to non-ideal manufacturing effects of non-zero mode conversion terms, as well as the asymmetric, and manufacturing variations. The validations are performed on both theory and self-error reduction through simulation and measurements cases. The 2X-Thru …

Efficient Estimation And Mitigation For Radio-Frequency Interference, Qiaolei Huang

Doctoral Dissertations

"With rapid innovations in Internet of Things (IoT) and wireless technology, more and more consumer electronic devices around the world are now connected to the internet. In a small form factor electronic device, there are plenty of potential noise sources such as System On Chip (SoC), high speed traces, flexible cables and power converters, etc. Those noise sources can possibly introduce radio frequency interference (RFI) issues. In this dissertation, a transfer function based calculation method is proposed to estimate radio frequency interference (RFI) problems. The derived equations can clearly decompose the RFI problem into two parts: the noise source and …

Passive Harmonic Generation At Spring Contacts, Sen Yang

Doctoral Dissertations

"In the first paper, the RF passive harmonic generation phenomenon on the spring contact is studied. A spring contact harmonic generation measurement system is developed. The factors that may have an impact on the spring contact harmonic generation, such as contact material, contact force, and contact resistance are characterized by the measurement system. The gold-to-gold contact is found to be much superior to the stainless-steel contacts. It is also found that the passive nonlinearity at the spring contact is the semiconductor-like junction formed by the surface oxide film.

In the second paper, we show that the maximum E-field coupling occurs …