Engineering Commons^™

Network Virtualization And Emulation Using Docker, Openvswitch And Mininet-Based Link Emulation, Narendra Prabhu

Masters Theses

With the advent of virtualization and artificial intelligence, research on networked systems has progressed substantially. As the technology progresses, we expect a boom in not only the systems research but also in the network of systems domain. It is paramount that we understand and develop methodologies to connect and communicate among the plethora of devices and systems that exist today. One such area is mobile ad-hoc and space communication, which further complicates the task of networking due to myriad of environmental and physical conditions. Developing and testing such systems is an important step considering the large investment required to build …

Metric Learning Via Linear Embeddings For Human Motion Recognition, Byoungdoo Kong

Masters Theses

We consider the application of Few-Shot Learning (FSL) and dimensionality reduction to the problem of human motion recognition (HMR). The structure of human motion has unique characteristics such as its dynamic and high-dimensional nature. Recent research on human motion recognition uses deep neural networks with multiple layers. Most importantly, large datasets will need to be collected to use such networks to analyze human motion. This process is both time-consuming and expensive since a large motion capture database must be collected and labeled. Despite significant progress having been made in human motion recognition, state-of-the-art algorithms still misclassify actions because of characteristics …

Performance Evaluation Of Classical And Quantum Communication Systems, Gayane Vardoyan

Doctoral Dissertations

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is a robust and reliable method used to transport data across a network. Many variants of TCP exist, e.g., Scalable TCP, CUBIC, and H-TCP. While some of them have been studied from empirical and theoretical perspectives, others have been less amenable to a thorough mathematical analysis. Moreover, some of the more popular variants had not been analyzed in the context of the high-speed environments for which they were designed. To address this issue, we develop a generalized modeling technique for TCP congestion control under the assumption of high bandwidth-delay product. In a separate contribution, we …

Short Term Energy Forecasting For A Microgird Load Using Lstm Rnn, Akhil Soman

Masters Theses

Decentralization of the electric grid can increase resiliency (during natural disasters) and can reduce T&D energy losses and emissions. Microgrids and DERs can enable this to happen. It is important to optimally control microgrids and DERs to extract the greatest economic, environmental and resiliency benefits. This is enabled by robust forecasting to optimally control loads and energy sources. An integral part of microgrid control is power side and load side demand forecasting.

In this thesis, we look at the ability of a powerful neural network algorithm to forecast the load side demand for a microgrid using the UMass campus as …

Design And Implementation Of Path Finding And Verification In The Internet, Hao Cai

Doctoral Dissertations

In the Internet, network traffic between endpoints typically follows one path that is determined by the control plane. Endpoints have little control over the choice of which path their network traffic takes and little ability to verify if the traffic indeed follows a specific path. With the emergence of software-defined networking (SDN), more control over connections can be exercised, and thus the opportunity for novel solutions exists. However, there remain concerns about the attack surface exposed by fine-grained control, which may allow attackers to inject and redirect traffic. To address these opportunities and concerns, we consider two specific challenges: (1) …

Improving Computer Network Operations Through Automated Interpretation Of State, Abhishek Dwaraki

Doctoral Dissertations

Networked systems today are hyper-scaled entities that provide core functionality for distributed services and applications spanning personal, business, and government use. It is critical to maintain correct operation of these networks to avoid adverse business outcomes. The advent of programmable networks has provided much needed fine-grained network control, enabling providers and operators alike to build some innovative networking architectures and solutions. At the same time, they have given rise to new challenges in network management. These architectures, coupled with a multitude of devices, protocols, virtual overlays on top of physical data-plane etc. make network management a highly challenging task. Existing …

Formal Verification Of Divider And Square-Root Arithmetic Circuits Using Computer Algebra Methods, Atif Yasin

Doctoral Dissertations

A considerable progress has been made in recent years in verification of arithmetic circuits such as multipliers, fused multiply-adders, multiply-accumulate, and other components of arithmetic datapaths, both in integer and finite field domain. However, the verification of hardware dividers and square-root functions have received only a limited attention from the verification community, with a notable exception for theorem provers and other inductive, non-automated systems. Division, square root, and transcendental functions are all tied to the basic Intel architecture and proving correctness of such algorithms is of grave importance. Although belonging to the same iterative-subtract class of architectures, they widely differ …

Compound Effects Of Clock And Voltage Based Power Side-Channel Countermeasures, Jacqueline Lagasse

Masters Theses

The power side-channel attack, which allows an attacker to derive secret information from power traces, continues to be a major vulnerability in many critical systems. Numerous countermeasures have been proposed since its discovery as a serious vulnerability, including both hardware and software implementations. Each countermeasure has its own drawback, with some of the highly effective countermeasures incurring large overhead in area and power. In addition, many countermeasures are quite invasive to the design process, requiring modification of the design and therefore additional validation and testing to ensure its accuracy. Less invasive countermeasures that do not require directly modifying the system …

Sundown: Model-Driven Per-Panel Solar Anomaly Detection For Residential Arrays, Menghong Feng

Masters Theses

There has been significant growth in both utility-scale and residential-scale solar installa- tions in recent years, driven by rapid technology improvements and falling prices. Unlike utility-scale solar farms that are professionally managed and maintained, smaller residential- scale installations often lack sensing and instrumentation for performance monitoring and fault detection. As a result, faults may go undetected for long periods of time, resulting in generation and revenue losses for the homeowner. In this thesis, we present SunDown, a sensorless approach designed to detect per-panel faults in residential solar arrays. SunDown does not require any new sensors for its fault detection and …

Towards Optimized Traffic Provisioning And Adaptive Cache Management For Content Delivery, Aditya Sundarrajan

Doctoral Dissertations

Content delivery networks (CDNs) deploy hundreds of thousands of servers around the world to cache and serve trillions of user requests every day for a diverse set of content such as web pages, videos, software downloads and images. In this dissertation, we propose algorithms to provision traffic across cache servers and manage the content they host to achieve performance objectives such as maximizing the cache hit rate, minimizing the bandwidth cost of the network and minimizing the energy consumption of the servers. Traffic provisioning is the process of determining the set of content domains hosted on the servers. We propose …

Trustworthy Systems And Protocols For The Internet Of Things, Arman Pouraghily

Doctoral Dissertations

Processor-based embedded systems are integrated into many aspects of everyday life such as industrial control, automotive systems, healthcare, the Internet of Things, etc. As Moore’s law progresses, these embedded systems have moved from simple microcontrollers to full-scale embedded computing systems with multiple processor cores and operating systems support. At the same time, the security of these devices has also become a key concern. Our main focus in this work is the security and privacy of the embedded systems used in IoT systems. In the first part of this work, we take a look at the security of embedded systems from …

Design Of Hardware With Quantifiable Security Against Reverse Engineering, Shahrzad Keshavarz

Doctoral Dissertations

Semiconductors are a 412 billion dollar industry and integrated circuits take on important roles in human life, from everyday use in smart-devices to critical applications like healthcare and aviation. Saving today's hardware systems from attackers can be a huge concern considering the budget spent on designing these chips and the sensitive information they may contain. In particular, after fabrication, the chip can be subject to a malicious reverse engineer that tries to invasively figure out the function of the chip or other sensitive data. Subsequent to an attack, a system can be subject to cloning, counterfeiting, or IP theft. This …

Qoe-Aware Content Distribution Systems For Adaptive Bitrate Video Streaming, Divyashri Bhat

Doctoral Dissertations

A prodigious increase in video streaming content along with a simultaneous rise in end system capabilities has led to the proliferation of adaptive bit rate video streaming users in the Internet. Today, video streaming services range from Video-on-Demand services like traditional IP TV to more recent technologies such as immersive 3D experiences for live sports events. In order to meet the demands of these services, the multimedia and networking research community continues to strive toward efficiently delivering high quality content across the Internet while also trying to minimize content storage and delivery costs. The introduction of flexible and adaptable technologies …