Engineering Commons^™

Meta-Routing: Synergistic Merging Of Message Routing And Link Maintenance, Mustafa A. Ayad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The maintenance of network connectivity is essential for effective and efficient mobile team operations. Achieving robust mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) connectivity requires a capable link maintenance mechanism especially if the network experiences expected intermittent connectivity due to a hostile environment. One applicable example of such network scenarios is multi-robot exploration for urban search and rescue (USAR). With the proliferation of these robotic networks, communication problems such as the link maintenance problem are subject to be raised quickly. Although various routing protocols for wireless ad hoc networks have been proposed, they solve the problems of message routing and link maintenance …

Wireless Sensors For Condition Monitoring Applications Operating In Complete Metallic Environment, Lokesh Anilkumar Gupta

Open Access Dissertations

Condition monitoring of machines is advantageous in predicting failure and estimating machine component lifetime. Continuous monitoring of parameters such as temperature, vibration, and strain using sensors and consequent data analysis can help in reducing machine downtime by taking corrective actions before failure. Various wireless and wired sensors may be attached to critical components such as bearings, gears, mechanical seals, shafts etc. for measurements. These sensors however are often inadequate solutions as wired sensors are dicult to mount on rotating components, especially in millimeter-size spaces that may exist in some of these components. Wireless sensors provide a viable solution for measurements …

Analysis And Optimization Of Cooperative Wireless Networks, Phuong Thanh Tran

Open Access Dissertations

Recently, cooperative communication between users in wireless networks has attracted a considerable amount of attention. A significant amount of research has been conducted to optimize the performance of different cooperative communication schemes, subject to some resource constraints such as power, bandwidth, and time. However, in previous research, each optimization problem has been investigated separately, and the optimal solution for one problem is usually not optimal for the other problems.

This dissertation focuses on joint optimization or cross-layer optimization in wireless cooperative networks. One important obstacle is the non-convexity of the joint optimization problem, which makes the problem difficult to solve …

A Compact, Reconfigurable Uhf Communication System Design For Use With Polysat's Embedded Linux Platform, Austin Williams

Master's Theses

The beginning of this thesis provides an overview of the heritage UHF Communication System design flown on CP2, CP3, CP4, CP5, and CP6, summarizing previous analysis of its performance, and providing the justification for a complete system re-design. High level requirements for the new UHF System are defined, and a trade study is performed on state-of-the-art single chip transceivers, low noise amplifiers, and transmit power amplifiers. These components are then designed into a functional communication system, with key components analyzed for proper impedance matching and performance characterization compared to expected datasheet values. Next, the system as a whole is characterized …

Securearray: Improving Wifi Security With Fine-Grained Physical-Layer, Jie Xiong, Kyle Jamieson

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Despite the important role that WiFi networks play in home and enterprise networks they are relatively weak from a security standpoint. With easily available directional antennas, attackers can be physically located off-site, yet compromise WiFi security protocols such as WEP, WPA, and even to some extent WPA2 through a range of exploits specific to those protocols, or simply by running dictionary and human-factors attacks on users' poorly-chosen passwords. This presents a security risk to the entire home or enterprise network. To mitigate this ongoing problem, we propose SecureArray, a system designed to operate alongside existing wireless security protocols, adding defense …

Bocce Ball Launcher: An Adaptive Bocce Ball Device, Jake Deschamps, Megan Hughes, Thomas Lynch

Mechanical Engineering

This report details the adaptive bocce launching device created by Team B.A.L.L. and theprocess of designing, building and testing it. The final design was a wirelessly controlled pneumatic catapult capable of propelling a bocce ball such that it would land fifteen feet away and roll the length of the wheelchair accessible bocce courts located at the Colony Park Community Center in Atascadero. A wide variety of users are supported because the system is controlled by a single button which can be actuated by the user’s hand, forearm, head or anything else they are able to move. The catapult allows the …

Alternative Wheelchair Control System, Jessica Hendricks, Tara Keigharn

Electrical Engineering

We geared this project towards assisting an individual with limited[1] motor function to operate a wheelchair. The product targets individuals who find use of a joystick is ineffective or painful. We focused our design on the wheelchair bought from Adaptive Driving Systems (Driving, 2013); but ultimately we would like to field a final product capable of applying to any electric wheelchair. Our goal: a person to operate the electric wheelchair using sensors that transmit a translation of an individual’s hand movement through a wireless transmission to a microcontroller installed on the wheel chair that then controls the wheelchair’s movement. …

Adaptive Wireless Communications: Mimo Channels And Networks, Daniel Bliss, Siddhartan Govindasamy

Siddhartan Govindasamy

Adopting a balanced mix of theory, algorithms and practical design issues, this comprehensive volume explores cutting-edge applications in adaptive wireless communications and the implications these techniques have for future wireless network performance. Presenting practical concerns in the context of different strands from information theory, parameter estimation theory, array processing and wireless communication, the authors present a complete picture of the field. Topics covered include advanced multiple-antenna adaptive processing, ad hoc networking, MIMO, MAC protocols, space-time coding, cellular networks and cognitive radio, with the significance and effects of both internal and external interference a recurrent theme throughout. A broad, self-contained technical …

Fastlane: Flow-Based Channel Assignment In Dense Wireless Networks, Dane N. Seaberg

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Wireless communication in dense networks is becoming more apparent and presents challenges in achieving reliable and near real-time communication. While some works have begun to address dense wireless networks, few address both reliability and latency. In this work we introduce FastLane, a method of ow-based channel assignment for dense wireless networks, which works to achieve reliable, near real-time communication in a dense environment with single-radio devices. FastLane uses an assignment mechanism that assigns channels at a ow-level granularity, rather than a tree-level or link-level granularity. Our scheme also takes into account channel quality and can adapt as the quality changes …

Arraytrack: A Fine-Grained Indoor Location System, Jie Xiong, Kyle Jamieson

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With myriad augmented reality, social networking, and retail shopping applications all on the horizon for the mobile handheld, a fast and accurate location technology will become key to a rich user experience. When roaming outdoors, users can usually count on a clear GPS signal for accurate location, but indoors, GPS often fades, and so up until recently, mobiles have had to rely mainly on rather coarse-grained signal strength readings. What has changed this status quo is the recent trend of dramatically increasing numbers of antennas at the indoor access point, mainly to bolster capacity and coverage with multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) …

Microwave Characterization Of Carbon Nanotube Yarns For Uwb Medical Wireless Body Area Networks, Syed Muzahir Abbas, Oya Sevimli, Michael C. Heimlich, Karu P. Esselle, B Kimiaghalam, Javad Foroughi, Farzad Safaei

Australian Institute for Innovative Materials - Papers

Carbon nanotube (CNT) yarns are novel CNT-based materials that extend the advantages of CNT from the nanoscale to macroscale applications. In this study, we have modeled CNT yarns as potential data transmission lines. Test structures have been designed to measure electrical properties of CNT yarns, which are attached to these test structures using gold paste. DC testing and microwave S-parameter measurements have been conducted for characterization. The observed frequency independent resistive behavior of the CNT yarn is a very promising indicator that this material, with its added values of mechanical resilience and thermal conductivity, could be invaluable for a range …

Approximation Algorithm For Data Broadcasting In Duty Cycled Multi-Hop Wireless Networks, Dianbo Zhao, Kwan-Wu Chin

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Broadcast is a fundamental operation in wireless networks. To this end, many past studies have studied the NP-hard, broadcast problem for always-on multi-hop networks. However, in wireless sensor networks, nodes are powered by batteries, meaning, they have finite energy. Consequently, nodes are required to have a low duty cycle, whereby they switch between active and sleep state periodically. This means that a transmission from a node may not reach all of its neighbors simultaneously. Consequently, any developed broadcast protocols must consider collisions and the wake-up times of neighboring nodes. Henceforth, this paper studies the minimum latency broadcast scheduling problem in …

Security Analysis Of A Distributed Reprogramming Protocol For Wireless Sensor Networks, Yong Yu, Jianbing Ni, Ying Sun

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Reprogramming for wireless sensor networks is essential to upload new code or to alter the functionality of existing code. To overcome the weakness of the centralized approach of the traditional solutions, He et al. proposed the notion of distributed reprogramming where multiple authorized network users are able to reprogram sensor nodes without involving the base station. They also gave a novel distributed reprogramming protocol called SDRP by using identity-based signature, and provided a comprehensive security analysis for their protocol. In this letter, unfortunately, we demonstrate that SDRP is insecure as the protocol fails to satisfy the property of authenticity and …

On Improving Capacity And Delay In Multi Tx/Rx Wireless Mesh Networks With Weighted Links, Hung-Yi Loo, Sieteng Soh, Kwan-Wu Chin

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper considers the problem of deriving a link schedule for Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)-based concurrent transmit/receive Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) that results in low end-to-end delays as well as high network capacity. We first propose a MAX-CUT heuristic approach, called Algo-2, that maximizes link activations in each slot of a super-frame. Algo-2 is shown to produce better network capacity as compared to existing heuristic approaches and significantly improves the super-frame length of an existing MAX-CUT approach that enforces 2-phase transmit-receive restriction - a node that transmits (receives) in slot i ≥ 1 is to become a receiver (transmitter) …

Approximation Algorithms For Interference Aware Broadcast In Wireless Networks, Dianbo Zhao, Kwan-Wu Chin

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Broadcast is a fundamental operation in wireless networks and is well supported by the wireless channel. However, the interference resulting from a node's transmission pose a key challenge to the design of any broadcast algorithms/protocols. In particular, it is well known that a node's interference range is much larger than its transmission range and thus limits the number of transmitting and receiving nodes, which inevitably prolong broadcast. To this end, a number of past studies have designed broadcast algorithms that account for this interference range with the goal of deriving a broadcast schedule that minimizes latency. However, these works have …

Unitary Differential Space-Time-Frequency Codes For Mb-Ofdm Uwb Wireless Communications, L C. Tran, A. Mertins, T A. Wysocki

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

In a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), multiband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) ultra-wideband (UWB) system, coherent detection requires the transmission of a large number of symbols for channel estimation, thus reducing the bandwidth efficiency. For the first time, this paper proposes unitary differential space-time-frequency codes (DSTFCs) for MB-OFDM UWB communications, which increase the system bandwidth efficiency because no channel state information (CSI) is required. The proposed system would be useful when CSI is unavailable at the receiver, such as when the transmission of multiple channel estimation symbols is impractical or uneconomical. The coding and decoding algorithms for the proposed DSTFCs are …

Wireless Pressure Sensor System For Medical Applications, Xuehe Wang

Theses and Dissertations

Telemedicine in the modern era is a rapidly developing industry. In a telemedicine system, sensor is the key elements and play important role in any telemedicine applications, especially implantable sensors. Unlike traditional in vitro sensors, there are some special requirements for them like battery-less, compact, and bio-friendly. Therefore, many researchers in institutes as well as in industry are continually developing implantable sensor and sensor system to fulfill the requirements of medical applications.Nine in one thousand people in the United States are born with congenital heart defects and sixty percent die before one year old. As a result, it will be …

On A Joint Physical Layer And Medium Access Control Sublayer Design For Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks And Applications, Mahir Lumumba Meghji

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are distributed networks comprising small sensing devices equipped with a processor, memory, power source, and often with the capability for short range wireless communication. These networks are used in various applications, and have created interest in WSN research and commercial uses, including industrial, scientific, household, military, medical and environmental domains. These initiatives have also been stimulated by the finalisation of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, which defines the medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) for low-rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPAN).

Future applications may require large WSNs consisting of huge numbers of inexpensive wireless sensor …

Technology Engineering And Management In Aviation Chapter:The Evaluation Of Wireless Communication Devices: To Improve In-Flight Security Onboard Commercial Aircraft., Lori Brown, Liang Dong, Anthony Cerrullo

Lori J. Brown

As computer and information systems technology advances, industries such as aviation stand to benefit from the overwhelming new advances in hardware, software, and best practices. Technology Engineering and Management in Aviation: Advancements and Discoveries details the essential new developments in technology and management in the aviation industry. Specific and important advances in navigation, air traffic control, and environmental impact all make their way into this volume, which also focuses on management policies keeping up with new technology. This volume is a vital reference for practitioners, management, students, and all those interested in the field of aviation. This chapter will study …