Computer Engineering Commons^™

Nd − Pdpa: N Dimensional Probability Density Profile Analysis, Arjang Fahim

Theses and Dissertations

Proteins are often referred as working molecule of a cell, performing many structural, functional and regulatory processes. Revealing the function of proteins still remains a challenging problem. Advancement in genomics sequence projects produces large protein sequence repository, but due to technical difficulty and cost related to structure determination, the number of identified protein structure is far behind. Novel structures identification are particularly important for a number of reasons: they generate models of similar proteins for comparison; identify evolutionary relationships; further contribute to our understanding of protein function and mechanism; and allow for the fold of other family members to be …

Neuron Clustering For Mitigating Catastrophic Forgetting In Supervised And Reinforcement Learning, Benjamin Frederick Goodrich

Doctoral Dissertations

Neural networks have had many great successes in recent years, particularly with the advent of deep learning and many novel training techniques. One issue that has affected neural networks and prevented them from performing well in more realistic online environments is that of catastrophic forgetting. Catastrophic forgetting affects supervised learning systems when input samples are temporally correlated or are non-stationary. However, most real-world problems are non-stationary in nature, resulting in prolonged periods of time separating inputs drawn from different regions of the input space.

Reinforcement learning represents a worst-case scenario when it comes to precipitating catastrophic forgetting in neural networks. …

Generalized Techniques For Using System Execution Traces To Support Software Performance Analysis, Thelge Manjula Peiris

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation proposes generalized techniques to support software performance analysis using system execution traces in the absence of software development artifacts such as source code. The proposed techniques do not require modifications to the source code, or to the software binaries, for the purpose of software analysis (non-intrusive). The proposed techniques are also not tightly coupled to the architecture specific details of the system being analyzed. This dissertation extends the current techniques of using system execution traces to evaluate software performance properties, such as response times, service times. The dissertation also proposes a novel technique to auto-construct a dataflow model …

Novel Software Defined Radio Architecture With Graphics Processor Acceleration, Lalith Narasimhan

Dissertations

Wireless has become one of the most pervasive core technologies in the modern world. Demand for faster data rates, improved spectrum efficiency, higher system access capacity, seamless protocol integration, improved security and robustness under varying channel environments has led to the resurgence of programmable software defined radio (SDR) as an alternative to traditional ASIC based radios. Future SDR implementations will need support for multiple standards on platforms with multi-Gb/s connectivity, parallel processing and spectrum sensing capabilities. This dissertation implemented key technologies of importance in addressing these issues namely development of cost effective multi-mode reconfigurable SDR and providing a framework to …

Design And Implementation Of An Economy Plane For The Internet, Xinming Chen

Doctoral Dissertations

The Internet has been very successful in supporting many network applications. As the diversity of uses for the Internet has increased, many protocols and services have been developed by the industry and the research community. However, many of them failed to get deployed in the Internet. One challenge of deploying these novel ideas in operational network is that the network providers need to be involved in the process. Many novel network protocols and services, like multicast and end-to-end QoS, need the support from network providers. However, since network providers are typically driven by business reasons, if they can not get …

Energy-Efficient Content Delivery Networks, Vimal Mathew

Doctoral Dissertations

Internet-scale distributed systems such as content delivery networks (CDNs) operate hundreds of thousands of servers deployed in thousands of data center locations around the globe. Since the energy costs of operating such a large IT infrastructure are a significant fraction of the total operating costs, we argue for redesigning them to incorporate energy optimization as a first-order principle. We focus on CDNs and demonstrate techniques to save energy while meeting client-perceived service level agreements (SLAs) and minimizing impact on hardware reliability. Servers deployed at individual data centers can be switched off at low load to save energy. We show that …

Threat Analysis, Countermeaures And Design Strategies For Secure Computation In Nanometer Cmos Regime, Raghavan Kumar

Doctoral Dissertations

Advancements in CMOS technologies have led to an era of Internet Of Things (IOT), where the devices have the ability to communicate with each other apart from their computational power. As more and more sensitive data is processed by embedded devices, the trend towards lightweight and efficient cryptographic primitives has gained significant momentum. Achieving a perfect security in silicon is extremely difficult, as the traditional cryptographic implementations are vulnerable to various active and passive attacks. There is also a threat in the form of "hardware Trojans" inserted into the supply chain by the untrusted third-party manufacturers for economic incentives. Apart …

Embedded System Design Of A Real-Time Parking Guidance System, Omkar Dokur

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The primary objective of this work is to design a parking guidance system to reliably detect entering/exiting vehicles to a parking garage in a cost-efficient manner. Existing solutions (inductive loops, RFID based systems, and video image processors) at shopping malls, universities, airports etc., are expensive due to high installation and maintenance costs. There is a need for a parking guidance system that is reliable, accurate, and cost-effective. The proposed parking guidance system is designed to optimize the use of parking spaces and to reduce wait times. Based on a literature review we identify that the ultrasonic sensor is suitable to …

Gsu Alumni Portal, Vemuri Vinusha Chowdary, Sairam Dasu, Siva Machineni

All Capstone Projects

The main objective of GSU alumni portal web application is to allow old and new students of a university to communicate with each other. The application allows students to register and then search the data based on different criteria. Also it has the benefit of having a centralized database and up to date information. A user can easily obtain information about other registered users. This application is deployed using Cloud computing (Microsoft Azure) and nothing is managed locally. The administrator is responsible for maintaining information of students. When a student submits the registration form, administrator will complete the verification process …

Employee Hr Connect Portal, Aparna Allusivala, Sindhura Reddy Mandadi, Sri Vidya Rani Mudunuri

All Capstone Projects

Employee HR Connect Portal is essential in order to track employee time, project time. This portal can be hosted on any java based web server or application server and will be accessible via web-browsers. This portal is very user- friendly. Employee HR Connect Portal will be a useful tool to identify supply and demand of human resources. We have three main modules to maintain records of employee, department and project. Employee HR Connect Portal is very helpful for auditing. Through this portal we can judge the potentiality of the employee.

Real-Time Detection System For Suspicious Urls, Krishna Prasad Chouty, Anup Chandra Thogiti, Kranthi Sudha Vudatha

All Capstone Projects

Twitter is prone to malicious tweets containing URLs for spam, phishing, and malware distribution. Conventional Twitter spam detection schemes utilize account features such as the ratio of tweets containing URLs and the account creation date, or relation features in the Twitter graph. These detection schemes are ineffective against feature fabrications or consume much time and resources. Conventional suspicious URL detection schemes utilize several features including lexical features of URLs, URL redirection, HTML content, and dynamic behavior. However, evading techniques such as time-based evasion and crawler evasion exist. In this paper, we propose WARNINGBIRD, a suspicious Real-Time URL detection system for …

Using Eye And Head Movements As A Control Mechanism For Tele-Operating A Ground-Based Robot And Its Payload, Kathryn C. Hicks

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

To date, eye and head tracking has been used to indicate users' attention patterns while performing a task or as an aid for disabled persons, to allow hands-free interaction with a computer. The increasing accuracy and the reduced cost of eye- and head-tracking equipment make utilizing this technology feasible for explicit control tasks, especially in cases where there is confluence between the visual task and control.

The goal of this research was to investigate the use of eye-tracking as a more natural interface for the control of a camera-equipped, remotely operated robot in tasks that require the operator to simultaneously …

An Analysis Of Conus Based Deployment Of Pseudolites For Positioning, Navigation And Timing (Pnt) Systems, Justin H. Deifel, Albert J. Pena

Theses and Dissertations

The Global Positioning System (GPS) developed and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) provides a way for users to determine position, navigation and timing (PNT). GPS provides an extraordinary capability that has become instrumental in all aspects of our day to day lives. As new technologies such as automated vehicles and unmanned aircraft continue to be developed, a reliable back up to GPS is required to ensure the PNT data generated in these systems is accurate. This research studies a potential architecture for deploying a nationwide network of ground based pseudolites that would act to supplement and backup …

Rfid Microscope Lab, Patricia Carranza

Computer Engineering

The RFID Microscope Lab is a new exhibit created for the San Luis Obispo Children's Museum. The goal of the project is to create a modern, interactive exhibit that will teach children about different natural specimens through the use of technology. A computer, custom software, and RFID technology, will be used to display facts, microscopic images, and short videos of ten different specimens.

Developing Java Programs On Android Mobile Phones Using Speech Recognition, Santhrushna Gande

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Nowadays Android operating system based mobile phones and tablets are widely used and had millions of users around the world. The popularity of this operating system is due to its multi-tasking, ease of access and diverse device options. “Java Programming Speech Recognition Application” is an Android application used for handicapped individuals who are not able or have difficultation to type on a keyboard. This application allows the user to write a compute program (in Java Language) by dictating the words and without using a keyboard. The user needs to speak out the commands and symbols required for his/her program. The …

Api-Based Acquisition Of Evidence From Cloud Storage Providers, Andres E. Barreto

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Cloud computing and cloud storage services, in particular, pose a new challenge to digital forensic investigations. Currently, evidence acquisition for such services still follows the traditional approach of collecting artifacts on a client device. In this work, we show that such an approach not only requires upfront substantial investment in reverse engineering each service, but is also inherently incomplete as it misses prior versions of the artifacts, as well as cloud-only artifacts that do not have standard serialized representations on the client.

In this work, we introduce the concept of API-based evidence acquisition for cloud services, which addresses these concerns …

Mobile Cloud Computing Based Non Rigid Registration For Image Guided Surgery, Arun Brahmavar Vishwanatha

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

In this thesis we present the design and implementation of a Mobile Cloud computing platform for non-rigid registration required in Image Guided Surgery (MCIGS). MCIGS contributes in flexible, portable and accurate alignment of pre-operative brain data with intra-operative MRI, for image guided diagnosis and therapy and endoscopic skull base surgery. Improved precision of image guided therapy and specifically neurosurgery procedures is known to result in the improved prognosis for brain tumor patients. MCI GS system is tested with Physics Based Non-Rigid Registration method form ITK. Our preliminary results for brain images indicate that the proposed system over Wi-Fi can be …

Design And Implementation Of Digital Information Security For Physical Documents, Pengcheng Wang

Masters Theses

The objective of this thesis is to improve the security for physical paper documents. Providing information security has been difficult in environments that rely on physical paper documents to implement business processes. Our work presents the design of a digital information security system for paper documents, called "CryptoPaper", that uses 2-dimensional codes to represent data and its security properties on paper. A special scanner system is designed for "CryptoPaper" which uses image recognition techniques and cloud-based access control to display plaintext of encrypted and encoded data to authorized users.

Automatic User Profile Construction For A Personalized News Recommender System Using Twitter, Shiva Theja Reddy Gopidi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Modern society has now grown accustomed to reading online or digital news. However, the huge corpus of information available online poses a challenge to users when trying to find relevant articles. A hybrid system “Personalized News Recommender Using Twitter’ has been developed to recommend articles to a user based on the popularity of the articles and also the profile of the user. The hybrid system is a fusion of a collaborative recommender system developed using tweets from the “Twitter” public timeline and a content recommender system based the user’s past interests summarized in their conceptual user profile. In previous work, …

Detecting, Modeling, And Predicting User Temporal Intention, Hany M. Salaheldeen

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

The content of social media has grown exponentially in the recent years and its role has evolved from narrating life events to actually shaping them. Unfortunately, content posted and shared in social networks is vulnerable and prone to loss or change, rendering the context associated with it (a tweet, post, status, or others) meaningless. There is an inherent value in maintaining the consistency of such social records as in some cases they take over the task of being the first draft of history as collections of these social posts narrate the pulse of the street during historic events, protest, riots, …

'Fo Fighter: 2d Real-Time Game, Cary Dobeck

Computer Engineering

‘FO Fighter is a 2D real-time game for Android and iOS mobile devices. The game utilizes the motion sensors and touch screens built within these devices to give the player a great amount of control over their character’s position and firing direction. This control allows for a reactive environment set in outer space, where gravity is determined by the device’s orientation, while the player must dodge, fight and destroy multiple enemy fighters on each planet in the solar system. ‘FO Fighter has been tested throughout its development cycle on numerous devices on both the Android and iOS platforms, with testers …

Panorama: Multi-Path Ssl Authentication Using Peer Network Perspectives, William P. Harris

Computer Engineering

SSL currently uses certificates signed by Certificate Authorities (CAs) to authenticate connections. e.g. Google will pay a CA to sign a certificate for them, so that they can prove that they're not someone pretending to be Google. Unfortunately, this system has had multiple problems, and many believe that an alternative needs to be found.

One of the ideas for alternatives is using multiple "network perspectives" to authenticate a server. The idea behind this is that, though playing man-in-the-middle (MITM) with one connection is easy, it should be difficult for an adversary to do so with many connections, especially if they …

Classifying System Call Traces Using Anomalous Detection, William Doyle

Honors Theses

We used data mining techniques to detect intrusions among system call traces and have outlined our results. Recent work at the intersection of security and machine learning has lead to better understanding of anomalous intrusion detection. There is a need to more thoroughly understand how anomaly detection can be used because of its potential applications and advantages over current standard methods. In this thesis, we report on a new approach of anomalous detection using system call traces. Our goal is to be able to create a system that can accurately detect hacking attacks by analyzing the sequences of system calls …

Computational Framework For Small Animal Spect Imaging: Simulation And Reconstruction, Sang Hyeb Lee

Doctoral Dissertations

Small animal Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) has been an invaluable asset in biomedical science since this non-invasive imaging technique allows the longitudinal studies of animal models of human diseases. However, the image degradation caused by non-stationary collimator-detector response and single photon emitting nature of SPECT makes it difficult to provide a quantitative measure of 3D radio-pharmaceutical distribution inside the patient. Moreover, this problem exacerbates when an intra-peritoneal X-ray contrast agent is injected into a mouse for low-energy radiotracers.

In this dissertation, we design and develop a complete computational framework for the entire SPECT scan procedure from the radio-pharmaceutical …

Secure And Reliable Routing Protocol For Transmission Data In Wireless Sensor Mesh Networks, Nooh Adel Bany Muhammad

Dissertations

Abstract

Sensor nodes collect data from the physical world then exchange it until it reaches the intended destination. This information can be sensitive, such as battlefield surveillance. Therefore, providing secure and continuous data transmissions among sensor nodes in wireless network environments is crucial. Wireless sensor networks (WSN) have limited resources, limited computation capabilities, and the exchange of data through the air and deployment in accessible areas makes the energy, security, and routing major concerns in WSN. In this research we are looking at security issues for the above reasons. WSN is susceptible to malicious activities such as hacking and physical …

Enabling Runtime Self-Coordination Of Reconfigurable Embedded Smart Cameras In Distributed Networks, Franck Ulrich Yonga Yonga

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Smart camera networks are real-time distributed embedded systems able to perform computer vision using multiple cameras. This new approach is a confluence of four major disciplines (computer vision, image sensors, embedded computing and sensor networks) and has been subject of intensive work in the past decades. The recent advances in computer vision and network communication, and the rapid growing in the field of high-performance computing, especially using reconfigurable devices, have enabled the design of more robust smart camera systems. Despite these advancements, the effectiveness of current networked vision systems (compared to their operating costs) is still disappointing; the main reason …

Design And Verification Environment For High-Performance Video-Based Embedded Systems, Michael Mefenza Nentedem

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, a method and a tool to enable design and verification of computation demanding embedded vision-based systems is presented. Starting with an executable specification in OpenCV, we provide subsequent refinements and verification down to a system-on-chip prototype into an FPGA-Based smart camera. At each level of abstraction, properties of image processing applications are used along with structure composition to provide a generic architecture that can be automatically verified and mapped to the lower abstraction level. The result is a framework that encapsulates the computer vision library OpenCV at the highest level, integrates Accelera's System-C/TLM with UVM and QEMU-OS …

Tweetement: Pseudo-Relevance Feedback For Twitter Search, Kanatbay Bektemirov

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Microblogging platforms such as Twitter let users communicate with short messages. Due to the messages’ short content and the users’ tendency to type short queries while searching, it is particularly challenging to locate useful tweets that match user queries. The fundamental problems of word mismatch due to ambiguity are especially acute. To solve this problem, this thesis explores and compares multiple automatic query expansion methods that involve the most frequent hashtags and keywords. We built a Web service that provides real-time Twitter Search results incorporating automatic query expansion. Six pseudo-relevance feedback methods were studied and the numbers indicate that results …

Cpas - Campus Parking Availability System, Jacob Lambert

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Architectural Techniques To Extend Multi-Core Performance Scaling, Hamza Bin Sohail

Open Access Dissertations

Multi-cores have successfully delivered performance improvements over the past decade; however, they now face problems on two fronts: power and off-chip memory bandwidth. Dennard's scaling is effectively coming to an end which has lead to a gradual increase in chip power dissipation. In addition, sustaining off-chip memory bandwidth has become harder due to the limited space for pins on the die and greater current needed to drive the increasing load . My thesis focuses on techniques to address the power and off-chip memory bandwidth challenges in order to avoid the premature end of the multi-core era. ^ In the first …