Computer Engineering Commons^™

Protecting Return Address Integrity For Risc-V Via Pointer Authentication, Yuhe Zhao

Masters Theses

Embedded systems based on lightweight microprocessors are becoming more prevalent in various applications. However, the security of them remains a significant challenge due to the limited resources and exposure to external threats. Especially, some of these devices store sensitive data and control critical devices, making them high-value targets for attackers. Software security is particularly important because attackers can easily access these devices on the internet and obtain control of them by injecting malware.

Return address (RA) hijacking is a common software attack technique used to compromise control flow integrity (CFI) by manipulating memory, such as return-to-libc attacks. Several methods have …

Blockchain Design For A Secure Pharmaceutical Supply Chain, Zhe Xu

Masters Theses

In the realm of pharmaceuticals, particularly during the challenging times of the COVID-19 pandemic, the supply chain for drugs has faced significant strains. The increased demand for vaccines and therapeutics has revealed critical weaknesses in the current drug supply chain management systems. If not addressed, these challenges could lead to severe societal impacts, including the rise of counterfeit medications and diminishing trust in government authorities.

The study identified that more than the current strategies, such as the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) in the U.S., which focuses on unique authentication and traceability codes for prescription drugs, is needed to …

Understanding Quadrature Modulation By Designing A 7mhz Iq Test Bench To Encode The Polybius Square, William Lee Bradley

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis outlines the design of an IQ Test Bench that allows for experimentation of quadrature modulation techniques. Quadrature modulation utilizes two signals I and Q, 90° out of phase from each other, to greatly increase communication data rates. Using Desmos, a thorough mathematical analysis of waveform mixing is presented, and constellation diagrams are plotted from the results. From this an ancient fire signaling technique known as the Polybius Square is encoded into the system. The IQ Test Bench is built from fundamental components that would be contained within an RFFE: a local oscillator and two frequency mixers. The LO …

Fair Fault-Tolerant Approach For Access Point Failures In Networked Control System Greenhouses, Mohammed Ali Yaslam Ba Humaish

Theses and Dissertations

Greenhouse Networked Control Systems (NCS) are popular applications in modern agriculture due to their ability to monitor and control various environmental factors that can affect crop growth and quality. However, designing and operating a greenhouse in the context of NCS could be challenging due to the need for highly available and cost-efficient systems. This thesis presents a design methodology for greenhouse NCS that addresses these challenges, offering a framework to optimize crop productivity, minimize costs, and improve system availability and reliability. It contributes several innovations to the field of greenhouse NCS design. For example, it recommends using the 2.4GHz frequency …

Reinventing Integrated Photonic Devices And Circuits For High Performance Communication And Computing Applications, Venkata Sai Praneeth Karempudi

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

The long-standing technological pillars for computing systems evolution, namely Moore's law and Von Neumann architecture, are breaking down under the pressure of meeting the capacity and energy efficiency demands of computing and communication architectures that are designed to process modern data-centric applications related to Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, and Internet-of-Things (IoT). In response, both industry and academia have turned to 'more-than-Moore' technologies for realizing hardware architectures for communication and computing. Fortunately, Silicon Photonics (SiPh) has emerged as one highly promising ‘more-than-Moore’ technology. Recent progress has enabled SiPh-based interconnects to outperform traditional electrical interconnects, offering advantages like high bandwidth density, …

Gen-Acceleration: Pioneering Work For Hardware Accelerator Generation Using Large Language Models, Durga Lakshmi Venkata Deepak Vungarala

Theses

Optimizing computational power is critical in the age of data-intensive applications and Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML). While facing challenging bottlenecks, conventional Von-Neumann architecture with implementing such huge tasks looks seemingly impossible. Hardware Accelerators are critical in efficiently deploying these technologies and have been vastly explored in edge devices. This study explores a state-of-the-art hardware accelerator; Gemmini is studied; we leveraged the open-sourced tool. Furthermore, we developed a Hardware Accelerator in the study we compared with the Non-Von-Neumann architecture. Gemmini is renowned for efficient matrix multiplication, but configuring it for specific tasks requires manual effort and expertise. We propose implementing …

Control Of Fully-Actuated Aerial Manipulators And Omni-Directional Multirotors, Riley M. Mccarthy

Mechanical Engineering ETDs

This thesis details the system modeling, design, control, simulation, construction, and
testing of both a fully-actuated and omni-directional multirotor aerial system created
for the primary purpose of performing active tasks with their environment. This work
verifies the capabilities of both systems through empirical testing, and demonstrates
how through the use of new control methods and physical designs multirotors can
expand their purpose from passive inspection based tasks to active contact based
tasks. These systems take advantage of newly implemented control allocation features present in the PX4 flight control software, version 1.14. The use of which makes designing controllers for such …

Accelerating Machine Learning Inference For Satellite Component Feature Extraction Using Fpgas., Andrew Ekblad

Theses and Dissertations

Running computer vision algorithms requires complex devices with lots of computing power, these types of devices are not well suited for space deployment. The harsh radiation environment and limited power budgets have hindered the ability of running advanced computer vision algorithms in space. This problem makes running an on-orbit servicing detection algorithm very difficult. This work proposes using a low powered FPGA to accelerate the computer vision algorithms that enable satellite component feature extraction. This work uses AMD/Xilinx’s Zynq SoC and DPU IP to run model inference. Experiments in this work centered around improving model post processing by creating implementations …

Ensuring Non-Repudiation In Long-Distance Constrained Devices, Ethan Blum

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Satellite communication is essential for the exploration and study of space. Satellites allow communications with many devices and systems residing in space and on the surface of celestial bodies from ground stations on Earth. However, with the rise of Ground Station as a Service (GsaaS), the ability to efficiently send action commands to distant satellites must ensure non-repudiation such that an attacker is unable to send malicious commands to distant satellites. Distant satellites are also constrained devices and rely on limited power, meaning security on these devices is minimal. Therefore, this study attempted to propose a novel algorithm to allow …

Qasm-To-Hls: A Framework For Accelerating Quantum Circuit Emulation On High-Performance Reconfigurable Computers, Anshul Maurya

Theses and Dissertations

High-performance reconfigurable computers (HPRCs) make use of Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) for efficient emulation of quantum algorithms. Generally, algorithm-specific architectures are implemented on the FPGAs and there is very little flexibility. Moreover, mapping a quantum algorithm onto its equivalent FPGA emulation architecture is challenging. In this work, we present an automation framework for converting quantum circuits to their equivalent FPGA emulation architectures. The framework processes quantum circuits represented in Quantum Assembly Language (QASM) and derives high-level descriptions of the hardware emulation architectures for High-Level Synthesis (HLS) on HPRCs. The framework generates the code for a heterogeneous architecture consisting of a …

Melanoma Detection Based On Deep Learning Networks, Sanjay Devaraneni

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Our main objective is to develop a method for identifying melanoma enabling accurate assessments of patient’s health. Skin cancer, such as melanoma can be extremely dangerous if not detected and treated early. Detecting skin cancer accurately and promptly can greatly increase the chances of survival. To achieve this, it is important to develop a computer-aided diagnostic support system. In this study a research team introduces a sophisticated transfer learning model that utilizes Resnet50 to classify melanoma. Transfer learning is a machine learning technique that takes advantage of trained models, for similar tasks resulting in time saving and enhanced accuracy by …

A Modular Framework For Surface-Embedded Actuation And Optical Sensing In Soft Robots., Paul Bupe Jr

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the development and integration of modular technologies in soft robotics, with a focus on the OptiGap sensor system. OptiGap serves as a simple, flexible, cost-effective solution for real-time sensing of bending and deformation, validated through simulation and experimentation. Working as part of an emerging category of soft robotics called Soft, Curved, Reconfigurable, Anisotropic Mechanisms, or SCRAMs, this research also introduces the Thermally-Activated SCRAM Limb (TASL) technology, which employs shape-memory alloy (SMA) wire embedded in curved sheets for surface actuation and served as the initial inspiration for OptiGap. In addition, the EneGate system is presented as a complementary …

Cyber-Physical Multi-Robot Systems In A Smart Factory: A Networked Ai Agents Approach, Zixiang Nie

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on addressing the technical challenges of non-stationarity in smart factories through the use of cyber-physical AI agents. Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing with smart factories as a central role, have a growing demand for Just-in-Time (JIT) and on-demand production, as well as mass customization—all while maintaining high productivity, resource efficiency and resilience. This research positions Multi-Robot Systems (MRS)-driven smart factories. The heterogeneous production and transportation robots in an MRS collaborate to form multiple real-time adjusted production flows achieving the flexibility to accommodate such on-demand, mass customization.

However, the implementation of MRS introduces new sets of challenges, including …

Enabling Intelligent Network Management Through Multi-Agent Systems: An Implementation Of Autonomous Network System, Petro Mushidi Tshakwanda

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

This Ph.D. dissertation presents a pioneering Multi-Agent System (MAS) approach for intelligent network management, particularly suited for next-generation networks like 5G and 6G. The thesis is segmented into four critical parts. Firstly, it contrasts the benefits of agent-based design over traditional micro-service architectures. Secondly, it elaborates on the implementation of network service agents in Python Agent Development Environment (PADE), employing machine learning and deep learning algorithms for performance evaluation. Thirdly, a new scalable approach, Scalable and Efficient DevOps (SE-DO), is introduced to optimize agent performance in resource-constrained settings. Fourthly, the dissertation delves into Quality of Service (QoS) and Radio Resource …

Modeling And Compensating Of Noise In Time-Of-Flight Sensors, Bryan Rodriguez

Electrical Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Three-dimensional (3D) sensors provide the ability to perform contactless measurements of objects and distances that are within their field of view. Unlike traditional two-dimensional (2D) cameras, which only provide RGB data about objects within a scene, 3D sensors are able to directly provide depth information for objects within a scene. Of these 3D sensing technologies, Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensors are becoming more compact which allows them to be more easily integrated with other devices and to find use in more applications. ToF sensors also provide several benefits over other 3D sensing technologies that increase the types of applications where ToF sensors …

Framework For Implementing Advanced Radar Plotting Aid Capability For Small Maritime Vessels, Jason Stark Harris

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Every year in the United States many people are killed or injured when maritime vessels collide with other vessels or fixed objects. According to the United States Coast Guard, the top contributing factors to these collisions are operator inattention, operator inexperience and an improper lookout. Larger commercial vessels are required to have RADAR systems which support Automatic RADAR Plotting Aid (ARPA) which can automatically detect collisions and alert an operator to change course. These systems can be very expensive which put them out of reach of the average recreational boater. It is however possible to implement a low cost ARPA …

Evaluating Eeg–Emg Fusion-Based Classification As A Method For Improving Control Of Wearable Robotic Devices For Upper-Limb Rehabilitation, Jacob G. Tryon

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Musculoskeletal disorders are the biggest cause of disability worldwide, and wearable mechatronic rehabilitation devices have been proposed for treatment. However, before widespread adoption, improvements in user control and system adaptability are required. User intention should be detected intuitively, and user-induced changes in system dynamics should be unobtrusively identified and corrected. Developments often focus on model-dependent nonlinear control theory, which is challenging to implement for wearable devices.

One alternative is to incorporate bioelectrical signal-based machine learning into the system, allowing for simpler controller designs to be augmented by supplemental brain (electroencephalography/EEG) and muscle (electromyography/EMG) information. To extract user intention better, sensor …

Watch: A Distributed Clock Time Offset Estimation Tool On The Platform For Open Wireless Data-Driven Experimental Research, Cassie Jeng

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The synchronization of the clocks used at different devices across space is of critical importance in wireless communications networks. Each device’s local clock differs slightly, affecting the times at which packets are transmitted from different nodes in the network. This thesis provides experimentation and software development on POWDER, the Platform for Open, Wireless Data-driven Experimental Research, an open wireless testbed across the University of Utah campus. We build upon Shout, a suite of Python scripts that allow devices to iteratively transmit and receive with each other and save the collected data. We introduce WATCH, an experimental method to estimate clock …

Design And Fabrication Of A Trapped Ion Quantum Computing Testbed, Christopher A. Caron

Masters Theses

Here we present the design, assembly and successful ion trapping of a room-temperature ion trap system with a custom designed and fabricated surface electrode ion trap, which allows for rapid prototyping of novel trap designs such that new chips can be installed and reach UHV in under 2 days. The system has demonstrated success at trapping and maintaining both single ions and cold crystals of ions. We achieve this by fabricating our own custom surface Paul traps in the UMass Amherst cleanroom facilities, which are then argon ion milled, diced, mounted and wire bonded to an interposer which is placed …

Sel4 On Risc-V - Developing High Assurance Platforms With Modular Open-Source Architectures, Michael A. Doran Jr

Masters Theses

Virtualization is now becoming an industry standard for modern embedded systems. Modern embedded systems can now support multiple applications on a single hardware platform while meeting power and cost requirements. Virtualization on an embedded system is achieved through the design of the hardware-software interface. Instruction set architecture, ISA, defines the hardware-software interface for an embedded system. At the hardware level the ISA, provides extensions to support virtualization.

In addition to an ISA that supports hypervisor extensions it is equally important to provide a hypervisor completely capable of exploiting the benefits of virtualization for securing modern embedded systems. Currently there does …

Deep Learning Based Power System Stability Assessment For Reduced Wecc System, Yinfeng Zhao

Doctoral Dissertations

Power system stability is the ability of power system, for a giving initial operating condition, to reach a new operation condition with most of the system variables bounded in normal range after subjecting to a short or long disturbance. Traditional power system stability mainly uses time-domain simulation which is very time consuming and only appropriate for offline assessment.

Nowadays, with increasing penetration of inverter based renewable, large-scale distributed energy storage integration and operation uncertainty brought by weather and electricity market, system dynamic and operating condition is more dramatic, and traditional power system stability assessment based on scheduling may not be …

Generalizable Deep-Learning-Based Wireless Indoor Localization, Ali Owfi

All Theses

The growing interest in indoor localization has been driven by its wide range of applications in areas such as smart homes, industrial automation, and healthcare. With the increasing reliance on wireless devices for location-based services, accurate estimation of device positions within indoor environments has become crucial. Deep learning approaches have shown promise in leveraging wireless parameters like Channel State Information (CSI) and Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) to achieve precise localization. However, despite their success in achieving high accuracy, these deep learning models suffer from limited generalizability, making them unsuitable for deployment in new or dynamic environments without retraining. To …

Virtual Prototyping Of Pebb Based Power Electronics System For Ground Vehicles, Yi Li

All Theses

Power electronics are heavily involved in power and energy systems in plenty of applications nowadays. The increase of demand brings more challenges into simulations for development. Considering the complexity of the systems and high frequency operational conditions, this paper presents comprehensive research on modeling, simulating, and validation on ground vehicle propulsion system applications.

To reduce the computational burden, the Power Electronics Building Blocks concept is utilized to simplify the structure of modeling under different conversion scenarios in ground vehicle systems. In addition, the Average and Switching versions models are included. To speedup the simulation, the engagement of advanced computing technique …

A Study Of 5g Cellular Connectivity To Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Jackson Murrin

All Theses

The market of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has seen significant growth in the past ten years on both the commercial and military sides. The applications for UAVs are endless and options by manufacturers allow users to modify their drones for their specific goals. This industry has opened up the excitement of piloting vehicles in the air, photography, videography, exploration of nature from a different point of view and many other hobbies assisted by the emergence of UAVs. The growth of this industry coincides with the roll out of new 5G cellular network technology. This upgrade in cellular network infrastructure allows …

Development Of A Soft Robotic Approach For An Intra-Abdominal Wireless Laparoscopic Camera, Hui Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

In Single-Incision Laparoscopic Surgery (SILS), the Magnetic Anchoring and Guidance System (MAGS) arises as a promising technique to provide larger workspaces and field of vision for the laparoscopes, relief space for other instruments, and require fewer incisions. Inspired by MAGS, many concept designs related to fully insertable magnetically driven laparoscopes are developed and tested on the transabdominal operation. However, ignoring the tissue interaction and insertion procedure, most of the designs adopt rigid structures, which not only damage the patients' tissue with excess stress concentration and sliding motion but also require complicated operation for the insertion. Meanwhile, lacking state tracking of …

Cyberinet: Integrated Semi-Modular Sensors For The Computer-Augmented Clarinet, Matthew Bardin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Cyberinet is a new Augmented instrument designed to easily and intuitively provide a method of computer-enhanced performance to the Clarinetist to allow for greater control and expressiveness in a performance. A performer utilizing the Cyberinet is able to seamlessly switch between a traditional performance setting and an augmented one. Towards this, the Cyberinet is a hardware replacement for a portion of a Clarinet containing a variety of sensors embedded within the unit. These sensors collect various real time data motion data of the performer and air fow within the instrument. Additional sensors can be connected to the Cyberinet to …

Towards A Robust Defense: A Multifaceted Approach To The Detection And Mitigation Of Neural Backdoor Attacks Through Feature Space Exploration And Analysis, Liuwan Zhu

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

From voice assistants to self-driving vehicles, machine learning(ML), especially deep learning, revolutionizes the way we work and live, through the wide adoption in a broad range of applications. Unfortunately, this widespread use makes deep learning-based systems a desirable target for cyberattacks, such as generating adversarial examples to fool a deep learning system to make wrong decisions. In particular, many recent studies have revealed that attackers can corrupt the training of a deep learning model, e.g., through data poisoning, or distribute a deep learning model they created with “backdoors” planted, e.g., distributed as part of a software library, so that the …

Designing Intelligent Energy Efficient Scheduling Algorithm To Support Massive Iot Communication In Lora Networks, Jui Mhatre

Master of Science in Computer Science Theses

We are about to enter a new world with sixth sense ability – “Network as a sensor -6G”. The driving force behind digital sensing abilities is IoT. Due to their capacity to work in high frequency, 6G devices have voracious energy demand. Hence there is a growing need to work on green solutions to support the underlying 6G network by making it more energy efficient. Low cost, low energy, and long-range communication capability make LoRa the most adopted and promising network for IoT devices. Since LoRaWAN uses ALOHA for multi-access of channels, collision management is an important task. Moreover, in …

Optimizing High-Performance Computing Design: The Impacts Of Bandwidth And Topology Across Workloads For Distributed Shared Memory Systems, Jonathan A. Milton

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

With the complexity of high-performance computing designs continuously increasing, the importance of evaluating with simulation also grows. One of the key design aspects is the network architecture; topology and bandwidth greatly influence the overall performance and should be optimized. This work uses simulations written to run in the Structural Simulation Toolkit software framework to evaluate a variety of architecture configurations, identify the optimal design point based on expected workload, and evaluate the changes with increased scale. The results show that advanced topologies outperform legacy architectures justifying the additional design complexity; and that after a certain point increasing the bandwidth provides …

Vr Force Feedback Gloves, Mark Wu, Claire Chen

Electrical Engineering

The goal of this project is to produce a manufacturing plan for a consumer VR glove. The total addressable market of VR is over 170 million global users as of 2022 (Kolmar , 2022) with a serviceable available market of 300,000 users on Meta’s own social platform (Heath, 2022). The targeted Quest 2 platform utilizes handheld controllers, which causes a lack of immersivity in social settings and gaming scenarios. One common use of the platform involves social platforms such as “Horizons” where users meet in a virtual world to interact; handheld controllers don’t allow users to shake hands, make finger …