Computer Engineering Commons^™

Image Segmentation For Quantification Of Air-Water Interface In Micro-Ct Soil Images, Kranthi Kumar Potteti

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Soils are complex environments comprising various biological (roots, water, air etc) and physical constituents (minerals, aggregates, etc). Synchrotron radiation based X-ray microtomography (XMT) is widely used in extracting qualitative and quantitative information regarding spatial distribution of biological and physical soil constituents. Segmentation of these micro-CT soil images is of interest to geologists, hydrologists, civil and petroleum engineers and soil scientists. In this present work, we study and implement segmentation algorithms for microhydrology studies, specifically for soil water conductivity. Three well-known image segmentation algorithms are studied for evaluating their performance for the task. We demonstrate the problems and ways to segment …

Non-Blocking Concurrent Operations On Heap, Mahesh Acharya

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

We present a non-blocking implementation for the concurrent Heap data structure in the asynchronous shared memory system. The system may be a traditional one with a single processor with multiple threads, or it may be the one with multiple processors each possibly with multiple threads. Our implementation supports readMin, deleteMin, and insert operations on the heap. The deleteMin and insert operations are non-blocking operations, whereas the readMin is wait-free. One easy approach of using a heap in multi-threading environment could be by locking the entire heap before performing any operation. This would make the implementation very slow to have any …

Wavelets In Intelligent Transportation Systems: Data Compression And Incident Detection, Shaurya Agarwal

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Research show that wavelets can be used efficiently in denoising and feature extraction of a given signal. This thesis discusses about intelligent transportation systems(ITS), its requirement and benefits. We explore use of wavelets in intelligent transportation systems for knowledge discovery, compression and incident detection. In the first section of thesis, we focus on the following problems related to traffic matrix: data compression, retrieval and visualization. We propose a methodology using wavelet transform for data visualization and compression of traffic data. Aim is to research on the wavelet compression technique for the traffic data, come up with the performance of various …

Node Filtering And Face Routing For Sensor Network, Umang Amatya

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Greedy forward routing and face routing algorithms have been extensively used for sending messages in sensor networks. In this thesis, we consider the problem of filtering redundant nodes in a sensor network as a pre-processing step for face routing. We propose two algorithms for identifying redundant nodes. We test the performance of proposed filtering algorithms on generated networks. The prototype algorithm for testing the proposed algorithms has been implemented in the Java programming language. Experimental investigation shows that the proposed filtering algorithms are effective in removing redundant nodes without compromising the network connectivity.

Cpu Scheduling For Power/Energy Management On Heterogeneous Multicore Processors, Rajesh Patel

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Power and energy have become increasingly important concerns in the design and implementation of today's multicore/manycore chips. Many methods have been proposed to reduce a microprocessor's power usage and associated heat dissipation, including scaling a core's operating frequency. However, these techniques do not consider the dynamic performance characteristics of an executing process at runtime, the execution characteristics of the entire task to which this process belongs, the process's priority, the process's cache miss/cache reference ratio, the number of context switches and CPU migrations generated by the process, nor the system load. Also, many of the techniques that employ dynamic frequency …

Framework Development For Construction Safety Visualization, Kishor Shrestha

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Throughout the history of the construction industry, many fatalities and injuries have occurred in construction sites. One of the major causes of accidents is unsafe site conditions; basically, this is due to inadequate supervision. To improve upon the traditional supervision approach, this study proposes a `Framework Development for Construction Safety Visualization' approach. In addition to this, a computer vision Edge Detection Algorithm was developed and tested to convert construction site still images into edges of the objects in the images. The framework development of this study uses computer vision, robot vision, image compression, pattern recognition, internet transmission, network communication, and …

A Study Of A Novel Modular Variable Geometry Frame Arranged As A Robotic Surface, Christopher James Salisbury

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The novel concept of a "variable geometry frame" is introduced and explored through a three-dimensional robotic surface which is devised and implemented using triangular modules. The link design is optimized using surplus motor dimensions as firm constraints, and round numbers for further arbitrary constraints. Each module is connected by a passive six-bar mechanism that mimics the constraints of a spherical joint at each triangle intersection. A three dimensional inkjet printer is used to create a six-module prototype designed around surplus stepper motors powered by an old computer power supply as a proof-of-concept example.

The finite element method is applied to …

Determining The Validity Of The Nintendo Wii Balance Board As An Assessment Tool For Balance, Sabrina Mae Deans

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Context. Application of the Nintendo Wii-fit balance board and its games have been used in Physical Therapy clinics, showing success in individuals with neurological disorders, and has been recommended as a minimum baseline assessment of a symptoms checklist and standardized cognitive and balance assessments for concussion management by the NCAA. However, it still faces challenges of being considered a reliable and consistent tool for producing normative data in the allied healthcare. Because there is little to no evidence for the Wii-fit balance board as a valid balance assessment tool for clinical and/or research usage, the significance of this study is …

Optical Network-On-Chip Architectures And Designs, Lei Zhang

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As indicated in the latest version of ITRS roadmap, optical wiring is a viable interconnection technology for future SoC/SiC/SiP designs that can provide broad band data transfer rates unmatchable by the existing metal/low-k dielectric interconnects. In this dissertation study, a set of different optical interconnection architectures are presented for future on-chip optical micro-networks.

Three Optical Network-on-Chip (ONoC) architectures, i.e., Wavelength Routing Optical Network-on-Chip (WRON), Redundant Wavelength Routed Optical Network (RDWRON) and Recursive Wavelength Routed Optical Network (RCWRON) are proposed. They are fully connected networks designed based on passive switching Microring Resonator (MRR) optical switches. Given enough different routing optical wavelengths, …

Dynamic Distributed Programming And Applications To Swap Edge Problem, Feven Z. Andemeskel

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Link failure is a common reason for disruption in communication networks. If communication between processes of a weighted distributed network is maintained by a spanning tree T, and if one edge e of T fails, communication can be restored by finding a new spanning tree, T’. If the network is 2-edge connected, T’ can always be constructed by replacing e by a single edge, e’, of the network. We refer to e’ as a swap edge of e.

The best swap edge problem is to find the best choice of e’, that is, that e which causes the new spanning …

Study Of Stemming Algorithms, Savitha Kodimala

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Automated stemming is the process of reducing words to their roots. The stemmed words are typically used to overcome the mismatch problems associated with text searching.

In this thesis, we report on the various methods developed for stemming. In particular, we show the effectiveness of n-gram stemming methods on a collection of documents.

Data Routing In Multicore Processors Using Dimension Increment Method, Arpita H. Kadakia

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A Deadlock-free routing algorithm can be generated for arbitrary interconnection network using the concept of virtual channels but the virtual channels will lead to more complex algorithms and more demands of NOC resource.

In this thesis, we study a Torus topology for NOC application, design its structure and propose a routing algorithm exploiting the characteristics of NOC. We have chosen a typical 16 (4 by 4) routers Torus and propose the corresponding route algorithm. In our algorithm, all the channels are assigned 4 different dimensions (n0,n1,n2 & n3). By following the dimension increment method, we break the dependent route circles, …

Self-Stabilizing Leader Election In Dynamic Networks, Hema Piniganti

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The leader election problem is one of the fundamental problems in distributed computing. It has applications in almost every domain. In dynamic networks, topology is expected to change frequently. An algorithm A is self-stabilizing if, starting from a completely arbitrary configuration, the network will eventually reach a legitimate configuration.

Note that any self-stabilizing algorithm for the leader election problem is also an algorithm for the dynamic leader election problem, since when the topology of the network changes, we can consider that the algorithm is starting over again from an arbitrary state. There are a number of such algorithms in the …

Self-Stabilizing Group Membership Protocol, Mahesh Subedi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this thesis, we consider the problem of partitioning a network into groups of bounded diameter.

Given a network of processes X and a constant D, the group partition problem is the problem of finding a D-partition of X, that is, a partition of X into disjoint connected subgraphs, which we call groups, each of diameter no greater than D. The minimal group partition problem is to find a D-partition {G1, ... Gm} of X such that no two groups can be combined; that is, for any Gi and Gj, where i ≠ j, either Gi U Gj is disconnected …

Automated Procedures For Quantification Of Rhizosphere Physical Properties In Micro Ct Images, Natarajan S. Pillai

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The rhizosphere, i.e. the zone of soil immediately surrounding plant roots plays a prominent role in supplying plants with water and nutrients. However, surprisingly little is known about rhizosphere physical properties and how they affect root growth, water and nutrient uptake. The lack of non-invasive and non-destructive imaging techniques necessary to observe living roots growing in undisturbed soil have been a main reason for this shortcoming. Recent advances in synchrotron X-ray micro tomography (CMT) provide the potential to directly observe soil physical properties around living roots in-situ.In this work we develop procedures for assisting scientist to study the soil properties …

Processor Allocator For Chip Multiprocessors, Dawid Maksymilian Zydek

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Chip MultiProcessor (CMP) architectures consisting of many cores connected through Network-on-Chip (NoC) are becoming main computing platforms for research and computer centers, and in the future for commercial solutions. In order to effectively use CMPs, operating system is an important factor and it should support a multiuser environment in which many parallel jobs are executed simultaneously. It is done by the processor management system of the operating system, which consists of two components: Job Scheduler (JS) and Processor Allocator (PA). The JS is responsible for job scheduling that deals with selection of the next job to be executed, while the …

A Secure On-Line Credit Card Transaction Method Based On Kerberos Authentication Protocol, Jung Eun Kim

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Nowadays, electronic payment system is an essential part of modern business. Credit cards or debit cards have been widely used for on-site or remote transactions, greatly reducing the need for inconvenient cash transactions. However, there have been a huge number of incidents of credit card frauds over the Internet due to the security weakness of electronic payment system. A number of solutions have been proposed in the past to prevent this problem, but most of them were inconvenient and did not satisfy the needs of cardholders and merchants at the same time.

In this thesis, we present a new secure …

Text Categorization Based On Apriori Algorithm's Frequent Itemsets, Prathima Madadi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Automatic Text categorization is the task of assigning an electronic document to one or more categories, based on its contents. There are many known techniques to efficiently solve categorization problems. Typically these techniques fall into two distinct methodologies which are either logic based or probabilistic. In recent years, many researchers have tried approaches which area hybrid of these two methodologies.

In this thesis, we deal with document categorization using Apriori Algorithm. The Apriori algorithm was initially developed for data mining and basket analysis applications in the relational databases. Although the technique is logic based, it also relies on the statistical …

Human Identification Using Pyroelectric Infrared Sensors, Aron E. Suppes

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The objective of this thesis is to discuss the viability of using pyroelectric infrared (PIR) sensors as a biometric system for human identification.

The human body emits infrared radiation, the distribution of which varies throughout the body, and depends upon the shape and composition of the particular body part. A PIR sensor utilizing a Fresnel lens will respond to this infrared radiation. When a human walks, the motion of the body's individual components form a characteristic gait that is likely to affect a PIR sensor field in a unique way.

A statistical model, such as a Hidden Markov Model, could …

On-Board Three-Dimensional Object Tracking: Software And Hardware Solutions, Ajay Kumar Mandava

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

We describe a real time system for recognition and tracking 3D objects such as UAVs, airplanes, fighters with the optical sensor. Given a 2D image, the system has to perform background subtraction, recognize relative rotation, scale and translation of the object to sustain a prescribed topology of the fleet. In the thesis a comparative study of different algorithms and performance evaluation is carried out based on time and accuracy constraints. For background subtraction task we evaluate frame differencing, approximate median filter, mixture of Gaussians and propose classification based on neural network methods. For object detection we analyze the performance of …

Performance Evaluation Of Network-On-Chip Interconnect Architectures, Xinan Zhou

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

With a communication design style, Network-on-Chips (NoCs) have been proposed as a new Multi-Processor System-on-Chip paradigm. Simulation and functional validation are essential to assess the correctness and performance of the NoC design. In this thesis, a cycle-accurate NoC simulation system in Verilog HDL is developed to evaluate the performance of various NoC architectures. First, a library of NoC components is developed based on an existing design. Each NoC architecture to be evaluated is constructed from the library according to the topology description which specifies the network topology, network size, and routing algorithm. The network performance of four NoC architectures under …

Hierarchical Routing In Manets Using Simple Clustering, Adam Carnine

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis presents both a review of current MANET routing protocols and a new MANET routing algorithm. The routing protocols reviewed include representative samples from the three primary forms of routing found in MANETS: proactive routing, reactive routing and hybrid routing. Secure algorithms are given special treatment in the review. In addition several protocol enhancements are discussed.

The proposed routing protocol is designed to support networks of a medium size, containing over 200 nodes but less than 3,000 nodes. The design is intentionally simple to allow ease of implementation in comparison with other MANET protocols that provide similar functionality.

Extents And Limits Of Radioscopic Detection Of Nuclear Materials In Cargo Containers With Two Megavoltage Energy Barriers, Vijay Kumar Mandava

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The megavoltage X-ray technology is utilized for detecting nuclear materials in cargo containers. Interlaced response is obtained by switching rapidly between 6MeV and 9 MeV beams. It is known that the ratio of penetration levels of cargo contents taken at nominal and dual energies provides the information about atomic numbers of materials, and thus can also indicate the threat group. However, the identification is not straightforward if combinations of materials are present. The latter can lead to misdetections. It is imperative to know what are the extent and the limit of the currently employed technology, and how to carry out …