Computer Engineering Commons^™

A Machine Learning Framework For Identifying Molecular Biomarkers From Transcriptomic Cancer Data, Md Abdullah Al Mamun

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cancer is a complex molecular process due to abnormal changes in the genome, such as mutation and copy number variation, and epigenetic aberrations such as dysregulations of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA). These abnormal changes are reflected in transcriptome by turning oncogenes on and tumor suppressor genes off, which are considered cancer biomarkers.

However, transcriptomic data is high dimensional, and finding the best subset of genes (features) related to causing cancer is computationally challenging and expensive. Thus, developing a feature selection framework to discover molecular biomarkers for cancer is critical.

Traditional approaches for biomarker discovery calculate the fold change for each …

Digital And Mixed Domain Hardware Reduction Algorithms And Implementations For Massive Mimo, Najath A. Mohomed

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Emerging 5G and 6G based wireless communications systems largely rely on multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems to reduce inherently extensive path losses, facilitate high data rates, and high spatial diversity. Massive MIMO systems used in mmWave and sub-THz applications consists of hundreds perhaps thousands of antenna elements at base stations. Digital beamforming techniques provide the highest flexibility and better degrees of freedom for phased antenna arrays as compared to its analog and hybrid alternatives but has the highest hardware complexity.

Conventional digital beamformers at the receiver require a dedicated analog to digital converter (ADC) for every antenna element, leading to ADCs for …

A Comprehensive Security Framework For Securing Sensors In Smart Devices And Applications, Amit Kumar Sikder

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This doctoral dissertation introduces novel security frameworks to detect sensor-based threats on smart devices and applications in smart settings such as smart home, smart office, etc. First, we present a formal taxonomy and in-depth impact analysis of existing sensor-based threats to smart devices and applications based on attack characteristics, targeted components, and capabilities. Then, we design a novel context-aware intrusion detection system, 6thSense, to detect sensor-based threats in standalone smart devices (e.g., smartphone, smart watch, etc.). 6thSense considers user activity-sensor co-dependence in standalone smart devices to learn the ongoing user activity contexts and builds a context-aware model to distinguish malicious …

Mitigating Stealthy Link Flooding Ddos Attacks Using Sdn-Based Moving Target Defense, Abdullah Aydeger

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the increasing diversity and complication of Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, it has become extremely challenging to design a fully protected network. For instance, recently, a new type of attack called Stealthy Link Flooding Attack (SLFA) has been shown to cause critical network disconnection problems, where the attacker targets the communication links in the surrounding area of a server. The existing defense mechanisms for this type of attack are based on the detection of some unusual traffic patterns; however, this might be too late as some severe damage might already be done. These mechanisms also do not consider countermeasures during …

Reputation-Aware Trajectory-Based Data Mining In The Internet Of Things (Iot), Samia Tasnim

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Internet of Things (IoT) is a critically important technology for the acquisition of spatiotemporally dense data in diverse applications, ranging from environmental monitoring to surveillance systems. Such data helps us improve our transportation systems, monitor our air quality and the spread of diseases, respond to natural disasters, and a bevy of other applications. However, IoT sensor data is error-prone due to a number of reasons: sensors may be deployed in hazardous environments, may deplete their energy resources, have mechanical faults, or maybe become the targets of malicious attacks by adversaries. While previous research has attempted to improve the quality of …

Trajectory Privacy Preservation And Lightweight Blockchain Techniques For Mobility-Centric Iot, Abdur Bin Shahid

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Various research efforts have been undertaken to solve the problem of trajectory privacy preservation in the Internet of Things (IoT) of resource-constrained mobile devices. Most attempts at resolving the problem have focused on the centralized model of IoT, which either impose high delay or fail against a privacy-invading attack with long-term trajectory observation. These proposed solutions also fail to guarantee location privacy for trajectories with both geo-tagged and non-geo-tagged data, since they are designed for geo-tagged trajectories only. While a few blockchain-based techniques have been suggested for preserving trajectory privacy in decentralized model of IoT, they require large storage capacity …

A Privacy Framework For Decentralized Applications Using Blockchains And Zero Knowledge Proofs, David Gabay

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the increasing interest in connected vehicles along with electrification opportunities, there is an ongoing effort to automate the charging process of electric vehicles (EVs) through their capabilities to communicate with the infrastructure and each other. However, charging EVs takes time and thus in-advance scheduling is needed. As this process is done frequently due to limited mileage of EVs, it may expose the locations and charging pattern of the EV to the service providers, raising privacy concerns for their users. Nevertheless, the EV still needs to be authenticated to charging providers, which means some information will need to be provided …

Centralized And Distributed Detection Of Compromised Smart Grid Devices Using Machine Learning And Convolution Techniques, Cengiz Kaygusuz

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The smart grid concept has further transformed the traditional power grid into a massive cyber-physical system that depends on advanced two-way communication infrastructure. While the introduction of cyber components has improved the grid, it has also broadened the attack surface. In particular, the threat stemming from compromised devices pose a significant danger: An attacker can control the devices to change the behavior of the grid and can impact the measurements or damage the grid equipment. In this thesis, to detect such malicious smart grid devices, we propose a novel machine learning and convolution-based framework, named PowerWatch, that is able to …

Cloud Workload Allocation Approaches For Quality Of Service Guarantee And Cybersecurity Risk Management, Soamar Homsi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It has become a dominant trend in industry to adopt cloud computing --thanks to its unique advantages in flexibility, scalability, elasticity and cost efficiency -- for providing online cloud services over the Internet using large-scale data centers. In the meantime, the relentless increase in demand for affordable and high-quality cloud-based services, for individuals and businesses, has led to tremendously high power consumption and operating expense and thus has posed pressing challenges on cloud service providers in finding efficient resource allocation policies.

Allowing several services or Virtual Machines (VMs) to commonly share the cloud's infrastructure enables cloud providers to optimize resource …

Multi-Robot Coordination And Scheduling For Deactivation & Decommissioning, Sebastian A. Zanlongo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Large quantities of high-level radioactive waste were generated during WWII. This waste is being stored in facilities such as double-shell tanks in Washington, and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Due to the dangerous nature of radioactive waste, these facilities must undergo periodic inspections to ensure that leaks are detected quickly. In this work, we provide a set of methodologies to aid in the monitoring and inspection of these hazardous facilities. This allows inspection of dangerous regions without a human operator, and for the inspection of locations where a person would not be physically able to enter.

First, …

A Simplified Secure Programming Platform For Internet Of Things Devices, Halim Burak Yesilyurt

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The emerging Internet of Things (IoT) revolution has introduced many useful applications that are utilized in our daily lives. Users can program these devices in order to develop their own IoT applications; however, the platforms and languages that are used during development are abounding, complicated, and time-consuming. The software solution provided in this thesis, PROVIZ+, is a secure sensor application development software suite that helps users create sophisticated and secure IoT applications with little software and hardware experience. Moreover, a simple and efficient domain-specific programming language, namely Panther language, was designed for IoT application development to unify existing programming languages. …

User-Centric Privacy Preservation In Mobile And Location-Aware Applications, Mingming Guo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The mobile and wireless community has brought a significant growth of location-aware devices including smart phones, connected vehicles and IoT devices. The combination of location-aware sensing, data processing and wireless communication in these devices leads to the rapid development of mobile and location-aware applications. Meanwhile, user privacy is becoming an indispensable concern. These mobile and location-aware applications, which collect data from mobile sensors carried by users or vehicles, return valuable data collection services (e.g., health condition monitoring, traffic monitoring, and natural disaster forecasting) in real time. The sequential spatial-temporal data queries sent by users provide their location trajectory information. The …

Rethinking The I/O Stack For Persistent Memory, Mohammad Ataur Rahman Chowdhury

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Modern operating systems have been designed around the hypotheses that (a) memory is both byte-addressable and volatile and (b) storage is block addressable and persistent. The arrival of new Persistent Memory (PM) technologies, has made these assumptions obsolete. Despite much of the recent work in this space, the need for consistently sharing PM data across multiple applications remains an urgent, unsolved problem. Furthermore, the availability of simple yet powerful operating system support remains elusive.

In this dissertation, we propose and build The Region System – a high-performance operating system stack for PM that implements usable consistency and persistence for application …

Optimizing Main Memory Usage In Modern Computing Systems To Improve Overall System Performance, Daniel Jose Campello

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Operating Systems use fast, CPU-addressable main memory to maintain an application’s temporary data as anonymous data and to cache copies of persistent data stored in slower block-based storage devices. However, the use of this faster memory comes at a high cost. Therefore, several techniques have been implemented to use main memory more efficiently in the literature. In this dissertation we introduce three distinct approaches to improve overall system performance by optimizing main memory usage.

First, DRAM and host-side caching of file system data are used for speeding up virtual machine performance in today’s virtualized data centers. The clustering of VM …

Sustainable Resource Management For Cloud Data Centers, A. S. M. Hasan Mahmud

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the demand for data center computing has increased significantly due to the growing popularity of cloud applications and Internet-based services. Today's large data centers host hundreds of thousands of servers and the peak power rating of a single data center may even exceed 100MW. The combined electricity consumption of global data centers accounts for about 3% of worldwide production, raising serious concerns about their carbon footprint. The utility providers and governments are consistently pressuring data center operators to reduce their carbon footprint and energy consumption. While these operators (e.g., Apple, Facebook, and Google) have taken steps to …

Autonomous Pipeline Monitoring And Maintenance System: A Rfid-Based Approach, Jong-Hoon Kim, Gokarna Sharma, Noureddine Boudriga, S.S. Iyengar, Nagarajan Prabakar

School of Computing and Information Sciences

Pipeline networks are one of the key infrastructures of our modern life. Proactive monitoring and frequent inspection of pipeline networks are very important for sustaining their safe and efficient functionalities. Existing monitoring and maintenance approaches are costly and inefficient because pipelines can be installed in large scale and in an inaccessible and hazardous environment. To overcome these challenges, we propose a novel Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID)-based Autonomous Maintenance system for Pipelines, called RAMP, which combines robotic, sensing, and RFID technologies for efficient and accurate inspection, corrective reparation, and precise geo-location information. RAMP can provide not only economical and scalable remedy …

Modeling Security And Resource Allocation For Mobile Multi-Hop Wireless Neworks Using Game Theory, Laurent L. Y. Njilla

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents novel approaches to modeling and analyzing security and resource allocation in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). The research involves the design, implementation and simulation of different models resulting in resource sharing and security’s strengthening of the network among mobile devices. Because of the mobility, the network topology may change quickly and unpredictably over time. Moreover, data-information sent from a source to a designated destination node, which is not nearby, has to route its information with the need of intermediary mobile nodes. However, not all intermediary nodes in the network are willing to participate in data-packet transfer of …

Techniques For Efficient Execution Of Large-Scale Scientific Workflows In Distributed Environments, Selim Kalayci

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Scientific exploration demands heavy usage of computational resources for large-scale and deep analysis in many different fields. The complexity or the sheer scale of the computational studies can sometimes be encapsulated in the form of a workflow that is made up of numerous dependent components. Due to its decomposable and parallelizable nature, different components of a scientific workflow may be mapped over a distributed resource infrastructure to reduce time to results. However, the resource infrastructure may be heterogeneous, dynamic, and under diverse administrative control. Workflow management tools are utilized to help manage and deal with various aspects in the lifecycle …

Real-Time Scheduling Of Embedded Applications On Multi-Core Platforms, Ming Fan

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For the past several decades, we have experienced the tremendous growth, in both scale and scope, of real-time embedded systems, thanks largely to the advances in IC technology. However, the traditional approach to get performance boost by increasing CPU frequency has been a way of past. Researchers from both industry and academia are turning their focus to multi-core architectures for continuous improvement of computing performance. In our research, we seek to develop efficient scheduling algorithms and analysis methods in the design of real-time embedded systems on multi-core platforms. Real-time systems are the ones with the response time as critical as …

Trajectory Privacy Preservation In Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks, Xinyu Jin

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, there has been an enormous growth of location-aware devices, such as GPS embedded cell phones, mobile sensors and radio-frequency identification tags. The age of combining sensing, processing and communication in one device, gives rise to a vast number of applications leading to endless possibilities and a realization of mobile Wireless Sensor Network (mWSN) applications. As computing, sensing and communication become more ubiquitous, trajectory privacy becomes a critical piece of information and an important factor for commercial success. While on the move, sensor nodes continuously transmit data streams of sensed values and spatiotemporal information, known as ``trajectory information". …

Scheduling Medical Application Workloads On Virtualized Computing Systems, Javier Delgado

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents and evaluates a methodology for scheduling medical application workloads in virtualized computing environments. Such environments are being widely adopted by providers of “cloud computing” services. In the context of provisioning resources for medical applications, such environments allow users to deploy applications on distributed computing resources while keeping their data secure. Furthermore, higher level services that further abstract the infrastructure-related issues can be built on top of such infrastructures. For example, a medical imaging service can allow medical professionals to process their data in the cloud, easing them from the burden of having to deploy and manage these …