Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons^™

Investigating Customer Churn In Banking: A Machine Learning Approach And Visualization App For Data Science And Management, Pahul Preet Singh, Fahim Islam Anik, Rahul Senapati, Arnav Sinha, Nazmus Sakib, Eklas Hossain

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Customer attrition in the banking industry occurs when consumers quit using the goods and services offered by the bank for some time and, after that, end their connection with the bank. Therefore, customer retention is essential in today’s extremely competitive banking market. Additionally, having a solid customer base helps attract new consumers by fostering confidence and a referral from a current clientele. These factors make reducing client attrition a crucial step that banks must pursue. In our research, we aim to examine bank data and forecast which users will most likely discontinue using the bank’s services and become paying customers. …

Electron Trajectories And Critical Current In A Two-Dimensional Planar Magnetically Insulated Crossed-Field Gap, Xiaojun Zhu, Jack K. Wright, N. R. Sree Harsha, Jim Browning, Allen L. Garner

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The critical current in a one-dimensional (1D) crossed-field gap is defined by the transition from a cycloidal flow to a near-Brillouin (nB) state characterized by electron flow orthogonal to both the electric and magnetic fields and uniform virtual cathode formation. Motivated by recent studies on space-charge-limited current in non-magnetic diodes, we assess the meaning of critical current in a magentically insulated two-dimensional (2D) planar crossed-field geometry. Particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations demonstrate that binary behavior between a laminar and turbulent state does not occur in 2D because the virtual cathode is nonuniform. Rather than a distinct nB state above the critical current …

Generation Of Dna Oligomers With Similar Chemical Kinetics Via In-Silico Optimization, Michael Tobiason, Bernard Yurke, William L. Hughes

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Networks of interacting DNA oligomers are useful for applications such as biomarker detection, targeted drug delivery, information storage, and photonic information processing. However, differences in the chemical kinetics of hybridization reactions, referred to as kinetic dispersion, can be problematic for some applications. Here, it is found that limiting unnecessary stretches of Watson-Crick base pairing, referred to as unnecessary duplexes, can yield exceptionally low kinetic dispersions. Hybridization kinetics can be affected by unnecessary intra-oligomer duplexes containing only 2 base-pairs, and such duplexes explain up to 94% of previously reported kinetic dispersion. As a general design rule, it is recommended that unnecessary …

Investigation Of Degradation Of Solar Photovoltaics: A Review Of Aging Factors, Impacts, And Future Directions Toward Sustainable Energy Management, Eklas Hossain

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The degradation of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules is caused by a number of factors that have an impact on their effectiveness, performance, and lifetime. One of the reasons contributing to the decline in solar PV performance is the aging issue. This study comprehensively examines the effects and difficulties associated with aging and degradation in solar PV applications. In light of this, this article examines and analyzes many aging factors, including temperature, humidity, dust, discoloration, cracks, and delamination. Additionally, the effects of aging factors on solar PV performance, including the lifetime, efficiency, material degradation, overheating, and mismatching, are critically investigated. Furthermore, …

Three-Port Bi-Directional Dc–Dc Converter With Solar Pv System Fed Bldc Motor Drive Using Fpga, Arun Kumar Udayakumar, Raghavendra Rajan Vijaya Raghavan, Mohamad Abou Houran, Rajvikram Madurai Elavarasan, Anushkannan Nedumaran Kalavathy, Eklas Hossain

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The increased need for renewable energy systems to generate power, store energy, and connect energy storage devices with applications has become a major challenge. Energy storage using batteries is most appropriate for energy sources like solar, wind, etc. A non-isolated three-port DC–DC-converter energy conversion unit is implemented feeding the brushless DCmotor drive. In this paper, a non-isolated three-port converter is designed and simulated for battery energy storage, interfaced with an output drive. Based on the requirements, the power extracted from the solar panel during the daytime is used to charge the batteries through the three-port converter. The proposed three-port converter …

Investigating R(T) Functions For Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity In Memristive Neural Networks, Farhana Afrin, Kurtis D. Cantley

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Brain-inspired neuromorphic computation can be extremely efficient at very large scales due to inherent parallelism, scalability, and fault and failure tolerance. One widely used, biologically plausible synaptic learning mechanism is spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). The proposed generic model of time-varying resistance, or R(t) elements in this work, can produce classical and beyond classical STDP in electronic spiking neural networks with memristive synapses. Hebbian and Anti-Hebbian STDP is verified with the proposed generic R(t) model by tuning the R(t) function. By appropriately placing R(t) functions with selective resistance values, symmetric or non-classical STDP learning behavior is achieved.

Character Spotting And Autonomous Tagging: Offline Handwriting Recognition For Bangla, Korean And Other Alphabetic Scripts, Nishatul Majid, Elisa H. Barney Smith

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper demonstrates a framework for offline handwriting recognition using character spotting and autonomous tagging which works for any alphabetic script. Character spotting builds on the idea of object detection to find character elements in unsegmented word images. An autonomous tagging approach is introduced which automates the production of a character image training set by estimating character locations in a word based on typical character size. Although scripts can vary vividly from each other, our proposed approach provides a simple and powerful workflow for unconstrained offline recognition that should work for any alphabetic script with few adjustments. Here we demonstrate …

A Retrospective On 2022 Cyber Incidents In The Wind Energy Sector And Building Future Cyber Resilience, Megan Egan

Cyber Operations and Resilience Program Graduate Projects

Between February and June 2022, multiple wind energy sector companies were hit by cyber-attacks impacting their ability to monitor and control wind turbines. With projected growth in the United States of 110.66 GW from 2020 to 2030, wind energy will increasingly be a critical source of electricity for the United States and an increasingly valuable target for cyberattacks. This paper shows the importance of redundant remote communications, secure third-party providers, and improving response and recovery processes that would ensure this growth period fulfills its potential as a unique opportunity to build in cyber resilience from the outset of new installations …

Interleaved Honeypot-Framing Model With Secure Mac Policies For Wireless Sensor Networks, Rajasoundaran Soundararajan, Maheswar Rajagopal, Akila Muthuramalingam, Eklas Hossain, Jaime Lloret

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Wireless Medium Access Control (WMAC) protocol functions by handling various data frames in order to forward them to neighbor sensor nodes. Under this circumstance, WMAC policies need secure data communication rules and intrusion detection procedures to safeguard the data from attackers. The existing secure Medium Access Control (MAC) policies provide expected and predictable practices against channel attackers. These security policies can be easily breached by any intelligent attacks or malicious actions. The proposed Wireless Interleaved Honeypot-Framing Model (WIHFM) newly implements distributed honeypot-based security mechanisms in each sensor node to act reactively against various attackers. The proposed WIHFM creates an …

Tropospheric Attenuation Prediction For Future Millimeter Wave Terrestrial Systems: Estimating Statistics And Extremes, Jinwen Liu, David W. Matolak, Ismail Güvenç, Hani Mehrpouyan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Tropospheric attenuations can be significant in the millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency bands; hence, accurate prediction modeling of tropospheric attenuation is important for reliable mmWave communication. Several models have been established by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), yet estimation accuracy is limited due to the large spatial scales used for model input parameters. In this paper, we address this and apply local precipitation data to analyze tropospheric attenuation statistics and compare to results when using ITU regional input rain data. Specifically, tropospheric attenuation is predicted via simulations using the ITU method at 30, 60, and 90 GHz in four distinct geographic …

Laser-Induced Galfenol Embedded Multi-Layer Graphene-Oxide In Solution, Devyn Duryea, Nirmala Kandadai

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The proposed work demonstrates the direct synthesis of nanomaterial-embedded laser-induced few-layer graphene-oxide by directly ablating galfenol in a water-based solution for the first time. Laser-induced multilayer graphene-oxide (GO) embedded with galfenol (gallium–iron alloy) nanoparticles (NPs) is created through a method of direct laser inscription of bulk galfenol in deionized (DI) water with femtosecond laser ablation. The NP-embedded GO is achieved by irradiating a near-infrared (near-IR) femtosecond laser at 1040 nm on a bulk galfenol material submerged in a solution comprising DI water and a small concentration (5%/wt.) of polyvinylpyrrolidone followed by a second ablation in pure DI water. Results show …

Seamless Transition Of A Microgrid Between Grid-Connected And Islanded Mode, Julie B. Matarweh

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on improving the behavior of inverters during transition periods from islanded mode to grid-connected mode (GC) and vice-versa. A systematic approach is presented to add smart features to inverters to enhance their capability to cope with sudden changes in the power system.

The importance of microgrids lies in their ability to provide a stable and reliable source of power for critical loads in the presence of faults. For this purpose, a design is proposed consisting of a distributed energy resource (DER), battery energy storage system (BESS) and a load connected through a bypass switch with the main …

Ultra-Compact Hybrid Silicon: Chalcogenide Waveguide Temperature Sensor, Bahareh Badamchi, Wei-Che Hsu, Al-Amin Ahmed Simon, Zong Yin Chi, Jacob Manzi, Maria Mitkova, Alan X. Wang, Harish Subbaraman

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

We demonstrate a real-time, reusable, and reversible integrated optical sensor for temperature monitoring within harsh environments. The sensor architecture combines the phase change property of chalcogenide glasses (ChG) with the high-density integration advantages of high index silicon waveguides. To demonstrate sensor feasibility, ChG composition Ge₄₀S₆₀, which is characterized by a sharp phase transition from amorphous to crystalline phase around 415 °C, is deposited over a 50 µm section of a single mode optical waveguide. The phase transition changes the behavior of Ge₄₀S₆₀ from a low loss to high loss material, thus significantly …

Data-Driven Passivity-Based Control Of Underactuated Robotic Systems, Wankun Sirichotiyakul

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Classical control strategies for robotic systems are based on the idea that feedback control can be used to override the natural dynamics of the machines. Passivity-based control (Pbc) is a branch of nonlinear control theory that follows a similar approach, where the natural dynamics is modified based on the overall energy of the system. This method involves transforming a nonlinear control system, through a suitable control input, into another fictitious system that has desirable stability characteristics. The majority of Pbc techniques require the discovery of a reasonable storage function, which acts as a Lyapunov function candidate that can be …

Process-Property Linkages Construction For Inkjet Printing With Machine Learning, Fataneh Jenabi

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Printed electronics are emerging technologies that can potentially revolutionize the manufacturing of electronic devices. One promising technology for printed electronics is inkjet printing. Inkjet printing offers both low-cost processing and high resolution. Being a subset of additive manufacturing, inkjet printing minimizes waste and is compatible with a wide range of inks. However, inkjet printing of electronic devices is still in its infancy. One major challenge for inkjet printing is the complexity of the process optimization and uncertain high throughput production. To achieve a high-quality print, there is a complex parameter space of materials and processing parameters that needs to be …

Strategies For Controlling The Spatial Orientation Of Single Molecules Tethered On Dna Origami Templates Physisorbed On Glass Substrates: Intercalation And Stretching, Keitel Cervantes-Salguero, Austin Biaggne, John M. Youngsman, Brett M. Ward, Young C. Kim, Lan Li, John A. Hall, William B. Knowlton, Elton Graugnard, Wan Kuang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Nanoarchitectural control of matter is crucial for next-generation technologies. DNA origami templates are harnessed to accurately position single molecules; however, direct single molecule evidence is lacking regarding how well DNA origami can control the orientation of such molecules in three-dimensional space, as well as the factors affecting control. Here, we present two strategies for controlling the polar (θ) and in-plane azimuthal (ϕ) angular orientations of cyanine Cy5 single molecules tethered on rationally-designed DNA origami templates that are physically adsorbed (physisorbed) on glass substrates. By using dipolar imaging to evaluate Cy5′s orientation and super-resolution microscopy, the absolute …

Rapid, Reliable Tissue Fractionation Algorithm For Commercial Scale Biorefineries, Rahul Reddy Kancharla

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Increasing demand, limited supply, and the impact on the environment raise significant concerns about the consumption of fossil fuels. Because of this, global economies are facing two significant energy challenges: i) securing the supply of reliable and affordable energy and ii) achieving the transformation to a low-carbon, high-efficiency, and sustainable energy system. Recently, there has been growing interest in developing portable transportation fuels from biomass in order to reduce the petroleum consumption in the transportation sector - a major contributor to greenhouse gas emission. A cost-effective conversion process to produce biofuels from lignocellulosic biomass material relies not just on the …

Understanding The Radiation Effects On Fiber Optic Sensors, Sohel Rana

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, the effects of radiation (gamma, neutron or mixed gamma and neutron) on optical fiber sensors are studied and new techniques for real-time measurement of radiation-induced macroscopic changes in optical fibers are presented. It is crucial among the research and development efforts in the nuclear energy field to conduct experiments in Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) to support lifetime extension, novel fuels and materials development, better fuel management, and enhanced safety of existing as well as future nuclear power plants (NPP). Due to their unparalleled and unique advantages over traditional sensors, optical fiber sensors are deemed potential candidates for …

Experimental Validation Of A Reflective Long Period Grating Design Methodology, Sohel Rana, Nirmala Kandadai, Harish Subbaraman

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this work, we present an experimental demonstration of our previously published modeling work on reflective long period grating (LPG). To provide the practical realization of the modeling work, we coat a long segment of fiber both in the tail length and the end facet beyond the gratings with silver to invert the transmission mode LPG to reflection mode LPG. We then measure the LPG characteristics in both the transmission and reflection mode and validate our findings from modeling work. We further build temperature and refractive index (RI) sensors and demonstrate temperature sensing from 21 °C to 191 °C with …

Real-Time Measurement Of Parametric Influences On The Refractive Index And Length Changes In Silica Optical Fibers, Sohel Rana, Austin Fleming, Harish Subbaraman, Nirmala Kandadai

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this paper, we present a simple cascaded Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) that can be used to measure in real-time the refractive index (RI) and length variation in silica optical fibers caused due to external physical parameters, such as temperature, strain, and radiation. As a proof-of-concept, we experimentally demonstrate real-time monitoring of temperature effects on the RI and length and measure the thermo-optic coefficient (TOC) and thermal expansion coefficient (TEC) by using the cascaded FPI within a temperature range of 21–486°C. The experimental results provide a TEC of 5.53 × 10⁻⁷ /°C and TOC of 4.28 × 10⁻⁶ /°C …

A Deep Unsupervised Feature Learning Spiking Neural Network With Binarized Classification Layers For The Emnist Classification, Ruthvik Vaila, John Chiasson, Vishal Saxena

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

End user AI is trained on large server farms with data collected from the users. With ever increasing demand for IoT devices, there is a need for deep learning approaches that can be implemented at the Edge in an energy efficient manner. In this work we approach this using spiking neural networks. The unsupervised learning technique of spike timing dependent plasticity (STDP) and binary activations are used to extract features from spiking input data. Gradient descent (backpropagation) is used only on the output layer to perform training for classification. The accuracies obtained for the balanced EMNIST data set compare favorably …

Future Needs Of The Cybersecurity Workforce, Connie Justice, Char Sample, Sin Ming Loo, Alex Ball, Clay Hampton

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Expected growth of the job market for cyber security professionals in both the US and the UK remains strong for the foreseeable future. While there are many roles to be found in cyber security, that vary from penetration tester to chief information security officer (CISO). One job of particular interest is security architect. The rise in Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) implementations, especially in the cloud environment, promises an increase in the demand for these security professionals. A security architect requires a set of knowledge, skills, and abilities covering the responsibility for integrating the various security components to successfully support an …

Effect Of Room Air Exposure On The Field Emission Performance Of Uv Light Irradiated Si-Gated Field Emitter Arrays, Ranajoy Bhattacharya, Mason Cannon, Rushmita Bhattacharjee, Jim Browning

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Field emission cathodes are promising candidates in nanoscale vacuum channel transistors and are used in microwave vacuum electron devices. Prior research has shown that UV light exposure as well as 350 °C vacuum bake can desorb water vapor from Si field emission tips, resulting in lower work function and improved emission performance. However, after long exposure to room air (greater than 24 h), the improved performance is lost as water adsorbs on the tips. In this study, experiments were carried on two sets of 1000 × 1000 Si-gated field emitter arrays to determine the length of time that emitters can …

Handwritten English Word Recognition Using A Deep Learning Based Object Detection Architecture, Riktim Mondal, Samir Malakar, Elisa H. Barney Smith, Ram Sarkar

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Handwriting is used to distribute information among people. To access this information for further analysis the page needs to be optically scanned and converted to machine recognizable form. Due to unconstrained writing styles along with connected and overlapping characters, handwriting recognition remains a challenging task. Most of the methods in the literature use lexicon-based approaches and train their models on large datasets having near 50 K word samples to achieve good results. This results in high computational requirements. While these models use around 50 K words in their dictionary when recognizing handwritten English text, the actual number of words in …

Exciton Delocalization And Scaffold Stability In Bridged Nucleotide-Substituted, Dna Duplex-Templated Cyanine Aggregates, Simon K. Roy, Olga A. Mass, Donald L. Kellis, Christopher K. Wilson, John A. Hall, Bernard Yurke, William B. Knowlton

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Molecular excitons play a foundational role in chromophore aggregates found in light-harvesting systems and offer potential applications in engineered excitonic systems. Controlled aggregation of chromophores to promote exciton delocalization has been achieved by covalently tethering chromophores to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) scaffolds. Although many studies have documented changes in the optical properties of chromophores upon aggregation using DNA scaffolds, more limited work has investigated how structural modifications of DNA via bridged nucleotides and chromophore covalent attachment impact scaffold stability as well as the configuration and optical behavior of attached aggregates. Here we investigated the impact of two types of bridged nucleotides, …

Attenuation Of Several Common Building Materials: Millimeter-Wave Frequency Bands 28, 73, And 91 Ghz, Mahfuza Khatun, Changyu Guo, Hani Mehrpouyan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Future cellular systems will make use of millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequency bands. Many users in these bands are located indoors, i.e., inside buildings, homes, and offices. The typical building material attenuations in these high-frequency ranges are of interest for link budget calculations. In this article, we report on a collaborative measurement campaign to find the attenuation of several typical building materials in three potential mm-wave bands (28, 73, and 91 GHz). Using directional antennas, we took multiple measurements at multiple locations using narrow-band and wideband signals and averaged out residual small-scale fading effects. The materials include clear glass, drywall (plasterboard), plywood, …

A Multi-Dimensional Child-Langmuir Law For Any Diode Geometry, N. R. Sree Harsha, Marcus Pearlman, Jim Browning, Allen L. Garner

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

While prior theoretical studies of multi-dimensional space-charge limited current (SCLC) assumed emission from a small patch on infinite electrodes, none have considered emission from an entire finite electrode. In this paper, we apply variational calculus (VC) and conformal mapping, which have previously been used to derive analytic solutions for SCLC density (SCLCD) for nonplanar one-dimensional geometries, to obtain mathematical relationships for any multi-dimensional macroscopic diode with finite cathode and anode. We first derive a universal mathematical relationship between space-charge limited potential and vacuum potential for any diode and apply this technique to determine SCLCD for an eccentric spherical diode. We …

Active Compensation Of Radiation Effects On Optical Fibers For Sensing Applications, Sohel Rana, Austin Fleming, Nirmala Kandadai, Harish Subbaraman

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Neutron and gamma irradiation is known to compact silica, resulting in macroscopic changes in refractive index (RI) and geometric structure. The change in RI and linear compaction in a radiation environment is caused by three well-known mechanisms: (i) radiation-induced attenuation (RIA), (ii) radiation-induced compaction (RIC), and (iii) radiation-induced emission (RIE). These macroscopic changes induce errors in monitoring physical parameters such as temperature, pressure, and strain in optical fiber-based sensors, which limit their application in radiation environments. We present a cascaded Fabry–Perot interferometer (FPI) technique to measure macroscopic properties, such as radiation-induced change in RI and length compaction in real time …

Spatiotemporal Pattern Detection With Neuromorphic Circuits, Robert C. Ivans

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, neuromorphic circuits are used to implement spiking neural networks in order to detect spatiotemporal patterns. Unsupervised training and detection-by-design techniques were used to attain the appropriate connectomes and perform pattern detection.

Unsupervised training was performed by feeding random digital spikes with a repeating embedded spatiotemporal pattern to a spiking neural network composed of leaky integrate-and-fire neurons and memristor-R(t) element circuits which implement spike-timing-dependent plasticity learning rules.

Detection-by-design was achieved using neuromporphic circuits and digital logic gates. When detection-by-design was achieved using both neuromorphic circuits and digital logic gates, a network was created of spatiotemporal pattern detector circuits, …

A Wireless, Multi-Channel Printed Capacitive Strain Gauge System For Structural Health Monitoring, Kshama Lakshmi Ranganatha

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Structural health monitoring of soft structural textiles plays a key role within the space industry to ensure the safety and integrity of space habitats, parachutes, and decelerator systems. Strain monitoring could be an effective means to evaluate structural integrity, but conventional monitoring systems are not suitable because they are intended for large, rigid structures. To overcome the limitations of rigid sensors, we recently proposed using printed capacitive strain gauges (CSGs) on flexible substrates to monitor the structural health of soft structure materials. Here, we present a strategy and implementation of a wireless, multi-channel readout system for distributed monitoring of soft …