Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons^™

A Scalable, Cost-Oriented Approach For Computing Charge Plans For Electric Bus Fleets, Daniel T. Mortensen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Recent attention for reduced carbon emissions has pushed transit authorities to adopt battery electric buses (BEBs). One challenge experienced by BEB users is extended charge times, which create logistical challenges and may force BEBs to charge when energy is more expensive. Furthermore, BEB charging leads to high power demands, which can significantly increase monthly power costs and may push electrical infrastructure beyond its present capacity, requiring expensive upgrades. This work presents a novel method for minimizing the monthly cost of BEB charging while meeting bus route constraints. This method extends previous work by incorporating a more novel cost model, effects …

Super-Resolution Textured Digital Surface Map (Dsm) Formation By Selecting The Texture From Multiple Perspective Texel Images Taken By A Low-Cost Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (Uav), Bikalpa Khatiwada

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Textured Digital Surface Model (TDSM) is a three-dimensional terrain map with texture overlaid on it. Utah State University has developed a texel camera which can capture a 3D image called a texel image. A TDSM can be constructed by combining these multiple texel images, which is much cheaper than the traditional method. The overall goal is to create a TDSM for a larger area that is cheaper and equally accurate as the TDSM created using a high-cost system.

The images obtained from such an inexpensive camera have a lot of errors. To create scientifically accurate TDSM, the error presented in …

Reclaiming Fault Resilience And Energy Efficiency With Enhanced Performance In Low Power Architectures, Noel Daniel Gundi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Rapid developments of the AI domain has revolutionized the computing industry by the introduction of state-of-art AI architectures. This growth is also accompanied by a massive increase in the power consumption. Near-Theshold Computing (NTC) has emerged as a viable solution by offering significant savings in power consumption paving the way for an energy efficient design paradigm. However, these benefits are accompanied by a deterioration in performance due to the severe process variation and slower transistor switching at Near-Threshold operation. These problems severely restrict the usage of Near-Threshold operation in commercial applications. In this work, a novel AI architecture, Tensor Processing …

Mission Planning Techniques For Cooperative Leo Spacecraft Constellations, Skylar A. Cox

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This research develops a mission planning approach that allows different systems to cooperate in accomplishing a single mission goal. Using the techniques described allows satellites to cooperate in efficiently maneuvering, or collecting images of Earth and transmitting the collected data to users on the ground. The individual resources onboard each satellite, like fuel, memory capacity and pointing agility, are used in a manner that ensures the goals and objectives of the mission are realized in a feasible way. A mission plan can be generated for each satellite within the cooperating group that collectively optimize the mission objectives from a global …

Developing Firmware For Space Weather Probes 2 Using Hdl Coder, Nicholas L. Wallace

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

GPS and wireless communications are affected by interference from the ionosphere. Space weather affects plasma in the ionosphere, causing communication disruptions and reliability issues. To better understand how space weather affects the ionosphere, instruments are flown in space to collect data about the electrical characteristics of plasma in the ionosphere. Space systems require a lot of time and effort to develop and test. This thesis explores how a high level tool can be used to simplify the process and some obstacles that still exist with developing some space systems. To do this, the firmware architecture of a new version of …

A Cohesive Simulation And Testing Platform For Civil Autonomous Aerial Sensing And Operations, Stockton G. Slack

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Drones (also known as sUAS or small Uncrewed Aerial Systems) are often flown with cameras to take images of an area of land. These images can then be used to create a map by stitching these images together. This map can then be analyzed using scientific principles to learn things about the land and make decisions or take action based on the information.

The scientific application of drones is very advantageous, but flying a drone is inherently dangerous, impacting the safety of the airspace (particularly in the event of a crash), and drones are more dangerous the bigger they are. …

Development Of The Digital Signal Processing For The Space Weather Probes Version 2 Sensor Using The Matlab/Simulink Environment, Benjamin J. Lewis

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Space Weather Probes (SWP) is an instrument that provides measurements of the plasma environment of the ionosphere. SWP was flown on the Scintillation Prediction Observation Task (SPORT) mission, a joint mission between the United States of America and Brazil. This thesis will develop the digital signal processing (DSP) hardware design for the Space Weather Probes version 2 (SWP2). The data from these instruments will be used to determine the density and temperature of the local plasma, as well as the electric field in the local plasma. This thesis presents the design and testing of the DSP designs for all of …

The Active Cryocubesat Technology: Active Thermal Control For Small Satellites, Lucas S. Anderson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Modern CubeSats and Small Satellites have advanced in capability to tackle science and technology missions that would usually be reserved for more traditional, large satellites. However, this rapid growth in capability is only possible through the fast-to-production, low-cost, and advanced technology approach used by modern small satellite engineers. Advanced technologies in power generation, energy storage, and high-power density electronics have naturally led to a thermal bottleneck, where CubeSats and Small Satellites can generate more power than they can easily reject. The Active CryoCubeSat (ACCS) is an advanced active thermal control technology (ATC) for Small Satellites and CubeSats, which hopes to …

Viability And Performance Of Rf Source Localization Using Autocorrelation-Based Fingerprinting, Joseph L. Ipson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Finding the source location of a radio-frequency (RF) transmission is a useful capability for many civilian, industrial, and military applications. This problem is particularly challenging when done “Blind,” or when the transmitter was not designed with finding its location in mind, and relatively little information is available about the signal before-hand. Typical methods for this operation utilize the time, phase, power, and frequency viewable from received signals. These features are all less predictable in indoor and urban environments, where signals undergo transformation from multiple interactions with the environment. These interactions imprint structure onto the received signal which is dependent on …

Producing Analytical Models Of The Sport Spacecraft For Science Data Processing, Jason L. Powell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Scintillation Prediction Observation Research Task (SPORT) is a joint United States of America and Brazil 6U CubeSat mission. The SPORT mission is to understand how the Earth’s ionosphere evolves during day and night transitions. Space Weather Probes, a suite of instruments developed by Utah State University, monitors the ionosphere by observing currents and voltages around the SPORT spacecraft body. This thesis presents the data collected by Space Weather Probes and how it is used to measure the ionosphere. Modeling techniques are also presented to demonstrate how the Space Weather Probes instrument is expected to respond to the ionosphere.

Dynamic Inductive Power Transfer Systems With Reflexive Tuning Networks Designed By Machine Learning, Shuntaro Inoue

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This dissertation proposes a new way to make dynamic wireless charging systems more affordable. Instead of using one inverter for each transmitter coil, as is typically done, the proposed system uses a single inverter that is connected to multiple transmitter coils. This approach is made possible by reflexive tuning, which allows for high currents to be achieved only on the transmitter coil in use. The system was tested with a 50kW prototype, designed using a combination of neural networks and genetic algorithms. The prototype was tested on both automated rail and vehicle systems. The measured dc-dc efficiency with single and …

Communication‐Less Synchronous Rectification For In Motion Wireless Charging, Joshua B. Larsen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis puts forward a control scheme to allow for synchronous rectification for dynamic wireless power transfer. The automotive industry is transitioning away from internal combustion engines (ICEs) and towards electric vehicles (EVs). This transition is spurred by the environmental and economic benefits EVs offer over ICEs. However, further improvements can still be made to how electric vehicles operate. One of these improvements is the technology of in motion wireless charging or dynamic wireless power transfer. In motion wireless charging offers the ability to remove existing range anxiety concerns for EVs. It also offers the potential for a reduction in …

Modeling And Control Of Battery Management Systems With High-Frequency Ac Link Coupled Multiport Series Resonant Converters For 2nd Life Battery Applications, Brooks Jace Maughan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

While the use and production of Electric Vehicles becomes more prevalent, it is also important to make this economical and ensure the reduction of a carbon footprint. Second-life batteries can satisfy both problems as batteries can be used in a second-life application for lower power purposes such as supplementing the grid so the infrastructure needed to charge the expanding fleet of Electric Vehicles can be easily supplied. This thesis goes through the process of Active Cell Balancing which will produce equal capacities, or similar batteries, that can be more efficiently used in these and other types of second-life applications. The …

Numerical Modeling And Simulating Thermal Performance Of Printed Circuit Boards, Paul R. Ziegenfelder

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This research investigates how heat transfer theory can be applied to evaluate the thermal performance of printed circuit board (PCB) designs. A model was developed for correlating theory to the physical parameters relating to the construction of the PCB and a computer application was developed to perform the thermal analysis. The application allows the importation of common PCB design files for a straightforward and quick analysis of a PCB design’s thermal performance. The application is open-source to allows for further development and free access from the public.

Event-Based Obstacle Detection With Commercial Lidar, Chaz Cornwall

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Computerized obstacle detection for moving vehicles is becoming more important as vehicle manufacturers make their systems more autonomous and safe. However, obstacle detection must operate quickly in dynamic environments such as driving at highway speeds. A unique obstacle detection system using 3D changes in the environment is proposed. Furthermore, these 3D changes are shown to contain sufficient information for avoiding obstacles. To make the system easy to integrate onto a vehicle, additional processing is implemented to remove unnecessary dependencies. This system provides a method for obstacle detection that breaks away from typical systems to be more efficient.

Path Planning For Aircraft Under Threat Of Detection From Ground-Based Radar With Uncertainty In Aircraft And Radar States, Austin D. Costley

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Mission planners for manned and unmanned aircraft operating within the detection range of ground-based radar systems are often concerned with the probability of detection. Several factors influence the probability of detection, including aircraft position and orientation, radar position, and radar performance parameters. Current path planning algorithms assume that these factors are known with certainty, but in practice, these factors are estimated and have some uncertainty.

This dissertation explores methods to consider the uncertainty in the detection factors for an aircraft path planner. First, the detection model is extended to include uncertainty in the aircraft position and orientation, radar position, and …

High-Isolation Antenna Technique For Cubesat-Borne, Continuous-Waveform Radar, Logan E. Voigt

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Radar is important in target tracking, imaging, and weather prediction applications. As technology is increasingly miniaturized, there is a push for smaller radar. Research and exploration in outer space also benefit from small, low-power technologies. The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s RainCube was the first successful CubeSat-borne radar. A CubeSat is a type of small satellite that conforms to specific size and weight standards. Radar technology benefits from additional research on how to further miniaturize radar payloads.

Integrating the transmit and receive antennas on the solar panels removes the need for antenna-deployment mechanisms, preserving space on the CubeSat. This thesis also …

Analysis Of Optically Transparent Antennas Designed From Different Transparent Conductors, Rakib Hasan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This master’s thesis work presents an investigative study about the performance of transparent antennas. The antennas have been fabricated using two advanced transparent conductive films (TCF) namely Nano-C Hybrid and Silver-Nanowire (AgNW). Nano-C Hybrid is a new transparent conductive film which combines thin conductors like Carbon Nanotube and Silver Nanowire. The antennas made from Nano-C Hybrid and AgNW are of monopole types and are mounted on a ground plane made out of a printed circuit board and the antennas are excited using an SMA connector through that printed circuit board. Simulation works have been performed to find out the optimum …

Efficient And Secure Resource Allocation In Mobile Edge Computing Enabled Wireless Networks, Qun Wang

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

To support emerging applications such as autonomous vehicles and smart homes and to build an intelligent society, the next-generation internet of things (IoT) is calling for up to 50 billion devices connected world wide. Massive devices connection, explosive data circulation, and colossal data processing demand are driving both the industry and academia to explore new solutions.

Uploading this vast amount of data to the cloud center for processing will significantly increase the load on backbone networks and cause relatively long latency to time-sensitive applications. A practical solution is to deploy the computing resource closer to end-users to process the distributed …

Roadway-Embedded Transmitters And Multi-Pad Receivers For High Power Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer, Benny J. Varghese

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Electric vehicles (EVs) offer considerable economic and environmental benefits to society. Despite the decreasing vehicle costs and increasing range of newer EVs, the problem of range anxiety still exists. Range anxiety, at its core, is an issue of charging speeds rather than a concern about the driving range. Dynamic wireless charging of EVs is seen as a potential solution to this issue of range anxiety. Further, wireless charging technology also helps the push towards level 5 autonomy and opens new opportunities for how an EV can be utilized.

Dynamic wireless power transfer (DWPT) systems typically require a high initial investment …

Low Power Reconfigurable Antenna With Continuous Beam Steering Capability, Glendyn Darryn King

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Each year, the number of wireless devices increases, and the size of the devices’ data is increases, 8k video streaming, for example. More and more bandwidth is needed for wireless networks to meet these growing demands. Higher frequencies allow for more bandwidth; however, using higher frequencies comes with some trade-offs. The higher the wireless signal frequency, the shorter the distance it can travel before the signal strength becomes too weak for the receiver to pick it up. One solution might be to increase the power of the signal provider, but that would waste a lot of energy. Most antennas radiate …

Embracing Low-Power Systems With Improvement In Security And Energy-Efficiency, Pramesh Pandey

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As the economies around the world are aligning more towards usage of computing systems, the global energy demand for computing is increasing rapidly. Additionally, the boom in AI based applications and services has already invited the pervasion of specialized computing hardware architectures for AI (accelerators). A big chunk of research in the industry and academia is being focused on providing energy efficiency to all kinds of power hungry computing architectures. This dissertation adds to these efforts.

Aggressive voltage underscaling of chips is one the effective low power paradigms of providing energy efficiency. This dissertation identifies and deals with the reliability …

Alternative Doppler Extraction For Indoor Communication Signals, Thomas L. Bradshaw

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Radar is a common detection system for detecting the speed and velocity of moving objects. Radar is performed by transmitting a radio signal in the direction of a moving object and then processing the received reflected radio waves. The radar system processes the received signal to extract the Doppler frequency of the reflected waves, which reveals information about the velocity of the object. In traditional radar, the system uses one antenna for both the transmitter and the receiver.

In passive bistatic radar, the transmit antenna and receiver antenna are separated. In addition, the radar system has no control over the …

Analysis And Design Of 3-Phase Unfolding Based Ac-Dc Battery Chargers, Rees R. Hatch

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis presents the analysis and design of high-efficiency battery chargers for heavy duty EV applications. The rise in popularity of the electric vehicles (EVs) due to their increased efficiency over conventional internal combustion engines, has driven the need for more battery charging infrastructure. Furthermore, heavy duty vehicles are also being converted to electric to fill needs such as public transportation via bus fleets as well as cargo delivery via semi-trucks. Such heavy duty vehicles require more energy than personal transportation vehicles and thus require larger battery packs. To charge heavy duty battery packs in the same amount of time …

Active Stability Monitoring And Stability Control Of Dc Microgrids Using Incremental Continuous Injection, Rohail Hassan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Electrified transportation and integration of renewable energy in the electric power grid requires the use of power electronic converters for integrating different forms of power; from ac to dc, dc to ac, dc to dc, etc. Recent trend towards electrifying automobiles, aircraft and ships, and increasing penetration of renewable energy has increased the required power levels and number of the power electronics converters connected together in a dc microgrid system. Stable operation of these interfacing converters for all operating conditions has been a topic of renewed interest in the last couple of decades. Traditionally, dc microgrids have been designed conservatively …

Control Of Series Connected Battery Powered Modules, Joshua K. Wooten

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Batteries are a very common type of power source used for all sorts of applications. However, these batteries do not last forever. The purpose of this thesis is to explain and implement a strategy which allows batteries to have a second life; to be able to be re-charged and re-used for another set period of time once they no longer meet a system’s requirements. The preferable way to do this is to make each cell have the same state of charge (SOC) which will lead to a longer lasting battery pack. These batteries will be hooked up to a battery …

Three-Phase Unfolding Based Soft Dc-Link Converter Topologies For Ac To Dc Applications, Dorai Babu Yelaverthi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plugin hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are more efficient than internal combustion-based vehicles. Adaption of EVs will help reduce the carbon emissions produced by the transportation sector. The charging infrastructure has to grow at a rapid pace to encourage EV adaption. Installing higher capacity fast chargers will help alleviate the range anxiety of battery electric vehicle customers. More public charging stations are required for the full adaption of EVs. Utility power is distributed as ‘alternating current.’ A battery requires ‘direct current’ (DC) source to charge it. Hence a power converter that converts AC source to DC …

Raw Depth Image Enhancement Using A Neural Network, Xuan Xie

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The term image is often used to denote a data format that records information about a scene’s color. This dissertation object focuses on a similar format for recording distance information about a scene, “depth images”. Depth images have been used extensively in consumer-level applications, such as Apple’s Face ID, based on depth images for face recognition.

However, depth images suffer from low precision and high errors, and some post-processing techniques need to be utilized to improve their quality. Deep learning, or neural networks, are frameworks that use a series of hierarchically arranged nonlinear networks to process input data. Although each …

Algorithms For The Calibration And Correction Of Texel Images Using Inertial Measurement Updates, Trevor C. Welch

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A 3D terrain map can be developed to survey the earth’s surface and provide scientists with a method of accurately modeling terrain. Some of the applications include agricultural surveys, disaster management, and object classification. In order to develop a 3D terrain map, a sensor must capture all of the data to create the map. This 3D mapping tool can be made by combining a sensor that take samples of points on the earth’s surface and combines that with a digital camera that takes an image and lays it across those samples of the earth.

In order to take data over …

Development Of A Two-Level Warping Algorithm And Its Application To Speech Signal Processing, Al-Waled H. Al-Dulaimi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In many different fields there are signals that need to be aligned or “warped” in order to measure the similarity between them. When two time signals are compared, or when a pattern is sought in a larger stream of data, it may be necessary to warp one of the signals in a nonlinear way by compressing or stretching it to fit the other. Simple point-to-point comparison may give inadequate results, because one part of the signal might be comparing different relative parts of the other signal/pattern. Such cases need some sort of alignment todo the comparison. Dynamic Time Warping ( …