Electrical and Electronics Commons^™

Hvac Hardware Modeling Using Programmable Automatic Controller, Panthil Ketan Patel, Lumanti Tuladhar

Electrical Engineering

The primary purpose of this project is to use the donated programmable logic controllers (PLC) from Schneider Electric to develop experiments for a future lab class at Cal Poly. Our goal as the first group working on this project is to develop an experiment where the PLC can control the HVAC system based on temperature and humidity sensors and user inputs to maintain a desired consistent temperature. The PLC will be controlled using Unity Pro XLS/Control Expert software for simulations. The overall purpose of the experiments will be to demonstrate the potential of the PLC to minimize manual intervention while …

X-Band Phased-Array Weather-Radar Polarimetry Testbed, William Heberling Iv

Doctoral Dissertations

Phased-array weather radar have potential to replace reflector dish radar in major weather radar networks such as NEXRAD, providing faster update times and greater scan flexibility. However, the use of electronic scanning introduces polarization errors on weather radar measurables, requiring polarimetric bias calibration. The sources of polarimetric bias have been described theoretically, but experimental verification is still limited. Additionally, no standard method of calibration for polarimetric bias exists for phased-arrays. Therefore, the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) presents a fully operational X-Band phased-array weather radar polarimetric testbed. The testbed evaluates the calibration of a planar dual-polarization X-band phased-array radar through …

Design, Implementation, And Test Of Spacecraft Antennae And A Ground Station For Mesat1, Travis Russell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

MESAT1 is a CubeSat that was proposed by the University of Maine in response to NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative, and in early 2020 was selected by NASA to be launched into a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in June of 2022. The satellite will carry four low-cost complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) cameras which serve as sensing instruments for three science missions proposed by K-12 schools in Maine. The cameras will periodically take pictures of Earth to analyze water turbidity, identify urban heat islands, and predict harmful algal blooms. The multi-spectral image data is packed into frames and downlinked as Binary Phase-Shift Keying …

A Low-Cost, Arduino-Based Platform For Emulating Energy Harvesting In Wireless Sensor Networks, Braden A. Miller

ONU Student Research Colloquium

This paper presents an Arduino-based platform for emulating energy harvesting in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) as a form of hardware-in-the-loop simulation. The platform makes use of a battery monitoring circuit and code implemented on the Arduino as an alternative to using significantly more expensive fully equipped energy harvesting nodes. Using embedded code to emulate the energy harvesting process allows for various energy harvesting models and processes to be tested using the same platform. The main contributions of this paper are the experimental data and analyses demonstrating the energy use characterization of the Arduino-based platform in a three-node relay network using …

Planar Ultra-Wideband Modular Antenna (Puma) Arrays For High-Volume Manufacturing On Organic Laminates And Bga Interfaces, James R. Lacroix

Masters Theses

This work proposes wideband and broadband Planar Ultra-wideband Modular Antenna (PUMA) arrays designed to improve cost and reliability for high production volume commercial and military applications. The designs feature simplified PCB stack-ups with high dielectric constant (Dk) dimensionally stable materials to improve the manufacturing cost and yield. Additionally, the packages use ball grid array (BGA) interconnects, commonly used in digital electronics, for simple solder reflow integration with radio frequency (RF) electronics. While high Dk materials present practical manufacturing benefits, theoretical background will show how and why PUMA arrays lose frequency bandwidth and scan volume with high Dk materials. Further, a …

Detecting The Presence Of Electronic Devices In Smart Homes Using Harmonic Radar, Beatrice Perez, Gregory Mazzaro, Timothy J. Pierson, David Kotz

Dartmouth Scholarship

Data about users is collected constantly by phones, cameras, Internet websites, and others. The advent of so-called ‘Smart Things' now enable ever-more sensitive data to be collected inside that most private of spaces: the home. The first step in helping users regain control of their information (inside their home) is to alert them to the presence of potentially unwanted electronics. In this paper, we present a system that could help homeowners (or home dwellers) find electronic devices in their living space. Specifically, we demonstrate the use of harmonic radars (sometimes called nonlinear junction detectors), which have also been used in …

Removing Physical Presence Requirements For A Remote And Automated World - Api Controlled Patch Panel For Conformance Testing, Hunter George Wells

Honors Theses and Capstones

Quality assurance test engineers at the UNH-InterOperability Lab must run tests that require driving and monitoring a selection of DC signals. While the number of signals is numerous, there are limited ports on the test equipment, and only a few signals need patching for any given test. The selection of signals may vary between the 209 different tests and must be re-routed frequently. Currently, testers must leave their desk to manually modify the test setup in another room. This posed a considerable issue at the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic when physical access was not possible. In order to enable …

Autonomous Wildfire Detection System, Matthew Pyle, Nick Garrett

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

According to the National Fire Protection Association Journal, federal wildfire suppression costs in the United States have risen from an annual average of about $425 million from 1985 to 1999 up to $1.6 billion from 2000 to 2019. On average, more than 200,000 acres in the United States are burned per year due to wildfires, with more than 700,000 acres burned in 2020 alone. With the risk of wildfire ever rising, there is a need for better early detection of remote wildfires, as existing methods often include long delays like satellites or rely on human lookout towers. The objective is …

Smart Kettlebell, Cole Russell, Patrick Davis, Ryan Deboer, Isaac Stecker

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of design team 08’s senior design project is to create and implement a workout device that will be able to calculate the caloric expenditure, repetitions, and length of a workout. Once the duration of a workout is completed, the user metrics will be communicated from the kettlebell system to a user application via Bluetooth. The caloric expenditure will be used using the data that is provided from the accelerometer. The duration of the workout will be controlled using a push button that is connected to the kettlebell system that will allow for the start and stop of a …

Smart Uv-C Disinfectant Module, Nicole Baldy, Luke Rogers, Haitham Saleh

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The Smart UV Disinfectant device shall sanitize objects which are 18”x14”x8” or smaller and less than 20 lbs. using UV-C light. This device should contain many safety measures to prevent human and animal exposure to the UV-C light and have no public touchpoints to operate the interface. In order to achieve the first objective, this device shall contain a "sanitizing chamber" which completely encloses the object to be sanitized to prevent outside exposure with detection of any lifeforms inside of the chamber; for the second objective, it will contain a wireless interface to an Android application which can be used …

Network Management, Optimization And Security With Machine Learning Applications In Wireless Networks, Mariam Nabil

Theses and Dissertations

Wireless communication networks are emerging fast with a lot of challenges and ambitions. Requirements that are expected to be delivered by modern wireless networks are complex, multi-dimensional, and sometimes contradicting. In this thesis, we investigate several types of emerging wireless networks and tackle some challenges of these various networks. We focus on three main challenges. Those are Resource Optimization, Network Management, and Cyber Security. We present multiple views of these three aspects and propose solutions to probable scenarios. The first challenge (Resource Optimization) is studied in Wireless Powered Communication Networks (WPCNs). WPCNs are considered a very promising approach towards sustainable, …

Indoor Positioning Using Synchronized Ultrasonic Ofdma Signals, Julian Bartolone

Master's Theses

This paper proposes a method of short-range indoor localization using differential phase measurements of synchronized two-tone ultrasonic signals in an Orthogonal Frequency Multiple Access (OFDMA) scheme. This indoor positioning system (IPS) operates at an ultrasonic frequency of approximately 40kHz and synchronizes using an infrared signal. The OFDMA scheme allows for a receiver to process the signals from multiple transmitters continuously without the signals interfering with each other. The phases of the signals are measured using Goertzel Filters, allowing for low-complexity frequency content analysis. A MATLAB simulation using the proposed localization method is performed using four transmitter nodes in the corners …

Machine Learning For Unmanned Aerial System (Uas) Networking, Jian Wang

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Fueled by the advancement of 5G new radio (5G NR), rapid development has occurred in many fields. Compared with the conventional approaches, beamforming and network slicing enable 5G NR to have ten times decrease in latency, connection density, and experienced throughput than 4G long term evolution (4G LTE). These advantages pave the way for the evolution of Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) on a large scale. The reduction of consumption, the advancement of control engineering, and the simplification of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) enable the UAS networking deployment on a large scale to become feasible. The UAS networking can finish multiple complex …

Resampling And Super-Resolution Of Hexagonally Sampled Images Using Deep Learning, Dylan Flaute, Russell C. Hardie, Hamed Elwarfalli

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Super-resolution (SR) aims to increase the resolution of imagery. Applications include security, medical imaging, and object recognition. We propose a deep learning-based SR system that takes a hexagonally sampled low-resolution image as an input and generates a rectangularly sampled SR image as an output. For training and testing, we use a realistic observation model that includes optical degradation from diffraction and sensor degradation from detector integration. Our SR approach first uses non-uniform interpolation to partially upsample the observed hexagonal imagery and convert it to a rectangular grid. We then leverage a state-of-the-art convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture designed for SR …

Grammatical Evolution For Detecting Cyberattacks In Internet Of Things Environments, Hasanen Alyasiri, John Clark, Ali Malik, Ruairí De Fréin

Conference papers

The Internet of Things (IoT) is revolutionising nearly every aspect of modern life, playing an ever greater role in both industrial and domestic sectors. The increasing frequency of cyber-incidents is a consequence of the pervasiveness of IoT. Threats are becoming more sophisticated, with attackers using new attacks or modifying existing ones. Security teams must deal with a diverse and complex threat landscape that is constantly evolving. Traditional security solutions cannot protect such sys- tems adequately and so researchers have begun to use Machine Learning algorithms to discover effective defence systems. In this paper, we investigate how one approach from the …

Monte-Carlo-Based Analysis Of Traffic Flow For Urban Air Mobility Vehicles, Sara Ghayouraneh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The research conducted in this dissertation is focused on developing a simulation tool that can predict the traffic flow patterns of the Urban Air Mobility vehicles to alleviate some of the challenges related to their traffic management. First, an introduction to the concept of Urban Air Mobility is given, the usage of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast systems for Urban Air Mobility vehicles is suggested and dynamic addressing concept is introduced as an answer to a part of air traffic management and address scarcity challenge for Urban air Mobility vehicles. Next, in order to simulate the traffic flow patterns of the Urban …

Efficiently Estimating Survival Signature And Two-Terminal Reliability Of Heterogeneous Networks Through Multi-Objective Optimization, Daniel Bruno Lopes Da Silva

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The two-terminal reliability problem is a classical reliability problem with applications in wired and wireless communication networks, electronic circuit design, computer networks, and electrical power distribution, among other systems. However, the two-terminal reliability problem is among the hardest combinatorial problems and is intractable for large, complex networks. Several exact methods to solve the two-terminal reliability problem have been proposed since the 1960s, but they have exponential time complexity in general. Hence, practical studies involving large network-type systems resort to approximation methods to estimate the system's reliability. One attractive approach for quantifying the reliability of complex systems is to use signatures, …

Reference Design Of An Online Emulation And Hot-Patching Approach For Power Electronic Controller Validation, Estefano Soria Pearson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to develop a reference design of an online security system approach embedded in a power electronic controller for cybersecurity purposes. Cybersecurity in power electronics focuses on reducing vulnerabilities in the system, where most reside in the communication with the hardware devices. Although methods to secure communications lessen the probability and effects of cyber-attacks, discovering vulnerabilities is inevitable. This thesis attempts to provide a fail-safe approach to securing the system by targeting the safety of the power-electronic controller. This approach applies an additional security layer in case of a malicious or accidental controller firmware malfunction.

The online security …

Cross-Mixing Hybrid Beamforming Receiver For Wideband Apertures, Rimon Hokayem

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research is showing an interest in redefining phased arrays and devising more flexible low-profile receivers. As such, there is a need to compensate for the bulkiness of existing systems which is mainly imposed by the phase shifters placed after each element. That is, we must circumvent hardware limitations by searching for alternatives for phase shifting the signals to introduce more flexibility in signal reception for more downsized radio systems. Therefore, self-mixing arrays are developed and now deployed for the beamforming process. The concept stems from applying mixing instead of shifting to eliminate the delays in reception. Central to its realization …

Wildfire Early Detection System (Weds), Mason Mciver, Vincent Liang, Jeanreno Racines

Electrical Engineering

With climate change causing an increase in temperature over the past several decades, wildfires have been burning hotter and moving quicker leaving a trail of destruction in their path. Detecting a wildfire early allows firefighters to respond efficiently and effectively to ensure containment. With the rise of advanced computer vision and algorithms, autonomous systems can be used to monitor and report any fire activity. Having multiple devices spread out across a large area will allow first responders to map out the fire location and track the fire. By utilizing smart technologies, property damage can be minimized and residents living in …

Survey And Design Of Microwave Low-Noise Amplifiers, Omri Yaari, Pavin Virdee

Electrical Engineering

This project is a contest entry in the Wide In-band Receiver area of the 2020 International Microwave Symposium, 5G Low Noise Amplifier Competition [1]. The project includes RF transistor selection, single, two-stage, and cascode models, and RF parameter optimization to maximize the IMS Competition figure of merit along with a supplemental figure of merit [2]. 5G technologies (used in cellphones, IoT, etc.), first introduced in 2018, are on the rise in current society. Fifth generation hardware requires extended capabilities in comparison to 4G (5-20MHz bandwidth EU: 0.6-2.6GHz), including the newly allocated sub 6GHz frequency bands (EU: 3.4-3.8GHz) and wider bandwidth …

Scalable Cognitive Radio Network Testbed In Real Time, Kevin Z. Yu

Master's Theses

Modern society places an increasingly high demand on data transmission. Much of that data transmission takes place through communication over the frequency spectrum. The channels on the spectrum are limited resources. Researchers realize that at certain times of day some channels are overloaded, while others are not being fully utilized. A spectrum management system may be beneficial to remedy this efficiency issue. One of the proposed systems, Cognitive Radio Network (CRN), has progressed over the years thanks to studies on a wide range of subjects, including geolocation, data throughput rate, and channel handoff selection algorithm, which provide fundamental support for …

Boot-Loading Microcontroller Through Serial Port, Siddharth Sameer, Jayshree Ashok Pande

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Modern-day automobiles have several Electronic Control Units (ECUs) integrated into them so naturally, compared to the older cars, their complexity is too high, and this trend of increasing complexity in the cars of the future will continue to increase. Consequently, with the increase in the software part in the vehicles, there is always the risk of a potential bug. Whenever a software bug is found, a recall process is required to update the software. The modern ECU update technology is achieved through the interaction of information between the remote server and the end equipment of the vehicle. Therefore, due to …

Design And Assembly Of High-Temperature Signal Conditioning System On Ltcc With Silicon Carbide Cmos Circuits, Sajib Roy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objective of the work described in this dissertation paper is to develop a prototype electronic module on a low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) material. The electronic module would perform signal conditioning of sensor signals (thermocouples) operating under extreme conditions for applications like gas turbines to collect data on the health of the turbine blades during operation so that the turbines do not require shutdown for inspection to determine if maintenance is required. The collected data can indicate when such shutdowns, which cost $1M per day, should be scheduled and maintenance actually performed. The circuits for the signal conditioning system within …

A Comparison Of Medical Article Transport Approaches, Andrew White

Honors Scholar Theses

Our senior design project is to develop a product named the Smartbox - a container capable of safely carrying and monitoring medical articles and accommodate a UAV drone carrying the container. These medical articles include sensitive medicines and human organs for transplantation. Speed, safety, and reliability are a must in this field, as the stakes if a payload is lost or improperly maintained can be life threatening. This project aims to improve on the existing medical transport logistics chains in use today. Time is the most important factor in transportation: many organs simply cannot survive outside of the human body …

Project Blipper, Peter Jacobs, Preston Delaware, Ryan Foster

Senior Design Project For Engineers

This project was sponsored by Clorox to design and create an automatic bottle-unscrambling system for possible implementation at their bottling plant in Chile. The objective was to use a robotic arm to unscramble bottles from an incoming conveyor belt and place them upright on an outbound conveyor belt. Throughout the research, design, and testing of solutions for this project, several design alternatives were found for each discipline, and will be presented to Clorox so that they can make an informed decision for how and if they want to move forward with implementation of this project.

The project was split into …

Kennesaw State University And United Alloy Corporation Robotic Pick And Place Project, Kathryn Bharadwaj, Logan Spencer, Tharkun Hudlow

Senior Design Project For Engineers

United Alloy Corporation (UAC), a company specializing in unique aluminum parts for aeronautics, needed a fix to their error prone, labor-intensive billet press operation. The process has a problem of adding the wrong size or wrong alloy billet to the induction oven, which results in a waste of raw materials. The billets range from ten to thirty-seven inches in length and weigh up to three hundred pounds. Currently, an operator uses a gantry crane to check and lift the billets from a rack onto the magazine of an induction oven. The magazine can hold up to three billets safely and …

Design And Realization Of Fully-Digital Microwave And Mm-Wave Multi-Beam Arrays With Fpga/Rf-Soc Signal Processing, Sravan Kumar Pulipati

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There has been a constant increase in data-traffic and device-connections in mobile wireless communications, which led the fifth generation (5G) implementations to exploit mm-wave bands at 24/28 GHz. The next-generation wireless access point (6G and beyond) will need to adopt large-scale transceiver arrays with a combination of multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) theory and fully digital multi-beam beamforming. The resulting high gain array factors will overcome the high path losses at mm-wave bands, and the simultaneous multi-beams will exploit the multi-directional channels due to multi-path effects and improve the signal-to-noise ratio. Such access points will be based on electronic systems which heavily depend …

Channel Estimation In Multi-User Massive Mimo Systems By Expectation Propagation Based Algorithms, Mohammed Rashid

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technology uses large antenna arrays with tens or hundreds of antennas at the base station (BS) to achieve high spectral efficiency, high diversity, and high capacity. These benefits, however, rely on obtaining accurate channel state information (CSI) at the receiver for both uplink and downlink channels. Traditionally, pilot sequences are transmitted and used at the receiver to estimate the CSI. Since the length of the pilot sequences scale with the number of transmit antennas, for massive MIMO systems downlink channel estimation requires long pilot sequences resulting in reduced spectral efficiency and the so-called pilot …

Color-Compressive Bilateral Filter And Nonlocal Means For High-Dimensional Images, Christina Karam, Kenjiro Sugimoto, Keigo Hirakawa

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We propose accelerated implementations of bilateral filter (BF) and nonlocal means (NLM) called color-compressive bilateral filter (CCBF) and color-compressive nonlocal means (CCNLM). CCBF and CCNLM are random filters, whose Monte-Carlo averaged output images are identical to the output images of conventional BF and NLM, respectively. However, CCBF and CCNLM are considerably faster because the spatial processing of multiple color channels are combined into a single random filtering process. This implies that the complexity of CCBF and CCNLM is less sensitive to color dimension (e.g., hyperspectral images) relatively to other BF and NLM methods. We experimentally verified that the execution time …