Electrical and Electronics Commons^™

Enhancing Grid Reliability With Coordination And Control Of Distributed Energy Resources, Hani Mavalizadeh

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The growing utilization of renewable energy resources (RES) within power systems has brought about new challenges due to the inherent uncertainty associated with RES, which makes it challenging to accurately forecast available generation. Further- more, the replacement of synchronous machines with inverter-based RES results in a reduction of power system inertia, complicating the task of maintaining a balance between generation and consumption. In this dissertation, coordinating Distributed Energy Resources (DER) is presented as a viable solution to these challenges.DERs have the potential to offer different ancillary services such as fast frequency response (FFR) when efficiently coordinated. However, the practical implementation …

Investigation Of Software Defined Radio And Deep Learning For Ground Penetrating Radar, Yan Zhang

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is a non-invasive geophysical method that uses radar pulses to image the subsurface. This technology is widely used to detect and map subsurface structures, utilities, and features without the need for physical excavation. Traditional GPR systems, which rely on fixed radio frequency electronics like Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), have significant limitations in their flexibility and adaptability. Adjusting operational parameters such as waveform, frequency, and modulation schemes is challenging, which is crucial for tailoring performance to specific tasks or conditions. The considerable size and weight of these systems restrict their applicability in harsh or confined spaces where …

Intelligent Wide-Area Monitoring Systems Using Deep Learning, Mustafa Matar

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Scientific advancements based on the wide-area measurements as a way to monitor systems, are fundamental in reliable operation of different types of complex networks. These advanced measurement units capable of real-time wide-area monitoring, which enables capture system dynamic behavior. Therefore, advanced technology is urgently necessary to analyze substantial streaming data from these networks and handle system uncertainties. As an example, uncertainties in power systems due to renewable energy and demand response. Power system operation, and planning have become more complex and vulnerable to extreme weather and natural disasters. Thus, increasing power system resilience has gained more attention.Machine Learning (ML), and …

Reference Governors For Mimo Systems And Preview Control: Theory, Algorithms, And Practical Applications, Yudan Liu

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The Reference Governor (RG) is a methodology based on predictive control for constraint management of pre-stablized closed-loop systems. This problem is motivated by the fact that control systems are usually subject to physical restrictions, hardware protection, and safety and efficiency considerations. The goal of RG is to optimize the tracking performance while ensuring that the constraints are satisfied. Due to structural limitations of RG, however, these requirements are difficult to meet for Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) systems or systems with preview information. Hence, in this dissertation, three extensions of RG for constraint management of these classes of systems are developed. The …

Three Branch Diversity Systems For Multi-Hop Iot Networks, Sakil Ahmed Chowdhury

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging technological paradigm connecting numerous smart objects for advanced applications ranging from home automation to industrial control to healthcare. The rapid development of wireless technologies and miniature embedded devices has enabled IoT systems for such applications, which have been deployed in a variety of environments. One of the factors limiting the performance of IoT devices is the multipath fading caused by reflectors and attenuators present in the environment where these devices are deployed. Leveraging polarization diversity is a well-known technique to mitigate the deep signal fades and depolarization effects caused by multipath. However, neither …

Open-Source Wearable Sensors For Detecting Fall Risk In Patients With Multiple Sclerosis, Conor Joyce

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Wearable sensors are growing in popularity in the medical field to help measurephysiological signals from patients. The M-Sense Research Group at the University of Vermont uses wearable sensors to measure accelerometer and gyroscope data of patients with multiple sclerosis amongst other clinical applications. The sensors are attached directly to a patient’s skin on the chest and thigh and are worn for anywhere from an hour or two when being monitored in the lab or for five weeks when wearing the sensors at home. Current wearable sensors are closed source and do not allow recorded data to be seen in real …

Constraint-Aware And Efficiency-Aware Control Of Air-Path In Fuel Cell Vehicles, Eli Bacher-Chong

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Fuel cell technology offers the potential for clean, efficient, robust energy productionfor both stationary and mobile applications. But without fast and robust control systems, fuel cells cannot hope to maintain real-life efficiencies near enough to their theoretical potential. This work studies control and constraint management techniques to regulate a nonlinear multivariable air-path system for a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). The control objectives are to avoid oxygen starvation, run at the maximum net efficiency, achieve fast tracking of air flow and pressure set-points, and be easy to calibrate. To operate at maximum efficiency, a set-point map is generated for …

Exploring Hidden Networks Yields Important Insights In Disparate Fields Of Study, Laurence Clarfeld

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Network science captures a broad range of problems related to things (nodes) and relationships between them (edges). This dissertation explores real-world network problems in disparate domain applications where exploring less obvious "hidden networks" reveals important dynamics of the original network.

The power grid is an explicit network of buses (e.g., generators) connected by branches (e.g., transmission lines). In rare cases, if k branches (a k-set) fail simultaneously, a cascading blackout may ensue; we refer to such k-sets as "defective". We calculate system risk of cascading failure due to defective 2-sets and 3-sets in synthetic test cases of the Polish and …

Quasilinear Control: Multivariate Nonlinearities, Robustness And Numerical Properties, And Applications, Sarnaduti Brahma

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Quasilinear Control (QLC) is a theory with a set of tools used for the analysis and design of controllers for nonlinear feedback systems driven by stochastic inputs. It is based on the concept of Stochastic Linearization (SL), which is a method of linearizing a nonlinear function that, unlike traditional Jacobian linearization, uses statistical properties of the input to the nonlinearity to linearize it. Until now in the literature of QLC, SL was applied only to feedback systems with single-variable nonlinearities that appear only in actuators and/or sensors. In this dissertation, my recent contributions to the literature of QLC are summarized. …

Modeling And Control For Packetized Energy Management, Adil Khurram

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The overarching goal in power systems operations is to deliver energy in an efficient, reliable, and economical manner. To achieve this objective, the traditional power system operating paradigm is for generation to follow variable demand. As electrification and decarbonization policies are pursued, the levels of variable, renewable generation will increase, which will require that power system operator think beyond supply follows demand. This means that one needs to consider the potential flexibility provided by, for instance, internet-enabled, connected, and responsive loads, which are part of the broad class of behind-the-meter distributed energy resources (DERs).

The research work presented in this …

Optimization Of Energy-Constrained Resources In Radial Distribution Networks With Solar Pv, Mohammad Nawaf Nazir

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The research objective of the proposed dissertation is to make best use of available distributed energy resources to meet dynamic market opportunities while accounting for AC physics of unbalanced distribution networks and the uncertainty of distributed solar photovoltaics (PV). With ever increasing levels of renewable generation, distribution system operations must shift from a mindset of static unidirectional power flows to dynamic, unpredictable bidirectional flows. To manage this variability, distributed energy resources (DERs; e.g.,solar PV inverters, inverter-based batteries, electric vehicles, water heaters, A/Cs) need to be coordinated for reliable and resilient operation. This introduces the challenge of coordinating such resources at …

The Utilization Of Software Defined Radios For Adaptive, Phased Array Antenna Systems, Evan Fennelly

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The increased use of internet of things (IoT) devices will result in them being deployed

in a wide variety of environments and therefore warrant antenna systems that can be

adapted to improve link performance. Flexible communication technologies allow for

increased throughput, reliability, and improved efficiency in wireless channels. This

can be accomplished by implementing phased array antennas, among others. Phased

arrays create a beam that can be steered electronically, but are expensive to implement

given the many phase precise hardware components that need to be adjustable. A

software defined radio approach to beamforming can reduce this complexity for each

array …

Open Source Quantitative Stress Prediction Leveraging Wearable Sensing And Machine Learning Methods, Blake Hewgill

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The ability to monitor physiological parameters in an individual is paramount for the evaluation of physical health and the detection of many ailments. Wearable technologies are being introduced on a widening scale to address the absence of low-cost and non-invasive health monitoring as compared to medical grade equipment and technologies. By leveraging wearable technologies to supplement or replace traditional gold-standard measurement techniques, the research community can develop a deeper multifaceted understanding of the relationship between specific physiological parameters and particular health conditions. One particular research area in which wearable technologies are beginning to see application is the quantification of physical …

The Incidence Of Inverter Incidents: Understanding And Quantifying Contributions To Risk In Systems With Large Amounts Of Inverter-Based Resources, Caroline Rose Popiel

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Renewable energy is an important and growing percentage of the total power supply. Additionally, non-wires alternatives, which are meant to substitute for the construction of more transmission lines, are increasing in quantity as the demand for electrical power increases. Many non-wires alternatives take the form of renewable energy resources and batteries, and are distributed over short distances through neighborhoods and communities. Inverters are used to connect these DC resources to the AC grid.

However, there is growing industry concern that the disconnect function that is inherent to interconnection standards for inverter-based resources has the potential to result in a cascading …

Reference Governors For Time-Varying Systems And Constraints, Collin Freiheit

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Control systems are often subject to constraints imposed by physical limitations or safety considerations, and require means of constraint management to ensure the stability and safety of the system. For real-time implementation, constraint management schemes must not carry a heavy computational burden; however many of the current solutions are computationally unattractive, especially those with robust formulations. Thus, the design of constraint management schemes with low computational loads is an important and practical problem for control engineers. Reference Governor (RG) is an efficient constraint management scheme that is attractive for real-time implementation due to its low computational complexity and ease of …

Software Defined Radio Based Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave Ground Penetrating Radar, Patrick Fiske

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar allows for a wide range of research applications. One primary use of this technology and what is explored in this thesis, is imaging in the form of ground penetrating radar. To generate proper results, spectral wide-band reconstruction has been developed to overcome hardware limitations allowing for high resolution radar. Requiring complex reconstruction algorithms, the proposed method benefits greatly in terms of performance and implementation compared to other radar systems.

This thesis develops a wideband linearly frequency modulated radar leveraging a software-defined radio (SDR). The modular system is capable of a tunable wideband bandwidth up …

Utilizing Machine Learning For Respiratory Rate Detection Via Radar Sensor, Anwar Elhadad

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

In this research, we investigate a data processing method to capture the respiratory rate of a person by utilizing a doppler radar to monitor their body movement during respiration. We utilize a machine learning algorithm with a radar sensor to capture the chest movement of a person while breathing and determine the respiratory rate according to that movement. We are using a Random Forest classifier to distinguish between different classes of pulses. After that, the algorithm constructs a sinusoidal signal representing the breathing rate of the sample. By applying this technique, we can detect the breathing rate accurately for different …

Reference Governors: From Theory To Practice, Joycer Osorio

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Control systems that are subject to constraints due to physical limitations, hardware

protection, or safety considerations have led to challenging control problems that have

piqued the interest of control practitioners and theoreticians for many decades. In

general, the design of constraint management schemes must meet several stringent

requirements, for example: low computational burden, performance, recovery mechanisms

from infeasibility conditions, robustness, and formulation simplicity. These

requirements have been particularly difficult to meet for the following three classes

of systems: stochastic systems, linear systems driven by unmodeled disturbances,

and nonlinear systems. Hence, in this work, we develop three constraint management

schemes, based …

The Incorruptible Integrator: A Streamlined Approach To Imc-Pid Controller Tuning, Sam Wisotzki

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

In automakers' never-ending quest to reduce emissions and improve performance, the turbocharger represents a major step in advancing these goals. By repurposing waste exhaust and compressing the air intake, they are able to increase overall power. One critical control loop in the turbocharger is control of boost pressure via the wastegate. This is a highly nonlinear process and experimental data has shown that a gain-scheduled PID (proportional integral derivative) controller developed with IMC (internal model control) tuning methodology is an effective means to control boost pressure. Motivated by this successful implementation of IMC-PID tuning in the automotive world, this work …

Multi-Polarized Channel Characterization, Marcia Golmohamadi

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication is becoming an important aspect of warehouse management, remote control, robotics, traffic control, supply chain management, fleet management and telemedicine. M2M is expected to become a significant portion of the Industrial Internet and, more broadly, the Internet of Things (IoT). The environments in which M2M systems are expected to operate may be challenging in terms of radio wave propagation due to their cluttered, multipath nature, which can cause deep signal fades and signal depolarization. Polarization diversity in two dimensions is a well-known technique to mitigate such fades. But in the presence of reflectors and retarders where multipath …

Distributed Control Of Electric Vehicle Charging: Privacy, Performance, And Processing Tradeoffs, Micah Botkin-Levy

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

As global climate change concerns, technological advancements, and economic shifts increase the adoption of electric vehicles, it is vital to study how best to integrate these into our existing energy systems. Electric vehicles (EVs) are on track to quickly become a large factor in the energy grid. If left uncoordinated, the charging of EVs will become a burden on the grid by increasing peak demand and overloading transformers. However, with proper charging control strategies, the problems can be mitigated without the need for expensive capital investments. Distributed control methods are a powerful tool to coordinate the charging, but it will …

Quasilinear Control Of Systems With Time-Delays And Nonlinear Actuators And Sensors, Wei-Ping Huang

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

This thesis investigates Quasilinear Control (QLC) of time-delay systems with nonlinear actuators and sensors and analyzes the accuracy of stochastic linearization for these systems. QLC leverages the method of stochastic linearization to replace each nonlinearity with an equivalent gain, which is obtained by solving a transcendental equation. The idea of QLC is to stochastically linearize the system in order to analyze and design controllers using classical linear control theory. In this thesis, the existence of the equivalent gain for a closed-loop time-delay system is discussed. To compute the equivalent gain, two methods are explored. The first method uses an explicit …

Decoupled Reference Governors For Multi-Input Multi-Output Systems, Yudan Liu

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

In this work, a computationally efficient solution for constraint management of square

multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems is presented. The solution, referred to as

the Decoupled Reference Governor (DRG), maintains the highly-attractive computational

features of scalar reference governors (SRG) compared to Vector Reference

Governor (VRG) and Command Governor (CG). This work focuses on square MIMO

systems that already achieve the desired tracking performance. The goal of DRG is to

enforce output constraints and simultaneously ensure that the degradation to tracking

performance is minimal. DRG is based on decoupling the input-output dynamics

of the system so that every channel of the system …

Leveraging Software-Defined Radio For A Scalable Wide-Band Wireless Channel Measurement System, James Jamison

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Wireless channel characterization is important for determining both the requirements for a wireless system and its resulting reliability. Wireless systems are becoming ever more pervasive and thus are expected to operate in increasingly more cluttered environments. While these devices may be fixed in location, the channel is still far from ideal due to multipath. Under such conditions, it is desirable to have a means of taking wireless channel measurements in a low-cost and distributed manner, which is not always possible using typical channel measurement equipment.

This thesis leverages a software-defined radio (SDR) platform to perform wideband wireless channel measurements. Specifically, …

Cmos Programmable Time Control Circuit Design For Phased Array Uwb Ground Penetrating Radar Antenna Beamforming, Nicholas James Reilly

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Phased array radar systems employ multiple antennas to create a radar beam that can be steered electronically. By manipulating the relative phase values of feeding signals among different antennas, the effective radiation pattern of the array can be synthesized to enhance the main lobe in a desired direction while suppressing the undesired side lobes in other directions. Hence the radar scanning angles can be electronically controlled without employing the bulky mechanical gimbal structure, which can significantly reduce radar system size, weight and power consumption. In recent years, phased array technologies have received great attentions and are explored in developing many …

Microwave Bessel-Beam Propagation Through Spatially Inhomogeneous Media, Ryan Francis Grecco

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Long range wireless power transmission (WPT) is a critical technology for the development of remote power systems for air and space vehicles as well as for point-to-point transmission on Earth. This can be achieved using either a laser for transmission in the infrared to optical frequency domain or by using microwaves. The objective of this research is to study the application of microwave power transmission (MPT) through the use of a so-called Bessel-beam whose unique propagation properties include a self-healing ability as well as non-diffractive properties. These two unique properties lead to an increase in the efficiency of microwave power …

Adaptive High Voltage Pulse Signal Generator Circuit Design, Lixi Tao

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is widely used in area of geologic exploration, hidden stationary subject detection and quality inspection on various infrastructures. The pulse generator, which offers very accurate timing information, is the most cardinal component in GPR systems. It is easy to design a pulse generator which produces pulse with pre-settled peak value and pulse width in nanosecond scale. However, since the system is working in complicated environments, various pulses in different pulse widths and amplitudes are needed. In this background, pulse generators in tunability and stability are precious in value and universal in use. Indeed, a few adaptive …

Magnetic Graphene Memory Circuit Characterization And Verilog-A Modeling, Greg Abrami

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Memory design plays an important role in modern computer technology in regard

to overall performance and reliability. Prior memory technologies, including magneticcore

memory, hard disk drives, DRAM, SRAM have limitations in regard to bit density,

IC integration, power efficiency, and physical size, respectively. To address these

limitations we propose to develop a magnetic graphene random access memory (MGRAM)

utilizing graphene Hall effect, which takes advantage of the inherent reliability of magnetic

memory and superior electrical properties of graphene (high carrier mobility, zero-band

gap, high Hall sensitivity). As the graphene magnetic memory device will be integrated

with a CMOS ASIC design …

Investigating Key Techniques To Leverage The Functionality Of Ground/Wall Penetrating Radar, Yu Zhang

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) has been extensively utilized as a highly efficient and non-destructive testing method for infrastructure evaluation, such as highway rebar detection, bridge decks inspection, asphalt pavement monitoring, underground pipe leakage detection, railroad ballast assessment, etc. The focus of this dissertation is to investigate the key techniques to tackle with GPR signal processing from three perspectives: (1) Removing or suppressing the radar clutter signal; (2) Detecting the underground target or the region of interest (RoI) in the GPR image; (3) Imaging the underground target to eliminate or alleviate the feature distortion and reconstructing the shape of the target …

A Wide Band Adaptive All Digital Phase Locked Loop With Self Jitter Measurement And Calibration, Bo Jiang

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The expanding growth of mobile products and services has led to various wireless communication standards that employ different spectrum bands and protocols to provide data, voice or video communication services. Software deffned radio and cognitive radio are emerging techniques that can dynamically integrate various standards to provide seamless global coverage, including global roaming across geographical regions, and interfacing with different wireless networks. In software deffned radio and cognitive radio, one of the most critical RF blocks that need to exhibit frequency agility is the phase lock loop (PLL) frequency synthesizer. In order to access various standards, the frequency synthesizer needs …