Computer Engineering Commons^™

Component Hiding Using Identification And Boundary Blurring Techniques, James D. Parham Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Protecting software from adversarial attacks is extremely important for DoD technologies. When systems are compromised, the possibility exists for recovery costing millions of dollars and countless labor hours. Circuits implemented on embedded systems utilizing FPGA technology are the result of downloading software for instantiating circuits with specific functions or components. We consider the problem of component hiding a form of software protection. Component identification is a well studied problem. However, we use component identification as a metric for driving the cost of reverse engineering to an unreasonable level. We contribute to protection of software and circuitry by implementing a Java …

Real Time Fault Detection And Diagnostics Using Fpga-Based Architecture, Nathan P. Naber

Theses and Dissertations

Errors within circuits caused by radiation continue to be an important concern to developers. A new methodology of real time fault detection and diagnostics utilizing FPGA based architectures while under radiation were investigated in this research. The contributions of this research are focused on three areas; a full test platform to evaluate a circuit while under irradiation, an algorithm to detect and diagnose fault locations within a circuit, and finally to characterize Triple Design Triple Modular Redundancy (TDTMR), a new form of TMR. Five different test setups, injected fault test, gamma radiation test, thermal radiation test, optical laser test, and …

Modeling Computer Communication Networks In A Realistic 3d Environment, Charles R. Rowell Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Communication network simulations have typically been visualized in the past through 2D representations, but this is insufficient for battlefield network scenarios. Visual representations of battlefield networks greatly benefit from 3D visualization due to its ability to retain asset location. This research investigates the feasibility of modeling a typical battlefield communication network in a realistic 3D manner and discusses the effects of doing so. The result is an open source, 3D network visualization tool that can create highly intuitive connected battlefield scenes, enabling the user to quickly comprehend network state. It highlights mobile assets, packet movement, and node connectivity while allowing …

Codifying Information Assurance Controls For Department Of Defense (Dod) Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (Scada) Systems (U), Eddie A. Mendezllovet

Theses and Dissertations

Protecting DoD critical infrastructure resources and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems from cyber attacks is becoming an increasingly challenging task. DoD Information Assurance controls provide a sound framework to achieve an appropriate level of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. However, these controls have not been updated since 2003 and currently do not adequately address the security of DoD SCADA systems. This research sampled U.S. Air Force Civil Engineering subject matter experts representing eight Major Commands that manage and operate SCADA systems. They ranked 30 IA controls in three categories, and evaluated eight SCADA specific IA controls for inclusion into …

Using Decision Analysis To Select Facility Maintenance Management Information Systems, Marchello T. Graddy

Theses and Dissertations

Maintenance organizations, charged with preserving the built environment, are receiving a shrinking portion of an organization’s operational budget to do its job. It has been demonstrated through various studies that efficiencies can be gained by implementing a maintenance management information system (MMIS). However, with so many choices available, maintenance organizations often select the wrong system. This research effort used value-focused thinking decision analysis to create a model based on values from the Air Force Civil Engineer career field. Data for values and weights were collected from official documents and interviews. The resulting model is highly flexible, allowing the ultimate decision-maker …

Utilizing The Digital Fingerprint Method For Secure Key Generation, Jennifer C. Anilao

Theses and Dissertations

This research examines a new way to generate an uncloneable secure key by taking advantage of the delay characteristics of individual transistors. The user profiles the circuit to deduce the glitch count of each output line for each number of selectable buffers added to the circuit. The user can then use this information to generate a specific glitch count on each output line, which is passed to an encryption algorithm as its key. The results detail tests of two configurations for adding a selectable amount of buffers into each glitch circuit in order to induce additional delay. One configuration adds …

Service-Differentiated And Reliable Communication In Event-Based Wireless Sensor Networks, Yuyan Xue

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of low-power embedded devices with integrated sensing, computing and wireless communication capabilities. These devices, called sensor nodes or motes, are often battery-powered and deployed in a distributed manner to provide observations on the physical world. Reliably and promptly collecting the sensing data to convey the features of a surveillance area, especially the events of interest, to the sink is one of the most critical requirements of WSN design. However, dynamic wireless channel conditions and the constrained energy resources make it a challenging task to provide the end-to-end performance guarantees in multi-hop WSNs. The objective of …

Study Of Physical Layer Security In Wireless Communications, Mustafa Duruturk

Department of Computer Electronics and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis has investigated security in wireless communications at physical layer. Security is an important issue for wireless communications and poses many challenges. Most security schemes have been applied to the upper layers of communications networks. Since in a typical wireless communication, transmission of data is over the air, third party receiver(s) may have easy access to the transmitted data. This work discusses a new security technique at the physical layer for the MIMO (802.11n) transmitters. For this project, the wireless medium is secured by transmitting a noise signal that is only recoverable by the receiver. This report includes an …

Average Run Length Of Two-Span Moving Sum Algorithms, Swarnendu Kar, Kishan G. Mehrotra, Pramod Varshney

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - All Scholarship

Among the various procedures used to detect potential changes in a stochastic process the moving sum algorithms are very popular due to their intuitive appeal and good statistical performance. One of the important design parameters of a change detection algorithm is the expected interval between false positives, also known as the average run length (ARL). In this paper, we have derived closed form expressions of ARL for two special cases - namely the two-span moving sum and filtered derivative algorithms. We have assumed that the random variables are uniformly distributed.

A New Eclipse-Based Jml Compiler Built Using Ast Merging, Amritam Sarcar, Yoonsik Cheon

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

The Java Modeling Language (JML) is a formal interface specification language to document the behavior of Java program modules and has been used in many research and industrial projects. However, its inability to support Java 5 features such as generics is reducing its user base significantly. Besides, the JML compiler is on average 8.5 times slower than the javac Java compiler. In this paper, we present a new JML compiler built on the Eclipse Java compiler to support Java 5 features. We used a technique called AST merging to implement coarse-grained incremental compilation. In our experiments we observed a significant …

Nato Human View Architecture And Human Networks, Holly A. H. Handley, Nancy P. Houston

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The NATO Human View is a system architectural viewpoint that focuses on the human as part of a system. Its purpose is to capture the human requirements and to inform on how the human impacts the system design. The viewpoint contains seven static models that include different aspects of the human element, such as roles, tasks, constraints, training and metrics. It also includes a Human Dynamics component to perform simulations of the human system under design. One of the static models, termed Human Networks, focuses on the human-to-human communication patterns that occur as a result of ad hoc or deliberate …

Approximation Of Average Run Length Of Moving Sum Algorithms Using Multivariate Probabilities, Swarnendu Kar, Kishan Mehrotra, Pramod Varshney

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - All Scholarship

Among the various procedures used to detect potential changes in a stochastic process the moving sum algorithms are very popular due to their intuitive appeal and good statistical performance. One of the important design parameters of a change detection algorithm is the expected interval between false positives, also known as the average run length (ARL). Computation of the ARL usually involves numerical procedures but in some cases it can be approximated using a series involving multivariate probabilities. In this paper, we present an analysis of this series approach by providing sufficient conditions for convergence and derive an error bound. Using …

Global Positioning Logger, Matthew Hall

Computer Engineering

The Global Positioning Logger (GPL) is a mobile embedded device that utilizes GPS technology. The GPS data is used to display current speed and past global locations.

Utopia 3.0: Power Cycling Controller Board, Allan Chan

Computer Engineering

The Universal Test & Observation Power Interface Adapter (UTOPIA) is a device used for hard drive testing by Western Digital. Utopia is designed to provide an interface to communicate with a hard drive and perform power cycling functions on a hard drive.

The purpose of this project is to develop a prototype that retains the features of the previous Utopia boards while including two new features to be used in the next design: voltage margining and improved Serial Input/Output (SIO) drive control.

This document describes the design of version 3.0 of UTOPIA starting with component selection, schematic design and, PCB …

Random Approach To Optimization Of Overlay Public-Resource Computing Systems, Grzegorz Chmaj, Krzysztof Walkowiak

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

The growing need for computationally demanding systems triggers the development of various network-oriented computing systems organized in a distributed manner. In this work we concentrate on one kind of such systems, i.e. public-resource computing systems. The considered system works on the top of an overlay network and uses personal computers and other relatively simple electronic equipment instead of supercomputers. We assume that two kinds of network flows are used to distribute the data in the public-resource computing systems: unicast and peer-to-peer. We formulate an optimization model of the system. After that we propose random algorithms that optimize jointly the allocation …

Controlling The Uncontrollable: A New Approach To Digital Storytelling Using Autonomous Virtual Actors And Environmental Manipulation, Matthew J. Colon

Master's Theses

In most video games today that focus on a single story, scripting languages are used for controlling the artificial intelligence of the virtual actors. While scripting is a great tool for reliably performing a story, it has many disadvantages; mainly, it is limited by only being able to respond to those situations that were explicitly declared, causing unreliable responses to unknown situations, and the believability of the virtual actor is hindered by possible conflicts between scripted actions and appropriate responses as perceived by the viewer. This paper presents a novel method of storytelling by manipulating the environment, whether physically or …

A Self-Organizing Neural Architecture Integrating Desire, Intention And Reinforcement Learning, Ah-Hwee Tan, Yu-Hong Feng, Yew-Soon Ong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents a self-organizing neural architecture that integrates the features of belief, desire, and intention (BDI) systems with reinforcement learning. Based on fusion Adaptive Resonance Theory (fusion ART), the proposed architecture provides a unified treatment for both intentional and reactive cognitive functionalities. Operating with a sense-act-learn paradigm, the low level reactive module is a fusion ART network that learns action and value policies across the sensory, motor, and feedback channels. During performance, the actions executed by the reactive module are tracked by a high level intention module (also a fusion ART network) that learns to associate sequences of actions …

Exploring The Relationship Of The Closeness Of A Genetic Algorithm's Chromosome Encoding To Its Problem Space, Kevin Mccullough

Master's Theses

For historical reasons, implementers of genetic algorithms often use a haploid binary primitive type for chromosome encoding. I will demonstrate that one can reduce development effort and achieve higher fitness by designing a genetic algorithm with an encoding scheme that closely matches the problem space. I will show that implicit parallelism does not result in binary encoded chromosomes obtaining higher fitness scores than other encodings. I will also show that Hamming distances should be understood as part of the relationship between the closeness of an encoding to the problem instead of assuming they should always be held constant. Closeness to …

Elementary Electronic Kits & Interactive Web Database, Anne Racquel Bacani

Computer Engineering

The Elementary Electronic Kit and Interactive Web Database (E-Kit) project will focus on bridging the gap between Cal Poly students and local elementary schools to raise interests in engineering. Its main purpose is to expose local elementary school students to basic engineering concepts through simple interactive engineering experiments and lessons. The initial idea and proposal for this project was introduced by John Oliver, senior project advisor, whose main goal is to provide a service that would allow local elementary school teachers to bring in Cal Poly student volunteers to teach basic engineering lessons to their class. Lessons will focus on …

Reverberation-Chamber Test Environment For Outdoor Urban Wireless Propagation Studies, Helge Fielitz, Kate A. Remley, Christopher L. Holloway, Qian Zhang, Qiong Wu, David W. Matolak

Faculty Publications

We introduce a test environment to replicate the well-known clustering of reflections in power delay profiles arising from late-time delays and reflections. Urban wireless propagation environments are known to exhibit such clustering. The test setup combines discrete reflections generated by a fading simulator with the continuous distribution of reflections created in a reverberation chamber. We describe measurements made in an urban environment in Denver, CO, that illustrate these multiple distributions of reflections. Our comparison of measurements made in the urban environment to those made in the new test environment shows good agreement.