Computer Engineering Commons^™

Asymptotically Optimal Algorithm For Checking Whether A Given Vector Is A Solution To A Given Interval-Quantifier Linear System, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations, we have a linear dependence between different quantities. In such situations, we often need to solve the corresponding systems of linear equations. Often, we know the parameters of these equations with interval uncertainty. In this case, depending on the practical problem, we have different notions of a solution. For example, if we determine parameters from observations, we are interested in all the unknowns which satisfy the given system of linear equations for some possible values of the parameters. If we design a system so that it does not exceed given tolerance bounds, then we need to …

Is The World Itself Fuzzy? Physical Arguments For -- And Unexpected Computational Consequences Of -- Zadeh's Vision, Vladik Kreinovich, Olga Kosheleva

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Fuzzy methodology has been invented to describe imprecise ("fuzzy") human statements about the world, statements that use imprecise words from natural language like "small" or "large". Usual applications of fuzzy techniques assume that the world itself is ``crisp'', that there are exact equations describing the world, and fuzziness of our statements is caused by the incompleteness of our knowledge. But what if the world itself is fuzzy? What if there is no perfect system of equations describing the physical world -- in the sense that no matter what system of equations we try, there will always be cases when this …

Cubic Spline Interpolation By Solving A Recurrence Equation Instead Of A Tridiagonal Matrix, Peter Revesz

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

The cubic spline interpolation method is proba- bly the most widely-used polynomial interpolation method for functions of one variable. However, the cubic spline method requires solving a tridiagonal matrix-vector equation with an O(n) computational time complexity where n is the number of data measurements. Even an O(n) time complexity may be too much in some time-ciritical applications, such as continuously estimating and updating the flight paths of moving objects. This paper shows that under certain boundary conditions the tridiagonal matrix solving step of the cubic spline method could be entirely eliminated and instead the coefficients of the unknown cubic polynomials …

A Game-Theoretic Analysis Of The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Peter Revesz

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Although nuclear non-proliferation is an almost universal human desire, in practice, the negotiated treaties appear unable to prevent the steady growth of the number of states that have nuclear weapons. We propose a computational model for understanding the complex issues behind nuclear arms negotiations, the motivations of various states to enter a nuclear weapons program and the ways to diffuse crisis situations.

A Microfluidic Device For Thermal Particle Detection, Ashwin Kumar Vutha, Benyamin Davaji, Chung-Hoon Lee, Glenn M. Walker

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

We demonstrate the use of heat to count microscopic particles. A thermal particle detector (TPD) was fabricated by combining a 500-nm-thick silicon nitride membrane containing a thin-film resistive temperature detector with a silicone elastomer microchannel. Particles with diameters of 90 and 200 μm created relative temperature changes of 0.11 and −0.44 K, respectively, as they flowed by the sensor. A first-order lumped thermal model was developed to predict the temperature changes. Multiple particles were counted in series to demonstrate the utility of the TPD as a particle counter.

Gammatone And Mfcc Features In Speaker Recognition, Wison Burgos

Theses and Dissertations

The feature analysis component of an Automated Speaker Recognition (ASR) system plays a crucial role in the overall performance of the system. There are many feature extraction techniques available, but ultimately we want to maximize the performance of these systems. From this point of view, the algorithms developed to compute feature components are analyzed. Current state-of-the-art ASR systems perform quite well in a controlled environment where the speech signal is noise free. The objective of this thesis investigates the results that can be obtained when you combine Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and Gammatone Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (GFCC) as feature components …

Designing A Bayer Filter With Smooth Hue Transition Interpolation Using The Xilinx System Generator, Zhiqiang Li, Peter Revesz

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

This paper describes the design of a Bayer filter with smooth hue transition using the System Generator for DSP. We describe and compare experimentally two different designs, one based on a MATLAB implementation and the other based on a modification of the Bayer filter using bilinear interpolation.

Estimating The Flight Path Of Moving Objects Based On Acceleration Data, Peter Revesz

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Inertial navigation is the problem of estimating the flight path of a moving object based on only acceleration measurements. This paper describes and compares two approaches for inertial navigation. Both approaches estimate the flight path of the moving object using cubic spline interpolation, but they find the coefficients of the cubic spline pieces by different methods. The first approach uses a tridiagonal matrix, while the second approach uses recurrence equations. They also require different boundary conditions. While both approaches work in O(n) time where n is the number of given acceleration measurements, the recurrence equation-based method can be easier updated …

Cama: Efficient Modeling Of The Capture Effect For Low Power Wireless Networks, Behnam Dezfouli, Marjan Radi, Kamin Whitehouse, Shukor Abd Razak, Hwee-Pink Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Network simulation is an essential tool for the design and evaluation of wireless network protocols, and realistic channel modeling is essential for meaningful analysis. Recently, several network protocols have demonstrated substantial network performance improvements by exploiting the capture effect, but existing models of the capture effect are still not adequate for protocol simulation and analysis. Physical-level models that calculate the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) for every incoming bit are too slow to be used for large-scale or long-term networking experiments, and link-level models such as those currently used by the NS2 simulator do not accurately predict protocol performance. In this article, …

Organizing Video Search Results To Adapted Semantic Hierarchies For Topic-Based Browsing, Jiajun Wang, Yu-Gang Jiang, Qiang Wang, Kuiyuan Yang, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Organizing video search results into semantically structured hierarchies can greatly improve the efficiency of browsing complex query topics. Traditional hierarchical clustering techniques are inadequate since they lack the ability to generate semantically interpretable structures. In this paper, we introduce an approach to organize video search results to an adapted semantic hierarchy. As many hot search topics such as celebrities and famous cities have Wikipedia pages where hierarchical topic structures are available, we start from the Wikipedia hierarchies and adjust the structures according to the characteristics of the returned videos from a search engine. Ordinary clustering based on textual information of …

Click-Through-Based Subspace Learning For Image Search, Yingwei Pan, Ting Yao, Xinmei Tian, Houqiang Li, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

One of the fundamental problems in image search is to rank image documents according to a given textual query. We address two limitations of the existing image search engines in this paper. First, there is no straightforward way of comparing textual keywords with visual image content. Image search engines therefore highly depend on the surrounding texts, which are often noisy or too few to accurately describe the image content. Second, ranking functions are trained on query-image pairs labeled by human labelers, making the annotation intellectually expensive and thus cannot be scaled up. We demonstrate that the above two fundamental challenges …

Vireo @ Trecvid 2014: Instance Search And Semantic Indexing, Wei Zhang, Hao Zhang, Ting Yao, Yijie Lu, Jingjing Chen, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper summarizes the following two tasks participated by VIREO group: instance search and semantic indexing. We will present our approaches and analyze the results obtained in TRECVID 2014 benchmark evaluation

Using Embedded Systems To Determine The Configuration Of A Static Wheelchair Mounted Robotic Arm, Daniel Ashley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The calibration of a 9 degree of freedom (DOF) robotic manipulator using multiple three axis accelerometers and an embedded system will be accomplished in this work. The 9-DOF robotic system used in this study is a 7-DOF robotic arm attached to a 2-DOF power wheelchair. Combined they create a Wheelchair Mounted Robotic Arm (WMRA). The problem that will be solved by this thesis is the calibration of the robotic system during start up. The 7 DOF robotic arm is comprised of rotational joints only. These joints have dual channel encoders to determine the joint position, among other useful data. The …

Human Mirna Sequence Based Variations Database, Nadim Georges Bou Zeidan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are studied as key genetic elements that regulate the gene expression involved in different human diseases. Clinical sequence based variations like copy number variations (CNVs) affect miRNA biogenesis, dosage and target recognition that may represent potentially functional variants and relevant target bindings.

To systematically analyze miRNA-related CNVs and their effects on related genes, a user-friendly free online database was developed to provide further analysis of co-localization of miRNA loci with human genome CNV regions. Further analysis pipelines such as miRNA-target to estimate the levels or locations of variations for genetic duplications, insertions or deletions were also offered. Such …

Analysis And Prevention Of Code-Injection Attacks On Android Os, Grant Joseph Smith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Injection attacks are the top two causes of software errors and vulnerabilities, according to the MITRE Common Vulnerabilities list [1]. This thesis presents a threat analysis of injection attacks on applications built for Android, a popular but not rigorously studied operating system designed for mobile devices. The following thesis is argued: Injection attacks are possible on off-the-shelf Android systems, and such attacks have the capacity to compromise the device through resource denial and leaking private data. Specifically, we demonstrate that injection attacks are possible through the OS shell and through the SQLite API. To mitigate these attacks, we augment the …

Mapping Aadl To Petri Net Tool-Sets Using Pnml Framework, Hassan Reza, Amrita Chatterjee

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL) has been utilized to specify and verify non- functional properties of Real-Time Embedded Systems (RTES) used in critical application systems. Examples of such critical application systems include medical devices, nuclear power plants, aer- ospace, financial, etc. Using AADL, an engineer is enable to analyze the quality of a system. For example, a developer can perform performance analysis such as end-to-end flow analysis to guarantee that system components have the required resources to meet the timing requirements relevant to their communications. The critical issue related to developing and deploying safety critical systems is how to …

Strategies For Sensor Data Aggregation In Support Of Emergency Response, X. Wang, A. Walden, M. Weigle, S. Olariu

Computer Science Presentations

PDF of a powerpoint presentation from the Military Communications Conference (MILCOM), Baltimore, Maryland, October 7, 2014. Also available on Slideshare.

If We Take Into Account That Constraints Are Soft, Then Processing Constraints Becomes Algorithmically Solvable, Quentin Brefort, Luc Jaulin, Martine Ceberio, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Constraints are ubiquitous in science and engineering. Constraints describe the available information about the state of the system, constraints describe possible relation between current and future states of the system, constraints describe which future states we would like to obtain. To solve problems from engineering and science, it is therefore necessary to process constraints. We show that if we treat constraints as hard (crisp), with all the threshold values exactly known, then in the general case, all the corresponding computational problems become algorithmically unsolvable. However, these problems become algorithmically solvable if we take into account that in reality, …

Why Ricker Wavelets Are Successful In Processing Seismic Data: Towards A Theoretical Explanation, Afshin Gholamy, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many engineering applications ranging from engineering seismology to petroleum engineering and civil engineering, it is important to process seismic data. In processing seismic data, it turns out to be very efficient to describe the signal's spectrum as a linear combination of Ricker wavelet spectra. In this paper, we provide a possible theoretical explanation for this empirical efficiency. Specifically, signal propagation through several layers is discussed, and it is shown that the Ricker wavelet is the simplest non-trivial solution for the corresponding data processing problem, under the condition that the described properties of the approximation family are satisfied.

Wi-Fi Real Time Location Systems, Benjamin A. Doll

Open Access Theses

This thesis objective was to determine the viability of utilizing an untrained Wi-Fi real time location system as a GPS alternative for indoor environments. Background research showed that GPS is rarely able to penetrate buildings to provide reliable location data. The benefit of having location information in a facility and how they might be used for disaster or emergency relief personnel and their resources motivated this research. A building was selected with a well-deployed Wi-Fi infrastructure and its untrained location feature was used to determine the distance between the specified test points and the system identified location. It was found …