Electromagnetics and Photonics Commons^™

Designing Enhanced Nonlinearity In Plasmonic Devices With Epsilon-Near-Zero Films, Kevin Tran Le

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (MS) Theses

The growing demand for energy-efficient optical information processing motivates compact nonlinear photonic devices that can operate at low power. Silicon photonics is a mature platform for linear optical functions, but nonlinear operation remains challenging because of its weak Kerr response, two-photon absorption at telecommunication wavelengths, and limited compatibility with deeply subwavelength plasmonic confinement. This thesis computationally investigates epsilon-near-zero thin films integrated into plasmonic waveguide architectures as a route toward stronger light–matter interaction in compact nonlinear devices.

Two waveguide geometries are examined: a hybrid metal-insulator-metal plasmonic slab waveguide incorporating an ultrathin indium tin oxide epsilon-near-zero layer (5–50 nm), and a dielectric-loaded …

Domain-Specific Design On Fpga And Npu For Scientific Computing And On-Device Llm Inference, Miaoxiang Yu

All Dissertations

High-performance computing (HPC) is changing rapidly as scientific simulations and large language model (LLM) workloads push the need for higher performance under tight power and memory constraints. Conventional platforms such as CPUs and GPUs accelerate computation through instruction-driven parallelism, relying on multithreading, SIMD, and SIMT execution, but increasingly encounter scalability limits imposed by the power and memory walls. In contrast, Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and Neural Processing Units (NPUs) offer a high-efficiency alternative through dataflow-oriented architectures that exploit deep pipelining and customized memory hierarchies to reduce data movement. However, the performance potential of these spatial accelerators remains largely unrealized when …

Measurements And Scaling Of Ion Propulsion Impulse During Driven Magnetic Reconnection, Fatima Ebrahimi, Nicholas A. O'Gorman, Kush Maheshwari, Jongsoo Yoo, Alexandre Sainterme, Hantao Ji

Faculty Publications

Impulse scaling during magnetic reconnection, the magnetic energy conversion to kinetic energy, via direct Mach probe measurements in Magnetic Reconnection Experiment is examined. Ion exhaust velocity and impulse scalings with reconnecting magnetic field during the push phase of driven reconnection are presented. The outflows and impulse measurements are compared with global MHD simulations. Both measurements and simulations reveal a favorable scaling, greater than linear, of impulse with reconnecting field. These scaling results establish that magnetic reconnection could be utilized for plasma propulsion.

Millimeter Wave Channel Modeling In Shipboard Environments, Patrick Morris

Theses and Dissertations

The millimeter wave (mmWave) band has been increasingly studied in recent years due to the saturation of other common frequency bands and the need for higher data rates for current and future communications systems. In this thesis, we quantify key channel parameters for mmWave channels in several environments, including an office setting, an indoor corridor, outdoor areas near a large building, and two shipboard environments. Using a center frequency of 30.5 GHz and signal bandwidth of 500 MHz, we quantify path loss and delay dispersion. The shipboard environments are a focus due to their novelty. Measurements were made using a …

Condition Monitoring Of Induction Motor Using Motor Current Signature Analysis, Francis Ikechukwu Obianke, Joseph Okhaifoh, Benjamin Akinloye

Al-Bahir

Induction machines serve as the cornerstone and driving force of modern manufacturing and production systems. This research aims to monitor and analyse the operating performance of induction motors using motor current signature analysis (MCSA). MCSA is employed to process the current signal of a motor into a frequency spectrum, known as the current signature by applying the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm. The underlying principle is that vibration generated in a motor is closely related to the changes of the magnetic field density, and the induced voltage varies with the stator current.

A simulation model replicating the behaviour of an …

Inductive Transducers For Measuring Vibrations, S.F. Amirov, A.Kh. Sulliev, A.A. Shoimkulov

Chemical Technology, Control and Management

A new design of an induction transducer has been developed for measuring linear and torsional vibrations in different directions with high sensitivity by constructing an inertial element consisting of four mutually perpendicular sectors and making the masses of two adjacent sectors different from the masses of the other two adjacent sectors. By constructing an inertial element in the form of a sector with two mutually diametric magnetic cores and different masses, and placing it between the horizontal and vertical axes, a design of an induction transducer has been developed that highly sensitively measures linear and torsional vibrations in different directions, …

Electromagnetic Simulations For Vulnerable Road User Safety In 5g/6g Wireless Systems, Colin Mcnerny

Theses and Dissertations

Protecting vulnerable road users is imperative. As 5G wireless technology matures and 6G standards are established, new operational technology emerges to reduce traffic accidents. There is widespread evidence to support the need for pedestrian awareness in modern traffic ecosystems as a significant number of vulnerable road users are injured or killed every year due to observable traffic failures. Computational electromagnetic (CEM) solvers are used to model, simulate, and analyze the performance of antennas deployed to meet this challenge. Validation studies using the Altair FEKO CEM solver demonstrate scenarios where vulnerable road users are at risk. The simulation data in this …

Dielectric Grating Integrated Hg1-Xcdxte (Mercury Cadmium Telluride) Infrared Photodetectors For High Operating Temperature, Mohammad Ariful Hoque Sojib

Theses and Dissertations

Mercury cadmium telluride (Hg1-xCdxTe, MCT) infrared photodetectors typically require cryogenic cooling to suppress thermal noise, limiting their adoption in size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) constrained military and commercial systems. This dissertation investigates dielectric grating array integration as an extrinsic route to high operating temperature (HOT) detection in Auger-suppressed MCT architectures. Finite element modeling shows that a grating assisted light coupling into a subwavelength (1.5 µm) Hg0.762Cd0.238Te mid-wave infrared layer acting as an absorptive waveguide, achieves photocarrier generation rate comparable to a conventional bulk (e.g., 5 µm) layer. For long-wave infrared detectors, coupled FDTD and drift-diffusion modeling, together with a …

Machine Learning Based Automation Of Pcb Pdn Design And Optimization, Haran Manoharan

Doctoral Dissertations

The rapid increase in power density and stringent power-integrity requirements in modern System-on-Chip (SoC) platforms have made Power Delivery Network (PDN) design an increasingly complex, multi-stage challenge. Critical decisions must be made both during pre-layout planning, such as stackup configuration, power-plane geometry, and early decoupling capacitor (decap) budgeting, and during post-layout refinements. Traditional heuristic and evolutionary optimization techniques struggle with scalability, require extensive manual iteration, leading to long runtimes and limited adaptability across varying board configurations. To address these challenges, this work proposes a unified reinforcement-learning-driven framework for automated PDN synthesis and decap optimization that spans both pre-layout and post-layout …

Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Driven Package Pdn Design Automation, Haran Manoharan, Chulsoon Hwang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The design of package-level power delivery networks (PDNs) has become increasingly challenging as modern high-performance systems demand higher currents. Existing PDN design flows treat ball map assignment, stackup selection, and power plane routing as separate, largely manual steps, leading to long iteration times and limited scalability. This work proposes a unified and automated package PDN design framework based on multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). Each power domain is modeled as an agent, with specialized agents responsible for ball map assignment, routing layer selection, and power plane synthesis. A central controller coordinates agent decisions using a global reward that captures electrical and …

Experimental Characterization Of Photonic Crystal Based Invisibility Cloak Under Tm-Polarized Microwaves, Muhammad Danyal

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Electromagnetic invisibility cloaks guide waves around an object so that the transmitted wavefront remains undisturbed. Most experimental microwave cloaking studies have focused on transverse electric (TE) polarization due to established measurement techniques. In this thesis, the experimental realization and characterization of a dielectric photonic crystal cloak operating under transverse magnetic (TM) polarization are presented. A measurement system operating in the X-band was developed to map the electric field distribution of the transmitted waves. Cloaking performance was first evaluated qualitatively by comparing numerical and experimental field distributions, where restoration of a flat wavefront indicated effective cloaking. Quantitative evaluation was performed by …

Development Of Periodic Plasmonic Nano-Structures For Enhanced Labeled Bio-Sensing Systems, Kyle Zackary Smith

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The biomedical industry has seen sustained growth over the past half century, with a continually increasing demand for flexible, easy-to-use, and cost-effective tools. One large area of commercial interest has been point-of-use or point-of-care diagnostics, using optical based Lab-On-Chip (LOC) style systems. Label and label-free fluorescence detection systems are common benchtop modalities that have seen recent integration into these portable, cost-effective LOC applications. However, despite their maturity, there are still opportunities to improve device characteristics, specifically in reference to throughput, limit-of-detection (LOD), and hybrid integration (along with associated costs).

Optical research avenues at WVU have focused on improving these systems …

Design Of Energy-Efficient, Scalable, And Flexible Tensor Processing Architectures With Electro-Photonic Integrated Circuits, Oluwaseun Alo

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

In recent years, artificial intelligence has achieved remarkable success across domains such as computer vision, natural language processing, and scientific computing. This progress has been driven largely by advances in deep learning, particularly deep neural networks (DNNs), including convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and transformer-based models. While these models deliver unprecedented accuracy, often surpassing human performance, their computational complexity continues to grow rapidly due to multibillion- and trillion-parameter designs. As model sizes and deployment scales expand, the demand for energy-efficient and high-throughput hardware accelerators has intensified. Conventional electronic platforms based on CPUs, GPUs, ASICs, and FPGAs are increasingly constrained by the …

Nanomagnet Based Reservoir Computing And Quantum Control, Fahim F. Chowdhury

Theses and Dissertations

Conventional CMOS scaling has driven remarkable advances in computing but faces increasing physical and energy constraints, motivating alternative computing paradigms that integrate memory and computation while improving energy efficiency. Nanoscale magnetic systems offer a promising platform for such approaches because their intrinsic nonlinear dynamics and localized magnetic fields can support both classical and quantum information processing. This thesis investigates nanomagnetic systems for physical reservoir computing and, with primary emphasis, for localized quantum control of spin qubits.

The first part explores dipole-coupled nanomagnet arrays as physical reservoirs. Micromagnetic simulations demonstrate nonlinear dynamical behavior with high short-term memory and parity-check capacity, enabling …

Frequency And Phase Synchronization Of Antenna Arrays With Phase Incoherent Microcontrollers, Harley W. Byrd

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

The construction of phased array antennas has traditionally been an expensive and complex task. It has recently been claimed that it is possible to construct high-performance Wi Fi antenna arrays using inexpensive consumer components. Motivated by some limited data available from online presentations of such devices, this thesis covers an attempt to construct a phased-array Wi-Fi antenna using several ESP32 chips, which have native Wi-Fi modulation and demodulation capabilities. While there are many positive aspects associated with utilizing ESP32 chips for this purpose, a key challenge is the inherent phase incoherence of their internal Phase Locked Loops (PLLs). The approach …

Adaptive Multi-Grade Deep Learning For Highly Oscillatory Fredholm Integral Equations Of The Second Kind, Jie Jiang, Yuesheng Xu

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

This paper studies the use of Multi-Grade Deep Learning (MGDL) for solving highly oscillatory Fredholm integral equations of the second kind. We provide rigorous error analyses of continuous and discrete MGDL models, showing that the discrete model retains the convergence and stability of its continuous counterpart under sufficiently small quadrature error. We identify the DNN training error as the primary source of approximation error, motivating a novel adaptive MGDL algorithm that selects the network grade based on training performance. Numerical experiments with highly oscillatory (including wavenumber 500) and singular solutions confirm the accuracy, effectiveness and robustness of the proposed approach.

Transverse Magnetic Mode Split Post Dielectric Resonator, Donghyun Kim, Xiaoning Ye, Chaofeng Li

Patents

A device for measuring a property of a substrate comprises an enclosure,two resonators,and two probes.The substrate has a top surface, and the enclosure defines a cavity for placing the substrate. The resonators extend into the cavity of the enclosure. The probes extend into the cavity, and each of the probes comprises a loop that extends about an axis that is substantially parallel to the top surface of the substrate so that the probes are operable to excite a transverse magnetic mode signal in the cavity.

Early-Time/High-Frequency Electromagnetic Induction Sensing For Minimal-Metal And None-Metallic Subsurface Targets, Michele Louise Maxson

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Conventional electromagnetic induction (EMI) systems operate within the quasi-static regime, where measurements are dominated by conduction currents and are primarily sensitive to highly conductive targets and bulk soil properties. As a result, these systems exhibit limited sensitivity to low-conductivity and layered media, such as permafrost, composite materials, and minimum-metal landmines, where diagnostically relevant information resides in early-time/high-frequency electromagnetic responses, generally above 100 kHz. This limitation reflects a mismatch between conventional EMI system design and the underlying target physics, restricting the ability of standard EMI approaches to resolve fine-scale non-metallic subsurface structure.

In this thesis, I investigate early-time/high-frequency sensitivity as a …

Experimental Validation Of Optical Wireless Communication And Power Transfer For Uav Applications, Fnu Dhruv

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have revolutionized emergency response, disaster assessment, and search-and-rescue operations. However, their operational efficacy is fundamentally constrained by limited battery endurance and the susceptibility of traditional radio-frequency communication to disruption in adverse weather. To address these limitations, this thesis proposes and experimentally validates a novel architecture integrating Free-Space Optical (FSO) communication with Simultaneous Lightweight Information and Power Transfer (SLIPT). This system utilizes a split-beam configuration to concurrently enable high-bandwidth data transmission and optical energy harvesting to replenish the UAV's battery pack. The research was conducted in three progressive phases. Initially, system feasibility was established through rigorous optical …

Antenna-Based Sensors For Dielectric Characterization Of Materials, Hilary Scott Nkimbeng Cho

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This research introduces antenna-based sensors for dielectric characterization aimed at overcoming the limitations of conventional microwave sensors. Although traditional microwave sensors are widely used for their noncontact operation, high sensitivity, and ability to penetrate various materials, they often face challenges such as large size and high-power consumption. To address these issues, antenna-based sensors are explored for their compactness, ease of fabrication, and flexible design adaptability across diverse sensing applications. An in-depth analysis of multiple antenna sensor configurations is conducted, followed by the design and development of high-performance sensing structures. A saw-tooth slot antenna sensor is developed for highly sensitive liquid …