Signal Processing Commons^™

Stargrazer One: A New Architecture For Distributed Maximum Power Point Tracking Of Solar Photovoltaic Sources, Edgard Munoz-Coreas

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

The yield from a solar photovoltaic (PV) source is dependent on factors such as light and temperature. A control system called a maximum power point tracker (MPPT) ensures that the yield from a solar PV source is maximized in spite of these factors. This thesis presents a novel implementation of a perturb and observe (PO) MPPT.

The implementation uses a switched capacitor step down converter and a custom digital circuit implementation of the PO algorithm. Working in tandem, the switched capacitor step down converter and the custom digital circuit implementation were able to successfully track the maximum power point of …

Measuring And Monitoring Speech Quality For Voice Over Ip With Polqa, Visqol And P.563, Andrew Hines, Eoin Gillen, Naomi Harte

Conference papers

There are many types of degradation which can occur in Voice over IP (VoIP) calls. Of interest in this work are degradations which occur independently of the codec, hardware or network in use. Specifically, their effect on the subjective and objec- tive quality of the speech is examined. Since no dataset suit- able for this purpose exists, a new dataset (TCD-VoIP) has been created and has been made publicly available. The dataset con- tains speech clips suffering from a range of common call qual- ity degradations, as well as a set of subjective opinion scores on the clips from 24 …

Censoring And Fusion In Non-Linear Distributed Tracking Systems With Application To 2d Radar, Armond S. Conte Ii

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this research is to study various methods for censoring state estimate updates generated from radar measurements. The generated 2-D radar data are sent to a fusion center using the J-Divergence metric as the means to assess the quality of the data. Three different distributed sensor network architectures are considered which include different levels of feedback. The Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and the Gaussian Particle Filter (GPF) were used in order to test the censoring methods in scenarios which vary in their degrees of non-linearity. A derivation for the direct calculation of the J-Divergence using a particle filter …

Identification Of Hydrodynamic Forces Developed By Flapping Fins In A Watercraft Propulsion Flow Field, Erdem Aktosun

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In this work, the data analysis of oscillating flapping fins is conducted for mathematical model. Data points of heave and surge force obtained by the CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) for different geometrical kinds of flapping fins. The fin undergoes a combination of vertical and angular oscillatory motion, while travelling at constant forward speed. The surge thrust and heave lift are generated by the combined motion of the flapping fins, especially due to the carrier vehicle’s heave and pitch motion will be investigated to acquire system identification with CFD data available while the fin pitching motion is selected as a function …

Design And Software Validation Of Coded Communication Schemes Using Multidimensional Signal Sets Without Constellation Expansion Penalty In Band-Limited Gaussian And Fading Channels, Milton I. Quinteros

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

It has been well reported that the use of multidimensional constellation signals can help to reduce the bit error rate in Additive Gaussian channels by using the hyperspace geometry more efficiently. Similarly, in fading channels, dimensionality provides an inherent signal space diversity (distinct components between two constellations points), so the amplitude degradation of the signal are combated significantly better.

Moreover, the set of n-dimensional signals also provides great compatibility with various Trellis Coded modulation schemes: N-dimensional signaling joined with a convolutional encoder uses fewer redundant bits for each 2D signaling interval, and increases intra-subset minimum squared Euclidean distance (MSED) to …

Wirelessly Controlled Smart Outlet, Andrew Godsil, Ariel Dubinsky

Electrical Engineering

Popularity of home automation devices has increased greatly in recent years due to higher affordability and simplicity through smartphone and tablet connectivity. For the purpose of this experiment, we have developed the Smart Outlet: a stand-alone communication unit, used to connect home outlets to the internet. The Smart Outlet controls lighting and simple appliances throughout the home, remotely, using wireless commands from the web. A Google Calendar interface directly controls the outlets’ function by scheduling them with dedicated calendar events. The calendar’s interface can even be accessed from multiple different platforms (i.e. phones, computers, tablets) for the convenience of all …

A Study On Resource Efficient Digital Multimedia Security Measures In Mobile Devices, Prabhat Dahal

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

Advanced image and video processing abilities in smart phones and digital cameras make them popular means to capture multimedia. In addition, the integration of internet into such devices users seek to capture and easily share multimedia right from their smartphone while most steganography techniques are computer based. Hence, it is of utmost importance that the multimedia be processed for steganography right within the devices for multimedia authentication.

In this thesis, we first implement steganography into mobile smart devices that can capture multimedia. For devices such as smart phones, we propose a method to hide payload bits within video frames. The …

Low-Power Analog Processing, Daniel J. White

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

This dissertation presents the analog harmonic transform (AHT) and a first implementation in an integrated circuit. The transform is designed for a regular and simple hardware structure. It provides coefficients relating to an input signal's spectrum. These coefficients also have a simple relationship to the signal's Fouri\'er series coefficients.

The AHT is defined in its ideal form and evaluated for two example signal classification applications. Both military vehicle and bearing fault classification tasks are presented which validate the ability of a neural network to use the AHT coefficients to correctly classify the input signals. Because any real use of the …

On The Improvement Of The Capacity Of The Heterogeneous Networks With Link-Level And System-Level Approaches, Mehmet Bahadır Çelebi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Evolution of wireless services enabled the development of the advanced applications and shifted the paradigms of research in this field from voice to data centric. Such services are spreading like wildfire between users and hence, increasing the demand for large bandwidth. However, the frequency spectrum that is suitable for wireless mobile communications is already assigned to particular services from 400 MHz to several GHz. Also, allocating a large chunk of band continuously from the same part of the spectrum may not be possible due to spectral crowd. Therefore, meeting the demand for high data rate requiring wireless services within the …

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.

Calibrating Balloon Euso, Matt Rodencal

Von Braun Symposium Student Posters

No abstract provided.

Machine Learning Nuclear Detonation Features, Daniel T. Schmitt, Gilbert L. Peterson

Faculty Publications

Nuclear explosion yield estimation equations based on a 3D model of the explosion volume will have a lower uncertainty than radius based estimation. To accurately collect data for a volume model of atmospheric explosions requires building a 3D representation from 2D images. The majority of 3D reconstruction algorithms use the SIFT (scale-invariant feature transform) feature detection algorithm which works best on feature-rich objects with continuous angular collections. These assumptions are different from the archive of nuclear explosions that have only 3 points of view. This paper reduces 300 dimensions derived from an image based on Fourier analysis and five edge …

Timing Mark Detection On Nuclear Detonation Video, Daniel T. Schmitt, Gilbert L. Peterson

Faculty Publications

During the 1950s and 1960s the United States conducted and filmed over 200 atmospheric nuclear tests establishing the foundations of atmospheric nuclear detonation behavior. Each explosion was documented with about 20 videos from three or four points of view. Synthesizing the videos into a 3D video will improve yield estimates and reduce error factors. The videos were captured at a nominal 2500 frames per second, but range from 2300-3100 frames per second during operation. In order to combine them into one 3D video, individual video frames need to be correlated in time with each other. When the videos were captured …

Automated Synthetic Scene Generation, Ryan N. Givens

Theses and Dissertations

First principles, physics-based models help organizations developing new remote sensing instruments anticipate sensor performance by enabling the ability to create synthetic imagery for proposed sensor before a sensor is built. One of the largest challenges in modeling realistic synthetic imagery, however, is generating the spectrally attributed, three-dimensional scenes on which the models are based in a timely and affordable fashion. Additionally, manual and semi-automated approaches to synthetic scene construction which rely on spectral libraries may not adequately capture the spectral variability of real-world sites especially when the libraries consist of measurements made in other locations or in a lab. This …

Comparison Of Nonlinear Filtering Methods For Battery State Of Charge Estimation, Klaus Zhang

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In battery management systems, the main figure of merit is the battery's SOC, typically obtained from voltage and current measurements. Present estimation methods use simplified battery models that do not fully capture the electrical characteristics of the battery, which are useful for system design. This thesis studied SOC estimation for a lithium-ion battery using a nonlinear, electrical-circuit battery model that better describes the electrical characteristics of the battery. The extended Kalman filter, unscented Kalman filter, third-order and fifth-order cubature Kalman filter, and the statistically linearized filter were tested on their ability to estimate the SOC through numerical simulation. Their performances …

Model-Free Method Of Reinforcement Learning For Visual Tasks, Jeff S. Soldate, Jonghoon Jin, Eugenio Culurciello

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

There has been success in recent years for neural networks in applications requiring high level intelligence such as categorization and assessment. In this work, we present a neural network model to learn control policies using reinforcement learning. It takes a raw pixel representation of the current state and outputs an approximation of a Q value function made with a neural network that represents the expected reward for each possible state-action pair. The action is chosen an \epsilon-greedy policy, choosing the highest expected reward with a small chance of random action. We used gradient descent to update the weights and biases …

Multi-Channel Analysis For Gradient Artifact Removal From Concurrent Eeg-Fmri Studies, Miguel R. Castellanos, Zhongming Liu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Concurrent electroencephalogram (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recordings are susceptible to large amounts of noise due to the static and dynamic magnetic fields present inside the MR scanner. EEG-fMRI studies are conducted to provide better spatial and temporal resolution for each recording, respectively, but the artifacts found in the EEG render the data impossible to interpret. Past studies have focused on signal post-processing techniques which are able to effectively remove noise upon the completion of a study, but there are no techniques able to process the data in real-time without extensive calibration. This research addresses this issue by …

A Prototype Microwave Cavity Control Circuit For Use In Next Generation Free Electron Laser, Josh Thompson, Peter Neal Barrina, Jiayi Jiang, Joe Frisch, Steve Smith, Daniel Van Winkle

STAR Program Research Presentations

One of the current programs at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is the Linac Coherent Light Source, or LCLS. Using the existing hardware of the last third of their linear accelerator (or “linac”), SLAC has created one of the most energetic X-ray free electron lasers (or “FEL”). Since 2009, LCLS has used this FEL to perform a wide range of experiments across all sciences, most notably ultrafast filming at the molecular scale. As requests for beam-time with this laser increases, SLAC is purposing a linac upgrade to better match this demand. This upgrade, named LCLS-II, will replace existing copper radio frequency …

Design, Characterization And Application Of A Multiple Input Stethoscope Apparatus, Spencer Geng Wong

Master's Theses

For this project, the design, implementation, characterization, calibration and possible applications of a multiple transducer stethoscope apparatus were investigated. The multi-transducer sensor array design consists of five standard stethoscope diaphragms mounted to a rigid frame for a-priori knowledge of their relative spatial locations in the x-y plane, with compliant z-direction positioning to ensure good contact and pressure against the subject’s skin for reliable acoustic coupling. When this apparatus is properly placed on the body, it can digitally capture the same important body sounds investigated with standard acoustic stethoscopes; especially heart sounds. Acoustic signal inputs from each diaphragm are converted to …

Analysis Of Sensor Signals And Quantification Of Analytes Based On Estimation Theory, Karthick Sothivelr

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Compact sensor systems for on-site monitoring of groundwater for trace organic compounds are currently under development. To permit near real-time analysis of samples containing multiple analytes, the present work investigates a sensor signal processing approach based on estimation theory, specifically using Kalman Filter and Extended Kalman Filter. As a first step towards the analysis of groundwater samples containing multiple compounds, the approach presented in this work permits estimation of analyte concentration(s) in binary mixtures and single analyte samples on-line, before the sensor response reaches steady-state. Sensor signals from binary mixtures and single analyte samples of BTEX compounds (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, …