Digital Commons Network^™

Range-Doppler Map Processing Chain For Marine Radar On Fpga Of An Rfsoc, Nickolas W. Ogilvie

Master's Theses

To improve the accuracy and resolution of the measurements, radar systems employ increasingly complex, resource-intensive signal processing, larger bandwidths, and higher carrier frequencies. However, implementing these improvements requires more expensive, complex electronics that are larger and use more power. Using RFSoC (Radio Frequency System on Chips) in radars can address these challenges. By combining processors, an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), and RF data converters into a single integrated circuit, RFSoCs allow for radar electronics that are physically smaller, use less power, and are simpler to design. As using RFSoCs to perform RF data conversion for radars has been already …

Implementation Of Log4net And Parametric Modeling Within The Horizon Simulation Framework, Evan Andrew Droz

Master's Theses

Creating system models and simulations allow for rapid, iterative analysis of spacecraft mission performance. This design methodology provides opportunities for improvement before allocating resources towards further physical spacecraft development. Horizon Simulation Framework (HSF) is a system evaluation tool that can be used for the assessment of spacecraft mission performance, subject to mission targets, constraints, and spacecraft design. Specific subsystems are defined for a unique mission case and are evaluated through a Day-in-the-Life (DITL) scenario simulation. Valuable information can be derived from failed attempted mission-related events, highlighting shortcomings in subsystem capabilities. Further information can be unveiled by assessing possible system sensitivity …

Design And Implementation Of A Prototype Pendulum Platform For Aerospace Controls Education, Zachary A. Wright

Master's Theses

This thesis presents a modular, low-cost, prototype inverted pendulum platform for undergraduate Aerospace control theory research and education. The platform's default configuration integrates a propeller and reaction wheel as its actuators, with multiple sensors available to measure the pendulum's states. The platform utilizes open-source software and hardware to power the actuators, and uses MATLAB/Simulink to streamline data collection. System identification techniques are applied to the platform, and the mathematical model of the pendulum is verified. Momentum exchange between the reaction wheel and propeller during closed-loop stabilization of the pendulum is demonstrated.

Hydric Physiology Of Lizards, Savannah Weaver

Master's Theses

Chapter 1: Animals can respond to extreme climate by behaviorally avoiding it, or by physiologically coping with it. We understand behavioral thermoregulation and physiological thermal tolerances, but water balance has largely been neglected. Climate change includes both global warming and changes in precipitation regimes, so improving our understanding of organismal water balance is increasingly urgent. We assessed the hydric physiology of endangered Blunt-nosed Leopard Lizards (Gambelia sila) by measuring cutaneous evaporative water loss (CEWL), plasma osmolality, body mass, and body condition throughout their active season. On average, G. sila had low CEWL that is likely desert-adaptive, and high …

Balancing Privacy And Accuracy In Iot Using Domain-Specific Features For Time Series Classification, Pranshul Lakhanpal

Master's Theses

ε-Differential Privacy (DP) has been popularly used for anonymizing data to protect sensitive information and for machine learning (ML) tasks. However, there is a trade-off in balancing privacy and achieving ML accuracy since ε-DP reduces the model’s accuracy for classification tasks. Moreover, not many studies have applied DP to time series from sensors and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. In this work, we try to achieve the accuracy of ML models trained with ε-DP data to be as close to the ML models trained with non-anonymized data for two different physiological time series. We propose to transform time series into domain-specific 2D …

Suppression Of National Identities: Ukrainian And Baltic Cultures In The Soviet Union, Jonathan H. Mastman

Master's Theses

This thesis defines the formation and consummation of Soviet Bolshevism as another imperialist force rather than its stated objective of freeing the people of the United Soviet Socialist Republics from the clutches of an inequitable elite. Through the policies and objectives of the Soviet government the workers and citizens of Ukraine and the Baltic republics were not liberated or given autonomy over their lives and labor, as Marxist-Leninism would have them believe. I review the Russification efforts found first in the Tsarist Russian Empire and then continued by Soviets in the nature of pursuing or denying cultural, political, and economic …

Development Of Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome Knock Out Protocol For Drug Substance Assay Development, Julia C. Hanna

Master's Theses

Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome (WAS) is a rare X-linked primary immunodeficiency affecting approximately 1 in 100,000 live XY births in North America and is caused by a mutation to the WAS gene which is expressed across hematopoietic lineages. The WAS protein (WASp) plays a role in regulating actin polymerization. On a cellular level, there are a variety of effects of a lack of WASp or expression of a dysfunctional WASp protein for patients including issues with migration, adhesion, chemotactic response, phagocytosis, activation, and proliferation across different cell types in addition to reduced platelet size and output. This can lead to several systematic …

Design Of Class F-Based Doherty Power Amplifier For S-Band Applications, Kyle Chang

Master's Theses

Modern RF and millimeter-wave communication links call for high-efficiency front end systems with high output power and high linearity to meet minimum transmission requirements. Advanced modulation techniques, such as orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) require a large power amplifier (PA) dynamic range due to the high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). This thesis provides the analysis, design, and experimental verification of a high-efficiency, high-linearity S-band Doherty power amplifier (DPA) based on the Class F PA. Traditional Class F PAs use harmonically tuned output matching networks to obtain up to 88.4% power-added efficiency (PAE) theoretically, however the amplifier experiences poor linearity performance due …

Contextually Dynamic Quest Generation Using In-Session Player Information In Mmorpg, Shangwei Lin

Master's Theses

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are one of the most

popular genres in video games that combine massively multiplayer online genres with

role-playing gameplay. MMORPGs’ featured social interaction and forms of level pro-

gression through quest completion are the core for gaining players’ attention. Varied

and challenging quests play an essential part in retaining that attention. However,

well-crafted content takes much longer to develop with human efforts than it does to

consume, and the dominant procedural content generation models for quests suffer

from the drawback of being incompatible with dynamic world changes and the feeling

of repetition over time. …

Development Of A Low-Cost Acoustic Gauge For Simultaneous Tide And Wave Measurement, Alexander Kalman Dunn

Master's Theses

High-quality tide and wave data are essential in a variety of fields including coastal engineering, climate science, disaster response, and recreational activities. Accurate data are publicly accessible from government organizations such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), however the high costs associated with deploying and maintaining their high accuracy gauges results in a deficit of localized data. Commercial gauges available starting at $2,000 are still expensive for local agencies and individual users to deploy and maintain. These commercial options can also be limited in their scope, accuracy, or ease of use. In this thesis, a low-cost acoustic gauge …

Examining The Use Of A Network Bypass To Circumvent Data Diodes Within Industrial Control Systems, Bryce Molesh

Master's Theses

Our modern world relies upon large scale industrial plants, that are manged by Industrial Control Systems (ICS), to provide critical services such as electricity, water, or waste processing. Over time, these systems have been increasingly connecting outdated systems to modern internet technology to provide additional functionality such as real-time monitoring while also enabling operators to conduct modern business analytics. Thus, these plants offer a potential target for attackers. Recently, such attacks on Industrial Control Systems have increased in number with well publicized attacks such as Stuxnet and TRISIS. To protect against such attacks while also modernizing their networks, Industrial Control …

Groups Of Non Positive Curvature And The Word Problem, Zoe Nepsa

Master's Theses

Given a group $\Gamma$ with presentation $\relgroup{\scr{\scr{A}}}{\scr{R}}$, a natural question, known as the word problem, is how does one decide whether or not two words in the free group, $F(\scr{\scr{A}})$, represent the same element in $\Gamma$. In this thesis, we study certain aspects of geometric group theory, especially ideas published by Gromov in the late 1980's. We show there exists a quasi-isometry between the group equipped with the word metric, and the space it acts on. Then, we develop the notion of a CAT(0) space and study groups which act properly and cocompactly by isometries on these spaces, such groups …

​ Soilborne Pathogens Of Strawberry In The Central Coast Region Of California: ​ Survey And Cover Cropping With Wheat For Management Of Macrophomina Phaseolina, Mary Steele

Master's Theses

Surveys of the four major soilborne pathogens of strawberry (Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. fragariae, Macrophomina phaseolina, Phytophthora spp., and Verticillium dahliae) to determine their relative prevalence were conducted in Watsonville-Salinas, CA in 2021 and in Santa Maria, CA in 2022. All four major pathogens were detected at relatively similar prevalence in Watsonville-Salinas, between 22% and 31% of sampled fields. In Santa Maria, M. phaseolina was far more prevalent at 52% of sampled fields, the other three falling between 14% and 17%. Additionally replicated greenhouse and field trials were conducted to evaluate the effects of wheat as …

Assessing The Resilience Of Mycorrhizal Networks Following Central Tree Removal, Deon Lillo

Master's Theses

Mycorrhizal networks (MNs), or the networks of fungal mycelia that connect plants to each other, are vital in contributing to the well-being of ecosystems. They not only assist in the transport of nutrients across an ecosystem, but also help protect an ecosystem from disease and adverse conditions. However, more research into these networks is needed and modelling these networks as graphs can help us achieve this. By applying centrality analysis and performing k-core partitioning on these networks, we are able to identify the trees that are most important and central to a MN and observe the effects of removing these …

A Resource Guide For Historic Sundown Town Resolutions, Zoning Code Updates, And General Plan Policies, Anna Rago

City and Regional Planning

James W. Loewen’s book Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, released in 2005, calls out cities across the United States for their historically discriminatory practices of excluding Black and other non-white individuals from living within city borders, either through formal exclusionary policies or informal methods. Cities often enforced this exclusionary practice through violence and intimidation, leading to “all-white” communities throughout the United States. The belief was that these communities should be “sundown” or “sunset” towns, where people of color were not allowed after dark. Loewen’s book and the following movement awakened individuals, companies, and entire cities to take …

Evaluation Of Potential Surrogates For Listeria Monocytogenes In Fresh Citrus-Specific Validation Studies, Kimiko Grace Casuga

Master's Theses

The FSMA Produce Safety Rule (PSR) requires citrus packers to more closely assess, manage, and monitor food safety risks. Although there have been no foodborne illness outbreaks and only one recall in fresh citrus, the risk of pathogens coming in on the fruit and cross contamination during washing still exists. Packhouses have dynamic washing systems and in-plant validations may be the only way to demonstrate compliance with the PSR. In-plant validations use surrogates in place of pathogens, and none have been identified or validated for citrus. The aim of this research was to identify a surrogate for use in fresh …

Mobile Firewall System For Distributed Denial Of Service Defense In Internet Of Things Networks, Lorenzo B. Gardea

Master's Theses

Internet of Things (IoT) has seen unprecedented growth in the consumer space over the past ten years. The majority of IoT device manufacturers do not, however, build their products with cybersecurity in mind. The goal of the mobile firewall system is to move mitigation of network-diffused attacks closer to their source. Attack detection and mitigation is enforced using a machine that physically traverses the area. This machine uses a suite of security tools to protect the network. Our system provides advantages over current network attack mitigation techniques. Mobile firewalls can be deployed when there is no access to the network …

Autonomous Attitude Consensus For Nanosatellite Formations In Leo, Laird J. Mendelson

Master's Theses

Consensus strategies are examined as a possible approach to achieving attitude alignment for a large, close-proximity formation of nanosatellites in low earth orbit (LEO). An attitude-only distributed consensus approach is selected for further consideration due to its comparatively low data transmission requirements. The convergence of a connected network of satellites to the attitude agreement subspace under this control law is shown using a Lyapunov stability approach with a set of idealizing assumptions. A moderate-fidelity simulation demonstrates the performance of the control law under realistic conditions that violate those assumptions. Particular emphasis is placed on the conditions that arise from the …

Effects Of Mature Recombinant Gdf9 And Bmp15 On In-Vitro Maturation Of Bovine Oocytes And Subsequent Embryo Development And Effects Of Antioxidants On Blastocyst Re-Expansion Rates, Jamie Thompson

Master's Theses

In-vitro produced embryos (IVP) differ greatly from in-vivo derived embryos (IVD) in gene expression, metabolism, development, and cryotolerance which limit the widespread use of this technology. In-vitro maturation (IVM) is one of the most important components for successful in-vitro embryo development. Growth differentiation factor 9 (GDF9) and bone morphogenetic protein 15 (BMP15) have been found to be essential during oocyte maturation and thus female fertility. These proteins are oocyte secreted factors (OSFs) and are produced with pro- and mature protein regions where the pro-regions are thought to aid in protein folding and dimerization where heterodimerization the two proteins has been …

Neural Compression Inference Accelerator: A Cost And Energy-Effective Alternative To Conventional Machine Learning Inference Methods, Matthew Wallace

Master's Theses

Recent developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence have sparked an influx of workloads that require specialized computer hardware for cloud services. The hardware running machine learning models predominantly consists of graphics processing units (GPUs) and tensor processing units (TPUs). However, these com- ponents are expensive for cloud services to purchase, costly for customers to rent, prone to price spikes, and energy-intensive. In this research we show that both cloud services and customers would benefit from utilizing field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to alleviate the aforementioned challenges. An FPGA can be configured as a machine learning accelerator, operating similarly to …

Child Sexual Assault Prevention And Intervention, Kira Peterson, Amaya Ibuna, Emily Valenzuela

Psychology and Child Development

In our paper, we discuss child sexual assault, its risk factors, short and long-term outcomes, as well as prevention and intervention programs that have been shown to be valuable. To limit research, our focus will be on children living in the United States who have been physically sexually assaulted. To spread awareness of child sexual abuse, we also developed a pamphlet (See Appendix) that will be distributed to CASAs, which stands for Court Appointed Special Advocates. The development of the pamphlet is described in the combined Method and Results section. We conclude our project and paper with a Discussion section …

Bruxism Biofeedback Device, Claire A. Dossey, Errin S. Abasolo, Isabelle A. Starr

General Engineering

This paper aims to summarize the design process for a biofeedback bruxism device, covering the necessary background research, engineering requirements, design process, prototyping, manufacturing, and testing for the device. The purpose of this project was to design an engineering solution for the treatment of bruxism. This entails both measuring and significantly reducing clenching and grinding during sleep, as many current solutions may reduce symptoms of the disorder, but do not treat bruxism itself. Engineering requirements included biocompatibility, size and weight, electrical safety, and easy of use and comfort. Many design options were proposed, and a Pugh Matrix was used to …

Maintaining Institutional Memory For Non-Commercial College Radio Fundraising, Samantha K. Riordan

Journalism

This paper outlines how to run a non-commercial, non-profit radio station fundraising program, commonly called a Pledge Drive. Cal Poly’s radio station, KCPR 91.3, hosts an annual Pledge Drive in the spring. KCPR staff, specifically the fundraising manager and marketing director, lead the KCPR team in raising funds that support our operations for the upcoming year. This paper will detail the strengths of past fundraising drives and potential improvements to fundraising drives in the future while addressing the question of: How do college radio stations create continuity in non-commercial radio fundraising to ensure success amid changing economic conditions and the …

Food Processing And Campus Market (Building 24), Ian De Vries

Fire Protection Engineering: Culminating Experience Project Reports

This report provides a prescriptive and performance-based analysis of the Food Processing Building located on Cal Poly’s campus in San Luis Obispo, California. Food science and nutrition classes take place at the facility where faculty and students manufacture food products such as chocolates, jams, and barbecue sauces. The finished products are offered for sale in the building’s mercantile area, known as the Campus Market, in addition to other retail locations around the city. The Food Processing Building is considered mixed use with portions of the building classified as moderate-hazard factory (F-1), moderate-hazard storage (S-1), business (B), mercantile (M), and assembly …

Office Building In Moffett Park District, Cody Williams

Fire Protection Engineering: Culminating Experience Project Reports

The objective of this review is to analyze and evaluate the fire safety of a 5-story office building located in the Moffett Park District in Sunnyvale, California. The building is constructed largely of mass timber and classified as a Type IIIA building used primarily as office space. The first section of the report focuses on the building’s defining characteristics and use cases. The second portion of the report presents a comprehensive review of egress design, fire alarm systems, fire suppression systems, structural design, implementation of mass timber elements, and flammability requirements. The results of the analysis show that the building …

Dhf Conference Marketing And Branding, Anna Christine Haller

Graphic Communication

The focus for my GRC 462 Senior project is to dive into my role as Director of Marketing for the annual Women In Business conference. As the Director of Marketing for the event my goal is to develop visual branding and an event identity, develop a digital marketing strategy, create marketing collateral, and present promotional marketing to increase event sign ups. My role also includes managing a marketing creative team as well as marketing strategy team. I will also discuss how the branding and marketing initiatives reflect the Women In Business community values and add to the conference experience.

Battaglini Winery: Marketing Collateral Development & Rebranding, Lexi L. Battaglini

Graphic Communication

The Battaglini Winery is a small family-run winery located in Sonoma County. The winery has no existing brand guidelines and any marketing collateral in current use has outdated information and design elements. The purpose of this project is to provide the winery with cohesive and refreshed brand guidelines while using these guidelines to generate relevant marketing materials for consumers.

Biomechanical Knee Joint For Exoskeleton, Gabriel Ireton Ahern, Calloway Miller, Christianna Altamura, Eric Mailes

Mechanical Engineering

Our senior design project consisted of designing and manufacturing a biomechanically accurate, actuated knee joint to be integrated into an exoskeleton being developed by the Lower Limb Exoskeleton Assist Project (LLEAP), a part of the EMPOWER student association at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. As the human knee flexes and extends throughout gait motion, the center of rotation changes. Currently marketed exoskeletons have one point of rotation, which over constrains the knee and causes misalignment between the user and the suit [1]. Our goal was to mimic natural knee joint motion by changing the center or rotation, thus reducing misalignment …

Turbine Integrated Pitching System, Elizabeth Costley, Josephine Maiorano, Jeff Larson, Cameron Jackson

Mechanical Engineering

The Cal Poly Wind Power Club (CPWP) tasked this senior project to design, manufacture, test, and deliver a mechanism to pitch the blades for their small-scale horizontal axis wind turbine. CPWP competes in the Collegiate Wind Competition (CWC) against schools across the country, and as such it was critical to comply with the provided competition rules in addition to the design requirement from CPWP. The purpose of the pitching mechanism is to improve the performance and efficiency of the wind turbine by allowing the blades to adjust angles with different wind speeds. Specifically, this project aimed to minimize hub size, …

Treadmill Platform For Quadrupedal Robots, Baxter J. Bartlett, Jack F. Butler, Phillip A. Shafik, Tarun S. Ganamur

Mechanical Engineering

Cal Poly Legged Robots, led by Professor Refvem and Professor Xing, has been leading Cal Poly’s attempts to simulate, produce, and test their legged robots. The initial testing of the locomotion of these robots can be dangerous to the robot since any bugs in the code could cause the robot to fall over and harm itself. Our responsibility as a team was to deliver a portable platform for testing the locomotion capabilities containing a fall prevention mechanism. In short, we have designed a platform for this purpose that consists of a treadmill surrounded by a wheeled chassis with a system …