Engineering Commons^™

Architecture For Intelligent Power Systems Management, Optimization, And Storage., J. Chris Foreman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The management of power and the optimization of systems generating and using power are critical technologies. A new architecture is developed to advance the current state of the art by providing an intelligent and autonomous solution for power systems management. The architecture is two-layered and implements a decentralized approach by defining software objects, similar to software agents, which provide for local optimization of power devices such as power generating, storage, and load devices. These software device objects also provide an interface to a higher level of optimization. This higher level of optimization implements the second layer in a centralized approach …

Computing The K-Hop Neighborhoods In Wireless Networks Locally, Iyad A. Kanj, Andreas Wiese, Fenghui Zhang

Technical Reports

A k-local distributed algorithm (k is a natural number) is a distributed algorithm in which the computation at every point/device in the distributed system modeled as a graph depends solely on the initial states of the points that are at most k hops away from the point. A distributed algorithm is local if it is k-local for some fixed natural number k. Local distributed algorithms are very important, especially for applications in ad-hoc sensor and wireless networks, since such algorithms are naturally scalable, robust, and fault tolerant. Clearly, an essential component of any k-local distributed algorithm is computing the k-hop …

On The Pseudo-Achromatic Number Problem, Jianer Chen, Iyad A. Kanj, Jie Meng, Gei Xia, Fenghui Zhang

Technical Reports

We study the parameterized complexity of the pseudo-achromatic number problem: Given an undirected graph and a parameter k, determine if the graph can be partitioned into k groups such that every two groups are connected by at least one edge. This problem has been extensively studied in graph theory and combinatorial optimization. We show that the problem has a kernel of at most (k-2)(k+1) vertices that is constructable in time O(m\sqrt{n}), where n and m are the number of vertices and edges, respectively, in the graph, and k is the parameter. This directly implies that the problem is fixed-parameter tractable. …

Preliminary Results With A Targeted Online Java Course, Amber Settle, Will Marrero, Chad Settle

Technical Reports

While the College of Computing and Digital Media has offered online courses for 7 years, courses targeted specifically at online students remain in the minority. In this report, we investigate both student learning and student satisfaction with a targeted online introductory Java course developed by the first co-author. Initial results show that this targeted course has equivalent outcomes with respect to student learning and strongly improved student satisfaction.

Distributed Object Tracking Using A Cluster-Based Kalman Filter In Wireless Camera Networks, Henry Medeiros, Johnny Park, Avinash Kak

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Local data aggregation is an effective means to save sensor node energy and prolong the lifespan of wireless sensor networks. However, when a sensor network is used to track moving objects, the task of local data aggregation in the network presents a new set of challenges, such as the necessity to estimate, usually in real time, the constantly changing state of the target based on information acquired by the nodes at different time instants. To address these issues, we propose a distributed object tracking system which employs a cluster-based Kalman filter in a network of wireless cameras. When a target …

Supporting Collaboration In Mobile Environments, Rohan Sen

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Continued rapid improvements in the hardware capabilities of mobile computing devices is driving a parallel need for a paradigm shift in software design for such devices with the aim of ushering in new classes of software applications for devices of the future. One such class of software application is collaborative applications that seem to reduce the burden and overhead of collaborations on human users by providing automated computational support for the more mundane and mechanical aspects of a cooperative effort. This dissertation addresses the research and software engineering questions associated with building a workflow-based collaboration system that can operate across …

Toward Formalizing Non-Monotonic Reasoning In Physics: The Use Of Kolmogorov Complexity, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

When a physicist writes down equations, or formulates a theory in any other terms, he usually means not only that these equations are true for the real world, but also that the model corresponding to the real world is "typical" among all the solutions of these equations. This type of argument is used when physicists conclude that some property is true by showing that it is true for "almost all" cases. There are formalisms that partially capture this type of reasoning, e.g., techniques based on the Kolmogorov-Martin-Lof definition of a random sequence. The existing formalisms, however, have difficulty formalizing, e.g., …

Matlab Report, Nancy Hale

Cornerstone 3 Reports : Interdisciplinary Informatics

The objective of this effort is to create a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving using technology. Through Thinkfinity, the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems is collaborating with the science and quantitative faculty to create lessons that can be used by high school and first -year college students to work interactively with data to solve problems. MatLab is the tool of choice. It gives the user the ability to create visual models of large data sets and is used in the science and finance areas.

The key features of MatLab:

• Interactive tools for iterative exploration, design, and …

Testing The Value Of A Time-Based Language Model For Speech Recognition, Nisha Kiran, Nigel Ward

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Speech recognition relies on the language model in order to decode an utterance, and in general a better language model improves the performance of a speech recognizer. We have recently found that a time-based language model can improve on a standard trigram language model in terms of perplexity. This technical report presents the evaluation of this new language model in the context of speech recognition. First, a basic speech recognizer was built using the HTK tool. Then the recognizer was run using the standard language model and using the time-based one. On a testset of 39,147 words from the Switchboard …

Resource-Constrained Load Balancing Controller For A Parallel Database, Z. Tang, J. Douglas Birdwell, J. Chiasson, Chaouki T. Abdallah, Majeed M. Hayat

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

This brief documents experimental results using a deterministic dynamic nonlinear system for load balancing, previously reported by Tang et al. in a cluster of computer nodes used for parallel computations in the presence of time delays and resource constraints. While previous publications by the authors have provided theoretical analysis of this load-balancing strategy using an idealized model, and have documented experiments using a simulated database, experimental results using a complete database for DNA profiles are documented here. Evaluation of the proposed load-balancing strategy using an actual database was critical because of several characteristics of the database that cannot be accurately …

Cs 242: Computer Programming Iii, Guozhu Dong

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Cs 480/680: Comparative Languages, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

This course will introduce fundamental concepts and paradigms underlying the design of modern programming languages. For concreteness, we study the details of an object-oriented language (e.g. Java), and a functional language (e.g., Scheme). The overall goal is to enable comparison and evaluation of existing languages. The programming assignments will be coded in Java 5 and in Scheme.

Cs 415: Social Implications Of Computing, Leo Finkelstein

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

CS 415 is a communication skills course using as its subject matter current salient issues associated with the social implications of computing. In addition to the course text, you will need to use certain reading materials in the library and elsewhere, and you will be responsible for using concepts and theories provided in class lectures and discussions.

Cs 240: Computer Programming I, Travis E. Doom

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

Basic concepts of programming and programming languages are introduced. Emphasis is on structured programming and stepwise refinement. Prerequisite: MTH 130 or MPL 5.

Cs 205-02: Introduction To Computers And Office Productivity Software, John P. Herzog

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

Focus on learning MS Office software applications including word processing (intermediate), spreadsheets, database and presentation graphics using a case study approach where critical thinking and problem solving skills are required. Computer concepts are integrated throughout the course to provide an understanding of the basics of computing, the latest technological advances and how they are used in industry. Ethics and issues encountered in business are discussed to challenge students on societal impact of technology.

Ceg 720-01: Computer Architecture I, Soon M. Chung

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

Review of sequential computer architecture and study of parallel computers. Topics include memory hierarchy, reduced instruction set computer; pipeline processing, multiprocessing, various parallel computers, interconnection networks, and fault-tolerant computing. 3 hours lecture and 2 hours lab.

Ceg 233-01: Linux And Windows, Bin Wang

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

Introduction to Linux and Windows systems. GUI and Windowing Systems. Files and Directories. Ownership and Sharing. Programs and Processes. System calls, Libraries. Loading. Dynamic linking. Command Line Shells. Scripting languages. Regular expressions. Clients and Servers. Web browser clients and HTTPS. System Administration. 4 credit hours. 3 hours labs, 2 hours labs. Prerequisites: None.

Ceg 460/660-01: Computer Engineering, Eric Maston

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

This course is concerned with the techniques of designing and constructing large program. Some of the required basic concepts necessarily have to be developed using small programs as examples. To this extent, we also study programming-in-the-small. The overall objectives are to present an overview of issues in the development of software, to discuss terminology, to illustrate via example case studies, and to give sufficiently detailed advice on how to develop quality software. Hands-on experience is emphasized through the use of homework and a class project.

Ceg 720-01: Computer Architecture, Jack Jean

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Ceg 433/633-01: Operating Systems, Yong Pei

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

This course provides an introduction to operating system design. Topics to be covered include: Operating system structures, Operating system interfaces, Process management and scheduling, Inter-process communication, File systems and Memory management and Device access.

Ceg 360/560-01: Digital System Design, Travis E. Doom

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

Design of digital systems. Topics include flip-flops, registers, counters, programmable logic devices, memory devices, register-level design, and microcomputer system organization. Students must show competency in the design of digital systems. 3 hours lecture, 2 hours lab. Prerequisite: CEG 260.

Cs 241: Computer Programming Ii, Eric Maston

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

This is the second course in the Introduction to Computer Programming series. A continuation of CS240. The emphasis is on data abstraction and software development. Prerequisite: CS240.

Independent Study On Infinite Graph Theory, Martin Zimmermann

Technical Reports

In this paper we will prove some results about infinite graphs. We show that for every linear order there is a graph with a distinguished vertex such that the edges adjacent to that vertex have the given order in any plane drawing. The other results are concerned with connectivity. We prove a generalization of a characterization of 2-­connected graphs and prove that k-­connectedness does not imply the existence of finite k­connected subgraphs for k > 2.

Bag-Of-Visual-Words Expansion Using Visual Relatedness For Video Indexing, Yu-Gang Jiang, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Bag-of-visual-words (BoW) has been popular for visual classification in recent years. In this paper, we propose a novel BoW expansion method to alleviate the effect of visual word correlation problem. We achieve this by diffusing the weights of visual words in BoW based on visual word relatedness, which is rigorously defined within a visual ontology. The proposed method is tested in video indexing experiment on TRECVID-2006 video retrieval benchmark, and an improvement of 7% over the traditional BoW is reported.

Searching Blogs And News: A Study On Popular Queries, Aixin Sun, Meishan Hu, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Blog/news search engines are very important channels to reach information about the real-time happenings. In this paper, we study the popular queries collected over one year period and compare their search results returned by a blog search engine (i.e., Technorati) and a news search engine (i.e., Google News). We observed that the numbers of hits returned by the two search engines for the same set of queries were highly correlated, suggesting that blogs often provide commentary to current events reported in news. As many popular queries are related to some events, we further observed a high cohesiveness among the returned …

Congestion Mitigation In Wireless Sensor Networks Using Single-Hop Backpressure Algorithm, Vijay Shekar Mangilipalli Gangu Sham

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Wireless sensor networks consist of a group of small components with limited resources allocated to sense the environment and transmit data to the user or interpreter. This concept is technically evolved from Sensors that are basically used to sense the environment around and collect data based on the sensing application incorporated in them. An extension to functionality of the sensors leads to the concept of sensor networks, where, in addition to gathering information at individual sensors, the data is processed and transmitted to a central station or Base station. This concept of transmitting the information from one node to the …

Performance Of Adaptive Wireless Systems With Feedback, Sirisha Koduri

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Future generations of wireless systems will employ versatile transmitters and receivers based on software defined radios that are capable of adapting in response to changes in the operating environment to meet the specified quality of service requirements. In adaptive wireless systems, transmitters use feedback from the receiver to update characteristics of the transmitted signal to changing patterns of interference. In this thesis, the performance of transmitter adaptation algorithms with limited feedback and the system performance as a function in which the interference information is quantized for transmission over the feedback channel are analyzed. The results of this thesis were presented …

Integrating Preservation Functions Into The Web Server, Joan A. Smith

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Digital preservation of theWorldWideWeb poses unique challenges, different fromthe preservation issues facing professional Digital Libraries. The complete list of a website’s resources cannot be cited with confidence, and the descriptive metadata available for the resources is so minimal that it is sometimes insufficient for a browser to recognize. In short, the Web suffers from a counting problem and a representation problem. Refreshing the bits, migrating from an obsolete file format to a newer format, and other classic digital preservation problems also affect the Web. As digital collections devise solutions to these problems, the Web will also benefit. But the core …

Using Agile Software Development Practices In A Research Oriented Distributed Simulation, Douglas James Mielke

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Although sometimes controversial, agile methodologies have proven to be a viable choice for some software development projects. Projects suited to agile methodologies are those that involve new technology, have requirements that change rapidly, and are controlled by small, talented teams. Much literature about agile software development leans towards business products and non-government entities. Only a handful of literature resources mention agile software development being used in government contracts and even fewer resources mention research projects. NASA's Airspace and Traffic Operations Simulation (ATOS) is a research oriented simulation that doesn't follow the traditional business project mold. In an effort to gain …

Extending The Network Life Time In Wsn Using Energy Efficient Algorithm, Venkata Sesha Sai Koundinya Goparaju

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Wireless Sensor networks have many potential applications. These wireless sensor networks necessitate specific design requirements of which energy efficiency is vital. The sensor networks consist of sensor nodes that operate on battery power, and replacement of these batteries is very often a strenuous task, since networks are deployed in areas where the act of replacing the batteries proves impractical.

With the limited available energy of sensor nodes, most of the energy is drained during communication. An energy efficient routing algorithm can prolong the lifetime of the network by gradually depleting the nodes in the network. Many of the routing protocols …