Engineering Commons^™

Open Source Software For Commercial Off-The-Shelf Gps Receivers, Andrew Greenberg

Dissertations and Theses

Inexpensive and commercially available Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers can be used in novel applications, such as nanosatellites and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), by modifying the receiver's software. Unfortunately, typical GPS software development systems cost tens of thousands of dollars and have restrictive license agreements, such as non-disclosure agreements, for both their hardware and software. This thesis describes the design and construction of an open source GPS receiver development system that addresses these unnecessary restrictions. For the first time, any developer with a PC, a commercially available GPS receiver, and this development system can quickly and easily develop software for …

Experiences Teaching Website Engagibility To Computer Science Students., Pan Liqiang, Bryan Duggan, Ronan Fitzpatrick

Conference papers

In the second year of our degree program, DT228 students study a subject called Web Development. In this paper we describe our studio classroom based teaching approach to this subject and explain how using this approach has enabled us to expand the scope of the course to include the important concept of website engagibility. We present a summary of current theories on website engagibility and explain how we incorporated these theories into the course. We further describe an experiment which we carried out in order to encourage students to reflect on website engagibility and incorporate it into their continuous assessments.

Website Engagibility: A Step Beyond Usability., Ronan Fitzpatrick, Peter Smith, Brendan O'Shea

Conference papers

There is a continuing need for quality eCommerce websites which satisfy their owner’s perspective of quality of design and visitor’s perspective of quality of use. More particularly there is a need for website owners to be able to specify what constitutes a website that will fully engage site visitors and consequently what needs to be designed into the website in order to insure return on investment. This paper argues that the term usability is inappropriate to quality websites and that website engagibility is a step beyond usability. The paper reports continuing research which seeks to identify the requirements of website …

Developing Large-Scale Field-Programmable Analog Arrays For Rapid Prototyping, Tyson S. Hall, Christopher M. Twigg, Paul Hasler, David V. Anderson

Faculty Works

Field-programmable analog arrays (FPAAs) provide a method for rapidly prototyping analog systems. While currently available FPAAs vary in architecture and interconnect design, they are often limited in size and flexibility. For FPAAs to be as useful and marketable as modern digital reconfigurable devices, new technologies must be explored to provide area efficient, accurately programmable analog circuitry that can be easily integrated into a larger digital/mixed signal system. By leveraging recent advances in floating gate transistors, a new generation of FPAAs are achievable that will dramatically advance the current state of the art in terms of size, functionality, and flexibility.

Research Directions For Service-Oriented Multiagent Systems, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh, Mark Burstein, Keith Decker, Edmund Durfee, Tim Finin, Les Gasser, Hrishikesh Goradia, Nick Jennings, Kiran Lakkaraju, Hideyuki Nakashima, H. Van Dyke Parunak, Jeffrey S. Rosenschein, Alicia Ruvinsky, Gita Sukthankar, Samarth Swarup, Katia Sycara, Milind Tambe, Tom Wagner, Laura Zavala, Mas Research Roadmap Project

Faculty Publications

Today's service-oriented systems realize many ideas from the research conducted a decade or so ago in multiagent systems. Because these two fields are so deeply connected, further advances in multiagent systems could feed into tomorrow's successful service-oriented computing approaches. This article describes a 15-year roadmap for service-oriented multiagent system research.

A Semantic Web Services Architecture, Mark Burstein, Christoph Bussler, Michal Zaremba, Tim Finn, Michael N. Huhns, Massimo Paolucci, Amit P. Sheth, Stuart Williams

Faculty Publications

The semantic Web services initiative architecture (SWSA) committee has created a set of architectural and protocol abstractions that serve as a foundation for semantic Web service technologies. This article summarizes the committee's findings, emphasizing its review of requirements gathered from several different environments. We also identify the scope and potential requirements for a semantic Web services architecture.

Using The Crytek Game Engine In The Technological University Dublin, Hugh Mcatamney, Brendan O'Shea, Fredrick Mtenzi

Conference papers

It is envisaged that within the next 10 years. the Technological University Dublin (DIT), Ireland’s largest third level university, will move to a new campus in Grangegorman, located in the north inner city of Dublin This site is currently being used as a hospital. It has twelve listed buildings and is located in a densely populated urban community. This paper describes how the Crytek 3D Game engine is being used to create a game MOD (modification) of the current hospital site, how it will be used in the construction and public consultation process of the new campus and how students …

Creating Geo-Specific Road Databases For A Real-Time Interactive Driving Simulator, Dahai Guo

Link Foundation Modeling, Simulation and Training Fellowship Reports

Geo-specific road database development is important to a driving simulation system and a very labor intensive process. Road databases for driving simulation need high resolution and accuracy. Even though commercial software is available on the market, a lot of manual work still has to be done when the road crosssectional profile is not uniform. This research deals with geo-specific road databases development, especially for roads with non-uniform cross sections. In this research, the United States Geographical Survey (USGS) road information is used with aerial photos to accurately extract road boundaries, using image segmentation and data compression techniques. Image segmentation plays …

Pattern Recognition Via Machine Learning With Genetic Decision-Programming, Carl C. Hoff

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

In the intersection of pattern recognition, machine learning, and evolutionary computation is a new search technique by which computers might program themselves. That technique is called genetic decision-programming. A computer can gain the ability to distinguish among the things that it needs to recognize by using genetic decision-programming for pattern discovery and concept learning. Those patterns and concepts can be easily encoded in the spines of a decision program (tree or diagram). A spine consists of two parts: (1) the test-outcome pairs along a path from the program's root to any of its leaves and (2) the conclusion in that …

Editorial, Robert W. Stewart, Michael W. Hoffman, Stephan Weiss

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

In the past years, digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms and architectures for baseband communication systems have fuelled the delivery of applications such as 3G mobile communications and wireless LAN to mass markets. This was made possible by a tremendous growth in the performance of computational devices such as digital signal processors and FPGAs, as well as an increase in sampling rates of conversion devices to potentially several 100 MHz. While the development of both computational devices and ADCs/DACs continues, thus permitting DSP to be applied at IF sampling rates and possibly beyond, the opportunities for further enhancing radio devices by …

Comparison Of Antenna Array Systems Using Ofdm For Software Radio Via The Sibic Model, Khoi D. Le, Michael W. Hoffman, Robert D. Palmer

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

This paper investigates the performance of two candidates for software radio WLAN, reconfigurable OFDM modulation and antenna diversity, in an indoor environment. The scenario considered is a 20m × 10m × 3m room with two base units and one mobile unit. The two base units use omnidirectional antennas to transmit and the mobile unit uses either a single antenna with equalizer, a fixed beamformer with equalizer, or an adaptive beamformer with equalizer to receive. The modulation constellation of the data is QPSK and 16-QAM. The response of the channel at the mobile unit is simulated using a three-dimensional indoor WLAN …

A Novel Role For Gadd45Β As A Mediator Of Mmp-13 Gene Expression During Chondrocyte Terminal Differentiation, Kosei Ijiri, Luiz F. Zerbini, Haibing Peng, Ricardo G. Correa, Binfeng Lu, Nicole Walsh, Yani Zhao, Noboru Taniguchi, Xu-Ling Huang, Hasan H. Otu, Hong Wang, Jian Fei Wang, Setsuro Komiya, Patricia Ducy, Mahboob U. Rahman, Richard A. Flavell, Ellen M. Gravallese, Peter Oettgen, Towia A. Libermann, Mary B. Goldring

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

The growth arrest and DNA damage-inducible 45β (GADD45β) gene product has been implicated in the stress response, cell cycle arrest, and apoptosis. Here we demonstrated the unexpected expression of GADD45β in the embryonic growth plate and uncovered its novel role as an essential mediator of matrix metalloproteinase-13 (MMP-13) expression during terminal chondrocyte differentiation. We identified GADD45β as a prominent early response gene induced by bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) through a Smad1/Runx2-dependent pathway. Because this pathway is involved in skeletal development, we examined mouse embryonic growth plates, and we observed expression of Gadd45β mRNA coincident with Runx2 protein …

Range Imaging Observations Of Pmse Using The Eiscat Vhf Radar: Phase Calibration And First Results, J. R. Fernandez, R. D. Palmer, P. B. Chilson, I. Haggstrom, M. T. Rietveld

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

A novel phase calibration technique for use with the multiple-frequency Range IMaging (RIM) technique is introduced based on genetic algorithms. The method is used on data collected with the European Incoherent SCATter (EISCAT) VHF radar during a 2002 experiment with the goal of characterizing the vertical structure of Polar Mesosphere Summer Echoes (PMSE) over northern Norway. For typical Doppler measurements, the initial phases of the transmitter and receiver are not required to be the same. The EISCAT receiver systems exploit this fact, allowing a multistatic configuration. However, the RIM method relies on the small phase differences between closely spaced frequencies. …

Phased-Array Design For Biological Clutter Rejection: Simulation And Experimental Validation, B.L. Cheong, Michael Hoffman, R.D. Palmer, Stephen J. Frasier, F.J. Lopez-Dekker

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

This paper highlights recent results obtained with the Turbulent Eddy Profiler (TEP), which was devel- oped by the University of Massachusetts. This unique 915-MHz radar has up to 64 spatially separated receiving elements, each with an independent receiver. The calibrated raw data provided by this array could be processed using sophisticated imaging algorithms to resolve the horizontal structures within each range gate. After collecting all of the closely spaced horizontal slices, the TEP radar can produce three- dimensional images of echo power, radial velocity, and spectral width. From the radial velocity measure- ments, it is possible to estimate the three-dimensional …

On The Performance Of Turbo Codes With Convolutional Interleavers, Sina Vafi, Tadeusz Wysocki

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications (to 2015)

In this paper, some issues governing the block-wise performance of convolutional interleavers used in turbo codes are presented. Two different constructions of convolutional interleaver differing by the position of stuff bits in the interleaved data block are considered here. The performance assessment is based on the contribution of each weight to the overall code performance. For the given turbo code and each utilized interleaver, weight contribution is computed to finalize the code behavior in different signal to noise ratios. Simulations have been performed to verify the conducted analysis.

Combined Asterism And Sphere Decoder For Large Asymmetric Mimo Systems, Phillip Conder, Tadeusz Wysocki

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications (to 2015)

The area of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) communications systems has received enormous attention recently as they can provide a roughly linear increase in data rate by using Multiple Transmit and Receive antennas. The optimal detection strategy for a MIMO receiver is to perform a Maximum-Likelihood (ML) search over all possible transmitted symbol combinations which has an exponential complexity when the constellation size of number of transmit antennas increase. Sphere and Asterism decoders are schemes that achieved ML performance for MIMO systems, but both have shortcomings in computational complexity, Sphere decoding when n_t > n_r and Asterism when n …

A Generalized Algorithm For The Generation Of Correlated Rayleigh Fading Envelopes In Radio Channels, Le Chung Tran, Tadeusz Wysocki, Jennifer Seberry, Alfred Mertins

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications (to 2015)

Although generation of correlated Rayleigh fading envelopes has been intensively considered in the literature, all conventional methods have their own shortcomings, which seriously impede their applicability. In this paper, a very general, straightforward algorithm for generation of an arbitrary number of Rayleigh envelopes with any desired, equal or unequal power, in wireless channels either with or without Doppler frequency shifts, is proposed. The proposed algorithm can be applied in case of spatial correlation, such as with antenna arrays in Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems, or spectral correlation between the random processes like in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems. …

Generalized Williamson And Wallis-Whiteman Constructions For Improved Square Order-8 Cois Stbc, Le Chung Tran, Tadeusz Wysocki, Jennifer Seberry, Alfred Mertins, Sarah A. Spence

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications (to 2015)

Constructions of square, maximum rate Complex Orthogonal Space-Time Block Codes (CO STBCs) are well known, however codes constructed via the known methods include numerous zeros, which impede their practical implementation. By modifying the Williamson and Wallis-Whiteman arrays to apply to complex matrices, we propose two methods of construction of square, order-4n CO STBCs from square, order-n codes which satisfy certain properties. Applying the proposed methods, we construct square, maximum rate, order-8 CO STBCs with no zeros, such that the transmitted symbols equally disperse through transmit antennas. Those codes, referred to as the improved square …

Asterism Decoding For Turbo Coded Mimo Systems, Phillip Conder, Tadeusz Wysocki

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications (to 2015)

The area of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) communications systems has received enormous attention recently as they can provide a roughly linear increase in data rate by using multiple transmit and receive antennas. MIMO combined with an Turbo coding has been shown as a promising way to achieve near capacity for wireless channels.
Where previously described decoders provide linear decoding where the number of receive antennas is at least equal to the number of transmit antennas, are computationally burdensome when n_t > n_r. Asterism decoding is a scheme that achieved ML performance for MIMO systems for any number …

Service-Oriented Computing: Key Concepts And Principles, Michael N. Huhns, Munindar P. Singh

Faculty Publications

Traditional approaches to software development - the ones embodied in CASE tools and modeling frameworks - are appropriate for building individual software components, but they are not designed to face the challenges of open environments. Service-oriented computing provides a way to create a new architecture that reflects components' trends toward autonomy and heterogeneity. We thus emphasize SOC concepts instead of how to deploy Web services in accord with current standards. To begin the series, we describe the key concepts and abstractions of SOC and the elements of a corresponding engineering methodology.

Stabilizing Inter-Domain Routing In The Internet, Yu Chen, Ajoy K. Datta, Sebastien Tixeuil

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research

This paper reports the first self-stabilizing Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). BGP is the standard inter-domain routing protocol in the Internet. Self-stabilization is a technique to tolerate arbitrary transient faults.

The routing instability in the Internet can occur due to errors in configuring the routing data structures, the routing policies, transient physical and data link problems, software bugs, and memory corruption. This instability can increase the network latency, slow down the convergence of the routing data structures, and can also cause the partitioning of networks. Most of the previous studies concentrated on routing policies to achieve the convergence of BGP while …

Design And Evaluation Of Processes For Fuel Fabrication, Georg F. Mauer

Fuels Campaign (TRP)

The goal of this research project was to provide technical support to process designers working on the development of the fuel cycles for transmutation applications. Detailed process models were developed to better define the impact of fuel choice on the transmuter fuel cycle, including relative process losses, waste generation, and plant capital cost. These process models provide insight regarding required plant size and number of plants needed to mesh with the fuel recycling line. They also determine requirements for automation.

Manufacturing models for large-scale production in a hot cell environment were also developed. Combined, these two models allow the assessment …

Unification Of Transactions And Replication In Three-Tier Architectures Based On Corba, Wenbing Zhao, Louise E. Moser, P. Michael Melliar-Smith

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In this paper, we describe a software infrastructure that unifies transactions and replication in three-tier architectures and provides data consistency and high availability for enterprise applications. The infrastructure uses transactions based on the CORBA object transaction service to protect the application data in databases on stable storage, using a roll-backward recovery strategy, and replication based on the fault tolerant CORBA standard to protect the middle-tier servers, using a roll-forward recovery strategy. The infrastructure replicates the middle-tier servers to protect the application business logic processing. In addition, it replicates the transaction coordinator, which renders the two-phase commit protocol nonblocking and, thus, …

Power Analysis And Optimization Techniques For Energy Efficient Computer Systems, Wissam Chedid, Chansu Yu, Ben Lee

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Reducing power consumption has become a major challenge in the design and operation of to-day’s computer systems. This chapter describes different techniques addressing this challenge at different levels of system hardware, such as CPU, memory, and internal interconnection network, as well as at different levels of software components, such as compiler, operating system and user applications. These techniques can be broadly categorized into two types: Design time power analysis versus run-time dynamic power management. Mechanisms in the first category use ana-lytical energy models that are integrated into existing simulators to measure the system’s power consumption and thus help engineers to …

Development Of A Motor Speed Control System Using Matlab And Simulink, Implemented With A Digital Signal Processor, Andrew Klee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes an improved methodology for embedded software development. MATLAB and Simulink allow engineers to simplify algorithm development and avoid duplication of effort in deploying these algorithms to the end hardware. Special new hardware targeting capabilities of MATLAB and Simulink are described in detail. A motor control system design served to demonstrate the efficacy of this new method. Initial data was collected to help model the motor in Simulink. This allowed for the design of the open and closed loop control systems. The designed system was very effective, with good response and no steady state error. The entire design …

Differential Radio Link Protocol: An Improvement To Tcp Over Wireless Networks, Jaideep Sarkar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

New generations of wireless cellular networks, including 3G and 4G technologies, are envisaged to support more mobile users and a variety of wireless multimedia services. With an increasing demand for wireless multimedia services, the performance of TCP becomes a bottleneck as it cannot differentiate between the losses due to the nature of air as a medium and high data load on the network that leads to congestion. This misinterpretation by TCP leads to a reduction in the congestion window size thereby resulting in reduced throughput of the system. To overcome this scenario Radio Link Protocols are used at a lower …

Famtile: An Algorithm For Learning High-Level Tactical Behavior From Observation, Brian Stensrud

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research focuses on the learning of a class of behaviors defined as high-level behaviors. High-level behaviors are defined here as behaviors that can be executed using a sequence of identifiable behaviors. Represented by low-level contexts, these behaviors are known a priori to learning and can be modeled separately by a knowledge engineer. The learning task, which is achieved by observing an expert within simulation, then becomes the identification and representation of the low-level context sequence executed by the expert. To learn this sequence, this research proposes FAMTILE - the Fuzzy ARTMAP / Template-Based Interpretation Learning Engine. This algorithm attempts …

Integration Of Real-Time Experiments With Internet Access, Pavan Talakala

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The revolution of Internet – enabled instrumentation is emerging as a revolution in Measurement and Automation. New standards are being developed for transmitting data and connecting instruments to the Internet. The main purpose of this thesis is to design and develop a system to Integrate various Real – time experiments and be able to monitor and control them over Internet using LabVIEW. LabVIEW is a graphical programming package capable of data acquisition, data analysis, data presentation and real time remote control. In this thesis a Real – time system is developed which integrates several real time experiments and remote control …

Explanations In Contextual Graphs: A Solution To Accountability In Knowledge Based Systems, Brian W. Sherwell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In order for intelligent systems to be a viable and utilized tool, a user must be able to understand how the system comes to a decision. Without understanding how the system arrived at an answer, a user will be less likely to trust its decision. One way to increase a user's understanding of how the system functions is by employing explanations to account for the output produced. There have been attempts to explain intelligent systems over the past three decades. However, each attempt has had shortcomings that separated the logic used to produce the output and that used to produce …

A Realization Of Sc-Cnn-Based Circuit Using Ftfn, Eni̇s Günay, Esma Uzunhi̇sarcikli, Recai̇ Kiliç, Mustafa Alçi

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this paper, a realization of the State Controlled Cellular Neural Network (SC-CNN)-based circuit using Four Terminal Floating Nullor (FTFN) as active element is presented. In this realization, a new version of autonomous Chua's circuit has been considered using FTFN realization of SC-CNN-based circuit. The performance of the proposed SC-CNN-based circuit is demonstrated by PSpice simulations.