Engineering Commons^™

Un-Fair Trojan: Targeted Backdoor Attacks Against Model Fairness, Nicholas Furth

Theses

Machine learning models have been shown to be vulnerable against various backdoor and data poisoning attacks that adversely affect model behavior. Additionally, these attacks have been shown to make unfair predictions with respect to certain protected features. In federated learning, multiple local models contribute to a single global model communicating only using local gradients, the issue of attacks become more prevalent and complex. Previously published works revolve around solving these issues both individually and jointly. However, there has been little study on the effects of attacks against model fairness. Demonstrated in this work, a flexible attack, which we call Un-Fair …

Design And Implementation Of Photovoltaic Energy Harvesting Automaton, Iskandar Askarov

Theses

Global domestic electricity consumption has been rapidly increasing in the past three decades. In fact, from 1990 to 2020, consumption has more than doubled from 10,120 TWh to 23,177 TWh [1]. Moreover, consumers have been turning more towards clean, renewable energy sources such as Photovoltaic. According to International Energy Agency, global Solar power generation alone in 2019 has reached almost 3% [4] of the electricity supply. Even though the efficiency of photovoltaic panels has been growing, presently, the highest efficiency solar panels available to an average consumer range only from 20%-22% [14]. Many research papers have been published to increase …

Model-Based Deep Siamese Autoencoder For Clustering Single Cell Rna-Seq Data, Zixia Meng

Theses

In the biological field, the smallest unit of organisms in most biological systems is the single cell, and the classification of cells is an everlasting problem. A central task for analysis of single-cell RNA-seq data is to identify and characterize novel cell types. Currently, there are several classical methods, such as K-means algorithm, spectral clustering, and Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs), which are widely used to cluster the cells. Furthermore, typical dimensional reduction methods such as PCA, t-SNE, and ZIDA have been introduced to overcome “the curse of dimensionality”. A more recent method scDeepCluster has demonstrated improved and promising performances in …

A Decision Making Tool For Sustainable Design In Construction, Enda Collins

Theses

This report defines sustainability and sustainable development before any research is carried out. This is necessary so that the research carried out further in the report makes sense and there is a reason for including such items in this report. The need for this project and what the project aims to achieve is also highlighted in the introduction of this report.

Sustainability is made up of three equal parts; social, economic and environmental. This report goes through each item and gives examples of each type of development. Having discussed sustainability in a broad sense the report then focuses on Legislation …

Segmentation And Model Generation For Large-Scale Cyber Attacks, Steven E. Strapp

Theses

Raw Cyber attack traffic can present more questions than answers to security analysts. Especially with large-scale observables it is difficult to identify which packets are relevant and what attack behaviors are present. Many existing works in Host or Flow Clustering attempt to group similar behaviors to expedite analysis; these works often phrase the problem directly as offline unsupervised machine learning. This work proposes online processing to simultaneously model coordinating actors and segment traffic that is relevant to a target of interest, all while it is being received. The goal is not just to aggregate similar attack behaviors, but to provide …

Visualising Urban Flooding Scenarios Using Video Game Technology, William Elliott Lynn

Theses

This thesis investigates the application of computer graphics to the visualisation of urban flooding scenarios. The demand for urban flooding visualisations is presented in the context of an EU wide climate change response strategy. An analysis of the requirements from various stakeholders is presented and a strategy that addresses these requirements is synthesised. A study on the appropriate computer graphics methods and technologies is outlined and limitations of current technologies are assessed. Systems that solve these limitations are described and the result of usability and user acceptance testing are offered as evidence.

Semi-Automatic Management Of Knowledge Bases Using Formal Ontologies, Andreas Textor

Theses

This thesis presents an approach that deals with the ever-growing amount of data in knowledge bases, especially concerning knowledge interoperability and formal representation of domain knowledge. There arc multiple issues that must be addressed with current systems. A multitude of different formats, sources and tools exist in a domain, and it is desirable to develop their use further towards a standardised environment. Such an environment should support both the representation and processing of data from this domain, and the connection to other domains, where necessary. In order to manage large amounts of data, it should be possible to perform whatever …

Automated Network Planning For Industrial Ethernet Networks, Holger Machens

Theses

Engineers usually use computer aided methods to ease the increasingly complex planning task of automation plants. One such computer aided method for automated planning of Industrial Ethernet networks under given network QoS requirements is presented in this thesis. The method is based on partitioning the given set of network nodes according to specified communication relationships between the nodes, thereby creating subsets of nodes which are joined using given networking algorithms. Several networking algorithms may be applicable for each subset of nodes and any complete solution is a combination of several partial solutions, one for each subset of nodes. Enumeration through …

Lightweight Objective Quality Of Voice Estimation Through Machine Learning, Daniel Riordan

Theses

Communication systems are undergoing constant and rapid innovation, both at the design stage and in the field. This in turn has led to an inereasing need for fast, efficient, portable and economic methods for the testing of these systems. For voice carrying communication systems the quality of the transmitted voice that the system produces is a large factor in the overall performance rating of the system. This measure is known as the ‘Quality of Voice’ (QoV) and can be evaluated either subjectively or objectively.

Speech quality is a complex subjective phenomenon that can be best quantified by subjective testing. A …

Optimization In Multi-Agent Systems : Structures And Procedures, Ingo Stengel

Theses

The main advantage for the use of agent technology is in the capacity of agents to represent the interests of individual entities and to act autonomously on their behalf. In multi-agent systems this involves communication, coordination and negotiation.

The focus of this dissertation is to find ways to optimize multi-agent systems at different levels by taking into consideration their structure and the procedures used. As optimization depends to a large extent on the problem to be solved, group forming scenarios, in which self-interested agents compete to form and join groups, have been selected here for consideration. Optimization issues are discussed …

Elliptic Curve Cryptography Security On Restricted Mobile Devices, Debbie Mccann

Theses

Mobile technologies with limited resources, such as smart phones or PDAs, have increased dramatically in popularity. However, the level of security provided for these technologies has not kept pace with the value of the data that they contain or transmit.

Wireless networks usually provide some security, in the form of encryption. GSM and GPRS use different forms of the A5 algorithm, and Wi-Fi uses WEP or WPA. These encryption algorithms have proven weaknesses and in some cases have been efficiently cracked. To improve the security of wireless networks, stronger encryption algorithms need to be developed. One of the most attractive …

Management Framework For Hybrid Wireless Networks, Chong Shen

Theses

The objective of the Hybrid Wireless Network with dedicated Relay Nodes (HWN*) architecture is to interface the Base Station (BS) Oriented Mobile Network (BSON) and the 802.fix based Mobile Ad hoc Wireless Network (MANET) so that one system can be utilised as an alternative radio access network for data transmissions, while the incorporation of Relay Nodes (RN) is to extend the communication coverage, optimise medium resource sharing, increase spatial reuse opportunity, stabilise MANET link and create more micro-cells. The HWN* keeps the existing cellular infrastructure and a Mobile Terminal (MT) can borrow radio resources from other cells via secure multi-hop …

A Distributed Ai Approach For Large-Scale Wlan Design, Alan Mcgibney

Theses

The recent dramatic trend towards always-on-connectivity has driven the need for mobile ubiquitous computing environments with the advent of the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) seeing a shift from traditional wired networks to wireless networking. A WLAN typically contains a number of access points that allow wireless enabled clients access information and network resources such as the internet without the need for wires, offering flexibility and mobility to the users. Initial wireless networks were convenience based allowing users access to the primary wired network, and involved little planning prior to roll-out. The proliferation of low cost wireless devices combined wdth …

Personal Information Management. A Framework For Development Of Personalisable Web Based Services, Christopher Fuchs

Theses

The thesis research proposed herein will model, analyse and implement strategies for the development of personalised services. The goal of the research work is to design and implement a framework which supports developers by minimising the effort required in implementing personalised services. This includes the ability to react to localisation changes and to present proper information. An overall design goal is the independency of most components from each other which will be attained through the use of standard technologies and protocols and the consistent use of a component model. The result will include the proposed framework and the analyses of …

Anaerobic Digestion: Decision Support Software, Marco Poliafico

Theses

Ireland has significant quantities of livestock; meat exportation is a vibrant sector of the economy. Environmental management of animal wastes has therefore become an important concern. On the other hand in the last decade, national and EU policy debate has highlighted the need to investigate alternative energy: in particular energy for transport.

This study investigates the quantities of animal wastes produced in Ireland and their potential treatment using Anaerobic Digestion technologies. In 2005 Ireland had over 8 millions animals (cattle and pigs) and the annual slaughter accounted for over 4.2 million of these creatures. These animals have been responsible for …

Development Of A Service-Oriented Communication Platform For Heterogeneous Voice Over Ip Networks., Aisling O'Driscoll

Theses

As broadband services have become more widespread in recent years due to a variety of government initiatives and the establishment of Wireless Internet Service Providers, user requirements have evolved and the market has become more competitive. Whilst this is beneficial for consumers it means that Internet Service Providers must offer a more diverse range of services coupled with standard broadband packages to distinguish themselves from their competitors, generate new revenue and strengthen their competitive advantage. Therefore many providers are looking to Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) to provide communication platforms, enabling services such as Voice over IP (VoIP) along with other …

Numerical Modelling Of Sediments In Cork Harbour, Jérémy Pingon

Theses

In recent years there have been considerable developments in the new and emerging field of hydroinformatics. This relatively new discipline is concerned with the application of computer and networking technology for the planning, management and protection of water bodies.

Environmental issues in estuaries require accurate and detailed knowledge of cohesive sediment transport processes to assess different issues including water quality, pollutant dispersion, and dredging and maintenance of navigation channels.

This thesis presents a review of the main sediment properties and processes required for modelling the behaviour and transport of sediments. It also introduces a new approach to sediment properties using …

Design And Analysis Of Radio Frequency Deployment Algorithms For Gsm, Mónica Pérez-Carbonell

Theses

Due to the growth of the subscriber base and the introduction of new services, mobile communications networks’ demand for wireless resources is increasing. This has resulted in an increasing need to change the frequency allocation of a network in order to adapt the cellular network to new frequency demands.

Currently, a planning tool generates a new frequency plan, which is. then deployed to cell sites. The deployment should ideally be carried out with minimum disruption to network operation, which makes this deployment process a critical undertaking as any errors during or after the deployment can leave the network with poor …

Design And Implementation Of An Intranet-Solution Especially With Workflow Aspects, Robert Loew

Theses

An Intranet support a new or simply an easier information system for all the workers within a company using internet technology. On the one hand, employees can use Web technology and very simple tools to provide and navigate information. On the other hand, the costly and time-consuming business of installing and maintaining software on local PCs can be avoided by using Browser-based Intranet applications. Ideally, it would be possible to access all forms of information processing using one and the same Web browser. This is the aim of the Intranet Project upon which this thesis is based.

Various technologies for …

Security In Distributed Systems - A Framework For Different Application Types, Ingo Stengel

Theses

Security is a factor which decides upon the applicability of distributed applications. Therefore this thesis deals with security in distributed systems. The complexity of the existing distributed technologies makes it necessary to reduce the number of distributed technologies considered in this thesis, i.e. concentrating on: Java, Mobile Agents and CORBA, where only Java-based mobile agents will be considered.

After a short review of basic security principles including firewalls, existing security problems in the above mentioned distributed technologies are analysed. Additional generic problems in distributed systems are outlined.

Solutions are referring to two different areas: those regarding security problems with firewalls …

Enterprise Business Objects : Design And Implementation Of A Business Object Framework, Kai-Uwe Schafer

Theses

Software components representing business entities like customer or purchase order introduce a new way of Online Transaction Processing to business applications. Collaborating business objects allow to complete whole business processes as a single distributed transaction, instead of dividing it into queued steps, which sometimes even require user intervention. This IS due to the fact that business objects contain both business data and logic and that they incorporate multiple databases from different vendors and different geographic locations in a single transaction.

Business objects cannot be used as stand-alone components, but require a framework of services that manage persistence, concurrent transactions, and …

Virtual Reality Modelling Of A Cnc Machine, Damian O'Sullivan

Theses

The increasing importance of training and upgrading skills has led to the use of new interactive technologies in the development of more effective training tools. Previous techniques for training Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine operators, while excellent for their time, varied from brief inexpensive tutorials to expensive on the job training. A CNC machine uses a computer to perform the functions of the machine using a part program stored in the memory of the computer. This thesis describes a Virtual Reality (VR) model of a CNC milling machine, implemented within a VR environment representing a CNC workshop. Its development and …