Engineering Commons^™

An Integrated Multi-Modal Registration Technique For Medical Imaging, Xue Wang

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Registration of medical imaging is essential for aligning in time and space different modalities and hence consolidating their strengths for enhanced diagnosis and for the effective planning of treatment or therapeutic interventions. The primary objective of this study is to develop an integrated registration method that is effective for registering both brain and whole-body images. We seek in the proposed method to combine in one setting the excellent registration results that FMRIB Software Library (FSL) produces with brain images and the excellent results of Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM) when registering whole-body images. To assess attainment of these objectives, the following …

A Book Reader Design For Persons With Visual Impairment And Blindness, Luis E. Galarza

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this dissertation is to provide a new design approach to a fully automated book reader for individuals with visual impairment and blindness that is portable and cost effective. This approach relies on the geometry of the design setup and provides the mathematical foundation for integrating, in a unique way, a 3-D space surface map from a low-resolution time of flight (ToF) device with a high-resolution image as means to enhance the reading accuracy of warped images due to the page curvature of bound books and other magazines. The merits of this low cost, but effective automated book …

Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles For Wireless Localization In Search And Rescue, Virgilio Acuna

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents how unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can successfully assist in search and rescue (SAR) operations using wireless localization. The zone-grid to partition to capture/detect WiFi probe requests follows the concepts found in Search Theory Method. The UAV has attached a sensor, e.g., WiFi sniffer, to capture/detect the WiFi probes from victims or lost people’s smartphones. Applying the Random-Forest based machine learning algorithm, an estimation of the user's location is determined with a 81.8% accuracy.

UAV technology has shown limitations in the navigational performance and limited flight time. Procedures to optimize these limitations are presented. Additionally, how the UAV …

Advanced Solutions For Renewable Energy Integration Into The Grid Addressing Intermittencies, Harmonics And Inertial Response, Arash Anzalchi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Numerous countries are trying to reach almost 100\% renewable penetration. Variable renewable energy (VRE), for instance wind and PV, will be the main provider of the future grid. The efforts to decrease the greenhouse gasses are promising on the current remarkable growth of grid connected photovoltaic (PV) capacity. This thesis provides an overview of the presented techniques, standards and grid interface of the PV systems in distribution and transmission level. This thesis reviews the most-adopted grid codes which required by system operators on large-scale grid connected Photovoltaic systems. The adopted topologies of the converters, the control methodologies for active - …

Origami Reconfigurable Electromagnetic Systems, Shun Yao

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the ever-increasing demand for wireless communications, there is a great need for efficient designs of electromagnetic systems. Reconfigurable electromagnetic systems are very useful because such designs can provide multi-functionality and support different services. The geometrical topology of an electromagnetic element is very important as it determines the element’s RF performance characteristics. Origami geometries have significant advantages for launch-and-carry electromagnetic devices where devices need to fold in order to miniaturize their size during launch and unfold in order to operate after the platform has reached orbit.

This dissertation demonstrates a practical process for designing reconfigurable electromagnetic devices using origami structures. …

Bidirectional Electric Vehicles Service Integration In Smart Power Grid With Renewable Energy Resources, Ahmed A S Mohamed Mr

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As electric vehicles (EVs) become more popular, the utility companies are forced to increase power generations in the grid. However, these EVs are capable of providing power to the grid to deliver different grid ancillary services in a concept known as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and grid-to-vehicle (G2V), in which the EV can serve as a load or source at the same time. These services can provide more benefits when they are integrated with Photovoltaic (PV) generation. The proper modeling, design and control for the power conversion systems that provide the optimum integration among the EVs, PV generations and grid are investigated …

Technobiology Paradigm In Nanomedicine: Treating Cancer With Magnetoelectric Nanoparticles, Emmanuel Stimphil

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Today, cancer is the world’s deadliest disease. Despite significant progress to find a cure, especially over the last decade, with immunotherapy rapidly becoming the state of the art, major open questions remain. Each successful therapy is not only limited to a few cancers but also has relatively low specificity to target cancer cells; although cancer cells can indeed be eradicated, many normal cells are sacrificed as collateral damage. To fill this gap, we have developed a class of multiferroic nanostructures known as magnetoelectric nanoparticles (MENs) that can be used to enable externally controlled high-specificity targeted delivery and release of therapeutic …

Resilient And Real-Time Control For The Optimum Management Of Hybrid Energy Storage Systems With Distributed Dynamic Demands, Christopher R. Lashway

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A continuous increase in demands from the utility grid and traction applications have steered public attention toward the integration of energy storage (ES) and hybrid ES (HESS) solutions. Modern technologies are no longer limited to batteries, but can include supercapacitors (SC) and flywheel electromechanical ES well. However, insufficient control and algorithms to monitor these devices can result in a wide range of operational issues. A modern day control platform must have a deep understanding of the source. In this dissertation, specialized modular Energy Storage Management Controllers (ESMC) were developed to interface with a variety of ES devices. The EMSC provides …

Detecting Structural Defects Using Novel Smart Sensory And Sensor-Less Approaches, Amin Baghalian

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Monitoring the mechanical integrity of critical structures is extremely important, as mechanical defects can potentially have adverse impacts on their safe operability throughout their service life. Structural defects can be detected by using active structural health monitoring (SHM) approaches, in which a given structure is excited with harmonic mechanical waves generated by actuators. The response of the structure is then collected using sensor(s) and is analyzed for possible defects, with various active SHM approaches available for analyzing the response of a structure to single- or multi-frequency harmonic excitations. In order to identify the appropriate excitation frequency, however, the majority of …

Quantitative Yttrium-90 Bremsstrahlung Spect/Ct And Pet/Ct Study For 3d Dosimetry In Radiomicrosphere Therapy, Senait Aknaw Debebe

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Liver cancer ranks the third most common cause of cancer related mortality worldwide. Radiomicrosphere therapy (RMT), a form of radiation therapy, involves administration of Yttrium-90 (90Y) microspheres to the liver via the hepatic artery. 90Y microspheres bremsstrahlung SPECT/CT or PET/CT imaging could potentially identify an extrahepatic uptake. An early detection of such an uptake, thus, could initiate preventative measures early on. However, the quantitative accuracy of bremsstrahlung SPECT/CT images is limited by the wide and continuous energy spectrum of 90Y bremsstrahlung photons. 90Y PET/CT imaging is also possible but limited by the extremely small internal pair production decay. These limitation …

Band Gap Engineering Of 2d Nanomaterials And Graphene Based Heterostructure Devices, Md Monirojjaman Monshi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Two-Dimensional (2D) materials often exhibit distinguished properties as compared to their 3D counterparts and offer great potential to advance technology. However, even graphene, the first synthesized 2D material, still faces several challenges, despite its high mobility and high thermal conductivity. Similarly, germanene and silicene face challenges due to readily available semiconducting properties to be used in electronics, photonics or photocatalysis applications. Here, we propose two approaches to tune the band gap: One is by forming nanoribbon and edge functionalization and another by doping using inorganic nanoparticle’s interaction with 2D nanomaterials.

Edge functionalization of armchair germanene nanoribbons (AGeNRs) has the potential …

Wireless Positioning And Tracking For Internet Of Things In Gps-Denied Environments, Bekir Sait Ciftler

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Wireless positioning and tracking have long been a critical technology for various applications such as indoor/outdoor navigation, surveillance, tracking of assets and employees, and guided tours, among others. Proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, the evolution of smart cities, and vulnerabilities of traditional localization technologies to cyber-attacks such as jamming and spoofing of GPS necessitate development of novel radio frequency (RF) localization and tracking technologies that are accurate, energy-efficient, robust, scalable, non-invasive and secure. The main challenges that are considered in this research work are obtaining fundamental limits of localization accuracy using received signal strength (RSS) information with directional …

Mobility Analysis And Management For Heterogeneous Networks, Karthik Vasudeva

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The global mobile data traffic has increased tremendously in the last decade due to the technological advancement in smartphones. Their endless usage and bandwidth-intensive applications will saturate current 4G technologies and has motivated the need for concrete research in order to sustain the mounting data traffic demand. In this regard, the network densification has shown to be a promising direction to cope with the capacity demands in future 5G wireless networks. The basic idea is to deploy several low power radio access nodes called small cells closer to the users on the existing large radio foot print of macrocells, and …

Optimal Design Of Hybrid Wind/Photovoltaic Electrolyzer For Maximum Hydrogen Production Using Imperialist Competitive Algorithm, Arash Khalilnejad, Aditya Sundararajan, Arif I. Sarwat

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The rising demand for high-density power storage systems such as hydrogen, combined with renewable power production systems, has led to the design of optimal power production and storage systems. In this study, a wind and photovoltaic (PV) hybrid electrolyzer system, which maximizes the hydrogen production for a diurnal operation of the system, is designed and simulated. The operation of the system is optimized using imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA). The objective of this optimization is to combine the PV array and wind turbine (WT) in a way that, for minimized average excess power generation, maximum hydrogen would be produced. Actual meteorological …

Electronic And Magnetic Properties Of Two-Dimensional Nanomaterials Beyond Graphene And Their Gas Sensing Applications: Silicene, Germanene, And Boron Carbide, Sadegh Mehdi Aghaei

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The popularity of graphene owing to its unique properties has triggered huge interest in other two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials. Among them, silicene shows considerable promise for electronic devices due to the expected compatibility with silicon electronics. However, the high-end potential application of silicene in electronic devices is limited owing to the lack of an energy band gap. Hence, the principal objective of this research is to tune the electronic and magnetic properties of silicene related nanomaterials through first-principles models.

I first explored the impact of edge functionalization and doping on the stabilities, electronic, and magnetic properties of silicene nanoribbons (SiNRs) and …

Multiferroic Coreshell Magnetoelectric Nanoparticles As Nmr Sensitive Nanoprobes For Cancer Cell Detection, Abhignyan Nagesetti, Alexandra Rodzinski, Emmanuel Stimphil, Tiffanie Stewart, Chooda Khanal, Ping Wang, Rakesh Guduru, Ping Liang, Irina U. Agoulnik, Jeffrey Horstmyer, Sakhrat Khizroev

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Magnetoelectric (ME) nanoparticles (MENs) intrinsically couple magnetic and electric fields. Using them as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) sensitive nanoprobes adds another dimension for NMR detection of biological cells based on the cell type and corresponding particle association with the cell. Based on ME property, for the first time we show that MENs can distinguish different cancer cells among themselves as well as from their normal counterparts. The core-shell nanoparticles are 30 nm in size and were not superparamagnetic. Due to presence of the ME effect, these nanoparticles can significantly enhance the electric field configuration on the cell membrane which serves …

Physics Considerations In Targeted Anticancer Drug Delivery By Magnetoelectric Nanoparticles, Emmanuel Stimphil, Abhignyan Nagesetti, Rakesh Guduru, Tiffanie Stewart, Alexandra Rodzinski, Piang Liang, Sakhrat Khizroev

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In regard to cancer therapy, magnetoelectric nanoparticles (MENs) have proven to be in a class of its own when compared to any other nanoparticle type. Like conventional magnetic nanoparticles, they can be used for externally controlled drug delivery via application of a magnetic field gradient and image-guided delivery. However, unlike conventional nanoparticles, due to the presence of a non-zero magnetoelectric effect, MENs provide a unique mix of important properties to address key challenges in modern cancer therapy: (i) a targeting mechanism driven by a physical force rather than antibody matching, (ii) a high-specificity delivery to enhance the cellular uptake of …

Co-Design Of Security Aware Power System Distribution Architecture As Cyber Physical System, Tarek Youssef

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The modern smart grid would involve deep integration between measurement nodes, communication systems, artificial intelligence, power electronics and distributed resources. On one hand, this type of integration can dramatically improve the grid performance and efficiency, but on the other, it can also introduce new types of vulnerabilities to the grid. To obtain the best performance, while minimizing the risk of vulnerabilities, the physical power system must be designed as a security aware system.

In this dissertation, an interoperability and communication framework for microgrid control and Cyber Physical system enhancements is designed and implemented taking into account cyber and physical security …

Tunable, Room Temperature Thz Emitters Based On Nonlinear Photonics, Raju Sinha

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Terahertz (10¹² Hz) region of the electromagnetic spectrum covers the frequency range from roughly 300 GHz to 10 THz, which is in between the microwave and infrared regimes. The increasing interest in the development of ultra-compact, tunable room temperature Terahertz (THz) emitters with wide-range tunability has stimulated in-depth studies of different mechanisms of THz generation in the past decade due to its various potential applications such as biomedical diagnosis, security screening, chemical identification, life sciences and very high speed wireless communication. Despite the tremendous research and development efforts, all the available state-of-the-art THz emitters suffer from either being …

Development Of A Remotely Accessible Wireless Testbed For Performance Evaluation Of Ami Related Protocols, Utku Ozgur

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although smart meters are deployed in many countries, the data collection process from smart meters in Smart Grid (SG) still has some challenges related to consumer privacy that needs to be addressed. Referred to as Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), the data collected and transmitted through the AMI can leak sensitive information about the consumers if it is sent as a plaintext.

While many solutions have been proposed in the past, the deployment of these solutions in real-life was not possible since the actual AMIs were not accessible to researchers. Therefore, a lot of solutions relied on simulations which may not …

A Survey On Modality Characteristics, Performance Evaluation Metrics, And Security For Traditional And Wearable Biometric Systems, Aditya Sundararajan, Arif I. Sarwat, Alexander Pons

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Biometric research is directed increasingly towards Wearable Biometric Systems (WBS) for user authentication and identification. However, prior to engaging in WBS research, how their operational dynamics and design considerations differ from those of Traditional Biometric Systems (TBS) must be understood. While the current literature is cognizant of those differences, there is no effective work that summarizes the factors where TBS and WBS differ, namely, their modality characteristics, performance, security and privacy. To bridge the gap, this paper accordingly reviews and compares the key characteristics of modalities, contrasts the metrics used to evaluate system performance, and highlights the divergence in critical …

Optical Switching Using Transition From Dipolar To Charge Transfer Plasmon Modes In Ge2sb2te5 Bridged Metallodielectric Dimers, Arash Ahmadivand, Burak Gerislioglu, Raju Sinha, Mustafa Karabiyik, Nezih Pala

All Faculty

Capacitive coupling and direct shuttling of charges in nanoscale plasmonic components across a dielectric spacer and through a conductive junction lead to excitation of significantly different dipolar and charge transfer plasmon (CTP) resonances, respectively. Here, we demonstrate the excitation of dipolar and CTP resonant modes in metallic nanodimers bridged by phase-change material (PCM) sections, material and electrical characteristics of which can be controlled by external stimuli. Ultrafast switching (in the range of a few nanoseconds) between amorphous and crystalline phases of the PCM section (here Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST)) allows for designing a tunable plasmonic switch for optical communication applications with significant …