Engineering Commons^™

A Multifunctional Solar Panel Antenna For Cube Satellites, Olutosin C. Fawole

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This work presented the design of a single antenna structure that can perform the functions of about four antennas. The antenna is to be applied on a new kind of very tiny satellites. These satellites are called CubeSats. In contrast to an ordinary antenna that works at a single frequency band, the antenna designed will be able to work at about three different usable frequencies. In addition, it will be possible to make the waves emitted by the antenna to have multiple senses of rotation or no rotation at all. The multiple functional capability of the antenna will lead to …

Closed-Loop Thrust And Pressure Profile Throttling Of A Nitrous Oxide/Hydroxyl-Terminated Polybutadiene Hybrid Rocket Motor, Zachary W. Peterson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Hybrid motors that employ non-toxic, non-explosive components with a liquid oxidizer and a solid hydrocarbon fuel grain have inherently safe operating characteristics. The inherent safety of hybrid rocket motors offers the potential to greatly reduce overall operating costs. Another key advantage of hybrid rocket motors is the potential for in-flight shutdown, restart, and throttle by controlling the pressure drop between the oxidizer tank and the injector. This research designed, developed, and ground tested a closed-loop throttle controller for a hybrid rocket motor using nitrous oxide and hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene as propellants. The research simultaneously developed closed-loop throttle algorithms and lab scale …

Compressive Point Cloud Super Resolution, Cody S. Smith

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Automatic target recognition (ATR) is the ability for a computer to discriminate between different objects in a scene. ATR is often performed on point cloud data from a sensor known as a Ladar. Increasing the resolution of this point cloud in order to get a more clear view of the object in a scene would be of significant interest in an ATR application.

A technique to increase the resolution of a scene is known as super resolution. This technique requires many low resolution images that can be combined together. In recent years, however, it has become possible to perform super …

Aging-Aware Routing Algorithms For Network-On-Chips, Kshitij Bhardwaj

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Network-on-chips (NoCs) are one of the most scalable mediums to interconnect different processors in a multi-processor system. The processors are connected to routers via network interfaces and the routers are connected to each other through links. A routing algorithm is implemented inside each router that decides the path that a packet must take to reach the destination processor from the source. If a path is heavily utilized, the links and routers comprising the path start to age, and therefore can become faulty with time. In order to avoid this situation, the routing logic must be able to distribute the packets …

Multi-Functional Reconfigurable Antenna Development By Multi-Objective Optimization, Xiaoyan Yuan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Antennas are the most essential and significant elements of any wireless communication system. The most common antennas used in wireless communication systems include dipoles/monopoles, horn antennas, loop antennas, and micro-strip antennas. Each type possesses inherent advantages and disadvantages that make them satisfactory for particular applications. The properties of these antennas, however, are fixed by the initial design and cannot be changed. These fixed properties impose restrictions on the overall system performance as the antenna cannot adapt its characteristics in response to the changing propagation parameters of the wireless medium. A reconfigurable antenna, on the other hand, can dynamically change its …

Design And Characterization Of Circularly Polarized Cavity-Backed Slot Antennas In An In-House-Constructed Anechoic Chamber, Mangalam Chandak

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Small satellites have become important vehicles for space exploration. One of the challenges on these satellites is their limited surface area, which creates problems in allocating resources for devices such as antennas. Also, an effective satellite communication system often requires circularly polarized antennas. Therefore, integrating cross slot antennas around solar cells to form a multifunctional solar panel is one of the best solutions for small satellites. The cross geometry provides circular polarization and the slot configuration does not compete for any additional surface space. The main goal of this thesis was to design, fabricate, and test such type of slot …

A Study On Conformal Antenna Solutions For Cube Satellites, Maryam Jamali

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This master's thesis presents a study on two types of conformal antennas for the use on cube satellites (CubeSats). The two antenna solutions are including slot and microstrip patch antennas. CubeSats have been one of the most important vehicles for space exploration due to their small sizes and very low payload. At the same time, a challenge rises when allocating extremely limited surface real estate to space instrument, solar cells, and antennas. The most effective solution for such a challenge is to design antennas such that they do not block solar cells or compete for space with solar cells. Accordingly, …

Directed Cell Phone Antenna, Benjamin Carroll

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The purpose of this project is to design a Yagi-­‐Uda antenna with a very high forward directivity. This antenna will be built to the parameters of the Motorola Razr v3 cellular phone. The designed antenna will have a much higher forward gain than the internal antenna in the phone. This means that when the antenna is connected it will have an improved range of reception as long as the antenna is pointing in the direction of a cell tower. The impact of this project is that the signal reception of a popular model of cell phone will be drastically improved. …

The Equine Distress Monitor Project, Luke B. Peacock

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Colic is a very common symptom that effects many horses. Sometimes colic is an indicator of some very serous medical conditions that, if left untreated, could result in the death of the horse. A cast horse is a horse trapped in a prone position Cast horses are also at risk of serous injury or even death. The causes of these two conditions are so numerous that a horse's risk of being affected, while preventable, is significant. This illustrates a need for constant monitoring of high-risk, high-sentimnet, or high-cost horses.

The Equine Distress Monitor (EDM) system is non-evasive electronic long-term monitoring …

People Matching For Transportation Planning Using Optimized Features And Texel Camera Data For Sequential Estimation, Ziang Wang

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis explores pattern recognition in the dynamic setting of public transportation, such as a bus, as people enter and later exit from a doorway. Matching the entrance and exit of each individual provides accurate information about individual riders such as how long a person is on a bus and which stops the person uses. At a higher level, matching exits to entries provides information about the distribution of traffic flow across the whole transportation system. A texel camera is implemented and multiple measures of people are made where the depth and color data are generated. A large number of …

Design Of Negative Bias Temperature Instability (Nbti) Tolerant Register File, Saurabh Kothawade

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Negative Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI) is becoming a major reliability problem in the semiconductor industry. As time passes, NBTI reduces the capacity of performing correct computations in the microprocessor. Hence, after certain time period, the microprocessor may fail to work as we expect, causing failure of the entire system it is part of. In this research, we study the root cause of the failure due to NBTI effect. Based on our findings, we propose multiple methods to reduce the negative impact of NBTI on a microprocessor. We build a comprehensive experimental setup to consider real world effects in a microprocessor. …

Carrier Frequency Offset Estimation For Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, Nagaravind Challakere

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The objective of the research for this thesis is to improve the performance of the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) system by minimising the impact of frequency offset at the receive end. OFDM is a popular standard used in wireless communication systems such as cellphone networks and broadband internet. In an OFDM system, the data symbols modulate the carrier signal at the transmitter. Usually, the receiver function generator performs the demodulation task. In the absence of frequency offset compensation, the transmitted symbols can not be effectively recovered upon reception. This leads to packet loss and a degradation of the Quality …

Utilizing Correct Prior Probability Calculation To Improve Performance Of Low-Density Parity-Check Codes In The Presence Of Burst Noise, David A. Neal

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Error correcting codes help correct errors in transmitted data. These errors are caused by noise and distortion that are introduced during transmission. In some cases, there is more noise on some portions of a transmitted message than on others. This extra noise is referred to as burst noise and causes bursts of errors.

Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes are a family of error correcting codes. They provide excellent performance in many cases, but perform poorly when burst noise is present. Methods have been developed that help compensate for bursts of errors. In most cases, these do not completely account for the …