Engineering Commons^™

Roadway-Embedded Transmitters And Multi-Pad Receivers For High Power Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer, Benny J. Varghese

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Electric vehicles (EVs) offer considerable economic and environmental benefits to society. Despite the decreasing vehicle costs and increasing range of newer EVs, the problem of range anxiety still exists. Range anxiety, at its core, is an issue of charging speeds rather than a concern about the driving range. Dynamic wireless charging of EVs is seen as a potential solution to this issue of range anxiety. Further, wireless charging technology also helps the push towards level 5 autonomy and opens new opportunities for how an EV can be utilized.

Dynamic wireless power transfer (DWPT) systems typically require a high initial investment …

Low Power Reconfigurable Antenna With Continuous Beam Steering Capability, Glendyn Darryn King

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Each year, the number of wireless devices increases, and the size of the devices’ data is increases, 8k video streaming, for example. More and more bandwidth is needed for wireless networks to meet these growing demands. Higher frequencies allow for more bandwidth; however, using higher frequencies comes with some trade-offs. The higher the wireless signal frequency, the shorter the distance it can travel before the signal strength becomes too weak for the receiver to pick it up. One solution might be to increase the power of the signal provider, but that would waste a lot of energy. Most antennas radiate …

Analysis And Design Of 3-Phase Unfolding Based Ac-Dc Battery Chargers, Rees R. Hatch

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis presents the analysis and design of high-efficiency battery chargers for heavy duty EV applications. The rise in popularity of the electric vehicles (EVs) due to their increased efficiency over conventional internal combustion engines, has driven the need for more battery charging infrastructure. Furthermore, heavy duty vehicles are also being converted to electric to fill needs such as public transportation via bus fleets as well as cargo delivery via semi-trucks. Such heavy duty vehicles require more energy than personal transportation vehicles and thus require larger battery packs. To charge heavy duty battery packs in the same amount of time …

Embracing Low-Power Systems With Improvement In Security And Energy-Efficiency, Pramesh Pandey

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As the economies around the world are aligning more towards usage of computing systems, the global energy demand for computing is increasing rapidly. Additionally, the boom in AI based applications and services has already invited the pervasion of specialized computing hardware architectures for AI (accelerators). A big chunk of research in the industry and academia is being focused on providing energy efficiency to all kinds of power hungry computing architectures. This dissertation adds to these efforts.

Aggressive voltage underscaling of chips is one the effective low power paradigms of providing energy efficiency. This dissertation identifies and deals with the reliability …

Alternative Doppler Extraction For Indoor Communication Signals, Thomas L. Bradshaw

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Radar is a common detection system for detecting the speed and velocity of moving objects. Radar is performed by transmitting a radio signal in the direction of a moving object and then processing the received reflected radio waves. The radar system processes the received signal to extract the Doppler frequency of the reflected waves, which reveals information about the velocity of the object. In traditional radar, the system uses one antenna for both the transmitter and the receiver.

In passive bistatic radar, the transmit antenna and receiver antenna are separated. In addition, the radar system has no control over the …

Control Of Series Connected Battery Powered Modules, Joshua K. Wooten

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Batteries are a very common type of power source used for all sorts of applications. However, these batteries do not last forever. The purpose of this thesis is to explain and implement a strategy which allows batteries to have a second life; to be able to be re-charged and re-used for another set period of time once they no longer meet a system’s requirements. The preferable way to do this is to make each cell have the same state of charge (SOC) which will lead to a longer lasting battery pack. These batteries will be hooked up to a battery …

Active Stability Monitoring And Stability Control Of Dc Microgrids Using Incremental Continuous Injection, Rohail Hassan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Electrified transportation and integration of renewable energy in the electric power grid requires the use of power electronic converters for integrating different forms of power; from ac to dc, dc to ac, dc to dc, etc. Recent trend towards electrifying automobiles, aircraft and ships, and increasing penetration of renewable energy has increased the required power levels and number of the power electronics converters connected together in a dc microgrid system. Stable operation of these interfacing converters for all operating conditions has been a topic of renewed interest in the last couple of decades. Traditionally, dc microgrids have been designed conservatively …

Raw Depth Image Enhancement Using A Neural Network, Xuan Xie

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The term image is often used to denote a data format that records information about a scene’s color. This dissertation object focuses on a similar format for recording distance information about a scene, “depth images”. Depth images have been used extensively in consumer-level applications, such as Apple’s Face ID, based on depth images for face recognition.

However, depth images suffer from low precision and high errors, and some post-processing techniques need to be utilized to improve their quality. Deep learning, or neural networks, are frameworks that use a series of hierarchically arranged nonlinear networks to process input data. Although each …

Three-Phase Unfolding Based Soft Dc-Link Converter Topologies For Ac To Dc Applications, Dorai Babu Yelaverthi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plugin hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are more efficient than internal combustion-based vehicles. Adaption of EVs will help reduce the carbon emissions produced by the transportation sector. The charging infrastructure has to grow at a rapid pace to encourage EV adaption. Installing higher capacity fast chargers will help alleviate the range anxiety of battery electric vehicle customers. More public charging stations are required for the full adaption of EVs. Utility power is distributed as ‘alternating current.’ A battery requires ‘direct current’ (DC) source to charge it. Hence a power converter that converts AC source to DC …

Algorithms For The Calibration And Correction Of Texel Images Using Inertial Measurement Updates, Trevor C. Welch

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A 3D terrain map can be developed to survey the earth’s surface and provide scientists with a method of accurately modeling terrain. Some of the applications include agricultural surveys, disaster management, and object classification. In order to develop a 3D terrain map, a sensor must capture all of the data to create the map. This 3D mapping tool can be made by combining a sensor that take samples of points on the earth’s surface and combines that with a digital camera that takes an image and lays it across those samples of the earth.

In order to take data over …

Design Of Miniaturized Sweeping Langmuir Probe And Electric Field Probe For The Sport Mission, Nathan P. Tipton

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Scintillation Prediction Observation Research Task (SPORT) is a joint United States of America and Brazil 6U CubeSat mission. The US is providing the science instruments and the spacecraft launch. Brazil is providing the spacecraft bus, integration, and operations. Utah State University will provide four instruments for the mission as part of the US contribution in a suite called the Space Weather Probes (SWP). These instruments are the Sweeping Langmuir Probe (SLP), the Electric Field Probe (EFP), and the Sweeping Impedance Probe (SIP). Higher frequency components of the SLP and EFP will be observed through a Wave Spectrometer (WS). These …

Development Of A Two-Level Warping Algorithm And Its Application To Speech Signal Processing, Al-Waled H. Al-Dulaimi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In many different fields there are signals that need to be aligned or “warped” in order to measure the similarity between them. When two time signals are compared, or when a pattern is sought in a larger stream of data, it may be necessary to warp one of the signals in a nonlinear way by compressing or stretching it to fit the other. Simple point-to-point comparison may give inadequate results, because one part of the signal might be comparing different relative parts of the other signal/pattern. Such cases need some sort of alignment todo the comparison. Dynamic Time Warping ( …

Hardware Implementations Of Ccsds Deep Space Ldpc Codes For A Satellite Transponder, Dana R. Sorensen

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

Error-correction coding is a technique that adds mathematical structure to a message, allowing corruptions to be detected and corrected when the message is received. This is especially important for deep space satellite communications, since the long distances and low signal power levels often cause message corruption. A very strong type of error-correction coding known as LDPC codes was recently standardized for use with space communications. This project implements the encoding and decoding algorithms required for a small satellite radio to be able to use these LDPC codes. Several decoder architectures are implemented and compared by their performance, speed, and complexity. …

Soft-Switched Resonant Dc-Dc Converter In Underwater Dc Power Distribution Network, Tarak Saha

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Power distribution with DC source is advantageous over its AC counterpart in long distance distribution network due to the absence of effects of reactive components. Long distance power distribution with traditional voltage source suffers from drop in voltage over the length of the cable due to its impedance and forces the converters in the network to be over-designed with higher power rating than needed. In underwater power distribution network such as ocean observatory, marine sensors on the sea-bed etc., power conversion modules are situated at a distance far away from the shore, ranging from tens of kilometers to hundreds of …

System Level Characterization Of The Gridded Retarding Ion Drift Sensor (Grids) For The Petitsat Mission, Benjamin B. Oborn

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Weather prediction, wherever people live, serves as a beneficial part of everyday life. Weather in the upper portions of Earth’s atmosphere also impacts life on Earth but it is not able to be predicted as well as its terrestrial counterpart. PetitSat is a cube satellite (CubeSat) mission proposed to help remedy this issue. It will collect measurements of charged particles in the upper atmosphere called a plasma. The measurements taken by PetitSat will facilitate better prediction of upper-atmospheric weather. Prediction of when and where weather phenomenon will occur will allow avoidance of negative consequences that can result. Once such negative …

A Study In Gps-Denied Navigation Using Synthetic Aperture Radar, Colton P. Lindstrom

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In modern navigation systems, GPS is vital to accurately piloting a vehicle. This is especially true in autonomous vehicles, such as UAVs, which have no pilot. Unfortunately, GPS signals can be easily jammed or spoofed. For example, canyons and urban cities create an environment where the sky is obstructed and make GPS signals unreliable. Additionally, hostile individuals can transmit personal signals intended to block or spoof GPS signals. In these situations, it is important to find a means of navigation that doesn’t rely on GPS.

Navigating without GPS means that other types of sensors or instruments must be used to …

Emerging Works On Wireless Inductive Power Transfer: Auv Charging From Constant Current Distribution And Analysis Of Controls In Ev Dynamic Charging, Anindya Chitta Bagchi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Wireless power transfer through inductive coupling, termed as inductive power transfer (IPT), is one of the important technologies in power electronics that enable transfer of power between entities without physical connections. While it has seen significant growth in the areas such as electric vehicle charging, phone charging and biomedical implants, its emerging applications include charging of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and dynamic charging of electric vehicles from the roadway. This dissertation addresses a few key challenges in these areas of IPT applications, paving the way for future developments.

For the WPT for AUV, the recently developing sea-bed installed marine systems …

Self-Describing Fiducials For Gps-Denied Navigation Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Amanda J. Strate

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Accurate estimation of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle’s (UAV’s) location is critical for the operation of the UAV when it is controlled completely by its onboard processor. This can be particularly challenging in environments in which GPS is not available (GPS-denied). Many of the options previously explored for estimation of a UAV’s location without the use of GPS require more sophisticated processors than can feasibly be mounted on a UAV because of weight, size, and power restrictions. Many options are also aimed at indoor operation without the range capabilities to scale to outdoor operations. This research explores an alternative method of …

Formal Verification Of The Adversarial Robustness Property Of Deep Neural Networks Through Dimension Reduction Heuristics, Refutation-Based Abstraction, And Partitioning, Joshua Smith

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Neural networks are tools that are often used to perform functions such as object recognition in images, speech-to-text, and general data classification. Because neural networks have been successful at approximating these functions that are difficult to explicitly write, they are seeing increased usage in fields such as autonomous driving, airplane collision avoidance systems, and other safety-critical applications. Due to the risks involved with safety-critical systems, it is important to provide guarantees about the networks performance under certain conditions. As an example, it is critically important that self driving cars with neural network based vision systems correctly identify pedestrians 100% of …

Indoor Source Localization Of Radio Frequency Transmitters Using Blind Channel Identification Techniques, Madison L. Rose

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Locating transmitters is a research area that is becoming increasingly relevant as technology advances. It is especially useful for determining the location of livestock, drones, keys, phones, tablets, etc. As a result of this push for locating devices, many algorithms have been developed to determine source locations. Most source location algorithms and techniques rely on a "line of sight", or a direct path between the source and the receivers to provide accurate results.

Indoor environments pose a challenge to locating transmitters due to the many surfaces that allow radio waves to interact (reflect, refract, and generally distort) with them. Because …

Design Of A Sweeping Impedance Probe For The Sport Mission, Caleb W. Young

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In our modern world satellite systems are an evermore common part of day to day life. Reliable communication from the ground to these satellites is becoming more and more necessary. Plasma scintillations in the ionosphere can make these communications difficult or even impossible. By gaining a better understanding of these scintillations, times of bad satellite connection can be predicted in the same way terrestrial weather gets predicted and reported today. The objective of the SPORT mission is to gain a better understanding of these plasma scintillations. In order to measure plasma density, and gain a better understanding of plasma scintillations, …

Formation Control Using Vehicle Operational Envelopes And Behavior-Based Dual-Mode Model Predictive Control, Brian Merrell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis presents a control framework for formation control. Given an initial desired trajectory, a framework is presented to generate trajectories for each vehicle within the formation. When combined with an operational envelope, a designated area for each vehicle to maneuver, for each vehicle the multi-vehicle formation control problem can be redefined into a single vehicle problem. A single vehicle framework is presented to track the respective trajectory when possible, or stay near it when it passes through previously unknown obstacles. Arc-based motions are used to rapidly produce desirable robot controls while a trajectory tracking motion is used to ensure …

A Study Of Potential Security And Safety Vulnerabilities In Cyber-Physical Systems, Ali Al-Hashimi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The work in this dissertation focuses on two examples of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), integrations of communication and monitoring capabilities to control a physical system, that operate in adversarial environments. That is to say, it is possible for individuals with malicious intent to gain access to various components of the CPS, disrupt normal operation, and induce harmful impacts. Such a deliberate action will be referred to as an attack. Therefore, some possible attacks against two CPSs will be studied in this dissertation and, when possible, solutions to handle such attacks will also be suggested.

The first CPS of interest is vehicular …

Hardware Accelerator For Star Centroiding, Nazmus Sakib

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Since the dawn of civilization mankind has gazed upon the night sky and looked for directions. In this modern age, the stars have proved to be a reliable reference point for navigation in space. From small-satellites for gathering weather data to inter-planetary missions like Cassini Orbiter, figuring out the location of a spacecraft has been done successfully by taking images of star filed visible from the spacecraft, processing and analyzing the image to find the stars and then finding out from a star catalog which part of the sky the patterns of the visible stars best matches. But a lot …

Command, Control, And Telemetry For Utah State University's Scintillation Prediction Observation Research Task (Sport) Mission, Jordan Haws

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Scintillation Prediction Observation Research Task (SPORT) is a joint United States of America (USA) and Brazil small satellite mission to address the further understanding of the preconditions leading to equatorial plasma bubbles. Utah State University (USU) is supplying four instruments towards this SPORT mission. These four instruments will allow measurements of the electric field and plasma density in the ionosphere which will help understand what gives rise to plasma bubbles in the ionosphere.

This thesis will discuss the command, control, and telemetry communications needed to operate the SPORT USU instruments. It will cover an overview of the instruments involved, …

System-Level Analysis Of Autonomous Uav Landing Sensitivities In Gps-Denied Environments, Terran R. Gerratt

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This paper presents an analysis of the navigation accuracy of an fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) landing on a aircraft carrier. The UAV is equipped with typical sensors used in landing scenarios. Data from the Office of Naval Research is used to accurately capture the behavior of the aircraft carrier. Through simulation, the position and orientation of both the UAV and carrier are estimated. The quality of the UAV’s sensors are varied to determine the sensitivity of these estimates to sensor accuracy. The system’s sensitivity to GPS signals and visual markers on the carrier is also analyzed. These results allow …

Comparison Of Locational Beamforming Algorithms For Audio Targeting, Thomas Lewis Bradshaw

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

In many applications it is desirable to focus on the direction a signal is coming from to isolate the signal from interfering noise coming from other directions. This is often done by focusing the receiver on a given direction. One method to accomplish this focusing is to use an array of receivers and a signal processing algorithm called beamforming. This algorithm attenuates signals coming from all other directions besides the direction of interest, which can be viewed pictorially as a beam. However, it would also benefit many applications to be able to focus on a location rather than just a …

Built-In Return-Oriented Programs In Embedded Systems And Deep Learning For Hardware Trojan Detection, Nathanael R. Weidler

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Microcontrollers and integrated circuits in general have become ubiquitous in the world today. All aspects of our lives depend on them from driving to work, to calling our friends, to checking our bank account balance. People who would do harm to individuals, corporations and nation states are aware of this and for that reason they seek to find or create and exploit vulnerabilities in integrated circuits. This dissertation contains three papers dealing with these types of vulnerabilities. The first paper talks about a vulnerability that was found on a microcontroller, which is a type of integrated circuit. The final two …

Gpu-Accelerated Demodulation For A Satellite Ground Station, Emily Clark Young

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

One consequence of the increasing number of small satellite missions is an increasing demand for high data rate downlinks. As the satellites transmit at high data rates, ground-side receivers need to demodulate the transmitted data as quickly as possible. While application specific hardware can be designed, software defined radio solutions for ground stations are attractive for their flexibility, adaptability, and portability.

Another industry trend is the increasing use of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) in general-purpose processing. By performing many operations simultaneously, GPUs are capable of accelerating processing when given a problem that can be implemented in a parallel manner. Furthermore, …

Energy Management Of Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer Systems For Electric Vehicle Applications, Ahmed N. Azad

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Wireless power transfer is a method of transferring electric power from a transmitter to a receiver without requiring any physical connection between the two. Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer (DWPT) entails having the transmitters buried under the roadway and the receiver unit being installed on the Electric Vehicle (EV). In this method, EVs are charged while driving over the transmitters as they receive bursts of electric energy at the time of significant alignment between transmitters and receivers. Compared to the stationary charging method which involves parking the EV for long hours for a full charge, the dynamic charging method (i.e., DWPT) …