Engineering Commons^™

Acoustic Detection, Source Separation, And Classification Algorithms For Unmanned Aerial Vehicles In Wildlife Monitoring And Poaching, Carlo Lopez-Tello

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This work focuses on the problem of acoustic detection, source separation, and classification under noisy conditions. The goal of this work is to develop a system that is able to detect poachers and animals in the wild by using microphones mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The classes of signals used to detect wildlife and poachers include: mammals, birds, vehicles and firearms. The noise signals under consideration include: colored noises, UAV propeller and wind noises.

The system consists of three sub-systems: source separation (SS), signal detection, and signal classification. Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) is used for source separation, and random …

Optimized Sizing And Placing Of Distributed Energy Resources (Ders) In An Island Microgrid Using Der-Cam, Bhuwan B. Bastola

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

The electric grid at La Gomera, an island in the Canary archipelago, has been the subject of interest in optimized integration of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) primarily because of high distribution losses and concerns about complying with emission regulations. Consequently, the utility that operates the island power system wishes to mitigate the problem with installation of renewable and distributed energy sources like PV and battery, which is the focus of this research.

Specifically, the focus of this thesis is to use Distributed Energy Resource - Customer Adoption Model (DER-CAM) to optimize the installation of PV and battery in terms of …

Technological Assessment Of Different Solar-Biomass Systems For Hybrid Power Generation In Europe, Cm Iftekhar Hussain, Brian Norton, Aidan Duffy

Articles

Solar Tower thermal (ST), Parabolic Trough thermal (PT), Linear Fresnel thermal (LF) and Solar PV are discussed in the context of suitability for hybridization with biomass in Europe. Technical, economical and climate data have been compared to identify the key drivers of technology selection in setting up large scale solar-biomass hybrid power plants. The sole solar-biomass hybrid power plant is currently in operation in Spain uses PT technology due to its performance characteristics, comparatively easy installation process compared to ST and relatively higher heat and optical gain than LF. The climate condition in the EU shows that the region within …

The Influence Of The Electric Supply Industry On Economic Growth In Less Developed Countries, Edward Richard Bee

Dissertations

This study measures the impact that electrical outages have on manufacturing production in 135 less developed countries using stochastic frontier analysis and data from World Bank’s Investment Climate surveys. Outages of electricity, for firms with and without backup power sources, are the most frequently cited constraint on manufacturing growth in these surveys.

Outages are shown to reduce output below the production frontier by almost five percent in Africa and by a lower percentage in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. Production response to outages is quadratic in form. Outages also increase labor cost, reduce exports …

Analysis And Implementation Of Communications Systems For Small Satellite Missions, Jason S. Harris

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Nano satellites are becoming more and more popular space platforms due to their relatively low cost. Constellations of many of these small satellites are being launched for scientific and research purposes. This thesis has examined implementing a communications system for small satellites that can be used to maintain constant contact with satellites as they orbit the Earth. It analyzes the various components of a small satellite and how they integrate. It then discusses the different abstraction layers that will be required in order to support the same software architecture across various types of hardware. An orbital analysis was performed to …

Communications System Using Signal Modulation, William C. Barott

Publications

A communication method and system for communication utilizing modulation of digital signals, such as by targets and/or by use of low-complexity tags is presented. Targets may include any device or object that may alter signals, and tags can include a device with the ability to reflect and/or alter the properties of the signals and, in doing so, impose specific modulations on or alterations of such signals. Modulations can be sensed or detected using a receiver or receivers implementing processing algorithms derived from passive radar detection operations or other processes.

Transformative Role Of Photovoltaics In Phasing Out Alternating Current Based Grid By Local Dc Power Networks For Sustainable Global Economic Growth, Rajendra Singh, Amir A. Asif, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy

Publications

For sustainable global economic growth, eradication of global energy poverty and addressing climate challenges, free fuel based solar and wind energy sources are the only viable solution for electricity generation. Due to inherent advantages, photovoltaics has emerged as the major source of electrical power. Local generation of direct current (DC) power by PV and the use of batteries for storing electrical power have the potential of transforming global electricity infrastructure to address the problems faced by alternating current (AC) based centralized power generation and long haul transmission and distribution.

Bringing Electricity To Alafiarou: The Solar Microgrid Project, Nicolas Metais, Jacob Leatherberry

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Despite the great technological advancements and discoveries that have been made throughout the last century, 1.2 billion people still live without access to electricity, 95% of which live in Sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia.1 In this paper, we discuss how we designed and implemented a self-sustaining, affordable and highly replicable solar microgrid in order to accelerate the electrification of rural communities in the most environmentally conscious way possible. Our project focused on developing a microgrid for a small community of 10 households in rural Benin that previously had no access to electricity. We travelled to this village in December of …

Calibration Of Rapidscat Over-Land Σ0, Forrest Dayton Minor

Theses and Dissertations

RapidScat is a Ku-band radar that measures the normalized backscatter coefficient σ⁰ of the Earth's surface. Launched in 2015, it currently operates on the International Space Station. Nearly one year into its mission, RapidScat measurements began exhibiting strange behavior that is believed to be caused by a change in receiver gain. Changes in gain are compensated for during post-processing, but the measurements have a lower signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Calibration and validation of σ⁰ measurements from this low SNR state are performed using extended land targets with various signal strengths. Study areas include the Amazon rainforest, Congo rainforest, Argentina …

Characterization Of Geolocation Accuracy Of Suomi Npp Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder Measurements, Yang Han, Fuzhong Weng, Xiaolei Zou, Hu Yang, Deron Scott

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) onboard Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite has 22 channels at frequencies ranging from 23 to 183 GHz for probing the atmospheric temperature and moisture under all weather conditions. As part of the ATMS calibration and validation activities, the geolocation accuracy of ATMS data must be well characterized and documented. In this study, the coastline crossing method (CCM) and the land-sea fraction method (LFM) are utilized to characterize and quantify the ATMS geolocation accuracy. The CCM is based on the inflection points of the ATMS window channel measurements across the coastlines, whereas the LFM collocates …

A New Architecture For Application-Aware Cognitive Multihop Wireless Networks, Trenton Evans, Kossivi Tossou, Feng Ye, Zhihui Shu, Yi Qian, Yaoqing Yang, Hamid Sharif

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In this article, we propose a new architecture for AC-MWN. Cognitive radio is a technique to adaptively use the spectrum so that the resource can be used more efficiently in a low-cost way. A multihop wireless network can be deployed quickly and flexibly without fixed infrastructure. In our proposed new architecture, we study backbone routing schemes with network cognition, and a routing scheme with network coding and spectrum adaptation. A testbed is implemented to test the proposed schemes for AC-MWN. In addition to basic measurements, we implement a video streaming application based on the proposed AC-MWN architecture using cognitive radios. …

A Cyber Forensics Needs Analysis Survey: Revisiting The Domain's Needs A Decade Later, Vikram S. Harichandran, Frank Breitinger, Ibrahim Baggili, Andrew Marrington

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

The number of successful cyber attacks continues to increase, threatening financial and personal security worldwide. Cyber/digital forensics is undergoing a paradigm shift in which evidence is frequently massive in size, demands live acquisition, and may be insufficient to convict a criminal residing in another legal jurisdiction. This paper presents the findings of the first broad needs analysis survey in cyber forensics in nearly a decade, aimed at obtaining an updated consensus of professional attitudes in order to optimize resource allocation and to prioritize problems and possible solutions more efficiently. Results from the 99 respondents gave compelling testimony that the following …

Towards Improved Estimates Of Upper Ocean Energetics, Alexander Grant Wineteer

Master's Theses

The energy exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean is an important parameter in understanding the Earth’s climate. One way of quantifying this energy exchange is through the use of “wind work,” or the work done on the ocean by the wind. Since wind work is calculated according to the interaction between ocean surface currents and surface wind stress, a number of surface current decompositions can be used to decompose wind work calculations. In this research, geostrophic, ageostrophic, Ekman, and total current decompositions are all used to calculate wind work. Geostrophic currents are formed by the balance of surface pressure …

High-Efficiency Solar-Powered 3-D Printers For Sustainable Development, Jephias Gwamuri, Dhiogo Franco, Khalid Khan, Lucia Gauchia, Joshua M. Pearce

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

The release of the open source 3-D printer known as the RepRap (a self-Replicating Rapid prototyper) resulted in the potential for distributed manufacturing of products for significantly lower costs than conventional manufacturing. This development, coupled with open source-appropriate technology (OSAT), has enabled the opportunity for 3-D printers to be used for sustainable development. In this context, OSAT provides the opportunity to modify and improve the physical designs of their printers and desired digitally-shared objects. However, these 3-D printers require electricity while more than a billion people still lack electricity. To enable the utilization of RepRaps in off-grid communities, solar photovoltaic …

Bytewise Approximate Matching: The Good, The Bad, And The Unknown, Vikram S. Harichandran, Frank Breitinger, Ibrahim Baggili

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Hash functions are established and well-known in digital forensics, where they are commonly used for proving integrity and file identification (i.e., hash all files on a seized device and compare the fingerprints against a reference database). However, with respect to the latter operation, an active adversary can easily overcome this approach because traditional hashes are designed to be sensitive to altering an input; output will significantly change if a single bit is flipped. Therefore, researchers developed approximate matching, which is a rather new, less prominent area but was conceived as a more robust counterpart to traditional hashing. Since the conception …

An Efficient Hybrid Eye Detection Method, Mingxin Yu, Yingzi Lin, Xiangzhou Wang

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Eye detection is the most important and critical task of diverse applications such as face detection and recognition. However, most eye detection methods do not fully consider detection robustness to people with glasses, illumination variation, head pose change, and eye occlusions. This paper proposes an efficient hybrid eye detection method based on a gray intensity variance filter (VF) and support vector machines (SVMs). Firstly, the VF is used for eliminating most of noneye region images to keep less candidate eye regions. Then accurate two eye regions are determined easily through the trained SVM classifier. Moreover, this paper provides an assessment …

Implementation Of Solar Irradiance Forecasting Using Markov Switching Model And Energy Management System, Ayush Shakya

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Photovoltaic (PV) systems integration is increasingly being used to reduce fuel consumption in diesel-based remote microgrids. However, uncertainty and low correlation of PV power availability with load reduce the benefits of PV integration. These challenges can be handled by introducing reserve, which however leads to increased operational cost. Solar irradiance forecasting helps to reduce reserve requirement, thereby improving the utilization of PV energy. In this thesis, a new solar irradiance forecasting method for remote microgrids based on the Markov Switching Model (MSM) is presented. This method uses locally available data to predict one-day-ahead solar irradiance for scheduling energy resources in …

Open Source Software Adoption Evaluation Through Feature Level Sentiment Analysis Using Twitter Data, Muhammad Touseef Ikram, Naveed Anwer Butt, Muhammad Tanvir Afzal

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Adopting open source software from the Internet, developers often encounter the problem of accessing the quality of candidate software. To efficiently adopt the system they need a sort of quality guarantee regarding software resources. To assist the developer in software adoption evaluation we have proposed a software adoption assessment approach based on user comments. In our proposed approach, we first collected the textual reviews regarding the software resource, assigned the sentiment polarity (positive or negative) to each comment, extracted the adoption aspect which the comment talks about, and then based on the adoption aspects of the software generated an aggregated …

Energy Savings Potential In Air Conditioners And Chiller Systems, Durmuş Kaya, Hisham Alidrisi

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In the current paper we quantified and evaluated the energy saving potential in air conditioners and chiller systems. We also showed how to reduce the cost of air conditioners and chiller systems in existing facilities on the basis of payback periods. Among the measures investigated were: 1) installing higher efficiency air conditioners, 2) installing higher efficiency chillers, 3) duty cycling air conditioning units, and 4) utilizing existing economizers on air conditioning units. For each method, examples were provided from Arizona, USA. In these examples, the amount of saved energy, the financial evaluation of this energy, and the investment cost and …

Ship-Radiated Noise Feature Extraction Using Multiple Kernel Graph Embedding And Auditory Model, Xinzhou Xu, Xinwei Luo, Chen Wu, Li Zhao

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

No abstract provided.

Impacts Of Soil Type And Moisture On The Capacity Of Multi-Carrier Modulation In Internet Of Underground Things, Abdul Salam, Mehmet C. Vuran

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Unique interactions between soil and communication components in wireless underground communications necessitate revisiting fundamental communication concepts from a different perspective. In this paper, capacity profile of wireless underground (UG) channel for multi-carrier transmission techniques is analyzed based on empirical antenna return loss and channel frequency response models in different soil types and moisture values. It is shown that data rates in excess of 124 Mbps are possible for distances up to 12 m. For shorter distances and lower soil moisture conditions, data rates of 362 Mbps can be achieved. It is also shown that due to soil moisture variations, UG …

Market Based Control Of Pv Inverters In A Distribution System, Kumar Rishikesh

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

A growing energy crisis, a rapid climate change, and a constant depletion of fossil fuel necessitates the role of renewable energy resources like PV (Photovoltaics) and wind energy to form a group of distributed sources of generation. These circumstances promote the use of renewable resources meeting the environmental commitments in terms of checking pollution and toxic footprints. A group of PV and wind energy generation units may work together as micro players to form smart grid systems and participate in an existing distribution system to meet a portion of the daily energy demand. This will help in minimizing the network …

Bayesian Compressive Sensing Framework For Spectrum Reconstruction In Rayleigh Fading Channels, Nadia Iqbal, Asad Mahmood, Sajjad Hussain, Abdul Ghafoor

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

No abstract provided.

Validation Of Trnsys Modelling For A Fixed Slope Photovoltaic Panel, Kant Kanyarusoke, Jasson Gryzagoridis, Graeme Oliver

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

TRNSYS stands for transient system simulation software. This paper describes a procedure that was used to validate a TRNSYS model for estimating electricity yields from a fixed slope photovoltaic (PV) panel. The objective was to find how close to reality predicted energy yield for a specified panel can be, at a location near one of the weather stations listed in the software's database. The software was used to predict daily total incident radiation on a horizontal plane and electrical energy yields from a 90 Wp panel when sloped at 34$^{\circ}$ facing north at a test site in Cape Town, South …

Assessment Of Energy Performance Certificate Systems: A Case Study For Residential Buildings In Turkey, Kenan Yi̇ği̇t, Bora Acarkan

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The importance of sustainable development and energy efficiency efforts has increased in the construction sector. Energy-saving efforts for buildings have become more important due to the global energy crisis, and energy rating systems have been developed globally for assessment of energy performance. In this study, international green building certificate and energy performance certificate (EPC) systems are presented. The official EPC system for buildings in Turkey is illustrated with case studies. Energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from residential buildings are calculated using the official national software, which is called BEP-TR. The impact of lighting on the total energy performance of …

Time Series Analysis For A 1/Tb Memory Function And Comparison With The Lyapunov Exponent Using Volatility Scaling, Paddy Walsh, Jonathan Blackledge

Articles

Being able to provide accurate forecasts on the trending behaviour of time series is important in a range of applications involving the real time evolution of signals, most notable in financial time series analysis but control engineering in general. A critical solution for providing high accuracy forecasts is the filtering operation used to identify the position in time at which a trend occurs subject to a time delay factor that is inherent in the filtering strategy used. The paper explores this strategy and presents some example results that provide a quantitative measure of the accuracy used.

Energy Efficiency And Carbon Dioxide Emissions Across Different Scales Of Iron Ore Mining Operations In Western Australia, Shanuka Dilhani Palamure

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

During the last two decades, Western Australian iron ore mining industry experienced an exponential production growth arising from increased global demand for steel. The upturn in the iron ore price and considerably lower production cost encouraged extensive mining and consequently high-grade ore reserves were gradually depleted. Despite the energy-intensive nature of mining, high profitability motivated the mining companies to extract marginal-grade deposits with additional processing requirements, which increased energy consumption and ultimately increased the cost of iron ore production. This thesis sought to identify the energy efficiencies of open-cut iron ore mining operations, in terms of scale of operation as …

Bytewise Approximate Matching: The Good, The Bad, And The Unknown, Vikram S. Harichandran, Frank Breitinger, Ibrahim Baggili

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Hash functions are established and well-known in digital forensics, where they are commonly used for proving integrity and file identification (i.e., hash all files on a seized device and compare the fingerprints against a reference database). However, with respect to the latter operation, an active adversary can easily overcome this approach because traditional hashes are designed to be sensitive to altering an input; output will significantly change if a single bit is flipped. Therefore, researchers developed approximate matching, which is a rather new, less prominent area but was conceived as a more robust counterpart to traditional hashing. Since the conception …

Security Analysis Of Mvhash-B Similarity Hashing, Donghoon Chang, Somitra Sanadhya, Monika Singh

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

In the era of big data, the volume of digital data is increasing rapidly, causing new challenges for investigators to examine the same in a reasonable amount of time. A major requirement of modern forensic investigation is the ability to perform automatic filtering of correlated data, and thereby reducing and focusing the manual effort of the investigator. Approximate matching is a technique to find “closeness” between two digital artifacts. mvHash-B is a well-known approximate matching scheme used for finding similarity between two digital objects and produces a ‘score of similarity’ on a scale of 0 to 100. However, no security …

A Survey Of Wireless Communication Technologies & Their Performance For High Speed Railways, Subharthi Banerjee, Michael Hempel, Hamid Sharif

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

High Speed Railway (HSR) provides its customers not only safety, security, comfort and on-time commuting, but also a fast transportation alternative to air travel or regular passenger rail services. Providing these benefits would not be possible without the tremendous growth and prevalence of wireless communication technologies. Due to advances in wireless communication systems, both trains and passengers are connected through high speed wireless networks to the Internet, data centers and railroad control centers. Railroad communities, academia, related industries and standards bodies, even the European Space Agency, are involved in advancing developments of HSR for highly connected train communication systems. The …