Engineering Commons^™

Extensible Data Storage And Presentation Technology For An Ophthalmology Electronic Patient Record, Markus H. Heinrichs

Theses

The Electronic Patient Record (EPR) is a central element of practice systems used in ophthalmology. It acts as a repository for multi-media patient care data as well as billing information, serving healthcare providers and ultimately their patients. The aim of this thesis is to create both a data structure and a flexible on-screen representation of an EPR for an ophthalmology practice, and to provide an XML-based experimental prototype as a “proof of concept” which could ultimately be used as an replacement for an existing DOS- based solution. The medical background and requirements for this system will be described. The state-of-the-art …

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 …

Symmetrically Coated Pellicle Beam Splitters For Dual Quarter-Wave Retardation In Reflection And Transmission, Rasheed M.A. Azzam, Fadi A. Mahmoud

Electrical Engineering Faculty Publications

A trilayer pellicle that consists of a high-index center layer that is symmetrically coated on both sides by a low-index film can be designed to produce differential reflection and transmission phase shifts of ∓90° at oblique incidence and equal throughput for the p and the s polarizations. Such a device splits a beam of incident linearly polarized light into two orthogonal circularly polarized components that travel in well-separated angular directions. Examples of infrared dual quarter-wave retarders that use a symmetrically coated Ge pellicle at 77° angle of incidence are presented. A 50–50% splitter requires a symmetric pellicle with at least …

Angular Range For Reflection Of P-Polarized Light At The Surface Of An Absorbing Medium With Reflectance Below That At Normal Incidence, R. M.A. Azzam, Ericson E. Ugbo

Electrical Engineering Faculty Publications

The range of incidence angle, 0 < φ < φ_e, over which p-polarized light is reflected at interfaces between transparent and absorbing media with reflectance below that at normal incidence is determined. Contours of constant φ_e in the complex plane of the relative dielectric constant ε are presented. A method for determining the real and imaginary parts of the complex refractive index, ε^1/2 = n + jk, which is based on measuring φ_e and the pseudo-Brewster angle φ_pB, is viable in the domain of fractional optical constants, n, k < 1.

An Airborne Low-Cost Sar For Remote Sensing: Hardware Design And Development, Ram Narayanan, Paul C. Cantu, Xiaojian Xu

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

An airborne low-cost synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is under development at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The SAR system is an X-band, stepped-chirp frequency modulation (SCFM) radar system. One of its unique features is that the waveform generation consists of a timing-controlled D/A converter and VCO arrangement to synthesize the SCFM signal, whereby allowing for less design complexity and a much lower overall system cost. In this paper, we present a brief description of the system and some computer simulation results.

Shape-Based Change Detection And Information Mining In Remote Sensing, Jiang Li, Ram M. Narayanan

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Change detection is an important application of remote sensing. This paper presents our approach to retrieve and represent interesting shapes in the remotely sensed imagery using supervised classification, edge detection, and polygonal approximation techniques, and to compare the shape similarity by a computationally efficient metric. The experiments were conducted on a time series of calibrated and registered Landsat MSS images, covering the scene of the lakes at the western Nebraska. The results show the effectiveness of the shape-based change detection approach, which is potentially useful for specific applications such as the study of the lake change response to short or …

A Multiwavelength Airborne Polarimetric Lidar For Vegetation Remote Sensing: Instrumentation And Preliminary Test Results, Songxin Ran, Ram M. Narayanan

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Several spaceborne and airborne lidar systems have been launched for vegetation canopy studies. Previous research has shown that lidars are useful tools for remote sensing of vegetation architecture. To support its Airborne Remote Sensing Program, the University of Nebraska has developed a multiwavelength airborne polarimetric lidar system. This system employs a Nd:YAG laser which emits radiation at two wavelengths: the fundamental at 1064 nm and the frequency-doubled at 532 nm. Both laser beams are highly linearly polarized (100: 1 extinction ratio) and have a beam divergence angle of ~4 mrad. The receiver consists of four channels, which enable dual-wavelength and …

Femtosecond Laser Utilization Methods And Apparatus And Method For Producing Nanoparticles, Dennis R. Alexander

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

The present invention teaches various femtosecond machining and drilling apparatus and processes for fabricating tools and the like from both traditional and non-traditional materials. Also described are novel tools such as scalpels, and nozzles fabricated from the apparatus and processes of the present invention. Likewise, the present invention may be utilized in both a novel propulsion system and the production of materials formed from nanometer sized particles and the like.

Modeling, Fabrication, And Optimization Of Niobium Cavities, Robert A. Schill Jr., Mohamed Trabia, Yitung Chen

Transmutation Sciences Materials (TRP)

All technologies for the transmutation of nuclear waste require a large source of neutrons. One of the principal methods of generating these neutrons is by using a particle accelerator to bombard a heavy metal target. One of the more promising designs for particle accelerators for transmutation systems is the Superconducting Radio Frequency (RF) high-current linear accelerator (linac). The power supplies for these systems have three major components: niobium cavities, power couplers, and cryomodules. This research project will develop models to predict the behavior and performance of the niobium cavities, which will then be used to design and optimize the superconducting …

Kalman Filtering With State Equality Constraints, Daniel J. Simon, Tien Li Chia

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Kalman filters are commonly used to estimate the states of a dynamic system. However, in the application of Kalman filters there is often known model or signal information that is either ignored or dealt with heuristically. For instance, constraints on state values (which may be based on physical considerations) are often neglected because they do not fit easily into the structure of the Kalman filter. A rigorous analytic method of incorporating state equality constraints in the Kalman filter is developed. The constraints may be time varying. At each time step the unconstrained Kalman filter solution is projected onto the state …

A Personel Note, Leopold B. Felsen

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

No abstract provided.

Iterative Solution Of Field Problems With A Varying Physical Parameter, Anton G. Tijhuis, Martijn C. Van Beurden, A. Peter M. Zwamborn

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this paper, linear field problems with a varying physical parameter are solved with the conjugate-gradient FFT method and a dedicated extrapolation procedure for generating the initial estimate. The scheme is formulated and illustrated for two simple example problems. The importance of the choice of the stop criterion and the step size are demonstrated for the case of a straight thin-wire segment. A brief summary is given of the applications that have appeared in the open literature until now, and actual three-dimensional scattering problems for a rectangular conducting plate and an inhomogeneous, dispersive dielectric body are discussed. Finally, the case …

Network--Oriented Modeling Of Radiating Electromagnetic Structures, Peter Russer

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The application of network-oriented modeling for radiating electromagnetic structures is investigated. Network methods are applied to the field problem using the segmentation technique and by specifying canonical Foster representations as compact models of reciprocal linear lossless electromagnetic structures. Connection between different subdomains is obtained via connection circuits exhibiting only ideal transformers. In the case of radiating structures, the complete structure is embedded into a sphere and the field outside the sphere is expanded into orthogonal spherical TM- and TE- waves. For each radiation mode a Cauer canonic circuit representation is given.

Novel Time Domain Radiowave Propagators For Wireless Communication Systems, Funda Akleman, M. O. Özyalçin, Levent Sevgi̇

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this study, novel time domain wave propagators are used in path loss calculations for macro and micro cell coverage planning in wireless communication systems. Both Transmission Line Matrix (TLM) and Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) based propagators, which were introduced recently and validated and verified on different canonical propagation scenarios, are used for this purpose. Examples are chosen both in rural and urban areas, where two propagators are compared with each other. Excellent agreement between the results obtained via two propagators is presented. The results presented here are very encouraging and these propagators are shown to be powerful tools for not …

Floquet Wave Diffraction Theory For Tapered Planar Strip Array Green's Function, F. Capolino, F. Mariottini, S. Maci, L. B. Felsen

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This paper deals with the derivation and physical interpretation of a uniform high frequency representation of the Green's function for a planar phased array of dipoles. The asymptotic representation is based on Floquet wave edge diffraction theory herein extended to accommodate slowly varying tapered amplitude illumination with possible inclusion of dipole amplitudes that tend to zero at the edge. The phased array is assumed to be infinite with uniform amplitude excitation in the z-direction but finite and amplitude-tapered in the x-direction. This geometry permits study of diffraction phenomena occurring at the tapered edge of a rectangular array when the observation …

An Exact Line Integral Representation Of The Po Radiation Integral From A Flat Perfectly Conducting Surfaces Illuminated By Elementary Electric Or Magnetic Dipoles, Matteo Albani, Stefano Maci

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this paper, a line integral representation for the PO radiation integral from a flat perfectly conducting surface, illuminated by an arbitrary oriented elementary either electric or magnetic dipole, is presented. No restriction is imposed on the position of the source and of the observation point. The main application of this result is the acceleration of the numerical PO integration for electrically large surfaces. The formulation is based on the application of the equivalence principle to a projecting surface which allows the analytical evaluation in closed form of one of the two-fold surface integral which define the radiated field at …

Efficient Algorithms For Creation Of Linearly-Independent Decision Diagrams And Their Mapping To Regular Layouts, Marek Perkowski, Bogdan Jaroslaw Falkowski, Malgorzata Chrzanowska-Jeske, Rolf Dreschler

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A new kind of a decision diagrams are presented: its nodes correspond to all types of nonsingular expansions for groups of input variables, in particular pairs. The diagrams are called the Linearly Independent (LI) Decision Diagrams (LI DDs). There are 840 nonsigular expansions for a pair of variables, thus 840 different types of nodes in the tree. Therefore, the number of nodes in such (exact) diagrams is usually much smaller than the number of nodes in the well-known Kronecker diagrams (which have only single-variable Shannon, Positive Davio, and Negative Davio expansions in nodes). It is usually much smaller than 1/3 …

Generalized Inclusive Forms — New Canonical Reed-Muller Forms Including Minimum Esops, Marek Perkowski, Alan Mishchenko, Malgorzata Chzanowka-Jeske

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reed-Muller (AND/EXOR) expansions play an important role in logic synthesis and circuit design by producing economical and highly-testable implementations of Boolean functions [3–6]. The range of Reed-Muller expansions include canonical forms, i.e. expansions that create unique representations of a Boolean function. Several large families of canonical forms: fixed polarity Reed-Muller forms (FPRMs), generalized Reed-Muller forms (GRMs), Kronecker forms (KROs), and pseudo- Kronecker forms (PKROs), referred to as the Green/Sasao hierarchy, have been described [7–9]. (See Fig. 1 for a settheoretic relationship between these families.)

Term Trees In Application To An Effective And Efficient Atpg For And–Exor And And–Or Circuits, Lech Jozwiak, Aleksander Ślusarczyk, Marek Perkowski

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A compact data representation, in which the typically required operations are performed rapidly, and effective and efficient algorithms that work on these representations are the essential elements of a successful CAD tool. The objective of this paper is to present a new data representation—term trees (TTs)—and to discuss its application for an effective and efficient structural automatic test-pattern generation (ATPG). Term trees are decision diagrams similar to BDDs that are particularly suitable for structure representation of AND–OR and AND–EXOR circuits. In the paper, a flexible algorithm for minimum term-tree construction is discussed and an effective and efficient algorithm for ATPG …

Webspy: An Architecture For Monitoring Web Server Availability In A Multi-Platform Environment, Madhan M. Thirukonda

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

For an electronic business (e-business), customer satisfaction can be the difference between long-term success and short-term failure. Customer satisfaction is highly impacted by Web server availability, as customers expect a Web site to be available twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. Unfortunately, unscheduled Web server downtime is often beyond the control of the organization. What is needed is an effective means of identifying and recovering from Web server downtime in order to minimize the negative impact on the customer. An automated architecture, called WebSpy, has been developed to notify administration and to take immediate action when Web …

Atomic Hydrogen Cleaning Of Inp(100): Electron Yield And Surface Morphology Of Negative Electron Affinity Activated Surfaces, M. A. Hafez, H. E. Elsayed-Ali

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Atomic hydrogen cleaning of the InP(100) surface has been investigated using quantitative reflection high-energy electron diffraction. The quantum efficiency of the surface when activated to negative electron affinity was correlated with surface morphology. The electron diffraction patterns showed that hydrogen cleaning is effective in removing surface contaminants, leaving a clean, ordered, and (2×4)-reconstructed surface. After activation to negative electron affinity, a quantum efficiency of ∼6% was produced in response to photoactivation at 632 nm. Secondary electron emission from the hydrogen-cleaned InP(100)-(2×4) surface was measured and correlated to the quantum efficiency. The morphology of the vicinal InP(100) surface was investigated using …

Nitriding Of Titanium By Inductively Coupled Plasma, Abdul Hakim Hashim

Student Works (2000-2009)

A RF planar coil inductively coupled plasma syslem (ICP) is used in this project to nitride a commercially pure titanium substrate. The system is powered by a 600 W, 13.56 MHz, 50 Ω RF generator. The impedance matching is achieved by using an air­-core step-down transformer and a tunable vacuum capacitor. The electrical discharge characteristics of argon and argon-nitrogen admixture plasmas are investigated. Coil current, ion density and RF power transferred in the plasma at different pressure are studied. Nitriding of titanium using the system is found to be able to produce θ-TiN, ε-Ti2N and α-Ti(N) layers, as confirmed by …

Strained Quantum Well Heterostructure : Modeling And Simulation Of 980 Nm Laser, Yew Mun Hung

Student Works (2000-2009)

This thesis concerns the study of a strained quantum well laser diode emitting at wavelength of about 980 nm which is suitable for pumping Er³⁺ doped fiber amplifiers. The concept of a strained quantum well in the design of the active medium of the laser diode is discussed. A model is proposed that incorporates features of the physical structural factors and characteristics of the structure. The theoretical background linked directly to the simulation of the model is to provide calculations and derivations of the optical properties of the modeled structure. Theoretical calculations were made taking into account the variation of …

Interactive Virtual Laboratory For Experience With A Smart Bridge Test, Elizabeth C. Eckhoff, Vicki M. Eller, Steve Eugene Watkins, Richard Hall

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Virtual laboratory experiments can be cost effective, convenient instructional resources that have appeal to a wide range of learning styles. Expensive, time-consuming laboratory tests can be experienced repeatedly and remotely using interactive simulations and original video footage or animations. A virtual experiment can incorporate meaningful exercises, procedural options, and background hyperlinks to create a comprehensive "hands on" environment. Also, it may be used as preliminary training for the actual experiment.

An interactive LabVIEW-based laboratory for a load test simulation of an existing demonstration bridge was created. This smart truss bridge is instrumented with fiber optic strain sensors situated on the …

A New Cascaded Multilevel H-Bridge Drive, Keith Corzine, Yakov L. Familiant

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, a general structure for cascaded power converters is presented in which any number of H-bridge cells having any number of voltage levels are series connected to form an inverter phase leg. Equations are introduced for determining an optimal voltage ratio of DC voltages for the H-bridge cells which will maximize the number of voltage levels obtainable resulting in high power quality. Special cases of the generalized inverter are presented including novel 11-level and 15-level inverters. Laboratory measurements demonstrate the proposed inverter performance

Reliability Of Programmable Input/Output Pins In The Presence Of Configuration Upsets, Paul S. Graham, Nathaniel Rollins, Michael J. Wirthlin, Michael P. Caffrey

Faculty Publications

Sponsorship: Los Alamos National Laboratories (LA-UR-02-3163). Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are an attractive alternative for space-based remote sensing applications. However, SRAM-based FPGAs are sensitive to radiation induced single-event upsets within the configuration memory. Such configuration upsets may change the logic, routing, and operating modes of a user FPGA design. Upsets within the configuration of an I/O block are especially troublesome as they may impact the operation of other system components. This paper will evaluate the operation of the I/O block within the Xilinx Virtex FPGA in the presence of configuration memory upsets and introduce techniques for detecting and repairing …

Video Indexing And Retrieval Techniques Using Novel Approaches To Video Segmentation, Characterization, And Similarity Matching, Waleed Ezzat Farag

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Multimedia applications are rapidly spread at an ever-increasing rate introducing a number of challenging problems at the hands of the research community, The most significant and influential problem, among them, is the effective access to stored data. In spite of the popularity of keyword-based search technique in alphanumeric databases, it is inadequate for use with multimedia data due to their unstructured nature. On the other hand, a number of content-based access techniques have been developed in the context of image indexing and retrieval; meanwhile video retrieval systems start to gain wide attention, This work proposes a number of techniques constituting …

Gain-Bandwidth Characteristics Of Thin Avalanche Photodiodes, Majeed M. Hayat, Oh-Hyun Kwon, Yi Pan, Paul P. Sotirelis, Joe C. Campbell, Bahaa E.A. Saleh, Malvin Carl Teich

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

The frequency-response characteristics of avalanche photodiodes (APDs) with thin multiplication layers are investigated by means of a recurrence technique that incorporates the history dependence of ionization coefficients. In addition, to characterize the autocorrelation function of the impulse response, new recurrence equations are derived and solved using a parallel computer. The mean frequency response and the gain-bandwidth product are computed and a simple model for the dependence of the gain-bandwidth product on the multiplication-layer width is set forth for GaAs, InP, Al/sub 0.2/Ga/sub 0.8/As, and In/sub 0.52/Al/sub 0.48/As APDs. It is shown that the dead-space effect leads to a reduction (up …

Boundary Effects On Multiplication Noise In Thin Heterostructure Avalanche Photodiodes: Theory And Experiment [Al/Sub 0.6/Ga/Sub 0.4/As/Gaas], Majeed M. Hayat, Oh-Hyun Kwon, Shuling Wang, Joe C. Campbell, Bahaa E.A. Saleh, Malvin Carl Teich

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

The history-dependent recurrence theory for multiplication noise in avalanche photodiodes (APDs), developed by Hayat et al., is generalized to include inter-layer boundary effects in heterostructure APDs with multilayer multiplication regions. These boundary effects include the initial energy of injected carriers as well as bandgap-transition effects within a multilayer multiplication region. It is shown that the excess noise factor can be significantly reduced if the avalanche process is initiated with an energetic carrier, in which case the initial energy serves to reduce the initial dead space associated with the injected carrier. An excess noise factor reduction up to 40% below the …

Maximum-Likelihood Image Estimation Using Photon-Correlated Beams, Majeed M. Hayat, Muhammad Sajjad Abdullah, Adel Joobeur, Bahaa E.A. Saleh

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

A theory is presented addressing the fundamental limits of image estimation in a setup that uses two photon-correlated beams. These beams have the property that their photon arrivals, as a point process, are ideally synchronized in time and space. The true image represents the spatial distribution of the optical transmittance (or reflectance) of an object. In this setup, one beam is used to probe the image while the other is used as a reference providing additional information on the actual number of photons impinging on the object. This additional information is exploited to reduce the effect of quantum noise associated …