Engineering Commons^™

The Utilization Of Software Defined Radios For Adaptive, Phased Array Antenna Systems, Evan Fennelly

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The increased use of internet of things (IoT) devices will result in them being deployed

in a wide variety of environments and therefore warrant antenna systems that can be

adapted to improve link performance. Flexible communication technologies allow for

increased throughput, reliability, and improved efficiency in wireless channels. This

can be accomplished by implementing phased array antennas, among others. Phased

arrays create a beam that can be steered electronically, but are expensive to implement

given the many phase precise hardware components that need to be adjustable. A

software defined radio approach to beamforming can reduce this complexity for each

array …

The Incidence Of Inverter Incidents: Understanding And Quantifying Contributions To Risk In Systems With Large Amounts Of Inverter-Based Resources, Caroline Rose Popiel

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Renewable energy is an important and growing percentage of the total power supply. Additionally, non-wires alternatives, which are meant to substitute for the construction of more transmission lines, are increasing in quantity as the demand for electrical power increases. Many non-wires alternatives take the form of renewable energy resources and batteries, and are distributed over short distances through neighborhoods and communities. Inverters are used to connect these DC resources to the AC grid.

However, there is growing industry concern that the disconnect function that is inherent to interconnection standards for inverter-based resources has the potential to result in a cascading …

Reference Governors For Time-Varying Systems And Constraints, Collin Freiheit

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Control systems are often subject to constraints imposed by physical limitations or safety considerations, and require means of constraint management to ensure the stability and safety of the system. For real-time implementation, constraint management schemes must not carry a heavy computational burden; however many of the current solutions are computationally unattractive, especially those with robust formulations. Thus, the design of constraint management schemes with low computational loads is an important and practical problem for control engineers. Reference Governor (RG) is an efficient constraint management scheme that is attractive for real-time implementation due to its low computational complexity and ease of …

Reference Governors: From Theory To Practice, Joycer Osorio

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Control systems that are subject to constraints due to physical limitations, hardware

protection, or safety considerations have led to challenging control problems that have

piqued the interest of control practitioners and theoreticians for many decades. In

general, the design of constraint management schemes must meet several stringent

requirements, for example: low computational burden, performance, recovery mechanisms

from infeasibility conditions, robustness, and formulation simplicity. These

requirements have been particularly difficult to meet for the following three classes

of systems: stochastic systems, linear systems driven by unmodeled disturbances,

and nonlinear systems. Hence, in this work, we develop three constraint management

schemes, based …

Open Source Quantitative Stress Prediction Leveraging Wearable Sensing And Machine Learning Methods, Blake Hewgill

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The ability to monitor physiological parameters in an individual is paramount for the evaluation of physical health and the detection of many ailments. Wearable technologies are being introduced on a widening scale to address the absence of low-cost and non-invasive health monitoring as compared to medical grade equipment and technologies. By leveraging wearable technologies to supplement or replace traditional gold-standard measurement techniques, the research community can develop a deeper multifaceted understanding of the relationship between specific physiological parameters and particular health conditions. One particular research area in which wearable technologies are beginning to see application is the quantification of physical …

Utilizing Machine Learning For Respiratory Rate Detection Via Radar Sensor, Anwar Elhadad

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

In this research, we investigate a data processing method to capture the respiratory rate of a person by utilizing a doppler radar to monitor their body movement during respiration. We utilize a machine learning algorithm with a radar sensor to capture the chest movement of a person while breathing and determine the respiratory rate according to that movement. We are using a Random Forest classifier to distinguish between different classes of pulses. After that, the algorithm constructs a sinusoidal signal representing the breathing rate of the sample. By applying this technique, we can detect the breathing rate accurately for different …

Software Defined Radio Based Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave Ground Penetrating Radar, Patrick Fiske

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar allows for a wide range of research applications. One primary use of this technology and what is explored in this thesis, is imaging in the form of ground penetrating radar. To generate proper results, spectral wide-band reconstruction has been developed to overcome hardware limitations allowing for high resolution radar. Requiring complex reconstruction algorithms, the proposed method benefits greatly in terms of performance and implementation compared to other radar systems.

This thesis develops a wideband linearly frequency modulated radar leveraging a software-defined radio (SDR). The modular system is capable of a tunable wideband bandwidth up …