Engineering Commons^™

Architecture, Inertial Navigation, And Payload Designs For Low-Cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Based Personal Remote Sensing, Calvin Coopmans

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis presents work done towards a Personal Remote Sensing (PRS) system: small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with electronic, control, and sensing subsystems. Based on papers presented to conferences (AutoTestCon2008 and MESA2009), as well as other work on PRS, multiple levels of engineering are detailed: complex multi-UAV data flow; attitude estimation filters; real-time microprocessor functionality; and small, mobile power systems. Wherever possible, Open-Source tools and designs have been used, modified, or studied, providing excellent cost to performance ratios in most cases. First, the overall PRS UAV architecture, AggieAir, is presented with a motivating examples (GhostEye and EagleEye camera payloads). Then, …

Micro Electro Mechanical Systems Integrated Frequency Reconfigurable Antennas For Public Safety Applications, Hema Swaroop Mopidevi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis work builds on the concept of reconfiguring the antenna properties (frequency, polarization, radiation pattern) using Radio Frequency (RF) Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS). This is a part of the overall research performed at the RF Micro/Nano Electro Mechanical Systems (μN∈MS) Laboratory at Utah State University, which includes design, microfabrication, test, and characterization of μN∈MS integrated cognitive wireless communication systems (Appendix A).

In the first step, a compact and broadband Planar Inverted F Antenna (PIFA) is designed with a goal to accommodate reconfigurability at a later stage. Then, a Frequency Reconfigurable Antenna …

Micronetworking: Reliable Communication On 3d Integrated Circuits, Andres A. Contreras

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The potential failure in through-silicon vias (TSVs) still poses a challenge in trying to extend the useful life of a 3D integrated circuit (IC). A model is proposed to mitigate the communication problem in 3D integrated circuits caused by the breaks at the TSVs. We provide the details of a low-complexity network that takes advantages of redundant TSVs to make it possible to re-route around breaks and maintain effective communication between layers. Different configurations for the micronetwork are analyzed and discussed. We also present an evaluation of the micronetwork's performance, which turns out to be quite promising, based on several …

Integrated Solar Panel Antennas For Cube Satellites, Mahmoud N. Mahmoud

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis work presents an innovative solution for small satellite antennas by integrating slot antennas and solar cells on the same panel to save small satellite surface real estate and to replace deployed wire antennas for certain operational frequencies. The two main advantages of the proposed antenna are: 1) the antenna does not require an expensive deployment mechanism that is required by dipole antennas; 2) the antenna does not occupy as much valuable surface real estate as patch antennas. The antenna design is based on using the spacing between the solar cells to etch slots in these spaces to create …

Minimum Symbol Error Rate Timing Recovery System, Nagendra Bage Jayaraj

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis presents a timing error detector (TED) used in the symbol timing synchronization subsystem for digital communications. The new timing error detector is designed to minimize the probability of symbol decision error, and it is called minimum symbol error rate TED (MSERTED). The new TED resembles the TED derived using the maximum likelihood (ML) criterion but gives rise to faster convergence relative to MLTED. The new TED requires shorter training sequences for symbol timing recovery. The TED operates on the outputs of the matched filter and estimates the timing offset. The S-curve is used as a tool for analyzing …

Cooperative Remote Sensing And Actuation Using Networked Unmanned Vehicles, Haiyang Chao

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This dissertation focuses on how to design and employ networked unmanned vehicles for remote sensing and distributed control purposes in the current information-rich world. The target scenarios are environmental or agricultural applications such as river/reservoir surveillance, wind profiling measurement, and monitoring/control of chemical leaks, etc. AggieAir, a small and low-cost unmanned aircraft system, is designed based on the remote sensing requirements from environmental monitoring missions. The state estimation problem and the advanced lateral flight controller design problem are further attacked focusing on the small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platform. Then the UAV-based remote sensing problem is focused with further flight …

Transmitter Localization Using Autonomous Robotic Swarms, Joshua S. Adams

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this research is to design a proof of concept system that is capable of locating a hidden radio transmitter and to investigate methods of multi-agent formation control with a specific interest in the effectiveness of these methods on the overall objective of locating this transmitter. A system is proposed and developed in which autonomous agents work together to locate this transmitter and their responsiveness is analyzed while using formations based both on a behavioral system and a system derived from centroidal Voronoi tessellations. Many software adaptations to the existing MASnet program are required, as well as some …

Optimal Sensing And Actuation Policies For Networked Mobile Agents In A Class Of Cyber-Physical Systems, Christophe Tricaud

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The main purpose of this dissertation is to define and solve problems on optimal sensing and actuating policies in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs). Cyber-physical system is a term that was introduced recently to define the increasing complexity of the interactions between computational hardwares and their physical environments. The problem of designing the "cyber'' part may not be trivial but can be solved from scratch. However, the "physical'' part, usually a natural physical process, is inherently given and has to be identified in order to propose an appropriate "cyber'' part to be adopted. Therefore, one of the first steps in designing a …

Decentralized Coordination Of Multiple Autonomous Vehicles, Yongcan Cao

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This dissertation focuses on the study of decentralized coordination algorithms of multiple autonomous vehicles. Here, the term decentralized coordination is used to refer to the behavior that a group of vehicles reaches the desired group behavior via local interaction. Research is conducted towards designing and analyzing distributed coordination algorithms to achieve desired group behavior in the presence of none, one, and multiple group reference states.

Decentralized coordination in the absence of any group reference state is a very active research topic in the systems and controls society. We first focus on studying decentralized coordination problems for both single-integrator kinematics and …

Analog Front-End Design Using The Gm/Id Method For A Pulse-Based Plasma Impedance Probe System, Arun J. Rao

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Plasma Impedance Probe (PIP) is an electronic instrument that measures the impedance of a dipole antenna immersed in a plasma environment. Measurements made by the PIP provide valuable information regarding the plasma environment. Knowledge of ionospheric plasma density and density disturbances is required to understand radio frequency communication with satellites. The impedance curve provides us with significant plasma characteristics such as the electron-neutral collision frequency and plasma electron density.

The work proposed here is a transistor-level implementation of the analog front-end, the non-inverting amplifier that is used to drive the antenna. The antenna immersed in plasma is excited with …

A Finite Domain Constraint Approach For Placement And Routing Of Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Architectures, Rohit Saraswat

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Scheduling, placement, and routing are important steps in Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) design. Researchers have developed numerous techniques to solve placement and routing problems. As the complexity of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) increased over the past decades, so did the demand for improved place and route techniques. The primary objective of these place and route approaches has typically been wirelength minimization due to its impact on signal delay and design performance. With the advent of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), the same place and route techniques were applied to FPGA-based design. However, traditional place and route techniques may …

Metamaterial-Inspired Miniaturized Multi-Band Microwave Filters And Power Dividers, Alper Genc

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Integration of more communication standards in one microwave wireless device created a demand on developing compact, low-cost, and robust multi-band microwave components. This dissertation presents three studies for designing miniaturized and multi-band circuits that can be used for multi-band radio frequency (RF) front-ends. These three studies are the design of dual-band and tunable bandpass filters as well as dual- and triple-band equal-split power dividers/combiners. The dual-band filter is based on split ring resonators and double slit complemantary split ring resonators. A dual-band prototype three-stage Chebyshev filter, with a fractional bandwidth of 2% at 0.9 GHz and a fractional bandwidth of …