Engineering Commons^™

Underwater Acoustic Signal Analysis Toolkit, Kirk Bienvenu Jr

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This project started early in the summer of 2016 when it became evident there was a need for an effective and efficient signal analysis toolkit for the Littoral Acoustic Demonstration Center Gulf Ecological Monitoring and Modeling (LADC-GEMM) Research Consortium. LADC-GEMM collected underwater acoustic data in the northern Gulf of Mexico during the summer of 2015 using Environmental Acoustic Recording Systems (EARS) buoys. Much of the visualization of data was handled through short scripts and executed through terminal commands, each time requiring the data to be loaded into memory and parameters to be fed through arguments. The vision was to develop …

Algorithm For Computational Imaging On A Real-Time Hardware, Manish Bhattarai

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

DRAMATIC advances in the field of computational and medical imaging over the past decades have enabled many critical applications such as night vision, medical diagnosis, quality control, and remote sensing. The increasing demand for image quality and its fidelity requires an increase in pixel count and a sophisticated post-processing mechanism to efficiently store, transmit, and analyze this massive data. There is an inherent trade-off between the generation of big data by such imaging systems and efficiency in extraction of useful information within real-time constraints, limiting the efficacy of such sensors in real-time decision-making systems. The traditional imaging system gets burdened …

Tiled Time Delay Estimation In Mobile Cloud Computing Environments, Ruairí De Fréin

Conference papers

We present a tiled delay estimation technique in the context of Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) environments. We examine its accuracy in the presence of multiple sources for (1) sub-sample delays and also (2) in the presence of phase-wrap around. Phase wrap-around is prevalent in MCC because the separation of acoustic sources may be large. We show that tiling a histogram of instantaneous phase estimates can improve delay estimates when phase-wrap around is sig- nificantly present and also when multiple sources are present. We report that error in the delay estimator is generally less than 5% of a sample, when the …

Multiple Content Adaptive Intelligent Watermarking Schemes For The Protection Of Blocks Of A Document Image, Chetan Kr Mr., S Nirmala Dr.

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Most of the documents contain different types of information such as white space, static information and dynamic information or mix of static and dynamic information. In this paper, multiple watermarking schemes are proposed for protection of the information content. The proposed approach comprises of three phases. In Phase-1, the edges of the source document image are extracted and the edge image is decomposed into blocks of uniform size. In Phase-2, GLCM features like energy, homogeneity, contrast and correlation are extracted from each block and the blocks are classified as no-information, static, dynamic and mix of static and dynamic information content …

Dual Method Headphone Amplifier, Joseph S. Gross, Timothy P. Murphy

Electrical Engineering

Many high impedance headphones underperform their full potential when directly connected to the audio source. Amplifiers boost the audio signal and provide the headphones with sufficient power to ensure their maximum performance. The invention of transistors caused vacuum tube implementation to decline, leaving many audiophiles unsatisfied with the transistor’s sound signature. Vacuum tubes and transistors both amplify signals, however the distinct “tube sound” has vanished.

We have designed and created a product where the user selectively switches between solid-state transistor and tube amplification to compare the sound signatures of each amplification method. The ability to switch between the solid-state and …

Classification Of Daily Activities For The Elderly Using Wearable Sensors, Jian Liu, Jeehoon Sohn, Sukwon Kim

Computer Sciences and Electrical Engineering Faculty Research

Monitoring of activities of daily living (ADL) using wearable sensors can provide an objective indication of the activity levels or restrictions experienced by patients or elderly. The current study presented a two-sensor ADL classification method designed and tested specifically with elderly subjects. Ten healthy elderly were involved in a laboratory testing with 6 types of daily activities. Two inertial measurement units were attached to the thigh and the trunk of each subject. The results indicated an overall rate of misdetection being 2.8%. The findings of the current study can be used as the first step towards a more comprehensive activity …

An Integrated Multi-Modal Registration Technique For Medical Imaging, Xue Wang

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Registration of medical imaging is essential for aligning in time and space different modalities and hence consolidating their strengths for enhanced diagnosis and for the effective planning of treatment or therapeutic interventions. The primary objective of this study is to develop an integrated registration method that is effective for registering both brain and whole-body images. We seek in the proposed method to combine in one setting the excellent registration results that FMRIB Software Library (FSL) produces with brain images and the excellent results of Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM) when registering whole-body images. To assess attainment of these objectives, the following …

A Book Reader Design For Persons With Visual Impairment And Blindness, Luis E. Galarza

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this dissertation is to provide a new design approach to a fully automated book reader for individuals with visual impairment and blindness that is portable and cost effective. This approach relies on the geometry of the design setup and provides the mathematical foundation for integrating, in a unique way, a 3-D space surface map from a low-resolution time of flight (ToF) device with a high-resolution image as means to enhance the reading accuracy of warped images due to the page curvature of bound books and other magazines. The merits of this low cost, but effective automated book …

Realtime Implementation Of An Internal-Model-Principle Signal Identifier, Edris Saleh Mohsen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis presents a new means approach of tuning an adaptive internal model principle based signal identification algorithm whose computational costs are low enough to allow a realtime implementation. The algorithm allows an instantaneous Fourier decomposition of nonstationary signals that have a strongly predictable component. The algorithm is implemented as a feedback loop resulting in a closed loop system with a frequency response of a bandpass filter with notches at the frequencies of the Fourier decomposition. This is achieved through real time selection of the coefficients of the transfer functions in the feedback loop. Previous work showed how the dynamics …

Technobiology Paradigm In Nanomedicine: Treating Cancer With Magnetoelectric Nanoparticles, Emmanuel Stimphil

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Today, cancer is the world’s deadliest disease. Despite significant progress to find a cure, especially over the last decade, with immunotherapy rapidly becoming the state of the art, major open questions remain. Each successful therapy is not only limited to a few cancers but also has relatively low specificity to target cancer cells; although cancer cells can indeed be eradicated, many normal cells are sacrificed as collateral damage. To fill this gap, we have developed a class of multiferroic nanostructures known as magnetoelectric nanoparticles (MENs) that can be used to enable externally controlled high-specificity targeted delivery and release of therapeutic …

Aphonic: Adaptive Thresholding For Noise Cancellation In Smart Mobile Environments, Ruairí De Fréin

Conference papers

We propose a signal-channel, adaptive threshold selection technique for binary mask construction, namely APHONIC, (AdaPtive tHreshOlding for NoIse Cancellation) for smart mobile environments. Using this mask, we introduce two noise cancellation techniques that perform robustly in the presence of real-world interfering signals that are typically encountered by mobile users: a violin busker, a subway and busy city square sounds. We demonstrate that when the power of the time-frequency components of the voice of a mobile user does not significantly overlap with the components of the interference signal, the threshold learning and noise cancellation techniques significantly improve the Signal-to-Interference Ratio (SIR) …

Detecting Structural Defects Using Novel Smart Sensory And Sensor-Less Approaches, Amin Baghalian

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Monitoring the mechanical integrity of critical structures is extremely important, as mechanical defects can potentially have adverse impacts on their safe operability throughout their service life. Structural defects can be detected by using active structural health monitoring (SHM) approaches, in which a given structure is excited with harmonic mechanical waves generated by actuators. The response of the structure is then collected using sensor(s) and is analyzed for possible defects, with various active SHM approaches available for analyzing the response of a structure to single- or multi-frequency harmonic excitations. In order to identify the appropriate excitation frequency, however, the majority of …

Feasibility Of 802.11a-Based Transceivers For Vhf/Uhf Communications In Remote Regions, Abhimanyu Nath

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

The project focuses on adapting a traditional IEEE802.11a specification originally designed for indoors, to work across mountainous terrains such as areas of rural Montana in the UHF band. The goal of the project is to experiment with various CSMA/CA timing parameters to accommodate long propagation delays between mountain peaks. The simulation tool was built in C++. When links with various data rates and hidden nodes were introduced during worst case performance analysis, severe packet drops and queue latencies were found in the network statistics. A few timing optimizations were explored and alternatives were considered in the systems design. When stations …

Design Of Dc-Link Vscf Ac Electrical Power System For The Embraer 190/195 Aircraft, Eduardo Francis Carvalho Freitas, Nihad E. Daidzic

Journal of Aviation Technology and Engineering

A proposed novel DC-Link VSCF AC-DC-AC electrical power system converter for Embraer 190/195 transport category airplane is presented. The proposed converter could replace the existing conventional system based on the CSCF IDGs. Several contemporary production airplanes already have VSCF as a major or backup source of electrical power. Problems existed with the older VSCF systems in the past; however, the switched power electronics and digital controllers have matured and can be now, in our opinion, safely integrated and replace existing constant-speed hydraulic transmissions powering CSCF AC generators. IGBT power transistors for medium-level power conversion and relatively fast efficient switching are …

On Dual-Band Amplifications Using Dual Two-Tones: Clarifications And Discussion, Siyuan Yan, Xianzhen Yang, Xiao Li, Fu Lo

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A significant development of recent research in nonlinear distortion is the expansion of the conventional two-tone test for power amplifiers to the concurrent dual-band transmitters, by Amin et al. A general framework using dual two-tones is developed, which shows that the output signal is affected not only by intermodulation (IM) products but also by cross-modulation (CM) products. In this paper, we will make a number of clarifications to Amin et al.'s paper. The effects of IM and CM in passband will be discussed, IM represents a reduction for compressive devices, and CM reflects an interference caused by the signal from …

Synthesis Of Non-Uniformly Correlated Partially Coherent Sources Using A Deformable Mirror, Milo W. Hyde Iv, Santasri Bose-Pillai, Ryan A. Wood

Faculty Publications

The near real-time synthesis of a non-uniformly correlated partially coherent source using a low-actuator-count deformable mirror is demonstrated. The statistical optics theory underpinning the synthesis method is reviewed. The experimental results of a non-uniformly correlated source are presented and compared to theoretical predictions. A discussion on how deformable mirror characteristics such as actuator count and pitch affect source generation is also included.

Design And Validation Of A Low Cost High Speed Atomic Force Microscope, Michael Ganzer, Tien Pham

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

The Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) is an important instrument in nanoscale topography, but it is expensive and slow. The authors designed an AFM to overcome both limitations. To do this, they used an Optical Pickup Unit (OPU) from a DVD player as the laser and photodetector system to minimize cost and they did not implement a vertical control loop, which maximized potential speed. Students will be able to be use this device to make nanoscale measurements and engage in micro-engineering. To prototype this idea, the authors tested an OPU with a silicon wafer and demonstrated the ability to consistently distinguish …

Separation Of Vocal And Non-Vocal Components From Audio Clip Using Correlated Repeated Mask (Crm), Mohan Kumar Kanuri

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Extraction of singing voice from music is one of the ongoing research topics in the field of speech recognition and audio analysis. In particular, this topic finds many applications in the music field, such as in determining music structure, lyrics recognition, and singer recognition. Although many studies have been conducted for the separation of voice from the background, there has been less study on singing voice in particular.

In this study, efforts were made to design a new methodology to improve the separation of vocal and non-vocal components in audio clips using REPET [14]. In the newly designed method, we …

Distributed Emitter Detector Design Under Imperfect Communication Channel, Soumyadip Patra

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

We consider the distributed detection of an emitter using multiple sensors deployed at deterministic locations. The signal from the emitter follows a signal attenuation model dependent on the distance between the sensor and the emitter. The sensors transmit their decisions to the fusion center through a parallel access Binary Symmetric Channel (BSC) with a cross-over probability. We seek to optimize the detection performance under a prescribed false alarm at the sensor level and at the system level. We consider the triangular topology structure and using the least favorable emitter range study the impact of the BSC on the system level …

Gui For Mri-Compatible Neural Stimulator And Recorder, Soo Han Soon, Nishant Babaria, Ranajay Mandal, Zhongming Liu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) are useful tools to analyze brain activities given active stimulation. However, the electromagnetic noise from the MRI distorts the brain signal recording and damages the subject with excessive heat generated on the electrodes attached to the skin. MRI-compatible recording and stimulation systems previously developed at LIBI lab were capable of removing the electromagnetic noise during the imaging process. Previously, the hardware systems had required the integrative software that could control both circuits simultaneously and enable users to easily change recording and stimulation parameters. Graphical user interface (GUI) programmed with computer language informed …

Computational Imaging Approach To Recovery Of Target Coordinates Using Orbital Sensor Data, Michael D. Vaughan

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the components necessary for simulation of an image-based recovery of the position of a target using orbital image sensors. Each component is considered in detail, focusing on the effect that design choices and system parameters have on the accuracy of the position estimate. Changes in sensor resolution, varying amounts of blur, differences in image noise level, selection of algorithms used for each component, and lag introduced by excessive processing time all contribute to the accuracy of the result regarding recovery of target coordinates using orbital sensor data.

Using physical targets and sensors in this scenario would be …

Wide-Area Measurement-Driven Approaches For Power System Modeling And Analytics, Hesen Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents wide-area measurement-driven approaches for power system modeling and analytics. Accurate power system dynamic models are the very basis of power system analysis, control, and operation. Meanwhile, phasor measurement data provide first-hand knowledge of power system dynamic behaviors. The idea of building out innovative applications with synchrophasor data is promising.

Taking advantage of the real-time wide-area measurements, one of phasor measurements’ novel applications is to develop a synchrophasor-based auto-regressive with exogenous inputs (ARX) model that can be updated online to estimate or predict system dynamic responses.

Furthermore, since auto-regressive models are in a big family, the ARX model …

Two Senior Projects: 2.4 Ghz, 40% Efficiency Radio Frequency Amplifier, Ieee Design Contest, & Design And Implementation Of A Software Costas Loop For Audio Frequencies, Robert J. Tong

Electrical Engineering

How to Read this Document:

This document combines two senior project reports. The first senior project documents designing a class AB RF amplifier. The second, discusses the design and implementation of a software Costas loop for audio frequencies. The first report begins on the next page, while the Costas loop report starts on page 24. The two reports are orthogonal from one another. It is not a prerequisite to read the RF amplifier report before reading the Costas loop report. This document is merely two reports combined into one document. The second report, about the Costas loop, was written as …

Learning Multimodal Structures In Computer Vision, Ali Taalimi

Doctoral Dissertations

A phenomenon or event can be received from various kinds of detectors or under different conditions. Each such acquisition framework is a modality of the phenomenon. Due to the relation between the modalities of multimodal phenomena, a single modality cannot fully describe the event of interest. Since several modalities report on the same event introduces new challenges comparing to the case of exploiting each modality separately.

We are interested in designing new algorithmic tools to apply sensor fusion techniques in the particular signal representation of sparse coding which is a favorite methodology in signal processing, machine learning and statistics to …

Feasibility Of Melville Marginalia Authorship Differentiation, Aaron Burdin

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

We examine the feasibility of using image processing techniques to determine differentiation in authorship of historical pencil marks. Pencil marks with unattributed and attributed authorship are segmented from digital images of historical books. Analysis is performed on five features that are extracted from the "vertical" pencil marks, with those features used as a basis for authorship of marks. These marks consist of single stroke marks that are interspersed in the same document. We describe the challenges of the digital format that we were given and the steps taken in using autonomous segmentation to save pixel locations of marks. Five mark …

Application-Aware Cognitive Multi-Hop Wireless Networking Testbed And Experiments, Trenton T. Evans

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

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

Covert Wireless Communications In A Dynamic Environment, Tamara V. Sobers

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates covert communication in dynamic wireless communication environments. A key goal is to provide insight about the capabilities of a transmitter desiring to remain covert and analogously, the capabilities of the party attempting to detect covert communications. The first chapter provides background on covert communications prior to this work. The second chapter studies the theoretical limits of covert communication and proves that positive rate is achievable when a jammer is added to the classical Alice/Bob/Warden Willie model. The third chapter expands on the second chapter by considering more generally the impact of the dynamics of the environment on …

Real-Time Camera Tracking System Using Optical Flow Feature Points, Daniel D. Doyle, Alan L. Jennings, Jonathan T. Black

AFIT Patents

A new apparatus and method for tracking a moving object with a moving camera provides a real-time, narrow field-of-view, high resolution and on target image by combining commanded motion with an optical flow algorithm for deriving motion and classifying background. Commanded motion means that movement of the pan, tilt and zoom (PTZ) unit is “commanded” by a computer, instead of being observed by the camera, so that the pan, tilt and zoom parameters are known, as opposed to having to be determined, significantly reducing the computational requirements for tracking a moving object. The present invention provides a single camera pan …

Recursive Robust Pca Or Recursive Sparse Recovery In Large But Structured Noise, Chenlu Qiu, Namrata Vaswani, Brian Lois, Leslie Hogben

Namrata Vaswani

This paper studies the recursive robust principal components analysis problem. If the outlier is the signal-of-interest, this problem can be interpreted as one of recursively recovering a time sequence of sparse vectors, St, in the presence of large but structured noise, Lt. The structure that we assume on Lt is that Lt is dense and lies in a low-dimensional subspace that is either fixed or changes slowly enough. A key application where this problem occurs is in video surveillance where the goal is to separate a slowly changing background (Lt) from moving foreground objects (St) on-the-fly. To solve the above …

Predictive Shutdown Systems For Nuclear Power Plants, Drew J. Rankin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation investigates the use of a Kalman filter (KF) to predict, within the shutdown system (SDS) of a nuclear power plant (NPP), whether a safety parameter measurement will reach a corresponding trip set-point (TSP). The proposed predictive SDS (PSDS) designs aim to initiate shutdown actions at a time which is earlier than conventional shutdown initiation. These early detections are, in turn, expected to improve safety and productivity margins within the NPP. The KF-based point-PSDS design utilizes a linear time-varying (LTV) system model to predict mean safety parameter measurements for comparison against the TSP. The KF considers noise covariances that …