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Articles 2311 - 2340 of 2904

Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Theia: Radio Frequency Identification Performance Analysis Tool, Jason Francis Pereira Jan 2009

Theia: Radio Frequency Identification Performance Analysis Tool, Jason Francis Pereira

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

In recent years there has been an increase in the adoption of Radio FrequencyIdentication or RFID systems for most applications that deal with investment (products/people) tracking. The ideal requirements of investment tracking systems are :-lost-cost, zero maintenance and eciency.Although the applications are similar in nature, the scenarios and operating environmentsare not. This is a problem that plagues an inexpert consumer of RFIDsystems. RFID systems are application specic and hence have to be properly customizedto the application environment. One solution to this problem is to have theinstallation set up by an expert, but this is impractical due to recurring costs for …


Implementation Of Autonomous Navigation And Obstacle Avoidance On An Unmanned Ground Vehicle, Pranav Naresh Desai Jan 2009

Implementation Of Autonomous Navigation And Obstacle Avoidance On An Unmanned Ground Vehicle, Pranav Naresh Desai

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

This thesis presents the implementation of a novel distributed embedded systems approach to real-time obstacle avoidance and guidance for an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV). The mobility, real-time, and limited size requirements of UGVs, result in computationally limited and resource constrained hardware platform. The use of distributed computational resources, such as multiple embedded micro-controllers, enables the distribution of the computing resources for obstacle avoidance and guidance system functionalities. The resulting system's complexity is significantly greater than that of a single high performance processor performing all of the above functions. The hardware platform is integrated with sensors and micro-controllers to function as …


Design And Study Of Phase Locked Loop For Space Applications In Sub-Micron Cmos Technology, Partha Pratim Ghosh Jan 2009

Design And Study Of Phase Locked Loop For Space Applications In Sub-Micron Cmos Technology, Partha Pratim Ghosh

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

This work proposes a successful design of a radiation hard phase locked loop (PLL) using Silicon-on-Sapphire CMOS (SOS) technology for space applications. A fully self-bias radiation hard PLL providing frequency of 2.5 GHz has been designed for the first time on SOS technology. SOS technology is used to provide radiation hardness from Single Event Effects (SEE), an improvement over the use of commercially available bulk CMOS process. Innovative designs of VCO implemented in the PLL, architectural modifications in the use of buffers, bias stages, asynchronous dividers and optimization of fully self-bias design provide hardness from Total Ionization Dose (TID). Self-bias …


Designing Multi-Objective Reverse Logistics Networks Using Genetic Algorithms, Sanya Yimsiri Jan 2009

Designing Multi-Objective Reverse Logistics Networks Using Genetic Algorithms, Sanya Yimsiri

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Reverse logistics (RL) involves management of activities that include collection, sort/storage, transportation, recovery, disposal and re-distribution. The product return process is more complicated than forward logistics due to presence of multiple reverse distribution channels, individualized returns with small quantities, extended order cycles associated with product exchanges and a variety of recovery and disposition options. Reverse logistics has been gaining interest from many sectors due to rising costs, environmental concern and tougher regulations. As a result, good reverse logistics network design can help business save costs and meet their bottom lines in this competitive global environment. Most of the previous research …


Physiological Telemetric Sensing Systems For Medical Applications, Lun-Chen Hsu Jan 2009

Physiological Telemetric Sensing Systems For Medical Applications, Lun-Chen Hsu

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

A batteryless, wireless, sensing system, suitable for biomedical applications, was studied in this dissertation. The sensing system contains a reader and a transponder and the working principle is based on passive RFID systems. The transponder harvests the RF energy from the reader to power up the frequency generator circuit which is modulated by sensor signals. Sensor signals are encoded into frequency shifts to provide the immunity to motion artifacts and the robust performances of sensing system are demonstrated. The sensing platform can also be used for multiple sensor integration for different medical applications. In this dissertation, the physiological measurements are …


Effects Of Voltage Unbalance And System Armonics On The Performance Of Doubly Fed Induction Wind Generators, Morgan Mozhgan Kiani Jan 2009

Effects Of Voltage Unbalance And System Armonics On The Performance Of Doubly Fed Induction Wind Generators, Morgan Mozhgan Kiani

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Inherent difficulties in management of electric power in the presence of an increasing demand for more energy, non-conventional loads such as digital appliances, and non-sustainable imported fossil fuels has initiated a multi-folded effort by many countries to restructure the way electric energy is generated, dispatched, and consumed. Smart power grid is the manifestation of many technologies that would eventually transforms the existing power grid into a more flexible, fault resilient, and intelligent system. Integration of distributed renewable energy sources plays a central role in successful implementation of this transformation. Among the renewable options, wind energy harvesting offers superior engineering and …


Dynamic Scene Interpretation And Understanding From Two Views, Ninad Shashikant Thakoor Jan 2009

Dynamic Scene Interpretation And Understanding From Two Views, Ninad Shashikant Thakoor

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Interpretation of a static or dynamic scene starts by segmenting the scene followed by recognition. Our work concentrates on the general problem of segmenting and recognizing animate and inanimate objects in a scene captured from two different views. The two views here refer to either a pair of frames captured by a stereo camera or two frames (with spatial overlap) captured with a moving camera.The work described in the dissertation starts with an iterative split-and-merge framework for segmentation of an unknown number of objects captured with stereo camera. The disparity of a scene is modeled by approximating various surfaces in …


A Novel Method For Major Harmonic Sources Identification In High Voltage Transmission Systems, Shun Liang Jan 2009

A Novel Method For Major Harmonic Sources Identification In High Voltage Transmission Systems, Shun Liang

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Due to the proliferation of high-voltage power electronics devices and nonlinear loads connected to power systems, the penetration of produced harmonics into power transmission networks to pollute power quality of power systems has been a new concern. Recently, an electric utility company in Texas has observed that harmonic levels may exceed the recommended levels of IEEE Std. 519-1992 at some points in the 138 kV, 161 kV, and 345 kV transmission systems. In order to meet the requirement of the IEEE recommended practice and maintain the power quality of electricity delivered to consumers, identification of major harmonic sources to mitigate …


Electrodeposited Cuprous Oxide Solar Cells, Kunhee Han Jan 2009

Electrodeposited Cuprous Oxide Solar Cells, Kunhee Han

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

The electrochemically deposited cuprous oxide (Cu2O) as a photovoltaic absorber material is introduced in this work. The electrical, structural, and optical characteristics of electrodeposited Cu2O are well investigated. The pH of the deposition solution controls the flat band voltage of Cu2O. The variation of the flat band voltage by solution pH is related to oxygen incorporation in the film, which is controlled by the amount of oxygen precursor, OH-, in the solution. Hence, the high pH in the solution is preferable for producing a p-type Cu2O with copper vacancy, while the low pH in the solution is preferable for producing …


Mems Based Wireless Sensing And Therapeutic Systems For Biomedical Applications, Praveen Pandojirao-Sunkojirao Jan 2009

Mems Based Wireless Sensing And Therapeutic Systems For Biomedical Applications, Praveen Pandojirao-Sunkojirao

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Miniaturized devices in vivo for accurate diagnosis and prognosis in therapy to detect various physiological parameters inside human body have been a goal for efficient healthcare. In this perspective, microelectromechanical system (MEMS) devices providing small size features and new transduction functions benefit such biomedical applications. The features in MEMS devices also allow integration of CMOS circuitry and wireless communication for electronic control as well as actuation functionalities for driving mechanical parts for scanning, moving and probing. In this work, feasibility studies for two novel sensing systems: an in vivo optical fiber based spectral optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging system and …


A Hybrid Method For Identifying And Estimating Key Dynamic Parameters For Exciters, Pss And Governors Based On Event-Recorded Measurements On-Line Measurements, Yunzhi Cheng Jan 2009

A Hybrid Method For Identifying And Estimating Key Dynamic Parameters For Exciters, Pss And Governors Based On Event-Recorded Measurements On-Line Measurements, Yunzhi Cheng

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Following the power market deregulation, power systems have become more complex and are found to be consistently operating closer to their stability limits. Power system dynamic modeling and studies which provide significant insight into the dynamic characteristics of the system are bound to play increasingly critical roles. The dynamic simulation results are highly dependent on certain key parameters that govern the dynamics of the power system such as governors and/or exciters in the case of generation facilities. However, the dynamic parameters in the system database maintained by the Independent System Operator (ISO) are not accurate due to numerous reasons ranging …


A Family Of Robust Second Order Training Algorithms, Sanjeev Sreenivasa Rao Malalur Jan 2009

A Family Of Robust Second Order Training Algorithms, Sanjeev Sreenivasa Rao Malalur

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Starting with the concept of equivalent networks, a framework for analyzing the effect of linear dependence on training of a multi-layer perceptron is established. Detailed mathematical analyses are carried out to show that training using backpropagation and Newton's method is different under the presence of linear dependence.Two effective batch training algorithms are developed for the multilayer perceptron. First, the optimal input gain algorithm is presented, which computes an optimal gain coefficient for each input, used to update the input weights. The motivation for this algorithm comes from using equivalent networks to analyze the effect of input transformation. It is shown …


Open Main Detection In Underground Distribution Network Using Statistical Approaches, Abedalgany Abedallah Athamneh Jan 2009

Open Main Detection In Underground Distribution Network Using Statistical Approaches, Abedalgany Abedallah Athamneh

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

The continuous increase for people dependency on electrical energy to run most of their industrial, commercial and residential activities makes it necessary to regularly improve the distribution systems. This Improvement does not involve served area and system capacity increase only, but also includes service quality and system reliability enhancement. Outage is the most serious challenge that might affect the reliability of the distribution system, especially in the congested areas like New York City, where the outage is a threat for continuity of service for a large number of customers or for the important world institutions there. Outage incident in distribution …


Objective Image And Video Quality Assessment With Applications, Qiang Li Jan 2009

Objective Image And Video Quality Assessment With Applications, Qiang Li

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Objective Image and Video Quality Assessment (IQA/VQA) aims to automatically measure the quality degradation perceived by the human eyes. It is of fundamental importance to address a wide variety of problems in image and video processing. Based on the availability of the information about the reference image, IQA/VQA models can be classified into Full-reference (FR), Reduced-reference (RR) and No-reference (NR) IQA/VQA methods. This dissertation focuses on FRIQA/VQA, RRIQA/VQA, as well as their applications in perceptual image coding and video interpolation.First, we propose novel metrics for FRIQA/VQA based on Structural SIMilarity (SSIM) and the information theoretical weighting. The spatial information weights …


Performance Evaluation In Reverse Logistics With Data Envelopment Analysis, Ake Tonanont Jan 2009

Performance Evaluation In Reverse Logistics With Data Envelopment Analysis, Ake Tonanont

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Good reverse logistics design can save cost, increase revenues, and gain competitive edges over the rivals. Design of the optimized reverse supply chain model is a very important task to help enterprises save cost and gain benefits from their supply chains. In this study, reverse logistics is considered as a part of the Closed Loop Supply Chain (CLSC). CLSC combines forward and reverse flow together in the supply chain. Each component in a forward and reverse supply chain results in the efficiency of CLSC. Therefore, considering forward and reverse supply chain together as a CLSC will result in more benefits …


Software Capacity Planning: A Methodology For A Portfolio Of High Technology Product Development Projects, Rajiv Malhotra Jan 2009

Software Capacity Planning: A Methodology For A Portfolio Of High Technology Product Development Projects, Rajiv Malhotra

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Dissertations - Archive

High technology product development projects make extensive use of engineering software during the product development process. The suite of engineering software tools deployed during product development represents a significant portion of the product development costs. The ability to forecast the engineering software license capacity required to support product development plans is crucial for budgeting, return on investment (ROI) calculations, contract negotiations with the software suppliers, and the provision of an IT infrastructure necessary to support the execution of the software tools. This research shows that the usage of engineering application software in high technology is cyclical due to the characteristics …


Multi-Port Power Electronic Interface For Renewable Energy Sources, Wei Jiang Jan 2009

Multi-Port Power Electronic Interface For Renewable Energy Sources, Wei Jiang

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Energy intensive products and services are penetrating people's daily life as well as different sectors of industry during recent decades. Further effort to improve efficiency, reduce green house gas and hazardous particle emission lead to the emergence of the "more electric" concept in several industries including transportation. This trend, however, burdens the aging power system and existing local power networks. To offer a remedy to the problem and a smooth transition to a more reliable, more diverse, and more efficient power grid of the future, the concept of Multi-port Power Electronic Interface (MPEI) for localized power processing is introduced in …


Millimeter Scale Robots For The Nanofactory, Rakesh Murthy Jan 2009

Millimeter Scale Robots For The Nanofactory, Rakesh Murthy

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

The top down approach is a commonly employed miniaturization pathway into micro and nanomanufacturing. Its popularity is due to the fact that it adapts traditionally engineered macro scale positioning, manipulation and processing technology with micro and nano scale precision and part sizes. However, state of the art top down systems such as the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) span four to five orders of magnitude larger than the parts being handled. This dissertation addresses the need for creating millimeter size robotic positioning technology that closes the size gap between equipment and part sizes. Such microrobot manufacturing methodology comprising of micro component-level …


Online Adaptive Optimal Control For Continuous-Time Systems, Draguna Vrabie Jan 2009

Online Adaptive Optimal Control For Continuous-Time Systems, Draguna Vrabie

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

This work makes two major contributions. * First, in the field of computational intelligence, it develops reinforcement learning controllers (i.e. approximate dynamic programming algorithms) for continuous-time systems, whereas in the past, reinforcement learning has been mainly developed for discrete-time systems. * Second, in the field of control systems engineering, it develops on-line optimal adaptive controllers, whereas in the past, optimal control has been an off-line design tool, and on-line adaptive controllers have not been optimal. The online algorithms presented herein are reinforcement learning schemes which provide online synthesis of optimal control for a class of nonlinear systems with unknown drift …


Automated 3d Microassembly With Precision Adjusted Hybrid Supervisory Controller, Choudhury Aditya Narayan Das Jan 2009

Automated 3d Microassembly With Precision Adjusted Hybrid Supervisory Controller, Choudhury Aditya Narayan Das

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Unlike semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs), newer microsystems combine sensors, actuators, mechanical structures, electronics, and optics on a single substrate. In such a diversified system, heterogeneous manipulation of the components becomes unavoidable. In an effort to find a solution to reduced yields and speeds in manufacturing at the micro-scale, research initiated in 1990s has sought to understand top-down aspects of micromanipulation, sensor-based precision control of robots, self alignment effects using compliant micro structure designs, and so on. From these researches, automated microassembly emerges as an enabling technology for micro manufacturing that offers well-known pathways to building heterogeneous microsystems with a higher …


A Microfluidic Platform To Study Cell Migration, Smitha Malalur Nagaraja Rao Jan 2009

A Microfluidic Platform To Study Cell Migration, Smitha Malalur Nagaraja Rao

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Migration of cancer cells from the primary organ to distant sites is critical to the development of malignant metastasis. This is partly dependant on the various chemical factors present in the blood serum. Cell motility studies using conventional Boyden chamber assays require high volumes of reagents. The measurement provides only an end-point result and time-lapse study of the cell deformation and migration cannot be performed. We have designed and evaluated a poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic device in order to study cell migration in the presence of gradients. Photolithography and soft lithography processes were used to fabricate the PDMS devices from the …


Performance Analysis And Comparison Of Dirac Video Codec With H.264 / Mpeg-4 Part 10 Avc, Aruna Ravi Jan 2009

Performance Analysis And Comparison Of Dirac Video Codec With H.264 / Mpeg-4 Part 10 Avc, Aruna Ravi

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

Dirac is a hybrid motion-compensated state-of-the-art video codec that uses modern techniques such as wavelet transforms and arithmetic coding. It is an open technology, designed to avoid patent infringement and can be used without the payment of license fees. It is well suited to the business model of public service broadcasters as it can be easily recreated for new platforms. Dirac is aimed at applications ranging from HDTV (high definition television) to web streaming.H.264, MPEG-4 part-10 or AVC, is the latest digital video codec standard which has proven to be superior than earlier standards in terms of compression ratio, quality, …


Non-Linear Finite Element Dynamic Analysis Of The Effect Of Compaction On Underground Conduits, Anupong Kararam Jan 2009

Non-Linear Finite Element Dynamic Analysis Of The Effect Of Compaction On Underground Conduits, Anupong Kararam

Civil Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Construction loads are an important but often overlooked factor in underground pipe design and installation. Common compaction equipments used in pipeline construction can be a major contributor to pipe damage. To reduce load concentrations in excess of the design loads, construction equipment should be kept at a safe distance above the pipe location.This study investigates the behavior of a reinforced concrete pipeline system under a compaction process. The full-scale experimental test was conducted using a Type-2 standard trench installations soil and minimum compaction requirement. Using a compaction machine "hoe pack" and including the weight of a backhoe, a maximum dynamic …


On-Chip Liquid-Liquid Extraction And Separation Using Digital Microfluidics, Praveen Kunchala Jan 2009

On-Chip Liquid-Liquid Extraction And Separation Using Digital Microfluidics, Praveen Kunchala

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

In this thesis, on-chip liquid-liquid microextraction and separation using electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD) digital microfluidics was demonstrated by considering room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) and DI water as two liquid phases, which form immiscible interface with each other. Room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) have been actively investigated as replacements for the organic solvents and various "task-specific" ionic liquids (TSIL) are being developed which exhibit many attractive properties such as selectivity to specific biomolecules. Liquid-liquid extraction and separation using EWOD digital microfluidic device with model extraction experiments have been demonstrated, one was extraction of organic dye from RTIL (1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide, [bmim][NTf2]) …


Nanoscale Approaches For Biomolecule Separation And Detection, Swati Goyal Jan 2009

Nanoscale Approaches For Biomolecule Separation And Detection, Swati Goyal

Bioengineering Theses - Archive

Nanotechnology has the potential to contact and impact the biological interactions at the most basic chemical and physical levels. New approaches to nanodevices allow high sensitivity and specificity with low sample requirement. Such devices are potential candidates for early disease detection at molecular levels and have important implications in associated therapeutics.This research work focuses on two different areas: developing devices for DNA detection, protein enrichment and exploring material properties to fabricate microscale/nanoscale structures. In one approach, hairpin probe DNA was used to detect fmol of ss-DNA from k-ras oncogene. In another approach, nanochannel based device was developed to selectively increase …


Algorithm Developement For Adaptive Grid Generation Using Galerkin Finite Element Method, Monalkumar Patel Jan 2009

Algorithm Developement For Adaptive Grid Generation Using Galerkin Finite Element Method, Monalkumar Patel

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

The adaptive grid concept is developed in order to achieve more accurate and stable results for the numerical simulations of Partial Differential Equations (PDEs). There are two main types of strategies used for adaptive grids: local refinement by increasing the number of elements (h-refinement) and deforming grids where the number of elements remains fixed (r-refinement). The h-refinement method requires inserting additional elements and nodes in a certain region of the mesh. This significantly affects the software data structure and makes programming more difficult. To maintain the same data structure, the method must delete the same number of nodes from another …


Finite Element Analysis Of Bio-Heat Transfer For Magnetic Fluid Hyperthermia Application, Kamalkumar N. Chauhan Jan 2009

Finite Element Analysis Of Bio-Heat Transfer For Magnetic Fluid Hyperthermia Application, Kamalkumar N. Chauhan

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Finite Element solution for the multi-region bio-heat Equation is present to model magnetic fluid hyperthermia. This study solves the Penne's two dimensional bio-heat equation using finite element method and develops the thermal behavior of the tumor and healthyportion of the composite tissue using low curie nanoparticles.The inner cylinder represents the tumor tissue containing low Curie temperature nanoparticles. Low Curie temperature nanoparticles generate heat due to the Neel and Brownian relaxation when a magnetic field is applied. The outer cylinder represents the healthy tissue.First part of this thesis discusses about the background related to the nanoparticles heat dissipation and finite element …


Modeling An Instrumented (Tractor-Semitrailer Combination) Vehicle: Using System Identification Methods, Bito Irie Jan 2009

Modeling An Instrumented (Tractor-Semitrailer Combination) Vehicle: Using System Identification Methods, Bito Irie

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

In this thesis, properties of the input-output relationships of a tractor-semitrailer combination vehicle were analyzed. Predictive models of the system were identified using only input-output data collected separately but for the same portion of the road. A vehicle equipped with an inertial profiling system and a strain gauge instrumented truck were used to collect the input and output data, respectively. Input-output combinations such as single-input-single-output (SISO), multiple-input-single-output (MISO), and multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) representing the vehicle models were investigated using the polynomial and state-space black-box modeling (i.e., system identification) techniques. Comparisons among measured and k-steps ahead predicted outputs and residual analysis were …


Electrical Detection Of Single-Based Dna Mutation Using Functionalized Nanoparticles, Mohammud R. Noor Jan 2009

Electrical Detection Of Single-Based Dna Mutation Using Functionalized Nanoparticles, Mohammud R. Noor

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

DNA molecules posses unique structure and molecular recognition properties that makes them excellent candidate for bio-chemical sensors. Understanding the mechanism of charge transport in DNA is essential to develop DNA based molecular electronic devices. In the experiment reported in this thesis, we analyzed an electrical method to detect specific DNA. Hairpin probe DNA was engineered to melt and hybridize with certain perfect complementary sequences and immobilized on a silicon chip between gold nanoelectrodes. Hybridization of target DNA to the hairpin melts or open up the stem nucleotides, which provides DNA hybridization sites. Gold nanoparticle-conjugated universal reporter sequence detects the open …


Signal Processing In Radar And Non-Radar Sensor Networks, Jing Liang Jan 2009

Signal Processing In Radar And Non-Radar Sensor Networks, Jing Liang

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

This dissertation studies six topics within the area of radar andnon-radar sensor networks from a signal processing perspective:radar sensor networks (RSN) waveform design and performance analysis(chapter 2), blind speed alleviation using RSN (chapter 3), targetdetection in foliage using Ultra-Wideband (UWB) RSN (chapter 4),sense-through-foliage\&wall channel modeling (chapter 5), channelselection algorithms in virtual multiple-input-multiple-output(MIMO) sensor networks (chapter 6) and RF emitter passivegeolocation using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and sensors(chapter 7).In RSN, distributed radar sensors work in an ad hoc fashion but aregrouped together by an intelligent clusterhead that combineswaveform diversity. RSN not only provide spatial resilience fortarget detection and tracking compared to …