Engineering Commons^™

Radio Frequency Direction Finding System, Jacob Taub, Austin Colon

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

In certain terrain types It is difficult to locate people, objects, animals, etc. In particular, using one’s eyes and ears to locate something has certain disadvantages. Visible light propagates at high frequencies and is easily stopped by terrain. Also, sound waves do not propagate as effectively as electromagnetic waves in open air because they are mechanical waves. Therefore, our goal is to create a system that can locate emitters that output electromagnetic waves in the radio frequency (RF) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS). RF operates at a lower frequency than visible light and will diffract around mountains and pass …

Automated Mixed-Dose Pill Dispenser With Image Verificaton, Nairu Garcia-Acevedo, Rohan Bhatt

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

With the unfathomable number of medications that are available today due to medicinal advancements, there is room for error in the distribution of such medication even within proper pharmaceutical settings. Our primary goal is to reduce the overall contribution of a wide range of human errors in the dispersion of medication which is found to be an extremely large industry in today's age while doing so in a cost effective manner. This is to be executed first using a robotic arm, to automate and create mobility, and second, including image verification, to classify and select pills based on certain characteristics. …

Attacking Logic Locked Circuits Using Reinforcement Learning, Allen Shelton, Jake Mellor

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Logic Locking is an emerging form of hardware obfuscation that is intended to be a solution to many of the trust issues associated with the modern globalized IC supply chain. By inserting extra key-gates into a circuit, the functionality of the circuit can be locked until the correct order of bits or “key” is applied to the key gates. To assess the strength of new logic locking techniques, we propose a new attack that uses deep reinforcement learning. This attack aims to test logic locking as well as evaluate reinforcement learning as a possible attack against logic locking. By using …

Machine Learning-Based Side-Channel Analysis On The Advanced Encryption Standard, Jack Edmonds, Tyler Moon

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Hardware security is essential in keeping sensitive information private. Because of this, it’s imperative that we evaluate the ability of cryptosystems to withstand cutting edge attacks. Doing so encourages the development of countermeasures and new methods of data protection as needed. In this thesis, we present our findings of an evaluation of the Advanced Encryption Standard, particularly unmasked and masked AES-128, implemented in software on an STM32F415 microcontroller unit (MCU), against machine learning-based side-channel analysis (MLSCA). 12 machine learning classifiers were used in combination with a side-channel leakage model in the context of four scenarios: profiling one device and key …

Powering Iot Sensors With Rf Energy Harvesting, Austin Rothschild, Kristi Nguyen

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

There is a need to power Internet of Things (IoT) applications that require frequent, expensive, and/or dangerous battery replacements. Radio-frequency energy harvesting (RFEH) is a possible alternative source of power for select IoT sensor applications. In comparison to other methods of energy harvesting, RFEH has the smallest incident power densities and therefore comes with many design challenges.

In this project we implement a novel RFEH system powered via a dedicated transmitter. A planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) and voltage doubler circuit form the designed rectenna (rectifier + antenna) and the system is implemented on a custom PCB to carry out RF-to-DC …

Adaptive Deposition Of Difficult Materials, Abel Daniel, Emily Holden, Gabriela Sanches Carvalhocarval Silva

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

When using a robotic arm, the path that the arm follows is typically unique to the task it completes, but not to the object upon which the task is performed. Additionally, when extruding materials, those materials are typically easy to work with (i.e. smooth and uniform). In this paper, we discuss our three-pronged approach, focusing on the imaging of the cupcake, the robotic arm’s movement about the cupcake, and the extrusion method, to achieve this goal of, simply-speaking, decorating a cupcake. While our results were not optimized or as broad as we’d initially hoped that they would be, we were …

Telehealth Sensor Authentication Through Memory Chip Variability, Calvin Kimbro, Holden Gordon, Thomas Lyp

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

In light of the COVID-19 world-wide pandemic, the need for secure and readily available remote patient monitoring has never been more important. Rural and low income communities in particular have been severely impacted by the lack of accessibility to in-person healthcare. This has created the need for access to remote patient monitoring and virtual health visits in order for greater accessibility to premier care. In this paper, we propose hardware security primitives as a viable solution to meet the security challenges of the telehealth market. We have created a novel solution, called the High-Low (HiLo) method, that generates physical unclonable …