Engineering Commons^™

Predicting Critical Warps In Near-Threshold Gpgpu Applications Using A Dynamic Choke Point Analysis, Sourav Sanyal

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

General purpose graphics processing units (GP-GPU), owing to their enormous thread-level parallelism, can significantly improve the power consumption at the near-threshold (NTC) operating region, while offering close to a super-threshold performance. However, process variation (PV) can drastically reduce the GPU performance at NTC. In this work, choke points—a unique device-level characteristic of PV at NTC—that can exacerbate the warp criticality problem in GPUs have been explored. It is shown that the modern warp schedulers cannot tackle the choke point induced critical warps in an NTC GPU. Additionally, Choke Point Aware Warp Speculator, a circuit-architectural solution is proposed to dynamically …

Spectral, Energy And Computation Efficiency In Future 5g Wireless Networks, Haijian Sun

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Wireless technology has revolutionized the way people communicate. From first generation, or 1G, in the 1980s to current, largely deployed 4G in the 2010s, we have witnessed not only a technological leap, but also the reformation of associated applications. It is expected that 5G will become commercially available in 2020. 5G is driven by ever-increasing demands for high mobile traffic, low transmission delay, and massive numbers of connected devices. Today, with the popularity of smart phones, intelligent appliances, autonomous cars, and tablets, communication demands are higher than ever, especially when it comes to low-cost and easy-access solutions.

Existing communication architecture …

Investigation Of Graphene Interconnections For Multifunctional Reconfigurable Antenna Beam Steering, Joshua R. Perkins

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In high frequency, high-performance wireless communications, direct line of sight antennas are common. The issue with the line of sight antennas is the need to redirect the physical antenna to achieve the best possible reception. Classical redirections are done by mechanical movements: hand tuning and motors. Our multi-functional re-configurable antenna (MRA) concept allows for electrical and non-mechanical antenna reorientation. This work investigates two important concepts in the development and enhancement of future MRA devices: special, non-interfering, control signal circuitry and nano-sized switching devices that are controlled by the special circuitry. The investigation was conducted with the use of commercially available …

Robust Resource Allocation To Secure Physical Layer Using Uav-Assisted Mobile Relay Communications In 5g Technology, Shakil Ahmed

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are also known as drones. Recently, UAVs have attracted the next generation researchers due to their flexible, dynamic, and cost-effective deployment, etc. Moreover, the UAVs have a wide range of application domains, such as rescue operation in the remote area, military surveillance, emergency application, etc. Given the UAVs are appropriately deployed, the UAVs provide continuous and reliable connectivity, on-demand, and cost-effective features to the desired destination in the wireless communication system. Thus, the UAVs can be a great choice to deploy as a mobile relay in co-existence with the base stations (BSs) on the ground …

Agent-Based Model To Manage Household Water Use Through Social-Environmental Strategies Of Encouragement And Peer Pressure, Ryan James

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Inelastic price responses, demand hardening, and poor public awareness reduce the effectiveness of demand side strategies on water savings. This project quantified phycological household’s factors of attitudes, peer support, opportunities on water conservation with two social-environmental management strategies of encouragement and peer pressure. An agent-based model was populated with data for Logan, Utah using surveys, municipal billing, aerial imagery, weather monitoring stations, and flow, frequency, and durations of appliance use data. Results indicated those households with higher attitudes, peer support and opportunities saved the most water while peer pressure saved more than encouragement when using small and diverse social networks …

Edge Caching For Small Cell Networks, Md Ferdous Pervej

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

An idea of storing contents, such as media files, music files, movie clips, etc. is simple yet challenging in terms of required effort to make it count. Some of the benefits of pre-storing the contents are reduced delay of accessing/downloading a content, reduced load to the centralized servers and of course, a higher data rate. However, several challenges need to be addressed to achieve these benefits. Among many, some of the fundamentals are limited storage capacity, storing the right content and minimizing the costs. This thesis aims to address these challenges. First, a framework for predicting the proper contents that …

Statistical Analysis Of A Channel Emulator For Noisy Gradient Descent Low Density Parity Check Decoder, Rakin Muhammad Shadab

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of a channel emulator is to emulate a communication channel in real-life use case scenario. These emulators are often used in the domains of research in digital and wireless communication. One such area is error correction coding, where transmitted data bits over a channel are decoded and corrected to prevent data loss. A channel emulator that does not follow the properties of the channel it is intended to replicate can lead to mistakes while analyzing the performance of an error-correcting decoder. Hence, it is crucial to validate an emulator for a particular communication channel. This work delves into …

Generalization Of Signal Point Target Code, Md Munibun Billah

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Detecting and correcting errors occurring in the transmitted data through a channel is a task of great importance in digital communication. In Error Correction Coding (ECC), some redundant data is added with the original data while transmitting. By exploiting the properties of the redundant data, the errors occurring in the data from the transmission can be detected and corrected. In this thesis, a new coding algorithm named Signal Point Target Code has been studied and various properties of the proposed code have been extended.

Signal Point Target Code (SPTC) uses a predefined shape within a given signal constellation to generate …

Spiderworms: Using Silkworms As Hosts To Produce A Hybrid Silkworm-Spider Silk Fiber, Ana Laura Licon

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Spider silk has received significant attention due to its fascinating mechanical properties. Given the solitary and cannibalistic behavior of spiders, spider silk farming is impractical. Unlike spiders, silkworms are capable of producing large quantities of a fibrous product in a manner mimetic to spiders, and there already exists an industry to process cocoons into threads and textiles for many applications. The combination of silk farming (sericulture), a millennia old practice, and modern advancements in genetic engineering has given rise to an innovative biomaterial inspired by nature; transgenic silkworm silk.

This project focuses on the creation of chimeric silkworm-spider silk fibers …

Angles-Only Ekf Navigation For Hyperbolic Flybys, Iggy Matheson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Space travelers in science fiction can drop out of hyperspace and make a pinpoint landing on any strange new world without stopping to get their bearings, but real-life space navigation is an art characterized by limited information and complex mathematics that yield no easy answers. This study investigates, for the first time ever, what position and velocity estimation errors can be expected by a starship arriving at a distant star - specifically, a miniature probe like those proposed by the Breakthrough Starshot initiative arriving at Proxima Centauri. Such a probe consists of nothing but a small optical camera and a …

Multiple Imu Sensor Fusion For Suas Navigation And Photogrammetry, Matthew Givens

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Inertial measurement units (IMUs) are devices that sense accelerations and angular rates in 3D so that vehicles and other devices can estimate their orientations, positions, and velocities. While traditionally large, heavy, and costly, using mechanical gyroscopes and stabilized platforms, the recent development of micro-electromechanical sensor (MEMS) IMUs that are small, light, and inexpensive has led to their adoption in many everyday systems such as cell phones, video game controllers, and commercial drones. MEMS IMUs, despite their advantages, have major drawbacks when it comes to accuracy and reliability. The idea of using more than one of these sensors in an array, …

Modified Substrate Specificity Of A Methyltransferase Domain By Protein Insertion Into An Adenylation Domain Of The Bassianolide Synthetase, Fuchao Xu, Russell Butler, Kyle M. May, Megi Rexhepaj, Dayu Yu, Jiachen Zi, Yi Chen, Yonghong Liang, Jia Zeng, Joan Hevel, Jixun Zhan

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Presentations

Background: Creating designer molecules using a combination of select domains from polyketide synthases and/or nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS) continues to be a synthetic goal. However, an incomplete understanding of how protein-protein interactions and dynamics affect each of the domain functions stands as a major obstacle in the field. Of particular interest is understanding the basis for a class of methyltransferase domains (MT) that are found embedded within the adenylation domain (A) of fungal NRPS systems instead of in an end-to-end architecture.

Results: The MT domain from bassianolide synthetase (BSLS) was removed and the truncated enzyme BSLS-ΔMT was recombinantly expressed. The …

Hydrolearn: Facilitating The Development, Adaptation And Sharing Of Active-Learning Resources In Hydrology Education, Emad Habib, Melissa Gallagher, Jenny Byrd, Olivia Lahaye, Cary Rivet, Micah Lacombe, David Tarboton, Scott Black, Dan Ames

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Presentations

Lightning presentation and workshop presented at CUAHSI HydroInformatics Conference, 2019. https://www.cuahsi.org/community/cuahsi-science-meetings/. This workshop is offered for hydrology faculty interested in implementing or adapting active-learning, data-driven resources to their educational settings. The workshop aspires to create faculty networking and development opportunities with the overall goal of promoting and reducing barriers against adoption of active-learning resources in hydrology. The workshop will use the recently developed NSF-sponsored HydroLearn platform, along with resources from CUAHSI, HydroShare and other community platforms, to enable participating faculty to develop and share educational resources. The workshop will showcase existing seed modules and will cover best practices in …

An Efficient Framework For The Stochastic Verification Of Computation And Communication Systems Using Emerging Technologies, Zhen Zhang

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Expanding Instream Flows To Protect Ecosystems In Overallocated River Basins, Belize Lane, David E. Rosenberg

All In-stream Flows Material

Utahns are expressing a rapidly growing interest in protecting and enhancing instream flows for outdoor recreation and environmental benefits (Endter-Wada et al. 2015). However, many Utah rivers are already over-allocated for agricultural, municipal, hydropower and other water uses, making it difficult to procure additional water for instream flows. ‘Use it or lose it’ western water law and mentality encourages Utahns to use water rather than return it to rivers and ecosystems.

Stamina: Stochastic Approximate Model-Checker For Infinite-State Analysis, Thackur Neupane, Chris J. Myers, Curtis Madsen, Hao Zheng, Zhen Zhang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Stochastic model checking is a technique for analyzing systems that possess probabilistic characteristics. However, its scalability is limited as probabilistic models of real-world applications typically have very large or infinite state space. This paper presents a new infinite state CTMC model checker, STAMINA, with improved scalability. It uses a novel state space approximation method to reduce large and possibly infinite state CTMC models to finite state representations that are amenable to existing stochastic model checkers. It is integrated with a new property-guided state expansion approach that improves the analysis accuracy. Demonstration of the tool on several benchmark examples shows promising …

Quantifying Thermal Refugia Connectivity By Combining Temperature Modeling, Distributed Temperature Sensing, And Thermal Infrared Imaging, Jessica R. Dzara, Bethany T. Neilson, Sarah E. Null

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Watershed-scale stream temperature models are often one-dimensional because they require fewer data and are more computationally efficient than two- or three-dimensional models. However, one-dimensional models assume completely mixed reaches and ignore small-scale spatial temperature variability, which may create temperature barriers or refugia for cold-water aquatic species. Fine spatial- and temporal-resolution stream temperature monitoring provides information to identify river features with increased thermal variability. We used distributed temperature sensing (DTS) to observe small-scale stream temperature variability, measured as a temperature range through space and time, within two 400 m reaches in summer 2015 in Nevada's East Walker and main stem Walker …

Tour De France Pelotons Governed By Sight, Not Aerodynamics | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

The 2019 Tour de France has just begun. As 190 riders speed through the streets of France, spectators will marvel at the tightly-packed formation of cyclists known as the peloton. Fans will argue that a peloton creates an aerodynamic advantage, allowing riders to conserve energy throughout the grueling three-week race.

How Vision Governs The Collective Behaviour Of Dense Cycling Pelotons, J. Belden, Mohammad M. Mansoor, A. Hellum, S. R. Rahman, A. Meyer, C. Pease, J. Pacheco, S. Koziol, Tadd T. Truscott

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

In densely packed groups demonstrating collective behaviour, such as bird flocks, fish schools or packs of bicycle racers (cycling pelotons), information propagates over a network, with individuals sensing and reacting to stimuli over relatively short space and time scales. What remains elusive is a robust, mechanistic understanding of how sensory system properties affect interactions, information propagation and emergent behaviour. Here, we show through direct observation how the spatio-temporal limits of the human visual sensory system govern local interactions and set the network structure in large, dense collections of cyclists. We found that cyclists align in patterns within a ± 30° …

Microwave Assisted Sol-Gel Synthesis Of Silica-Spider Silk Composites, Abul Bashar Mohammad Giasuddin, David W. Britt

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

This study introduces a simple and environmentally friendly method to synthesize silica-protein nanocomposite materials using microwave energy to solubilize hydrophobic protein in an aqueous solution of pre-hydrolyzed organo- or fluoro-silane. Sol-gel functionality can be enhanced through biomacromolecule incorporation to tune mechanical properties, surface energy, and biocompatibility. Here, synthetic spider silk protein and organo- and fluoro-silane precursors were dissolved and mixed in weakly acidic aqueous solution using microwave technology. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Atomic force microscopy (AFM) images revealed the formation of spherical nanoparticles with sizes ranging from 100 to 500 nm depending, in part, on silane fluoro- or organo-side …

Usu Partners With Egyptian Universities For Water Resources Training | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

Faculty at Utah State University are developing the latest educational tools to train the next generation of engineers in Egypt and the Middle East.

Usu Professor To Receive Nation’S Highest Science And Engineering Award | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

The White House last week announced that Utah State University Assistant Professor Idalis Villanueva will receive the highest honor awarded by the U.S. government to scientists and engineers.

Active Layer Groundwater Flow: The Interrelated Effects Of Stratigraphy, Thaw, And Topography, Michael T. O'Connor, M. Bayani Cardenas, Bethany T. Neilson, Kindra D. Nicholaides, George W. Kling

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The external drivers and internal controls of groundwater flow in the thawed “active layer” above permafrost are poorly constrained because they are dynamic and spatially variable. Understanding these controls is critical because groundwater can supply solutes such as dissolved organic matter to surface water bodies. We calculated steady‐state three‐dimensional suprapermafrost groundwater flow through the active layer using measurements of aquifer geometry, saturated thickness, and hydraulic properties collected from two major landscape types over time within a first‐order Arctic watershed. The depth position and thickness of the saturated zone is the dominant control of groundwater flow variability between sites and during …

Twenty-Three Unsolved Problems In Hydrology (Uph) – A Community Perspective, Günter Blöschl, Marc F.P. Bierkens, Antonio Chambel, Christophe Cudennec, Georgia Destouni, Aldo Fiori, James W. Kirchner, Jeffrey J. Mcdonnell, Hubert H.G. Savenije, Murugesu Sivapalan, Christine Stumpp, Elena Toth, Elena Volpi, Gemma Carr, David G. Tarboton, Et. Al

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper is the outcome of a community initiative to identify major unsolved scientific problems in hydrology motivated by a need for stronger harmonisation of research efforts. The procedure involved a public consultation through online media, followed by two workshops through which a large number of potential science questions were collated, prioritised, and synthesised. In spite of the diversity of the participants (230 scientists in total), the process revealed much about community priorities and the state of our science: a preference for continuity in research questions rather than radical departures or redirections from past and current work. Questions remain focused …

Remembering Professor Emeritus Wynn R. Walker | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

Wynn Walker, a USU Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Emeritus and former associate dean for the College of Engineering, died Saturday, June 29.

Usu Grad Student Awarded Utah Water Users Association Scholarship | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

Ayman Nassar, a graduate student at Utah State University studying water resources, received one of this year’s Utah Water Users Association scholarships, which is awarded annually to two students who study in Utah and plan to pursue a water resources career.

Usu Professor Receives Sudweeks Award For Contributions To Water Quality Research | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

Utah State University faculty Judy Sims received the Calvin K. Sudweeks Award on June 26 from the Utah Division of Water Quality.

Usu Alum Awarded For Work In Irrigation Engineering | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

Utah State University College of Engineering alumnus Saleh Taghvaeian will receive the Larry W. Turner Young Extension Professional Award from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. The award will be presented July 10 at the organization’s annual conference in Boston.

Three-Dimensional Numerical Modeling Of A Scroll Vortex Intake, S. N. Chan

International Junior Researcher and Engineer Workshop on Hydraulic Structures

Scroll vortex intakes are vortex drop structures commonly used in water supply, drainage and sewerage systems, characterized by a vortex chamber with its wall curling inwards to the dropshaft and a horizontal bottom. The stormwater flows into the intake via an eccentrical approach channel, which imparts vortex motion to the flow, forming a swirling vortex flow with a stable air core through the center of dropshaft. Over past decades, much effort has been devoted to investigating the scroll intake vortex flow, yet the understanding and predictions of the vortex flow is still far from complete due to a lack of …

Large-Eddy Simulations Of T-Shaped Open-Channel Confluences With Different Downstream Channel Widths, Pedro Xavier Ramos, Laurent Schindfessel, João Pedro Pêgo, Tom De Mulder

International Junior Researcher and Engineer Workshop on Hydraulic Structures

Confluences of open-channel flows are common in nature as well as in urban drainage networks and in hydraulic structures. The complex hydrodynamics is often studied in schematized, right-angled confluences. In this paper, the influence of the downstream channel width onto time-averaged and turbulent flow features will be investigated numerically, based on Large-Eddy Simulations. For one flow situation, i.e. flow ratio and downstream Froude number, two geometries will be compared: a discordant width case, which was studied experimentally by Yuan et al. (2016) in a flume with a wider downstream channel than the upstream mean and tributary channels, and the corresponding …