Engineering Commons^™

Enhancing Fundraising Strategies In Higher Education Through Machine Learning, Laith Alatwah

Electrical Engineering Theses

This thesis presents a comprehensive application of machine learning techniques, namely Fine Gaussian SVM and RUS Boosted Trees, to enhance fundraising strategies in higher education institutions. Analyzing a rich dataset from Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT, spanning 2012 to 2022, the study focuses on donor profiles, including demographics, donation history, and engagement patterns. Key demographic insights include the increasing engagement of younger donors (20-29 age group) and significant contributions from older donors (70-99 age group). Geographical trends are also examined, revealing distinct patterns based on donors' city, state, and ZIP code. The Fine Gaussian SVM model demonstrates moderate discriminatory power, with …

Automated Sensing Methods In Soft Stretchable Sensors For Soft Robotic Gripper, Prosenjit Kumar Ghosh

Electrical Engineering Theses

A soft robot is made from deformable and flexible materials such as silicone, rubber, polymers, etc. Soft robotics is a rapidly evolving field where the human-robot-interaction and bio-inspired design align. The physical characteristics such as highly deformable material and dexterity make soft robots widely applicable. A soft robotic gripper is a robotic hand that acts like a human hand and grasps any object. The most common applications of soft robotics grippers are gripping and locomotion in sensitive applications where high dynamic and sensitivity are essential. Nowadays, soft robotics grippers are used without any sensing method and feedback as it is …

Computational Design Of Fiber-Optic Probes For Biosensing, Suwarna Karna

Electrical Engineering Theses

This thesis presents a study on the optical characteristics of hollow-core photonic crystal fibers (HC-PCFs) with a band gap cladding structure and their applications in optical fiber sensing. This 800B HC-PCF exhibited excellent optical properties and has a flexible structure, which makes them suitable for a wide range of industrial applications. Finite element simulations and structural optimization designs were conducted using the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technique to determine the optimal performance parameters of the 800B HC-PCF. The fiber was further modified using the SPR technique to improve its practical detection capabilities. The performance of the modified fiber was observed …

Effect On 360 Degree Video Streaming With Caching And Without Caching, Md Milon Uddin

Electrical Engineering Theses

People all around the world are becoming more and more accustomed to watching 360-degree videos, which offer a way to experience virtual reality. While watching videos, it enables users to view video scenes from any perspective. To reduce bandwidth costs and provide the video with less latency, 360-degree video caching at the edge server may be a smart option. A hypothetical 360-degree video streaming system can partition popular video materials into tiles that are cached at the edge server. This study uses the Least Recently Used (LRU) and Least Frequently Used (LFU) algorithms to accomplish video caching and suggest a …

Wearable Sensors For Plants, Nafize Ishtiaque Hossain

Electrical Engineering Theses

This thesis reports PlantFit: a research and development project that is intended to develop wearable sensors for plants. Plants are responsible for providing food, fiber, fuel, and fodder to the society. To overcome the problem of a limited land base, a more efficient farming approach needs to be developed, and thus precision farming is required. Precision farming would entail personalized healthcare in plants. When the plant is under any stress, the productivity declines. Plants release phytohormones, also known as early responders, in response to these stressors. The key crop phytohormones that respond to environmental stresses include salicylic acid (SA), indole-3-acetic …

An Integrated Electronic-Skin Patch For Real-Time And Continuous Monitoring Of A Panel Of Biomarkers Combined With Drug Delivery, Tanzila Noushin

Electrical Engineering Theses

Inflammatory biomarkers present in the human body play a vital role in medical field by guiding the clinician in decision-making for many diseases. The levels of these inflammatory biomarkers are associated with the severity and progress of several diseases. Researchers have found that increasing severity of many diseases such as cardiovascular disease, after surgery infection, and adverse clinical outcomes due to infectious diseases, results in the elevation of the level of inflammatory biomarkers in human sweat. Furthermore, the inflammatory cytokines indicate the pathophysiology and prognosis of critically ill SARS‑CoV‑2 patients. In this thesis work, different sensors have been developed for …

Surface Flashover Under Various Surface Conditions, Bradley A. Hannum

Electrical Engineering Theses

Electrical insulators are critical components used in every high voltage application whether it is operated continuously or in a pulsed mode. Bulk dielectric breakdown and surface flashover must be prevented in all use cases, especially those that occur in polluted environments. Though electrical standards have been written as a guide to prevent insulator surface flashover, such as Underwriters Laboratories (UL) 840, they are not directly applicable to applications where size and weight are critical. UL 840 experimental design is vague, does not consider all environments, and is written primarily with the electric power utilities in mind. The research presented here …

Development Of A Novel Sensor For Soil Moisture's Profile, Toan Canh Nguyen

Electrical Engineering Theses

Monitoring of soil’s water content has been an important part of the irrigation system in farming, regional resources development, rainfall detection as well as disaster prevention. There has been studies and developments in this area over the decades. However, most of the works are focused on sensing the soil as a homogeneous medium, which does not accurately reflect the heterogeneous structure of soil. Works on multi-layer soil sensing have been researched and developed. Though, the current design is complex, not easy to produce and assemble. This work presents a novel low-cost and simple soil sensor design to detect the soil’s …

Wi-Fi-Based Indoor Localization Using Model-Based And Data-Driven Approaches, Ayoub Idelhaj

Electrical Engineering Theses

This thesis investigates model-based and data-driven approaches for indoor localization using the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) of Wi-Fi signals. We study multiple model-based indoor localization approaches, including the free space path loss model, the log-distance path loss model, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) model, and a nonlinear regression model. We examine their indoor localization accuracy using raw RSSI values, and filter RSSI values passed through a Moving Average filter and a Kalman filter. For data driven approaches, we employ a family of Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) algorithms including Basic-ELM, Online Sequential-ELM (OS-ELM), Hierarchical-ELM (H-ELM), and Kernel-ELM (K-ELM), to find …

Multi-Player H1 Differential Game Using On-Policy And Off-Policy Reinforcement Learning, Peiliang An

Electrical Engineering Theses

This work studies a multi-player H-infinity differential game for systems of general linear dynamics. In this game, multiple players design their control inputs to minimize their cost functions in the presence of worst-case disturbances. We first derive the optimal control and disturbance policies using the solutions to Hamilton-Jacobi-Isaacs (HJI) equations. We then prove that the derived optimal policies stabilize the system and constitute a Nash equilibrium solution. Two integral reinforcement learning (IRL) -based algorithms, including the policy iteration IRL and o -policy IRL, are developed to solve the differential game online. We show that the off-policy IRL can solve the …

Assessment Of Cardiorespiratory Interactions During Life Threatening Events In Preterm Infants Using Point Process And Bivariate Algorithms, Mohammed T. Alenazi

Electrical Engineering Theses

Cardiorespiratory interactions considered as an important indicator of neurodevelopment of preterm infants. The strength of cardiorespiratory interactions are presumed to be weak and rapidly fluctuating. The current signal processing algorithms are insufficient to capture such time varying weak interactions. In addition, detection of these interactions becomes difficult during life threatening events due to lack of information available due to apnea (absence of output from respiratory system) and the transient temporal destabilization of cardiac system due to bradycardia. To detect the cardiorespiratory interactions, a point process algorithm of cardiac system with respiration as covariates is proposed. The bivariate model is embedded …

Autonomous Landing Of Quadrotor On A Moving Ugv With The Optimal Control Policies, Suhas Priyatham Manda

Electrical Engineering Theses

This thesis proposes an offline method that uses an integral reinforcement learning (IRL) technique along with the system identification to determine the optimal control of a system with completely unknown dynamics. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that are particularly deployed to track and land on an arbitrarily moving unmanned ground vehicles (UGV), demand a high performance controller to perform precise tracking. One way of designing an optimal tracking controller is developing linear quadratic integrators (LQI) with a quadratic type of cost function that solves Riccati equation. However, this approach requires prior knowledge of the linearized UAV system dynamics. We overcome this …

Car Plate Detection Using Region-Based Convolutional Neural Networks, Shengyi Luan

Electrical Engineering Theses

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) comprise a deep learning technology which is widely used to perform image classification. In this research, we review CNN structures and explain how they can be used for finding license plates in vehicle images. We summarize how the standard CNN processes images into features and compare it to Region-Based Convolutional Neural Networks (R-CNN). After comparing their pros and cons, we decide to design a R-CNN to train our dataset for this project. We find that the one trained with the most training data has the highest testing accuracy. The first training network detector leads to the …

Three-Dimensional Design Of A Mimo System Based On Supershape Antenna, Ismail Abiola Shittu

Electrical Engineering Theses

In this thesis, a three-dimensional multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna is designed for wireless applications. The MIMO consists of three antennas arranged around a triangular prismatic polystyrene foam that acts as a supporting block to form a tetrahedral configuration. This system has the capability of achieving multipath propagation; it also has the potential to improve the quality and reliability of radio signals, improve the channel capacity, and increase the communication speed and data rate. A circular microstrip patch antenna with regular spikes was designed based on the Superformula- a generic formula that describes naturally occurring shapes with six parameters. Afterward, bandwidth enhancement …

A Real-Time Internet Of Things (Iot) Based Affective Framework For Monitoring Emotions In Infants, Alhagie Sallah

Electrical Engineering Theses

An increase in the number of working parents has led to a higher demand for remotely monitoring activities of babies through baby monitors. The baby monitors vary from simple audio and video monitoring frameworks to advance applications where we can integrate sensors for tracking vital signs such as heart rate, respiratory rate monitoring. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of devices where each device can is recognizable in the network. The IoT node is a sensor or device, which primarily functions as a data acquisition unit. The data acquired through the IoT nodes are wirelessly transmitted to the …

Developing An Enhanced Adaptive Antenna Beamforming Algorithm For Telecommunication Applications, Mohammad Omar Tawfiq Abualhayja'a

Electrical Engineering Theses

As a key enabler for advanced wireless communication technologies, smart antennas have become an intense field of study. Smart antennas use adaptive beamforming algorithms which allow the antenna system to search for specific signals even in a background of noise and interference. Beamforming is a signal processing technique used to shape the antenna array pattern according to prescribed criteria.

In this thesis, a comparative study is presented for various adaptive antenna beamforming algorithms. Least mean square (LMS), normalized least mean square (NLMS), recursive least square (RLS), and sample matrix inversion (SMI) algorithms are studied and analyzed. The study also considers …

Study Of The Detection And The Emission Of Thz Waves In Mos₂Material, Ayah Masoud Ass’Ad Hijazi

Electrical Engineering Theses

Terahertz (THz) technology is receiving a wide interest nowadays, developing more researches worldwide to emerge new devices based on the THz regime and overcoming the challenge of the remarkable THz-gap. This thesis is concerned with studying and developing new emerging materials with new structures in terms of THz waves. The main objective of this thesis is to examine how the MoS₂ material in nanoribbons structure detect and emit THz waves theoretically and experimentally in contrast to Graphene nanoribbon material. The theoretical model was used alongside the experimental setup to fully understand the behavior of the materials and to have a …

Flexible Ph Sensor For Smart Sensing, Khengdauliu Chawang

Electrical Engineering Theses

pH level of biofluid is crucial in understanding physiological health. Commercial glass electrode pH sensors are bulky and cannot provide real time data. In this study, a novel miniature pH sensor capable of continuous wireless communication was developed, which is a promising technology for providing point-of-care diagnosis. Iridium Oxide because of its wide pH sensing range and biocompatibility has attracted attention from biomedical and food industries; high sensitivity of Iridium Oxide based sensor is attributed to its high charge density. Flexible polyamide Kapton substrate (127 µm) is taken as base substrate and E-Beam method is employed to deposit adhesion and …

Design Of A Clc Testbed To Study High Voltage Capacitors, Christopher Francisco Martinez

Electrical Engineering Theses

Pulsed power systems rely on the interconnection of several unique stages for successful implementation. These stages can include, but are not limited to a prime power source, power conditioning circuit, intermediate energy storage, pulsed forming network, and the load. There are many possible intermediate energy storage devices that can be considered, two of which are inductive and capacitive. There are many advantages and disadvantages that each offer. Inductive energy storage is several times more energy dense than capacitive energy storage but most of the time, an opening switch is required to transfer the energy to the load and those are …

Synchronous Machine Emulation Of Vsc For Interconnection Of Renewable Energy Sources Through Hvdc Transmission, Mohamed Asker Kanakkayil

Electrical Engineering Theses

The majority of the energy demand over the past years has been fulfilled by centralized generating stations. However, with a continuously increasing energy demand, the integration of decentralized renewable energy sources (RES) into the power system network becomes inevitable even though these sources affect the stability of the grid due to their intermittency and use of various power converters. The transmission of power over long distances from RES is usually accomplished either by AC or DC transmission. High voltage DC transmission (HVDC) is preferred over high voltage AC transmission (HVAC) due to numerous and complex reasons, such as its lower …

Active Filter Modelling To Mitigate Harmonics Generated By Electric Vehicle Chargers, Fasalu Rahman Puthiyottil

Electrical Engineering Theses

The Automotive industry is going through a rapid transformation to adopt electrified technology. A major share of the electrified vehicles is going to be in the Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug in hybrids segments that need to connect to the grid to recharge the batteries. For customer convenience, the time required for fully charging the battery need to be brought down significantly. EV charging stations are getting installed that could bring down the charging time to less than 30 minutes. However this pose a unique issue to the power quality of the utility grid. During charging, the EV charging …

Analysis And Tests For A Hybrid Model Created From Classical Taguchi And Goal Post Manufacturing Loss Models, Prajwal Bhandari

Electrical Engineering Theses

We present an analysis of the previously proposed “modified quadratic” loss function. This loss model integrates elements from both Classical Taguchi and Goal Post manufacturing loss models. Specifically, the analyzed hybrid model follows the Taguchi loss quadratic dependence between the upper and lower manufacturing specification limits. On the other hand, outside of these limits, the loss rule is in agreement with the Goal Post Model. Supported by the results of analysis contained herein the Taguchi-Hybrid model does not overestimate the loss as is inherent to the classical Taguchi model. Also, the proposed Taguchi Hybrid model does not ignore deviations from …

Determination Of Cleaning Frequency And Power Enhancement Of Photovoltaic Panels Using Novel Cleaning Approach, Ali Hasan Shah

Electrical Engineering Theses

Dust accumulation on the photovoltaic (PV) surface decreases the solar radiation penetration to the PV cells and eventually the power production from the PV system. In order to prevent the dust-based power losses, the PV systems are required to be cleaned frequently depending upon different geographical locations, PV integration schemes, and the scale of the PV power plant. In large-scale power plants, the PVs are periodically cleaned traditionally by water sprinkling that requires sophisticated equipment mobile equipment that at the best involves robotics and hence calls for substantial capital investment as well as water consumption. Since most of the largescale …

Point Process Algorithm For The Estimation Of Bi-Directional Cardiorespiratory Interactions In Preterm Infants, Selorm Darkey

Electrical Engineering Theses

Cardiorespiratory interactions tend to be frail in the early stages of life, necessitating the further analysis of their existence since this could turn out to be a significant factor in assessing the neurodevelopment of neonates. Strength of cardio-respiratory interactions are presumed to be weak and rapidly fluctuating in neonates. Even with the extensive significant research that have been dedicated to early human development there still isn’t a standard or specific technique to analyze these weak cardio-respiratory fluctuating characteristics in neonates. We employ a mathematical technique that’s based on series of tools that have been outstanding in measurement of significant cardio-respiratory …

Distributed Compressive Sensing Algorithm For Photoacoustic Tomography, Maha Abdulwahab Hassan Shehada

Electrical Engineering Theses

Biomedical imaging techniques are playing an essential role in diagnosing different kinds of diseases, which always motivates the search for improving their sensitivity and accuracy. Photoacoustic Tomography (PAT) is one of the most powerful techniques. PAT has many advantages as it is less expensive and faster than Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). It combines the advantages of optical imaging and ultrasound imaging as it provides high contrast, high penetration, and high-resolution images for biological tissues. Also, it uses non-ionizing radiation which is very safe for human health. The main challenge in PAT is that human tissues can be exposed only to …

On The Analysis Of On-Board Sensing And Off-Board Sensing Through Wireless Communication For Uav Path Planning In Wind Fields, Murilo Augsto Pinheiro

Electrical Engineering Theses

This work focuses on the roles of on-board sensing and off-board sensing through wireless communication for UAV missions. Employing UAV path planning under spatiotemporal wind effect as a case study, this work implements a modeling framework composed by the vehicle dynamics, environmental effect and communication model that transmits wind field data. Based on the analysis of the minimum-time optimal UAV path planning solution under communication constraints and spatiotemporal wind impact, this work obtains quantitative insights into the effect of communication quality and information update configuration on the performance of path planning. This study finds that on-board sensing and off-board sensing …

Uav: Trajectory Generation And Simulation, Neha Bhushan

Electrical Engineering Theses

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have gained mass popularity in fields such as Defense, Agriculture, Sport and Photography etc. Their wide adoption in such research projects have opened new horizons for opportunities. However, UAVs operate in a rather dynamic environment since various factors such as airspeed, temperature, pressure, turbulence etc. are capable of hampering the flight operation. There is a need for rather robust trajectory generation algorithm and system such that it provides an easy user interface to specify the path of UAV through space, alongside making the UAV capable enough to maneuver itself from the initial to final position. This …

Modernization Of Laboratory Curriculum For The Undergraduate Digital Systems Course, Brolyne H. Onyango

Electrical Engineering Theses

We introduce a novel hybrid approach to modernize the curriculum for the Digital Systems course, using traditional circuit construction, simulation software and implementation of circuits using reconfigurable logic. The NI Multisim circuit simulation software and a Digilent Basys-3 board are utilized. Students will use a breadboard and chips to construct basic combinational circuits using logic gates. Next, they will use the NI Multisim to build and simulate circuits that are difficult to build physically. Finally, an FPGA board will be utilized to implement the most complex circuits. Typically, the use of FPGA technology requires knowledge of HDL, which is considered …

Smart-Detect: An Iot Based Monitoring System For Oil Leak Detection, Youssef Mohamed Baiji

Electrical Engineering Theses

In the past couple of years, the oil and gas industry is aiming to reduce it’s day-to-day costs due to reasons such as reduction in oil prices, mass overproduction and so on. This has the Oil and Gas industries aiming for innovative ways to reduce costs and minimize nonproductive time. In order to accomplish this goal, oil companies need to improve and control measurements with more reliable but relatively cheaper systems. One of the methods is using Internet-of-Things (IoT) based monitoring systems which can help in remote monitoring. IoT is offering better solutions for oil and gas companies to reduce …

An Evaluation Of Two Controller Implementations For An Inverted Pendulum On Cart System, Shaima Abdul Wahab Ali Al Habsi

Electrical Engineering Theses

Various embedded systems are available for control system design and implementation in either lab experiments of postgraduate and undergraduate courses in the area of dynamics and control, or in experimental academic research. The focus of this Master thesis project is set to study, compare and evaluate the performance of two options of controller implementations ranging from a low-cost microcontroller based embedded system to a relatively high-end, high-cost controller prototyping system. In the work reported here, the Arduino® DUE board, which is an Atmel ARM Cortex CPU based, and the dSPACE_® DS1104 prototyping system are used. Another objective of the …