Engineering Commons^™

Multispectral Imaging For Face Recognition Over Varying Illumination, Hong Chang

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the advantage of using multispectral narrow-band images over conventional broad-band images for improved face recognition under varying illumination. To verify the effectiveness of multispectral images for improving face recognition performance, three sequential procedures are taken into action: multispectral face image acquisition, image fusion for multispectral and spectral band selection to remove information redundancy.

Several efficient image fusion algorithms are proposed and conducted on spectral narrow-band face images in comparison to conventional images. Physics-based weighted fusion and illumination adjustment fusion make good use of spectral information in multispectral imaging process. The results demonstrate that fused narrow-band images outperform …

Modeling Of Algan/Gan High Electron Mobility Transistor For Sensors And High-Temperature Circuit Applications, Sazia Afreen Eliza

Doctoral Dissertations

With the most advanced and mature technology for electronic devices, silicon (Si) based devices can be processed with practically no material defects. However, Si technology has difficulty meeting the demand for some high-power, high-speed, and high-temperature applications due to limitations in its intrinsic properties. Wide bandgap semiconductors have greater prospects compared to Si based devices. The wide band gap material system shows higher breakdown voltage, lower leakage, higher saturation velocity, larger thermal conductivity and better thermal stability suitable for high-power, high-speed, and high-temperature operations of the devices. In recent years, GaN based devices have drawn much research attention due to …

Uncertainty Minimization In Robotic 3d Mapping Systems Operating In Dynamic Large-Scale Environments, Sreenivas Rangan Sukumar

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation research is motivated by the potential and promise of 3D sensing technologies in safety and security applications. With specific focus on unmanned robotic mapping to aid clean-up of hazardous environments, under-vehicle inspection, automatic runway/pavement inspection and modeling of urban environments, we develop modular, multi-sensor, multi-modality robotic 3D imaging prototypes using localization/navigation hardware, laser range scanners and video cameras.

While deploying our multi-modality complementary approach to pose and structure recovery in dynamic real-world operating conditions, we observe several data fusion issues that state-of-the-art methodologies are not able to handle. Different bounds on the noise model of heterogeneous sensors, the …

Investigation Of Propagation Characteristics Of Twisted Hollow Waveguides For Particle Accelerator Applications, Joshua Lee Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

A new class of accelerating structures employing a uniformly twisted waveguide is investigated. Twisted waveguides of various cross-sectional geometries are considered and analyzed. It is shown that such a twisted waveguide can support waves that travel at a speed slower than the speed of light c. The slow-wave properties of twisted structures are of interest because these slow-wave electromagnetic fields can be used in applications such as electron traveling wave tubes and linear particle accelerators.

Since there is no exact closed form solution for the electromagnetic fields within a twisted waveguide or cavity, several previously proposed approximate methods are examined, …

System-On-Package Low-Power Telemetry And Signal Conditioning Unit For Biomedical Applications, Mohammad Rafiqul Haider

Doctoral Dissertations

Recent advancements in healthcare monitoring equipments and wireless communication technologies have led to the integration of specialized medical technology with the pervasive wireless networks. Intensive research has been focused on the development of medical wireless networks (MWN) for telemedicine and smart home care services. Wireless technology also shows potential promises in surgical applications. Unlike conventional surgery, an expert surgeon can perform the surgery from a remote location using robot manipulators and monitor the status of the real surgery through wireless communication link. To provide this service each surgical tool must be facilitated with smart electronics to accrue data and transmit …

Hardware Development Of An Ultra-Wideband System For High Precision Localization Applications, Cemin Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

A precise localization system in an indoor environment has been developed. The developed system is based on transmitting and receiving picosecond pulses and carrying out a complete narrow-pulse, signal detection and processing scheme in the time domain. The challenges in developing such a system include: generating ultra wideband (UWB) pulses, pulse dispersion due to antennas, modeling of complex propagation channels with severe multipath effects, need for extremely high sampling rates for digital processing, synchronization between the tag and receivers’ clocks, clock jitter, local oscillator (LO) phase noise, frequency offset between tag and receivers’ LOs, and antenna phase center variation. For …

Mrf Stereo Matching With Statistical Estimation Of Parameters, Mohammad Shafikul Huq

Doctoral Dissertations

For about the last ten years, stereo matching in computer vision has been treated as a combinatorial optimization problem. Assuming that the points in stereo images form a Markov Random Field (MRF), a variety of combinatorial optimization algorithms has been developed to optimize their underlying cost functions. In many of these algorithms, the MRF parameters of the cost functions have often been manually tuned or heuristically determined for achieving good performance results. Recently, several algorithms for statistical, hence, automatic estimation of the parameters have been published. Overall, these algorithms perform well in labeling, but they lack in performance for handling …

Stochastic Modeling And Estimation Of Wireless Channels With Application To Ultra Wide Band Systems, Yanyan Li

Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis is concerned with modeling of both space and time variations of Ultra Wide Band (UWB) indoor channels. The most common empirically determined amplitude distribution in many UWB environments is Nakagami distribution. The latter is generalized to stochastic diffusion processes which capture the dynamics of UWB channels. In contrast with the traditional models, the statistics of the proposed models are shown to be time varying, but converge in steady state to their static counterparts.

System identification algorithms are used to extract various channel parameters using received signal measurement data, which are usually available at the receiver. The expectation maximization …

Multi-Channel Real-Time Communication In Wireless Sensor Network, Nitish Kumar Jha

Masters Theses

Many radio chips used in today's sensor mote hardware can work at different frequencies. Recently, several multi-channel communication protocols have been proposed to improve network throughput and reduce packet loss for wireless sensor networks. However, existing work does not provide explicit guarantees for application-specified end-to-end communication delays, which are critical to many real-time applications such as surveillance and disaster response. On the other hand, those radio chips also have adaptable transmission power which allows a trade-off between communication delays and energy efficiency.

This work proposes two multi-channel real-time communication protocols. One of the protocols features a node-based channel assignment policy …

Design And Development Of An Apd Algorithm Development Board For Positron Emission Tomography, Rakesh Mallem

Masters Theses

Using the PET scanner, three dimensional images of the human body with sufficient detail can be viewed which help physicians to visualize both normal metabolic functions and discover the chemical processes underlying physical abnormalities. Commercial PET scanners employ Photo Multiplier Tubes to detect the anti-matter annihilation photons and amplify the signals to a suitable level for digital sampling. Photomultiplier tubes provide extremely high sensitivity and exceptionally low noise compared to other photosensitive devices currently used to detect radiant energy in the ultraviolet, visible and near infrared regions. A combined magnetic resonance positron emission tomography (MR-PET) modality would require a solid-state …

Antennas And Arrays For Mobile Platforms -- Direct Broadcast Satellite And Wireless Communication, Songnan Yang

Doctoral Dissertations

Flexibility of any proposed communication links is becoming one of the most challenging features. Direct broadcasting satellite services, for example, will be greatly enhanced by providing service-on-the-move. This market is very demanding as it necessitates the development of a low cost, low profile antenna that can be mounted on top of SUVs and minivans, which is capable of continuously tracking the satellite. Another example is the wireless antennas for laptops and smart-phones, where the antennas should fit within an extremely small volume and should be capable of addressing many services over wide frequency range. In this dissertation, both DBS and …

Wide-Area Surveillance System Using A Uav Helicopter Interceptor And Sensor Placement Planning Techniques, Marcus James Jackson

Masters Theses

This project proposes and describes the implementation of a wide-area surveillance system comprised of a sensor/interceptor placement planning and an interceptor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) helicopter. Given the 2-D layout of an area, the planning system optimally places perimeter cameras based on maximum coverage and minimal cost. Part of this planning system includes the MATLAB implementation of Erdem and Sclaroff’s Radial Sweep algorithm for visibility polygon generation. Additionally, 2-D camera modeling is proposed for both fixed and PTZ cases. Finally, the interceptor is also placed to minimize shortest-path flight time to any point on the perimeter during a detection event. …

High Performance Reconfigurable Computing For Linear Algebra: Design And Performance Analysis, Junqing Sun

Doctoral Dissertations

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) enable powerful performance acceleration for scientific computations because of their intrinsic parallelism, pipeline ability, and flexible architecture. This dissertation explores the computational power of FPGAs for an important scientific application: linear algebra. First of all, optimized linear algebra subroutines are presented based on enhancements to both algorithms and hardware architectures. Compared to microprocessors, these routines achieve significant speedup. Second, computing with mixed-precision data on FPGAs is proposed for higher performance. Experimental analysis shows that mixed-precision algorithms on FPGAs can achieve the high performance of using lower-precision data while keeping higher-precision accuracy for finding solutions of …

Implantable Piezoresistive Microcantilever-Based Wireless Cocaine Biosensors, Bernadeta Resti Widhiyatni Srijanto

Doctoral Dissertations

Cocaine is a well-known, illegal, recreational drug that is addictive due to its effects on the mesolimbic reward pathway in the human body. Accurate and real-time measurement of the concentration of cocaine in the body as a function of time and physiological factors is a key requirement for the understanding of the use of this drug. Current methods for such measurements involve taking samples from the human body (such as blood, urine, and hair) and performing analytical chemistry tests on these samples. This techniques are relatively expensive, time consuming, and labor intensive. To address this issue, a new implantable sensor …

An Analog Multiphase Self-Calibrating Dll To Minimize The Effects Of Process, Supply Voltage, And Temperature Variations, James D. Vandersand

Doctoral Dissertations

Delay locked loops have been found to be useful tools in such applications as computing, TDCs, and communications. These system can be found in space exploration vehicles and satellites, which operate in extreme environments. Unfortunately, in these environments supply voltage and temperature will not be constant, therefore they must be under consideration when designing a DLL. Furthermore, solar radiation in conjunction with the varying environmental aspects, could cause the delay locked loop to lose it locked state.

Delay locked loops are inherently good at tracking these environmental aspects, but in order to do so, the voltage controlled delay line must …

Long Range Automated Persistent Surveillance, Yi Yao

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses long range automated persistent surveillance with focus on three topics: sensor planning, size preserving tracking, and high magnification imaging.

field of view should be reserved so that camera handoff can be executed successfully before the object of interest becomes unidentifiable or untraceable. We design a sensor planning algorithm that not only maximizes coverage but also ensures uniform and sufficient overlapped camera’s field of view for an optimal handoff success rate. This algorithm works for environments with multiple dynamic targets using different types of cameras. Significantly improved handoff success rates are illustrated via experiments using floor plans of …

Mutual Coupling Considerations In The Development Of Multi-Feed Antenna Systems, Sung-Woo Lee

Doctoral Dissertations

In the design of any multi-port network with more than one antenna, mutual coupling between these different ports must be accounted for. In an effort to investigate and control these mutual coupling effects, we have selected three structures to be thoroughly analyzed. Furthermore, they have been fabricated and tested to develop relevant design guides for these selected structures to have minimal mutual coupling effects.

These selected structures included a feed network for a multi-port antenna, a dual feedhorn for a large reflector antenna, as well as a set of Multi- Input Multi-Output (MIMO) laptop antennas. In the first study, we …

Detail Enhancing Denoising Of Digitized 3d Models From A Mobile Scanning System, Bradley I. Grinstead

Doctoral Dissertations

The acquisition process of digitizing a large-scale environment produces an enormous amount of raw geometry data. This data is corrupted by system noise, which leads to 3D surfaces that are not smooth and details that are distorted. Any scanning system has noise associate with the scanning hardware, both digital quantization errors and measurement inaccuracies, but a mobile scanning system has additional system noise introduced by the pose estimation of the hardware during data acquisition. The combined system noise generates data that is not handled well by existing noise reduction and smoothing techniques.

This research is focused on enhancing the 3D …

Design And Analysis Of A Delta Sigma Modulator For A Fractional N Phase Locked Loop Frequency Synthesizer Operating At 2.4 Ghz, Timothy R. Grundman

Masters Theses

With the advances in communications, frequency synthesizers are becoming essential for many different circuits and broadcast bands. This need led to the creation of the fractional N frequency synthesizer. This synthesizer has proven itself to be a great invention allowing for many improvements over similar concepts. However, it only reaches the full extents of its capabilities when it is combined with a Delta Sigma modulator. This combined circuit shows great advances in noise performance and frequency resolution.

The fractional N frequency synthesizer is merely an integer N PLL with the ability to change the division ratio. The first attempts to …

Development Of Gate-Controlled Dc Electrokinetic Micropumps, Prachya Mruetusatorn

Masters Theses

Lab-on-chip (LOC) devices have received considerable attention in research and development for automated, high-throughput biological and chemical analysis. While much progress has been accomplished; however, fluid flow control still needs improvement and reminds one of the significant challenges for the future practical LOC devices. This thesis explores the application of electroosmosis (EO) technique and field effect flow control (FEFC) technology for micropumps, an important microfluidic component of LOC systems.

In this work, electroosmosis method was employed to electro-kinetically move the working fluid under a longitudinal electric field, and the FEFC technique was also utilized to manipulate the Electroosmotic Flow (EOF) …

Temperature Characterization Of The Ultracapacitor Serial Resistance Using A Constant Voltage Source, Curtis W. Miller

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the temperature effects on an ultracapacitor’s equivalent series resistance using a constant voltage source. Previous research has focused on developing models using constant current source. However, as the ultracapacitor technology develops, allowing for the expansion of these devices into new power applications, it is important to understand how ultracapacitors will perform in various temperatures and charging and discharging methods. By predicting the ultracapacitor behavior, systems can be optimized for efficiency and minimize internal circuit losses.

For this thesis, Matlab was used to plot the experimental data and to provide best fit curves with their respective coefficients to …

A Low Power Integrated Circuit For Implantable Biosensor Incorporating An On-Chip Fsk Modulator, Taeho Oh

Masters Theses

Medical care has been significantly improved in recent years due to tremendous technological advancement in the field of CMOS technology. Among those improvements, integrated circuit design and sensing techniques have brought to the doctors more flexibility and accuracy of examinations of their patients. For example, a diabetic patient needs to visit a hospital on a regular basis for the examination and proper treatment. However, with the tremendous advancement in electronic technology, a patient can soon monitor his or her own blood glucose level at home or at office with an implantable sensor which can also trigger insulin pump attached to …

Remote Monitoring Of Barowell Pumps Using A Radio Link, Paul R. Schwer

Masters Theses

Barowell pumps are notorious for having problems and failures, which sometimes occur at the most inopportune times during aeropropulson testing. These failures could be better predicted with proper health monitoring. Continuous monitoring of changes in the health of the pump would allow timely preventive and corrective maintenance to be performed as necessary to reduce failures and reduce plant downtime.

This thesis addresses a wireless method to monitor these pumps remotely by a user located in the control room. The operator can note the ultrasonic amplitude of the bearings on the pumps and make a decision to schedule preventive maintenance.

An …

Ac Electrokinetic Manipulation Of Microfluids And Particles Using Orthogonal Electrodes, Kai Yang

Masters Theses

AC electrokinetics (ACEK) is a promising technique to manipulate micro/bio-fluids and particles. It has many advantages over DC electrokinetics for its low applied voltage, portability and compatibility for integration into lab-on-a-chip devices. This thesis focuses on the design of a multi-functional orthogonal microelectrode system that induces ACEK effect for manipulation of microfluids and particles. Orthogonal electrode configuration used in this research can achieve maximum non-uniform electric field distribution, resulting in strong fluid and particle motion. In the experiments, three types of microflow fields were observed by changing the applied electric signals. Three ACEK processes, capacitive electrode polarization, Faradaic polarization, and …

Multichannel Time-Stamping-Based Correlator And Hardware Simulator For Photon Correlation Spectroscopy, Isaac P. Lescano Mendoza

Masters Theses

In fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and dynamic light scattering, digital correlators acquire the autocorrelation function of detected photons to measure diffusional dynamics of biomolecules and small particles. Multi-channel data from different wavelengths or scattering angles provide increased information for resolving multiple species. Similarly, in single-molecule spectroscopy and in experiments on photon entanglement, there is a need to acquire time stamps of photons from multiple detectors. To enable such advances, a cost-effective Multichannel Time-Correlator (MTC) and a Multichannel Hardware Simulator (MHS) were developed, each based on a reconfigurable digital input/output card, recently available from National Instruments. The field-programmable-gate-array (FPGA) cores of the …