Engineering Commons^™

Machine Learning, Game Theory Algorithms, And Medium Access Protocols For 5g And Internet-Of-Thing (Iot) Networks, Mohamed Elkourdi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the first part of this dissertation, a novel medium access protocol for the Internet of Thing (IoT) networks is introduced. The Internet of things (IoT), which is the network of physical devices embedded with sensors, actuators, and connectivity, is being accelerated into the mainstream by the emergence of 5G wireless networking. This work presents an uncoordinated non-orthogonal random-access protocol, which is an enhancement to the recently introduced slotted ALOHA- NOMA (SAN) protocol that provides high throughput, while being matched to the low complexity requirements and the sporadic traffic pattern of IoT devices. Under ideal conditions it has been shown …

Evaluation Of Waste Express Bag As A Novel Bitumen Modifier, Yuming Lin, Chichun Hu, Sanjeev Adhikari, Chuanhai Wu, Miao Yu

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

With the rapid development of China’s e-commerce and logistics industry, a large number of waste express bags (WEBs) have been produced, which are difficult to recycle. The existing methods of waste express bag disposal often cause severe environmental pollution. It was discovered in this paper that the use of WEBs to modify bitumen could be an environmentally friendly way to recycle WEBs. This study aimed to investigate the feasibility of using WEBs to modify bitumen and promote the performance of WEB-modified bitumen. In order to verify this assumption, a series of basic or rheological experiments were conducted on different dosages …

Design Of Shape-Morphing Structures Consisting Of Bistable Compliant Mechanisms, Rami Alfattani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents a design concept for shape-morphing structures that have two stable configurations. The design concept defines the methodology of transforming a planar structural shape into spatial structural shape using bistable compliant mechanisms. Bistable complaint mechanisms are used to achieve structural stable configurations. The dissertation incorporating geometrical relationships for the mechanisms that form the primary structure described in step-by-step process. This dissertation implements the design layouts for designer to creating shape-morphing structures including origami. The novel contribution of the work is classified in three models. The first model presents a methodology to induce bistability behavior into an origami reverse …

A New Method For Microsimulation Model Calibration: A Case Study Of I-710, Hossein Nasr Esfahani, Ziqi Song

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

As a part of the feasibility analysis of electric truck roadways for some of the major corridors near Los Angles, California, this paper aims to introduce and investigate a new method for microsimulation model calibration. The model of I-710 southbound was developed in VISSIM software and calibrated through two sets of data: O-D demand from planning models and field data which was consist of traffic flow and speed. Due to the lack of proper count data for on-ramps/off-ramps, the O-D demand was estimated via path flow estimator. After determining the calibration parameters, in an attempt to avoid unnecessary VISSIM’s time-consuming …

Concentration Flow Cells For Efficient Salinity Energy Recovery With Carbonized Peat Moss And Molybdenum Disulfide Electrodes, Haihui Zhu

LSU Master's Theses

The globally extractable salinity gradient (SG) energy from the mixing of seawater and river water is estimated to be 3% of worldwide electricity consumption. Here we applied carbonized peat moss (CPM) electrodes and molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) electrodes to a concentration flow cell that is capable of harvesting SG energy based on the electrode (pseudo-)capacitance together with the Donnan potential. The CPM electrodes were made from the visually inexhaustible peat moss by a facile pyrolysis process. With two identical CPM electrodes and a cation-exchange membrane, the cell produced a peak power density of 5.33 W m^-2 and an …

Proceedings Of The Cuny Games Conference 5.0, Robert O. Duncan, Joe Bisz, Julie Cassidy, Kathleen Offenholley, Carolyn Stallard, Deborah Sturm, Anders A. Wallace

Publications and Research

The CUNY Games Network is an organization dedicated to encouraging research, scholarship and teaching in the developing field of games-based learning. We connect educators from every campus and discipline at CUNY and beyond who are interested in digital and non-digital games, simulations, and other forms of interactive teaching and inquiry-based learning. The CUNY Games Conference distills its best cutting-edge interactive presentations into a two-day event to promote and discuss game-based pedagogies in higher education, focusing particularly on non-digital learning activities that faculty can use in the classroom every day. The conference will include workshops lead by CUNY Games Organizers on …

Finding The Balance: A Technical Writing Assignment During A Co-Op Work Experience, Lindsay Corneal, Debbie Morrow

Presentations

The mandatory three semester co-op work experience in the engineering programs at Grand Valley State University allows students to apply their education to real engineering situations. As part of the regular assessment of the co-op work experiences, site visits are held between faculty, students, and the employers. It has very often been noted by employer supervisors that students perform well technically but still lack polish communicating in a professional setting. To address this, a project was launched to incorporate online writing instruction as academic content associated with the Co-op II semester, with a technical proposal writing assignment as the major …

Develop A 3d Neurological Disease Model Of Human Cortical Glutamatergic Neurons Using Micropillar-Based Scaffolds, Cheng Chen, Xin Dong, Kai-Heng Fang, Fang Yuan, Yao Hu, Min Xu, Yu Huang, Xixiang Zhang, Danjun Fang, Yan Liu

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

Establishing an effective three-dimensional (3D) in vitro culture system to better model human neurological diseases is desirable, since the human brain is a 3D structure. Here, we demonstrated the development of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) pillar-based 3D scaffold that mimicked the 3D microenvironment of the brain. We utilized this scaffold for the growth of human cortical glutamatergic neurons that were differentiated from human pluripotent stem cells. In comparison with the 2D culture, we demonstrated that the developed 3D culture promoted the maturation of human cortical glutamatergic neurons by showing significantly more MAP2 and less Ki67 expression. Based on this 3D culture …

Seismic Landslide Hazard Mapping For Greater Vancouver, British Columbia, Ali Fallah Yeznabad, Sheri E. Molnar, Hesham M. El Naggar

Western Research Forum

The lower Mainland of southwest British Columbia (BC) hosts about 3.5 million people and significant infrastructures of national importance. Southwestern BC has the highest seismic risk in Canada with significant potential to cause earthquake-induced hazards including tsunamis, liquefaction and landslides. A Cascadia mega-thrust (M_W 9) earthquake is predicted to generate $75 billion Canadian dollars in losses. This damage can be resulted from ground shaking or its secondary phenomena like landslides; ground shaking during earthquakes may trigger landslides that can damage or destroy buildings, bury roads and highways and kill and injure people. In Canada, during the past century and …

Graduate Keynote. Golf Grip Force Evaluation In Individuals With And Without Hand Arthritis Using A New Wearable Sensor Technology, Sara Frances Holland, Emily Lalone, Louis M. Ferreira, James P. Dickey

Western Research Forum

BACKGROUND

Hand osteoarthritis (H-OA) is the most common type of osteoarthritis largely affecting individuals over 45. H-OA involves pain, loss of grip strength and limiting participation in recreational activities such as golf. Currently, a number of ‘arthritic’ grips are designed using joint protection principles to ‘reduce hand forces and tight gripping’. However, no comprehensive examinations in their effectiveness have been conducted.

HYPOTHESIS

The purpose of this study is to systematically analyse the hand forces produced from various golf grips and arthritis grips at the distal-phalanges of the hand-grip interface in individuals with and without hand arthritis using new wearable sensor …

Congratulation A-Pin Recipients | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

College of Engineering Dean Dr. Jagath Kaluarachchi and department heads from across the college recognized 78 students on Wednesday for receiving the prestigious A-pin award for the Spring and Fall of 2018.

Serious Game Design Using Mda And Bloom’S Taxonomy, Senobio V. Chavez

Theses and Dissertations

The field of Serious Games (SG) studies the use of games as a learning tool and it has been in existence for over forty years. During this period the primary focus of the field has been designing systems to evaluate the educational efficacy of existing games. This translates to a lack of systems designed to aid in the creation of serious games, but this does not have to remain an issue. The rise in popularity of games means that there is no shortage of ideas on how to methodically create them for commercial production which can just as easily be …

Design And Fabrication Of Automatic Single Axis Solar Tracker For Solar Panel, Ghazanfar Mehdi, Naveed Ali, Shafquat Hussain, Asad A. Zaidi, Ahmer Hussain Shah, M. Mustafa Azeem

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Sun energy is a considered to be one of most promising sources to address the world energy crises. Photovoltaic cell is one of the prominent sources of energy. The most important factors that affect the efficiency of solar cells are cell temperature, maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and energy conversion efficiency. The optimization of these factors improves solar cells efficiency for more reliable applications. This study associated by means of the designing and manufacturing process of single axis tracker device by using photo voltaic conversion panels. This solar tracker system assures the conversion optimization of electricity from the source of …

On The Drought Recovery And Resiliency: How Terrestrial And Riverine Ecosystems Recover From Agricultural And Hydrological Droughts, Behzad Ahmadi

Dissertations and Theses

Climate extremes, in particular droughts are significant driving forces towards riverine and terrestrial ecosystems disturbance. Drought impacts on stream ecosystems include losses that can either be direct (e.g. destruction of habitat for aquatic species) or indirect (e.g. deterioration of water quality, soil quality, and increased chance of wildfires). This study investigates hydrological and agricultural droughts and their recovery durations. For the riverine ecosystems, this study combines hydrologic drought and water quality changes during droughts and represents a multi-stage framework to detect and characterize hydrological droughts, while considering water quality parameters. Hydrological droughts are categorized into three stages of growth, persistence, …

Developing A Simulation Tool For Evaluating In-Motion Detector Systems (La-Ur-18-29139), Brian Jennings

Nuclear Engineering ETDs

Available simulation software lacks the ability to produce in-motion detector responses for detector systems that may be used to detect the illicit trafficking of nuclear materials. In this thesis, a simulation tool is developed that uses static measured data as a basis set for producing in-motion detector responses with the ability to vary many parameters in each simulated trial. Once the basis set is measured and loaded into the simulation tool, the user interface allows the user to enter variations to speed, source height, source-to-detector distance, background exposure rate, which source(s) are present, their relative strength and shielding configuration, and …

Displacement Damage Effects In Gesn Light Emitting Diodes, Kevin K. Choe

Theses and Dissertations

Potential future use on Earth-orbiting satellites calls for investigation into the suitability of GeSn based photonic devices in high energy proton environments. The electroluminescence (EL) intensity of Ge1-xSnx (x = 0, 0.02, 0.069, and 0.094) light emitting diodes was measured before and after irradiation by 2 MeV protons at relatively high fluence levels. The results showed that GeSn devices with higher Sn content were up to 10 times more resistant against proton displacement damage than the pure Ge (x = 0) devices. As Sn concentration increased, the band gap decreased, and V-P hole trap energy level moved further from the …

Graph-Based Temporal Analysis In Digital Forensics, Nikolai A. Adderley

Theses and Dissertations

Establishing a timeline as part of a digital forensics investigation is a vital part of understanding the order in which system events occurred. However, most digital forensics tools present timelines as histogram or as raw artifacts. Consequently, digital forensics examiners are forced to rely on manual, labor-intensive practices to reconstruct system events. Current digital forensics analysis tools are at their technological limit with the increasing storage and complexity of data. A graph-based timeline can present digital forensics evidence in a structure that can be immediately understood and effortlessly focused. This paper presents the Temporal Analysis Integration Management Application (TAIMA) to …

Cyber-Attack Drone Payload Development And Geolocation Via Directional Antennae, Clint M. Bramlette

Theses and Dissertations

The increasing capabilities of commercial drones have led to blossoming drone usage in private sector industries ranging from agriculture to mining to cinema. Commercial drones have made amazing improvements in flight time, flight distance, and payload weight. These same features also offer a unique and unprecedented commodity for wireless hackers -- the ability to gain ‘physical’ proximity to a target without personally having to be anywhere near it. This capability is called Remote Physical Proximity (RPP). By their nature, wireless devices are largely susceptible to sniffing and injection attacks, but only if the attacker can interact with the device via …

High Fidelity Satellite Navigation Receiver Front-End For Advanced Signal Quality Monitoring And Authentication, Andrew D. Braun

Theses and Dissertations

Over the last several years, interest in utilizing foreign satellite timing and navigation (satnav) signals to augment GPS has grown. Doing so is not without risks; foreign satnav signals must be vetted and determined to be trustworthy before use in military applications. Advanced signal quality monitoring methods can help to ensure that only authentic and reliable satnav signals are utilized. To effectively monitor and authenticate signals, the front-end must impress as little distortions upon the received signal as possible. The purpose of this study is to design, fabricate, and test the performance of a high-fidelity satnav receiver front-end for advanced …

Machine Learning Models Of C-17 Specific Range Using Flight Recorder Data, Marcus Catchpole

Theses and Dissertations

Fuel is a significant expense for the Air Force. The C-17 Globemaster eet accounts for a significant portion. Estimating the range of an aircraft based on its fuel consumption is nearly as old as flight itself. Consideration of operational energy and the related consideration of fuel efficiency is increasing. Meanwhile machine learning and data-mining techniques are on the rise. The old question, "How far can my aircraft y with a given load cargo and fuel?" has given way to "How little fuel can I load into an aircraft and safely arrive at the destination?" Specific range is a measure of …

Convolutional Neural Network Architecture Study For Aerial Visual Localization, Jedediah M. Berhold

Theses and Dissertations

In unmanned aerial navigation the ability to determine the aircraft's location is essential for safe flight. The Global Positioning System (GPS) is the default modern application used for geospatial location determination. GPS is extremely robust, very accurate, and has essentially solved aerial localization. Unfortunately, the signals from all Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) to include GPS can be jammed or spoofed. To this response it is essential to develop alternative systems that could be used to supplement navigation systems, in the event of a lost GNSS signal. Public and governmental satellites have provided large amounts of high-resolution satellite imagery. These …

Near Real-Time Rf-Dna Fingerprinting For Zigbee Devices Using Software Defined Radios, Frankie A. Cruz

Theses and Dissertations

Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Network(s) (LR-WPAN) usage has increased as more consumers embrace Internet of Things (IoT) devices. ZigBee Physical Layer (PHY) is based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.15.4 specification designed to provide a low-cost, low-power, and low-complexity solution for Wireless Sensor Network(s) (WSN). The standard’s extended battery life and reliability makes ZigBee WSN a popular choice for home automation, transportation, traffic management, Industrial Control Systems (ICS), and cyber-physical systems. As robust and versatile as the standard is, ZigBee remains vulnerable to a myriad of common network attacks. Previous research involving Radio Frequency-Distinct Native Attribute …

Improved Fabrication For Micromirror Arrays, Enoc Flores

Theses and Dissertations

Micromirror devices which consisted of one SU-8 2050 layer, two different exposures, and a series of metal depositions were constructed and evaluated. By varying the exposure, a micromirror structure was fabricated with different thicknesses, a ratio of 1.083 µm/(mJ/cm2) was found. The initial design consisted of four layers. The pillar was made of one SU-8 layer, and the top portion had three layers in the following order: gold, SU-8, and gold. This design could not be released and did not have characteristics of a flat and conformal reflective surface. Several variations of the initial design were explored and all of …

Side Channel Anomaly Detection In Industrial Control Systems Using Physical Characteristics Of End Devices, Ryan D. Harris

Theses and Dissertations

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are described by the Department of Homeland Security as systems that are so \vital to the United States that their incapacity or destruction would have a debilitating impact on our physical or economic security." Attacks like Stuxnet show that these systems are vulnerable. The end goal for Stuxnet was to spin centrifuges at a frequency rate outside of normal operation and hide its activity from the ICS operator. This research aims to provide a proof of concept for an anomaly detection system that would be able to detect an attack like Stuxnet by measuring the physical …

Machine Translation With Image Context From Mandarin Chinese To English, Brooke E. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

Despite ongoing improvements in machine translation, machine translators still lack the capability of incorporating context from which source text may have been derived. Machine translators use text from a source language to translate it into a target language without observing any visual context. This work aims to produce a neural machine translation model that is capable of accepting both text and image context as a multimodal translator from Mandarin Chinese to English. The model was trained on a small multimodal dataset of 700 images and sentences, and compared to a translator trained only on the text associated with those images. …

Monocular Visual Odometry For Fixed-Wing Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Kyung M. Kim

Theses and Dissertations

The popularity of small unmanned aircraft systems (SUAS) has exploded in recent years and seen increasing use in both commercial and military sectors. A key interest area for the military is to develop autonomous capabilities for these systems, of which navigation is a fundamental problem. Current navigation solutions suffer from a heavy reliance on a Global Positioning System (GPS). This dependency presents a significant limitation for military applications since many operations are conducted in environments where GPS signals are degraded or actively denied. Therefore, alternative navigation solutions without GPS must be developed and visual methods are one of the most …

Physical Layer Discrimination Of Electronic Control Units Using Wired Signal Distinct Native Attribute (Ws-Dnda), Rahn M. Lassiter

Theses and Dissertations

The Controller Area Network (CAN) bus is a communication system used in automobiles to connect the electronic components required for critical vehicle operations. These components are called Electronic Control Units (ECU) and each one exercises one or more functions within the vehicle. ECUs can provide autonomous safety features and increased comfort to drivers but these advancements may come at the expense of vehicle security. Researchers have shown that the CAN bus can be hacked by compromising authorized ECUs or by physically connecting unauthorized devices to the bus. Physical layer (PHY) device fingerprinting has emerged as one of the accepted approaches …

Aerial Simultaneous Localization And Mapping Using Earth's Magnetic Anomaly Field, Taylor N. Lee

Theses and Dissertations

Aerial magnetic navigation has been shown to be a viable GPS-alternative, but requires a prior-surveyed magnetic map. The miniaturization of atomic magnetometers extends their application to small aircraft at low altitudes where magnetic maps are especially inaccurate or unavailable. This research presents a simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) approach to constrain the drift of an inertial navigation system (INS) without the need for a magnetic map. The filter was demonstrated using real measurements on a professional survey flight, and on an AFIT unmanned aerial vehicle.

Unguided Cyber Education Techniques Of The Non-Expert, Seth A. Martin

Theses and Dissertations

The United States Air Force and Department of Defense continues to rely on its total workforce to provide the first layer of protection against cyber intrusion. Prior research has shown that the workforce is not adequately educated to perform this task. As a result, DoD cybersecurity strategy now includes attempting to improve education and training on cyber-related concepts and technical skills to all users of DoD networks. This paper describes an experiment designed to understand the broad methods that non-expert users may use to educate themselves on how to perform technical tasks. Preliminary results informed subsequent experiments that directly compared …

Micro-Contacts With 3-D Surfaces Made With Grayscale Lithography, Paul L.J. Michaud

Theses and Dissertations

MEMS switches show advantages over FET transistors and PIN diodes for switching applications due to low contact resistance, high linearity, low power use, better isolation and lower insertion loss. The switches have not replaced FETs or PIN diodes due to perceived limitations in their reliability and the need for stable contact resistance. In order to create switches acceptable for industry applications, research on micro-contact physics and failure mechanisms of micro-contacts is necessary to develop durable contact surfaces. The aim of this research was to design and fabricate micro-contacts with three-dimensional surfaces using grayscale lithography. The goal was to create devices …