Computer Engineering Commons^™

Gr802.11 Jamming Detector, Grant A. Blake

Computer Engineering

One important component of a jamming-resistant 802.11 network is detecting the presence of a jammer during normal operation. This is required so that communications on the network can operate at full efficiency when no jammer is present, but switch to a less efficient, but more resilient protocol when the network is under attack. This paper describes a potential method for detecting some common forms of jamming, lays out a plan to test the effectiveness of the detection method, and summarizes the implementation and results of the test plan.

Tidalsim Senior Project Report, Kent Zhang, Colin Vandervoort

Computer Engineering

Throughout the course of this project, our team helped the Cal Poly Biological Sciences department refine an intertidal zone simulator. The aim of this device is to allow any marine biologist to easily simulate a vast range of tidal zones in order to test animal behaviors within these zones. Another goal of this project is to make each simulation tank independent from the others by using a single microcontroller to handle all inputs and outputs of the system as well as logging all relevant data. The current system is set up so that a separate microcontroller handles dissolved oxygen and …

Smart Dc Wall Outlet Design With Improved Load Voltage Detection, Patrick Donovon Granieri

Master's Theses

A standard home in the United States has access to the 120V AC power grid for use with home appliances. Many electronics used at home are powered by a DC power supply, which loses energy in the conversion from AC power. The DC House project avoids any conversion between AC and DC by storing energy in batteries as DC power and supplying it directly to DC appliances. While AC systems feature a standardized output voltage, no such standard exists for DC systems. The Smart DC Wall Outlet solves this by automatically adjusting its output voltage to meet any required DC …

Multi-Vector Tracking Of Wifi And Zigbee Devices, Calvin Andrew Laverty

Master's Theses

Location privacy preservation has shifted to the forefront of discussions about next generation wireless networks. While pseudonym-changing schemes have been proposed to preserve an individual's privacy, simulation has shown that new association attack models render these schemes useless. The major contribution of this thesis is the implementation of a tracking network with commodity hardware on the California Polytechnic State University campus which leverages the combination of de-anonymization strategies on captured wireless network data to show the effectiveness of a pseudonym-changing scheme for wireless identification across WiFi and Zigbee protocols.

Electrical Machines For Harsh Environments, Ayman M. El-Refaie

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

There have been several megatrends over the past several years that have been driving research activities in the area of electrical machines and drives. These include transportation electrification (land vehicles, aerospace, ships, locomotives), expanded role of renewables (wind, solar, wave…etc.), and smart grid among others. One of those megatrends that continues to become more critical is electrical machines for harsh environments. In many applications, production has been moved to remote locations and harsh environments. These include subsea oil exploration, sour/acid gas compression, downhole and geothermal pumps, underground mining, and aerospace applications. This paper will provide an overview of electrical machine …

Lattice Dynamics Of Orthorhombic Ndgao3, Alyssa Mock, Rafal Korlacki, Sean Knight, Megan Stokey, A. Fritz, Vanya Darakchieva, Mathias Schubert

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

A complete set of infrared-active and Raman-active lattice modes is obtained from density functional theory calculations for single-crystalline centrosymmetric orthorhombic neodymium gallate. The results for infraredactive modes are compared with an analysis of the anisotropic long-wavelength properties using generalized spectroscopic ellipsometry. The frequency-dependent dielectric function tensor and dielectric loss function tensor of orthorhombic neodymium gallium oxide are reported in the spectral range of 80–1200 cm⁻¹. A combined eigendielectric displacement vector summation and dielectric displacement loss vector summation approach augmented by considerations of lattice anharmonicity is utilized to describe the experimentally determined tensor elements. All infrared-active transverse and longitudinal …

Lattice Dynamics Of Orthorhombic Ndgao3, A. Mock, Rafal Korlacki, Sean Knight, Megan Stokey, A. Fritz, V. Darakchieva, Mathias Schubert

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

A complete set of infrared-active and Raman-active lattice modes is obtained from density functional theory calculations for single-crystalline centrosymmetric orthorhombic neodymium gallate. The results for infraredactive modes are compared with an analysis of the anisotropic long-wavelength properties using generalized spectroscopic ellipsometry. The frequency-dependent dielectric function tensor and dielectric loss function tensor of orthorhombic neodymium gallium oxide are reported in the spectral range of 80–1200 cm⁻¹. A combined eigendielectric displacement vector summation and dielectric displacement loss vector summation approach augmented by considerations of lattice anharmonicity is utilized to describe the experimentally determined tensor elements. All infrared-active transverse and longitudinal …

Anonymous And Efficient Message Authentication Scheme For Smart Grid, Libing Wu, Jing Wang, Sherali Zeadally, Debiao He

Information Science Faculty Publications

Smart grid has emerged as the next-generation electricity grid with power flow optimization and high power quality. Smart grid technologies have attracted the attention of industry and academia in the last few years. However, the tradeoff between security and efficiency remains a challenge in the practical deployment of the smart grid. Most recently, Li et al. proposed a lightweight message authentication scheme with user anonymity and claimed that their scheme is provably secure. But we found that their scheme fails to achieve mutual authentication and mitigate some typical attacks (e.g., impersonation attack, denial of service attack) in the smart grid …

High-Torque-Density Low-Cost Magnetic Gear Utilizing Hybrid Magnets And Advanced Materials, Ali Hussain Al-Qarni, Fan Wu, Ayman M. El-Refaie

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Two major challenges of existing high-performance magnetic gears are: (i) High content of rare-earth permanent magnets which results in high cost as well as price fluctuation; (ii) Conflict between mechanical and electromagnetic performances, especially in the design of highspeed rotor. A magnetic gear using a blend of magnet types, i.e NdFeB, or Dy-free NdFeB and ferrites, is proposed in this paper. The goal is to bring down the cost while retaining comparable torque-transducing performance to a baseline magnetic gear only using rare-earth NdFeB magnets. A variety of topologies based on different combinations of magnet types and geometric shapes have been …

Computationally Efficient Optimization Of A Five-Phase Flux-Switching Pm Machine Under Different Operating Conditions, Hao Chen, Xiangdong Liu, Nabeel Demerdash, Ayman M. El-Refaie, Zhen Chen, Jiangbiao He

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

This paper investigates the comparative design optimizations of a five-phase outer-rotor flux-switching permanent magnet (FSPM) machine for in-wheel traction applications. To improve the comprehensive performance of the motor, two kinds of large-scale design optimizations under different operating conditions are performed and compared, including the traditional optimization performed at the rated operating point and the optimization targeting the whole driving cycles. Three driving cycles are taken into account, namely, the urban dynamometer driving schedule (UDDS), the highway fuel economy driving schedule (HWFET), and the combined UDDS/HWFET, representing the city, highway, and combined city/highway driving, respectively. Meanwhile, the computationally efficient finite-element analysis …

Prototyping A Capacitive Sensing Device For Gesture Recognition, Chenglong Lin

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Capacitive sensing is a technology that can detect proximity and touch. It can also be utilized to measure position and acceleration of gesture motions. This technology has many applications, such as replacing mechanical buttons in a gaming device interface, detecting respiration rate without direct contact with the skin, and providing gesture sensing capability for rehabilitation devices. In this thesis, an approach to prototype a capacitive gesture sensing device using the Eagle PCB design software is demonstrated. In addition, this paper tested and evaluated the resulting prototype device, validating the effectiveness of the approach.

Hardware Ip Classification Through Weighted Characteristics, Brendan Mcgeehan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Today’s business model for hardware designs frequently incorporates third-party Intellectual Property (IP) due to the many benefits it can bring to a company. For instance, outsourcing certain components of an overall design can reduce time-to-market by allowing each party to specialize and perfect a specific part of the overall design. However, allowing third-party involvement also increases the possibility of malicious attacks, such as hardware Trojan insertion. Trojan insertion is a particularly dangerous security threat because testing the functionality of an IP can often leave the Trojan undetected. Therefore, this thesis work provides an improvement on a Trojan detection method known …

Granny Pod Virtual Assistant, David Connolly, Bing Chen

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Dr. Chen is working on a sustainable small house (SSH) project, sometimes called the “Granny Pod”. Regulations will soon allow homeowners to house their parents on their property, which can be an opportunity live independently in a cheap, sustainable, and convenient alternative to a retirement community. To help achieve this vision, a Virtual Assistant system for the SSH was developed. The system uses a Google Home or Amazon Echo to respond to the voice command “Hey Google (or Alexa), I need help” by contacting the nearby homeowner or caretaker. It alerts the resident who is at the door when the …

The Affective Perceptual Model: Enhancing Communication Quality For Persons With Pimd, Jadin Tredup

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Methods for prolonged compassionate care for persons with Profound Intellectual and Multiple Disabilities (PIMD) require a rotating cast of import people in the subjects life in order to facilitate interaction with the external environment. As subjects continue to age, dependency on these people increases with complexity of communications while the quality of communication decreases. It is theorized that a machine learning (ML) system could replicate the attuning process and replace these people to promote independence. This thesis extends this idea to develop a conceptual and formal model and system prototype.

The main contributions of this thesis are: (1) proposal of …

Design Of Remote Datalogger Connection And Live Data Tweeting System, Zachary Wofford

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Low-Impact Development (LID) is an attempt to sustainably respond to the potential hazards posed by urban expansion. Green roofs are an example of LID design meant to reduce the amount of runoff from storm events that are becoming more intense and less predictable while also providing insulation to buildings. LID has not yet been widely adopted as it is often a more expensive alternative to conventional infrastructure (Bowman et. al., 2009). However, its benefits are apparent. The University of Arkansas Honors College awarded a grant to research the large green roof atop Hillside Auditorium. One part of this grant is …

Asynchronous Circuit Synthesis Using Multi-Threshold Null Convention Logic, Nicholas Renoudet Mize

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the demand for an energy-efficient alternative to traditional synchronous circuit design grows, hardware designers must reconsider the traditional clock tree. By doing away with the constrains of a clock, asynchronous sequential circuit designs can achieve a much greater level of efficiency. The utilization of asynchronous logic synthesis flows has enabled researchers to better implement asynchronous circuit designs which have been optimized using the same industry standard tools that are already used in sequential synchronous designs. This thesis offers a new flow for such tools which implements the MTNCL asynchronous circuit architecture.

A Survey Of Prediction And Classification Techniques In Multicore Processor Systems, Cristinel Ababei, Milad Ghorbani Moghaddam

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

In multicore processor systems, being able to accurately predict the future provides new optimization opportunities, which otherwise could not be exploited. For example, an oracle able to predict a certain application's behavior running on a smart phone could direct the power manager to switch to appropriate dynamic voltage and frequency scaling modes that would guarantee minimum levels of desired performance while saving energy consumption and thereby prolonging battery life. Using predictions enables systems to become proactive rather than continue to operate in a reactive manner. This prediction-based proactive approach has become increasingly popular in the design and optimization of integrated …

Quantitative Detection Of Complex Mixtures Using A Single Chemical Sensor: Analysis Of Response Transients Using Multi-Stage Estimation, Karthick Sothivelr, Florian Bender, Fabien Josse, Edwin E. Yaz, Antonio J. Ricco

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Most chemical sensors are only partially selective to any specific target analyte(s), making identification and quantification of analyte mixtures challenging, a problem often addressed using arrays of partially selective sensors. This work presents and experimentally verifies a signal-processing technique based on estimation theory for online identification and quantification of multiple analytes using only the response data collected from a single polymer-coated sensor device. The demonstrated technique, based on multiple stages of exponentially weighted recursive least-squares estimation (EW-RLSE), first determines which of the analytes included in the sensor response model are absent from the mixture being analyzed; these are then eliminated …

Survey Of Insulation Systems In Electrical Machines, Rasul Hemmati, Fan Wu, Ayman M. El-Refaie

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Insulating materials and insulation systems design have been gaining more attentions as more electrical machines tend to operate in harsher environments for various applications. Harsh environments include high temperature, humidity, erosion, low air pressure, etc. This paper discusses recent advances in insulation systems for electrical machines. Insulation tests as well as test standards that have been used to evaluate insulation systems and detect insulation failures will be discussed. Insulating materials used for a wide range of industrial applications such as wind turbine generators, aerospace hybrid/electric powertrain, and hydro generators have been summarized. For the emerging high-altitude, highvoltage aerospace applications, partial …

Towards Fully Additively-Manufactured Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machines: Opportunities And Challenges, Fan Wu, Ayman M. El-Refaie

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

With the growing interest in electrification and as hybrid and pure electric powertrains are adopted in more applications, electrical machine design is facing challenges in terms of meeting very demanding performance metrics for example high specific power, harsh environments, etc. This provides clear motivation to explore the impact of advanced materials and manufacturing on the performance of electrical machines. This paper provides an overview of additive manufacturing (AM) approaches that can be used for constructing permanent magnet (PM) machines, with a specific focus on additively-manufactured iron core, winding, insulation, PM as well as cooling systems. Since there has only been …

Analysis Of Bitcoin Cryptocurrency And Its Mining Techniques, Suman Ghimire

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer digital, decentralized cryptocurrency created by an individual under pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. In fact, it is the first digital, decentralized currency. Several developers and organizations have explored the importance of digital cryptocurrency and the concept of the blockchain. Bitcoin is assumed to be one of the secure and comfortable payment methods that can be used in the upcoming days. The backbone of Bitcoin mining is the concept of the blockchain, which is assumed to beone of the ingenious invention of this century. The blockchain is the collection of blocks that are linked together in such a way …

Multimodal Emotion Classification, Anurag Illendula, Amit Sheth

Publications

Most NLP and Computer Vision tasks are limited to scarcity of labelled data. In social media emotion classification and other related tasks, hashtags have been used as indicators to label data. With the rapid increase in emoji usage of social media, emojis are used as an additional feature for major social NLP tasks. However, this is less explored in case of multimedia posts on social media where posts are composed of both image and text. At the same time, w.e have seen a surge in the interest to incorporate domain knowledge to improve machine understanding of text. In this paper, …

Knowledge-Aware Assessment Of Severity Of Suicide Risk For Early Intervention, Manas Gaur, Amanuel Alambo, Joy Prakash Sain, Ugur Kursuncu, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Ramakanth Kavuluru, Amit Sheth, Randon S. Welton, Jyotishman Pathak

Publications

Mental health illness such as depression is a significant risk factor for suicide ideation, behaviors, and attempts. A report by Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) shows that 80% of the patients suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) have suicidal behavior, 5-10% of whom commit suicide. While multiple initiatives have been developed and implemented for suicide prevention, a key challenge has been the social stigma associated with mental disorders, which deters patients from seeking help or sharing their experiences directly with others including clinicians. This is particularly true for teenagers and younger adults where suicide is the second …

Urban Underground Infrastructure Monitoring Iot: The Path Loss Analysis, Abdul Salam, Syed Shah

Faculty Publications

The extra quantities of wastewater entering the pipes can cause backups that result in sanitary sewer overflows. Urban underground infrastructure monitoring is important for controlling the flow of extraneous water into the pipelines. By combining the wireless underground communications and sensor solutions, the urban underground IoT applications such as real time wastewater and storm water overflow monitoring can be developed. In this paper, the path loss analysis of wireless underground communications in urban underground IoT for wastewater monitoring has been presented. It has been shown that the communication range of up to 4 kilometers can be achieved from an underground …

An Underground Radio Wave Propagation Prediction Model For Digital Agriculture, Abdul Salam

Faculty Publications

Underground sensing and propagation of Signals in the Soil (SitS) medium is an electromagnetic issue. The path loss prediction with higher accuracy is an open research subject in digital agriculture monitoring applications for sensing and communications. The statistical data are predominantly derived from site-specific empirical measurements, which is considered an impediment to universal application. Nevertheless, in the existing literature, statistical approaches have been applied to the SitS channel modeling, where impulse response analysis and the Friis open space transmission formula are employed as the channel modeling tool in different soil types under varying soil moisture conditions at diverse communication distances …

Metal-Insulator Transition (Mit) Materials For Biomedical Applications, Mohiuddin Munna, Protap Mahanta, Ronald A. Coutu Jr.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Transitional metal oxides get considerable interest in electronics and other engineering applications over few decades. These materials show several orders of magnitude metal-insulator transition (MIT) triggered by external stimuli. Bio-sensing using Vanadium dioxide (VO₂), a MIT material is largely unexplored. In this short article, we investigate the VO₂ based thermal sensor performance for measuring the biomolecule concentration. Active sensing layer is chromium and niobium co-doped VO₂ as it shows 11.9%/°C temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) with practically no thermal hysteresis. Our study demonstrated that VO₂ based microsensors can be used to measure the biomolecule concentrations, …

Low-Dimensional Materials With Protective Coatings For Applications Under Extreme Conditions, Qiming Zou

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Traditional ceramic-based, conductive materials used under extreme conditions are severely limited due to their conditional electrical conductivity and poor stability under harsh circumstances. Advanced composite structures based on vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VACNTs) and high-temperature ceramics are expected to address this grand challenge, in which ceramic serves as a shielding layer protecting the VACNTs from the oxidation and erosive environment, while the VACNTs work as a conductor. However, it is still a great challenge to fabricate VACNT/ceramic composite structures due to the limited infiltration of ceramics inside the VACNT arrays. Hence developing a feasible method to infiltrate ceramics into VACNT …

Autonomous Watercraft Simulation And Programming, Nicholas J. Savino

Student Scholar Showcase

Automation of various modes of transportation is thought to make travel more safe and efficient. Over the past several decades, advances to semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicles have led to advanced autopilot systems on planes and boats, and an increasing popularity of self-driving cars. We predicted the motion of an autonomous vehicle using simulations in Python. The simulation models the motion of a small scale watercraft, which can then be built and programmed using an Arduino Microcontroller. We examined different control methods for a simulated rescue craft to reach a target. We also examined the effects of different factors, such as …

Nematic Liquid Crystal Composite Materials For Dc And Rf Switching, Mohiuddin Munna, Farhana Anwar, Ronald A. Coutu Jr.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Liquid Crystals (LCs) are widely used in display devices, electro-optic modulators, and optical switches. A field-induced electrical conductivity modulation in pure liquid crystals is very low which makes it less preferable for direct current (DC) and radio-frequency (RF) switching applications. According to the literature, a conductivity enhancement is possible by nanoparticle doping. Considering this aspect, we reviewed published works focused on an electric field-induced conductivity modulation in carbon nanotube-doped liquid crystal composites (LC-CNT composites). A two to four order of magnitude switching in electrical conductivity is observed by several groups. Both in-plane and out-of-plane device configurations are used. In plane …

On Using Ai Bots For Voice Controlled Augmented Reality Applications, Juan Estrella

Publications and Research

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to benefit society in the realms of medicine, security, manufacturing, entertainment, marketing, and many others. One of the advances of AI is in the field of Natural Language Processing and Speech Recognition; making computers understand what humans say and mean. On the other hand, the term Augmented Reality (AR) refers to the technologies that superimpose digital content generated by computers over the user’s view of the real world. AR technologies enhance the version of the physical environment with computergenerated sensory input such as sound, video, or graphics overlaid on top of the real-world view. …