Computer Engineering Commons^™

A Framework For Using Modeling And Simulation-Based Methods In Support Of Project Management In A U.S. Department Of Defense Enterprise Architecture Framework Environment, Jose Leprout Bricio-Neto

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The Enterprise Architecture, Analysis and Project Management (EA2PM) framework developed and proposed in this study enables better evaluation of the ability for enterprise architects, project managers and analysts to share system data using their own domain-specific software tools with a focus on the capability to automatically generate a discrete-event simulation model. EA2PM framework is based on applying a Knowledge Management (KM) construct to establish data and information boundaries, and developing a methodology that allows for high levels of traceability from system architecture's environmental factors through assessment of data and information mediation across domains within a KM system.

An application of …

A Hurricane Evacuation Route System Real-Time Monitoring And Distribution Of Load, Anup Khanal

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Hurricane evacuation is one of the major steps in diminishing the devastating effects of hurricanes on lives and properties. The challenge in evacuating a large number of people in a short time is the severe congestion faced in the transportation network, leading to long delays and shortages. Standard hurricane evacuation plans focus on how to best utilize the main arteries. The research challenge is to not overload the fastest routes and to utilize all the routes efficiently. The evacuation routing system proposed in this thesis focuses on distributing the traffic load throughout the network, utilizing alternative routes not considered in …

A Hidden Markov Model Based Approach To Detect Rogue Access Points, Gayathri Shivaraj

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

One of the most challenging security concerns for network administrators is the presence of Rogue access points. The challenge is to detect and disable a Rogue access point before it can cause hazardous damage to the network. This thesis proposes a statistically based approach to detect Rogue access points using a Hidden Markov Model, which is applied to passively measure packet-header data collected at a gateway router or any monitoring point. This approach utilizes variations in packet inter-arrival time to differentiate between authorized access points and Rouge access points. This approach used the inter-arrival time of a packet as a …

Tree-D-Seek: A Framework For Retrieving Three-Dimensional Scenes, Saurav Mazumdar

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In this dissertation, a strategy and framework for retrieving 3D scenes is proposed. The strategy is to retrieve 3D scenes based on a unified approach for indexing content from disparate information sources and information levels. The TREE-D-SEEK framework implements the proposed strategy for retrieving 3D scenes and is capable of indexing content from a variety of corpora at distinct information levels. A semantic annotation model for indexing 3D scenes in the TREE-D-SEEK framework is also proposed. The semantic annotation model is based on an ontology for rapid prototyping of 3D virtual worlds.

With ongoing improvements in computer hardware and 3D …

A Taxonomy For And Analysis Of Anonymous Communications Networks, Douglas J. Kelly

Theses and Dissertations

Any entity operating in cyberspace is susceptible to debilitating attacks. With cyber attacks intended to gather intelligence and disrupt communications rapidly replacing the threat of conventional and nuclear attacks, a new age of warfare is at hand. In 2003, the United States acknowledged that the speed and anonymity of cyber attacks makes distinguishing among the actions of terrorists, criminals, and nation states difficult. Even President Obama’s Cybersecurity Chief-elect recognizes the challenge of increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks. Now through April 2009, the White House is reviewing federal cyber initiatives to protect US citizen privacy rights. Indeed, the rising quantity and ubiquity …

Using Covert Means To Establish Cybercraft Command And Control, Bradley D. Sevy

Theses and Dissertations

With the increase in speed and availability of computers, our nation's computer and information systems are being attacked with increased sophistication. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Information Directorate (RI) is researching a next generation network defense architecture, called Cybercraft, that provides automated and trusted cyber defense capabilities for AF network assets. This research we consider the issues to protect or obfuscate command and control aspects of Cybercraft. In particular, we present a methodology to hide aspects of Cybercraft platform initialization in context to formation of hierarchical, peer-to-peer groups that collectively form the Cybercraft network. Because malicious code networks (known …

Image Processing For Multiple-Target Tracking On A Graphics Processing Unit, Michael A. Tanner

Theses and Dissertations

Multiple-target tracking (MTT) systems have been implemented on many different platforms, however these solutions are often expensive and have long development times. Such MTT implementations require custom hardware, yet offer very little flexibility with ever changing data sets and target tracking requirements. This research explores how to supplement and enhance MTT performance with an existing graphics processing unit (GPU) on a general computing platform. Typical computers are already equipped with powerful GPUs to support various games and multimedia applications. However, such GPUs are not currently being used in desktop MTT applications. This research explores if and how a GPU can …

The Modular Clock Algorithm For Blind Rendezvous, Nicholas C. Theis

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the problem in initializing communications whereby cognitive radios need to find common spectrum with other cognitive radios, a process known as frequency rendezvous. It examines the rendezvous problem as it exists in a dynamic spectrum access cognitive network. Specifically, it addresses the problem of rendezvous in an infrastructureless environment. A new algorithm, the modular clock algorithm, is developed and analyzed as a solution for the simple rendezvous environment model, coupled with a modified version for environment models with less information. The thesis includes a taxonomy of commonly used environment models, and analysis of previous efforts to solve …

Low Probability Of Intercept Waveforms Via Intersymbol Dither Performance Under Multipath Conditions, Jonathan K. Keen

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the effects of multipath interference on Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) waveforms generated using intersymbol dither. LPI waveforms are designed to be difficult for non-cooperative receivers to detect and manipulate, and have many uses in secure communications applications. In prior research, such a waveform was designed using a dither algorithm to vary the time between the transmission of data symbols in a communication system. This work showed that such a method can be used to frustrate attempts to use non-cooperative receiver algorithms to recover the data. This thesis expands on prior work by examining the effects of …

Numerical Analysis For Relevant Features In Intrusion Detection (Narfid), Jose Andres Gonzalez

Theses and Dissertations

Identification of cyber attacks and network services is a robust field of study in the machine learning community. Less effort has been focused on understanding the domain space of real network data in identifying important features for cyber attack and network service classification. Motivations for such work allow for anomaly detection systems with less requirements on data “sniffed” off the network, extraction of features from the traffic, reduced learning time of algorithms, and ideally increased classification performance of anomalous behavior. This thesis evaluates the usefulness of a good feature subset for the general classification task of identifying cyber attacks and …

A Neutral Network Based Vehicle Classification System For Pervasive Smart Road Security, Naixue Xiong, Jing (Selena) He, Jong Hyuk Park, Donald Cooley

Faculty Articles

Pervasive smart computing environments make people get accustomed to convenient and secure services. The overall goal of this research is to classify vehicles along the I215 freeway in Salt Lake City, USA. This information will be used to predict future roadway needs and the expected life of a roadway. The classification of vehicles will be performed by a synthesis of multiple sets of features. All feature sets have not yet been determined; however, one such set will be the reduced wavelet transform of the image of a vehicle. In order to use such a feature, it is necessary that the …

Visual Word Proximity And Linguistics For Semantic Video Indexing And Near-Duplicate Retrieval, Yu-Gang Jiang, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Bag-of-visual-words (BoW) has recently become a popular representation to describe video and image content. Most existing approaches, nevertheless, neglect inter-word relatedness and measure similarity by bin-to-bin comparison of visual words in histograms. In this paper, we explore the linguistic and ontological aspects of visual words for video analysis. Two approaches, soft-weighting and constraint-based earth mover’s distance (CEMD), are proposed to model different aspects of visual word linguistics and proximity. In soft-weighting, visual words are cleverly weighted such that the linguistic meaning of words is taken into account for bin-to-bin histogram comparison. In CEMD, a cross-bin matching algorithm is formulated such …

Automated Virtual Machine Introspection For Host-Based Intrusion Detection, Brett A. Pagel

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines techniques to automate configuration of an intrusion detection system utilizing hardware-assisted virtualization. These techniques are used to detect the version of a running guest operating system, automatically configure version-specific operating system information needed by the introspection library, and to locate and monitor important operating system data structures. This research simplifies introspection library configuration and is a step toward operating system independent introspection. An operating system detection algorithm and Windows virtual machine system service dispatch table monitor are implemented using the Xen hypervisor and a modified version of the XenAccess library. All detection and monitoring is implemented from …

Adaptive Control Of Woofer-Tweeter Adaptive Optics, Jimmie J. Perez

Theses and Dissertations

Adaptive optics applies advanced sensing and control to improve the ability of optical systems to collect images through a turbulent atmosphere. The results of this research effort demonstrate that the combination of two recent approaches improves the performance of adaptive optics in directed energy and laser communication scenarios. The first approach is adaptive control, which offers improved performance over fixed-gain controllers in the presence of rapidly changing turbulence. The second approach incorporated into the study is a dual-mirror system. The two mirrors are a high-bandwidth, low-actuator-stroke (tweeter) mirror and a low-bandwidth, large actuator-stroke (woofer) mirror. The woofer-tweeter combination allows for …

An Fpga-Based System For Tracking Digital Information Transmitted Via Peer-To-Peer Protocols, Karl R. Schrader

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis addresses the problem of identifying and tracking digital information that is shared using peer-to-peer file transfer and Voice over IP (VoIP) protocols. The goal of the research is to develop a system for detecting and tracking the illicit dissemination of sensitive government information using file sharing applications within a target network, and tracking terrorist cells or criminal organizations that are covertly communicating using VoIP applications. A digital forensic tool is developed using an FPGA-based embedded software application. The tool is designed to process file transfers using the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol and VoIP phone calls made using the Session …

Is Parallel Programming Hard, And If So, Why?, Paul E. Mckenney, Maged M. Michael, Manish Gupta, Philip William Howard, Josh Triplett, Jonathan Walpole

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Of the 200+ parallel-programming languages and environments created in the 1990s, almost all are now defunct. Given that parallel systems are now well within the budget of the typical hobbyist or graduate student, it is not unreasonable to expect a new cohort in excess of several thousand parallel languages and environments to appear in the 2010s. If this expected new cohort is to have more practical impact than did its 1990s counterpart, a robust and widely applicable framework will be required that encompasses exactly what, if anything, is hard about parallel programming. This paper revisits the fundamental precepts of concurrent …

Learning Image‐Text Associations, Tao Jiang, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Web information fusion can be defined as the problem of collating and tracking information related to specific topics on the World Wide Web. Whereas most existing work on Web information fusion has focused on text-based multidocument summarization, this paper concerns the topic of image and text association, a cornerstone of cross-media Web information fusion. Specifically, we present two learning methods for discovering the underlying associations between images and texts based on small training data sets. The first method based on vague transformation measures the information similarity between the visual features and the textual features through a set of predefined domain-specific …

Programmer Friendly Refactoring Tools, Emerson Murphy-Hill

Dissertations and Theses

Tools that perform semi-automated refactoring are currently under-utilized by programmers. If more programmers adopted refactoring tools, software projects could make enormous productivity gains. However, as more advanced refactoring tools are designed, a great chasm widens between how the tools must be used and how programmers want to use them. This dissertation begins to bridge this chasm by exposing usability guidelines to direct the design of the next generation of programmer-friendly refactoring tools, so that refactoring tools fit the way programmers behave, not vice-versa.

Archetype Alignment: A Two-Level Driven Semantic Matching Approach To Interoperability In The Clinical Domain, Damon Berry, Jesus Bisbal

Conference Papers

Semantic interoperability between electronic health record systems and other information systems in the health domain implies agreement about the structure and the meaning of the information that is communicated. There are still a number of similar but different EHR system approaches. Some of the newer approaches adopt the two-layer model approach where a generic reference model is constrained by archetypes into valid clinical concepts which can be exchanged. The meaning of the concepts that are represented by an archetype can be conveyed by embedding codes from a commonly recognised terminology at appropriate points in the archetype. However, as the number …

Defining A Forensic Audit, G. S. Smith, D. L. Crumbley

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Disclosures about new financial frauds and scandals are continually appearing in the press. As a consequence, the accounting profession's traditional methods of monitoring corporate financial activities are under intense scrutiny. At the same time, there is recognition that principles-based GAAP from the International Accounting Standards Board will become the recognized standard in the U.S. The authors argue that these two factors will change the practices used to fight corporate malfeasance as investigators adapt the techniques of accounting into a forensic audit engagement model.

Visualisation Of Honeypot Data Using Graphviz And Afterglow, Craig Valli

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This research in progress paper explores the use of Graphviz and Afterglow for the analysis of data emanating from a honeypot system. Honeypot systems gather a wide range of data that is often difficult to readily search for patterns and trends using conventional log file analysis techniques. The data from the honeypots has been statically extracted and processed through Afterglow scripts to produce inputs suitable for use by the DOT graph based tools contained within Graphviz. This paper explores some of the benefits and drawbacks of currently using this type of approach.

Insecurity By Obscurity: A Review Of Soho Router Literature From A Network Security Perspective, Patryk Szewczyk, Craig Valli

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Because of prevalent threats to SoHo based ADSL Routers, many more devices are compromised. Whilst an end-user may be at fault for not applying the appropriate security mechanisms to counter these threats, vendors should equally share the blame. This paper reveals that the lack of security related content and poor overall design could impact on end-users’ interpretation and willingness to implement security controls on their ADSL router. It argues that whilst the number of threats circulating the Internet is increasing, vendors are not improving their product literature.

Equational Coalgebraic Logic, Alexander Kurz, Raul Leal

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Coalgebra develops a general theory of transition systems, parametric in a functor T; the functor T specifies the possible one-step behaviours of the system. A fundamental question in this area is how to obtain, for an arbitrary functor T, a logic for T-coalgebras. We compare two existing proposals, Moss’s coalgebraic logic and the logic of all predicate liftings, by providing one-step translations between them, extending the results in [21] by making systematic use of Stone duality. Our main contribution then is a novel coalgebraic logic, which can be seen as an equational axiomatization of Moss’s logic. The three logics are …

A Mobile Ecg Monitoring System With Context Collection, Jin Peng Li, Damon Berry, Richard Hayes

Conference Papers

Preventative health management represents a shift from the traditional approach of reactive treatment-based healthcare towards a proactive wellness-management approach where patients are encouraged to stay healthy with expert support when they need it, at any location and any time. This work represents a step along the road towards proactive, preventative healthcare for cardiac patients. It seeks to develop a smart mobile ECG monitoring system that requests and records context information about what is happening around the subject when an arrhythmia event occurs. Context information about the subject’s activities of daily living will, it is hoped, provide an enriched data set …

A Novel Ep Approach For Multi-Area Economic Dispatch With Multiple Fuel Options, P. S. Manoharan, P. S. Kannan, V. Ramanathan

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This paper presents a novel approach to multi-area economic dispatch problems with multiple fuel options using a hybrid evolutionary programming method. The objective is to minimize the operation cost of the entire system while satisfying the tie line constraints. In this paper, EP-LMO (Evolutionary Programming with Levenberg-Marquardt Optimization) technique is proposed to solve multi-area economic dispatch problems with multiple fuel options. The EP-LMO is developed in such a way that a simple evolutionary programming (EP) is applied as a base level search to find the direction of the optimal global region. And Levenberg-Marquardt Optimization (LMO) method is used as a …

Vlsi-Cell Placement Technique For Architecture Of Field Programmable Gate Array (Fpga) Design, Avnesh Verma, Sunil Dhingra, M. K. Soni

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is an on field programmable device which can be designed for different applications. Various types of software are available for its synthesis. The cell placement depends upon the designing and programming languages used for FPGA. In this paper cell placement technique of FPGA architecture is analyzed for the application of Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation (SVPWM) technique used in speed control of an induction motor. The modulation pulses are produced due to the various components activated and their interconnection in Configurable Logic Blocks (CLBs). Few of its components are so analyzed to find out …

Modeling And Calculation Of Electromagnetic Field In The Surroundings Of A Large Power Transformer, Leonardo Strac, Franjo Kelemen, Damir Zarko

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The presented study compares measured and calculated electromagnetic field quantities in the surroundings of a large power transformer with the aim to avoid the necessity of measuring the field on subsequent units and use a computer model instead. The influences of various objects located in the vicinity of the transformer during measurement are also analyzed and are taken into account in a computer model.

Analytical Regularization Method For Electromagnetic Wave Diffraction By Axially Symmetrical Thin Annular Strips, Fati̇h Di̇kmen, Yury Alexanderovich Tuchkin

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

A new mathematically rigorous and numerically efficient method based on the combination of Orthogonal Polynomials Method, and Analytical Regularization Method, for electromagnetic wave diffraction by a model structure for various antennae such as Fresnel zone plates is proposed. It can be used as validation tool for the other (more general or less accurate) numerical methods and physical approaches. The initial boundary value problem is equivalently reduced to the infinite system of the linear algebraic equations of the second kind, i.e. to an equation of the type (I+H) x=b in the space l_2 with compact operator H. This equation can be …

A Cryptanalysis Methodology For The Reverse Engineering Of Encrypted Information In Images, Allan Anthony Rwabutaza

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Security is an important issue related to the storage and communication of data and information. In data and information security, cryptography and steganography are two of the most common security techniques. On one hand, there is cryptography, which is the secret communication between two parties by message scrambling on the sender's side and message unscrambling on the receiver's side so that only the intended receiver gets the secret message. On the other hand, there is steganography, which is the hiding of information in a medium in such a way that no one other than the sender or the intended receiver …

Telecommunications Liberalisation In Africa: Proposed Regulatory Model For The Sadc Region, Z. N. Jobodwana

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The liberalisation of the telecommunication industry in Africa, and the further development of the region’s physical infrastructure was accompanied by the further development of Africa’s information, communication and technology infrastructure. Competition within the industry stimulated heavy economic investment in other sectors of the economy. The outcome of liberalisation also included the establishment of community-based structures that continue to enable communities to manage their own development and gain access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) in an unprecedented manner. The telecommunication infrastructure further stimulated the fast development of other related services, for example, ecommerce and mobile commerce (m-commerce), e-government, internet banking, …