Computer Engineering Commons^™

Electromagnetic Wave Propagation Prediction For Wireless Networks Inside Boeing Fuselages, Mennatoallah Youssef

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Commercial grade software is intended for electromagnetic predictions within office buildings; it was used to develop models to analyze propagation inside airplane fuselages. This study shows that Wireless XGTD and Insite software can accurately predict power propagation within airplane fuselages. Current work uses fuselage models, which contain additional internal components. A comparison was made between empty and full fuselage to examine the effects of internal components. Two propagation model types [Fast 3D and Full 3D] were also compared for accuracy to experimental study. It was concluded that completed fuselages are suggested for further simulation study as well as that the …

A Feature Specific Modular Approach For Pose And Illumination Invariant Face Recognition, Praveen Sankaran

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A feature specific modular-PCA (Principal Component Analysis) approach on face images in multiple views for pose and illumination invariant face recognition is presented in this thesis. Principal components are extracted from different sub-modules of the image and are concatenated to make a single signature vector to represent a face region in a particular viewing angle. Additional principal components are extracted horn image regions representing key facial feature and are added as an extension of the signature vector. Feature specific modular-PCA approach is capable of recognizing faces in varying illumination conditions and facial expressions as the modular components represent the local …

Mobility-Pattern Based Localization Update Algorithm For Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks, Mohammad Yacoub Al-Laho

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In mobile wireless sensor networks, sensors move in the monitored area at any direction and speed. Unlike many other networking hosts, sensor nodes do not have global addresses. They are often identified by using a location-based addressing scheme. Therefore, it is important to have the knowledge of the sensor location indicating where the data came from. In this thesis, three localization update algorithms were designed, Specifically, a sensor movement is divided into three states: Pause, Linear, and Random. Each state adopts different localization update algorithm. Since complex movement involves different mobility patterns, a state transition model is developed to …

Applying A Simulation-Based Real-Time Decision Making Method To Mass Casualty Scenarios In Hospital Emergency Departments, Fatemah Al-Douli

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The high possibility of having a mass casualty incident compels hospitals to plan ahead in order to sufficiently provide the healthcare needed to as many casualty victims as possible. The Emergency Rooms (ER) are usually hospitals' main entrance for many casualties. Therefore, the ER in the Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters (CHKD) was selected as the system to be examined. The ER in CHKD, the only specialized pediatric ER in the region, already struggles to handle very high patient arrival rates. Consequently, it is expected that treating a large number of patients surviving within a very short period of …

Image Compression By Vector Quantization Of Dct Coefficients Using A Self-Organizing Neural Network, Kirankumar Boyapati

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Image compression is used to remove different types of redundancies and irrelevant information in an image so that the space required for storing the image is minimized. Conventional transform based techniques remove the redundancies between adjacent pixels and irrelevant information in the image but fail to remove the redundancies between different parts of the image. There are techniques like vector quantization, which take care of the redundant information in different parts of the image, but fail to remove the irrelevant information in the image. In this thesis a new technique for lossy digital image compression is proposed which is a …

Programmable Process Flow Networks, Filip D. Cuckov

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A model that introduces programmability to processes occurring in a cargo terminal simulation through the use of a process language is presented in this thesis. The model provides a means for a straight-forward definition, and redefinition of changing processes, their incorporation in the simulation architecture and efficient execution. The model was built to investigate a solution for transforming the cargo terminal simulation CPortS into a process-oriented simulation without hard-coded processes. The approach taken separates the system into an architecture and a set of processes which utilize and interact with the architecture's resources and infrastructure. The processes that take place within …

Creating Software [Sic] Environments On An M-Node Beowulf Cluster To Execute Discrete-Event Simulations, Jermaine Fitz-Gerald Headley

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This thesis describes the development of a software tool that facilitates the creation of software environments that make a simulation tool execute k replications of an application program on several nodes of an M-node Beowulf cluster. It is assumed that each cluster-node consists of p processors. The p processors that are contained in the master cluster-node are termed master processors, and the p processors that are contained in a slave cluster-node are termed slave processors. The slave processors are used to execute the replications, while the master processors are dedicated to schedule the replications and process other housekeeping chores. For …

Generalization Issues In Pattern Classification Applied To Speaker Identification, Mame C. Sall

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This thesis is an extension of previous work on speaker identification, but with a primary focus on the generalization performance of patterns classifiers for speaker identification. The goal for all pattern classifiers is to generalize to new data, not just perform well on the training data set. The error on the training data is typically a biased estimate of the generalization error. The training set error tends to be smaller than the generalization error if the model is selected such that it minimizes the training error. Therefore, the training error alone should not be used as a good predictor of …

Bottleneck Analysis Of Cports, Sreekalyana Chakravarthy Kajuluri

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

CPortS is a transportation logistics simulation that models the flow of military cargo through a seaport and the interaction of the cargo with the port resources and infrastructure. It provides information about the seaport's capabilities, how the cargo has been handled, how many days the cargo took to clear a particular port area, and the overall throughput of the seaport. The model is highly data intensive since it models the huge traffic in a real seaport.

Bottlenecks reduce system performance. Systems that are traffic intensive or simulations of systems, which are data intensive, encounter bottlenecks, which reduce their performance. In …

An Algorithm For Locating Fundamental Frequency (F0) Markers In Speech, Princy Dikshit

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Speech has been the principal form of human communication since it began to evolve at least one hundred thousand years ago. Speech is produced by vibrations of the vocal cords. The rate of vibration of the cords is called fundamental frequency (F0) or pitch. The objective of this thesis is to locate pitch period cycles on a cycle-by-cycle basis. The complexity in identifying pitch cycles stems from the highly irregular nature of human speech. Dynamic programming is used to combine two sources of information for pitch period marking. One source of information is the "local" information corresponding to the location …

Huffman Approach To Opcode Compression, Jason B. Shreve

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Instructions are the building blocks of computer programs. They are composed of opcodes, which uniquely identify each instruction, and the operands or data. In most architectures, the instruction length is a set multiple of the word size. The size and number of operands vary by instruction. Due to programmer usage, program need, or compiler design, opcodes do not occur with a constant distribution. Likely, some opcodes occur very frequently, whereas others occur very infrequently or not at all. If the length of an opcode were representative of its frequency, compression in program size might be achieved.

This thesis is an …

Vector Operations In Superscalar Architectures, Nathan Daniel Flinn

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Vector calculations are very prevalent today. Though the vector-processing computer is quite an old concept, superscalar processors lack hardware support for vector operations. This thesis investigates whether an ordinary superscalar computer architecture can be designed to include hardware support for improved vector operations without drastically changing the existing superscalar design and behavior. A computer architecture design was created and implemented that included the vector multiply (dot product) operation. The design includes a Vector Operations Unit that captures incoming vector operations and generates the necessary set of machine instructions to complete the vector operation internally. It then delivers these instructions to …

Hierarchical Hybrid Multicast An End System Multicast Algorithm Approach, Guillermo Loaisiga

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Due to the rapid development in the computer and communication technologies, the Internet is experiencing an increasing demand of high-speed, real-time distributed applications, such as live streaming multimedia, videoconferencing, distributed simulations, and multiparty games. Multicast is an efficient transmission mechanism to support these applications. Historically, IP Multicast (IPM) has provided multicast support with well-known benefits, especially in bandwidth savings. However, it has experienced little deployment due to economic and architectural limitations.

Overlay multicast holds promise for the implementation of large scale Internet multicast services. An overlay network is a virtual topology constructed on top of the Internet infrastructure. This concept …

Interactive Land Use Vrml Application Using Servlet Assist, Suresh Chitithoti

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The integration of VRML and Servlet technologies has the potential to revolutionize web-based simulation visualization. The Interactive Land Use VRML Application (ILUVA) uses Java Servlets enabling one to perform urban planning by taking a virtual land area and add buildings, roadways, landscaping, and other features. The Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) is a web-based technology for specifying and delivering interactive three-dimensional visualizations over a browser. The Java Servlet technology offers several powerful capabilities such as user authentication, session management, database connectivity for maintaining several possibly simultaneous user sessions, and dynamically generated VRML. Save and restore capabilities for any applications are …

Generic Performance Evaluation Tool Implementation For An Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer, James M. Mengert

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Evaluation software for analyzing general analytical model applications utilizing MATLAB is presented in this thesis. The focus is to provide an interactive environment for the evaluation of model applications relating to an Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer. The Generic Performance Evaluation Tool (GPET) was developed by researchers at Old Dominion University and NASA-Langley Research Center and was a NASA-Langley Research Center sponsored project. GPET is capable of producing a multitude of object-oriented input data for any number of individual model applications. The tool is also capable of creating user-defined input interfaces for the purpose of viewing and/or editing input object data, …

Unidirectional Cordic For Efficient Computation Of Trigonometric And Hyperbolic Functions, Satish Ravichandran

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

CORDIC (Coordinate Rotation Digital Computer) is an iterative algorithm to compute values of trigonometric, logarithmic and transcendental functions by performing vector rotations, which can be implemented with only shift and add operations in a digital system. CORDIC algorithms are extensively used in the areas of digital signal processing, digital image processing and artificial neural networks. A new technique, named unidirectional CORDIC, for efficient computation of trigonometric and hyperbolic functions is presented in this thesis. In the conventional CORDIC algorithm, the vector rotations are performed in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions, but in the unidirectional CORDIC the vectors are rotated only …

Parallel Implementation Of A Face Recognition [Sic] System Based On Modular Pca Approach, Rajkiran Gottumukkal

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This thesis describes research in automated methods for the recognition of human faces. The research is driven by the need to design a method, which would ensure high accuracy under the conditions of facial expression, illumination and pose variations. The resulting method is able to cope with uncontrolled nature of facial expression, illumination and head rotations. The main novelty of this work is the idea that some of the local facial features do not vary even when the facial expression, illumination and pose vary. This idea is applied to the existing principle component analysis lPCA) method to arrive at a …

Creating Enterprise Simulations Using High Level Architecture, Anton R. Lidums

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Despite an established need, there are two remaining roadblocks to building distributed simulations and enterprise simulation systems. First, commercial simulation packages and engineering modeling tools are not readily distributable across multiple computers and have traditionally had very little impetus for utilizing a distributable format. Second, although HLA simulations have been built and there are tools to facilitate those efforts, very little has been done or written that specifically describes a "non-standard" integration implementation in sufficient detail to make the process reusable or repeatable. This thesis introduces a proof of concept prototype that was developed to integrate simulations. The paper presents …

Automatic Speaker Identification Using Reusable And Retrainable Binary-Pair Partitioned Neural Networks, Ashutosh Mishra

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This thesis presents an extension of the work previously done on speaker identification using Binary Pair Partitioned (BPP) neural networks. In the previous work, a separate network was used for each pair of speakers in the speaker population. Although the basic BPP approach did perform well and had a simple underlying algorithm, it had the obvious disadvantage of requiring an extremely large number of networks for speaker identification with large speaker populations. It also requires training of networks proportional to the square of the number of speakers under consideration, leading to a very large number of networks to be trained …

Output Analysis Of Configurable Port Simulation, Ravikiran Jogu

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The Configurable Port Simulation (CPortS) is a simulation of military cargo moving through a commercial seaport during a force deployment. CPortS simulates cargo at the individual entity level of detail. Simulation at the individual entity level generates huge amounts of output data making the output analysis difficult. To understand the reasons as to why bottlenecks occur in the process of cargo clearance, an analyst needs to be able to partition the data during analysis, not a priori. This makes the estimation of required graph generation impossible, which demands a very dynamic output analysis tool that can enable the analyst to …

A Pipelined Architecture For Real Time Correction Of Barrel Distortion In Wide-Angle Camera Images, Hau Trung Ngo

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Images captured by wide-angle cameras show barrel type spatial distortion due to wide-angle configuration of the camera lens where image regions farther from the center are compressed in a nonlinear fashion. The barrel distortion correction technique based on least squares estimation attempts to correct a distorted image by expanding it nonlinearly so that straight lines in the object space remain straight in the image space. The intensity value of a pixel in the expanded image is calculated by back mapping its position to the corresponding position in the distorted image and performing linear interpolation on the neighboring pixels. Distorted images …

Object-Oriented Architecture For Concurrent Processes In A Port Simulation, Reejo Mathew

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

An architectural model to represent the resources and infrastructure within a cargo terminal, as well as to support the concurrent but opposite flow of cargo within the terminal, is presented in this thesis. The model supports the configuration of an individual cargo terminal according to its characteristics, as well as the processing involved in the simultaneous flow of cargo in opposite directions through the terminal. This is useful in the analysis of the flow of military cargo and aids the decision-making process to increase the efficiency and throughput of any military operation. This model has been developed with the aim …

Recurrent Neural Networks And Algorithms For Reconstruction Of Images From Noisy And/Or Partial Data, Ming-Jung Seow

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In this thesis, modular architectures and neighborhood-distance based learning algorithms for fast and effective convergence with increased storage capacity of Hopfield neural networks are presented. The main objective of this research work is to better understand the function of recurrent neural networks and the influence of modularity within a network, and to design, implement, and test the performance of modular Hopfield neural networks for pattern association. Mathematical analysis and results are provided to show that the speed, storage capacity, and generalization capability of the recurrent networks are improved significantly by incorporating the modular architectures and learning algorithms. A new ratio …

Approaching High Fidelity Human Tracking And Representation In Interactive Virtual Environments, Taimur K. Khan

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This thesis revolves around an Office of Naval Research (ONR) grant known as Virtual Environments for Training (VET). The primary goal is to determine the effectiveness of an immersive environment for training; the secondary goal is to compare the results of this study to a similar study conducted in an environment that is less immersive.

Effectiveness will be determined by the performance of trainees manning a virtual military checkpoint. A four-wall immersive environment employing cave technology will be compared to a three dimensional desktop version of the scenarios employed in the more immersive environment. In order to make this comparison, …

A Multilevel Neural Network Architecture For Digital Implementation Of A Face Recognition System Based On Eigenface Approach, Linda Rajan

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The design and development of the digital implementation of a multilevel feed forward neural network architecture for face recognition based on statistical features representing Eigenfaces is presented in this thesis. The architecture is divided into three parts: feature extractor, classifier and identifier, The Eigenface extractor architecture is developed based on an efficient design strategy in which all the M weight values corresponding to the Eigenfaces are generated simultaneously from M images representing the Eigen vectors and the test input image. The multilayer neural network classifier is trained using error backpropagation algorithm. A novel multilevel digital architecture is developed for the …

Support For Statistical Analysis Of The Configurable Port Simulation (Cports), Saurav Mazumdar

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The primary objective of this thesis is to provide support for statistical analysis of CPortS: a transportation logistics simulation, which models the movement of military traffic through seaports and the interaction of the traffic with port infrastructure. By any standards, CPortS is a very large, data intensive simulation. It provides capabilities for analyzing many important issues such as port clearance and throughput. CPortS was classically run in single run mode. Only a single replication of the simulation was performed and conclusions were drawn from the results obtained. Users and analysts of CPortS performed multiple runs only to see the effect …

Analysis Of Error Recovery Effects On Digital Flight Control Systems, Arturo Tejada Ruiz

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Life-critical, real-time applications like flight-by-wire aircraft, rely on closed-loop digital control systems and fault-tolerant computer systems to reliably achieve the desired operation. The computer systems, however, may be affected by random hardware/software faults induced mainly by environmental conditions such as high intensity radiated fields (HIRF) and lightning. These harsh electromagnetic environments are known to induce common­ mode faults (CMF) in aircraft electronic systems, which disrupt fault-tolerant provisions and possibly affect the operation of the digital control system. Current flight-by-wire aircraft have computer systems that can neither detect CMF nor recover from them. New systems are under investigation that can recover …

Robust Face Representation And Recognition Under Low Resolution And Difficult Lighting Conditions, Mohammad Moinul Islam

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on different aspects of face image analysis for accurate face recognition under low resolution and poor lighting conditions. A novel resolution enhancement technique is proposed for enhancing a low resolution face image into a high resolution image for better visualization and improved feature extraction, especially in a video surveillance environment. This method performs kernel regression and component feature learning in local neighborhood of the face images. It uses directional Fourier phase feature component to adaptively lean the regression kernel based on local covariance to estimate the high resolution image. For each patch in the neighborhood, four directional …

Embedded Software Programming To Develop A Command Line User Interface For Monitoring And Debugging A Manually Driven Gas Regulator Control System, Syed N. Hyder

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This thesis presents a complete embedded programming model and software codes for a command-line user interface for CONCOA's gas regulator control system. Control Corporation of America (CONCOA) manufactures high-pressure gas regulators, which mechanically control the pressure at their outlets. Since the control system is based on mechanical regulators, adding or stopping gas flow from the system can cause manifold fluctuation that could further cause the pressure to rise or fall with time. The main motivation for developing a command line user interface is to provide a centralized computer control to monitor and debug the gas regulator control system electronically by …

Traffic Simulation Using Arena, Shanti Yelamanchi

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Many traffic simulation tools exist for developing traffic simulations; these tools can be divided broadly into two categories — macro simulation tools and micro simulation tools. These two categories of simulation tools are directed at modeling the extremes of traffic systems: very large systems and very small systems. There is a class of intermediate-sized transportation networks for which neither category of simulation tools might perform adequately. Additionally these specialized traffic simulation tools have a high learning curve. For developing medium sized traffic simulations in a short period of time, one might choose to use a familiar general-purpose discrete event simulation …