Computer Engineering Commons^™

E-Learning And Knowledge Management: The Development Of An E-Learning System For Organisational Training, Alan Muhire

Dissertations

Information technology has major role in most successful companies and organisations around the world, most companies are using IT to reduce operation cost, while improving customer service by providing service twenty four hours, seven days a week and improving communication that helps keep pace with competitors. In most companies and organisation training is a process carried out on a regular basis; the quality of training offered to employee will be reflected on how knowledgeable the staff will become resulting in the organisation becoming more successful. As organisations and companies are currently interested in improving knowledge management, employees are equally working …

Biometric Alternatives To Captcha: Exploring Accessible Interface Options, Anita Foley

Dissertations

In the computing domain the relationship between accessibility and security is a complex and evolving one; accessibility attempts to ensure that as wide a range of individuals as possible are granted access to systems, whereas security attempts to restrict access only to individuals who are entitled to access those systems. A key security concern is to determine whether or not the system is being accessed by a software agent or a real human being, and a number of approaches have been developed to determine the answer to this question. This issue has been discussed throughout the history of computer science …

Investigation And Analysis Of Open Government Data In Ireland, And The Creation Of A Set Of Quality Guidelines To Aid Its Utility Within Mobile Application Development, Peadar Fitzpatrick

Dissertations

Governments are the custodians of vast amount of data. While some of this data may be sensitive in nature, in that it contains personal or confidential information, much of it is in the public interest. Recent years has seen the emergence of Open Government Data (OGD) where governments are now actively making their data available in open and electronically accessible formats. The motivation for the production of such data includes a desire to increase transparency but also a desire to realise the economic potential associated with re-use of this data. A key usage area for this data to date has …

An Investigation Into Obstacles Effecting The Use Of Support Technology For Accommodation Facilitation In Third Level Education, Conor Brennan

Dissertations

The profile of students attending third level education in Ireland has changed over the past number of years. More non-traditional students have entered mainstream education. These non-traditional students may be mature students, students whose first language is not English and students with disabilities. In the 2010-2011 academic session 6,932 students with disabilities were enrolled in third level education. This represent 3.9%(AHEAD 2011) of all students enrolled in third level education, which constitutes a 10% increase on 2009-2010. This increase is putting pressure on an already strained system. Efforts have been made to educate and inform lecturers and teaching staff on …

Cloud Computing Adoption For Smes: Challenges, Barriers And Outcomes, Mojtaba Akbari

Dissertations

In spite of all the excitement and fuss around cloud computing technologies in recent years, it is believed that the industry has been to some extent lagging behind when it comes to the deployment of cloud technologies and migration from legacy Information Technology (IT) infrastructure. This research aims to investigate the influential factors that impact adoption of cloud-based technologies by various organizations. More specifically, this research focuses on the behaviour of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) rather than larger organizations. Such classification is crucial since the constraints applicable to SMEs are different to their larger counterparts and subsequently the decision …

The Effect Of Learning Styles And E-Learning Tools On The Training Of Ict To Digital Immigrants In Life Long Learning, Stephen Horan

Dissertations

The diversity of learners in the classroom has expanded significantly in the past twenty years, in a modern classroom it is unsurprising to see learners for whom English is not their first language, learners with specific learning difficulties, mature learners, learners attempting to return to work, etc., so much so that the 'typical' learner has become extinct. This research will look at the use of Information Communication Technology in Education by undertaking an investigation of how the use of ICT can aid learners, both digital natives and digital immigrants. The project will use learning styles at the core of an …

Towards Universally Designed Assistive Technology E-Learning, Karl O'Keeffe

Dissertations

The aim of this dissertation is to provide Assistive Technology (AT) professionals involved in the area of education and training with a set of reusable technological tools and techniques that will enable them to increase the reach, efficiency, effectiveness and accessibility of their training through online delivery. There are a number of broadly accepted reasons why an organisation in any field might choose to make training available online or partially online (blended) rather than relying on traditional face to face methods. Of the four considered here and mentioned above, accessibility is the biggest concern in the context of AT. It …

Digital Evidence Education In Schools Of Law, Aaron Alva, Barbara Endicott-Popovsky

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

An examination of State of Connecticut v. Julie Amero provides insight into how a general lack of understanding of digital evidence can cause an innocent defendant to be wrongfully convicted. By contrast, the 101-page opinion in Lorraine v. Markel American Insurance Co. provides legal precedence and a detailed consideration for the admission of digital evidence. An analysis of both cases leads the authors to recommend additions to Law School curricula designed to raise the awareness of the legal community to ensure such travesties of justice, as in the Amero case, don’t occur in the future. Work underway at the University …

On The Design Partitioning Of 3d Monolithic Circuits, Luke Maresca

Masters Theses

"Conventional three-dimensional integrated circuits (3D ICs) stack multiple dies vertically for higher integration density, shorter wirelength, smaller footprint, faster speed and lower power consumption. Due to the large through-silicon-via (TSV) sizes, 3D design partitioning is typically done at the architecture-level With the emerging monolithic 3D technology, TSVs can be made much smaller, which enables potential block-level partitioning. However, it is still unclear how much benefit can be obtained by block-level partitioning, which is affected by the number of tiers and the sizes of TSVs. In this thesis, an 8-bit ripple carry adder was used as an example to explore the …

A Comparison Of Near-Infrared And Visible Imaging For Surveillance Applications, Kathryn Nicole Rodhouse

Masters Theses

"A computer vision approach is investigated which has low computational complexity and which compares near-infrared and visible image systems. The target application is a surveillance system for pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Near-infrared light has potential benefits including non-visible illumination requirements. Image-processing and intelligent classification algorithms for monitoring pedestrians are implemented in outdoor and indoor environments with frequent traffic. The image set collected consists of persons walking in the presence of foreground as well as background objects at different times during the day. Image sets with nonperson objects, e.g. bicycles and vehicles, are also considered. The complex, cluttered environments are highly …

Design And Verification Of Clockless Advanced Encryption Standard (Aes) Crypto-Hardware For Improved Side-Channel Attack Resistance, Siva Pavan Kumar Kotipalli

Masters Theses

"The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is the most widely used symmetric key algorithm standard in different security protocols. The AES was very reliable in providing security for data until a few years ago, when researchers proved the Side Channel Attacks (SCA) like power analysis were successful in compromising this security.

This thesis focuses on designing effective countermeasures against the SCA's, by exploring the usage of an Asynchronous logic based design approach, called Null Convention Logic (NCL). This work discusses the design of NCL based subset of AES cryptosystem. The performance benefits of this novel cryptosystem are presented by making qualitative …

Ipad2 Logical Acquisition: Automated Or Manual Examination?, Somaya Ali, Sumaya Alhosani, Farah Alzarooni, Ibrahim Baggili

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Due to their usage increase worldwide, iPads are on the path of becoming key sources of digital evidence in criminal investigations. This research investigated the logical backup acquisition and examination of the iPad2 device using the Apple iTunes backup utility while manually examining the backup data (manual examination) and automatically parsing the backup data (Lantern software-automated examination).The results indicate that a manual examination of the logical backup structure from iTunes reveals more digital evidence, especially if installed application data is required for an investigation. However, the researchers note that if a quick triage is needed of an iOS device, then …

Speech Intelligibility Prediction Using A Neurogram Similarity Index Measure, Andrew Hines, Naomi Harte

Articles

Performance Intensity functions can be used to provide additional information over measurement of speech reception threshold and maximum phoneme recognition by plotting a test subject's recognition probability over a range of sound intensities. A computational model of the auditory periphery was used to replace the human subject and develop a methodology that simulates a real listener test. The newly developed NSIM is used to evaluate the model outputs in response to Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) word lists and produce phoneme discrimination scores.

An Improved Medium Access Control Protocol For Real-Time Applications In Wlans And Its Firmware Development, Sushil Dutt

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), commonly known as Wi-Fi, has emerged as a popular internet access technology and researchers are continuously working on improvement of the quality of service (QoS) in WLAN by proposing new and efficient schemes. Voice and video over Internet Protocol (VVoIP) applications are becoming very popular in Wi-Fi enabled portable/handheld devices because of recent technological advancements and lower service costs. Different from normal voice and video streaming, these applications demand symmetric throughput for the upstream and downstream. Existing Wi-Fi standards are optimised for generic internet applications and fail to provide symmetric throughput due …

Improved Speech Intelligibility With A Chimaera Hearing Aid Algorithm, Andrew Hines, Naomi Harte

Conference papers

It is recognised that current hearing aid fitting algorithms can corrupt fine timing cues in speech. This paper presents a fitting algorithm that aims to improve speech intelligibility, while preserving the temporal fine structure. The algorithm combines the signal envelope amplification from a standard hearing aid fitting algorithm with the fine timing information available to unaided listeners. The proposed “chimaera aid” is evaluated with computer simulated listener tests to measure its speech intelligibility for 3 sample hearing losses. In addition, the experiment demonstrates the potential application of auditory nerve models in the development of new hearing aid algorithm designs using …

Stereoscopic Avatar Interfaces : A Study To Determine What Effect, If Any, 3d Technology Has At Increasing The Interpretability Of An Avatar's Gaze Into The Real-World, Mark Dunne, Brian Mac Namee, John D. Kelleher

Conference papers

An approach to displaying avatar interfaces monoscopically such as the Turning, Stretching and Boxing (TSB) technique (a combination of three graphical processes) has been shown to improve the communication efficiency of avatars by increasing a user's ability to interpret an avatar's gaze direction through the delivery of a sustained 3D illusion of the avatar on a standard 2D display. A reasonable question to ask about this approach is whether or not the improvement in interpretability can be matched or surpassed by using a standard 3D display technology (stereoscopic) with or without the fore-mentioned approach? This paper presents an experiment that …

A Design Tool For Wsn Design In Buildings, Antony Guinard

Theses

The combination of sensing, processing, communication and actuation has made the monitoring and operation of buildings a significant emerging application area for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). The design, implementation and management of WSN is a complex task requiring a broad spectrum of disciplines such as networking and protocols, information management and embedding engineering to be successful. Indoor environments in particular pose a number of challenges that make the design of wireless networks a difficult task. These include the influence of obstacles and people on radio propagation, ever evolving building layout and interference from other wireless networks. The large-scale adoption of …

The Value Of Modeling And Simulation Standards, Andrew J. Collins, David Meyr, Solomon Sherfey, Andreas Tolk, Mikel Petty

VMASC Publications

In the current economic climate, there is a requirement to justify all government spending by demonstrating the added-value that the expenditure gives. Modeling and Simulation (M&S) community is not exempted from this rule. This paper focuses on attempts to value standards and demonstrates that even though a myriad of different standards exist in the United States today, no one has "cracked the nut" on determining their value. This does not mean that standards are without value. The paper highlights their importance to our society and human development as a whole. Thus if we cannot give a value to M&S standards, …

Colonel Blotto Games And Lancaster's Equations: A Novel Military Modeling Combination, Andrew Collins, Patrick T. Hester

VMASC Publications

Military strategists face a difficult task when engaged in a battle against an adversarial force. They have to predict both what tactics their opponent will employ and the outcomes of any resultant conflicts in order to make the best decision about their actions. Game theory has been the dominant technique used by analysts to investigate the possible actions that an enemy will employ. Traditional game theory can be augmented by use of Lanchester equations, a set of differential equations used to determine the outcome of a conflict. This paper demonstrates a novel combination of game theory and Lanchester equations using …

Erasure Techniques In Mrd Codes, Florentin Smarandache, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, R. Sujatha, R.S. Raja Durai

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

In this book the authors study the erasure techniques in concatenated Maximum Rank Distance (MRD) codes. The authors for the first time in this book introduce the new notion of concatenation of MRD codes with binary codes, where we take the outer code as the RD code and the binary code as the inner code. The concatenated code consists of the codewords of the outer code expressed in terms of the alphabets of the inner code. These new class of codes are defined as CRM codes. This concatenation techniques helps one to construct any CRM code of desired minimum distance …

Neutrosophic Masses & Indeterminate Models Applications To Information Fusion, Florentin Smarandache

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

In this paper we introduce the indeterminate models in information fusion, which are due either to the existence of some indeterminate elements in the fusion space or to some indeterminate masses. The best approach for dealing with such models is the neutrosophic logic.

Investigation Of The Divcon Neuron To Increase The Performance Of A Traditional Feed Forward Multi-Layer Perceptron And Its Hardware Implementation, Jovan Saenz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have been developed in an attempt to emulate the information processing capabilities of the biological brain. They offer an alternate computing approach to problems in which mathematical modeling is complicated, such as pattern recognition and pattern classification.

Since ANNs were proposed in the early 1940s, there has been a great amount of research effort dedicated to the development of new models that improve performance. Consequently, different architectures, a variety of activation functions, and distinct learning algorithms have been developed and implemented in different disciplines such as medicine, engineering, and science. In addition, ANNs have been …

Multi-Physics Modeling Of Induction-Based Additive Manufacturing Of Metals, Danny W. Muse

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The shift towards 3D printing of functional products has provided a glimpse of the future in terms of manufacturing technologies and the creation of volumetrically complex structures made possible only through these technologies. 3D printing has emerged from the culmination of several technologies covering multiple industries and a myriad of materials. Unlike subtractive technologies such as mills, lathes and CNC machines, where material is removed from a bulk slab or billet to produce a desired part, 3D printing uses an additive layered approach to deposit material based on cross sections of the desired part. Both approaches produce parts based on …

Sensor-Based Robotic Learning System For The Rehabilitation Of Arm, Chethan Ramachandra Keladi

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In recent studies, the neurological studies has shown that the neurological disorders like Stroke, Parkinson's disease, Dystonia, Spinal Cord Injury (SCI), Cerebral Palsy (CP), etc., cause the disability of upper limb and one of the major issues with the neurological injuries is motor impairment. This issue is caused by the lack of interaction between the central nervous system (CNS) and muscles [1] and can be cured by the intensive training which includes repetitive and reaching tasks. The intensive training can be performed using conventional therapy and robot-assisted therapy, but the research has shown additional effects on motor recovery and functional …

Video Mosaicing Using Inertial Sensors, Arturo Maya Pereyra

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A method to reduce the process complexity of Video Mosaicing could rely on information concerning the orientation of the camera instead of image feature tracking. Inertial sensors (e.g. accelerometers and gyros) could form part of a low cost motion based technology which can be used in this case and this thesis details an approach for Video Mosaicing based on such technology that requires non-computationally intensive algorithms.

Implement Smart Sensors With Wireless Communication Protocols With Embedded Microcontrollers In A Capstone Project Design, Steve C. Hsiung, Cory T. Gleason, Lacides A. Osorio, Charles H. Mcginn

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Wireless communication has become popular and widely used in our daily lives. Their applications are: Cellular Wireless for telephone systems, data collection, voice communication, and other mobile or extremely remote devices, Bluetooth for low-power applications in short range and moderate date bandwidth, Proprietary ISM (industrial, scientific, medical) protocols used in open frequency bands from 260 to 470 MHz, 902 to 928 MHz, and 2.4GHz, 802.11/WiFi in wireless data communications, 802.15/ZigBee for mesh networks of sensors and controllers, and Z-Wave for low speed wireless protocol of home electronics devices to intercommunicate using reliable protocol that easily travels through walls, floors, and …

Human Action Recognition By Principal Component Analysis Of Motion Curves, Daniel Stephen Chivers

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Human action recognition is used to automatically detect and recognize actions per- formed by humans in a video. Applications include visual surveillance, human-computer interaction, and robot intelligence, to name a few. An example of a surveillance application is a system that monitors a large public area, such as an airport, for suspicious activity. In human-machine interaction, computers may be controlled by simple human actions. For example, the motion of an arm may instruct the computer to rotate a 3-D model that is being displayed. Human action recognition is also an important capability of intelligent robots that interact with humans.

General …

An Analysis Of Step, Jt, And Pdf Format Translation Between Constraint-Based Cad Systems With A Benchmark Model, Dillon Mckenzie-Veal

Department of Computer Graphics Technology Degree Theses

This research was conducted to provide greater depth into the ability of STEP AP 203 Edition 2, JT, and 3D PDF to translate and preserve information while using a benchmark model. The benchmark model was designed based on four industry models and created natively in the five industry leading 3D CAD programs. The native CAD program models were translated using STEP, JT, and 3D PDF. Several criteria were analyzed along the paths of translation from one disparate CAD program to another. Along with the analysis of the three interoperable file formats a survey was conducted to determine how well the …

Querying And Managing Opm-Compliant Scientific Workflow Provenance, Chunhyeok Lim

Wayne State University Dissertations

Provenance, the metadata that records the derivation history of scientific results, is important in scientific workflows to interpret, validate, and analyze the result of scientific computing. Recently,

to promote and facilitate interoperability among heterogeneous provenance systems, the Open Provenance Model (OPM) has been proposed and has played an important role in the community.

In this dissertation, to efficiently query and manage OPM-compliant provenance, we first propose a provenance collection framework that collects both prospective provenance, which captures

an abstract workflow specification as a recipe for future data derivation and retrospective provenance, which captures past workflow execution and data derivation information. …

Remote Software Upload Techniques In Future Vehicles And Their Performance Analysis, Irina Hossain

Wayne State University Dissertations

Updating software in vehicle Electronic Control Units (ECUs) will become a mandatory requirement for a variety of reasons, for examples, to update/fix functionality of an existing system, add new functionality, remove software bugs and to cope up with ITS infrastructure. Software modules of advanced vehicles can be updated using Remote Software Upload (RSU) technique. The RSU employs infrastructure-based wireless communication technique where the software supplier sends the software to the targeted vehicle via a roadside Base Station (BS). However, security is critically important in RSU to avoid any disasters due to malfunctions of the vehicle or to protect the proprietary …