Computer Engineering Commons^™

A Multiagent Modeling And Investigation Of Smart Homes With Power Generation, Storage, And Trading Features, Salman Kahrobaee, Rasheed A. Rajabzadeh, Leen-Kiat Soh, Sohrab Asgarpoor

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Smart homes, as active participants in a smart grid, may no longer be modeled by passive load curves; because their interactive communication and bidirectional power flow within the smart grid affects demand, generation, and electricity rates. To consider such dynamic environmental properties, we use a multiagent-system-based approach in which individual homes are autonomous agents making rational decisions to buy, sell, or store electricity based on their present and expected future amount of load, generation, and storage, accounting for the benefits each decision can offer. In the proposed scheme, home agents prioritize their decisions based on the expected utilities they provide. …

Optimum Sizing Of Distributed Generation And Storage Capacity In Smart Households, Salman Kahrobaee, Sohrab Asgarpoor, Wei Qiao

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

In the near future, a smart grid will accommodate customers who are prepared to invest in generation-battery systems and employ energymanagement systems in order to cut down on their electricity bills. The main objective of this paper is to determine the optimum capacity of a customer’s distributed-generation system (such as a wind turbine) and battery within the framework of a smart grid. The proposed approach involves developing an electricity management system based on stochastic variables, such as wind speed, electricity rates, and load. Then, a hybrid stochastic method based on Monte Carlo simulation and particle swarm optimization is proposed to …

Real-Time Stereo Matching On Cuda Using An Iterative Refinement Method For Adaptive Support-Weight Correspondences, Jedrzej Kowalczuk, Eric T. Psota, Lance C. Pérez

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

High-quality real-time stereo matching has the potential to enable various computer vision applications including semi-automated robotic surgery, teleimmersion, and 3-D video surveillance. A novel real-time stereo matching method is presented that uses a two-pass approximation of adaptive supportweight aggregation, and a low-complexity iterative disparity refinement technique. Through an evaluation of computationally efficient approaches to adaptive support-weight cost aggregation, it is shown that the two-pass method produces an accurate approximation of the support weights while greatly reducing the complexity of aggregation. The refinement technique, constructed using a probabilistic framework, incorporates an additive term into matching cost minimization and facilitates iterative processing …

Adaptive Feature Extraction And Svm Classification For Real-Time Fault Diagnosis Of Drivetrain Gearboxes, Dingguo Lu, Wei Qiao

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Drivetrain gearboxes play an important role in many modern industrial applications. This paper presents a novel method consisting of adaptive feature extraction and support vector machine (SVM)-based classification for condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of drivetrain gearboxes operating in variable-speed conditions. An adaptive signal resampling algorithm, a frequency tracker, and a feature generation algorithm are integrated in the proposed method for effective extraction of the features of gearbox faults from the stator current signal of the AC electric machine connected to the gearbox. A radial basis function kernel-SVM classifier is designed to identify the fault in the gearbox according to …

Achievable Throughput Regions Of Fading Broadcast And Interference Channels Under Qos Constraints, Deli Qiao, Mustafa Cenk Gursoy, Senem Velipasalar

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Transmission over fading broadcast and interference channels in the presence of quality of service (QoS) constraints is studied. Effective capacity, which provides the maximum constant arrival rate that a given service process can support while satisfying statistical QoS constraints, is employed as the performance metric. In the broadcast scenario, the effective capacity region achieved with superposition coding and successive interference cancellation is identified and is shown to be convex. Subsequently, optimal power control policies that achieve the boundary points of the effective capacity region are investigated, and an algorithm for the numerical computation of the optimal power adaptation schemes for …

Adaptive Threshold Displacement Algorithm For Removing Hidden Information From Digital Images, Fahimeh Rezaei, Michael Hempel, Tao Ma, Pradhumna Lal Shrestha, Dongming Peng, Hamid Sharif

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

The growth of the Internet and online social media, especially in recent years, also gave rise to a proliferation of online multimedia content creation and distribution. The use of modern steganography methods – the art of hiding information within multimedia – presents an unprecedented opportunity for malicious uses of these materials. Therefore, developing an effective technique to avoid the distribution of secret data is a significant problem that is addressed in this paper for digital images. We introduce a novel algorithm to remove the steganography information embedded in an image without changing the quality of the image and with no …

Adaptive Channel Allocation And Routing In Cognitive Radio Networks, Zhihui Shu, Jiazhen Zhou, Yi Qian, Rose Qingyang Hu

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

One of the biggest challenges in multi-hop cognitive radio networking is the dynamic change of channel availability to secondary users which could cause the breaking of routes and thus communications. To address this challenge, we propose an adaptive channel allocation and routing scheme in this paper. Our scheme is flexible so that it can react to the dynamic change of channel availability, and it can maximize the throughput by exploiting network coding opportunities. First, we model the primary users’ activity, channel availability and the interference among the secondary users in a cognitive radio network environment, and show how to implement …

Social Pervasive Systems: The Integration Of Social Networks And Pervasive Systems, Soumaia Al Ayyat

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

Sensor technology embedded in smart mobile devices branded such devices as candidates for building innovative context-aware pervasive applications. On a parallel front, the notable evolution in the shape and form of social networking and their seamless accessibility from mobile devices founded a goldmine of contextual information. Utilizing an ecosystem that combines both mobile smart devices and a big data like environment in the form of social networks allows for the creation of an elitist set of services and applications that merge the two domains. In this paper, and following the footsteps of similar research efforts that attempted to combine both …

Online Learning In A Chemical Perceptron, Peter Banda, Christof Teuscher, Matthew R. Lakin

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Autonomous learning implemented purely by means of a synthetic chemical system has not been previously realized. Learning promotes reusability and minimizes the system design to simple input-output specification. In this article we introduce a chemical perceptron, the first full-featured implementation of a perceptron in an artificial (simulated) chemistry. A perceptron is the simplest system capable of learning, inspired by the functioning of a biological neuron. Our artificial chemistry is deterministic and discrete-time, and follows Michaelis-Menten kinetics. We present two models, the weight-loop perceptron and the weight-race perceptron, which represent two possible strategies for a chemical implementation of linear integration and …

An Evaluation Of De-Embedding Techniques For Tsvs, Nicholas Garrett Erickson

Masters Theses

"One of the most important aspects of modern electronic designs is device measurement and characterization. Without device measurement and characterization, the functionality of end designs cannot be guaranteed. At the silicon level (on-wafer), extracting the electrical performance of devices and structures has grown increasingly more complex with the continual shrink of feature sizes. Compared to the overall measurement setup (VNA, cables, probes, interposers, etc.), the ultra small size of on-wafer structures leads to their electrical performance being easily overshadowed by other, larger fixtures. Thus, many scientists and engineers have worked to devise ever more accurate calibration and de-embedding techniques for …

Research Project On Biometrics, Alia Hassan, Ingy Nazif

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

As technology evolves, and our personal details become more and more susceptible to hacking, one of the most important concerns we now have is being sure our phones, computers, networks are secure. We have begun to move on from simple password and motion patterns onto using facial recognition, and other forms of biometric recognition technology to protect our private information. The iPhone 5 for example, now presents features to identify uniquely the owner of the device, in the form of fingerprint detection. So we decided to focus on the topic biometrics for this research paper, which is basically how to …

Distributed Beamforming With Imperfect Phase Synchronization For Cognitive Radio Networks, Andrew Minturn, Deepraj Vernekar, Yaoqing Lamar Yang, Hamid Sharif

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

In this paper, we present the analysis and simulation evaluation of a cognitive radio network employing a distributed beamforming technique with imperfect phase synchronization in the presence of a primary receiver. Our system model consists of a group of cognitive transmitters, each with an ideal isotropic antenna and equal transmit power, communicating with a secondary receiver in the farfield. The objective of the network of cognitive transmitters is to optimize its beampattern in the direction of the secondary receiver while minimizing the beampattern in the direction of the primary receiver to a certain threshold. The phases of the transmitted signals …

Modeling Learner Mood In Realtime Through Biosensors For Intelligent Tutoring Improvements, Keith Brawner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Computer-based instructors, just like their human counterparts, should monitor the emotional and cognitive states of their students in order to adapt instructional technique. Doing so requires a model of student state to be available at run time, but this has historically been difficult. Because people are different, generalized models have not been able to be validated. As a person’s cognitive and affective state vary over time of day and seasonally, individualized models have had differing difficulties. The simultaneous creation and execution of an individualized model, in real time, represents the last option for modeling such cognitive and affective states. This …

Life Long Learning In Sparse Learning Environments, John Reeder

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Life long learning is a machine learning technique that deals with learning sequential tasks over time. It seeks to transfer knowledge from previous learning tasks to new learning tasks in order to increase generalization performance and learning speed. Real-time learning environments in which many agents are participating may provide learning opportunities but they are spread out in time and space outside of the geographical scope of a single learning agent. This research seeks to provide an algorithm and framework for life long learning among a network of agents in a sparse real-time learning environment. This work will utilize the robust …

Mission Aware Energy Saving Strategies For Army Ground Vehicles, Macam Dattathreya

Wayne State University Dissertations

Fuel energy is a basic necessity for this planet and the modern technology to perform many activities on earth. On the other hand, quadrupled automotive vehicle usage by the commercial industry and military has increased fuel consumption. Military readiness of Army ground vehicles is very important for a country to protect its people and resources. Fuel energy is a major requirement for Army ground vehicles. According to a report, a department of defense has spent nearly $13.6 billion on fuel and electricity to conduct ground missions. On the contrary, energy availability on this plant is slowly decreasing. Therefore, saving energy …

Phylogeny And Ancestral Genome Reconstruction From Gene Order Using Maximum Likelihood And Binary Encoding, Fei Hu

Theses and Dissertations

Over the long history of genome evolution, genes get rearranged under events such as rearrangements, losses, insertions and duplications, which in all change the ordering and content along the genome. Recent progress in genome-scale sequencing renews the challenges in the reconstructions of phylogeny and ancestral genomes with gene-order data. Such problems have been proved so interesting that a large number of algorithms have been developed rigorously over the past few years in attempts to tackle these problems following various principles. However, difficulties and limitations in performance and scalability largely prevent us from analyzing emerging modern whole-genome data, our study presented …

Table Of Contents

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

A Simple Experiment With Microsoft Office 2010 And Windows 7 Utilizing Digital Forensic Methodology, Gregory H. Carlton

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Digital forensic examiners are tasked with retrieving data from digital storage devices, and frequently these examiners are expected to explain the circumstances that led to the data being in its current state. Through written reports or verbal, expert testimony delivered in court, digital forensic examiners are expected to describe whether data have been altered, and if so, then to what extent have data been altered. Addressing these expectations results from opinions digital forensic examiners reach concerning their understanding of electronic storage and retrieval methods. The credibility of these opinions evolves from the scientific basis from which they are drawn using …

The Advanced Data Acquisition Model (Adam): A Process Model For Digital Forensic Practice, Richard Adams, Val Hobbs, Graham Mann

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

As with other types of evidence, the courts make no presumption that digital evidence is reliable without some evidence of empirical testing in relation to the theories and techniques associated with its production. The issue of reliability means that courts pay close attention to the manner in which electronic evidence has been obtained and in particular the process in which the data is captured and stored. Previous process models have tended to focus on one particular area of digital forensic practice, such as law enforcement, and have not incorporated a formal description. We contend that this approach has prevented the …

Geospatial Virtual Heritage: A Gesture-Based 3d Gis To Engage The Public With Ancient Maya Archaeology, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Jim Robertsson, Jennifer Von Schwerin, Giorgio Agugario, Fabio Remondino, Gabrio Girardi

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This paper presents our research to develop a gesture-based 3D GIS system to engage the public in cultural heritage. It compares two types of interaction—device-based vs. natural interaction— and summarizes the beta-testing results of a 3D GIS tool for archaeology, called QueryArch3D, in which participants used device-based interaction (i.e. mouse and keyboard). It follows with a description of the gesture-based system—that we developed in response to these beta-tests. The system uses QueryArch3D and Microsoft’s Kinect to enable people use body movements (in lieu of keyboard or mouse) to navigate a virtual reality landscape, query 3D objects, and call up photos, …

Substantive Collaboration: Are We Ready To Lead?, Mark Askren

Information Technology Services: Publications

Although MOOCs have received the most attention in higher education this year, another issue is affecting colleges and universities and the IT community on a much broader scale: the perception that the higher education business model is “broken.” This isn’t an IT problem by definition, but IT leaders have not contributed effectively to a solution. At least not yet. So what can we, as IT leaders, do individually and collectively to change the outcome? The answer is clear. We have to collaborate. Substantially. And in ways that are far-reaching and very challenging. We have to change our core processes and …

Using Power-Law Properties Of Social Groups For Cloud Defense And Community Detection, Justin L. Rice

Doctoral Dissertations

The power-law distribution can be used to describe various aspects of social group behavior. For mussels, sociobiological research has shown that the Lévy walk best describes their self-organizing movement strategy. A mussel's step length is drawn from a power-law distribution, and its direction is drawn from a uniform distribution. In the area of social networks, theories such as preferential attachment seek to explain why the degree distribution tends to be scale-free. The aim of this dissertation is to glean insight from these works to help solve problems in two domains: cloud computing systems and community detection.

Privacy and security are …

Accelerated Data Delivery Architecture, Michael L. Grecol

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This paper introduces the Accelerated Data Delivery Architecture (ADDA). ADDA establishes a framework to distribute transactional data and control consistency to achieve fast access to data, distributed scalability and non-blocking concurrency control by using a clean declarative interface. It is designed to be used with web-based business applications. This framework uses a combination of traditional Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) combined with a distributed Not Only SQL (NoSQL) database and a browser-based database. It uses a single physical and conceptual database schema designed for a standard RDBMS driven application. The design allows the architect to assign consistency levels to entities …

Investigation On The Mobile Robot Navigation In An Unknown Environment, Ahmed S. Khusheef

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Mobile robots could be used to search, find, and relocate objects in many types of manufacturing operations and environments. In this scenario, the target objects might reside with equal probability at any location in the environment and, therefore, the robot must navigate and search the whole area autonomously, and be equipped with specific sensors to detect objects. Novel challenges exist in developing a control system, which helps a mobile robot achieve such tasks, including constructing enhanced systems for navigation, and vision-based object recognition. The latter is important for undertaking the exploration task that requires an optimal object recognition technique.

In …

A Model For Systematically Investigating Relationships Between Variables That Affect The Performance Of Novice Programmers, Vivian Campbell

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This research was motivated by an interest in novices learning to program

and a desire to understand the factors that affect their learning. The

traditional approach to performing such an investigation has been to select

factors which may be important and then perform statistical tests on a few

potential relationships. A new research model is proposed and tested to

ensure that a thorough and systematic investigation of the data is performed.

This thesis describes the data, defines the model and explains the

application and validation of the model.

The research process is managed by a control algorithm that is the …

A Method For Ontology-Based Semantic Relatedness Measurement, Görkem Gi̇ray, Murat Osman Ünalir

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

There are many methods having different approaches for assessing similarity and relatedness and they are used in many application areas, including web service discovery, invocation and composition, word sense disambiguation, information retrieval, ontology alignment and merging, document clustering, and short answer grading. These methods can be categorized as path-based, information content-based, feature-based, geometric model-based, and hybrid approaches. These approaches use resources such as concept hierarchy, conceptual graph, and corpus for computing similarity and relatedness. With the rise of the semantic web, ontologies have attracted the attention of several researchers. Ontologies represented in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) are also valuable …

A Combined Protective Scheme For Fault Classification And Identification Of Faulty Section In Series Compensated Transmission Lines, Resul Çöteli̇

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The fault detection process is very difficult in transmission lines with a fixed series capacitor because of the nonlinear behavior of protection device and series-parallel resonance. This paper proposes a new method based on S-transform (ST) and support vector machines (SVMs) for fault classification and identification of a faulty section in a transmission line with a fixed series capacitor placed at the middle of the line. In the proposed method, the fault detection process is carried out by using distinctive features of 3-line signals (line voltages and currents) and zero sequence current. The relevant features of these signals are obtained …

Approximate Sub-Graph Isomorphism For Watermarking Finite State Machine Hardware, Richard William Piper Meana

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We present a method of mitigating theft of sequential circuit Intellectual Property hardware designs through means of watermarking. Hardware watermarking can be performed by selectively embedding a watermark in the state encoding of the Finite State Machine. This form of watermarking can be achieved by matching a directed graph representation of the watermark with a sub-graph in state transition graph representation of the FSM. We experiment with three approaches: a brute force method that provides a proof of concept, a greedy algorithm that provides excellent runtime with a drawback of sub-optimal results, and finally a simulated annealing method that provides …

A Distributed Local-Leg Feedback Algorithm For Robust Walking On Uneven Terrain, Mayur Ramakant Palankar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Legged animals can traverse significantly more of the Earth's land mass than man-made wheeled and tracked vehicles~\cite{Anonymous67}. Their impressive mobility is largely due to multiple dexterous legs and the robust algorithms that coordinate and control them. A legged animal such as a squirrel can exhibit multiple locomotion modes such as walking, running and jumping and also multiple gaits or leg phase timings within each mode. A robot that could mimic this level of robust locomotion would be highly useful for planetary exploration, military reconnaissance, and time-critical search and rescue in cluttered or collapsed buildings.

A number of biological studies on …

A Novel Method For Watermarking Sequential Circuits, Matthew Lewandowski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We present an Intellectual Property (IP) protection technique for sequential circuits driven by embedding a decomposed signature into a Finite State Machine (FSM) through the manipulation of the arbitrary state encoding of the unprotected FSM. This technique is composed of three steps: (a) transforming the signature into a watermark graph, (b) embedding watermark graphs into the original FSM's State Transition Graph (STG) and (c) generating models for verification and extraction. In the watermark construction process watermark graphs are generated from signatures. The proposed methods for watermark construction are: (1) BSD, (2) FSD, and (3) HSD. The HSD method is shown …