Computer Engineering Commons^™

Physical Layer Detection Of Hardware Keyloggers, Saptarshi Mallick

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This work addresses the problem of detecting devices which are stealthily attached to the computer for logging keystrokes from keyboards. These devices are known as hardware keyloggers (HKL). When an HKL is attached to the keyboard, certain electrical characteristics of the keyboard signal are altered. Based on these characteristics (features), differences have been identified in an accurate assertion was made about the presence of HKL.

The characteristics from which the differences were obtained were used to make distributions and compared with distance-measuring methods. An experiment was done to collect data from a number of keyboards and form two distributions (training …

Humanity Hyper-Externalized, Josh Gloe

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Polarization-Coupled Ferroelectric Unpolarunction Memory And Energy Storage Device, Mathias M. Schubert, Tino Hofmann, Venkata Rao Voora

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

A memory device is provided. The memory device includes a plurality of memory cells and a controller to write data to and read data from the memory cells. Each memory cell includes a first semiconductor material having a spontaneous polarization, a resistive ferroelectric material having a switchable spontaneous polarization, and a second semiconductor material having a spontaneous polarization, the resistive ferroelectric material being positioned between and in contact with the first and second semiconductor materials. The memory device can be configured to store energy that can be released by applying a voltage pulse to the memory device.

A New Spatio-Temporal Data Mining Method And Its Application To Reservoir System Operation, Abhinaya Mohan

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis develops a spatio-temporal data mining method for uncertain water reservoir data. The goal of the data mining method is to learn from a history human reservoir operations in order to derive an automated controller for a reservoir system. Spatio-temporal data mining is a challenging task due to the reasons: (1) spatio-temporal datasets are usually much larger than spatial data sets, (2) many common spatial techniques are unable to deal with objects that change location, size or shape, and (3) complex and often non-linear spatio-temporal relationships cannot be separated into pure spatial and pure temporal relationships.

Support Vector Machines …

Identification Of Curriculum Content For A Renewable Energy Graduate Degree Program, John R. Haugherty

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the College of Science and Technology Morehead State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science by John R. Haughery on April 24, 2014.

Autonomous Aerial Water Sampling, John-Paul W. Ore

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Obtaining spatially separated, high frequency water samples from rivers and lakes is critical to enhance our understanding and effective management of fresh water resources. In this thesis we present an aerial water sampler and verify the system in field experiments. The aerial water sampler has the potential to vastly increase the speed and range at which scientists obtain water samples while reducing cost and effort. The water sampling system includes: 1) a mechanism to capture three 20 ml samples per mission; 2) sensors and algorithms for safe navigation and altitude approximation over water; and 3) software components that integrate and …

First Step Mental Health App, Joshua Martin, James Faraday, Mackenzie Lopez

Undergraduate Research Symposium

The goal of this project is to create a tool that provides students at Minnesota State University, Mankato with mental health information through a freely available smartphone application (App). Our approach uses a software engineering design process that focuses on who our customers are, what resources are available, and how we can best connect the two to improve student lives. We identified the stakeholders involved and worked with campus mental health professionals to help shape our App. While there is a broad range of mental health topics, we have focused on materials related to depression. The first process gives the …

Position Tracking Using Wifi, Tyler Bayne

Honors Theses

Position tracking using WiFi is needed as a more accurate method of intra-building tracking due to Global Positioning System's (GPS) lack of accuracy in buildings. The main application of this project is to provide a safety system, which may be either tracking employees within a building and allowing them to send an emergency message through a device, or to track objects throughout a building. The devices can send simple messages to a central location. These messages will include position information and which emergency has been selected. The devices consist of two buttons and two LEDs, and with a button press, …

Position Tracking Using Wifi, Nathan Conrad

Honors Theses

Position tracking using WiFi is needed as a more accurate method of intra-building tracking due to Global Positioning System’s (GPS) lack of accuracy in buildings. The main application of this project is to provide a safety system, which may be either tracking employees within a building and allowing them to send an emergency message through a device, or to track objects throughout a building. The devices can send simple messages to a central location. These messages will include position information and which emergency has been selected. The devices consist of two buttons and two LEDs, and with a button press, …

Major Advancements In Personal Computing, Brandon Brooks

Senior Seminars

This research essay expounds on the history and the journey of the Personal Computer. You will read about some of the most important items that the author felt contributed to the advancement of the PC over the years. The dates of the information ranges from the late 1960s up until the last year or so. The author talks about hardware components and software components, but the bulk of the material in this paper explains the history of each major milestone and what contributed to making it better, or more useful than the last. Each sub-topic will bring us closer to …

The Design Of A Mobile, Animatronic Bald Eagle, Eric Burns

Phi Kappa Phi Research Symposium (Archived)

Modern animatronics are used as a tool to help engage audiences in realistic and entertaining experiences. Many animatronic figures are dynamic in movement, but static in mobility. The research presented covers the beginnings of mobile animatronic research. An animatronic bald eagle, Opportunity, was designed for that purpose. Animations for Opportunity are generated by integration of Arduino, Pololu Mini Maestro, and Hitec Servo Motors. Arduino receives signals from flex sensors which cause voltage variations when “flexed”. The 1:1 scale, animatronic eagle can be perched on the arm of an “actor” who simulates an eagle’s caretaker. The flex sensors are located within …

Flame-Enhanced Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy, L. Liu, S. Li, X. N. He, X. Huang, C. F. Zhang, L. S. Fan, M. X. Wang, Y. S. Zhou, K. Chen, L. Jiang, J. F. Silvain, Yongfeng Lu

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Flame-enhanced laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) was investigated to improve the sensitivity of LIBS. It was realized by generating laser-induced plasmas in the blue outer envelope of a neutral oxy-acetylene flame. Fast imaging and temporally resolved spectroscopy of the plasmas were carried out. Enhanced intensity of up to 4 times and narrowed full width at half maximum (FWHM) down to 60% for emission lines were observed. Electron temperatures and densities were calculated to investigate the flame effects on plasma evolution. These calculated electron temperatures and densities showed that high-temperature and low-density plasmas were achieved before 4 μs in the flame environment, …

A Multi-Case Study Of Student Interactions With Educational Robots And Impact On Science, Technology, Engineering, And Math (Stem) Learning And Attitudes, Stephanie Holmquist

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The demand for STEM trained workers continues to increase not only in the United States, but globally. Reports have indicated that the United States is not doing a good job encouraging students to pursue STEM oriented degrees. In particular, it has become increasingly important to emphasize STEM connections at an early level in order to encourage student career exploration as they continue their education. Educational robots represent a unique alternative to traditional methods, especially at the elementary level. Considering the use of educational robots have largely been ignored at this level, the purpose of this study was to describe the …

Eliminating Mutual Views In Fusion Of Ranging And Rgb-D Data From Robot Teams Operating In Confined Areas, Damian M. Lyons, Karma Shrestha

Faculty Publications

We address the problem of fusing laser and RGB-Data from multiple robots operating in close proximity to one another. By having a team of robots working together, a large area can be scanned quickly, or a smaller area scanned in greater detail. However, a key aspect of this problem is the elimination of the spurious readings due to the robots operating in close proximity. While there is an extensive literature on the mapping and localization aspect of this problem, our problem differs from the dynamic map problem in that it involves at one kind of transient map feature, robots viewing …

A Framework For Synthesizing Agent-Based Heterogeneous Population Model For Epidemic Simulation, Madih Sahar

Open Access Theses

Social interactions play an important role in spread of a disease. In this thesis we propose a probabilistic approach to synthesize an agent-based heterogeneous population interaction model to study the spatio-temporal dynamics of an air-born epidemic, such as influenza, in a metropolitan area. The proposed methodology is generic in nature and can generate a baseline population for the cities for which detailed population summary tables are not available. The joint probabilities of population demographics are estimated using the International Public Use Microsimulation Data (IPUMS) sample data set. Based on the population density and the socio-economic status, the population is divided …

A Sensor Ontology For The Domain Of Firefighting Robots, Amy Renae Wagoner

Open Access Theses

Fires create thousands of dollars in damage and thousands of deaths each year. Firefighters risk their lives everyday and are often killed in action. Firefighting robots may be able to reduce the loss of lives and damage due to fires. Robots are often used for redundant tasks that require the consistency and efficiency of a machine. They are especially optimal for tasks that require strength that exceeds that of a typical human being or for environments that are hazardous to people. Robots' metallic exteriors are far more durable and easier to replace than flesh and blood, thus they are ideal …

Numerical Examination Of The Nonlinear Dynamics Of A Hybrid Acousto-Optic Bragg Cell With Positive Feedback Under Profiled Beam Propagation, Fares S. Almehmadi, Monish Ranjan Chatterjee

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In standard weak interaction theory, acousto-optic Bragg analysis typically assumes that the incident light and sound beams are uniform plane waves. Acousto-optic Bragg diffraction with nonuniform profiled input beams is numerically examined under open loop via a transfer function formalism. Unexpected deviations in the first-order diffracted beam from the standard theory are observed for high �� values. These deviations are significant because the corresponding closed-loop system is sensitive to input amplitudes and initial conditions, and the overall impact on the dynamical behavior has not been studied previously in standard analyses. To explore the effect of such nonuniform output profiles on …

Avida Checkpoint/Restart Implementation, Nilab Mohammad Mousa

McNair Scholars Research Journal

As high performance computing centers (HPCC) continue to grow in popularity, issues of resource management and reliability are becoming limiting factors in scheduling long-running jobs. One of the factors is time. Efficacy of Avida, the platform of research for digital evolution, is limited by the allocated time available on HPCC. Saving the state of the software at a point and restarting the execution from the paused state will allow for better resource utilization, as well as help reduce restrictions that constrain the potential of the software. This research examines whether or not Berkeley Lab Checkpoint/Restart (BLCR) can be integrated with …

Characterizing The Intra-Warp Address Distribution And Bandwidth Demands Of Gpgpus, Calvin Holic

Open Access Theses

General-purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs) are an important class of architectures that offer energy-efficient, high performance computation for data- parallel workloads. GPGPUs use single-instruction, multiple-data (SIMD) hardware as the core execution engines with (typically) 32 to 64 lanes of data width. Such SIMD operation is key to achieving high-performance; however, if memory demands of the different lanes in the "warp" cannot be satisfied, overall system performance can suffer.

There are two challenges in handling such heavy demand for memory bandwidth. First, the hardware necessary to coalesce multiple accesses to the same cache block--a key function necessary to reduce the demand …

Transparent Spectrum Co-Access In Cognitive Radio Networks, Jonathan Daniel Backens

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The licensed wireless spectrum is currently under-utilized by as much as 85%. Cognitive radio networks have been proposed to employ dynamic spectrum access to share this under-utilized spectrum between licensed primary user transmissions and unlicensed secondary user transmissions. Current secondary user opportunistic spectrum access methods, however, remain limited in their ability to provide enough incentive to convince primary users to share the licensed spectrum, and they rely on primary user absence to guarantee secondary user performance. These challenges are addressed by developing a Dynamic Spectrum Co-Access Architecture (DSCA) that allows secondary user transmissions to co-access transparently and concurrently with primary …

Design Of Hardware Accelerator For Fuzzy Automata Using Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration, Chinh K. Nguyen

Masters Theses

As embedded systems have become more complex and designers are required to develop new products faster while using fewer chips. FPGAs are a good choice because they offer flexibility to design on-chip devices as well as the embedded systems that are reprogrammable and reconfigurable. Today's tougher cost, higher performance, and lower power consumption requirements demand even more efficient design strategies. Dynamic partial reconfiguration (PR) is a good approach to meet these requirements because it extends the inherent flexibility of the FPGA by allowing partial regions of the FPGA to be dynamically reconfigured with new functionality while other applications are still …

Computational-Communicative Actions Of Informational Processing, Florentin Smarandache, Stefan Vladutescu

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

This study is circumscribed to the Information Science. The zetetic aim of research is double: a) to define the concept of action of informational processing and b) to design a taxonomy of actions of informational processing. First, the investigation trays to demonstrate that the computational actions of informational processing or the informational actions are computational-investigative configurations for structuring information: clusters of highly-aggregated operations which are carried out in a unitary manner operate convergently and behave like a unique computational device. From a methodological point of view, they are comprised within the category of analytical instruments for the informational processing of …

Web Archive Services Framework For Tighter Integration Between The Past And Present Web, Ahmed Alsum

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Web archives have contained the cultural history of the web for many years, but they still have a limited capability for access. Most of the web archiving research has focused on crawling and preservation activities, with little focus on the delivery methods. The current access methods are tightly coupled with web archive infrastructure, hard to replicate or integrate with other web archives, and do not cover all the users' needs. In this dissertation, we focus on the access methods for archived web data to enable users, third-party developers, researchers, and others to gain knowledge from the web archives. We build …

Developing An Embedded System Solution For High-Speed, High-Capacity Data Logging For A Size-Constrained, Low-Power Biomechanical Telemetry System And Investigating Components For Optimal Performance, Brandon Blaine Gardner

Open Access Theses

The Purdue Neurotrauma Group (PNG) seeks to develop a biomechanical telemetry system capable of monitoring and storing athletes' head motions with the intention of identifying when a player may be at risk of neurophysiological damage, especially brain damage. A number of commercially-available systems exist with a similar goal; however, each of these systems discards information below an acceleration threshold. Research by PNG indicates that any acceleration may contribute to brain damage and that, because of this, an event-based model is insufficient for a proper understanding of an athlete's neurophysiological health. Continuous-time monitoring of head accelerations is therefore necessary. To facilitate …

Software Architecture And Development For Controlling A Hubo Humanoid Robot, Manas Ajit Paldhe

Open Access Theses

Due to their human-like structure, humanoid robots are capable of doing some complex tasks. Since a humanoid robot has a large number of actuators and sensors, controlling it is a difficult task. For various tasks like balancing, driving a car, and interacting with humans, real-time response of the robot is essential. Efficiently controlling a humanoid robot requires a software that guarantees real-time interface and control mechanism so that real-time response of the robot is possible. Addition- ally, to reduce the development effort and time, the software should be open-source, multi-lingual and should have high-level constructs inbuilt in it.

Currently Robot …

Analysis Of Eye Tracking Data Obtained By Customers’ Product Evaluations, Shweta Sanjay Sareen

Open Access Theses

Within the mechanical engineering discipline, product representational studies have been used to inform engineers on the suitability of their product designs for prospective customers. Mainly based in customers' oral responses, engineers would modify the product design accordingly. The incorporation of eye tracking data, in addition to the oral responses, in these product representational studies is a recent addition. This case study performs data analysis of a product representational study conducted by Reid, MacDonald and Du (2012), which considers the impact of 2D and 3D product representation on customer judgments with associated eye gaze patterns. The aim of this thesis is …

Reliability Guided Resource Allocation For Large-Scale Supercomputing Systems, Shruti Umamaheshwaran

Open Access Theses

In high performance computing systems, parallel applications request a large number of resources for long time periods. In this scenario, if a resource fails during the application runtime, it would cause all applications using this resource to fail. The probability of application failure is tied to the inherent reliability of resources used by the application. Our investigation of high performance computing systems operating in the field has revealed a significant difference in the measured operational reliability of individual computing nodes. By adding awareness of the individual system nodes' reliability to the scheduler along with the predicted reliability needs of parallel …

Relationship Between Photofixed Condensate, Effluent And Bulk Composition Of Several Common Rtv Materials, Fen Zhou Hanrahan, Natale J. Ianno

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Raman spectroscopy and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy are employed to analyze the bulk compositions of five kinds of Room Temperature Vulcanized (RTV) silicones (CV2568, RTV566, DC93-500, SCV2590 and SCV2590-2) that are commonly employed in orbiting spacecraft. It is found that polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), silicon dioxide, Tetra-n-propylsilicate (NPS), silicic acid, tetraethyl orthosilicate, and trimethylsilanol are contained in all of them. The outgassing products from those silicones are characterized by FTIR. By comparing the position of the peaks, it is found that the outgassing products of each material are PDMS and NPS which are consistent with the compositions of samples determined with …

Dynamic Characteristic Identification Of Seismic-Excited Multi-Story Buildings Through Response-Only Technique, Agung Budipriyanto, Priyo Suprobo

Makara Journal of Technology

Identifying dynamic characteristics of civil engineering structures is still a challenging task. It intends to assess behavior of the structures under time-dependent loads. This paper discusses a methodology suitable for identifying the characteristics of multi-story buildings using only their measured response under earthquake ground excitations. Appropriateness of technique used for structural identification was corroborated through coherence of the structure’s responses. The methodology was applied for identifying the characteristics of 14-story and 20-story office buildings located in a high seismic region. Responses of these two buildings recorded during three different seismic ground motions were investigated. The buildings’ response spectral densities and …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Soy-Based Polyurethane Foam With Utilization Of Ethylene Glycol In Polyol, Flora Elvistia Firdaus

Makara Journal of Technology

The use of vegetable oils on replacing petroleum has attracted attention of many researchers. The chemical structure of vegetable oils are different from petrochemicals, so the structure of soybean oil has to be chemically modified through its unsaturated fatty acid chain in triglyceride. A two step process was conducted for the preparation of soy-polyol in designated temperatures; 50 °C, 60 °C, and 70 °C. Ethylene glycol (EG) as co-reagent was taking part in soy-polyol synthesis, and the soy-polyol was used as a sole polyol for polyurethane synthesis. Referred to the previous study, the existence of EG in polyurethane synthesis can …