Digital Circuits Commons^™

Polysaber: A Custom Reactive Lightsaber Soundboard, Pedro B. Medeiros

Computer Engineering

The PolySaber project was developed as a custom reactive lightsaber control system built as a fully custom PCB design. The purpose of the project was to create a lower-cost and more customizable alternative to commercially available lightsaber soundboards while simultaneously providing hands-on experience in PCB design, embedded systems development, and hardware integration. Commercial lightsaber soundboards are expensive, proprietary, and difficult for hobbyists to customize. The PolySaber project addresses this by creating a modifiable hardware platform built around the ESP32 microcontroller. The system supports programmable firmware, RGB NeoPixel blade control, motion sensing, reactive swing and clash effects, onboard audio amplification, and …

Developing A Multi-Band Gnss Remote Sensing Station To Measure Precipitable Water Vapor For Flash Flood Nowcasting, Madison Gleydura

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Flash flood nowcasting in Central and Southern Appalachia is particularly challenging due to steep terrain, narrow valleys, highly localized rainfall patterns, and limited measurement coverage. Traditional remote sensing methods, such as Doppler radar and microwave radiometry, suffer from reduced resolution at long range and signal blockage by mountains. GNSS-meteorology offers an established alternative for measuring precipitable water vapor and is currently integrated into several numerical weather models. Recent research demonstrates that commercial-grade GNSS receivers can produce tropospheric products comparable to those from geodetic-grade equipment. The gaps in mountain coverage can be addressed by developing a low-cost, self-contained embedded system that …

Flexible Fault-Tolerant Multi-Die Fpga-Based Architectures For Varying Space Environments, Yosof Ali Seif El Din Ali Maklad

Theses and Dissertations

It is well-known fact that spacecraft’s electronic components operate in an extreme harsh and varying space environments, beside changing orbit or passing through Van Allan Belts during orbital course results of radiation levels change. This thesis focuses on SRAM-based FPGA systems on-board of such spacecrafts, that are commonly utilized in space applications’ critical applications due to their capabilities and flexibility to reconfigure, since these systems are vulnerable to frequent negative impacts of ionizing radiation, thus inducing soft and hard errors leading to disastrous failures that could jeopardize the entire spacecraft. The soft errors’ effects are frequent yet can be mitigated, …

How’S It Growing? Tools For Observing Snow And Sea Ice In A Changing Arctic Ocean, Ian Alexander Raphael

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

September Arctic sea ice extent has diminished by roughly 50% in the 45 years since satellite observations began. The Arctic Ocean may experience ice-free summers within the next decade, with implications for habitat, resource extraction, geopolitics, and local and global climate change. To predict how Arctic sea ice will change in the future, we need to understand its behavior in the present. In situ sea ice mass balance measurements (snow accumulation, ice growth, snow and ice surface melt, and bottom melt) are essential for studying the processes driving rapid changes in the ice pack, and for validating remote sensing measurements …

Design And Implementation Of Uvm-Based Verification Framework For Deep Learning Accelerators, Randa Ahmed Hussein Aboudeif

Theses and Dissertations

Recent advancements in deep learning (DL) have made hardware accelerators, known as deep learning accelerators (DLAs), a preferred solution for numerous high-performance computing (HPC) applications, including speech recognition, computer vision, and image classification. DLAs are composed of hundreds of parallel processing engines to speed up computations and can gain access to pre-trained networks from the cloud or through on-chip memory to implement the DNN inference process. DLA verification is becoming an important and challenging phase. The verification process is required to handle the complex DLA design. Moreover, the reliability of DLAs is critical for assessment as they are involved in …

Autonomous Landscape Exploration Rover Using Imaging Surface Navigation (Alexis), Noah Jones, Dominic Salupo

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The objective is to develop a small-form-factor rover prototype that can be used to prove out a novel traversal method for use on extraterrestrial surfaces. The novel traversal method being proposed is LIDAR/CV-enhanced navigation, provided by a detachable flight vehicle that can communicate with the rover. On planets with thin atmospheres, cold gas thrusters or similar may be needed, but for the scope of this project more traditional flight/propulsion methods will be used.

Exploring Smart Thermostat, Don P. Dang

2024 Fall Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

This study examines the security, privacy, and compatibility challenges associated with smart thermostats in smart home systems. Smart thermostats, as part of the growing Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, face vulnerabilities such as unauthorized access, data breaches, and inconsistent security protocols. Using a mixed-methods approach, this research evaluates encryption techniques, communication protocols (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi Fi), and user behaviors that impact system security and efficiency. Key findings indicate that 35% of users are concerned about hacking risks, while 25% express data privacy concerns. Many users lack awareness of security measures, such as firmware updates and password management, which increases vulnerabilities. …

Enhancing Cybersecurity In Wireless Sensor Networks: Machine Learning, Blockchain And Future Perspectives, Ilemona Solomon Atawodi

Dissertations

Security in the Industrial Internet of Things encounters various security issues but the main issues can be broken down into three core issues: Availability, Integrity, and Confidentiality. Security challenges generally tend to be caused by a failure of the system in one of these areas or cause a failure in one of these areas. Therefore researching scalable solutions to these security issues is prudent to explore methods that could be applied to large-scale industrial IIoT with tens to hundreds of devices as well as small-scale systems on a tiny factory floor comprising of just a few devices. In our research, …

Building A Wireless Electronic Control Unit For An Electric Vehicle, Hector S. Sosa

2024 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Modern vehicles have a variety of features such remote start systems, advance drive assist systems, smart suspension systems, and a feature rich infotainment system. With all this technology in the car, there exists a complex network of computers working together in conjunction to deliver the modern driving experience that many people have today. To be competitive in the market, auto manufacturers are tasked to add additional features to vehicles by adding additional or modifying electronic control units (ECUs). In this study, an ECU will be designed for a mock electric vehicle which contains an already established network of ECU’s. The …

Towards A Wearable Device For Measuring Impedance Plethysmography Of The Radial Artery, Pritom Chowdhury

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Recent advancements in bioimpedance technology have demonstrated significant promise in the application of cardiac health monitoring. This research explores the design and development of a forearm-based wearable bioimpedance device for non-invasive measurement of heart rate and respiratory rate at an accuracy level comparable to medical-grade monitors. It utilizes a tetrapolar electrode configuration to analyze bioimpedance changes in the radial artery due to blood flow.

An ongoing aspect of this work involves the preliminary development of an embedded framework intended to integrate signal generation, acquisition, and processing within the device to achieve compact and efficient system design, anticipated to contribute to …

A Novel Processor Architecture Implementing The Stacked Error Diffusion Algorithm And Its Zynq-Based Realization, Qishi Hu

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Digital halftoning reproduces continuous-tone images using patterns of black and white dots, while multitoning extends this concept by incorporating inks with intermediate intensities. These techniques are extensively utilized in the printing industry to accommodate the limited range of inks available in printers. Stacked error diffusion is a high-quality multitoning algorithm that adheres to the blue-noise dithering standard. This thesis research studies the potential parallelism inherent in the algorithm and introduces the design of a novel processor architecture optimized for efficient execution. The architecture is realized on an FPGA development board featuring a Zynq SoC. Additionally, the hardware prototype can also …

Electronic Note-String Detector, Gavin Garcia-Rossi, Tommy Smail

Electrical Engineering

As the virtual space has become a dominant part of everyone’s day-to-day lives, many normal face-to-face interactions and services have not yet been facilitated by adapting technology. One of these prevailing areas is music lessons. Over Zoom meetings, or other virtual platforms, it is tremendously challenging to teach students. These challenges include recognizing student mistakes audibly and visually, and being able to give confident feedback on the incorrect notes played by learning musicians. Without having to delve into improving the complex systems that would be required to improve audio, video, and connection quality of these connections, we have another solution …

Low-Power, Event-Driven System On A Chip For Charge Pulse Processing Applications, Joseph A. Schmitz

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation presents an electronic architecture and methodology capable of processing charge pulses generated by a range of sensors, including radiation detectors and tactile synthetic skin. These sensors output a charge signal proportional to the input stimulus, which is processed electronically in both the analog and digital domains. The presented work implements this functionality using an event-driven methodology, which greatly reduces power consumption compared to standard implementations. This enables new application areas that require a long operating time or compact physical dimensions, which would not otherwise be possible. The architecture is designed, fabricated, and tested in the aforementioned applications to …

Power Amplifier Based On Composite Injection-Voltaic Transistors, Nodira Batirdjanovna Alimova

Chemical Technology, Control and Management

The problem of high-current radio engineering devices is related to the fact that the use of high-power transistors and other semiconductor devices is limited by such a phenomenon as a secondary breakdown, in which there is a sharp decrease in the voltage on the device with simultaneous internal current lacing, and the device fails. To solve the problem of secondary breakdown, schemes have been proposed that operate stably at reverse voltage values 4-5 times higher than usual and at power dissipation 2-3 times higher than the maximum allowable power for an individual device. The problem is proposed to be solved …

Automated Robotic Light Bulb Testing Platform, Agha I. Akram, Muhammad Ali Ummy

Publications and Research

The main purpose of this project is to create a functional prototype of a multilayered system that incorporates aspects of electrical, mechanical, and computer engineering technology. The main objective of the system is to be able to determine whether a light bulb is working or not. The building blocks of this system are a robotic arm that is able to slide along a rail (for added mobility), a conveyor belt, and an electromechanical device that holds and tests light bulbs. Initially, the robot arm picks up a light bulb and places it into the holder which then tests it. A …

Removing Physical Presence Requirements For A Remote And Automated World - Api Controlled Patch Panel For Conformance Testing, Hunter George Wells

Honors Theses and Capstones

Quality assurance test engineers at the UNH-InterOperability Lab must run tests that require driving and monitoring a selection of DC signals. While the number of signals is numerous, there are limited ports on the test equipment, and only a few signals need patching for any given test. The selection of signals may vary between the 209 different tests and must be re-routed frequently. Currently, testers must leave their desk to manually modify the test setup in another room. This posed a considerable issue at the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic when physical access was not possible. In order to enable …

Garden Bot: Autonomous Home Garden Weed Removal Robot, Brendon Lovejoy, Robert Connolly, Isaac Lucas, Stevan Veselinov

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

With frequent weeding being a tedious chore and an essential task for a successful garden, there is need for an automated method of handling this routine. Existing technologies utilize computer vision, GPS, multiple units and other tools to remove weeds from garden plots. However, these solutions are often complex and expensive, suited for large agricultural plots in contrast to small-scale home gardens. In addition, many of these technologies, along with manual tillers and cultivators suited for home use, are unable to perform weeding within rows of crops in a process known as intra-row weeding. The Garden Bot is an autonomous, …

Side Channel Attack Counter Measure Using A Moving Target Architecture, Jithin Joseph

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

A novel countermeasure to side-channel power analysis attacks called Side-channel Power analysis Resistance for Encryption Algorithms using DPR or SPREAD is investigated in this thesis. The countermeasure leverages a strategy that is best characterized as a moving target architecture. Modern field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) architectures provide support for dynamic partial reconfiguration (DPR), a feature that allows real-time reconfiguration of the programmable logic (PL). The moving target architecture proposed in this work leverages DPR to implement a power analysis countermeasure to side-channel attacks, the most common of which are referred to as differential power analysis (DPA) and correlation power analysis …

Analog & Digital Remote Synthesizer, Adam Brunner, Andrew Cihon-Scott, Scott Grisso, Linus Wright

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this project is to develop and design an analog synthesizer musical instrument that integrates embedded digital hardware into the design to enable control from a remote source. The use of digital hardware enables the potential for a wide range of convenient features such as sound profile saving and loading, output recording functionality, and the ability to accept digital input from another musical instrument utilizing the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI). In addition to the synthesizer itself, this project also includes the design of a companion application that can be hosted on a wide variety of consumer computing …

Light Loaded Automated Guided Vehicle, Marcus Radtka, Nazar Paramashchuk, Lawrence Shevock

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The objective of the locomotion system was to design and implement the mechanical, electrical, and software related functions to ensure the LLAGV had the capability of maneuvering its surroundings. The LLAGV’s motors were represented in an open loop transfer function to utilize RPM feedback and a compensator when needed. The modeled compensator helped control the LLAGV’s speed and acceleration, enabling further control of the LLAGV. The internal circuitry has the means to properly distributed power to all components and allowed the user to control the LLAGV to their desire. The application software within the LLAGV locomotion system (LLAGV-LS) had consideration …

A 2.56 Gbps Serial Wireline Transceiver That Supports An Auxiliary Channel And A Hybrid Line Driver To Compensate Large Channel Loss, Xiaoran Wang

Electrical Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Serial transceiver links are widely used for high-speed point-to-point communications. This dissertation describes two transceiver link designs for two different applications.

In serial wireline communications, security is an increasingly important factor to concern. Securing an information processing system at the application and system software layers is regarded as a necessary but incomplete defense against the cyber security threats. In this dissertation, an asynchronous serial transceiver that is capable of transmitting and receiving an auxiliary data stream concurrently with the primary data stream is described. The transceiver instantiates the auxiliary data stream by modulating the phase of the primary data without …

Analysis And Design Of A Soft Switching Z-Source Boost Dc-Dc Converter, Mahdi Rezvanyvardom, Amin Mirzaei

Emirates Journal for Engineering Research

This paper proposes a high step-up fully soft switched Z-source Boost DC-DC converter, which uses two resonant paths to create soft switching conditions for switches and diodes and also increases the voltage gain. The proposed converter only has one switch, so it has a simple structure. Furthermore, its control circuit remains pulse width modulation. Since soft switching conditions are provided for all switching elements, the converter efficiency is very high. This converter also has all advantages of Z-source converters. The converter is analyzed and simulated in PSPICE software. The results confirm the aforementioned advantages and features of the proposed converter

Nonlinear Least Squares 3-D Geolocation Solutions Using Time Differences Of Arrival, Michael V. Bredemann

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

This thesis uses a geometric approach to derive and solve nonlinear least squares minimization problems to geolocate a signal source in three dimensions using time differences of arrival at multiple sensor locations. There is no restriction on the maximum number of sensors used. Residual errors reach the numerical limits of machine precision. Symmetric sensor orientations are found that prevent closed form solutions of source locations lying within the null space. Maximum uncertainties in relative sensor positions and time difference of arrivals, required to locate a source within a maximum specified error, are found from these results. Examples illustrate potential requirements …

Dual-Axis Solar Tracker, Bryan Kennedy

All Undergraduate Projects

Renewable energies, and fuels that are not fossil fuel-based, are one of the prolific topics of debate in modern society. With climate change now becoming a primary focus for scientists and innovators of today, one of the areas for the largest amount of potential and growth is that of the capturing and utilization of Solar Energy. This method involves using a mechanical system to track the progression of the sun as it traverses the sky throughout the day. A dual-axis solar tracker such as the one designed and built for this project, can follow the sun both azimuthally and in …

Weight Controlled Electric Skateboard, Zachary Barram, Carson Bertozzi, Vishnu Dodballapur

Computer Engineering

Technology and the way that humans interact is becoming more vital and omnipresent with every passing day. However, human interface device designers suffer from the increasingly popular “designed for me or people like me” syndrome. This design philosophy inherently limits accessibility and usability of technology to those like the designer. This places severe limits of usability to those who are not fully able as well as leaves non-traditional human interface devices unexplored. This project set out to explore a previously uncharted human interface device, on an electric skateboard, and compare it send user experience with industry leading human interface devices.

Tidalsim Senior Project Report, Kent Zhang, Colin Vandervoort

Computer Engineering

Throughout the course of this project, our team helped the Cal Poly Biological Sciences department refine an intertidal zone simulator. The aim of this device is to allow any marine biologist to easily simulate a vast range of tidal zones in order to test animal behaviors within these zones. Another goal of this project is to make each simulation tank independent from the others by using a single microcontroller to handle all inputs and outputs of the system as well as logging all relevant data. The current system is set up so that a separate microcontroller handles dissolved oxygen and …

Prototyping A Capacitive Sensing Device For Gesture Recognition, Chenglong Lin

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Capacitive sensing is a technology that can detect proximity and touch. It can also be utilized to measure position and acceleration of gesture motions. This technology has many applications, such as replacing mechanical buttons in a gaming device interface, detecting respiration rate without direct contact with the skin, and providing gesture sensing capability for rehabilitation devices. In this thesis, an approach to prototype a capacitive gesture sensing device using the Eagle PCB design software is demonstrated. In addition, this paper tested and evaluated the resulting prototype device, validating the effectiveness of the approach.

Investigating The Effect Of Detecting And Mitigating A Ring Oscillator-Based Hardware Trojan, Lakshmi Ramakrishnan

Electrical Engineering Theses and Dissertations

The outsourcing of the manufacturing process of integrated circuits to fabrications plants all over the world has exposed these chips to several security threats, especially at the hardware level. There have been instances of malicious circuitry, such as backdoors, being added to circuits without the knowledge of the chip designers or vendors. Such threats could be immensely powerful and dangerous against confidentiality, among other vulnerabilities.

Defense mechanisms against such attacks have been probed and defense techniques have been developed. But with the passage of time, attack techniques have improved immensely as well. From directly observing the inputs or outputs, adversaries …

Analog Sorting Using Pulse Width Modulation, Riley C. Olson

Computer Engineering

As time goes on, computers become more and more powerful. However, as processing time becomes less of a limiting factor for computing tasks, power consumption takes its place for many tasks. This paper proposes and tests a new method for sorting analog signals. This new sorting method converts analog signals into Pulse Width Modulated(PWM) signals of varying duty cycle , which are then sorted by a simple network of combinational logic, and then converted to a normal binary representation. In order to implement this new method, multiple circuits had to be designed and and tested to ensure their functionality and …

Roborodentia Robot: Treadbot, Stephen C. Schmidt

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This document is a summary of my contest entry to the 2018 Cal Poly Roborodentia competition. It is meant to be a process overview and design outline of the mechanical, electrical, and software components of my robot.