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 …

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, …

Design Considerations Of A Gpu, Nicholas M. Devilliers

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

With the current era of AI technology, the era of single instruction multiple data has become an increasingly viable solution to accelerate training. The problem is that while software to use GPUs and other hardware accelerators, designing GPUs and ASIC devices has become increasingly more expensive and there aren’t great examples of generic GPUs that anyone can use and modify. In this thesis, there are four design considerations that will be discussed and how they affect the result of a generic GPU. The four considerations that were talked about in the thesis are, word width, arithmetic type, number of stages, …

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. …

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 …

An Animated Introduction To Digital Logic Design, John D. Carpinelli

Open and Affordable Textbooks

There is a newer edition of this textbook available here.

This book is designed for use in an introductory course on digital logic design, typically offered in computer engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, and other related programs. Such a course is usually offered at the sophomore level. This book makes extensive use of animation to illustrate the flow of data within a digital system and to step through some of the procedures used to design and optimize digital circuits.

All of the animations for this book can be found here: https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/dld-animations/

Chatgpt As Metamorphosis Designer For The Future Of Artificial Intelligence (Ai): A Conceptual Investigation, Amarjit Kumar Singh (Library Assistant), Dr. Pankaj Mathur (Deputy Librarian)

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this research paper is to explore ChatGPT’s potential as an innovative designer tool for the future development of artificial intelligence. Specifically, this conceptual investigation aims to analyze ChatGPT’s capabilities as a tool for designing and developing near about human intelligent systems for futuristic used and developed in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Also with the helps of this paper, researchers are analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of ChatGPT as a tool, and identify possible areas for improvement in its development and implementation. This investigation focused on the various features and functions of ChatGPT that …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Heuristic-Based Threat Analysis Of Register-Transfer-Level Hardware Designs, Wesley Layton Ellington

Electrical Engineering Theses and Dissertations

The development of globalized semiconductor manufacturing processes and supply chains has lead to an increased interest in hardware security as new types of hardware based attacks, called hardware Trojans, are being observed in industrial and military electronics. To combat this, a technique was developed to help analyze hardware designs at the register-transfer-level (RTL) and locate points of interest within a design that might be vulnerable to attack. This method aims to eventually enable the creation of an end-to-end design hardening solution that analyzes existing designs and suggests countermeasures for potential Trojan attacks. The method presented in this work uses a …

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 …

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 …

Real Time And High Fidelity Quadcopter Tracking System, Tyler Mckay Hall

Computer Engineering

This project was conceived as a desired to have an affordable, flexible and physically compact tracking system for high accuracy spatial and orientation tracking. Specifically, this implementation is focused on providing a low cost motion capture system for future research. It is a tool to enable the further creation of systems that would require the use of accurate placement of landing pads, payload acquires and delivery. This system will provide the quadcopter platform a coordinate system that can be used in addition to GPS.

Field research with quadcopter manufacturers, photographers, agriculture and research organizations were contact and interviewed for information …

Design And Simulation Of An 8-Bit Successive Approximation Register Charge-Redistribution Analog-To-Digital Converter, Sumit K. Verma

Electrical Engineering Theses

The thesis initially investigates the history of the monolithic ADCs. The next chapter explores the different types of ADCs available in the market today. Next, the operation of a 4-bit SAR ADC has been studied. Based on this analysis, an 8-bit charge-redistribution SAR ADC has been designed and simulated with Multisim (National Instruments, Austin, TX). The design is divided into different blocks which are individually implemented and tested. Level-1 SPICE MOSFET models representative of 5μm devices were used wherever individual MOSFETs were used in the design. Finally, the power dissipation during the conversion period was also estimated. The supply voltage …

Solid State Drive, Shaun A. Steele

Electrical Engineering

This project documents the design and implementation of a solid state drive (SSD). SSDs are a non-volatile memory storage device that competes with hard disk drives. SSDs rely on flash memory, a type of non-volatile memory that is electrically erased and programmed. The appeal of SSDs lies in the fact that they allow a fast, reliable, and durable memory storage device. The goal of this project is to have a working external SSD built from scratch.

Achieving A Better Balance Between Productivity And Performance On Fpgas Through Heterogeneous Extensible Multiprocessor Systems, Abazar Sadeghian

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) were first introduced circa 1980, and they held the promise of delivering performance levels associated with customized circuits, but with productivity levels more closely associated with software development. Achieving both performance and productivity objectives has been a long standing challenge problem for the reconfigurable computing community and remains unsolved today. On one hand, Vendor supplied design flows have tended towards achieving the high levels of performance through gate level customization, but at the cost of very low productivity. On the other hand, FPGA densities are following Moore's law and and can now support complete multiprocessor …

Mos Current Mode Logic (Mcml) Analysis For Quiet Digital Circuitry And Creation Of A Standard Cell Library For Reducing The Development Time Of Mixed Signal Chips, David Marusiak

Master's Theses

Many modern digital systems use forms of CMOS logical implementation due to the straight forward design nature of CMOS logic and minimal device area since CMOS uses fewer transistors than other logic families. To achieve high-performance requirements in mixed-signal chip development and quiet, noiseless circuitry, this thesis provides an alternative toCMOSin the form of MOS Current Mode Logic (MCML). MCML dissipates constant current and does not produce noise during value changing in a circuit CMOS circuits do. CMOS logical networks switch during clock ticks and with every device switching, noise is created on the supply and ground to deal with …

Discrete Alarm Clock, Travis Moore, Collin Barth

Electrical Engineering

The standard alarm clock, as used daily by millions worldwide, has clear room for modification and improvement.  This paper documents an implementation that rectifies many of these flaws.  Improvements include adjustable snooze length, an IR remote for ease of use, and an RF headset for discrete alarm use or potential incorporation into a device much like a hearing aid.  The processes involved in creating a digital alarm clock, as well as the obstacles met in the implementation of the enhanced design, are detailed within.