Digital Circuits Commons^™

A Novel Design-For-Test Flow Using Librelane, Mohamed E. Gaber

Theses and Dissertations

Design-for-testing is a crucial element of application-specific integrated circuit design, yet, in the nascent open-source electronic design automation scene, the solutions for it are sorely limited. Design-for-test-enabled chips allow defects to be caught early on in the manufacturing process, avoiding incurring huge costs if hardware with defective chips is shipped to equipment manufacturers or, worse, end-users. Yet, the current open-source solutions rely on a brute-force utility that does not scale and negatively impacts the design by holding design-for-testing features as co-equal with the design’s regular operation, and a nominally layout-aware solution that does not holistically integrate into a larger flow. …

A Study On Quantization And Hardware Cost Tradeoffs In A 5g Nr Ldpc Decoder On Fpga, Giancarlo Acosta

Master's Theses

The fixed-point implementation of a 5G New Radio LDPC decoder forces a tradeoff between precision and hardware cost, governed by the variable node word length W_L, the check node message width W_R, and the normalized min-sum correction factor α. This thesis characterizes how these three parameters affect both error correction performance and FPGA resource utilization for an LDPC decoder on an established LDPC decoder architecture. A bit-accurate MATLAB core model records bit error rate (BER) and frame error rate (FER) while a verified HDL Coder model generates synthesizable VHDL for Vivado synthesis, and both are swept …

Reproducing And Evaluating Charger Surfing: Robustness Of Smartphone Charging-Line Side-Channels, Colby M. Watts

Master's Theses

Smartphones are frequently connected to external, untrusted charging hardware, creating opportunities for side-channel attacks that do not require malware or direct access to device data. Charger Surfing, a recently proposed charging-line power analysis side-channel attack, reported high accuracy in inferring touchscreen input from voltage measurements collected from a smartphone’s charging cable; however, the reproducibility and robustness of these results under different conditions remain unclear. This thesis presents an independent replication and evaluation of Charger Surfing, including the development of an end-to-end data collection pipeline consisting of a modified charging cable, oscilloscope-based recordings, custom Android app, automated trace processing, and convolutional …

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 …

Improving Human Visual Search: Enhancing Lung Cancer Nodule Detection In Medical Images, Christopher Khajira

Masters Theses

Human visual search involves the identification of relevant signals within information-rich environments, which is a fundamental problem in visual perception. While detection accuracy and response time are commonly used to evaluate performance in visual search, these measures do not reveal the underlying cognitive and computational structure that produces observable behavior. A key challenge lies in distinguishing between competing processing architectures, particularly in complex visual domains where different models can produce similar behavioral outcomes. This study addresses this challenge by developing a computational experimental framework for analyzing visual search behavior using System Factorial Technology (SFT). The experimental framework integrates naturalistic medical …

Exploration Of Real-Time Power Electronic Simulation On Amd Npu, Shouyu Du

All Theses

The rapid electrification of the automotive and data center sectors has created a critical demand for high-fidelity, real-time simulation of complex power electronic systems. While Hardware- in-the-Loop (HIL) simulation on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) is the current industry standard, it presents significant challenges regarding development complexity and memory limita- tions. This dissertation investigates the feasibility of utilizing Neural Processing Units (NPUs)— specifically the AMD AI Engine (AIE) XDNA2 architecture—as a novel platform for real-time, deterministic circuit simulation. This study establishes a comprehensive automated modeling framework based on graph theory and Massarini’s method to derive linear state-space representations for arbitrary circuit …

Design And Verification Of The Multi-Slit Solar Explorer Camera Field Programmable Gate Arrays, Jordan M. Johnson

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

The Multi-Slit Solar Explorer, or MUSE, is a NASA mission that will take images of the Sun to study solar flares and the solar corona. The mission will provide insight into the mechanisms behind space weather. The mission consists of two cameras: the Spectrograph (SG), and the Context Imager (CI). The Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory is providing both cameras for the mission.

This report describes a part of the design and verification process for a central component on these cameras known as the Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). These FPGAs are programmed to acquire, handle, and send images …

Developing A Framework For Microchip Design Recovery, Eric Diep

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

Due to the increase in diverse chip production over the past decade, reverse engineering has become a difficult and daunting task. This research develops a methodology for microchip design recovery, seeking to validate and reproduce prior approaches to physical reverse engineering using low-cost tools and techniques. We used mechanical hardware abrasion tools and techniques to delayer and capture silicon integrated chip (IC) layout. We focused on the Mifare Classic EVl microchip, commonly implemented in public transit/transportation cards, to extract information for design recovery. The research explores limitations and advantages of mechanical abrasion and optical microscopy in context to modem chip …

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 …

Ai-Scm Cmm: A Capability Maturity Model For Artificial Intelligence Integration In Supply Chain Management, Lordt Becklines, Omar F. El-Gayar, Patti Brooks, Insu Park

Annual Research Symposium

Artificial intelligence is increasingly deployed in supply chain management, yet many organizations struggle to align adoption efforts with process readiness, data quality, governance, and workforce capabilities, and they still lack validated supply chain specific roadmap for assessing readiness, sequencing investments, and reducing implementation risk. This study develops and evaluates a Capability Maturity Model for Artificial Intelligence Integration in Supply Chain Management to address that gap. Using a design science research approach, the study synthesizes prior literature and practitioner knowledge to define maturity dimensions, capability indicators, and staged progression levels for AI integration in supply chain contexts. The artifact and assessment …

A Capability Maturity Model For Artificial Intelligence Integration In Supply Chain Management, Lordt Becklines

Dissertations

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming Supply Chain Management (SCM), yet many organizations struggle to assess their readiness for AI adoption and to understand how AI capabilities develop across maturity stages. This dissertation addresses this gap by developing a Capability Maturity Model (CMM) for AI integration in SCM, grounded in Organizational Information Processing Theory (OIPT), the Resource-Based View, and related capability frameworks. The model provides a structured approach for evaluating an organization's information-processing requirements, resource configurations, and alignment needed for effective AI-enabled supply chain operations.

Using a design science research approach, the AI-SCM CMM and its associated assessment instrument were derived …

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, …