Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons^™

A Generalized Optimal Power Flow Program For Distribution System Analysis And Operation With Distributed Energy Resources And Solid State Transformers, Fanjun Meng

Doctoral Dissertations

"The present distribution system is gradually trending towards a smart grid paradigm with massive development of distributed energy resources (DER), advanced power electronics interfaces, and a digitalized communication platform. Such profound changes bring challenges as well as opportunities for an entity like the distribution network operator (DNO) to optimally operate DERs and other controllable elements to achieve higher levels of energy efficiency, economic benefits, supply reliability and power quality.

The major contribution of this dissertation is in the development of a generalized three-phase optimal power flow (OPF) program in a novel control scheme for future distribution system optimization and economic …

Electric-Drive Vehicle Emulation Using Advanced Test Bench, Poria Fajri

Doctoral Dissertations

"Vehicle electrification is considered to be the most promising approach toward addressing the concerns on climate change, sustainability, and rapid depletion of fossil fuel resources. As a result electric-drive vehicle (EDV) technology is becoming the subject of many research studies, from academia and research laboratories to automotive industries and their suppliers. However, a crucial step toward the success of EDV implementation is developing test platforms that closely emulate the behavior of these vehicles.

In this dissertation, a new approach for emulating an EDV system on a motor/dynamometer test bench is investigated. Two different methods of emulation are discussed which are …

Automated Classification Of Malignant Melanoma Based On Detection Of Atypical Pigment Network In Dermoscopy Images Of Skin Lesions, Nabin K. Mishra

Doctoral Dissertations

“Melanoma causes more deaths than any other form of skin cancer. Early melanoma detection is important to prevent progression to a more deadly stage. Automated computer-based identification of melanoma from dermoscopic images of skin lesions is the most efficient method in early diagnosis. An automated melanoma identification system must include multiple steps, involving lesion segmentation, feature extraction, feature combination and classification. In this research, a classifier-based approach for automatically selecting a lesion border mask for segmentation of dermoscopic skin lesion images is presented. A logistic regression based model selects a single lesion border mask from multiple border masks generated by …

Hardware Implementation Of Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Transceiver For Wireless Communication, Bing Han

Doctoral Dissertations

"This dissertation proposes an efficient hardware implementation scheme for iterative multi-input multi-output orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) transceiver. The transmitter incorporates linear precoder designed with instantaneous channel state information (CSI). The receiver implements MMSE-IC (minimum mean square error interference cancelation) detector, channel estimator, low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoder and other supporting modules. The proposed implementation uses QR decomposition (QRD) of complex-valued matrices with four co-ordinate rotation digital computer (CORDIC) cores and back substitution to achieve the best tradeoff between resource and throughput. The MIMO system is used in field test and the results indicate that the instantaneous CSI varies very fast in …

Hardware Integration Of Ultracapacitor Based Energy Storage To Provide Grid Support And To Improve Power Quality Of The Distribution Grid, Deepak Somayajula

Doctoral Dissertations

"Grid integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) is increasing rapidly. Integration of various types of energy storage technologies like batteries, ultracapacitors (UCAPs), superconducting magnets and flywheels to support intermittent DERs, such as solar and wind, in order to improve their reliability is becoming necessary. Of all the energy storage technologies UCAPs have low energy density, high power density and fast charge/discharge characteristics. They also have more charge/discharge cycles and higher terminal voltage per module when compared to batteries. All these characteristics make UCAPs ideal choice for providing support to events on the distribution grid which require high power for short …

New Approaches To Smart Grid Security With Scada Systems, Bixiang Tang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The use of information technology in electric power grid introduces the vulnerability problem looming the future smart grid. The supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)is the first defense, which itself is undermined by potential malicious attacks. This dissertation studies two particular security threats facing the smart grid and SCADA systems: the unobservable attack and the replay attack. The former is well known in fault detection of the power grid and has received renewed interest in the past a few years, while the latter is motivated by the Stuxnet worm allegedly used against the nuclear facilities in Iran. For unobservable attacks, …

Cost Minimization Approach To Synthesis Of Linear Reversible Circuits, Ben Schaeffer, Marek Perkowski

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper presents a heuristic cost minimization approach to synthesizing linear reversible circuits. Two bidirectional linear reversible circuit synthesis methods are introduced, the Alternating Elimination with Cost Minimization method (AECM) and the Multiple CNOT Gate method (MCG). Algorithms, example syntheses, and extensions to these methods are presented. An MCG variant which incorporates line reordering is introduced. Tests comparing the new cost minimization methods with the best known method for large circuits are presented. Results show that of the three methods MCG had the lowest average CNOT gate counts for linear reversible circuits up to 24 lines, and that AECM had …

Reliability Analysis For Chain Topology Wireless Sensor Networks With Multiple-Sending Transmission Scheme, Jie Cai, Xiaoyu Song, Jinyuan Wang, Ming Gu

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reliability analysis is a key problem in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The primary contribution of this paper is an in-depth study of the reliability of a chain topology wireless sensor network with multiple-sending scheme. We study the wireless link reliability for the fading channels. The node energy availability for the source and relay nodes is investigated in terms of the limited node energy. The instantaneous network reliability and the mean time to failure are derived. Finally, the initial node energy allocation scheme is proposed to balance the lifetime of each sensor node, thus reducing the total energy consumption. The simulation …

Functional Verification Of High Performance Adders In Coq, Qian Wang, Xiaoyu Song, Ming Gu, Jiaguang Sun

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Addition arithmetic design plays a crucial role in high performance digital systems. The paper proposes a systematic method to formalize and verify adders in a formal proof assistant COQ. The proposed approach succeeds in formalizing the gate-level implementations and verifying the functional correctness of the most important adders of interest in industry, in a faithful, scalable, and modularized way. The methodology can be extended to other adder architectures as well.

Neuromodulation Based Control Of Autonomous Robots On A Cloud Computing Platform, Cameron Muhammad

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

In recent years, the advancement of neurobiologically plausible models and computer networking has resulted in new ways of implementing control systems on robotic platforms. The work presents a control approach based on vertebrate neuromodulation and its implementation on autonomous robots in the open-source, open-access environment of robot operating system (ROS). A spiking neural network (SNN) is used to model the neuromodulatory function for generating context based behavioral responses of the robots to sensory input signals. The neural network incorporates three types of neurons- cholinergic and noradrenergic (ACh/NE) neurons for attention focusing and action selection, dopaminergic (DA) neurons for rewards- and …

Advanced Control Of Small-Scale Power Systems With Penetration Of Renewable Energy Sources, Shaghayegh Kazemlou

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Stability, protection, and operational restrictions are important factors to be taken into account in a proper integration of distributed energy. The objective of this research is presenting advanced controllers for small-scale power systems with penetration of renewable energy sources resources to ensure stable operation after the network disturbances. Power systems with distributed energy resources are modeled and controlled through applying nonlinear control methods to their power electronic interfaces in this research. The stability and control of both ac and dc systems have been studied in a multi-source framework. The dc distribution system is represented as a class of interconnected, nonlinear …

Effect Of Laser-Assisted Resonant Excitation On The Growth Of Gan Films, H. Rabiee Golgir, Y. Gao, Y. S. Zhou, L. S. Fan, Kamran Keramatnejad, Yongfeng Lu

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

Gallium nitride (GaN) films were grown using laser-assisted metal organic chemical vapor deposition (LMOCVD). The vibrational mode (1084.63 cm^-1) of ammonia (NH₃) molecules was resonantly excited using a wavelength-tunable CO₂ laser at a laser wavelength of 9.219 μm due to its high absorption cross-section. Through wavelength-matched resonant excitation of the NH3 molecules, highly c-axis oriented GaN films were successfully deposited on sapphire (α-Al₂O₃) substrates at low temperatures (250 to 600^oC). The strong (0001) GaN peak in Xray diffraction spectra confirmed the good crystalline quality of GaN films. Additionally, the …

Prepulse Inhibition Of The Acoustic Startle Reflex: Comparing Low And High Trait Anxious Individuals, Krista Sturm

Honors Theses

This investigation examined whether prepulse inhibition of the acoustic startle reflex was impaired among individuals with high trait anxiety compared to controls. PPI has traditionally been theorized to be a psychophysiological index of information processing and sensorimotor gating, and is now being used to help identify various psychological disorders. Although results of existing research on reduced PPI across the anxiety spectrum are equivocal, previous findings indicate that highly anxious (HA) participants exhibit significantly reduced PPI at lead intervals of 60 ms relative to low anxious (LA) controls. This study paired a 70 dB (A) white noise prepulse stimulus with a …

Processor, Payload, And Power Subsystem Development Of The Missat-1 Cubesat, Rana Roxanne Gordji, Zachary Christian Puuwai Olaa Morgan, Samuel Liyang Di

Honors Theses

This thesis details the development and programming of the processor subsystem, camera payload, and power subsystem of the Mississippi Imaging Space Satellite (MISSat-1). An overview of the hardware and software considerations necessary for the processor subsystem is discussed. An explanation of microcontroller uses as well as real time operating system fundamentals is also presented as it relates to MISSat-1. The subsystem deals with varieties of peripheral integration and communication standards among devices. The camera graphical user interface (GUI) was expanded with the addition of functions that improve CubeSat image handling. Additionally, image processing techniques and algorithms are considered to improve …

Defect Mediated Electrochemical Hydrogenation Of Epitaxial Graphene: Towards Graphene Based Microbial Fuel Cells, Kevin Michael Daniels

Theses and Dissertations

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are seen as a promising complementary technology to alleviate the exponentially increasing worldwide energy demand. MFCs use bacteria to extract energy from biomass, where choice of electrode materials has a strong impact on energy extraction and efficiency. Graphene, a single monolayer of carbon with exceptional electrical conductivity and high surface area, is seen as a promising material with the potential of improving charge transfer and bacterial adhesion. To probe this reactivity, a novel means of hydrogenation of graphene by electrochemistry is demonstrated.

In this thesis, electrochemical hydrogenation of epitaxial graphene (EG), graphene grown on silicon carbide …

High Frequency Ac Power Systems, Huaxi Zheng

Theses and Dissertations

High Frequency AC (HFAC) power systems - systems having frequencies higher than the usual 60 Hz - may have advantages in some applications, especially where small size and weight are important (aircraft, ships, etc), or where variable operating speed increases efficiency. While 400 Hz systems are widely used in aircraft, these generally do not include parallel-connected generators that operate at megawatt power levels, which is our domain of interest in this research. In particular, we are interested in micro-grid power systems in the 10-100 MW range, consisting of several generators operating in parallel at system frequencies above 60 Hz. This …

Book Review: The Basics Of Digital Forensics: The Primer For Getting Started In Digital Forensics, Stephen Larson

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The Basics of Digital Forensics: The Primer for Getting Started in Digital Forensics is well-named–it really is very basic. And it should be, as the book’s intended audience includes entry-level digital forensics professionals and complimentary fields such as law enforcement, legal, and general information security. Though the copyright is 2012, some of the data is from 2009, and there is mention of estimates for 2010.

“Time For Some Traffic Problems”: Enhancing E-Discovery And Big Data Processing Tools With Linguistic Methods For Deception Detection, Erin S. Crabb

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Linguistic deception theory provides methods to discover potentially deceptive texts to make them accessible to clerical review. This paper proposes the integration of these linguistic methods with traditional e-discovery techniques to identify deceptive texts within a given author’s larger body of written work, such as their sent email box. First, a set of linguistic features associated with deception are identified and a prototype classifier is constructed to analyze texts and describe the features’ distributions, while avoiding topic-specific features to improve recall of relevant documents. The tool is then applied to a portion of the Enron Email Dataset to illustrate how …

Hot Zone Identification: Analyzing Effects Of Data Sampling On Spam Clustering, Rasib Khan, Mainul Mizan, Ragib Hasan, Alan Sprague

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Email is the most common and comparatively the most efficient means of exchanging information in today's world. However, given the widespread use of emails in all sectors, they have been the target of spammers since the beginning. Filtering spam emails has now led to critical actions such as forensic activities based on mining spam email. The data mine for spam emails at the University of Alabama at Birmingham is considered to be one of the most prominent resources for mining and identifying spam sources. It is a widely researched repository used by researchers from different global organizations. The usual process …

Accurate Modeling Of The Siemens S7 Scada Protocol For Intrusion Detection And Digital Forensics, Amit Kleinmann, Avishai Wool

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The Siemens S7 protocol is commonly used in SCADA systems for communications between a Human Machine Interface (HMI) and the Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). This paper presents a model-based Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) designed for S7 networks. The approach is based on the key observation that S7 traffic to and from a specific PLC is highly periodic; as a result, each HMI-PLC channel can be modeled using its own unique Deterministic Finite Automaton (DFA). The resulting DFA-based IDS is very sensitive and is able to flag anomalies such as a message appearing out of its position in the normal sequence …

From The Editor-In-Chief, Ibrahim Baggili

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Welcome to JDFSL’s fourth and final issue for 2014! First, I would like to thank our editorial board, reviewers, and the JDFSL team for bringing this issue to life. It has been a big year for JDFSL as the journal continues to progress. I would like to highlight our critical achievements for 2014 before touching on the papers that were accepted in this issue: 1. JDFSL has gone to a fully open access model without author payment through support from academic institutions. 2. JDFSL has formed and continues to form partnerships with various conferences that relate to cyber security and …

Book Review: Judiciary-Friendly Forensics Of Software Copyright Infringement (Vinod Polpaya Bhattathiripad), Pedro L. P. Sanchez

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Judiciary-Friendly Forensics of Software Copyright Infringement is a book by Dr. Vinod Polpaya Bhattathiripad, published by IGI-Global as part of its Research Essentials series. The book discusses the forensics of software copyright infringement and highlights theoretical, functional, and procedural matters in the investigation of copyright infringement of software products, as well as the development of forensic technologies to detect and avoid software piracy. It is of interest to software forensic experts, lawyers in the field of copyright infringement, judges, software professionals, and students.

Table Of Contents

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Personal Denial Of Service (Pdos) Attacks: A Discussion And Exploration Of A New Category Of Cyber Crime, Michael R. Bartolacci, Larry J. Leblanc, Ashley Podhradsky

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The growth of the Internet has created a corresponding growth in Internet-based crimes and online misbehavior, particularly among younger computer-savvy people. Younger generations have grown up in a world where internet access, social networking, e-commerce and smartphones are commonplace. Given this fact, they have learned how to use, and how to abuse, technology. This leads us to define a new category of cybercrime called a Personal Denial of Service attack (PDOS). A PDOS is a cyber-crime in which an individual deliberately prevents the access of another individual or small group to online services such as email or banking. Due to …

File Detection On Network Traffic Using Approximate Matching, Frank Breitinger, Ibrahim Baggili

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

In recent years, Internet technologies changed enormously and allow faster Internet connections, higher data rates and mobile usage. Hence, it is possible to send huge amounts of data / files easily which is often used by insiders or attackers to steal intellectual property. As a consequence, data leakage prevention systems (DLPS) have been developed which analyze network traffic and alert in case of a data leak. Although the overall concepts of the detection techniques are known, the systems are mostly closed and commercial. Within this paper we present a new technique for network traffic analysis based on approximate matching (a.k.a …

Fast Rtp Detection And Codecs Classification In Internet Traffic, Petr Matousek, Ondrej Rysavy, Martin Kmet

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This paper presents a fast multi-stage method for on-line detection of RTP streams and codec identification of transmitted voice or video traffic. The method includes an RTP detector that filters packets based on specific values from UDP and RTP headers. When an RTP stream is successfully detected, codec identification is applied using codec feature sets. The paper shows advantages and limitations of the method and its comparison with other approaches. The method was implemented as a part of network forensics framework NetFox developed in project SEC6NET. Results show that the method can be successfully used for Lawful Interception as well …

Relating Admissibility Standards For Digital Evidence To Attack Scenario Reconstruction, Changwei Liu, Anoop Singhal, Duminda Wijesekera

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Attackers tend to use complex techniques such as combining multi-step, multi-stage attack with anti-forensic tools to make it difficult to find incriminating evidence and reconstruct attack scenarios that can stand up to the expected level of evidence admissibility in a court of law. As a solution, we propose to integrate the legal aspects of evidence correlation into a Prolog based reasoner to address the admissibility requirements by creating most probable attack scenarios that satisfy admissibility standards for substantiating evidence. Using a prototype implementation, we show how evidence extracted by using forensic tools can be integrated with legal reasoning to reconstruct …

Audit: Automated Disk Investigation Toolkit, Umit Karabiyik, Sudhir Aggarwal

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Software tools designed for disk analysis play a critical role today in forensics investigations. However, these digital forensics tools are often difficult to use, usually task specific, and generally require professionally trained users with IT backgrounds. The relevant tools are also often open source requiring additional technical knowledge and proper configuration. This makes it difficult for investigators without some computer science background to easily conduct the needed disk analysis. In this paper, we present AUDIT, a novel automated disk investigation toolkit that supports investigations conducted by non-expert (in IT and disk technology) and expert investigators. Our proof of concept design …

Evidentiary Power And Propriety Of Digital Identifiers And The Impact On Privacy Rights In The United States, Michael Losavio, Deborah Keeling

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Media and network systems capture and store data about electronic activity in new, sometimes unprecedented ways; computational systems make for new means of analysis and knowledge development. These new forms offer new, powerful tactical tools for investigations of electronic malfeasance under traditional legal regulation of state power, particular that of Fourth Amendment limitations on police searches and seizures under the U.S. Constitution. But autonomy, identity and authenticity concerns with electronic data raise issues of public policy, privacy and proper police oversight of civil society. We examine those issues and their implications for digital and computational forensics

Effects Of The Factory Reset On Mobile Devices, Riqui Schwamm, Neil C. Rowe

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Mobile devices usually provide a “factory-reset” tool to erase user-specific data from the main secondary storage. 9 Apple iPhones, 10 Android devices, and 2 BlackBerry devices were tested in the first systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of factory resets. Tests used the Cellebrite UME-36 Pro with the UFED Physical Analyzer, the Bulk Extractor open-source tool, and our own programs for extracting metadata, classifying file paths, and comparing them between images. Two phones were subjected to more detailed analysis. Results showed that many kinds of data were removed by the resets, but much user-specific configuration data was left. Android devices did …