Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons^™

Power System State Estimation And Renewable Energy Optimization In Smart Grids, Peng Yang

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

The future smart grid will benefit from real-time monitoring, automated outage management, increased renewable energy penetration, and enhanced consumer involvement. Among the many research areas related to smart grids, this dissertation will focus on two important topics: power system state estimation using phasor measurement units (PMUs), and optimization for renewable energy integration.

In the first topic, we consider power system state estimation using PMUs, when phase angle mismatch exists in the measurements. In particular, we build a measurement model that takes into account the measurement phase angle mismatch. We then propose algorithms to increase state estimation accuracy by taking into …

Thermo-Electric Generator Evaluation Board, Jeanette Brooks, Cody Sullivan, Adrian Rothenbuhler

College of Engineering Presentations

Thermoelectric generators (TEGs) are solid-state devices that convert temperature gradients into electrical energy. TEGs are desirable sources of energy as they require low maintenance and have high reliability with potential for use in low power and remote applications. To date, no simple and affordable, common test platform for evaluating the performance of TEGs in their associated environment exists. This project is aimed at providing such a platform to deliver performance data that is crucial in power budgeting and viability studies of TEG-powered applications. The design utilizes the common LTC3109 converter chip and an off-the-shelf micro-controller for temperature and load current …

Low-Current Sensing Circuit And Topology For Portable Gamma Radiation Sensor, M. S. Ailavajhala, M. R. Latif, M. Mitkova

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A sensing circuit is presented for a portable/handheld semiconductor based radiation sensor, which senses low current changes without the inclusion of transistor noise issues. This circuit design block was implemented using supporting circuit architectures to enable sensing between 33pA to 1nA using low voltages. Additionally, a unique circuit topology is presented by which the effect of radiation damage to the silicon substrate and any devices on the substrate is reduced.

Ion Beam Effect On Ge-Se Chalcogenide Glass Films: Non-Volatile Memory Array Formation, Structural Changes And Device Performance, M. R. Latif, T. L. Nichol, M. Mitkova, D. A. Tenne, I. Csarnovics, S. Kokenyesi, A. Csik

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this work a scheme for fabricating a conductive bridge non-volatile memory arrays, using ion bombardment through a mask, is demonstrated. Blanket films and devices have been created to study the structural changes, surface roughness and device performance. Ar⁺ ions interaction on thin films of Ge_xSe_1−x system have been studied using Raman Spectroscopy, Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDS). The performance of the memory devices has been analyzed based on the formation of vias and damage accumulation due to Ar⁺ ion interactions with Ge_xSe_1−x(x=0.25, 0.3 and 0.4) …

Impedance Extraction By Matlab/Simulink And Labview/Multisim, Jen-Pin Lin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the techniques of small-signal impedance measurement in three-phase power systems. Stability issue has become critically important since power electronics are highly applied in power distribution and conversion systems. Controlled output systems cause the risk of instability. In order to obtain the impedance model, an impedance extraction in D-Q reference frame algorithm is developed. This paper also applied Interpolated Fast Fourier Transform to increase accuracy of impedance model. Based on the voltage injection, Phase-Locked Loop, Park Transform, D-Q reference frame, and IPFFT. Three-phase system has been realigned on D-Q coordinate and impedance model is extracted in this form. …

Near Coastal Winds For Everyone: Targeting Near Coastal Regions For Special Wind Retrieval Processing, Forrest Minor, Dr. David Long

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Microwave scatterometers, which use radar backscatter measurements from satellites to infer wind vectors near the ocean’s surface, have the ability to monitor global wind speeds at high resolutions. Such data is used for weather forecasting and climate research. However, scatterometer observations over the ocean can be contaminated by land proximity. Consequently, current methods do not use measurements within 30 km of the coast (about 10.6 million square kilometers worldwide) in the data set. This unused data can be utilized by a recently developed algorithm that can measure winds as close as 5 km to the coast (Owen and Long, 2009). …

Quantitation Of Molecular Interactions Based On The Avidin-Biotin Complex By Dielectric Spectroscopy, Stephen Wood, Dr. Brian Mazzeo

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The interaction of proteins with other molecules is a common phenomenon that is relevant to various disciplines such as medicine and material science. There are several aspects regarding these molecular interactions that can be researched with one of several measurement techniques. Dielectric spectroscopy is an inexpensive and non-invasive technique used to probe the electrical properties of materials. It was developed in the early twentieth century as a method to measure the change in the dielectric constant of a material in response to changes in frequency. The change or relaxation in the dielectric constant as a function of frequency allows for …

Mediator-Less Immunodetection With Voltage-Controlled Intrinsic Amplification For Ultrasensitive And Rapid Detection Of Microorganism Pathogens, Jiapeng Wang, Yan Xu, Siu-Tung Yau

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

A mediator-less immunodetection method for microorganisms is realized by incorporating the newly developed field-effect enzymatic detection (FEED) technique with the conventional electrochemical immunosensing approach. The gating voltage of FEED facilitates the transduction of electrical signal through the bulky immune complex so that the detection does not rely on the use of mediators or other diffusional substances. The voltage-controlled intrinsic amplification provided by the detection system allows detection in low-concentration samples without target pre-enrichment, leading to ultrasensitive and rapid detection. The detection approach is demonstrated with E. coliO157:H7, a model microorganism, in milk with an estimated detection limit of 20 CFU …

Financial Appraisal Of A Small Scale Wind Turbine With A Case Study In Ireland, Tony Kealy

Articles

This research seeks to evaluate the economic benefits to be gained by installing a small-scale wind turbine for a customer with a three-phase electrical supply requirement. The evidence for the claims made in this paper is obtained by using actual data obtained from the installed equipment over a three year period. The objective is to accurately appraise the financial investment using real data. There appears to be limited studies conducted into this type of research, possibly because the renewable energy sector is in the infancy stage in the host country, Ireland. There are some wind energy installations with financial appraisal …

A Technical Assessment Of Aperture-Coupled Antenna Technology, Justin T. Obenchain

Senior Honors Theses

Aperture coupling refers to a method of construction for patch antennas, which are specific types of microstrip antennas. These antennas are used in a variety of applications including cellular telephones, military radios, and other communications devices.

The purpose of this thesis is to assess the benefits and drawbacks of aperture-coupled antenna technology. To develop a successful analysis of the patch antenna construction technique known as aperture coupling, this assessment begins by examining basic antenna theory and patch antenna design. After uncovering some of the fundamental principles that govern aperture-coupled antenna technology, a hypothesis is created and assessed based on the …

Smart Home Node For Local Wireless Applications, Lalith Narasimhan

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

This research investigated the possibility of implementing a multifrequency and multiprotocol wire-less smart home node by using Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) and the open-source GNU Radio platform. Such an implementation could provide a high level of interoperability between various devices leading to a higher level of flexibility and easier implementation of current and future smart home standards and protocols.

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

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

Introduction

Nowadays, computational intelligence has been applied to transform human behavior and experience into mathematical representations that can be interpreted by computer programs. The development of intelligent control systems and intelligent decision support systems (IDSS) (Fig. 1) are part of this trend. Moreover, Partial reconfiguration allows some regions of the FPGA to be dynamically reconfigured while other tasks are still running in the remainder of the device. A hardware accelerator was developed for a fuzzy automaton-based decision support system in the context of testing eye-hand coordination skills for handicapped children. A Zynq-7000 FPGA platform (Fig. 3) was used for this …

Removing Interference From Above Ground Reflectors In Ground Penetrating Radar Data, Vincent Krause

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

This poster considers the background and approach to removing interference from above ground reflectors in ground penetrating radar data.

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, …

The Circuit, Spring 2014, Department Of Electrical And Computer Engineering, Michigan Technological University

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Newsletters

Table of Contents:

• Department News
• Research News
• Alumni Spotlight
• Faculty News
• 2013 Highlights

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 …

Led Array Design To Simulate Solar Radiation For Indoor Testing Of Solar Cells, Brent Dube

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

Solar Cell testing is vital to the development of new technologies. However, the sun's radiation is inconsistent over time of day and season. Therefore, a reliable source of light energy is necessary for consistent and accurate testing

Multiframe Adaptive Wiener Filter Super-Resolution With Jpeg2000-Compressed Images, Barath Narayanan Narayanan, Russell C. Hardie, Eric J. Balster

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Historically, Joint Photographic Experts Group 2000 (JPEG2000) image compression and multiframe super-resolution (SR) image processing techniques have evolved separately. In this paper, we propose and compare novel processing architectures for applying multiframe SR with JPEG2000 compression. We propose a modified adaptive Wiener filter (AWF) SR method and study its performance as JPEG2000 is incorporated in different ways. In particular, we perform compression prior to SR and compare this to compression after SR. We also compare both independent-frame compression and difference-frame compression approaches. We find that some of the SR artifacts that result from compression can be reduced by decreasing the …

Integrated Dc-Dc Boost Converters Using Cmos Silicon On Sapphire Technology, Imaduddin Mohammad

Open Access Theses

With the recent advancements in semiconductor manufacturing towards smaller, faster and more efficient microelectronic systems, the problems of increasing leakage current and reduced breakdown voltage in bulk-CMOS transistors have become substantial in the sub-100-nanometer era. The Peregrine UltraCMOS Silicon-on-Sapphire (SOS) technology that uses highly-insulating sapphire substrate as insulator was introduced to meet the continually growing need for higher performance RF products. The electrically isolated circuit elements in the UltraCMOS technology lead to increased switching speeds and lower power consumption due to reduced junction and parasitic capacitances. Furthermore, the growing need for high-speed switching applications such as boosting a lower voltage …

Engine Control Unit Tuning Module Test System, Efren Alonzo Cabebe Jr.

Computer Engineering

A test system has been developed to provide quality assurance and functional testing for soon-to-be mass produced engine tuning modules. The system is comprised of two halves: the front-end graphical user interface and back-end microcontroller platform. The use of the interface is intuitive in starting tests and reporting the status of completed tests. The back-end microcontroller platform performs the physical tests. Two high precision analog-to-digital converters and two digital-to-analog converters provide the inputs to and receive the outputs from the module, with another pulse-width-modulated pin tied to the tachometer input. Alongside the test system infrastructure, a simple suite of tests …

Measuring Political Brand Equity In Ireland, Ewan Alexander Mcdonald, Roger Sherlock, John Hogan Dr

Articles

Measuring Political Brand Equity in the Republic of Ireland

This paper will apply cognitive mapping techniques to understand the manner in which political brand equity is formed and distributed amongst the four largest Irish political parties from the perspective of citizens. It assesses the fundamental aspects of branding and brand equity in the marketing and political marketing literatures and offers and overview of the market in question – the Irish political environment. Primary data was generated through the participation of 232 citizens in the political brand elicitation stage and a further 75 citizens were involved in the construction of the …

Microfiber Coupler Based Label-Free Immunosensor, Lin Bo, Christy Charlton O'Mahony, Yuliya Semenova, Niamh Gilmartin, Pengfei Wang, Gerald Farrell

Articles

Optical microfibers and related structures which incorporate large evanescent field and minimal size offer new opportunities for biosensing applications. In this paper we report the development of an immunosensor based on a tapered microfiber coupler embedded in a low refractive index polymer. Biomolecules adsorbed on the microfiber coupler surface modify the surrounding refractive index. By immobilizing antigens on the surface of the sensing area, the microfiber coupler was able to operate as a label-free immunosensor to detect specific antibodies. We experimentally demonstrated for the first time the sensing ability of this sensor using a fibrinogen antigen-antibody pair. By monitoring the …

Colormap Development For Night Vision From Synthetic Imagery, H. A. Qadir, Samuel Peter Kozaitis

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

We presented a method for colorizing fused imagery using a synthetic image as the color source. Imagery acquired at night from two sensors with different spectral bands were fused into a single image. We used a color transfer method based on a look-up table approach to change the false color appearance of the fused image to a natural appearance. Because the resulting multiband fused image is highly dependent on the colors is a reference image, we generated a synthetic reference image. We showed that this approach could lead to more realistic color representation for images acquired in dark environments.

Using Evolutionary Programming To Increase The Accuracy Of An Ensemble Model For Energy Forecasting, James Gramz

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Natural gas companies are always trying to increase the accuracy of their forecasts. We introduce evolutionary programming as an approach to forecast natural gas demand more accurately. The created Evolutionary Programming Engine and Evolutionary Programming Ensemble Model use the current GasDay models, along with weather and historical ow to create an overall forecast for the amount of natural gas a company will need to supply to their customers on a given day. The existing ensemble model uses the GasDay component models and then tunes their individual forecasts and combines them to create an overall forecast. The inputs into the Evolutionary …

Blending As A Multi-Horizon Time Series Forecasting Tool, Tian Gao

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Every day, millions of cubic feet of natural gas is transported through interstate pipelines and consumed by customers all over the United States of America. Gas distributors, responsible for sending natural gas to individual customers, are eager for an estimate of how much natural gas will be used in the near future. GasHour software, a reliable forecasting tool from the Marquette University GasDay lab, has been providing highly accurate hourly forecasts over the past few years. Our goal is to improve current GasHour forecasts, and my thesis presents an approach to achieve that using a blending technique. This thesis includes …

Analysis Of Power Converter's Control Techniques In Grid-Tie And Ac Micro/Smart Grid, Abdulgafor Mohammed Alfares

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Power converters have an outstanding potential in micro and smart grid applications that require flexible and fast power control as well as rigid voltage regulation at the point of common coupling. Power converters are required to properly operate under several modes of operation such as grid-tie and micro-grid modes of operations. In addition, the control system should be designed to enable proper load sharing between several units. Several control techniques have been proposed in the literature to address most of the control requirements of the power converters under different operating modes mentioned above. However, references found in the literatures are …

Effect Of Image Capture Devices On The Accuracy Of Black-Box Printer Models, Jae Sung Youn

Open Access Theses

In the process of electrophotograpic (EP) printing, the deposition of toner to the printer-addressable pixel is greatly influenced by the neighboring pixels of the digital halftone. To account for these effects, printer models can either be embedded in the halftoning algorithm, or used to predict the printed halftone image at the input to an algorithm being used to assess print quality. Most recently, a series of six new models were developed to accurately account for local neighborhood effects and the influence of a 45 × 45 neighborhood of pixels on the central printer-addressable pixel. All these models are referred to …

Properties Of Ambiguity Functions, John Mulcahy-Stanislawczyk

Open Access Theses

The use of ambiguity functions in radar signal design and analysis is very common. Understanding the various properties and meanings of ambiguity functions allow a signal designer to understand the time delay and doppler shift properties of a given signal. Through the years, several different versions of the ambiguity function have been used.

Each of these functions essentially have the same physical meaning; however, the use of different functions makes it difficult to be sure that certain properties hold for different formulations. This work proves several parallel properties of two versions of the asymmetric ambiguity function, the symmetric ambiguity function, …

Comparison Of A Sierpinski Gasket Monopole Antenna To Bow-Tie Antennas Based Off The Fractal Iterative Shapes, Kyle Nathan Murg

Open Access Theses

Antennas are an integral part of mobile devices. Recently, the demand for smaller phones has increased requiring smaller components within the device. This leads to problems with performance and limitations of RF systems within mobile devices including antennas which have been affected by the size thus affected frequency output. In this thesis, fractal theory will be utilized to compare the performance of the Sierpinski Gasket Monopole antenna to single band antennas to see if this is a viable substitute in mobile applications. By utilizing simulations and physical antennas, the performance will be observed at each frequency band and compared.

Computer Modeling And Simulation Of Implantable Medical Device Heating Due To Mri Gradient Coil Fields, Bryan David Stem

Open Access Theses

For patients with implantable medical devices, the ability to safely undergo MRI scanning is critical to ensuring the highest standard of care. The gradient coils of an MRI generate kilohertz frequency, time varying magnetic fields. These magnetic fields induce a voltage on the external case of metallic, implantable medical devices through electromagnetic induction. Since the magnetic field generated by a gradient coil is time varying, the induced voltage results in the flow of eddy currents which can cause heating effects. These heating effects have been successfully modeled using ANSYS Maxwell and ANSYS Mechanical software packages.

The multi-physics simulation and solution …