Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons^™

High-Bandwidth Iop Sensing Backscatter Transceiver, Mark Manuel

Electrical Engineering

This document describes the design and build of a mobile phone attachment that communicates with an ASIC embedded smart contact lens. The portable device enables patients and clinicians to conveniently and instantaneously measure intraocular pressure (IOP). The device replaces bulky and expensive benchtop RF synthesizer and signal analyzer machines required for communication to the smart contact lens into a portable and convenient device. The transceiver transmits VHF ISM band radio and can capture reflected backscatter On-Off-Keying modulated message signals at bandwidths from DC to 130MHz.

Wind/Hydro Generator Simulator, Michael Timothy Djaja, Christopher James Rotsios

Electrical Engineering

The intention of this project is to make it easier for people without reliable access to electricity to implement their own sources of electrical generation. The ability to simulate different sources of generation allows people in need to find what source of generation will most properly meet their electricity needs. The goal of this project was to provide a wind or water flow profile from any area in the world and output a corresponding amount of power that would be expected from a small-scale wind or hydro generator. Due to difficulties with the microcontroller and incorrect sizing of components, this …

Microgrid Protection Student Laboratory: Human-Machine Interface And Scada Database, Nathan P. Martinez

Electrical Engineering

The electric utility system, a ubiquitous and fundamental component of modern life, has changed more in the last 20 years than the last 100. With more homes and businesses installing distributed energy resources (DERs) such as solar panels, battery storage, and other intermittent sources, massive changes need to take place in the electric transmission and distribution systems. Engineers must develop a new skill set for a modern utility industry. This project summarizes a component for a new laboratory class aimed at power engineering students at Cal Poly which supports the laboratory through the creation of a human-machine interface (HMI) and …

Mgsnn2: A New Eco-Friendly Wide Band Gap Semiconductor, Krystal R. York

Masters Theses

Materials having a wide band gap (above 2 eV) can provide new alternatives for existing light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and other opto-electronic devices. Currently, many such devices are comprised of low-earth-abundant elements, such as gallium and indium, which are harmful to the environment to extract and difficult to recycle. Alternatively, MgSnN2 is an unexplored material comprised of earth abundant elements which benefit from a mature recycling infrastructure. This material has a predicted band gap of 3.43 eV, indicating that it could be a viable substitute for GaN (band gap of 3.4 eV), which is commonly used in LEDs and other device …

Farmbot Trackless Redesign, Cole Thomas, Cailey Kamm, Clayton Alderson, Otto Akerstrom

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

For this project the team PLANT3D worked along with Rory Aronson and FarmBot to generate a cheaper more user-friendly design for the FarmBot Genesis 1.3. Working with Rory and FarmBot, we as a team generated a list of design requirements and engineering specifications for the project. These requirements centered around creating a more accessible FarmBot model for the average person to be able to purchase and set up with ease. Much of this required taking the existing system and eliminating the most common problem areas. These were the track system, built using 1.5 meter aluminum extrusions and the complex interchangeable …

Optimized Insulation And Filter Design Of Rotating Machines Fed By Fast Front Pulses, Mohammed Khalil Hussain

Dissertations

AC rotating machines are exposed to fast front pulses when fed from inverters. This type of excitation produces dielectric stress in the machine’s insulation system that can result in premature deterioration or even failure.

In this dissertation, a non-uniform transmission line model to predict the transient voltage distribution in a machine coil under steep-fronted surge conditions is described and implemented. This model is a function not only of frequency but also of space to represent the variation of electrical parameters in the overhang and slot regions of the coil. These parameters are computed using the finite element method. In order …

Differential Power Analysis In-Practice For Hardware Implementations Of The Keccak Sponge Function, Nathaniel Graff

Master's Theses

The Keccak Sponge Function is the winner of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) competition to develop the Secure Hash Algorithm-3 Standard (SHA-3). Prior work has developed reference implementations of the algorithm and described the structures necessary to harden the algorithm against power analysis attacks which can weaken the cryptographic properties of the hash algorithm. This work demonstrates the architectural changes to the reference implementation necessary to achieve the theoretical side channel-resistant structures, compare their efficiency and performance characteristics after synthesis and place-and-route when implementing them on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), publish the resulting implementations under the …

Adaptation Of Vt-Dbr Lasers For Lidar, Luke Horowitz

Master's Theses

Vernier Tuned Distributed Bragg Reflector (VT-DBR) lasers have had great success in the field of Swept-Source Optical Coherence Tomography (SS-OCT) due to their continuous and nearly 40 nm wavelength tuning range in a single longitudinal mode. Fast sweeps allow for real time imaging with micrometer resolution at a distance of a few centimeters. While this laser has proven quite useful as a medical imaging tool via OCT, it has yet to similarly prove itself for general light detection and ranging (LIDAR) applications due to range limitations that arise from a finite laser coherence length. The goal of this thesis is …

A Modified Multiphase Boost Converter With Reduced Input Current Ripple: Split Inductance And Capacitance Configuration, Zoe M. Hay

Master's Theses

This thesis presents the simulation, design, and hardware implementation of a modified multiphase boost converter. Converter design must consider noise imposed on input and output nodes which connect to and influence the operation of other devices. Excessive noise introduces EMI which can damage sensitive circuits or impede their operation. High ripple current degrades battery lifetime and reduces operating efficiency in connected systems such as PV arrays. Converters with high ripple current also experience greater peak conduction loss and require larger components. A two-phase implementation of a modified boost converter demonstrates the input current filtering benefits of the modified topology with …

Dynamics Simulation And Optimal Control Of A Multiple-Input And Multiple-Output Balancing Cube, Felix K. Haimerl

Master's Theses

This thesis document outlines the development of a multibody dynamics simulation of an actively stabilized multiple-input, multiple-output, coupled, balancing cube and the process of verifying the results by implementing the control algorithm in hardware. A non-linear simulation of the system was created in Simscape and used to develop a Linear Quadratic Gaussian control algorithm. To implement this algorithm in actual hardware, the system was first designed, manufactured, and assembled. The structure of the cube and the reaction wheels were milled from aluminum. DC brushless motors were installed into the mechanical system. In terms of electronics, a processor, orientation sensor, motor …

Online Edge Caching And Wireless Delivery In Fog-Aided Networks, Seyyed Mohammadreza Azimi

Dissertations

Multimedia content is the significant fraction of transferred data over the wireless medium in the modern cellular and wireless communication networks. To improve the quality of experience perceived by users, one promising solution is to push the most popular contents as close as to users, also known as the "edge" of network. Storing content at the edge nodes (ENs) or base stations (BSs) is called "caching". In Fog Radio Access Network (F-RAN), each EN is equipped with a cache as well as a "fronthaul" connection to the content server. Among the new design problems raised by the outlined scenarios, two …

Borehole Communication Via Drill Strings In Oil Wells, Ali Hamdan Alenezi

Dissertations

The performance of multichannel and single channel accelerometers used as uphole communication receivers is studied. Using measured channels from the drill string testbed, it is shown that one tri-axial accelerometer can provide nearly uncorrelated signals when compared to two single channel accelerometers. Having uncorrelated signals at the uphole receiver provides a diversity which in turn can lead to an increase in the communication system performance. The use of a strain sensor as a receiver in borehole communication is proposed. Using measured channels from the drill string testbed, the performance of a strain receiver with a single-accelerometer receiver is compared. The …

Secure Entity Authentication, Zuochao Dou

Dissertations

According to Wikipedia, authentication is the act of confirming the truth of an attribute of a single piece of a datum claimed true by an entity. Specifically, entity authentication is the process by which an agent in a distributed system gains confidence in the identity of a communicating partner (Bellare et al.). Legacy password authentication is still the most popular one, however, it suffers from many limitations, such as hacking through social engineering techniques, dictionary attack or database leak. To address the security concerns in legacy password-based authentication, many new authentication factors are introduced, such as PINs (Personal Identification Numbers) …

From Geographically Dispersed Data Centers Towards Hierarchical Edge Computing, Abbas Kiani

Dissertations

Internet scale data centers are generally dispersed in different geographical regions. While the main goal of deploying the geographically dispersed data centers is to provide redundancy, scalability and high availability, the geographic dispersity provides another opportunity for efficient employment of global resources, e.g., utilizing price-diversity in electricity markets or utilizing locational diversity in renewable power generation. In other words, an efficient approach for geographical load balancing (GLB) across geo-dispersed data centers not only can maximize the utilization of green energy but also can minimize the cost of electricity. However, due to the different costs and disparate environmental impacts of the …

On Distributed Mobile Edge Computing, Xiang Sun

Dissertations

Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) has been proposed to offload the workloads of mobile applications from mobile devices to the cloud in order to not only reduce energy consumption of mobile devices but also accelerate the execution of mobile applications. Owing to the long End-to-End (E2E) delay between mobile devices and the cloud, offloading the workloads of many interactive mobile applications to the cloud may not be suitable. That is, these mobile applications require a huge amount of computing resources to process their workloads as well as a low E2E delay between mobile devices and computing resources, which cannot be satisfied …

Microfluidic Biosensor With Functionalized Gold Nano Particles On Interdigitated Electrodes, Bharath Babu Nunna

Dissertations

The integration of the microfluidics to the biosensor has growing demand with favorable conditions such as reduced processing time and low reagent consumption. The immuno biosensing with the microfluidic platform helped to make the electrochemical biosensing assays portable due to which this sensing mechanism can be easily implemented in point of care devices. The implementation of the biosensing in the microchannels significantly reduces the sample requirement form milli liter (mL) to micro liter (uL), and thus leads to low volume sample requirement during the sensing. The primary factors contributing to the microfluidic biosensors performance are probe immobilization, specific binding and …

Self-Sufficiency Of 3-D Printers: Utilizing Stand-Alone Solar Photovoltaic Power Systems, Khalid Yousuf Khan, Lucia Gauchia, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

A self-replicating rapid prototyper (RepRap) is a type of 3-D printer capable of printing many of its own components in addition to a wide assortment of products from high-value scientific or medical tools to household products and toys. There is some evidence that these printers could provide low-cost distributed manufacturing in underprivileged rural areas. For the most isolated communities without access to the electric grid, a low-cost alternative energy is needed. Solar energy can be harvested through a stand-alone photovoltaic (PV) power system specifically designed to match the needs of the RepRap. The voltage and current requirement for the printer …

Do Nir Spectra Collected From Laboratory-Reared Mosquitoes Differ From Those Collected From Wild Mosquitoes?, Masabho Peter Milali, Maggy T. Sikulu-Lord, Samson Sifael Kiware, Floyd E. Dowell, Richard J. Povinelli, George F. Corliss

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Background

Near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a high throughput technique that measures absorbance of specific wavelengths of light by biological samples and uses this information to classify the age of lab-reared mosquitoes as younger or older than seven days with an average accuracy greater than 80%. For NIRS to estimate ages of wild mosquitoes, a sample of wild mosquitoes with known age in days would be required to train and test the model. Mark-release-recapture is the most reliable method to produce wild-caught mosquitoes of known age in days. However, it is logistically demanding, time inefficient, subject to low recapture rates, …

Fault Identification And Location For Distribution Network With Distributed Generations, Wen Fan, Yuan Liao

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Power distribution networks with distributed generations may experience faults. It is essential to promptly locate the fault for fast repair and restoration. This paper presents a novel method for identifying the faulted section and accurate location of faults that occur on power distribution grid. Appropriate matrices are set up to represent meter locations on the grid and the topology of the grid. The voltage and current measurements obtained are utilized to decide the fault sections. Then fault location is determined by solving equations that link measurements and fault locations through bus impedance matrix. The method is applicable to both single …

Applications Of Complex Network Analysis In Electric Power Systems, Mahmoud Saleh, Yusef Esa, Ahmed Mohamed

Publications and Research

This paper provides a review of the research conducted on complex network analysis (CNA) in electric power systems. Moreover, a new approach is presented to find optimal locations for microgrids (MGs) in electric distribution systems (EDS) utilizing complex network analysis. The optimal placement in this paper points to the location that will result in enhanced grid resilience, reduced power losses and line loading, better voltage stability, and a supply to critical loads during a blackout. The criteria used to point out the optimal placement of the MGs were predicated on the centrality analysis selected from the complex network theory, the …

Performance Evaluation Of Energy-Autonomous Sensors Using Power-Harvesting Beacons For Environmental Monitoring In Internet Of Things (Iot), George Dan Moiş, Teodora Sanislav, Silviu Corneliu Folea, Sherali Zeadally

Information Science Faculty Publications

Environmental conditions and air quality monitoring have become crucial today due to the undeniable changes of the climate and accelerated urbanization. To efficiently monitor environmental parameters such as temperature, humidity, and the levels of pollutants, such as fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the air, and to collect data covering vast geographical areas, the development of cheap energy-autonomous sensors for large scale deployment and fine-grained data acquisition is required. Rapid advances in electronics and communication technologies along with the emergence of paradigms such as Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) and the Internet of Things (IoT) have led to …

An Investigation Of The Cortical Learning Algorithm, Anthony C. Samaritano

Theses and Dissertations

Pattern recognition and machine learning fields have revolutionized countless industries and applications from biometric security to modern industrial assembly lines. The fields continue to accelerate as faster, more efficient processing hardware becomes commercially available. Despite the accelerated growth of the pattern recognition and machine learning fields, computers still are unable to learn, reason, and perform rudimentary tasks that humans and animals find routine. Animals are able to move fluidly, understand their environment, and maximize their chances of survival through adaptation - animals demonstrate intelligence. A primary argument in this thesis that we have not yet achieved a level of intelligence …

Stealth Transmission In Free Space Optical Communication Systems Using Amplified Spontaneous Emission Noise, Youness Ergaibi

Theses and Dissertations

One of the challenging real-world problems in the communication network is to secure the communication system that deals with a large data. Perhaps even a more challenging version of this scenario is when the channel that transmits the information is a wireless media. This thesis introduces a steganography technique to secure the physical layer of the communication system. It enhances the benefits by using optical communication rather than radio frequency (RF) communication, especially in terms of transmitting a large scale of data. This thesis demonstrates that we can transmit secure large information in free space (air) using steganography mechanism and …

The Fabrication Of High-Aspect Ratio Gratings For Talbot Interferometer With Medical Imaging Application., Vikaram Singh

LSU Master's Theses

X-ray Phase contrast-based Talbot interferometer creates high contrast between weak and strong absorbing materials, which makes it effective in imaging soft tissues. However, its performance is bounded by the aspect-ratio, features and symmetry of its gratings. For 40 KeV energy X-rays, the analyzer grating thickness should be 100 µm or more to achieve > 90% absorption in order to obtain high contrast images. Moreover, the smaller period in grating is desired for higher resolution. Therefore, researchers are exploring various fabrication techniques to achieve greater aspect-ratio gratings. Utilizing modern LIGA techniques, the aspect-ratio of gratings can be improved with a simplified …

Perovskite Solar Cells Fabricated Via Scalable Dip Coating Methods, Joseph F. Iannello

Theses and Dissertations

Perovskite solar cells present the possibility for less expensive electricity generation, through the use of low cost materials and fabrication methods relative to current silicon-based technology. Many current methods of fabricating thin film perovskite solar cells focus on spin-coating, which inherently lacks scalability due to particle conglomeration, poor uniformity over a larger area, and safety concerns. Dip-coating, an alternative to spin-coating, which is explored here addresses these issues which limit scalability. Each individual layer can be separately synthesized, deposited, and characterized, which leads towards scalability. Choosing only the best results from each independent layer allowed progress to the creation of …

Analysis Of Nonlinear Graphene Plasmonics Using Surface Integral Equations, Ling Ling Meng, Tian Xia, Xiaoyan Y.Z. Xiong, Li (Lijun) Jun Jiang, Weng Cho Chew

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Graphene plasmonics have attracted significant attention in the past few years due to the remarkable optical and electrical properties of graphene. A highly effective method based on surface integral equations (SIE) in the frequency domain is proposed to describe both linear and nonlinear effects of graphene efficiently and accurately. Graphene, a centrosymmet-ric material, can possess second harmonic generation (SHG) when the conductivity is nonlocal. In this work, the fundamental harmonic (FH) of a graphene wrapped particle is studied as the first benchmark by introducing a conducting surface in SIE. Then it is modified to analyze a graphene-based patch antenna in …

Range Information Characterization Of The Hokuyo Ust-20lx Lidar Sensor, Matthew A. Cooper, John F. Raquet, Rick Patton

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a study on the data measurements that the Hokuyo UST-20LX Laser Rangefinder produces, which compiles into an overall characterization of the LiDAR sensor relative to indoor environments. The range measurements, beam divergence, angular resolution, error effect due to some common painted and wooden surfaces, and the error due to target surface orientation are analyzed. It was shown that using a statistical average of sensor measurements provides a more accurate range measurement. It was also shown that the major source of errors for the Hokuyo UST-20LX sensor was caused by something that will be referred to as “mixed …

Improvement Of 802.11 Protocol On Fully Programmable Wireless Radio, Eunji Lee

Maseeh Summer Undergraduate Research Experience

The growth in the number of connected device usage has led to a rapidly increased data traffic on wireless network and the demand for access to high speed and stable Internet connection is becoming more prominent. However, current off the shelf wireless cards are not programmable or observable across layers of the standard protocol stack, which leads to poor practical performance. Thus, Wireless Open Access Research Platform (WARP), a scalable wireless platform providing programmable functionality at every layer of the network stack, has been used for the real-time implementation and improvement of 802.11 protocol.

An Exploration Of Software Defined Radio And Gnu Radio Companion For Use In Drone-To-Drone Communication, Amanda K. H. Voegtlin

Maseeh Summer Undergraduate Research Experience

In a world that increasingly relies on automation and intelligent robotics, there is a need for drones to expand their independence and adaptability in navigating their environments. One approach to this problem is the use of wireless communication between units in order to coordinate their sensor data and build real-time maps of the environments they are navigating. However, especially indoors, relying on a fixed transmission tower to provide data to the units faces connectivity challenges.

The purpose of this research was to determine the fitness of an on-drone assembly that uses the the NI B200mini software-defined radio board and Gnu …

An Analysis Of Lora Low Power Technology And Its Applications, Gomathy Venkata Krishnan

Maseeh Summer Undergraduate Research Experience

The number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has exponentially increased in the last decade. With the increase in these devices, there is a necessity to effectively connect and control these devices remotely. Cellular technologies cannot handle this demand since they are not cost effective and easy to deploy. This is where LoRa technology comes handy. LoRa is long-range, low-power, low cost technology that supports internet of things applications. LoRa has many advantages in terms of capacity, mobility, battery lifetime and cost. It uses the unlicensed 915MHz ISM band and can be easily deployed.

This research is focused on setting …