Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons^™

On Algebraic Structures And Automaton For Optimal Computer Network Design And Performance Study, Xiangrong Ma

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

For decades, study of computer networks has been concentrated on the use of the well-established OSI or TCP/IP reference models that have found tremendous success in the actual implementation of various network structures and protocols. Lack of theoretical foundation, this implementation-driven, empirical approach, however, is experiencing insurmountable difficulties in delivering, tuning for, and sustaining the promised peak performance of a computer system that is so heavily dependent on the performance of the underline computer networks. This issue is becoming particularly prevalent in today’s cloud-based high-performance computing environment where CPU-time-extensive computation loads need to get distributed among computing machines through high-speed …

A Highly-Sensitive Global-Shutter Cmos Image Sensor With On-Chip Memory For Hundreds Of Kilo-Frames Per Second Scientific Experiments, Konstantinos Moutafis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this work, a highly-sensitive global-shutter CMOS image sensor with on-chip memory that can capture up to 16 frames at speeds higher than 200kfps is presented. The sensor fabricated and tested is a 100 x 100 pixel sensor, and was designed to be expandable to a 1000 x 1000 pixel sensor using the same building blocks and similar architecture.

The heart of the sensor is the pixel. The pixel consists of 11 transistors (11T) and 2 MOSFET capacitors. A 6T front-end is followed by a Correlated Double Sampling (CDS) circuitry that includes 2 capacitors and a reset switch. The 4T …

On Action Quality Assessment, Paritosh Parmar

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this dissertation, we tackle the task of quantifying the quality of actions, i.e., how well an

action was performed using computer vision. Existing methods used human body pose-based features to express the quality contained in an action sample. Human body pose estimation in actions such as sports actions, like diving and gymnastic vault, is particularly challenging, since the athletes undergo convoluted transformations while performing their routines. Moreover, pose-based features do not take into account visual cues such as water splash in diving. Visual cues are taken into account by human judges. In our first work, we show that using …

Neural Network In Hardware, Jiong Si

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation describes the implementation of several neural networks built on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and used to recognize a handwritten digit dataset – the Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology (MNIST) database. A novel hardwarefriendly activation function called the dynamic ReLU (D-ReLU) function is proposed. This activation function can decrease chip area and power of neural networks when compared to traditional activation functions at no cost to prediction accuracy.

The implementations of three neural networks on FPGA are presented: 2-layer online training fully-connected neural network, 3-layer offline training fully-connected neural network, and two solutions of Super-Skinny …

High-Speed Radhard Mega-Pixel Cis Camera For High-Energy Physics, Wenlan Wu

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation describes the schematic design, physical layout implementation, system-level hardware with FPGA firmware design, and testing of a camera-on-a-chip with a novel high-speed CMOS image sensor (CIS) architecture developed for a mega-pixel array. The novel features of the design include an innovative quadruple column-parallel readout (QCPRO) scheme with rolling shutter that increases pixel rate, its ability to program the frame rate and to tolerate Total Ionizing Dose effects (TID). Two versions of the architecture, a small (128 x 1,024 pixels) and large (768 x 1,024 pixels) version were designed and fabricated with a custom layout that does not include …

An Application Of Deep Learning Models To Automate Food Waste Classification, Alejandro Zachary Espinoza

Dissertations and Theses

Food wastage is a problem that affects all demographics and regions of the world. Each year, approximately one-third of food produced for human consumption is thrown away. In an effort to track and reduce food waste in the commercial sector, some companies utilize third party devices which collect data to analyze individual contributions to the global problem. These devices track the type of food wasted (such as vegetables, fruit, boneless chicken, pasta) along with the weight. Some devices also allow the user to leave the food in a kitchen container while it is weighed, so the container weight must also …

An Enhanced Two-Stage Grid-Connected Linear Parameter Varying Photovoltaic System Model For Frequency Support Strategy Evaluation, Colin Levis, Cathal O' Loughlin, Terence O' Donnell, Martin Hill

Electrical & Electronic Engineering

Securing a future sustainable decarbonised economy involves moving towards a system with rising penetration levels of distributed photovoltaics (PVs) within the low voltage distribution network (LVDN). This power system evolution is displacing conventional generators and has resulted in a decline in inertia that is essential for frequency stability. Emerging network codes require PV generators to maintain a scheduled curtailed active power (CAP) reserve for under-frequency contingencies. In this paper, the development, verification and application of an enhanced, two-stage grid-connected, state-space, linear parameter varying (LPV) PV system model is presented. The LPV model provides accurate and efficient modelling for PV systems …

Localized Dielectric Loss Heating In Dielectrophoresis Devices, Tae Joon Kwak, Imtiaz Hossen, Rashid Bashir, Woo-Jin Chang, Chung-Hoon Lee

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Temperature increases during dielectrophoresis (DEP) can affect the response of biological entities, and ignoring the effect can result in misleading analysis. The heating mechanism of a DEP device is typically considered to be the result of Joule heating and is overlooked without an appropriate analysis. Our experiment and analysis indicate that the heating mechanism is due to the dielectric loss (Debye relaxation). A temperature increase between interdigitated electrodes (IDEs) has been measured with an integrated micro temperature sensor between IDEs to be as high as 70 °C at 1.5 MHz with a 30 V_pp applied voltage to our ultra-low …

Founding The Domain Of Ai Forensics, Ibrahim Baggili, Vahid Behzadan

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

With the widespread integration of AI in everyday and critical technologies, it seems inevitable to witness increasing instances of failure in AI systems. In such cases, there arises a need for technical investigations that produce legally acceptable and scientifically indisputable findings and conclusions on the causes of such failures. Inspired by the domain of cyber forensics, this paper introduces the need for the establishment of AI Forensics as a new discipline under AI safety. Furthermore, we propose a taxonomy of the subfields under this discipline, and present a discussion on the foundational challenges that lay ahead of this new research …

A Wideband, Circularly Polarized, Directive Antenna With A Circular Reflector, Tyler J. Mcpherson, Zabed Iqbal, Sungkyun Lim

Electrical & Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

A two-element, patch antenna with a single feed is presented to achieve wideband, circular polarization, and uni-directional radiation. The driven element of the antenna has a rotated, corner-truncated radiating patch to achieve circularly polarized radiation with an offset microstrip feedline in the front side. The back side of the driven element comprises a wide hexagonal slot, eight meander tips, and a parasitic patch in the center. A circular reflector is added behind the driven element to increase realized gain toward the front side direction of the driven element. A prototype of the antenna is fabricated for validation. In both simulation …

Hf Iq Mixer Vfo Temperature Compensation And Drive Level Optimization For Opposite Sideband Suppression, Katlin Anne-Rostomyan Dahn

Dissertations and Theses

An amateur radio 40m band temperature compensated variable frequency oscillator (VFO) with drive-level optimized for opposite sideband suppression for use as the local oscillator (LO) of a high frequency (HF) IQ image reject mixer is considered in this work. The first problem of this thesis was the discovery of the HF IQ mixer's opposite sideband suppression dependence on LO drive-level. As a solution to this problem, the author built a fixed drive-level VFO for the optimal opposite sideband suppression. This then led to the second problem of this thesis; the discovery by this author of the well-known problem of VFO …

Introducing Phonetic Information To Speaker Embedding For Speaker Verification, Yi Liu, Liang He, Michael T. Johnson

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Phonetic information is one of the most essential components of a speech signal, playing an important role for many speech processing tasks. However, it is difficult to integrate phonetic information into speaker verification systems since it occurs primarily at the frame level while speaker characteristics typically reside at the segment level. In deep neural network-based speaker verification, existing methods only apply phonetic information to the frame-wise trained speaker embeddings. To improve this weakness, this paper proposes phonetic adaptation and hybrid multi-task learning and further combines these into c-vector and simplified c-vector architectures. Experiments on National Institute of Standards and Technology …

2019 Fall Engr333 Poster, Megan Black, Evan Block, Jacob Deysher, Zach Erickson, Peter Atma, John Macy, Paul Steenwyk, Justin Skaggs, Justin Eekhoff, Adam Marquardt, Alan Samdel, Nathan Van Wyhe, Zach Ashenfelter, Brett Ermer, Clayton Lockwood, Ryan Schierbeek, Andrew Zerull, Matthew Buist, Hannah Chilkiewicz, Nathan Hall, Holly Straup, Ivy Chipinda, Andrew Huston, Peter Oh, Tony Vander Ploeg, Josh Hallenbeck, Cameron Ilbrink, Bridget Pertzsch, Lillie Spackman, Zuber Abdella, Michael Merz, Nathan Schuten, Abigail Willson, William Benneh, Marcus Gelder, Steven Vanast, Tyler Johnson, Christopher Pappageorge, Trevor Sando

ENGR 333

Energy efficiency can be a worthy goal for institutions and individuals; reducing energy consumption decreases demand for fossil fuels and consumes energy more sustainably. However, more cost-effective devices can lead to behavioral changes that ultimately increase energy consumption, even though the devices themselves are more energy efficient: This called the rebound effect. Rebound occurs when less energy is saved than expected. This can be a result of several factors: increased use of the device drawing more energy, manufacturers using more energy to create the new device, or money saved by the users being re-spent in the economy. The combination of …

Amodal Instance Segmentation And Multi-Object Tracking With Deep Pixel Embedding, Yanfeng Liu

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

This thesis extends upon the representational output of semantic instance segmentation by explicitly including both visible and occluded parts. A fully convolutional network is trained to produce consistent pixel-level embedding across two layers such that, when clustered, the results convey the full spatial extent and depth ordering of each instance. Results demonstrate that the network can accurately estimate complete masks in the presence of occlusion and outperform leading top-down bounding-box approaches.

The model is further extended to produce consistent pixel-level embeddings across two consecutive image frames from a video to simultaneously perform amodal instance segmentation and multi-object tracking. No post-processing …

Optimal Allocation Of Energy Storage And Wind Generation In Power Distribution Systems, Carlos Mendoza

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

The advent of energy storage technologies applications for the electric power system gives new tools for planners to cope with the operation challenges that come from the integration of renewable generation in medium voltage networks. This work proposes and implements an optimization model for Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) and distributed generation allocation in radial distribution networks. The formulation aims to assist distribution system operators in the task of making decisions on energy storage investment, BESSs' operation, and distributed generation penetration's level to minimize electricity costs. The BESSs are required to participate in energy arbitrage and voltage control. In addition, …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Fall 2019, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge. The senior design competition helps focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects on …

2019 Fall Engr333 Seminar Presentation, Ivy Chipinda, Andrew Huston, Adam Marquardt, Lillie Spackman

ENGR 333

File for student presentation, given by students in the Fall 2019 class of ENGR333.

Aluminum/Carbon Composites Materials Fabricated By The Powder Metallurgy Process, Amélie Veillère, Hiroki Kurita, Akira Kawasaki, Yongfeng Lu, Jean-Marc Heintz, Jean-François Silvain

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Aluminum matrix composites reinforced with carbon fibers or diamond particles have been fabricated by a powder metallurgy process and characterized for thermal management applications. Al/C composite is a nonreactive system (absence of chemical reaction between the metallic matrix and the ceramic reinforcement) due to the presence of an alumina layer on the surface of the aluminum powder particles. In order to achieve fully dense materials and to enhance the thermo-mechanical properties of the Al/C composite materials, a semi-liquid method has been carried out with the addition of a small amount of Al-Si alloys in the Al matrix. Thermal conductivity and …

Sensor Emulation With Physiolocal Data In Immersive Virtual Reality Driving Simulator, Jungsu Pak, Oliver Mathias, Ariane Guirguis, Uri Maoz

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Can we enhance the safety and comfort of AVs by training AVs with physiological data of human drivers? We will train and compare AV algorithm with/without physiological data.

Image Restoration Using Automatic Damaged Regions Detection And Machine Learning-Based Inpainting Technique, Chloe Martin-King

Computational and Data Sciences (PhD) Dissertations

In this dissertation we propose two novel image restoration schemes. The first pertains to automatic detection of damaged regions in old photographs and digital images of cracked paintings. In cases when inpainting mask generation cannot be completely automatic, our detection algorithm facilitates precise mask creation, particularly useful for images containing damage that is tedious to annotate or difficult to geometrically define. The main contribution of this dissertation is the development and utilization of a new inpainting technique, region hiding, to repair a single image by training a convolutional neural network on various transformations of that image. Region hiding is also …

The Trolley Problem In Virtual Reality, Jungsu Pak, Ariane Guirguis, Nicholas Mirchandani, Scott Cummings, Uri Maoz

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Would people react to the Trolley problem differently based on the medium? Immersive Virtual Reality Driving Simulator was used to examine participants respond to the trolley problem in a realistic and controlled simulated environment.

A New Synthesized Microalloys Steel Ods Of High Amplitude Ultrasonically Irradiation, Marzuki Silalahi, Hanif Abdurrahman Wicaksana, Ferhat Aziz, Syahfandi Ahda, Mohamad Riza Iskandar

Makara Journal of Technology

Micropowders of oxide-dispersion-strengthened (ODS) steel have been synthesized using the ultrasonic irradiation method with variations in amplitude. The ultrasonic irradiation process is performed for 50 h at a frequency of 20 kHz with 40%, 50%, and 60% amplitudes in toluene solution. The formation of Fe-Cr microalloys in the preparation of Fe- 15Cr-0.5Y2O3 powder was analyzed using SEM-EDS, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and TEM-EDS. The percentage of Fe- Cr phase mass fraction of ODS steel micropowder formed during ultrasonic irradiation with 40%:50%:60% amplitude was 12.2%:34.1%:22.1%, with 25.67:77.02:38.51 nm crystallite size. The crystallite size at 50% amplitude was the largest, and the diffusion …

The Challenges Facing Autonomous Vehicles And The Progress In Addressing Them, Garrett Johnson

Senior Honors Theses

Autonomous vehicles are an emerging technology that faces challenges, both technical and socioeconomic. This paper first addresses specific technical challenges, such as parsing visual data, communicating with other entities, and making decisions based on environmental knowledge. The technical challenges are to be addressed by the fields of image processing, Vehicle to Everything Communication (V2X), and decision-making systems. Non-technical challenges such as ethical decision making, social acceptance, and economic pushback are also discussed. Ethical decision making is discussed in the framework of deontology vs utilitarianism, while social acceptance of utilitarian autonomous vehicles is also investigated. Last, the likely economic impact is …

Comprehensive Inspection On The Experimental Ferritic Stainless Steel By Means Of Transmission Electron Microscopy And Neutron Diffraction Techniques, Parikin Parikin, Mohammad Dani, Riza Iskandar, Aziz Khan Jahja, Andon Insani, Joachim Mayer

Makara Journal of Technology

The field of physical metallurgy is one of the primary beacons that guide alloy developments for multipurpose materials such as the in-core structure materials for pressure vessel components and heat exchangers. The surface microstructure of new ferritic steel with significant local constituent materials was characterized by high resolution powder neutron diffractometer (HRPD) and transmission electron microscope (TEM), combined with the energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). The alloy contains73% Fe, 24% Cr, 2% Si, 0.8% Mn, and 0.1% Ni, in %wt. The charge materials were melted by the casting techniques. The neutron diffractograms obtained shows five dominant diffraction peaks at (110), …

Study On Antibacterial Of Chitosan/Hydroxyapatite Doped Magnesium Composite As A Material For Bone Graft Applications, Andromeda Dwi Laksono, Teodoro A. Amatosa, Jr., Hilda Pebrianti Octaviana Sitorus, Wentika Putri Kusuma Asih, Sulistijono Sulistijono

Makara Journal of Technology

Hydroxyapatite (HAp) is one of the constituent minerals of bone and teeth, that has been widely used for synthesizing bone graft. Due to the limitation on properties of the hydroxyapatite, it is doping with Magnesium (HAp-Mg). The addition of Chitosan (Chi) was expected to improve the antibacterial properties of HAp-Mg. The present research aims to study the influence of Chitosan with 0, 5, 15, and 25 wt% addition on biocompatibility properties of Chi/HAp-Mg composite. HAp-Mg was synthesized using the sol-gel method; meanwhile, Chi/HAp-Mg composite was manufactured by mixing Chitosan in acetic acid, and HAp-Mg was added into the mixture. The …

Evaluation Of Primal-Dual Splitting Algorithm For Mri Reconstruction Using Spatio-Temporal Structure Tensor And L1-2 Norm, Mia Rizkinia, Masahiro Okuda

Makara Journal of Technology

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an essential medical imaging technique which is widely used for medical research and diagnosis. Dynamic MRI provides the observed object visualization through time and results in a spatiotemporal signal. The image sequences often contain redundant information in both spatial and temporal domains. To utilize this characteristic, we propose a spatio-temporal reconstruction approach based on compressive sensing theory. We apply spatio-temporal structure tensor using nuclear norm, in addition to the wavelet sparsity regularization. The spatio-temporal structure tensor is a matrix that consists of gradient components of the MRI data w.r.t the spatial and temporal domains. For …

Influence Of Nh4f In Dextran Based Biopolymer Electrolytes: Conductivity And Electrical Analysis, Muhamad Hafiz Hamsan, Mohd Fakhrul Zamani Kadir, Shujahadeen Bakar Aziz, Muhammad Amirul Solihin Azha, Saifful Kamaluddin Muzakir

Makara Journal of Technology

Dextran polymer host was doped with different concentrations of ammonium fluoride (NH4F) via casting technique. In this present work, dextran-NH4F film has been employed to investigate the ionic conductivity using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy from 50 to 5 MHz. The highest room temperature conductivity is achieved at (2.33 ± 0.76) × 10-3 S cm-1 with 40 wt.% NH4F. The electrolyte is found to obey Arrhenius rule at high temperature with activation energy of 0.21 eV. Dielectric analysis has been performed to obtain better understanding on the conductivity pattern. The dielectric parameters e.g. ɛreal, ɛimag, Mreal, and Mimag have been tested as …

Acute Toxicitystudy Of Choline Based Ionic Liquids Towards Danio Rerio Fish And The Aggregation Behavior Of Their Binary Mixtures, Mansoor Ul Hassan Shah, Nasruddin Nasruddin, Suzana Bt Yusup, Muhammad Moniruzzaman

Makara Journal of Technology

Marine oil spills are effectively controlled by chemical dispersants. However, the toxicity associated with it reduce its employment in marine environment. To overcome this limitation, the acute toxicity of choline based ionic liquids was evaluated as a potential low toxic variant for oil spill remediation. Further, the aggregation behavior of the individual as well as their binary mixtures was also evaluated by employing tensiometry technique. The half-lethal concentration, LC50on zebrafish (Danio rerio) of three choline based ionic liquids showed that the studied ionic liquids (ILs) fall in the range of “practically nontoxic” ( 100-1000 mg L-1).Various micellar properties showed that …

Neutron Diffraction Study Of Multiferroic 0.6nife2o4/0.4batio3 Composite, Engkir Sukirman, Yosef Sarwanto, Syahfandi Ahda, Andon Insani

Makara Journal of Technology

Neutron diffraction study on the 0.6NiFe2O4/0.4BaTiO3 multiferroic composite has been carried out. The 0.6NiFe2O4/0.4BaTiO3 multiferroic composites have been synthesized by solid reaction method. In this study, 20 g of BaTiO3 (BTO) and 20 g of NiFe2O4 (NFO) compounds were prepared from the powder raw materials of BaO3 and TiO2 for BTO, and NiO and Fe2O3 for NFO. Furthermore, both BTO and NFO were each crushed for 5 hours using High Energy Milling (HEM). Then the BTO and NFO were calcined in the furnace at 950 °C/5 hours and 900 °C/5 hours, respectively. Both NFO and BTO precursors were manually mixed …

Load Flow Analysis Of 138/69kv Substation Using Electrical Transient & Analysis Program (Etap), Vanessa Abadia Gomez

Electrical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper examines the load flow analysis of a high-voltage substation using ETAP, and explores options for improving the voltage profile of the system. This study yields critical information about the system, such as the voltage drop at each feeder, the voltage at each bus, as well as real and reactive power losses at the different branches and feeders. In this power flow examination, the system’s performance is evaluated for different operating conditions, so that control measurements can be applied if necessary. The experimental results are used for proposing a plan of using fixed and switched shunt capacitor banks to …