Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons^™

Small Signal Stability Analysis Of Virtual Impedance Control In Islanded Microgrid, Oroghene Oboreh-Snapps, Kartikeya J.P. Veeramraju, Arnold Fernandes, Alvaro Cardoza, Angshuman Sharma, Jonathan Saelens, Jonathan W. Kimball

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper examines the impact of virtual impedance control in an inverter-dominated microgrid (MG) system. the goal is to provide a clear understanding of Virtual Impedance (VI) control toward MG stability. This analysis is performed by developing the system's Small-Signal Model (SSM) and studying the poles' trajectory change when the system's key control parameters are varied. the results indicate that VI will benefit system stability when considering MG with low X/R while negatively affecting MG with high X/R. Also, there is a trade-off between the coupling impedance of the inverter and the VI parameters, which needs to be considered when …

Modeling, Simulation, And Hardware Testing Of A Noise-Canceller Adc Architecture, Ethan R. Rando

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs) are essential elements of most complex electronic devices. ADCs allow for an analog signal to be converted into the digital domain, and thus interpreted by a digital circuit or model. While ADCs are extremely common, they are not immune from common tradeoffs when being designed and implemented. The most prominent tradeoff when selecting or designing an ADC is whether to pursue a high conversion rate or a high resolution on the digital output. There are some ADC designs that allow for relatively high resolution while maintaining a respectable conversion rate, however these designs often come at the …

Furniture Mover, Zachariah Burkhardt, Gary Mucciarone, Gino Mucciarone, Juan Soto, David Kotyk

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The movement of furniture is an often overlooked pain point for physically-challenged individuals, especially when rearranging furniture in a room. These individuals may try to minimize the risk of tip-over or strain-related injuries by seeking assistance from others. Still, some individuals are limited in finding volunteers forthcoming and capable of helping. This can lead to a dilemma of either being able to find individuals willing to assist in the process or risking one’s own personal safety when moving furniture. The proposed design project implements the use of multiple, independent platforms with mecanum wheels placed underneath each corner of a piece …

Botsitter, Maria Hatzis, Gregory Blondheim Jr., Marian Bonto, Brett Jacobsen

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

As society progresses into an era where both parents work, whether it is online or in person, children in the home may be put in dangerous situations if they are not given the attention they need. The BotSitter is an automated system that follows the child around and makes an audio alarm to alert both the child and the nearby guardian. Using RSSI trilateration, predetermined danger areas, and embedded controls, the BotSitter will be able to follow the child. The device can manage to keep track of the child for the guardian while being almost completely automated outside of setup.

Motion Sensors And Instrumentation Based On Electrochemical Redox Reaction, Xiaoce Feng

Wayne State University Dissertations

To detect human body vital physiological signals, an electrochemical wearable sensor and a single-mode artificial mechanoreceptor have been developed and their capabilities to detect cardiorespiratory signals, as well as to detect rapid adaptive and slow adaptive responses have been preliminarily demonstrated. The electrochemical method based on I-/I3- redox couple proves to be a sensitive transduction mechanism. Furthermore, a common gate transimpedance amplifier based on gallium nitride high electron mobility transistor for the mechano-acoustic sensor and the wearable mechanoreceptor was developed. The transistor’s performance at high temperatures has been investigated, and its failure mode at high temperature has been discussed.

Gas Sensor Development For Environmental And Soil Monitoring, Xiaoyu Chen

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation introduces the development of 3 type of gas sensors for different applications.Chapter 2 reports a simple but effective methane sensor based on off-the-shelf quartz tuning forks (QTFs). It has been experimentally demonstrated that the presence of methane increases the resonant frequency of a single QTF with a sensitivity of 0.0063 Hz/1% or 0.19 ppm/1% and a detection limit of 0.025% at 0.5 Hz sampling rate. For the differential device with 2 QTFs, the values reach to 0.0050 Hz/1% and <0.0386% at 0.25 Hz sampling rate. An excellent selectivity to carbon dioxide, which causes a decrease of the resonant frequency, has been illustrated. Temperature, pressure and humidity responses have been characterized. This new methane sensor is expected to meet the requirements of cost, power, size, reliability and explosion permissibility for coal mine safety applications. Chapter 3 illustrates an in-situ soil probe prototype development for Arctic area underground greenhouse monitoring utilizing commercially available CO2 sensors. Several single and double measurement site prototypes indoor and outdoor test results show the reliability and robustness. These prototypes are ready for real field test to provide long-term Arctic soil information in harsh environments. Chapter 4 uses a simple, surfactant-free solvothermal method to synthesize spherical Pt−Ni NPs which was coated onto a planar electrochemical sensor device as the electrode material. With BmpyNTf2 as the electrolyte, O2 and H2 sensing reaction were investigated. The sensor exhibited a high sensitivity to O2 ((3.04 ± 0.18) × 10−5 mA cm−2 ppm−1) compared to commercial Pt/C-based sensor ((2.57 ± 0.22) × 10−5 mA cm−2 ppm−1), and H2 sensitivity for (0.331 ± 0.014) × 10−4 mA cm−2 ppm−1. Other feature such as rapid gas response, high selectivity and superior reproducibility were also demonstrated.

High-Power, High-Efficiency, High-Power-Density, Non-Isolated Dc-Dc Converter For Fuel Cell Vehicles, Nima Abdolmaleki

Wayne State University Dissertations

This work proposes various solutions for performance, efficiency, and power density improvements of high-power interleaved boost converters (IBCs) in electrified powertrains, namely, use of SiC, LCIs, improved controller, and soft-switching. A relationship was developed for the output current calculation of an n-phase interleaved boost converter (IBC) and output DC link capacitance sizing. The semiconductor losses and efficiency in an n-phase SiC-based IBC were calculated and analyzed. The trade-off in design of an n-phase SIBC with regards to passive components requirements and sizing, passive components volume, losses, and efficiency were analytically investigated from different aspects. An n-phase SIBC was simulated at …

The Role Of Soc In Ensuring The Security Of Iot Devices: A Review Of Current Challenges And Future Directions, Hajar Bennouri, Abdiaziz Abdi, Iqbal Hossain, Alexandre Pujol

Conference papers

The growing popularity and deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has led to serious security concerns. The integration of a security operations center (SOC) becomes increasingly important in this situation to ensure the security of IoT devices. In this article, we will present a summary of IoT device security issues, their vulnerabilities, a review of current challenges to keep these devices secure, and discuss the role that SOC can bring in protecting IoT devices while considering the challenges encountered and the directions to consider when implementing a reliable SOC for IoT monitoring.

Detection Of Pause In A Pedestrian’S Movement On A Linear Walkway Using Bluetooth Low Energy Received Signal Strength Indicator, Mayank Parmar, Paula Kelly, Damon Berry

Conference papers

In recent years, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has amassed significant attention in several applications. Its potential, however, remains largely unexplored for understanding pedestrian behaviour. This study focuses on investigating the potential of BLE in identifying pedestrian activity in an outdoor linear walkway. We specifically examine the likelihood of detecting pauses in the movement of pedestrians on a linear walkway using the strength of the signals obtained from a BLE device carried by the pedestrian. To accomplish this, a volunteer pedestrian intentionally pauses at selected points on the chosen walkway for varying predetermined intervals. The obtained data was conditioned using a …

Capturing The Behaviour Of Volunteer Pedestrians In A Newly-Developed University Campus Using A Distributed Array Of Bluetooth Low Energy Devices, Ahlam Al Anbouri, Mayank Parmar, David Powell, Paula Kelly, Niall Holmes Dr., Damon Berry, Lorraine D'Arcy

Conference papers

Contemporary public infrastructure projects emphasise sustainable options that integrate pedestrian routes, leisure facilities and convenient access to public transport systems. It is important to understand the effectiveness of these contemporary designs. In the age of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), there is a need to develop technologybased solutions that collect information about the behaviour of pedestrians in public spaces as they commute and engage in leisure pursuits while simultaneously preserving the privacy of these citizens. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), has privacypreserving features that make it worth considering as part of a technology solution for studies of this type. This …

Indication Of Pedestrian’S Travel Direction Through Bluetooth Low Energy Signals Perceived By A Single Observer Device, Mayank Parmar, Paula Kelly, Damon Berry

Conference papers

This paper presents a study to understand the directional sensitivity of a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) monitoring device (Observer) and whether, using a single such Observer, the characteristics of its antenna can be used to identify the direction of a pedestrian’s movement. To comprehend the directional characteristics of the antenna of the Observer employed for this study, the device is subjected to BLE signals emitted from a BLE beacon (Broadcaster) in an anechoic chamber. The results of this study confirmed that in the clean, noiseless environment of the chamber, the antenna we employed is clearly more receptive to signals emerging …

Work In Progress: A Virtual Educational Robotics Coding Club Framework To Improve K-6 Students Emotional Engagement In Stem, Kate Carmody, Julie Booth, Jospehine Bleach, Pramod Pathak, Paul Styles

Conference papers

The growing popularity and deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has led to serious security concerns. The integration of a security operations center (SOC) becomes increasingly important in this situation to ensure the security of IoT devices. In this article, we will present a summary of IoT device security issues, their vulnerabilities, a review of current challenges to keep these devices secure, and discuss the role that SOC can bring in protecting IoT devices while considering the challenges encountered and the directions to consider when implementing a reliable SOC for IoT monitoring.

An Unmanned Aircraft System For Marking Live Power Lines To Prevent Bird Collisions, Mattheuns D. Pretorius, Lourens Leeuwner, Kaajial Durgapersad, Constant Hoogstad, Peter Beckedahl, Michael D. Michael, Kishaylin Chetty

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Collisions with overhead power lines represent a significant cause of mortality for a number of large bird species worldwide. Certain threatened species are severely impacted by power line collisions, particularly those for which there are no other known significant threats. In South Africa, bird collisions with overhead power line cables, including collisions with phase conductors and shield wires, contribute significantly to annual threatened bird species mortalities associated with Eskom power lines. The most practical mitigation measure is to attach bird anti-collision devices as markers on the cables. Current marking methods involve installations by hand, where linemen are hoisted up to …

Detection And Localization Of Data Forgery Attacks In Automatic Generation Control, Fengli Zhang, Yatish R. Dubasi, Wei Bao, Qinghua Li

Electrical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Automatic Generation Control (AGC) is a key control system to maintain the power system’s balance between load and supply by maintaining its frequency in a specific range. It collects the tie-line power flow and frequency measurements of each control area to calculate the Area Control Error (ACE) and then adjusts power generation based on the calculated ACE. However, malicious frequency or tie-line power flow measurements can be injected and then AGC is misled to make false power generation adjustments which will harm power system operations. Such attacks can be carefully designed to pass the power system’s existing bad data detection …

Nidec Automated Winder, Michael Pugh, Ben A. Swartz, Andrew Leonard, Garrett Dostal

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Nidec Drive Systems is a leading electric motor manufacturing company with several facilities in the US and around the world. However, as of recent, Nidec has started to see some signs of old and outdated production machines affecting their production numbers even though the demand for electric is ever increasing. In an attempt to repair some of these issues, Nidec reached out to the University of Akron to look for senior design groups to help design and standardize better production machines. We were tasked with redesigning a new winder, which is a machine that winds the copper coils to the …

Safe Kids Car, Nathan Keenan, Jackson Piper, Kyle Law, Anthony Meniru

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The main goal of this project is to retrofit toy vehicles, such as Powerwheels cars, with safety systems that can protect the driver and those around the driver. Such systems will include lights, including headlights and taillights, and an automatic braking system, which will activate in the face of an inevitable collision. The system will also work with the driver to prevent collisions, providing warnings of impending danger.

Keywords: toy vehicles, collision detection, collision avoidance, automatic braking system, DC motors, automatic headlights.

Smart Power Outlet, Kyrolos Melek, Joseph M. Garro, Ethan G. Frese, Madison Britton

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

With an ever-increasing demand on the electrical grid and an increase in electrical consumer goods per household, effective power management and monitoring for home users is a must. The objective of this project is to create a consumer outlet and companion phone application. The power outlet will measure power draw on each socket and report these measurements via an embedded system, wirelessly, to the application. The application will then allow for setting custom power draws at which an individual socket will switch off if exceeded and will display how much a given outlet or individual socket is costing per unit …

Whiteboard Drawing Device, Stefan Ilic, Andrew Adams, Vaughn Richards, James Medved

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Whiteboards have become a staple in many classrooms, especially in the context of STEM courses. However, when it comes to teaching complex topics, it can be difficult or impractical to provide accurate drawings and visualizations by hand, and in extreme cases may lead to misinterpretation of a particular topic. To fix this issue, the Whiteboard Drawing Device allows users to draw preset shapes to a whiteboard automatically, both quickly and accurately. Using either a smartphone application or a set of onboard controls, the device allows users to automatically draw straight lines, rectangles, triangles, sinusoidal waves, and circles on the whiteboard. …

Wireless Kick Pedal, Jacob Wise, Ryan Kinyo, Bradley Toth, Ian Zanath

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The goal of the project is to build a wireless kick pedal that allows accessibility to drummers that have leg or foot disabilities and add versatility to multi-instrumentalists looking to add percussion while playing another instrument. The proposed pedal is designed in two main parts, a wearable band that tracks the player’s movement, and a hammer mechanism that receives actuation commands from the wearable band to move the hammer and deliver a drumbeat. The band is designed to be worn on several parts of the body, including the ankle, knee, thigh, or even the arm depending on the user’s situation. …

Wireless Environmental Weather Monitor, Joel Christie-Millett, Nathan Schroeder, Sylvester Wilson, Matthew Szijarto

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The goal of this senior design/honors project is to create a device that monitors environmental conditions in order to detect a wildfire. This device should notify a user of the status of the environment. The device should also last for 6 months without any human interaction. My role on the team is to design the power supply system that maximizes efficiency and uses renewable energy.

Detection Of Various Dental Conditions On Dental Panoramic Radiography Using Faster R-Cnn, Shih Lun Chen, Tsung Yi Chen, Yi Cheng Mao, Szu Yin Lin, Ya Yun Huang, Chiung An Chen, Yuan Jin Lin, Mian Heng Chuang, Patricia Angela R. Abu

Department of Information Systems & Computer Science Faculty Publications

The dental panoramic radiograph (DPR) is a pivotal diagnostic tool in dentistry. However, despite the growing prevalence of artificial intelligence (AI) across various medical domains, manual methods remain the prevailing means of interpreting DPR images. This study aims to introduce an advanced identification system for detecting seven dental conditions in DPR images by utilizing Faster R-CNN. The primary objectives are to enhance dentists' efficiency and evaluate the performance of various CNN models as foundational training networks. This study contributes significantly to the field in several notable ways. Firstly, including a Butterworth filter in the training process yielded an approximately 7% …

Performance Evaluation Of Face Mask Detection For Real-Time Implementation On An Rpi, Ivan George L. Tarun, Vidal Wyatt M. Lopez, Pamela Anne C. Serrano, Patricia Angela R. Abu, Rosula Reyes, Ma. Regina Justina Estuar

Department of Information Systems & Computer Science Faculty Publications

Mask-wearing remains to be one of the primary protective measures against COVID-19. To address the difficulty of manual compliance monitoring, face mask detection models considerate of both frontal and angled faces were developed. This study aimed to test the performance of the said models in classifying multi-face images and upon running on a Raspberry Pi device. The accuracies and inference speeds were measured and compared when inferencing images with one, two, and three faces and on the desktop and the Raspberry Pi. With an increasing number of faces in an image, the models’ accuracies were observed to decline, while their …

Towards The Development Of A Blockchain System For Philippine Government Processes For Enhanced Transparency And Verifiability, Karlo Angelo F. Cabugwang, Raphael Christen K. Enriquez, Bienvenido E. Villabroza, Christian E. Pulmano

Department of Information Systems & Computer Science Faculty Publications

There are cases of corruption and fraud within the Philippine government that have gone under the radar, often due to a lack of transparency and verifiability. The objective of this study is to prototype a blockchain network that can run a government process as a decentralized application such that it can enhance transparency and verifiability in the public sector. This can be accomplished by identifying a government process that would be converted into a decentralized application. One of these processes would be converted into a decentralized application. Afterwards, a blockchain framework should be identified one which can create a public …

Data-Integrity Aware Stochastic Model For Cascading Failures In Power Grids, Rezoan Ahmed Shuvro, Pankaz Das, Jamir Shariar Jyoti, Joana M. Abreu, Majeed M. Hayat

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

The reliable operation of power grids during cascading failures is heavily dependent on the interdependencies between the power grid components and the supporting communications and control networks. Moreover, the system operators' expertise in dealing with cascading failures can play a pivotal role during contingencies. In this paper, a dynamical probabilistic model is developed based on Markov-chains, which captures the dynamics of cascading failures in the power grid. Specifically, a previously developed Markov-chain based model is extended to capture the trade-off between the benefits of having a robust communication infrastructure and its vulnerability from data integrity (e.g., cyber-attacks). State-space reduction of …

Multi-Variable Phase And Gain Calibration For Multi-Channel Transmit Signals, Ryan C. Ball

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

A method for software-defined radio array calibration is presented. The method implements a matched filter approach to calculate the phase shift between channels. The temporal stability of the system and calibration coefficients are shown through the standard deviation over the course of four weeks. The standard deviation of the phase correction was shown to be less than 2 deg. for most channels in the array and within 8 deg. for the most extreme case. The standard deviation in amplitude scaling was calculated to be less than 0.06 for all channels in the array. The performance of the calibration is evaluated …

Fault Diagnosis And Accommodation In Quadrotor Simultaneous Localization And Mapping Systems, Anthony J. Green

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) is the process of using distance measurements to points in the surrounding environment to build a digital map and perform localization. It has been observed that featureless environments like tunnels or straight hallways will cause positioning faults in SLAM. This research investigates the fault diagnosis and accommodation problem for a laser-rangefinder-based SLAM systems on a quadrotor. A potential solution of using optical flow as velocity estimate and an extended Kalman filter (EKF) to perform position estimation is proposed. A fault diagnosis method for detecting faults in positional SLAM data or optical flow velocity data is …

Digital Beamforming Array Phase Calibration Techniques For Multi-Pass Interferometric Sar, Kelly Cheung

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Calibration plays a critical role in the optimal performance of algorithms in digital beamforming arrays. Phase incoherency between elements results in poor beamforming with decreased gain and higher sidelobes, leading to a decrease in accuracy and sensitivity of measurements. A similar problem exists in performing multi-pass interferometric SAR (IFSAR) processing of SAR data stacks to generate topological maps of the scene, where phase errors translate to height errors. By treating each SAR image in the data stack like an element of a uniform linear array, this thesis explores several phase calibration techniques that can be used to calibrate digital beamforming …

Bandgap Engineering Of 2d Materials And Its Electric And Optical Properties, Kumar Vishal

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Since their invention in 1958, Integrated Circuits (ICs) have become increasingly more complex, sophisticated, and useful. As a result, they have worked their way into every aspect of our lives, for example: personal electronic devices, wearable electronics, biomedical sensors, autonomous driving cars, military and defense applications, and artificial intelligence, to name some areas of applications. These examples represent both collectively, and sometimes individually, multi-trillion-dollar markets. However, further development of ICs has been predicted to encounter a performance bottleneck as the mainstream silicon industry, approaches its physical limits. The state-of-the-art of today’s ICs technology will be soon below 3nm. At such …

Development Of Automated Egg Incubator With Backup Power Supply, Allen N. Maroma, Dolly P. Maroma, Bernardo A. Pangilinan

ASEAN Journal of Community Engagement

This study addresses the development of an automated egg incubator with backup power supply that could benefit farmer communities through the developmental research approach. A prototype is developed to respond to the needs for uninterrupted incubation which is affected by the frequent power outages that reduce its efficiency in egg handling. In this project, the automated egg incubator with a backup power supply is designed to hatch a capacity of 150 eggs (75 setters and 75 hatchers) every 21 days, ensuring continuous operation even in the absence of a consistent power supply. An inverter, connected to a battery, ensures a …

A Phase Change Memory And Dram Based Framework For Energy-Efficient And High-Speed In-Memory Stochastic Computing, Supreeth Mysore

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have proven to be highly effective in various fields related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). However, the significant computational and memory requirements of CNNs make their processing highly compute and memory-intensive. In particular, the multiply-accumulate (MAC) operation, which is a fundamental building block of CNNs, requires enormous arithmetic operations. As the input dataset size increases, the traditional processor-centric von-Neumann computing architecture becomes ill-suited for CNN-based applications. This results in exponentially higher latency and energy costs, making the processing of CNNs highly challenging.

To overcome these challenges, researchers have explored the Processing-In Memory (PIM) …