Electrical and Electronics Commons^™

Distributed Optimization And Control Of Islanded Microgrids, Md Rishad Hossain

Theses and Dissertations

A microgrid may have numerous multi-functional power electronic converters connecting sources, loads, and storage to the system. Systems where converters are the interface between many of the main sources of energy and load centers have the ability to direct the flow of energy if the control of the converters is coordinated. The influence of energy flow in a microgrid by coordinated action of converters is referred to here as ‘energy routing’. Energy routing allows for reduction of systems losses by optimizing source operating points and reducing transmission and distribution path losses. Energy ramp rates at various points in the system …

Wireless Channel Modeling For Networks On Chips, William Rayess

Theses and Dissertations

The advent of integrated circuit (chip) multiprocessors (CMPs) combined with the continuous reduction in device physical size (technology scaling) to the sub-nanometer regime will result in an exponential increase in the number of processing cores that can be integrated within a single chip. Today’s CMPs already support tens to low hundreds of cores and both industry and academic roadmaps project that future chips will have thousands of cores. Therefore, while there are open questions on how to harness the computing power offered by CMPs, the design of power-efficient and compact on-chip interconnection networks that connects cores, caches and memory controllers …

Engineering Model Of Iii-Nitride Power Heterostructure Field Effect Transistor On Silicon Substrate, Mohammad Mirwazul Islam

Theses and Dissertations

In modern society, the demand for power consumption is increasing rapidly and the need of energy savings is now an issue of global importance. Highly efficient power converters and power conditioning systems operating with wide range of traditional as well as novel renewable and clean energy sources, are playing crucial role in energy saving. Si converters have already reached their limitation in terms of switching frequency and breakdown voltage/on-resistance ratio. Research is going on all around the world and it is now well accepted that significant improvement in power conversion efficiency and speed can only be achieved using beyond Si …

Investigation Of Wide Bandgap Semiconductor Devices For Radiation Detection Applications, Rahmi Orhon Pak

Theses and Dissertations

Radioactive materials, as they decay, generate different high-frequency electromagnetic radiation such as alpha particles, beta particles, x-rays, gamma-rays, and neutrons. Nuclear detectors could stop these high-energy ionizing radiations, collect and transport the charges generated to an external circuit, and produce an electrical signal which is amplified by readout electronics to measure the energy of nuclear interaction. Thus, nuclear detectors are important tools for accounting of radioactive materials and have widespread applications in nuclear power plants, nuclear waste management, in national security, in medical imaging such as x-ray mammography, digital chest radiography, CT scan, and in high energy astronomy for NASA …

Design, Analysis, Implementation And Evaluation Of Real-Time Opportunistic Spectrum Access In Cloud-Based Cognitive Radio Networks, Nimish Sharma

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Opportunistic spectrum access in cognitive radio network is proposed for remediation of spectrum under-utilization caused by exclusive licensing for service providers that are intermittently utilizing spectrum at any given geolocation and time. The unlicensed secondary users (SUs) rely on opportunistic spectrum access to maximize spectrum utilization by sensing/identifying the idle bands without causing harmful interference to licensed primary users (PUs). In this thesis, Real-time Opportunistic Spectrum Access in Cloud-based Cognitive Radio Networks (ROAR) architecture is presented where cloud computing is used for processing and storage of idle channels. Software-defined radios (SDRs) are used as SUs and PUs that identify, report, …

System Level Analysis And Design For Wireless Inter-Chip Interconnection Communication Systems By Applying Advanced Wireless Communication Technologies, Xin Zheng

Theses and Dissertations

As the dramatic development of high speed integrated circuits has progressed, the 60 GHz silicon technology has been introduced to enable much faster computer systems and their corresponding applications. However, when signals are propagating at 60 GHz or higher frequencies on a PCB (Printed Circuit Board), the crosstalk among signal buses and devices, trace losses, and introduced parasitic capacitance and inductance between high density traces, become significant and may be severe enough such that the inter-chip communications will not be able to meet computer system signal specifications. High speed circuit signal integrity researchers in both electronic industries and academia have …

A Two-Level Identity Model To Support Interoperability Of Identity Information In Electronic Health Record Systems., Xu Chen

Doctoral

The sharing and retrieval of health information for an electronic health record (EHR) across distributed systems involves a range of identified entities that are possible subjects of documentation (e.g., specimen, clinical analyser). Contemporary EHR specifications limit the types of entities that can be the subject of a record to health professionals and patients, thus limiting the use of two level models in healthcare information systems that contribute information to the EHR. The literature describes several information modelling approaches for EHRs, including so called “two level models”. These models differ in the amount of structure imposed on the information to be …

Beyond Conventional C-Plane Gan-Based Light Emitting Diodes: A Systematic Exploration Of Leds On Semi-Polar Orientations, Morteza Monavarian

Theses and Dissertations

Despite enormous efforts and investments, the efficiency of InGaN-based green and yellow-green light emitters remains relatively low, and that limits progress in developing full color display, laser diodes, and bright light sources for general lighting. The low efficiency of light emitting devices in the green-to-yellow spectral range, also known as the “Green Gap”, is considered a global concern in the LED industry. The polar c-plane orientation of GaN, which is the mainstay in the LED industry, suffers from polarization-induced separation of electrons and hole wavefunctions (also known as the “quantum confined Stark effect”) and low indium incorporation efficiency that …

Switchless Reconfigurable Antenna With 360° Steering, Adam Narbudowicz, Max Ammann, Dirk Heberling

Conference Papers

—A novel reconfigurable antenna capable of rotating a bidirectional pattern by 360◦ in azimuth is proposed. The antenna has two ports, no aperture switching components, and offers a more compact solution than an array. It provides a reconfigurable pattern in the band 2.525–2.595 GHz and a fixed omnidirectional pattern from 2.235 to 2.725 GHz. The measured gains for four investigated configurations are between 2.1 and 3.1 dBi with total efficiencies between 80% and 89%. The antenna is intended to operate with software defined radio [digital beamforming or multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO)], where the potential of pattern generation using the dual-port antenna can …

Digital Processes And Characterization For Fabricating 3d Rf Devices, Harvey Hing Tsang

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In this work, co-planar waveguides (CPW) are fabricated and characterized with low temperature 3D printed materials for flexible electronic applications. Laser processing is introduced to reduce heating and cooling times for curing and subtractive manufacturing. CPWs are optimized by varying printing resolution, adjusting curing conditions and shaping conductor profile with a pico-laser. By using acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) as substrate material and Dupont CB028 as conductive material, a high S21 and low S11 CPW is fabricated. Optimized direct write methods are dispensed onto 3D complex structures to move away from 2.5D style printing and move into true 3D printed antenna …

Cdte Doped With Zn Grown On Si(111) And Si(211) Using The Closed Space Sublimation Method, Jose Alberto Valdez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Cadmium telluride (CdTe) doped with zinc (Zn) has been used for the fabrication of X-ray imaging devices. CdTe allows the device to have the same image quality at a lower X-ray dose. When silicon is used as a substrate for CdTe growth, this reduces the cost and allows the readout circuitry to be fabricated on the same substrate. However, material quality and device performance needs to be addressed since the lattice parameters of CdTe (6.482 Å) and Si (5.431 Å) result in a 19% lattice mismatch.

In this work, CdTe doped with Zn is deposited on Si (211) and Si …

Design And Evaluation Of The Impact Of A Multi-Agent Control System (Framework) Applied To A Social Setting, Perez Antonio Perez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The objective of this research is to design and analyze the performance of a new mechanism to improve the advising of students in a nontraditional environment. This nontraditional environment includes: a minority serving, commuter campus with a high percentage of transfer students. Specifically, these demographics are unable to keep a tightly controlled cohort of students flowing through to the completion of the curriculum. Students in these circumstances usually have varied course loads and competing priorities due to family and financial needs or other societal responsibilities. Therefore, there is a need for an individualized approach to advising.

University administrations face challenges …

Adaptive Switched Capacitor Voltage Boost For Thermoelectric Generation, Rene A. Brito

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Thermoelectric generators (TEG) and other forms of energy harvesting often provide voltages that are not directly usable by traditional electronics as levels are too low from the TEG. While increasing the number of thermoelectric elements can ultimately increase the power output, there is a tradeoff between size and power. By implementing charge pumps, a proposed circuit technique is described that can boost the TEG output to levels that can be used for energy harvesting applications. Current voltage boost circuits for TEGs simply boost a voltage by a set amount. The proposed circuit consists of an analog chip, to provide several …

Information Entropy Measures Applied To Hierarchial Complex Technical And Socio-Technical Systems, Satya Aditya Akundi

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A significant increase of Systems-of-Systems (SoS) is currently observed in the social and technical domains. With increasing constituent components, Systems of Systems are becoming larger and more complex. Recent research efforts have highlighted the importance of identifying innovative statistical approaches for analyzing complex systems to better understand how they work. This research is aimed towards developing an Information Entropy based framework to analyze complex technical and social systems. Entropy in terms of information theory can be seen as the expected amount of information observed in an event. A parallel can be drawn between information entropy and system complexity, where, as …

Reliable And Secure Scada Framework For Residential Microgrid Communications, Goutham Krishna Chalamasetty

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Cyber security is one of the major needs for electric power industry like many other industries and organizations. The advancements in technology provide numerous benefits to power industry as well as benefits cyber attackers to perform different cyber-attacks on the industry. Power system is a complex physical entity that deals with power generation, distribution, and transmission. In general, no individual or company or an organization can bear a one hour power cut, which shows the need for reliability in electric power industry.

In order to develop a reliable and secure Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) communication network, this Thesis …

Hybrid Straintronics-Spintronics: Energy-Efficient Non-Volatile Devices For Boolean And Non-Boolean Computation, Ayan K. Biswas

Theses and Dissertations

Research in future generation computing is focused on reducing energy dissipation while maintaining the switching speed in a binary operation to continue the current trend of increasing transistor-density according to Moore’s law. Unlike charge-based CMOS technology, spin-based nanomagnetic technology, based on switching bistable magnetization of single domain shape-anisotropic nanomagnets, has the potential to achieve ultralow energy dissipation due to the fact that no charge motion is directly involved in switching. However, switching of magnetization has not been any less dissipative than switching transistors because most magnet switching schemes involve generating a current to produce a magnetic field, or spin transfer …

A Different Type Of Lighting Research: A Qualitative Methodology, Kevin Kelly

Articles

As lighting researchers we can learn from our colleagues in the humanities who have progressed Qualitative Research methods to a high level of rigour. We should consider using Qualitative Research Methods more. Such methods allow exploration of complex issues involving human behaviour and facilitate researchers to address difficult to answer questions that otherwise go unanswered. Good quality Qualitative Research can provide rich explanations of what went on in a given situation. Validity and Reliability are considered differently with this type of research methodology. This paper attempts to identify when qualitative research is appropriate, what questions it can answer in lighting …

A Techno-Economical Appraisal Of A Pv Domestic Plant On A Irish Dwelling, Roberto Sandano

Articles

A comprehensive study of a domestic PV installation is addressed in this paper. A series of economic results are presented for a domestic installation in Ireland.

Sol-Gel Silica Coated Optical Fiber Sensor For Ammonia Gas Detection, Dejun Liu, Arun Mallik, Wei Han, Qiang Wu

Conference papers

A high sensitivity ammonia gas sensor based on a tapered small core single-mode fiber (SCSMF) structure for measurement of ammonia gas concentration is reported. The proposed tapered SCSMF fiber structure has a waist diameter of 13.5 μm and it is fabricated using a customized microheater brushing technique. The silica based material prepared by sol-gel method is used as a coating applied to the surface of tapered fiber structures. Experimental results show that sensor is very sensitive to ammonia. The best measurement resolution of the ammonia concentration is estimated to be 16 ppb for gas concentrations of 0.5 ppm to 2.5 …

Pattern Recognition In Class Imbalanced Datasets, Nahian A. Siddique

Theses and Dissertations

Class imbalanced datasets constitute a significant portion of the machine learning problems of interest, where recog­nizing the ‘rare class’ is the primary objective for most applications. Traditional linear machine learning algorithms are often not effective in recognizing the rare class. In this research work, a specifically optimized feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) is proposed and developed to train from moderate to highly imbalanced datasets.

The proposed methodology deals with the difficulty in classification task in multiple stages—by optimizing the training dataset, modifying kernel function to generate the gram matrix and optimizing the NN structure. First, the training dataset is extracted …

Sparse Adaptive Local Machine Learning Algorithms For Sensing And Analytics, Jack Cannon

Maseeh Summer Undergraduate Research Experience

The goal of digital image processing is to capture, transmit, and display images as efficiently as possible. Such tasks are computationally intensive because an image is digitally represented by large amounts of data. It is possible to render an image by reconstructing it with a subset of the most relevant data. One such procedure used to accomplish this task is commonly referred to as sparse coding. For our purpose, we use images of handwritten digits that are presented to an artificial neural network. The network implements Rozell's locally competitive algorithm (LCA) to generate a sparse code. This sparse code is …

Rapid And Accurate C-V Measurements, Ji-Hong Kim, Pragya R. Shrestha, Jason P. Campbell, Jason T. Ryan, David Nminibapiel, Joseph J. Kopanski

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We report a new technique for the rapid measurement of full capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristic curves. The displacement current from a 100-MHz applied sine wave, which swings from accumulation to strong inversion, is digitized directly using an oscilloscope from the MOS capacitor under test. A C-V curve can be constructed directly from this data but is severely distorted due to nonideal behavior of real measurement systems. The key advance of this paper is to extract the system response function using the same measurement setup and a known MOS capacitor. The system response correction to the measured C-V curve of the unknown …

Electricity Sector Reform: Sourcing And Cost Management Of Electricity For Steel Manufacturing In Nigeria, Christopher Ndubuisi Okonkwo

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In 2014, Lazard levelized cost of energy analysis model priced diesel powered systems at $0.225 – $0.404/KWh and a range of $0.165 – $0.242/KWh for gas-powered systems. The model gave a range of $0.28 – $0.33/kWh for diesel and a range of $0.14/kWh – $0.16/kW for gas fired. Nigeria has an abundance of gas reserves, but heavy gas flaring by oil companies perpetuates power failure across Nigeria. What has resulted is an unreliable electricity infrastructure and a high cost of alternative energy. The Electricity Power Sector Reform Act of 2005 started the reform process. Guided by decision theory, the purpose …

Hardware Design And Integration And Software Programming For Optical Elastography, Nima Taherkhani

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The elastic and viscoelastic properties of skin are a reflection of its health. Measurement of these elastic properties can be used as the indicator of various pathologies. The measurement concept in our works is to mechanically stimulate the skin with a low frequency pneumatic force using non-invasive means of deflecting the skin and use laser speckle to study the elasticity of the skin.

The goal of this work was to develop a setup for in vivo optical elastography of skin. This setup includes an electro-mechanical device which is able to deliver a sinusoidal pneumatic stimulus equivalent to 10 grams of …

A Fault Tolerant, Data Fusion System For Navigation Applications To A Ducted Fan Vtol Uav, Jian Lu

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

A Fault Tolerant, Data Fusion (FTDF) algorithm for a Ducted Fan Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (DFUAV) Navigation System is presented. The algorithm have two parts: Gradient Descent (GD) for the Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS) and an Interacting Multiple Model (IMM) for position estimation. The GD methodology was designed to fuse the gyroscope, accelerometer, and geomagnetic sensors. The IMM algorithm is able to identify and compensate for multiple sensors data failures. There are three parts in the presentation.

Firstly, system identification and the Allan Variance method is used to build dynamic models and noise models for multiple Sensors and Actuators. …

Modeling, Simulation And Control Of Hybrid Electric Vehicle Drive While Minimizing Energy Input Requirements Using Optimized Gear Ratios, Sanjai Massey

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This project was conducted to analyze (model and simulate) and optimize an electric motor based drive system to propel a typical passenger vehicle in an urban driving environment. Although there are many HEV and EV type systems on the market today, this paper chose the Toyota Prius HEV system as a baseline using a brushless AC motor.

Although a vehicle can be driven many ways, a more standardized Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule, UDDS, was chosen to simulate real driving conditions. This schedule is determined by the US Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, and is intended to represent the city driving conditions …

Creating Multi-Functional G-Code For Multi-Process Additive Manufacturing, Efrain Aguilera Jr

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Additive manufacturing (AM) started over thirty years ago and with it a manufacturing revolution that moves industrial production into the personal home. With recent interest shifting into multi-functional parts fabricated through AM technologies, unified systems are being developed. Merging different manufacturing technologies into one single machine is a challenge but undergoing research has shown promise in the development of multi-functional systems. Concurrent work is being done in the software, automation, and hardware aspect of multi-functional systems. An effort to use industry compatible Computer Aided Design (CAD) software to design multi-functional parts including circuits, micro-machining, and foil embedding then exporting and …

Numerical Calculation Of Spatially Variant Anisotropic Metamaterial, Asad Ullah Hil Gulib

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is rapidly evolving into a mainstream manufacturing technology that is creating new opportunities for electromagnetics and circuits. 3D printing permits circuits to fully utilize the third dimension allowing more functions in the same amount of space and allows the devices to have arbitrary form factors. 3D printing is letting us discover new physics that is not possible in standard 2D circuits and devices. However, evolving electromagnetics and circuits into three dimensions introduces some serious problems like thermal management, interference, and mutual coupling between the components which degrades performance and hurts signal integrity.

Metamaterials are engineered …

The Viability Of High-Frequency Oscillation Analysis In Eeg Signals For Seizure Prediction, Bryan David Kern

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Seizure prediction is a decades-old research problem that has yet to reach any satisfying conclusions. Many studies have tackled the problem with varying results, but there has yet to be any major breakthroughs that define the direction of all future research. However, a promising, new predictor may have presented itself in recent years in the form of high frequency oscillations (HFOs). With the discovery of HFOs (80 - 800 Hz) as a biomarker for epilepsy, new interest has been placed in studying the high frequency content of EEGs to find a possible link between epilepsy and HFOs. In this paper, …

Dielectric Prism Antenna, Jose Antonio Avila

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

3D printing is revolutionizing the development and manufacturing of devices. Currently multi-material 3D printing, like metals plus dielectrics, is in the early stages and not very accessible. This work set out to develop an all-dielectric antenna that could be 3D printed with current widely accessible 3D printing technologies. The antenna developed is an all-dielectric ultra-thin antenna with a simple geometry. The antenna radiates by using total internal reflection and a circulating mode operating as a leaky whispering gallery mode. We are calling the antenna the dielectric prism antenna because it acts like an optical prism. The dielectric prism antenna was …