Signal Processing Commons^™

Single-Sided Hearing Assistance Application, Harryson Nguyen, Jp Haratani

Electrical Engineering

The product is a hearing assistance smartphone application which aims to improve the quality of life of people with single-sided hearing loss/deafness by providing them with a cheaper and more reliable alternative to medically-prescribed hearing aids. Due to development setbacks, the product instead uses open-ear earbuds. Since the earbuds are not directly inserted into the user’s ear canals, they will not obstruct the hearing of the user’s non-deaf ear, and the user will still be able to hear the sounds that come from their non-deaf side. Some users may find that Bluetooth earbuds can be quite expensive, but are ultimately …

Piezoelectric Actuator Driver System, Daniel Hoefer

Electrical Engineering

This work presents the design, fabrication, and testing of a high-voltage piezoelectric actuator driver system purposed for integration into defense and aerospace precision motion control applications, particularly those in laser optics. The core challenge addressed was the mismatch between the standardized 28V DC power bus used in military systems and the significantly higher voltage requirements of piezoelectric actuators. Existing commercial drivers were evaluated and found unsuitable for field deployment due to inadequate ruggedness, excessive complexity, or power limitations. Consequently, a modular system architecture was designed featuring four independent driver channels, each using a high-voltage, high-current linear amplifier topology to scale …

Synthetic Aperture Radar Processing For Increased Resolution Of Englacial Strata, Ava Stockman

Electrical Engineering

Glaciological research relies on a variety of remote-sensing methods to study the internal structure of glaciers and other bodies of ice. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) serves as one method for imaging large cross sections of englacial strata, reducing the need for labor-intensive, costly, and hazardous ice coring expeditions and operations. Characterizing englacial structures using SAR images allows scientists to learn about the ice dynamics of past and present which provides the basis for discoveries about climate history and glacial dynamics. This project explores the benefits of employing various SAR processing methods to raw phase history data acquired through the British …

Field Deployable Mobile Manipulator For Autonomous Apple Harvesting, Gabriel K. Basus, Antonio Bowen, Andrew Daouda

Electrical Engineering

Increasing labor costs and agricultural demands have created a need for automated apple harvesting. However, automated apple harvesting via robotic manipulation must overcome certain challenges to be an effective and efficient method. First, the system must compete with or perform better than manual human labor. Second, it must safely and accurately navigate an apple orchard autonomously. Third, the robotic manipulator must be able to securely grasp and pick apples without causing damage. To address these challenges, this project utilizes a Husky UGV equipped with a 2D LiDAR sensor, an RGB-D camera, an IMU, an OpenManipulator-X robot arm, and a soft …

Design Of High Efficiency Doherty Power Amplifier, Kobi G. Kelly, Severin Pindell

Electrical Engineering

The project includes design and fabrication of a high efficiency power amplifier for a student design competition held at International Microwave Symposium (IMS) 2023. Efficient power amplifiers are critical for base station communication requiring efficient use of available power. The final design optimizes power added efficiency (PAE) and linearity. The amplifier will operate at 2.45 GHz. Competitive PAE above 50%, and C/I above 30 dB is achieved by leveraging a Doherty class amplifier using accurate discrete CGH4006P transistor models to simulate an efficient and linear design. Unique design features include optimal transistor bias point selection and power split ratios between …

2-Channel Eeg Neurofeedback System, Tim Erwin, Donna Nikjou, Sebastian Turkewitz

Electrical Engineering

This work describes the design of an EEG-based neurofeedback system which provides users with real-time feedback on their level of focus or relaxation. By analyzing the spectral content of the brain activity measured via scalp electrodes, focus and relaxation levels can be quantified. Based on these measurements, live feedback in the form of moving bar graphs is provided to users, allowing them to gain awareness of their mental-state and more efficiently learn how to consciously relax or focus. This project covers the design of the system, including amplification and filtering stages, digitization, and signal processing. The system interfaces with a …

Digital Audio Synthesizer, Philip A. Schremp, Alexander J. Elliott

Electrical Engineering

With more and more of the modern music production and live performance workflow becoming digitized synthesizers are the perfect middle ground between the traditional instrument layout and the progressive electronic sound. Despite the fact that synthesizers have made their place in the modern music pipeline they have one significant drawback. Synthesizers are expensive. Whether they are analog or digital, many of the synthesizers produced today are not affordable for the average musician or synth hobbyist. We will be designing a cost effective digital audio synthesizer that will still have enough versatility and a high enough quality to be useful in …

Electronic Note-String Detector, Gavin Garcia-Rossi, Tommy Smail

Electrical Engineering

As the virtual space has become a dominant part of everyone’s day-to-day lives, many normal face-to-face interactions and services have not yet been facilitated by adapting technology. One of these prevailing areas is music lessons. Over Zoom meetings, or other virtual platforms, it is tremendously challenging to teach students. These challenges include recognizing student mistakes audibly and visually, and being able to give confident feedback on the incorrect notes played by learning musicians. Without having to delve into improving the complex systems that would be required to improve audio, video, and connection quality of these connections, we have another solution …

4-Band Personal Eq Device, Carson Kellerman

Electrical Engineering

The device is a 4-band EQ with 3.5mm audio input and output jacks. The device has 4 adjustable EQ bands. Each of the 4 bands are adjustable via knob potentiometers, and are able to boost or cut their respective center frequencies of 150Hz, 400Hz, 2500Hz, and 10kHz from -15dB to +15dB. The device is battery powered off of 1 9V battery and is able to function for 10 hours before needing to replace the batteries. The device has a Total Harmonic Distortion of less than 1% and a Signal to Noise Ratio greater than 60dB. Overall, this device allows music …

Audio Research Codec, Charlie Sutro

Electrical Engineering

Active Noise and Vibration Control (ANVC) systems are of increasing relevance as urban areas get more densely populated with people and their noise sources. Community noise is of great importance to many forms of transit that aim to bring mobility to a region with minimal subsequent noise pollution. Active Vibration Control (AVC) is an emerging field of research which can be employed to further mitigated unwanted harshness in an acoustic environment by extending the principals of Active Noise Control (ANC)to solid mediums using surface transducers and piezoelectric actuators.

The Audio Research Codec (ARC) is a compact, cost-effective system designed for …

Automotive Collision Warning System Retrofit, Ethan Clark Najmy

Electrical Engineering

In the early 2000s, few automakers began implementing forward collision warning systems in their cars. As technology advanced this system became available on more and more luxury cars. In recent years, this technology has spread to more affordable vehicles driven every day. However, as this technology has only recently advanced to less expensive, more economical cars, older vehicles of the same model may not have this advanced and important safety feature. This project investigates and creates a preliminary design for an affordable, easy-to-install, forward collision warning system that can be retrofitted to vehicles without the system currently installed. Using a …

Instrumented Control Column For Optionally Piloted Aircraft, Andrew J. Klein

Electrical Engineering

Natilus, an aerospace company that is rapid-prototyping optionally piloted aircraft (OPA) for the shipping industry, needs a system that retrieves control column position data in order to manipulate flight simulator parameters in software. At present, a universally compatible system for all aircraft does not exist. Typically, established aerospace companies will sink significant time and money into developing proprietary systems for control column data retrieval as every aircraft is unique in its layout and linkage design. However, as a startup developing their first aircraft, Natilus does not have the privilege of modifying an existing sensor system to work with their HIL …

Sky Survey Radio Telescope, Jack E. Mcguigan

Electrical Engineering

This document outlines the design of a radio telescope designed to perform hydrogen line sky surveys. The telescope produces radio images mapping the intensity and relative velocities of hydrogen concentrations to their sky coordinates. Over the course of a day, the telescope images the regions of space visible to it, allowing sky survey imagery to be updated daily. Sky survey images are comprised of an array of pixels corresponding to specific sky coordinates. Each 8-bit RGB pixel contains information on the concentrations of hydrogen in the brightness and relative velocity in the color. Radio images mapping the concentrations and velocities …

Directional Speaker, Gabriel Tramontina Ceribelli, Vincent Trevor Pierce

Electrical Engineering

Parametric Acoustic Arrays (PAA) are highly directional soundwaves whose attenuation and spread are much less affected by distance from the source as compared to traditional speakers. A well-known application for PAA is the directional speaker. Studies show that noise directly affects health and decreasing noise pollution can help improve the quality of life for millions of people. Directional speakers can revolutionize society by coupling space with sound. This project encodes audio into two RF-Pulse Width Modulated (PWM) waves to drive a transducer array. Each RF-PWM wave interferes with the other in air to generate a Single Sideband (SSB) frequency spectrum …

Bearing Health Detector, Natalie N. Tokhmakhian, Alexander J. Davis

Electrical Engineering

Bearings, a common component in rotating machinery, are essential components of modern rotating machines; thus, monitoring their health is crucial when reducing downtime and boosting production efficiency. The Bearing Health Detector (BHD), a hand-held device, captures and processes the sound of a machine under test in real time and estimates the level of wear and tear by comparing the sound to previous tests. The BHD encompasses audiences involved with roller bearings in rotating machinery and is designed to provide the diagnosis of wear through the universal detection of good, satisfactory, and very poor with the following color scheme: green, yellow, …

Multi-Effects Analog Guitar Pedal, Carson J. Bryan

Electrical Engineering

The Multi-FX Analog Guitar Pedal includes the analysis, design, performance, PCB layout, and packaging of an industry-standard effects pedal for an electric guitar. This project takes an analog input signal and utilizes analog circuitry to give the user the option to customize the way that their playing sounds. Effects include the options to add equalization filtering and distortion. The EQ filtering will allow the user to attenuate or gain certain frequencies divided into the 3 standard audio bands: bass (20-300 Hz), middle (300-4000 Hz), and treble (4-20 kHz). The soft-clipping distortion stage will allow the user to move around the …

Diy Cell Incubator, Hayden James Jeanor

Electrical Engineering

The purpose of creating a cell Incubator is for the development of cell and tissue production in laboratory settings. Large scale research projects and the medical community grow cells for various reasons, including experiments and creating tissue for patients. However, they cannot simply depend on growing cells in a petri dish that sit on a rack at room temperature. To grow heathy cells in the fastest way possible, they use cell incubators. Cell incubators create an atmosphere within the incubation bay that is designed to promote cell growth. The three main components that need to be constantly regulated, using a …

Iris Detection Authenticator, Nathan D. Tang, Bryan K. Chau

Electrical Engineering

The development of iris biometric identification recognition is presented. Iris recognition differs from other methods because data acquisition is non-physical and is more accessible. It has been proven that the iris does not change as an individual ages and is well protected from external damages due to the eyelid and cornea, acting as a shield to the iris. In addition, the iris is almost impossible to forge due to its complex patterns and the current limitations in technology. Using Canny Edge Detection, Hough Transform, rubber-sheet normalization, Histogram of Gradient feature extraction, and the MultiMedia University iris database as our subjects, …

Standalone Wireless Humming Music Synthesizer, Elizaveta Viktorovna Koush, Conrad Kinsey, Alberto Munoz

Electrical Engineering

This project, called a standalone wireless humming music synthesizer, aimed to provide a tool for musicians to make creating music easier. It did this by removing learning barriers and adding an assistive functionality element that current synthesizers fail to address.

Existing methods for synthesizers typically include a keyboard or some collection of buttons to play melodies on. This requires the knowledge of music theory and a learning curve for the instrument, and this device aims to tackle this barrier. A device that can synthesize your voice into high-quality audio removes this musical knowledge barrier and allows anyone to easily convert …

Signal Adc Converter Simulation On Cadence Virtuoso For Audio Applications, Maxwell Kazuki Fukada

Electrical Engineering

Audio signals are representations of sounds with a mixture of multiple analog signals between the frequency of 20Hz to 20,000Hz. To record snippets of audio data onto a mobile phone or computer, the signal needs to be converted to a digital format. For this purpose, many devices utilize a converter, specifically a sigma-delta modulator with a digital filter. By using a converter, electronics can receive binary data about the audio signal accurately and quickly without losing important signal information. This project aims to simulate a fully functional audio converter with a sigma-delta modulator and decimation filter. The system will receive …

Hum Synthesizer, Daniel Keith Mcfall, Jason Chang

Electrical Engineering

Most modern music, especially the popular and rising genres such as pop music and rap music are more reliant on music synthesizers than ever before. While other instruments are readily used to sample background noises, the main form of sound generation is becoming more digital rather than using acoustic instruments. However, many people that want to make music aren’t familiarized with traditional music theory and would have difficulty using a traditional synthesizer. The Hum Synthesizer aims to allow a wider audience to access the functions of a traditional synthesizer by using voice controls rather than keyboard controls. If the user …

Poly Camtracker, Nickolas W. Ogilvie, Shawn W. Thai

Electrical Engineering

With the onset of the post-pandemic virtual classroom world, more and more classes are attempting hybrid-style instruction. To accomplish that, recordings of lectures are widely used, with presentation-sharing & audio recording capability. However, video recordings of lectures, with the ability to see the board, lab equipment, and the professor, are the optimal way to give the virtual students the best experience. Right now, technology is readily available for static camera recordings of lecture halls, but this may not suffice when it comes to larger lecture halls and lab demonstrations, where directed shots of equipment or the whiteboard are needed in …

Chess Piece Detection, Craig Reid Belshe

Electrical Engineering

This project determines the positions of each piece on a physical chessboard, so that a computer can record a game of chess by noting down the piece positions at the end of each turn. It determines each move so that the game can be replayed later without watching actual footage. The project allows for easy viewing of past games. An image of the chessboard is analyzed to detect each square on the board, and each piece's location. This is then done for each turn, so that the system can keep track of an entire game.

Dsp Guitar Fx Pedal, Stephen P. Rock

Electrical Engineering

A guitar effects (FX) pedal, also referred to as a stomp box, manipulates the electric signal produced by guitars to produce a variety of different sounds for the application of music. Musicians use guitar effects to produce sonically different and interesting sounds for the sake of performance, creation, and art. Although the different types of effects are numerous, the basic effects fall into either distortion, modulation, or delay. The use of guitar pedals allows the musician to accurately perform desired pieces of music or compose new songs.

The current guitar pedal market includes many effects by many manufacturers, however many …

Ecg Arrhythmia Classification Using Discrete Wavelet Transformation, Hannah E. Chookaszian, Nathan D. Diekema

Electrical Engineering

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the highest leading cause of death worldwide with an approximate 17.9 million related deaths every year according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Electrocardiographic (EKG or ECG) signals are electrical signals measured in the heart and are the main indicator for pre-existing cardiac conditions. The application of deep learning methods such as artificial neural networks (ANN) will assist in the automated detection and classification of ECG signals. The current methods for ECG analysis are lacking in accuracy and reliability considering the level of risk involved with CVDs and the importance of a correct diagnosis. Clinicians use …

Ofdm Simulation, Joseph W. Bednar

Electrical Engineering

The project objective is to provide a tool that will allow the user to simulate an adaptive OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing) communication system in the presence of various types of interference and noise. The open-source code allows students and engineers to adjust the modulation, threshold settings, and distortion effects in the channel while observing the output bit error rate. The results the simulation provides will aid researchers in attempting to characterize the interference of OFDM based systems and their effectiveness in the presence of noise.

Biometric Identification With Ecg Signals, Connor Lindstrom, Jonathan Wood, Jacob Torchia, Jonathan Lee

Electrical Engineering

This project introduces a new form of biometric identification with an ECG signal with the use of machine learning concepts. The ECG signal makes a good candidate for identification because of its unique characteristics that make it easy to distinguish individuals from one another. A patient who has previously had ECG scans stored in a database before, can be verified using this program. This project has the capability of identifying a person or verifying a person solely using their ECG signal. Utilizing this biometric identification, hospitals would be able to add to the reliability of their identification process. Additionally, companies …

Pseudo-Stereo Audio Processor, Zachariah David Bunce

Electrical Engineering

Due to both technical and resource limitations, non-professional audio production must often record with a single microphone, creating a mono audio signal. Even some originally multi-channel audio files often combine the separate channels into a single channel to save memory. However, this channel limitation makes any music held within the audio duller during listening. The Pseudo-Stereo Audio Processor remedies this situation, introducing a quadrature phase shift onto a given single-channel audio signal, producing multiple phase shifted output signals. These separate fixed-phase output signals are then recombined to produce a variable phase difference, emulated two-channel version of the input signal, allowing …

Portable Electrocardiogram Device And Signal Processing Design, Ryan F. Blaalid

Electrical Engineering

Full 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) measurements require inconvenient and time consuming adhesive electrode placement. This project proposes a design for a Bluetooth based ECG for remote patient measurement. The device is designed to measure up to 6-leads and utilizes 5 dry (non-adhesive) electrodes to accomplish this. The device delivers the ECG data to the user’s mobile smart phone and can then be sent to the patient’s doctor for analysis. Since the contact of the dry electrodes to the skin is not perfect, low-frequency noise called baseline wandering is introduced. A signal processing technique borrowed from image processing called morphological filtering is …

Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle Controller With Pid Stability Regulation, Christian E. Aguirre

Electrical Engineering

The earth’s oceans and rivers remain widely unexplored. Hobbyists and companies across the globe invest money and resources into remotely operated vehicles (ROV) to further expand underwater knowledge. Each ROV includes a controller that operates motors and monitors other crucial system vitals. The ROV Controller project makes the process of designing an ROV simpler and more affordable by providing a multi-purpose programmable controller.

The ROV controller features programmable digital inputs/outputs and analog inputs. The controller processes control signals from analog joysticks, digital signals from a gyroscope and utilizes a MUX to expand the analog input capabilities of the Arduino. The …