Systems and Communications Commons^™

Protocol-Aware Enforcement-Point Postcards And Collector Feedback For Ot/Ics Forensic Readiness And Closed-Loop Defense, Haden Fowler

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this work, we apply P4-programmable switches to Operational Technology (OT) and Industrial Control System (ICS) traffic with the objective of turning enforcement decisions into structured forensic evidence that can also support fast, scoped feedback. OT investigations often rely on later correlation of endpoint logs, passive packet traces, and historian data, but those sources can be incomplete, hard to align in time, and missing the decision made at the enforcement point. We address this gap by implementing a P4-based enforcement switch that parses Modbus/TCP write traffic, applies protocol-aware policy checks, and exports protocolaware postcards to a collector. The collector stores …

Uav-Based Sensor Integration For In-Situ Lake Water Quality Monitoring, Alec R. Campbell

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Surface water monitoring is often constrained by limited spatial and temporal coverage due to the labor-intensive nature of traditional sampling methods, particularly in environments that are difficult to access or pose safety risks. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer a promising solution by enabling more frequent, spatially distributed, and cost-effective data collection. This study presented the design, development, and field evaluation of a UAV-based system for real-time, in-situ water quality monitoring. The system integrated multiple sensors, including oxidation-reduction potential (ORP), RGB spectrometry, pH, electrical conductivity (EC), dissolved oxygen (DO), and a multispectral spectrometer within a UAV platform.

Field testing was conducted …

Leveraging P4 Programmable-Hardware Switches For In-Network Pmu Packet Recovery, Evan Michael Bonar

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) systems are essential for real-time power grid monitor- ing but often face data loss due to network delays, equipment malfunctions, or transmis- sion errors. Traditional centralized recovery solutions introduce significant latency and scalability challenges. This thesis presents a P4-based in-network recovery mechanism that embeds detection and recovery directly into the data plane of P4-enabled programmable switches, significantly reducing recovery time and infrastructure complexity. Using the Aurora 610 switch, the system detects missing packets via sequence number analysis and recovers magnitudes with an efficient register-based algorithm.

Evaluation demonstrates high accuracy and low latency, achieving a mean absolute …

High Performance Silicon Carbide Based Converters For Powertrain Electrification, Nan Lin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the increasing concern towards environment protection, electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) have become popular in recent years. They not only help reduce carbon emissions, but also come with other benefits such higher efficiency and better user experience. Many countries and vehicle manufactures have made their plans to keep up with this trend in vehicle electrification. Powertrain is an assembly of components in a vehicle that pushes it forward. As for EVs and HEVs, their powertrains are composed of one or more power electronics converters, which are significant to the system. Silicon carbide MOSFETs have shown superior …

Ism-Band Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Node, Fnu Naveed

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the interest in remote wireless sensor networks has grown significantly, particularly with the rapid advancements in Internet of Things (IoT) technology. These networks find diverse applications, from inventory tracking to environmental monitoring. In remote areas where grid access is unavailable, wireless sensors are commonly powered by batteries, which imposes a constraint on their lifespan. However, with the emergence of wireless energy harvesting technologies, there is a transformative potential in addressing the power challenges faced by these sensors. By harnessing energy from the surrounding environment, such as solar, thermal, vibrational, or RF sources, these sensors can potentially operate …

Development Of Medical Device For Volume Status Assessment Using Peripheral Venous Pressure, Audra Beneux

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The severe side effects of acute dehydration and blood loss may be prevented if assessed and treated quickly. As amplifier technology has improved, small peripheral venous pressure (PVP) signals collected using a transducer on an intravenous catheter can be analyzed to monitor patient volume status. This thesis details the development of an embedded system prototype that quickly and accurately assesses volume status using PVP analysis. The volume prediction algorithm classified 10 seconds of PVP data as “dehydrated” or “resuscitated”. The hardware design consisted of four primary areas: analog signal conditioning, processing, user interaction, and power. After data collection, the signal …

A Memory-Centric Customizable Domain-Specific Fpga Overlay For Accelerating Machine Learning Applications, Atiyehsadat Panahi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Low latency inferencing is of paramount importance to a wide range of real time and userfacing Machine Learning (ML) applications. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) offer unique advantages in delivering low latency as well as energy efficient accelertors for low latency inferencing. Unfortunately, creating machine learning accelerators in FPGAs is not easy, requiring the use of vendor specific CAD tools and low level digital and hardware microarchitecture design knowledge that the majority of ML researchers do not possess. The continued refinement of High Level Synthesis (HLS) tools can reduce but not eliminate the need for hardware-specific design knowledge. The designs …

Structural Checking Tool Restructure And Matching Improvements, Derek Taylor

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the rising complexity and size of hardware designs, saving development time and cost by employing third-party intellectual property (IP) into various first-party designs has become a necessity. However, using third-party IPs introduces the risk of adding malicious behavior to the design, including hardware Trojans. Different from software Trojan detection, the detection of hardware Trojans in an efficient and cost-effective manner is an ongoing area of study and has significant complexities depending on the development stage where Trojan detection is leveraged. Therefore, this thesis research proposes improvements to various components of the soft IP analysis methodology utilized by the Structural …

A Novel Data Lineage Model For Critical Infrastructure And A Solution To A Special Case Of The Temporal Graph Reachability Problem, Ian Moncur

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rapid and accurate damage assessment is crucial to minimize downtime in critical infrastructure. Dependency on modern technology requires fast and consistent techniques to prevent damage from spreading while also minimizing the impact of damage on system users. One technique to assist in assessment is data lineage, which involves tracing a history of dependencies for data items. The goal of this thesis is to present one novel model and an algorithm that uses data lineage with the goal of being fast and accurate. In function this model operates as a directed graph, with the vertices being data items and edges representing …

Live Access Control Policy Error Detection Through Hardware, Bryce Mendenhall

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Access Control (AC) is a widely used security measure designed to protect resources and infrastructure in an information system. The integrity of the AC policy is crucial to the protection of the system. Errors within an AC policy may cause many vulnerabilities such as information leaks, information loss, and malicious activities. Thus, such errors must be detected and promptly fixed. However, current AC error detection models do not allow for real-time error detection, nor do they provide the source of errors. This thesis presents a live error detection model called LogicDetect which utilizes emulated Boolean digital logic circuits to provide …

Automated Flight Controller Adaptive Compensation For Actuator Failures In Transport Type Aircraft, Daniel James Fresella

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Aircraft operate over a wide range of conditions including atmospheric, weight, and center ofgravity changes. This presents a substantial challenge to automatic control system designers. When these operating conditions are merged with a partial or full control surface failure, automatic flight control is near impossible with conventional controllers. Additionally, when pilots experience control failure emergencies during flight, workload and fatigue increase drastically. The continued research of automatic flight control systems that can seamlessly adapt to unmodelled failures will enable a new generation of robust aircraft control. In this paper a 9th order 6 degree of freedom aircraft model is used …

Computational Frameworks For Multi-Robot Cooperative 3d Printing And Planning, Laxmi Prasad Poudel

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation proposes a novel cooperative 3D printing (C3DP) approach for multi-robot additive manufacturing (AM) and presents scheduling and planning strategies that enable multi-robot cooperation in the manufacturing environment. C3DP is the first step towards achieving the overarching goal of swarm manufacturing (SM). SM is a paradigm for distributed manufacturing that envisions networks of micro-factories, each of which employs thousands of mobile robots that can manufacture different products on demand. SM breaks down the complicated supply chain used to deliver a product from a large production facility from one part of the world to another. Instead, it establishes a network …

Grid Strength Assessment Trough Q-V Modal Analysis And Maximum Loadability Of A Wind-Dominated Power System Using P-Q Regions, Pierre Obed Dorile

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Climate change is a menace to the existence of the world and policymakers are trying totackle this phenomenon by deploying large-scale wind farms into their grids. Among them, wind energy shows a promising future to substitute the traditional power plants. However, the deployment of these wind farms into the grid is not a panacea that does not pose any challenges to the grid operators. Keeping the power system voltage stable while considering the strength of the transmission grid is among the major challenges facing by the transmission system operators. Amid normal operation and fault conditions, wind farms should help the …

Reference Design Of An Online Emulation And Hot-Patching Approach For Power Electronic Controller Validation, Estefano Soria Pearson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to develop a reference design of an online security system approach embedded in a power electronic controller for cybersecurity purposes. Cybersecurity in power electronics focuses on reducing vulnerabilities in the system, where most reside in the communication with the hardware devices. Although methods to secure communications lessen the probability and effects of cyber-attacks, discovering vulnerabilities is inevitable. This thesis attempts to provide a fail-safe approach to securing the system by targeting the safety of the power-electronic controller. This approach applies an additional security layer in case of a malicious or accidental controller firmware malfunction.

The online security …

Monte-Carlo-Based Analysis Of Traffic Flow For Urban Air Mobility Vehicles, Sara Ghayouraneh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The research conducted in this dissertation is focused on developing a simulation tool that can predict the traffic flow patterns of the Urban Air Mobility vehicles to alleviate some of the challenges related to their traffic management. First, an introduction to the concept of Urban Air Mobility is given, the usage of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast systems for Urban Air Mobility vehicles is suggested and dynamic addressing concept is introduced as an answer to a part of air traffic management and address scarcity challenge for Urban air Mobility vehicles. Next, in order to simulate the traffic flow patterns of the Urban …

Efficiently Estimating Survival Signature And Two-Terminal Reliability Of Heterogeneous Networks Through Multi-Objective Optimization, Daniel Bruno Lopes Da Silva

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The two-terminal reliability problem is a classical reliability problem with applications in wired and wireless communication networks, electronic circuit design, computer networks, and electrical power distribution, among other systems. However, the two-terminal reliability problem is among the hardest combinatorial problems and is intractable for large, complex networks. Several exact methods to solve the two-terminal reliability problem have been proposed since the 1960s, but they have exponential time complexity in general. Hence, practical studies involving large network-type systems resort to approximation methods to estimate the system's reliability. One attractive approach for quantifying the reliability of complex systems is to use signatures, …

Data Forgery Detection In Automatic Generation Control: Exploration Of Automated Parameter Generation And Low-Rate Attacks, Yatish R. Dubasi

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Automatic Generation Control (AGC) is a key control system utilized in electric power systems. AGC uses frequency and tie-line power flow measurements to determine the Area Control Error (ACE). ACE is then used by the AGC to adjust power generation and maintain an acceptable power system frequency. Attackers might inject false frequency and/or tie-line power flow measurements to mislead AGC into falsely adjusting power generation, which can harm power system operations. Various data forgery detection models are studied in this thesis. First, to make the use of predictive detection models easier for users, we propose a method for automated generation …

Achieving Differential Privacy And Fairness In Machine Learning, Depeng Xu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Machine learning algorithms are used to make decisions in various applications, such as recruiting, lending and policing. These algorithms rely on large amounts of sensitive individual information to work properly. Hence, there are sociological concerns about machine learning algorithms on matters like privacy and fairness. Currently, many studies only focus on protecting individual privacy or ensuring fairness of algorithms separately without taking consideration of their connection. However, there are new challenges arising in privacy preserving and fairness-aware machine learning. On one hand, there is fairness within the private model, i.e., how to meet both privacy and fairness requirements simultaneously in …

Design Of Control Logic And The Human-Machine Interface For A Demonstration Plant Growth Chamber Implemented On A Programmable Logic Controller, Rachael Koehler

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

This honors thesis covers the planning, development, and implementation of system controls and human-machine interface (HMI) for a demonstration plant growth chamber. The work is a continuation of an ongoing project to be used as an educational and recruiting tool manifesting the skills acquired from the Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department at the University of Arkansas’ College of Engineering. This work includes emergency controls, overall design interface, and controls for both the aeration and lighting subsystems of the growth chamber. Overall design interface controls established included development of two user modes, Administrator and Visitor. The Administrator user will have full …

Design And Assembly Of High-Temperature Signal Conditioning System On Ltcc With Silicon Carbide Cmos Circuits, Sajib Roy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objective of the work described in this dissertation paper is to develop a prototype electronic module on a low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) material. The electronic module would perform signal conditioning of sensor signals (thermocouples) operating under extreme conditions for applications like gas turbines to collect data on the health of the turbine blades during operation so that the turbines do not require shutdown for inspection to determine if maintenance is required. The collected data can indicate when such shutdowns, which cost $1M per day, should be scheduled and maintenance actually performed. The circuits for the signal conditioning system within …

Signals And Systems, Jingxian Wu

Open Educational Resources

Signals and Systems is a core Electrical Engineering undergraduate course. This course covers the topics of signal and system analysis, with an emphasis on the analysis of linear time-invariant systems. The materials presented in this course are designed for a 15-week course for junior or senior level students. The open access materials for this course include:

Course outline and guides: a detailed guideline that provides a week-by-week teaching schedule for a 15-week semester.

Lecture notes: a complete set of lecture notes with detailed explanations and a large number of examples that cover all the contents that are offered in this …

Development Of A Reference Design For A Cyber-Physical System, Nicholas Paul Blair

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a reference design to assist in the selection of security practices in power electronics design. A prototype will be developed from this reference design for evaluation. This evaluation will include a brief cost/benefit analysis to gauge the efficacy of implementing each layer of security throughout the power electronics design process. This thesis will also describe the obstacles and effectiveness of integrating a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) into a cyber-hardened grid-connected device. The TPM device is a secured crypto processor that assists in generating, storing, and restricting the use of cryptographic keys. The …

Low Latency Anomaly Detection With Imperfect Models, Samrat Nath

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The problem of anomaly detection deals with detecting abrupt changes/anomalies in the distribution of sequentially observed data in a stochastic system. This problem applies to many applications, such as signal processing, intrusion detection, quality control, medical diagnosis, etc. A low latency anomaly detection algorithm, which is based on the framework of quickest change detection (QCD), aims at minimizing the detection delay of anomalies in the sequentially observed data while ensuring satisfactory detection accuracy. Moreover, in many practical applications, complete knowledge of the post-change distribution model might not be available due to the unexpected nature of the change. Hence, the objective …

A Power Constrained 433-Mhz Low Noise Amplifier, Pablo Alvarez Arellano

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Within wireless communication systems, low noise amplifiers are critical for the performance of receivers. They are primarily responsible for providing enough gain while adding little noise to overcome the noise of the subsequent stages. The LNA presented here is part of a battery-powered transceiver meant to measure crop nutrient data and relay the information. Therefore, power consumption and area become import considerations. To design for a specific power level, a power-constrained noise optimization method is used. The method sizes the amplifying transistor for a fixed source impedance, power dissipation, technology, and operating frequency. The chosen topology is the cascode stage …

Fractional Order State Feedback Control For Improved Lateral Stability Of Semi-Autonomous Commercial Heavy Vehicles, Rasheed Mazen Abdulkader

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the growing development of autonomous and semi-autonomous large commercial heavy vehicles, the lateral stability control of articulated vehicles have caught the attention of researchers recently. Active vehicle front steering (AFS) can enhance the handling performance and stability of articulated vehicles for an emergency highway maneuver scenario. However, with large vehicles such tractor-trailers, the system becomes more complex to control and there is an increased occurrence of instabilities. This research investigates a new control scheme based on fractional calculus as a technique that ensures lateral stability of articulated large heavy vehicles during evasive highway maneuvering scenarios. The control method is …

Adaptive Boundary Control Using The Natural Switching Surfaces For Flyback Converters, Luciano Andres Garcia Rodriguez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The derivation and implementation of the natural switching surfaces (NSS) considering certain parametric uncertainties for a flyback converter operating in the boundary conduction mode (BCM) is the main focus of this paper. The NSS with nominal parameters presents many benefits for the control of nonlinear systems; for example, fast transient response under load-changing conditions. However, the performance worsens considerably when the converter actual parameters are different from the ones used in the design process. Therefore, a novel control strategy for NSS considering the effects of parameter uncertainties is proposed. This control law can estimate and adapt the control trajectories in …

Autonomous Boat Control Software Design Using Model-Based Systems Engineering, Noah Nelson

Electrical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

While there is considerable buzz about self-driving cars, self-driving boats are actually more fully developed. The Boat Hardware Control Platform Team was tasked with developing a fleet of small autonomous boats that travel to a destination while avoiding obstacles and staying in formation. The author’s specific task was to develop software used by the boats to detect obstacles and plan a route to a destination. This was done using a method inspired by self-driving cars, which shows promise, but is still being tested at the time of writing. The entire project incorporated model-based systems engineering, which proved to be useful.

Design Of Remote Datalogger Connection And Live Data Tweeting System, Zachary Wofford

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Low-Impact Development (LID) is an attempt to sustainably respond to the potential hazards posed by urban expansion. Green roofs are an example of LID design meant to reduce the amount of runoff from storm events that are becoming more intense and less predictable while also providing insulation to buildings. LID has not yet been widely adopted as it is often a more expensive alternative to conventional infrastructure (Bowman et. al., 2009). However, its benefits are apparent. The University of Arkansas Honors College awarded a grant to research the large green roof atop Hillside Auditorium. One part of this grant is …

A Silicon Germanium Cmos Linear Voltage Regulator For Wireless Agricultural Applications, Aminta Naidili Castillo Robles

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents the design, simulation and test results of a silicon germanium (SiGe) complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) linear regulator. The objective of the circuit is to power other analog devices regardless of the load current and input voltage changes. The application of this regulator is to be part of a project developing a miniaturized semiconductor platform that can be inserted into stems of crops in order to measure data inside the plant and then send it wirelessly to the user. The linear regulator was designed on a BiCMOS SiGe 0.13µm which is a GlobalFoundries process. It has been tested at …

Applications Of Krylov Subspace And Balanced Truncation Model Order Reduction In Power Systems, Sebastian Emanuel Garrido

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Dynamic representations of power systems usually result in the order of hundreds or even thousands of buses. Therefore, reduction of these dynamic representations is convenient. Two applications of model order reduction in power systems are discussed in this thesis. First, Krylov subspace-based method is applied to the IEEE-123 Node Test Feeder in the context of distribution-level power systems simulation. Second, a Balanced Truncation-based model reduction is implemented in the 3-Machine 9-Bus system for designing a power system controller in the context of generation- and transmission-level power systems.

First, for the IEEE-123 Node Test Feeder, a two-sided Arnoldi algorithm is proposed …