Systems and Communications Commons^™

Energy Efficient Load Balancing In Multi-Band Cellular Networks Via Reinforcement Learning, Ahmed Shoukry El Soukkary

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates energy-efficient load balancing in homogeneous multi-band cellular networks through the joint design of user association (UA) and transmit power allocation (PA). The original mixed-integer nonlinear formulation is decomposed into two coupled yet tractable subproblems: a UA stage and a PA stage for high-frequency bands. For UA, a SINR-ratio-based heuristic is proposed to prioritize users that are most sensitive to suboptimal band assignments, and it is benchmarked against a Max- SINR baseline. For PA, the high-band power control problem is addressed using reinforcement learning, where a Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) agent learns power levels and band-activation decisions under …

Scalable And Fault-Tolerant Network Architectures For Real-Time Video Transmission In Industrial Networked Control Systems, Moustafa Awad

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis addresses the challenge of transporting supervisory video alongside time-critical control traffic in industrial Networked Control Systems (NCS) without violating stringent real-time constraints. A simple yet scalable network architecture is developed and evaluated for a plant-level deployment comprising three interconnected workcells with sensors, controllers, actuators, and cameras. The design explicitly accommodates bandwidth-intensive video streams while preserving the responsiveness of watchdog/control traffic. Analytical delay modeling decomposes end-to-end latency into transmission, propagation, processing, and queuing components, and Riverbed-based simulations are used to validate the model under realistic mixed-traffic conditions. A traffic-engineering strategy - phase-shifting supervisory camera transmissions - effectively desynchronizes frame …

Flexible Fault-Tolerant Multi-Die Fpga-Based Architectures For Varying Space Environments, Yosof Ali Seif El Din Ali Maklad

Theses and Dissertations

It is well-known fact that spacecraft’s electronic components operate in an extreme harsh and varying space environments, beside changing orbit or passing through Van Allan Belts during orbital course results of radiation levels change. This thesis focuses on SRAM-based FPGA systems on-board of such spacecrafts, that are commonly utilized in space applications’ critical applications due to their capabilities and flexibility to reconfigure, since these systems are vulnerable to frequent negative impacts of ionizing radiation, thus inducing soft and hard errors leading to disastrous failures that could jeopardize the entire spacecraft. The soft errors’ effects are frequent yet can be mitigated, …

Ontological Runtime Monitoring For Mission Engineering, Alexander R. Will

Theses and Dissertations

The advent of the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) concept will bring low-altitude aviation to civilians through passenger and cargo transport. However, the prospective vehicles in UAM studies are predominantly autonomous, raising questions about their efficacy and stability in densely populated urban areas. At the same time, extensive work has been performed to define a new branch of systems engineering that focuses on runtime behavior, synchronization, communication, and task allocation.This field is known as "mission engineering". Mission engineering has been deployed in military scenarios to model human-autonomy cooperation. By applying the concepts from this field to UAM, full systems-of-systems can be …

Timing And Stability Of Uav Operations In Smart City Environments: Experimental Analysis And Design Implications, Rabia Ipek Yasar

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the deployment and performance of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) within the Virginia Commonwealth University Open Cyber City (OCC) testbed. The study focuses on evaluating real-time indoor positioning performance using the Crazyflie drone platform. High-precision position measurements are obtained using the Vicon motion capture system, enabling analysis of the latency between the drone’s actual position and the system-reported position. In a closed-loop control system, the time difference between the position measurement and the application of the control command is called the system delay. Both stationary (hovering) and trajectory-following experiments are conducted to evaluate system performance. Communication delays in …

Load Balancing In Mobile Networks Using Deep Reinforcement Learning And Traffic Prediction, Shorouk Raafat Mokhtar Abouamasha

Theses and Dissertations

Wireless communication networks are advancing at a rapid pace, driven by various challenges and ambitious goals. This rapid growth is driven by a range of applications, including technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), as well as innovations in smart cities, autonomous vehicles, and more. Different applications demand specific performance criteria such as high data throughput, low latency, robust reliability, and efficient energy usage. In this thesis, we investigate two enhancements that can be adopted in wireless networks to tackle the challenges of resource optimization and network management. The motivation behind this is the fact that future networks will face …

C-Band Air To Ground Communication System For Uav, Mubark Alghamdi

Theses and Dissertations

C band spectrum 5030-5091 MHz is allocated for command-and-control communication services with unmanned aircraft systems. This document evaluates the possibility of using 3GPP 5G standards for provisioning of such services. Channelization of the spectrum and major system parameters are proposed. The performance of the proposed system in channel fading environment is evaluated using MATLAB based simulations. The evaluations examine SINR, and average throughput of the proposed system at different altitudes of the unmanned aircraft system. MATLAB simulations are used to evaluate system performance in free-space environments. Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) and Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) are predicted at different UAS …

Characterizing Human Mobility Patterns In Saudi Arabia Using Cellular Data, Meshal Alnefaie

Theses and Dissertations

The study analyzes human mobility in Saudi Arabia. Using crowd-source data, Riyadh mobility is analyzed to find trends and highlight mobility patterns of individuals in Riyadh. Then, the mobility of Riyadh is compared with that of Jeddah and Dammam in a similar data collection and analysis. Four mobility metrics are utilized: Number of Visited Locations (NLOC), Number of Unique Locations (NULOC), Radius of Gyration (RGYR), and Distance Traveled (DTRV). The results show interesting outcomes about individuals in the three cities. Although these cities are far from each other, they observe the same mobility patterns. These findings have the potential to …

Parallel Communications In Single-Core Optical Fibers Utilizing Spatial Domain Multiplexing And Wavelength Division Multiplexing, Mingxuan Tu

Theses and Dissertations

This endeavor proposes a hybrid parallel optical communication architecture in single-core fibers combining WDM in O-band (1270 nm, 1310 nm, 1310 nm, and 1330 nm) and two-channel SDM. The proposed architecture applies carefully designed delays in each propagating channel to achieve synchronization and, therefore, realizes parallel transmission in single-core fibers without the help of Serializer/De-serializers (SerDes). A mathematical model of SDM, calculations on delays between each optical channel, simulation of the hybrid architecture, experimental setup, and the testing and analysis of channel performance have been provided. A design of a photonic integrated circuit based on thin film lithium niobate electro-optic …

Fair Fault-Tolerant Approach For Access Point Failures In Networked Control System Greenhouses, Mohammed Ali Yaslam Ba Humaish

Theses and Dissertations

Greenhouse Networked Control Systems (NCS) are popular applications in modern agriculture due to their ability to monitor and control various environmental factors that can affect crop growth and quality. However, designing and operating a greenhouse in the context of NCS could be challenging due to the need for highly available and cost-efficient systems. This thesis presents a design methodology for greenhouse NCS that addresses these challenges, offering a framework to optimize crop productivity, minimize costs, and improve system availability and reliability. It contributes several innovations to the field of greenhouse NCS design. For example, it recommends using the 2.4GHz frequency …

Explore Security And Machine Learning Applications In Next Generation Wireless Networks, Haolin Tang

Theses and Dissertations

Next-generation (NextG) or Beyond-Fifth-Generation (B5G) wireless networks have become a prominent focus in academic and industry circles. This is driven by the increasing demand for cutting-edge applications such as mobile health, self-driving cars, the metaverse, digital twins, virtual reality, and more. These diverse applications typically require high communication network performance, including spectrum utilization, data speed, and latency. New technologies are emerging to meet the communication requirements of various applications. Intelligent Reflecting Surface (IRS) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are two representatives that have been demonstrated as promising and powerful technologies in NextG communications. While new technologies significantly enhance communication performance, they …

Traffic Light Detection And V2i Communications Of An Autonomous Vehicle With The Traffic Light For An Effective Intersection Navigation Using Mavs Simulation, Mahfuzur Rahman

Theses and Dissertations

Intersection Navigation plays a significant role in autonomous vehicle operation. This paper focuses on enhancing autonomous vehicle intersection navigation through advanced computer vision and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication systems. The research unfolds in two phases. In the first phase, an approach utilizing YOLOv8s is proposed for precise traffic light detection and recognition, trained on the Small-Scale Traffic Light Dataset (S2TLD). The second phase establishes seamless connectivity between autonomous vehicles and traffic lights in a simulated Mississippi State University Autonomous Vehicle Simulation (MAVS) environment resembling a small city with multiple intersections. This V2I system enables the transmission of Signal Phase and Timing …

Project Thetis: A Low-Cost, Low-Profile Inertial Data Logger, Braidan Duffy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis details the design, testing, calibration, and verification of a nine degree of freedom inertial measurement data logger for use with floating bodies. The instrument was conceived to address limitations of equipment used in classes within the Ocean Engineering department at Florida Institute of Technology. By meeting with several stakeholders and end users, a series of stakeholder requirements, capabilities, and component-level requirements were de- veloped that informed the design constraints. There were several hardware iterations of the board, culminating in Revision F5 which was extensively tested and proven. The design was inspected after testing concluded to determine which capabilities …

Exploring Bistatic Scattering Modeling For Land Surface Applications Using Radio Spectrum Recycling In The Signal Of Opportunity Coherent Bistatic Simulator, Dylan R. Boyd

Theses and Dissertations

The potential for high spatio-temporal resolution microwave measurements has urged the adoption of the signals of opportunity (SoOp) passive radar technique for use in remote sensing. Recent trends in particular target highly complex remote sensing problems such as root-zone soil moisture and snow water equivalent. This dissertation explores the continued open-sourcing of the SoOp coherent bistatic scattering model (SCoBi) and its use in soil moisture sensing applications. Starting from ground-based applications, the feasibility of root-zone soil moisture remote sensing is assessed using available SoOp resources below L-band. A modularized, spaceborne model is then developed to simulate land-surface scattering and delay-Doppler …

Physical Layer Security With Unmanned Aerial Vehicles For Advanced Wireless Networks, Aly Sabri Abdalla

Theses and Dissertations

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are emerging as enablers for supporting many applications and services, such as precision agriculture, search and rescue, temporary network deployment, coverage extension, and security. UAVs are being considered for integration into emerging wireless networks as aerial users, aerial relays (ARs), or aerial base stations (ABSs). This dissertation proposes employing UAVs to contribute to physical layer techniques that enhance the security performance of advanced wireless networks and services in terms of availability, resilience, and confidentiality. The focus is on securing terrestrial cellular communications against eavesdropping with a cellular-connected UAV that is dispatched as an AR or ABS. …

Wifi Sensing At The Edge Towards Scalable On-Device Wireless Sensing Systems, Steven M. Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations

WiFi sensing offers a powerful method for tracking physical activities using the radio-frequency signals already found throughout our homes and offices. This novel sensing modality offers continuous and non-intrusive activity tracking since sensing can be performed (i) without requiring wearable sensors, (ii) outside the line-of-sight, and even (iii) through the wall. Furthermore, WiFi has become a ubiquitous technology in our computers, our smartphones, and even in low-cost Internet of Things devices. In this work, we consider how the ubiquity of these low-cost WiFi devices offer an unparalleled opportunity for improving the scalability of wireless sensing systems. Thus far, WiFi sensing …

Development Of A Security-Focused Multi-Channel Communication Protocol And Associated Quality Of Secure Service (Qoss) Metrics, Paul M. Simon

Theses and Dissertations

The threat of eavesdropping, and the challenge of recognizing and correcting for corrupted or suppressed information in communication systems is a consistent challenge. Effectively managing protection mechanisms requires an ability to accurately gauge the likelihood or severity of a threat, and adapt the security features available in a system to mitigate the threat. This research focuses on the design and development of a security-focused communication protocol at the session-layer based on a re-prioritized communication architecture model and associated metrics. From a probabilistic model that considers data leakage and data corruption as surrogates for breaches of confidentiality and integrity, a set …

A Harmonic Radar System For Honey Bee Tracking To Better Understand Colony Collapse Disorder, William B. Woo

Theses and Dissertations

Honey bees are some of the most important pollinators for agriculture in the world and are pivotal to the health of worldwide ecosystems. Like all insects, bees struggle with exposure to parasites, diseases, and other environmental factors that can negatively affect the overall health of the colony. Recently, a new unexplainable phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has been wreaking havoc on bee populations worldwide. As a result, a system capable of tracking bees is required to understand the different contributions of chemicals, parasites, etc. to CCD. This research seeks to show data supporting the development of systems for an …

Machine Learning Based Critical Resource Allocation In Mixed-Traffic Cellular Networks, Mohamed Nomeir

Theses and Dissertations

The proliferation of cellular networks over the past two decades has encouraged the expansion of their use in many modern applications. These applications involve the use of data traffic of different quality of service (QoS) requirements. Some of these requirements are quite stringent such as in the case of critical Internet of Things (IoT) health care, military and homeland security applications. This situation resulted in imposing a variety of resource allocation requirements on the cellular network operation in a simultaneous manner.

In this thesis, we consider the challenging problem of mixed-traffic resource allocation, or scheduling, in cellular networks. We focus …

Network Management, Optimization And Security With Machine Learning Applications In Wireless Networks, Mariam Nabil

Theses and Dissertations

Wireless communication networks are emerging fast with a lot of challenges and ambitions. Requirements that are expected to be delivered by modern wireless networks are complex, multi-dimensional, and sometimes contradicting. In this thesis, we investigate several types of emerging wireless networks and tackle some challenges of these various networks. We focus on three main challenges. Those are Resource Optimization, Network Management, and Cyber Security. We present multiple views of these three aspects and propose solutions to probable scenarios. The first challenge (Resource Optimization) is studied in Wireless Powered Communication Networks (WPCNs). WPCNs are considered a very promising approach towards sustainable, …

Latency Optimization In Smart Meter Networks, Amr Kassab

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, we consider the problem of smart meter networks with data collection to a central point within acceptable delay and least consumed energy. In smart metering applications, transferring and collecting data within delay constraints is crucial. IoT devices are usually resource-constrained and need reliable and energy-efficient routing protocol. Furthermore, meters deployed in lossy networks often lead to packet loss and congestion. In smart grid communication, low latency and low energy consumption are usually the main system targets. Considering these constraints, we propose an enhancement in RPL to ensure link reliability and low latency. The proposed new additive composite …

Enhanced Interest Aware Peoplerank For Opportunistic Mobile Social Networks, Yosra Saad Shahin

Theses and Dissertations

Network infrastructures are being continuously challenged by increased demand, resource-hungry applications, and at times of crisis when people need to work from homes such as the current Covid-19 epidemic situation, where most of the countries applied partial or complete lockdown and most of the people worked from home. Opportunistic Mobile Social Networks (OMSN) prove to be a great candidate to support existing network infrastructures. However, OMSNs have copious challenges comprising frequent disconnections and long delays. we aim to enhance the performance of OMSNs including delivery ratio and delay. We build upon an interest-aware social forwarding algorithm, namely Interest Aware PeopleRank …

Reinforcement Learning-Based Access Schemes In Cognitive Radio Networks, Ehab Maged Elguindy

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, we propose different MAC protocols based on three Reinforcement Learning (RL) approaches, namely Q-Learning, Deep Q-Network (DQN), and Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG). We exploit the primary user (PU) feedback, in the form of ARQ and CQI bits, to enhance the performance of the secondary user (SU) MAC protocols. Exploiting the PU feedback information can be applied on the top of any SU sensing-based MAC protocol. Our proposed model relies on two main pillars, namely, an infinite-state Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) to model the system dynamics besides a queuing-theoretic model for the PU queue; the …

An Optimized Lte-Based Technique For Drone Base Station 3d Placement And Resource Allocation In Delay-Sensitive M2m Networks, Ahmed Fahim

Theses and Dissertations

The deployment of drone-mounted communication systems has received increasing interest and attention recently as it allows significant improvement to the network access capacity and coverage. Many applications can benefit from such deployments in particular machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. Drones are expected to facilitate extending wireless network access for both human users and the smart machine-type-communication devices (MTCDs) that have strict and diverse quality of service (QoS) requirements. In this thesis, we propose an optimal solution for the dynamic placement of an LTE drone-mounted base station to maximize the coverage of MTCDs deployed over a large geographical area in disaster situations or …

A General Framework For Characterizing And Evaluating Attacker Models For Cps Security Assessment, Christopher S. Deloglos, Christopher Deloglos

Theses and Dissertations

Characterizing the attacker’s perspective is essential to assessing the security posture and resilience of cyber-physical systems. The attacker’s perspective is most often achieved by cyber-security experts (e.g., red teams) who critically challenge and analyze the system from an adversarial stance. Unfortunately, the knowledge and experience of cyber-security experts can be inconsistent leading to situations where there are gaps in the security assessment of a given system. Structured security review processes (such as TAM, Mission Aware, STPA-SEC, and STPA-SafeSec) attempt to standardize the review processes to impart consistency across an organization or application domain. However, with most security review processes, the …

Exploiting Feedback Information In Cognitive Radio Systems, Sara Abozeid Attlla

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, we consider a cognitive radio (CR) network where the primary network's feedback information is utilized to design access schemes for the secondary network, to exploit the underutilized primary spectrum resources. Secondary users (SUs) identify the spectrum opportunities by sensing the spectrum for primary users (PUs) activities and by listening to the PUs feedback. The feedback signals monitored in this research work are the channel quality indicator (CQI) and automatic repeat request (ARQ) available in the PUs network. For detecting the PUs activities, SUs employ hard/soft energy sensing. The secondary access decisions are optimized to maximize the SUs …

Mathematical Models Of Cellular Signaling And Supramolecular Self-Assembly, Pratip Rana

Theses and Dissertations

Synthetic biologists endeavor to predict how the increasing complexity of multi-step signaling cascades impacts the fidelity of molecular signaling, whereby cellular state information is often transmitted with proteins diffusing by a pseudo-one-dimensional stochastic process. We address this problem by using a one-dimensional drift-diffusion model to derive an approximate lower bound on the degree of facilitation needed to achieve single-bit informational efficiency in signaling cascades as a function of their length. We find that a universal curve of the Shannon-Hartley form describes the information transmitted by a signaling chain of arbitrary length and depends upon only a small number of physically …

Convolutional Neural Network Architecture Study For Aerial Visual Localization, Jedediah M. Berhold

Theses and Dissertations

In unmanned aerial navigation the ability to determine the aircraft's location is essential for safe flight. The Global Positioning System (GPS) is the default modern application used for geospatial location determination. GPS is extremely robust, very accurate, and has essentially solved aerial localization. Unfortunately, the signals from all Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) to include GPS can be jammed or spoofed. To this response it is essential to develop alternative systems that could be used to supplement navigation systems, in the event of a lost GNSS signal. Public and governmental satellites have provided large amounts of high-resolution satellite imagery. These …

Machine Translation With Image Context From Mandarin Chinese To English, Brooke E. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

Despite ongoing improvements in machine translation, machine translators still lack the capability of incorporating context from which source text may have been derived. Machine translators use text from a source language to translate it into a target language without observing any visual context. This work aims to produce a neural machine translation model that is capable of accepting both text and image context as a multimodal translator from Mandarin Chinese to English. The model was trained on a small multimodal dataset of 700 images and sentences, and compared to a translator trained only on the text associated with those images. …

Preserving Privacy In Automotive Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems, Kenneth L. Hacker

Theses and Dissertations

The automotive industry is moving towards a more connected ecosystem, with connectivity achieved through multiple wireless systems. However, in the pursuit of these technological advances and to quickly satisfy requirements imposed on manufacturers, the security of these systems is often an afterthought. It has been shown that systems in a standard new automobile that one would not expect to be vulnerable can be exploited for a variety of harmful effects. This thesis considers a seemingly benign, but government mandated, safety feature of modern vehicles; the Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS). Typical implementations have no security-oriented features, leaking data that can …