Systems and Communications Commons^™

Cooperative Anti-Jamming For Secondary Opportunistic Networks: A Colonel Blotto Game Model, Mohammad Abdellatif, Mohamed Abdelraheem

Electrical Engineering

Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) has been proposed to increase the spectrum utilization efficiency and to solve the spectrum scarcity problem. However, due to the spectrum sharing and opportunistic access nature of the DSA networks, they are more vulnerable to security threats like jammers. In this paper, we propose an anti-jamming technique in which the secondary network coordinator groups the secondary users in smart collations over the different channels. By utilizing cooperative communication, the secondary users in these collations can boost their transmission against the effect of the jammer. The interaction between the secondary network and the jammer is modeled as …

Directional Modulation For Compact Devices, Adam Narbudowicz, Max Ammann, Dirk Heberling

Articles

A new directional modulation system which uses radiation pattern data for modulation encoding is proposed. The approach allows compact multiport antennas (e.g. MIMO capable antennas) to be used for directional modulation, replacing extensive arrays. The modulation weighting coefficients are calculated with a fixed, antenna specific equation, thus reducing computational complexity. The solution is intended to enhance privacy in small, battery-operated wireless devices, required for “Internet of Things” applications.

An Acoustic-Based Approach For Condition Monitoring Of Pipes, Muhammad S. Khan, Turaj Ashuri, Mitchell Collins, Geoffrey Birkemeier, Emad Almohmmedali

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

Polyvinyl chloride pipes are extensively used in municipal sewer systems. As the sewer system ages, polyvinyl chloride pipes become prone to developing cracks that can release toxic effluents into the environment. Traditionally, utility operators pass a close circuit television camera mounted on a guided vehicle through the pipe to monitor the defects. The video is observed by a trained operator who records the condition of the pipe. This arrangement has two major limitations. First, it is expensive due to complex set up. Second, if a pipe is blocked the guided vehicle cannot pass through its entire length. A more economical …

Intrusion Detection For Smart Grid Communication Systems, Brycent Chatfield

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Transformation of the traditional power grid into a smart grid hosts an array of vulnerabilities associated with communication networks. Furthermore, wireless mediums used throughout the smart grid promote an environment where Denial of Service (DoS) attacks are very effective. In wireless mediums, jamming and spoofing attack techniques diminish system operations thus affecting smart grid stability and posing an immediate threat to Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) of the smart grid. Intrusion detection systems (IDS) serve as a primary defense in mitigating network vulnerabilities. In IDS, signatures created from historical data are compared to incoming network traffic to identify abnormalities. In …

Identification, Calculation And Warning Of Horizontal Curves For Low-Volume Two-Lane Roadways Using Smartphone Sensors, Shaohu Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Smartphones and other portable personal devices that integrate global positioning systems, Bluetooth Low Energy, and advanced computing technologies have become more accessible due to affordable prices, product innovation, and people’s desire to be connected. As more people own these devices, there are greater opportunities for data acquisition in Intelligent Transportation Systems, and for vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. Horizontal curves are a common factor in the number of observed roadway crashes. Identifying locations and geometric characteristics of the horizontal curves plays a critical role in crash prediction and prevention, and timely curve warnings save lives. However, most states in the US face a …

Development Of Microgrid Test Bed For Testing Energy Management System, Shaili Nepal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Today the world population has reached 7.5 billion, and this number is expected to grow at the rate of 1.13% every year [1]. With this increase in population, the total demand for electricity has also increased. More people means the need for more power: electricity to power homes, schools, industries, hospitals, and so on. In today’s world, where most of the daily activities are dependent on electricity, demand for electricity, therefore, continues to rise. Currently, managing this growing need for electricity is one of the challenges the world is facing. In addition to this, approximately 1.2 billion people live in …

Efficient Energy Optimization For Smart Grid And Smart Community, Avijit Das

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The electric power industry has undergone significant changes in response to the environmental concerns during the past decades. Nowadays, due to the integration of different distributed energy systems in the smart grid, the balancing between power generation and load demand becomes a critical problem. Specifically, due to the intermittent nature of renewable energy sources (RESs) , power system optimization becomes significantly complicated. Due to the uncertain nature of RESs, the system may fail to ensure the power quality which may cause increased operating costs for committing costly reserve units or penalty costs for curtailing load demands. This dissertation presents three …

Multi-Band Antenna Array Based On Double Negative Metamaterial For Multi Automotive Applications, Mohd Jamlos, Abdulrahman Alqadami,, Imtiaz Islam, Ping Soh, Rizalman Mamat, Khairil Khairi, Adam Narbudowicz

Articles

Nowadays, the demand for antennas in wireless communication system for automotive applications is rising at a rapid rate [1, 2]. Their usage includes collision avoidance system (CAS), Vehicle-to-vehicle communications, pre-crash safety systems, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), tyre pressure monitoring system (TPMS), Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), etc. To enhance its effectiveness in these new applications, a small, multi-band, multi-functional antenna is required instead of conventional single band antennas [2, 3]. Such multifunctional antennas with favourable radiation characteristics are more practical in addressing modern antenna design requirements. However, the achievement of the above mentioned antenna’s features using conventional materials and structures …

Design Of A Compact, Fully-Autonomous 433 Mhz Tunable Antenna For Wearable Wireless Sensor Applications, John Buckley, Kevin Mccarthy, Domenico Gaetano, Loizos Loizou, Brendan O'Flynn, Cian O'Mathuna

Articles

The authors present the design of a tunable 433 MHz antenna that is tailored for wearable wireless sensor applications. This study first presents a detailed analysis of the measured impedance characteristics of a chosen antenna under test (AUT) in varying proximity to a human test subject. Instead of limiting the analysis to the head and hand only, this analysis measures the AUT impedance at varying distances from 11 different body positions. A novel antenna equivalent circuit model is then developed that enables both the free-space and total on-body AUT impedance variation to be rapidly computed using a circuit simulator instead …

Assessing Peer Review By Gauging The Fate Of Rejected Manuscripts: The Case Of The Journal Of Artificial Societies And Social Simulation, Niccolò Casnici, Francisco Grimaldo, Nigel Gilbert, Pierpaolo Dondio, Flaminio Squazzoni

Articles

This paper investigates the fate of manuscripts that were rejected from JASSS-The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, the flagship journal of social simulation. We tracked 456 manuscripts that were rejected from 1997 to 2011 and traced their subsequent publication as journal articles, conference papers or working papers. We compared the impact factor of the publishing journal and the citations of those manuscripts that were eventually published against the yearly impact factor of JASSS and the number of citations achieved by the JASSS mean and top cited articles. Only 10% of the rejected manuscripts were eventually published in a …

Target Read Operation Of Passive Ultra High Frequency Rfid Tag In A Multiple Tags Environment, Zi Qin Phua

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Passive ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio frequency Identification (RFID) has emerged as a promising solution for many industrial applications. Passive UHF systems are relatively inexpensive to implement and monitor, as no line of sight is required for the communication. There are several advantages to using a passive RFID system. For example, no internal power source is required to activate the tags, and lower labor costs and efficient multitasking operations are expected in a long term scenario. However, due to factors such as tag-to-tag interference and inaccurate localization, RFID tags that are closely spaced together are difficult to detect and program accurately …

Experimental Investigation Of Reading Passive Uhf Tags In A Multi-Tag Environment, Yi Zhou

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Recently, the Internet of things (IoT) has emerged as a promising solution for several industrial applications. One of the key components in IoT is passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tags which do not require a power source for operations. Specifically, ultra-high frequency (UHF) tags are studied in this paper. However, due to factors such as tag-to-tag interference and inaccurate localization, RFID tags that are closely spaced together are difficult to detect and program accurately with unique identifiers. This thesis investigates several factors that affect the ability to encode a specific tag with unique information in the presence of other tags, …

Contributions To Edge Computing, Vernon K. Bumgardner

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Efforts related to Internet of Things (IoT), Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Machine to Machine (M2M) technologies, Industrial Internet, and Smart Cities aim to improve society through the coordination of distributed devices and analysis of resulting data. By the year 2020 there will be an estimated 50 billion network connected devices globally and 43 trillion gigabytes of electronic data. Current practices of moving data directly from end-devices to remote and potentially distant cloud computing services will not be sufficient to manage future device and data growth.

Edge Computing is the migration of computational functionality to sources of data generation. The importance of …

Power Budgets For Cubesat Radios To Support Ground Communications And Inter-Satellite Links, Otilia Popescu

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

CubeSats are a class of pico-satellites that have emerged over the past decade as a cost-effective alternative to the traditional large satellites to provide space experimentation capabilities to universities and other types of small enterprises, which otherwise would be unable to carry them out due to cost constraints. An important consideration when planning CubeSat missions is the power budget required by the radio communication subsystem, which enables a CubeSat to exchange information with ground stations and/or other CubeSats in orbit. The power that a CubeSat can dedicate to the communication subsystem is limited by the hard constraints on the total …

Hovercam, Kevin Rauh, Ross Palenik

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Quadcopters are widely used in recreational areas and often have video cameras mounted to them. The Hovercam increases the range of usefulness of quadcopters and allow the user to record him or herself while performing any task. The Hovercam will use GPS to track and follow a target. A smartphone application will be used to control the Hovercam in its basic functions of taking off, hovering, and landing.

Packmule, Jared M. Alexander, Jared J. Ford, Timothy J. Griffiths, Andray Pennington

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

People face demands of hauling equipment and belongings with them every day, whether it be for work or leisure. This design report discusses and details a product that would allow people to overcome the struggles of this. The Packmule is an autonomous following robot that has the capability of carrying a load up to 30 pounds. The design involves two independently controlled motors operating two drive wheels so that the Packmule will be flexible in the directions it can move. There are also two more steering wheels for support of the base and the load inside. The way in which …

System For Workout Information Management, Mark Archual, Ethan E. Schweinsberg

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Power racks are a weight machine used by swimmers to provide resistance while they swim away from a wall toward the center of the pool. The objective of this project is to build a modular data system that can be added to these machines to record and log quantitative information during their use. This information will be stored on a web server, and made available to the user for analysis and visualization through a web application. Workout data can also be downloaded and interpreted at a later time, independent of the web application. The data system should be water resistant, …

Indoor Mapping Drone, Benjamin J. Plevny, Andrew Armstrong, Miguel Lopez, Davidson Okpara

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project addresses the need for an autonomous indoor mapping system that will create a 3D map of an unknown physical environment in real time. The aerial system moves and avoids obstacles autonomously, without the need for human remote control or observation. An aerial system produces a map of an unknown indoor environment by transmitting data received from the aerial device’s sensors. The transmission occurs over a wireless channel from the aerial device to a remote server for processing and storage of the data. As the transmission is done in real time, the aerial system does not require hardware for …

Smart Underground Antenna Arrays: A Soil Moisture Adaptive Beamforming Approach, Abdul Salam, Mehmet C. Vuran

School of Computing: Technical Reports

In this paper, a novel framework for underground beamforming using adaptive antenna arrays is presented. Based on the analysis of propagation in wireless underground channel, a theoretical model is developed which uses soil moisture information and feedback mechanism to improve performance wireless underground communications. Array element in soil has been analyzed empirically and impacts of soil type and soil moisture on return loss and resonant frequency are investigated. Beam patterns are investigated to communicate with both underground and above ground devices. Depending on the incident angle, refraction from soil-air interface has the adverse effects in the UG communications. It is …

A Hybrid State/Event Driven Communication-Based Control For Dc Microgrids, Yusef Esa

Dissertations and Theses

The U.S. electric power industry is undergoing unprecedented changes triggered by the growing electricity demand, and the national efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, there is a call for increased power grid resiliency, survivability and self-healing capabilities. As a result of these challenges, the smart grid concept emerged. One of the main pillars of the smart grid is microgrids. In this thesis, the technical merits of clustering multiple microgrids during blackouts on the overall stability and supply availability have been investigated.

We propose to use the existing underground distribution grid infrastructure, if applicable, during blackouts to form microgrid clusters. …

A Host Board Design For An Experiment System Of Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks, He Huang

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Evaluation of theoretical innovation in field experiments plays an important role for research in Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs). During the experiments, the problems of power consumption, costs, and assembly of underwater nodes concern researchers all the time. This project develops a host board for an UWSNs field experiment system. This host board solves the above problems by deploying power management module, utilizing cheap and low power consumption chips (Raspberry Pi and MSP430), and rationalizing layout.

The main functions of the host board include battery monitoring, on-board DC converters, remotely power supply control, data ports bridge, and pluggable module for …

Secure Cloud Controlled Software Defined Radio Network For Bandwidth Allocation, Isaac J. Cushman

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of mobility of wireless devices for opportunistic spectrum access and communications using National Instrument Universal Software Radio Peripherals devices. The overall system utilizes software defined radio networks for frequency allocation, cloud connectivity to maintain up-to-date information, and moving target defense as a security mechanism. Each USRP device sends its geolocation to query the spectrum database for idle channels. The cloud cluster was designed for complex data storage and allocation using a smart load balancer to offer ultra-security to users. This project also explores the advantages of data protection and security …

Magneto Inductive Communication System For Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks, Niaz Ahmed

Doctoral Dissertations

"Underwater wireless sensor networks have found a number of applications in underwater environment monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, military applications and ocean exploration. Among the four possible means of underwater wireless communication, namely acoustic, electromagnetic (EM), magneto-inductive (MI) and optics communication, MI communication enjoys the advantages of being low cost and robust equally in air, water and soil. This dissertation presents design and implementation of a low-power and low-cost MI sensor network node that is suited for long-term deployment of underwater and underground infrastructure monitoring, such as bridge scour and levee scour monitoring. The designed MI sensor node combat the directionality of …

Node Localization In Underwater Sensor Networks (Uwsn), Huai Huang

Doctoral Dissertations

"This dissertation focuses on node localization in underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) where anchor nodes have knowledge of their own locations and communicate with sensor nodes in acoustic or magnetic induction (MI) means. The sensor nodes utilize the communication signals and the locations of anchor nodes to locate themselves and propagate their locations through the network.

For UWSN using MI communications, this dissertation proposes two localization methods: rotation matrix (RM)-based method and the distance-based method. Both methods require only two anchor nodes with arbitrarily oriented tri-directional coils to locate one sensor node in the 3-D space, thus having advantages in …

Omni-Directional Infrared 3d Reconstruction And Tracking Of Human Targets, Emrah Benli

Theses and Dissertations

Omni-directional (O-D) infrared (IR) vision is an effective capability for mobile systems in robotics, due to its advantages: illumination invariance, wide field-of-view, ease of identifying heat-emitting objects, and long term tracking without interruption. Unfortunately, O-D IR sensors have low resolution, low frame rates, high cost, sensor noise, and an increase in tracking time. In order to overcome these disadvantages, we propose an autonomous system application in indoor scenarios including 1) Dynamic 3D Reconstruction (D3DR) of the target view in real time images, 2) Human Behavior-based Target Tracking from O-D thermal images, 3) Thermal Multisensor Fusion (TMF), and 4) Visual Perception …

Accurate Acoustic Ranging System Using Android Smartphones, Mohammadbagher Fotouhi

Theses and Dissertations

ACCURATE ACOUSTIC RANGING SYSTEM USING ANDROID SMARTPHONES

By Mohammadbagher Fotouhi, Master of Science

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University 2017

Major Director: Dr. Ruixin Niu, Associate Professor of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

In this thesis, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of an android ranging system, a high-accuracy acoustic-based ranging system which allows two android mobile phones to learn their physical distance from each other.

In this system we propose a practical solution for accurate ranging based on acoustic communication …