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- Creator:
- Kinsey, Kyle
- Description:
- The goal of this thesis is to research and test an embedded heterogeneous solution that can perform image processing in real-time for an Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) application. The first part of this thesis is focused on stereo image processing and computing within MATLAB as the chosen programming environment. Using MATLAB functions, the goal of performing stereo image processing is to compute the distance, henceforth known as disparity or stereo disparity, between the car on which the cameras are mounted, and all other obstructions in the road ("Depth Estimation From Stereo Video - MATLAB & Simulink Example", 2016). Close attention will be paid to the segmentation algorithm and areas where parallelization can be used to increase the program execution speed, especially after being converted from MATLAB code to C/C++ code ("Automatically Converting MATLAB Code to C Code - MATLAB Video", 2016). Secondly, the thesis will survey the current heterogeneous programming environments such as the Synopsys VDK ("VDK FOR NXP S32V200", 2016), and the NXP Vision SDK- available embedded environments for developing and implementing heterogeneous computing-based algorithms for use within autonomous vehicular driving and artificial intelligence. Lastly, the thesis will demonstrate the parallel processing performance of the Nvidia Jetson TX1 computational board based on the Sum of Absolute Differences (SAD) algorithm for stereo disparity. The algorithm was implemented using the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) Single Input, Multiple Data (SIMD) programming paradigm.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Cook, Morgan Douglas
- Description:
- The current technological trend in transportation is a move toward cleaner energy and one of the fastest growing technologies in this field is the energy storage system (ESS)–regularly comprised of batteries. This trend can be seen in battery (BEV) and hybrid-electric vehicles (HEV). Efficiency of energy storage system (ESS) operation is crucial to electrified vehicles as batteries are still only capable of delivering a relatively limited amount of power before reaching a discharged state. Minimizing power losses within the electrical system is central to the challenge of developing electric vehicles or plug-in HEV's (PHEV) which can reach extended ranges and create broad consumer appeal. The purpose of this research is to optimize the operation of the high-voltage/low- voltage (HV/LV) electrical system by reducing power loss through control of the DC/DC buck converter duty ratio. A variable DC/DC voltage output will allow the system to use power more efficiently by online matching of the system’s real-time power needs. This will be achieved through simulation by a model predictive control (MPC) based power management strategy. The simulations will consist of software-in-the-loop (SIL) hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Anaduaka, Chuka
- Description:
- This thesis seeks to highlight some of the various challenges facing the aviation industry in the need to better understand and predict operational risk. It looks at various problems that plagues the aviation industry with an aim to improve the understanding of risk faced by the both the flight crew and the aviation industry itself. The relationships between the different types of data are briefly discussed in understanding the current level of risk. The conclusions are that a more comprehensive view of risk is required to help reduce or eliminate most risks that plague the airline industry. This thesis highlights the potential for future aviation regulation to be risk reduction based
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Banwait, Baldeep Kaur
- Description:
- This thesis research was aimed at developing a real-time image processing application and the mechanism of communication for DE1-system-on-chips (DE1-SoCs). DE1-SoCs have an ARM-based hard processor system (HPS) connected to an FPGA fabric by the high-bandwidth interconnect. By implementing the soft processors in the FPGA fabric, DE1-SoCs realize heterogeneous multiprocessing. Since the number and type of soft processors are configurable, DE1-SoCs can realize various heterogeneous multiprocessors for supporting different embedded applications. Communication between the soft processor and the HPS are not directly supported by operating systems running on top of such different types of processors. In order to overcome the problem and increase the design efficiency, we propose a synthesis method of inter-processor communication by implementing various bridges in the HPS used to communicate data between the FPGA fabric and the HPS logic. The inter-processor communication is realized using a shared memory model and inter-processor interrupts. The HPS-FPGA bridges allow masters in the FPGA fabric to communicate with slaves in the HPS logic and vice versa. The FPGA-to-HPS bridge exposes an AXI slave interface that we connected to Avalon-MM interfaces in the FPGA fabric and vice-versa. In this research we developed an image processing application and the main goal of image processing is to extract important data from images. Using this extracted information description, interpretation and understanding of the scene can be provided by the machine. In other words, image processing is used as a tool of altering and analyzing pictorial information of images. In our daily life we come across different type of image processing. The main point of image processing is to modify the selected images in desired manner. For instance, an image processing application may allow users to halftone their selected image stored in the memory card of their phone or any other multimedia device and then show the resulting image on a big monitor. In other words, image processing is used as a tool of altering and analyzing pictorial information of images. In our daily life we come across different type of image processing best example of image processing in our daily life is our brain sensing lot of images when we see images with eyes and processing is done is very less time. In existing system there are many techniques which are available for extracting information from images but there are no exact processing is defined. In this proposed system we will come across Image halftoning techniques in image processing to evaluating the use of the Altera’s DE1 SOC Board in heterogeneous computing.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Patel, Jay T.
- Description:
- This thesis focuses on the development and performance analysis of a Run Time Reconfigurable (RTR) system on the Xilinx Virtex 5 Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) platform. Due to the complexity and size of data encryption or decryption or compression algorithms, it is necessary to conserve hardware resources while maintaining flexibility of concurrently available algorithms. RTR is a technique that modifies a certain portion of the FPGA system by loading a partial configuration file at a run time without affecting the run time operations of the rest of the system. In this thesis, two different reconfigurable partitions are implemented: 1) a simple controller that controls the blinking frequency of the Light Emitting Diode (LED) indicator and serves as a proof-of-concept indicator for the RTR and 2) a suite of variant data encryption standards. Each partition can be dynamically reconfigured without interrupting the rest of the system execution. Different partial configuration files with variable sizes have been transmitted to the FPGA platform via a JTAG interface. The run time reconfigurable latency was measured for such partial configuration files. The performances of hardware resource utilization and power consumption in the RTR system were evaluated to validate the proposed implemented design.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Khodadadi, Ali
- Description:
- Committee members: Kamran Karimlou, Don Maurizio, Fred Daneshgaran, Recent increases in oil cost and planet pollutions added more restrictions on the automotive industry. Consequently, automotive technology is improving rapidly to meet increasingly stringent emissions and fuel economy based on governmental regulations. The material that is covered in this thesis was applied to California State University Los Angeles EcoCAR2 vehicle during the first year of the EcoCAR2 competition. EcoCAR2 is a student competition among sixteen North American universities in which students design and build advanced powertrain vehicles based on a donated platform to compete on metrics of fuel economy, emissions, performance and utility. The CSULA team demonstrated a refined vehicle using several ambitious designs and components including: 1-Appling the required mechanical and control modifications in order to compressed natural gas engine runs on E85. 2-Reallocation of the electrical motor to rear axle. 3-Adding a new battery stack and improve Malibu to a plugin hybrid electric vehicle., Controller, Hybrid Vehicle, Parallel Through the Road, PHEV, and Thesis (M.S.) California State University, Los Angeles, 2012
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Enciso, James
- Description:
- This thesis project encompasses the design, development, and implementation of an electromyography-driven exergaming fitness monitoring system for the facilitation of in-home exercise for wheelchair users. This proof of concept design explores the concept of incorporating commercially available wireless EMG sensors into a mobile exercise-based gaming environment as a means of motivating wheelchair users to exercise in the convenience of their own home as a cost-effective alternative to traditional workout facilities. A mobile app consisting of three EMG-driven exergames was developed to support one of three exercise modes - cardio, aerobic, and resistance - pertaining to an SCI-specific workout protocol. The scoring system utilizes a dual-threshold based algorithm to reliably detect individual muscle contractions and assign virtual progress based on physical effort, derived from maximum voluntary contraction, age, height, mass, and maximum heart rate. Real-time physiological monitoring encourages users to maintain their pace and issues alerts to rest when overexertion is detected to ensure user activity remains within safe conditions. Other forms of feedback include Calories burned and historical trend summaries. Multiplayer features allow users to either replay the progress from previously recorded sessions as a virtual opponent or compete against another live player. The mobile app prototype was benchmarked for acquisition accuracy, transmission reliability, and power consumption. Such tests revealed that the sensors can transmit with zero packet loss within 18m under unobstructed line of sight conditions and can support up to 3.19 hours of continuous use with a single battery. An 8-week in-home feasibility pilot study on four traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) subjects revealed increases in weekly playtime and integrated EMG among participants. Qualitative feedback also asserted improvements in motivation and ease of use as a practical workout facilitation device.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Nadirov, Gennadiy
- Description:
- The thesis describes a top level mission requirements, statements, objectives, characterizations, and evaluations of ImSAT satellite. It is a system engineering approach to building a satellite based on customer needs and objectives. The thesis explains each sub-system of a satellite and its components. In addition, it will explain the function of each component and how it fits into the overall system and spacecraft. Finally, it will describe the spacecraft structure, ground station, and launch vehicle which will be used to launch ImSAT satellite into its required orbit for mission success.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Chao, Te-Kang
- Description:
- Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is designed to artificially trigger muscle activations that help to recover some impaired or lost neurological functions due to spinal cord injuries (SCI). However, present FES technology depends on imprecisely controlled timing and results in unnatural gait patterns and quick fatigue onset. A new engineering approach was proposed to time the stimulation to robotically controlled treadmill training (RTT) in spinal cord injured (SCI) rodents during walking. The objective of this research is to test whether FES timed to RTT (FES + RTT) improves the long-term ability of rats to step, as measured by three sets of key outcome measures: 1) joint angle kinematics; 2) step height, length, and rate; and 3) the tendency to step independently. Kinematic analysis showed that rats receiving FES timed to RTT produced more appropriate ankle flexion, stepped more efficiently, and produced more independent stepping than those receiving stimulation without RTT.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Pudpai, Tom
- Description:
- This thesis measures the performance of different optimizations of the Sum of Absolute Differences (SAD) algorithm on an NVIDIA graphics processing unit (GPU) using the OpenCL heterogeneous programming paradigm. The SAD algorithm forms one of several steps required to implement stereo vision. To determine distance using stereo vision, a pair of cameras must sample a pair of image frames. This thesis’s version of the SAD algorithm attempts to match 5x5 pixel windows of one frame with those of their counterpart frame. With the correct calibration parameters, the approximate depth of each pixel in real-world coordinates can be determined. The massively parallel architecture of a GPU can take advantage of the highly parallelizable SAD algorithm. In this thesis, OpenCL is the programming framework chosen to develop the algorithm and stream data between an Intel Core i5-6200 CPU and an NVIDIA GeForce 940M GPU. From the CPU host, the parallel kernel code is executed on the GPU device and the results are returned to the CPU. This thesis presents the observation and analysis of the SAD algorithm’s performance on this heterogeneous system. The effectiveness of algorithmic optimizations such as loop unrolling is measured, but the main emphasis of this thesis is on data streaming. Performance gains are realized by explicitly mapping data from the slower global memory to the faster shared local memory of the GPU. Local memory is loaded by either a centralized or distributed approach from the OpenCL-defined work-items operating in a workgroup. In this thesis’s GPU architecture, each streaming multiprocessor (SMM) occupied by a workgroup contains both a nonprogrammable local cache space and an explicitly programmable scratchpad memory space. The result is up to 90.26% better performance between the fully optimized and nonoptimized versions of the SAD algorithm implementation. Although NVIDIA provides an implicit caching mechanism for OpenCL to speed up memory loads, the addition of explicit caching to the local shared memory by the programmer clearly provides maximum performance.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Kalaimani, Kalaivani
- Description:
- This thesis concerns with the optimization of the power-split in a Hybrid Energy Storage System (HESS) in which the battery acts as the Main energy storage (MES) and the ultracapacitor acts the auxiliary energy storage (AES) using the Dynamic Programming algorithm. Thus the minimal power loss can be achieved by controlling the parameters using certain algorithms. Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) are an existing yet promising technology commonly known for the reduced fuel consumption whereas the Electric Vehicles (EVs) consume no fuel at all and utilize electricity. The use of power converters in the of the battery electric vehicle enables the control of certain parameters for a given drive cycle. The algorithm used in this thesis aims in optimizing the power split among the Main Energy Storage (MES) and the Auxiliary Energy Storage (AES) and is evaluated using simulations. The concentration of this thesis is Dynamic Programming (DP) which is an off line energy management strategy that uses an algorithm which breaks a complex problem into several sub problems and solves it in a recursive manner. DP is a non-predictive strategy used for solving any real-time problems by exploiting the available information from the present and the past and is also computationally very efficient. The simplified model of the HESS under consideration does not require any powertrain and allows for the derivation of optimal solutions. Implementation of DP strategy on this simplified HESS model has shown optimization of energy split among the sources, minimization of energy and reduced cost function. The dynamic programming algorithm exploits the information obtained from the HESS components. The initial and the final constraints of the associated variables taken in to consideration by the DP are only an assumption.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Herman, Garth Edward
- Description:
- The objective of this thesis is to implement a Kalman filter and direction cosine matrix (DCM) on a Cypress Programmable System on a Chip-5 platform to combine sensor data and improve the localization capability of a robot. The robot operates in three modes: 1) controlled by an operator, 2) controlled by an operator for only critical operations, and 3) autonomous navigation once provided a destination. The robot maps an environment to create a high-resolution map and navigate obstacles. An embedded microcontroller uses accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer data to determine the robot's heading and position. The Kalman Filter is demonstrated to combine data from these sensors to improve the standard deviation between measurements and is compared to the DCM that is demonstrated to improve the mean heading. Future work includes implementing a Kalman Filter in a DCM, and incorporating a GPS device in the Kalman Filter.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Perez, Ismael
- Description:
- Various forms of neural stimulation have been shown to produce enhancements in locomotor behavior in spinal cord injured subjects, and the importance of afferent feedback has been implicated in the rehabilitive effects of peripheral nerve stimulation. However, the extent to which such behavioral modifications are observed vary widely and the mechanism behind these changes are yet to be elucidated. Much progress has been previously made in the field of computational modeling, and in particular in the modeling of central pattern generator circuitry responsible for producing rhythmic locomotor output. However, even the most advanced models still lack a mechanism for lasting rehabilitative modifications of spinal circuitry. We focus our efforts on incorporating a mode by which afferent feedback induces lasting changes in motoneuron synaptic weight. We demonstrate that by incorporating the calcium control hypothesis into our CPG model, afferent feedback can shift the operating point in post-synaptic calcium concentration, which in turn leads to changes in synaptic weight which last beyond the period of afferent stimulation.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Herman, Garth Edward
- Description:
- The objective of this thesis is to implement a Kalman filter and direction cosine matrix (DCM) on a Cypress Programmable System on a Chip-5 platform to combine sensor data and improve the localization capability of a robot. The robot operates in three modes: 1) controlled by an operator, 2) controlled by an operator for only critical operations, and 3) autonomous navigation once provided a destination. The robot maps an environment to create a high-resolution map and navigate obstacles. An embedded microcontroller uses accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer data to determine the robot's heading and position. The Kalman Filter is demonstrated to combine data from these sensors to improve the standard deviation between measurements and is compared to the DCM that is demonstrated to improve the mean heading. Future work includes implementing a Kalman Filter in a DCM, and incorporating a GPS device in the Kalman Filter.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Vertanus, Norair
- Description:
- This thesis presents the design of an Egg machine Controller for an egg washing machine. It is capable of controlling hot water valve and speed of the conveyer belt. The control depends on dirt level and the quantity of the eggs loaded on conveyer belt; the machine does it automatically in absence of an operator using Fuzzy Logic Controller. The machine is controlled with two fuzzy controllers. First fuzzy controller controls the hot water valve and it is an open loop with no feedback signal. For the dirty eggs, more pressured hot water will be applied. The speed of the belt also will be reduced to increase the time to apply water. The second fuzzy controller is designed to operate in three speeds automatically adjusted depending on the quantity of the eggs on the belt fed ready to be washed and tracked to maintain the desired speed under varying damping conditions because of the load.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Rabanales, Irvin
- Description:
- Neuromuscular electrical stimulation and robotic treadmill training (NMES +RTT) is used as a rehabilitation tool for patients with spinal cord injury (SCI) to help regain mobility. Each, independently, has shown success in improving SCI patient¡¯s quality of life. The relationship between electromyography (EMG) and paw contact (PC) signals was quantified and used to measure the effectiveness of NMES+RTT. A closer association (1:1 mapping) and more consistent timing between EMG bursts and PC would indicate that NMES+RTT enhanced spinal cord circuitry in a way that more desirable movements are produced during stepping. After the four week rehabilitation period, the strong EMG and PC correlation shows that neuromuscular electrical stimulation reduces the latency between EMG and paw contact bursts and increases the number of EMG bursts that produce a successful paw contact. An ANOVA analysis shows that the findings are statistically significant ( p¡Ö.05). The study predicts NMES+RTT can be used to effectively help SCI patients regain mobility and improve motor skills.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Sanchez, Patricia
- Description:
- A study was conducted on rats using weight supported robotic treadmill training combined with neuromuscular electrical stimulation (WSRTT+NMES) as a therapy to rehabilitate walking ability after a spinal cord injury. Joint kinematics were used to examine the effects of different timing protocols on the medial gastrocnemius (MG) muscle, which is utilized during the stance phase of stepping. A new motion capture system was utilized to obtain joint position information and MATLAB software to evaluate joint kinematics. Results indicate that both early and late stance groups improve over the first two weeks of training, but that they also worsen over the last two weeks of training, the late group more so for both improvements and decline. So while there is improvement, it was not sustained.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Le, Son Xuan
- Description:
- This thesis, we will conduct evaluation and testing of Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Line Current Differential Protection and Automation System (SEL-311L) using Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS) for each protective element of the relay. First, we build very large power system model representing portion of California power rid and use Computer-Aided Protection Engineering (CAPE) software to reduce system into a seven buses equivalent system. We also use Positive Sequence Load Flow (PSLF) to get power flow into and out of each bus. Finally, we use RSCAD software to build the model with given data from CAPE and PSLF and validate the result. Finally, we place two SEL-311L protective relays at each end of the transmission line and set them up and examine different protective elements and evaluate their performance. We will make a comparison of elements with each other and rank them according to trip condition. The steps how to execute each different kind of software will be presented.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Sarkesian, Arpineh
- Description:
- The Structures, Pointing, and Control Engineering (SPACE) laboratory has a research project funded by a NASA research grant. The Hubble Space Telescope can see further in the space than current telescope technology. The system top level requirements are figure maintenance of the primary mirror to hold within 1 micron RMS distortion and precision pointing with accuracy of 2 arc seconds. This thesis presents the system identification of a Peripheral Pointing Architecture (PPA) for the SPACE testbed. A finite element model of the PPA is done by Finite Element Modeling and Post processing. Modal analysis is performed on the finite element model resulting in the natural frequencies, mode shapes, eigenvalues, and degree of freedom mapping of the PPA structure. To determine System Identification of the PPA, the input and output should be determined by running tests, simulations and collecting data.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Kim, Seongjun
- Description:
- This thesis focuses on the implementation of parallel algorithms of finding the positions of objects in a stereoscopic computer vision. The algorithms have been implemented based on the Epipolar geometry theory. In this thesis, when two cameras (left and right) take consecutive snapshots of the same object at different perspectives, a vertex of an object on each left frame of a snapshot can be projected to an “Epipolar” line formed of candidate vertices on the right counterpart. Tracking an Epipolar line takes much less computational power than tracking all the pixels on the right frame. With vertices extracted from the geometric feature of a left image in a pre-processing of the left frame, hundreds of different Epipolar lines have to be tracked on the right. Based on the nature of the algorithm, there are two stages of processing: Stage 1: producing Epipolar lines, and Stage 2: tracking each Epipolar line to identify the counterpart vertex. Pipelining was used in this thesis to organize the programming structure of the algorithm based on these two processing stages. Parallel processing was used to allocate multiple processing elements (PEs) generated by a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to allow parallel processing on each of such stages. In this thesis, we used OpenCL as the parallel programming paradigm to develop the algorithm. OpenCL is a parallel processing method used as an industry standard. Multiple processing elements in an OpenCL device may concurrently produce and track Epipolar lines so that the throughput can be improved. The targeted embedded system is the Altera DE1-SoC. This system provides the Altera OpenCL (AOCL) Software Development Kit (SDK) with their FPGA fabric, and hence, the system is a good fit for parallel processing in embedded level. Two data exchange models were used for pipelining; Stage 1 may either produce all candidates’ coordinates, or the characteristic parameters of each Epipolar line. The resulting data is, then, sent to Stage 2 using a shared memory model, or the AOCL’s specific data exchange mechanism called “channeling.” With the different combinations of pipelining models and data exchange architectures, different versions of the algorithm have been implemented. As a result, we found that the throughput of the Pipelined implementation with Candidates’ coordinate Exchange via Channeling (PipeCEC) is 32.6% higher than the one with a non-pipelined implementation (N-Pipe). Furthermore, when multiple processing elements are allocated to the pipeline stages, the load balancing can be achieved. For instance, the throughput of the pipelined implementation with parameter exchange via Channeling using 2 Stage 2 processing elements (PipePEC.1.2) is 29.9% higher than the one with PipeCEC.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Krogstad, Dustin Gordon
- Description:
- This thesis contains proprietary Oculus information and cannot be released unless explicit clearance is given by Oculus VR. The field of precision millimeter wave radar tracking consist of bringing together many well understood topics together in unison ranging from AM radio signal processing, zero crossing detection and FMCW theory. To achieve high precision tracking of multiple targets in close proximity to each other, an active target with an amplifier and mixer was manufactured. Operating at 120 GHz, a high range resolution can be achieved as the precision of the measurement ultimately depends on the size of the wavelength being very small (or high in frequency). At 120 GHz, sub-millimeter precision is possible. The mixer allows the target response to be frequency shifted into its own frequency band for further processing and isolation from noise and passive clutter from the environment. Rather than using the standard FFT approach in determining the range, a zero crossing detector was implemented to allow fast acquisition times. Zero crossing analog boards were designed and mounted onto the back-end of a commercially available 120 GHz radar platform and range measurements were recorded. With a data acquisition time of 60 µs, a standard deviation of 0.5 millimeters was achieved using a zero crossing detector.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Gill, Opinderpal
- Description:
- This thesis highlights way to mitigate the risk in software development by implementing automation. The example of WWW.CALSTATELA.EDU has been taken to show how automation can be implemented. The different software development methodologies and the software risk management have been defined in details. The technology used to automate the test cases is JAVA with selenium webdriver libraries. Selenium libraries help to replicated the user actions and launches the browsers and perform the tests automatically. The keyword driven framework has been defined in the thesis. Where the test cases are created in the excel sheet and are mapped with the test steps. POI API libraries have been used to run the test from excel sheets. The PASS / FAIL status is automatically updated in the result column of test cases sheet. The need of automation to mitigate risk in software development has been well defined.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Babazadehasbagh, Erfan
- Description:
- Energy is an important input for economic development. Since exhaustible energy sources in the country are limited, there is an urgent need to focus attention on development of renewable energy sources and use of energy efficient technologies. Also, in modern world the demand for energy has increased dramatically in the past century and it will grow even further in the near future than ever before. Renewable energy is also termed as "green energy", "clean energy", "sustainable energy" and "alternative energy". On type of renewable energy is solar energy. Solar energy is not only about present but it also about future. This thesis outlines the Types of solar cells, Benefits and weak points of Solar Power as well as Efficiency of the system, History of Solar Energy and Recent developments in solar technology. Also it will include design of a 3 MW AC/ 4.12 MW DC Solar power plant.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Jalayer, Nikta
- Description:
- Polar coding is a recent technique in communications over Binary Discrete Memoryless Channels (BDMC), invented by Arikan [1], this technique was developed based on the idea of channel polarization. With polar coding, communication with rates near Shannon limit [2] is possible and encoding, decoding algorithms are highly reliable, with low complexity. In this research the algorithm of coding was simulated and used along with two different decoding techniques, successive cancellation and belief propagation, to perform analysis based on different Signal to Noise Ratio per Bit (SNRB) and different rates. Results of these simulations are graphed and presented in chapter 4 of this research in order to have a better comparison for BER. We could confirm that successive cancellation decoder, works better for codes with larger block length, regardless of the rate for the communication system, also in general and under the same circumstances, belief propagation works better than successive cancellation.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Anderson, Daniel Patrick
- Description:
- The thesis proposal is to system engineer and lead an innovation team in the acquisition, research, design, engineer, build and test (proof of concept) of a high voltage electric supercharger (HVES). Under normal driving conditions, all vehicles rarely use peak power demonstrating that the designed engine is much bigger than necessary with significant energy and inertial losses. The purpose of the HVES is to give a smaller more efficient engine the ability to provide the temporary peak power requirements for rare high vehicle performance. HVES systems take advantage of the power architecture of a hybrid vehicle by using the high voltage battery packs to temporarily supply extra high energy/power density fuel to the internal combustion engine (ICE). The proposed work will not only include the full design cycle of design/build/test/evaluation process according to specifications, but also the management and guidance of an undergraduate team of engineers to meet the needs of the client.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Chou, John
- Description:
- This thesis presents the modification of a Bergen Industrial Twin Helicopter, integrating both sensors and software together to construct a LQR controller for the helicopter. It presents modeling the helicopter as three subsystems, flapping and thrust equations, force and torque equations, and treating the helicopter as a rigid body, assumptions had been made to further simplify the equations. A state space then extracted, but such model inherent nonlinearity. The design a LQR controller is based on a generic linear state space model then built and implemented in Matlab and Simulink based on a LQR controller optimal control theory design, LQR controller guarantees the system stability with a feedback gain K in the closed-loop system under the conditions the system is both controllable and observable.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Khalaj Hedayati, Arian
- Description:
- Since, audio channels derive low current which makes them efficient to be used as communication lines.In this project I am going to design and implement a basic remote Interface between the audio port of an android smart-phone and Arduino board. .
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Lainez, Orlando
- Description:
- The purpose is to design and implement a small electrical hydro generation plant, sub-station, transmission system, distribution system and solar system per house in a rural area of a third world country where electrical infrastructure is not available. This system will provide basic electricity needs for local people in the area such as power for a refrigerator, microwave, house lighting and convenience receptacles. The design and implementation will entail to specify equipment and materials for the hydro generation plant, sub-station, transmission lines, distribution system and solar system for every house.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Kehsishi, Varen
- Description:
- This thesis addresses the system engineering steps taken in building a space vehicle. The space vehicle that this thesis will focus on will be called IMSAT, short for Imagery Satellite. System engineering of IMSAT is critical for technical management of design, development, production, and operation of this satellite. Generic system engineering approaches are applied to analyze and evaluated the building of IMSAT. The first step taken towards building a spacecraft is determination of the objective of mission. Once objective of the mission is determined, process of sizing and component selection instigates. Sizing and component selection is critical in manufacturing IMSAT. Sizing of a component includes but is not limited to mass, power consumption and diminution.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Dersarkissian, Sosy
- Description:
- Urban city health follows a pattern of degradation that can be directly correlated to the growth in population. This is due to human activities that dramatically increase toxic emissions and sound pollution. This can be seen clearly in vehicular traffic, crowded public transportation, and crowded public spaces. In this thesis, we present urban city models with dynamics based on a city's development and its emission of pollution. A simulation is provided to predict the viability of the models. First, we introduce the history of urban cities and the rapidly developing technologies involved to monitor a city's health. Second, we developed a multi-sensor prototype to constantly monitor city heath. Next, we proposed a framework to describe a city in terms of its pollution, economic activity, smart infrastructure, and traditional infrastructure. Finally, we used optimal control principles to demonstrate how funding and resources can ideally lead a traditional city toward becoming a smart city.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Olia, Khashayar
- Description:
- Continuous Variable Quantum Key Distribution (CV QKD) potentially can transmit high rate secret key compared to Discrete Variable Quantum Key Distribution (DV QKD). Since Gaussian samples with zero mean is used in CV QKD, the main problem is that most Gaussian samples have small magnitude around zero and tend to be easily perturbed by noise. The problem becomes worse when transmission over longer distance is occurred resulting in higher loss and lower Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). In this study, we propose to use permutation modulation as a vector quantization technique for Gaussian samples at both legitimate parties over a large dimension. We implement three algorithms defined by Burger [1] to generate the permutation codes for Gaussian samples, represent the permutation codes with binary sequences and finally decode the binary sequences to reconstruct the permutation codes. The idea is to use these algorithms both at Alice and Bob as the information reconciliation process, so they will be able to generate permutation codes based on their Gaussian samples. Bob then represent the permutations with binary sequences and communicate over classical channel to share his measurement. Since each index of permutations is represented by binary sequence, Eve doesn’t have access to actual samples. In addition to this feature, permutation modulation allows us to quantize over larger and larger dimension without increasing the required bit rate.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Lainez, Orlando
- Description:
- The purpose is to design and implement a small electrical hydro generation plant, sub-station, transmission system, distribution system and solar system per house in a rural area of a third world country where electrical infrastructure is not available. This system will provide basic electricity needs for local people in the area such as power for a refrigerator, microwave, house lighting and convenience receptacles. The design and implementation will entail to specify equipment and materials for the hydro generation plant, sub-station, transmission lines, distribution system and solar system for every house.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Sheikh, Sana
- Description:
- ABSTRACT Interface Design for Memory Access in an FPGA-MIPS Datapath This thesis focuses on the design and implementation of memory access control on an Altera DE-1 System-on-chip (SOC) board. The board integrates a Hard Processor System (HPS) with a dual-core cortex-A9 processor, and an FPGA fabric within a Cyclone V SOC chip. A multi-cycle MIPS datapath is implemented on the FPGA fabric, the datapath needs to access the SDRAM for instruction fetch, data fetch and data store. A handshaking protocol between the datapath and the (synchronous dynamic random access memory) SDRAM control is used to facilitate the memory accesses. Data communication between the HPS and the FPGA is performed using the Altera Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture (AMBA) Advanced Extensible Interface (AXI) bridges. The bridges are configured so the MIPS datapath can access instructions and data from the SDRAM. The MIPS machine code and the program data are initially stored in a Secure Digital Multi Media Card (SD/MMC). The HPS, using a burst mode, initiates a mapping of all the code and data from the SD/MMC to the memory banks in the SDRAM. Once the mapping is completed, a run command is performed on the Multicycle Datapath to sequentially execute the instructions. The result, then, is displayed using the on-board LED’s. The interfaces among the HPS, the FPGA, and the SD/MMC are developed via a custom IP Core. The software packages used for the implementation of the system include; Altera Quartus-II which provides the programming environment for the design on the FPGA fabric and the Qsys tool for designing custom IP and the bridge configurations. The Quartus II also allows the user to establish a JTAG and UART connection for hardware debugging on the Altera DE-1 SOC board. The C code compilation, debugging and building are performed using the INTEL SOC FPGA Embedded Design Suite (EDS). The HPS runs a LINUX Operating System (OS) which builds a LINUX KERNEL. When connected to the board, the LINUX KERNEL maps and integrates all the programming components together and synchronizes data communication. The results have shown correct instruction fetching and data accesses for the execution of MIPS instructions on the datapath.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Ibrahim, Mohamed Elsaid Awad
- Description:
- With the increase in technology, many developers have advanced their knowledge in improving road safety by designing various devices such as Vehicular AD Hoc Networks (VANETs). These VANETs are important in ensuring there is a continuous vehicle-to-vehicle communication along the roads while at close range in order to prevent road accidents. Similarly, VANETS are meant to ensure vehicles are alerted of events occurring at their surrounding through information sharing between vehicles to other vehicles (V2V) and vehicles to stationary objects built along the roads (V2I). However, MAC sub-layer protocol is common when designing VANET devices; this is because VANETs are ineffectual in preventing road accidents when messages cannot get to the other party. The path breaks causes delay of inconsistency and packet delays from source to destination. There are several improvement measures that can be taken to VANET is effective and efficient in improving road safety through inter vehicle communication and vehicle to stationary VANET devices installed along the roads. Since VANET operates in a wireless environment, there are other interferences from wireless devices such as mobile phones, laptops and other operational devices installed in vehicles. This thesis evaluated the performance of multiple routing protocols on MANET to assess their ability in finding stable paths. The evaluation led to practical suggestions on how to design better routing protocols for VANET. Keywords: MAC sub-layer, VANET, RTS, CTS, PASTA, TDMA and V2V/V2I
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Vo, Hau Trung
- Description:
- This Thesis focuses on the design ARM architecture using Verilog, Vivado Design Suite IDE. There are three types of processors: M- series (microcontroller), R-Series (real-time), and A-series (Application) processor. The focus of research is mainly on the M-series processor. The processor consists of four stages: load/store, fetch, decode, and execute. This research on the M-series will cover the following: Random Access Memory (RAM), Memory Address Register (MAR), Memory Buffer Register (MBR), Address Incrementer, sixteen bits Register Files, Shifter, Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU), and Control Unit. The Addressing Modes will be implemented in this ARM processor. ARM’s addressing modes are used to specify the difference between the data coming from the memory and the register. Every single instruction relies on the addressing mode within used for the operand. This research of addressing mode consists of Immediate Addressing, Register Addressing, Index Addressing, and PC-Relative Addressing. The encoder of the ARM’s processor is different from other RISC processor such as MIPS. It has its own techniques after the data is fetched. The encoder of the processor consists: Multiplies, load/ stores, pre-indexed, post-indexed, offset pre-indexed, data processing immediate shift, miscellaneous instructions, data processing immediate, undefined instructions, load/store immediate offset, media instructions, load/store multiplies, branch, and branch with link. The encoder input is the output of the memory and the output is the input of the control unit. Currently, the Central Processing Unit (CPU) has the ALU and the RAM memory. The ARM processor is completely mapped in every single bit to make sure it is matched with the M-series. The state diagram will be mapped out after, which is when the encoder is being set with the correct bits. This thesis is about implementing the arm processor and RTL design using Verilog.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Alhazmi, Mohammed Masad
- Description:
- Penetration level of wind units in power systems is increasing rapidly. There are different topologies and configurations of wind units. The most famous configuration is called Doubly-Fed Induction Generator (DFIG). In this configuration, the stator of an induction generator is directly connected to the grid, while the rotor is connected to the grid through an AC/AC converter. The advantage of this topology is the controllability of output active and reactive powers of the generator to some extents. In this thesis, a MATLAB/Simulink modeling of DFIG is presented. Dynamic modeling of all the components of the DFIG is presented here and implemented in Simulink. Moreover, a number of studies on DFIG are performed to carry steady state analysis on DFIG. Then, the design of different controllers for the AC/DC and DC/AC converters is presented. These controllers are designed to ensure extracting maximum power from the wind while keeping the stability of DFIG after different contingencies. Dynamic performances of DFIG controllers are tested through two different studies; the first case is the effect of change in the wind speed over the time and the other case is the effect of grid under-voltage.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Borah, Kaustav Jyoti
- Description:
- A state observer is a system in which we can model a real system in order to give an estimate of the internal state of the system. In the first part of the thesis, we discuss some of the design techniques and compare three different types of state observers are presented in this thesis. The considered observers include Luenberger observer, unknown input observer and sliding mode observer. The application of these observers to a Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) DC servo motor model and the performance of observers is assessed. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of these schemes, the simulated results on the position of DC servomotor in terms of residuals including white noise disturbance are discussed. This thesis also presents a hybrid model based and statistical fault diagnosis system, for nonlinear three-tank model systems. The purpose of fault diagnosis is to generate and to analyze the residual to find out the fault occurrence. This fault diagnosis system includes residual generator and residual processor. The fault generator is applied with the Luenberger observer, which has its own algorithm to compute the parameters. The thesis starts with introduction and literature review, systems monitoring, fault detection, modeling of DC servo motor and then we discussed three different types of state observer systems and then shows the methods of residual generation and residual processing. The final chapter presents the simulation results, which operated by MATLAB Simulink. The fault diagnosis system successfully captured different kind of fault in three-tank model. The results prove the effectiveness of this fault diagnosis system.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
38. Power quality
- Creator:
- Buck, Michael E.
- Description:
- The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) Standard 1100-2005 has defined power quality as a concept of powering and grounding sensitive electronic equipment in a manner that is suitable for the operation of that equipment (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers [IEEE], 2005). Power quality can also be used to describe different electromagnetic phenomena that characterize the voltage and/or current at a given time and at a given location on a power system (IEEE, 2009). Electricity providers have always faced the task of ensuring compatibility between their power source and the load it serves. Concerns about power quality have increased as electronic loads and information technology equipment proliferate on power systems (IEEE, 2009). This thesis will discuss fundamentals of power quality and power quality standards. The document also includes information about common power anomalies and mitigation techniques.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Abbasi, Somayeh
- Description:
- Microgrids are small power systems with diverse distributed generators with high reliability. With recent developments in the area of renewable energies and increasing concerns about environmental issues, microgrids are rising as excellent candidate to address multiple issues with current power grids and at the same time they can decrease the total cost of electricity. Because of their unique characteristics, design and operation of microgrids are different than conventional power systems. In this thesis a comprehensive method to optimize the operation management of a microgrid is presented. Various factors including fuel cost, environmental cost, maintenance cost, start-up and shut-down costs, spot price of electricity as well as the effect of congestion and ramp rate are considered. In this regard, the sum of different costs of microgrid operation is considered as an objective function. Four different scenarios are investigated to see the effect of low and high penetration level of wind unit, spot price of electricity and environmental cost on the operation of a microgrid. To demonstrate the performance of the presented method, a test system consisting of microturbine, fuel cells and wind unit is considered. Simulations are carried out using MATLAB and results of the optimal operation management are presented in each case.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
40. Control Strategies for Mitigating Traffic Shock Waves Utilizing Connected and Autonomous Vehicles
- Creator:
- Saunders, Joshua
- Description:
- In this thesis, an optimal control strategy to mitigate shock waves in traffic streams consisting of connected and autonomous vehicles is developed and compared against a that of a proportional controller. First, the formation of traffic shock waves is explained with the help of mathematical modeling and numerical simulation. Further, an optimal control problem to mitigate shock waves on a circular track consisting of connected and autonomous vehicles is formulated. The optimal control problem is solved using linear quadratic tracking controller using the variational approach. We use entropy to measure the effectiveness of connected and autonomous vehicles to reduce traffic shock waves (stop-and-go) waves on a circular track, thereby increasing throughput and reducing emissions. An optimal control law is also developed to minimize the error of the headway between vehicles in a platoon.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Ramirez, Oscar
- Description:
- Due to the limitation of natural resources where conventional energy can be obtained, other energies sources must be found without such limits. For this reason, we are trying to cut down the usage of conventional energy by using renewable energy sources. In this thesis, we are going to look into different types of energy sources and compare them. Then we are going to focus on the hybrid system, its components, and its benefits. In order to have a reliable hybrid system each component has to be reliable and deterministic, but unfortunately, renewable energy sources such as wind energy and solar energy alone are not always both reliable and deterministic. One way to solve this problem is by integrating a backup system so energy output could always be steady as needed. By using solar energy during the day, we can help minimize the emissions of carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuels and slow down the depletion of fossil fuels. For this reason, there must be a reliable forecasting that can help predict the power output at a certain time. We will present several methods to predict power output such as ARIMA, ARMA, and artificial neural networks (ANN). Ultimately the goal will be to minimize the cost of electricity for the average consumer while at the same time helping reduce the use of conventional energy.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Al Bahrani, Ahmad
- Description:
- With the increasing growth of multimedia applications and the traffic load explosion on various network environments, the fidelity of media data has become one of the biggest concerns of producers, users and researchers. Digital watermarking is one of the most commonly deployed ways to hide important authentication information in media data. In this thesis, I design and implement a novel mobile application to enhance digital right management of images. The primary functions of the mobile application can be described as follows: It provides a range of functions, from images editing, enhancement, and sharing. It also has an embedded function that provides digital copyright protection using the watermark technique. The motivation for that is to maintain the quality of the secured image. The application (GalleryPlus) basically is a photos gallery that provides the user the ability to browse images from local memory or take new photos and start editing them. After the image has been chosen, it can be secured using the watermark digital copyright function. The application can also check if the provided image is been secured by the same function, and transfer the image to other devices. The implementation is based on Android platform. The main contributions of this thesis is providing a photo gallery with the option of image infringement protection as well as a comprehensive performance evaluation based on the testing results.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Monsalvo, Kevin
- Description:
- This thesis shows the design and performance of Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) algorithms on a S32 NXP image processing board. The system was integrated onto a 2016 Chevrolet Camaro and included a monocular camera, two front-facing LIDARs and two blind-spot LIDARs. Communication between the sensors and processing board is possible through a common physical network used by vehicles and satellites known as Control Area Network (CAN). Algorithms like vehicle and lane detection are combined with sensor and vehicle signals to produce more complex algorithms like collision warning and suggested driving velocities. Due to a non-disclosure agreement with NXP, code will not be provided but software flow diagrams describing the logic will. The system was integrated onto a 2016 Chevrolet Camaro as part of the EcoCAR3 university competition sponsored by General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy. The system was developed over the course of one year in the competition.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Jishi, Omar Radi
- Description:
- The aim of this study is to explore the application of an exponentially weighted moving average-PI Controller for the purpose of stock trading. Previous research has been conducted on stock trading using a pure PI controller that resulted in a robust expectation property: the expected value of the cumulative profit is positive for most cases. However, by applying the controller proposed in this paper, we are able to generalize previous results to allow for more emphasis on recent data which may carry greater influence in the behavior of the stock price. Thus the exponentially weighted moving average-PI controller more heavily weights recent data. While the use of models to predict the behavior of stock prices are heavily used in industry, they have proved to be unreliable. The use of classical feedback control does not require the use of models, hence we work in a model-free system. As shall be shown, this lends itself to opportunities such as the robust expectation property.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Ledezma Vazquez, Oscar Omar
- Description:
- Currently, stroke is the fifth cause of death and disability among adults, affecting approximately 795,000 people every year in the United States. Hand mobility is commonly impaired in stroke victims. Treatment for hand impairment range from therapist-guided physical exercises to robotically controlled exoskeletons. Devices that act as a substitute, such as the exoskeletons and neuromuscular electrical stimulation, do not typically rehabilitate hand movements but merely assist movements when the device is donned. A more effective treatment which actually restores hand mobility is encouraging patients to carry out hand movements themselves. Therefore, our aim was to develop a low cost therapeutic device, which better motivated patients, using custom-made, addicting, and fun games to practice hand exercises. An Arduino-based hand therapy device was developed to motivate stroke patients to practice movements that aid in rehabilitating range of motion and hand strength. A glove was embedded with a force sensing resistor (FSR) at each of the fingertips except for the thumb. The FSRs were connected to a voltage divider circuit which fed into an analog input of the ATMega 328P microcontroller. Individual finger presses are detected and the force magnitude of these finger presses are determined in the microcontroller code, and then fed to a computer game engine, developed in Scratch. Each finger is assigned a specific color. The user is required to press a color by doing a functional pinch grip of the appropriate finger with sufficient strength to play each game. There are 7 interactive games: Simon Says, Crazy Drums, The Color Game, Jetpack Joyride, Don’t Touch the Spikes and Grid Guardian. The user presses on the correct sensor associated to the color of the character or object to execute an action A small clinical study was conducted to determine the user-friendly capabilities of the glove games, the gloves’ capabilities in rehabilitating and motivating grip strength, and the subjects’ ability to carry out a standard block-in-text.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Muhlmeyer, Michael
- Description:
- The role of information spread and the impact it has on societies in the modern world cannot be understated. In the age of mass communication, digital misinformation, and social media, the importance of understanding and developing control mechanisms for information spread are doubly necessary. While traditional information spread has been examined in detail from a variety of angles over the decades, little attention has been given to the relatively recent phenomena of the super-fast spread of information via social media and the rise and impact of “fake news” within said information networks. In Chapters 1 through 5, a background of information spread theory, terminology, and applications are presented and organized in both a general setting and specifically as information spread applies to social media networks. The importance and influence of a network’s structure to the spread of information is also discussed. In Chapters 6 through 8, several traditional dynamic models are presented, built upon, and re-framed in the modern context of social media information spread using differential equations. A new model is proposed to address networks and sets of adjacent networks in which information learned and spread is highly polarized, contentious, or unverified. In Chapters 9 and 10, control mechanisms and strategies are examined and evaluated along with supporting social theory. These control strategies are developed and applied to sample case studies using the models discussed previously. The results from the proposed control methods of the sample scenarios are calculated, simulated, and discussed.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Arguello, Patrick David
- Description:
- Neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) shows promise in restoring a de- gree of ambulatory function in patients who have sustained spinal cord injury (SCI). These therapeutic effects are enabled via stimulation of both the efferent (motor) or af- ferent (sensory) bers found in the peripheral nervous system. It has been shown that by changing stimulus parameters, the efferent or afferent pathways could be activated preferentially. Several studies have been published demonstrating the specic stimu- lus parameters required to preferentially activate the afferent pathway. Most of these studies, however, utilize surface electrodes, with little research done on percutaneous stimulation involving implanted microelectrodes. By developing an electrophysiolog- ically accurate model of efferent/afferent bers as well as that of the microelectrode, we hope to identify the optimal stimulus parameters for aerent ber recruitment in our NMES-based therapy. Our simulations reveal that short pulsewidth (50 s), low-frequency (30 - 100 Hz) stimulation provides greater activation of sensory axons over motor axons in the context of intramuscular NMES. iv
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Agamao, Oliver Santiago
- Description:
- The focus of this thesis is the development of a generic small-scale unmanned helicopter model and an adaptive controller. A mathematical model is necessary to design a controller that drives the helicopter to the point of equilibrium. Mathematical models can be derived in two ways: 1) first principles that require rigorous applications of the physical laws of aerodynamics, 2) based on observed behaviors of the helicopter resulting in simpler empirical equations. This thesis derives the helicopter model based on the first principle, and it is implemented in Simulink. Adaptive controller is proposed for it controls the helicopter with a wider flight envelope, and this controller does not heavily rely on the system model to accurately predict the behavior of the helicopter. Systematic simulations validate the methods and algorithms developed in this thesis, and the results presented serve as a useful guide when implementing a controller for unmanned helicopter.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Gupta, Monal
- Description:
- A Wireless sensor network (WSN) is a wireless network composed of low-cost and low-power distributed autonomous devices (also denoted as motes) equipped with sensors able to monitor environmental and physical quantities, execute simple autonomous calculations and perform short-range communication with similar devices or a gateway. WSNs have gained increasing attention from both users and the research community because they avoid costly wiring and can be placed in harsh and hostile environments where wired networks cannot be deployed. Our goal was to develop a lab-based sensor network using TelosB nodes. We had to research on TelosB motes and understand how they detect temperature, light, and humidity, study the software that supports TelosB motes, study their operating system TinyOS, learn the NesC language that is used to program a mote and install the mote devices into the lab laptops. We finally selected a simple distributed algorithm, programmed it into our nodes and performed wireless radio communication among three TelosB nodes in order to exchange the data needed by the distributed algorithm.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Creator:
- Chao, Te-Kang
- Description:
- Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is designed to artificially trigger muscle activations that help to recover some impaired or lost neurological functions due to spinal cord injuries (SCI). However, present FES technology depends on imprecisely controlled timing and results in unnatural gait patterns and quick fatigue onset. A new engineering approach was proposed to time the stimulation to robotically controlled treadmill training (RTT) in spinal cord injured (SCI) rodents during walking. The objective of this research is to test whether FES timed to RTT (FES + RTT) improves the long-term ability of rats to step, as measured by three sets of key outcome measures: 1) joint angle kinematics; 2) step height, length, and rate; and 3) the tendency to step independently. Kinematic analysis showed that rats receiving FES timed to RTT produced more appropriate ankle flexion, stepped more efficiently, and produced more independent stepping than those receiving stimulation without RTT.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Los Angeles
- Department:
- Electrical and Computer Engineering