Theses/Dissertations - Electrical and Computer Engineering
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Browsing Theses/Dissertations - Electrical and Computer Engineering by Author "Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering."
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Item Accelerating path planning algorithms with high level synthesis tools and FPGAs.(2013-05-15) Trower, John W.; Duren, Russell Walker.; Electrical and Computer Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.Accelerating path planning algorithms with field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) allows the designer to achieve significant performance increases over using a traditional central processing unit (CPU). Converting an algorithm to run on an FPGA is a complicated and time consuming process. This thesis develops and verifies a design framework that demonstrates how to design a path planning algorithm in a high level language, then convert the algorithm into hardware description languages using high level synthesis tools. This design framework will be used to demonstrate the acceleration of a genetic algorithm.Item Adaptive load impedance optimization for power amplifiers in reconfigurable radar transmitters.(2013-05-15) Martin, Joshua Lee.; Baylis, Charles Passant, 1979-; Electrical and Computer Engineering.; U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.A fundamental tradeoff exists in radar transmitter design between linearity and efficiency due to the signal amplification. These transmitters are driven into saturation in order to increase efficiency, but may potentially violate regulatory spectral mask limitations. An adaptive method for optimizing linearity and efficiency for power amplifiers in radar transmitters is presented. This approach uses intelligent search techniques with load-pull measurements for power-added efficiency (PAE) and adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) to dynamically maximize the PAE while meeting spectral requirements. Using load-tuning, an algorithm performs a steepest ascent search for the PAE optimum load reflection coefficient, followed by a steepest descent search for ACPR. The steepest descent search, when begun at the PAE optimum, approximates the Pareto optimal frontier between the two objectives. This trace enables PAE to be maximized for an imposed limit on ACPR, optimizing the performance of adaptive radar transmitters under spectral mask constraints.Item Algorithmic specified complexity.(2013-09-24) Ewert, Winston.; Marks, Robert J., II (Robert Jackson), 1950-; Electrical and Computer Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.Information theory is a well developed field, but does not capture the essence of what information is. Shannon Information captures something in its definition of improbability as information. But not all improbable events convey information. Kolmogorov complexity captures the idea of information as something easily described. But not all easily described objects are information. The proposed Algorithmic Specified Complexity takes into account both Shannon Information and Kolmogorov complexity to gain a fuller evaluation of information. We demonstrate this concept and develop several examples. We show the low probability of high Algorithmic Specified Complexity. We apply the concept to both images and functional machines from the Game of Life.Item Calibration methodology for a microwave non-invasive glucose sensor.(2008-06-09T15:41:02Z) McClung, Melanie J.; Jean, B. Randall.; Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.Non-invasive measuring techniques for determining biological parameters are more heavily researched with the growth of the biomedical industry. One of the top areas in non-invasive research deals with diabetes. This disease affects more than 20 million people in the United States, and there is an increasing desire to find a testing process that is non-invasive, easy to use, and safe for users. Microwave technology has improved greatly during recent years and is now seen more often in conjunction with biomedical research. Microwaves are capable of taking measurements of materials inside of a closed volume without the need to come into contact with the material. This makes them ideal for measuring biological parameters, specifically glucose concentrations in the blood. This thesis expands on the development of a microwave sensor to non-invasively measure blood glucose levels and will examine the possibility of developing a calibration for a device using the microwave sensor.Item A comparison of field programmable gate arrays and digital signal processors in acoustic array processing.(2006-07-29T16:28:42Z) Stevenson, Jeremy C.; Duren, Russell Walker.; Thompson, Michael Wayne.; Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.The Field Programmable Gate Array's (FPGA) constant growth in computing power has given embedded system developers a choice to replace their current processors with a FPGA. However, most systems continue to use the original processor due to familiarity and design speed. Design tools, such as Simulink for MATLAB, have created a potential for significantly reducing FPGA development time. This potential was explored by developing an acoustic array processing system on both a FPGA and a DSP (Digital Signal Processor). The system includes a filtering stage, a correlation stage, and a trigonometric math stage. All of these stages are computationally intensive which provide an accurate portrayal of the chips' capabilities. The paper documents the comparison of the FPGA and the DSP implementations in regards to the performance of each implementation, the design time of each implementation and the capability of the design tools used in each implementation.Item Data compression application to the MIL-STD 1553 avionics data bus.(2006-05-11T16:11:15Z) Weston, Bron O.; Duren, Russell Walker.; Thompson, Michael Wayne.; Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.With the current state of legacy military avionic systems reaching its ceiling in memory space, processing power, and data-bus through-put (bandwidth), a need has arisen to maximize its limited resources to avoid extensive costs of system overhaul. Specifically, F/A-18 C/D Aircraft is approaching message capacity on its MIL-STD-1553 buses. To slow this assent to capacity limits, one possible solution implements data compression techniques to increase bandwidth. In these efforts, this thesis examines different lossless compression schemes to find ideal options to consider for implementation on MIL-STD-1553 based F/A-18 C/D Aircraft. Several compression routines are identified that provide significant data compression while requiring very little computational effort. A surprising benefit is that the reduction in wasted time spent waiting on data communication more than offsets the time required to compress and decompress the data.Item Demonstration of a power conditioning system for grid-connected fuel cell power plant.(2013-09-24) Wu, Guiying, 1985-; Lee, Kwang Y.; Electrical and Computer Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.This thesis demonstrates a power conditioning system (PCS) for grid-connected hybrid direct fuel-cell with turbine (DFC/T) power plant. The PCS is an interface between distributed generation and utility grid. It regulates voltage, current and power transmitted from the hybrid DFC/T power plant to utility grid. The proposed system consists of DC/DC converters, DC/AC inverter, and an LCL filter. The DC/DC converter and DC/AC inverter use switches that operate at high speeds. The use of detailed model with switches will decrease the simulation speed, thus it takes long time to execute time simulations in MATLAB. This thesis utilizes effective averaged models for converter and inverter to reduce the calculation time for a large-scale fuel cell power plant in MATLAB. To regulate and stabilize the DC bus voltage, DC/DC converter with PI controller is adopted. For the DC/AC inverter, active and reactive power flow controller is used.Item Design and implementation of a multi-agent optimized control system for a large-scale fossil-fuel electrical power unit.(2011-12-19) Williams, Craig S. (Craig Stevens); Lee, Kwang Y.; Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.The problem facing the United Sates electric power industry today can be attributed to society’s ever increasing demand for energy, environmental concerns with reliance on fossil fuels, and uncertainty about an aging infrastructure’s ability to cope with increasing demand for energy. Existing control systems for power plants are rigid and lack the capability to provide optimal operation with increasing amounts of requirements placed on the power plants, prompting the need for a more adaptive, robust control system. The object of this thesis aims to develop and present an optimized control system based on the concept of Multi-Agent Systems (MASs), which have been applied to other complex problems in the power industry. This thesis applies a MAS distributed control methodology to a large-scale power plant optimized control system, improving the overall flexibility, autonomy, and robustness of the control system, which in turn increases the efficiency and operation of the power plant.Item Design and modeling of a power conditioning system for the hybrid fuel-cell/turbine power plant.(2011-09-14) Guo, Zhitong, 1987-; Lee, Kwang Y.; Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.This thesis presents the model of a power conditioning system (PCS) for the hybrid direct fuel-cell with turbine (DFC/T) power plant. It regulates voltage, current and power transmitted from the hybrid DFC/T power plant to utility grid. The proposed system consists of DC/DC converters, a grid-connected sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM) DC/AC inverter, and an LCL filter. To regulate and stabilize the DC link voltage, DC/DC converter with PI controller is adopted. With three-phase SPWM inverter, both active and reactive power flow can be controlled. Both conventional proportional integral (PI) and the improved fuzzy PI control schemes are proposed. The LCL filter can greatly reduce the current total harmonic distortion (THD). Theoretical analysis and modeling methodologies are presented. Simulation results validate the proposed system and demonstrate that the proposed PCS can follow a dynamic load and reduce the current THD to 1.65%, which is much lower than IEEE standard of 5%.Item Design of a microwave sensor for non-invasive determination of blood-glucose concentration.(2006-05-27T14:46:59Z) Green, Eric C.; Jean, B. Randall.; Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.Diabetes is a disease that afflicts millions worldwide. To control the effects of this disease, diabetics must check their blood glucose levels on a regular basis. Currently, all daily glucose monitoring techniques are invasive, requiring a sample of blood. Microwave sensors are non-destructive and non-contact measuring devices, making them ideal for the measurement of parameters in industrial processes. Current uses of microwave sensors range from measuring moisture content of corn chips to measuring concentration of a solute in water. If a microwave sensor were developed to determine blood glucose concentration, it could be the first daily-use glucose-measuring technique that is truly non-invasive. This thesis provides background on diabetes and microwave measurement. From this background, a sensor is developed and its advantages are illustrated. The thesis concludes by making suggestions for improving the sensor and recommendations on how to implement the sensor into a useful product.Item Design, analysis and simulation of a new current controller for wind power generation system using proportional plus resonance control.(2011-09-14) Liu, Bochuan, 1986-; Song, Byeong-Mun.; Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.This thesis presents design, analysis and simulation of a new current control scheme for wind power generation system (WPGS). Proportional plus resonance (PR) controller is proposed to improve the accuracy of the control loop. Adding a current sensor at the capacitor filter instead of the damping resistor, the proposed two-current loop controller overcomes the instability of the system caused by the LCL filter and minimizes the power loss on the damping resistor (usually 0.8% of rated power). When the impedance of the grid is changing, the proposed current controller still keeps system stable with phase margins more than 45 degree. Moreover, using the proposed current controller, voltage transient characteristics of WPGS are analyzed and a control scheme is introduced to meet the low-voltage ride-through standard. All analysis and evaluation have been conducted for a 250kW WPGS with 208V grid voltage.Item Determining the complex permittivity of materials with the Waveguide-Cutoff method.(2006-07-31) Anderson, Christopher.; Jean, B. Randall.; Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.A new method for the determination of complex permittivity values is explained. The Waveguide-Cutoff method consists of a rectangular chamber with loop antennas for excitation from a Vector Network Analyzer. It then utilizes a particle swarm optimization routine to determine Debye parameters for a given material within the sample. The system is compared to a common Open-Ended Coaxial Probe technique and found to have similar accuracy for determining the dielectric constant over the same frequency band. This syste, however, does not suffer from the same restrictions as the coaxial probe and has a much larger bandwidth than other transmission line methods of similar size.Item Development and implementation of a Multi-Agent Control System for the Rankine Cycler Laboratory Teaching System.(2012-11-29) Gomes, Jason.; Gravagne, Ian A.; Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.One challenge faced by the engineering discipline in the near future is increased electric power demand coupled with greater efficiency requirements for power generation stations. Development of more robust control systems capable of supporting larger power plants with more adaptable control schemes is one solution to the problem. A Multi-Agent Control System is a type of coordinated control scheme capable of multiple parallel operations using several elements, or agents, communicating over a network. This thesis discusses the development and implementation of a Multi-Agent Control System on a small laboratory power generation plant.Item Development and implementation of a multi-agent system for intelligent optimized power plant control.(2012-08-08) Head, Jason D.; Lee, Kwang Y.; Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.As the demand for electric power grows and regulations on power plant operation become stricter, the size, and therefore complexity, of new power plant units is increasing while the intricacies of the multiple simultaneous processes that take place to generate electricity require tighter control. In order to provide a solution to some of the associated operational challenges arising from this situation, control techniques have been developed to allow optimized power plant control while considering non-fixed operating goals. Each of these techniques is computationally intensive, requiring a distributed, parallel control framework to implement each technique simultaneously in distributed subsystem environments. For these reasons, previous research has studied multi-agent systems as a means to implement such a control system. Therefore, the goal of this thesis is to fully develop a multi-agent system to coordinate and implement these techniques to control a third order fossil fuel power plant model.Item Development and implementation of real-time distributed network with the CAN protocol.(2006-05-27T13:44:18Z) Ford, Walter Davis; Gravagne, Ian A.; Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.One of the most interesting applications of a new field of mathematics called dynamic equations on time scales is the modeling, analysis and design of distributed control networks. This thesis documents the development of a scalable, real-time test bed on which to test new time scale-based theories. The Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol is used as the communication backbone. A general description of CAN and reasons for its selection are included. A general purpose computational node is implemented on a desktop computer running the QNX real-time operating system. QNX development entailed writing a driver for an SJA1000-based CAN controller. Charmed Labs’ Xport and the Gameboy Advance (GBA) are used for the network of embedded nodes. Development for the GBA-Xport combination involved interfacing an OpenCores.org CAN core to the Xport’s bus on an FPGA in Verilog and writing a driver class. Appendices include the code and code documentation.Item Emergent behaviors of multi-objective swarms with applications in a dynamic underwater environment.(2013-09-24) Roach, Jon H.; Marks, Robert J., II (Robert Jackson), 1950-; Electrical and Computer Engineering.; The Applied Research Lab at the Pennsylvania State University.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.The allocation of resources between tasks within a swarm of agents can be difficult without a centralized controller. This problem is prevalent when designing a swarm of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, in which underwater communication becomes challenging and a centralized controller cannot be used. In this thesis, a disjunctive fuzzy control system is used to solve the problem of resource management. Multi-objective, multi-state swarms are evolved with an offline learning algorithm to adapt to dynamic scenarios. Some of the emergent behaviors developed through the evolutionary algorithm are state-switching and recruitment techniques. In addition, the adaptability of swarms is tested by removing sensors from the system and re-evolving the swarm to allow it to compensate for its sensor loss. The concepts of a multi-objective, multi-state swarm are also applied to an underwater minefield mapping scenario, which is used to test the robustness of the swarm with respect to swarm size.Item Evaluating Impulse C and multiple parallelism partitions for a low-cost reconfigurable computing system.(2009-04-01T12:08:36Z) Li Shen, Carmen C.; Duren, Russell Walker.; Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.Impulse C is a C-to-HDL compiler from Impulse Accelerated Technology that facilitates the introduction of software programmers, mathematicians, and scientists, into the realm of FPGA-based algorithm development for high-speed numerical computation. This thesis evaluates the Impulse C programming language and explores differing levels of parallelism across multiple, homogeneous, FPGA development platforms using the Aurora serial communication scheme. Impulse C and Xilinx IP cores are employed in the numerical computation of a neural network consisting of 27 inputs and 1200 outputs. The artificial neural network is capable of emulating an underwater acoustic environment and has been used to determine characteristic parameters of reflections from the ocean floor. Timing, logic utilization and ease-of-use are metrics used to evaluate Impulse C in the automatic generation of VHDL code for the network test application. Implementations with parallelism at the system level and at the intermediate (loop) level are explored as part of this study.Item An evaluation of CoWare Inc.'s Processor Designer tool suite for the design of embedded processors.(2008-12-01T16:28:01Z) Franz, Jonathan D.; Duren, Russell Walker.; Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.The goal of this thesis is to evaluate the Processor Designer family of tools from CoWare, Inc. Processor Designer uses the L.I.S.A. 2.0 (Language for Instruction Set Architecture) language. The evaluation is being performed to determine the suitability of the toolset for incorporation into a classroom environment and for the use in developing replacements for legacy processors. The main focus will be on the ease of use of the tools. This includes exploring how steep of a learning curve is involved with this new processor designer language and how well the tools have been documented. The limitations of the tools will also be explored, as far as what can and cannot be done in the language. The thesis is also intended to provide a tutorial introduction to the CoWare Inc. tool suite for future students.Item An evaluation of error masking techniques for digital wireless audio systems.(2011-05-12T15:44:06Z) Michaud, Renée J.; Thompson, Michael Wayne.; Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.This thesis investigates the tradeoffs associated with typical communication system designs for packetized wireless transmission systems. Communication system design requires judicious selection of source data rate, data compression technique, error correction method, modulation scheme, and latency. In particular, we investigate a wireless system for live music, focusing on masking methods to mitigate the affect of dropped data packets. Three different masking methods were developed and tested in combination with three packet sizes, creating nine unique test environments. The efficacy of the masking methods was then evaluated. The packet error rate threshold is defined as the lowest packet error rate for which the subject can hear noise interference. A Matlab graphical user interface was used to automate a human subject protocol, which was designed to investigate the packet error rate threshold for each condition. A comparison of the results and statistical analysis of the effectiveness of the masking methods are presented.Item Experimental investigation of a time scales linear feedback control theorem.(2008-03-03T17:25:15Z) Allen, Benjamin T.; Gravagne, Ian A.; Engineering.; Baylor University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.Dynamic equations on time scales comprise an exciting new area of research in mathematics which promises applications in many areas, particularly control theory. This thesis describes the design and implementation of a simulator and real-time controller useful for experimentation with and demonstration of the applications of time scale control theory. Under the guidance of the Baylor time scales group, the system is used to test a time scales feedback control equation currently under research.