In this dissertation, we explored multiple coding techniques to reduce energy consumption, improve performance, and secure wireless sensor networks specifically and ad-hoc networks in general. With the introduction of Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G technologies, wireless sensor networks are quickly emerging as an important and key technology in the...
The ubiquity of high quality video and proliferation of mobile devices has contributed to an unprecedented rise in video consumption. HTTP, in conjunction with adaptive streaming, has become the de facto mechanism for delivering the vast majority of video as it readily caters to heterogeneous networks and devices. This dissertation...
This dissertation focuses on the application of diatom frustules, the biosilica shell of an algae possessing physical and photonic properties capable of enhancing optical signals, for the enhancement of optical sensing. In this work, we incorporate diatom frustules into biosensors for signal enhancement and improved target molecule detection. The potential...
Successive-approximation-register (SAR) analog-to-digital converters are popular for medium accuracy, medium speed and low power applications, such as in biomedical applications. They have low latency and simple architecture compared with ΔΣ ADCs. This is because of SAR ADCs’ binary searching scheme. Furthermore, SAR ADCs can apply oversampling and noise shaping schemes...
Accurate information of power network parameters is essential for performing various power system monitoring and control tasks including state estimation, economic dispatch, and contingency analysis. In this paper, we present a novel approach of power network parameter correction wherein we exploit the sparse nature of parameter errors. Parameter error correction...
Crowdsourcing is a popular paradigm to address the high demands for labeled data in big data deluge. It aims to produce accurate labels by effectively integrating noisy, non-expert labeling from crowdsourced workers (annotators). The machine learning community has been studying effective crowdsourcing methods for many years, and many models and...
In a power system, operators maintain voltage stability through adequate reactive reserves. Maintaining and accessing an efficient allocation of reactive reserves is prohibitively complex because of reactive line losses, the variety of reactive resources, and either limited or variable reactive outputs from renewable sources. By clustering the system into smaller...
Metal-insulator-metal (MIM) and dual-insulator MIM (MIIM) devices are used in rectennas, hot-electron transistors, single electron transistors, resistive random access memory (RRAM), and capacitors. The performance of these devices relies heavily on the energy barrier height at each metal-insulator interface. Thus, determination of the in-situ electron energy barrier at each interface...
Over the last decades, CMOS-integrated sensors have made impressive progress in performance, form-factor, and energy-efficiency for various applications such as imaging, physical/chemical sensing, bio/health monitoring. In the era of the artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet-of-things (IoT), such CMOS-integrated sensors are essential for massive and comprehensive data acquisition, where sensing...
Harvesting energy from ambient sources can provide power autonomy to energy efficient electronics and sensors. The last decade has seen a multitude of ways to scavenge energy from various sources like solar, thermal, electromagnetic, electrostatic, piezo-electric and many more. Thermal energy from human body heat is ubiquitous and can be...
This research focuses on receiver architectures which enable better spectral eciency
by handling blockers in the same spectral range as the signal. The presence of
such blockers, without the use of blocker cancelling/ltering techniques leads to gain
compression and hence, consequent performance degradation of receivers leading to
reduced spectrum...
Wearable sensors with an inertial measurement unit (IMU) are popular for indoor positioning and activity pattern detection. The IMUs can be connected to a wireless transmission module, allowing users to monitor and process motion-related parameters remotely. Because of the complexity and uncertainty of signals in indoor environments, a radio frequency...
This thesis deals with target localization using multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radars. In the field of communications, navigation, radar, and sensing networks, one of the common and most sophisticated problems is target localization. We develop a target localization scheme in distributed MIMO radar systems using bistatic range measurements. The localization approach...
Traditional approaches to streaming H.264 video over a network typically rely on a single method of transport (i.e., reliable or unreliable) and/or use static values for parameters that can have a significant negative impact on the perceptual quality of the received video. This dissertation presents a dynamic method for wireless...
This project concerns the design, layout, assembly, debugging, and testing of a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) that autonomously, reliably, and effectively conducts Cyclic Voltammetry (CV) measurements. CV is an electrochemical procedure done to analyze, quantize, and visualize reversible reduction-oxidation reactions, often used in medical devices to monitor the levels of...
Load flow studies are one of the most essential engineering applications for grid operators because they provide a clear picture of the operating conditions of the power system. Traditionally, the load flow problem is assumed to be deterministic; that is, the system variables contain no randomness. Unfortunately, this assumption is...
Currently available soil moisture sensors have intrinsic limitations that limit their adoption by industry. Depending on the technology, these limitations may include high costs, battery requirements, precice manual installation, high cost, and/or constrictive legislation that regulates their use. A passive soil moisture sensing system based around RFID technology would allay...
The electrical output of solar panels is reduced when dust covers the panels, but the air movement produced by a flying drone can be used to remove this debris. This research project will study the effectiveness of a quadcopter drone in dusting a solar panel. A solar panel was covered...
Modern communication systems often have the ability to transmit signals on multiple communication mediums (e.g., RF, visible light) or interfaces (e.g., MAC layer protocols) at the same time. While each channel has different characteristics, a centralized controller with channel condition information will be able to schedule the resource allocated to...
We consider the problem of computing the cannonical polyadic decomposition (CPD) for large-scale dense tensors. This work is a combination of alternating least squares and fiber sampling. Data sparsity can be leveraged to handle large tensor CPD, but this route is not feasible for dense data. Inspired by stochastic optimization's...
While electrification is currently one of the largest trends in the automotive world, other related industries are also evaluating electrification opportunities as a means to reduce environmental impact, emissions, and noise pollution. One such sector is the aviation industry. While it is generally accepted that all-electric aircraft are not a...
This work demonstrates correlation of microwave signals encoded with 16-bit codes using the parametric interaction of spin waves. Signal processing correlators are devices that compare two signals, such as a reference code and a received code, where the output indicates the similarity between the signals. Correlators are used in communication...
Structural health monitoring (SHM) systems perform automated non-destructive damage detection and characterization for a variety of large structures including civil structures such as bridges and aerospace structures such as aircrafts and space vehicles. The goals of SHM include preventing catastrophic structural failures, increasing reliability, reducing maintenance costs, and increasing the...
There are nearly two million limb amputees living in the United States of America. Loss of limbs results in profound changes in one's life. However, the underlying neural circuitry and much of the ability to sense and control movements of their missing limb is retained even after limb loss. This...
Conventional Delta-Sigma analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) utilize operational transconductance amplifiers (OTAs) in their loop filter implementation followed by multi-bit voltage domain quantizers. As CMOS integrated circuit technology scales to smaller geometries, the minimum transistor length and the intrinsic gain of the transistors decrease. Moreover, with process scaling the voltage headroom decreases...
As the power system grows larger and more complex, real-time monitoring and control become very significant in order to achieve reliable operation of the power system. Before any security assessment can be made or control actions are taken, the reliable estimate of the existing state of the system must be...
In recent years, SAR ADCs have been shown to acheive faster conversion times and improved power efficiencies due to their simple building blocks that are digital in nature and scale favorably with technology. High resolution ADCs with stringent noise requirement has led to the adoption of hybrid ADC architectures such...
Artificial Intelligence has gained resurgence in popularity through machine learning methods. This thesis investigates the current use of AI, the impact it will have on the economy and the ethical considerations for developing this technology. In the coming decade AI could increase global economic output over $10 Trillion. AI will...
With the rapid growth of worldwide internet traffic in data centers and clouds, silicon photonics has been utilized to provide enormous data bandwidth and outstanding energy efficiency over electronics. Computing servers and storage servers that are connected by communication links are relying more on optical rather than electrical means mainly...
Low-power millimeter-wave (mm-wave) transceivers are of interest for achieving energy-efficient high data rate short-reach wireless and guided-wave links.
Spatial modulation or space-shift keying (SSK) can provide energy efficiency improvements by using antenna-switching or transmission direction switching for data modulation. Such links are particularly attractive at millimeter-wave frequencies due to small...
Efficient time-series analysis can impact multiple application domains such as motif discovery in gene analysis or music data, extracting spectro-temporal patterns in acoustic scene analysis, or annotating and classifying electrical bio-signals (such as ECG, EEG, and EMG) for medical applications.
Time-series analysis involves a variety of tasks.
To predict future...
Millimeter-wave (mm-wave) technology promises high speed, high system capacity and low latency interconnects with reduced cost. Applications like high data-rate wireless links, next generation automotive sensors and security body scanners highly depend on mm-wave technology innovations. As operating frequency moves to higher mm-wave bands, shrinking antenna dimensions enable co-integration of...
In any biomedical signal acquisition system, a front-end amplifier is needed to amplify low amplitude bio-signals while filtering out any unwanted low-frequency artifacts. The design of low frequency poles within the sub-Hz range implies very large time-constants which goes against system integrability. In recent years, the pseudo resistor has been...
The CMOS two-stage Operational Transconductance Amplifier (OTA) has been a key enabler for mixed-signal IC design for nearly four decades . This research focuses on a modified two-stage CMOS OTA that features load-pole cancellation (LPC); i.e., the resulting architecture is essentially a two-stage CMOS OTA with no load capacitance. The...
The Pacific Northwest is part of the "Ring of Fire," which is well-known for heavy seismic activity. Numerous active faults in the area have encouraged electric grid managers in the region to more deeply contemplate and proactively intervene to support grid resilience. This research introduces Monte Carlo (MC) based power...
Due to the continued evolution of 5G standards, the need for higher rates of data, lower latency network access, and implementations that are more energy efficient have become clear. To enable wireless communications at rates over tens of Gbps, the wide bandwidth of mmWave spectrum can be exploited. Beamforming (or...
Movement pattern detection can be applied in a variety of applications such as assisting independent living of seniors at home, behaviour understanding in surveillance systems, sports analytics, and robotics. This project develops a scheme that fuses information from different sensors to detect movement patterns. This report contains three main parts:...
Ring amplifiers (ringamps) have shown excellent power efficiency in the latest state-of-the-art analog to digital converters (ADCs). This thesis describes circuit techniques to ensure robust operation of ringamps using standard analog techniques and proportional-integral-derivative(PID) controller analogy. Large-signal and small-signal analysis of a ringamp are performed using simple RC settling and...
As the sources of our electricity shift from centralized and carbon emitting, to a portfolio of distributed, clean-energy sources, the wave energy converter (WEC) has become a topic of exploration and development for providing coastal communities electric power. Part of this trend has included an effort to create open source...
Data acquisition (DAQ) systems are a necessary component for products whose outcomes depend on collected information throughout its operation. Current systems are directed towards users utilizing custom hardware, software, and requiring its user to have high-level skills in coding and system setup; but with the increasing interest in renewable energy,...
Deep Learning methods have been gaining a lot of significance for various Biomedical applications for diagnosing several types of diseases. Two applications considered here are: 1) Diabetic Retinopathy Detection and 2) ECG signal Classification (or Arrhythmia Detection). Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is a major cause of blindness in Diabetic patients, and...
Using robotics in education allows students to become familiar with multiple topics in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). With the use of robotic educational tools in the 8th – 12th grade classrooms, such as Sphero, Anki Cozmo, and Lego Mindstorms, few devices allow students to build the robots’ electrical...
In this thesis, we propose a Blockchain-based distributed protocol for enabling deployment of dynamic, on-demand IoT networks. Specifically, the proposed protocol leverages Blockchain technology to: (i) enable distributed and secure authentication, registration, and management of IoT devices; (ii) provide fast discovery of IoT resources and scalable and secure instantiation of...
The thesis focuses on the development of a novel printed resistive humidity sensor and integrated flexible electronics for an RFID-enabled humidity sensing platform. We explored a hybrid nanocomposite material for humidity sensing consisting of carbon nanomaterials, conductive polymer and cellulose polymer that undergoes resistance change in response to humidity change....
The increasing demand for higher data-rates is challenging to satisfy with spectrum-deficient indoor WiFi networks. A novel hybrid WiFi Free-Space Optical (WIFO) system has been proposed to enhance the wireless capacity of indoor WiFi networks. In this thesis, an integrated optical wireless receiver is designed and integrated in 65-nm CMOS...
Ocean waves provide a promising source of renewable energy for the North American electric grid. However, ideal control of wave energy converters (WECs) requires perfect forecasting of future wave conditions, and waves can be unpredictable. This paper presents a comparison of three different prediction methods and analyzes their performance in...
Noise-shaping multibit quantizers in a ΔΣ modulator offer extra orders of noise shaping without increasing the loop-filter order and without compromising the stability of the modulator. This dissertation presents two new architectures for improving the overall performance of continuous-time ΔΣ modulators using noise-shaped quantizers.
The first modulator architecture is motivated...
Ring amplification has emerged as an efficient technique to drive large capacitive loads in switched capacitor circuits. We propose circuit techniques to demonstrate the first application of a ring amplifier in a non-capacitive feedback system of a LDO. These techniques enable a simple cap-less LDO structure in 180nm CMOS that...
Filters and data converters are key analog-and-mixed-signal (AMS) building blocks in communication systems, such as software-defined radios and internet-of-things. In this dissertation, novel switched-capacitor filter and analog-to-digital converter (ADC) circuit configurations have been explored which are power efficient and are digital scaling friendly.
First, a novel switched-capacitor low-pass filter architecture...
The machine learning and deep learning models have been very lightly explored in analyzing the behavior of On-Chip network traffic. These models have proven their potential in pattern recognition, classification etc... In this paper we analyze the spatial pattern that each workload exhibits in its life cycle during execution. We...
We consider multiple Compressive Sensing (CS) problems wherein the supports of signal vectors of CS problems are restricted to satisfy a collection of joint logical constraints, which we refer to as coupling constraints. We consider a case where the coupling constraints are encoded in a graph and present a sequential...
Portable, high power efficiency communication devices is a growing market in the semiconductor industry. Analog-to-digital converters (ADC) are key interface that are used to digitize the sensed information. Recently, digital techniques have been proposed to improve analog building block power efficiency in sub-micron technologies. This research focuses on mixed signal...
Direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) was initially used for anti-jamming in military applications and was later developed in other commercial applications. Walsh codes, which are a set of mutually orthogonal codes, are one type of the spreading codes used in DSSS systems. For any spreading codes of length N, these...
Real time indoor positioning awareness systems aim to add localization capabilities to upcoming wireless technologies that are quickly becoming an important feature for indoor environment. RF-based impulse-radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) is a promising technology for in-door positioning systems due to obstacle penetration capabilities, immunity to multi-path and fading, and high resolution....
The scarcity of wireless spectrum resources and the overwhelming demand for wireless broadband resources have prompted industry, government agencies and academia within the wireless communities to develop and come up with effective solutions that can make additional spectrum available for broadband data. As part of these ongoing efforts, cognitive radio...
The dissertation focuses on the engineering of light-matter interaction using plasmonic nanoparticles and metamaterials to achieve enhanced luminescence and based on which to improve the performance of biosensing and light-emitting technologies. We designed and fabricated a spectrum of nanostructures to exhibit particular dispersion relations capable of controlling the spontaneous emission...
This work presents an inductor less switched capacitor based energy harvester, which can simultaneously harvest from 2 energy sources (Solar + Piezo). The proposed harvester employs 2D maximum power point tracking algorithm, by changing the conversion ratios of the charge pumps for piezo and solar sources, and 1D voltage regulation...
With the need for higher spectral efficiency and data rates the rise of simultaneous transmit-and-receive (STAR) radios is becoming increasingly valuable. While many systems employ two separate channels for transmit and receive to double the data speed, this comes at the cost of doubling the RF band. This same performance...
Renewable electrical energy sources are relatively easy to integrate at moderate penetrations, utilizing a combination of technical and market methods to increase grid flexibility. However, integrating high renewable portfolios is more challenging, and the optimal combination of resources will vary depending on the features of specific geographic areas. This study...
For mmWave Integrated Circuit (IC) design, co-integration of passives can reduce size and power consumption, increase reliability, and reduce overall cost. However, skin and proximity effects in the metallization are aggravated at mmWave frequencies, resulting in increased attenuation and degradation of overall performance. Furthermore, tight integration of passive components (to...
This thesis concerns the development of a direct torque control strategy using a sliding mode control approach to optimize the power output of an oscillating water column (OWC) wave energy converter (WEC). The OWC WEC is a device that has a submerged vertical tail tube open at both ends, which...
Due to the advantages of the high surface area and high porosity, Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) materials are widely used in gas storage. As a typical MOF material, Zeolitic Imidazolate Framework-8 (Zif-8) has high selectivity and adsorption capability of carbon dioxide (CO2). In this thesis, we investigated the infrared absorption of...
Besides enabling an enhanced mobile broadband access, fifth-generation (5G) wireless mobile networks are envisioned to support the connectivity of massive, heterogeneous Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Connecting these devices through 5G systems and providing them with their needed data rates require huge amounts of spectrum and power resources, thus calling...
The Amazon basin is a natural wonder of biodiversity that serves as one of the largest single carbon storage mechanisms in the world. For these reasons, preserving the Amazon and other similar forests is a worthy goal. Protecting these spaces is not possible without understanding the threats facing animal populations...
With the increasing penetration of renewable energy integration and potential threats from natural disasters, modern electric power system have been significantly exposed to both small- and large-scale disturbances. Traditional performance metrics including indices of reliability, stability, and security are no longer adequate to describe a power network. Infrastructure properties like...
The electrical grid serves as one of the major lifelines to our society. We have come to expect electricity to be available when we want it. But the system that delivers power to us is very complex and made up of many individual pieces. Maintaining and operating this system reliably...
Pulse Oximetry is a technology used ubiquitously across the medical field for measuring oxygen saturation and heart rate monitoring. In this project a system was developed to use a new technology for pulse oximetry: single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs). This work outlines the development process and experimental results of a SPAD...
Cell counting is a key tool used in biological and clinical laboratories, but at present, commercial cell counters are large and expensive. CMOS technology is a promising platform for creating small, low-cost sensors but currently lacks a robust method of directly interfacing these sensors with the microfluidic networks needed for...
Several hardware-based security improvements to Near Field Communication (NFC) and Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) systems are developed and presented. The improvements are intended to be used in conjunction with software encryption to ensure robust security. Two main implementations for a more secure NFC or RFID system are presented: a jamming system,...
Few navigation-assistance technologies for vision impaired individuals are practical due to inhibiting factors such as cost, comfort, convenience, and overall usefulness of the assistance. This thesis will present the design and implementation of a navigation assistance system intended to address these concerns. The presented system improves on existing technologies by...
Flow rate sensors for in situ gas or liquid monitoring typically comprise multiple transducer elements, including a heater and one or more temperature sensors to measure the rate of heat energy removal by the flowing fluid. The need for multiple transducer elements limits feasibility of shrinking these sensors to microfluidic...
Project Loom is a system of sensors, actuators, processors, and wireless connectivity chips that the user can pick and choose from in order to create an Internet of Things application that fits their desired needs. The modularity of the system and ease of use allows for the user to create...
Modern sensor network applications are often implemented wirelessly in order to lessen installation costs and reduce deployment times. Unfortunately, these wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes must often rely on batteries or energy harvesting techniques in order to sustain their operation and supply the power needed to maintain communication within the...
This design of a Grid Friendly Electric Hot Water Heater Thermostat was built for the Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Design course, ECE44x. The design enables hot water heaters to respond to imbalances in the grid seen through deviations from standard grid frequency by varying the power output to the...
The prevalence of Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications leads to an increasing focus on the design and optimization of sensor nodes. Battery lifetime and associated costs of battery replacement often limits the long term operation and viability of sensor nodes. RF wireless energy harvesting on the other hand can be appealing since...
Magnetic particle imaging (MPI) is a biomedical imaging technique which detects the presence of magnetic nanoparticles which have been introduced into the specimen prior to imaging. MPI has shown promise for real-time imaging with spatial resolution comparable to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MPI research has focused predominantly on the development...
Analog-to-digital converters are essential components to the portable devices that we are using today. Wireless sensors, body implanted devices, communication devices and so forth require low power ADCs. Therefore achieving higher resolution and bandwidth with lower power consumption is targeted in ADCs design. In this work power efficient ADCs for...
Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are the key building block for sensor applications, such as wireless communications and digital electronics. These applications require ADCs to have medium to high accuracy (normally from 10-14 bits) and relatively low signal bandwidth (ranging from 100Hz-150kHz). Since these applications are often powered by batteries, high power...
Demands of today's integrated society dependent on communication systems have driven the creation of ever more efficient analog-to-digital converters. For the same reasons, digital circuitry has rapidly expanded to serve all the different systems and needs of consumers. The trend of technology development has been to make these digital circuits...
The recent increase in the number of wireless devices has been driven by the growing markets of smart homes and the Internet of Things (IoT). Consequently, current research has focused on efficient utilization of the radio frequency (RF) spectrum to accommodate such an increase in wireless bandwidth. Alternatively, latest free-space...
This work describes the design and modification of a commercial children’s ride-on car to effectively collect usage data. The design is cheap and could be easily modified to gather more information. This will serve as a viable way to collect information about how motorized independence can help children with developmental...
Data centers have been charged a great amount of electric bill by the power company and demand charge can contribute up to 40% of the electric bill due to the "random" workload. This phenomenon can be avoided by using the existing Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) as the assistant power source...
Electricity is at the center of attention as today many essential systems (water, gas, communications, and the internet for example) and infrastructures depend on its continuity for their smooth functioning. On the other hand, electricity power networks have developed and became large, and highly complex technical systems, geographically extended, requiring...
The electrical stability of amorphous indium-gallium-zinc oxide (a-IGZO) thinfilmtransistors (TFTs) is investigated for flat-panel display applications. Althoughproducts incorporating a-IGZO TFT backplanes are already commercially available,e.g., iMac with 5K retina display, technical challenges need to be addressed for nextgenerationapplications, e.g., active-matrix organic light-emitting diode displays.Device stability is one crucial issue. The...
Silicon integrated circuit (IC) technology has enabled numerous electrical and optical sensors used in biological and chemical assays, where they can increase performance while decreasing cost and size compared to traditional detectors. There is significant potential to further leverage IC technology for lab-on-chip applications, creating affordable and portable medical diagnostic...
The need to detect trace amounts of target molecules is great, particularly when it comes to biosensing. With the early detection of a disease, the odds of the successful treatment of an individual increases significantly. To enhance the capability of biomolecular detection, we have created an optical biosensor capable of...
Several frequency and amplitude estimation algorithms are presented for balanced and unbalanced three-phase power grid systems. All the estimators are dynamic in nature and are implemented in the complex domain by transforming the three-phase power signals using Clarke’s transform. Specifically, we first construct a non-linear dynamic model of the complex...
Mobile video streaming has become an essential application in mobile wireless networks,making up most of the mobile data of today’s Internet traffic. Studies have shown that mobile video data is projected to make up about 78 percent of the global mobile data traffic, and that global mobile data traffic is...
The increasing demand for higher data-rates in spectrum-deficient indoor WiFi networks calls for the adaptation of hybrid systems, consisting of RF and optical wireless channels. The novel hybrid WiFi Free-Space Optical (WIFO) system was introduced to enhance the wireless capacity of indoor WiFi networks. In this thesis, an optical wireless...
This work presents a new data encoding scheme: Integrated Pulse Width Modulation (iPWM) for equalizing lossy wireline channels with the aim of achieving energy efficient wireline communication. The proposed scheme is able to overcome the fundamental limitations imposed by Manchester and Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) encoding on high data rate...
The trend towards higher resolution, faster refresh rate active-matrix liquid-crystal displays (AMLCDs) as well as the emergence of active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) displays is driving the demand for amorphous oxide semiconductor thin-film transistors (AOS TFTs) with higher mobility. A physics-based model for carrier transport in an amorphous semiconductor is...
Most of today’s Internet of Things (IoT) applications assume that data will be moved offdevices into centralized cloud platforms. While existing IoT systems leverage cloud-based analytics for meaningful data reasoning, the assumption that data should always be moved off the devices is problematic. The amount of data to be moved...
In this work, an alternating current (ac) magnetic susceptometer is designed and implemented to track the Brownian relaxation time of magnetic nanoparticles that are suspended in a liquid medium. The detection technique based on the Brownian relaxation time of magnetic nanoparticles has found its way in a variety of biosensing...
Scalable array transceivers with wide frequency tuning range are attractive for next-generationradios. Key challenges for such radios include generation of LO signals with widefrequency tuning range, scalable synchronization between multiple array unit cells andtolerance to in-band and out-of-band interferers. This thesis presents approaches toaddress these challenges in commercial CMOS technologies.The...
Hydropower is the one of the oldest renewable energy technologies and is wrongly thought of today as having little room to grow. The opportunity for new hydropower capacity is immense through both technology advancement and run-of-river new stream reach projects. Despite the age of hydropower, a divide in opinion is...
The internet-of-things is a growing market segment which is based on an arrayof portable communication devices with high power efficiency. Advanced semiconductortechnology can easily improve their digital performance, but the samecannot be said for the analog blocks which are vital to their operation. Highperformance analog circuits continue to use conventional...
Model Predictive Control (MPC) has previously been investigated on ocean waveenergy converters (WEC) to improve the amount of power captured, while respectingthe system constraints. Previous research done in the same area, focused onbuilding a control scheme by using the knowledge of the past & current statesof the system and predicting...
Hyperthermia is a cancer therapy that relies on the local heating of a cancerous tumor to kill cancer cells and disrupt the future growth of the tumor. While hyperthermia is capable of killing tumors separately, physicians often combine it with other treatment methods, typically radiation therapy, for its synergistic effects...
ROSS (Robotic Oceanographic Surface Sampler) is an autonomous boat, equipped with oceanographic sensors, used for studying the ocean’s surface. One of its advantages over traditional research vessels is its ability to sample near glaciers, an area too dangerous for manned ships. In order to properly ascertain deep ocean heat’s effect...
This dissertation focuses on extending the application scope of surface enhanced infrared absorption spectroscopy to gas sensing. The method we propose is incorporating plasmonic nanostructures with nano-composite material, metalorganic framework, which can selectively preconcentrate certain gas molecules into the nanopores. The preconcentrating property is first demonstrated by applying metal-organic framework...