In this research, multi-perspective image registration using LiDAR and visual images was considered. 2D-3D image registration is a difficult task because it requires the extraction of different semantic features from each modality. This problem is solved in three parts. The first step involves detection and extraction of common features from each of the data sets. The second step consists of associating the common features between two different modalities. Traditional methods use lines or orthogonal corners as common features. The third step consists of building the projection matrix. Many existing methods use global positing system (GPS) or inertial navigation system (INS) for an initial estimate of the camera pose. However, the approach discussed herein does not use GPS, INS, or any such devices for initial estimate; hence the model can be used in places like the lunar surface or Mars where GPS or INS are not available. A variation of the method is also described, which does not require strong features from both images but rather uses intensity gradients in the image. This can be useful when one image does not have strong features (such as lines) or there are too many extraneous features.

Future generation cellular networks are expected to deliver an omnipresent broadband access network for an endlessly increasing number of subscribers. Long term Evolution (LTE) represents a significant milestone towards wireless networks known as 4G cellular networks. A key feature of LTE is the implementation of enhanced Radio Resource Management (RRM) mechanism to improve the system performance. The structure of LTE networks was simplified by diminishing the number of the nodes of the core network. Also, the design of the radio protocol architecture is quite unique. In order to achieve high data rate in LTE, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has selected Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) as an appropriate scheme in terms of downlinks. However, the proper scheme for an uplink is the Single-Carrier Frequency Domain Multiple Access due to the peak-to-average-power-ratio (PAPR) constraint. LTE packet scheduling plays a primary role as part of RRM to improve the system’s data rate as well as supporting various QoS requirements of mobile services. The major function of the LTE packet scheduler is to assign Physical Resource Blocks (PRBs) to mobile User Equipment (UE). In our work, we formed a proposed packet scheduler algorithm. The proposed scheduler algorithm acts based on the number …

This paper describes multitasking facilities of Ada in concurrent and real-time programming. Synchronization and process communication mechanisms are discussed in detail, also, a new mechanism to solve the scheduling problem is developed. In the concurrent programming aspect, a comparison is made between Ada's rendezvous and Pascal's Monitor concept. In the real-time programming aspect, the differences between the Ada multitasking and the traditional "cyclic executive approaches are contrasted and their associated costs/benefits analyzed.

The device optimization is a very important element in semiconductor technology advancement. Its objective is to find a design point for a semiconductor device so that the optimized design goal meets all specified constraints. As in other engineering fields, a nonlinear optimizer is often used for design optimization. One major drawback of using a nonlinear optimizer is that it can only partially explore the design space and return a local optimal solution. This dissertation provides an adaptive optimization design methodology to allow the designer to explore the design space and obtain a globally optimal solution. One key element of our method is to quickly compute the set of all feasible solutions, also called the acceptability region. We described a polytope-based representation for the acceptability region and an adaptive linearization technique for device performance model approximation. These efficiency enhancements have enabled significant speed-up in estimating acceptability regions and allow acceptability regions to be estimated for a larger class of device design tasks. Our linearization technique also provides an efficient mechanism to guarantee the global accuracy of the computed acceptability region. To visualize the acceptability region, we study the orthogonal projection of high-dimensional convex polytopes and propose an output sensitive algorithm for …

Agents that act as user assistants will become invaluable as the number of information sources continue to proliferate. Such agents can support the work of users by learning to automate time-consuming tasks and filter information to manageable levels. Although considerable advances have been made in this area, it remains a fertile area for further development. One application of agents under careful scrutiny is the automated negotiation of conflicts between different user's needs and desires. Many techniques require explicit user models in order to function. This dissertation explores a technique for dynamically constructing user models and the impact of using them to anticipate the need for negotiation. Negotiation is reduced by including an advising aspect to the agent that can use this anticipation of conflict to adjust user behavior.

Agent-based architecture explains the rationale and basis for developing agents that can interact with users through natural language query/answer patterns developed systematically using AIML (artificial intelligence mark-up language) scripts. This thesis research document also explains the architecture for VISTA (virtual interactive story-telling agents), which is used for interactive querying in educational and recreational purposes. Agents are very effective as conversational interfaces when used along side with graphical user interface (GUI) in applications and Web pages. This architecture platform can support multiple agents with or with out sharing of knowledgebase. They are very useful as chat robots for recreational purposes, customer service and educational purposes. This platform is powered by Java servlet implementation of Program D and contained in Apache Tomcat server. The AIML scripting language defined here in is a generic form of XML language and forms the knowledgebase of the bot. Animation is provided with Microsoft® Agent technology and text-to-speech support engine.

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks have seen tremendous growth in development and usage in recent times. This attention has brought many developments as well as new challenges to these networks. We will show that agent extensions to P2P networks offer solutions to many problems faced by P2P networks. In this research, an attempt is made to bring together JXTA P2P infrastructure and Jinni, a Prolog based agent engine to form an agent based P2P network. On top of the JXTA, we define simple Java API providing P2P services for agent programming constructs. Jinni is deployed on this JXTA network using an automated code update mechanism. Experiments are conducted on this Jinni/JXTA platform to implement a simple agent communication and data exchange protocol.

The Programmable Logic Array (PLA) has been widely used in the design of VLSI circuits and systems because of its regularity, flexibility, and simplicity. The equivalence problem is typically to verify that the final description of a circuit is functionally equivalent to its initial description. Verifying the functional equivalence of two descriptions is equivalent to proving their logical equivalence. This problem of pure logic is essential to circuit design. The most widely used technique to solve the problem is based on Binary Decision Diagram or BDD, proposed by Bryant in 1986. Unfortunately, BDD requires too much time and space to represent moderately large circuits for equivalence testing. We design and implement a new algorithm called the Cover-Merge Algorithm for the equivalence problem based on a divide-and-conquer strategy using the concept of cover and a derivational method. We prove that the algorithm is sound and complete. Because of the NP-completeness of the problem, we emphasize simplifications to reduce the search space or to avoid redundant computations. Simplification techniques are incorporated into the algorithm as an essential part to speed up the the derivation process. Two different sets of heuristics are developed for two opposite goals: one for the proof of equivalence …

In recent years, the collection of genomic data has skyrocketed and databases of genomic data are growing at a faster rate than ever before. Although many computational methods have been developed to interpret these data, they tend to struggle to process the ever increasing file sizes that are being produced and fail to take advantage of the advances in multi-core processors by using parallel processing. In some instances, loss of accuracy has been a necessary trade off to allow faster computation of the data. This thesis discusses one such algorithm that has been developed and how changes were made to allow larger input file sizes and reduce the time required to achieve a result without sacrificing accuracy. An information entropy based algorithm was used as a basis to demonstrate these techniques. The algorithm dissects the distinctive patterns underlying genomic data efficiently requiring no a priori knowledge, and thus is applicable in a variety of biological research applications. This research describes how parallel processing and object-oriented programming techniques were used to process larger files in less time and achieve a more accurate result from the algorithm. Through object oriented techniques, the maximum allowable input file size was significantly increased from 200 …

This thesis presents algorithms to utilize the wireless bandwidth efficiently and at the same time meet the quality of service (QoS) requirements of the users. In the proposed algorithms we present an adaptive frame structure based upon the airlink frame loss probability and control the admission of call requests into the system based upon the load on the system and the QoS requirements of the incoming call requests. The performance of the proposed algorithms is studied by developing analytical formulations and simulation experiments. Finally we present an admission control algorithm which uses an adaptive delay computation algorithm to compute the queuing delay for each class of traffic and adapts the service rate and the reliability in the estimates based upon the deviation in the expected and obtained performance. We study the performance of the call admission control algorithm by simulation experiments. Simulation results for the adaptive frame structure algorithm show an improvement in the number of users in the system but there is a drop in the system throughput. In spite of the lower throughput the adaptive frame structure algorithm has fewer QoS delay violations. The adaptive call admission control algorithm adapts the call dropping probability of different classes of …

Guiding navigation in virtual environments (VEs) is a challenging task. A key issue in the navigation of a virtual environment is to be able to strike a balance between the user's need to explore the environment freely and the designer's need to ensure that the user experiences all the important events in the VE. This thesis reports on a study aimed at comparing the effectiveness of various navigation cues that are used to motivate users towards a specific target location. The results of this study indicate some significant differences in how users responded to the various cues.

The Internet became a standard way of exchanging business data between B2B and B2C applications and with this came the need for providing various services on the web instead of just static text and images. Web services are a new type of services offered via the web that aid in the creation of globally distributed applications. Web services are enhanced e-business applications that are easier to advertise and easier to discover on the Internet because of their flexibility and uniformity. In a real life scenario it is highly difficult to decide which J2EE application server to go for when deploying a enterprise web service. This thesis analyzes the various ways by which web services can be developed & deployed. Underlying protocols and crucial issues like EAI (enterprise application integration), asynchronous messaging, Registry tModel architecture etc have been considered in this research. This paper presents a report by analyzing what various J2EE application servers provide by doing a case study and by developing applications to test functionality.

Wireless sensor networks are composed of sensor nodes, which can monitor an environment and observe events of interest. These networks are applied in various fields including but not limited to environmental, industrial and habitat monitoring. In many applications, the exact location of the sensor nodes is unknown after deployment. Localization is a process used to find sensor node's positional coordinates, which is vital information. The localization is generally assisted by anchor nodes that are also sensor nodes but with known locations. Anchor nodes generally are expensive and need to be optimally placed for effective localization. Passive localization is one of the localization techniques where the sensor nodes silently listen to the global events like thunder sounds, seismic waves, lighting, etc. According to previous studies, the ideal location to place anchor nodes was on the perimeter of the sensor network. This may not be the case in passive localization, since the function of anchor nodes here is different than the anchor nodes used in other localization systems. I do extensive studies on positioning anchor nodes for effective localization. Several simulations are run in dense and sparse networks for proper positioning of anchor nodes. I show that, for effective passive localization, the …

The purpose of this thesis is to present a comprehensive colligation of applications of mobile agents in networks, and provide a baseline association of these systems. This work has been motivated by the fact that mobile agent systems have been deemed proficuous alternatives in system applications. Several mobile agent systems have been developed to provide scalable and cogent solutions in network-centric applications. This thesis examines some existing mobile agent systems in core networking areas, in particular, those of network and resource management, routing, and the provision of fault tolerance and security. The inherent features of these systems are discussed with respect to their specific functionalities. The applicability and efficacy of mobile agents are further considered in the specific areas mentioned above. Although an initial foray into a collation of this nature, the goal of this annotated bibliography is to provide a generic referential view of mobile agent systems in network applications.

Due to the long duration required to perform manual knowledge entry by human knowledge engineers it is desirable to find methods to automatically acquire knowledge about the world by accessing online information. In this work I examine using the Cyc ontology to guide the creation of Naïve Bayes classifiers to provide knowledge about items described in Wikipedia articles. Given an initial set of Wikipedia articles the system uses the ontology to create positive and negative training sets for the classifiers in each category. The order in which classifiers are generated and used to test articles is also guided by the ontology. The research conducted shows that a system can be created that utilizes statistical text classification methods to extract information from an ad-hoc generated information source like Wikipedia for use in a formal semantic ontology like Cyc. Benefits and limitations of the system are discussed along with future work.

Two applications of a binary tree data type based on a simple pairing function (a bijection between natural numbers and pairs of natural numbers) are explored. First, the tree is used to encode natural numbers, and algorithms that perform basic arithmetic computations are presented along with formal proofs of their correctness. Second, using this "canonical" representation as a base type, algorithms for encoding and decoding additional isomorphic data types of other mathematical constructs (sets, sequences, etc.) are also developed. An experimental application to a memory management system is constructed and explored using these isomorphic types. A practical analysis of this system's runtime complexity and space savings are provided, along with a proof of concept framework for both applications of the binary tree type, in the Java programming language.

This thesis explores the classification of emotions in song lyrics, using automatic approaches applied to a novel corpus of 100 popular songs. I use crowd sourcing via Amazon Mechanical Turk to collect line-level emotions annotations for this collection of song lyrics. I then build classifiers that rely on textual features to automatically identify the presence of one or more of the following six Ekman emotions: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness and surprise. I compare different classification systems and evaluate the performance of the automatic systems against the manual annotations. I also introduce a system that uses data collected from the social network Twitter. I use the Twitter API to collect a large corpus of tweets manually labeled by their authors for one of the six emotions of interest. I then compare the classification of emotions obtained when training on data automatically collected from Twitter versus data obtained through crowd sourced annotations.

Worms have caused significant destruction over the last few years. Network security elements such as firewalls, IDS, etc have been ineffective against worms. Some worms are so fast that a manual intervention is not possible. This brings in the need for a stronger security architecture which can automatically react to stop worm propagation. The method has to be signature independent so that it can stop new worms. In this thesis, an automated defense system (ADS) is developed to automate defense against worms and contain the worm to a level where manual intervention is possible. This is accomplished with a two level architecture with feedback at each level. The inner loop is based on control system theory and uses the properties of PID (proportional, integral and differential controller). The outer loop works at the network level and stops the worm to reach its spread saturation point. In our lab setup, we verified that with only inner loop active the worm was delayed, and with both loops active we were able to restrict the propagation to 10% of the targeted hosts. One concern for deployment of a worm containment mechanism was degradation of throughput for legitimate traffic. We found that with proper …

Mobile applications are growing in popularity and pose new problems in the area of software testing. In particular, mobile applications heavily depend upon user interactions and a dynamically changing environment of system events. In this thesis, we focus on user-driven events and use Q-learning, a reinforcement machine learning algorithm, to generate tests for Android applications under test (AUT). We implement a framework that automates the generation of GUI test cases by using our Q-learning approach and compare it to a uniform random (UR) implementation. A novel feature of our approach is that we generate user-driven event sequences through the GUI, without the source code or the model of the AUT. Hence, considerable amount of cost and time are saved by avoiding the need for model generation for generating the tests. Our results show that the systematic path exploration used by Q-learning results in higher average code coverage in comparison to the uniform random approach.

Current syndromic surveillance systems utilize centralized databases that are neither scalable in storage space nor in computing power. Such systems are limited in the amount of syndromic data that may be collected and analyzed for the early detection of infectious disease outbreaks. However, with the increased prevalence of international travel, public health monitoring must extend beyond the borders of municipalities or states which will require the ability to store vasts amount of data and significant computing power for analyzing the data. Intelligent mobile agents may be used to create a distributed surveillance system that will utilize the hard drives and computer processing unit (CPU) power of the hosts on the agent network where the syndromic information is located. This thesis proposes the design of a mobile agent-based syndromic surveillance system and an agent decision model for outbreak detection. Simulation results indicate that mobile agents are capable of detecting an outbreak that occurs at all hosts the agent is monitoring. Further study of agent decision models is required to account for localized epidemics and variable agent movement rates.

Computer systems which interact with human users to collect, update or provide information are growing more complex. Additionally, users are demanding more thorough testing of all computer systems. Because of the complexity and thoroughness required, automation of interactive systems testing is desirable, especially for functional testing. Many currently available testing tools, like program proving, are impractical for testing large systems. The solution presented here is the development of an automated test system which simulates human users. This system incorporates a high-level programming language, ATLIS. ATLIS programs are compiled and interpretively executed. Programs are selected for execution by operator command, and failures are reported to the operator's console. An audit trail of all activity is provided. This solution provides improved efficiency and effectiveness over conventional testing methods.

Shadows in indoor scenarios are usually characterized with multiple light sources that produce complex shadow patterns of a single object. Without removing shadow, the foreground object tends to be erroneously segmented. The inconsistent hue and intensity of shadows make automatic removal a challenging task. In this thesis, a dynamic thresholding and transfer learning-based method for removing shadows is proposed. The method suppresses light shadows with a dynamically computed threshold and removes dark shadows using an online learning strategy that is built upon a base classifier trained with manually annotated examples and refined with the automatically identified examples in the new videos. Experimental results demonstrate that despite variation of lighting conditions in videos our proposed method is able to adapt to the videos and remove shadows effectively. The sensitivity of shadow detection changes slightly with different confidence levels used in example selection for classifier retraining and high confidence level usually yields better performance with less retraining iterations.

In software testing, it is often desirable to find test inputs that exercise specific program features. Finding these inputs manually, is extremely time consuming, especially, when the software being tested is complex. Therefore, there have been numerous attempts automate this process. Random test data generation consists of generating test inputs at random, in the hope that they will exercise the desired software features. Often the desired inputs must satisfy complex constraints, and this makes a random approach seem unlikely to succeed. In contrast, combinatorial optimization techniques, such as those using genetic algorithms, are meant to solve difficult problems involving simultaneous satisfaction of many constraints.

This dissertation addresses the general problem of recognition of acoustic signals which may be derived from speech, sonar, or acoustic phenomena. The specific problem of recognizing speech is the main focus of this research. The intention is to design a recognition system for a definite number of discrete words. For this purpose specifically, eight isolated words from the T1MIT database are selected. Four medium length words "greasy," "dark," "wash," and "water" are used. In addition, four short words are considered "she," "had," "in," and "all." The recognition system addresses the following issues: filtering or preprocessing, training, and decision-making. The preprocessing phase uses linear predictive coding of order 12. Following the filtering process, a vector quantization method is used to further reduce the input data and generate a finite inductive sequence of symbols representative of each input signal. The sequences generated by the vector quantization process of the same word are factored, and a single ruling or reference template is generated and stored in a codebook. This system introduces a new modeling technique which relies heavily on the basic concept that all finite sequences are finitely inductive. This technique is used in the training stage. In order to accommodate the variabilities …