Most times people are unprepared to face natural disasters resulting in chaos, increased number of deaths, etc.Emergency responders need an efficiently working communication network to get in touch with the emergency services like hospitals, police, fire and rescue as well as people who are stranded. Such a network is also the need of the hour for survivors to contact their near and dear ones. One of the major barriers of communication during an emergency is the destruction of network elements. In case the communication devices survive the calamity, odds of the network getting congested are certainly high because almost everyone will be trying to use the same network resources. An important factor when dealing with emergency situations is the calls for an immediate response and an efficient Emergency Communication Systems (ECS). Currently there is a capability gap between existing ECS solutions and what we dream of achieving. Most current solutions do not meet cost or mobility constraints. An inexpensive, portable and mobile system will fulfill this capability gap. The main purpose of this research is to optimize the altitude and received signal strength of an aerial base station to provide maximum radio coverage on the ground as well as propose …

This thesis presents a series of neural network classifiers for object detection in both optical and infrared images. The focus of this work is on efficient and accurate solutions. The thesis discusses the evolution of the highly efficient and tiny network Binary Classification Vision Transformer (BC-ViT) and how through thoughtful modifications and improvements, the BC-ViT can be utilized for tasks of increasing complexity. Chapter 2 discusses the creation of BC-ViT and its initial use case for underwater image classification of optical images. The BC-ViT is able to complete its task with an accuracy of 99.29\% while being comprised of a mere 15,981 total trainable parameters. Chapter 3, Waste Multi-Class Vision Transformer (WMC-ViT), introduces the usefulness of mindful algorithm design for the realm of multi-class classification on a mutually exclusive dataset. WMC-ViT shows that the task oriented design strategy allowed for a network to achieve an accuracy score of 94.27\% on a five class problem while still maintaining a tiny parameter count of 35,492. The final chapter demonstrates that by utilizing functional blocks of BC-ViT, a simple and effective target detection algorithm for infrared images can be created. The Edge Infrared Vision Transformer (EIR-ViT) showed admirable results with a high IoU …

In the era of big data, it is essential to implement practical security and privacy measures to ensure the lawful use of data and provide users with trust and assurance. In the dissertation, I address this issue through several key steps. Firstly, I delve into the problem of conditional secret disclosure, representing it using graphs to determine the most efficient approach for storing and disclosing secrets. Secondly, I extend the conditional disclosure of secrets problem from a single secret to multiple secrets and from a bipartite graph to an arbitrary graph. Thirdly, I remove security constraints to observe how they affect the efficiency of storage and recovery. In our final paper, I explore the secure summation problem, aiming to determine the capacity of total noise. Throughout the dissertation, I leverage information-theoretic tools to address security and privacy concerns.

A wireless communication system allows two parties to exchange information over long distances. The antenna is the component of a wireless communication system that allows information to be converted into electromagnetic radiation that propagates through the air. A system using an antenna with a highly directional beam pattern allows for high power transmission and reception of data. For a directional antenna to serve its purpose, it must be accurately pointed at the object it is communicating with. To communicate with a mobile node, knowledge of the mobile node's position must be gained so the directional antenna can be regularly pointed toward the moving target. The Global Positioning System (GPS) provides an accurate source of three-dimensional position information for the mobile node. This thesis develops an antenna control station that uses GPS information to track a mobile node and point a directional antenna toward the mobile node. Analysis of the subsystems used and integrated system test results are provided to assess the viability of the antenna control station.