Design of Voltage Boosting Rectifiers for Wireless Power Transfer Systems (open access)

Design of Voltage Boosting Rectifiers for Wireless Power Transfer Systems

This thesis presents a multi-stage rectifier for wireless power transfer in biomedical implant systems. The rectifier is built using Schottky diodes. The design has been simulated in 0.5µm and 130nm CMOS processes. The challenges for a rectifier in a wireless power transfer systems are observed to be the efficiency, output voltage yield, operating frequency range and the minimum input voltage the rectifier can convert. The rectifier outperformed the contemporary works in the mentioned criteria.
Date: May 2019
Creator: Suri, Ramaa Saket
System: The UNT Digital Library
Implementations of Fuzzy Adaptive Dynamic Programming Controls on DC to DC Converters (open access)

Implementations of Fuzzy Adaptive Dynamic Programming Controls on DC to DC Converters

DC to DC converters stabilize the voltage obtained from voltage sources such as solar power system, wind energy sources, wave energy sources, rectified voltage from alternators, and so forth. Hence, the need for improving its control algorithm is inevitable. Many algorithms are applied to DC to DC converters. This thesis designs fuzzy adaptive dynamic programming (Fuzzy ADP) algorithm. Also, this thesis implements both adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) and Fuzzy ADP on DC to DC converters to observe the performance of the output voltage trajectories.
Date: May 2019
Creator: Chotikorn, Nattapong
System: The UNT Digital Library
Mesh Networking for Inter-UAV Communications (open access)

Mesh Networking for Inter-UAV Communications

Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) have a great potential to enhanced situational awareness in public safety operations. Many UASs operating in the same airspace can cause mid-air collisions. NASA and the FAA are developing a UAS traffic management (UTM) system, which could be used in public safety operations to manage the UAS airspace. UTM relies on an existing communication backhaul, however natural disasters may disrupt existing communications infrastructure or occur in areas where no backhaul exists. This thesis outlines a robust communications alternative that interfaces a fleet of UASs with a UTM service supplier (USS) over a mesh network. Additionally, this thesis outlines an algorithm for vehicle-to-vehicle discovery and communication over the mesh network.
Date: May 2019
Creator: Walton, Michael Tanner
System: The UNT Digital Library

Proximal Policy Optimization in StarCraft

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Deep reinforcement learning is an area of research that has blossomed tremendously in recent years and has shown remarkable potential in computer games. Real-time strategy game has become an important field of artificial intelligence in game for several years. This paper is about to introduce a kind of algorithm that used to train agents to fight against computer bots. Not only because games are excellent tools to test deep reinforcement learning algorithms for their valuable insight into how well an algorithm can perform in isolated environments without the real-life consequences, but also real-time strategy games are a very complex genre that challenges artificial intelligence agents in both short-term or long-term planning. In this paper, we introduce some history of deep learning and reinforcement learning. Then we combine them with StarCraft. PPO is the algorithm which have some of the benefits of trust region policy optimization (TRPO), but it is much simpler to implement, more general for environment, and have better sample complexity. The StarCraft environment: Blood War Application Programming Interface (BWAPI) is open source to test. The results show that PPO can work well in BWAPI and train units to defeat the opponents. The algorithm presented in the thesis is …
Date: May 2019
Creator: Liu, Yuefan
System: The UNT Digital Library

Quantile Regression Deep Q-Networks for Multi-Agent System Control

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Training autonomous agents that are capable of performing their assigned job without fail is the ultimate goal of deep reinforcement learning. This thesis introduces a dueling Quantile Regression Deep Q-network, where the network learns the state value quantile function and advantage quantile function separately. With this network architecture the agent is able to learn to control simulated robots in the Gazebo simulator. Carefully crafted reward functions and state spaces must be designed for the agent to learn in complex non-stationary environments. When trained for only 100,000 timesteps, the agent is able reach asymptotic performance in environments with moving and stationary obstacles using only the data from the inertial measurement unit, LIDAR, and positional information. Through the use of transfer learning, the agents are also capable of formation control and flocking patterns. The performance of agents with frozen networks is improved through advice giving in Deep Q-networks by use of normalized Q-values and majority voting.
Date: May 2019
Creator: Howe, Dustin
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Cognitive MIMO OFDM Detector Design for Computationally Efficient Space-Time Decoding (open access)

A Cognitive MIMO OFDM Detector Design for Computationally Efficient Space-Time Decoding

In this dissertation a computationally efficient cognitive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division duplexing (OFDM) detector is designed to decode perfect space-time coded signals which are able maximize the diversity and multiplexing properties of a rich fading MIMO channel. The adaptive nature of the cognitive detector allows a MIMO OFDM communication system to better meet to needs of future wireless communication networks which require both high reliability and low run-time complexity depending on the propagation environment. The cognitive detector in conjunction with perfect space-time coding is able to achieve up to a 2 dB bit-error rate (BER) improvement at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) while also achieving comparable runtime complexity in high SNR scenarios.
Date: August 2019
Creator: Grabner, Mitchell J
System: The UNT Digital Library
Modeling and Design of Antennas for Loosely Coupled Links in Wireless Power Transfer Applications (open access)

Modeling and Design of Antennas for Loosely Coupled Links in Wireless Power Transfer Applications

Wireless power transfer (WPT) systems are important in many areas, such as medical, communication, transportation, and consumer electronics. The underlying WPT system is comprised of a transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX). For biomedical applications, such systems can be implemented on rigid or flexible substrates and can be implanted or wearable. The efficiency of a WPT system is based on power transfer efficiency (PTE). Many WPT system optimization techniques have been explored to achieve the highest PTE possible. These are based on either a figure-of-merit (FOM) approach, quality factor (Q-factor) maximization, or by sweeping values for coil geometries. Four WPT systems for biomedical applications are implemented with inductive coupling. The thesis later presents an optimization technique for finding the maximum PTE of a range of frequencies and coil shapes through frequency, geometry and shape sweeping. Five optimized TX coil designs for different operating frequencies are fabricated for three shapes: square, hexagonal, and octagonal planar-spirals. The corresponding RX is implemented on polyimide tape with ink-jet-print (IJP) silver. At 80 MHz, the maximum measured PTE achieved is 2.781% at a 10 mm distance in the air for square planar-spiral coils.
Date: August 2019
Creator: Sinclair, Melissa Ann
System: The UNT Digital Library
Realization of LSTM Based Cognitive Radio Network (open access)

Realization of LSTM Based Cognitive Radio Network

This thesis presents the realization of an intelligent cognitive radio network that uses long short term memory (LSTM) neural network for sensing and predicting the spectrum activity at each instant of time. The simulation is done using Python and GNU Radio. The implementation is done using GNU Radio and Universal Software Radio Peripherals (USRP). Simulation results show that the confidence factor of opportunistic users not causing interference to licensed users of the spectrum is 98.75%. The implementation results demonstrate high reliability of the LSTM based cognitive radio network.
Date: August 2019
Creator: Valluru, Aravind-Deshikh
System: The UNT Digital Library

Deep Learning Approach for Sensing Cognitive Radio Channel Status

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Cognitive Radio (CR) technology creates the opportunity for unlicensed users to make use of the spectral band provided it does not interfere with any licensed user. It is a prominent tool with spectrum sensing functionality to identify idle channels and let the unlicensed users avail them. Thus, the CR technology provides the consumers access to a very large spectrum, quality spectral utilization, and energy efficiency due to spectral load balancing. However, the full potential of the CR technology can be realized only with CRs equipped with accurate mechanisms to predict/sense the spectral holes and vacant spectral bands without any prior knowledge about the characteristics of traffic in a real-time environment. Multi-layered perception (MLP), the popular neural network trained with the back-propagation (BP) learning algorithm, is a keen tool for classification of the spectral bands into "busy" or "idle" states without any a priori knowledge about the user system features. In this dissertation, we proposed the use of an evolutionary algorithm, Bacterial Foraging Optimization Algorithm (BFOA), for the training of the MLP NN. We have compared the performance of the proposed system with the traditional algorithm and with the Hybrid GA-PSO method. With the results of a simulation experiment that this …
Date: December 2019
Creator: Gottapu, Srinivasa Kiran
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Feasibility Study of Cellular Communication and Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (open access)

A Feasibility Study of Cellular Communication and Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Consumer drones have used both standards such as Wi-Fi as well as proprietary communication protocols, such as DJI's OcuSync. While these methods are well suited to certain flying scenarios, they are limited in range to around 4.3 miles. Government and military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) controlled through satellites allow for a global reach in a low-latency environment. To address the range issue of commercial UAVs, this thesis investigates using standardized cellular technologies for command and control of UAV systems. The thesis is divided into five chapters: Chapter 1 is the introduction to the thesis. Chapter 2 describes the equipment used as well as the test setup. This includes the drone used, the cellular module used, the microcontroller used, and a description of the software written to collect the data. Chapter 3 describes the data collection goals, as well as locations in the sky that were flown in order to gather experimental data. Finally, the results are presented in Chapter 4, which draws limited correlation between the collected data and flight readiness Chapter 5 wraps up the thesis with a conclusion and future areas for research are also presented.
Date: December 2019
Creator: Gardner, Michael Alan
System: The UNT Digital Library
Optimization of RSA Cryptography for FPGA and ASIC Applications (open access)

Optimization of RSA Cryptography for FPGA and ASIC Applications

RSA cryptography is one of the most widely used cryptosystems in the world. FPGA/ASIC implementations for the classic RSA cryptosystem have high resource utilization due to the use of the Extended Euclid's algorithm for MOD inverse generation, the MOD exponent operation for encryption and decryption, and through non finite-field arithmetic. This thesis translates the RSA cryptosystem into the finite-field domain of arithmetic which greatly increases the range of encryption and decryption keys and replaces the MOD exponent with a multiplication. A new algorithm, the SPX algorithm, is presented and shown to outperform Euclid's algorithm, which is the most widely used mechanism to compute the GCD in FPGA implementations of RSA. The SPX algorithm is then extended to support the computation of the MOD inverse and supply decryption keys. Lastly, a finite-field RSA system is created and shown to support character encryption and decryption while being designed to be integrated into any larger system.
Date: December 2019
Creator: Simpson, Zachary P
System: The UNT Digital Library