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Computer Science |
Alvear, Alcides, Rodríguez, Manuel, Villalain, Angel, Ferra, Jaime, University of Puerto Rico - Mayagüez, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.
Development of
a Database Middleware System to Support Remote Sensing Analysis over
Distributed Data Sources
This research is an integral part of the TerraScope. The central
objective of the TerraScope project is the creation of distributed
image data bases and the development of tools so that clients can
interact with these image databases through the Web. Software tools,
data products and other information will be made available to all
interested in using it and making the best use of it including the
fields of education, scientific research, and its potential
applications in the medicine, Biology, engineering, geophysical and
other branches of science. A tool, called the ImageCutter, will be
constructed in such away that customized interaction between a
client and distributed data bases will be possible. The clients are
users who have codes in Matlab and C++ concerning Remote Sensing
applications. Examples of these are supervised or unsupervised
classification tools. These applications use images stored in any of
the data bases available to the user. The ImageCutter tool is a
Middleware solution whose basic characteristic is that it will work
through the Web to find processing sites where image processing
operators can be executed to refine image and generate new data
products. The system will enable a client application to gather data
and metadata about images (e.g. MODIS, RadarSat) from a group of
image data bases, and request image refinement operations to be
executed. The Image Cutter will enable the client application to
send images and customized processing code to clusters or parallel
machines, where the image refinement will occur.
Cabarcas, Amaury, Malave, Lizvette, Vélez, Bienvenido, University of Puerto Rico - Mayagüez, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.
TERRASCOPE CLIENT: An Interactive Image Browser for an Earth Science Information System
Terrascope Client is an interactive image browser designed to perform spatial exploration in conjunction with an Earth Science Information System (Terrascope Server). Using Flash MX, XML and Servlets technology it delivers satellite images with their corresponding metadata, GIS characteristics, and other outstanding information. Once an image of interest is located, users may easily search the database for images contained within this seed image (sub-images) or for images overlapping this seed image.
Users may perform operations such as pan, zoom in, and zoom out over the image and display specific metadata for the image.
González Santiago, Nathaniel, Bruckman Vargas, Henry F., Medina Cruz, José A., Ortíz Ubarri, José, Corrada Bravo, Carlos J., Universidad de Puerto Rico - Río Piedras, Ciencia de Cómputos
Smart Sensing Net Card for Load Balancing and Redundancy in Multiple Services Environment
Este proyecto tiene como objetivo maximizar la utilización de los servidores de tal manera que tanto los servicios como programas con aplicaciones científicas puedan hacer mejor uso de los recursos con la menor intervención posible del usuario. Se busca lograr nuestro objetivo utilizando un sistema de control con algoritmos de optimización. Se utilizará VHDL para convertir el código creado a un chip para luego ser instalados a la tarjeta de red. Los servidores que tengan dicha tarjeta y se encuentren dentro del rango especificado por el usuario, compartirán la información relevante sobre los recursos y la utilización de dicho sistema. Una computadora principal recibirá la petición del usuario y la redirigirá al servidor que mejor pueda satisfacer las necesidades del servicio particular. En caso de que la computadora principal llegase a fallar y se pierda la comunicación, entonces las máquinas llevaran a cabo un algoritmo que resultara en una de las máquinas secundarias convirtiéndose en una primaria. Esto ofrece un sistema de redundancia a nuestro servicios. Soluciones como “web switch” han sido propuestas pero estas solo intentan resolver el problema de un servicio especifico y con un punto principal de falla. Se presentarán las diferentes facetas del proyecto que incluyen lo antes mencionado así como sistemas de recompilación y envío de datos entre computadoras y un programa de replicación de data. Por otro lado un elemento importante es el valorizar o crear una métrica que nos permita tomar la mejor decisión en la selección de la computadora que atenderá la petición de acuerdo a la aplicación.
Martínez-Montes, Maritere, Rodríguez-Martínez, Omar, Rodríguez-Martínez, Manuel, Rivera-Vega, Pedro I., University of Puerto Rico - Mayagüez, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.
Smart Mirrors: An Intelligent Peer to Peer Network of Web Servers
We consider the problem of serving static data being requested by users on the Internet, with the goal of completing the service in minimum time (turnaround time). One common approach is for a particular server to duplicate its content into other servers in the Internet, which are then called “mirrors of each other.” When one of such server receives a request, a list of mirror sites is shown to the user. The user then selects the server to download the data from. The major deficiency of this approach is that the user has no criteria as to which server is the one implying minimum turnaround time. We propose a distributed peer to peer mirror system, which we refer to as the Smart Mirrors System, that will guide the user in making a more intelligent selection. The system is currently under development at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UPRM. It leads the user to select the site that can complete the download operation with minimum turnaround time when compared to other mirror sites. Different research issues are being considered in this project, in particular, the architecture of the system, cost model to estimate service time of each particular server, interchange of information and service requests among peers, and real experimentation to validate different alternatives being investigated. We will discuss these research issues under consideration and present preliminary results.
Molina Vargas, Ana Mercedes, Rodríguez Martínez, Manuel, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.
XRoaster: A Tool for Catalog Management on Middleware Databases Systems
Currently there a few tools for catalog management, everything is do it manually and require write code to change the global schema. XRoaster is a graphical tool for catalog management from integrated distributed data sources and is a tool designed to generate XML document which containing metadata about data sources. All the tasks for catalog management are integrated in this tool for use of the administrator. This application is going to improve the process of catalog management because is fast and efficient, it is user friendly and it can handle all schema management tasks. This application does not require that the administrator write any code to do the management.
Schema mapping is an important issue since it provides the mechanism by which the system extracts the required data from the data sources. Currently, however, there are few tools for catalog management and schema mapping management. Everything is done manually, and is necessary to write some ad-hoc code at the moment that is necessary for something to change in the global schema.
XRoaster is an XML-based tool that is designed to generate XML data containing metadata about data sources. This application uses the XML standard to provide a platform-independent framework that allows administrators to easily generate all the metadata necessary to register one or more data sources into the system. This application is going to be used friendly in order to improve the process.
Rivera, Bárbara, Venezuela Martínez, Otoniel, Nieves González, Aniel, Corrada Bravo, Carlos J., University of Puerto Rico – Río Piedras, Computer Science.
Simulations of Turbo Codes with Interleavers from Permutation Monomials with Uniform Cycle-Length
Turbo Codes, which were invented in 1993 by Berrou et al., offer a practical method of communicating reliably at rates near channel capacity. The “turbo encoder” consists of two recursive convolutional codes arranged in a parallel concatenation, and a crucial component: an N bit interleaver or permuter. The function of the interleaver is to take each incoming block of N data bits and rearrange them in a manner that lacks any apparent order prior to encoding by the second encoder.
Turbo Codes give good performance using two soft input - soft output Viterbi decoders individually linked to the convolutional codes. The soft input - soft output decoders extend the decoding role to reassess probabilities. The noise altered the uncoded information bits, which are available to each decoder to initialize the a priori likelihoods. Each decoder sends a posteriori likelihoods of the decoded bits to the other decoder, and uses the corresponding estimates from the other decoder as a priori likelihood. The “turbo decoder” then iterates between the outputs of the two decoders until reaching satisfactory convergence. In the decoding process the inverse of the interleaver is used.
To design an interleaver with a simple construction and good performance has been considered a difficult task. Normally a random interleaver is used, but while they obtain good performances, the complete permutation has to be stored in memory. Simulations indicate a range of performance. Thus, before an interleaver is used, its performance must be check by simulation. We did simulations for Turbo Codes using interleavers from permutations generated with monomials over finite fields (which can be generated by shift registers and not stored in memory) with cycles of length 2 (it is its own inverse). Good results have been observed, with performances as good as or better than comparable random interleavers.
Toledo, Lissette, Vélez, Bienvenido, Valiente, Jairo, University of Puerto Rico - Mayagüez, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.
InforadarML: a Multi-lingual Information Discovery Tool
We present the design of InforadarML, a search engine supporting automatically generated visual query hierarchies. The basic idea is to organize a result set in a hierarchy using queries as the basis for forming the various categories upon which the documents are organized. Our research addresses two inherent problems in information retrieval: formulating precise and effective information retrieval queries has always been a difficult task even for experienced users, and multilingual information resources are becoming accessible throughout the world at an unprecedented rate. Although research has demonstrated that new algorithms and user interfaces are desirable to deal with the particularities of multilingual corpora, we are beginning to see effective results. In contrast with much previous multi-lingual information retrieval work, InforadarML is intended to support fully multi-lingual users with enough multilingual proficiency to express information needs effectively as well as to understand documents written in different languages. We discuss the web based graphical user interface and propose an experimental framework for assessing the retrieval performance of multi-lingual document ranking algorithms. The framework works from the assumption that semantically equivalent queries in multiple languages are somehow available. Precision/Recall test conducted on a collection of about 10 thousand multi-lingual web pages suggest at least two interesting observations.
Torres, José, Vélez Rivera, Bienvenido, University of Puerto Rico - Mayagüez, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.
Elastically Replicated Information Services (ERIS)
Elastically Replicated Information Services (ERIS) use adaptive replication algorithms to sustain a desired level of data availability even in the presence of changes to the topology of a distributed storage system. In this research is established the need for achieving a dynamic balance among replication and migration in order to sustain a constant level of availability while maximizing storage utilization. Also in this paper is exhibit a trade off between utilization and availability. Utilization is given a special meaning for the purpose of the investigation. A multi-node storage system was modeled mathematically and described within a simulator framework. The simulator included algorithms of replication of objects, based on a Bernoulli process to find the availability of the system while the nodes count increases. Validation and calibration of the simulator was made against proven theoretical probabilistic models. The probability function for one node failure was found to be (1 – ex) where x equals the inverse of the mean time to failure of the node. The simulation output data about system multi-disk system failures in terms of mean time before failure (MTBF), but based on the manufacturers mean time to failure (MTTF) of individual disks. This data is analyzed by graphical means and statistical formulations. Various replication methods are reviewed, specifically the methods of Consensus Based, Data Trading, Caching, and RAID. The primary conclusions for the research so far are the following. The group or region of nodes in the distributed storage system where the fewer replicas are is the predominant point of failure of the System (The chain breaks on the weakest link). The need for an ERIS is justified.
Alemañy, Jasmi*UPR-Mayagüez, Civil Engineering Department, University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez
Analysis of Alternatives for the operation of ATI during periods of low demand
The Tren Urbano is the biggest infrastructure project in the history of Puerto Rico and of great impact for the economy, tourism and culture of our country. It is a new urban heavy rail transit system and the spiral of the public transportation system in the Metropolitan Area of San Juan. To ensure the quality of the system and achieve a high level of service, it is necessary that other modes of transportation feed the Tren Urbano. The principal modes that have to be coordinated with the Tren Urbano schedule are the Metropolitan Bus Authority (AMA) and the “públicos”, between others.
The “públicos”, are private operators that follow their own schedule, which can be adjusted, to the passengers demand. For that reason they don’t work in periods of low demand such as nights and Sundays. This project analyzes the operation of ATI, (Integrated Transportation Alternatives), a multimodal transportation system with three components: AMA, Públicos and Tren Urbano in off peak periods. As part of this research, I will study the plans that the Tren Urbano Office has, regarding the topic and its progress.
This research is divided in two stages: (1) Identify possible alternatives for the operation of “públicos” in periods of low demand and (2) Analyze the alternatives by quantitative measurements and suggests the best alternatives. I have completed the first stage of the research. I made an extensive literature review to identify the possible alternatives. The next step is to analyze the alternatives.
Beras Aulet, Cristina*UPR-Mayagüez, Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering; Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Colón Jiménez, Ely X. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Yupa Luna, Jacinto Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Calderón Arteaga, Hermes E. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Suárez, Oscar Marcelo Dept. of General Engineering, Univ. of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez
Production and heat Treatment of Aluminium Matrix Composites Based on Recycled Can Alloys to Improve Mechanical Properties
A new series of aluminum matrix composites has been proposed in order to eliminate several deleterious effects found in currently available cast AMC containing ceramic reinforcements such as silicon carbide, graphite, and alumina particulates. By incorporating aluminum borides as reinforcers, these novel AMC can be produced as precipitation-hardenable ones provided the presence of small amounts of copper and magnesium as solutes in the aluminum matrix. Copper and magnesium boosted hardness in these precipitation-hardened Al-Mg-Cu composites. For the present project magnesium was added to the melt by using an AA 5XXX alloy obtained from clean used beverage cans. The composite was melted and heat-treated to produce optimum materials with the highest strength. Microhardness measurements and microstructure analysis were conducted to characterize the new material.
De La Cruz Alcántara Angel A.*UPR-Mayagüez, Electrical and Computer Engineering; Martínez Torres, Carlos J., Electrical and Computer Engineering; Couvertier, Isidoro Electrical and Computer Engineering, UPR-Mayaguez
A Microcontroller Based Scale Model of an Elevator System as a Visualization Tool for Learning Basic Computer Programming Concepts and Attracting K-12 Students into Engineering
The main objective of this project is to use and modify an existing design of a scale-model of an elevator so that it can be used for teaching basic computer programming concepts in practices. The system will be portable, simple and will use a modern microcontroller. This model will be used for demonstrations for K-12 students as well as a teaching aid in the first programming course in the College of Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez.
González, Carlos*UPR-Mayagüez, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Ortiz, Heidy A; Quinones, Joylynn; Vargas, Elliiot A; Couvertier, Isidoro;
Automatic Guitar Tuner
Professional guitar players have to deal with the problem of tuning their instruments every time they are going to record or do a live presentation. In the present time professional musicians use electronic devices to get the most precise tuning possible. Even though technology has advanced dramatically in the last decades, the actual devices known to men for tuning guitars require the manual movement of the pegs in order to achieve the desire tuning. This article proposes an automatic guitar tuner in which guitar players, not only will achieve a precise tuning but will free them of the tedious and time consuming chore of moving the pegs.
González Carlos A.*UPR-Mayagüez, Electrical and Computer Engineering; Molina, Abdeel E.
Design and Implementation of a Microcontroller Based System for a Solar Air Conditioning System
The project is to
design, implement, and test a microcontroller-based control system
for a Solar Air Conditioning System (SACS). The proposed control
system is complemented with several additional devices. These
devices include instrumentation amplifiers, signal conditioners,
relays, and a memory expansion.
The instrumentation amplifiers are used to amplify the signals from
the thermocouple temperature sensors required trough the SACS.
These signals require amplification because they are very small, in
the order of milivolts, while the microcontroller can read signals
from 0 to 5 volts. The instrumentation amplifiers are also used to
convert signals in the 4-20 miliamperes to voltage signals in the 0
to 5 volts range.
The relays are used as power couplers to provide power to the
actuators required to control the SACS. These actuators include
pumps, fans, and three-way valves.
The memory extension is used to expand the input and output channels
for the microcontroller based control system. This is required
because the microcontroller itself does not count with enough input
and output channels to control the SACS.
Some tests have been performed for the input and output channels.
These were open loop tests in which each channel was tested
individually. When all the tests are perform, the microcontroller
based system will be integrated to the SACS for final tests and the
automatic control will be initiated to debug the controller.
González, Zuleyma*UPR-Mayagüez, Computer Engineering; Rijos, Oriel, Computer Engineering Ierkic, Mario, Electrical Engineering López, Norman Eastman Kodak
DCT-based Lossy Compression of Grayscale Still Images
Digital imaging applications are common in our daily lives, and many images nowadays are being acquired at high resolutions in the quest for improved image quality. From an imaging system design point of view, the negative to the common use of digital images is the vast number of bits that must be stored for each image. In order for imaging applications to be compatible with current technologies, the number of data needed to represent digital images needs to be reduced with little degradation in image quality. A project involving the implementation of a Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) based lossy compression scheme of grayscale digital still images is proposed. The proposed scheme is similar to the baseline system of the DCT-JPEG standard.
Hernández, Frank*UPR-Mayagüez, Computer Engineering; Elliot
Supporting Multimedia Applications With NetTraveler
In recent years, several new architectures have been developed for supporting multimedia applications such as digital video and audio. However, quality of service (QoS) is an important element that is still missing from these architectures. This work deals with the development of a prototype for supporting multimedia applications using NetTraveler architecture. NetTraveler is a Database Middleware Systems, will be used to establish dynamic federations (similar to workgroups) of machines. On a given federation, local data sources will be able to interoperate with each other, and with data sources that might be located on remote geographic sites connected via a wide-area network. NetTraveler will be designed to cope with dynamic wide-area environments where data sources go off-line, change location, have limited power capabilities, and form ad-hoc federations of sites that work together to complete a given task.
Justiniano, Jorge*UPR-Mayagüez, Electrical and Computer Engineering; Nuñez, Jose; Couvertier, Isidoro
Using the scale model car wash embedded system to improve the learning experience of undergraduate computer education
The car wash project is designed to present the basic concepts of computer and electrical engineering. This scale model can be used to show high school students that computer engineering is not just restricted to dealing with computers, but to demonstrate that there is a whole world of other areas and applications were it is used. . It can also be used to enhance the learning experience of undergraduate computer education. The main goal of this project is to attract and motivate K-12 students to pursue a degree in computer engineering and to enhance and facilitate the learning experience of computer education.
López, Carlos*UPR-Mayagüez, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Leyda León-Colón, Sandra L. Cruz-Pol, Stephen M. Sekelsky Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Active rain-gauge concept for liquid clouds using W-band and S-band Doppler radars
The use of multi- frequency radar's Doppler Spectrum to study different aspects of precipitation has demonstrated its utility as an accurate profiling rain-gauge method. Recent studies used this concept to retrieve the drop-size distribution and vertical air motion in rain using dual- frequency Cloud Profiling Radar System , which operates at 33GHz (Ka-band) and 95GHz (W-band). This study was performed for low to moderate rain-rates because the use of the Ka-band frequency limited the accuracy of the measurements for high rain-rates due to the attenuation this signal suffers while it passes through the cloud. In this work, we use a non-attenuating frequency, 2.8GHz (S-band)), instead of the Ka-band, to obtain measurements over a wider dynamic range of rain conditions, extending the active rain-gauge concept to heavier rain-rates. The W-band signal provides accurate measurement of the vertical air motion in rain. The actual drop's shapes must be corrected for heavy rain in which case large non-spherical raindrops exist. This research's goal is to develop IDL codes to align, process, and analyze the collected data to retrieve several cloud characterization parameters, such as drop size distribution and vertical air motion that would be used to study the inner processes of rain. Up to this point, several equation have been isolated, programs have been documented, simulated and real spectra have been plotted, data has been aligned, and air density has been retrieved. Rain-rate approximations and the vertical air motion retrieval will be presented.
López, Ana*UPR-Mayagüez, Computer Engineering; Badía, René, Pinela, Kelly, Torres, Nikaulys
Tren Urbano - Passanger Information System (TU-PIS)
This proyect presents the process of designing and developing a Passenger Information System (PIS) for the Tren Urbano (TU) heavy rail system. The PIS’ purpose is to provide a real-time view of the periphery of a TU station with the locations of the major mass transit vehicles in the area and dynamic information about the points of interest in the area that can assist TU passengers with planning their trips and possible alternatives.
The PIS should provide real-time Internet-based access for PCs, laptops, Internet appliances, handheld devices, and similar devices through a client-server interface system. A prototype of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the client side is being developed using Macromedia Flash. The server side uses a relational database management system to store the information, which is then provided to the Flash application through the use of the XML.
Our future work includes the integration of client and server and demonstration of its functionality, and to investigate and demonstrate the feasibility of the system used. We believe that current technology like Flash, XML, and PostgreSQL allows us to develop a good client-server interface that can provide us with the functionality, flexibility, stability, and portability we need to achieve our goals.
Núñez, Melisa*UPR-Mayagüez, Electrical and Computer Engineering; Crespo, Jennifer, Zayas, Pedro, Jimenez, Manuel, Couvertier, Isidoro
Design of an IRDA Stack Using the MSP430
IRDA is a standard defined by the IRDA consortium (InfraRed Data Association). It specifies a way to wirelessly transfer data via infrared radiation. Infrared communications, under the IRDA protocol, is an inexpensive and widely adopted, short range, wireless technology that allows devices to easily "speak" to each other. Key protocol features make operation simple even for inexperienced users or devices with very little user interface. Digital cameras, phones, pagers, and computer peripherals are some of the typical application frames for this technology. This project sets out to implement this protocol on the TI-MSP430, an ultra-low-power, 16-bit RISC microcontroller developed by Texas Instruments. The implementation process will focus on creating a library stack to enable the establishment of a communication link using the IrDA protocol in such a way that user interaction will be minimal. This implementation will enable any device featuring an MSP-430 microcontroller to communicate with any other device featuring this protocol.
Rodríguez, Shannon*UPR-Mayagüez, Electrical and Computer Engineering; Cruz-Pol, Sandra;
Cirrus Ice Crystal Simulation for Comparison with Microwave Remote Sensing Radar Response
Various methods and techniques to estimate ice crystals radar response have been developed to study the structure of cirrus clouds. Most methods assume a spherical shape for the ice crystals. This assumption leads to mistakes on the parameter estimation related to the particles size. In this work, we will model the shape of ice particles found in cirrus cloud as measured by airborne instruments, specifically ice bullets. These can be found depending on the temperature and cloud altitude, isolated or in groups of two or more bullets, called bullet rosettes. The model of the bullet rosettes was developed using the parameters obtained by airborne measurements from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). These measurements were done by Video Ice Particle Sampler (VIPS). This is an airborne instrument that flies inside cirrus clouds, and takes samples of the cirrus cloud particles sizes up to 5 mm in size. With these sample parameters we modeled the actual shape of the bullet rosettes using the software DDSCAT. This software allows us to create irregular models of particles using the Discrete Dipole Approximation method. With this model we are able to analyze the backscattering produced by the bullets rosettes model or reflectivity and compute the total volume backscattering coefficient expected from the cirrus clouds
Vélez, Iván P.*UPR-Mayagüez, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department;
Web-Based Catalog Browse System For Satellite Imagery And Associated Metadata For The Space Information Laboratory
The purpose of the project is to create a database system to allow easy access of RADARSAT 1, LANDSAT 7 and TERRA (Modis) satellite image data captured in the Space Information Laboratory, a component of the NASA-URC Tropical Center for Earth and Space Studies, to the public by means of the World Wide Web. The process involves the development of techniques for compilation and organization of all existing satellite image data files, the design of the database structure that contains all the images and related information, as well as the method for the integration of the database with a web-based search and catalog browse system to make it accessible online. This system presents the relevant metadata and the preview, or quicklook, of the satellite image products that can be obtained through the Space Information Laboratory for educational research, or bought for commercial purposes.