Master of Science, University of Toledo, 2019, Engineering (Computer Science)

The world is on the brink of an era of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), widely known to public as drones, where we will get to experience multiple UAVs flying in the national airspace carrying out diverse tasks such as monitoring, surveillance, product deliveries, law enforcement, fertilizing crop fields, aerial photography, and transport. In such scenarios, where multiple UAVs are flying in a smaller airspace, there is a possibility of collisions, path overlaps, mix-ups, and uncertainties as far as their flying routes are concerned. These flying routes could be inside constructed air corridors where the UAVs would be allotted to fly, similar to the air corridors of commercial aircraft. There is a growing need to identify and construct these air corridors for UAVs to fly in their respective corridors to avoid such mishaps as is what is done with commercial airplanes. The airplanes fly in their designated air corridors from one location to another without any uncertainty. It would be really useful to devise and design such a system for multiple UAVs as well, that would be able to construct air corridors for them to fly through. This served as the primary motivation behind proposing a novel approach to estimate and visualize air corridors for autonomous multi-UAV flights in an airspace. In addition to it, we studied various popular uncertainty visualization techniques and came up with a cutting-edge way to incorporate uncertainty into the visualization of the air corridors. Furthermore, we provide a standalone web application with a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) developed using HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and an open-source JavaScript library for visualizing world-class 3-D maps called CesiumJS. Subsequently, we present the estimation and visualization results and discuss possible application areas where the proposed technique could be put to use. Finally, we discuss the summarized research findings and future research directions.

Committee: Ahmad Javaid (Committee Chair); Vijay Devabhaktuni (Committee Co-Chair); Devinder Kaur (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Engineering; Computer Science

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, Cleveland State University, 2013, Fenn College of Engineering

VDL Mode 2 is the principal data communication technology for aeronautical communications implemented in the NextGen project for the National Airspace System (NAS), with potentially worldwide service. Aeronautical communications have strict transmission delay standards for safety considerations. Meeting the strict standards significantly drops the capacity of the number of aircraft that can communicate using the Very High Frequency (VHF) Data Radio (VDR). In this thesis, three methods of increasing the capacity while maintaining the strict standards are evaluated: transmit power control, load regulation and ground station placement. A simulation model using OPNET software is used for testing. Load regulation shows some improvement, while transmit power control is not beneficial. The best results are obtained from optimal ground station placement, with over 300 percent capacity improvement in certain scenarios.

Committee: Vijaya Konangi Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Fuqin Xiong Ph.D. (Committee Member); Nigamanth Sridhar Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Aerospace Engineering; Electrical Engineering; Engineering; Technical Communication

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 1996, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (Engineering and Technology)

Operational viability of a directive distance measuring equipment (DME) antenna in a national airspace system (NAS) approach and landing environment

Committee: Michael Braasch (Advisor) Subjects: