Larrondo-Petrie, Maria M.

The Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) and Internet of Things (IoT) have become emerging and essential technologies of the past few decades that connect various heterogeneous systems and devices. Sensors and actuators are fundamental units in most CPS and IoT systems, they are used extensively in vehicle systems, smart health care systems, smart buildings and cities, and many other types of applications. The extensive use of sensors and actuators, coupled with their increasing connectivity, exposes them to a wide range of threats. Given their integration into various systems and the use of multiple technologies, it is very useful to characterize their functions abstractly. For concreteness, we study them here in the context of autonomous cars. An autonomous car is an example of a CPS, which includes IoT applications. For instance, IoT units allow an autonomous car to be connected wirelessly to roadside units, other vehicles, and fog and cloud systems. Also, the IoT allows them to collect and share information on traffic, navigation, roads, and other aspects. An autonomous car is a complex system, not only due to its intricate design but also because it operates in a dynamic environment, interacting with other vehicles and the surrounding infrastructure. To manage these functions, it must integrate various technologies from different sources. Specifically, a diverse array of sensors and actuators is essential for the functionality of autonomous vehicles.

While international academic and research collaborations are of great importance at this
time, it is not easy to find researchers in the engineering field that publish in languages
other than English. Because of this disconnect, there exists a need for a portal to find
Who’s Who in Engineering Education in the Americas. The objective of this thesis is to
built an object-oriented architecture for this proposed portal. The Unified Modeling
Language (UML) model developed in this thesis incorporates the basic structure of a
social network for academic purposes. Reverse engineering of three social networks
portals yielded important aspects of their structures that have been incorporated in the
proposed UML model. Furthermore, the present work includes a pattern for academic
social networks.

Computer icons, along with animation, sound and other multimedia features, can facilitate communications between clients, software engineers and managers. Icon-based Software Engineering Environment (IconSEE++), being developed at Florida Atlantic University, uses icons to convey concepts describing object-oriented software development projects, as well as to navigate to all technical and non-technical project documentation. IconSEE++ is composed of three layers. The Icon Generator, Manager and Repository form a part of the middle layer. This thesis includes a survey of visual development tools and their comparison to IconSEE++. For the Icon Generator, Manager and Repository, the thesis presents object-oriented analysis models in UML notation, identifies implementation issues and provides strategies to solve them. Numerous code segments illustrating proposed solutions have been developed.

Current computer technologies and demands bring new challenges to the software engineering tools. This thesis includes a survey of software engineering environments, standards and technologies. It also examines the features needed to support rigorous object-oriented software development. The main contributions of the thesis are descriptions of innovative concepts and a high-level framework for a next-generation object-oriented software system development, management and maintenance environment, called IconSEE++, an Icon-based Software Engineering Environment.

Most popular object-oriented modeling techniques (OOMTs) provide good support for the creation of conceptual models of system behavior and structure. A serious drawback of these techniques is that the concepts and notations used are not rigorously defined. This can lead to the creation of ambiguous models, and to disagreements over the proper use and interpretation of modeling constructs. An important modeling construct that is often loosely defined is aggregation. This thesis presents a precise characterization of aggregation that can help developers identify appropriate applications of the concept. Our characterization is the result of careful analysis of literature on conceptual modeling, knowledge representation and object-oriented (OO) modeling. We discuss primary and secondary properties of aggregation and propose annotations for UML (Unified Modeling Language). An extensive discussion of the more useful patterns of aggregation helps developers pick a suitable prescription of aggregation.

The rich structuring mechanisms, and abstract modeling constructs available in most graphical object-oriented modeling methods (OOMs) facilitate the creation of abstract, visually-appealing, highly-structured graphical models. On the other hand, lack of formal semantics for the modeling notation can severely limit the utility of OOMs. Formal specification techniques (FSTs) support the creation of precise and analyzable specifications, but they can be tedious to create and difficult to read, especially by system developers not trained in formal methods. The complementary strengths of OOMs and FSTs suggest that their integration can result in techniques that can be used to create precise and analyzable models. This thesis describes a technique for integrating analysis level UML (Unified Modeling Language) Class Diagrams with the formal notation Object-Z.

In this thesis, we investigate the different proposed ways of combining object oriented and relational database systems (such combined systems are commonly called object-relational systems). This thesis is based on ideas presented in various papers about object and object relational databases. In this work, a discussion of standards such as ANSI's SQL3 (to be released) and ODMG-93 is given. In particular, the "Class = Relation" and "Class = Domain" approaches to object-relational systems are investigated. Arguments supporting the proposition that the latter approach is the correct approach are presented.

Software development for ecological data systems is concentrated in the description, modeling, and standardization of large amounts of ecological data. Ecological data assembled in many formats is very difficult to reuse. This thesis develops a database model that supports the storage of heterogeneous data in standardized formats. Ecological data standardization is solved with the specification of a structure conversion system. Because input formats cannot be predicted, a scientific data description language was created to control the execution of the conversion system. System analysis is based on interviews with South Florida Water Management District scientists conducting ecosystem research, and ecological data collected at Lake Okeechobee, Florida, during a five-year study. Object-oriented and structural methods were used for analysis. Development is complemented with an introduction to user interfaces.

Based on multi-agent supporting system (MASS) structures used to investigate the synchronous algorithms in my previous work, the partially and totally asynchronous distributed algorithms are proposed in this thesis. The stability of discrete MASS with asynchronous distributed algorithms is analyzed. The partially asynchronous algorithms proposed for both 1- and 2-dimensional MASS are proven to be convergent, if the vertical disturbances vary sufficiently slower than the convergent time of the system. The adjacent error becomes zero when the system converges. It is also proven that in 1-dimensional MASS using the proposed totally asynchronous algorithm, the maximum of the absolute value of the adjacent error is non-increasing over time. Finally, the simulation results for all the above cases are presented to demonstrate the theoretical findings.

Digital Watermarking is a multimedia technique recently developed with the purpose of enhancing copyright protection on multimedia files. This thesis presents a survey of digital watermark features and classifications. It also proposes a classification method that includes most of previous classifications. The thesis then proceeds to detail two digital watermarking methods, Lower Significant Bit Encoding and Spread Spectrum Encoding. Software is designed and implemented to show the capabilities and behavior of each method. The software also shows how each method reacts to four typical transformations (attacks). The results of applying the two methods and their survival rates against the typical transformations are discussed in detail. Finally, the source code for the software is made available.