Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)

Brain-controlled prostheses have the potential to improve the quality of life of a large num- ber of paralyzed persons by allowing them to control prosthetic limbs simply by thought. An essential requirement for natural use of such neural prostheses is that the user should be provided with somatosensory feedback from the artificial limb. This can be achieved by electrically stimulating small populations of neurons in the cortex; a process known as cor- tical microstimulation. This dissertation describes the development of novel technologies for experimental neuroscience and their use...

Radios available today are designed to be high performance devices. These radios require careful design by experienced and skilled RF IC designers, more expensive RF processes, and large chip areas for RF passives. The resulting cost of these devices is at the dollar level without the off chip components, and the careful design required makes integration of these radios with other circuits (microprocessors, sensors, etc) an expensive proposition. We believe that radios that require limited design skills while still having good performance will enable widespread use of wireless...

Mobile sensor networks present opportunities for improved in situ sensing in complex hydrodynamic environments such as estuarial deltas. This dissertation considers the design and implementation of the mobile sensor network system that was built as part of the Floating Sensor Network project for use in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in California over the 2007-2012 time period. Individual Lagrangian sensor units collect hydrodynamic state information, which is then transmitted to a centralized server and assimilated to produce a state estimate for the entire hydrodynamic system....