## ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.

In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.

Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.

Date Range
2011 2019

## Recent Submissions

The primary focus of this dissertation lies in extremal combinatorics, in particular intersection theorems in finite set theory. A seminal result in the area is the theorem of Erdos, Ko and Rado which finds the upper bound on the size of an intersecting family of subsets of an n-element set and characterizes the structure of families which attain this upper bound. A major portion of this dissertation focuses on a recent generalization of the Erdos--Ko--Rado theorem which considers intersecting families of independent sets in graphs. An intersection theorem is proved for a large class of graphs, namely chordal graphs which …

Contributors
Kamat, Vikram Mahendra, Hurlbert, Glenn, Colbourn, Charles, et al.
Created Date
2011

This research describes software based remote attestation schemes for obtaining the integrity of an executing user application and the Operating System (OS) text section of an untrusted client platform. A trusted external entity issues a challenge to the client platform. The challenge is executable code which the client must execute, and the code generates results which are sent to the external entity. These results provide the external entity an assurance as to whether the client application and the OS are in pristine condition. This work also presents a technique where it can be verified that the application which was attested, …

Contributors
Srinivasan, Raghunathan, Dasgupta, Partha, Colbourn, Charles, et al.
Created Date
2011

Finding the optimal solution to a problem with an enormous search space can be challenging. Unless a combinatorial construction technique is found that also guarantees the optimality of the resulting solution, this could be an infeasible task. If such a technique is unavailable, different heuristic methods are generally used to improve the upper bound on the size of the optimal solution. This dissertation presents an alternative method which can be used to improve a solution to a problem rather than construct a solution from scratch. Necessity analysis, which is the key to this approach, is the process of analyzing the …

Contributors
Nayeri, Peyman, Colbourn, Charles, Konjevod, Goran, et al.
Created Date
2011

Thanks to continuous technology scaling, intelligent, fast and smaller digital systems are now available at affordable costs. As a result, digital systems have found use in a wide range of application areas that were not even imagined before, including medical (e.g., MRI, remote or post-operative monitoring devices, etc.), automotive (e.g., adaptive cruise control, anti-lock brakes, etc.), security systems (e.g., residential security gateways, surveillance devices, etc.), and in- and out-of-body sensing (e.g., capsule swallowed by patients measuring digestive system pH, heart monitors, etc.). Such computing systems, which are completely embedded within the application, are called embedded systems, as opposed to general …

Contributors
Jeyapaul, Reiley, Shrivastava, Aviral, Vrudhula, Sarma, et al.
Created Date
2012

Gray codes are perhaps the best known structures for listing sequences of combinatorial objects, such as binary strings. Simply defined as a minimal change listing, Gray codes vary greatly both in structure and in the types of objects that they list. More specific types of Gray codes are universal cycles and overlap sequences. Universal cycles are Gray codes on a set of strings of length n in which the first n-1 letters of one object are the same as the last n-1 letters of its predecessor in the listing. Overlap sequences allow this overlap to vary between 1 and n-1. …

Contributors
Horan, Victoria E., Hurlbert, Glenn H, Czygrinow, Andrzej, et al.
Created Date
2012

A central concept of combinatorics is partitioning structures with given constraints. Partitions of on-line posets and on-line graphs, which are dynamic versions of the more familiar static structures posets and graphs, are examined. In the on-line setting, vertices are continually added to a poset or graph while a chain partition or coloring (respectively) is maintained. %The optima of the static cases cannot be achieved in the on-line setting. Both upper and lower bounds for the optimum of the number of chains needed to partition a width $w$ on-line poset exist. Kierstead's upper bound of $\frac{5^w-1}{4}$ was improved to $w^{14 \lg … Contributors Smith, Matthew Earl, Kierstead, Henry A, Colbourn, Charles, et al. Created Date 2012 Every graph can be colored with one more color than its maximum degree. A well-known theorem of Brooks gives the precise conditions under which a graph can be colored with maximum degree colors. It is natural to ask for the required conditions on a graph to color with one less color than the maximum degree; in 1977 Borodin and Kostochka conjectured a solution for graphs with maximum degree at least 9: as long as the graph doesn't contain a maximum-degree-sized clique, it can be colored with one fewer than the maximum degree colors. This study attacks the conjecture on multiple … Contributors Rabern, Landon, Kierstead, Henry, Colbourn, Charles, et al. Created Date 2013 The complexity of the systems that software engineers build has continuously grown since the inception of the field. What has not changed is the engineers' mental capacity to operate on about seven distinct pieces of information at a time. The widespread use of UML has led to more abstract software design activities, however the same cannot be said for reverse engineering activities. The introduction of abstraction to reverse engineering will allow the engineer to move farther away from the details of the system, increasing his ability to see the role that domain level concepts play in the system. In this … Contributors Carey, Maurice, Colbourn, Charles, Collofello, James, et al. Created Date 2013 Let$G=(V,E)$be a graph. A \emph{list assignment}$L$for$G$is a function from$V$to subsets of the natural numbers. An$L$-\emph{coloring} is a function$f$with domain$V$such that$f(v)\in L(v)$for all vertices$v\in V$and$f(x)\ne f(y)$whenever$xy\in E$. If$|L(v)|=t$for all$v\in V$then$L$is a$t$-\emph{list assignment}. The graph$G$is$t$-choosable if for every$t$-list assignment$L$there is an$L$-coloring. The least$t$such that$G$is$t$-choosable is called the list chromatic number of$G$, and is denoted by$\ch(G)$. The complete multipartite graph with$k\$ …

Contributors
Wang, Ran, Kierstead, H.A., Colbourn, Charles, et al.
Created Date
2015

In software testing, components are tested individually to make sure each performs as expected. The next step is to confirm that two or more components are able to work together. This stage of testing is often difficult because there can be numerous configurations between just two components. Covering arrays are one way to ensure a set of tests will cover every possible configuration at least once. However, on systems with many settings, it is computationally intensive to run every possible test. Test prioritization methods can identify tests of greater importance. This concept of test prioritization can help determine which tests …

Contributors
Ang, Nicole, Syrotiuk, Violet, Colbourn, Charles, et al.
Created Date
2015