I've been updating the website but it's still a work-in-progress. Please bear with me while I get eveything back in order, thank you.
Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. That's right, I'm back at
PSU. I've been accepted into the PhD program back at the Electical and Computer Engineering department and I'll be working in the Northwest Electromagnetic and Acoustic Research Laboratory with Dr. Martin Siderius as my advisor. This time around I'll be doing more physical modeling, specifically for underwater acoustics.
I have graduated as of 2012! This website will remain posted until I can find another suitable web host.
Greetings Travelers,
Welcome to my information pit stop [slash] chop shop. Here you will find helpful materials on electric circuit analysis and applied electromagnetics. While working as a teaching and research assistant/associate at Portland State University (PSU) I have collected a decent archive of solved problems, video tutorials, quick reference guides, and research papers. While not everything in my archives is posted here, I feel that the information presented is a fair representation of the key concepts that students sometimes struggle with in an electrical/computer engineering program. I like to think of this site as a living document, and as such, I welcome any and all feedback pertaining to its content. Best regards,
Alex Higgins
BS CE & Physics (2008), MS ECE (2012), PhD Candidate (June 2025)
Office:
Email:
Classes
Projects
This section contains current and past projects that I have worked on. Most are for personal interest or to help facilitate my work.
Bayesian Fusion of Heterogeneous Data for Event Detection
This is a joint project with PSU NEAR-Lab and Metron (US Air Force) for joint processing of sensor data streams.
Link to NEAR-Lab project can be found here.
Magnetic Levitation Rubix Cube
This is a personal project that involves creating a magnetic levitation platform for a Rubix Cube.
Details about the science behind this project can be found here.
LTSpice for OS X
This is a WINE wrapper application of the popular LTSpice circuit simulator, schematic capture and waveform viewer by Linear Technologies. The application was built using Wineskin v2.5, using the WS8Wine v1.3.32 engine. It's been tested to work on Intel based Apple computers running OS 10.7.
Download LTSpiceIV for OS X here.
Aprilia Scooter Car Charger
This is a personal project that involves design and installation of a 12 V car changer outlet on my 2001 Aprilia scooter.
Details about the science behind this project can be found here.
Publications
This is a catalogue of my published research work.
- A. Higgins and M. Siderius, "Underwater acoustic propagation and scattering from a dynamic rough sea surface using the Finite-Difference Time-Domain method." The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 156.1 (2024): 119-136.
- M. Siderius, B. Stevens, A. Higgins, D. Wendeborn, Y.T. Lin, B.J. DeCourcy, and J. Chaytor, (2022). New England shelf break acoustic (NESBA) experiment: Seabed analysis. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 152(4_Supplement), A27-A27.
- A. Higgins and M. Siderius. "Acoustic wave scattering from dynamic rough sea-surfaces using the finite-difference time-domain method and Pierson–Moskowitz frequency spectrum." UA Conference Proceedings (2019): 727-734.
- J. A. Higgins, "Measurement and Simulation of Parallel Plate Waveguide Structures in the Terahertz Region for Sensing and Material Characterization Applications," Master's Thesis, Portland State University. (Bibtex) (PDOT)
- A. Higgins, F. Kernan, and B. Pejcinovic, "Application of open-source meep software to terahertz radiation waveguide problems," in MIPRO, pp. 118-123, IEEE, 2011. (Bibtex)
- A. Higgins, B. Pejcinovic, C. Cowen, and F. Kernan, "An investigation of parallel plate waveguide terahertz radiation input coupling," SPIE Proceedings, vol. 8023, no. 1, pp. 802310-802310-13, 2011. (Bibtex)
- A. Higgins, F. Kernan, and B. Pejcinovic, "Multimode characterization of parallel plate waveguide," in Microwave Measurement Symposium (ARFTG),, 2010 76th ARFTG, pp. 1-5, 30 2010-Dec. 3 2010. (Bibtex)
- F. Kernan, M. Wachsmuth, J. Higgins, B. Pejcinovic, L. Zurk, and R. Campbell, "Utilizing parallel plate waveguide modes for terahertz sensing," in Infrared Millimeter and Terahertz Waves (IRMMW-THz), 2010 35th International Conference on, pp. 1–2, Sept. 2010. (Bibtex)
This is a catalogue of my presented research work.
- Alex Higgins and Martin Siderius. "A novel and computationally efficient subgrid technique for modeling scattering and Doppler effects of rough dynamic sea surfaces using the finite-difference time-domain method." The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 154 (2023): A321-A321.
- Alex Higgins and Martin Siderius. "Acoustic scattering from dynamic rough ocean surfaces using finite-difference time-domain modeling techniques." The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 152 (2022): A252-A253.
- Alex Higgins and Martin Siderius. "Implementation and analysis of high-performance cloud computing for underwater acoustic modeling applications." The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 150 (2021): A209-A209.
- Alex Higgins and Martin Siderius. "Acoustic wave scattering from dynamic rough sea-surfaces using the finite-difference time-domain method." The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 145 (2019): 1781-1781.
- Alex Higgins, Martin Siderius and Hines, Paul. "Modeling acoustic interactions with a dynamic rough sea surface boundary." The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 144.3_Supplement (2018): 1688-1688.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Miscellaneous Documents
This section contains documents/links that I have found to be useful reference material. In fact, I have some of these posted on the wall of my work space or right-at-hand in my file cabinet because I use them so often.
What am I up to now?
