Strategies towards high performance (high-resolution/linearity) time-to-digital converters on field-programmable gate arrays

Time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) technology has become popular in scientific research and industrial applications, such as high-energy physics, bio-sensing, non-invasion health monitoring, and 3D imaging. Because of the increasing demand for high-precision time measurements, time-to-digital converters (TDCs) have attracted attention since the 1970s. As a fully digital solution, TDCs are portable and have great potential for multichannel applications compared to bulky and expensive time-to-amplitude converters (TACs). A TDC can be implemented in ASIC and FPGA devices. Due to the low cost, flexibility, and short development cycle, FPGA-TDCs have become promising. Starting with a literature review, three original FPGA-TDCs with outstanding performance are introduced. The first design is the first efficient wave union (WU) based TDC implemented in Xilinx UltraScale (20 nm) FPGAs with a bubble-free sub-TDL structure. Combining with other existing methods, the resolution is further enhanced to 1.23 ps. The second TDC has been designed for LiDAR applications, especially in driver-less vehicles. Using the proposed new calibration method, the resolution is adjustable (50, 80, and 100 ps), and the linearity is exceptionally high (INL pk-pk and INL pk-pk are lower than 0.05 LSB). Meanwhile, a software tool has been open-sourced with a graphic user interface (GUI) to predict TDCs’ performance. In the third TDC, an onboard automatic calibration (AC) function has been realized by exploiting Xilinx ZYNQ SoC architectures. The test results show the robustness of the proposed method. Without the manual calibration, the AC function enables FPGA-TDCs to be applied in commercial products where mass production is required.Time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) technology has become popular in scientific research and industrial applications, such as high-energy physics, bio-sensing, non-invasion health monitoring, and 3D imaging. Because of the increasing demand for high-precision time measurements, time-to-digital converters (TDCs) have attracted attention since the 1970s. As a fully digital solution, TDCs are portable and have great potential for multichannel applications compared to bulky and expensive time-to-amplitude converters (TACs). A TDC can be implemented in ASIC and FPGA devices. Due to the low cost, flexibility, and short development cycle, FPGA-TDCs have become promising. Starting with a literature review, three original FPGA-TDCs with outstanding performance are introduced. The first design is the first efficient wave union (WU) based TDC implemented in Xilinx UltraScale (20 nm) FPGAs with a bubble-free sub-TDL structure. Combining with other existing methods, the resolution is further enhanced to 1.23 ps. The second TDC has been designed for LiDAR applications, especially in driver-less vehicles. Using the proposed new calibration method, the resolution is adjustable (50, 80, and 100 ps), and the linearity is exceptionally high (INL pk-pk and INL pk-pk are lower than 0.05 LSB). Meanwhile, a software tool has been open-sourced with a graphic user interface (GUI) to predict TDCs’ performance. In the third TDC, an onboard automatic calibration (AC) function has been realized by exploiting Xilinx ZYNQ SoC architectures. The test results show the robustness of the proposed method. Without the manual calibration, the AC function enables FPGA-TDCs to be applied in commercial products where mass production is required

Applications of MATLAB in Science and Engineering

The book consists of 24 chapters illustrating a wide range of areas where MATLAB tools are applied. These areas include mathematics, physics, chemistry and chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, biological (molecular biology) and medical sciences, communication and control systems, digital signal, image and video processing, system modeling and simulation. Many interesting problems have been included throughout the book, and its contents will be beneficial for students and professionals in wide areas of interest

Intelligent Circuits and Systems

ICICS-2020 is the third conference initiated by the School of Electronics and Electrical Engineering at Lovely Professional University that explored recent innovations of researchers working for the development of smart and green technologies in the fields of Energy, Electronics, Communications, Computers, and Control. ICICS provides innovators to identify new opportunities for the social and economic benefits of society.　 This conference bridges the gap between academics and R&D institutions, social visionaries, and experts from all strata of society to present their ongoing research activities and foster research relations between them. It provides opportunities for the exchange of new ideas, applications, and experiences in the field of smart technologies and finding global partners for future collaboration. The ICICS-2020 was conducted in two broad categories, Intelligent Circuits & Intelligent Systems and Emerging Technologies in Electrical Engineering

Experimental Characterisation and Modelling of Atmospheric Fog and Turbulence in FSO

Free space optical (FSO) communication uses visible or infrared (IR) wavelengths to broadcast high-speed data wirelessly through the atmospheric channel. The performance of FSO communications is mainly dependent on the unpredictable atmospheric channel such as fog, smoke and temperature dependent turbulence. However, as the real outdoor atmosphere (ROA) is time varying and heterogeneous in nature as well as depending on the magnitude and intensity of different weather conditions, carrying out a proper link assessment under specific weather conditions becomes a challenging task. Investigation and modelling the ROA under diverse atmospheric conditions is still a great challenge in FSO communications. Hence a dedicated indoor atmospheric chamber is designed and built to produce controlled atmosphere as necessary to mimic the ROA as closely as possible. The experimental results indicate that the fog attenuation is wavelength dependent for all visibility V ranges, which contradicts the Kim model for V < 0.5 km. The obtained result validates that Kim model needs to be revised for V < 0.5 km in order to correctly predict the wavelength dependent fog attenuation. Also, there are no experimental data and empirical model available for FSO links in diverse smoke conditions, which are common in urban areas. Therefore, a new empirical model is proposed to evaluate the wavelength dependent fog and smoke attenuation by reconsidering the q value as a function of wavelength rather than visibility. The BER performance of an FSO system is theoretically and experimentally evaluated for OOK- NRZ, OOK-RZ and 4-PPM formats for Ethernet line data-rates from light to dense fog conditions. A BER of 10-6 (Q-factor ≈ 4.7) is achieved at dense fog (transmittance, T = 0.33) condition using 4-PPM than OOK-NRZ and OOK-RZ modulation schemes due to its high peak-to-average power ratio albeit at the expense of doubling the bandwidth. The effects of fog on OOK-NRZ, 4-PAM and BPSK are also experimentally investigated. In comparison to 4-PAM and OOK-NRZ signals, the BPSK modulation signalling format is more robust against the effects of fog. Moreover, the effects of using different average transmitted optical communication powers Popton the T and the received Q-factor using the OOK-NRZ modulation scheme are also investigated for light and dense fog conditions. The results show that for an FSO system operating at a Q-factor of 4.7 (for BER = 10-6), the required Q-factor is achieved at T of 48% under the thick fog condition by increasing Popt to 1.07 dBm, whereas the values of T are 55% and ~70% for the transmit power of 0.56 dBm and -0.7 dBm, respectively. The experimental characterisation and investigation of the atmospheric turbulence effect on the Ethernet and Fast-Ethernet FSO link is reported using different modulation schemes. The experiment is carried out in a controlled laboratory environment where turbulence is generated in a dedicated indoor atmospheric chamber. The atmospheric chamber is calibrated to mimic an outdoor turbulence conditions and the measured data are verified against the theoretical predictions. The experiment also demonstrates methods to control the turbulence levels and determine the equivalence between the indoor and outdoor FSO links. The results show that the connectivity of Ethernet and Fast-Ethernet links are highly sensitive to atmospheric turbulence. The results also show that the BPSK and OOK-NRZ modulation signalling formats are more robust against the weak atmospheric turbulence conditions than PAM signal

Dependable Embedded Systems

This Open Access book introduces readers to many new techniques for enhancing and optimizing reliability in embedded systems, which have emerged particularly within the last five years. This book introduces the most prominent reliability concerns from today’s points of view and roughly recapitulates the progress in the community so far. Unlike other books that focus on a single abstraction level such circuit level or system level alone, the focus of this book is to deal with the different reliability challenges across different levels starting from the physical level all the way to the system level (cross-layer approaches). The book aims at demonstrating how new hardware/software co-design solution can be proposed to ef-fectively mitigate reliability degradation such as transistor aging, processor variation, temperature effects, soft errors, etc. Provides readers with latest insights into novel, cross-layer methods and models with respect to dependability of embedded systems; Describes cross-layer approaches that can leverage reliability through techniques that are pro-actively designed with respect to techniques at other layers; Explains run-time adaptation and concepts/means of self-organization, in order to achieve error resiliency in complex, future many core systems

Design and performance optimization of asynchronous networks-on-chip

As digital systems continue to grow in complexity, the design of conventional synchronous systems is facing unprecedented challenges. The number of transistors on individual chips is already in the multi-billion range, and a greatly increasing number of components are being integrated onto a single chip. As a consequence, modern digital designs are under strong time-to-market pressure, and there is a critical need for composable design approaches for large complex systems. In the past two decades, networks-on-chip (NoC’s) have been a highly active research area. In a NoC-based system, functional blocks are first designed individually and may run at different clock rates. These modules are then connected through a structured network for on-chip global communication. However, due to the rigidity of centrally-clocked NoC’s, there have been bottlenecks of system scalability, energy and performance, which cannot be easily solved with synchronous approaches. As a result, there has been significant recent interest in combing the notion of asynchrony with NoC designs. Since the NoC approach inherently separates the communication infrastructure, and its timing, from computational elements, it is a natural match for an asynchronous paradigm. Asynchronous NoC’s, therefore, enable a modular and extensible system composition for an ‘object-orient’ design style. The thesis aims to significantly advance the state-of-art and viability of asynchronous and globally-asynchronous locally-synchronous (GALS) networks-on-chip, to enable high-performance and low-energy systems. The proposed asynchronous NoC’s are nearly entirely based on standard cells, which eases their integration into industrial design flows. The contributions are instantiated in three different directions. First, practical acceleration techniques are proposed for optimizing the system latency, in order to break through the latency bottleneck in the memory interfaces of many on-chip parallel processors. Novel asynchronous network protocols are proposed, along with concrete NoC designs. A new concept, called ‘monitoring network’, is introduced. Monitoring networks are lightweight shadow networks used for fast-forwarding anticipated traffic information, ahead of the actual packet traffic. The routers are therefore allowed to initiate and perform arbitration and channel allocation in advance. The technique is successfully applied to two topologies which belong to two different categories – a variant mesh-of-trees (MoT) structure and a 2D-mesh topology. Considerable and stable latency improvements are observed across a wide range of traffic patterns, along with moderate throughput gains. Second, for the first time, a high-performance and low-power asynchronous NoC router is compared directly to a leading commercial synchronous counterpart in an advanced industrial technology. The asynchronous router design shows significant performance improvements, as well as area and power savings. The proposed asynchronous router integrates several advanced techniques, including a low-latency circular FIFO for buffer design, and a novel end-to-end credit-based virtual channel (VC) flow control. In addition, a semi-automated design flow is created, which uses portions of a standard synchronous tool flow. Finally, a high-performance multi-resource asynchronous arbiter design is developed. This small but important component can be directly used in existing asynchronous NoC’s for performance optimization. In addition, this standalone design promises use in opening up new NoC directions, as well as for general use in parallel systems. In the proposed arbiter design, the allocation of a resource to a client is divided into several steps. Multiple successive client-resource pairs can be selected rapidly in pipelined sequence, and the completion of the assignments can overlap in parallel. In sum, the thesis provides a set of advanced design solutions for performance optimization of asynchronous and GALS networks-on-chip. These solutions are at different levels, from network protocols, down to router- and component-level optimizations, which can be directly applied to existing basic asynchronous NoC designs to provide a leap in performance improvement

A Review of Resonant Converter Control Techniques and The Performances

paper first discusses each control technique and then gives experimental results and/or performance to highlights their merits. The resonant converter used as a case study is not specified to just single topology instead it used few topologies such as series-parallel resonant converter (SPRC), LCC resonant converter and parallel resonant converter (PRC). On the other hand, the control techniques presented in this paper are self-sustained phase shift modulation (SSPSM) control, self-oscillating power factor control, magnetic control and the H-∞ robust control technique

OBSERVER-BASED-CONTROLLER FOR INVERTED PENDULUM MODEL

This paper presents a state space control technique for inverted pendulum system. The system is a common classical control problem that has been widely used to test multiple control algorithms because of its nonlinear and unstable behavior. Full state feedback based on pole placement and optimal control is applied to the inverted pendulum system to achieve desired design specification which are 4 seconds settling time and 5% overshoot. The simulation and optimization of the full state feedback controller based on pole placement and optimal control techniques as well as the performance comparison between these techniques is described comprehensively. The comparison is made to choose the most suitable technique for the system that have the best trade-off between settling time and overshoot. Besides that, the observer design is analyzed to see the effect of pole location and noise present in the system

A Review of Resonant Converter Control Techniques and The Performances

paper first discusses each control technique and then gives experimental results and/or performance to highlights their merits. The resonant converter used as a case study is not specified to just single topology instead it used few topologies such as series-parallel resonant converter (SPRC), LCC resonant converter and parallel resonant converter (PRC). On the other hand, the control techniques presented in this paper are self-sustained phase shift modulation (SSPSM) control, self-oscillating power factor control, magnetic control and the H-∞ robust control technique