Reliable Linear, Sesquilinear and Bijective Operations On Integer Data Streams Via Numerical Entanglement

A new technique is proposed for fault-tolerant linear, sesquilinear and bijective (LSB) operations on $M$ integer data streams ($M\geq3$), such as: scaling, additions/subtractions, inner or outer vector products, permutations and convolutions. In the proposed method, the $M$ input integer data streams are linearly superimposed to form $M$ numerically-entangled integer data streams that are stored in-place of the original inputs. A series of LSB operations can then be performed directly using these entangled data streams. The results are extracted from the $M$ entangled output streams by additions and arithmetic shifts. Any soft errors affecting any single disentangled output stream are guaranteed to be detectable via a specific post-computation reliability check. In addition, when utilizing a separate processor core for each of the $M$ streams, the proposed approach can recover all outputs after any single fail-stop failure. Importantly, unlike algorithm-based fault tolerance (ABFT) methods, the number of operations required for the entanglement, extraction and validation of the results is linearly related to the number of the inputs and does not depend on the complexity of the performed LSB operations. We have validated our proposal in an Intel processor (Haswell architecture with AVX2 support) via fast Fourier transforms, circular convolutions, and matrix multiplication operations. Our analysis and experiments reveal that the proposed approach incurs between $0.03\%$ to $7\%$ reduction in processing throughput for a wide variety of LSB operations. This overhead is 5 to 1000 times smaller than that of the equivalent ABFT method that uses a checksum stream. Thus, our proposal can be used in fault-generating processor hardware or safety-critical applications, where high reliability is required without the cost of ABFT or modular redundancy.Comment: to appear in IEEE Trans. on Signal Processing, 201

Remote support technology for small business

Small business is in need of a more efficient solution for managing their Information Technology support needs. Due to small business\u27s need for custom solutions, IT service providers must dedicate highly skilled personnel to client business sites, incurring high overhead costs and restricting their ability to apply their employee base to multiple clients. This restriction in cost and flexibility places a high cost burden on small business clients, straining an already limited budget. The use of remote IT support technology may provide the basis for a solution to these problems. By applying remote technology, an IT provider could centralize their employee workforce, managing clients from a single location rather than dedicating manpower to client sites. If the technology was available to support such a model, this change in the methodology could result in a more manageable solution. Small business had the highest propensity to outsource IT support for the management of their hardware, software, web hosting, server/host management, networking, and security requirements. Many remote tools currently exist to support these needs, offering solutions for access, alerts, system monitoring, diagnosis, and reporting of a client\u27s IT infrastructure. Using these tools for remote support, a remote solution showed the greatest ability to manage the software, server/host management, and networking needs of small business organizations. Web hosting service requirements were strongly supported as well, although the use of remote solutions would cause a change in the current overall structure of web hosting support, leaving the solution more difficult to implement. In the areas of hardware and security, although many of the primary needs for support were strongly addressed, flaws were discovered that made the use of the methodology less than ideal. The primary flaws of remote support resulted from the inability to manage hardware device failure, the inability to manage the network medium, and security issues resulting from the ability to separate a system administrator from the designated system through denial of service type attacks. Although each of these flaws displayed a significant issue with the use of a remote management IT solution, it was determined that the risk of each could be limited through the use of redundancy, offering a feasible work around. From both a business and a technological perspective, remote solutions proved to be a viable alternative to on-site support for the management of small business IT needs. The total cost of remote solutions is extremely comparable to the average yearly salary of an IT employee, typically offering the same potential for the support of a client\u27s IT infrastructure as a one time investment. In addition, remote solutions offer significant savings to the provider in the reduction of administrative overhead and the increased potential for business expansion, allowing for significant cost savings to be passed on to the client. Although the use of remote technology does not offer a perfect solution in its support of small business, the functionality which is readily available presents the strong potential to increase the efficiency of current small business IT support methods and offer more cost effective solutions to small business organizations

Phase 1 of the automated array assembly task of the low cost silicon solar array project

The results of a study of process variables and solar cell variables are presented. Interactions between variables and their effects upon control ranges of the variables are identified. The results of a cost analysis for manufacturing solar cells are discussed. The cost analysis includes a sensitivity analysis of a number of cost factors

Increased energy efficiency in LTE networks through reduced early handover

“A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy”.Long Term Evolution (LTE) is enormously adopted by several mobile operators and has been introduced as a solution to fulfil ever-growing Users (UEs) data requirements in cellular networks. Enlarged data demands engage resource blocks over prolong time interval thus results into more dynamic power consumption at downlink in Basestation. Therefore, realisation of UEs requests come at the cost of increased power consumption which directly affects operator operational expenditures. Moreover, it also contributes in increased CO2 emissions thus leading towards Global Warming. According to research, Global Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems consume approximately 1200 to 1800 Terawatts per hour of electricity annually. Importantly mobile communication industry is accountable for more than one third of this power consumption in ICT due to increased data requirements, number of UEs and coverage area. Applying these values to global warming, telecommunication is responsible for 0.3 to 0.4 percent of worldwide CO2 emissions. Moreover, user data volume is expected to increase by a factor of 10 every five years which results in 16 to 20 percent increase in associated energy consumption which directly effects our environment by enlarged global warming. This research work focuses on the importance of energy saving in LTE and initially propose bandwidth expansion based energy saving scheme which combines two resource blocks together to form single super RB, thereby resulting in reduced Physical Downlink Control Channel Overhead (PDCCH). Thus, decreased PDCCH overhead helps in reduced dynamic power consumption up to 28 percent. Subsequently, novel reduced early handover (REHO) based idea is proposed and combined with bandwidth expansion to form enhanced energy ii saving scheme. System level simulations are performed to investigate the performance of REHO scheme; it was found that reduced early handover provided around 35% improved energy saving while compared to LTE standard in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) based scenario. Since there is a direct relationship between energy consumption, CO2 emissions and vendors operational expenditure (OPEX); due to reduced power consumption and increased energy efficiency, REHO subsequently proven to be a step towards greener communication with lesser CO2 footprint and reduced operational expenditure values. The main idea of REHO lies in the fact that it initiate handovers earlier and turn off freed resource blocks as compare to LTE standard. Therefore, the time difference (Transmission Time Intervals) between REHO based early handover and LTE standard handover is a key component for energy saving achieved, which is estimated through axiom of Euclidean geometry. Moreover, overall system efficiency is investigated through the analysis of numerous performance related parameters in REHO and LTE standard. This led to a key finding being made to guide the vendors about the choice of energy saving in relation to radio link failure and other important parameters

Concepts for on-board satellite image registration. Volume 2: IAS prototype performance evaluation standard definition

Problems encountered in testing onboard signal processing hardware designed to achieve radiometric and geometric correction of satellite imaging data are considered. These include obtaining representative image and ancillary data for simulation and the transfer and storage of a large quantity of image data at very high speed. The high resolution, high speed preprocessing of LANDSAT-D imagery is considered