Embedded electronic systems driven by run-time reconfigurable hardware

Abstract This doctoral thesis addresses the design of embedded electronic systems based on run-time reconfigurable hardware technology –available through SRAM-based FPGA/SoC devices– aimed at contributing to enhance the life quality of the human beings. This work does research on the conception of the system architecture and the reconfiguration engine that provides to the FPGA the capability of dynamic partial reconfiguration in order to synthesize, by means of hardware/software co-design, a given application partitioned in processing tasks which are multiplexed in time and space, optimizing thus its physical implementation –silicon area, processing time, complexity, flexibility, functional density, cost and power consumption– in comparison with other alternatives based on static hardware (MCU, DSP, GPU, ASSP, ASIC, etc.). The design flow of such technology is evaluated through the prototyping of several engineering applications (control systems, mathematical coprocessors, complex image processors, etc.), showing a high enough level of maturity for its exploitation in the industry.Resumen Esta tesis doctoral abarca el diseño de sistemas electrónicos embebidos basados en tecnología hardware dinámicamente reconfigurable –disponible a través de dispositivos lógicos programables SRAM FPGA/SoC– que contribuyan a la mejora de la calidad de vida de la sociedad. Se investiga la arquitectura del sistema y del motor de reconfiguración que proporcione a la FPGA la capacidad de reconfiguración dinámica parcial de sus recursos programables, con objeto de sintetizar, mediante codiseño hardware/software, una determinada aplicación particionada en tareas multiplexadas en tiempo y en espacio, optimizando así su implementación física –área de silicio, tiempo de procesado, complejidad, flexibilidad, densidad funcional, coste y potencia disipada– comparada con otras alternativas basadas en hardware estático (MCU, DSP, GPU, ASSP, ASIC, etc.). Se evalúa el flujo de diseño de dicha tecnología a través del prototipado de varias aplicaciones de ingeniería (sistemas de control, coprocesadores aritméticos, procesadores de imagen, etc.), evidenciando un nivel de madurez viable ya para su explotación en la industria.Resum Aquesta tesi doctoral està orientada al disseny de sistemes electrònics empotrats basats en tecnologia hardware dinàmicament reconfigurable –disponible mitjançant dispositius lògics programables SRAM FPGA/SoC– que contribueixin a la millora de la qualitat de vida de la societat. S’investiga l’arquitectura del sistema i del motor de reconfiguració que proporcioni a la FPGA la capacitat de reconfiguració dinàmica parcial dels seus recursos programables, amb l’objectiu de sintetitzar, mitjançant codisseny hardware/software, una determinada aplicació particionada en tasques multiplexades en temps i en espai, optimizant així la seva implementació física –àrea de silici, temps de processat, complexitat, flexibilitat, densitat funcional, cost i potència dissipada– comparada amb altres alternatives basades en hardware estàtic (MCU, DSP, GPU, ASSP, ASIC, etc.). S’evalúa el fluxe de disseny d’aquesta tecnologia a través del prototipat de varies aplicacions d’enginyeria (sistemes de control, coprocessadors aritmètics, processadors d’imatge, etc.), demostrant un nivell de maduresa viable ja per a la seva explotació a la indústria

FPGA design methodology for industrial control systems—a review

This paper reviews the state of the art of fieldprogrammable gate array (FPGA) design methodologies with a focus on industrial control system applications. This paper starts with an overview of FPGA technology development, followed by a presentation of design methodologies, development tools and relevant CAD environments, including the use of portable hardware description languages and system level programming/design tools. They enable a holistic functional approach with the major advantage of setting up a unique modeling and evaluation environment for complete industrial electronics systems. Three main design rules are then presented. These are algorithm refinement, modularity, and systematic search for the best compromise between the control performance and the architectural constraints. An overview of contributions and limits of FPGAs is also given, followed by a short survey of FPGA-based intelligent controllers for modern industrial systems. Finally, two complete and timely case studies are presented to illustrate the benefits of an FPGA implementation when using the proposed system modeling and design methodology. These consist of the direct torque control for induction motor drives and the control of a diesel-driven synchronous stand-alone generator with the help of fuzzy logic

Performance analysis of massively parallel embedded hardware architectures for retinal image processing

This paper examines the implementation of a retinal vessel tree extraction technique on different hardware platforms and architectures. Retinal vessel tree extraction is a representative application of those found in the domain of medical image processing. The low signal-to-noise ratio of the images leads to a large amount of low-level tasks in order to meet the accuracy requirements. In some applications, this might compromise computing speed. This paper is focused on the assessment of the performance of a retinal vessel tree extraction method on different hardware platforms. In particular, the retinal vessel tree extraction method is mapped onto a massively parallel SIMD (MP-SIMD) chip, a massively parallel processor array (MPPA) and onto an field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA)This work is funded by Xunta de Galicia under the projects 10PXIB206168PR and 10PXIB206037PR and the program Maria BarbeitoS

Trustworthy Quantum Computation through Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions

Quantum computing is under rapid development, and today there are several cloud-based, quantum computers (QCs) of modest size (>100s of physical qubits). Although these QCs, along with their highly-specialized classical support infrastructure, are in limited supply, they are readily available for remote access and programming. This work shows the viability of using intrinsic quantum hardware properties for fingerprinting cloud-based QCs that exist today. We demonstrate the reliability of intrinsic fingerprinting with real QC characterization data, as well as simulated QC data, and we detail a quantum physically unclonable function (Q-PUF) scheme for secure key generation using unique fingerprint data combined with fuzzy extraction. We use fixed-frequency transmon qubits for prototyping our methods

Ono: an open platform for social robotics

In recent times, the focal point of research in robotics has shifted from industrial ro- bots toward robots that interact with humans in an intuitive and safe manner. This evolution has resulted in the subfield of social robotics, which pertains to robots that function in a human environment and that can communicate with humans in an int- uitive way, e.g. with facial expressions. Social robots have the potential to impact many different aspects of our lives, but one particularly promising application is the use of robots in therapy, such as the treatment of children with autism. Unfortunately, many of the existing social robots are neither suited for practical use in therapy nor for large scale studies, mainly because they are expensive, one-of-a-kind robots that are hard to modify to suit a specific need. We created Ono, a social robotics platform, to tackle these issues. Ono is composed entirely from off-the-shelf components and cheap materials, and can be built at a local FabLab at the fraction of the cost of other robots. Ono is also entirely open source and the modular design further encourages modification and reuse of parts of the platform

Smart chemical sensing microsystem : towards a nose-on-a-chip

The electronic nose is a rudimentary replica of the human olfactory system. However there has been considerable commercial interest in the use of electronic nose systems in application areas such as environmental, medical, security and food industry. In many ways the existing electronic nose systems are considerable inferior when compared to their biological counterparts, lacking in terms of discrimination capability, processing time and environmental adaptation. Here, the aim is to extract biological principles from the mammalian olfactory systems to create a new architecture in order to aid the implementation of a nose-on-a-chip system. The primary feature identified in this study was the nasal chromatography phenomena which may provide significant improvement by producing discriminatory spatio-temporal signals for electronic nose systems. In this project, two different but complimentary groups of systems have been designed and fabricated to investigate the feasibility of generating spatio-temporal signals. The first group of systems include the fast-nose (channel 10 cm x 500 μm2), proto-nose I (channel 1.2 m x 500 μm2) and II (channel 2.4 m x 500 μm2) systems that were build using discrete components. The fast-nose system was used to characterise the discrete sensors prior to use. The proto-nose systems, in many ways, resembles gas chromatography systems. Each proto-nose system consists of two microchannels (with and without coating) and 40 polymer-composite sensors of 10 different materials placed along it. The second group of systems include the hybrid-nose and the aVLSI-nose microsensor arrays assembled with microchannel packages of various lengths (5 cm, 32 cm, 7lcm, 240 cm) to form nose-on-a-chip systems. The hybrid-nose sensor array consists of 80 microsensors built on a 10 mm x 10 mm silicon substrate while the aVLSI-nose sensor array consists of 70 microsensors built on a 10 mm x 5 mm silicon substrate using standard CMOS process with smart integrated circuitries. The microchannel packages were fabricated using the Perfactory microstereolithography system. The most advanced microchannel package contains a 2.4 m x 500 J.lm2 microchannel with an external size of only 36 mm x 27 mm x 7 mm. The nose-on-a-chip system achieved miniaturisation and eliminates the need for any external processing circuitries while achieving the same capability of producing spatio-temporal signals. Using a custom-designed vapour test station and data acquisition electronics, these systems were evaluated with simple analytes and complex odours. The experimental results were in-line with the simulation results. On the coated proto-nose II system, a 25 s temporal delay was observed on the toluene vapour pulse compared to ethanol vapour pulse; this is significant compared to the uncoated system where no delay difference was obtained. Further testing with 8 analyte mixtures substantiated that spatio-temporal signals can be extracted from both the coated proto-nose and nose-on-a-chip (hybrid-nose sensor array with 2.4 m long microchannel) systems. This clearly demonstrates that these systems were capable of imitating certain characteristics of the biological olfactory system. Using only the temporal data, classification was performed with principal components analysis. The results reinforced that these additional temporal signals were useful to improve discrimination analysis which is not possible with any existing sensor-based electronic nose system. In addition, fast responding polymer-composite sensors were achieved exhibiting response times of less than 100 ms. Other biological characteristics relating to stereolfaction (two nostrils sniffing at different rates), sniffing rate (flow velocity) and duration (pulse width) were also investigated. The results converge with the biological observations that stereolfaction and sniffing at higher rate and duration improve discrimination. Last but not least, the characterisation of the smart circuitries on the aVLSI-nose show that it is possible to achieve better performance through the use of smart processing circuitries incorporating a novel DC-offset cancellation technique to amplify small sensor response with large baseline voltage. The results and theories presented in this study should provide useful contribution for designing a higher-performance electronic nose incorporating biological principles

FPGA-based High-Performance Collision Detection: An Enabling Technique for Image-Guided Robotic Surgery

Collision detection, which refers to the computational problem of finding the relative placement or con-figuration of two or more objects, is an essential component of many applications in computer graphics and robotics. In image-guided robotic surgery, real-time collision detection is critical for preserving healthy anatomical structures during the surgical procedure. However, the computational complexity of the problem usually results in algorithms that operate at low speed. In this paper, we present a fast and accurate algorithm for collision detection between Oriented-Bounding-Boxes (OBBs) that is suitable for real-time implementation. Our proposed Sweep and Prune algorithm can perform a preliminary filtering to reduce the number of objects that need to be tested by the classical Separating Axis Test algorithm, while the OBB pairs of interest are preserved. These OBB pairs are re-checked by the Separating Axis Test algorithm to obtain accurate overlapping status between them. To accelerate the execution, our Sweep and Prune algorithm is tailor-made for the proposed method. Meanwhile, a high performance scalable hardware architecture is proposed by analyzing the intrinsic parallelism of our algorithm, and is implemented on FPGA platform. Results show that our hardware design on the FPGA platform can achieve around 8X higher running speed than the software design on a CPU platform. As a result, the proposed algorithm can achieve a collision frame rate of 1 KHz, and fulfill the requirement for the medical surgery scenario of Robot Assisted Laparoscopy.published_or_final_versio

Sensors and Technologies in Spain: State-of-the-Art

The aim of this special issue was to provide a comprehensive view on the state-of-the-art sensor technology in Spain. Different problems cause the appearance and development of new sensor technologies and vice versa, the emergence of new sensors facilitates the solution of existing real problems. [...