Evaluation of SNMP-like protocol to manage a NoC emulation platform

International audience—The Networks-on-Chip(NoCs) are currently the most appropriate communication structure for many-core embedded systems. AnFPGA-based emulation platform can drastically reduce the time needed to evaluate a NoC, even if it is composed by tens or hundreds of distributed components. These components should be timely managed in order to execute an evaluation traffic scenario. There is a lack of standard protocols to drive FPGA-based NoC emulators. Such protocols could ease the integration of emulation components developed by different designers. In this paper, we evaluate a light version of SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) to manage an FPGA-based NoC emulation platform. The SNMP protocol and its related components are adapted to a hardware implementation. This facilitates the configuration of the emulation nodes without FPGA-resynthesis, as well as the extraction of emulation results. Some experiments highlight that this protocol is quite simple to implement and very efficient for a light resources overhead

Visualising Network Traffic Data From AirTraffic Control Radio Systems

In recent years the aviation industry has begun to embrace digital technology forAir Traffic Control (ATC) radio systems. This change has created challenges not onlyfor the industry but also for personnel. However, this implementation offers manyimprovements over older systems; more precise control, straightforward integrationwith other ATC systems and a more efficient way to provide software updates. Thechallenge for personnel is to develop a new skillset enabling a learning transitionfrom analogue to digital systems, with a specific emphasis on computer networkingskills.This project was undertaken in collaboration between the University of Lincoln(UoL) and Park Air Systems (PAS), an industry-leading provider of Air-Space com-munication solutions. A system has been developed to find a mechanism to monitorand visualise network traffic. The use of graphs provides a direct interface for theend-users, enabling a mechanism for identifying performance issues to meet thetransitional challenges from analogue to digital. An easy to use interface has beendesigned, which will enable non-technical users to interact effectively with the sys-tem.Considerable testing was undertaken to investigate the system usability concern-ing the practical application for users with limited networking experience. A surveyprovided a range of quantitative and qualitative data which was further analysed toscrutinize user perspectives on system usability. This involved engineers from PASand postgraduate students from UoL to compare results between direct industrypersonnel and unaffiliated participants