Special Topics in Information Technology

This open access book presents thirteen outstanding doctoral dissertations in Information Technology from the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Information Technology has always been highly interdisciplinary, as many aspects have to be considered in IT systems. The doctoral studies program in IT at Politecnico di Milano emphasizes this interdisciplinary nature, which is becoming more and more important in recent technological advances, in collaborative projects, and in the education of young researchers. Accordingly, the focus of advanced research is on pursuing a rigorous approach to specific research topics starting from a broad background in various areas of Information Technology, especially Computer Science and Engineering, Electronics, Systems and Control, and Telecommunications. Each year, more than 50 PhDs graduate from the program. This book gathers the outcomes of the thirteen best theses defended in 2020-21 and selected for the IT PhD Award. Each of the authors provides a chapter summarizing his/her findings, including an introduction, description of methods, main achievements and future work on the topic. Hence, the book provides a cutting-edge overview of the latest research trends in Information Technology at Politecnico di Milano, presented in an easy-to-read format that will also appeal to non-specialists

Variation-Aware Modeling and Design of Nanophotonic Interconnects

Optical interconnects have started to replace electrical interconnects in the communications between racks and circuit boards with potential benefits in bandwidth, delay, power efficiency, and crosstalk. Silicon photonics has emerged to be a highly promising enabling technology for the short-reach nanophotonic interconnects because it offers favorable CMOS compatibility and high integration level. The fast-growing complexity of photonic integrated circuit (PIC) and close electro-optical integration call for computer-aided design (CAD) for integrated photonics, and electronic-photonic design automation (EPDA) including accurate behavior models and efficient simulation methodologies for integrated electro-optical systems. Also, the nanophotonic devices are highly sensitive to fabrication process variation and thermal variation effects, which requires proper modeling, optimization, and management schemes. To address these problems, this thesis is dedicated to the following two tasks: (1) compact modeling and circuit-level simulation of nanophotonic interconnects, and (2) power-efficient management of the variation effects in nanophotonic interconnects.The first part of the thesis develops compact models for key components in nanophotonic interconnects including silicon microring modulators, diode lasers, electro-absorption modulators (EAM), photodetectors, etc. These compact models are developed based on their electrical and optical properties, and are then extensively validated by measurement data. The model parameters are extracted from common electrical and optical tests. Implemented in Verilog-A, the models are used in SPICE simulations of optical links, whose results again agree well with measurement data. The compact model library and the simulation methodology enable electro-optical co-simulations and optical device design explorations in the circuit-level.In the second part of the thesis, we propose modeling methods and power-efficient management schemes for the process and thermal variations in optical interconnects. The proposed adaptive tuning technique performs on-chip self-tests and adaptively allocates just enough power for link operations. The technique saves significant amount of power compared to worst-case based conservative designs, and scales well w.r.t. variations and network size. We also design power-efficient pairing algorithms for microring-based optical interconnects. Our algorithms optimally mix-and-match microring-based devices to minimize the power consumption for tuning. The algorithms are tested on both measured and synthetic data sets, demonstrating promising results of power reduction and scalability for handling a large number of devices. Lastly, we decompose and analyze wafer-scale spatial patterns of process variations in microring modulators. We further investigate the correlations between the spatial patterns and fabrication process steps, which is valuable for understanding process variation sources and improving fabrication processes for uniformity

Special Topics in Information Technology

This open access book presents thirteen outstanding doctoral dissertations in Information Technology from the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Information Technology has always been highly interdisciplinary, as many aspects have to be considered in IT systems. The doctoral studies program in IT at Politecnico di Milano emphasizes this interdisciplinary nature, which is becoming more and more important in recent technological advances, in collaborative projects, and in the education of young researchers. Accordingly, the focus of advanced research is on pursuing a rigorous approach to specific research topics starting from a broad background in various areas of Information Technology, especially Computer Science and Engineering, Electronics, Systems and Control, and Telecommunications. Each year, more than 50 PhDs graduate from the program. This book gathers the outcomes of the thirteen best theses defended in 2020-21 and selected for the IT PhD Award. Each of the authors provides a chapter summarizing his/her findings, including an introduction, description of methods, main achievements and future work on the topic. Hence, the book provides a cutting-edge overview of the latest research trends in Information Technology at Politecnico di Milano, presented in an easy-to-read format that will also appeal to non-specialists

Optical Communication

Optical communication is very much useful in telecommunication systems, data processing and networking. It consists of a transmitter that encodes a message into an optical signal, a channel that carries the signal to its desired destination, and a receiver that reproduces the message from the received optical signal. It presents up to date results on communication systems, along with the explanations of their relevance, from leading researchers in this field. The chapters cover general concepts of optical communication, components, systems, networks, signal processing and MIMO systems. In recent years, optical components and other enhanced signal processing functions are also considered in depth for optical communications systems. The researcher has also concentrated on optical devices, networking, signal processing, and MIMO systems and other enhanced functions for optical communication. This book is targeted at research, development and design engineers from the teams in manufacturing industry, academia and telecommunication industries

Design and Optimization of Mobile Cloud Computing Systems with Networked Virtual Platforms

A Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) system is a cloud-based system that is accessed by the users through their own mobile devices. MCC systems are emerging as the product of two technology trends: 1) the migration of personal computing from desktop to mobile devices and 2) the growing integration of large-scale computing environments into cloud systems. Designers are developing a variety of new mobile cloud computing systems. Each of these systems is developed with different goals and under the influence of different design constraints, such as high network latency or limited energy supply. The current MCC systems rely heavily on Computation Offloading, which however incurs new problems such as scalability of the cloud, privacy concerns due to storing personal information on the cloud, and high energy consumption on the cloud data centers. In this dissertation, I address these problems by exploring different options in the distribution of computation across different computing nodes in MCC systems. My thesis is that "the use of design and simulation tools optimized for design space exploration of the MCC systems is the key to optimize the distribution of computation in MCC." For a quantitative analysis of mobile cloud computing systems through design space exploration, I have developed netShip, the first generation of an innovative design and simulation tool, that offers large scalability and heterogeneity support. With this tool system designers and software programmers can efficiently develop, optimize, and validate large-scale, heterogeneous MCC systems. I have enhanced netShip to support the development of ever-evolving MCC applications with a variety of emerging needs including the fast simulation of new devices, e.g., Internet-of-Things devices, and accelerators, e.g., mobile GPUs. Leveraging netShip, I developed three new MCC systems where I applied three variations of a new computation distributing technique, called Reverse Offloading. By more actively leveraging the computational power on mobile devices, the MCC systems can reduce the total execution times, the burden of concentrated computations on the cloud, and the privacy concerns about storing personal information available in the cloud. This approach also creates opportunities for new services by utilizing the information available on the mobile device instead of accessing the cloud. Throughout my research I have enabled the design optimization of mobile applications and cloud-computing platforms. In particular, my design tool for MCC systems becomes a vehicle to optimize not only the performance but also the energy dissipation, an aspect of critical importance for any computing system