The Development of a Portable Hard Disk Encryption/Decryption System with a MEMS Coded Lock

In this paper, a novel portable hard-disk encryption/decryption system with a MEMS coded lock is presented, which can authenticate the user and provide the key for the AES encryption/decryption module. The portable hard-disk encryption/decryption system is composed of the authentication module, the USB portable hard-disk interface card, the ATA protocol command decoder module, the data encryption/decryption module, the cipher key management module, the MEMS coded lock controlling circuit module, the MEMS coded lock and the hard disk. The ATA protocol circuit, the MEMS control circuit and AES encryption/decryption circuit are designed and realized by FPGA(Field Programmable Gate Array). The MEMS coded lock with two couplers and two groups of counter-meshing-gears (CMGs) are fabricated by a LIGA-like process and precision engineering method. The whole prototype was fabricated and tested. The test results show that the user's password could be correctly discriminated by the MEMS coded lock, and the AES encryption module could get the key from the MEMS coded lock. Moreover, the data in the hard-disk could be encrypted or decrypted, and the read-write speed of the dataflow could reach 17 MB/s in Ultra DMA mode

Design of Belief Propagation Based on FPGA for the Multistereo CAFADIS Camera

In this paper we describe a fast, specialized hardware implementation of the belief propagation algorithm for the CAFADIS camera, a new plenoptic sensor patented by the University of La Laguna. This camera captures the lightfield of the scene and can be used to find out at which depth each pixel is in focus. The algorithm has been designed for FPGA devices using VHDL. We propose a parallel and pipeline architecture to implement the algorithm without external memory. Although the BRAM resources of the device increase considerably, we can maintain real-time restrictions by using extremely high-performance signal processing capability through parallelism and by accessing several memories simultaneously. The quantifying results with 16 bit precision have shown that performances are really close to the original Matlab programmed algorithm

Implementations of Wireless and Wired Intelligent Systems for Healthcare with Focus on Diabetes and Ultrasound Applications

The research and implementations presented in this thesis focuses mainly on healthcare applications utilizing the wireless and wired communication and “Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems” (MEMS) technologies, and secondly on security aspects. Chapters four and five presents new work in intelligent diabetes remote monitoring front-end system and into the corresponding new ultrasound simulator training systems. The motivation from the University of Sheffield of Electronic and Electrical Engineering Department and Sheffield Children Hospital with the partial grant scholarship from “Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council” (EPSRC) for involvement in one “Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care” (CLAHRC) projects, was to improve the existing WithCare+ system and also the development of multiple new front-end solutions for it. My motivation to create solutions which will improve the life of patients who suffer from chronic disease such as type-1 diabetes, and also to provide new methods in management of that illness by clinicians and possible resulting annual government money saving, drives me to the successful result. From the other side, the motivation from the department of Neonatal in Sheffield Royal Hallamshire Hospital and the University of Sheffield of Electronic and Electrical Engineering Department drives me to the creation of a new, very low cost ultrasound simulation training system, using new components such as MEMS sensors. The hardware design and embedded source code was created in order to provide a ready library, for use by other projects, where 3D space orientation is required through exploitation of MEMS sensors and intelligent fusion filter algorithm. The third contribution affects the cryptographic aspects. The new implementation of fast and very efficient portable C code algorithm for t-adic NAF Key generation in ECC cryptographic principle for utilization of it with Koblitz curves presented in Appendix I

Microfabricated Tools and Engineering Methods for Sensing Bioanalytes

There is a convergence between the needs of the medical community and the capabilities of the engineering community. For example, the scale of biomedical devices and sensors allow for finer, more cost-effective quantification of biological and chemical targets. By using micro-fabrication techniques, we design and demonstrate a variety of microfluidic sensors and actuators that allow us to interact with a biochemical environment. We demonstrate the performance of microfluidic blood-filtrations chips, immune-diagnostic assays, and evaporative coolers. Furthermore, we show how micro-fabricated platinum filaments can be used for highly localized heating and temperature measurement. We demonstrate that these filaments can be used as miniature IR spectroscopic sources. Finally, we describe and demonstrate novel combinatorial coding methods for increasing the information extracted from biochemical reactions. We show proof-principle of these techniques in the context of Taqman PCR as well as persistence length PCR

Embedded computing systems design: architectural and application perspectives

Questo elaborato affronta varie problematiche legate alla progettazione e all'implementazione dei moderni sistemi embedded di computing, ponendo in rilevo, e talvolta in contrapposizione, le sfide che emergono all'avanzare della tecnologia ed i requisiti che invece emergono a livello applicativo, derivanti dalle necessità degli utenti finali e dai trend di mercato. La discussione sarà articolata tenendo conto di due punti di vista: la progettazione hardware e la loro applicazione a livello di sistema. A livello hardware saranno affrontati nel dettaglio i problemi di interconnettività on-chip. Aspetto che riguarda la parallelizzazione del calcolo, ma anche l'integrazione di funzionalità eterogenee. Sarà quindi discussa un'architettura d'interconnessione denominata Network-on-Chip (NoC). La soluzione proposta è in grado di supportare funzionalità avanzate di networking direttamente in hardware, consentendo tuttavia di raggiungere sempre un compromesso ottimale tra prestazioni in termini di traffico e requisiti di implementazioni a seconda dell'applicazione specifica. Nella discussione di questa tematica, verrà posto l'accento sul problema della configurabilità dei blocchi che compongono una NoC. Quello della configurabilità, è un problema sempre più sentito nella progettazione dei sistemi complessi, nei quali si cerca di sviluppare delle funzionalità, anche molto evolute, ma che siano semplicemente riutilizzabili. A tale scopo sarà introdotta una nuova metodologia, denominata Metacoding che consiste nell'astrarre i problemi di configurabilità attraverso linguaggi di programmazione di alto livello. Sulla base del metacoding verrà anche proposto un flusso di design automatico in grado di semplificare la progettazione e la configurazione di una NoC da parte del designer di rete. Come anticipato, la discussione si sposterà poi a livello di sistema, per affrontare la progettazione di tali sistemi dal punto di vista applicativo, focalizzando l'attenzione in particolare sulle applicazioni di monitoraggio remoto. A tal riguardo saranno studiati nel dettaglio tutti gli aspetti che riguardano la progettazione di un sistema per il monitoraggio di pazienti affetti da scompenso cardiaco cronico. Si partirà dalla definizione dei requisiti, che, come spesso accade a questo livello, derivano principalmente dai bisogni dell'utente finale, nel nostro caso medici e pazienti. Verranno discusse le problematiche di acquisizione, elaborazione e gestione delle misure. Il sistema proposto introduce vari aspetti innovativi tra i quali il concetto di protocollo operativo e l'elevata interoperabilità offerta. In ultima analisi, verranno riportati i risultati relativi alla sperimentazione del sistema implementato. Infine, il tema del monitoraggio remoto sarà concluso con lo studio delle reti di distribuzione elettrica intelligenti: le Smart Grid, cercando di fare uno studio dello stato dell'arte del settore, proponendo un'architettura di Home Area Network (HAN) e suggerendone una possibile implementazione attraverso Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS)

Demystifying Internet of Things Security

Break down the misconceptions of the Internet of Things by examining the different security building blocks available in Intel Architecture (IA) based IoT platforms. This open access book reviews the threat pyramid, secure boot, chain of trust, and the SW stack leading up to defense-in-depth. The IoT presents unique challenges in implementing security and Intel has both CPU and Isolated Security Engine capabilities to simplify it. This book explores the challenges to secure these devices to make them immune to different threats originating from within and outside the network. The requirements and robustness rules to protect the assets vary greatly and there is no single blanket solution approach to implement security. Demystifying Internet of Things Security provides clarity to industry professionals and provides and overview of different security solutions What You'll Learn Secure devices, immunizing them against different threats originating from inside and outside the network Gather an overview of the different security building blocks available in Intel Architecture (IA) based IoT platforms Understand the threat pyramid, secure boot, chain of trust, and the software stack leading up to defense-in-depth Who This Book Is For Strategists, developers, architects, and managers in the embedded and Internet of Things (IoT) space trying to understand and implement the security in the IoT devices/platforms

A software architecture for electro-mobility services: a milestone for sustainable remote vehicle capabilities

To face the tough competition, changing markets and technologies in automotive industry, automakers have to be highly innovative. In the previous decades, innovations were electronics and IT-driven, which increased exponentially the complexity of vehicle’s internal network. Furthermore, the growing expectations and preferences of customers oblige these manufacturers to adapt their business models and to also propose mobility-based services. One other hand, there is also an increasing pressure from regulators to significantly reduce the environmental footprint in transportation and mobility, down to zero in the foreseeable future. This dissertation investigates an architecture for communication and data exchange within a complex and heterogeneous ecosystem. This communication takes place between various third-party entities on one side, and between these entities and the infrastructure on the other. The proposed solution reduces considerably the complexity of vehicle communication and within the parties involved in the ODX life cycle. In such an heterogeneous environment, a particular attention is paid to the protection of confidential and private data. Confidential data here refers to the OEM’s know-how which is enclosed in vehicle projects. The data delivered by a car during a vehicle communication session might contain private data from customers. Our solution ensures that every entity of this ecosystem has access only to data it has the right to. We designed our solution to be non-technological-coupling so that it can be implemented in any platform to benefit from the best environment suited for each task. We also proposed a data model for vehicle projects, which improves query time during a vehicle diagnostic session. The scalability and the backwards compatibility were also taken into account during the design phase of our solution. We proposed the necessary algorithms and the workflow to perform an efficient vehicle diagnostic with considerably lower latency and substantially better complexity time and space than current solutions. To prove the practicality of our design, we presented a prototypical implementation of our design. Then, we analyzed the results of a series of tests we performed on several vehicle models and projects. We also evaluated the prototype against quality attributes in software engineering

Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the Cyber Domain

Unmanned Aircraft Systems are an integral part of the US national critical infrastructure. The authors have endeavored to bring a breadth and quality of information to the reader that is unparalleled in the unclassified sphere. This textbook will fully immerse and engage the reader / student in the cyber-security considerations of this rapidly emerging technology that we know as unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). The first edition topics covered National Airspace (NAS) policy issues, information security (INFOSEC), UAS vulnerabilities in key systems (Sense and Avoid / SCADA), navigation and collision avoidance systems, stealth design, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms; weapons systems security; electronic warfare considerations; data-links, jamming, operational vulnerabilities and still-emerging political scenarios that affect US military / commercial decisions. This second edition discusses state-of-the-art technology issues facing US UAS designers. It focuses on counter unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS) – especially research designed to mitigate and terminate threats by SWARMS. Topics include high-altitude platforms (HAPS) for wireless communications; C-UAS and large scale threats; acoustic countermeasures against SWARMS and building an Identify Friend or Foe (IFF) acoustic library; updates to the legal / regulatory landscape; UAS proliferation along the Chinese New Silk Road Sea / Land routes; and ethics in this new age of autonomous systems and artificial intelligence (AI).https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/1027/thumbnail.jp

Applications in Electronics Pervading Industry, Environment and Society

This book features the manuscripts accepted for the Special Issue “Applications in Electronics Pervading Industry, Environment and Society—Sensing Systems and Pervasive Intelligence” of the MDPI journal Sensors. Most of the papers come from a selection of the best papers of the 2019 edition of the “Applications in Electronics Pervading Industry, Environment and Society” (APPLEPIES) Conference, which was held in November 2019. All these papers have been significantly enhanced with novel experimental results. The papers give an overview of the trends in research and development activities concerning the pervasive application of electronics in industry, the environment, and society. The focus of these papers is on cyber physical systems (CPS), with research proposals for new sensor acquisition and ADC (analog to digital converter) methods, high-speed communication systems, cybersecurity, big data management, and data processing including emerging machine learning techniques. Physical implementation aspects are discussed as well as the trade-off found between functional performance and hardware/system costs

Internet of Things From Hype to Reality

The Internet of Things (IoT) has gained significant mindshare, let alone attention, in academia and the industry especially over the past few years. The reasons behind this interest are the potential capabilities that IoT promises to offer. On the personal level, it paints a picture of a future world where all the things in our ambient environment are connected to the Internet and seamlessly communicate with each other to operate intelligently. The ultimate goal is to enable objects around us to efficiently sense our surroundings, inexpensively communicate, and ultimately create a better environment for us: one where everyday objects act based on what we need and like without explicit instructions