A Novel Approach to Color Conversion on Embedded Devices

Color profiles have become an integral part of output devices. They are used to maintain color consistency among different input and output devices such as  screens and printers. Embedded systems have omitted support for color profiles since they have limited resources and are not able to handle such operations in real-time. The goal of this thesis report,  is to provide a solution for such systems by using a graphics accelerator to perform color profile conversion real-time. Benchmarks on different mobile devices are presented  discussing the performance differences and image quality improvements by using color profiles, along with drawbacks of each system. The aim of this report  is to provide sufficient information on how color profile conversion takes place, how to optimize the high cost of conversion, as well as a smart color profile conversion mechanism that can be integrated in the graphics stack of Qt

Thermal characterization of a gas-gap heat switch for satellite thermal control

A heat switch is a variable thermal conductance device that can act as a thermal conductor or a thermal insulator. A gas-gap heat switch, which is currently in its third design iteration, has been developed by University of Twente in collaboration with the European Space Agency. This device is filled with a gas, whose thermal conductivity varies with temperature and pressure. It is a promising technology that could find extensive applications in Earth Observation and interplanetary missions due to the extreme variations in the thermal environment encountered throughout a mission lifetime. The gas-gap heat switch is manufactured out of a titanium alloy using 3D-printing technology. The main idea is to offer a quick and cheap plug-and-play solution for electronics units thermal control. The main purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the performance of the heat switch by building thermal simulation models and through experimentation, providing a correlation between the experimental and theoretical data. Additionally, the various parameters that affect the performance are identified and quantified. A preliminary analysis to evaluate the impact of the device in future missions has been conducted, using the straw-man concept analysis method. Design and manufacturability improvements and recommendations are also provided in order to facilitate the manufacturing process and improve the attainable tolerances. The experimental data shows a good correlation with the theoretical data with a deviation of less than 20% when adequate manufacturing tolerances are achieved. The experiments showed that the second prototype has an ON-conductance of 2.60 W/K and an OFF-conductance of and 0.30 W/K, with an overall ON/OFF ratio of 8.67, when operating with Helium. The third iteration exhibited a degraded performance that is attributed to manufacturing problems. A scale analysis shows that theoretically the performance of the heat switch reaches a plateau at a size of 0.1 m2, with an ON-conductance of 241 W/m2∙K and an OFF-conductance of 8.5 W/m2∙K for an ON/OFF ratio of 27.29. All the mentioned values include a contact heat transfer coefficient of 700 W/m2∙K on both sides of the switch. The switch has a surface area density of 8.16 kg/m2.Aerospace EngineeringSpace EngineeringSpace Systems Engineerin