Design of Pacman with Debug Logic

This thesis work was performed at Ineda System Pvt Ltd, Hyderabad, India. Pacman is an interrupt controller, designed with the concept of priority based selection of peripherals with 16x8 input interrupt lines. The main objective of this Master Thesis is to upgrade 16x8 interrupt controller and priority resolver to 128x8 input interrupt lines and adding a debug feature for this customised processor which has its own instruction set. In this thesis, the upgradation of Pacman and design of debugging features such as halt, break point, single step are implemented at the Register Transfer Level (RTL) in the processor. The processor is integrated with Memory, JtagtoAHB, System Register modules and the Advanced High-performance Bus (AHB) Arbiter. The functional correctness of the design is verified using system verilog test bench and validated the design in FPGA environment.Peripheral Access Control Management (Pacman) is a 128x8 Vectored Interrupt Controller designed with the concept of priority based selection of peripherals which requires immediate attention. Debug features such as halt , break point and single step are added to Pacman which gives the user an opportunity to debug this customized processor. AHB Master and Slave are used in the design to communicate with the peripherals on a chip

Influence of knowledge sharing and virtual teams on employee productivity: a case study in a financial institution

This study is examining the influence of knowledge sharing and virtual teams on employee productivity. The influence is further evaluated through a set of dimensions on different aspects of the independent variables. To get relevant information on the variables, the sample is based in a highly decentralized and knowledge dependent unit of a financial institution. The triangulation method was used where quantitative data is collected by a questionnaire and qualitative data through interviews. The analysis is based on a multiple hierarchical regression to have more control over the variables. The analysis results show that both virtual teams and knowledge sharing have a positive effect on productivity and are likely to increase employee’s productivity. However, some of the dimensions seem to be affecting the productivity much more than others and the organizations should prioritize their focus on those

MEDIA ACCESS CONTROL SECURITY KEY DISTRIBUTION USING BLOCKCHAIN AND PUBLIC KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY

Techniques are described herein for sophisticated authentication and encryption methods that do not require manual configuration or a centralized server. These techniques use blockchain and public key cryptography to exchange Media Access Control security (MACsec) keys securely between router links and thereby by avoid manual configuration for MACsec. This simplifies existing MACsec key configuration approaches, which use static security mode with manually-configured security keys and dynamic security mode with keys distributed from a centralized Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) server over Extensible Authentication Protocol Transport Layer Security (EAP-TLS)

IMPROVING DETERMINISM OF WIRELESS/WI-FI USING CRITICAL NETWORK PARAMETERS

Techniques are described herein for improving wireless determinism by enhancing the Access Point (AP) join and client association processes. The AP join process may be enhanced by considering several factors to improve the determinism of wireless service. These factors include reliability, controller availability, network availability, and value-added services. Similarly, the client association process may also be enhanced by considering these factors to select a better AP / Service Set Identifier (SSID)

NODE AND SERVICE DISCOVERY IN WIRELESS LOCAL AREA NETWORK CONTROLLER CLUSTER ARCHITECTURES USING HYPERLEDGER

In the wireless cluster deployments, node discovery is a challenge. Further, it can be more challenging to discover the services running in such deployments. There are existing methods which use client side discovery and server side discovery that need a centralized Service Registry to maintain all available service instances. Presented herein are techniques that provide for the utilization of a private blockchain and HyperLedger in order to discover nodes and their services in wireless cluster deployments. Techniques of this proposal may provide for de‑centralizing node and service discovery in wireless cluster deployments without compromising authentication and security aspects. In one example, when a node comes up, it can authenticate itself with a Blockchain provider to be recognized as a legitimate node for a deployment. The node and services associated therewith would be added to the Ledger. The Ledger can be made available to all nodes in the deployment, which allows members to learn the node and service details and further communicate with the respective nodes for various services

SECURE INTERNET OF THINGS ONBOARDING USING PUBLIC KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY AND DIFFIE-HELLMAN INTEGRATED ENCRYPTION SCHEME

Techniques are described for using public key cryptography and blockchain methods to automatically and securely on-board Internet of Things (IOT) devices. This is an improvement over typical approaches in which IOT devices are on-boarded to Wi-Fi® networks with a pre-shared key that could be built-in or configured through out-of-band connectivity (e.g., Bluetooth®, Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), etc.)

Kinematic Analysis of Spatial Geared Mechanisms

In this paper, a general method for kinematic analysis of complex gear mechanisms, including bevel gear trains and non-collinear input and output axes, is presented. This new approach is based on the null-space of the kinematic constraint matrix computed from the mechanism graph or its adjacency matrix. The novelty is that the elements of the adjacency matrix are weighted with complex coefficients allowing bevel gears to be taken into account and the angular velocity of each link to be directly expressed using polar coordinates. This approach is illustrated on a two-degree-of-freedom car differential and applied to a helicopter main gear box. A MATLAB open source software was developed to implement this method

A Wavelet Based Multiscale Run-by-Run Controller for Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) Processes

Run-by-Run (RbR) control is an online supervisory control strategy designed for the batch manufacturing industry. The objective of RbR control is to minimize process drift, shift and variability between machine runs, thereby reducing costs. The most widely used RbR controllers use the Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA) filter. However, the linear nature of the EWMA filter makes these RbR controllers inefficient for processes with features at multiple frequencies (also known as multiscale processes). Recent developments in wavelet theory have enhanced the ability to analyze events in multiscale processes. New RbR control strategies have started to emerge that incorporate wavelet analysis. These controllers, developed at the University of South Florida, seem to be robust in dealing with multiscale processes. The objective of this research is to integrate the wavelet based, multiscale analysis approach with the existing double EWMA RbR control strategy for controlling a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) process. The new controller (WRbR controller) is applied on a Chemical Mechanical Planerization process having four inputs and two outputs. A continuous drift and mean shift are introduced in the process, which is then controlled using both the existing double EWMA and the new wavelet based RbR controllers. The results indicate that the wavelet based controller is better in terms of the average square deviation and the standard deviation in the process outputs. Moreover, the observed decrease in the magnitude of the average absolute input deviation indicates a smoother process operation

METHOD TO OPTIMISE DISTRIBUTION OF AUTHENTICATION INFORMATION FOR CLIENT RE-CONNECTIVITY

There are many customer deployments wherein the switches and WLCs authenticates the clients using 802.1X authentication methods which uses EAP to exchange messages during the authentication process. Here, AAA servers acts as Authenticator. Typically, AAA servers are deployed remotely and connected to enterprise over the WAN link. In short, client authenticates with the AAA server through Switch/WLC. In the scenarios such as, if AAA server(s) is/are down OR the respective link between Switch/WLC and AAA servers is down and in-turn servers are not reachable, clients will fail to connect, and service will be impacted. There are techniques which caches the authentication credentials locally on the Switch/WLC when client connects first time. Further when client connects to the same Switch/WLC next time, this local cache can be used to authenticate the client even when AAA server is not available. But there is no guarantee the next time client will connect to the same Switch/WLC. In such cases client connectivity will fail, even though Authentication Cache is available with the other Switch. The techniques presented here is one such method for the clients to re-connect to any Switch/WLC of a particular deployment, even when the link is down, or AAA server(s) is/are not reachable. As per this method, when client connects first time, authentication credentials are stored on any one of the Switch/WLC by hashing the client MAC address. Further if client re-connects to a different Switch/WLC and if AAA servers are not available or reachable, then Switch/WLC will calculate the hash using the client MAC address and find the right Switch/WLC to fetch the authentication details to proceed with client authentication and connectivity

Method to support iPSK for WPA3 clients as well as reduce Online Dictionary Attacks

WPA3 was developed with the backward compatibility into consideration, i.e., if WPA3 is enabled on WPA2+PSK SSID (also called mixed mode), then both WPA3 and WPA2-only clients can associate to same SSID. This will work as long as SSID is configured to use default-PSK. In other words, if SSID is configured with iPSK, then WPA2-only clients can associate to the SSID using iPSK, but WPA3 clients fails to associate to this SSID using iPSK, as current WPA3 SAE negotiation does not consider iPSK (unique PSK per client). Also, WPA3 was introduced to combat offline dictionary attacks on WPA2+PSK by using SAE protocol where-in an attacker would not be able to go through a word-list and compute a PMK that comes from the dragonfly handshake to test the MIC of a PTK off-line without interacting with the Authenticator. But still WPA3 is vulnerable to online dictionary attacks. The technique presented herein propose method to support iPSK even for the WPA3 clients and much more beneficial for the mixed-mode (i.e., supporting both WPA2 and WPA3 clients with iPSK) deployments. Also, this method decreases the attack surface of the WPA3 by aborting/breaking the SAE negotiation as early as possible