EuFRATE: European FPGA Radiation-hardened Architecture for Telecommunications

The EuFRATE project aims to research, develop and test radiation-hardening methods for telecommunication payloads deployed for Geostationary-Earth Orbit (GEO) using Commercial-Off-The-Shelf Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). This project is conducted by Argotec Group (Italy) with the collaboration of two partners: Politecnico di Torino (Italy) and Technische Universit¨at Dresden (Germany). The idea of the project focuses on high-performance telecommunication algorithms and the design and implementation strategies for connecting an FPGA device into a robust and efficient cluster of multi-FPGA systems. The radiation-hardening techniques currently under development are addressing both device and cluster levels, with redundant datapaths on multiple devices, comparing the results and isolating fatal errors. This paper introduces the current state of the project’s hardware design description, the composition of the FPGA cluster node, the proposed cluster topology, and the radiation hardening techniques. Intermediate stage experimental results of the FPGA communication layer performance and fault detection techniques are presented. Finally, a wide summary of the project’s impact on the scientific community is provided

From Scilab to multicore embedded systems: Algorithms and methodologies

http://samos-conference.com/Resources_Samos_Websites/Proceedings_Repository_SAMOS/2012/Files/2012-IC-34.pdfWhile advances in processor architecture continues to increase hardware parallelism, parallel software creation is hard. There is an increasing need for tools and methodologies to narrow the entry gap for non-experts in parallel software development as well as to streamline the work for experts. This paper presents the methodology and algorithms for the creation of parallel software written in Scilab source code for multicore embedded processors in the context of the “Architecture oriented paraLlelization for high performance embedded Multicore systems using scilAb” (ALMA) EU FP7 project. The ALMA parallelization approach in a nutshell attempts to manage the complexity of the task by alternating focus between very localized and holistic view program optimization strategies

COVID-19 symptoms at hospital admission vary with age and sex: results from the ISARIC prospective multinational observational study

Background: The ISARIC prospective multinational observational study is the largest cohort of hospitalized patients with COVID-19. We present relationships of age, sex, and nationality to presenting symptoms. Methods: International, prospective observational study of 60 109 hospitalized symptomatic patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 recruited from 43 countries between 30 January and 3 August 2020. Logistic regression was performed to evaluate relationships of age and sex to published COVID-19 case definitions and the most commonly reported symptoms. Results: ‘Typical’ symptoms of fever (69%), cough (68%) and shortness of breath (66%) were the most commonly reported. 92% of patients experienced at least one of these. Prevalence of typical symptoms was greatest in 30- to 60-year-olds (respectively 80, 79, 69%; at least one 95%). They were reported less frequently in children (≤ 18 years: 69, 48, 23; 85%), older adults (≥ 70 years: 61, 62, 65; 90%), and women (66, 66, 64; 90%; vs. men 71, 70, 67; 93%, each P < 0.001). The most common atypical presentations under 60 years of age were nausea and vomiting and abdominal pain, and over 60 years was confusion. Regression models showed significant differences in symptoms with sex, age and country. Interpretation: This international collaboration has allowed us to report reliable symptom data from the largest cohort of patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19. Adults over 60 and children admitted to hospital with COVID-19 are less likely to present with typical symptoms. Nausea and vomiting are common atypical presentations under 30 years. Confusion is a frequent atypical presentation of COVID-19 in adults over 60 years. Women are less likely to experience typical symptoms than men

System-Level Design Methodologies for Telecommunication

VIII, 176 p. 110 illus., 64 illus. in color.onlin

System-level design methodologies for telecommunication

This book provides a comprehensive overview of modern networks design, from specifications and modeling to implementations and test procedures, including the design and implementation of modern networks on chip, in both wireless and mobile applications.  Topical coverage includes algorithms and methodologies, telecommunications, hardware (including networks on chip), security and privacy, wireless and mobile networks and a variety of modern applications, such as VoLTE and the internet of things

Whisper: Fast Flooding for Low-Power Wireless Networks

This article presents Whisper, a fast and reliable protocol to flood small amounts of data into a multi-hop network. Whisper makes use of synchronous transmissions, a technique first introduced by the Glossy flooding protocol. In contrast to Glossy, Whisper does not let the radio switch from receive to transmit mode between messages. Instead, it makes nodes continuously transmit identical copies of the message and eliminates the gaps between subsequent transmissions. To this end, Whisper embeds the message to be flooded into a signaling packet that is composed of multiple packlets-where a packlet is a portion of the message payload that mimics the structure of an actual packet. A node must intercept only one of the packlets to detect that there is an ongoing transmission and that it should start forwarding the message. This allows Whisper to speed up the propagation of the flood and, thus, to reduce the overall radio-on time of the nodes. Our evaluation on the FlockLab testbed shows that Whisper achieves comparable reliability but 2x lower radio-on time than Glossy. We further show that by embedding Whisper in an existing data collection application, we can more than double the lifetime of the network