Case study of filter design in embedded systems

Chapter 28 - Case studies in design

An M language is being used for algorithm development and verification in embedded systems design recently. The M language processes the whole array simultaneously and it is expected that the design based on M can be implemented faster and the same or better quality. This paper presents a case study of a filter design for image processing using the M language based design flow. In this design flow, Prewitt filter were easily designed by a little coefficient change in a Sobel filter. The results of the case study demonstrated the high efficiency of the M language based design flow as compared to traditional functional modeling and HDL hand coding that it reduced 36% of the total man-hours.

A case study in interface design The CHI'89 Information Kiosk

The steady increase in complexity of high-end embedded systems goes along with an increasingly complex design process. We are currently still in a transition phase from Hardware-Description Language (HDL) based design towards virtual-platform-based design of embedded systems. As design complexity rises faster than developer productivity a gap forms. Restoring productivity while at the same time managing increased design complexity can also be achieved through focussing on the development of new tools and design methodologies. In most application areas, high-level modelling languages such as SystemC are used in early design phases. In modern software development Continuous Integration (CI) is used to automatically test if a submitted piece of code breaks functionality. Application of the CI concept to embedded system design and testing requires fast build and test execution times from the virtual platform framework. For this use case the ability to save a specific state of a virtual platform becomes necessary. The saving and restoring of specific states of a simulation requires the ability to serialize all data structures within the simulation models. Improving the frameworks and establishing better methods will only help to narrow the design gap, if these changes are introduced with the needs of the engineers and developers in mind. Ultimately, it is their productivity that shall be improved. The ability to save the state of a virtual platform enables developers to run longer test campaigns that can even contain randomized test stimuli. If the saved states are modifiable the developers can inject faulty states into the simulation models. This work contributes an extension to the SoCRocket virtual platform framework to enable snapshotting. The snapshotting extension can be considered a reference implementation as the utilization of current SystemC/TLM standards makes it compatible to other frameworkds. Furthermore, integrating the UVM SystemC library into the framework enables test driven development and fast validation of SystemC/TLM models using snapshots. These extensions narrow the design gap by supporting designers, testers and developers to work more efficiently.

Chip reliability becomes a great threat to the design of future microelectronic systems with the continuation of the progressive downscaling of CMOS technologies. Hence increasing the robustness of chip implementations in terms of error tolerance becomes an important issue. In this paper we present a case study in reliability-aware design tolerating transient errors. A state-of-the-art WiMAX channel decoder for LDPC codes is investigated on all design levels to increase its reliability for a given system performance with minimum hardware overhead. We show that an efficient exploitation of the algorithmic fault-tolerance yields a fairly small area overhead with nearly no degradation in communications performance even under high error injection rates.

Although originally motivated by applications such as image processing, multidimensional (nD) systems have mainly attracted the attention of the research community due to the richness of new theoretical questions raised by their treatment, and are often replaced by other settings when it comes to modelling, identifying and controlling processes in practical situations. The aim of this special issue is to illustrate the application potential of nD systems by presenting several contributions where the nD framework is successfully used either to deal with practical problems or to solve practically relevant questions that arise in other contexts that are not at first sight related to multidimensional systems. In the paper Multidimensional Control Systems: Case Studies in Design and Evaluation, by Rogers et al., after introducing the most commonly used models for the analysis and control of discrete nD linear systems, a series of case studies is presented with the aim of demonstrating the advantages of the nD systems approach in solving certain control problems. Namely, applications in the fields of sensor grid networks, iterative learning control, civil engineering and agriculture are considered. The paper Two-dimensional Generalized Predictive Control (2D-GPC) Scheme for the Batch Processes with Two-dimensional (2D)Dynamics, Shi et al. studies the problem of iterative learning control (ILC) design for batch processes. Based on 2Dcontrolled auto-regressive moving average (2D-CARMA) model, a novel two-dimensional generalized predictive control (2D-GPC) is proposed. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by the experimental results on packing pressure control of the injection molding process.

Case study in design and transient analysis of hydrogen-propelled aircraft using direct combustion

This paper summarizes various aspects of identifying and using biological analogies in engineering design. To avoid the immense as well as potentially biased task of creating a database specifically for this purpose, the chosen approach searches biological knowledge in natural language format, e.g., books, papers, etc., for instances of functional keywords describing the engineering problem. Strategies developed to facilitate this search as well how text descriptions of biological phenomena were used in problem solving are summarized. Case studies in design for remanufacture and microassembly are used to provide an overview of the method.

Performance evaluation of collaboration in the design process: Using interoperability measurement

This paper presents a survey on embedded systems design and applications. Several platforms for embedded systems, including microcontrollers, microprocessors, field-programmable gate arrays, digital signal processors, and application-specific integrated circuits are discussed and compared. A survey of embedded system-based industrial applications is presented. Examples of real-life design decisions specific to development of such systems are also presented. The carefully selected three design case study examples include industrial control of wind tunnel with emphasis on actuator control, a mobile robot navigation system with emphasis on integration and synchronization of several subsystems, and optimized implementation of computationally intensive control system on a small microcontroller system.

There is no such thing as high assurance without high assurance hardware. High assurance hardware is essential because any and all high assurance systems ultimately depend on hardware that conforms to, and does not undermine, critical system properties and invariants. And yet, high assurance hardware development is stymied by the conceptual gap between formal methods and hardware description languages used by engineers. This article advocates a semantics-directed approach to bridge this conceptual gap. We present a case study in the design of secure processors, which are formally derived via principled techniques grounded in functional programming and equational reasoning. The case study comprises the development of secure single- and dual-core variants of a single processor, both based on a common semantic specification of the ISA. We demonstrate via formal equational reasoning that the dual-core processor respects a “no-write-down” information flow policy. The semantics-directed approach enables a modular and extensible style of system design and verification. The secure processors require only a very small amount of additional code to specify and implement, and their security verification arguments are concise and readable. Our approach rests critically on ReWire, a functional programming language providing a suitable foundation for formal verification of hardware designs. This case study demonstrates both ReWire’s expressiveness as a programming language and its power as a framework for formal, high-level reasoning about hardware systems.

Performative Microforests: Investigating the potential benefits of integrating spatial vegetation environments into buildings, in regards to the performance of buildings, their occupants + local ecosystems

Ergonomics is the study of designing more human-friendly products, systems or processes for human. By extending this concept to robotics field, we propose robot ergonomics which is a transdisciplinary approach that brings together roboticists, product designers, and architects to solve numerous unsettled research problems or technology bottlenecks in robotics community through designing products for robots. This paper focuses on a case study of chair design for Roomba. Seven design criteria are proposed and intensive experiments are performed to validate the criteria using 22 chairs. Based on such empirical design strategy, three generic principles (i.e., observability, accessibility, and safety) of chair design are extracted for Roomba.

Chapter 7 - Case Studies in Modulus-Limited Design

This chapter introduces a method of design evaluation based on technical merit. With the aim of supporting decision making from the early stages of the design process, technical merit is a measure of the proximity of a product to forecast limits of performance, reliability and economy. The accuracy of the calculations and forecasts are used to define a measure of risk. The chapter is divided into the following sections. Section 22.1 provides a background for Design for Technical Merit and briefly introduces some current evaluation techniques. In section 22.2, ideas drawn from these techniques are combined with a generic model of system development to define technical merit and methods for its calculation. Sections 22.3 and 22.4 outline a case study in design for technical merit, using a manual method and a computer-based tool, respectively.