Simulation of modern battlefield scenarios on consumer PC:s deal with a number of limitations, many of them related to the limited performance of a normal PC compared to workstations and servers. Specifically, the visualization of realistic large scale outdoor environments is problematic because of the large amount of data required to describe its contents. This becomes especially problematic in simulations of fast moving vehicles such as aircrafts, where one needs to maintain high frame rates while having high visual detail for orientation and targeting. This thesis proposes a method of generating realistic outdoor environments from actual geological data and then rendering it efficiently using an improved level of detail algorithm within a proprietary battle simulation framework. We also show how to integrate an open source Flight Dynamics Model (FDM) into the simulation framework for future hybrid simulations involving aircrafts.

For demanding applications, for example image or video processing, there may be computations that aren’t very suitable for digital signal processors. While a DSP processor is appropriate for some tasks, the instruction set could be extended in order to achieve higher performance for the tasks that such a processor normally isn’t actually design for. The platform used in this project is flexible in the sense that new hardware can be designed to speed up certain computations. This thesis analyzes the computational complex parts of JPEG2000. In order to achieve sufficient performance for JPEG2000, there may be a need for hardware acceleration. First, a JPEG2000 decoder was implemented for a DSP processor in assembler. When the firmware had been written, the cycle consumption of the parts was measured and estimated. From this analysis, the bottlenecks of the system were identified. Furthermore, new processor instructions are proposed that could be implemented for this system. Finally the performance improvements are estimated.

Xilinx Virtex II Pro FPGA with integrated PowerPC core offers an opportunity to implementing a software and hardware codesign. The software application executes on the PowerPC processor while the FPGA implementation of hardware cores coprocess with PowerPC to achieve the goals of acceleration. Another benefit of coprocessing with the hardware acceleration core is the release of processor load. This thesis demonstrates such an FPGA based software and hardware codesign by implementing a real time video processing project on Xilinx ML310 development platform which is featured with a Xilinx Virtex II Pro FPGA. The software part in this project performs video and memory interface task which includes image capture from camera, the store of image into on-board memory, and the display of image on a screen. The hardware coprocessing core does a contrast enhancement function on the input image. To ease the software development and make this project flexible for future extension, an Embedded Operating System MontaVista Linux is installed on the ML310 platform. Thus the software video interface application is developed using Linux programming method, for example the use of Video4Linux API. The last but not the least implementation topic is the software and hardware interface, which is the Linux device driver for the hardware core. This thesis report presents all the above topics of Operating System installation, video interface software development, contrast enhancement hardware implementation, and hardware core’s Linux device driver programming. After this, a measurement result is presented to show the performance of hardware acceleration and processor load reduction, by comparing to the results from a software implementation of the same contrast enhancement function. This is followed by a discussion chapter, including the performance analysis, current design’s limitations and proposals for improvements. This report is ended with an outlook from this master thesis.

The automotive field is becoming more and more complex and cars are no longer just pure mechanical artifacts. Today much more than 50 % of the functionality of a car is computerized, so, a modern car system is obviously based on mixed technologies which emphasize the need for new approaches to the design process compared to the processes of yesterday. A corresponding technology shift has been experienced in the aerospace industry starting in the late sixties and today aircraft could not fly without its computers and the pilots’ environment has turned to a so called glass cockpit with no iron-made instrumentation left. A very similar change is still going on in the automotive area. Simulator-Based Design (SBD) refers to design, development and testing new products, systems and applications which include an operator in their operation. Simulator-Based Design has been used for decades in the aviation industry. It has been a common process in this field. SBD may be considered as a more specific application of simulation-based design, where the specific feature is a platform, the simulator itself. The simulator could consist of a generic computer environment in combination with dedicated hardware components, for instance a cockpit. This solution gives us the possibility of including the human operator in the simulation. The name of the project is Simulator-Based Design in Practice. The purpose of this master thesis is to get a complete practice in how to use a human-in-the-loop simulator as a tool in design activities focusing on the automotive area. This application area may be seen as an example of systems where an operator is included in the operation and thus experience from the car application could be transferred to other areas like aviation or control rooms in the process industry. During the performance of the project we have gone through the main parts of the SBD process. There are many steps to complete the whole cycle and many of them have iterative loops that connect these steps with the previous one. This process starts with a concept (product/system) and continues with a virtual prototyping stage followed by implementation, test design, human-in-the-loop simulation, data analysis, design synthesis and in the end a product/system decision. An iterative process approach makes the cycle flexible and goal oriented. We have learnt how to use the simulator and how to perform the whole cycle of SBD. We first started getting familiar with the simulator and the ASim software and then we were trying to reduce the number of computers in the simulator and changing the network in order to find good optimization pf the computer power. The second step has been to implement a new application to the simulator. This new application is the rear mirror view and consists of a new LCD monitor and the rear view vision that must be seen in the new monitor. Finally we updated the cockpit to the new language program Action Script 3.0. The information gathering consisted of the course Human-System interaction in the University, the introduction course to ASim software and the course of Action Script 3.0.

Vår uppgift är att sammansätta en produkt som skall sänka de så kallade ”Roaming” avgifterna som uppkommer då ett telefonsamtal måste resa eller ”roama” genom flera olika operatörers mobilnät. För att sänka denna kostnad har ett företag vid namn ”CallKey Group Ltd” tagit fram en produkt, ”CallKeyOne” som är en lösning baserat på GSM SIM-kort. CallKeyOne kommer att reducera kostnaden för utgående samtal radikalt och att motta samtal blir gratis i de flesta länder. Detta leder ofta till en reducerad kostnad med upp till 70 %. Uppgiften för författarna av denna rapport var att integrera CallKey: s API med en webbaserad betalsida vid namn PayNova. Den färdiga produkten ska bli en fullt fungerande produkt som tillåter kunderna att fylla på sitt SIM-kort med förbetald kredit för internationella samtal. Till uppgiften hör även att skapa en databas där information om överföringar och kunder skall lagras. Kunden ska kunna betala via kreditkort och pengarna ska sedan överföras till uppdragsgivarna. Uppgiften har utförts med hjälp av ByAir AB som är ett svenskt företag med kontor i Göteborg som har licensen för CallKeyOne i Sverige.

This master thesis is about building an adaptive library based on a platform independent model, which represents a conceptual design realizing the functional requirements being independent of the technologies and software architectures changes. This adaptive library is a model, which has a higher level of abstraction than the code that we will generate afterwards, generalizes the solution of those problems that can be resolved using different implementations that uses different kinds of data structures. In addition the higher level of abstraction that this adaptive library is having will give a speed up in developing the application and higher quality solution because of the maintainability and reusability. This solution is going to have the propriety to be changed easily in order to solve different concrete problems.

Alstom Power i Växjö arbetar med utveckling och försäljning av bland annat elektrofilter till rökgasreningssystem vid olika typer av miljövårdsanläggningar för t.ex. kraftverksindustrin. Dessa elektrofilter kontrolleras och regleras med hjälp av styrutrustning uppbyggd av ett antal styrenheter som idag kommunicerar via en egentillverkad standard kallad ”Fläktbuss”. För att övervaka detta system vill man använda handburna PDA och kommunicera med Fläktbussen via USB. För att få kommunikationen mellan USB och Fläktbuss att fungera krävs någon form av aktiv konvertering. Detta examensarbete kommer att ta upp så väl problematik och lösningar kring det problem som finns i samband med denna konvertering. / Alstom Power in Växjö develop and sell equipment like electro filters for enviromental purposes for the power industry. Those filters are controlled and regulated by controlunits, communicating via an Alstoms own standrad called “Fläktbuss”. To supervise and maintain this system, a solution of PDA and USB communication is intresting. To make this USB – Fläktbuss adaption an active conversion of data is required. This diplomawork will contain and discuss problems and solutions about this conversion.

Den här rapporten undersöker om gränsen mellan Terminal Services och Citrix XenApp har börjat suddas ut eller om man ännu kan dra en tydlig linje mellan dessa. Detta för att avgöra om organisationer som idag kör Windows Server 2003 med Citrix XenApp enbart klarar sig med de nya funktionerna i Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services och ändå uppfylla de krav och behov en organisation har. Arbetet genomfördes rent teoretiskt. För att avgöra likheter och skillnader mellan applikationerna, så användes till största delen ett ramverk. För att kunna få en bild av hur applikationerna tillämpas rent praktiskt, användes tidigare testar samt analyser. Resultatet visar att Terminal Services tagit ett större steg inom marknaden för applikationsvirtualisering. Slutsatsen antyder att Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services är lämplig för organisationer utan komplexa behov.

This report concerns the implementation of a simulation framework to evaluate an emerging peer-to-peer network topology scheme using 8-point hypercircles, entitled HyperCircle. This topology was proposed in order to alleviate some of the drawbacks of current P2P systems evolving in an uncontrolled manner, such as scalability issues, network overload and long search times. The framework is supposed to be used to evaluate the advantages of this new topology. The framework has been built on top of an existing simulator software solution, the selection of which was an important part of the development. Weighing different variables such as scalability and API usability, the selection fell on OverSim, an open-source discreet-event simulator based on OMNET++. After formalizing the protocol for easier implementation, as well as extending it for better performance, implementation followed using C++ with OverSim’s API and simulation library. Implemented as a module (alongside other stock modules providing their own protocols such as Chord and Kademlia), it can be used in OverSim to simulate a user-defined network using one of the simulation routine applications provided (or using a custom application written by the user). For the purposes of this thesis, the standard application KBRTestApp was used; an application sending test messages between randomly selected nodes, while adding and removing nodes at specific time intervals. The adding and removing of nodes can be configured with probability parameters. Tentative testing shows that this implementation of the HyperCircle protocol has a certain performance gain over the OverSim implementations of the Chord and Kademlia protocols, measurable in the time it takes a message to get from sender to recipient. Further testing is outside the scope of this thesis.

Denna rapport återspeglar framtagandet av ett företags webbplats. Då själva utvecklandet av webbplatsen har varit en praktisk tillämpning så tar rapporten snarare upp utvecklingen på ett mer teoretiskt plan i form av en fallstudie. Vilka tekniker och metoder som har använts i det praktiska arbetet, såsom användbarhet, semantisk uppmärkning och agila utvecklingsmetoder, har förklarats samtidigt som dess funktionalitet vävts in i arbetets olika implementeringsfaser. Då också ett specialanpassat CMS (innehållshanteringssystem för redigering av webbplatsens innehåll) har utvecklats för webbplatsen så beskriver rapporten också arbetet kring detta.