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AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Zeeshan Ahmed Bashir, for the Masters of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, presented on 29th June 2015, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale TITLE: MSB FIRST ARITHMETIC CIRCUIT FOR MOTION ESTIMATION MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Haibo Wang This thesis presents a novel design of arithmetic circuits that perform computation from MSB to LSB in a serial manner. In the MSB first serial computation, the result is gradually refined along the computation cycles. If the result is used to do a comparison with a threshold, such as in motion estimation applications, it is possible to draw the comparison conclusion in the middle of the computation and subsequently skip the rest of the computation. Thus the MSB-first serial computation potentially results in significant power reduction, making them attractive to low power applications. Unlike the existing MSB-first design that uses redundant number system, the proposed design is based on the widely used 2’ complementary number system, making the proposed circuits more compact and consuming less power as compared to the existing circuits that use signed digital bit numbers. The proposed arithmetic circuits have been used to implement variable block size motion estimation (VBSME) circuits, including block sizes of 4x4, 8x4, 8x8, 8x16 and 16x16 on a Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA device. The performance of the proposed design is compared with the design based on existing MSB-first arithmetic circuit. The comparison shows the proposed design consumes significantly less power compared to the reference design.

abstract: Parts are always manufactured with deviations from their nominal geometry due to many reasons such as inherent inaccuracies in the machine tools and environmental conditions. It is a designer job to devise a proper tolerance scheme to allow reasonable freedom to a manufacturer for imperfections without compromising performance. It takes years of experience and strong practical knowledge of the device function, manufacturing process and GD&T standards for a designer to create a good tolerance scheme. There is almost no theoretical resource to help designers in GD&T synthesis. As a result, designers often create inconsistent and incomplete tolerance schemes that lead to high assembly scrap rates. Auto-Tolerancing project was started in the Design Automation Lab (DAL) to investigate the degree to which tolerance synthesis can be automated. Tolerance synthesis includes tolerance schema generation (sans tolerance values) and tolerance value allocation. This thesis aims to address the tolerance schema generation. To develop an automated tolerance schema synthesis toolset, to-be-toleranced features need to be identified, required tolerance types should be determined, a scheme for computer representation of the GD&T information need to be developed, sequence of control should be identified, and a procedure for creating datum reference frames (DRFs) should be developed. The first three steps define the architecture of the tolerance schema generation module while the last two steps setup a base to create a proper tolerance scheme with the help of GD&T good practice rules obtained from experts. The GD&T scheme recommended by this module is used by the tolerance value allocation/analysis module to complete the process of automated tolerance synthesis. Various test cases are studied to verify the suitability of this module. The results show that software-generated schemas are proper enough to address the assemblability issues (first order tolerancing). Since this novel technology is at its initial stage of development, performing further researches and case studies will definitely help to improve the software for making more comprehensive tolerance schemas that cover design intent (second order tolerancing) and cost optimization (third order tolerancing). / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Mechanical Engineering 2016

Traditional FPGA-based digital design is based on writing hardware definition language (HDL) code from scratch. Time to market, cost of development, and the level of training required for designers all can be reduced with a simplified and abstracted design strategy. This project intends to demonstrate a graphical user interface (GUI) layer of abstraction on top of existing commercially produced design aids including MATLAB, Simulink, and Xilinx System Generator. This project performs and demonstrates a specific implementation example of a Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR) message decoder as proof-of-concept for the abstracted design method. The abstracted digital design methods shown in this project can be adapted for use in other areas of development and research including digital signal processing and communications.

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This doctoral thesis is situated within the digital design field of architecture, and is a continuation of the licentiate thesis Architectural Prototypes: Modes of Design Development and Architectural Practice, presented at the KTH School of Architecture in 2008. The doctoral thesis investigates the current status of the digital design field of architecture, and identifies a number of related discourses. Within this field, it identifies a period of formation, which in recent years has turned into a process of reformation. It contributes to this ongoing reformation by proposing two alternate areas of future practice and research within the field. A speculative approach is considered to be important for a continued mode of exploration within the field, and is suggested as away to bring new scope to the digital design field. A number of key terms from the field of science fiction studies have been investigated to support the construction of a speculative framework for further development. A strategic approach is regarded as crucial to the way new design potentials that have emerged within the digital design field to be implemented into general architectural practice, and to further inform the field itself. Key concepts have been imported from the field of strategic management in the formulation of a framework for digital design strategies. The notion of the prototype, as explored in the previous licentiate thesis, resurfaces as a prototypical approach, which could be equally employed in the speculative approach and the strategic approach. The doctoral thesis is also situated within the field of research-by-design, in the way architectural design projects have been facilitated as contextualized experiments, selected, documented and aligned in regard to terminology, and analyzed through a series of design project enquiries. / QC 20120528

En uppgift för en digital designer är att skapa användbara visuella gränssnitt, det som går att se som t.ex. text och grafik. Det skapas ett reellt problem när designern använder den populära stilen flat design i visuella gränssnitt när senare forskning pekar mot att stilen saknar tydliga signaler (signifiers) som berättar vad som är klickbart då skuggor är borttagna. Forskning säger att det är svårt att upptäcka vad som är klickbart när klickbara element inte ”poppar fram” som i teorin om preattentive processing; vilket gör stilen mindre användbar. Men det finns motsättningar i senare forskning vilket gör att jag vill öka förståelsen för hur användaren kommer fram till vad som är klickbart i flat design.Genom en kvalitativ fallstudie bestående av ett experiment, metoderna observation och intervju undersökte jag flat designs signifiers med hjälp av 5 informanter och 3 webbsidors startsidor. Jag kom fram till att det som får användaren att förstå att element är klickbara beror på komposition mellan detaljer och helhet. Gestaltningslagar har betydelse. Konventioner har betydelse och teorin om preattentive processing. Informanterna har ett inlärt beteende men de lär sig också medans de surfar och det finns element som ”poppar fram” trots avsaknad av skuggor. / A task for a digital designer is to create useful visual interfaces, which can be seen as, for example, text and graphics. It creates a real problem when the designer uses the popular style flat design in visual interfaces when later research indicates that the style lacks clear signals (signifiers) that tells what is clickable due to the lack of shadows. Research says that it is difficult to detect what is clickable when clickable elements do not "pop out" as in the theory of preattentive processing; which makes the style less useful. But there are contradictions in recent research which means that I want to increase understanding of how the user figure out what is clickable in flat design.Through a qualitative case study consisting of an experiment, the observation and interview methods, I examined flat design signifiers using 5 informants and 3 web pages. I found that what makes the user figure out if elements are clickable depends on the composition between the details and the whole. design laws are important. Conventions are important and the theory of preattentive processing. The informants have an inferior behavior, but they also learn as they browse and there are elements that “pop out” despite the absence of shadows.