Over the last decade, research into unmanned and autonomous vehicles has greatly increased. With applications ranging from science and exploration to humanitarian and military efforts, the rising need for autonomous vehicles demands constant innovation and growth. The Intelligent Dependable Embedded Architectures (IDEA) lab at the University of Kentucky is continually launching research oriented programs [1]. A few key projects focus on the development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). Through this research, at the University of Kentucky, the need to develop a reliable, lightweight, node based hardware for use in light UAVs and other unmanned and autonomous vehicles became apparent. This paper addresses the design and implementation of a network processing node for light UAVs. This system utilizes a Controller Area Network (CAN) noise tolerant communications bus, a low power ZigBee Wireless Network for expanded inner plane communications and Silicon Laboratories C8051F041 microcontrollers to provide the necessary inputs/output and data processing. The final result will be a flight ready light UAV featuring distributed processing nodes to handle the servo communications and controls.

Dependable and Fault-tolerant computing is actively being pursued as a research area since the 1980s in various fields involving development of safety-critical applications. The ability of the system to provide reliable functional service as per its design is a key paradigm in dependable computing. For providing reliable service in fault-tolerant systems, dynamic reconfiguration has to be supported to enable recovery from errors (induced by faults) or graceful degradation in case of service failures. Reconfigurable Distributed applications provided a platform to develop fault-tolerant systems and these reconfigurable architectures requires an embedded network that is inherently fault-tolerant and capable of handling movement of tasks between nodes/processors within the system during dynamic reconfiguration. The embedded network should provide mechanisms for deterministic message transfer under faulty environments and support fault detection/isolation mechanisms within the network framework. This thesis describes the design, implementation and validation of an embedded networking layer using Controller Area Network (CAN) to support reconfigurable embedded systems.

The CubeLab is a new payload standard that greatly improves access to the International Space Station (ISS) for small, rapid turn-around microgravity experiments. CubeLabs are small (less than 16”x8”x4” and under 10kg) modular payloads that interface with the NanoRacks Platform aboard the ISS. CubeLabs receive power from the station and transfer data using the standard terrestrial plug-and-play Universal Serial Bus (USB). The Space Plug-and-play Avionics (SPA) architecture is a modular technology for spacecraft that provides an infrastructure for modular satellite components to reduce the time to orbit and development costs for satellites. This paper describes the development of a bus capable of interfacing SPA-1 payloads in the CubeLab form-factor aboard the ISS. This CubeLab also provides the “discover and join” functionality that is necessary for a SPA-1 network of devices. This will ultimately provide persistent SPA capabilities on the ISS which will allow users to send SPA-1 devices to orbit for on-the-fly installation by astronauts.

This thesis describes the design, implementation and testing of a spacecraft bus implemented on KySat-1, a picosatellite scheduled to launch late 2009 to early 2010. The spacecraft bus is designed to be a robust reusable bus architecture using commercially available off the shelf components and subsystems. The bus designed and implemented for the KySat-1 spacecraft will serve as the basis for a series of future Kentucky Space Consortium missions. The spacecraft bus consists of attitude determination and control subsystem, communications subsystem, command and data handling subsystem, thermal subsystem, power subsystem, and structures and mechanisms. The spacecraft bus design is described and the implementation and testing and experimental results of the integrated spacecraft engineering model. Lessons learned with the integration, implementation, and testing using commercial off the shelf components are also included. This thesis is concluded with future spacecraft bus improvements and launch opportunity of the implemented spacecraft, KySat-1.

Fault detection and location algorithms have allowed for the power industry to alter the power grid from the traditional model to becoming a smart grid. This thesis implements an already established algorithm for detecting faults, as well as an impedance-based algorithm for detecting where on the line the fault has occurred and develops a smart algorithm for future HDL conversion using Simulink. Using the algorithms, the ways in which this implementation can be used to create a smarter grid are the fundamental basis for this research. Simulink was used to create a two-bus power system, create environment variables, and then Matlab was used to program the algorithm such that it could be FPGA-implementable, where the ways in which one can retrieve the data from a power line has been theorized. This novel approach to creating a smarter grid was theorized and created such that real-world applications may be further implemented in the future.

The explosion in processing power of embedded systems has enabled distributed embedded networks to perform more complicated tasks. Middleware are sets of encapsulations of common and network/operating system-specific functionality into generic, reusable frameworks to manage such distributed networks. This thesis will survey and categorize popular middleware implementations into three adapted layers: host-infrastructure, distribution, and common services. This thesis will then apply a quantitative approach to grading and proposing a single middleware solution from all layers for two target platforms: CubeSats and autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). CubeSats are 10x10x10cm nanosatellites that are popular university-level space missions, and impose power and volume constraints. Autonomous UAVs are similarly-popular hobbyist-level vehicles that exhibit similar power and volume constraints. The MAVLink middleware from the host-infrastructure layer is proposed as the middleware to manage the distributed embedded networks powering these platforms in future projects. Finally, this thesis presents a performance analysis on MAVLink managing the ARM Cortex-M 32-bit processors that power the target platforms.

The objective of this research is to develop an embedded, wireless, energy-harvesting prototype (E-WEHP) that can power on and sustain embedded sensing functions using the power present in ambient wireless signals in urban areas. This research is part of a bigger effort towards greening RF circuits and applications in order to reduce their pollution foot-print. Pollution due to modern electronics is primarily caused by non-biodegradable packaging waste and batteries that form a big part of most electronics. Electronic waste can especially be a nuisance in RFID and wireless sensors that are mass-produced and widely-used in consumer items, buildings, industries, agriculture and transportation. The first part of this research effort addresses the issue of minimizing electronic packaging waste by characterizing and using biodegradable substrates such as Paper and Perfluoropolymer (PFA) as a dielectric material in RF circuits. Towards this goal, the first of its kind active wireless sensor modules made of biodegradable paper substrate using a clean and novel inkjet-printing technology is developed and successfully operated in the 900 MHz free ISM band. The second and third part of this research effort addresses the issue of battery waste by investigating the use of ambient solar and wireless radiation for powering RF and embedded electronics for wireless localization and sensing applications without the use of batteries. The second part of this work presents a unique solar-powered tag called SOLTAG that combines solar cells along with an RFID-type powering mechanism to implement a very low-cost, battery-less, semi-passive wireless-tag but with a much longer range than passive EPC-Gen2 RFID tags. A GPS-like, low-cost, vehicle-tracking system based on a received-signal-strength-indication method using SOLTAGs in vehicles and a wireless network of Mica-motes is successfully developed and tested with accuracy down to 1.62 meters The third and main part of this research work presents a novel embedded-wireless-energy-harvesting-prototype (E-WEHP) that can successfully power-on and sustain sensing and M2M peripherals in a 16-bit microcontroller using the power present in ambient, wireless, Digital-TV signals without the use of batteries. This work involves an in-depth characterization of OFDM signals used in Digital-TV broadcasts in Tokyo and Atlanta along with the design and development of the E-WEHP hardware and firmware that exploits the multi-carrier nature of such TV signals for powering itself at a range of over 6 km from the TV broadcast sources. This work opens up the possibility of pervasively powering sensor motes for applications such as environmental sensing, smart homes, structural health monitoring, security and internet of things without the environmental and logistical cost of periodic battery replacement and disposal.

Embedded systems are getting more complex and require more intensive processing capabilities. They must be able to adapt to the rapid evolution of the high-end embedded applications that are characterized by their high computation-intensive workloads (order of TOPS: Tera Operations Per Second), and their high level of parallelism. Moreover, since the dynamism of the applications is becoming more significant, powerful computing solutions should be designed accordingly. By exploiting efficiently the dynamism, the load will be balanced between the computing resources, which will improve greatly the overall performance. To tackle the challenges of these future high-end massively-parallel dynamic embedded applications, we have designed the AHDAM architecture, which stands for "Asymmetric Homogeneous with Dynamic Allocator Manycore architecture". Its architecture permits to process applications with large data sets by efficiently hiding the processors' stall time using multithreaded processors. Besides, it exploits the parallelism of the applications at multiple levels so that they would be accelerated efficiently on dedicated resources, hence improving efficiently the overall performance. AHDAM architecture tackles the dynamism of these applications by dynamically balancing the load between its computing resources using a central controller to increase their utilization rate.The AHDAM architecture has been evaluated using a relevant embedded application from the telecommunication domain called "spectrum radio-sensing". With 136 cores running at 500 MHz, AHDAM architecture reaches a peak performance of 196 GOPS and meets the computation requirements of the application.

Souvent, dû a l'aspect cyclique des programmes embarqu és, les traces de microcontrôleurs contiennent beaucoup de donn ées. De plus, dans notre contexte de travail, pour l'analyse du comportement, une seule trace se terminant sur une défaillance est disponible. L'objectif du travail pr esent é dans cette th ese est d'aider à l'analyse de trace de microcontrôleurs. La premi ère contribution de cette th èse concerne l'identifi cation de cycles, ainsi que la g én ération d'une description pertinente de la trace. La d étection de cycles repose sur l'identifi cation du loop- header. La description propos ée à l'ing enieur est produite en utilisant la compression bas ée sur la g én ération d'une grammaire. Cette derni ère permet la d etection de r ép étitions dans la trace. La seconde contribution concerne la localisation de faute(s). Elle est bas ée sur l'analogie entre les ex écutions du programme et les cycles. Ainsi, pour aider dans l'analyse de la trace, nous avons adapt é des techniques de localisation de faute(s) bas ée sur l'utilisation de spectres. Nous avons aussi d éfi ni un processus de filtrage permettant de r éduire le nombre de cycles àa utiliser pour la localisation de faute(s). Notre troisi ème contribution concerne l'aide a l'analyse des cas o ù les multiples cycles d'une même ex écution interagissent entre eux. Ainsi, pour faire de la localisation de faute(s) pour ce type de cas, nous nous int eressons à la recherche de r égles d'association. Le groupement des cycles en deux ensembles (cycles suspects et cycles corrects) pour la recherche de r égles d'association, permet de d e finir les comportements jug és correctes et ceux jug és comme suspects. Ainsi, pour la localisation de faute(s), nous proposons à l'ing enieur un diagnostic bas é sur l'analyse des r égles d'association selon leurs degr és de suspicion. Cette th èse pr esente également les évaluations men ées, permettant de mesurer l'efficacit e de chacune des contributions discut ées, et notre outil CoMET. Les r ésultats de ces évaluations montrent l'e fficacit e de notre travail d'aide à l'analyse de traces de microcontrôleurs.

CPS (Cyber-Physical Systems) enable a new class of applications that perceive their surroundings using raw data from sensors, monitor the timing of dynamic processes, and control the physical environment. Since failures and misbehaviors in application domains such as cars, medical devices, nuclear power plants, etc., may cause significant damage to life and/or property, CPS need to be safe and dependable. A conventional way of improving dependability is to use redundant hardware to replicate the whole (sub)system. Although hardware replication has been widely deployed in conventional mission-critical systems, it is cost-prohibitive to many emerging CPS application domains. Hardware replication also leads to limited system flexibility. This dissertation studies the problem of making CPS affordably dependable and develops a system-level framework that manages critical CPS resources including processors, networks, and sensors. Our framework called SAFER (System-level Architecture for Failure Evasion in Real-time applications) incorporates configurable software mechanisms and policies to tolerate failures of critical CPS resources while meeting their timing constraints. It supports adaptive graceful degradation, the effective use of different sensor modalities, and the fault-tolerant schemes of hot standby, cold standby, and re-execution. SAFER reliably and efficiently allocates tasks and their backups to CPU and sensor resources while satisfying network traffic constraints. It also fuses and (re)configures sensor data used by tasks to recover from system failures. The SAFER framework aims to guarantee the timeliness of different types of tasks that fall into one of four categories: (1) tasks with periodic arrivals, (2) tasks with continually varying periods, (3) tasks with parallel threads, and (4) tasks with self-suspensions. We offer the schedulability analyses and runtime support for such tasks with and without resource failures. Finally, the functionality of the proposed system is evaluated on a self-driving car using SAFER. We conclude that the proposed framework analytically satisfies timing constraints and predictably operates systems with and without resource failures, hence making CPS dependable and timely.