<p>Communication and digital signal processing applications of today are often developed as fully integrated systems on one single chip and are implemented as application specific integrated circuits using e.g. VLSI technology. As the systems are getting more and more complex in terms of speed and performance the chip size and the design time tend to increase rapidly. This will result in search for cheaper and less time consuming alternatives. One alternative is field programmable gate arrays, so called FPGAs. The FPGAs are getting faster, cheaper and the number of gates increases all the time. A long list of ready to use functional blocks so called intellectual property (IP) blocks can be used in FPGAs. The latest FPGAs can also be bought with one or more embedded processors, in form of hard processor cores or as licenses for soft processor cores. This will speed up the design phase and of course also decrease the crucial time to market even more. </p><p>The purpose of this master’s thesis was to develop a waveform generator to generate a sine signal and a cosine signal, I and Q, used for radio/radar applications. The digital signals should have an output data rate of at least 100 MHz. The digital part of the system should be implemented in hardware using e.g. an FPGA. To convert the digital signals to analog signals two D/A converters are used. The analog signals, I and Q, should have a bandwidth of 1 MHz - 11 MHz. </p><p>The waveform generator was developed and implemented using a Virtex II FPGA from Xilinx. An embedded microprocessor within the FPGA, MicroBlaze, in form of a soft processor core was used to control the system. A user interface program running on the microprocessor was also developed. Testing of the whole system, both hardware and software, was done. The system is able to generate digital sine and cosine curves of an output data rate of 100 MHz.</p>

Communication and digital signal processing applications of today are often developed as fully integrated systems on one single chip and are implemented as application specific integrated circuits using e.g. VLSI technology. As the systems are getting more and more complex in terms of speed and performance the chip size and the design time tend to increase rapidly. This will result in search for cheaper and less time consuming alternatives. One alternative is field programmable gate arrays, so called FPGAs. The FPGAs are getting faster, cheaper and the number of gates increases all the time. A long list of ready to use functional blocks so called intellectual property (IP) blocks can be used in FPGAs. The latest FPGAs can also be bought with one or more embedded processors, in form of hard processor cores or as licenses for soft processor cores. This will speed up the design phase and of course also decrease the crucial time to market even more. The purpose of this master’s thesis was to develop a waveform generator to generate a sine signal and a cosine signal, I and Q, used for radio/radar applications. The digital signals should have an output data rate of at least 100 MHz. The digital part of the system should be implemented in hardware using e.g. an FPGA. To convert the digital signals to analog signals two D/A converters are used. The analog signals, I and Q, should have a bandwidth of 1 MHz - 11 MHz. The waveform generator was developed and implemented using a Virtex II FPGA from Xilinx. An embedded microprocessor within the FPGA, MicroBlaze, in form of a soft processor core was used to control the system. A user interface program running on the microprocessor was also developed. Testing of the whole system, both hardware and software, was done. The system is able to generate digital sine and cosine curves of an output data rate of 100 MHz.

This study explores a solution to promote Test-Driven Development in the embedded development field, a field that has not adopted the use as widely as other software development fields. In this study, an evaluation process of Unit Test Framework was created. In Test-Driven Development, creating unit tests is an essential part where Unit Test Framework is a software and tool to help developers create such unit tests. The target group is junior embedded developers, catering to a niche group with the reason for introducing and promoting Test-Driven Development early on. This research was conducted specifically in the software development field for embedded microcontrollers in C++.  The first research area was about what junior embedded developers think are the most important features and criteria a Unit Test Framework should consist of and support. Those results, along with the author's own opinions from their experience of using Unit Test Framework, a list of features and criteria was compiled for the model to evaluate. The model tests and evaluates criteria using both an observational and experimental method. The result outlines each framework's different strengths and weaknesses and lowers the knowledge barrier, thereby promoting Test-Driven Development and the use of Unit Test Frameworks.

Panoramas or stitched images are used in topographical mapping, panoramic 3D reconstruction, deep space exploration image processing, medical image processing, multimedia broadcasting, system automation, photography and other numerous fields. Generating real-time panoramic images in small embedded computer is of particular importance being lighter, smaller and mobile imaging system. Moreover, this type of lightweight panoramic imaging system is used for different types of industrial or home inspection. A real-time handheld panorama imaging system is developed using embedded real-time Linux as software module and Gumstix Overo and PandaBoard ES as hardware module. The proposed algorithm takes 62.6602 milliseconds to generate a panorama frame from three images using a homography matrix. Hence, the proposed algorithm is capable of generating panorama video with 15.95909365 frames per second. However, the algorithm is capable to be much speedier with more optimal homography matrix. During the development, Ångström Linux and Ubuntu Linux are used as the operating system with Gumstix Overo and PandaBoard ES respectively. The real-time kernel patch is used to configure the non-real-time Linux distribution for real-time operation. The serial communication software tools C-Kermit, Minicom are used for terminal emulation between development computer and small embedded computer. The software framework of the system consist UVC driver, V4L/V4L2 API, OpenCV API, FFMPEG API, GStreamer, x264, Cmake, Make software packages. The software framework of the system also consist stitching algorithm that has been adopted from available stitching methods with necessary modification. Our proposed stitching process automatically finds out motion model of the Spherical camera system and saves the matrix in a look file. The extracted homography matrix is then read from look file and used to generate real-time panorama image. The developed system generates real-time 180° view panorama image from a spherical camera system. Beside, a test environment is also developed to experiment calibration and real-time stitching with different image parameters. It is able to take images with different resolutions as input and produce high quality real-time panorama image. The QT framework is used to develop a multifunctional standalone software that has functions for displaying real-time process algorithm performance in real-time through data visualization, camera system calibration and other stitching options. The software runs both in Linux and Windows. Moreover, the system has been also realized as a prototype to develop a chimney inspection system for a local company. / Main Uddin-Al-Hasan, E-mail: main.hasan@gmail.com