The design in this work provides an easy and cost-efficient way of performing an FPGA implementation of a specific algorithm through use of a custom hardware design language and communication synthesis. The framework is designed to optimize performance with matrix-type mathematical operations. The largest matrices used in this process are 4x4 matrices. The primary example modeled in this work is MIMO decoding. Making this possible are 16 functional unit containers within the framework, with generalized interfaces, which can hold custom user hardware and IP cores. This framework, which is controlled by a microsequencer, is centered on a matrix-based memory structure comprised of 64 individual dual-ported memory blocks. The microsequencer uses an instruction word that can control every element of the architecture during a single clock cycle. Routing to and from the memory structure uses an optimized form of a crossbar switch with predefined routing paths supporting any combination of input/output pairs needed by the algorithm. A goal at the start of the design was to achieve a clock speed of over 100 MHz; a clock speed of 183 MHz has been achieved. This design is capable of performing a 4x4 matrix inversion within 335 clock cycles, or 1,829 ns. The power efficiency of the design is measured at 17.15 MFLOPS/W. / Master of Science

The modular design methodology has been widely adopted to harness the complexity of large FPGA-based systems. As a result, a number of commercial and academic tool flows emerged to support modular design including Hierarchical Design Flow and Partial Reconfiguration Flow, OpenPR, HMFlow, PARBIT, REPLICA, GoAhead and QFlow frameworks. As all of these projects have shown, a modular approach raises the abstraction level, provides clear boundaries for incremental design, reduces placement complexity, and improves productivity. At the physical layer, modules can be compiled into rectangular regions, suitable for placement on the FPGA fabric. Creating a design then becomes the process of placing all of the modules on the FPGA, followed by inter-module routing. FPGAs, however, are not homogenous, and the shape of individual modules could greatly impact overall device utilization. Prior work in modular assembly utilize modules with a single shape and aspect ratio in the assembly process. Due to the increasing size and heterogeneity of contemporary FPGAs, the placement flexibility of such a module is becoming increasingly limited. This thesis introduces a process that exploits offline shape generation and exploration, enabling the selection of shapes using criterias such as resource usage efficiency, placement flexibility, and device utilization. Module shapes can be generated with these criterias in mind while still taking advantage of the reduced placement complexity of modular design and assembly / Master of Science

The continued expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) in recent years has introduced a myriad of concerns about its security. There have been numerous examples of IoT devices being attacked, demonstrating the need for integrated security. The vulnerability of data transfers in the IoT can be addressed using cryptographic protocols. However, IoT devices are resource-constrained which makes it difficult for them to support existing standards. To address the need for new, standardized lightweight cryptographic algorithms, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) began a Lightweight Cryptography Standardization Process. This work analyzes the Sparkle (Schwaemm and Esch) submission to the process from a hardware based perspective. Two baseline implementations are created, along with one implementation designed to be resistant to side channel analysis and an incremental implementation included for analysis purposes. The implementations use the Hardware API for Lightweight Cryptography to facilitate an impartial evaluation. The results indicate that the side channel resistant implementation resists leaking data while consuming approximately three times the area of the unprotected, incremental implementation and experiencing a 27% decrease in throughput. This work examines how all of these implementations perform, and additionally provides analysis of how they compare to other works of a similar nature. / Master of Science / In today's society, interactions with connected, data-sharing devices have become common. For example, devices like "smart" watches, remote access home security systems, and even connected vending machines have been adopted into many people's day to day routines. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the term used to describe networks of these interconnected devices. As the number of these connected devices continues to grow, there is an increased focus on the security of the IoT. Depending on the type of IoT application, a variety of different types of data can be transmitted. One way in which these data transfers can be protected is through the use of cryptographic protocols. The use of cryptography can provide assurances during data transfers. For example, it can prevent an attacker from reading the contents of a sensitive message. There are several well studied cryptographic protocols in use today. However, many of these protocols were intended for use in more traditional computing platforms. IoT devices are typically much smaller in size than traditional computing platforms. This makes it difficult for them to support these well studied protocols. Therefore, there have been efforts to investigate and standardize new lightweight cryptographic protocols which are well suited for smaller IoT devices. This work analyzes several hardware implementations of an algorithm which was proposed as a submission to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Lightweight Cryptography Standardization Process. The analysis focuses on metrics which can be used to evaluate its suitability for IoT devices.

Nowadays, security is one of the foremost concerns as the confidence in a system is mostly dependent on its ability to protect itself against any attack. The area of Electromagnetic Fault Injection (EMFI) wherein attackers can use electromagnetic (EM) pulses to induce faults has started garnering increasing attention. It became crucial to understand EM attacks and find the best countermeasures. In this race to find countermeasures, different researchers proposed their ideas regarding the generation of EM attacks and their detection. However, it is difficult to see a universal agreement on the nature of these attacks. In this work, we take a closer look at the analysis of the primary EMFI fault models suggested earlier. Initial studies had shown that EM glitches caused timing violations, but recently it was proposed that EM attacks can create bit sets and bit resets. We performed a detailed experimental evaluation of the existing detection schemes on two different FPGA platforms. We present their comparative design analysis concerning their accuracy, precision, and cost. We propose an in situ timing sensor to overcome the disadvantages of the previously proposed detection approaches. This sensor can successfully detect most of the electromagnetic injected faults with high precision. We observed that the EM attack behaves like a localized timing attack in FPGAs which can be identified using the in situ timing sensors. / MS / When computers are built only for a specific application, they are called embedded systems. Over the past decade, there has been an incredible increase in the number of embedded systems around us. Right from washing machines to electronic locks, we can see embedded systems in almost every aspect of our lives. There is an increasing integration of embedded systems in applications such as cars and buildings with the advent of smart technologies. Due to our heavy reliance on such devices, it is vital to protect them against intentional attacks. Apart from the software attacks, it is possible for an attacker to disrupt or control the functioning of a system by physically attacking its hardware using various techniques. We look at one such technique that uses electromagnetic pulses to create faults in a system. We experimentally evaluate two of the previously suggested methods to detect electromagnetic injection attacks. We present a new sensor for this detection which we believe is more effective than the previously discussed detection schemes.

Increasing computing power has been helping researchers understand many complex scientific problems. Scientific computing helps to model and visualize complex processes such as molecular modelling, medical imaging, astrophysics and space exploration by processing large set of data streams collected through sensors or cameras. This produces a massive amount of data which consume a large amount of processing and storage resources. Monitoring the data streams and filtering unwanted information will enable efficient use of the available resources. This thesis proposes a data-centric system that can monitor high-speed data streams in real-time. The proposed system provides a flexible environment where users can plug-in application-specific data monitoring algorithms. The Long Wavelength Array telescope (LWA) is an astronomical apparatus that works with high speed data streams, and the proposed data-centric platform is developed to evaluate FPGAs to implement data monitoring algorithms in LWA. The throughput of the data-centric system has been modeled and it is observed that the developed data-centric system can deliver a maximum throughput of 164 MB/s. / Master of Science

In current Field-Programmable-Logic Architecture (FPGA) design flows, it is very hard to control the routing of submodules. It is thus very hard to make an identical copy of an existing circuit within the same FPGA fabric. We have solved this problem in a way that still enables us to modify the logic function of the copied submodule. Our technique has important applications in the design of side-channel resistant implementations in FPGA. Starting from an existing single-ended design, we are able to create a complementary circuit. The resulting overall circuit strongly reduces the power-consumption-dependent information leaks. We will show all the necessary steps needed to implement secure circuits on a FPGA, from initial design stage all the way to verification of the level of security through laboratory measurements. We show that the direct mapping of a secure ASIC circuit-style in an FPGA does not preserve the same level of security, unless our symmetrical routing technique is employed. We demonstrate our approach on an FPGA prototype of a cryptographic design, and show through power-measurements followed by side-channel power analysis that secure logic implemented with our approach is resistant whereas non-routing-aware directly mapped circuit can be successfully attacked. / Master of Science

Over the years, phased array antennas have provided electronic scanning with high gain and low sidelobe levels for many radar and satellite applications. The need for higher bandwidth as well as greater scanning ability has led to research in the area of aperiodically spaced antenna arrays. Aperiodic arrays use variable spacing between antenna elements and generally require fewer elements than periodically spaced arrays to achieve similar far field pattern performance. This reduction in elements allows the array to be built at much lower cost than traditional phased arrays. This thesis introduces the concept of aperiodic phased arrays and their design via optimization algorithms, specifically Particle Swarm Optimization. An axial mode helix is designed as the antenna array element to obtain the required half power beamwidth and bandwidth. The final optimized aperiodic array is compared to a traditional periodic array and conclusions are made. / Master of Science

With usable spectrum becoming increasingly more congested, the need for robust, adaptive communications to take advantage of spatially-separated signal sources is apparent. Traditional phased array beamforming techniques used for interference removal rely on perfect calibration between elements and precise knowledge of the array configuration; however, if the exact array configuration is not known (unknown or imperfect assumption of element locations, unknown mutual coupling between elements, etc.), these traditional beamforming techniques are not viable, so a blind beamforming approach is required. A novel blind beamforming approach is proposed to address complex narrow-band interference environments where the precise array configuration is unknown. The received signal is decomposed into orthogonal narrow-band partitions using a polyphase filter-bank channelizer, and a rank-reduced version of the received matrix on each sub-channel is computed through reconstruction by retaining a subset of its singular values. The wideband spectrum is synthesized through a near-perfect polyphase reconstruction filter, and a composite wideband spectrum is obtained from the maximum eigenvector of the resulting covariance matrix.The resulting process is shown to suppress numerous interference sources (in special cases even with more than the degrees of freedom of the array), all without any knowledge of the primary signal of interest. Results are validated with both simulation and wireless laboratory over-the-air experimentation. / M.S. / As the number of devices using wireless communications increase, the amount of usable radio frequency spectrum becomes increasingly congested. As a result, the need for robust, adaptive communications to improve spectral efficiency and ensure reliable communication in the presence of interference is apparent. One solution is using beamforming techniques on digital phased array receivers to maximize the energy in a desired direction and steer nulls to remove interference. However, traditional phased array beamforming techniques used for interference removal rely on perfect calibration between antenna elements and precise knowledge of the array configuration. Consequently, if the exact array configuration is not known (unknown or imperfect assumption of element locations, unknown mutual coupling between elements, etc.), these traditional beamforming techniques are not viable, so a beamforming approach with relaxed requirements (blind beamforming) is required. This thesis proposes a novel blind beamforming approach to address complex narrow-band interference in spectrally congested environments where the precise array configuration is unknown. The resulting process is shown to suppress numerous interference sources, all without any knowledge of the primary signal of interest. Results are validated with both simulation and wireless laboratory experimentation conducted with a two-element array, verifying that proposed beamforming approach achieves a similar performance to the theoretical performance bound of receiving packets in AWGN with no interference present.

FPGAs can potentially deliver tremendous acceleration in high-performance server and embedded computing applications. Whether used to augment a processor or as a stand-alone device, these reconfigurable architectures are being deployed in a large number of implementations owing to the massive amounts of parallelism offered. At the same time, a significant challenge encountered in their wide-spread acceptance is the laborious efforts required in programming these devices. The increased development time, level of experience needed by the developers, lower turns per day and difficulty involved in faster iterations over designs affect the time-to-market for many solutions. High-level synthesis aims towards increasing the productivity of FPGAs and bringing them within the reach software developers and domain experts. OpenCL is a specification introduced for parallel programming purposes across platforms. Applications written in OpenCL consist of two parts - a host program for initialization and management, and kernels that define the compute intensive tasks. In this thesis, a compilation flow to generate customized application-specific hardware descriptions from OpenCL computation kernels is presented. The flow uses Xilinx AutoESL tool to obtain the design specification for compute cores. An architecture provided integrates the cores with memory and host interfaces. The host program in the application is compiled and executed to demonstrate a proof-of-concept implementation towards achieving an end-to-end flow that provides abstraction of hardware at the front-end. / Master of Science

Configurable computing machines (CCMs) are available as plug in cards for standard workstations. CCMs make it possible to achieve computing feats on workstations that were previously only possible with super computers. However, it is difficult to create applications for CCMs. The development environment is fragmented and complex. Compilers for CCMS are emerging but they are in their infancy and are inefficient. The difficulties of implementing run time reconfiguration (RTR) on CCMs are addressed in this thesis. Tools and techniques are introduced to simplify the development and synthesis of applications and partitions for RTR applications. A multiplexed memory port (MMP) is presented in JHDL and VHDL that simplifies the memory interface, eases the task of writing applications and creating partitions, and makes applications platform independent. The MMP is incorporated into an existing CCM compiler. It is shown that the MMP can increase the compiler's functionality and efficiency. / Master of Science