Reliability is of the utmost importance for safety of electronic systems built for the automotive, industrial, and medical sectors. In these systems, the embedded memory is especially sensitive due to the large number of minimum-sized devices in the cell arrays. Memory failures which occur after the manufacture-time burnin testing phase are particularly difficult to address since redundancy allocation is no longer available and fault detection schemes currently used in industry generally focus on the cell array while leaving the peripheral logic vulnerable to faults. Even in the cell array, conventional error control coding (ECC) has been limited in its ability to detect and correct failures greater than a few bits, due to the high latency or area overhead of correction [43]. Consequently, improvements to conventional memory resilience techniques are of great importance to continued reliable operation and to counter the raw bit error rate of the memory arrays in future technologies at economically feasible design points [11, 36, 37, 53, 56, 70]. In this thesis we examine the landscape of design techniques for reliability, and introduce two novel contributions for improving reliability with low overhead. To address failures occurring in the cell array, we have implemented an erasurebased ECC scheme (EB-ECC) that can extend conventional ECC already used in memory to correct and detect multiple erroneous bits with low overhead. An important component of this scheme is the method for detecting erasures at runtime; we propose a novel ternary-output sense amplifier design which can reduce the risk of undetected read latency failures in small-swing bitline designs. While most study has focused on the static random access memory (SRAM) cell array, for high-reliability products, it is important to examine the effects of failures on the peripheral logic as well. We have designed a wordline assertion comparator (WLAC) which has lower area overhead in large cache designs than competing techniques in the literature to detect address decoder failure.

The main contribution of this thesis is the statistical analysis of orthogonal frequency di- vision multiplexing (OFDM) systems operating over wireless channels that are both fre- quency selective and Rayleigh fading. We first describe the instantaneous capacity of such systems using a central limit theorem, as well as the asymptotic capacity of a power lim- ited OFDM system as the number of subcarriers approaches infinity. We then analyse the performance of uncoded OFDM systems by first developing bounds on the block error rate. Next we show that the distribution of the number of symbol errors within each block may be tightly approximated, and derive the distribution of an upper bound on the total variation distance. Finally, the central result of this thesis proposes the use of lattices for encodingOFDMsystems. For this, we detail a particular method of using lattices to encode OFDMsystems, and derive the optimalmaximumlikelihood decodingmetric. Generalised Minimum Distance (GMD) decoding is then introduced as a lower complexity method of decoding lattice encoded OFDM. We derive the optimal reliability metric for GMD decod- ing of OFDM systems operating over frequency selective channels, and develop analytical upper bounds on the error rate of lattice encoded OFDM systems employing GMD decod- ing.

This dissertation presents and analyzes two new algorithms for sparse direct solution methods based on the use of local-global solution (LOGOS) modes. One of the new algorithms is a rigorous error control strategy for LOGOS-based matrix factorizations that utilize overlapped, localizing modes (OL-LOGOS) on a shifted grid. The use of OL-LOGOS modes is critical to obtaining asymptotically efficient factorizations from LOGOS-based methods. Unfortunately, the approach also introduces a non-orthogonal basis function structure. This can cause errors to accumulate across levels of a multilevel implementation, which has previously posed a barrier to rigorous error control for the OL-LOGOS factorization method. This limitation is overcome, and it is shown that it is possible to efficiently decouple the fundamentally non-orthogonal factorization subspaces in a manner that prevents multilevel error propagation. This renders the OL-LOGOS factorization error controllable in a relative RMS sense. The impact of the new, error-controlled OL-LOGOS factorization algorithm on computational resource utilization is discussed and several numerical examples are presented to illustrate the performance of the improved algorithm relative to previously reported results. The second algorithmic development considered is the development of efficient out-of-core (OOC) versions of the OL-LOGOS factorization algorithm that allow associated software tools to take advantage of additional resources for memory management. The proposed OOC algorithm incorporates a memory page definition that is tailored to match the flow of the OL-LOGOS factorization procedure. Efficiency of the function of the part is evaluated using a quantitative approach, because the tested massive storage device performances do not follow analytical results. The performance latency and the memory usage of the resulting OOC tools are compared with in-core performance results. Both the new error control algorithm and the OOC method have been incorporated into previously existing software tools, and the dissertation presents results for real-world simulation problems.

No description available.

Multi-view video is capable of presenting a full and accurate depth perception of a scene. The concept of multi-view video is becoming more useful especially in 3D display systems by enhancing the viewing of high resolution stereoscopic images from arbitrary viewpoints without the use of any special glasses. Like monoscopic video, the multi-view video is faced with different challenges such as: reliable compression, storage and bandwidth due to the increased number of views as well as the high sensitivity to transmission errors. All these may lead to a detrimental effect on the reconstructed views. The work in this thesis investigates the problems and challenges of transmission losses in a multi-view video bitstream over error prone wireless networks. Based on the network simulation results, the proposed technique is capable of addressing the problem of transmission losses. In practical wireless networks, transmission errors are inevitable and pose a serious challenge to the coded video data. The aim of this research effort is to examine the effect of these errors in a multi-view video bitstream when transmitted over a lossy channel. Moreover, this research work aims to develop a novel scheme that can make the multi-view coded videos more robust to transmission errors by minimizing the error effects and improving the perceptual quality. Multi-layer data partitioning as an error resilient technique is developed in JMVC 8.5 reference software in order to make the multi-view video bitstream more robust during transmission. In addition to that, we propose a simple decoding scheme that can support the decoding of the multi-layer data partitioning bitstream over channels with high error rate. The proposed technique is benchmarked with the already existing H.264/AVC data partitioning technique. The work in this thesis also employs the use of group of pictures as a coding parameter to investigate and reduce the effects of transmission errors in multi-view video transmitted over a very high error rate channel. The experiments are carried out with different error loss rates in order to evaluate the performance of these techniques in terms of perceptual quality when transmitted over a simulated erroneous channel. Errors are introduced using the Sirannon network simulator. The error performance of each technique is evaluated and analysed both objectively and subjectively after reconstruction. The results of the research investigation and simulation are presented and analysed in chapter six of the thesis.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper presents a mathematical model for Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM) in frequency selective multipath encountered in aeronautical telemetry. The use of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) for modulation and demodulation is reviewed. Error control coding with interleaving in frequency is able to provide reliable data communications during frequency selective multipath fade events. Simulations demonstrate QPSK mapped COFDM performs well in a multipath fading environment with parameters typically encountered in aeronautical telemetry.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / With the discovery of Turbo Codes in 1993, interest in developing error control coding schemes that approach channel capacity has intensified. Some of this interest has been focused on lowdensity parity-check (LDPC) codes due to their high performance characteristics and reasonable decoding complexity. A great deal of literature has focused on performance of regular and irregular LDPC codes of various rates and on a variety of channels. This paper presents the simulated performance results of a serial concatenated LDPC coding system on an AWGN channel. Performance and complexity comparisons between this serial LDPC system and typical LDPC systems are made.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / Three Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) mapped COFDM systems demonstrating a continuum of complexity levels are simulated over an evolving three ray model of the multipath fading channel with parameters interpolated from actual channel sounding experiments. The first COFDM system uses coherent QPSK and convolutional coding with interleaving in frequency, channel equalization and soft decision decoding; the second uses convolutional coding with interleaving in frequency, Differential Phase Shift Keying (DPSK) and soft decision decoding; the third system uses a quaternary BCH code with DPSK mapping and Error and Erasure Decoding (EED). All three systems are shown to be able to provide reliable data communication during frequency selective fade events. Simulations demonstrate QPSK mapped COFDM with reasonable complexity performs well in a multipath frequency selective fading environment under parameters typically encountered in aeronautical telemetry.

"Packet loss can be detrimental to real-time interactive video over lossy networks because one lost video packet can propagate errors to many subsequent video frames due to the encoding dependency between frames. Feedback-based error control techniques use feedback information from the decoder to adjust coding parameters at the encoder or retransmit lost packets to reduce the error propagation due to data loss. Feedback-based error control techniques have been shown to be more effective than trying to conceal the error at the encoder or decoder alone since they allow the encoder and decoder to cooperate in the error control process. However, there has been no systematic exploration of the impact of video content and network conditions on the performance of feedback-based error control techniques. In particular, the impact of packet loss, round-trip delay, network capacity constraint, video motion and reference distance on the quality of videos using feedback-based error control techniques have not been systematically studied. This thesis presents analytical models for the major feedback-based error control techniques: Retransmission, Reference Picture Selection (both NACK and ACK modes) and Intra Update. These feedback-based error control techniques have been included in H.263/H.264 and MPEG4, the state of the art video in compression standards. Given a round-trip time, packet loss rate, network capacity constraint, our models can predict the quality for a streaming video with retransmission, Intra Update and RPS over a lossy network. In order to exploit our analytical models, a series of studies has been conducted to explore the effect of reference distance, capacity constraint and Intra coding on video quality. The accuracy of our analytical models in predicting the video quality under different network conditions is validated through simulations. These models are used to examine the behavior of feedback-based error control schemes under a variety of network conditions and video content through a series of analytic experiments. Analysis shows that the performance of feedback-based error control techniques is affected by a variety of factors including round-trip time, loss rate, video content and the Group of Pictures (GOP) length. In particular: 1) RPS NACK achieves the best performance when loss rate is low while RPS ACK outperforms other repair techniques when loss rate is high. However RPS ACK performs the worst when loss rate is low. Retransmission performs the worst when the loss rate is high; 2) for a given round-trip time, the loss rate where RPS NACK performs worse than RPS ACK is higher for low motion videos than it is for high motion videos; 3) Videos with RPS NACK always perform the same or better than videos without repair. However, when small GOP sizes are used, videos without repair perform better than videos with RPS ACK; 4) RPS NACK outperform Intra Update for low-motion videos. However, the performance gap between RPS NACK and Intra Update drops when the round-trip time or the intensity of video motion increases. 5) Although the above trends hold for both VQM and PSNR, when VQM is the video quality metric the performance results are much more sensitive to network loss. 6) Retransmission is effective only when the round-trip time is low. When the round-trip time is high, Partial Retransmission achieves almost the same performance as Full Retransmission. These insights derived from our models can help determine appropriate choices for feedback-based error control techniques under various network conditions and video content. "

O objetivo desta tese é introduzir uma nova metodologia para a cinética bidimensional multi- grupo de difusão de nêutrons em reatores nucleares. A metodologia apresentada usa uma aproximação polinomial em um domínio homogêneo retangular com condições de contornos não homogêneas. Como ela consiste em uma série de Taylor truncada, sua estimativa de erro varia de acordo com o tamanho do retângulo. Os coeficientes são obtidos principalmente pelas suas relações com o termo independente, que _e determinado pela equação diferencial. Estas relações são obtidas apenas pelas condições de contorno, e é demonstrado serem linearmente independentes. Um esquema numérico é feito para assegurar uma rápida convergência. Estes procedimentos feitos para um retângulo homogêneo são feitos para construir soluções para problemas de autovalor e dependentes do tempo de geometria ortogonal global com parâmetros seccionalmente constantes pelo método iterativo SOR. O autovalor dominante e sua autofunção são obtidos pelo método da potência no problema de autovalor. A solução para casos dependentes do tempo usam o método de Euler modificado na variável tempo. Quatro casos-teste clássicos são considerados para ilustração. / The objective of this thesis is to introduce a new methodology for two{dimensional multi{ group neutron diffusion kinetics in a reactor core. The presented methodology uses a polyno- mial approximation in a rectangular homogeneous domain with non{homogeneous boundary conditions. As it consists on a truncated Taylor series, its error estimates varies with the size of the rectangle. The coefficients are obtained mainly by their relations with the independent term, which is determined by the differential equation. These relations are obtained by the boundary conditions only, and these relations are proven linear independent. A numerical scheme is made to assure faster convergence. The procedures done for one homogeneous rectangle are used to construct the solution of global orthogonal geometry with step{wise constant parameters steady state and time dependent problems by the iterative SOR algo- rithm. The dominant eigenvalue and its eigenfunction are obtained by the power method in the eigenvalue problem. The solution for the time dependent cases uses the modi ed Euler method in the time variable. Four classic test cases are considered for illustration.