abstract: Sensing and controlling current flow is a fundamental requirement for many electronic systems, including power management (DC-DC converters and LDOs), battery chargers, electric vehicles, solenoid positioning, motor control, and power monitoring. Current Shunt Monitor (CSM) systems have various applications for precise current monitoring of those aforementioned applications. CSMs enable current measurement across an external sense resistor (RS) in series to current flow. Two different types of CSMs designed and characterized in this paper. First design used direct current reading method and the other design used indirect current reading method. Proposed CSM systems can sense power supply current ranging from 1mA to 200mA for the direct current reading topology and from 1mA to 500mA for the indirect current reading topology across a typical board Cu-trace resistance of 1 ohm with less than 10 µV input-referred offset, 0.3 µV/°C offset drift and 0.1% accuracy for both topologies. Proposed systems avoid using a costly zero-temperature coefficient (TC) sense resistor that is normally used in typical CSM systems. Instead, both of the designs used existing Cu-trace on the printed circuit board (PCB) in place of the costly resistor. The systems use chopper stabilization at the front-end amplifier signal path to suppress input-referred offset down to less than 10 µV. Switching current-mode (SI) FIR filtering technique is used at the instrumentation amplifier output to filter out the chopping ripple caused by input offset and flicker noise by averaging half of the phase 1 signal and the other half of the phase 2 signal. In addition, residual offset mainly caused by clock feed-through and charge injection of the chopper switches at the chopping frequency and its multiple frequencies notched out by the since response of the SI-FIR filter. A frequency domain Sigma Delta ADC which is used for the indirect current reading type design enables a digital interface to processor applications with minimally added circuitries to build a simple 1st order Sigma Delta ADC. The CSMs are fabricated on a 0.7µm CMOS process with 3 levels of metal, with maximum Vds tolerance of 8V and operates across a common mode range of 0 to 26V for the direct current reading type and of 0 to 30V for the indirect current reading type achieving less than 10nV/sqrtHz of flicker noise at 100 Hz for both approaches. By using a semi-digital SI-FIR filter, residual chopper offset is suppressed down to 0.5mVpp from a baseline of 8mVpp, which is equivalent to 25dB suppression. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Electrical Engineering 2011

<p>Modern reactors promise enhanced capabilities not previously possible including integration with the smart grid, remote monitoring, reduced operation and maintenance costs, and more efficient operation. . Modern reactors are designed for installation to remote areas and integration to the electric smart grid, which would require the need for secure undisturbed remote control and the implementation of two-way communications and advanced digital technologies. However, two-way communications between the reactor facility, the enterprise network and the grid would require continuous operation data transmission. This would necessitate a deep understanding of cybersecurity and the development of a robust cybersecurity management plan in all reactor communication networks. Currently, there is a limited number of testbeds, mostly virtual, to perform cybersecurity research and investigate and demonstrate cybersecurity implementations in a nuclear environment. To fill this gap, the goal of this thesis is the development of a real-time cyber-physical testbed with real operational and information technology data to allow for cybersecurity research in a representative nuclear environment. In this thesis, a prototypic cyber-physical testbed was designed, built, tested, and installed in PUR-1. The cyber-physical testbed consists of an Auxiliary Moderator Displacement Rod (AMDR) that experimentally simulates a regulating rod, several sensors, and digital controllers mirroring Purdue University Reactor One (PUR-1) operation. The cyber-physical testbed is monitored and controlled remotely from the Remote Monitoring and Simulation Station (RMSS), located in another building with no line of sight to the reactor room. The design, construction and testing of the cyber-physical testbed are presented along with its capabilities and limitations. The cyber-physical testbed network architecture enables the performance of simulated cyberattacks including false data injection and denial of service. Utilizing the RMSS setup, collected information from the cyber-physical testbed is compared with real-time operational PUR-1 data in order to evaluate system response under simulated cyber events. Furthermore, a physics-based model is developed and benchmarked to simulate physical phenomena in PUR-1 reactor pool and provide information about reactor parameters that cannot be collected from reactor instrumentation system.</p>