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The exponential growth of computer power is no longer limited to stand alone computing systems but applies to all areas of commercial embedded computing systems. The ongoing rapid growth in intelligent embedded systems is visible in the commercial automotive area, where a modern car today implements up to 80 different electronic control units (ECUs) and their total memory size has been increased to several hundreds of megabyte. This growth in the commercial mass production world has led to new challenges, even within the automotive industry but also in other business areas where cost pressure is high. The need to drive cost down means that every cent spent on recurring engineering costs needs to be justified. A conflict between functional requirements (functionality, system reliability, production and manufacturing aspects etc.), testing and maintainability aspects is given. Software reprogramming, as a key issue within the automotive industry, solve that given conflict partly in the past. Software Reprogramming for in-field service and maintenance in the after sales markets provides a strong method to fix previously not identified software errors. But the increasing software sizes and therefore the increasing software reprogramming times will reduce the benefits. Especially if ECU’s software size growth faster than vehicle’s onboard infrastructure can be adjusted. The thesis result enables cost prediction of embedded systems’ software reprogramming by generating an effective and reliable model for reprogramming time for different existing and new technologies. This model and additional research results contribute to a timeline for short term, mid term and long term solutions which will solve the currently given problems as well as future challenges, especially for the automotive industry but also for all other business areas where cost pressure is high and software reprogramming is a key issue during products life cycle.

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We have investigated several topics in the area of manganites including oxygen disorder, grain boundaries, low field magnetoresistance, magnetoresistive anisotropy and magnetic properties. Studied materials were in the form of polycrystalline samples and epitaxial thin films. The studied compounds were Sm(1-x)Sr(x)MnO3 (SSMO) and La(1-x)Ca(x)MnO3 (LCMO). 1-We have studied the effects of oxygen disorder and grain boundary disorder in the SSMO system close to half hole doping level. The temperature dependencies of resistivity and magnetoresistance were measured as a function of the vacuum annealing time. We observed a logarithmic increase of the resistivity as a function of vacuum annealing time. We have shown that an increasing grain boundary disorder softens the magnetic phase transition from a first order phase transition into a second order transition. Furthermore, the peaks in the resistivity and specific heat are broadened and there is an increase in the charge-carrier scattering rates in the metallic state. On the other hand, the polaronic hopping activation energies in the insulating state changed slightly as a function of grain boundary disorder. The origin of these phenomena is discussed. Magnetoresistive anisotropy has been studied as a function of the grain size. Results showed a strong grain size dependence of anisotropic electrical transport in granular samples of manganites. 2-We investigated the anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) in ultrathin LCMO films grown on various substrates. It was found that depending on the strain state, the AMR in some of these systems exceeds 100% and can even change sign. These changes are dramatic when compared to the few percent change in AMR in conventional ferromagnets. The mechanism behind these changes in the AMR is discussed. We have also studied the effects of strain on resistive peak broadening with a simple percolation model. We have shown that strain associated with a lattice mismatched substrate in thin films can cause new electronic behavior, not found in bulk materials or thicker films of the same chemical composition. Resistivity of the ultra thin films exhibit strong relaxation effects when measured as a function of time in a constant magnetic field.

This Master Thesis examines the possibility to apply a magnetometer developed by the Ångstöm space technology center to a small magnetic ground penetrating radar system with dimension in the order of one dm³. The magnetometer is broadband (DC-1GHz) and miniaturized. Loop antennas are used to transmit the signal.    A series of experiments have been performed in order to characterize the system, mainly examining the ability to determine distance to a target, using continuous sine wave signals and pulse trains. Standing wave patterns are formed between antenna and target and can be used for determining distance in the continuous case. When using a pulse train, the echo from the target could not be resolved using the current experiment set up, distance could therefore not be determined.

This report is a summary of the development of sensor integration for low-cost crash avoidance for over-land commercial trucks. The goal of the project was to build and test a system composed of low-cost commercially available sensors arranged on a truck trailer to monitor the environment around the truck. The system combines the data from each sensor to increase the reliability of the sensor using a probabilistic data fusion approach. A combination of ultrasonic and magnetoresistive sensors was used in this study. In addition, Radar and digital imaging were investigated as reference signals and possible candidates for additional sensor integration. However, the primary focus of this work is the integration of the ultrasonic and magnetoresistive sensors. During the investigation the individual sensors were evaluated for their use in the system. This included communication with vendors and lab and field testing. In addition, the sensors were modeled using an analytical mathematical model to help understand and predict the sensor behavior. Next, an algorithm was developed to fuse the data from the individual sensors. A probabilistic approach was used based on Bayesian filtering with a prediction-correction algorithm. Sensor fusion was implemented using joint a probability algorithm. The output of the system is a prediction of the likelihood of the presence of a vehicle in a given region near the host truck trailer. The algorithm was demonstrated on the fusion of an ultrasonic sensor and a magnetic sensor. Testing was conducted using both a light pickup truck and also with a class 8 truck. Various scenarios were evaluated to determine the system performance. These included vehicles passing the host truck from behind and the host truck passing vehicles. Also scenarios were included to test the system at distinguishing other vehicles from objects that are not vehicles such as sign posts, walls or railroads that could produce electronic signals similar to those of vehicles and confuse the system. The test results indicate that the system was successful at predicting the presence and absence of vehicles and also successful at eliminating false positives from objects that are not vehicles with overall accuracy ranging from 90 to 100% depending on the scenario. Some additional improvements in the performance are expected with future improvements in the algorithm discussed in the report. The report includes a discussion of the mapping of the algorithm output with the implementation of current and future safety and crash avoidance technologies based on the level of confidence of the algorithm output and the seriousness of the impending crash scenario. For example, irreversible countermeasures such as firing an airbag or engaging the brakes should only be initiated if the confidence of the signal is very high, while reversible countermeasures such as warnings to the driver or nearby vehicles can be initiated with a relatively lower confidence. The results indicate that the system shows good potential as a low cost alternative to competing systems which require multiple, high cost sensors. Truck fleet operators will likely adopt technology only if the costs are justified by reduced damage and insurance costs, therefore developing an effective crash avoidance system at a low cost is required for the technology to be adopted on a large scale.

This thesis includes a study of a touch-free sensor systems and different principles for measuring a magnetic field. An in-depth study was conducted to describe two important principles in these contexts, i.e. Magnetoresistance principle and the Hall Effect principle. A market evaluation of different sensor chips developed on these principles was conducted. Furthermore, the study should be linked to existing principles to determine the position of a rotating axis. Function tests show that the performance requirement for each component was met. The results based on verification tests show that it is important to have a better mechanical connection between drive and device. Temperature tests show that the system meets the project specification at room temperature, but large angular deviations occur in temperature change, especially when driving with short steps. This thesis can be continued by reprogramming the source code and developing new software that can control more parameters and make it more accurate at positioning. Another recommendation would be to investigate and compare other sensor chips because there are several sensors that can apply to the system. Further improvements can be made by performing more tests on the system. / Examensarbetet innefattar en studie om beröringsfritt givarsystem och olika principer för att mäta ett magnetfält. En fördjupad litteraturstudie utfördes för att förklara två viktiga principer i dessa sammanhang d.v.s. magnetoresistiva principen och hallgivarprincipen. En marknadsutvärdering av olika sensor-chip som utvecklats enligt dessa principer genomfördes. Vidare ska studien kopplas till kända principer för att bestämma positionen för en roterande axel. Funktionstester visar att prestandakravet för varje komponent uppfylldes. Resultaten baserade på verifieringstester visar att det är viktigt att ha en bättre mekanisk koppling mellan drivdon och enhet. Temperaturtester visar att systemet uppfyller projektets kravspecifikation vid rumstemperaturen men det uppkommer stora vinkelavvikelser vid temperaturförändring framför allt vid körning med korta steg. Detta arbete kan fortsättas genom omprogrammering av källkoden och utveckling av ny programvara som kan styra fler parametrar och göra det mer exakt vid positionsbestämning. En annan rekommendation skulle vara att undersöka och jämföra andra sensorchip eftersom det finns flera sensorer som kan tillämpa i systemet. Ytterligare förbättringar kan göras genom att utföra fler tester på systemet.

付記する学位プログラム名: 京都大学卓越大学院プログラム「先端光・電子デバイス創成学」 / 京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(工学) / 甲第24891号 / 工博第5171号 / 新制||工||1987(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院工学研究科電子工学専攻 / (主査)教授 白石 誠司, 准教授 掛谷 一弘, 教授 小野 輝男, 教授 森山 貴広 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering) / Kyoto University / DFAM

Advanced scanning magnetoresistive microscopy (SMRM) — a robust magnetic imaging and probing technique — is presented. It utilizes conventional recording heads of a hard disk drive as sensors. The spatial resolution of modern tunneling magnetoresistive sensors is nowadays comparable with more commonly used magnetic force microscopes. Important advantages of SMRM are the ability to detect pure magnetic signals directly proportional to the out-of-plane magnetic stray field, negligible sensor stray fields, and the ability to apply local bipolar magnetic field pulses up to 10 kOe with bandwidths from DC up to 1 GHz. The performance assessment of this method and corresponding best practices are discussed in the first section of this work. An application example of SMRM, the study on chemically ordered L10 FePt is presented in a second section. A constructed heater unit of SMRM opens the path to investigate temperature-dependent magnetic properties of the medium by recording and imaging at elevated temperatures. L10 FePt is one of the most promising materials to reach limits in storage density of future magnetic recording devices based on heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). In order to be implemented in an actual recording scheme, the medium Curie temperature should be lowered. This will reduce the power requirements, and hence, wear and tear on a heat source — integrated plasmonic antenna. It is expected that the exchange coupling of FePt to thin Fe layers provides high saturation magnetization and elevated Curie temperature of the composite. The addition of Cu allows adjusting the magnetic properties such as perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, coercivity, saturation magnetization, and Curie temperature. This should lead to a lowering of the switching field of the hard magnetic FeCuPt layer and a reduction of thermally induced recording errors. In this regard, the influence of the Fe layer thickness on the switching behavior of the hard layer was investigated, revealing a strong reduction for Fe layer thicknesses larger than the exchange length of Fe. The recording performance of single-layer and bilayer structures was studied by SMRM roll-off curves and histogram methods at temperatures up to 180 °C In the last section of this work, SMRM advantages are demonstrated by various experiments on a two-dimensional magnetic vortex lattice. Magnetic vortex is a peculiar complex magnetization configuration which typically appears in a soft magnetic structured materials. It consists of two coupled sub-systems: the core, where magnetization vector points perpendicular to the structure plane, and the curling magnetization where magnetic flux is rotating in-plane. The unique properties of a magnetic vortex making it an object of a great research and technological interest for spintronic applications in sensorics or data storage. Manipulation of the vortex core as well as the rotation sense by applying a local field pulse is shown. A spatially resolved switching map reveals a significant "write window" where vortex cores can be addressed correctly. Moreover, the external in-plane magnet extension unit allow analyzing the magnetic vortex rotational sense which is extremely practical for magnetic coupling investigations of magnetic coupling phenomena.

Nanomagnetic logic, incorporating logic bits in the magnetization orientations of single-domain nanomagnets, has garnered attention as an alternative to transistor-based logic due to its non-volatility and unprecedented energy-efficiency. The energy efficiency of this scheme is determined by the method used to flip the magnetization orientations of the nanomagnets in response to one or more inputs and produce the desired output. Unfortunately, the large dissipative losses that occur when nanomagnets are switched with a magnetic field or spin-transfer-torque inhibit the promised energy-efficiency. Another technique offering superior energy efficiency, “straintronics”, involves the application of a voltage to a piezoelectric layer to generate a strain which is transferred to an elastically coupled magnetrostrictive layer, causing magnetization rotation. The functionality of this scheme can be enhanced further by introducing magnetocrystalline anisotropy in the magnetostrictive layer, thereby generating four stable magnetization states (instead of the two stable directions produced by shape anisotropy in ellipsoidal nanomagnets). Numerical simulations were performed to implement a low-power universal logic gate (NOR) using such 4-state magnetostrictive/piezoelectric nanomagnets (Ni/PZT) by clocking the piezoelectric layer with a small electrostatic potential (~0.2 V) to switch the magnetization of the magnetic layer. Unidirectional and reliable logic propagation in this system was also demonstrated theoretically. Besides doubling the logic density (4-state versus 2-state) for logic applications, these four-state nanomagnets can be exploited for higher order applications such as image reconstruction and recognition in the presence of noise, associative memory and neuromorphic computing. Experimental work in strain-based switching has been limited to magnets that are multi-domain or magnets where strain moves domain walls. In this work, we also demonstrate strain-based switching in 2-state single-domain ellipsoidal magnetostrictive nanomagnets of lateral dimensions ~200 nm fabricated on a piezoelectric substrate (PMN-PT) and studied using Magnetic Force Microscopy (MFM). A nanomagnetic Boolean NOT gate and unidirectional bit information propagation through a finite chain of dipole-coupled nanomagnets are also shown through strain-based "clocking". This is the first experimental demonstration of strain-based switching in nanomagnets and clocking of nanomagnetic logic (Boolean NOT gate), as well as logic propagation in an array of nanomagnets.