The thesis deals with the design of wireless communication system using Wireless M- Bus, which works in the 169 MHz band. This system is designed to collect data from meters that are not equipped with a radio and have pulse outputs. The thesis describes the Wireless M-Bus standard and the current components of the communication system used by ModemTec. It also describes the selection and design of a suitable hardware implementing the receiver and transmitter modules and the firmware design for these modules. The thesis deals with the parameterization of the transmitter module in order to specify the parameters of the transmitted measured quantity.

Asynchronous design is a possible alternative design methodology that has the ability to alleviate issues associated with clock skew, power dissipation, and process and environmental variability among transistors, issues encountered in typical synchronous design methodologies. This investigation studies the implementation of two asynchronous models of the Texas Instruments MSP430 processor family using a logic system known as Null Convention Logic (NCL). The study also investigates two design styles of NCL: the data-driven and control-driven design styles. This example and others show that although there are tradeoffs in chip area and performance, the control-driven design style is a viable methodology that can lead to designs that are low in energy usage. The openMSP430 processor project is the baseline for the investigation as it is a mature open-source project. Silicon-proven multiple times and fully synthesizable, it parallels the original Texas Instruments family nearly cycle for cycle. UNCLE (Unified NCL Environment) is a toolset used to create comparable implementations of the openMSP430 architecture that are data-driven and control-driven in nature. This investigation shows that the control-driven implementation has a slightly larger chip area due to the complexity of the control path and its effects on the data path. While the control path has a lower area than the data-driven model due to area optimization, the data path of the control-driven version is larger than that of the data-driven model. Because of these issues of complexity in both the control and data paths, the performance of the model suffers as well, degrading from the already poor performance of the traditional data-driven NCL model. Along with the increase in chip area and the decrease in performance, the control-driven model sees a 50.2% average decrease in energy usage as compared to the data-driven model. As with most design choices in engineering, there are tradeoffs when using either design style of NCL. This investigation serves to allow designers to make a well-informed decision when deciding between the two.

Embedded systems are so ubiquitous that they account for almost 90% of all the computing devices. They range from very small scale devices with an 8-bit microcontroller and few kilobytes of RAM to large-scale devices featuring PC-like performance with full-blown 32-bit or 64-bit processors, special-purpose acceleration hardware and several gigabytes of RAM. Each of these classes of embedded systems have unique set of challenges in terms of hardware utilization, performance and power consumption. As network connectivity becomes a standard feature in these devices, security becomes an important concern. Public Key Cryptography is an indispensable tool to implement various security features necessary on these embedded platforms. In this thesis, we provide optimized PKC solutions on platforms belonging to two extreme classes of the embedded system spectrum. First, we target high-end embedded platforms Qualcomm Snapdragon and Intel Atom. Each of these platforms features a dual-core processor, a GPU and a gigabyte of RAM. We use the SIMD coprocessor built into these processors to accelerate the modular arithmetic which accounts for the majority of execution time in Elliptic Curve Cryptography. We exploit the structure of NIST primes to perform the reduction step as we perform the multiplication. Our implementation runs over two times faster than OpenSSL implementations on the respective platforms. The second platform we targeted is an energy-harvested wireless sensor node which has a 16-bit MSP430 microcontroller and a low power RF interface. The system derives its power from a solar panel and is constrained in terms of available energy and computational power. We analyze the computation and communication energy requirements for different signature schemes, each with a different trade-off between computation and communication. We investigate the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), the Lamport-Diffie one-time hash-based signature scheme (LD-OTS) and the Winternitz one-time hash-based signature scheme (W-OTS). We demonstrate that there’s a trade-off between energy needs, security level and algorithm selection. However, when we consider the energy needs for the overall system, we show that all schemes are within one order of magnitude from each another. / Master of Science

The work deals with design of system for monitoring elderly people. The final product of this thesis will be used to ensure protection of old person´s health. The device will also remind water regime, taking of medicine, measure gas concentration and it will make an emergency call or send an emergency SMS. It will inform an old person about time and date and it will also be working in case of power fail.

Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) microcontrollers can be useful for non-critical processing on spaceborne platforms. Many of these microprocessors are inexpensive and consume little power. However, the software running on these processors is vulnerable to radiation upsets, which can cause unpredictable program execution or corrupt data. Space missions cannot allow these errors to interrupt functionality or destroy gathered data. As a result, several techniques have been developed to reduce the effect of these upsets. Some proposed techniques involve altering the processor hardware, which is impossible for a COTS device. Alternately, the software running on the microcontroller can be modified to detect or correct data corruption. There have been several proposed approaches for software mitigation. Some take advantage of advanced architectural features, others modify software by hand, and still others focus their techniques on specific microarchitectures. However, these approaches do not consider the limited resources of microcontrollers and are difficult to use across multiple platforms. This thesis explores fully automated software-based mitigation to improve the reliability of microcontrollers and microcontroller software in a high radiation environment. Several difficulties associated with automating software protection in the compilation step are also discussed. Previous mitigation techniques are examined, resulting in the creation of COAST (COmpiler-Assisted Software fault Tolerance), a tool that automatically applies software protection techniques to user code. Hardened code has been verified by a fault injection campaign; the mean work to failure increased, on average, by 21.6x. When tested in a neutron beam, the neutron cross sections of programs decreased by an average of 23x, and the average mean work to failure increased by 5.7x.

The thesis deals with design and construction of low-power measurement device with power over optical fiber. This device should measure input signal in range of 50 mV to 50 V and the results of measurement sent through optical fiber into sensing module.

This thesis project describes the design and construction of an automated system for maintaining live conditions in aquarium. The main purpose of the system is to automate certain procedures and to ensure control of important environmental parameters of artificial breeding of aquarium animals and plants. The device regulates lighting, temperature, CO2 concentration and other parameters. The LCD with touch screen is used to system control and to display measured values.

This thesis deals with a design of speedometer for sportsmen, which is able to display current speed and to record a trip. The proposed parts are small enough. That's why sportsman won't be bothered much. The GPS is used for measurement of speed and to determine position. A strip, which consists of LED diodes, is used for speed displaying. The strip is situated in a sportsman's glasses. A trip is recorded to a MultiMediaCard. The FAT file system is used on the memory card.

This work descibes general principles of measuring the alternating current and voltage using conventional and unconventional sensors.This work shows specific parmeters conected with principles of the measurement, advantages and disadvantages of individual measuring procedures, types of output signals, precisions, limitations, ways of power and so on. Part of the work is to find optimal measurement procedure, which can be aplicated to practical measuring of alternating currents and voltage. Main part of the work concerns the realisation of optimal method of measuring alternating current.

This project describes a concept of a library architecture that will enable to hide platform-specific behaviour of different MCUs under an united API that will enable the developers to develop portable applications. After a short summary of the current situation, the report describes the main principles of the library-to-be followed by definitions of behaviour of each module that can be controlled using the library. Then this report describes techniques used in the implementation and platform specifics. In the conclusion there is an idea of the direction in which the development could continue.