A SoC design approach is implemented for the MERGE project which features Machine Learning (ML) interface for the hardware design. This setup deals with detection and localization of impact on a piezo metal composite. Development of the project is executed on Digilent ZYBO board. ZYBO incorporates Xilinx ZYNQ architecture. This architecture provides Processing System (PS) and Programmable Logic (PL) that communicate with each other via AMBA Standard AXI4 Interface. Communication cost have major inuence on the system performance. A optimized hardware software partitioning solution will reduce the communication costs. Therefore, best fitting interface for the provided design is needed to be evaluated to trade-off between cost and performance. High performance of AXI Interface will provide efficient localization of impact, especially for real-time scenario. In the thesis, the performance of three different AXI4 interface are evaluated. Evaluation is performed on the basis of the amount of data transferred and the time taken to process it. Evaluation of interfaces are done through implementation of test cases in Xilinx SDK. Hardware design for AXI4-Interfaces is implemented in Vivado and later tested on Digilent ZYBO board. To test the performance of interfaces, read and write operations are initiated by PS on interface design. Each operation is performed for multiple data lengths. Average execution time is calculated that highlights time taken to transfer the corresponding input data length. Through these tests, it is found that AXI4-Stream is the best choice for a continuous set of data. Preferably, it provides unlimited burst length which is useful for the current project. Among other two interfaces, AXI4-Full performed better in terms of execution time as compared to AXI4-Lite.

The common availability of multiple processors in modern CPU devices and the need to reduce cost of embedded systems has created a drive for integrating functionalities from different parts of a system into a single Multi- Processor System-on-Chip (MPSoC) device. As a result, system resources are shared amongst the critical and non-critical components of the system, which results in a mixed-criticality system (MCS). An example of a MCS is to combine an airbag control unit with the infotainment system of a car, in such a case, both components must be certified unless an isolation mechanism that can prevent the non-critical to interfere with the critical subsystems is implemented. This isolation can be achieved via spatial and temporal partitioning of system resources, such as static mapping of CPUs to critical tasks, memory and IO virtualization, and time domain multiplexing of applications. System isolation is currently achievable through virtualization techniques, and is commonly used in data centers and personal computers. Recently, virtualization solutions have been emerging for embedded systems in order to cope with the increased design complexity, the stringent non-functional requirements, and to facilitate the certification process of MCS. The achieved performance, safety, security, and robustness in a virtualized system depends on the virtualization architecture and hardware platform. This thesis work performs state-of the art research in the field of mixedcriticality embedded systems with a focus on virtualization of embedded systems. As a result, a deep study of virtualization architectures, and open-source virtualization solutions is conducted in order to understand the consequences of using this technology in MCS. The work is concluded with a design and implementation of mixed-criticality embedded system that leverages the hardware capabilities of the target device (Zynq-7000 all programmable SoC), and contributes to the Living Lab WP7 of the EMC2 project.

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are aircraft without a human pilot on board. They are comprised of a ground-based autonomous or human operated control system, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a communication, command and control (C3) link between the two systems. UAS are widely used in military warfare, wildfire mapping, aerial photography, etc primarily to collect and process large amounts of data. While they are highly efficient in data collection and processing, they are susceptible to software espionage and data manipulation. This research aims to provide a novel solution to enhance the security of the flight controller thereby contributing to a secure and robust UAS. The proposed solution begins by introducing a new technology in the domain of flight controllers and how it can be leveraged to overcome the limitations of current flight controllers. The idea is to decouple the applications running on the flight controller from the task of data validation. The authenticity of all external data processed by the flight controller can be checked without any additional overheads on the flight controller, allowing it to focus on more important tasks. To achieve this, we introduce an adjacent controller whose sole purpose is to verify the integrity of the sensor data. The controller is designed using minimal resources from the reconfigurable logic of an FPGA. The secondary I/O processor is implemented on an incipient Zynq SoC based flight controller. The soft-core microprocessor running on the configurable logic of the FPGA serves as a first level check on the sensor data coming into the flight controller thereby forming a trusted boundary layer. / Master of Science

Modern radar technology relies heavily on digital signal processing. As radar technology pushes the boundaries of miniaturization, computational systems must be developed to support the processing demand. One particular application for small radar technology is in modern drone systems. Many drone applications are currently inhibited by safety concerns of autonomous vehicles navigating shared airspace. Research in radar based Detect and Avoid (DAA) attempts to address these concerns by using radar to detect nearby aircraft and choosing an alternative flight path. Implementation of radar on small Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV), however, requires a lightweight and power efficient design. Likewise, the radar processing system must also be small and efficient.This thesis presents the design of the processing system for a small Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) phased array radar. The radar and processing is designed to be light-weight and low-power in order to fly onboard a UAV less than 25 kg in weight. The radar algorithms for this design include a parallelized Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), cross correlation, and beamforming. Target detection algorithms are also implemented. All of the computation is performed in real-time on a Xilinx Zynq 7010 System on Chip (SoC) processor utilizing both FPGA and CPU resources.The radar system (excluding antennas) has dimensions of 2.25 x 4 x 1.5 in3, weighs 120 g, and consumes 8 W of power of which the processing system occupies 2.6 W. The processing system performs over 652 million arithmetic operations per second and is capable of performing the full processing in real-time. The radar has also been tested in several scenarios both airborne on small UAVs as well as on the ground. Small UAVs have been detected to ranges of 350 m and larger aircraft up to 800 m. This thesis will describe the radar design architecture, the custom designed radar hardware, the FPGA based processing implementations, and conclude with an evaluation of the system's effectiveness and performance.

In this exam project the investigation has been done to determine, which profits that can be made by switching an internal bus between two chips, one FPGA and a processor, to an internal bus implemented on only one chip, System on Chip. The work is based on measurements made in real time in Xilinx’s development tools on different buses, AXI4 and AXI4-Light connected to AXI3. The port that is used is FPGA’s own GP-port. Besides measuring the time of transactions also physical aspects have been investigated in this project: space, costs and time. Based on those criteria a comparison to the original construction was made to determine which benefits that can be achieved. The work has shown a number of results that are in comparison with the original construction. The System on Chip has turned out to be a better solution in most cases. When using the AXI4-Light-bus the benefits were not as obvious. Cosmic radiation, temperature or humidity are beyond the scope of this investigation. In the work the hypothetic deductive method has been used to prove that the System on Chip is faster than the original design. In this method three statements must be set up against each other; one statement that ought to be true, one statement that is a contradiction and a conclusion of what is proved. The pre-study pointed out that the System on Chip is a faster solution than the original construction. The method is useful since it proves that the pre-study is comparable to the measured results. / I detta examensarbete har undersökningar gjorts för att fastställa vilka vinster som går att göra genom att byta en internbuss mellan två chip, en FPGA och en processor, mot en intern buss implementerat på ett enda chip, System on Chip. Arbetet bygger på mätningar gjorda i realtid i Xilinx utvecklingsverktyg på olika bussar, AXI4 och AXI4‑Lite som är kopplade internt mot AXI3. Den port som används är FPGAs egen GP‑port. Förutom att mäta överföringshastigheterna, har även fysiska aspekter som utrymme, kostnader och utvecklingstid undersökts. Utifrån dessa kriterier har en jämförelse gjorts med den befintliga konstruktionen för att fastställa vilka vinster som går att uppnå. Arbetet har resulterat i ett antal resultat som är ställda mot de förutsättningar som fanns i den ursprungliga lösningen. I de flesta fall visar resultatet att ett System on Chip är en bättre lösning. De fall som var tveksamma var vid viss typ av överföring med AXI4‑Lite bussen. I arbetet har inte undersökning av kosmisk strålning, temperatur eller luftfuktighet betraktas. I arbetet med att försöka att bevisa att ett System on Chip är snabbare än den ursprungliga uppsättningen har utvecklingsmetoden hypotetisk deduktiv använts. Denna metod bygger på att man från början sätter upp ett påstående, som man förutsätter är sant, följt av en konjunktion, som inte får inträffa, för att slutligen dra en slutsats, som konstaterar fakta. Eftersom fakta som lästes in i början av arbetet pekade på att ett System on Chip var en snabbare och billigare lösning kändes metoden användbar. Under arbetets gång har det visat sig vara en bra metod som också ger ett resultat där sannolikheten för att det är en snabbare lösning ökar. Däremot säger inte metoden att det är helt säkert att den i alla situationer är bättre, vilket kan ändras om man använder andra förutsättningar eller tar med andra aspekter.

Tato práce se zabývá výběrem vhodného obrazového snímače pro použití v kameře snímající rostliny ve vysokém rozlišení a návrhem vhodného obvodu pro propojení vybraného snímače (SONY IMX253) s vývojovou deskou Avnet MicroZed. Tato práce pojednává o jednotlivých parametrech obrazových snímačů podle kterých je vybírán vhodný obrazový snímač. Je vysvětlen proces výběru vhodného obrazového snímače a podrobněji popsány parametry vybraného snímače. Je naznačena problematika návrhu elektroniky a plošných spojů z hlediska požadavků vysokorychlostních obvodů a citlivých a specifických součástek jako je obrazový snímač. Je nastíněna konfigurace a programování obvodu Xilinx Zynq a nakonec je provedeno zjednodušené teoretické ověření funkčnosti navrženého modulu.

The goal of this project is to design a hardware unit that is designed to accelerate evolutionary design of digital circuits on transistor level. The project is divided to two parts. The first one describes design methods of the MOSFET circuits and issues of evolutionary algorithms. It also analyses current results in this domain and provides a new method for the design and optimization. The second part describes proposed unit that accelerates the new method on the circuit Zynq which integrates ARM processor and programmable logic. The new method functionality has been empirically analysed in the task of optimization of few circuits with more inputs. The hardware unit has been tested for designing of gates on transistor level.

This thesis discuss necessary changes needed in order to run MicroC/OS-II on multicore processor, mainly Zynq 7000 All Programmable SoC which uses two ARM Cortex-A9 cores. Problems that arise during this transition are also discussed.

<div>Field Programmable Gate Arrays(FPGAs) were invented in the 1980s. Since then the use of FPGAs in many fields has been growing rapidly. Due to the inherent reconfiguration and relatively low development cost FPGA technology has become one of the important components in data processing and communication system.</div><div>The recent development of computing technology affects not only the software but also requires integrating and utilizing a custom logic design on a dedicated hardware platform.</div><div>In this context,this research work analyzes and compares on-chip interfaces of HW/SW communication in the Zynq-7000 all programmable SoC based platform. Several experiments were carried out to evaluate the performance of data communication between the processing system and programmable logic through general purpose(GP), high performance ports (HP) and accelerator coherency port (ACP). The results identified the most effective interfaces for transferring data from the PL to PS and store the data to DRAM memory.</div><div>One conclusion of this work is that, the selection of suitable ports depends on application requirements. For low-bandwidth application GP port is appropriate. For high-speed applications, the high performance port(HP) and Accelerator Coherency Port (ACP) are suitable and works better.The results of this thesis are useful in high performance embedded system design.<br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div>

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are being used more frequently in space applications because of their reconfigurability and intensive processing capabilities. FPGAs in environments like space are susceptible to ionizing radiation which can cause Single Event Upsets (SEUs) in the FPGA's configuration memory. These upsets may cause the programmed user design on the FPGA to deviate from its normal behavior. Space missions cannot afford to allow important data processing applications to become corrupted due to these radiation upsets.Configuration scrubbing is an upset mitigation technique that detects and corrects upsets in an FPGA's configuration memory. Configuration scrubbing periodically monitors an FPGA's configuration memory utilizing mechanisms such as Error Correction Codes (ECCs), Cyclic Redundancy Checks (CRCs), a protected golden file, and partial reconfiguration to detect and correct upset memory bits. This work presents improved Xilinx 7-Series configuration scrubbing architectures that achieve minimal hardware footprints, competitive performance metrics, and robust detection and correction capabilities. The two principal scrubbing architectures presented in this work are the readback and hybrid scrubbers which detect and correct Single Bit Upsets (SBUs) and Multi-Bit Upsets (MBUs). Harnessing the performance advantages granted by the 7-Series internal Readback CRC scan, a hybrid scrubber built in software for the Zynq XZC07020 FPGA has been measured to correct SBUs in 8.024 ms, even-numbered MBUs in 13.38 ms, and odd-numbered MBUs in 21.40 ms. It can also perform a full readback scrub of the entire device in under two seconds. These scrubbing architectures were validated in radiation beam tests, where one of the architectures corrected MBUs as large as sixteen bits in a single frame.