Research
Research areas of the department
• Embedded systems
• Wireless sensor networks
• Multiprocessor System-on-Chip
• Application specific processors and HW accelerators
• Design and compilation tools
• Positioning and navigation
• Web applications and social networks
Research on embedded manycore computing platforms combines embedded processor architecture, Network-on-Chip, middleware for monitoring and controlling the platform, and is also moving towards parallelizing compilation onto such platforms and extension of existing operating systems for manycore architecture. The platforms are prototyped on FPGA, and may be complemented by application-specific accelerators in addition to programmable processors.
Research on application-specific processor (ASP) design methodology is based on Transport Triggered Architecture (TTA) and Coarse Grain Reconfigurable Array (CGRA) approaches as the hardware platforms, and design tools for compiling and mapping applications onto such hardware architectures. The research on ASP design methodology concentrates mostly on compiler code generation issues, methods on fast generation of customized soft-core multiprocessors and processor architecture features leading to energy efficient designs.
Research on positioning and navigation covers GPS and GALILEO positioning receiver hardware and software architecture and implementations, use of Signals of Opportunity (such a WLAN) for positioning, and sensor-based localization methods. The group has gained a deep understanding of performance of micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) sensor in various navigation applications. In addition, the group has introduced novel ways to use the GPS and sensor data in context-aware applications.
Research on high-abstraction level system design covers design automation methods and prototype tools to enhance the performance of electronics product development. The key topics are design space exploration, model-based (UML2.0) design methods, requirements capture, and model to FPGA automation. The group has co-operation with several industrial partners. The group presented the World’s first UML2.0-based MP-SoC design flow that used UML models as the only design capture followed by a completely automated flow to real implementation on FPGA-based MP-SoCs. The group contributed to the well-known MARTE UML profile. Current activities include creation of open source IP library formats, IEEE1685 and Multicore Association MCAPI based design environment development and requirements management modeling.
Research on Software-Defined Radio implementations uses manycore, TTA and reconfigurable platforms. It deals with efficient partitioning and mapping of receiver baseband algorithms on programmable and reconfigurable processing elements, context switching, and cognitive radio protocols.
Research of wireless sensor networks (WSN) covers energy efficient multi-hop MAC and routing protocols, energy-optimized platforms, embedded software architectures, and prototype implementations. Performance and reliability of WSN technologies are developed through large-
scale application pilot studies. For novel applications, automated processing of data reserves and real-time measurements are developed for the various areas of applications containing measuring and controlling, positioning and distributed data processing on distributed server infrastructure.
Research on video encoder architectures has presented several parallel hardware architectures and software implementations for H.263/4, MPEG-4/AVC on over ten commercial platforms. Architectures make use of novel parallel memory architecture that solves the memory bandwidth bottleneck. A software framework for managing image processing pipeline reduces total memory requirements and reduces pipeline development time by months.
Research on new network applications utilizes other research fields for developing novel service concepts and usage scenarios. The research develops web-based applications servers, ad hoc applications, applications on positioning and navigation, urban IT-services, real-time lottery games, etc.
There are also research activities on nanocircuit design methodology, where computer arithmetic units based on quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) have been studied. QCA is a promising computing paradigm for the emerging post-CMOS digital circuits.
The research is carried out in collaboration with several international partners.
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