Digital Circuits Commons^™

Flexible Fault-Tolerant Multi-Die Fpga-Based Architectures For Varying Space Environments, Yosof Ali Seif El Din Ali Maklad

Theses and Dissertations

It is well-known fact that spacecraft’s electronic components operate in an extreme harsh and varying space environments, beside changing orbit or passing through Van Allan Belts during orbital course results of radiation levels change. This thesis focuses on SRAM-based FPGA systems on-board of such spacecrafts, that are commonly utilized in space applications’ critical applications due to their capabilities and flexibility to reconfigure, since these systems are vulnerable to frequent negative impacts of ionizing radiation, thus inducing soft and hard errors leading to disastrous failures that could jeopardize the entire spacecraft. The soft errors’ effects are frequent yet can be mitigated, …

Autonomous Landscape Exploration Rover Using Imaging Surface Navigation (Alexis), Noah Jones, Dominic Salupo

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The objective is to develop a small-form-factor rover prototype that can be used to prove out a novel traversal method for use on extraterrestrial surfaces. The novel traversal method being proposed is LIDAR/CV-enhanced navigation, provided by a detachable flight vehicle that can communicate with the rover. On planets with thin atmospheres, cold gas thrusters or similar may be needed, but for the scope of this project more traditional flight/propulsion methods will be used.

Enhancing Cybersecurity In Wireless Sensor Networks: Machine Learning, Blockchain And Future Perspectives, Ilemona Solomon Atawodi

Dissertations

Security in the Industrial Internet of Things encounters various security issues but the main issues can be broken down into three core issues: Availability, Integrity, and Confidentiality. Security challenges generally tend to be caused by a failure of the system in one of these areas or cause a failure in one of these areas. Therefore researching scalable solutions to these security issues is prudent to explore methods that could be applied to large-scale industrial IIoT with tens to hundreds of devices as well as small-scale systems on a tiny factory floor comprising of just a few devices. In our research, …

Accelerating Machine Learning Inference For Satellite Component Feature Extraction Using Fpgas., Andrew Ekblad

Theses and Dissertations

Running computer vision algorithms requires complex devices with lots of computing power, these types of devices are not well suited for space deployment. The harsh radiation environment and limited power budgets have hindered the ability of running advanced computer vision algorithms in space. This problem makes running an on-orbit servicing detection algorithm very difficult. This work proposes using a low powered FPGA to accelerate the computer vision algorithms that enable satellite component feature extraction. This work uses AMD/Xilinx’s Zynq SoC and DPU IP to run model inference. Experiments in this work centered around improving model post processing by creating implementations …

Nonlinear Least Squares 3-D Geolocation Solutions Using Time Differences Of Arrival, Michael V. Bredemann

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

This thesis uses a geometric approach to derive and solve nonlinear least squares minimization problems to geolocate a signal source in three dimensions using time differences of arrival at multiple sensor locations. There is no restriction on the maximum number of sensors used. Residual errors reach the numerical limits of machine precision. Symmetric sensor orientations are found that prevent closed form solutions of source locations lying within the null space. Maximum uncertainties in relative sensor positions and time difference of arrivals, required to locate a source within a maximum specified error, are found from these results. Examples illustrate potential requirements …

Real Time And High Fidelity Quadcopter Tracking System, Tyler Mckay Hall

Computer Engineering

This project was conceived as a desired to have an affordable, flexible and physically compact tracking system for high accuracy spatial and orientation tracking. Specifically, this implementation is focused on providing a low cost motion capture system for future research. It is a tool to enable the further creation of systems that would require the use of accurate placement of landing pads, payload acquires and delivery. This system will provide the quadcopter platform a coordinate system that can be used in addition to GPS.

Field research with quadcopter manufacturers, photographers, agriculture and research organizations were contact and interviewed for information …

Analysis Of Error Recovery Effects On Digital Flight Control Systems, Arturo Tejada Ruiz

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Life-critical, real-time applications like flight-by-wire aircraft, rely on closed-loop digital control systems and fault-tolerant computer systems to reliably achieve the desired operation. The computer systems, however, may be affected by random hardware/software faults induced mainly by environmental conditions such as high intensity radiated fields (HIRF) and lightning. These harsh electromagnetic environments are known to induce common­ mode faults (CMF) in aircraft electronic systems, which disrupt fault-tolerant provisions and possibly affect the operation of the digital control system. Current flight-by-wire aircraft have computer systems that can neither detect CMF nor recover from them. New systems are under investigation that can recover …