Kaiserslautern - Fachbereich Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik
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Regelkonzept für eine Niederspannungsnetzautomatisierung unter Verwendung des Merit-Order-Prinzips
(2022)
Durch die zunehmende Erzeugungsleistung auf Niederspannungsnetzebene (NS-Netzebene) durch Photovoltaikanlagen, sowie die Elektrifizierung des Wärme- und des Verkehrssektors sind Investitionen in die NS-Netze notwendig. Ein höherer Digitalisierungsgrad im NS-Netz birgt das Potential, die notwendigen Investitionen genauer zu identifizieren, und damit ggf. zu reduzieren oder zeitlich zu verschieben. Hierbei stellt die Markteinführung intelligenter Messsysteme, sog. Smart Meter, eine neue Möglichkeit dar, Messwerte aus dem NS-Netz zu erhalten und auf deren Grundlage die Stellgrößen verfügbarer Aktoren zu optimieren. Dazu stellt sich die Frage, wie Messdaten unterschiedlicher Messzyklen in einem Netzautomatisierungssystem genutzt werden können und wie sich das nicht-lineare ganzzahlige Optimierungsproblem der Stellgrößenoptimierung effizient lösen lässt. Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit der Lösung des Optimierungsproblems. Dazu kommt eine Stellgrößenoptimierung nach dem Merit-Order-Prinzip zur Anwendung.
This paper aims to improve the traditional calibration method for reconfigurable self-X (self-calibration, self-healing, self-optimize, etc.) sensor interface readout circuit for industry 4.0. A cost-effective test stimulus is applied to the device under test, and the transient response of the system is analyzed to correlate the circuit's characteristics parameters. Due to complexity in the search and objective space of the smart sensory electronics, a novel experience replay particle swarm optimization (ERPSO) algorithm is being proposed and proved a better-searching capability than some currently well-known PSO algorithms. The newly proposed ERPSO expanded the selection producer of the classical PSO by introducing an experience replay buffer (ERB) intending to reduce the probability of trapping into the local minima. The ERB reflects the archive of previously visited global best particles, while its selection is based upon an adaptive epsilon greedy method in the velocity updating model. The performance of the proposed ERPSO algorithm is verified by using eight different popular benchmarking functions. Furthermore, an extrinsic evaluation of the ERPSO algorithm is also examined on a reconfigurable wide swing indirect current-feedback instrumentation amplifier (CFIA). For the later test, we proposed an efficient optimization procedure by using total harmonic distortion analyses of CFIA output to reduce the total number of measurements and save considerable optimization time and cost. The proposed optimization methodology is roughly 3 times faster than the classical optimization process. The circuit is implemented by using Cadence design tools and CMOS 0.35 µm technology from Austria Microsystems (AMS). The efficiency and robustness are the key features of the proposed methodology toward implementing reliable sensory electronic systems for industry 4.0 applications.
Multicore processors and Multiprocessor System-on-Chip (MPSoC) have become essential in Real-Time Systems (RTS) and Mixed-Criticality Systems (MCS) because of their additional computing capabilities that help reduce Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP), required wiring, and associated costs. In distributed systems, a single shared multicore or MPSoC node executes several applications, possibly of different criticality levels. However, there is interference between applications due to contention in shared resources such as CPU core, cache, memory, and network.
Existing allocation and scheduling methods for RTS and MCS often rely on implicit assumptions of the constant availability of individual resources, especially the CPU, to provide guaranteed progress of tasks. Most existing approaches aim to resolve contention in only a specific shared resource or a set of specific shared resources. Moreover, they handle a limited number of events such as task arrivals and task completions.
In distributed RTS and MCS with several nodes, each having multiple resources, if the applications, resource availability, or system configurations change, obtaining assumptions about resources becomes complicated. Thus, it is challenging to meet end-to-end constraints by considering each node, resource, or application individually.
Such RTS and MCS need global resource management to coordinate and dynamically adapt system-wide allocation of resources. In addition, the resource management can dynamically adapt applications to changing availability of resources and maintains a system-wide (global) view of resources and applications.
The overall aim of global resource management is twofold.
Firstly, it must ensure real-time applications meet their end-to-end deadlines even in the presence of faults and changing environmental conditions. Secondly, it must provide efficient resource utilization to improve the Quality of Service (QoS) of co-executing Best-Effort (BE) (or non-critical) applications.
A single fault in global resource management can render it useless. In the worst case, the resource management can make faulty decisions leading to a deadline miss in real-time applications. With the advent of Industry 4.0, cloud computing, and Internet-of-Things (IoT), it has become essential to combine stringent real-time constraints and reliability requirements with the need for an open-world assumption and ensure that the global resource management does not become an inviting target for attackers.
In this dissertation, we propose a domain-independent global resource management framework for distributed RTS and MCS consisting of heterogeneous nodes based on multicore processors or MPSoC. We initially developed the framework with the French Aerospace Lab -- ONERA and Thales Research & Technology during the DREAMS project and later extended it during SECREDAS and other internal projects. Unlike previous resource management frameworks RTS and MCS, we consider both safety and security for the framework itself.
To enable real-time industries to use cloud computing and enter a new market segment -- real-time operation as a cloud-based service, we propose a Real-Time-Cloud (RT-Cloud) based on global resource management for hosting RTS and MCS.
Finally, we present a mixed-criticality avionics use case for evaluating the capabilities of the global resource management framework in handling permanent core failures and temporal overload condition, and a railway use case to motivate the use of RT-Cloud with global resource management.
Bees are recognized as an indispensable link in the human food chain and general ecological system.
Numerous threats, from pesticides to parasites, endanger bees and frequently lead to hive collapse. The varroa destructor mite is a key threat to bee keeping and the monitoring of hive infestation level is of major concern for effective treatment. Sensors and automation, e.g., as in condition-monitoring and Industry 4.0, with machine
learning offer help. In numerous activities a rich variety of sensors have been applied to apiary/hive
instrumentation and bee monitoring. Quite recent activities try to extract estimates of varroa infestation level by
hive air analysis based on gas sensing and gas sensor systems. In our work in the IndusBee4.0 project [8, 11], an hive-integrated, compact autonomous gas sensing system for varroa infestation level estimation based on low-
cost highly integrated gas sensors was conceived and applied. This paper adds to [11] with the first results of a
mid-term duration investigation from July to September 2020 until formic acid treatment. For the regarded hive more than 79 % of detection probability based on the SGP30 gas sensor readings have been achieved.
The nondestructive testing of multilayered materials is increasingly applied in
both scientific and industrial fields. In particular, developments in millimeter
wave and terahertz technology open up novel measurement applications, which
benefit from the nonionizing properties of this frequency range. One example is
the noncontact inspection of layer thicknesses. Frequently used measuring and
analysis methods lead to a resolution limit that is determined by the bandwidth
of the setup. This thesis analyzes the reliable evaluation of thinner layer thicknesses
using model-based signal processing.
Beamforming performs spatial filtering to preserve the signal from given directions of interest while suppressing interfering signals and noise arriving from other directions.
For example, a microphone array equipped with beamforming algorithm could preserve the sound coming from a target speaker and suppress sounds coming from other speakers.
Beamformer has been widely used in many applications such as radar, sonar, communication, and acoustic systems.
A data-independent beamformer is the beamformer whose coefficients are independent on sensor signals, it normally uses less computation since the coefficients are computed once. Moreover, its coefficients are derived from the well-defined statistical models, then it produces less artifacts. The major drawback of this beamforming class is its limitation to the interference suppression.
On the other hand, an adaptive beamformer is a beamformer whose coefficients depend on or adapt to sensor signals. It is capable of suppressing the interference better than a data-independent beamforming but it suffers from either too much distortion of the signal of interest or less noise reduction when the updating rate of coefficients does not synchronize with the changing rate of the noise model. Besides, it is computationally intensive since the coefficients need to be updated frequently.
In acoustic applications, the bandwidth of signals of interest extends over several octaves, but we always expect that the characteristic of the beamformer is invariant with regard to the bandwidth of interest. This can be achieved by the so-called broadband beamforming.
Since the beam pattern of conventional beamformers depends on the frequency of the signal, it is common to use a dense and uniform array for the broadband beamforming to guarantee some essential performances together, such as frequency-independence, less sensitive to white noise, high directivity factor or high front-to-back ratio. In this dissertation, we mainly focus on the sparse array of which the aim is to use fewer sensors in the array,
while simultaneously assuring several important performances of the beamformer.
In the past few decades, many design methodologies for sparse arrays have been proposed and were applied in a variety of practical applications.
Although good results were presented, there are still some restrictions, such as the number of sensors is large, the designed beam pattern must be fixed, the steering ability is limited and the computational complexity is high.
In this work, two novel approaches for the sparse array design taking a hypothesized uniform array as a basis are proposed, that is, one for data-independent beamformers and the another for adaptive beamformers.
As an underlying component of the proposed methods, the dissertation introduces some new insights into the uniform array with broadband beamforming. In this context, a function formulating the relations between the sensor coefficients and its beam pattern over frequency is proposed. The function mainly contains the coordinate transform and inverse Fourier transform.
Furthermore, from the bijection of the function and broadband beamforming perspective, we propose the lower and upper bounds for the inter-distance of sensors. Within these bounds, the function is a bijective function that can be utilized to design the uniform array with broadband beamforming.
For data-independent beamforming, many studies have focused on optimization procedures to seek the sparse array deployment. This dissertation presents an alternative approach to determine the location of sensors.
Starting with a weight spectrum of a virtual dense and uniform array, some techniques are used, such as analyzing a weight spectrum to determine the critical sensors, applying the clustering technique to group the sensors into different groups and selecting representative sensors for each group.
After the sparse array deployment is specified, the optimization technique is applied to find the beamformer coefficients. The proposed method helps to save the computation time in the design phase and its beamformer performance outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in several aspects such as the higher white noise gain, higher directivity factor or more frequency-independence.
For adaptive beamforming, the dissertation attempts to design a versatile sparse microphone array that can be used for different beam patterns.
Furthermore, we aim to reduce the number of microphones in the sparse array while ensuring that its performance can continue to compete with a highly dense and uniform array in terms of broadband beamforming.
An irregular microphone array in a planar surface with the maximum number of distinct distances between the microphones is proposed.
It is demonstrated that the irregular microphone array is well-suited to sparse recovery algorithms that are used to solve underdetermined systems with subject to sparse solutions. Here, a sparse solution is the sound source's spatial spectrum that need to be reconstructed from microphone signals.
From the reconstructed sound sources, a method for array interpolation is presented to obtain an interpolated dense and uniform microphone array that performs well with broadband beamforming.
In addition, two alternative approaches for generalized sidelobe canceler (GSC) beamformer are proposed. One is the data-independent beamforming variant, the other is the adaptive beamforming variant. The GSC decomposes beamforming into two paths: The upper path is to preserve the desired signal, the lower path is to suppress the desired signal. From a beam pattern viewpoint, we propose an improvement for GSC, that is, instead of using the blocking matrix in the lower path to suppress the desired signal, we design a beamformer that contains the nulls at the look direction and at some other directions. Both approaches are simple beamforming design methods and they can be applied to either sparse array or uniform array.
Lastly, a new technique for direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation based on the annihilating filter is also presented in this dissertation.
It is based on the idea of finite rate of innovation to reconstruct the stream of Diracs, that is, identifying an annihilating filter/locator filter for a few uniform samples and the position of the Diracs are then related to the roots of the filter. Here, an annihilating filter is the filter that suppresses the signal, since its coefficient vector is always orthogonal to every frame of signal.
In the DOA context, we regard an active source as a Dirac associated with the arrival direction, then the directions of active sources can be derived from the roots of the annihilating filter. However,
the DOA obtained by this method is sensitive to noise and the number of DOAs is limited.
To address these issues, the dissertation proposes a robust method to design the annihilating filter and to increase the degree-of-freedom of the measurement system (more active sources can be detected) via observing multiple data frames.
Furthermore, we also analyze the performance of DOA with diffuse noise and propose an extended multiple signal classification algorithm that takes diffuse noise into account. In the simulation,
it shows, that in the case of diffuse noise, only the extended multiple signal classification algorithm can estimate the DOAs properly.
Property-Driven Design
(2021)
We introduce Property-Driven Design, a tool-flow that guarantees formal soundness be- tween ESL and RTL and thus enables a shift-left of general functional verification by moving HW verification to higher abstraction layers. In addition, by generating a formal Verification IP (VIP) automatically from ESL descriptions, the entry hurdle to formal methods is reduced considerably, opening them to a wider audience, which effectively ‘democratizes’ them. Short feedback cycles reduce time spent on RTL verification and lead to higher-quality designs.
In this thesis, the software development principles of Model-Driven Architecture have been adopted for developing a generation flow for properties. The taken approach for property generation introduces three models, namely the Model-of-Things, the Model-of-Property, and the Model-of-View. Each model belongs to a distinct model layer in the generation flow and each model layer addresses a specific concern of the property generation. The separation of concerns through model layers ensures modular flow development, and enables uncomplicated enhancements and feature extensions. The properties are generated through a series of model-to-model transformations between these model layers. Python is used as the domain-specific language for describing the intermediate transformations. A metamodel-based automation framework is utilized to generate an infrastructure that facilitates the description of transformations. The APIs that form the central part of the infrastructure are generated from the metamodel definitions of the models mentioned before. The generated APIs are further extended with domain-specific APIs to significantly reduce the effort required for developing the transformations. The property generation solution developed in this thesis is termed as “MetaProp”.
A key aspect of the property generation flow is the translation of informal specifications to formal specification models. Due to the diverse nature of hardware designs, the methodology includes different modeling paradigms to formalize the specifications. The metamodel Meta-Expression provides features to describe the behavior of combinational designs in the form of expression trees and dataflow expressions. The MetaExpression metamodel is modular in nature and can be integrated into other metamodel definitions that capture the specification level configurations of the design. For modeling the behavior of sequential designs, a formalism using finite state machine-like notations for traces is introduced. The metamodel MetaSTS defines this formalism. The MetaSTS metamodel enables to define the behavior of sequential designs with annotated timing information for transitions between important states. Annotation is also used to map abstract states in the Model-of-Things to the Model-of-Property and, finally, to the design implementation. Such an annotation or binding mechanism enables Model-of-Properties to be applicable on a variety of design implementations.
Another important contribution of this thesis is a complete processor verification methodology, which is based on the aforementioned generation approach. The introduced methods for specification modeling are employed to formalize the ISA and the behavior of instructions within the processor pipelines. However, it requires substantial manual efforts and in-depth knowledge of the microarchitectural details of the processor implementation to describe the transformations that define the Model-of-Properties. The prime reason for this requirement is the overlapped execution of instructions within the pipelined architectures of processors and the numerous internal and external pipeline stall scenarios. For a complete processor verification, a set of generated properties must consider all combinations of instruction overlapping coupled with all scenarios of pipeline stalls. In retrospect, the Model-of-Properties —from which the properties are generated — are required to consider all combinations of the aforementioned scenarios. To address these aspects, the C-S²QED method — an extension of the S²QED method — has been developed to completely verify a processor. The C-S²QED method is also applicable to exceptions within the processor pipelines and superscalar pipeline architectures. The C-S²QED method detects all functional bugs in a processor implementation and requires significantly less manual efforts compared to state-of-the-art processor verification methods. The completeness hypothesis of the C-S²QED method based on the completeness criterion defined by C-IPC and a completeness proof are also part of this thesis. The property generation flow has been leveraged to generate a set of C-S²QED properties to further enhance the effectiveness of the methodology.
The applicability and effectiveness of the introduced modeling paradigms and developed methods have been demonstrated with the formal verification of several industry strength designs. Numerous logic bugs including the bugs that are typically regarded as difficult to find have been detected during the formal verification with generated properties. Most IPs of an SoC called “RiVal” including the RISC-V core and excluding the legacy IPs have been formally verified only with the proposed methods in this thesis. The Rival SoC is used in the powertrain and safety automotive applications. The manufactured chip works “first time right” and no logic bug has been detected during the post-manufacturing tests. Various architectural alternatives of the RISC-V based processor designs are verified with the generated C-S²QED properties. The property generation is built in a configurable manner such that any changes in microarchitecture of the processor — that may be caused by the changes in specifications — are implicitly covered by the generation flow. Thus, additional manual efforts are not required and the functional flaws due to the changes in specifications are neutralized. Furthermore, the proposed methods have also been applied to communication protocol IPs, bus bridges, interrupt controllers and safety-relevant designs.
Small embedded devices are highly specialized platforms that integrate several pe- ripherals alongside the CPU core. Embedded devices extensively rely on Firmware (FW) to control and access the peripherals as well as other important functionality. Customizing embedded computing platforms to specific application domains often necessitates optimizing the firmware and/or the HW/SW interface under tight re- source constraints. Such optimizations frequently alter the communication between the firmware and the peripheral devices, possibly compromising functional correct- ness of the input/output behavior of the embedded system. This poses challenges to the development and verification of such systems. The system must be adapted and verified to each specific device configuration.
This thesis presents a formal approach to formulate these verification tasks at several levels of abstraction, along with corresponding HW/SW co-equivalence checking techniques for verifying correct I/O behavior of peripherals under a modified firmware. The feasibility of the approach is shown on several case studies, including industrial driver software as well as open-source peripherals. In addition, a subtle bug in one of the peripherals and several undocumented preconditions for correct device behavior were detected by the verification method.
Code coverage analysis plays an important role in the software testing process. More recently, the remarkable effectiveness of coverage feedback has triggered a broad interest in feedback-guided fuzzing. In this work, we discuss static instrumentation techniques for binary-level coverage analysis without compiler support. We show that the proposed techniques are precise, efficient, and transparent significantly beyond the state of the art.
We implement these techniques into two tools, namely, Spedi and bcov. Both tools are open source and publicly available. Spedi shows that the disassembly and function identification of stripped binaries can be highly accurate without resort to any external information. We build on these important results in bcov where we statically instrument x86-64 ELF binaries to track code coverage. However, improving efficiency and scaling to large real-world software required an orchestrated effort combining several techniques.
First, we bring a well-known probe pruning technique, for the first time, to binary-level instrumentation and effectively leverage its notion of superblocks to reduce overhead. Second, we introduce sliced microexecution, a robust technique for jump table analysis which improves CFG precision and enables us to instrument jump table entries. Additionally, smaller instructions in x86-64 pose a challenge for inserting detours. To address this challenge, we aggressively exploit padding bytes. Also, we introduce a greedy scheme to systematically host detours in neighboring basic blocks.
We evaluate bcov on a corpus of 95 binaries compiled from eight popular and well-tested packages like FFmpeg and LLVM. Two instrumentation policies, with different edge-level precision, are used to patch all functions in this corpus - over 1.6 million functions. Our precise policy has average performance and memory overheads of 14% and 22%, respectively. Instrumented binaries do not introduce any test regressions. The reported coverage is highly accurate with an average F-score of 99.86%. Finally, our jump table analysis is comparable to that of IDA Pro on gcc binaries and outperforms it on clang binaries.
Our work demonstrates that static instrumentation can offer unique advantages in comparison to established methods like compiler instrumentation and dynamic binary instrumentation. It also opens the door for many interesting applications of static instrumentation, which can go well beyond coverage analysis.