Electronic System Design

The Embedded System group at School of Engineering is focusing on design of electronics for complex embedded systems. Computers are used as components in almost every gadget in our daily life including washing machines, elevators, door locks, cars, cameras, phones etc. Future gadgets and products are likely to incorporate much more functionality including handling audio and video inputs and outputs. Such products will use multiple processors to implement the required functionality. Design of these new complex electronic systems requires a close connection between hardware and software design and development. Reuse and configurability of hardware and software are necessary to keep down the cost and design time.

The Embedded System group is working on many aspects of complex embedded system design including specification, modelling, optimization, synthesis and prototyping. Currently our research focus is to use a new design paradigm, called Network on Chip (NoC), for design of complex embedded systems. NoC is a scalable architectural platform with a potential to handle growing complexity and can provide easy re-configurability. The basic idea of this way to design is that processors are connected via a packet switched communication network on a single chip similar to the way computers are connected to internet. NoC is very useful when scalable systems with heterogeneous set of processors should be designed. NoCs modular organization with standardized interfaces makes this architecture very suitable for designing products with already designed and verified cores. This architecture also provides a possibility to build powerful systems with several simple and slow computers, some of them highly specialized, on a single chip.

We are involved in developing methods and tools to develop systems using NoC paradigm. Specifically, our research includes the following:

• Evaluation and Specialization of NoC architectures for specific applications
• Algorithms and Tools to Map Applications to a NoC Architecture
• Efficient Routing schemes for communication among Cores on a NoC platform

Large integrated circuits have a production yield that is rather small. Our group is also working in the area of developing methods to test large and complex integrated circuits for manufacturing faults.  

More detailed information related to our research is available at NoC Group Research.

We have close cooperation with the other two research groups in our department. Data Communication group in the department is involved in development of algorithms, codes and protocols for implementation of ad-hoc and sensor networks. Our research can be used for implementation of these new ideas. Robust Electronics group is involved in research to develop electronic products which can reliably work in harsh environmental conditions. Together with the other two groups we are planning to set up a Centre for Robust System Design. The goal is to carry out research to develop electronic systems which incorporate physical robustness, fault tolerance and can tolerate communication errors.

Our group has the main responsibility of running the Master Program in Embedded System. In this master program all aspects of embedded system design are taught.