Scientific publications

In the medical domain there is a tension between the requested speed of innovation and the time needed to deliver a certifiable system. To ensure the required safety, usually a long test and integration phase is needed. To shorten this phase and to avoid late bug fixing, the aim is to detect faults (if any) much earlier in the development process.

There is a strong push towards smart buildings that aim to achieve comfort, safety and energy efficiency, through building automation systems (BAS) that incorporate multiple subsystems such as heating and air-conditioning, lighting, access control etc. The design, commissioning and operation of BAS is already challenging when handling an individual subsystem; however when introducing co-operation between systems the complexity increases dramatically.

This paper provides an overview of the architecture for self-organizing, co-operative and robust Building Automation Systems (BAS) proposed by the EC funded FP7 SCUBA1 project. We describe the current situation in monitoring and control systems and outline the typical stakeholders involved in the case of building automation systems.

To provide a good balance between the performance and flexibility of future digital control platforms, we propose an FPGA-based heterogeneous multiprocessor approach, in which the platform is composed of processing elements from a set of parameterizable heterogeneous Application-Specific Instruction-set Processors (ASIPs), connected with an hierarchical interconnect.

Latest trends in embedded platform architectures show a steady shift from high frequency single core platforms to lower-frequency but highly-parallel execution platforms. Scheduling applications with stringent latency requirements on such multiprocessor platforms is challenging. Our work is motivated by the scheduling challenges faced by ASML, the world's leading provider of wafer scanners.

Gossip-based Wireless Sensor Networks (GWSNs) are complex systems of inherently random nature. Planning and designing GWSNs requires a fast and adequately accurate mechanism to estimate system performance. As a first contribution, we propose a performance analysis technique that simulates the gossip-based propagation of each single piece of data in isolation.

Sensor nodes in many Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) architectures are supposed to deliver sensed data to a gateway node on the body. To satisfy the data delivery requirements, the network needs to adapt itself to the changes in connection status of the body nodes to the gateway. As a prerequisite, Link Quality Estimation (LQE) needs to be done to detect the connection status of the nodes.

Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) receive attention as the possible next abstraction step in programming. Despite the benefits of using DSLs, in the industry there is also some reluctance against their introduction in product development. We address a number of issues that are important to gain industrial confidence for the introduction of DSLs.

Synchronous dataflow graphs (SDFGs) are used extensively to model streaming applications. An SDFG can be extended with scheduling decisions, allowing SDFG analysis to obtain properties, such as throughput or buffer sizes for the scheduled graphs. Analysis times depend strongly on the size of the SDFG.

In the context of Domain Specific Languages (DSLs), we study ways to detect faults early in the software development cycle. We propose techniques that validate a wide range of properties, classified into basic and advanced. Basic validation includes syntax checking, reference checking and type checking.