Interconnects (Integrated circuit technology)

With the increasing complexity of the system design, it has become very critical to
enhance system design productivity to meet with the time-to-market demands. Real Time
embedded system designers are facing extreme challenges in underlying architectural
design selection. It involves the selection of a programmable, concurrent, heterogeneous
multiprocessor architecture platform. Such a multiprocessor system on chip (MPSoC)
platform has set new innovative trends for the real-time systems and system on Chip
(SoC) designers. The consequences of this trend imply the shift in concern from
computation and sequential algorithms to modeling concurrency, synchronization and
communication in every aspect of hardware and software co-design and development.
Some of the main problems in the current deep sub-micron technologies characterized by
gate lengths in the range of 60-90 nm arise from non scalable wire delays, errors in signal
integrity and un-synchronized communication. These problems have been addressed by
the use of packet switched Network on Chip (NOC) architecture for future SoCs and
thus, real-time systems. Such a NOC based system should be able to support different levels of quality of service (QoS) to meet the real time systems requirements. It will
further help in enhancing the system productivity by providing a reusable communication
backbone. Thus, it becomes extremely critical to properly design a communication
backbone (CommB) for NOC. Along with offering different levels of QoS, CommB is
responsible directing the flow of data from one node to another node through routers,
allocators, switches, queues and links. In this dissertation I present a reusable component
based, design of CommB, suitable for embedded applications, which supports three types
of QoS (real-time, multi-media and control applications).

Fourier telescopy imaging is a recently-developed imaging method that relies on active
structured-light illumination of the object. Reflected/scattered light is measured by a large
“light bucket” detector; processing of the detected signal yields the magnitude and phase
of spatial frequency components of the object reflectance or transmittance function. An
inverse Fourier transform results in the image.
In 2012 a novel method, known as time-average Fourier telescopy (TAFT), was
introduced by William T. Rhodes as a means for diffraction-limited imaging through
ground-level atmospheric turbulence. This method, which can be applied to long
horizontal-path terrestrial imaging, addresses a need that is not solved by the adaptive
optics methods being used in astronomical imaging.
Field-experiment verification of the TAFT concept requires instrumentation that is not
available at Florida Atlantic University. The objective of this doctoral research program is thus to demonstrate, in the absence of full-scale experimentation, the feasibility of
time-average Fourier telescopy through (a) the design, construction, and testing of smallscale
laboratory instrumentation capable of exploring basic Fourier telescopy datagathering
operations, and (b) the development of MATLAB-based software capable of
demonstrating the effect of kilometer-scale passage of laser beams through ground-level
turbulence in a numerical simulation of TAFT.

Time Average Fourier Telescopy (TAFT) has been proposed as a means for obtaining high-resolution, diffraction-limited images over large distances through ground-level horizontal-path atmospheric turbulence. Image data is collected in the spatial-frequency, or Fourier, domain by means of Fourier Telescopy; an inverse two dimensional Fourier transform yields the actual image. TAFT requires active illumination of the distant object by moving interference fringe patterns. Light reflected from the object is collected by a “light-bucket” detector, and the resulting electrical signal is digitized and subjected to a series of signal processing operations, including an all-critical averaging of the amplitude and phase of a number of narrow-band signals.