Jeroen Boydens | KU Leuven (original) (raw)

Papers by Jeroen Boydens

2022 IEEE International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility & Signal/Power Integrity (EMCSI)

DSP Valley Newsletter, Jun 1, 2015

This paper describes the tools and techniques used in an e-learning course on embedded software d... more This paper describes the tools and techniques used in an e-learning course on embedded software development. This course is part of the EOLES (Electronics and Optics e-Learning for Embedded Systems) program aimed at students of the North-African countries where a private internet connection is not always reliable. Originally the project was funded as an EU TEMPUS project but it evolved towards a self-supporting course coordinated by the University of Limoges in France (UNILIM). The project aims to provide a third year bachelor degree program relying exclusively on blended learning, including e-learning and remote laboratories. While the complete EOLES course contains 15 TUs (Technical Units), this paper focusses on one single TU: TU-13, dealing with embedded software development, awarding for 6 ECTUs (European Credit Transfer Units). This TU-13 is steered by the University of Leuven in Belgium (KU Leuven), Faculty of Engineering Technology. TU-13 contains a course on the C programming language, the use of microcontrollers and serial communication but this paper mainly focuses on the C programming course. The course can be followed online using streaming services, but a downloadable equivalent is available for those students who do not have access to a reliable internet connection. A typical programming course requires a lot of scaffolding, and thus special care was taken in providing the customized support while students are both online and offline. An important idea is providing the students the possibility to ask questions to their peers in an online discussion forum while the instructor still manages this forum and validates the answers. If necessary, the instructor posts an accurate reply. Next to this forum, students get automated offline feedback on the exercises they make, based on automated software tests provided with default exercise templates running on their proper laptops. Students are requested to submit their solutions at regular time intervals. Although self-evaluation is available, a formal validation of correctness of their exercises is still necessary. Finally, the paper discusses a correlation between the students passing all self-evaluation exercises (formative evaluations) and their results of a written examination (summative evaluation) held at the end of the course.

2020 XXIX International Scientific Conference Electronics (ET)

Image classification neural networks tend to give high probabilities to images they in fact do no... more Image classification neural networks tend to give high probabilities to images they in fact do not recognize. This paper compares three approaches to detect such out-of-distribution data: One-Class Support Vector Machine, Isolation Forest and Local Outlier Factor. The experiments show that Isolation Forest outperforms the other two approaches. However, when combining the three algorithms using a majority voter, the results show that this ensemble is better at detecting out-of-distribution data than using the Isolation Forest algorithm solely.

2019 4th International Conference on System Reliability and Safety (ICSRS)

Embedded systems' hardware can be impacted by soft errors, which can cause data flow errors i... more Embedded systems' hardware can be impacted by soft errors, which can cause data flow errors in the systems' software. In this paper, we present a novel software-based approach to counter data flow errors, called Selective Duplication and Selective Comparison (SDSC). First, we validated our SDSC technique by implementing it for six case studies and submitting it to a fault injection campaign. Next, we measured its execution time overhead. To put the measured results into perspective, we compared them to those of two established techniques, called Critical Block Duplication (CBD) and near Zero silent Data Corruption (nZDC). The results show that our SDSC technique has a higher error detection ratio with a lower silent data corruption compared to both the CBD and nZDC techniques. This does, however, come with a slightly higher execution time overhead.

Typical telecom applications apply a planar architecture pattern based on the processing requirem... more Typical telecom applications apply a planar architecture pattern based on the processing requirements of each subsystem. In a symmetric multiprocessing environment all applications share the same hardware resources. However, currently embedded hardware platforms are being designed with asymmetric multiprocessor architectures to improve separation and increase performance of noninterfering tasks. These asymmetric multiprocessor architectures allow different planes to be separated and assign dedicated hardware for each responsibility. While planes are logically separated, some hardware is still shared and creates cross-plane influence effects which will impact the performance of the system. The aim of this report is to evaluate, in an embedded environment, the performance of a typical symmetric multiprocessing architecture compared to its asymmetric multiprocessing variant, applied on a telecom application.

A WBAN (Wireless Body Area Network) allows connecting several sensor nodes into one sensor networ... more A WBAN (Wireless Body Area Network) allows connecting several sensor nodes into one sensor network. Each sensor node can be provided with a dedicated sensor. In case of fall detection, the physical movements of the body, which show characteristic patterns typical for a falling body, are used to generate a warning signal. Physical movements of the body can be measured by accelerometers. Today there is a lot of progress in the area of MEMS accelerometers. They are very small and hence can get integrated in WBAN sensor nodes. This paper proposes a setup and evaluation of a WBAN with multiple accelerometer nodes for an application in fall detection.

Electronics

Modern safety-critical systems depend heavily on communication networks while operating in increa... more Modern safety-critical systems depend heavily on communication networks while operating in increasingly polluted electromagnetic environments. Forward Error Correction codes are increasingly being used in safety-critical applications; however, vulnerabilities can still be caused by undetected corrupted data. Within this paper, the effectiveness of primitive Reed–Solomon Codes under single-frequency electromagnetic disturbances is assessed. Additionally, the impact of various parameters including the message length, the Reed–Solomon Codes’ symbol size, and the amplitude of the induced voltages are also investigated. Simulations show that, at harmonics and some certain ratios of the bit-rate frequency, the susceptibility of Reed–Solomon Codes relative to this type of disturbance increases substantially. In worse-case scenarios, the rate of undetected corrupted data at these ratios could increase to values above 80%. It is shown that the main reason that Reed–Solomon Codes fail to dete...

This paper describes a simple multitasking framework targeted at embedded systems built around mu... more This paper describes a simple multitasking framework targeted at embedded systems built around multicore microcontrollers, which are just coming on the scene. A DES code cracking machine will be developed as an example application to demonstrate both how the framework is used and the benefits of the multicore architectures for parallel computations. Some possible optimizations will be pointed which may improve the performance in specific appliations.

EDULEARN Proceedings

At educational programs at KU Leuven, a learning trajectory stimulating the development of Resear... more At educational programs at KU Leuven, a learning trajectory stimulating the development of Research and Design (R&D)-oriented skills is important. The paper studies such a learning trajectory belonging to the electronics-ICT engineering program at the campus in Bruges. Fourteen R&D skills are selected as mandatory learning outcomes. Spread over the curriculum, these skills are learned through a wide range of teaching methods. According to the 'Aalborg model', a range of project types distinguished by different student-centered approaches is introduced. Students experience a sequence of learning activities, being the backbone of a methodical and didactic responsible learning trajectory.

IEEE Letters on Electromagnetic Compatibility Practice and Applications

In our modern daily lives, more and more electronic systems are performing safety-critical tasks.... more In our modern daily lives, more and more electronic systems are performing safety-critical tasks. For these systems, robust communication is crucial. Undetected corruptions of data (a.k.a. False Negatives) within these channels might lead to severe harm to humans or the environment. In order to detect corruptions, Error Detection Codes have since long been used. This letter assesses the resilience of a straightforward duplication mechanism against electromagnetic disturbances by simulating a harsh reverberating electromagnetic environment. The simulations reveal that simply duplicating the bits is not sufficient. By analysing the different fault mechanisms present in duplication, new Error Detection Codes are proposed. These new codes are derived from existing codes, with the explicit requirement to cover each other’s vulnerabilities towards False Negatives. In this letter, the EMI-resilient codes are built based on a duplication methodology combined with a Hamming Double Error Detection Code. Due to the different coverage of failure mechanisms under the considered reverberating electromagnetic environment, the rate of False Negatives is significantly reduced.

2018 IEEE XXVII International Scientific Conference Electronics - ET

Several software-implemented fault injection tools and processes have been proposed to validate s... more Several software-implemented fault injection tools and processes have been proposed to validate softwareimplemented fault tolerance measures. However, most of these tools have either been implemented to work with one specific target or they support multiple targets but lack the implementation of a wide array of fault injection processes. This paper aims to fill this gap by proposing a new softwareimplemented tool that supports both physical and simulated targets with a wide array of injection processes.

2017 XXVI International Scientific Conference Electronics (ET)

Fault injection is a highly used technique to test fault-tolerant embedded systems. We present a ... more Fault injection is a highly used technique to test fault-tolerant embedded systems. We present a new software-implemented fault injection process to deterministically inject control flow errors in embedded CPUs. The proposed process analyses the disassembly file of the program acting on the embedded CPUs to construct the correct control flow. Once known, this information is used to deterministically inject intra-block, inter-block and out-of-function errors. To conclude, we discuss how our process can aid in performing a vulnerability analysis for a target algorithm.

Sensors

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), a short-range and low-power communication protocol, has gained a lot ... more Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), a short-range and low-power communication protocol, has gained a lot of popularity in recent years. A part of BLE is the Generic Attribute Profile (GATT) which defines the data communication between two devices. During the initial connection between two BLE devices a discovery of services, characteristics and descriptors is required for the GATT to operate. During this discovery phase, the device is unusable as it builds the foundation for further data transactions. When unoptimized, this discovery step can take up to a few seconds, leading to frustrations for the end user or delays in some applications. In this paper, we aim to find guidelines on how to optimize this discovery process. A simulation framework was developed, able to simulate and analyze the packet exchange of the service discovery, while taking link layer parameters into account. The results show that minimizing the connection interval and maximizing the data length leads to the lowest dis...

Abstract:The Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi) is a platform for service-oriented computing... more Abstract:The Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi) is a platform for service-oriented computing in Java with support for managing service dependencies among installed bundles (i.e. application components). An important aspect of OSGi is event notification. OSGi intro-duces a specialized approach, called the Whiteboard pattern, to integrate event notification in a volatile services environment. But this mechanism strongly deviates from the Java program-ming model because it bypasses important compile-time guarantees. Furthermore, the limited expressiveness of its event constraint language makes it impossible to detect composite events, and it leads to the notification of unsollicited events. In this paper, we propose a domain specific language that allows programmers to de-fine events in a way that maximizes compile-time guarantees on event definitions and on the actions to be taken when these events arise. This extension not only raises the level of abstrac-tion for event publicat...

Multicore embedded systems introduce new opportunities and challenges. Scaling of computational p... more Multicore embedded systems introduce new opportunities and challenges. Scaling of computational power is one of the main reasons for a transition to a multicore environment. Parallel design patterns, such as Map Reduce, Task Graph, Thread Pool, Task Parallelism assist to derive a parallel approach for calculating the Fast Fourier Transform. By combining these design patterns, a robust application can be obtained. The key issues for concurrent calculation of a Fast Fourier Transform are determined at a higher level avoiding low-level patch-ups.