Embedded Computer Systems and Applications (ELE547):  Fall 2013

Guidelines for The Term Design Projects

 

1.      You may choose your own topic for your term project related to the course. Alternatively, you can choose one project from the following list of possible projects.

2.      Suggested Design Projects

·         Design an image processing system to interact with digital cameras

·         Design an FPGA system for Biomedical applications such as artificial legs

·         Design a GPU based embedded system for applications requiring high performance computing

·         Design a Nural-Machine Interface for Biomedical Applications

·         Design a USB device to communicate with PC and store information

·         Design a NAND array flash memory system with wear leveling and high write performance

·         Design a embedded system that can recover information from damaged handheld devices

·         Design a system for remote control of home heating/lighting using ZigBee/Bluetooth protocol;

·         Design an application program to measure the distance between two ZigBee/Bluetooth devices;

·         Design a home/office security system with remote control functionality using ZigBee/Bluetooth protocol;

·         Design a wireless remote control automobile system (toy car) using ZigBee/Bluetooth protocol;

·         Design a patient monitoring system using ZigBee/Bluetooth devices;

·         Use an embedded system to implement a wireless remote monitoring tool for important data storages. The control box (5208) is able to monitor the status of the data storage using SNMP;

·         Configure different RAID architectures: RAID1, RAID3, RAID4, and RAID5 using MD of Linux on an embedded board;

·         Implement an iSCSI block level storage controller using an embedded system board and open source iSCSI target;

·         Design a network bridge using the ColdFire microprocessor. The bridge should be able to receive all Ethernet packets traveling on the LANs connected to it. It should analyze each packet received and determine whether and where to forward a packet. It can also work in a promiscuous mode to accept all packets.

·         Design a simple wireless sensor network using ZigBee/Bluetooth protocol with low power consumption, communication efficiency, and performance in mind.

·         Design a consumer electronic device using wireless remote control with ZigBee/Bluetooth protocol.

·         Design a disk controller using the ColdFire Processor following the IDE standard. This project involves both hardware connections and software drivers. Your controller should be able to move the disk head as well as read and write a small amount of data.

·         Design and implement a software RAID controller using the Linux MD driver. Your program should allow users to configure the RAID system for simple RAID 0, 1, and 5 systems. A GUI would be nice although not necessary.

·         Design and simulate a memory cache design to maximize the cache-hit ratio for the application programs that you have developed so far in the lab. Cache parameters that you need to make design decisions about include line size, mapping function, cache size, associativity, replacement algorithm, and write back policy.

·         Performance evaluation and profiling of the ColdFire microprocessor. The evaluation should be comprehensive enough to draw general conclusions in terms of performance/cost ratio. The specific architecture issues to be examined include pipelining, memory hierarchy, bus timing scheme, I/O interfaces, and networking capabilities.

·         Driver designs under the Linux kernel. We have the Linux kernel installed on our ColdFire processor board. You may choose a device driver to work on such as printer driver, disk driver, network driver, or general block device drivers.

·         Design a network router using the ColdFire microprocessor. The router should be able to interpret IP headers, select optimal routing, and control possible congestion.

3.      Important Due Dates:

Project Proposal Due Date:  Oct. 17, 2013(a power point presentation describing exactly what you plan to do for the project)

Proposal Presentation Date: Oct. 17, 2013(Each student will present your project proposal, your specific tasks in the project, and expected results in 25 minutes. PowerPoint presentation is required)

Project Finish Date: Dec. 3, 2013, (Project presentation and demonstration start. Each student will do a 25 minutes presentation including project demo)

Final Report Due Date:  Dec. 3, 2013.

4.      Requirements for Project Reports

1.      Proposal part:

      • Objectives and motivations: state clearly your objectives of the project and why you think it is a useful work to perform.
      • Background:  state explicitly what the current state-of-the-art is in the field of your project, give references if necessary.
      • Specific design: your design and plan of the project. You need to be specific on this and include flowchart, programs needed, and hardware diagrams.
      • Based on your knowledge, write down what results you would expect from the lab.

2.      Final Report Part:

      • Describe clearly the procedure of your experiments and how you conducted the experiments.
      • Observations: what happened during your experiments? Describe in detail all observations you had.
      • Analysis and interpretation of results. This is the important part of your report. You should explain what you observed in the project, analyze and interpret your results.
      • Discussion and suggestions: Through your experiments, what have you learnt? Do you have any suggestions for future classes or improvement on the learning experiences.