Frank Poppen

Safety Evaluation of Automotive Electronics Using Virtual Prototypes: State of the Art and Research Challenges

Intelligent automotive electronics significantly improved driving safety in the last decades. With the increasing complexity of automotive systems, dependability of the electronic components themselves and of their interaction must be assured to avoid any risk to driving safety due to unexpected failures caused by internal or external faults. Additionally, Virtual Prototypes (VPs) have been accepted in many areas of system development processes in the automotive industry as platforms for SW development, verification, and design space exploration. We believe that VPs will significantly contribute to the analysis of safety conditions for automotive electronics. This paper shows the advantages of such a methodology based on todays industrial needs, presents the current state of the art in this field, and outlines upcoming research challenges that need to be addressed to make this vision a reality.

The personal hearing system: a software hearing aid for a personal communication system

A concept and architecture of a personal communication system (PCS) is introduced that integrates audio communication and hearing support for the elderly and hearing-impaired through a personal hearing system (PHS). The concept envisions a central processor connected to audio headsets via a wireless body area network (WBAN). To demonstrate the concept, a prototype PCS is presented that is implemented on a netbook computer with a dedicated audio interface in combination with a mobile phone. The prototype can be used for field-testing possible applications and to reveal possibilities and limitations of the concept of integrating hearing support in consumer audio communication devices. It is shown that the prototype PCS can integrate hearing aid functionality, telephony, public announcement systems, and home entertainment. An exemplary binaural speech enhancement scheme that represents a large class of possible PHS processing schemes is shown to be compatible with the general concept. However, an analysis of hardware and software architectures shows that the implementation of a PCS on future advanced cell phone-like devices is challenging. Because of limitations in processing power, recoding of prototype implementations into fixed point arithmetic will be required and WBAN performance is still a limiting factor in terms of data rate and delay.

Real-time quality estimation to enable process evaluation in integrated circuit development

Nowadays, managing product development projects becomes more and more challenging. Following Moorepsilas law, especially the semiconductor industry develops products of increasing complexity while minimizing time-to-market and maintaining high quality standards at the same time. Therefore, there is a strong need to improve the productivity of digital design projects. However, to be able to do so a quantification of productivity as a metric of inputs and outputs of the development processes is needed. For this reason, this paper focuses on the quality of products under development to describe one aspect of the output of design projects. A method for real-time product quality estimation of integrated circuits based on an integrated requirements and quality model is introduced. Ontologies are used to define the integrated model. The method is implemented in the performance measurement framework Permeter.

Integrated Monitoring for Personalized Renal Replacement Therapy

Introduction: Emerging renal support devices tend towards automated physiological monitoring and treatment adaptation. In the patient-centred development of the mobile NEPHRON+ system decisive physiological aspects and their mutual affections were identified and methods of measurement were incorporated into a wearable system enabling a personalized and un-supervised auto-adaptive treatment. Methods: Nephrologists determined the physiological variables to be monitored in dialysis patients. The experts’ opinions were confirmed by extensive literature survey to find formalized relationships between the physiological parameters. As a basis for the embedded device control, suitable means of monitoring were integrated into the prototype of NEPHRON+, a networked mobile dialysis system. Results: To monitor the principal function of the blood cleansing device, ion selective and enzymatic electrodes tailored towards the miniaturized device are integrated in the mobile blood treatment system. Weight measurements are transmitted via Bluetooth to gauge the hydration surplus to be removed. Both, fluidic and chemical dynamics in the body are described based on the measurements using compartment models. Hemodynamic instabilities frequently arise during blood cleansing treatment due to homeostatic imbalance. Thus an electric sphygmomanometer and heart rate acquisition are likewise connected for intermittent measurements. To interpret these context sensitive parameters an accelerometer is embodied into the wearable system enabling to estimate the influence of the treated patient’s physical activity on aforementioned vital parameters. This allows differentiating between the vital parameter dynamics arising from activity and the negative influence of homeostatic imbalance. Conclusion: A prototypic architecture for a defined treatment scenario has been realized to demonstrate the technical feasibility, enabling comprehensive physiological monitoring of dialysis treatments. Mathematical models of the monitored variables were gleaned for context aware evaluation of the mutually dependent parameters.