1. technology and computing

Abstracts PhD Seminar Information and Communications Engineering
WS 2014/15
AICHINGER Philipp
Betreuer: Kubin
Automatic Detection of Diplophonic Voice
Voice disorders may lead to social isolation or reduced job chances in affected subjects. Correct
treatment indication and treatment effect measurement are needed in order to tackle these
problems and rely on robust techniques for voice assessment. Diplophonia is a severe symptom in
voice disorders and needs to be assessed objectively. In the current clinical practice diplophonia is
detected auditively by the medical doctor, which is problematic from the viewpoints of evidence
based medicine and scientific methodology. The “Diplophonia Diagram” is a state-of-the-art
procedure for detecting diplophonic voice automatically. It achieves a classification accuracy of
94.2 %, which is superior to all competitive methods. We suggest using the Diplophonia Diagram for
automatically detecting diplophonic voice in future clinical studies. Future work should concentrate
on the development of valid clinical interpretation guidelines for the Diplophonia Diagram.
EBNER Wolfgang
Betreuer: Brasseur
Double Clutch Transmission for Heavy Duty Vehicles
A new trend of heavy duty vehicles is the development of double clutch transmissions (DCT). A DCT
shows advantages over common used transmissions especially automatic manual transmissions
(AMT). The benefits are a better driveability and lower rear axle ratios which can lead to lower fuel
consumption. A disadvantage are the higher productions costs compared to AMT. Therefore, if the
productions costs are the most important sales factor, this transmission variant will not gain a high
market share.
In the presentation the advantages and disadvantages of this transmission variant and wherein the
possibilities to reduce production costs are shown.
ENZINGER Harald
Betreuer: Vogel
Analysis of Even-Order Terms in Memoryless and Quasi-Memoryless Polynomial Baseband Models
Behavioral modeling of nonlinear passband systems like radio frequency power amplifiers is mainly
based on polynomial baseband models. Motivated by the convolution property of the Fourier
transform applied to passband signals, it is common practice to include only odd-order terms in
these models. Experimental results show, however, that significant improvements can be achieved
by also including even-order terms. In this presentation, the fundamental relationship of even-order
terms in polynomial passband and baseband models is analyzed, providing a theoretical foundation
for the improved modeling accuracy of polynomial baseband models with even-order terms.
FREIDL Philipp Franz
Betreuer: Bösch
Design of a MM-Wave RFID System
Radio frequency identification (RFID) has become an important communication technology for many
commercial applications. While RFID systems at high frequencies and ultra high frequencies are
already widely adopted, the used frequency bands are subject of several limitations. Due to the
popularity of RFID and other wireless communication technologies, these commonly used bands are
quite crowded. Additionally the regulations constrain the usage of a narrow bandwidth, which results
in low to moderate data rates. With the development of commercial technologies for radio
communication systems in the mm-wave area, the implementation of RFID systems at these
frequencies will become an true option for the future. Besides the benefit of having a fairly broad
bandwidth with very few competing communication systems, the usage of mm-waves allows a
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reduction of the antenna size without sacrificing their effectiveness. In this talk, the design of a mmwave RFID (MMID) system using commercial as well as custom made components is presented.
Along with the top level design, measurements to analyze the performance of key components are
shown.
GRUBMÜLLER Michael
Betreuer: Brasseur
Circuit Technology for High Accuracy Sensors for Power Measurements in Electrified Drivetrains
In the electrified powertrain, high efficient electric drives are used. For efficiency determination
accurate measurement systems are necessary. Since the motors are driven via a pulse-width signal,
high frequency components of voltage and current signals must be taken into account. Therefor
broadband and precise high current and high voltage sensors are required. For this thesis, suitable
sensors will be implemented and specified.
HÖLL Thomas
Betreuer: Pinz
Measurement of Radiometric Surface Properties by 3D Reconstruction and Controlled Illumination
In this talk I will present principles of appearance acquisition and I will motivate this topic by stating
some applications of it. Object appearance visually depends on its geometry, its material property
and the illumination conditions. The first part of my talk will give a brief introduction on how an
objects shape can be captured. Because I focus in my PhD- thesis on the acquisition of visually
measureable material property, I will mainly address this sub-part of appearance acquisition. I will
talk about different reflectance properties of real world materials and how various researchers tried
to capture them. In literature one can observe two main directions: First a direct approach using
special measurement devices and second an indirect approach where the reflectance is inferred,
using a set of images and statistics about reflectance and real world lighting. In the end I will give a
rough research plan on how I want to capture real world reflectance properties using a novel microrange scanning device.
HÖLLER Andrea
Betreuer: Römer
Software Implemented Fault Tolerance for Dependable Embedded Systems
Embedded systems have to satisfy ever-growing demands for high computing performance and have
to provide an ever wider range of functionalities. Thus there is a move to components off-the-shelf
processors and multi-core technology. At the same time there is a major new problem: electronic
systems are expected to become inherently undependable in the near future when migrating
towards new semiconductor technologies. That is particularly relevant for safety-critical systems,
whose failures could result in loss of life.
To address these challenges, we propose a software-based approach to a more flexible error
handling and correction of errors reaching the software level. One goal of the thesis is to show how
formal methods can be used to analyze the fault tolerance and security of systems at application
level. Furthermore, innovative concepts how to efficiently exploit the inherent redundancy of multicore systems to increase the reliability and availability are investigated. To assess the new
techniques, a virtual hardware evaluation platform with fault injection capabilities is proposed.
JONJIC Antonio
Betreuer: Bösch
Design and system integration of wireless sensor network nodes
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are a promising technology. It can be applied in many important
areas such as environment protection, building automation, homeland security, infrastructure and
industrial facilities monitoring and protection. To make WSNs technology feasible and useful for
wide-spread deployment, some key issues like security and miniaturization need to be solved.
Providing security in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is a challenging task, considering its network
pattern -many-to-one- , broadcast nature of the communication medium, limited wireless link
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bandwidth and limited hardware resources. Furthermore WSN nodes can be deployed over a wide
area where unattended nodes could be captured. A second important WSN technology issue is
miniaturization. For high-volume manufacturing, small energy-efficient system architectures and
heterogeneous integration approaches are needed. In my work I try to find solutions for those issues.
KHAN Hassan Noor
Betreuer: Bösch
Delay Profile Investigation of Indoor On-Body Channel Measurements
On-body channel measurements play an important role in the development of wireless body area
networks (WBANs). WBANs enable new promising applications in surveillance, sports and health. In
particular, remote health monitoring systems using WBANs allow the flexibility in providing locationindependent and consistent patient monitoring systems. A key area of research in optimization of
WBANs is to get an accurate knowledge of the propagation channel using delay profiles, including an
estimate of the delay spread between two nodes on the body. This information plays an important
role in the design of the physical, medium access control and network layers of WBANs for remote
health monitoring systems. Propagation measurements at 900 MHz are performed on a human body
in a multipath environment, considering different parts of the body separately. Channel
characteristics are extracted from the measurement data.
KRAMMER Martin
Betreuer: Fuchs
Simulation and Modeling in the Context of Verification and Test of Safety Related Embedded
Systems
The development of automotive electronics and electrics has become very challenging over the past
decades. The number of functions serving drivers and passengers has increased, and new complex
electrified propulsion systems need to be managed efficiently. High reliability and functional safety
are key issues. The traditional V-process model is used throughout the automotive industry. It helps
to align definition and implementation tasks with their corresponding integration, verification and
validation tasks. Furthermore, it defines the interfaces between hierarchies of original equipment
manufacturers (OEMs), suppliers and development teams.
In this thesis, modelling and simulation of safety-critical automotive electric and electronic systems
are in focus. Main goal is to establish system models as a means of semiformal link between
requirements/specifications and verification/validation phases in an automated way. These system
models aim for an easier integration of hardware and software elements as well as elements from
other domains. Due to the cross-domain nature of such systems, advanced co-simulation techniques
are used to build executable system models.
In course of this work, a domain specific modelling language is developed. This language is
implemented as a UML profile. It enables the construction of system models and their automated
transformation to co-simulation configurations. For this purpose, the interface to a co-simulation
platform is specified. A demonstrator implementation in connection with an industry tool is available
and highlights the benefits of this approach.
LEITINGER Erik
Betreuer: Witrisal
Multipath-Assisted Indoor Localization and Tracking: Performance Bounds and Algorithms
Location awareness is a key component of many future wireless applications. Achieving the needed
level of accuracy robustly is still elusive, especially in indoor environments which are characterized by
harsh multipath conditions. Promising candidate systems thus either use sensing technologies that
provide remedies against multipath or they fuse information from multiple information sources. Our
research field, "Multipath-assisted indoor localization and tracking", employs both of these
strategies. Ultra-wideband (UWB) signals are used to facilitate the separation of multipath
components (MPCs). Knowing the floor plan, these MPCs can be associated to the local geometry
and used as additional (virtual) anchors (VAs). In this way, additional position-related information is
exploited that is contained in the radio signals.
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The provided talk gives an overview about the derived performance bounds (Cramer-Rao Lower
Bound) and algorithms for multipath-assisted indoor localization and tracking. Furthermore, an
approach for multipath-assisted indoor SLAM (Simultaniuous Localization and Mapping), where also
new potential virtual sources are estimated, will be presented.
LESJAK Christian
Betreuer: Brenner
Facilitating Secure Smart Maintenance Services
Following mechanization, electrification and digitalization, Industry 4.0 and related initiatives
propagate and shape the antici-pated fourth industrial revolution. A specific approach are smart
maintenance services, which aim at reducing unplanned equipment downtime by predicting timely
maintenance tasks from current and centrally collected equipment usage status data. Maintenance
technicians then carry out maintenance tasks more efficiently by wirelessly interacting with industrial
equipment using portable maintenance clients in the field. Therefore, security requires serious
consideration.
This thesis investigates how dual-interface security controllers can enable secured smart
maintenance services. In a number of case studies we design, implement and evaluate different pilot
cases for remote monitoring and local updating of industrial equipment. A major concern is also the
migration form nowadays to future connected devices. First results include a near field
communication (NFC) interface into embedded systems for bidirectional data communication using a
mobile client; a system for device identification and authentication via two different interfaces (NFC
and network) utilizing the same creden-tials; and a system to collect device snapshots in a secured,
transparent and ad-hoc way.
MACHER Georg
Betreuer: Brenner
Seamless Model-Based Development of Automotive Safety-Critical Multi-Core Systems
Automotive embedded systems have become very complex and are strongly integrated. Introduction
of automotive multi-core technologies strongly support functional integration of different
applications on the same control unit. Safety-criticality of such systems raises new challenges.
Traditional software development methods used in the automotive domain have reached their limits
due to the complex, real-time, resource constrained, and networked nature of these systems.
Furthermore, domain standards such as Automotive SPICE, ISO 26262, and AUTOSAR complicate
system development even more. A comprehensive understanding or solution how to overcome this
multiple-constraints situation is still an open issue. The aim of this thesis is to foster a conceptual
change from a document-centric approach to a seamless model-based approach on
process,methodical, and tool level. Therefore, the work enhance a model-driven systems and safety
engineering framework for multi-core systems, enabling the seamless description of the system from
requirements at system level down to software component implementation and focuses on the
following aspects:
o) Safety-critical multi-core system development
o) Identification of parallelism to enable safety-related parallel computation on different cores
o) Real-time behaviour of multi-core applications
o) Cross core influences due to shared resources
o) Dedicated methods and tools supporting safety analysis beyond limitations of traditional
approaches
o) New software architectures for multi-core systems, relying on existing standards (such as
AUTOSAR)
MARTIN Helmut
Betreuer: Watzenig
Approaches for reuse of functional safety artefacts
Electrical and/or electronic (E/E) embedded system development is one of the main drivers for
innovation, but still challenging in various domains. In the context of E/E systems we have to cover
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possible malfunctions of E/E systems, because malfunctions of E/E systems potentially cause
hazardous events that could, in worst case, harm people. That is the reason why we have to consider
the domain specific functional safety standards. Functional safety aims to get a clear understanding
of potential problems, their causes and effects, and provides possible fault solutions and mitigation
measures to ensure a safe state in every possible hazardous situation.
The need for cost efficient development, shorter time to market and the improvement of products
quality requires systematic approaches to solve that challenges. The application of systematic reuse
methods is one possible enabler to improve that situation in industrial practice.
In the last decades the software development applies and evaluates such reuse methods for years
but their focus was set on non safety-critical software. But it is not possible to consider any specific
hazards of the new system when the reused software was designed and coded. Therefore, software
which is safe in one system and environment may be unsafe in another. It is required to extend the
known reuse methods from SW for application for reuse on safety-critical systems. We have to be
aware that functional safety is not a property of the software itself, but rather a combination of the
software design and the environment where the software is used: So it is application-, environment-,
and system-specific.
MESSNER Stephanie
Betreuer: Watzenig
Design of Control Patterns for the Development of robust and distributed Driver Assistance
Functions
The introduction of advanced driver assistance systems (up to autonomous driving) and associated
complex control functions are a major challenge for vehicle development. For cost and efficiency
reasons the control functions, sensors, actuators, sensor evaluation, data processing, etc are
distributed on a large number of electronic control units (ECUs) and processing cores (Multi-Core) in
the vehicle. As a result, the additional latencies (bus communication, A/D-D/A-conversion, etc.) and
discretization of the system actually lead to nonlinear, time-variant control problems with dead times
which are very difficult to handle.
The aim of this project is to establish a connection between the control function design in an early
phase of the development process and the actual software implementation which takes place rather
late. The final outcome of the project is a framework consisting of so-called "control patterns"
together with robustness tests. This framework allows the design, optimization, and testing of the
resulting distributed system against stability and robustness criteria based on “Distribution
Templates” already in an early development phase. This will reduce the effort for the development of
advanced driver assistance systems significantly and errors or mistakes during the development
process can be avoided.
A detailed literature study on the control and software engineering issues, as well as driver
assistance systems will lay the foundation for this work. For the industrial application of the adaptive
cruise control (ACC) an evaluation platform together with the relevant simulation models and
software components will be set up. For the ACC, design patterns – here called "Control patterns” will be designed to describe the separation and distribution of the control function in the ECU
network. The resulting discrete and distributed systems with dead-times will be studied and
evaluated for their stability and robustness properties. In several iterations, a framework for the
derivation of common “Distribution Templates” will be developed. As a final step, the results of the
project will be summarized and documented.
PESSENTHEINER Hannes
Betreuer: Kubin
Characterization of Multiple Acoustic Sources by Jointly Detecting
Direction of Arrival, Fundamental Frequency, and Harmonics An active acoustic source causes an
acoustic event which is part of an acoustic scene encoded in an acoustic wave field captured by
sensors over time. To fully describe such a scene we need to detect, separate, characterize, and
interpret these events. To be able to do so, we have to extract features from a captured wave field
an assign them to their corresponding acoustic sources. One effective way is to jointly estimate
features, e.g., the direction of arrival, the fundamental frequency, and several harmonics instead of
estimating these features separately and assigning them afterwards. Especially in distant speech
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recognition assigning features to sources is of major importance to increase the word accuracy rate.
But it is often based on constraints that cause a decrease in the system's accuracy/performance
and/or an increase of required computational resources. Nowadays, people tend to solve such
problems by applying algorithms based on machine learning; though accurate enough, it generally
requires a lot of time and training data. Thus, I would like to present a solution based on pure signal
processing only, which does not require any adaptive filters, classifiers, and training data.
PEZZEI Pirmin
Betreuer: Leitgeb E.
Investigation of geometrical losses and the impact on link budgets for wireless optical links
Optical wireless communication (OWC) is gaining more and more importance in the wireless domain
because of the high transmission bandwidth, license-free long-range operation and no
electromagnetic pollution. An OWC system consists of an optical radiation source and an optical
receiver, which must be in line-of-sight to the transmitter. The presentation concentrates on three
main topics of such an optical transmission system. First part is about two different beam intensity
distribution models. The second one deals with mechanical misalignments that cause geometrical
link losses. Finally optical link budgets are discussed which are necessary for planning OWC links.
RADMILOVIC Zoran
Betreuer: Watzenig
Robust Reinforcement Learning as an Active Damping Controller of Powertrain Oscillations
regarding HEV topologies
Power-split systems as in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) use a planetary gear sets to create a strong
mechanical coupling between components. Such a configuration offers a variety of possibilities in
reduction of CO2 emissions and fuel consumption. During acceleration or because of external
disturbances, oscillations can occur which leads to a drivability and performance downgrade. Active
damping controller uses the electric motor to suppress drivetrain oscillations instead of handling
them within the internal combustion engine (ICE). The control algorithm is based on reinforcement
learning and it is implemented as part of an existing hybrid controller. Based on a prediction of the
torque distribution in the system, the controller generates a damping torque signal for electric
motors to suppress upcoming oscillations.
RASCHKE Wolfgang
Betreuer: Weiß
Product Families in the Context of Resource Constrained Smart Card Development
Modern smart cards are small embedded systems for security relevant applications. Cost pressure
and minimization of time-to-market lead to a high effort for test and verification. For these reasons it
is important to support the design processes with encompassing tools for testing and evaluation.
The subject of this work deals with the design processes which are necessary to reduce the
functional spectrum of product specific smart cards. Therefore it is imperative to map the
development artifacts onto a model. This model must consider the component dependencies as well
as boundary conditions due to resource constraints.
SPORER Harald
Betreuer: Brenner
Safety from Scratch for Small and Micro-sized Enterprises in the Automotive Context
Regardless if it is a newly developed or a redesign of a former explicit mechanical functionality the
automotive E&E-Systems continue their success story. Due to the fact that we still are at the
beginning of connecting the vehicle with its environment the end of increasing electric and electronic
functions at our cars is not in sight. Of course this extensive use and complexity of E&E-Systems has a
direct effect on the required quality of these often safety-relevant systems. Especially small and
micro-sized enterprises (SMiEs) which want to deliver goods and services to a Tier-1 supplier or even
an OEM often struggle with setting up their development processes to achieve the required quality.
At this thesis methodologies and tools has been developed to support these small and micro-sized
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companies at their development activities. To achieve an appropriate support two goals can be
stated: (1) An engineering process reference model realizable for SMiEs shall be created and (2) A
deployment package technique shall be provided to support the fast implementation of the SMiE
process reference model at the companies. The latter includes also the development of a tool called
“Embedded Automotive System Design (EASy Design)” which provides a domain specific language
especially for the model-based design of the different abstraction levels along an automotive E&ESystem development.
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