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Due to its performance, the field of deep learning has gained a lot of attention, with neural networks succeeding in areas like Computer Vision (CV), Neural Language Processing (NLP), and Reinforcement Learning (RL). However, high accuracy comes at a computational cost as larger networks require longer training time and no longer fit onto a single GPU. To reduce training costs, researchers are looking into the dynamics of different optimizers, in order to find ways to make training more efficient. Resource requirements can be limited by reducing model size during training or designing more efficient models that improve accuracy without increasing network size.
This thesis combines eigenvalue computation and high-dimensional loss surface visualization to study different optimizers and deep neural network models. Eigenvectors of different eigenvalues are computed, and the loss landscape and optimizer trajectory are projected onto the plane spanned by those eigenvectors. A new parallelization method for the stochastic Lanczos method is introduced, resulting in faster computation and thus enabling high-resolution videos of the trajectory and secondorder information during neural network training. Additionally, the thesis presents the loss landscape between two minima along with the eigenvalue density spectrum at intermediate points for the first time.
Secondly, this thesis presents a regularization method for Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) that uses second-order information. The gradient during training is modified by subtracting the eigenvector direction of the biggest eigenvalue, preventing the network from falling into the steepest minima and avoiding mode collapse. The thesis also shows the full eigenvalue density spectra of GANs during training.
Thirdly, this thesis introduces ProxSGD, a proximal algorithm for neural network training that guarantees convergence to a stationary point and unifies multiple popular optimizers. Proximal gradients are used to find a closed-form solution to the problem of training neural networks with smooth and non-smooth regularizations, resulting in better sparsity and more efficient optimization. Experiments show that ProxSGD can find sparser networks while reaching the same accuracy as popular optimizers.
Lastly, this thesis unifies sparsity and neural architecture search (NAS) through the framework of group sparsity. Group sparsity is achieved through ℓ2,1-regularization during training, allowing for filter and operation pruning to reduce model size with minimal sacrifice in accuracy. By grouping multiple operations together, group sparsity can be used for NAS as well. This approach is shown to be more robust while still achieving competitive accuracies compared to state-of-the-art methods
When people with hearing loss are provided with different devices in each ear, these devices usually have different processing latencies. This leads to static temporal offsets between both ears in the order of several milliseconds. This thesis measured effects of such offsets in stimulation timing on mechanisms of binaural hearing, such as sound localization and speech understanding in noise in hearing-impaired and normal-hearing listeners.
Electrochemical pressure impedance spectroscopy (EPIS) has received the attention of researchers as a method to study mass transport processes in polymer electrolyte mem-brane fuel cells (PEMFC). It is based on analyzing the cell voltage response to a harmonic excitation of the gas phase pressure in the frequency domain. Several experiments with a single-cell fuel cell have shown that the spectra contain information in the frequency range typical for mass transport processes and are sensitive to specific operating condi-tions and structural fuel cell parameters. To further benefit from the observed features, it is essential to identify why they occur, which to date has not yet been accomplished. The aim of the present work, therefore, is to identify causal links between internal processes and the corresponding EPIS features.
To this end, the study follows a model-based approach, which allows the analysis of inter-nal states that are not experimentally accessible. The PEMFC model is a pseudo-2D model, which connects the mass transport along the gas channel with the mass transport through the membrane electrode assembly. A modeling novelty is the consideration of the gas vol-ume inside the humidifier upstream the fuel cell inlet, which proves to be crucial for the reproduction of EPIS. The PEMFC model is parametrized to a 100 cm² single cell of the French project partner, who provided the experimental EPIS results reproduced and in-terpreted in the present study.
The simulated EPIS results show a good agreement with the experiments at current den-sities ≤ 0.4 A cm–2, where they allow a further analysis of the observed features. At the lowest excitation frequency of 1 mHz, the dynamic cell voltage response approaches the static pressure-voltage response. In the simulated frequency range between 1 mHz – 100 Hz, the cell voltage oscillation is found to strongly correlate with the partial pressure oscillation of oxygen, whereas the influence of the water pressure is limited to the low frequency region.
The two prominent EPIS features, namely the strong increase of the cell voltage oscillation and the increase of phase shift with frequency, can be traced back via the oxygen pressure to the oscillation of the inlet flow rate. The phenomenon of the oscillating inlet flow rate is a consequence of the pressure change of the gas phase inside the humidifier and in-creases with frequency. This important finding enables the interpretation of experimen-tally observed EPIS trends for a variation of operational and structural fuel cell parame-ters by tracing them back to the influence of the oscillating inlet flow rate.
The separate simulation of the time-dependent processes of the PEMFC model through model reduction shows their individual influence on EPIS. The sluggish process of the wa-ter uptake by the membrane is visible below 0.1 Hz, while the charge and discharge of the double layer becomes visible above 1 Hz. The gas transport through the gas diffusion layer is only visible above 100 Hz. The simulation of the gas transport through the gas channel
without consideration of the humidifier becomes visible above 1 Hz. With consideration of the humidifier the gas transport through the gas channel is visible throughout the fre-quency range. The strong similarity of the spectra considering the humidifier with the spectra of the full model setup shows the dominant influence of the humidifier on EPIS.
A promising observation is the change in the amplitude relationship between the cell volt-age and the oxygen partial pressure oscillation as a function of the oxygen concentration in the catalyst layer. At a frequency where the influence of oxygen pressure on the cell voltage is dominant, for example at 1 Hz, the amplitude of the cell voltage oscillation could be used to indirectly measure the oxygen concentration in the catalyst layer.
With the expansion of IoT devices in many aspects of our life, the security of such systems has become an important challenge. Unlike conventional computer systems, any IoT security solution should consider the constraints of these systems such as computational capability, memory, connectivity, and power consumption limitations. Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) with their special characteristics were introduced to satisfy the security needs while respecting the mentioned constraints. They exploit the uncontrollable and reproducible variations of the underlying component for security applications such as identification, authentication, and communication security. Since IoT devices are typically low cost, it is important to reuse existing elements in their hardware (for instance sensors, ADCs, etc.) instead of adding extra costs for the PUF hardware. Micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) devices are widely used in IoT systems as sensors and actuators. In this thesis, a comprehensive study of the potential application of MEMS devices as PUF primitives is provided. MEMS PUF leverages the uncontrollable variations in the parameters of MEMS elements to derive secure keys for cryptographic applications. Experimental and simulation results show that our proposed MEMS PUFs are capable of generating enough entropy for a complex key generation, while their responses show low fluctuations in different environmental conditions.
Keeping in mind that the PUF responses are prone to change in the presence of noise and environmental variations, it is critical to derive reliable keys from the PUF and to use the maximum entropy at the same time. In the second part of this thesis, we elaborate on different key generation schemes and their advantages and drawbacks. We propose the PUF output positioning (POP) and integer linear programming (ILP) methods, which are novel methods for grouping the PUF outputs in order to maximize the extracted entropy. To implement these methods, the key enrollment and key generation algorithms are presented. The proposed methods are then evaluated by applying on the responses of the MEMS PUF, where it can be practically shown that the proposed method outperforms other existing PUF key generation methods.
The final part of this thesis is dedicated to the application of the MEMS PUF as a security solution for IoT systems. We select the mutual authentication of IoT devices and their backend system, and propose two lightweight authentication protocols based on MEMS PUFs. The presented protocols undergo a comprehensive security analysis to show their eligibility to be used in IoT systems. As the result, the output of this thesis is a lightweight security solution based on MEMS PUFs, which introduces a very low overhead on the cost of the hardware.
Ultra-low-power passive telemetry systems for industrial and biomedical applications have gained much popularity lately. The reduction of the power consumption and size of the circuits poses critical challenges in ultra-low-power circuit design. Biotelemetry applications like leakage detection in silicone breast implants require low-power-consuming small-size electronics. In this doctoral thesis, the design, simulation, and measurement of a programmable mixed-signal System-on-Chip (SoC) called General Application Passive Sensor Integrated Circuit (GAPSIC) is presented. Owing to the low power consumption, GAPSIC is capable of completely passive operation. Such a batteryless passive system has lower maintenance complexity and is also free from battery-related health hazards. With a die area of 4.92 mm² and a maximum analog power consumption of 592 µW, GAPSIC has one of the best figure-of-merits compared to similar state-of-the-art SoCs. Regarding possible applications, GAPSIC can read out and digitally transmit the signals of resistive sensors for pressure or temperature measurements. Additionally, GAPSIC can measure electrocardiogram (ECG) signals and conductivity.
The design of GAPSIC complies with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 15693/NFC (near field communication) 5 standard for radio frequency identification (RFID), corresponding to the frequency range of 13.56 MHz. A passive transponder developed with GAPSIC comprises of an external memory storage and very few other external components, like an antenna and sensors. The passive tag antenna and reader antenna use inductive coupling for communication and energy transfer, which enables passive operation. A passive tag developed with GAPSIC can communicate with an NFC compatible smart device or an ISO 15693 RFID reader. An external memory storage contains the programmable application-specific firmware.
As a mixed-signal SoC, GAPSIC includes both analog and digital circuitries. The analog block of GAPSIC includes a power management unit, an RFID/NFC communication unit, and a sensor readout unit. The digital block includes an integrated 32-bit microcontroller, developed by the Hochschule Offenburg ASIC design center, and digital peripherals. A 16-kilobyte random-access memory and a read-only 16-kilobyte memory constitute the GAPSIC internal memory. For the fabrication of GAPSIC, one poly, six-metal 0.18 µm CMOS process is used.
The design of GAPSIC includes two stages. In the first stage, a standalone RFID/NFC frontend chip with a power management unit, an RFID/NFC communication unit, a clock regenerator unit, and a field detector unit was designed. In the second stage, the rest of the functional blocks were integrated with the blocks of the RFID/NFC frontend chip for the final integration of GAPSIC. To reduce the power consumption, conventional low-power design techniques were applied extensively like multiple power supplies, and the operation of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) transistors in the sub-threshold region of operation, as well as further innovative circuit designs.
An overvoltage protection circuit, a power rectifier, a bandgap reference circuit, and two low-dropout (LDO) voltage regulators constitute the power management unit of GAPSIC. The overvoltage protection circuit uses a novel method where three stacked transistor pairs shunt the extra voltage. In the power rectifier, four rectifier units are arranged in parallel, which is a unique approach. The four parallel rectifier units provide the optimal choice in terms of voltage drop and the area required.
The communication unit is responsible for RFID/NFC communication and incorporates demodulation and load modulation circuitry. The demodulator circuit comprises of an envelope detector, a high-pass filter, and a comparator. Following a new approach, the bandgap reference circuit itself acts as the load for the envelope detector circuit, which minimizes the circuit complexity and area. For the communication between the reader and the RFID/NFC tag, amplitude-shift keying (ASK) is used to modulate signals, where the smallest modulation index can be as low as 10%. A novel technique involving a comparator with a preset offset voltage effectively demodulates the ASK signal. With an effective die area of 0.7 mm² and power consumption of 107 µW, the standalone RFID/NFC frontend chip has the best figure-of-merits compared to the state-of-the-art frontend chips reported in the relevant literature. A passive RFID/NFC tag developed with the standalone frontend chip, as well as temperature and pressure sensors demonstrate the full passive operational capability of the frontend chip. An NFC reader device using a custom-built Android-based application software reads out the sensor data from the passive tag.
The sensor readout circuit consists of a channel selector with two differential and four single-ended inputs with a programmable-gain instrumentation amplifier. The entire sensor readout part remains deactivated when not in use. The internal memory stores the measured offset voltage of the instrumentation amplifier, where a firmware code removes the offset voltage from the measured sensor signal. A 12-bit successive approximation register (SAR) type analog-to-digital-converter (ADC) based on a charge redistribution architecture converts the measured sensor data to a digital value. The digital peripherals include a serial peripheral interface, four timers, RFID/NFC interfaces, sensor readout unit interfaces, and 12-bit SAR logic.
Two sets of studies with custom-made NFC tag antennas for biomedical applications were conducted to ascertain their compatibility with GAPSIC. The first study involved the link efficiency measurements of NFC tag antennas and an NFC reader antenna with porcine tissue. In a separate experiment, the effect of a ferrite compared to air core on the antenna-coupling factor was investigated. With the ferrite core, the coupling factor increased by four times.
Among the state-of-the-art SoCs published in recent scientific articles, GAPSIC is the only passive programmable SoC with a power management unit, an RFID/NFC communication interface, a sensor readout circuit, a 12-bit SAR ADC, and an integrated 32-bit microcontroller. This doctoral research includes the preliminary study of three passive RFID tags designed with discrete components for biomedical and industrial applications like measurements of temperature, pH, conductivity, and oxygen concentration, along with leakage detection in silicone breast implants. Besides its small size and low power consumption, GAPSIC is suitable for each of the biomedical and industrial applications mentioned above due to the integrated high-performance microcontroller, the robust programmable instrumentation amplifier, and the 12-bit analog-to-digital converter. Furthermore, the simulation and measurement data show that GAPSIC is well suited for the design of a passive tag to monitor arterial blood pressure in patients experiencing Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD), which is proposed in this doctoral thesis as an exemplary application of the developed system.