Current Project:

System-On-Chip Acceleration of Wheel-rail Contact Laws by using FPGA, PhD’s project, since 2006

Funding: ORSAS + Tetley & Lipton awards + School’s Maintenance +  University’s International Research Scholarship

Supervisors: Prof. T.X. Mei,  Dr. Steven Freear

Background:

● Simulation of the behaviour of railway vehicles is regarded as an essential designing method to verify the improvement in dynamic performance offered by the emerging technology

● The requirement of simulation in real-time is increasing significantly as it offers a realistic means to test the control strategies which is economically and logistically easier than real track experiment.

● Wheel-rail contacts laws are found to be the bottleneck in the simulation especially when real-time running is required.

Objective:

To develop a custom system-on-chip accelerator for contact laws, which:

● Run fast enough for real-time requirements, typically less than 1ms in step size

● Has good scalability when designing larger systems for multiple contacts

● Produces results in required accuracy level

Publication:

● Y. Zhou, S. Freear, T.X. Mei, An FPGA Hardware/Software Co-Design Optimization with Evolutionary Computation. (ready to be submitted)

● Y. Zhou, T.X. Mei, S. Freear, Real-time Modeling of Wheel-rail Contact Laws With System-on-chip. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems. vol.21, no.5, pp. 672-684, May 2010 (DOI) (DOI-2) (view in PDF)

● Y. Zhou, T.X. Mei, S. Freear, Field programmable gate array Implementation of Wheel-Rail Contact Laws. IET Control Theory & Applications. vol.4, no.2, pp. 303-313, February 2010  (DOI) (view in PDF)

● T.X. Mei, Y. Zhou, S. Freear, System-On-Chip Approach for Acceleration Wheel-Rail Contact Algorithms. 21st International Symposium on Dynamics of Vehicles on Roads and Tracks (IAVSD 2009). 2009

● Y. Zhou, T.X. Mei, S. Freear, FPGA Implementation of Wheel-rail Contact Laws. UKACC Control 2008. 2008  (view in PDF)

IAVSD2009 poster

view project poster

Sponsored by ORSAS

Former projects:

FPGA Based Real Time Simulation for Electrical Machines, MSc’s project, 2003-2005

Supervisor: Dr. T.X. Mei

This project studies a novel solution for the real time simulation of electrical motors, based on the latest FPGA devices.

It will provide a low cost and flexible platform for rapid development, testing and commissioning of real time traction control algorithms and functionalities – without the need to rely on traditional CPUs and associated peripherals. The system developed will be suitable and adaptable for use at any stage of the development and design.

Publication:

● Zhou Y.; Mei, T.X. FPGA based real time simulation for electrical machines. IFAC World Congress 2005. 2005  (view in PDF)

● Mei, T.X.; Zhou, Y. Real Time Simulation of Electrical Motors using System-on-chip Approach. UKACC Control 2004. 2004  (view in PDF)

view project poster

Greenhouse Wireless Programmable Fuzzy-Control System, ‘CHALLENGE CUP’ contest’s project, 2001-2003

Supervisor: Dr. Bosheng Yu     Project Lead: Yongji Zhou

This project investigated the feasibility for developing a intelligent greenhouse control system. Multi-node wireless sensor network was employed in the system. Each sensor node is equipped with a radio transceiver, a battery, and a microcontroller for monitoring temperature/humidity and controlling heating/misting equipment. Fuzzy logic was employed in the host system to trigger sending control signal to the sensor nodes, where the frequency and traffic of communication was reduced to minimize the energy consumption on each sensor node and meanwhile good temperature/humidity control was achieved.

Work involves (1)wireless communication between sensor nodes and gateway sensor nodes via radio transceivers, (2)communication between gateway sensor node host system on PC via parallel port, (3)temperature, humidity and luminosity data acquisition and monitoring via microcontrollers, (4)real-time monitoring on host system, and (5)controlling heaters, electric fans, misting system and lights using fuzzy logic.

A greenhouse model was made for the purpose demonstration. In the model, data of temperature, humidity and luminosity are obtained and transmitted to PC via wireless/RF communication. Based on Fuzzy logic, the PC sends out manipulation command to maintain these three parameters to the preset value.

The work was granted top-rank prize in the provincial contest and 2nd-rank prize in the national one.

Publication:

Zhou Y. Design of PC Parallel Port Communication under Peripheral Circuit EPP Mode. Modern Electronic Techniques. 153.  pp.29-34. 2003  (view in PDF)

Greenhouse model

Host board

Sub board

Team members and me

System diagram

Prize diploma

Design of PC-based Radar Information Mining & Display Card, BEng final year project, 2002-2003

Supervisor: Dr. Bosheng Yu

Introduction: The enhancement of operation frequency of CPU and PC’s bus (e.g. PCI bus) enable real time processing and display of radar video signal on a common PC. The aim of this project is to propose a scheme to implement such function, based on the fundamental theory of radar raster scan & display technology. And in our formulated scheme, we investigate (1) pre-processing and mining of radar video signal by CPLD/FPGA, (2) realization of PCI bus interface via PCI bridge IC, and (3) development of PCI drivers on Windows platform. Our research is suitable for application of not only military radars but also civil ones.

The work was ranked “Excellent” (top-grade) by the EE School of Xidian University in the assessment of final year project.