The design of wireless embedded systems needs their efficient and realistic simulation to verify that requirements are met. The reproduction of communication behavior is crucial to assess the performance of hardware and software components, e.g., dependability and energy consumption. This work presents and discusses different levels of abstraction for the simulation of the communication behavior. Each level addresses different aspects of the communication and allows to specify different kinds of detail; furthermore, it requires a specific modeling approach. Their use and the corresponding computational overhead is shown in the specific case of the Bluetooth standard. We also show that simulation results obtained at a low abstraction level can be used at a higher one to drive design choices.

The industry is merging two different wireless personal area networks (WPAN) technologies: Bluetooth (BT) and WiMedia ultra wide band (UWB), into a single BT over UWB (BToUWB) specification. The goal is to provide low cost, low power and a wide range of data rate wireless communications for multimedia and mobile applications. The complexity to study such a system requires the development of a virtual prototype at a high- level of abstraction. The model needs a fast simulation time in order to explore the algorithms necessary for the merging of the standards. Moreover, as the merging is still in a standardization phase, this virtual prototype helps to actively participate to this effort. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the methodology used to create a virtual prototype of a BToUWB device.

Smart sensors differ from conventional ones in their ability to process a high amount of data close to the source and in their ability to communicate in a bi-directional way. We review the design of a distributed perception system using the CoMES design flow. This perception system is made of a collection of smart sensors connected by a fieldbus. We report on the ultrasonic smart sensor design part, sensor which aims at delivering features related to the perceived environment. We especially focus on the high-level design of such a subsystem, design which results in a functional structure describing the internal solution in a technology-independent way. Thanks to the CoMES technology, this solution can be validated through simulation before considering the architectural design aspects leading to the prototyping step.

This paper proposes an approach for designing and implementing an interpretation system for a multi-sensory perception machine. Integrating multiple heterogeneous recognition and perception processes seems useful to efficiently obtain a reliable interpretation of a real complex dynamic environment. After tackling the problems of modelling objects and sensors, we propose a generic multi-sensory recognition and fusion approach and then present how are controlled and organized the perception tasks through a flexible distributed architecture. The work is validated by experimental results in real situations

The authors propose an approach to generalize the hypothesis and test recognition paradigm for multisensory environments and fairly generic object models. Matching, prediction and localization procedures are based on a generic representation of feature accuracy. This generic approach performs fusion both at the numeric (geometric) and at the symbolic (recognition) levels. Its reliability is illustrated by several real-world examples demonstrating recognition of real objects in complex cluttered environments using four types of sensory data: contour images (two viewpoints), stereovision 3-D line segments, range 3-D faces, and color images.>