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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1988

A new code for Galileo

Over the past six to eight years, an extensive research effort was conducted to investigate advanced coding techniques which promised to yield more coding gain than is available with current NASA standard codes. The delay in Galileo's launch due to the temporary suspension of the shuttle program provided the Galileo project with an opportunity to evaluate the possibility of including some version of the advanced codes as a mission enhancement option. A study was initiated last summer to determine if substantial coding gain was feasible for Galileo and, is so, to recommend a suitable experimental code for use as a switchable alternative to the current NASA-standard code. The Galileo experimental code study resulted in the selection of a code with constant length 15 and rate 1/4. The code parameters were chosen to optimize performance within cost and risk constraints consistent with retrofitting the new code into the existing Galileo system design and launch schedule. The particular code was recommended after a very limited search among good codes with the chosen parameters. It will theoretically yield about 1.5 dB enhancement under idealizing assumptions relative to the current NASA-standard code at Galileo's desired bit error rates. This ideal predicted gain includes enough cushion to meet the project's target of at least 1 dB enhancement under real, non-ideal conditions.

Dolinar, S.↗
NASA NTRS1990

On linear structure and phase rotation invariant properties of block 2(sup l)-PSK modulation codes

Two important structural properties of block 2(l)-ary PSK (phase shift keying) modulation codes, linear structure and phase symmetry, are investigated. For an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, the error performance of a modulation code depends on its squared Euclidean distance distribution. Linear structure of a code makes the error performance analysis much easier. Phase symmetry of a code is important in resolving carrier phase ambiguity and ensuring rapid carrier phase resynchronization after temporary loss of synchronization. It is desirable for a code to have as many phase symmetries as possible. A 2(l)-ary modulation code is represented here as a code with symbols from the integer group. S sub 2(l) PSK = (0,1,2,...,2(l)-1), under the modulo-2(l) addition. The linear structure of block 2(l)-ary PSK modulation codes over S sub 2(l)-ary PSK with respect to the modulo-2(l) vector addition is defined, and conditions under which a block 2(l)-ary PSK modulation code is linear are derived. Once the linear structure is developed, phase symmetry of a block 2(l)-ary PSK modulation code is studied. It is a necessary and sufficient condition for a block 2(l)-PSK modulation code, which is linear as a binary code, to be invariant under 180 deg/2(l-h) phase rotation, for 1 is less than or equal to h is less than or equal to l. A list of short 8-PSK and 16-PSK modulation codes is given, together with their linear structure and the smallest phase rotation for which a code is invariant.

Lin, Shu↗
NASA NTRS2000

Performance of the OVERFLOW-MLP and LAURA-MLP CFD Codes on the NASA Ames 512 CPU Origin System

The shared memory Multi-Level Parallelism (MLP) technique, developed last year at NASA Ames has been very successful in dramatically improving the performance of important NASA CFD codes. This new and very simple parallel programming technique was first inserted into the OVERFLOW production CFD code in FY 1998. The OVERFLOW-MLP code's parallel performance scaled linearly to 256 CPUs on the NASA Ames 256 CPU Origin 2000 system (steger). Overall performance exceeded 20.1 GFLOP/s, or about 4.5x the performance of a dedicated 16 CPU C90 system. All of this was achieved without any major modification to the original vector based code. The OVERFLOW-MLP code is now in production on the inhouse Origin systems as well as being used offsite at commercial aerospace companies. Partially as a result of this work, NASA Ames has purchased a new 512 CPU Origin 2000 system to further test the limits of parallel performance for NASA codes of interest. This paper presents the performance obtained from the latest optimization efforts on this machine for the LAURA-MLP and OVERFLOW-MLP codes. The Langley Aerothermodynamics Upwind Relaxation Algorithm (LAURA) code is a key simulation tool in the development of the next generation shuttle, interplanetary reentry vehicles, and nearly all "X" plane development. This code sustains about 4-5 GFLOP/s on a dedicated 16 CPU C90. At this rate, expected workloads would require over 100 C90 CPU years of computing over the next few calendar years. It is not feasible to expect that this would be affordable or available to the user community. Dramatic performance gains on cheaper systems are needed. This code is expected to be perhaps the largest consumer of NASA Ames compute cycles per run in the coming year.The OVERFLOW CFD code is extensively used in the government and commercial aerospace communities to evaluate new aircraft designs. It is one of the largest consumers of NASA supercomputing cycles and large simulations of highly resolved full aircraft are routinely undertaken. Typical large problems might require 100s of Cray C90 CPU hours to complete. The dramatic performance gains with the 256 CPU steger system are exciting. Obtaining results in hours instead of months is revolutionizing the way in which aircraft manufacturers are looking at future aircraft simulation work. Figure 2 below is a current state of the art plot of OVERFLOW-MLP performance on the 512 CPU Lomax system. As can be seen, the chart indicates that OVERFLOW-MLP continues to scale linearly with CPU count up to 512 CPUs on a large 35 million point full aircraft RANS simulation. At this point performance is such that a fully converged simulation of 2500 time steps is completed in less than 2 hours of elapsed time. Further work over the next few weeks will improve the performance of this code even further.The LAURA code has been converted to the MLP format as well. This code is currently being optimized for the 512 CPU system. Performance statistics indicate that the goal of 100 GFLOP/s will be achieved by year's end. This amounts to 20x the 16 CPU C90 result and strongly demonstrates the viability of the new parallel systems rapidly solving very large simulations in a production environment.

Taft, James R.↗
DOE OSTI2015

COUPLING OF RELAP5-SCDAP MOD4.0 AND NEUTRONIC CODES

High-fidelity and accurate nuclear system codes play a key role in the design and analysis of complex nuclear power plants, which consist of multiple subsystems, such as the reactor core (and its fuel, burnable poisons, control elements, etc.), the reactor internal structures, the vessel, and the energy conversion subsystem and beyond to grid demand. Most commonly the interplay between these various subsystems is modeled using coupled codes, each of which represents one of the subsystems. And the most common direct coupling is that of thermal-hydraulics and neutronics codes. The subject of this paper is the coupling of codes that model not only thermal-hydraulics and neutronics, but also structural components damage. Furthermore, the neutronic component is not limited to the sole core solver. The coupled code system encompasses thermal-hydraulics, material performance of the fuel, neutronic solver, and neutronic data preparation. Thus, this paper presents a framework for coupling RELAP5/SCDAPSIM/MOD4.0 with a suite of neutron kinetics codes that includes NESTLE, DRAGON and a version of the ENDF library. The version of the RELAP5/SCDAPSIM/MOD4.0 code used in this work is one developed by Innovate System Software (ISS) as part of the international SCDAP Development and Training Program (SDTP) for best-estimate analysis to model reactor transients including severe accident phenomena. This RELAP5/SCDAPSIM/MOD4.0 code version is also capable of predicting nuclear fuel performance. It uses nodal power distributions to calculate mechanical and thermal parameters such as heat-up, oxidation and meltdown of fuel rods and control rods, the ballooning and rupture of fuel rod cladding, the release of fission products from fuel rods, and the disintegration of fuel rods into porous debris and molten material. On the neutronics side, this work uses the NESTLE and DRAGON codes. NESTLE is a multi-dimensional static and kinetic neutronic code developed at North Carolina State University. It solves up to four energy groups neutron diffusion equations utilizing the Nodal Expansion Method (NEM) in Cartesian or hexagonal geometry. The DRAGON code, developed at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, performs lattice physics calculations based on the neutron transport equation and is capable of using very fine energy group structures. In this work, we have developed a coupling approach to exchange data among the various modules. In the coupling process, the generated nuclear data (in fine multigroup energy structure) are collapsed down into two- or four-group energy structures for use in NESTLE. The neutron kinetics and thermal-hydraulics modules are coupled at each time step by using the cross-section data. The power distribution results of the neutronic calculations are transmitted to the thermal-hydraulics code. The spatial distribution of coolant density and the fuel-moderator temperature, which result from the thermal-hydraulic calculations, are transmitted back to the neutron kinetics codes and then the loop is closed using new neutronics results. Details of the actual data transfers will be described in the full length paper.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2023

A Review of the Evaluation of Building Energy Code Compliance in the United States

Building energy codes are essential tools for achieving energy efficiency in buildings. However, the full energy savings potential of these codes can only be realized if buildings are constructed in compliance with them. Therefore, evaluating building energy code compliance is crucial in bridging the gap between the energy efficiency requirements set by energy codes and the actualized energy savings achieved. An energy code compliance evaluation serves as a mechanism to assess construction practices, evaluate the effectiveness of code enforcement, identify gaps in compliance, and guide strategies for improvement through training and education. Conducting code compliance evaluation activities involves field studies that require careful design and significant resources. Historically, more emphasis has been placed on developing and adopting building energy codes, while efforts to evaluate compliance have been relatively limited and lacking consistent approaches. The passage of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which mandated that states create plans for achieving 90% compliance within eight years, stimulated the need for an energy code compliance evaluation. As a result, federal, state, and local governments, and utilities have invested in the development of methodologies and tools for code compliance evaluation studies. This paper reviews the code compliance evaluation studies conducted in the United States over the past three decades. It describes and compares the methodologies and metrics used to assess building energy code compliance, summarizes the general elements and steps involved in the evaluation process, and discusses common issues in these studies. Over time, code compliance evaluation methodologies have evolved from isolated development within individual states, regions, and utilities, to widely accepted protocols applicable across different states and local jurisdictions. There has been a transition in compliance metrics, shifting from historical compliance rates to energy-consumption-oriented approaches.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
NASA NTRS2004

Accumulate-Repeat-Accumulate-Accumulate-Codes

Inspired by recently proposed Accumulate-Repeat-Accumulate (ARA) codes [15], in this paper we propose a channel coding scheme called Accumulate-Repeat-Accumulate-Accumulate (ARAA) codes. These codes can be seen as serial turbo-like codes or as a subclass of Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes, and they have a projected graph or protograph representation; this allows for a high-speed iterative decoder implementation using belief propagation. An ARAA code can be viewed as a precoded Repeat-and-Accumulate (RA) code with puncturing in concatenation with another accumulator, where simply an accumulator is chosen as the precoder; thus ARAA codes have a very fast encoder structure. Using density evolution on their associated protographs, we find examples of rate-lJ2 ARAA codes with maximum variable node degree 4 for which a minimum bit-SNR as low as 0.21 dB from the channel capacity limit can be achieved as the block size goes to infinity. Such a low threshold cannot be achieved by RA or Irregular RA (IRA) or unstructured irregular LDPC codes with the same constraint on the maximum variable node degree. Furthermore by puncturing the accumulators we can construct families of higher rate ARAA codes with thresholds that stay close to their respective channel capacity thresholds uniformly. Iterative decoding simulation results show comparable performance with the best-known LDPC codes but with very low error floor even at moderate block sizes.

density evolution↗
DOE OSTI2020

Opening the Door to Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings with Energy Codes

Building codes represent standard design practice in the construction industry and must continually evolve to account for advancing technologies and innovative practices. Energy codes have historically focused on energy efficiency within buildings and across their systems. However, many of tomorrow's technologies go beyond efficiency and target increased flexibility. These demand flexibility (DF) measures can postpone or reduce building electric load based on price or other grid signals, and include smart appliances, connected lighting, and connected mechanical systems. Expanding codes to enable such grid-interactive efficient building (GEB) has the potential to influence their realization at scale, which will support renewable-energy grid-integration and building-sector decarbonization. However, considering DF measures in code development creates a new set of challenges for codes and the practices contained therein. This paper considers the role of building energy codes in enabling GEB. Specifically, it reviews the status of demand flexibility (DF) measures in current commercial building energy code. It examines the national model code development process and identifies components barring the consideration and inclusion of DF measures - including code scope, characterization and analysis of proposed new prescriptive measures, and accounting for time-of-day and geographic differences in their benefits. The paper presents findings from code development analyses that indicate the cost benefit of DF measures and the limitations associated with current code development conventions. To encourage building flexibility and improved energy resilience moving forward, recommendations are made for removing code development barriers and sanctioning DF measure consideration in future model codes.

Building Energy Codes and Standards, Grid-Interact↗
DOE OSTI2013

Evaluating the performance of two neutron spectrum unfolding codes based on iterative procedures and artificial neural networks

In this work the performance of two neutron spectrum unfolding codes based on iterative procedures and artificial neural networks is evaluated. The first one code based on traditional iterative procedures and called Neutron spectrometry and dosimetry from the Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas (NSDUAZ) use the SPUNIT iterative algorithm and was designed to unfold neutron spectrum and calculate 15 dosimetric quantities and 7 IAEA survey meters. The main feature of this code is the automated selection of the initial guess spectrum trough a compendium of neutron spectrum compiled by the IAEA. The second one code known as Neutron spectrometry and dosimetry with artificial neural networks (NDSann) is a code designed using neural nets technology. The artificial intelligence approach of neural net does not solve mathematical equations. By using the knowledge stored at synaptic weights on a neural net properly trained, the code is capable to unfold neutron spectrum and to simultaneously calculate 15 dosimetric quantities, needing as entrance data, only the rate counts measured with a Bonner spheres system. Similarities of both NSDUAZ and NSDann codes are: they follow the same easy and intuitive user's philosophy and were designed in a graphical interface under the LabVIEW programming environment. Both codes unfold the neutron spectrum expressed in 60 energy bins, calculate 15 dosimetric quantities and generate a full report in HTML format. Differences of these codes are: NSDUAZ code was designed using classical iterative approaches and needs an initial guess spectrum in order to initiate the iterative procedure. In NSDUAZ, a programming routine was designed to calculate 7 IAEA instrument survey meters using the fluence-dose conversion coefficients. NSDann code use artificial neural networks for solving the ill-conditioned equation system of neutron spectrometry problem through synaptic weights of a properly trained neural network. Contrary to iterative procedures, in neural net approach it is possible to reduce the rate counts used to unfold the neutron spectrum. To evaluate these codes a computer tool called Neutron Spectrometry and dosimetry computer tool was designed. The results obtained with this package are showed. The codes here mentioned are freely available upon request to the authors.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2015

Code dependencies of pre-supernova evolution and nucleosynthesis in massive stars: evolution to the end of core helium burning

We present a comparison of 15M ⊙ , 20M ⊙ and 25M ⊙ stellar models from three different codes|GENEC, KEPLER and MESA|and their nucleosynthetic yields. The models are calculated from the main sequence up to the pre-supernova (pre-SN) stage and do not include rotation. The GENEC and KEPLER models hold physics assumptions that are characteristic of the two codes. The MESA code is generally more flexible; overshooting of the convective core during the hydrogen and helium burning phases in MESA is chosen such that the CO core masses are consistent with those in the GENEC models. Full nucleosynthesis calculations are performed for all models using the NuGrid post-processing tool MPPNP and the key energy-generating nuclear reaction rates are the same for all codes. We are thus able to highlight the key diferences between the models that are caused by the contrasting physics assumptions and numerical implementations of the three codes. A reasonable agreement is found between the surface abundances predicted by the models computed using the different codes, with GENEC exhibiting the strongest enrichment of H-burning products and KEPLER exhibiting the weakest. There are large variations in both the structure and composition of the models—the 15M ⊙ and 20M ⊙ in particular—at the pre-SN stage from code to code caused primarily by convective shell merging during the advanced stages. For example the C-shell abundances of O, Ne and Mg predicted by the three codes span one order of magnitude in the 15M ⊙ models. For the alpha elements between Si and Fe the differences are even larger. The s-process abundances in the C shell are modified by the merging of convective shells; the modification is strongest in the 15M ⊙ model in which the C-shell material is exposed to O-burning temperatures and the γ -process is activated. The variation in the s-process abundances across the codes is smallest in the 25M ⊙ models, where it is comparable to the impact of nuclear reaction rate uncertainties. In general the differences in the results from the three codes are due to their contrasting physics assumptions (e.g. prescriptions for mass loss and convection). The broadly similar evolution of the 25M ⊙ models gives us reassurance that different stellar evolution codes do produce similar results. For the 15M ⊙ and 20M ⊙ models, however, the different input physics and the interplay between the various convective zones lead to important differences in both the pre-supernova structure and nucleosynthesis predicted by the three codes. For the KEPLER models the core masses are different and therefore an exact match could not be expected.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Diablo Test Suite: Code Coverage Analysis

An analysis of the Diablo source code covered by its Software Quality Assurance test suite was performed. Intel’s code coverage tool was used to determine the percentage of covered files, blocks, and functions. Excluding non-functional legacy files and single use developer-only files, the code coverage tool showed that 55% of blocks, the most applicable metric and closest to lines of code, are covered. For a large software code, 70-80% coverage is generally considered a reasonable target.A significant percentage of the uncovered code can be categorized as features that are not practical to test, duplicate/unused legacy code, and niche features only used by select individuals. Additionally, large segments of code dedicated to debugging and error handling are untested, as the test problems do not error out. The remaining untested code can be considered general purpose for use by the analyst/user community. These untested general purpose features are identified in the document and should be prioritized when new testing is added. Suggestions for additional test problems that would have the biggest impact on increasing the code coverage metric are presented. Finally, it is important to note that the single biggest way to increase the overall coverage metric is to delete old and unused code. While admittedly tedious to perform, future code development would also benefit markedly from this. Deleting unused code would likely push the coverage metric north of 60%, which is not too far off the 70-80% target. Overall, the current test suite covers the majority of commonly used features in Diablo, but there remains significant room for improvement. These areas for improvement have been identified.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRS1989

Multi-level bandwidth efficient block modulation codes

The multilevel technique is investigated for combining block coding and modulation. There are four parts. In the first part, a formulation is presented for signal sets on which modulation codes are to be constructed. Distance measures on a signal set are defined and their properties are developed. In the second part, a general formulation is presented for multilevel modulation codes in terms of component codes with appropriate Euclidean distances. The distance properties, Euclidean weight distribution and linear structure of multilevel modulation codes are investigated. In the third part, several specific methods for constructing multilevel block modulation codes with interdependency among component codes are proposed. Given a multilevel block modulation code C with no interdependency among the binary component codes, the proposed methods give a multilevel block modulation code C which has the same rate as C, a minimum squared Euclidean distance not less than that of code C, a trellis diagram with the same number of states as that of C and a smaller number of nearest neighbor codewords than that of C. In the last part, error performance of block modulation codes is analyzed for an AWGN channel based on soft-decision maximum likelihood decoding. Error probabilities of some specific codes are evaluated based on their Euclidean weight distributions and simulation results.

Lin, Shu↗
NASA NTRS1993

A low-complexity and high performance concatenated coding scheme for high-speed satellite communications

This report presents a low-complexity and high performance concatenated coding scheme for high-speed satellite communications. In this proposed scheme, the NASA Standard Reed-Solomon (RS) code over GF(2(exp 8) is used as the outer code and the second-order Reed-Muller (RM) code of Hamming distance 8 is used as the inner code. The RM inner code has a very simple trellis structure and is decoded with the soft-decision Viterbi decoding algorithm. It is shown that the proposed concatenated coding scheme achieves an error performance which is comparable to that of the NASA TDRS concatenated coding scheme in which the NASA Standard rate-1/2 convolutional code of constraint length 7 and d sub free = 10 is used as the inner code. However, the proposed RM inner code has much smaller decoding complexity, less decoding delay, and much higher decoding speed. Consequently, the proposed concatenated coding scheme is suitable for reliable high-speed satellite communications, and it may be considered as an alternate coding scheme for the NASA TDRS system.

Lin, Shu↗
NASA NTRS1995

The trellis complexity of convolutional codes

It has long been known that convolutional codes have a natural, regular trellis structure that facilitates the implementation of Viterbi's algorithm. It has gradually become apparent that linear block codes also have a natural, though not in general a regular, 'minimal' trellis structure, which allows them to be decoded with a Viterbi-like algorithm. In both cases, the complexity of the Viterbi decoding algorithm can be accurately estimated by the number of trellis edges per encoded bit. It would, therefore, appear that we are in a good position to make a fair comparison of the Viterbi decoding complexity of block and convolutional codes. Unfortunately, however, this comparison is somewhat muddled by the fact that some convolutional codes, the punctured convolutional codes, are known to have trellis representations that are significantly less complex than the conventional trellis. In other words, the conventional trellis representation for a convolutional code may not be the minimal trellis representation. Thus, ironically, at present we seem to know more about the minimal trellis representation for block than for convolutional codes. In this article, we provide a remedy, by developing a theory of minimal trellises for convolutional codes. (A similar theory has recently been given by Sidorenko and Zyablov). This allows us to make a direct performance-complexity comparison for block and convolutional codes. A by-product of our work is an algorithm for choosing, from among all generator matrices for a given convolutional code, what we call a trellis-minimal generator matrix, from which the minimal trellis for the code can be directly constructed. Another by-product is that, in the new theory, punctured convolutional codes no longer appear as a special class, but simply as high-rate convolutional codes whose trellis complexity is unexpectedly small.

Mceliece, R. J.↗
NASA NTRS1996

Multilevel Concatenated Block Modulation Codes for the Frequency Non-selective Rayleigh Fading Channel

This paper is concerned with construction of multilevel concatenated block modulation codes using a multi-level concatenation scheme for the frequency non-selective Rayleigh fading channel. In the construction of multilevel concatenated modulation code, block modulation codes are used as the inner codes. Various types of codes (block or convolutional, binary or nonbinary) are being considered as the outer codes. In particular, we focus on the special case for which Reed-Solomon (RS) codes are used as the outer codes. For this special case, a systematic algebraic technique for constructing q-level concatenated block modulation codes is proposed. Codes have been constructed for certain specific values of q and compared with the single-level concatenated block modulation codes using the same inner codes. A multilevel closest coset decoding scheme for these codes is proposed.

Lin, Shu↗
NASA NTRS1999

Punctured Parallel and Serial Concatenated Convolutional Codes for BPSK/QPSK Channels

As available bandwidth for communication applications becomes scarce, bandwidth-efficient modulation and coding schemes become ever important. Since their discovery in 1993, turbo codes (parallel concatenated convolutional codes) have been the center of the attention in the coding community because of their bit error rate performance near the Shannon limit. Serial concatenated convolutional codes have also been shown to be as powerful as turbo codes. In this dissertation, we introduce algorithms for designing bandwidth-efficient rate r = k/(k + 1),k = 2, 3,..., 16, parallel and rate 3/4, 7/8, and 15/16 serial concatenated convolutional codes via puncturing for BPSK/QPSK (Binary Phase Shift Keying/Quadrature Phase Shift Keying) channels. Both parallel and serial concatenated convolutional codes have initially, steep bit error rate versus signal-to-noise ratio slope (called the -"cliff region"). However, this steep slope changes to a moderate slope with increasing signal-to-noise ratio, where the slope is characterized by the weight spectrum of the code. The region after the cliff region is called the "error rate floor" which dominates the behavior of these codes in moderate to high signal-to-noise ratios. Our goal is to design high rate parallel and serial concatenated convolutional codes while minimizing the error rate floor effect. The design algorithm includes an interleaver enhancement procedure and finds the polynomial sets (only for parallel concatenated convolutional codes) and the puncturing schemes that achieve the lowest bit error rate performance around the floor for the code rates of interest.

Acikel, Omer Fatih↗
NASA NTRS2010

Support for Systematic Code Reviews with the SCRUB Tool

SCRUB is a code review tool that supports both large, team-based software development efforts (e.g., for mission software) as well as individual tasks. The tool was developed at JPL to support a new, streamlined code review process that combines human-generated review reports with program-generated review reports from a customizable range of state-of-the-art source code analyzers. The leading commercial tools include Codesonar, Coverity, and Klocwork, each of which can achieve a reasonably low rate of false-positives in the warnings that they generate. The time required to analyze code with these tools can vary greatly. In each case, however, the tools produce results that would be difficult to realize with human code inspections alone. There is little overlap in the results produced by the different analyzers, and each analyzer used generally increases the effectiveness of the overall effort. The SCRUB tool allows all reports to be accessed through a single, uniform interface (see figure) that facilitates brows ing code and reports. Improvements over existing software include significant simplification, and leveraging of a range of commercial, static source code analyzers in a single, uniform framework. The tool runs as a small stand-alone application, avoiding the security problems related to tools based on Web browsers. A developer or reviewer, for instance, must have already obtained access rights to a code base before that code can be browsed and reviewed with the SCRUB tool. The tool cannot open any files or folders to which the user does not already have access. This means that the tool does not need to enforce or administer any additional security policies. The analysis results presented through the SCRUB tool s user interface are always computed off-line, given that, especially for larger projects, this computation can take longer than appropriate for interactive tool use. The recommended code review process that is supported by the SCRUB tool consists of three phases: Code Review, Developer Response, and Closeout Resolution. In the Code Review phase, all tool-based analysis reports are generated, and specific comments from expert code reviewers are entered into the SCRUB tool. In the second phase, Developer Response, the developer is asked to respond to each comment and tool-report that was produced, either agreeing or disagreeing to provide a fix that addresses the issue that was raised. In the third phase, Closeout Resolution, all disagreements are discussed in a meeting of all parties involved, and a resolution is made for all disagreements. The first two phases generally take one week each, and the third phase is concluded in a single closeout meeting.

Holzmann, Gerald J.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Prioritized LT Codes

The original Luby Transform (LT) coding scheme is extended to account for data transmissions where some information symbols in a message block are more important than others. Prioritized LT codes provide unequal error protection (UEP) of data on an erasure channel by modifying the original LT encoder. The prioritized algorithm improves high-priority data protection without penalizing low-priority data recovery. Moreover, low-latency decoding is also obtained for high-priority data due to fast encoding. Prioritized LT codes only require a slight change in the original encoding algorithm, and no changes at all at the decoder. Hence, with a small complexity increase in the LT encoder, an improved UEP and low-decoding latency performance for high-priority data can be achieved. LT encoding partitions a data stream into fixed-sized message blocks each with a constant number of information symbols. To generate a code symbol from the information symbols in a message, the Robust-Soliton probability distribution is first applied in order to determine the number of information symbols to be used to compute the code symbol. Then, the specific information symbols are chosen uniform randomly from the message block. Finally, the selected information symbols are XORed to form the code symbol. The Prioritized LT code construction includes an additional restriction that code symbols formed by a relatively small number of XORed information symbols select some of these information symbols from the pool of high-priority data. Once high-priority data are fully covered, encoding continues with the conventional LT approach where code symbols are generated by selecting information symbols from the entire message block including all different priorities. Therefore, if code symbols derived from high-priority data experience an unusual high number of erasures, Prioritized LT codes can still reliably recover both high- and low-priority data. This hybrid approach decides not only "how to encode" but also "what to encode" to achieve UEP. Another advantage of the priority encoding process is that the majority of high-priority data can be decoded sooner since only a small number of code symbols are required to reconstruct high-priority data. This approach increases the likelihood that high-priority data is decoded first over low-priority data. The Prioritized LT code scheme achieves an improvement in high-priority data decoding performance as well as overall information recovery without penalizing the decoding of low-priority data, assuming high-priority data is no more than half of a message block. The cost is in the additional complexity required in the encoder. If extra computation resource is available at the transmitter, image, voice, and video transmission quality in terrestrial and space communications can benefit from accurate use of redundancy in protecting data with varying priorities.

Woo, Simon S.↗
DOE OSTI2023

Recommendations for Minimum Required Error Codes for Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure

OCPP protocol manages the interaction between the EVSE and its respective back-end communication network. It plays a pivotal role in both error reporting and troubleshooting, carried out primarily through the CSMS. OCPP defines both standard error codes and a flexible framework for creating and communicating custom error codes. The OCPI protocol orchestrates the communication between different backhaul communication networks, incorporating the exchange of error codes. These error codes are instrumental in pinpointing and rectifying issues that can surface prior to, during, or after charging operations, fortifying the reliability and resilience of the EV charging infrastructure. The flexibility offered by the OCPP and OCPI frameworks through the introduction of custom error codes also creates its own set of challenges. While the integration of custom error codes allows for enhanced granularity, it also introduces inconsistencies and fragmentation within the overarching diagnostic reporting system. To address the challenges with custom error codes this report proposes a set of Minimum Required Error Codes (MRECs) for streamlined error reporting, interpretability, and diagnostics. Recommendations in this report are based on independent analysis of custom error codes from multiple stakeholders within the EV charging ecosystem. For better error resolution, this report also assigns one or more entities responsible for the resolution of every mentioned error code. Finally, a functional classification for each mentioned error code is also identified to describe the nature of the error. In summary, the purpose of this document is to simplify the troubleshooting process and increase charging reliability for all EV users. This report serves as a recommendation for industry stakeholders, encouraging a unified methodology to define, transmit, and interpret common error codes.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗