Efficient and Reconfigurable Processors for Distributed Actuator-Sensor Arrays

The proposed research will assess the feasibility of designing efficient and reconfigurable processors for actuator-sensor arrays. The arays considered in this proposal are highly distributed networks of sensors and actuators and a processing interface that controls and monitors the array. The advent of MEMS and related microfabrication technologies have enabled the development of actuator-sensor arrays for structural control. The practicality of actuator-sensor arrays has made reconfigurability and efficient information processing central design issues. The proposed innovation is to increase efficiency by locally processing the large number of sensor and actuator signals before sending them to a central processor. Local processign increases the speed at which information can be exchanged and allows local measurements to be spatial filtered. The speed and accuracy of the local processing will be maximized by constructing the processor form digitally programmable analog electronics or programmable logic devices. Technical challenges include determining the seensor and actuator genre for the array, developing control algorithms that exploit sensor-actuator distribution, and identifuing the most efficient architecture for the local processor. A prototype of the array will be evaluated in a hardware demonstration of active noise control.