Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation

Allan T Hilchie

Kenneth F McKinney

Kenneth R Weidele

Tim Manestitaya

Christopher H Meawad

Timothy D Schaffner

Geoffrey R Janjua

Kirk L Haderlie

Kenneth Mckinney

Kirk Haderlie

A system and related method for determining whether an electrical circuit has been compromised. The system includes a circuit probe positioned relative to the electrical circuit that detects electromagnetic circuit emissions therefrom and an analysis device electrically coupled to the circuit probe and receiving electromagnetic emissions detection signals therefrom, where the analysis device identifies constituent frequencies and their magnitudes in the detection signals. The system also includes a comparison processor responsive to the constituent frequencies and magnitudes from the analysis device, where the comparison processor compares the constituent frequencies and magnitudes to previously stored constituent frequencies and magnitudes obtained from an equivalent test circuit to the electrical circuit to determine whether the electrical circuit has been compromised. A background probe can be provided to obtain background emissions that can be subtracted from the circuit emissions.

Application and product realization of darpa lads capabilities to legacy avionics

A method and architecture for mitigating configuration memory imprinting in programmable logic devices. At power-up, a configuration memory inversion control determines whether to operate the current power cycle in normal mode or inversion mode, with an objective of equal time in each mode over the system's lifecycle. A configuration memory (CM) input inversion plane is positioned between a CM controller and the CM cells, and a CM output inversion plane is positioned between the CM cells and the FPGA function blocks. When running in inversion mode, data to/from the CM cells is inverted (0's and 1's are swapped) by the input and output inversion planes. By balancing time individual memory addresses spend in high and low voltage states, the system minimizes differences in memory cell stresses, thus reducing memory imprinting effects. The same concept applied to other architectures, such as a processor's external RAM and internal cache, is also disclosed.

Architecture to mitigate configuration memory imprinting in programmable logic

A method and architecture for mitigating memory imprinting in electronic system volatile memory. At system power-up, a bus mode register control determines whether to operate the current power cycle in normal mode or inversion mode, with an objective of equal amounts of time in each mode over the system's lifecycle. A bi-directional data bus inverter is positioned between a system processor and volatile memory. When the system is running in inversion mode, data from non-volatile memory is inverted (0's and 1's are swapped) when copied to volatile memory, and the data bus inverter rectifies all data bits flowing in/out of the processor. By balancing the time spent by individual memory addresses in high and low voltage states, the system minimizes differences in memory cell stresses, thus reducing memory imprinting effects. The same concept applied to other architectures, such as internal processor cache memory, and FPGA configuration memory, is also disclosed.

System architecture to mitigate memory imprinting

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Sierra Vista, AZ, United States of America

Allan T Hilchie