Abstract    A permanent physical fault in communication lines usually leads to a failure. The feasibility of evolution of a self organized communication is studied in this paper to defeat this problem. In this case a communication protocol may emerge between blocks and also can adapt itself to environmental changes like physical faults and defects. In spite of faults, blocks may continue to function since a self organized nature can provide self-healing capabilities. In the present paper, Evolvable Hardware is to create such a fault tolerant communication without any predefined protocol using a GA algorithm. Evolvable Hardware is a concept that aims the application of evolutionary algorithms to hardware design. The feasibility of this idea is studied in simulation of two reconfigurable blocks that are intended to transmit video streams through their communication lines. Permanent physical faults are induced in the communication lines between Evolvable Hardware blocks. Though the results show the emergence of fault tolerant protocols among Evolvable Hardware blocks without human intervention, there are some limitations in functional and gate level evolution of the blocks. Thus, a new adaptive approach is presented in this paper to defeat some limitations like the stalling effect of GA in faulty conditions.

Keywords    Evolvable Hardware, Co-evolution, Genetic Algorithm, Emergent Communication

چکیده    يک نقص فيزيکي دائمي در خطوط ارتباطي بين دو عامل سخت­افزاري معمولا مي­تواند به عدم عملکرد صحيح منجر شود. در اين مقاله به مطالعه­ي امکان­پذيري تکامل يک ارتباط خودسازمانده براي غلبه بر مشکل ذکر شده پرداخته مي­شود. در اين نوع ارتباط يک پروتکل تکاملي، بصورت خودبخودي بين عاملها تکامل مي­يابد که مي­تواند خود را با تغييرات محيطي مثل نقصهاي فيزيکي وفق دهد. براي توليد چنين ارتباطي در اين پژوهش از سخت افزارهاي تکامل پذير استفاده شده است. سخت‌افزار تكامل پذير با استفاده از الگوريتمهاي تكاملي در طراحي و تعيين ساختار مجدد سامانه­هاي سخت‌افزاري پديد مي­آيد. عاملهاي سخت افزاري به کار رفته در اين تحقيق از الگوريتم ژنتيک براي ايجاد يک ارتباط تحمل پذير خطا استفاده مي­کنند.امکان­پذيري اين ايده با شبيه سازي آزمون انتقال تصوير بين دوعامل سخت افزاري مورد مطالعه قرار گرفته است. در اين آزمون نقصهاي فيزيکي دائمي به خطوط ارتباطي بين عاملهاي سخت افزار تکامل پذير تزريق شده اند. نتايج اوليه­ي شبيه­سازي نشان دهنده­ي توليد يک ارتباط خودسازمانده و مقاوم در برابر خطا بين عاملهاي سخت افزاري است، اگر چه در سطوح گيت و کارکردي محدوديتهايي براي بازيابي در برابر خطا وجود دارد. براي رفع اين محدوديتها، يک رهيافت وفقي براي استفاده در سخت افزارهاي تکامل پذير ارائه شده است که برخي از مشکلات مانند اثر ايستايي در الگوريتم ژنتيک را بهبود داده است.

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