Critical embedded systems are subject to time and security guarantee requirements, while requiring significant computing power that can only be offered by multicore processors. Off-the-shelf processors meet the performance requirements but do not provide the necessary safety and security guarantees, on the one hand because they were not necessarily designed for this purpose, and on the other hand because the details of their internal architecture are not known, thus prohibiting any reliable analysis of their behavior. The aim of the project is to propose a multicore processor that meets these two requirements. The availability and control of a safe (temporally predictable) and secure processor will allow a state and its public and private actors to carry out their missions in optimal conditions of trust. We will follow the path of the open hardware movement which offers the possibility to develop specific processors. The design of a specific processor enabled by the technological, software and organizational infrastructure of the RISC-V ecosystem meets the challenges of sovereignty by (1) ensuring components availability and (2) guaranteeing complete control of the hardware architecture. This full knowledge will enable the relevant implementation of formal verification tools for the expected properties in terms of predictability and security (complete and precise knowledge of the hardware implementation is the guarantee of being able to produce a correct model). Moreover, it will also make it possible to verify the authenticity and fidelity of the components.

Fiber optic sensors today represent a widely used solution in many fields of military (navigation, sonar) and civilian (stress and temperature measurements) applications. In terms of pure performance, interferometric devices are the benchmark, thanks in particular to high powers and very low noise laser sources. However, the combination of these two parameters today comes up against inevitable non-linear effects in single-mode fibers, which “saturate” the performance of interferometric sensors. Controlling these non-linear effects is therefore one of the main challenges in the design of new generation optical fiber sensors. Also, while entanglement is an important resource in quantum information processing or quantum computing, the use of correlations present in photonic “entangled” states is relatively new in the field of fiber optic sensors and interferometric sensors in particular. However, the use of photonic entanglement is clearly an alternative to this pitfall of non-linear effects in fibers. Thanks to optical powers much lower than those of conventional interferometers, the implementation of optical fiber quantum sensors therefore constitutes a serious alternative to all current technologies. The challenge for QAFEINE is therefore to successfully implement a fiber optic quantum sensor whose performance tends towards that of current conventional devices (few km, µrad / sqrt (Hz), kHz badnwidth), but using extremely low optical powers. By combining INPHYNI's expertise on entangled photon sources and quantum metrology on the one hand, and TRT-Fr's expertise on the design of innovative fiber optic sensor architectures for the detection of acoustic waves , and for navigation on the other hand, the objective of QAFEINE is twofold: - Design a quantum optical fiber sensor (CQFO) architecture that responds to dual applications and whose principle is interference between pairs of entangled photons at telecom wavelengths. - Strongly improve the performance of this CQFO in terms of sensor length, required optical power level, and bandwidth, by optimizing the entangled quantum state which makes it possible to probe the sensor (entanglement in energy time, and / or in polarization). This optimization of the photonic quantum state in order to improve the performance of CQFOs is a strong and still unresolved problem in the field of quantum sensors in general. It is therefore central in QAFEINE. In addition, this project will compare the performance of the same device probed with classical light or with a quantum entangled state. This project will therefore make it possible to provide quantitative and experimental answers to concrete application cases for which certain optimized quantum photonic states make it possible to envisage an alternative to the classical states of light in the rapidly expanding field of fiber optic sensors. In the longer term, this project will therefore make it possible to design new generation sensors for dual applications (navigation, sonar, etc.) and for which absolute control of the level and form of photonic entanglement is essential. The advances demonstrated within the framework of this project will directly benefit the underwater listening and navigation systems developed by Thales, within the DMS (Defense Mission Systems) and AVS (AVionic Systems) divisions. The concepts studied as well as the components identified for future developments could also contribute to the improvement of quantum communication systems, at the heart of the concerns of Thales SIX and Thales Alenia Space, for example.

Thousands or event hundreds of sensors, actuators and calculators are currently embedded in modern vehicles. They are constantly exchanging messages, trough one of several real-time networks, and these messages are requires for the correct behavior of the system. These networks handle data flows with very different characteristics. The IEEE society has defined a real-time extension of Ethernet, called TSN (Time Sensitive Networking). It allows unifying the architectures by offering several mechanisms. In case of failure of some elements of the network, some of the communications are lost, leading to a global system failure or at least degradation. The aim of the project is to work on the resilience of such network, and to allow a network suffering from some degradation to reconfigure itself in order to continue to provide the core of its services. Such adaptation mechanism already exists in communication networks, but the challenge comes here from the real-time requirements. In a degraded situation, it is not sufficient to serve all flow in a blind best effort way. Some flows have a greater importance than others for the global service, i.e. they are more critical. But one can not simply map criticality into priorities and to a per priority schedule. First because Ethernet and TSN networks only have 8 levels of priority. But mostly because in real-time networks, a scheduling based on priorities is not sufficient to offer good real-time properties (otherwise, the 8 priority levels of Ethernet would have been sufficient. The challenge is to reconfigure the network with the remaining resources. But computing a reconfiguration is quite different from computing a configuration at system design. First, the new configuration must be as identical to the previous one as possible. The reason is that it is better not to modify the parameters of the date flows that are not directly impacted by the faults (is its criticality is high enough to keep the resources it uses). Second, this configuration must be computed on-line, that is to say in a few seconds, using the embedded computing power, whereas at design, one may use hours of computation of dedicated computers. Moreover, this reconfiguration will be easier if the initial configuration has been designed to be reconfigurable. But adding new mechanisms always increases the attack opportunities. In TSN, it exists a central network configuration element, and a central user configuration element. The system design must prevent an attacker to signal as faulty some element in nominal state, in order to push the system in a degraded situation. One must also prevent an attacker to endorse the identity of a configuration element and so, deploy a faulty configuration on a nominal network (for example, by sending messages to the wrong destination, or forcing all flow to cross a single element, leading to overload, buffer overflow and message losses). The aim of the project is to make TSN resilient, i.e. to define reconfiguration algorithms and reconfigurable architectures, without adding new attack opportunities.

The objective of the PALMIR project is to develop and fabricate mid-infrared detectors and modulators operating around 4.8 µm and to implement them in a multifunction transceiver platform to realize a simultaneous telemetry and free-space optical communications demonstration. Several technological building blocks developed at III-V Lab as part of the previous ANR-Astrid HISPANID project (2017-2021, ref. ANR-17-ASTR-0008) allowed the fabrication of a high-speed detector working at 10.3 µm. This initial work permitted to experimentally demonstrate a 10.3 μm QCD infrared (IR) photo-detector in patch antenna configuration, operating at room temperature and with a bandwidth of 25 GHz. These developments permitted to develop know-how and technological building blocks and processes requiring to increase in TRL level of the technology. In the framework of PALMIR project, we target a wavelength of 4.8 µm, more suited to the identified operational situations. This wavelength shift does not have any major impact on the the technological approach which has been already developed within the framework of HISPANID, neither on the identified QCD detector structures, nor on the production of the patch antennas used for the coupling of the optical signal on the detector. Considering the targeted applications, in PALMIR we will chose to work at few GHz (from 1 to 5 GHz typically). In the final demonstrator, we will also integrate modulators based on metamaterials developed at LPENS. A collaboration for the development of mid-infrared components has already been set up between TRT and ENS as part of the ENS-Thales Chair and previous collaborative projects (ANR CORALI, joint PhD thesis). TRT will thus have access to 4.8 µm fast modulators and detectors for identified use-cases. The integration and the electro-optical and thermal packaging of the components will be partially shared and standardized due to the similarities between the modulators and the infrared detectors developed within the framework of the PALMIR project.

We propose to investigate the possibilities of femtosecond (fs) laser ablation to design a new architecture of multifunctional optical surface. This technique is extremely promising since it has the advantage of being a one-step technology able to directly structure planar and non-planar surfaces of any kind of materials, with varying feature parameters. Fs-laser machining has been used to create matrices of hole-like surface microstructures, in single or multiple hard surface layers, leading to the possibility to realize meta-surfaces allowing to build flat components having complex optical effects. Such architecture could provide antireflective and superhydrophobic properties. The main objective is to develop a technological process based on fs-laser ablation to design sub-wavelength structures on optical substrates such as silicon and germanium, for MWIR and LWIR applications respectively. Other materials, like sapphire and diamond, will also be addressed. Furthermore, a Laser Induced Periodic Surface Structures process, allowing to attain nano-structures far below the size of the laser focus, will be envisaged to target the critical dimensions for applications in the visible range on glass material. The challenge lies in the conception and validation of a laser surface patterning platform for the realization of a dense array of high aspect-ratio ~1µm-scale holes, in single or multiple-layered surface. Once the feasibility demonstrated, the aim is to upscale the capacity of the structuration process and to move towards an ultrafast laser patterning platform of curved surfaces. In a first step, it is planned to address the structuration of 2” optical windows, as typically implemented in binoculars developed by Thales for Vis or IR bands. This achievement will then consist in the realization of a first demonstrator. As a final challenge, larger sizes (4’’) and non-planar windows shapes will be targeted, allowing applications on a larger scope of Thales systems.