- Electrical and Computer Engineering
Professor Redinbo’s research was in the general area of the design and analysis of reliable computing resources, both at the digital system and subsystem levels. His work emphasized fault-tolerant computer implementations and was motivated by theoretical concepts as well as practical experience. He was particularly interested in communication and signal processing functions that were affected by soft errors causing momentary malfunctions. Earth-orbiting satellites containing high-speed processing resources that supported fast transforms and multiplexing operations were studied. Data compression procedures that were very susceptible to processing failures benefited from reliable design features. JPEG and arithmetic coding data compression standards were of particular focus. A distinctly new approach to reliable computing used algorithmic-level fault tolerance techniques for increasing dependability in processed data by employing real number error-detecting codes. An important challenge was separating numerical roundoff effects from internal hardware failure effects. Professor Redinbo also studied real number error-detecting and correcting codes, their design and error correction procedures. Such codes involved symbols that had real or integer values as opposed to classic binary codes. The new, developing wavelet codes that were similar to convolutional codes held great promise of protecting many data processing subsystems.