Design and Implementation of a Wireless Home Automation Control System with Speech Recognition

Home automation systems became one of the most interesting areas for both the construction and the electronics sector. Changing the state of the home appliances easily, scheduling events, and remote control capabilities using high technologies attract modern home residents everyday. This thesis researches the possibilities of applying speech recognition solutions to automated homes. Speech based solutions would provide great benefits especially to disabled or elder people. In addition, wireless devices prevent cabling complications through the walls. An open source software based on the Hidden Markov Models called Sphinx 4 has been used to realize the speech recognition in this thesis. The speech recognition system has been developed in a Linux PC and a wireless node was attached to it, so that it became a small command center. Another wireless node was connected to a lighting control system and a servo motor so that it became an actuator, wirelessly controlled from the command center. This way the skeleton of a speech based home automation system has been built and verified to work. In the results section, the recognition accuracy analysis, power consumption tests, and range tests were performed to verify the robustness of the system.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Developing a hybrid video synthesiser for audiovisual performance and composition

This thesis presents the development process and analysis of a hybrid video synthesiser that was designed towards use in audiovisual performance and composition. Though there are various instruments, platforms, and approaches towards audiovisual performance and composition, this practice-based thesis, through the development of an instrument, addresses a very specific gap – the lack of a hybrid, i.e., a software-based physical modular video synthesiser. This thesis will trace the historical origins of the video synthesiser, contextualise audiovisual performance and composition, and discuss the development of this hybrid video synthesiser. This thesis will document the iterative development process, provide key takeaways from performances and finally, provide a discussion, certain recommendations, and contributions that this instrument makes within the field of video synthesisers and audiovisual performance

RENEWABLE ENERGY–POWERED HYDROGEN GENERATION AND STORAGE FROM AMBIENT MOISTURE

This research combines the proven Electrochemical Hydrogen Production and Storage System with a renewable energy source for safe and reliable utilization in Department of Defense and Navy applications. Photovoltaic cells provide the most robust and cost effective renewable energy combined with minimal complexity and weight compared to other available renewable energy sources. Previous research has proven solar panels are capable of consistently achieving the desired energy output levels for hydrogen generation. The critical component of this research is the design and installation of a coupled control system and graphics display to effectively distribute energy from the solar panels to the different components of the generation system while monitoring system status and regulating production autonomously. Once all components function as desired independently, they are combined and assessed to confirm operational viability and a final configuration to maximize practical utilization is investigated. The final product is the fully autonomous coupled system utilizing the implemented controller as well as a capabilities study and a proof of concept report.Ensign, United States NavyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Development of a Personal Area Network for biomedical measurements for Internet of Things (IoT)

Internet of Things is a set of ever growing technologies and specialized devices that are increasingly influential in our everyday lives. IoT is all about connecting the physical and the digital worlds in one enabling the collection of real world data and the automation of processes. IoT turns your typical device into an smart, programmable one, more capable of interacting with humans and thus enabling users to better understand their surroundings through the data collected. This data collected by the IoT devices can then be used on all kinds of contemporary services and applications. This project aims to implement an IoT application for biomedical measurements, consisting of a WSN(Wireless Sensor Network), where three sensor nodes will collect physical world measurements. This collected information will be transmitted to a routing device, that further send the information to the internet, where the user will be able to access the data in real time through a web browser and schedule some events. In order to carry out the described scenario, a Raspberry Pi and four Zolertia Z1, three working as sensor nodes and one working as a routing node were used. The Z1 mote is powered by a low power MSP430 class microcontroller. Contiki was the operating system chosen to run the sensor nodes. In this scenario, Raspberry Pi plays the role of a router, enabling the connection of the WSN network and the internet. To send the information from the nodes, a high-speed program was developed, aiming to beat the default restrictions that Contiki OS imposes on high-speed networks. The transport protocol chosen is UDP. On the receiving end, an UDP server and a python script were developed with the intent to send the collected data to our ASP.NET web server and mySQL database. Finally connectivity tests and network speed tests of the deployed system are presented

Energy Awareness for Multiple Network Interface-Activated Smartphone

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 공과대학 전기·컴퓨터공학부, 2017. 8. 최성현.최신 스마트폰은 LTE와 Wi-Fi와 같은 네트워크 인터페이스 여러 개를 동시에 사용하여 전송율을 증가시키거나 네트워크 접속성을 향상시킬 수 있다. 이런 경우에, 스마트폰의 에너지 소모는 LTE와 Wi-Fi를 동시에 사용함에 따라 증가할 수 있다. 특히, 제한된 용량을 가지는 배터리로 동작을 하는 스마트폰에서 에너지 소모는 중요한 이슈이기 때문에, 에너지 증가와 성능 향상 사이의 trade-off를 고려하는 것이 요구된다. 에너지 인지 기술과 함께 스마트폰의 LTE와 Wi-Fi 인터페이스를 전략적으로 잘 사용함으로써, 배터리 에너지 소모를 줄임과 동시에 스마트폰 어플리케이션의 성능을 최적화 하는 것이 가능해진다. 본 논문에서는 LTE와 Wi-Fi 링크를 동시에 활용할 수 있는 스마트폰에서 에너지 인지를 가능하게 하는 다음 세 가지 전략을 고려하였다. (i) LTE와 Wi-Fi를 동시에 사용하는 스마트폰의 전력 소모 모델링, (ii) 스마트폰의 배터리 소모율의 실시간 예측 기법, (iii) dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) 기반의 비디오 스트리밍의 성능 최적화. 먼저, 동시에 여러 네트워크를 활성화하여 사용하는 스마트폰의 정밀한 전력 소모 모델링을 제시한다. 패킷 처리에 의해 소모되는 전력과 네트워크 인터페이스에서 소모되는 전력을 분해하여, 다중 네트워크 인터페이스를 활성화시키는 경우의 정밀한 전력 소모 모델을 구성한다. 다양한 시나리오에서 측정된 전력과 모델을 통해 예측된 전력을 비교하며 제안하는 전력 소모 모델의 정확성을 평가하였다. 기존 전력 소모 모델에 비해 단일 네트워크 통신의 경우에도 7%-35% 만큼 추정 오차를 줄였으며, 다중 네트워크 통신의 경우 추정 오차를 25% 줄임을 보였다. 두 번째로, 스마트폰의 실시간 에너지 인지를 가능하게 하기 위해서, 스마트폰에서 사용하고 있는 Li-ion 배터리의 특성을 고려하여 배터리 소모율을 추정하는 기법을 고안한다. Li-ion 배터리는 온도와 노화 상태에 따라서 가용 용량과 내부 저항이 달라지기 때문에, 온도와 노화 상태에 따라서 배터리 소모율이 달라질 수 있다. 배터리 특성을 모델링하는 것은 어려운 일이기 때문에, effective resistance 개념을 도입하여 용량과 내부 저항을 모르고도 배터리 소모율을 예측할 수 있는 BattTracker를 고안한다. BattTracker는 실시간 배터리 소모율을 최대 0.5초 마다 추정할 수 있다. 실제 스마트폰으로 다양한 실험을 통하여 BattTracker가 배터리 소모 예측을 5% 오차율 이내로 예측함을 보였으며, 이를 활용하면 높은 시간 해상도로 스마트폰의 에너지 인지 동작이 가능해진다. 마지막으로, 애너지 인지 기법과 LTE와 Wi-Fi 링크를 동시에 활용하는 것을 dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) 기반 비디오 스트리밍 어플리케이션에 적용한다. 스마트폰에서 LTE와 Wi-Fi 링크를 동시에 활용하는 것은 다양한 측면에서 DASH 기반의 비디오 스트리밍의 성능을 향상시킬 수 있다. 그러나, 배터리 에너지와 LTE 데이터 사용량을 절약하면서 끊김없는 고화질의 비디오를 스트리밍하는 것은 도전적인 일이다. 따라서, DASH 비디오를 시청하는 사용자의 Quality of Experience (QoE)를 향상시키기 위하여 LTE와 Wi-Fi를 동시에 활용하는 DASH video chunk 요청 기법인 REQUEST를 제안한다. REQUEST는 주어진 배터리 에너지와 LTE 사용량 예산 내에서 최적에 가까운 품질의 비디오를 끊김없이 스트리밍해 주는 것을 가능하게 한다. 다양한 환경에서의 시뮬레이션과 실 환경에서의 측정을 통하여, REQUEST가 기존 비디오 스트리밍 기법에 비해 평균 비디오 품질, 재버퍼링, 자원 낭비량 관점에서 상당히 우수함을 보인다. 요약하자면, 우리는 LTE와 Wi-Fi의 동시 사용하는 스마트폰에서의 전력 모델링 방법론, 실시간 배터리 소모율 추정 기법, DASH 기반 비디오 스트리밍 성능 최적화를 제안한다. 이 연구를 통해서, 우리는 프로토타입 구현과 실험 장비들을 통한 실측 기반으로 LTE와 Wi-Fi를 동시에 활용하는 스마트폰을 위한 에너지 인지 기술을 제안한다. 제안하는 기법들의 성능은 상용 스마트폰에 구현하여 실 환경에서의 성능 평가를 통해 검증하였다.State-of-the-art smartphones can utilize multiple network interfaces simultaneously, e.g., LTE and Wi-Fi, to enhance throughput and network connectivity in various use cases. In this situation, energy consumption of smartphones can increase while using both LTE and Wi-Fi interfaces simultaneously. Since energy consumption is an important issue for smartphones powered by batteries with limited capacity, it is required to consider the trade-off between energy increase and performance enhancement. By judiciously utilizing both LTE and Wi-Fi interfaces of smartphones and energy awareness techniques, it is enabled to optimize the performance of smartphones applications while saving battery energy. In this dissertation, we consider the following three strategies to enable the energy awareness for smartphones which utilize both LTE and Wi-Fi links: (i) Power modeling for smartphone which utilizes both LTE and Wi-Fi links simultaneously, (ii) real-time battery drain rate estimation for smartphones, and (iii) optimizing the performance of dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH)-based video streaming for smartphones. First, an accurate power modeling is presented for the smartphones, especially, those capable of activating/utilizing multiple networks simultaneously. By decomposing packet processing power and power consumed by network interfaces, we construct the accurate power model for multiple network interface-activated cases. The accuracy of our model is comparatively evaluated by comparing the estimated power with the measured power in various scenarios. We find that our model reduces estimation error by 7%–35% even for single network transmissions, and by 25% for multiple network transmissions compared with existing power models. Second, in order to enable real-time energy awareness for smartphones, we develop a battery drain rate monitoring technique by considering characteristics of Li-ion batteries which are used by smartphones. With Li-ion battery, battery drain rate varies with temperature and battery aging, since they affect battery characteristics such as capacity and internal resistance. Since it is difficult to model the battery characteristics, we develop BattTracker, an algorithm to estimate battery drain rate without knowing the exact capacity and internal resistance by incorporating the concept of effective resistance. BattTracker tracks the instantaneous battery drain rate with up to 0.5 second time granularity. Extensive evaluation with smartphones demonstrates that BattTracker accurately estimates the battery drain rate with less than 5% estimation error, thus enabling energy-aware operation of smartphones with fine-grained time granularity. Finally, we adapt an energy awareness and utilize both LTE and Wi-Fi links for a Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH)-based video streaming application. Exploiting both LTE and Wi-Fi links simultaneously enhances the performance of DASH-based video streaming in various aspects. However, it is challenging to achieve seamless and high quality video while saving battery energy and LTE data usage to prolong the usage time of a smartphone. Thus, we propose REQUEST, a video chunk request policy for DASH in a smartphone, which can utilize both LTE andWi-Fi to enhance users Quality of Experience (QoE). REQUEST enables seamless DASH video streaming with near optimal video quality under given budgets of battery energy and LTE data usage. Through extensive simulation and measurement in a real environment, we demonstrate that REQUEST significantly outperforms other existing schemes in terms of average video bitrate, rebuffering, and resource waste. In summary, we propose a power modeling methodology, a real-time battery drain rate estimation method, and performance optimization of DASH-based video streaming for a smartphone which utilizes both LTE and Wi-Fi simultaneously. Through this research, we propose several energy-aware techniques for the smartphone, which especially utilizes both LTE and Wi-Fi, based on prototype implementation and the real measurement with experimental equipment. The performance of the proposed methods are validated by implementation on off-the-shelf smartphones and evaluations in real environments.1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation 1 1.2 Overview of Existing Approaches 3 1.2.1 Power modeling of smartphone 3 1.2.2 Battery drain rate estimation 4 1.2.3 Optimizing the performance of video streaming 5 1.3 Main Contributions 6 1.3.1 PIMM: Power Modeling of Multiple Network Interface-Activated Smartphone 6 1.3.2 BattTracker: Real-Time Battery Drain Rate Estimation 7 1.3.3 REQUEST: Performance Optimization of DASH Video Streaming 8 1.4 Organization of the Dissertation 8 2 PIMM: Packet Interval-Based Power Modeling of Multiple Network Interface-Activated Smartphones 10 2.1 Introduction 10 2.2 Background 12 2.2.1 Power saving operations of Wi-Fi and LTE 12 2.2.2 Related work 13 2.3 Power Consumption Modeling 14 2.3.1 Modeling Methodology 15 2.3.2 Packet interval-based power modeling 21 2.4 Practical issues 30 2.4.1 Impact of packet length 30 2.4.2 Impact of channel quality 33 2.5 Performance Evaluation 34 2.5.1 On-line power estimation 35 2.5.2 Single network data connections 37 2.5.3 Multiple network data connections 42 2.5.4 Model generation complexity 45 2.6 Summary 46 3 BattTracker: Enabling Energy Awareness for Smartphone Using Li-ion Battery Characteristics 47 3.1 Introduction 47 3.2 Background 50 3.2.1 Smartphones battery interface 50 3.2.2 State of Charge (SoC) and Open Circuit Voltage (Voc) 50 3.2.3 Batterys internal resistance 53 3.2.4 Related Work 53 3.3 Li-ion Battery Characteristics 54 3.3.1 Impact of temperature and aging on Li-ion battery 54 3.3.2 Measuring battery characteristics 54 3.3.3 Battery characteristics models 57 3.4 Effective Internal Resistance 58 3.4.1 Effective internal resistance (re) 58 3.4.2 Battery drain rate and lifetime derived from re 60 3.5 BattTracker Design 61 3.5.1 Rd estimator 62 3.5.2 Voc estimator 62 3.5.3 re estimator 64 3.6 Performance Evaluation 65 3.6.1 Comparison schemes and performance metrics 66 3.6.2 Convergence time of re 67 3.6.3 Power consumption overhead of BattTracker 67 3.6.4 Comparison with measurement using equipment 68 3.6.5 BattTracker with aged batteries 70 3.6.6 BattTracker with various video applications 70 3.6.7 BattTracker with varying temperature 73 3.7 Summary 74 4 REQUEST: Seamless Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP for Multi-Homed Smartphone under Resource Constraints 75 4.1 Introduction 75 4.2 Background and Related Work 77 4.2.1 Background 77 4.2.2 Related Work 79 4.3 Motivation 80 4.3.1 Wi-Fi Throughput Fluctuation 80 4.3.2 Optimizing Resource Utilization 82 4.4 Proposed Chunk Request Policy 83 4.5 Problem Formulation 86 4.6 REQUEST Algorithm 90 4.6.1 Request Interval Adaptation 91 4.6.2 Chunk Request Adaptation 94 4.7 Performance Evaluation 96 4.7.1 Prototype-Based Evaluation 98 4.7.2 Trace-Driven Simulation 102 4.8 Summary 104 5 Concluding Remarks 106 5.1 Research Contributions 106 5.2 Future Work 107 Abstract (In Korean) 117Docto

Monitoring Of Remote Hydrocarbon Wells Using Azure Internet Of Things

Remote monitoring of hydrocarbon wells is a tedious and meticulously thought out task performed to create a cyber-physical bridge between the asset and the owner. There are many systems and techniques on the market that offer this solution but due to their lack of interoperability and/or decentralized architecture they begin to fall apart when remote assets become farther away from the client. This results in extreme latency and thus poor decision making. Microsoft\u27s Azure IoT Edge was the focus of this writing. Coupled with off-the-shelf hardware, Azure\u27s IoT Edge services were integrated with an existing unit simulating a remote hydrocarbon well. This combination successfully established a semi-autonomous IIoT Edge device that can monitor, process, store, and transfer data locally on the remote device itself. These capabilities were performed utilizing an edge computing architecture that drastically reduced infrastructure and pushed intelligence and responsibility to the source of the data. This application of Azure IoT Edge laid a foundation from which a plethora of solutions can be built, enhancing the intelligence capability of this asset. This study demonstrates edge computing\u27s ability to mitigate latency loops, reduce network stress, and handle intermittent connectivity. Further experimentation and analysis will have to be performed at a larger scale to determine if the resources implemented will suffice for production level operations

White RHINO: a low-cost communications radar hardware platform

Includes bibliographical referencesThe Electromagnetic spectrum has always been a very expensive resource and hence, has not been accessible to everyone. Yet, it is under-utilized. The new Whitespace Technology standards provide an efficient way to use the spectrum. However, the concept of shared spectrum introduced by the Whitespace Technology promises to reduce the cost of accessing the spectrum by a huge margin. Also, because the standards utilize the television channels, the VHF and UHF frequencies facilitate wireless transmission over large distances. This has provided impetus to various application developers. Using Whitespace Technology for Communications Radar is one such novel application which has great benefits for the African scenario. Here, the population is scattered and infrastructure for navigation and tracking is inadequate. But, there is a shortage of low-cost commercially available hardware platforms tailored for the application. In order to boost Whitespace-based Communications Radar application development, the White RHINO(Reconfigurable Hardware Interface for computation and radio) hardware platform was developed. It aims to fill the gap of low-cost commercial hardware platforms available for Whitespace-based Communications Radar. Being a Communications Radar platform, the White RHINO had to be designed keeping the standards and regulating body norms as yardsticks. However, an achievable radar performance of the platform under various scenarios was also estimated. The White RHINO contains an FPGA (the Zynq7000 series) which has dual embedded ARM processing cores. For the wireless interface, it contains a field programmable RF transceiver and an RF frontend section. The platform contains wired networking capability of 2 Gbps. The platform also has 512 MB DDR3 and 128 Mbit NAND ash as onboard memory. Finally, it has USB host, SDIO and JTAG for programmability and temperature sensors for system monitoring. The manufactured boards were tested under lab environment. It was found that except a failure on the RF transceiver section (due to a PCB footprint error), other interfaces were functional. The White RHINO successfully runs both U-Boot and Linux as operating systems. The error and other minor bugs have been corrected for the next fabrication run. Also, the cost of the complete White RHINO system is less than 1000 USD which makes it a very powerful platform and yet, less expensive than most of the commercially available platforms designed for similar applications

Optically Powered Highly Energy-efficient Sensor Networks

In optically powered networks, both, communication signals and power for remotely located sensor nodes, are transmitted over an optical fiber. Key features of optically powered networks are node operation without local power supplies or batteries as well as operation with negligible susceptibility to electro-magnetic interference and to lightning. In this book, different kinds of optically powered devices and networks are investigated, and selected applications are demonstrated

Optically Powered Highly Energy-efficient Sensor Networks

In optically powered networks, both, communication signals and power for remotely located sensor nodes, are transmitted over an optical fiber. Key features of optically powered networks are node operation without local power supplies or batteries as well as operation with negligible susceptibility to electro-magnetic interference and to lightning. In this book, different kinds of optically powered devices and networks are investigated, and selected applications are demonstrated

Electrochemical Plug-and-Power e-readers for Point-of-Care Applications

Point-of-Care diagnostic tests enable monitor health conditions and obtain fast results close to the patient, reducing medical costs, and allowing the control of infectious outbreaks. The interest in developing Point-of-Care devices is increasing due to they are suitable for a wide variety of applications. This doctoral thesis focuses on the development of Plug-and-Power electronic readers (e- readers) for electrochemical detections and the demonstration of their possibilities as Point-of-Care diagnostic testing. The solutions proposed in this study make it possible to improve Point-of-Care tests whose premises are laboratory decentralization, personalized medicine, rapid diagnosis, and improvement of patient care. Developed electronic readers can be powered from a conventional system, such as a USB port or a lithium battery, or can be defined as self-powered systems, capable of extracting energy from alternative energy sources, such as fuel cells, defining Plug-and-Power systems. The designed electrochemical detection devices in this thesis are based on low-power consumption electronic instrumentation circuits. These circuits are capable of controlling the sensing element, measuring its response, and representing the result quantitatively. The implemented devices can work with both electrochemical sensors and fuel cells. Furthermore, it is possible to adapt its measurement range, enabling its use in a wide variety of applications. Thanks to their reduced energy consumption, some of these developments can be defined as self-powered platforms able to operate only with the energy extracted from the biological sample, which in turn is monitored. These devices are easy-to-use and plug-and-play, enabling those unskilled individuals to carry out tests after prior training. Moreover, thanks to their user-friendly interface, results are clear and easy to understand. This doctoral dissertation is presented as an article compendium and composed of three publications detailed in chronological order of publication. The first contribution describes an innovative portable Point-of-Care device able to provide a quantitative result of the glucose concentration of a sample. The proposed system combines an e-reader and a disposable device based on two elements: a glucose paper-based power source, and a glucose fuel cell-based sensor. The battery-less e-reader extracts the energy from the disposable unit, acquires the signal, processes it, and shows the glucose concentration on a numerical display. Due to low-power consumption of the e-reader, the whole electronic system can operate only with the energy extracted from the disposable element. Furthermore, the proposed system minimizes the user interaction, which only must deposit the sample on the strip and wait a few seconds to see the test result. The second publication validates the e-reader in other scenarios following two approaches: using fuel cells as a power element, and as a dual powering and sensing element. The device was tested with glucose, urine, methanol, and ethanol fuel cells and electrochemical sensors in order to show the adaptability of this versatile concept to a wide variety of fields beyond clinical diagnostics, such as veterinary or environmental fields. The third study presents a low-cost, miniaturized, and customizable electronic reader for amperometric detections. The USB-powered portable device is composed of a full- custom electronic board for signal acquisition, and software, which controls the systems, represents and saves the results. In this study, the performance of the device was compared against three commercial potentiostats, showing comparable results to those obtained using three commercial systems, which were significantly more expensive. As proof of concept, the system was validated by detecting horseradish peroxidase samples. However, it could be easily extended its scope and measure other types of analytes or biological matrices since it can be easily adapted to detect currents a wide range of currents.Las pruebas de diagnostico Point-of-Care permiten monitorizar las condiciones de salud y obtener resultados rápidos cerca del paciente, reduciendo los costes médicos y permitiendo controlar brotes infecciosos. El interés por desarrollar dispositivos de Point- of-Care está aumentando debido a que son aplicables a una amplia variedad de aplicaciones. Esta tesis doctoral se centra en el desarrollo de lectores electrónicos (e-readers) Plug-and- Power para detecciones electroquímicas y la demostración de sus posibilidades como pruebas de diagnóstico de punto de atención (Point-of-Care). Las soluciones propuestas en este trabajo permiten mejorar las pruebas Point-of-Care, cuyas premisas son la descentralización de laboratorio, la medicina personalizada, el diagnóstico rápido y la mejora de la atención al paciente. Los lectores electrónicos desarrollados pueden ser alimentados desde un sistema convencional, como puede ser un puerto USB o una batería de litio, o definirse como sistemas autoalimentados, capaces de extraen energía de fuentes alternativas de energía, como celdas de combustible (fuel cells), definiendo así sistemas Plug-and-Power. Los dispositivos de detección electroquímica diseñados se basan en circuitos de instrumentación electrónica de bajo consumo. Estos circuitos son capaces controlar el elemento de sensado, medir su respuesta y representar el resultado de forma cuantitativa. Los dispositivos implementados pueden trabajar tanto con sensores electroquímicos como con fuel cells. Además, es posible adaptar su rango de medida, permitiendo su utilización en una amplia variedad de aplicaciones. Gracias a su reducido consumo de energía, algunos de estos desarrollos pueden definirse como plataformas autoalimentadas capaces de operar solo con la energía extraída de la muestra biológica, que a su vez es monitorizada. Estas plataformas electrónicas son fáciles de usar y Plug-and-Play, permitiendo que personas no cualificadas puedan utilizarlas después de un previo entrenamiento. Además, gracias a su interfaz fácil de usar, los resultados son claros y fáciles de interpretar