The Ultralight project: the network as an integrated and managed resource for data-intensive science

Looks at the UltraLight project which treats the network interconnecting globally distributed data sets as a dynamic, configurable, and closely monitored resource to construct a next-generation system that can meet the high-energy physics community's data-processing, distribution, access, and analysis needs

The CUAVA-1 CubeSat—A Pathfinder Satellite for Remote Sensing and Earth Observation

In this paper we report a 3U CubeSat named CUAVA-1 designed by the ARC Training Centre for CubeSats, UAVs, and Their Applications (CUAVA). CUAVA, funded by the Australian Research Council, aims to train students, develop new instruments and technology to solve crucial problems, and help develop a world-class Australian industry in CubeSats, UAVs, and related products. The CUAVA-1 project is the Centre’s first CubeSat mission, following on from the 2 Australian satellites INSPIRE-2 and UNSW-EC0 CubeSats that launched in 2017. The mission is designed to serve as a precursor for a series of Earth observations missions and to demonstrate new technologies developed by our partners. We also intend to use the satellite to provide students hands-on experiences and to gain experience for our engineering, science and industry teams for future, more complex, missions

Functional mobile-based two-factor authentication by photonic physical unclonable functions

Given the rapid expansion of the Internet of Things and because of the concerns around counterfeited goods, secure and resilient cryptographic systems are in high demand. Due to the development of digital ecosystems, mobile applications for transactions require fast and reliable methods to generate secure cryptographic keys, such as Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs). We demonstrate a compact and reliable photonic PUF device able to be applied in mobile-based authentication. A miniaturized, energy-efficient, and low-cost token was forged of flexible luminescent organic–inorganic hybrid materials doped with lanthanides, displaying unique challenge–response pairs (CRPs) for two-factor authentication. Under laser irradiation in the red spectral region, a speckle pattern is attained and accessed through conventional charge-coupled cameras, and under ultraviolet light-emitting diodes, it displays a luminescent pattern accessed through hyperspectral imaging and converted to a random intensity-based pattern, ensuring the two-factor authentication. This methodology features the use of a discrete cosine transform to enable a low-cost and semi-compact encryption system suited for speckle and luminescence-based CRPs. The PUF evaluation and the authentication protocol required the analysis of multiple CRPs from different tokens, establishing an optimal cryptographic key size (128 bits) and an optimal decision threshold level that minimizes the error probability.publishe

Advanced photonic and electronic systems WILGA 2018

WILGA annual symposium on advanced photonic and electronic systems has been organized by young scientist for young scientists since two decades. It traditionally gathers around 400 young researchers and their tutors. Ph.D students and graduates present their recent achievements during well attended oral sessions. Wilga is a very good digest of Ph.D. works carried out at technical universities in electronics and photonics, as well as information sciences throughout Poland and some neighboring countries. Publishing patronage over Wilga keep Elektronika technical journal by SEP, IJET and Proceedings of SPIE. The latter world editorial series publishes annually more than 200 papers from Wilga. Wilga 2018 was the XLII edition of this meeting. The following topical tracks were distinguished: photonics, electronics, information technologies and system research. The article is a digest of some chosen works presented during Wilga 2018 symposium. WILGA 2017 works were published in Proc. SPIE vol.10445. WILGA 2018 works were published in Proc. SPIE vol.10808

Wireless Personal Area Network-Based Assistance for the Visually Impaired

In this dissertation, a system allowing a visually impaired person to interact with his environment is developed using modern, low-power wireless communications techniques. With recent advances in wireless sensor networks, open-source operating systems, and embedded processing technology, low-cost devices have become practically feasible as a personal notification system for impaired people. Additionally, text-to-speech capabilities can now be employed without special application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), allowing low-cost, general-purpose processors to fill a niche that once required expensive semiconductors. The system takes advantage of 802.15.4 and media access control (MAC) protocols offered by the open source operating system TinyOS. Important characteristics of these new standards that make them ideal for interface with humans are short range, low- power, and open-source software. To facilitate research and development in use and integration of such devices, we developed a hardware platform to allow exploration of possible future network architectures with multiple options for interfacing with the user. Our Visually Impaired Notification System (VINS) allows unprecedented awareness of the environment and has been simulated with multiple nodes using a modification of the TinyOS Dissemination protocol. This dissertation outlines the hardware platform, demonstration of a working prototype, and simulations of how the system would work in its intended environment. We envision this system being used as a testbed allowing further research of other communications and message-delivery techniques. Additionally, the research has contributed directly to the TinyOS project and offered new insight into power management in embedded systems. Finally, through the research effort we were able to contribute to the open source movement and have produced software in four languages used in three countries with over 1500 downloads

Smart optical sensors for internet of things: integration of temperature monitoring and customized security physical unclonable functions

Nowadays, the Internet of Things (IoT) has an astonishingly societal impact in which healthcare services stand out. Amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic scenario, challenges include the development of authenticatable smart IoT devices with the ability to simultaneously track people and sense in realtime human body temperature aiming to infer a health condition in a contactless and remote way through user-friendly equipment such as a smartphone. Univocal smart labels based on quick response (QR) codes were designed and printed on medical substrates (protective masks and adhesive) using flexible organicinorganic luminescent inks. Luminescence thermometry and physical unclonable functions (PUFs) are simultaneously combined allowing non-contact temperature detection, identification, and connection with the IoT environment through a smartphone. This is an intriguing example where luminescent inks based on organic-inorganic hybrids modified by lanthanide ions are used to fabricate a smart label that can sense temperature with remarkable figures of merit, including maximum thermal sensitivity of Sr = 1.46 %K−1 and temperature uncertainty of δT = 0.2 K, and an authentication methodology accuracy, precision, and recall of 96.2%, 98.9%, and 85.7%, respectively. The methodology proposed is feasibly applied for the univocal identification and mobile optical temperature monitoring of individuals, allowing the control of the access to restricted areas and the information transfer to medical entities for post medical evaluation towards a new generation of mobile-assisted eHealth (mHealth).publishe

Wafer bonding for fabrication of three-dimensional photonic band gap crystals

Photonic band gap (PBG) crystals are artificially engineered periodic dielectric structures which exhibit forbidden frequency regions where electromagnetic waves cannot propagate. Since the use of three-dimensional PBG crystals was first proposed in 1987 to control optical properties, these structures have generated considerable interest due to their potential applications over a wide frequency range. However, the demonstration of practical three-dimensional PBG crystals has been limited to larger-dimensional structures operating below far-infrared frequencies because of difficulties in fabricating small complex structures;In this work, we have devised techniques for use in fabricating 3-D PBG crystals with micrometer length scales operating in the mid-infrared region. This microfabrication-based approach uses alternating steps of wafer fusion bonding, selective substrate etching, and pattern etching to sequentially build up PBG crystals in a layer-by-layer fashion. The wafer fusion technique was utilized to stack up GaAs thin films. To enhance the bonding, a thin (Ga,In)As bonding layer has been incorporated into the structure to improve the bonding strength between two PBG layers;The surfaces and interfaces of the bonded samples have been characterized mechanically and optically to further determine the optimum bonding conditions for PBG crystals. Using (Ga,In)As layers, smooth and uniform bonded surfaces and good adhesion at the interfaces have been achieved at annealing temperatures of ~650°C. By reducing the anneal times and In content in (Ga,In)As alloys, the overall transmission intensities have been improved over the entire spectrum, particularly at higher frequencies;Using wafer fusion bonding techniques, we have successfully constructed multi-layer structures with PBG dimensions at micron length scales. With improved stacking interfaces, wafer bonding and micromachining techniques provide a promising way to realize photonic crystals with stop bands around 10 [mu]m