Employing Information and Communications Technologies in Homes and Cities for the Health and Well-Being of Older People

YesHe X and Sheriff RE (Eds.) Employing ICT in Homes and Cities for the Health and Well-Being of Older People. Workshop Proceedings of ICT4HOP’16. 15-17 Aug 2016. Sichuan University, Chengdu, China.British Council, Researcher Links, Newton Fund, NSF

Cooperative Relaying In Power Line Environment: A Survey and Tutorial

Exchange of information is essential in any society and the demand for faster, cheaper, and secure communications is increasing every day. With other hi-tech initiatives like IPv6 and Internet-of-Things (IOT) already in the horizon, demand for broadband is set to escalate beyond its current level. Inherently laden in the challenges posed by this technology are fresh opportunities in terms of penetration of data services into rural communities and development of innovative strategies for more efficient use of the grid. Though still in its developmental phase/stage, Power Line Communication (PLC) has grown beyond theoretical fantasy to become a reality. The proofs are the readily available PLC systems that can be purchased off the shelfto achieve in-house networking and the much talked about, smart metering technology; generally regarded as the “new bride” in utilities industry. One of the biggest gains of PLC is its use of existing electrical cables, thereby eliminating cost of installation and maintenance of data cables. However, given that the power infrastructure was traditionally built to deliver electricity, data signals do suffer various forms of distortions and impairments as they transit it. This paper presents a tutorial on the deployed wireless system technique which is to be adapted to PLC scenario for the purpose of managing the available source energy for achieving reliable communication system. One of these techniques is the cooperative diversity. Its application and deployment in power line environment is explored. The improvement achieved through cooperative diversity in some PLC systems were presented along with the associated limitations. Finally, future areas of research which will further improve the reliability of PLC systems and reduce its power consumption during transmission is shown

Technological considerations in measuring weather derived epileptic seizures of dogs

As in every technical discipline, the objective, reproducible instrumental measurements are indispensable. It is no different at investigating the effect of weather on living organism. The parallel measurement of the atmospheric environment and the physiological parameters is novel and individual, as well as the investigation of epileptic seizures depending on weather situations. Several questions came up in connection with our equipment designed for studying dogs epileptic phenomenon, such as fixing, water resistant,- and robust implementation, the problem of data storage, measurement schedule or the power supply for instance. Keeping these in mind during the development process we got an apparatus, which since is an integral part of our further researches

Antena inteligente para aplicações RFID

Mestrado em Engenharia Electrónica e TelecomunicaçõesThe adoption and proliferation of information systems in many business and personal activities leads to the need of tagging and tracking items and services. Radio frequency identi cation (RFID) systems were developed as an e ort to answer the increasing needs of particulars and enterprises alike for wireless identi cation of objects and data exchange services, enabling a large number of businesses to reduce costs and increase revenue. As to further develop the e ciency provided by businesses worldwide, smart antenna systems were introduced as core component in their production and service providing lines, opening the path for innovative and robust wireless RFID based communication schemes, providing advanced signal capturing, processing characteristics and enhanced tracking and process automation. Smart antennas can be installed within RFID readers, enabling them to more e ciently process returned echoes by the tags and therefore improving the identi cation mechanism. RFID reader architectures with an embedded smart antenna network reliably improve the throughput, the reading speed and position detection of tagged items. A smart antenna based circuit is proposed here for RFID assisted localization and for beam steering applications using a uniform linear array of microstrip directional antennas. Several beamforming and direction of arrival estimation methods were employed in order to analyze their performance and resolution based on the computational load, modulation, and the overall environment in which the smart anetnna system may be deployed.A adoção e proliferação de sistemas de informação em várias indústrias e atividades pessoais são responsáveis pela crescente necessidade de identifcar e rastrear itens e serviços. Sistemas de identificação por rádiofrequência (RFID) foram desenvolvidos de modo a responder às crescentes necessidades tanto de particulares como de empresas quanto à utilização de sistemas de identificaçao e de transmissão de dados sem _os, permitindo a redução de despesas e o aumento de receitas a várias empresas. De modo a melhorar a eficiência de empresas a uma escala global, sistemas de antenas inteligentes foram introduzidos nas suas linhas de manufatura e de prestação de serviços como um componente central, abrirando o caminho para esquemas de comunicação sem _os inovadores e robustos, baseados em RFID, facultando processos de captura e processamento de sinal avançados capazes de fornecer melhorias em aplicações de rastreamento e automação de processos. Antenas inteligentes podem ser instaladas em leitores RFID, permitindo um melhor processamento de sinais transmitidos pelas etiquetas, dando origem a um método de identificação mais eficiente. A arquitectura de leitores RFID com uma rede de antenas inteligentes embutida garante melhorias na taxa de transferência e na rapidez de leitura de informação assim como na deteção de itens etiquetados. Um circuito baseado em sistemas de antenas inteligentes é proposto neste trabalho para localização assistida dispositivos RFID e para direccionamento de feixe através da utilizaçao de um agregado linear e uniforme de antenas microstrip diretivas. Várias técnicas de direcionamento de feixe e de estimativa de angulo de chegada foram utilizados, de modo a analisar o desempenho e a resolução de cada algoritmo de acordo com a carga computacional, modulação utilizada e o ambiente em que o sistema de antenas inteligentes poderá ser implementado

Using SuperDARN to predict polar irregularities that cause GPS scintillation

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2016High levels of scintillation caused by strong magnetic storms can cause GPS devices to lose connection with the necessary satellites. Current research has shown a correlation between major magnetic storms and higher levels of the recorded Total Electron Content (TEC) seen in GPS receivers. The research presented in this thesis examines the idea that observations from the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) can be used to predict scintillation levels in GPS receivers at polar latitudes by using GPS scintillation values σφ and S4 that were collected from January, 2013 till November, 2015. These values were gathered from Poker Flat, Alaska, and McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Using various graphical methods the GPS data was compared with the recorded velocity, power and spectral width measurements from Kodiak, Alaska, and South Pole, Antarctica, SuperDARN sites. The SuperDARN values were ignored in the comparison if they did not fall within the specified GPS field of view, they were tagged with a ground scatter flag, or the data quality flag indicating they were erroneous. These bar and scatter graphs indicate that many of the irregularities identified by SuperDARN do not cause scintillation of a GPS signal. When the GPS scintillation variables are examined as a function of the SuperDARN signal parameters (power, velocity, and spectral width) only a small dependence is shown, demonstrating little correlation between the GPS scintillation variables and SuperDARN's variables. Based on these results SuperDARN cannot be used to predict higher levels of GPS scintillation in polar latitudes

Fall Detection Using Neural Networks

Falls inside of the home is a major concern facing the aging population. Monitoring the home environment to detect a fall can prevent profound consequences due to delayed emergency response. One option to monitor a home environment is to use a camera-based fall detection system. Conceptual designs vary from 3D positional monitoring (multi-camera monitoring) to body position and limb speed classification. Research shows varying degree of success with such concepts when designed with multi-camera setup. However, camera-based systems are inherently intrusive and costly to implement. In this research, we use a sound-based system to detect fall events. Acoustic sensors are used to monitor various sound events and feed a trained machine learning model that makes predictions of a fall events. Audio samples from the sensors are converted to frequency domain images using Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients method. These images are used by a trained convolution neural network to predict a fall. A publicly available dataset of household sounds is used to train the model. Varying the model\u27s complexity, we found an optimal architecture that achieves high performance while being computationally less extensive compared to the other models with similar performance. We deployed this model in a NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer Kit

Electrical and Computer Engineering Annual Report 2017

Early Career Awards Faculty Directory Faculty Highlights Special Report: Mobility at Michigan Tech Faculty Publications Staff Profile & Directory Graduate Student Research Accelerated Master\u27s Degree Graduate Student Awards & Degrees Undergraduate Highlights Senior Design Enterprise Undergraduate Student Awards & Advisory Grants & Contracts Departmental Statistics A Pioneer\u27s Storyhttps://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/ece-annualreports/1001/thumbnail.jp