Evolution of Communication and Monitoring Systems for the Management of Traffic and Safety Control Systems in Railway Sites

The collaboration between R.F.I. S.p.A. and Alma Mater Studiorum of Bologna had the purpose to evaluate the feasibility and to investigate the main radar sensor tech- nologies suited to be integrated with existing signalling systems in rail sites, with particular reference to the UWB technology. This activity has been supported by a study of the UWB radio channel characteristics in a reference (LC-like) scenario, through ray tracing (RT) simulation. It was also studied, with the aid of computer simulations, the remote interconnection of several radars via fiber optic links (RoF), in order to concentrate in a single physical location all the signal processing operations and network control

Edge Artificial Intelligence for Real-Time Target Monitoring

The key enabling technology for the exponentially growing cellular communications sector is location-based services. The need for location-aware services has increased along with the number of wireless and mobile devices. Estimation problems, and particularly parameter estimation, have drawn a lot of interest because of its relevance and engineers' ongoing need for higher performance. As applications expanded, a lot of interest was generated in the accurate assessment of temporal and spatial properties. In the thesis, two different approaches to subject monitoring are thoroughly addressed. For military applications, medical tracking, industrial workers, and providing location-based services to the mobile user community, which is always growing, this kind of activity is crucial. In-depth consideration is given to the viability of applying the Angle of Arrival (AoA) and Receiver Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) localization algorithms in real-world situations. We presented two prospective systems, discussed them, and presented specific assessments and tests. These systems were put to the test in diverse contexts (e.g., indoor, outdoor, in water...). The findings showed the localization capability, but because of the low-cost antenna we employed, this method is only practical up to a distance of roughly 150 meters. Consequently, depending on the use-case, this method may or may not be advantageous. An estimation algorithm that enhances the performance of the AoA technique was implemented on an edge device. Another approach was also considered. Radar sensors have shown to be durable in inclement weather and bad lighting conditions. Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radars are the most frequently employed among the several sorts of radar technologies for these kinds of applications. Actually, this is because they are low-cost and can simultaneously provide range and Doppler data. In comparison to pulse and Ultra Wide Band (UWB) radar sensors, they also need a lower sample rate and a lower peak to average ratio. The system employs a cutting-edge surveillance method based on widely available FMCW radar technology. The data processing approach is built on an ad hoc-chain of different blocks that transforms data, extract features, and make a classification decision before cancelling clutters and leakage using a frame subtraction technique, applying DL algorithms to Range-Doppler (RD) maps, and adding a peak to cluster assignment step before tracking targets. In conclusion, the FMCW radar and DL technique for the RD maps performed well together for indoor use-cases. The aforementioned tests used an edge device and Infineon Technologies' Position2Go FMCW radar tool-set

Advanced Sensors for Real-Time Monitoring Applications

It is impossible to imagine the modern world without sensors, or without real-time information about almost everything—from local temperature to material composition and health parameters. We sense, measure, and process data and act accordingly all the time. In fact, real-time monitoring and information is key to a successful business, an assistant in life-saving decisions that healthcare professionals make, and a tool in research that could revolutionize the future. To ensure that sensors address the rapidly developing needs of various areas of our lives and activities, scientists, researchers, manufacturers, and end-users have established an efficient dialogue so that the newest technological achievements in all aspects of real-time sensing can be implemented for the benefit of the wider community. This book documents some of the results of such a dialogue and reports on advances in sensors and sensor systems for existing and emerging real-time monitoring applications

6G Enabled Advanced Transportation Systems

The 6th generation (6G) wireless communication network is envisaged to be able to change our lives drastically, including transportation. In this paper, two ways of interactions between 6G communication networks and transportation are introduced. With the new usage scenarios and capabilities 6G is going to support, passengers on all sorts of transportation systems will be able to get data more easily, even in the most remote areas on the planet. The quality of communication will also be improved significantly, thanks to the advanced capabilities of 6G. On top of providing seamless and ubiquitous connectivity to all forms of transportation, 6G will also transform the transportation systems to make them more intelligent, more efficient, and safer. Based on the latest research and standardization progresses, technical analysis on how 6G can empower advanced transportation systems are provided, as well as challenges and insights for a possible road ahead.Comment: Submitted to an open access journa

New Approach of Indoor and Outdoor Localization Systems

Accurate determination of the mobile position constitutes the basis of many new applications. This book provides a detailed account of wireless systems for positioning, signal processing, radio localization techniques (Time Difference Of Arrival), performances evaluation, and localization applications. The first section is dedicated to Satellite systems for positioning like GPS, GNSS. The second section addresses the localization applications using the wireless sensor networks. Some techniques are introduced for localization systems, especially for indoor positioning, such as Ultra Wide Band (UWB), WIFI. The last section is dedicated to Coupled GPS and other sensors. Some results of simulations, implementation and tests are given to help readers grasp the presented techniques. This is an ideal book for students, PhD students, academics and engineers in the field of Communication, localization & Signal Processing, especially in indoor and outdoor localization domains

Towards localisation with Doppler radar

In this thesis the author introduces a novel method for Geo Localisation via Doppler Radar. The area of research is in the three dimensional space using amplitude and magnitude measurements. Geo Localisation in mobile applications is a useful technology that enables monitoring and gathering information about objects of interest

Application of computer vision for roller operation management

Compaction is the last and possibly the most important phase in construction of asphalt concrete (AC) pavements. Compaction densifies the loose (AC) mat, producing a stable surface with low permeability. The process strongly affects the AC performance properties. Too much compaction may cause aggregate degradation and low air void content facilitating bleeding and rutting. On the other hand too little compaction may result in higher air void content facilitating oxidation and water permeability issues, rutting due to further densification by traffic and reduced fatigue life. Therefore, compaction is a critical issue in AC pavement construction.;The common practice for compacting a mat is to establish a roller pattern that determines the number of passes and coverages needed to achieve the desired density. Once the pattern is established, the roller\u27s operator must maintain the roller pattern uniformly over the entire mat.;Despite the importance of uniform compaction to achieve the expected durability and performance of AC pavements, having the roller operator as the only mean to manage the operation can involve human errors.;With the advancement of technology in recent years, the concept of intelligent compaction (IC) was developed to assist the roller operators and improve the construction quality. Commercial IC packages for construction rollers are available from different manufacturers. They can provide precise mapping of a roller\u27s location and provide the roller operator with feedback during the compaction process.;Although, the IC packages are able to track the roller passes with impressive results, there are also major hindrances. The high cost of acquisition and potential negative impact on productivity has inhibited implementation of IC.;This study applied computer vision technology to build a versatile and affordable system to count and map roller passes. An infrared camera is mounted on top of the roller to capture the operator view. Then, in a near real-time process, image features were extracted and tracked to estimate the incremental rotation and translation of the roller. Image featured are categorized into near and distant features based on the user defined horizon. The optical flow is estimated for near features located in the region below the horizon. The change in roller\u27s heading is constantly estimated from the distant features located in the sky region. Using the roller\u27s rotation angle, the incremental translation between two frames will be calculated from the optical flow. The roller\u27s incremental rotation and translation will put together to develop a tracking map.;During system development, it was noted that in environments with thermal uniformity, the background of the IR images exhibit less featured as compared to images captured with optical cameras which are insensitive to temperature. This issue is more significant overnight, since nature elements are not able to reflect the heat energy from sun. Therefore to improve roller\u27s heading estimation where less features are available in the sky region a unique methodology that allows heading detection based on the asphalt mat edges was developed for this research. The heading measurements based on the slope of the asphalt hot edges will be added to the pool of the headings measured from sky region. The median of all heading measurements will be used as the incremental roller\u27s rotation for the tracking analysis.;The record of tracking data is used for QC/QA purposes and verifying the proper implementation of the roller pattern throughout a job constructed under the roller pass specifications.;The system developed during this research was successful in mapping roller location for few projects tested. However the system should be independently validated

Investigating Key Techniques to Leverage the Functionality of Ground/Wall Penetrating Radar

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) has been extensively utilized as a highly efficient and non-destructive testing method for infrastructure evaluation, such as highway rebar detection, bridge decks inspection, asphalt pavement monitoring, underground pipe leakage detection, railroad ballast assessment, etc. The focus of this dissertation is to investigate the key techniques to tackle with GPR signal processing from three perspectives: (1) Removing or suppressing the radar clutter signal; (2) Detecting the underground target or the region of interest (RoI) in the GPR image; (3) Imaging the underground target to eliminate or alleviate the feature distortion and reconstructing the shape of the target with good fidelity. In the first part of this dissertation, a low-rank and sparse representation based approach is designed to remove the clutter produced by rough ground surface reflection for impulse radar. In the second part, Hilbert Transform and 2-D Renyi entropy based statistical analysis is explored to improve RoI detection efficiency and to reduce the computational cost for more sophisticated data post-processing. In the third part, a back-projection imaging algorithm is designed for both ground-coupled and air-coupled multistatic GPR configurations. Since the refraction phenomenon at the air-ground interface is considered and the spatial offsets between the transceiver antennas are compensated in this algorithm, the data points collected by receiver antennas in time domain can be accurately mapped back to the spatial domain and the targets can be imaged in the scene space under testing. Experimental results validate that the proposed three-stage cascade signal processing methodologies can improve the performance of GPR system

Developing a person guidance module for hospital robots

This dissertation describes the design and implementation of the Person Guidance Module (PGM) that enables the IWARD (Intelligent Robot Swarm for attendance, Recognition, Cleaning and delivery) base robot to offer route guidance service to the patients or visitors inside the hospital arena. One of the common problems encountered in huge hospital buildings today is foreigners not being able to find their way around in the hospital. Although there are a variety of guide robots currently existing on the market and offering a wide range of guidance and related activities, they do not fit into the modular concept of the IWARD project. The PGM features a robust and foolproof non-hierarchical sensor fusion approach of an active RFID, stereovision and cricket mote sensor for guiding a patient to the X-ray room, or a visitor to a patient’s ward in every possible scenario in a complex, dynamic and crowded hospital environment. Moreover, the speed of the robot can be adjusted automatically according to the pace of the follower for physical comfort using this system. Furthermore, the module performs these tasks in any unconstructed environment solely from a robot’s onboard perceptual resources in order to limit the hardware installation costs and therefore the indoor setting support. Similar comprehensive solution in one single platform has remained elusive in existing literature. The finished module can be connected to any IWARD base robot using quick-change mechanical connections and standard electrical connections. The PGM module box is equipped with a Gumstix embedded computer for all module computing which is powered up automatically once the module box is inserted into the robot. In line with the general software architecture of the IWARD project, all software modules are developed as Orca2 components and cross-complied for Gumstix’s XScale processor. To support standardized communication between different software components, Internet Communications Engine (Ice) has been used as middleware. Additionally, plug-and-play capabilities have been developed and incorporated so that swarm system is aware at all times of which robot is equipped with PGM. Finally, in several field trials in hospital environments, the person guidance module has shown its suitability for a challenging real-world application as well as the necessary user acceptance

Trailgazers: A Scoping Study of Footfall Sensors to Aid Tourist Trail Management in Ireland and Other Atlantic Areas of Europe

This paper examines the current state of the art of commercially available outdoor footfall sensor technologies and defines individually tailored solutions for the walking trails involved in an ongoing research project. Effective implementation of footfall sensors can facilitate quantitative analysis of user patterns, inform maintenance schedules and assist in achieving management objectives, such as identifying future user trends like cyclo-tourism. This paper is informed by primary research conducted for the EU funded project TrailGazersBid (hereafter referred to as TrailGazers), led by Donegal County Council, and has Sligo County Council and Causeway Coast and Glens Council (NI) among the 10 project partners. The project involves three trails in Ireland and five other trails from Europe for comparison. It incorporates the footfall capture and management experiences of trail management within the EU Atlantic area and desk-based research on current footfall technologies and data capture strategies. We have examined 6 individual types of sensor and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each. We provide key learnings and insights that can help to inform trail managers on sensor options, along with a decision-making tool based on the key factors of the power source and mounting method. The research findings can also be applied to other outdoor footfall monitoring scenarios