Monitoring of huge buildings and civil structures using self-powered LoRa Wireless Sensor Networks

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A SURVEY ON DEVICES EXPLOITING LORA COMMUNICATION

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have experienced a large application in many fields, such as smart homes, health monitoring, environmental monitoring, and a great number of studies is present in literature. In particular, it is expected that the Internet of Things (IoT) will become increasingly pervasive in everyday life. Among different technologies, devices based on Long Range (LoRa) and LoRaWAN stand out due to their relative low cost, low power consumption and large cover range. In this survey, recent papers investigating applications of LoRa modules have been selected. The different usecases are presented with a comparison between communication parameters and results obtained

ON THE REALIZATION OF A COMMUNICATION SYSTEM FOR ATMOSPHERIC PROBES BASED ON LORA TECHNOLOGIES: PRELIMINARY MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS

Characterization of atmospheric properties remains a latent ambiguity for weather forecasting and climate models since their characteristics depends on multidisciplinary processes in a wide range of natural scales. The development of ultra-small light disposable radio probes is important to understand this properties Being light-weighted, the probes will have a fluiddifferent atmospheric layers after been released, thus simulating the behaviour of small particles (e.g. drops). Each disposable probe is equipped with compact size microprocessors (presently the first prototype uses velocity, acceleration, pressure, temperature). The probes collect, store and then send the coded information to a base station located at the ground through a dedicated radio transmission link. It is to be noted that longrange communication link (10 km) should be assured with low power consumption technology: a network -modules and the base station is the potential adopted solution. In order to realize the communication system for the atmospheric probes, some prototypal links and networks have bene realized using the Adafruit Feather 32u4 LoRa Radio RFM95 modules. It is an embedded module, which contains a LoRa transceiver RFM95 and an ATmega32u4 microcontroller. The radio module can be powered using 3.3 volts either by using a micro USB or an external battery and it can transmit from +5 dBm to +20 dBm, which are theoretically enough for the purpose of this study. The present work presents the preliminary measurements made both in indoor and outdoor environment considering differ find the best set of parameters to work in the harsh environment to acquire information about warm clouds and send them to the ground receiver. Particularly detailed measurements have been made in harsh environmental found inside a warm cloud. The measurements techniques and results are presented together with the realization of a first operational prototype of both probes and ground receiver

Feasibility Analysis of a LoRa-Based WSN Using Public Transport

LoRa (Long Range) is a proprietary radio communication technology exploiting license-free frequency bands, allowing low-rate information exchange over long distances with very low power consumption. Conventional environmental monitoring sensors have the disadvantage of being in fixed positions and distributed over wide areas, thus providing measurements with a spatially insufficient level of detail. Since public transport vehicles travel continuously within cities, they are ideal to house portable monitoring systems for environmental pollution and meteorological parameters. The paper presents a feasibility analysis of aWireless Sensor Network (WSN) to collect this information from the vehicles conveying it to a central node for processing. The communication system is realized by deploying a layer-structured, fault-resistant, multi-hop Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) based on the LoRa technology. Both a theoretical study about electromagnetic propagation and network architecture are addressed with consideration of potential practical network realization

Risk factors associated with adverse fetal outcomes in pregnancies affected by Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): a secondary analysis of the WAPM study on COVID-19.

Objectives To evaluate the strength of association between maternal and pregnancy characteristics and the risk of adverse perinatal outcomes in pregnancies with laboratory confirmed COVID-19. Methods Secondary analysis of a multinational, cohort study on all consecutive pregnant women with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 from February 1, 2020 to April 30, 2020 from 73 centers from 22 different countries. A confirmed case of COVID-19 was defined as a positive result on real-time reverse-transcriptase-polymerase-chain-reaction (RT-PCR) assay of nasal and pharyngeal swab specimens. The primary outcome was a composite adverse fetal outcome, defined as the presence of either abortion (pregnancy loss before 22 weeks of gestations), stillbirth (intrauterine fetal death after 22 weeks of gestation), neonatal death (death of a live-born infant within the first 28 days of life), and perinatal death (either stillbirth or neonatal death). Logistic regression analysis was performed to evaluate parameters independently associated with the primary outcome. Logistic regression was reported as odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI). Results Mean gestational age at diagnosis was 30.6+/-9.5 weeks, with 8.0% of women being diagnosed in the first, 22.2% in the second and 69.8% in the third trimester of pregnancy. There were six miscarriage (2.3%), six intrauterine device (IUD) (2.3) and 5 (2.0%) neonatal deaths, with an overall rate of perinatal death of 4.2% (11/265), thus resulting into 17 cases experiencing and 226 not experiencing composite adverse fetal outcome. Neither stillbirths nor neonatal deaths had congenital anomalies found at antenatal or postnatal evaluation. Furthermore, none of the cases experiencing IUD had signs of impending demise at arterial or venous Doppler. Neonatal deaths were all considered as prematurity-related adverse events. Of the 250 live-born neonates, one (0.4%) was found positive at RT-PCR pharyngeal swabs performed after delivery. The mother was tested positive during the third trimester of pregnancy. The newborn was asymptomatic and had negative RT-PCR test after 14 days of life. At logistic regression analysis, gestational age at diagnosis (OR: 0.85, 95% CI 0.8-0.9 per week increase; pPeer reviewe

A survey of clinical features of allergic rhinitis in adults

Background: Allergic rhinitis (AR) has high prevalence and substantial socio-economic burden. Material/Methods: The study included 35 Italian Centers recruiting an overall number of 3383 adult patients with rhinitis (48% males, 52% females, mean age 29.1, range 18\u201345 years). For each patient, the attending physician had to fill in a standardized questionnaire, covering, in particular, some issues such as the ARIA classification of allergic rhinitis (AR), the results of skin prick test (SPT), the kind of treatment, the response to treatment, and the satisfaction with treatment. Results: Out of the 3383 patients with rhinitis, 2788 (82.4%) had AR: 311 (11.5%) had a mild intermittent, 229 (8.8%) a mild persistent, 636 (23.5%) a moderate-severe intermittent, and 1518 (56.1%) a moderate-severe persistent form. The most frequently used drugs were oral antihistamines (77.1%) and topical corticosteroids (60.8%). The response to treatment was judged as excellent in 12.2%, good in 41.3%, fair in 31.2%, poor in 14.5%, and very bad in 0.8% of subjects. The rate of treatment dissatisfaction was significantly higher in patients with moderate-to-severe AR than in patients with mild AR (p<0.0001). Indication to allergen immunotherapy (AIT) was significantly more frequent (p<0.01) in patients with severe AR than with mild AR. . Conclusions: These fndings confirm the appropriateness of ARIA guidelines in classifying the AR patients and the association of severe symptoms with unsuccessful drug treatment. The optimal targeting of patients to be treated with AIT needs to be reassessed

A new wireless sensor network module for health monitoring of civil structures

The work presents the results of a project concerning the study and the prototypal realization of an innovative low cost module for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) that would allow the measurement of internal displacements inside civil structures. A set of these sensors could also be part of wide Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). The basic working principle of the sensor is the Hall Effect. This effect is the result of a magnetic field applied to a conductor, which moves the electrons toward one of the extremes of the conductor itself generating an electric signal. The Hall Effect sensor measures the voltage variation, due to the variation in the distance between two equal sensors inserted in the structure undergoing deformation. The description of the sensor is given together with the explanation of its possible installation mode. Test results are presented with the discussion of possible practical use of sensors

PROCESSO PER IL RECUPERO INTEGRALE DI METALLI PREZIOSI E TERRE RARE DA MATERIALE ELETTRONICO IN DISUSO RECUPERATO DA RIFIUTI DI APPARATI ELETTRICI ED ELETTRONICI

Il Brevetto ha per oggetto un processo a ciclo chiuso per via umida per il recupero integrale di materia prima seconda, in particolare metalli nobili e terre rare, da componenti elettronici derivanti dallo smontaggio di Rifiuti di Apparati Elettrici ed Elettronici (RAEE) fuori uso. Il processo messo a punto permette il trattamento per via umida di materiale misto derivante dai processi di pre-trattamento dei componenti elettronici in disuso, eseguito a temperatura ambiente, ovvero senza il coinvolgimento di elevate temperature e con ridotti consumi di energia, e soprattutto con modalità a ciclo chiuso, ovvero con il completo recupero dei reagenti utilizzati, alla fine di ogni ciclo. In particolare, tale processo idrometallurgico a ciclo chiuso si compone di una serie di processi successivi svolti in fase umida, tipicamente attacchi acidi sulle polveri, realizzati all'interno di contenitori stagni definiti "reattori" appositamente ingegnerizzati al fine di ottimizzare le rese di estrazione e di riciclare sia le emissioni gassose generate dalle reazioni chimiche coinvolte sia i reflui liquidi. La configurazione dei reattori messa a punto permette la modularità e scalabilità degli stessi, ovvero permette di gestire il processo in funzione delle effettive quantità di materiale introdotto a monte. Il processo prevede, inoltre, n. 3 cicli temporali distinti: ciclo di processo del singolo carico di polveri; ciclo giornaliero, composto da n. 3 cicli di processo; ciclo settimanale, composto da n. 5 cicli settimanali

Feasibility study of LoRa ad-hoc network in a urban noisy environment

LoRa is a proprietary radio communication technology exploiting license-free frequency bands. It allows low-rate information exchange with a very low-power consumption. LoRa is very convenient when the amount of transmitted data is limited and when a low cost infrastructure is required. This work presents some preliminary propagation measurements in a noisy urban environment by using prototypal transmitters and receivers as network nodes. Results highlights that LoRa can be used for different ad-hoc networks deployed on an urban area