A mobile sensing solution for indoor and outdoor state detection

Abstract. One important research challenge in ubiquitous computing is determining a device’s indoor/outdoor environmental state. Particularly with modern smartphones, environmental information is important for enabling of new types of services and optimizing already existing functionalities. This thesis presents a tool for Android-powered smartphones called ContextIO for detecting the device’s indoor/outdoor state by combining different onboard sensors of the device itself. To develop ContextIO, we developed a plugin to AWARE mobile sensing framework. Together the plugin and its separate controller component collect rich environmental sensor data. The data analysis and ContextIO’s design considers collected data particularly about magnetometer, ambient light and GSM cellular signal strength. We manually derive thresholds in the data that can be used in combination to infer whether a device is indoor or outdoor. ContextIO uses the same thresholds to infer the state in real time. This thesis contributes an Android tool for inferring the device’s indoor/outdoor status, an open dataset that other researchers can use in their work and an analysis of the collected sensor data for environmental indoor/outdoor state detection.Tiivistelmä. Yksi jokapaikan tietotekniikan tutkimuskysymyksistä keskittyy selvittämään onko laitteen sijainti sisä- vai ulkotilassa. Etenkin uudet älypuhelimet pystyvät hyödyntämään tätä tietoa uudenlaisten palveluiden ja sovellusten kehittämisessä sekä vanhojen toiminnallisuuksien optimoinnissa. Tämä diplomityö esittelee Android-käyttöjärjestelmällä toimiville puhelimille suunnatun työkalun nimeltään ContextIO. Työkalu yhdistelee älypuhelimen sensorien tuottamaa tietoa ja havaitsee laitteen siirtymisen eri sijaintiin sisä- ja ulkotilojen suhteen. ContextIO:n suunnittelu ja kehitystyö perustuvat data-analyysiin, jonka data kerättiin AWARE-sensorialustan liitännäisellä sekä erillisellä nimeämistyökalulla. Data-analyysi keskittyy magnetometrin, valosensorin sekä GSM-kentän voimakkuuden hyödyntämiseen paikantamisessa. Kerätystä datasta määriteltiin raja-arvot, joita yhdistelemällä voidaan varsin luotettavasti todeta laitteen sijainti sisä- ja ulkotilojen suhteen. Nämä raja-arvot luovat perustan ContextIO:n reaaliaikaiselle laitteen sijainnin määrittämiselle. Tämän diplomityön pääasialliset tulokset ovat työkalu Android-pohjaisten älypuhelinten sijainnin määrittämiseen sisä- ja ulkotilojen suhteen, avoin datasetti, jota muut tutkijat voivat käyttää sekä sijainnin määrittämiseen keskittyvä data-analyysi

A Programmable Time Alignment Scheme for Detector Signals from the Upgraded muon Spectrometer at the ATLAS Experiment

We present a programmable time alignment scheme used in an ASIC for the ATLAS forward muon trigger development. The scheme utilizes regenerated clocks with programmable phases to compensate for the timing offsets introduced by different detector trace lengths. Each ASIC used in the design has 104 input channels with delay compensation circuitry providing steps of ~ 3 ns and a full range of 25 ns for each channel. Detailed implementation of the scheme including majority logic to suppress single-event effects is presented. The scheme is flexible and fully synthesizable. The approach is adaptable to other applications with similar phase shifting requirements. In addition, the design is resource efficient and is suitable for cost-effective digital implementation with a large number of channels.Comment: 5 pages, 8 figure

FPGA Implementation of a Fixed Latency Scheme in a Signal Packet Router for the Upgrade of ATLAS Forward Muon Trigger Electronics

We propose a new fixed latency scheme for Xilinx gigabit transceivers that will be used in the upgrade of the ATLAS forward muon spectrometer at the Large Hadron Collider. The fixed latency scheme is implemented in a 4.8 Gbps link between a frontend data serializer ASIC and a packet router. To achieve fixed latency, we use IO delay and dedicated carry in resources in a Xilinx FPGA, while minimally relying on the embedded features of the FPGA transceivers. The scheme is protocol independent and can be adapted to FPGA from other vendors with similar resources. This paper presents a detailed implementation of the fixed latency scheme, as well as simulations of the real environment in the ATLAS forward muon region.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, accepted by IEEE - Transactions on Nuclear Scienc

Prevalent presence of periodic actin-spectrin-based membrane skeleton in a broad range of neuronal cell types and animal species

Actin, spectrin, and associated molecules form a periodic, submembrane cytoskeleton in the axons of neurons. For a better understanding of this membrane-associated periodic skeleton (MPS), it is important to address how prevalent this structure is in different neuronal types, different subcellular compartments, and across different animal species. Here, we investigated the organization of spectrin in a variety of neuronal- and glial-cell types. We observed the presence of MPS in all of the tested neuronal types cultured from mouse central and peripheral nervous systems, including excitatory and inhibitory neurons from several brain regions, as well as sensory and motor neurons. Quantitative analyses show that MPS is preferentially formed in axons in all neuronal types tested here: Spectrin shows a long-range, periodic distribution throughout all axons but appears periodic only in a small fraction of dendrites, typically in the form of isolated patches in subregions of these dendrites. As in dendrites, we also observed patches of periodic spectrin structures in a small fraction of glial-cell processes in four types of glial cells cultured from rodent tissues. Interestingly, despite its strong presence in the axonal shaft, MPS is disrupted in most presynaptic boutons but is present in an appreciable fraction of dendritic spine necks, including some projecting from dendrites where such a periodic structure is not observed in the shaft. Finally, we found that spectrin is capable of adopting a similar periodic organization in neurons of a variety of animal species, including Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila, Gallus gallus, Mus musculus, and Homo sapiens