Comparison between an in-flight UAV refueling platform and ground-based vehicles for plant protection product distribution

Limited payload range generally caused by the poor weight-energy performance, flight autonomy, manual replacement of spent batteries, and agrochemical tank refilling procedure are limiting factors affecting UAVs' agrochemical distribution. This work aims to evaluate the effectiveness of agrochemical distribution by a UAV operated by a reactive robotic payload replacement (M.A.R.S.) platform and compare it with ground-based distribution systems in a viticulture scenario. The work considers a hybrid technology UAV with an onboard gasoline-powered electric generator, characterized by an "in-flight" refill of fuel and agrochemicals without the need for landing. Results report a limited ability of the aerial system to cover large areas with a single tank, balanced by 2.3 minutes to perform a tank refill, significantly less than ground-based distribution systems. The volumes of plant protection products delivered per hectare by the aerial platforms are more suitable for low-volume treatments but they can be logistically advantageous because of their rapid response and lack of impact on soil and crops. The proposed approach represents a solution for UAV implementation for spraying operations on vineyards and opens new scenarios for large areas treatments

An Advanced Real-Time Rainfall Monitoring System Based on Commercial Satellite Broadcasting Service

Correct regulation of meteoric surface and subsurface flow waters is a fundamental goal for the sustainable development of the territories. In this paper, a new system for real-time monitoring of rainfall and cumulated rainfall is resented and discussed. The system implements a Sensor Network based on the IoT paradigm and can cover a wide area with a relatively small number of sensors, strategically placed. A real application case, based on the implementation of the Monte Scarpino pilot plant, is also presented and discussed

Enhancing Cyber Security of LoRaWAN Gateways under Adversarial Attacks

The Internet of Things (IoT) has disrupted the IT landscape drastically, and Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) is one specification that enables these IoT devices to have access to the Internet. Former security analyses have suggested that the gateways in LoRaWAN in their current state are susceptible to a wide variety of malicious attacks, which can be notoriously difficult to mitigate since gateways are seen as obedient relays by design. These attacks, if not addressed, can cause malfunctions and loss of efficiency in the network traffic. As a solution to this unique problem, this paper presents a novel certificate authentication technique that enhances the cyber security of gateways in the LoRaWAN network. The proposed technique considers a public key infrastructure (PKI) solution that considers a two-tier certificate authority (CA) setup, such as a root-CA and intermediate-CA. This solution is promising, as the simulation results validate that about 66.67% of the packets that are arriving from an illegitimate gateway (GW) are discarded in our implemented secure and reliable solution

Monitoring the Air Quality in an HVAC System via an Energy Harvesting Device

The energy consumption of a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system represents a large amount of the total for a commercial or civic building. In order to optimize the system performance and to increase the comfort of people living or working in a building, it is necessary to monitor the relevant parameters of the circulating air flux. To this end, an array of sensors (i.e., temperature, humidity, and CO2 percentage sensors) is usually deployed along the aeraulic ducts and/or in various rooms. Generally, these sensors are powered by wires or batteries, but both methods have some drawbacks. In this paper, a possible solution to these drawbacks is proposed. It presents a wireless sensor node powered by an Energy Harvesting (EH) device acted on by the air flux itself. The collected data are transmitted to a central unit via a LoRa radio channel. The EH device can be placed in air ducts or close to air outlets

Metal Oxide Gas Sensor Electronic Interfaces

In this chapter, we introduce Metal-Oxide (MOX) based semiconductor gas sensors as good candidates for realizing a gas sensing system due to their variety of advantages such as low cost, long life time, high sensitivity, small size, simplicity of operation, flexibility in production, and compatibility with the standard CMOS process. A review of MOX gas sensors (commercial and noncommercial) is presented to draw the main requirements for the electronic interface circuit design. The chapter presents a review of the state\u2010of\u2010the\u2010art for possible circuit interfaces provided in literature. Electronic interface circuits based on time/frequency are preferable when converting wide resistance range with high linearity (low linearity error) without any need of calibration since the output periodic waveform can be easily converted to digital domain. A detailed explanation for each building block constituting R\u2010to\u2010T architecture is provided highlighting the main requirements to achieve high linearity and wide dynamic range (DR)

Improved Chebyshev Spectral Method Modeling for Vector Radiative Transfer in Atmospheric Propagation

An improved spectral coefficient method based on Chebyshev polynomials of the second kind is employed to solve the vector radiative transfer equation under the assumption of parallel-plane atmosphere and Rayleigh scattering. The solver is extended to consider a Lambertian surface at the bottom of the atmosphere. The computational properties of the proposed algorithm are analyzed and the validity of the implemented method is tested against a publicly available benchmark dataset

A 0.5 V, 32 nW Compact Inverter-Based All-Filtering Response Modes Gm-C Filter for Bio-Signal Processing

A low-power, low-voltage universal multi-mode Gm-C filter using a 180 nm TSMC technology node is presented in this paper. The proposed filter employs only three transconductance operational amplifiers (OTAs) operating in the sub-threshold region with a supply voltage of 0.5 V, resulting in a power consumption of 32 nW. Moreover, without additional active elements, the proposed circuit can operate various functional modes, such as voltage, current, transconductance, and trans-resistance. The filter’s frequency, centered at 462 Hz, and a compact and low-power solution showing only 93.5 μVrms input-referred noise make the proposed fi lter highly suitable for bio-signal processing