Frequency: Quarterly E- ISSN: 2230-8156 P- ISSN: 2249-1333 Abstracted/ Indexed in: CNKI Scholar (China National Knowledge Infrastructure), Ulrich's International Periodical Directory, Google Scholar, SCIRUS, Genamics JournalSeek
Quarterly published in print and online "Inventi Impact: Sensing & Actuation" publishes high quality unpublished as well as high impact pre-published research and reviews catering to the needs of researchers and professionals. This multidisciplinary journal covers all recent advances in the growing fields of sensing and actuation. The journal invites articles from both the categories i.e. physical and chemical. Some of the highlighted areas are: classification of effects, physical effects, measurement theory, modelling of sensors: piezoelectric materials, polymers, metal oxides, III-V and II-VI semiconductors, thick and thin films, optical glass fibres, amorphous, polycrystalline and monocrystalline silicon; photovoltaic diodes, photoconductors, photodiodes, phototransistors, positron-sensitive photodetectors, optoisolators, photodiode arrays, charge-coupled devices, light-emitting diodes, injection lasers and liquid-crystal displays; mchanical sensors, thermal sensors, magnetic sensors, mcromechanics, interface electronics, and sensor systems and applications.
Sub-Saharan Africa contains the highest number of people affected by droughts.\nAlthough this can easily be mitigated through the provision of timely, reliable and relevant\nweather forecasts, the sparse network of weather stations in most of these countries makes this\ndifficult. Rapid development in wireless sensor networks has resulted in weatherboards capable\nof capturing weather parameters at the micro-level. Although these weatherboards offer a\nviable solution to Africa�s drought, the acceptability of such data by meteorologists is only\npossible if these sensors are calibrated and their field readiness scientifically evaluated. This\nis the contribution of this paper; we present results of a calibration exercise that was carried\nout to: (1) measure and correct lag, random and systematic errors; (2) determine if Perspex\nwas an ideal material for building sensor boards� enclosures; and (3) identify sensor boards�\nbattery charging and depletion rates. The result is a calibration report detailing actual error\nand uncertainty values for atmospheric pressure, humidity and temperature sensors, as well\nas the recharge and discharge curves of the batteries. The results further ruled out the use of\nPerspex for enclosing the sensor boards. These experiments pave the way for the design and\nimplementation of a sensor-based weather monitoring system (SenseWeather) that was piloted\nin two regions in Kenya....
In this paper, a circular microstrip antenna for stress evaluation is studied. This kind of\nmicrostrip sensor can be utilized in structural health monitoring systems. Reflection coefficient S11\nis measured to determine deformation/strain value. The proposed sensor is adhesively connected\nto the studied sample. Applied strain causes a change in patch geometry and influences current\ndistribution both in patch and ground plane. Changing the current flow in patch influences the\nvalue of resonant frequency. In this paper, two different resonant frequencies were analysed because\nin each case, different current distributions in patch were obtained. The sensor was designed for\noperating frequency of 2.5 GHz (at fundamental mode), which results in a diameter less than 55 mm.\nObtained sensitivity was up to 1 MHz/100 MPa, resolution depends on utilized vector network\nanalyser. Moreover, the directional characteristics for both resonant frequencies were defined, studied\nusing numerical model and verified by measurements. Thus far, microstrip antennas have been\nused in deformation measurement only if the direction of external force was well known. Obtained\ndirectional characteristics of the sensor allow the determination of direction and value of stress by\none sensor. This method of measurement can be an alternative to the rosette strain gauge....
Power management is addressed in the context of embedded systems from energy-aware design to energy-efficient implementation. A set of mechanisms specifically conceived for this scenario is proposed, including a power management API defined at the level of user-visible system components, the infrastructure necessary to implement that API (namely, battery monitoring, accounting, autosuspend, and autoresume), an energy-event propagation mechanism based on Petri nets and implemented with aspect-oriented programming techniques, and an autonomous power manager build upon the proposed API and infrastructure. These mechanisms are illustrated and evaluated using realistic wireless sensor network cases that sustain comparisons with other proposals at each of the considered levels. As a result, this paper has its main contribution on the introduction of a comprehensive and systematic way to deal with power management issues in resource-constrained, battery-operated systems....
Energy efficiency is still the obstacle for long-term real-time wireless ECG monitoring. In this paper, a digital compressed sensing-\n(CS-) based single-spot Bluetooth ECG node is proposed to deal with the challenge in wireless ECG application. A periodic\nsleep/wake-up scheme and a CS-based compression algorithm are implemented in a node, which consists of ultra-low-power\nanalog front-end, microcontroller, Bluetooth 4.0 communication module, and so forth. The efficiency improvement and the\nnode�s specifics are evidenced by the experiments using the ECG signals sampled by the proposed node under daily activities of\nlay, sit, stand, walk, and run. Under using sparse binary matrix (SBM), block sparse Bayesian learning (BSBL) method, and\ndiscrete cosine transform (DCT) basis, all ECG signals were essentially undistorted recovered with root-mean-square differences\n(PRDs) which are less than 6%. The proposed sleep/wake-up scheme and data compression can reduce the airtime over energyhungry\nwireless links, the energy consumption of proposed node is 6.53 mJ, and the energy consumption of radio decreases\n77.37%. Moreover, the energy consumption increase caused by CS code execution is negligible, which is 1.3% of the total\nenergy consumption...
The feasibility of a non contact sensor is investigated. This type of sensor can potentially be used for torque measurement in a speed variable\npower transmission system. Torque can be read by examining the phase difference between two induction signals from\nrespective magnetic sensors that detect the magnetic field intensity of permanent magnets mounted on the surface of a shaft in\nrotation. A real-time measuring algorithm that includes filtering and calibration is adopted to measure the torque magnitude. It is\nshown that this new torque sensor can perform well under rotation speeds ranging from 300 rpm to 500 rpm. As an interim report\nrather than a complete development, this work demonstrates the feasibility of non contact torque measurement by monitoring a\nmagnetic field. The result shows an error of less than 2% within the full test range, which is a sufficient competitive performance\nfor commercial sensors. The price is very low compared to competitors in the marketplace, and the device does not require special\nhandling of the shaft of the surface....
We propose theoretically a spectroscopic ellipsometer in which the polarizer and the analyzer are rotating synchronously in the same direction with the same angular speed. The light intensity received by the detector contains four components, one dc and three AC terms, with frequencies of 2?, 4?, and 6?. The main advantage of the proposed ellipsometer is that: one can extract the ellipsometric parameters ? and ? from the AC Fourier coefficients without relying on the dc component which is considered to be a serious problem in rotating-analyzer or -polarizer ellipsometers. This allows measurements in semi-dark room without worrying about stray light problems, dark currents in detectors, and long term fluctuations in light sources. The results from the simulated spectra of the complex refractive index of c-Si, and Au are presented. The noise effect on the proposed ellipsometer was simulated and plotted for the two samples....
How to improve performance of an automatic fingerprint verification system (AFVS) is always a big challenge in\r\nbiometric verification field. Recently, it becomes popular to improve the performance of AFVS using ensemble\r\nlearning approach to fuse related information of fingerprints. In this article, we propose a novel framework of\r\nfingerprint verification which is based on the multitemplate ensemble method. This framework is consisted of\r\nthree stages. In the first stage, enrollment stage, we adopt an effective template selection method to select those\r\nfingerprints which best represent a finger, and then, a polyhedron is created by the matching results of multiple\r\ntemplate fingerprints and a virtual centroid of the polyhedron is given. In the second stage, verification stage, we\r\nmeasure the distance between the centroid of the polyhedron and a query image. In the final stage, a fusion rule\r\nis used to choose a proper distance from a distance set. The experimental results on the FVC2004 database prove\r\nthe improvement on the effectiveness of the new framework in fingerprint verification. With a minutiae-based\r\nmatching method, the average EER of four databases in FVC2004 drops from 10.85 to 0.88, and with a ridge-based\r\nmatching method, the average EER of these four databases also decreases from 14.58 to 2.51....
A specially designed microcontroller with event-driven sensor data processing unit (EPU) is proposed to provide energy-efficient\nsensor data acquisition for Internet of Things (IoT) devices in rare-event human activity sensing applications. Rare-event sensing\napplications using a remotely installed IoT sensor device have a property of very long event-to-event distance, so that the inaccurate\nsensor data processing in a certain range of accuracy error is enough to extract appropriate events from the collected sensing data.\nThe proposed signal-to-event converter (S2E) as a preprocessor of the conventional sensor interface extracts a set of atomic events\nwith the specific features of interest and performs an early evaluation for the featured points of the incoming sensor signal. The\nconventional sensor data processing such as DSPs or software-driven algorithm to classify the meaningful event from the collected\nsensor data could be accomplished by the proposed event processing unit (EPU). The proposed microcontroller architecture\nenables an energy efficient signal processing for rare-event sensing applications.The implemented system-on-chip (SoC) including\nthe proposed building blocks is fabricated with additional 7500 NAND gates and 1-KB SRAM tracer in 0.18um CMOS process,\nconsuming only 20% compared to the conventional sensor data processing method for human hand-gesture detection....
Dual-slider positioning in a miniaturized system is crucial in many industrial applications.\nThis paper presents a miniaturized dual-slider linear actuator by employing one piezoelectric\nelement (PZT) and integrating the methods of electrostatic adhesion and inertia drive. Two inertia\ndrive methods can be converted by clamping and releasing one of the sliders on a base. Two thin-film\nelectrodes are mounted on the base for clamping and releasing the slider by electrostatic adhesion.\nThe actuator can thus drive dual sliders independently by converting the two inertia drive methods....
In production processes, many adjustment tasks have to be carried out manually. In order\nto automate these activities, there is a need for cost and space efficient actuators that can provide\ncomparatively high forces. This paper presents a novel actuator concept based on the phase\nchange material paraffin wax. Furthermore, a numerical modelling strategy is introduced enabling\nthe prediction of actuator properties. The model considers paraffin wax as a deformable body.\nThe temperature-dependent volume expansion data of the paraffin wax is obtained experimentally to\nallow for a realistic description of the thermal-mechanical properties. The simulation is verified, using\nexperimental data from actuators with varying paraffin wax volumes. With a maximum deviation of\n6%, the simulations show a good agreement with the experiments....
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