Current Issue : July-September Volume : 2026 Issue Number : 3 Articles : 5 Articles
The rapid integration of Industry 4.0 technologies into non-computer engineering curricula presents a significant pedagogical challenge: avoiding a “one-size-fits-all” approach. While Project-Based Learning (PBL) is widely advocated for teaching Internet of Things (IoT), little research addresses how students from different engineering branches—specifically Industrial, Environmental, and Electrical—respond to identical technical requirements. This study evaluates the deployment of ESP32-based IoT solutions for local agriculture and beekeeping problems in the Peruvian Andes, analyzing the performance and perception of three distinct student cohorts (Total N = 95). Results indicate a significant divergence in learning outcomes and satisfaction. The cohort predominantly composed of Industrial Engineering students (NRC-33563) demonstrated lower adherence to technical code modularization (88% vs. 97%) and lower overall course recommendation rates compared to the mixed cohorts (NRC-33562/33561), who reported higher engagement with the hardware implementation. These findings suggest that while Environmental and Electrical engineering students naturally align with the sensing and actuation layers of IoT, Industrial engineering students may require a curriculum that emphasizes process optimization and data analytics over raw firmware development. We propose a differentiated pedagogical framework to maximize engagement and competency acquisition across diverse engineering disciplines....
This paper presents a methodology for assessing the impact of photovoltaic (PV) module degradation on the payback time of PV power plant investment in a prosumer power system. The methodology uses PV module performance measurements to determine the current degradation level and compares it to the manufacturer-defined degradation level during its lifetime. This represents input data for the PV power plant simulation model, which determines its performance during its lifetime and the investment payback time. The proposed methodology is evaluated using experimental measurements of the performance of two 10-year-old PV modules from the commercially most widely used technologies. The performance measurements on PV modules indicate that the current degradation level does not align with the manufacturer’s defined one. Equal-size models of PV power plants are created in PVSOL Premium software to analyze the impact of manufacturerdefined and real-life degradation on the payback time of PV power plant investments. The simulations confirmed that this influences the payback time of investments, emphasizing the importance of choosing a high-quality PV module during planning and installation....
LiDAR-based 3D object detection is essential for autonomous driving vehicles under poor lighting conditions. With LiDAR data, point cloud technologies have become increasingly important, as LiDAR sensors are largely cost down. However, the sparsity of point cloud poses a challenge for 3D object detection, requiring advancements in sparse convolutional networks. Given that the multiscale feature fusion mechanism can improve object detection performance using rich information across scale features, we added a refinement fusion network with cross-attention modules to existing 3D voxel-based object detection networks. We also employed a realistic strategy to refine existing point cloud data augmentation techniques to enable the trained detection networks to achieve substantially improved results. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed detection system across three categories on the KITTI dataset. These enhancements address the limitations of current approaches and highlight the superior performance of the proposed system....
This paper presents two new step-up DC–DC converters that have high voltage gains and low voltage stresses across their main switches with respect to their output voltages. These high voltage gains are achieved with the help of voltage multiplier cells (VMCs). By inserting VMCs that are switched inductors (SIs) and switched capacitors (SCs), the voltage gains increased substantially compared to the conventional converters, such as the traditional boost converter (TBC), Luo converter, or Zeta converter. Furthermore, the TBC has a voltage stress across its main switch that equals the output voltage, while the two proposed step-up converters have voltage stresses across their main switches that are lower than their output voltages. An extended converter is obtained from the main topology, which has a higher voltage gain than the main one. This paper investigates both topologies in continuous conduction mode (CCM) operation and shows a detailed analysis deriving the voltage gain and the voltage stress between the switches. In the main topology, when the duty ratio (D) is 0.75, the output voltage equals around thirty times the input voltage. In the extended topology, when D is 0.75, the output voltage equals around sixty times the input voltage. The voltage stresses across the main switches in both topologies are half of their output voltages when D is 0.75. Simulation models using Matlab/Simulink are carried out for both the main and extended topologies, showing how these agree with the theoretical derivations....
The three-level neutral-point-clamped cascaded rectifier (3LNPC-CR) is a key component in power electronic transformers (PET) due to its high efficiency and modular configuration. However, voltage imbalance among submodule DC links may cause system instability and degrade power quality. To address this issue, this paper proposes a voltage balancing strategy based on Model Predictive Control with a Smooth Switching Sequence (MPC-3S). First, a negative-sequence current control strategy is introduced to equalize the voltages among phases. In addition, an improved modulation scheme is developed to predict and optimize system states in real time within the control horizon, dynamically selecting the optimal switching sequence to achieve rapid voltage equalization. Finally, simulation and experimental results on a three-phase, three-module 3LNPC-CR prototype demonstrate that the proposed MPC-3S strategy can achieve fast intra-phase voltage balancing within 0.1 s under load imbalance, while maintaining high-quality grid-side current. These results verify that the proposed method significantly enhances both the dynamic and steady-state performance of 3LNPC-CR systems, providing a practical and efficient solution to the voltage-balancing challenge in PET applications....
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