Refine
Year of publication
- 2017 (74) (remove)
Document Type
- Conference Proceeding (74) (remove)
Conference Type
- Konferenzartikel (48)
- Konferenz-Abstract (19)
- Konferenz-Poster (3)
- Sonstiges (3)
- Konferenzband (1)
Language
- English (74) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (74)
Keywords
- CST (4)
- HF-Ablation (4)
- RoboCup (3)
- CRT (2)
- Gamification (2)
- Affective Computing (1)
- Arbeitswissenschaft (1)
- Computer Games (1)
- Context-Awareness (1)
- Data mining (1)
Institute
- Fakultät Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik (E+I) (bis 03/2019) (32)
- Fakultät Maschinenbau und Verfahrenstechnik (M+V) (24)
- ivESK - Institut für verlässliche Embedded Systems und Kommunikationselektronik (11)
- Fakultät Medien und Informationswesen (M+I) (bis 21.04.2021) (10)
- Fakultät Wirtschaft (W) (9)
- ACI - Affective and Cognitive Institute (4)
- WLRI - Work-Life Robotics Institute (2)
- Zentrale Einrichtungen (1)
Open Access
- Open Access (36)
- Closed Access (33)
- Bronze (4)
- Closed (4)
The ability to detect a target signal masked by noise is improved in normal-hearing listeners when interaural phase differences (IPDs) between the ear signals exist either in the masker or in the signal. To improve binaural hearing in bilaterally implanted cochlear implant (BiCI) users, a coding strategy providing the best possible access to IPDs is highly desirable. Outcomes of a previous study (Zirn, Arndt et al. 2016) revealed that a subset of BiCI users showed improved IPD detection thresholds with the fine structure processing strategy FS4 compared to the constant rate strategy HDCIS using narrowband stimuli. In contrast, little differences between the coding strategies were found for broadband stimuli with regard to binaural speech intelligibility level differences (BILD) as an estimate of binaural unmasking. Compared to normalhearing listeners (7.5 ± 1.2 dB) BILD were small in BiCI users (around 0.5 dB with both coding strategies).
In the present work, we investigated the influence of binaural fitting parameters on BILD. In our cohort of BiCI users many were implanted with electrode arrays differing in length left versus right. Because this length difference typically corresponded to the distance of two electrode contacts the first modification of bilateral fitting was a tonotopic adjustment by deactivation of the most apical electrode contact on the side with the deeper inserted array (tonotopic approach).
The second modification was the isolation of the residual, most apical electrode contacts by deactivation of the basally adjacent electrode contact on each side (tonotopic sparse approach). Applying these modifications, BILD improved by up to 1.5 dB.
The aim of the smart grid is to achieve more efficient, distributed and secure supply of energy over the traditional power grid by using a bidirectional information flow between the grid agents (e.g. generator node, customer). One of the key optimization problems in smart grid is to produce power among generator nodes with a minimum cost while meeting the customer demand, known as Economic Dispatch Problem (EDP). In recent years, many distributed approaches to solve EDP have been proposed. However, protecting the privacy-sensitive data of individual generator nodes has been largely overlooked in the existing solutions. In this work, we show an attack against an existing auction-based EDP protocol considering a non-colluding semi-honest adversary. We briefly introduce our approach to a practical privacy-preserving EDP solution as our work in progress.
Biological in situ methanation: Gassing concept and feeding strategy for enhanced performance
(2017)
The expansion of fluctuating renewable electricity production from wind and solar energy requires huge storage capacities. Power-to-gas (PtG) can contribute to tackle that issue via a two-step process, the electrolytic production of hydrogen and a subsequent methanation step (with additional CO2). The resulting fully grid compatible methane, also known as synthetic natural gas (SNG), can be both stored and transported in the vast existing natural gas infrastructure.
To overcome current major drawbacks of PtG, the relatively low efficiency and the high costs, we developed an improved method for the methanation step. In our approach we use a further development of the biological in situ methanation of hydrogen in biogas plants. Because this strategy uses directly internal residual CO2 from the biogas process in the biogas plant, you neither need additional external CO2 nor special reactors. Thus, PtG is combined with the production of an upgraded highly methane rich raw biogas.
However, the low solubility of hydrogen in aqueous solutions and the exploitation of the maximum biological production rates are still an engineering challenge for high performance biological in situ methanation.
In our experiments a setup with membrane gassing turned out to be most promising to ensure a sufficient gas liquid mass transfer of the hydrogen. The monitoring of hydrogenotrophic and aceticlastic archaea showed some adaption of these microbial subgroups to the hydrogen feed.
In order to achieve high methane concentrations of more than 90 % in the raw biogas a CO2-controlled hydrogen feed flow rate is suggested. For methane concentrations lower than 90 % simple current controlled hydrogen supply can be applied.
In safety critical applications wireless technologies are not widely spread. This is mainly due to reliability and latency requirements. In this paper a new wireless architecture is presented which will allow for customizing the latency and reliability for every single participant within the network. The architecture allows for building up a network of inhomogeneous participants with different reliability and latency requirements. The used TDMA scheme with TDD as duplex method is acting gentle on resources. Therefore participants with different processing and energy resources are able to participate.
Spectral analysis of signal averaging electrocardiography in atrial and ventricular tachyarrhythmias
(2017)
Background: Targeting complex fractionated atrial electrograms detected by automated algorithms during ablation of persistent atrial fibrillation has produced conflicting outcomes in previous electrophysiological studies. The aim of the investigation was to evaluate atrial and ventricular high frequency fractionated electrical signals with signal averaging technique.
Methods: Signal averaging electrocardiography (ECG) allows high resolution ECG technique to eliminate interference noise signals in the recorded ECG. The algorithm uses automatic ECG trigger function for signal averaged transthoracic, transesophageal and intracardiac ECG signals with novel LabVIEW software (National Instruments, Austin, Texas, USA). For spectral analysis we used fast fourier transformation in combination with spectro-temporal mapping and wavelet transformation for evaluation of detailed information about the frequency and intensity of high frequency atrial and ventricular signals.
Results: Spectral-temporal mapping and wavelet transformation of the signal averaged ECG allowed the evaluation of high frequency fractionated atrial signals in patients with atrial fibrillation and high frequency ventricular signals in patients with ventricular tachycardia. The analysis in the time domain evaluated fractionated atrial signals at the end of the signal averaged P-wave and fractionated ventricular signals at the end of the QRS complex. The analysis in the frequency domain evaluated high frequency fractionated atrial signals during the P-wave and high frequency fractionated ventricular signals during QRS complex. The combination of analysis in the time and frequency domain allowed the evaluation of fractionated signals during atrial and ventricular conduction.
Conclusions: Spectral analysis of signal averaging electrocardiography with novel LabVIEW software can utilized to evaluate atrial and ventricular conduction delays in patients with atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia. Complex fractionated atrial electrograms may be useful parameters to evaluate electrical cardiac arrhythmogenic signals in atrial fibrillation ablation.
In the course of the last few years, our students are becoming increasingly unhappy. Sometimes they stop attending lectures and even seem not to know how to behave correctly. It feels like they are getting on strike. Consequently, drop-out rates are sky-rocketing. The lecturers/professors are not happy either, adopting an “I-don’t-care” attitude.
An interdisciplinary, international team set in to find out: (1) What are the students unhappy about? Why is it becoming so difficult for them to cope? (2) What does the “I-don’t-care” attitude of professors actually mean? What do they care or not care about? (3) How far do the views of the parties correlate? Could some kind of mutual understanding be achieved?
The findings indicate that, at least at our universities, there is rather a long way to go from “Engineering versus Pedagogy” to “Engineering Pedagogy”.
eTPL: An Enhanced Version of the TLS Presentation Language Suitable for Automated Parser Generation
(2017)
The specification of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol defines its own presentation language used for the purpose of semi-formally describing the structure and on-the-wire format of TLS protocol messages. This TLS Presentation Language (TPL) is more expressive and concise than natural language or tabular descriptions, but as a result of its limited objective has a number of deficiencies. We present eTPL, an enhanced version of TPL that improves its expressiveness, flexibility, and applicability to non-TLS scenarios. We first define a generic model that describes the parsing of binary data. Based on this, we propose language constructs for TPL that capture important information which would otherwise have to be picked manually from informal protocol descriptions. Finally, we briefly introduce our software tool etpl-tool which reads eTPL definitions and automatically generates corresponding message parsers in C++. We see our work as a contribution supporting sniffing, debugging, and rapid-prototyping of wired and wireless communication systems.
The low cost and small size of MEMS inertial sensors allows their combination into a multi sensor module in order to improve performance. However the different linear accelerations measured on different places on a rotating rigid body have to be considered for the proper fusion of the measurements. The errors in measurement of MEMS inertial sensors include deterministic imperfection, but also random noise. The gain in accuracy of using multiple sensors depends strongly on the correlation between these errors from the different sensors. Although for sensor fusion it usually assumed that the measurement errors of different sensors are uncorrelated, estimation theory shows that for the combination of the same type of sensors actually a negative correlation will be more beneficial. Therefore we describe some important and often neglected considerations for the combination of several sensors and also present some preliminary results with regard to the correlation of measurements from a simple multi sensor setup.
The Thread protocol is a recent development based on 6LoWPAN (IPv6 over IEEE 802.15.4), but with extensions regarding a more media independent approach, which – additionally – also promises true interoperability. To evaluate and analyse the operation of a Thread network a given open source 6LoWPAN stack for embedded devices (emb::6) has been extended in order to comply with the Thread specification. The implementation covers Mesh Link Establishment (MLE) and network layer functionality as well as 6LoWPAN mesh under routing mechanism based on MAC short addresses. The development has been verified on a virtualization platform and allows dynamical establishment of network topologies based on Thread's partitioning algorithm.
A novel approach of a test environment for embedded networking nodes has been conceptualized and implemented. Its basis is the use of virtual nodes in a PC environment, where each node executes the original embedded code. Different nodes run in parallel, connected via so-called virtual channels. The environment allows to modifying the behavior of the virtual channels as well as the overall topology during runtime to virtualize real-life networking scenarios. The presented approach is very efficient and allows a simple description of test cases without the need of a network simulator. Furthermore, it speeds up the process of developing new features as well as it supports the identification of bugs in wireless communication stacks. In combination with powerful test execution systems, it is possible to create a continuous development and integration flow.
A novel approach of a testbed for embedded networking nodes has been conceptualized and implemented. It is based on the use of virtual nodes in a PC environment, where each node executes the original embedded code. Different nodes are running in parallel and are connected via so-called virtual interfaces. The presented approach is very efficient and allows a simple description of test cases without the need of a network simulator. Furthermore, it speeds up the process of developing new features.
OPC UA (Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture) is already a well-known concept used widely in the automation industry. In the area of factory automation, OPC UA models the underlying field devices such as sensors and actuators in an OPC UA server to allow connecting OPC UA clients to access device-specific information via a standardized information model. One of the requirements of the OPC UA server to represent field device data using its information model is to have advanced knowledge about the properties of the field devices in the form of device descriptions. The international standard IEC 61804 specifies EDDL (Electronic Device Description Language) as a generic language for describing the properties of field devices. In this paper, the authors describe a possibility to dynamically map and integrate field device descriptions based on EDDL into OPCUA.
The paper describes the hardware and software architecture of the developed multi MEMS sensor prototype module, consisting of ARM Cortex M4 STM32F446 microcontroller unit, five 9-axis inertial measurement units MPU9255 (3D accelerometer, 3D gyroscope, 3D magnetometer and temperature sensor) and a BMP280 barometer. The module is also equipped with WiFi wireless interface (Espressif ESP8266 chip). The module is constructed in the form of a truncated pyramid. Inertial sensors are mounted on a special basement at different angles to each other to eliminate hardware sensors drifts and to provide the capability for self-calibration. The module fuses information obtained from all types of inertial sensors (acceleration, rotation rate, magnetic field and air pressure) in order to calculate orientation and trajectory. It might be used as an Inertial Measurement Unit, Vertical Reference Unit or Attitude and Heading Reference System.
Legacy industrial communication protocols are proved robust and functional. During the last decades, the industry has invented completely new or advanced versions of the legacy communication solutions. However, even with the high adoption rate of these new solutions, still the majority industry applications run on legacy, mostly fieldbus related technologies. Profibus is one of those technologies that still keep on growing in the market, albeit a slow in market growth in recent years. A retrofit technology that would enable these technologies to connect to the Internet of Things, utilize the ever growing potential of data analysis, predictive maintenance or cloud-based application, while at the same time not changing a running system is fundamental.
Climate change and resultant scarcity of water are becoming major challenges for countries around the world. With the advent of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) in the last decade and a relatively new concept of Internet of Things (IoT), embedded systems developers are now working on designing control and automation systems that are lower in cost and more sustainable than the existing telemetry systems for monitoring. The Indus river basin in Pakistan has one of the world's largest irrigation systems and it is extremely challenging to design a low-cost embedded system for monitoring and control of waterways that can last for decades. In this paper, we present a hardware design and performance evaluation of a smart water metering solution that is IEEE 802.15.4-compliant. The results show that our hardware design is as powerful as the reference design, but allows for additional flexibility both in hardware and in firmware. The indigenously designed solution has a power added efficiency (PAE) of 24.7% that is expected to last for 351 and 814 days for nodes with and without a power amplifier (PA). Similarly, the results show that a broadband communication (434 MHz) over more than 3km can be supported, which is an important stepping stone for designing a complete coverage solution of large-scale waterways.
Due to climate change and scarcity of water reservoirs, monitoring and control of irrigation systems is now becoming a major focal area for researchers in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are rapidly finding their way in the field of irrigation and play the key role as data gathering technology in the domain of IoT and CPS. They are efficient for reliable monitoring, giving farmers an edge to take precautionary measures. However, designing an energy-efficient WSN system requires a cross-layer effort and energy-aware routing protocols play a vital role in the overall energy optimization of a WSN. In this paper, we propose a new hierarchical routing protocol suitable for large area environmental monitoring such as large-scale irrigation network existing in the Punjab province of Pakistan. The proposed protocol resolves the issues faced by traditional multi-hop routing protocols such as LEACH, M-LEACH and I-LEACH, and enhances the lifespan of each WSN node that results in an increased lifespan of the whole network. We used the open-source NS3 simulator for simulation purposes and results indicate that our proposed modifications result in an average 27.8% increase in lifespan of the overall WSN when compared to the existing protocols.
For the RoboCup Soccer AdultSize League the humanoid robot Sweaty uses a single fully convolutional neural network to detect and localize the ball, opponents and other features on the field of play. This neural network can be trained from scratch in a few hours and is able to perform in real-time within the constraints of computational resources available on the robot. The time it takes to precess an image is approximately 11 ms. Balls and goal posts are recalled in 99 % of all cases (94.5 % for all objects) accompanied by a false detection rate of 1.2 % (5.2 % for all). The object detection and localization helped Sweaty to become finalist for the RoboCup 2017 in Nagoya.