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The growing demand for active medical implantable devices requires data and or power links between the implant and the outside world. Every implant has to be encapsulated from the body by a specific housing and one of the most common materials used is titanium or titanium alloy. Titanium thas the necessary properties in terms of mechanical and chemical stability and biocompatibility. However, its electrical conductivity presents a challenge for the electromagnetic transmission of data and power. The proposed paper presents a fast and practical method to determine the necessary transmission parameters for titanium encapsulated implants. Therefore, the basic transformer-transmission-model is used with measured or calculated key values for the inductances. Those are then expanded with correction factors to determine the behavior with the encapsulation. The correction factors are extracted from finite element method simulations. These also enable the analysis of the magnetic field distribution inside of the housing. The simulated transmission properties are very close to the measured values. Additionally, based on lumped elements and magnetic field distribution, the influential parameters are discussed in the paper. The parameter discussion describes how to enhance the transmitted power, data-rate or distance, or to reduce the size of the necessary coils. Finally, an example application demonstrates the usage of the methods.
This thesis deals with the creation of a cross-platform application using Xamarin.Forms. The cross-platform application will cover three different platforms android, iOS, and UWP.
The application is the first concept of a possible feature for a companion application for LS telcom. There, the user can identify cell antennas using a map-view and a camera-view making the application an augmented reality application. Thus, the user can search for a specific cell and access various information that he would not be able to see with his eyes like for example the frequency of the transmitting cells.
The cell data is generated from three different sources, Cartoradio, OpenCelliD, and the LS telcom databrowser. Eventually, the decision was taken, that the main source should be the LS telcom databrowser which has multiple advantages over the other cell sources.
The cells on the map-view are placed using the extracted coordinates from the source data. However, the cells on the camera-view are placed with complex calculations using different formulas like the Haversine formula to calculate the distance between the cell and the user and the bearing to calculate the angle between the cell and the user. Various settings will allow the user to personalize the application according to his wishes.
Mobile learning (m-learning) can be considered as a new paradigm of e-learning. The developed solution enables the presentation of animations and 3D virtual reality (VR) on mobile devices and is well suited for mobile learning. Difficult relations in physics as well as intricate experiments in optics can be visualised on mobile devices without need for a personal computer. By outsourcing the computational power to a server, the coverage is worldwide.
The mobile devices related industries are subject to rapid change, driven by technological advances and dynamic consumer behaviour. Hence, the understanding of the mobile devices markets is an important step in the analysis phase of mobile applications development. In this paper, a brief description of the different markets is introduced followed by an analysis of the main features of the markets leaders' devices which are important in the development process of mobile web applications. Finally, approaches are proposed to deal with the mobile devices diversity.
This paper explores the potential of an m-learning environment by introducing the concept of mLab, a remote laboratory environment accessible through the use of handheld devices.
We are aiming to enhance the existing e-learning platform and internet-assisted laboratory settings, where students are offered in-depth tutoring, by providing compact tuition and tools for controlling simulations that are made available to learners via handheld devices. In this way, students are empowered by having access totheir simulations from any place and at any time.
This thesis deals with the implementation of the SUBSCALE algorithm in the Python programming language. First, the current state of research and the needs of the target group are considered. Then, the choice of language is decided based on the findings. On the basis of self-generated requirements, the implementation is carried out.
Finally, the code is evaluated for accuracy, consistency, and execution time, as well as its applicability in practice.
Since the implementation of the current work proved to be unconvincing, an approach is tested in which Python is used only as a front-end.
The Metering Bus, also known as M-Bus, is a European standard EN13757-3 for reading out metering devices, like electricity, water, gas, or heat meters. Although real-life M-Bus networks can reach a significant size and complexity, only very simple protocol analyzers are available to observe and maintain such networks. In order to provide developers and installers with the ability to analyze the real bus signals easily, a web-based monitoring tool for the M-Bus has been designed and implemented. Combined with a physical bus interface it allows for measuring and recording the bus signals. For this at first a circuit has been developed, which transforms the voltage and current-modulated M-Bus signals to a voltage signal that can be read by a standard ADC and processed by an MCU. The bus signals and packets are displayed using a web server, which analyzes and classifies the frame fragments. As an additional feature an oscilloscope functionality is included in order to visualize the physical signal on the bus. This paper describes the development of the read-out circuit for the Wired M-Bus and the data recovery.
A simple measuring method for acquiring the radiation pattern of an ultrawide band Vivaldi antenna is presented. The measuring is performed by combining two identical Vivaldi antennas and some of the intrinsic properties of a stepped-frequency continue wave radar (SFCW radar) in the
range from 1.0 GHz to 6.0 GHz. A stepper-motor provided the azimuthal rotation for one of the antennas from 0 ◦ to 360 ◦. The tests have been performed within the conventional environment (laboratory / office) without using an anechoic chamber or absorbing materials. Special measuring devices have not been used either. This method has been tested with different pairs of Vivaldi antennas and it can be also used for different ones (with little or no change in the system), as long as their operational
bandwidth is within the frequency range of the SFCW radar.
Keywords — SFCW Radar, Antenna Gain Characterization,
Azimuthal Radiation Pattern
Design of a Programmable Passive SoC for Biomedical Applications Using RFID ISO 15693/NFC5 Interface
(2018)
Low power, low cost inductively powered passive biotelemetry system involving fully customized RFID/NFC interface base SoC has gained popularity in the last decades. However, most of the SoCs developed are application specific and lacks either on-chip computational or sensor readout capability. In this paper, we present design details of a programmable passive SoC in compliance with ISO 15693/NFC5 standard for biomedical applications. The integrated system consists of a 32-bit microcontroller, a sensor readout circuit, a 12-bit SAR type ADC, 16 kB RAM, 16 kB ROM and other digital peripherals. The design is implemented in a 0.18 µm CMOS technology and used a die area of 1.52 mm × 3.24 mm. The simulated maximum power consumption of the analog block is 592 µW. The number of external components required by the SoC is limited to an external memory device, sensors, antenna and some passive components. The external memory device contains the application specific firmware. Based on the application, the firmware can be modified accordingly. The SoC design is suitable for medical implants to measure physiological parameters like temperature, pressure or ECG. As an application example, the authors have proposed a bioimplant to measure arterial blood pressure for patients suffering from Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD).
An Ultra-Low-Power RFID/NFC Frontend IC Using 0.18 μm CMOS Technology for Passive Tag Applications
(2018)
Battery-less passive sensor tags based on RFID or NFC technology have achieved much popularity in recent times. Passive tags are widely used for various applications like inventory control or in biotelemetry. In this paper, we present a new RFID/NFC frontend IC (integrated circuit) for 13.56 MHz passive tag applications. The design of the frontend IC is compatible with the standard ISO 15693/NFC 5. The paper discusses the analog design part in details with a brief overview of the digital interface and some of the critical measured parameters. A novel approach is adopted for the demodulator design, to demodulate the 10% ASK (amplitude shift keying) signal. The demodulator circuit consists of a comparator designed with a preset offset voltage. The comparator circuit design is discussed in detail. The power consumption of the bandgap reference circuit is used as the load for the envelope detection of the ASK modulated signal. The sub-threshold operation and low-supply-voltage are used extensively in the analog design—to keep the power consumption low. The IC was fabricated using 0.18 μm CMOS technology in a die area of 1.5 mm × 1.5 mm and an effective area of 0.7 mm2. The minimum supply voltage desired is 1.2 V, for which the total power consumption is 107 μW. The analog part of the design consumes only 36 μW, which is low in comparison to other contemporary passive tags ICs. Eventually, a passive tag is developed using the frontend IC, a microcontroller, a temperature and a pressure sensor. A smart NFC device is used to readout the sensor data from the tag employing an Android-based application software. The measurement results demonstrate the full passive operational capability. The IC is suitable for low-power and low-cost industrial or biomedical battery-less sensor applications. A figure-of-merit (FOM) is proposed in this paper which is taken as a reference for comparison with other related state-of-the-art researches.
Todays‘ traffic support environments are distributed by nature. In many cases the monitoring, control and guidance of traffic is effected by a federation of coordinating centers, often managed by different organizations, using differing local IT technology and system architecture. Despite the federative character of such systems, maintenance of a consistent overall traffic state is indispensable for a safe operation. This project develops a new type of middleware supporting federative systems
in the domain of Air Traffic Control (ATC), using OMG‘s DDS (Data Distribution Service) standard as contributor.
High mobility, electrolyte-gated transistors (EGTs) show high DC performance at low voltages (< 2 V). To model those EGTs, we have used different models for the below and the above threshold regime with appropriate interpolation to ensure continuity and smoothness over all regimes. This empirical model matches very well with our measured results obtained by the electrical characterization of EGTs.
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.
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.
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.
How can manufacturers or service companies provide better services with connected products, without having acquired a powerful IT infrastructure nor the competences for software development?
Today companies can appeal to a relocated-IT-infrastructure provider, which is called Cloud.
Consequently, they do not have to manage and take care of the safety/security aspect, the updates and the breakdown of the infrastructure internally, as those are all managed by the provider.
It is possible to outsource the development of the software of the connected product to an external company. However, the question now is how fast this company can juggle from one Cloud to another in order to fulfil their clients wishes?
neverMind offers a solution based on a multi-protocols-platform linking the different connected products to a multitude of Clouds without having to redesign the whole communication stack/building block for each change in the Cloud-solution. This is the object of my thesis.
The development follows the V-Model, the first steps to understand the complexity of the project were the realisation of the product technical and architectural specifications. The last step before the Implementation was to design in details the progress and the process of every parts of the platform.
The outcome of the requirements analysis led me to divide the project in two parts:
• a “General Interface” acting as a gateway between the Client-application and “Cloud-modules”
• the “Cloud-modules” themselves.
So far, the specifications are drown up; the General Interface and a client example are coded, as well as a first Cloud-module template.
Die Vision vom "Internet der Dinge" prägt seit Jahren Forschung und Entwicklung, wenn es um smarte Technologien und die Vernetzung von Geräten geht. In der Zukunft wird die reale Welt zunehmend mit dem Internet verknüpft, wodurch zahlreiche Gegenstände (Dinge) des normalen Alltags dazu befähigt werden, zu interagieren und sowohl online als auch autark zu kommunizieren. Viele Branchen wie Medizin, Automobilbau, Energieversorgung und Unterhaltungselektronik sind gleichermaßen betroffen, wodurch trotz Risiken auch neues wirtschaftliches Potential entsteht. Im Bereich "Connected Home" sind bereits Lösungen vorhanden, mittels intelligenter Vernetzung von Haushaltsgeräten und Sensoren, die Lebensqualität in den eigenen vier Wänden zu erhöhen. Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Thread Protokoll; einer neuen Technologie zur Integration mehrerer Kommunikationsschnittstellen innerhalb eines Netzwerks. Darüber hinaus wird die Implementierung auf Netzwerkebene (Network Layer) vorgestellt, sowie aufbereitete Informationen bezüglich verwendeter Technologien dargestellt.
In this paper an RFID/NFC (ISO 15693 standard) based inductively powered passive SoC (system on chip) for biomedical applications is presented. A brief overview of the system design, layout techniques and verification method is dis-cussed here. The SoC includes an integrated 32 bit microcontroller, sensor interface circuit, analog to digital converter, integrated RAM, ROM and some other peripherals required for the complete passive operation. The entire chip is realized in CMOS 0.18 μm technology with a chip area of 1.52mm x 3.24 mm.
Android is an operating system which was developed for use in smart mobile phones and is the current leader in this market. A lot of efforts are being spent to make Android available to the embedded world, as well. Many embedded systems do not have a local GUI and are therefore called headless devices. This paper presents the results of an analysis of the general suitability of Anroid in headless embedded systems and ponders the advantages and disadvantages. It focuses on the hardware related issues, i.e. to what extent Android supports hardware peripherals normally used in embedded systems.
The research project Ko-TAG [2], as part of the research initiative Ko-FAS [1], funded by the German Ministry of Economics and Technologies (BMWi), deals with the development of a wireless cooperative sensor system that shall pro-vide a benefit to current driver assistance systems (DAS) and traffic safety applications (TSA). The system’s primary function is the localization of vulnerable road users (VRU) e.g. pedestrians and powered two-wheelers, using communication signals, but can also serve as pre-crash (surround) safety system among vehicles. The main difference of this project, compared to previous ones that dealt with this topic, e.g. the AMULETT project, is an underlying FPGA based Hardware-Software co-design. The platform drives a real-time capable communication protocol that enables highly scalable network topologies fulfilling the hard real-time requirements of the single localization processes. Additionally it allows the exchange of further data (e.g. sensor data) to support the accident pre-diction process and the channel arbitration, and thus supports true cooperative sensing. This paper gives an overview of the project’s current system design as well as of the implementations of the key HDL entities supporting the software parts of the communication protocol. Furthermore, an approach for the dynamic reconfiguration of the devices is described, which provides several topology setups using a single PCB design.
The efficient support of Hardwae-In-theLoop (HIL) in the design process of hardwaresoftware-co-designed systems is an ongoing challenge. This paper presents a network-based integration of hardware elements into the softwarebased image processing tool „ADTF“, based on a high-performance Gigabit Ethernet MAC and a highly-efficient TCP/IP-stack. The MAC has been designed in VHDL. It was verified in a SystemCsimulation environment and tested on several Altera FPGAs.
The objective of this thesis is the conceptual design of a battery management system for the first prototype of the UWC (University of the Western Cape) Modular Battery System. The battery system is a lithium-ion battery that aims to be used in renewable energy systems and for niche electric vehicles such as golf carts.
The concept that is introduced in this thesis comprises the parameter monitoring, the safety management and has its main focus on an accurate state of charge estimation.
Another battery system that was already implemented is used as base for the parameter monitoring and the safety management for the new battery management system. In contrast to that, the concept for the state of charge estimation must be developed completely.
Different methods for the state of charge estimation which are based on the measured voltage, current and temperature are discussed, evaluated and the chosen method is conceived in this thesis. The method used for the state of charge estimation is different for the time when the battery is active than when it is inactive. During charge and discharge Coulomb counting is used and when the cell is inactive voltage versus state of charge lookup tables are used to update the estimation.
To have an accurate estimation when the cell is inactive only for a short time, a model of the voltage relaxation is used to predict the voltage when the cells are in equilibrium. This allows the algorithm to reset the state of charge that is estimated by Coulomb counting – which tends to have a growing error over time – frequently.
To evaluate the accuracy of the voltage prediction, cell tests were executed where the voltage relaxation was sampled. The recursive least square method to predict the end voltage was tested with a MATLAB programme. With the help of voltage versus state of charge lookup tables it was possible to determine the state of charge accuracy with the accuracy of the voltage prediction.
Electronic pills, smart capsules or miniaturized microsystems swallowed by human beings or animals for various biomedical and diagnostic applications are growing rapidly in the last years. This paper searched out the important existing electronic pills in the market and prototypes in research centers. Further objective of this research is to develop a technology platform with enhanced feature to cover the drawback of most
capsules. The designed telemetry unit is a synchronous bidirectional communication block using continuous phase DQPSK of 115 kHz low carrier frequency for inductive data transmission suited for human body energy transfer. The communication system can assist the electronic pill to trigger an actuator for drug delivery, to record temperature, or to measure pH of the body. It consists additionally to a 32bit processor, memory, external peripheries, and detection facility. The complete system is designed to fit small-size mass medical application with low power consumption, size of 7x25mm. The system is designed, simulated and emulated on FPGA.
Machine-to-machine communication is continuously extending to new application fields. Especially smart metering has the potential to become the first really large-scale M2M application. Although in the future distributed meter devices will be mainly connected via dedicated primary communication protocols, like ZigBee, Wireless
M-Bus or alike, a major percentage of all meters will be connected via point to point communication using GPRS or UMTS platforms. Thus, such meter devices have to be extremely cost and energy efficient, especially if the devices are battery based and powered several years by a single battery. This paper presents the development of an automated measurement unit for power and time, thus energy characteristics can be recorded. The measurement unit includes a hardware platform for the device
under test (DUT) and a database based software environment for a smooth execution and analysis of the measurements.
This Master's Thesis discusses intelligent sensor networks considering autonomous sensor placement strategies and system health management. Sensor networks for an intelligent system design process have been researched recently. These networks consist of a distributed collective of sensing units, each with the abilities of individual sensing and computation. Such systems can be capable of self-deployment and must be scalable, long-lived and robust. With distributed sensor networks, intelligent sensor placement for system design and online system health management are attractive areas of research. Distributed sensor networks also cause optimization problems, such as decentralized control, system robustness and maximization of coverage in a distributed system. This also includes the discovery and analysis of points of interest within an environment. The purpose of this study was to investigate a method to control sensor placement in a world with several sources and multiple types of information autonomously. This includes both controlling the movement of sensor units and filtering of the gathered information depending on individual properties to increase system performance, defined as a good coverage. Additionally, online system health management was examined in this study regarding the case of agent failures and autonomous policy reconfiguration if sensors are added to or removed from the system. Two different solution strategies were devised, one where the environment was fully observable, and one with only partial observability. Both strategies use evolutionary algorithms based on artificial neural networks for developing control policies. For performance measurement and policy evaluation, different multiagent objective functions were investigated. The results of the study show that in the case of a world with multiple types of information, individual control strategies performed best because of their abilities to control the movement of a sensor entity and to filter the sensed information. This also includes system robustness in case of sensor failures where other sensing units must recover system performance. Additionally, autonomous policy reconfiguration after adding or removing of sensor agents was successful. This highlights that intelligent sensor agents are able to adapt their individual control policies considering new circumstances.
The idea of this game is to use a flashcard system to create a short story in a foreign language. The story is developed by a group of participants by exchanging sentences via a flashcard system. This way the participants can learn from each other by knowledge sharing without fear of making mistakes because the group members are anonymous. Moreover they do not need a constant support from a teacher.
Under a grant of the German ProInno program („Erhöhung der Innovationskompetenz mittelständischer Unternehmen“)the Hochschule Offenburg participated during the past 2 years in an industry project prototyping a new type of service for modern Air Traffic Control (ATC) applications.<br> Objective of the project has been the joint development of hardware and software components for a so-called TIS-B (Traffic Information System - Broadcast) support infrastructure to enable new cockpit applications increasing the air situation awareness for pilots of commercial airliners [1]. At the core of the project is a space-time-scheduler, controlling a battery of TIS-B groundstations over a Wide Area Surveillance Network [4].<br> The project has been successfully concluded and is currently in its evaluation phase. Industry partner was the Karlsruhe-located company COMSOFT, international market leader in ATC sensor networks.
In short-reach connections, large-diameter multimode fibres allow for robust and easy connections. Unfortunately, their propagation properties depend on the excitation conditions. We propose a launching technique using a fibre stub that can tolerate fabrication tolerances in terms of tilts and off-sets to a large extent. A study of the influence of displaced connectors along the transmission link shows that the power distributions approach a steady-state power distribution very similar to the initial distribution established by the proposed launching scheme.
Air traffic control today still works primarily with classical sensors like primary and Secondary Surveillance Radars (PSR, MSSR, Mode-S) [1]. Upcoming is a new technology, ADS (Automatic Dependent Surveillance), which derives positional information from a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and distributes this data together with additional information from the on-board Flight Management System (FMS) to other aircraft (air-to-air) and to ADS groundstations (air-to-ground). [2] Because the transmission of the data takes place on a shared broadcasting media, like the 1090 MHz Extended Squitter (ES) channel, the technology is also referred to as ADS-Broadcast (ADS-B).
Radio frequency (RF) power amplifiers (PA) are the most power consuming components of a mobile communications unit. They are used to convert the DC power from the battery into RF power delivered to the antenna. In a cell phone it becomes very important to use highly efficient power amplifiers, such as Class C and Class E PAs, to increase the talk time which is directly proportional to the battery life. On the other hand, these RF PAs are inherently nonlinear and produce spectral regrowth and other undesirable effects.
Active Noise Control (ANC) systems have proved to be a very efficient way to reduce low-frequency acoustic noise. On this domain, passive techniques like enclosures, barriers and silencers tend to be relatively large, costly and ineffective. Although many studies and articles have been published in order to improve performance and stability, the implementation of a real-time, stable and robust system still faces several theoretical and practical challenges.