• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2012.04a
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• pp.771-776
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• 2012

Recently, wireless power transfer technology is ready to be commercialized in consumer electronics. It draws attention of not only experts but also public because of its convenience and huge market. However, previous technologies such as magnetic resonance and induction coupling have limited applications because of its short transfer distance compared to device size and magnetic intensity limitation for the safety of body exposure. As an alternative, ultrasonic wireless power transfer technology is proposed. The ultrasonic wireless power transfer system is composed of transmitter which converts electrical energy to ultrasonic energy and receiver which converts the ultrasonic energy to the electrical energy again. This paper is focused on the development of high energy conversion efficiency of ultrasonic transmitter. Optimal transfer frequency is calculated based on the acoustic radiation and damping effect. The transmitter is designed through numerical analysis, and is manufactured to match the optimal transfer frequency with the size of 100mm diameter, 12.2 mm thickness plate. The energy conversion efficiency of about 13.6% at 2m distance is obtained, experimentally. This result is quite high considered with the device size and the power transfer distance.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.711-717
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• 2007

Location information will become increasingly important for future Pervasive Computing applications. Location tracking system of a moving device can be classified into two types of architectures: an active mobile architecture and a passive mobile architecture. In the former, a mobile device actively transmits signals for estimating distances to listeners. In the latter, a mobile device listens signals from beacons passively. Although the passive architecture such as Cricket location system is inexpensive, easy to set up, and safe, it is less precise than the active one. In this paper, we present a passive location system using Cricket Mote sensors which use RF and ultrasonic signals to estimate distances. In order to improve accuracy of the passive system, the transmission speed of ultrasound was compensated according to air temperature at the moment. Upper and lower bounds of a distance estimation were set up through measuring minimum and maximum distances that ultrasonic signal can reach to. Distance estimations beyond the upper and the lower bounds were filtered off as errors in our scheme. With collecting distance estimation data at various locations and comparing each distance estimation with real distance respectively, we proposed an equation to compensate the deviation at each point. Equations for proposed algorithm were derived to calculate relative coordinates of a moving device. At indoor and outdoor tests, average location error and average location tracking period were 3.5 cm and 0.5 second, respectively, which outperformed Cricket location system of MIT.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.8-13
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• 2003

This study proposes integrity evaluation method of weld zone in rails using high precision distance amplitude characteristics curve(DACC) and ultrasonic signals. For these purposes, the ultrasonic signals for defects(porosity and crack) of weld zone in rails are acquired in the type of time series data and echo strength. 6 lines in the DACC indicated damage evaluation standard of weld zone in rails. The aquired ultrasonic signals agree fairly well with the mesured results of reference block and sensitivity block(defect location, beam propagation distance, echo strength, etc). The proposed high precision DACC in this study can be used for integrity evaluation of weld zone in rails.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.7-12
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• 2008

This study proposes integrity evaluation method of weld zone in titanium using titanium distance amplitude characteristics curve(TDACC) and ultrasonic signals. For these purposes, the ultrasonic signals for porosity defects of weld zone in titanium are acquired in the type of time series data and echo strength. 4 lines in the DACC indicated damage evaluation standard of weld zone in titanium. The acquired ultrasonic signals agree fairly well with the measured results of reference block and sensitivity block(defect location, bean1 propagation distance, echo strength, etc). The proposed TDACC in this study agree fairy well with the measured results of weld zone in titanium(weld defects as porosity). The proposed TDACC in this study can be used for integrity evaluation of weld zone in titanium.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1995.11a
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• pp.142-145
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• 1995

This paper is to develop a measurement system of the displacement distance using ultrasonic sensors. Two 400KHz ultrasonic sensors are used for realizing the measurement system, such as one sensor transmits the sine wave and the other sensor receives this wave. The displacement is measured by the phase difference between transmitting and receiving signals. A phase defecter transforms phase difference to voltage. Because the output voltage pattern has nonlinear characteristics, the relations of the voltage and the distance are learned by a neural network. As the results of teaming, the efficiency of measurement system is improved. This system can measure the displacement distance at the accuracy of 1 micrometer level.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.327-333
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• 2011

Intelligent robots are widely needed in various areas of industry from extremely dangerous environments to service tasks. For autonomous mobile robots, it is significant to move itself safely to a destination point, recognizing its surroundings. Advances in sensor technology and its applications are achieved in order to develop an intelligent robot. In this paper, a mobile robot with a path-finding algorithm is presented. The path-finding algorithm is the one that does not only find a path to designated destination and also recognizes obstacles on the way, calculating its distance. 10 ultrasonic sensor are mounted on the front and rear of the mobile robot to figure out its position. Specular reflection and wide viewing angle, which are inherent characteristics of ultrasonic waves, cause errors in measuring distance.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.53 no.1
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• pp.15-19
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• 2004

In this paper, we present the fabrication and characteristic analysis of Sagnac interferometric optical fiber senior(OFS) system for detecting pulsed ultrasonic signal in underwater. The hollow cylindrical mandrel wound round by single mode optical fiber is used as sensing component. The ultrasonic signal source is simulated by the PZT actuator operated by an function generator. The distance dependency of the OFS's sensitivity was measured. The sensitivity has been shown to be inversely propotional to the square-root of distance between ultrasonic source and sensing component. It has also been shown that the OFS could detect the signals less affected by ultrasonic path comparing to conventional acousto-electric sensor. and accurate location of ultrasonic signal could be carried out using two OFSs.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.228-235
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• 2007

The main purpose of this paper is to manage the container property effectively at the container yard by applying the RTLS technology to the field of port logistics. Yet, many kinds of noises happen to be inputted with the distance value(between the reader and the tag) which is to be inputted into the location identification algorithm, which makes the distance value jumped due to the system noise of the ultrasonic sensor module and the measurement noise. The Kalman Filter is widely used to prevent this jump occurrence; the noises are eliminated by using the EKF(Extended Kalman Filter) while considering that the distance information of the ultrasonic sensor is non-linear. Also, the 3D RTLS system at the port container yard suggested in this research is designed not to be interrupted for its ultrasonic transmission by positioning the antenna at the front of each sector of the container where the active tags are installed. We positioned the readers, which function as antennas for location identification, to four places randomly in the absolute coordinate and let the positions of the active tags identified by using the distance data delivered from the active tags. For the location identification algorithm used in this paper, the triangulation measurement that is most used in general is applied and newly reorganized to calculate the position of the container. In the first experiment, we dealt with the error resulting in the angle and the distance of the ultrasonic sensor module, which is the most important in the hardware performance; in the second, we evaluated the performance of the location identification algorithm, which is the most important in the software performance, and tested the noise cancellation effects for the EKF. According to the experiment result, the ultrasonic sensor showed an average of 3 to 5cm error up to $45^{\circ}$ in case of $60^{\circ}$ or more, non-reliable linear distances were obtained. In addition, the evaluation of the algorithm performance showed an average of $4^{\circ}{\sim}5^{\circ}$ error due to the error of the linear distance-this error is negligible for most container location identifications. Lastly, the experiment results of noise cancellation and jump preservation by using the EKF showed that noises were removed in the distance information which was entered from the input of the ultrasonic sensor and as a result, only signal was extracted; thus, jumps were able to be removed and the exact distance information between the ultrasonic sensors could be obtained.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.33-39
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• 2015

In conducting indoor positioning by code division multiple access using spread spectrum ultrasonic waves, it is required to detect signals under the influence of near-far problem occurred by difference on signal power, caused by distance between transmitter and receiver. For discussing robustness to the problem, we verified measuring accuracy on distance from an experiment on a real space with a hardware device where our proposed method is mounted. The proposed method performs automatic signal detection by setting threshold level dynamically. As an experimental result, measurable distance were improved by the proposed method, and measurement errors were up to 50mm in distances from 1000mm to 6000mm; therefore, enough accuracy to realize self-localization or navigation for autonomous mobile robot or human was obtained.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 1998.06a
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• pp.271-274
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• 1998

Ultrasonic sensors are becoming indispensable components in every sector of automation equipments due to many advantages. But the main purposes of the noncontact sensing device are rather narrowly confined within object detection and distance measurement. To widen the realm of the applications to object recognition, ultrasonic sensors need to improve the recognition resolution to a certain amount. To resolve the problem of spatial resolution restriction, an increased number of the sensors in the forms of a linear array or 2-dimensional array of the sensor has been used. Also better resolution has been obtained by shifting the array in several steps using mechanical actuators. For an object recognition using ultrasonic sensors, measurements of distance, shift, oblique angle in certain ranges should be obtained. But a little attention has been paid to the measurement of angles. In this paper we propose a practical method for an object angular value detection in addition to distance measurement in ultrasonic sensor array system with little additional hardware burden. Using the established measurement look-up table for the variations of distance, shift, angle and transmitter voltages for each sensor characteristics, a set of different return echo signals for adjacent receivers are processed to provide enhanced angular value reading for an object.