• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.267-282
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• 2005

This work describes ongoing development of an embedded sensor system for the early detection and prevention of deterioration of reinforcing steel tendons within reinforced concrete. These devices will evaluate the condition of the steel tendon using ultrasonic techniques and then wirelessly transmit this data to the outside world without human intervention. The ultrasonic transducers and the interpretation of the sensed signals that allow detection and prognosis of tendon condition are detailed. Electrical characterization of concrete mixtures used in bridge construction is conducted and a wideband microstrip antenna is designed and fabricated to operate between 2.4 and 2.5 GHz when embedded in such a medium. Simulations and measurements of the embedded antenna element are presented. Transceiver selection and implementation are discussed as well as future work in operational protocols, sensor networking, and power sources. By implementing commercially available off-the-shelf components whenever possible, these devices have the potential to save millions of dollars a year in evaluation, repair and replacement of reinforced concrete.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.5_6
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• pp.675-687
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• 2010

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is the science and technology of monitoring and assessing the condition of aerospace, civil and mechanical infrastructures using a sensing system integrated into the structure. Impedance-based SHM measures impedance of a structure using a PZT (Lead Zirconate Titanate) patch. This paper presents a low-power wireless autonomous and active SHM node called Autonomous SHM Sensor 2 (ASN-2), which is based on the impedance method. In this study, we incorporated three methods to save power. First, entire data processing is performed on-board, which minimizes radio transmission time. Considering that the radio of a wireless sensor node consumes the highest power among all modules, reduction of the transmission time saves substantial power. Second, a rectangular pulse train is used to excite a PZT patch instead of a sinusoidal wave. This eliminates a digital-to-analog converter and reduces the memory space. Third, ASN-2 senses the phase of the response signal instead of the magnitude. Sensing the phase of the signal eliminates an analog-to-digital converter and Fast Fourier Transform operation, which not only saves power, but also enables us to use a low-end low-power processor. Our SHM sensor node ASN-2 is implemented using a TI MSP430 microcontroller evaluation board. A cluster of ASN-2 nodes forms a wireless network. Each node wakes up at a predetermined interval, such as once in four hours, performs an SHM operation, reports the result to the central node wirelessly, and returns to sleep. The power consumption of our ASN-2 is 0.15 mW during the inactive mode and 18 mW during the active mode. Each SHM operation takes about 13 seconds to consume 236 mJ. When our ASN-2 operates once in every four hours, it is estimated to run for about 2.5 years with two AAA-size batteries ignoring the internal battery leakage.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.345-346
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• 2008

We analyzed the structural parameters of a guiding coil and a feeding loop for wireless power transfer in mid-range. The length, diameter, and number of turns of the guiding coil are the major factors to determine the resonant frequency. The separation distance between the coil and the loop also affects the power transfer ratio. This scheme has a greater transmission efficiency than using dipoles.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.242-250
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• 2007

Wireless sensor networks are subject to highly heterogeneous system requirements in terms of their functionality and performance due to their broad application areas. Though the heterogeneity hinders the opportunity of developing a single universal platform for sensor networks, efforts to provide uniform, inter-operable and scalable ones for sensor networks are still essential for the growth of the industry as well as their technological advance. As a part of our work to develop such a robust platform, this paper presents the software architecture for sensor nodes with focus on our sensor node operating system and its configuration methodology. Addressing principle issues in its design space which includes programming, execution, task scheduling and software layer models, our architecture is highly reconfigurable with respect to system resources and functional requirements and also highly efficient in supporting multi-threading under small system resources.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.143-151
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• 2016

In this paper, a real-time air quality monitoring system based on wireless network is designed and implemented for industrial park or multiuse facilities. The existing gas detector is high price and hard to apply the remote monitoring system. On the other hand, demand for air quality monitoring is increasing because of industrial gas accident, air pollution, and so on. In Korea, indoor air regulation was established by law. According to indoor air regulation, CO2, CO, and NO2 are important gases as the air quality standard. So we study the gas detector for indoor air quality and the wireless network system. The wireless network consist of sensor network and WCDMA to apply various place. To verify the performance of the implemented gas detector, the gas measurement experiment is performed in laboratory environment by using the realized gas detecting wireless sensor node. And we evaluate the experiment results.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.15-20
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• 2016

Recently, the u-IT applications for plants and livestock become larger and control of livestock farm environment has been used important in the field of industry. We implemented wireless sensor networks and farm environment automatic control system for applying to the breeding barn environment by calculating the THI index. First, we gathered environmental information like livestock object temperature, heart rate and momentum. And we also collected the farm environment data including temperature, humidity and illuminance for calculating the THI index. Then we provide accurate control action roof open and electric fan in of intelligent farm to keep the best state automatically by using collected data. We believed this technology can improve industrial competitiveness through the u-IT based smart integrated management system introduction for industry aversion and dairy industries labor shortages due to hard work and old ageing.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.37-42
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• 2006

In this paper, we study a problem of providing reliable data transmission in wireless sensor network(WSN). A system with forward error correction9FEC) can provide an objective reliability while using less transmission power than a system without FEC. We propose the use of LDPC codes of various code rate (0.53, 0.81, 0.91) of FEC for WSN. Node-node-node interference is considered in the simulation in addition to AWGN in the channel. It is shown that the rate of 0.91 LDPC coded system obtained 7dB gain in signal to noise ratio over a system without FEC.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.185-194
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• 2010

In this paper, we propose an application layer-based vertical handover management protocol, called multihoming RTP (mhRTP), for real-time applications with seamless mobility across heterogeneous wireless access networks. The proposed multi-homing RTP provides a soft handover by utilizing multiple available wireless access network interfaces simultaneously. The newly available path is dynamically added to the ongoing session by the mhRTP session manager. Also the decision making of QoS-improving or QoS-guaranteed handover is possible based on the estimation of available bandwidth in each candidate network. The performances of the proposed mhRTP have been analyzed through a series of simulations on OPNET network simulator. From the performance analysis, we confirmed that the proposed mhRTP can provide QoS-guaranteed vertical handover with efficient session managements.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.43-52
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• 2007

IEEE 802.15.4 specification which defines low-rate wireless personal area network(LR-WPAN) has application to home or building automation, remote control and sensing, intelligent management, environmental monitoring, and so on. Recently, it has been considered as an alternative technology to provide multimedia services such as automation via voice recognition, wireless headset and wireless camera for surveillance. In order to evaluate capability of voice traffic on the IEEE 802.15.4 LR-WPAN, we supposed two scenarios, voice traffic only and coexistence of voice and sensing traffic. For both cases we examined delay and packet loss rate in case of with and without acknowledgement, and various beacon period varying with beacon and superframe order values. In LR-WPAN with voice devices only, total 5 voice devices could be applicable and in the other case, i.e., coexisted cases of voice and sensor devices, a voice device was able to coexist with about 60 sensor devices.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.381-390
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• 2015

The efficient design of a transport protocol contributes to energy conservation as well as performance improvement in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this paper, a node-density-aware transport protocol (NDTP) for intra-cluster transmissions in WSNs for monitoring physical attributes is proposed, which takes node density into account to mitigate congestion in intra-cluster transmissions. In the proposed NDTP, the maximum active time and queue length of cluster heads are restricted to reduce energy consumption. This is mainly because cluster heads do more works and consume more energy than normal sensor nodes. According to the performance evaluation results, the proposed NDTP outperforms the conventional protocol remarkably in terms of network lifetime, congestion frequency, and packet error rate.