• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.41-49
• /
• 2005

Electromyogram (EMG) signal generated by voluntary contraction of muscles is often used in rehabilitation devices because of its distinct output characteristics compared to other bio-signals. This paper proposes a novel EMG-based human-computer interface for electric-powered wheelchair users with motor disabilities by C4 or C5 spine cord injury. User's commands to control the electric-powered wheelchair are represented by shoulder elevation motions, which are recognized by comparing EMG signals acquired from the levator scapulae muscles with a preset double threshold value. The interface commands for controlling the electric-powered wheelchair consist of combinations of left-, right- and both-shoulders elevation motions. To achieve a real-time interface, we implement an EMG processing hardware composed of analog amplifiers, filters, a mean absolute value circuit and a high-speed microprocessor. The experimental results using an implemented real-time hardware and an electric-powered wheelchair showed that the EMG-based human-computer interface is feasible for the users with severe motor disabilities.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
• /
• v.16 no.4
• /
• pp.753-764
• /
• 1992

The steam generator water level is difficult to control at low power due to its reversed responses to the feedwater flow, which are well known as the shrink and swell phenomena. With regard to this problem a new control scheme has been studied by which the level transients could be kept within permissible ranges at low power. The relations between the various input conditions to steam generator and the level transients have been examined to be expressed in the form of process transfer functions. Analog filters have been incorporated to be expressed in the process with proper control constants. This control scheme allows the prediction of level variation together with the corresponding feedwater rate and results in mider transients with good stabilites.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
• /
• v.3 no.4
• /
• pp.266-275
• /
• 2008

The sensorless speed control technique for BLDC motor using digital IP control is proposed in this paper for advanced speed characteristic which is robust to motor parameters and load variations. The sensorless drive of BLDC motor using terminal voltages is affected by load or speed because it uses analog filters to estimate the rotor position. For this reason, the robust speed controller with the accurate rotor position estimator is needed for sensorless control which is robust to load and insensitive to motor parameters. The constant speed robust to load variation and the stable sensorless control of BLDC motor robust to the increase or decrease of speed with constant load is implemented using digital IP control in this paper. The validity to these is established with experimentation.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.38-42
• /
• 2015

In terms of food safety,mixture of contaminants in food is a serious problem for not only consumers but also manufacturers. In general, the target size of the metallic contaminant to be removed is 0.5 mm. However, it is a difficult task for manufacturers to achieve this target, because of lower system sensitivity. Therefore, we developed a food contaminant detection system based on high-Tc RF superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs), which are highly sensitive magnetic sensors. This study aims to improve the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the system and detect a 0.5 mm diameter steel ball. Using a real time digital signal processing technique along with analog band-pass filters, we improved the SNR of the system. Owing to the improved SNR, a steel ball with a diameter as small as 0.3 mm, with stand-off distance of 117 mm was successfully detected. These results suggest that the proposed system is a promising candidate for the detection of metallic contaminants in food products.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
• /
• v.47 no.2
• /
• pp.141-149
• /
• 2010

It is essential to find oscillating angles and periods in a seaway when designing and manufacturing stabilizers. It is difficult to find oscillating angles and periods in high speed turning and they vary with ship speed and wave heading angles, therefore, proper algorithm to measure oscillating periods in a seaway. In the present study, three kinds of algorithms are developed to measure oscillating angles periods in a seaway. Dual axis tilt sensor of low price is used to measure oscillating angles, and the effect of lateral accelerations on tilt sensor have been reduced by the fusion algorithm using the gyro sensor signals. Analog and digital filters are applied to minimize the noise of the signals. Three kinds of algorithms, zero crossing, peak to peak and moving zero crossing algorithm, are developed to measure oscillating periods in a seaway. It is found that the moving zero algorithm showed the best results in the sea trials.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.19 no.6
• /
• pp.571-575
• /
• 1998

One of the most significant features of diagnostic ultrasonic instruments is to provide real time information of the soft tissues movements. Echocardiogram has been widely used for diagnosis of heart diseases since it is able to show real time images of heart valves and walls. However, the currently used ultrasonic images are deteriorated due to presence of speckle noises and image dropout. Therefore, it is very important to develop a new technique which can enhance ultrasonic images. In this study, a technique which extracts enhanced binary images in echocardiograms was proposed. For this purpose, a digital moving image file was made from analog echocardiogram, then it was stored as 8-bit gray-level for each frame. For an efficient image processing, the region containing the heat septum and tricuspid valve was selected as the region of interest(ROI). Image enhancement filters and morphology filters were used to reduce speckle noises in the images. The proposed procedure in this paper resulted in binary images with enhanced contour compared to those form the conventional threshold technique and original image processing technique which can be further implemented for the quantitative analysis of the left ventricular wall motion in echocardiogram by easy detection of the heart wall contours.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
• /
• v.44 no.2
• /
• pp.34-45
• /
• 2007

Digital decimation filter is inevitable in oversampled sigma-delta A/D converters for the sake of reducing the oversampled rate to Nyquist rate. This paper presented a Verilog-HDL design and implementation of an area-efficient digital decimation filter that provides time-to-market advantage for sigma-delta analog-to-digital converters. The digital decimation filter consists of CIC(cascaded integrator-comb) filter and two cascaded half-band FIR filters. A CSD(canonical signed digit) representation of filter coefficients is used to minimize area and reduce in hardware complexity of multiplication arithmetic. Coefficient multiplications are implemented by using shifters and adders. This three-stage decimation filter is fabricated in $0.25-{\mu}m$ CMOS technology and incorporates $1.36mm^2$ of active area, shows 4.4 mW power consumption at clock rate of 2.8224 MHz. Measured results show that this digital decimation filter is suitable for digital audio decimation filters.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.15 no.12
• /
• pp.7287-7291
• /
• 2014

A CDTA (current differencing transconductance amplifier) is an active building block for current mode analog signal processing with the advantages of high linearity and a wide frequency bandwidth. In addition, it can generate a stable voltage because all the differencing input current flows to the grounded devices. In this paper, a new small signal equivalent circuit is proposed to analyze a CDTA. The proposed small signal equivalent circuit provides greater precision in analyzing the magnitude and frequency response than its previous counterparts because it considers the parasitic components of the input, internal and output terminal. In addition, observations of the changes made in various devices, such as the resistor (Rz) confirmed that those devices heavily influence the characteristics of CDTA. The designed parameters of the proposed small signal equivalent circuit of the CDTA provides convenience and accuracy in the further design of analog integrated circuits. For verification purposes, a 2.5 MHz low pass filter was designed on the HSPICE simulation program using the proposed small signal equivalent circuit of CDTA.

• Progress in Superconductivity
• /
• v.8 no.1
• /
• pp.33-39
• /
• 2006

We have developed a second-order double relaxation oscillation SQUID(DROS) gradiometer with a baseline of 35 mm, and constructed a poorly magnetically-shielded room(MSR) with an aluminum layer and permalloy layers for magnetocardiography(MCG). The 2nd-order DROS gradiometer has a noise level of 20 $fT/{\surd}Hz$ at 1 Hz and 8 $fT/{\surd}Hz$ at 200 Hz inside the heavily-shielded MSR with a shielding factor of $10^3$ at 1 Hz and $10^4-10^5$ at 100 Hz. The poorly-shielded MSR, built of a 12-mm-thick aluminum layer and 4-6 permalloy layers of 0.35 mm thickness, is 2.4mx2.4mx2.4m in size, and has a shielding factor of 40 at 1 Hz, $10^4$ at 100 Hz. Our 64-channel second-order gradiometer MCG system consists of 64 2nd-order DROS gradiometers, flux-locked loop electronics, and analog signal processors. With the 2nd-order DROS gradiometers and flux-locked loop electronics installed inside the poorly-shielded MSR, and with the analog signal processor installed outside it, the noise level was measured to be 20 $fT/{\surd}Hz$ at 1 Hz and 8 $fT/{\surd}Hz$ at 200 Hz on the average even though the MSR door is open. This result leads to a low noise level, low enough to obtain a human MCG at the same level as that measured in the heavily-shielded MSR. However, filters or active shielding is needed fur clear MCG when there is large low-frequency noise from heavy air conditioning or large ac power consumption near the poorly-shielded MSR.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.41 no.5
• /
• pp.507-517
• /
• 2022

The PhotoAcoustic Microscopy (PAM) has been proved to be a useful tool for biological and medical applications due to its high spatial and contrast resolution. PAM is based on transmission of laser pulses and reception of PA signals. Since the strength of PA signals is generally low, not only are high-performance optical and acoustic modules required, but high-performance electronics for imaging are also particularly needed for high-quality PAM imaging. Most PAM systems are implemented with a combination of several pieces of equipment commercially available to receive, amplify, enhance, and digitize PA signals. To this end, PAM systems are inevitably bulky and not optimal because general purpose equipment is used. This paper reports a PA signal receiving system recently developed to attain the capability of improved Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) and Contrast to Noise Ratio (CNR) of PAM images; the main module of this system is a low noise, wideband signal receiver that consists of two low-noise amplifiers, two variable gain amplifiers, analog filters, an Analog to Digital Converter (ADC), and control logic. From phantom imaging experiments, it was found that the developed system can improve SNR by 6.7 dB and CNR by 3 dB, compared to a combination of several pieces of commercially available equipment.