Low-cost switched array-wide band antenna for Search and Rescue disaster management

Author(s):  
Elyas Palantei ◽  
Syafruddin Syarif ◽  
Arif Hidayat ◽  
Sutan Takdir Ali Munawar
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salil Goel ◽  
Allison Kealy ◽  
Bharat Lohani

Precise localization is one of the key requirements in the deployment of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) for any application including precision mapping, surveillance, assisted navigation, search and rescue. The need for precise positioning is even more relevant with the increasing automation in UAVs and growing interest in commercial UAV applications such as transport and delivery. In the near future, the airspace is expected to be occupied with a large number of unmanned as well as manned aircraft, a majority of which are expected to be operating autonomously. This paper develops a new cooperative localization prototype that utilizes information sharing among UAVs and static anchor nodes for precise positioning of the UAVs. The UAVs are retrofitted with low-cost sensors including a camera, GPS receiver, UWB (Ultra Wide Band) radio and low-cost inertial sensors. The performance of the low-cost prototype is evaluated in real-world conditions in partially and obscured GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) environments. The performance is analyzed for both centralized and distributed cooperative network designs. It is demonstrated that the developed system is capable of achieving navigation grade (2–4 m) accuracy in partially GNSS denied environments, provided a consistent communication in the cooperative network is available. Furthermore, this paper provides experimental validation that information sharing is beneficial to improve positioning performance even in ideal GNSS environments. The experiments demonstrate that the major challenges for low-cost cooperative networks are consistent connectivity among UAV platforms and sensor synchronization.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 2218
Author(s):  
Sizhen Bian ◽  
Peter Hevesi ◽  
Leif Christensen ◽  
Paul Lukowicz

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) are seen as an emerging technology for maritime exploration but are still restricted by the availability of short range, accurate positioning methods necessary, e.g., when docking remote assets. Typical techniques used for high-accuracy positioning in indoor use case scenarios, such as systems using ultra-wide band radio signals (UWB), cannot be applied for underwater positioning because of the quick absorption of the positioning medium caused by the water. Acoustic and optic solutions for underwater positioning also face known problems, such as the multi-path effects, high propagation delay (acoustics), and environmental dependency. This paper presents an oscillating magnetic field-based indoor and underwater positioning system. Unlike those radio wave-based positioning modalities, the magnetic approach generates a bubble-formed magnetic field that will not be deformed by the environmental variation because of the very similar permeability of water and air. The proposed system achieves an underwater positioning mean accuracy of 13.3 cm in 2D and 19.0 cm in 3D with the multi-lateration positioning method and concludes the potential of the magnetic field-based positioning technique for underwater applications. A similar accuracy was also achieved for various indoor environments that were used to test the influence of cluttered environment and of cross environment. The low cost and power consumption system is scalable for extensive coverage area and could plug-and-play without pre-calibration.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (21) ◽  
pp. 10454
Author(s):  
Antonella Maria Loconsole ◽  
Vito Vincenzo Francione ◽  
Vincenza Portosi ◽  
Onofrio Losito ◽  
Michele Catalano ◽  
...  

A water-in-diesel microwave sensor based on a substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) microwave applicator is designed and characterized in this study. The interaction between the microwave electromagnetic field and the diesel fuel contaminated with small concentrations of water is obtained via suitable radiating slots placed on the top of an SIW waveguiding structure. The SIW applicator working frequency is chosen by observing the behavior of the complex dielectric permittivity of the fuel–water blend based on a preliminary wide band investigation. The performances of the SIW microwave sensor are evaluated in terms of scattering parameter modulus |S21| as a function of the water concentration in ppm. The best sensitivity Δ|S21|Δρ=1.42 mdB/ppm is obtained at a frequency of f=9.76 GHz, with a coefficient of determination R2=0.94. The sensor is low-cost, low profile and ensures a good sensitivity for constant and real-time monitoring.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-81
Author(s):  
Malsawmi Pachuau

Local government plays an integral part in the mechanism of Disaster Management in Mizoram. The local bodies are the direct representatives of the local community and the local community places their full trust in them. Post disaster measures such as mock drills, training of search and rescue teams, physical and economic relief and rehabilitation are not something new to us, yet the aspect of disaster mitigation is something which has not bred familiarity among the Mizos. The need for sensitization of the public on the importance of Disaster Mitigation is a necessity. The saying ‘Earthquakes do not kill people; buildings do’ is pertinent in urban areas. Urban areas are congested and more prone to disasters. High rise buildings, squatter settlements due to high densities and low availability of land has endangered not just the lives of the public but has also caused a massive disturbance of the ecological system. The paper covers certain Acts and Regulations of the Aizawl Municipal Corporation dealing with structural mitigation and the detection of illegal construction, unsafe buildings, and encroachments on municipal and public properties. At the local level, the councillors are involved in making, unmaking and carrying out these rules and regulations, with direct bearing on the local people. The paper also gives an account of the need of reimplementation to generate awareness, knowledge and education on Disaster Management to the people of Mizoram.


Building a precise low cost indoor positioning and navigation wireless system is a challenging task. The accuracy and cost should be taken together into account. Especially, when we need a system to be built in a harsh environment. In recent years, several researches have been implemented to build different indoor positioning system (IPS) types for human movement using wireless commercial sensors. The aim of this paper is to prove that it is not always the case that having a larger number of anchor nodes will increase the accuracy. Two and three anchor nodes of ultra-wide band with or without the commercial devices (DW 1000) could be implemented in this work to find the Localization of objects in different indoor positioning system, for which the results showed that sometimes three anchor nodes are better than two and vice versa. It depends on how to install the anchor nodes in an appropriate scenario that may allow utilizing a smaller number of anchors while maintaining the required accuracy and cost.


Author(s):  
Anupma Gupta ◽  
Paras Chawla ◽  
Ankush Kansal ◽  
Kulbir Singh

: A defected ground antenna with dielectric reflector is designed and investigated for breast tumour diagnosis. Ultra-wide band resonance (3.1 to 10.6 GHz) is achieved by etching two slots and adding a narrow vertical strip in a patch antenna. A high dielectric constant substrate is added below the antenna, which shows remarkable effect on performance. Antenna performance is verified experimentally on an artificially fabricated breast tissue and tumour. Malignant tissue has different dielectric properties than the normal tissue, that causes deviation in the scattered antenna power. Average value of backscattered signal variation and ground penetrating radar (GPR) algorithm is used to localize the tumour of radius 4mm in breast tissue.


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (22) ◽  
pp. 4980 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunlong Sun ◽  
Lianwu Guan ◽  
Zhanyuan Chang ◽  
Chuanjiang Li ◽  
Yanbin Gao

As the restaurant industry is facing labor shortage issues, the use of meal delivery robots instead of waiters/waitresses not only allows the customers to experience the impact of robot technology but also benefits the restaurant business financially by reducing labor costs. Most existing meal delivery robots employ magnetic navigation technologies, which require magnetic strip installation and changes to the restaurant decor. Once the moving path is changed, the magnetic strips need to be re-laid. This study proposes multisource information fusion, i.e., the fusion of ultra-wide band positioning technology with an odometer and a low-cost gyroscope accelerometer, to achieve the positioning of a non-rail meal delivery robot with navigation. By using a low-cost electronic compass and gyroscope accelerometer, the delivery robot can move along a fixed orbit in a flexible and cost-effective manner with steering control. Ultra-wide band (UWB) and track estimation algorithm are combined by extended Kalman filter (EKF), and the positioning error after fusion is about 15 cm, which is accepted by restaurants. In summary, the proposed approach has some potential for commercial applications.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (10) ◽  
pp. 2867
Author(s):  
Marko Malajner ◽  
Danijel Šipoš ◽  
Dušan Gleich

This paper proposes an improved design of a pulse-based radar. An improved design of a pulse generator is presented using step recovery diodes and a signal mixer for the received signal. Two-step recovery diodes produce pulses of 120 ps in duration. A pulse generator is improved by removing the negative power supply, resulting in a reduced number of electronic pulses. A sampling mixer at the receiver’s site receives the generated signal and stretches it from picoseconds into microseconds. The improved pulse generator is also used in the sampling mixer as a strobe pulse generator, which makes the sampling mixer much simpler. The stretched signal is then sampled by a low sample rate using an analog to digital converter. The proposed radar design achieves up to 8 GHz bandwidth and an equivalent receiving sample rate of about 100 GSa/s. The radar is controlled using a software-defined radio called Red Pitaya, which is also used for data acquisition. The proposed radar design uses widely available commercial components, which makes radar design widely available with low cost implementation.


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