OPTOELECTRONIC HARDWARE-SOFTWARE MONOMODULAR SENSOR OF METEOROLOGICAL RANGE OF VISIBILITY AND ATMOSPHERE TRANSPARENCY WITH AUTOMATIC CORRECTION OF EXTERNAL POLLUTION EFFECT OF OPTICAL SYSTEMS

A model sample of a monomodular hardware-software optoelectronic sensor of k-factor, meteorological range of visibility and atmosphere transparency with high technical and operational characteristics of small -sized execution is developed and created. The combination in the algorithm of functioning of the developed hardware-software methods of sensor creation provided increase of accuracy and invariance of results of measurement concerning external background illumination and self-testing with automatic correction of pollution effect of optical windows of the sensor. Continuous monitoring of the degree of contamination of optical windows provides an opportunity in case of detection of exceeding the permissible level of pollution to provide the operator with information about the need for preventive work. The proposed method of automatic correction of contamination of optical windows either completely eliminates or significantly increases the time interval of their mechanical cleaning operations, which reduces labour costs for maintenance of the sensor. The analysis of technical capabilities of the nodes of the model sample of the sensor allowed to estimate its basic meteorological parameters: the k-factor – (0.17÷1.11∙10-4) m-1, the meteorological visibility – (18÷27∙103 ) m and the atmosphere transparency per 1 km of the layer – (0÷0.895). The developed meteorological sensor can be used as a basic remote-controlled instrument for measuring meteorological parameters of the state of the atmosphere at the hydrometeorological stations of the country, mobile meteorological stations, stationary meteorological stations of road and air services to ensure guaranteed safety of workers.

Power factor improvement for a three-phase system using reactive power compensation

For all industrial and distribution sites, the lagging power factor of electrical loads is a common problem. In the early days, it was corrected manually by adding the capacitor banks of certain values in parallel. Automatic power factor correction (APFC) using a capacitor bank helps to make a power factor that is close to unity. It consists of a microcontroller that processes the value of the power factor to enable the system and monitor the power factor if it falls below (0.77) from the specified level. This paper presents the automatic correction of the power factor by adding the capacitors banks automatically of the desired value in a three-phase system in the form of binary coding (0-7). The main purpose of this system is to maintain the power factor as close as to unity, for the experimental case, it is set to (0.93) which helps to decreases the losses and ultimately increase the efficiency of the system.

Snow effect on the neutron monitor network for 2018-2019

In this article, the influence of the surrounding snow cover on the neutron monitors count rate of the world network of neutron monitors was estimated using the method of reference stations. The applied technique also makes it possible to estimate the snow cover thickness at the observation point, which was done for more than two dozen stations. A comparison of the data correction results for snow is carried out for the case of automatic correction, based on the developed algorithm, and for manual one, with an error estimate.

Assessment and Improvement of Two Low-Cost Particulate Matter Sensor Systems by Using Spatial Interpolation Data from Air Quality Monitoring Stations

Two low-cost fine particulate matter (PM2.5) sensor systems have been established by the government and community in Taiwan. Each system combines hundreds of PM2.5 sensors through an Internet of Things architecture. Since these sensors have not been calibrated, their performance has been questioned. In this study, the spatial interpolation data from air quality monitoring stations (AQMSs) was used to quantify the performances of the two sensor systems. The linearity, sensitivity, offset, precision, accuracy, and bias of the two sensor systems were estimated. The results indicate that the linearity of the government’s sensor system was higher than that of the community sensor system. However, the sensitivity of the government’s system was lower than that of the community system. The relative standard deviation, relative error, offset, and bias of the community sensor system were higher than those of the government sensor system. However, the government sensor system exhibited superior spatial interpolation results for the AQMS data than the community sensor system did. The precision and accuracy of the two sensor systems were poor during a period of low PM2.5 concentrations. A working platform of improvements consisting of monitoring the operation loop and automatic correction loop is proposed. The monitoring operation loop comprises five modules, namely outlier detection, temporal anomaly analysis, spatial anomaly analysis, spatiotemporal anomaly analysis, and trajectory analysis modules. The automatic correction loop contains spatial interpolation module, a sensor performance detection module, and a correction module. The proposed working platform can enhance the performance of low-cost sensor systems, especially as alert systems for reportable events.