IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine

The evolving fifth generation (5G) cellular wireless networks are envisioned to provide higher data rates, enhance end-user quality-of-experience (QoE), reduce end-to-end latency, and lower energy consumption. This article presents several emerging technologies which could enable and define future 5G mobile communication standards and cellular networks. We highlight the key ideas for each technolo... View full abstract»

Modern smart grids require the improvement of measurement and communication infrastructures of distribution networks, at both medium voltage (MV) and low voltage (LV) levels. Distributed sensing and measurement systems are needed to provide all necessary data for grid monitoring, control and management, as well as for the implementation of a number of smart functionalities, such as remote control ... View full abstract»

Today, at the low end of the communication protocols we find the inter-integrated circuit (I2C) and the serial peripheral interface (SPI) protocols. Both protocols are well suited for communications between integrated circuits for slow communication with on-board peripherals. The two protocols coexist in modern digital electronics systems, and they probably will continue to compete in t... View full abstract»

In this paper, we describe the construction and characterization of a low-cost ultrasonic sensing system for obstacle avoidance on a mobile robot. In some locations and in certain conditions where electronic components are not readily available and not affordable, it is more advantageous to design an obstacle sensing system with a single sensor (e.g., HC-SR04) to reduce the construction cost. We d... View full abstract»

Nowadays, the Internet of Things (IoT) can be considered an important technological revolution related to smart cities, smart homes, smart factories and smart ports implementations. As the presence of smart sensing systems in ports becomes a reality, different operation areas are working today in automatic mode. Examples of challenging projects related to smart ports in the IoT era can be found fr... View full abstract»

Wireless power transfer (WPT) is an old subject, introduced for the first time by Nikola Tesla in the twentieth century [1]. His patent proposal was based on the magnetic resonance of two coils to distribute large amounts of energy to distant places of consumption. The subject returned to the mainstream in the last decade due to the exponential growth in the number of electronic devices. Currently... View full abstract»

Despite women's relatively recent entrance into many male-dominated fields, women currently make up 17 percent of the engineering workforce, with as few as 8 percent in mechanical engineering and as many as 34 percent in environmental engineering [1]. Of the 17 percent of the engineering workforce that are women, 68 percent are White women [2]. Why does the male-domination of engineering persist? ... View full abstract»

We have developed a Maglev train under the guidance of the Japanese Ministry of Transport. The Maglev train is an advanced train that can run more than 500 km/h with a linear synchronous motor (LSM) that has both a superconducting magnet on board and an armature coil in the ground. The Maglev train was tested on the Yamanashi Maglev test line. Tests began in 1997, which exercised various functions... View full abstract»

Sensors and the Internet of Things (IoT) are driving the next wave of technological innovation, transforming lives and growing the economy. By connecting digital devices to the physical world around them, the impact of these emerging technologies on our data-driven society is limitless. The sensor market is growing at over 10% per year, and it is currently worth around US $500 billion globally. Th... View full abstract»

Recognition of human movements is very useful for several applications, such as smart rooms, interactive virtual reality systems, human detection and environment modeling. The objective of this work focuses on the detection and classification of falls based on variations in human silhouette shape, a key challenge in computer vision. Falls are a major health concern, specifically for the elderly. I... View full abstract»

This article focuses on three recent applications of microwave and millimeter wave NDT&E techniques that involve novel instrumentation development and measurements, including: 1) disbond detection in strengthened concrete bridge members retrofitted with carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite laminates; 2) corrosion and precursor pitting detection in painted aluminum and steel substra... View full abstract»

In this article, we examine prognostics and health management (PHM) issues using battery health management of Gen 2 cells, an 18650-size lithium-ion cell, as a test case. We will show where advanced regression, classification, and state estimation algorithms have an important role in the solution of the problem and in the data collection scheme for battery health management that we used for this c... View full abstract»

In this article we gave an overview of vision-based measurement (VBM), its various components, and uncertainty in the correct IM (instrumentation and measurement) metrological perspective. VBM is a fast rising technology due to the increasing affordability and capability of camera and computing hardware/software. While originally a specialized application, VBM is expected to become more ubiquitous... View full abstract»

Mechanical removal of blood clots is a promising approach towards the treatment of vascular diseases caused by pathological clot formation in the circulatory system. These clots can form and travel to deep seated regions in the circulatory system and result in significant problems as blood flow past the clot is obstructed. A microscopically small helical microrobot (Fig. 1a) offers great promise i... View full abstract»

The First-Year Engineering (FYE) program at the University of Kentucky (UK) is a three course sequence intended to recruit and retain engineering and computer science students by engaging them in exploration and design experiences. Transfer students are also welcomed into the College of Engineering through a course developed specifically for students entering the College with a previous degree or ... View full abstract»

Most sensors have three functional parts: the sensor part, signal conditioning part and interface part (Fig. 1). The sensor part senses the physical phenomena and transforms it typically into electric form. The signal condition part amplifies, linearizes and scales the electric signal. The interface part can be a simple mechanical connector, (field) bus adapter or in a wireless sensor, a radio mod... View full abstract»

In the December 2016 issue of I&M Magazine, there is a fine bit of history about the rise and fall of the slide rule [1]. The slide rule as used for multiplication and division qualifies as an analog computer, and analog computing will be the topic of this column. The best way to understand how a slide rule works is to make one. I started with a piece of semilog graph paper. Interestingly, some co... View full abstract»

From FabLabs new and important business opportunities can emerge in the world of Adaptive Manufacturing and the Internet of Things (IoT), by leveraging the services provided by large information technology (IT) companies, such as cloud computing. FabLabs aim to foster the creation of small start-ups, able to survive in a global market with rising fierce competition. Therefore, governance action is... View full abstract»

Measuring the speed of light, and ultimately using this speed to define the meter in the International System of Units (SI), has much to teach us about basic metrology. These lessons will gain new relevance later this year if the revised SI gains final approval, as expected. The history culminating in the last measurement of the speed of light is reviewed in this issue's column. View full abstract»

In recent years, as Cloud Computing and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies develop rapidly, smart home technology has entered a new stage: smart electric power usage, which will break the traditional extensive management situation for electric power loads, particularly under the background of an energy crisis. People will gradually gravitate towards the demands for more energy-related and intel... View full abstract»

As presented in [1], the fourth industrial revolution is coming: one which promises to marry the worlds of production and network connectivity in an Internet of Things (IOT). "Smart production" becomes the norm in a world where intelligent information and communication technology or ICT-based machines, systems and networks are capable of independently exchanging and responding to information to ma... View full abstract»

The goal of this work is to develop a low cost hardware- based system identification (SI) demonstrator. It targets the students and practicing engineers with an illustration of the threads for model extraction caused by nonlinear distortion. The focus lies on hands-on training with a high return on effort. The training starts from real experiments that are performed on the demonstrator hardware, w... View full abstract»

Load cells have long been used to sense and measure force and torque. When properly designed and used, they are very accurate and reliable sensors. Load cells are applied in several different fields, usually for weighing measurements. Among many other things, food, vehicles, and animals are weighed daily with load cells. The gripper of a robotic arm that picks up an object can be equipped with loa... View full abstract»

Measurement of the signal amplitude of radio frequency (RF) waves is an important function in a wide range of applications. Some of these applications are signal-level adjustment and verification for radar and communication radio and measurements made to control and ensure safety in industrial and home microwave heating processes. Frequencies that are normally considered to be "microwave" are typi... View full abstract»

The rapid growth of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) sensors over the last decades has introduced compactness along with maximum accuracy and has brought new directions for automation in industry. Nowadays, MEMS sensors are considered a highly efficient technology, which is found in abundant industrial, medical, aerospace, and consumer applications. This article discusses the importance and p... View full abstract»

Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) use microminiature sensors and actuators. MEMS technology provides the benefits of small size, low weight, high performance, easy mass-production and low cost. This article is the first part of a three-part series on MEMS sensors. In the present article, we provide a general introduction to MEMS sensing and the primary sensing techniques. Next, MEMS-based bio... View full abstract»

As the common metal structure type, welded structures are widely used in civil infrastructure, bridges, ships and engineering machinery. Fatigue cracks often originate in welds enduring intense stress concentration or in welding defects under long-term continuous alternating loading [1]. Once these cracks propagate to a critical length, the structural integrity will be challenged. As a result, wel... View full abstract»

Gone is the era where robots were strictly used for industrial automation, working in a single, isolated welding cell from an assembly line, away from their human overlords and relegated to repetitive brainless preprogrammed tasks. Modern robotics in contrast, is rapidly evolving in a more inclusive way for the robots, bringing them closer to us humans, and opening in the process a huge and divers... View full abstract»

The present work shows a low-cost instrument, based on a microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometer which costs less than US$ 1.20/unit and is designed to analyze unbalance in rotating machines. The acceleration signals were acquired using two perpendicular axes on a free wheel shaft, which were used to analyze the shaft vibration in the frequency domain by its Fast Fourier Transform (FFT... View full abstract»

Camera calibration plays a key role in every computer vision application dealing with the problems of recovering a camera's geometry with respect to a 3D world reference, making 3D measurement in a captured scene or extracting 3D data from observed objects. These problems emerge in various applications such as structure from motion, robotics, augmented reality, 3D object recognition, and Simultane... View full abstract»

Quality sleep is important for sustenance of good health. With changing life style and work cultures, it is increasingly becoming a prized thing. No wonder, sleep related problems are among the most widely reported health concerns. This is bringing sleep labs, their instrumentation and related matters into the spotlight. The gold standard instrumentation for sleep studies is polysomnography (PSG).... View full abstract»

In spite of the significant recent progress, the incorporation of haptics into virtual environments is still in its infancy due to limitations in the hardware, the cost of development, as well as the level of reality they provide. Nonetheless, we believe that the field will one day be one of the groundbreaking media of the future. It has its current holdups but the promise of the future is worth t... View full abstract»

Today, most of the signal processing performed in electronic systems is digital, and the performance of the analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) present at the borders of the digital domain become very important. The most recent applications in telecommunication, measurement, and consumer electronics call for ever-increasing ADC resolution and speed. The uncertainty of ADC performance strongly affe... View full abstract»

This paper presents an overview of the portion of the real-time simulation laboratory of the Institute for Automation of Complex Power Systems at RWTH Aachen University, dedicated to the testing of instrumentation, measurement and monitoring applications. Its key feature is the ability to test monitoring systems and complex monitoring methods as integrated systems as well as a set of individual co... View full abstract»

The amount of visible and near infrared light reflected by plants varies depending on their health. In this study, multispectral images were acquired by a quadcopter for high throughput phenotyping of tomato spot wilt disease resistance among twenty genotypes of peanuts. The plants were visually assessed to acquire ground truth ratings of disease incidence. Multispectral images were processed into... View full abstract»

Smart grids pose two sorts of interesting challenges to phasor measurement techniques. The main challenge results from estimating the parameters of voltage and current signals. It has been a hot topic since the advent of the phasor measurement unit (PMU) in the acquisition of synchrophasors of a power system under dynamic conditions. There are several research groups working in this field who have... View full abstract»

Hydroelectric turbine-generator units are equipped with different types of permanent monitoring sensors mainly for maintenance and safety but not for the efficiency measurement. Acceptance tests such as the efficiency measurement require additional precision instrumentation. Several measurement techniques exist to perform the testing and making the choice depends on the power plant configuration a... View full abstract»

There are several types of software testing that are widely used in the current IT world. This paper explain some of these types of tests and describes the author's experiences with them. When a tester knows what type of testing is needed, it greatly improves the test results and ultimately decreases the number of defects. Test methods covered include glass box testing, black box testing, system t... View full abstract»

Kim Fowler and John Schmalzel introduced many of the common sensor strategies that constitute the first stage in the measurement chain. While every element of that chain is important, the choice of an appropriate, robust sensor is an important decision. They gave examples from test stands for testing rocket engines. Measurements of the weight of liquids, their temperatures, and their flow rates in... View full abstract»

Standards are quickly moving towards quantum metrology and provide extremely low uncertainties, which let people perform highly accurate measurements. Yet in the golden age of the early Olympic Games, most standards were based on human elements and were limited by their poor reproducibility. This paper discusses the old standards of length, their differences between cultures and places, their larg... View full abstract»

Accelerometers (ACCs) and gyroscopes (gyros) are commonly known as inertial sensors and their orthogonal triads generally form an inertial measurement unit (IMU) used as a core means of a navigation system. Before the navigation system is to be used, it is necessary to perform its calibration. A typical process of the IMU calibration usually estimates scale-factors, orthogonality or misalignment e... View full abstract»

Three-phase induction motors are the workhorses of industry because of their widespread use. They are used extensively for heating, cooling, refrigeration, pumping, conveyors, and similar applications. They offer users simple, rugged construction, easy maintenance, and cost-effective pricing. These factors have promoted standardization and development of a manufacturing infrastructure that has led... View full abstract»

This paper has given an intelligent approach to avoid centerless grinding process instabilities without the need for sensors. The model-based algorithm techniques detect the configurations and the conditions of the process under which instabilities appear. The models and techniques developed have proven very useful for defining the optimum configuration of the process. View full abstract»

In this article, Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) technology used to implement fiber sensors is explained and some applications in temperature and strain measurements are presented. In the first section, the fundamentals and operation principles of FBGs are shown as well as optical fiber sensing interrogators. The second part of the article presents applications of temperature measurements in power trans... View full abstract»

As forecasted by the United States Air Force Aerospace Management Systems Division, it is expected that in 2028, the number of drones for civilian use will be greater than that used for defense [1], and in 2035, the number of commercial drones populating the US sky will be 175,000, i.e., ten times the actual number of defense-related (public) drones (Fig. 1). View full abstract»

Aging and degradation of transportation infrastructure pose significant safety concerns, especially in light of increased use of these structures. The economic downturn further exacerbates such concerns, especially for critical structures such as bridges, where replacement is infeasible and maintenance and repair are expensive. The US Federal Highway Administration has classified over 25% of the b... View full abstract»

Digital signal processing (DSP) is the process of taking a signal and performing an algorithm on it to analyze, modify, or better identify that signal. To take advantage of DSP advances, one must have at least a basic understanding of DSP theory along with an understanding of the hardware architecture designed to support these new advances. There are several programming techniques that maximize th... View full abstract»

The ability to predict and understand the responses of an airframe with simultaneous external influences acting on its elements is a challenging effort. Moreover, although considerable research has been devoted to monitoring structures within the aerospace industry (commercial, military, and space), successful field implementations have not been widely achieved. Breakthroughs for in-flight measure... View full abstract»

The Need for STEM Professionals We are increasingly exposed to complex societal and technological problems. Qualified Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) professionals are needed to solve these problems and cope with contemporary demands such as sustainable energy and efficient healthcare [1]. It is not surprising then that the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report (2016... View full abstract»

We outline three architectures for establishing system timing used in both the general computing environment and in the more specialized environment of test, measurement, and industrial control. Increasingly tight synchronization requirements and the trend to more distributed and peer-to-peer applications have led to the development of the IEEE 1588 standard as a means of establishing a precise co... View full abstract»