Sensors, Volume 14, Issue 1

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology faces the problem of message collisions. The coexistence of tags sharing the communication channel degrades bandwidth, and increases the number of bits transmitted. The window methodology, which contro...

By the end of 2012, China had launched 16 BeiDou-2 navigation satellites that include six GEOs, five IGSOs and five MEOs. This has provided initial navigation and precise pointing services ability in the Asia-Pacific regions. In order to assess the n...

We present a design of a nanometrology measuring setup which is a part of the national standard instrumentation for nanometrology operated by the Czech Metrology Institute (CMI) in Brno, Czech Republic. The system employs a full six-axis interferomet...

Rice crop height is an important agronomic trait linked to plant type and yield potential. This research developed an automatic image processing technique to detect rice crop height based on images taken by a digital camera attached to a field server...

The use of inertial sensors to characterize pathological gait has traditionally been based on the calculation of temporal and spatial gait variables from inertial sensor data. This approach has proved successful in the identification of gait deviatio...

Sensor networks are becoming an essential part of ubiquitous systems and applications. However, there are no well-defined protocols or mechanisms to access the sensor network from the enterprise information system. We consider this issue as a heterog...

In this paper, a new application of an electro-active-polymer for a radio frequency (RF) switch is presented. We used an ionic polymer metallic composite (IPMC) switch to change the operating frequency of an inverted-F antenna. This switch is light i...

In this paper, we propose an intelligent method, named the Novelty Detection Power Meter (NodePM), to detect novelties in electronic equipment monitored by a smart grid. Considering the entropy of each device monitored, which is calculated based on a...

Conventional metallic strain sensors are flexible, but they can sustain maximum strains of only ~5%, so there is a need for sensors that can bear high strains for multifunctional applications. In this study, we report stretchable and flexible high-st...

This survey aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the current researchon underwater wireless sensor networks, focusing on the lower layers of the communicationstack, and envisions future trends and challenges. It analyzes the current state-of-t...

Tactile sensing provides critical information, such as force, texture, shape or temperature, in manipulation tasks. In particular, tactile sensors traditionally used in robotics are emphasized in contact force determination for grasping control and o...

This paper explores how inertial Pedestrian Dead-Reckoning (PDR) location systems can be improved with the use of a light sensor to measure the illumination gradients created when a person walks under ceiling-mounted unmodified indoor lights. The pro...

This paper describes a wireless sensor network (WSN) used to monitor the health state of architectural heritage in real-time. The WSN has been deployed and tested on the “Rognosa” tower in the medieval village of San Gimignano, Tuscany, Italy. This t...

Recently introduced passive wireless strain sensors based on microstrip patch antennas have shown great potential for reliable health and usage monitoring in aerospace and civil industries. However, the wireless interrogation range of these sensors i...

During the last years, the use of Portable Coordinate Measuring Machines (PCMMs) in industry has increased considerably, mostly due to their flexibility for accomplishing in-line measuring tasks as well as their reduced costs and operational advantag...

Nutritive Sucking (NS) is a highly organized process that is essential for infants’ feeding during the first six months of their life. It requires the complex coordination of sucking, swallowing and breathing. The infant’s inability to perform a safe...

To address the bottleneck issues of an elastic-style six-axis force/torque sensor (six-axis force sensor), this work proposes a no-elastic piezoelectric six-axis force sensor. The operating principle of the piezoelectric six-axis force sensor is anal...

This paper describes the development of a multi-parameter system for monitoring volcanic activity. The system permits the remote access and the connection of several modules in a network. An embedded ARM^TM processor has been used, allowing a great fl...

Spraying techniques have been undergoing continuous evolution in recent decades. This paper presents part of the research work carried out in Spain in the field of sensors for characterizing vineyard canopies and monitoring spray drift in order to im...

This paper evaluates and characterizes the technical performance of medical wireless personal area networks (WPANs) that are based on smartphones. For this purpose, a prototype of a health telemonitoring system is presented. The prototype incorporate...

Spatial variation and temporal changes in ground subsidence over the Nobi Plain, Central Japan, are assessed using GIS techniques and ground level measurements data taken over this area since the 1970s. Notwithstanding the general slowing trend obser...

We present a novel sensorized mat for monitoring infant’s posture through the measure of pressure maps. The pressure-sensitive mat is based on an optoelectronic technology developed in the last few years at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna: a soft silicone...

High density oligonucleotide microarrays present a big challenge for statistical data processing methods which aim to separate changes induced by experimental factors from those caused by artifacts and measurement inaccuracies. Despite huge advances...

One of the challenges of phased array (PA) ultrasonic imaging systems is their limited capability to deal with real-time applications, such as echocardiography and obstetrics. In its most basic outline, these systems require emitting and receiving wi...

This paper demonstrates a novel flow sensor with two-dimensional 360° direction sensitivity achieved with a simple structure and a novel data fusion algorithm. Four sensing elements with roundabout wires distributed in four quadrants of a circle comp...

Flexibility testing is one of the most important fitness assessments. It is generally evaluated by measuring the range of motion (RoM) of body segments around a joint center. This study presents a novel assessment of flexibility in the microcirculato...

G-Quadruplex (G-4) structures are formed when G-rich DNA sequences fold into intra- or intermolecular four-stranded structures in the presence of metal ions. G-4-hemin complexes are often effective peroxidase-mimicking DNAzymes that are applied in m...

The present study was aimed at evaluating the Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) method to estimate the 3D orientation of the lower trunk during walking using the angular velocity signals generated by a wearable inertial measurement unit (IMU) and no...

Vibration sensor data from a mechanical system are often associated with important measurement information useful for machinery fault diagnosis. However, in practice the existence of background noise makes it difficult to identify the fault signature...

The physical properties and the effect of effective surface area (ESA) on the sensing properties of tin dioxide [SnO₂] thin films in air and propane [C₃H₈] atmosphere as a function of operating temperature and gas concentration have been studied in t...

This article describes the implementation of a web server using an embedded Altera NIOS II IP core, a general purpose and configurable RISC processor which is embedded in a Cyclone FPGA. The processor uses the μCLinux operating system to support a Bo...

The Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (BOTDA)-based optical fiber method has been proposed to measure strain variations caused by corrosion expansion. Spatial resolutions of 1 m can be achieved with this kind of Brillouin sensor for detecting th...

A surface plasmon resonance sensor for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is developed using repeatable telecommunication wavelength modulation based on optical fiber communications laser wavelength and stability. MTB DNA co...

This paper describes the design and experimental verification of a multipoint sensing system with hetero-core spliced optical fiber sensors and its remote management using an internet-standard protocol. The study proposes two different types of desig...

In order to distinguish dysfunctional gait, clinicians require a measure of reference gait parameters for each population. This study provided normative values for widely used parameters in more than 1,400 able-bodied adults over the age of 65. We al...

Difficulty with turning is a major contributor to mobility disability and falls in people with movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD). Turning often results in freezing and/or falling in patients with PD. However, asking a patient to ex...

Since their introduction in 2001, SiNW-based sensor devices have attracted considerable interest as a general platform for ultra-sensitive, electrical detection of biological and chemical species. Most studies focus on detecting, sensing and monitori...

We study the presence of dark and bright modes in a planar metamaterial with a double rod unit cell introducing geometric asymmetry in rod lengths. The dark mode displays a Fano-type resonance with a sharp asymmetric profile, rendering it far more se...

This study presents a fault detection of roller bearings through signal processing and optimization techniques. After the occurrence of scratch-type defects on the inner race of bearings, variations of kurtosis values are investigated in terms of two...

For the past 20 years, many authors have focused their investigations on wireless sensor networks. Various issues related to wireless sensor networks such as energy minimization (optimization), compression schemes, self-organizing network algorithms,...

Extracting energy from ambient vibration to power wireless sensor nodes has been an attractive area of research, particularly in the automotive monitoring field. This article reports the design, analysis and testing of a vibration energy harvesting d...

We have developed a high-resolution automatic sampling system for continuous in situ measurements of stable water isotopic composition and nitrogen solutes along with hydrological information. The system facilitates concurrent monitoring of a large n...

For devices such as bio-/chemical sensors in microfluidic systems, flow fluctuations result in noise in the sensor output. Here, we demonstrate in-line monitoring of flow fluctuations with a cantilever-like sensor integrated in a microfluidic channel...

In this research, we have developed a multi-channel piezoelectric acoustic sensor (McPAS) that mimics the function of the natural basilar membrane capable of separating incoming acoustic signals mechanically by their frequency and generating correspo...

This paper presents a novel self-timed multi-purpose sensor especially conceived for Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). The aim of the sensor is to measure performance variations during the life-cycle of the device, such as process variability,...

We report a novel design wherein high-refractive-index zinc oxide (ZnO) intermediary layers are used in anti-symmetrically structured surface plasmon resonance (SPR) devices to enhance signal quality and improve the full width at half maximum (FWHM)...

Piezoelectric sensing is of increasing interest for high-temperature applications in aerospace, automotive, power plants and material processing due to its low cost, compact sensor size and simple signal conditioning, in comparison with other high-te...

We investigated a lab-based hyperspectral imaging system’s response from pure (single) and mixed (two) algal cultures containing known algae types and volumetric combinations to characterize the system’s performance. The spectral response to volumetr...

Energy-efficient communication is one of the main concerns of wireless sensor networks nowadays. A commonly employed approach for achieving energy efficiency has been the use of duty-cycled operation of the radio, where the node’s transceiver is turn...

A new data dimension-reduction method, called Internal Information Redundancy Reduction (IIRR), is proposed for application to Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES) datasets obtained from industrial plasma processes. For example in a semiconductor manu...