Applied System Innovation — Open Access Journal

LoRa (Long Range) is a proprietary radio communication technology exploiting license-free frequency bands, allowing low-rate information exchange over long distances with very low power consumption. Conventional environmental monitoring sensors have the disadvantage of being in fixed positions and distributed over wide areas, thus providing measurements with a spatially insufficient level of detail. Since public transport vehicles travel continuously within cities, they are ideal to house portable monitoring systems for environmental pollution and meteorological parameters. The paper presents a feasibility analysis of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) to collect this information from the vehicles conveying it to a central node for processing. The communication system is realized by deploying a layer-structured, fault-resistant, multi-hop Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) based on the LoRa technology. Both a theoretical study about electromagnetic propagation and network architecture are addressed with consideration of potential practical network realization. Full article

This paper presents a novel method of restoring the electron beam (EB) measurements that are degraded by linear motion blur. This is based on a fuzzy inference system (FIS) and Wiener inverse filter, together providing autonomy, reliability, flexibility, and real-time execution. This system is capable of restoring highly degraded signals without requiring the exact knowledge of EB probe size. The FIS is formed of three inputs, eight fuzzy rules, and one output. The FIS is responsible for monitoring the restoration results, grading their validity, and choosing the one that yields to a better grade. These grades are produced autonomously by analyzing results of a Wiener inverse filter. To benchmark the performance of the system, ground truth signals obtained using an 18 μm wire probe were compared with the restorations. Main aims are therefore: (a) Provide unsupervised deblurring for device independent EB measurement; (b) improve the reliability of the process; and (c) apply deblurring without knowing the probe size. These further facilitate the deployment and manufacturing of EB probes as well as facilitate accurate and probe-independent EB characterization. This paper’s findings also makes restoration of previously collected EB measurements easier where the probe sizes are not known nor recorded. Full article

One of the current and biggest problems in the system of emergency care for the drug overdose epidemic is the failure of information delivery on nearby treatment facilities. Even though some initiatives have tried to solve this issue, they either failed in delivering the information or in providing good usability. This paper presents the design and development of a web application that we refer to as DrugHelp.Care. This application delivers highly accurate, easy-to-understand, and targeted information in a timely manner for substance users and their well-wishers. It also provides an ecosystem for the treatment facilities with an easy-to-use interface to constantly update their complex information along with automatic email reminders and data completion progress indicators. Based on the requirements we have collected from substance users and treatment facilities, the application is designed and developed using the LAMP stack. A search engine for the substance users and their well-wishers preserves complete anonymity, which is very important to ensure the confidentiality of substance users. Full article

The development of compact wearable antennas and transceivers for communication, IoT (Internet of Things), and biomedical systems will be presented in this paper. Development of Compact efficient wearable antennas is one of the major challenges in development of wearable communication, IoT, and medical systems. The main goal of wireless body area networks (BANs), WBANs, is to provide continuously medical data to the physician. Body area network (BAN) antennas should be flexible, lightweight, compact, and have low production cost. However, low efficiency is the major disadvantage of small printed antennas. Microstrip antennas resonant frequency is altered, due to environment conditions, different antenna locations, and different system operation modes. These disadvantages may be solved by using compact active and tunable antennas. A new class of wideband active wearable antennas for medical applications is presented in this paper. Amplifiers may be connected to the wearable antenna feed line to increase the system dynamic range. Small lightweight batteries supply the bias voltage to the active components. An active dual polarized antenna is presented in this paper. The active dual polarized antenna gain is 14 ± 3 dB for frequencies ranging from 380 to 600 MHz. The active transmitting dual polarized antenna output power is around 18 dBm. A voltage-controlled diode, varactor, may be used to control the antenna electrical performance at different environments. For example, an antenna located in patient stomach area has VSWR (Voltage Standing Wave Ratio) better than 2:1 at 434 MHz. However, if the antenna will be placed on the patient back, it may resonate at 420 MHz. By varying the varactor bias voltage, the antenna resonant frequency may be shifted from 420 to 434 MHz. An ultra-wideband passive and active printed slot antenna may be employed in wideband wearable communication systems. The active slot antenna gain is 13 ± 2 dB for frequencies from 800 MHz to 3 GHz. Full article

Visible Light Communication (VLC) uses light-emitting diodes to provide wireless connectivity in public environments. Transmission security in this emerging channel is not trivial. Chaotic modulation techniques can provide encryption directly in the physical layer based on the random-alike evolution and strong synchronization prospect given by deterministic chaos. In secure chaotic inclusion or embedding methods, continuous-time chaos oscillator models need to be synchronized via a coupling carrier. Here we present a first numerical simulation study for the impact of the variable delays induced by line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight multipath fading in complete chaotic synchronization. More precisely, we analyze a chaotic Colpitts oscillator that is simultaneously transmitting the carrier to several mobile receivers via nine spotlights. Such induced delays depend on both the receiver position and the carrier frequency, influencing the complete synchronization required in modulation via chaotic inclusion. Correlation values for several receiver positions and carrier frequencies are presented, examining the progressive emergence of the multipath effect and its impact on chaotic synchronization. We show that, for the chaotic oscillator and coupling applied in the defined room settings, complete chaotic synchronization can be achieved and that it is robust up to the tens of MHz region. Full article

In this work, an advanced drone battery charging system is developed. The system is composed of a drone charging station with multiple power transmitters and a receiver to charge the battery of a drone. A resonance inductive coupling-based wireless power transmission technique is used. With limits of wireless power transmission in inductive coupling, it is necessary that the coupling between a transmitter and receiver be strong for efficient power transmission; however, for a drone, it is normally hard to land it properly on a charging station or a charging device to get maximum coupling for efficient wireless power transmission. Normally, some physical sensors such as ultrasonic sensors and infrared sensors are used to align the transmitter and receiver for proper coupling and wireless power transmission; however, in this system, a novel method based on the hill climbing algorithm is proposed to control the coupling between the transmitter and a receiver without using any physical sensor. The feasibility of the proposed algorithm was checked using MATLAB. A practical test bench was developed for the system and several experiments were conducted under different scenarios. The system is fully automatic and gives 98.8% accuracy (achieved under different test scenarios) for mitigating the poor landing effect. Also, the efficiency η of 85% is achieved for wireless power transmission. The test results show that the proposed drone battery charging system is efficient enough to mitigate the coupling effect caused by the poor landing of the drone, with the possibility to land freely on the charging station without the worry of power transmission loss. Full article

In the health industry, the use of data (including Big Data) is of growing importance. The term ‘Big Data’ characterizes data by its volume, and also by its velocity, variety, and veracity. Big Data needs to have effective data governance, which includes measures to manage and control the use of data and to enhance data quality, availability, and integrity. The type and description of data quality can be expressed in terms of the dimensions of data quality. Well-known dimensions are accuracy, completeness, and consistency, amongst others. Since data quality depends on how the data is expected to be used, the most important data quality dimensions depend on the context of use and industry needs. There is a lack of current research focusing on data quality dimensions for Big Data within the health industry; this paper, therefore, investigates the most important data quality dimensions for Big Data within this context. An inner hermeneutic cycle research approach was used to review relevant literature related to data quality for big health datasets in a systematic way and to produce a list of the most important data quality dimensions. Based on a hierarchical framework for organizing data quality dimensions, the highest ranked category of dimensions was determined. Full article

The proposed research methodology aims to design a generally implementable framework for providing a house owner/member with the immediate notification of an ongoing theft (unauthorized access to their premises). For this purpose, a rigorous analysis of existing systems was undertaken to identify research gaps. The problems found with existing systems were that they can only identify the intruder after the theft, or cannot distinguish between human and non-human objects. Wireless Sensors Networks (WSNs) combined with the use of Internet of Things (IoT) and Cognitive Internet of Things are expanding smart home concepts and solutions, and their applications. The present research proposes a novel smart home anti-theft system that can detect an intruder, even if they have partially/fully hidden their face using clothing, leather, fiber, or plastic materials. The proposed system can also detect an intruder in the dark using a CCTV camera without night vision capability. The fundamental idea was to design a cost-effective and efficient system for an individual to be able to detect any kind of theft in real-time and provide instant notification of the theft to the house owner. The system also promises to implement home security with large video data handling in real-time. The investigation results validate the success of the proposed system. The system accuracy has been enhanced to 97.01%, 84.13, 78.19%, and 66.5%, in scenarios where a detected intruder had not hidden his/her face, hidden his/her face partially, fully, and was detected in the dark from 85%, 64.13%, 56.70%, and 44.01%. Full article

In this paper, a water driven soft actuator is introduced. Soft actuators driven by various external stimuli, such as air pressure, temperature, pH, electric field, and light have been reported in the past. Although they are very attractive, they often require hard external devices for driving and the response speeds are often slow. The developed water driven actuator was with sodium polyacrylate wrapped by stretchable meshed nylon. Through some experiments, it was confirmed that swell and shrink phenomena of the developed device occur depending on the fluid flow. The phenomena could be found when adequate quantity of sodium polyacrylate was inside of the nylon. The amount of sodium polyacrylate that is required for the phenomenon was investigated. Through the experiments, it was confirmed that the displacement and the response speed of the swell and shrink were large and fast, respectively, in spite of its simple implementation. Full article

This article presents an advanced dual chaotic watermarking scheme to improve information security. To ensure confidentiality in digital image transmission, a secure dual watermarking scheme is proposed by applying the chaotic logistic system and hyper-chaotic dynamical system. Chaotic watermarking was conducted in the spatial domain, where suboptimal secure hashing with a variable length was selected in preprocessing stages. The secret key was generated by the chaotic sequence for pixel shuffling using a chaotic logistic map, so that a controlled amount of distortion was inserted into the host digital image. Watermarking was proceeded after the chaotic watermark had been embedded into the shuffled image. To strengthen the security, the hyper-chaotic system was used to generate chaotic blocks for block scrambling in order to achieve dual chaotic watermarking. Characteristics analysis was conducted for multiple examples in both spatial and frequency domains. Potential effects induced by the chaotic driving parameter on processing time and integrity authentication of chaotic dual watermarking were also analyzed in detail. Full article

The energy performance of residential and commercial buildings is a vital topic because of the rapid urbanization occurring throughout the world. Accommodation buildings are considered energy intensive compared to other commercial facilities. In addition, they are the main component of the tourism industry. Therefore, various actions and policies have been introduced to improve the energy performance of accommodation buildings. This research depends on a national scale database of energy consumption of commercial buildings in Japan. It is the main source of data to conduct this study. The Database for Energy Consumption of Commercial buildings (DECC) is a national survey that is provided by the Japan Sustainable Building Consortium (JSBC). Based on the DECC, the study presents a general benchmark which is developed by applying regression and artificial neural network (ANN) methods to assess the energy performance of accommodation buildings in the Kanto region, Japan. The study presents a broad benchmark to evaluate basic energy consumption of accommodation building with three variables. In addition, the study highlights the necessity of designing the ANN model through the choosing of hidden layers and training method. The outcomes of each learning method and hidden layer was examined using main indicators to verify its accuracy. Full article

Lifts play an important role in human transportation in multi-storage buildings, which experience continuous improvements to their architecture and structure. As a result of these improvements, the development of efficient lift systems with more programs is required to meet these changes. In this work, a lift control system based on a programmable logic controller (PLC) is introduced, elucidating the development of the lift control algorithm and network based on a dispatching algorithm that utilizes a fuzzy system and exploits the traffic situation and condition. The PLC language ladder logic is implemented to facilitate a reduction in the average waiting time of passengers and the power consumption. Ladder diagrams for different scenarios are compared. The analysis of personnel-machine-environment (P-M-E) system conditions was conducted, examining numerous physical factors that could pose health and safety threats to workers. The present study opens doors for future lift systems studies based on PLC and the estimation of a safe workplace for machines and operators. Full article

Today, we are witnessing increased demand for more speed and capacity in the Internet, and more processing power and storage in every end user device. Demand for greater performance is present in every system. Electronic devices and their hosted applications need to be fast, but not to lose their main security features. Authentication and encryption are the main processes in the security aspect, and are required for a secure communication. These processes can be executed in different devices, among them PCs, microprocessors, microcontrollers, biometric cards or mobile devices. Biometric identity cards are becoming increasingly popular, challenging traditional PC devices. This paper compares two processing systems, the efficiency of encryption and signatures on the data executed in national identity biometric card versus PC, known also as the match-on-card versus the match-off-card. It considers how different parameters impact the process and the role they play on the overall process. The results, executed with a predefined set of test vectors, determine which processing system to use in a certain situation. Final conclusions and recommendations are given taking into consideration the efficiency and security of the data. Full article

Multimedia teaching materials are widely applied in various disciplines. More resources are provided by authorities to encourage elementary school teachers to use them. The resources provide an opportunity for teachers to share teaching resources for students. In this study, the technology acceptance model (TAM) was used as the basic model to explore the effects of the information technology (IT) environment on the perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and attitude towards using multimedia, and the relevance and influence of these attitudes on behavioral intention. There are 2317 teachers in Chiayi county, and 460 participants were selected by stratified random sampling. The results showed that the ease of use of the multimedia material would enhance the intention to use. The attitude toward use also influences the intention to use. Full article

With the advances in the microfabrication of analogue front-end devices, and embedded and signal processing technology, it has now become possible to devise miniaturized health monitoring kits for non-invasive real time monitoring at any location. The current commonly available kits only measure singleton physiological parameters, and a composite analysis that covers all vital signs and trauma scores seems to be missing with these kits. The research aims at using vital signs and other physiological parameters to calculate trauma scores National Early Warning Score (NEWS), Revised Trauma Score (RTS), Trauma Score - Injury Severity Score (TRISS) and Prediction of survival (Ps), and to log the trauma event to electronic health records using standard coding schemes. The signal processing algorithms were implemented in MATLAB and could be ported to TI AM335x using MATLAB/Embedded Coder. Motion artefacts were removed using a level ‘5’ stationary wavelet transform and a ‘sym4’ wavelet, which yielded a signal-to-noise ratio of 27.83 dB. To demonstrate the operation of the device, an existing Physionet, MIMIC II Numerics dataset was used to calculate NEWS and RTS scores, and to generate the correlation and regression models for a clinical class of patients with respiratory failure and admitted to Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Parameters such as age, heart rate, Systolic Blood Pressure (SysBP), respiratory rate, and Oxygen Saturation (SpO2) as predictors to Ps, showed significant positive regressions of 93% at p < 0.001. The NEWS and RTS scores showed no significant correlation (r = 0.25, p < 0.001) amongst themselves; however, the NEWS and RTS together showed significant correlations with Ps (blunt) (r = 0.70, p < 0.001). RTS and Ps (blunt) scores showed some correlations (r = 0.63, p < 0.001), and the NEWS score showed significant correlation (r = 0.79, p < 0.001) with Ps (blunt) scores. Global Positioning System (GPS) system was built into the kit to locate the individual and to calculate the shortest path to the nearest healthcare center using the Quantum Geographical Information System (QGIS) Network Analysis tool. The physiological parameters from the sensors, along with the calculated trauma scores, were encoded according to a standard Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT) coding system, and the trauma information was logged to electronic health records using Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR) servers. The FHIR servers provided interoperable web services to log the trauma event information in real time and to prepare for medical emergencies. Full article

Thermal energy storage systems can be determinant for an effective use of solar energy, as they allow to decouple the thermal energy production by the solar source from thermal loads, and thus allowing solar energy to be exploited also during nighttime and cloudy periods. The current study deals with the modelling and simulation of a cooling thermal energy storage unit consisting of an aluminum container partially filled with a phase change material (PCM). Two unsteady models are implemented and discussed, namely a conduction-based model and a conduction-convection-based one. The equations systems relative to both the models are solved by means of the Comsol Multiphysics finite element solver, and results are presented in terms of temporal variation of temperature in different points inside the PCM, of the volume average liquid fraction, and of the cooling energy stored and released through the aluminum container external surface during the charge and discharge, respectively. Moreover, the numerical results obtained by the implementation of the above different models are compared with experimental ones obtained with a climatic chamber. The comparison between numerical and experimental results indicate that, for the considered cooling energy storage unit, free convection plays a crucial role in the heat transfer inside the liquid PCM and cannot be neglected. Full article

Some machine learning algorithms have shown a better overall recognition rate for facial recognition than humans, provided that the models are trained with massive image databases of human faces. However, it is still a challenge to use existing algorithms to perform localized people search tasks where the recognition must be done in real time, and where only a small face database is accessible. A localized people search is essential to enable robot–human interactions. In this article, we propose a novel adaptive ensemble approach to improve facial recognition rates while maintaining low computational costs, by combining lightweight local binary classifiers with global pre-trained binary classifiers. In this approach, the robot is placed in an ambient intelligence environment that makes it aware of local context changes. Our method addresses the extreme unbalance of false positive results when it is used in local dataset classifications. Furthermore, it reduces the errors caused by affine deformation in face frontalization, and by poor camera focus. Our approach shows a higher recognition rate compared to a pre-trained global classifier using a benchmark database under various resolution images, and demonstrates good efficacy in real-time tasks. Full article

In the present work the effect of surface roughness on oxidation behavior during the early stages of high temperature exposure of Ni-base superalloy IN 625 is described. The surface roughness was described using standard contact profilometer as well as novel method, fractal analysis. It was found that the different surface preparation resulted in a difference in roughness with a parameter increase of at least one order of magnitude for the ground sample as compared with the polished sample. The oxidation test was performed in a horizontal tube furnace. Post-exposure analyses including glow discharge optical emission spectrometry (GD-OES) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), which revealed that grinding lowers the oxidation kinetics of IN 625 from 1.76 × 10⁻¹² cm²·s⁻¹, obtained for polished sample, to 9.04 × 10⁻¹³ cm²·s⁻¹. It was found that surface preparation influences the oxide scale composition and morphology. The hypothesis explaining the mechanism responsible for the changes in oxidation behavior is proposed as well. Full article

The ongoing Zika virus (ZIKV) in the Americas has been a serious public health emergency since 2015. Since Zika is a vector-borne disease, the size of the vector population in the affected area plays a key role in controlling the scale of the outbreak. The primary vectors for Zika, the Aedes Agypti and Aedes Albopictus species of mosquitoes, are highly sensitive to climatic conditions for survival and reproduction. Additionally, increased international travel over the years has caused the disease outbreak to turn into a pandemic affecting five continents. The mosquito population and the human travel patterns are the two main driving forces affecting the persistence and resurgence of Zika and other vector-borne diseases. This paper presents an enhanced dynamic model that simulates the 2013–2014 French Polynesia Zika outbreak incorporating the temperature dependent mosquito ecology and the local transit network (flights and ferries). The study highlights the importance of human travel patterns and mosquito population dynamics in a disease outbreak. The results predict that more than 85% of the population was infected by the end of the outbreak and it lasted for more than five months across the islands. The basic reproduction number ($R_0$) for the outbreak is also calculated using the next-generation-matrix for validation purposes. Additionally, this study is focused on measuring the impact of intervention strategies like reducing the mosquito population, preventing mosquito bites and imposing travel bans. French Polynesia was chosen as the region of interest for the study because of available demographic, climate and transit data. Additionally, results from similar studies for the region are available for validation and comparison. However, the proposed system can be used to study the transmission dynamics of any vector-borne disease in any geographic region by altering the climatic and demographic data, and the transit network. Full article