Jens Frederik Dalsgaard Nielsen

Innovative Application of a New PBL Model to Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Projects

In the knowledge society, learning is not only knowledge acquisition or participation in established social practice. It is also a process of creating new knowledge collaboratively when addressing complex problems which involve interdisciplinary knowledge and innovative thinking. In our research we focus on questions of how to prepare engineering students for the increasing complexity of their professional lives and how to help them acquire skills of collaboration, management and innovation as well as awareness of knowledge creation. This paper will discuss these questions by examining the learning process in the ICT-based, intercultural and interdisciplinary PBL environment of an international student satellite project.

An SDR based AIS receiver for satellites

For a few years now, there has been a high interest in monitoring the global ship traffic from space. A few satellite, capable of listening for ship borne AIS transponders have already been launched, and soon the AAUSAT3, carrying two different types of AIS receivers will also be launched. One of the AIS receivers onboard AAUSAT3 is an SDR based AIS receiver. This paper serves to describe the background of the AIS system, and how the SDR based receiver has been integrated into the AAUSAT3 satellite. Amongst some of the benefits of using an SDR based receiver is, that due to its versatility, new detection algorithms are easily deployed, and it is easily adapted the new proposed AIS transmission channels.

Development of cubesats in an educational context

For the last decade development and construction of student cubesat satellites has played an important part in the engineering Master Program within Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at Aalborg University, Denmark. Due to the extend of such projects, it is important to focus on keeping the students interested and active within the satellite projects, and keep them engaged until the end of the project. This paper focuses on benefits as well as pitfalls in the process of students developing and operating their own satellite as part of their education. Finally, a comparison is made between the two most recent AAU satellites, the AAUSAT-II and AAUSAT3, which serves to illustrate, that setting the students free, can result in radical new ways of designing satellites.

Magneto-Inductive Underground Communications in a District Heating System

Feasibility of underground data communications by employing magntic induction is investigated. Realizing an underground wireless sensor network for a district heating plant motivates this research challenge. The main contribution of the paper is finding the optimal designs for coil antennas at the transmitter and receiver sides of a magneto-inductive communication system.

Control of an autonomous vehicle for registration of weed and crop in precision agriculture

The paper describes the development of an autonomous electrical vehicle to be used for weed mapping in precision agriculture with special focus on the conceptual framework of the control system. The lowest layer of the control system is the propulsion and steering control, the second layer coordinates the movements of the wheel units, the third layer is path execution and perception and the upper layer performs planning and reasoning. The control system is implemented on an autonomous vehicle. The vehicle has been tested for path following and position accuracy. Based on the results a new vehicle is under construction.

The Feasibility of Communication Among Pumps in a District Heating System

The problem tackled is selecting a viable method for communication among pumps in a district heating system. This system is viewed as a metropolitan wireless sensor network, the nodes of which are confined underground and physically connected by pipes. In a further horizon, providing sophisticated control systems for similar urban utilities motivates this research problem. Here we have reported the results of investigating several potential methods for realizing the idea of “the talking pumps” in a district heating system. This includes a diverse list of key references, simulations for some methods and experimental results for some others, followed by selection of the most appropriate option. The methods considered used (1) acoustic waves through water and pipelines; (2) power-line communications; (3) the electrical conductivity of pipes; (4) cell-phone infrastructure; (5) free and guided radio-frequency (RF) electromagnetic (EM) waves; and (5) free and guided very low frequency (VLF) electric and magnetic fields, also known as magnetic induction. The viability of the latter method was verified by simulations and primitive experimental results.

A decentralized design philosophy for satellites

For the last decade development and construction of student cubesat satellites has played an important part in the engineering Master Program within Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at Aalborg University, Denmark. As a result three cubesats AAU CUBESAT, AAUSAT-II and AAUSAT3 has been constructed and launhed (AAUSAT3 will launch Q3 2011). This paper focuses on distributed system approach for internal as well as ground link structure.

A danish perspective on problem based learning in space education

This describes the goals of the Student Satellite Program at Aalborg University (AAU), and the means for implementing it, namely a concept called problem based learning, which is the cornerstone in education at AAU. AAU has, within the last decade, chosen to focus strongly on education in space technology, not because the country lacks aerospace engineers, but because space projects require the students to think about systems rather than individual modules, while providing problems that are technically challenging for the students to solve. This combination makes the graduates very attractive for industry in general, and not only for the space industry

Design of a small satellite for performing measurements in a ground station network

Small satellites gain more and more interests from both educational and academic institutions, but also from the industry. They constitute a cheap alternative to large, more expensive and more complex satellites. A consequence of their small form factor is the lack of space for secondary payload, like advanced communication facilities. These deficiencies make it difficult to apply quality assurances concerning satellite communication links on the ground segment. Previous approaches have been primarily passive and focused only on the bit error rate of receiving links at ground stations. The results therefor covered only one direction of a bidirectional link and even if they were quite accurate in common, they were nevertheless only approximations. In this paper a novel design solution based on a small satellite cluster is going to be proposed to offer quality assurance for the ground segment in both sending and receiving directions in multiple amateur frequency bands based on highaccurate error rate information.

COTS Technologies for Integrating Development Environment, Remote Monitoring and Control of Livestock Stable Climate

In this paper we present a flexible environment for development of climate control systems, especially aimed for livestock building facilities. Matlab/SimuLink as a de facto standard is used as development environment and is integrated with a remote monitoring and control system, allowing users to act as human in the loop controllers. For demonstration of technology maturity the entire system is developed using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies namely: PC architecture, Linux, Matlab/Simulink/RTW, MySql, Apache and ssh. The presented system is considered as prestudy/case for a future industrial solution.