María I. Jiménez

A configurable sensor network applied to ambient assisted living.

The rising older people population has increased the interest in Ambient Assisted Living systems. This article presents a system for monitoring the disabled or older persons developed from an existing surveillance system. The modularity and adaptability characteristics of the system allow an easy adaptation for a different purpose. The proposed system uses a network of sensors capable of motion detection that includes fall warning, identification of persons and a configurable control system which allows its use in different scenarios.

Performance Evaluation of a Biometric System Based on Acoustic Images

An acoustic electronic scanning array for acquiring images from a person using a biometric application is developed. Based on pulse-echo techniques, multifrequency acoustic images are obtained for a set of positions of a person (front, front with arms outstretched, back and side). Two Uniform Linear Arrays (ULA) with 15 λ/2-equispaced sensors have been employed, using different spatial apertures in order to reduce sidelobe levels. Working frequencies have been designed on the basis of the main lobe width, the grating lobe levels and the frequency responses of people and sensors. For a case-study with 10 people, the acoustic profiles, formed by all images acquired, are evaluated and compared in a mean square error sense. Finally, system performance, using False Match Rate (FMR)/False Non-Match Rate (FNMR) parameters and the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve, is evaluated. On the basis of the obtained results, this system could be used for biometric applications.

A Robot Controlled by Blinking for Ambient Assisted Living

This article presents a system which allows interaction between a physically disabled person and his environment. It contributes to achieve an Ambient Assisted Living (AAL). This system is controlled by voluntary muscular movements, particularly the orbicular ones. These movements are translated into instructions which are sent by means of a wireless link to a mobile robot that executes them. This robot includes a video camera in order to show the environment of the route that the robot follows on its way to the user. It also includes a subsystem that contains light and sound signals. This system can aid people with reduced mobility, extending the time that older people and disabled people can live in their home environment, increasing their autonomy and their confidence.

Analysis and design of multifunction radar task schedulers based on queue

Inside the set of systems that constitute the avionics, the radar on board is one of the principal systems, both for the commercial and the military aircraft. For a few years ago, the technologies of electronic exploration arrays are used in the radar design, and specially, in the combat fighters, where the detection and tracking of multiple targets is a fundamental requirement. In this type of environments, it is required to use multifunction radar, MFAR (Multi-Function Array Radar), which joins inside the same system, and simultaneously, so much the classic functions of tracking and surveillance, as all the functions related to the communication, countermeasures, calibration, etc. Thus, the functions are implemented according to specific tasks. The principal ones are: surveillance, tracking, confirmation of false alarm, backscanning, reacquisition and communications plane-missile. Therefore, it is required to work with, specialized subsystems inside the radar. They are called task schedulers. The task scheduler is a key element of the radar, since it does the planning and distribution of energy and time resources to be shared and used by all tasks. This paper analyzes the features of the task schedulers based on tasks queues. Radar time is divided in time intervals that are called scheduling intervals. They allow realizing the task scheduling in a flexible and automatic way, planning individually each interval. Therefore, the task scheduler constitutes, for every scheduling interval, the corresponding queue or queues with the tasks planned to execute in that interval. Then, the tasks that are going to execute are selected from those tasks queues. Therefore, the scheduler includes and applies two scheduling policies: the policy for the constitution of the tasks queues, and the policy of scheduling, which is applied for planning every scheduling interval. Several schedulers have been designed and studied, and it has been made a comparative analysis of different performed schedulers. The tests and experiments have been done by means of system software simulation. Finally a suitable set of radar characteristics has been selected to evaluate the behavior of the task scheduler working.

Analysis of Directive Sensor Influence on Array Beampatterns

Over the past few years, a large number of pattern synthesis techniques of antenna arrays have been studied and developed. Such techniques may be classified into two categories: techniques that optimize the excitation (amplitude and phase) of each element in a uniform array (Van Veen & Buckley, 1988), and techniques that adjust the positions of the elements with uniform excitation, resulting in a non-uniform geometry (“Unz, 1960”, ”Harrington, 1961”, ”Skolnik et al., 1964”, ”Haupt, 1994”). Despite of this classification, both categories are not exclusive; so, it is possible to develop techniques that optimize both the excitations and the positions of the elements (”Akdagli & Guney, 2003”, “Kurup et al., 2003”, “Kumar & Branner, 2005”). It has been also observed that many of these techniques make a beampattern synthesis only in the case of an array pointing to the broadside. Only a few techniques are designed taking into account other angles further than the broadside (“Bae et al., 2005”, “Bray et al., 2002”, “Feng & Chen, 2005”), which is the basis of beamforming. The reason is that, these techniques work on the assumption that the array is formed by omnidirectional sensors. In this case, working with the array pattern in the u domain (u=sen(θ)), a variation of the pointing angle only implies that a shift in the beampattern, without variation of the characteristics of neither the main lobe, nor the sidelobes (Mailloux, 2005). Thus, representing the pattern in the u-u

Improving teaching in engineering education: adjunct enterprise professors programme

The gap between University curricula in engineering, and profiles required by companies represents a problem that remains unsolved. The main two reasons behind this decoupling are the absence of certain specific applied subjects and a lack of knowledge regarding updated technological innovations that are already introduced in the business world. The PAVEs programme (Profesores Asociados Vinculados a Empresa, Adjunct Enterprise Professors) of the University of Valladolid offers an improvement in the preparation of engineers, representing an effective solution to the exposed problems. It complements engineering curricula including industry-driven knowledge imparted by industry professionals. Many years of research and implementation experiences of the PAVEs program approve a methodology that works and enhances the performance of engineering students. The obtained results show that both students and companies participating are highly satisfied with the experience.

Experimental Calibration for Electronic Beamforming with Sensor Arrays

A sensor array system with N channels is assumed to have the same characteristics for each channel, which are composed of a sensor and an amplification system. In beamforming applications, the gain and phase of each channel are key elements in the synthesis of the beampattern (van Veen & Buckley, 1988). On the other hand, the position of the sensors in the array and the orientation of the axis/plane where the array is placed are also important for an accurate calculation of the weight vector.

Virtualizing Grid Computing Infrastructures into the Cloud

This paper shows how virtualization techniques can be introduced into the grid computing infrastructure to provide a transparent and homogeneous scientific computing environment. Today’s trends in grid computing propose a shared model where different organizations make use of a heterogeneous grid, frequently a cluster of clusters (CoC) of computing and network resources. This paper shows how a grid computing model can be virtualized, obtaining a simple and homogeneous interface that can be offered to the clients. The proposed systemis implemented on a system named virtual grid. Both cloud computing infrastructure and grid computing technology used, are freely available to all users.

A Scientific Computing Environment for Accessing Grid Computing Systems Using Cloud Services

This paper shows how virtualization techniques can be introduced into the grid computing infrastructure to provide a transparent and homogeneous scientific computing environment. Today’s trends in grid computing propose a shared model where different organizations make use of a heterogeneous grid, frequently a cluster of clusters (CoC) of computing and network resources. This paper shows how a grid computing model can be virtualized, obtaining a simple and homogeneous interface that can be offered to the clients. The proposed system called virtual grid, uses virtualization support and is developed from integration of standard grid and cloud computing technologies.Furthermore, a Scientific Computing Environment (SCE) has been developed to provide uniform access to the virtual grid.

MATLAB COM Integration for Engineering Applications

The most powerful idea around component-based software, is that components can be implemented by a programmer and reused by others without having knowledge of the source code. Components are binary packages that can be deployed and further integrated with others written on different programming languages. As component selection and integration is usually an easy and well-known process, components are also called COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf).