Stefano Di Pascoli

Last-Meter Smart Grid Embedded in an Internet-of-Things Platform

The customer domain of the smart grid naturally blends with smart home and smart building systems, but typical proposed approaches are “distributor-centric” rather than “customer-centric,” undermining user acceptance, and are often poorly scalable. To solve this problem, we propose a detailed architecture and an implementation of a “last-meter” smart grid-the portion of the smart grid on customer premises-embedded in an internet-of-things (IoT) platform. Our approach has four aspects of novelty and advantages with respect to the state of the art: 1) seamless integration of smart grid with smart home applications in the same infrastructure; 2) data gathering from heterogeneous sensor communication protocols; 3) secure and customized data access; and 4) univocal sensor and actuator mapping to a common abstraction layer on which additional concurrent applications can be built. A demonstrator has been built and tested with purposely-developed ZigBee smart meters and gateways, a distributed IoT server, and a flexible user interface.

Natural gas, cars and the environment. A (relatively) 'clean' and cheap fuel looking for users

Abstract This paper deals with the spread of natural gas as a fuel for motor vehicles. Working on the basis of an input-oriented (and life cycle) approach to environmental issues, it is easy to show that natural gas is often relatively clean in comparison to all the other alternatives. Although natural gas is both cheap and very well suited to motoring uses, natural gas vehicles (NGVs) have not achieved widespread diffusion. This is particularly puzzling in Italy, as the relative price after taxes (in caloric equivalents) of natural gas is about 0.3 against gasoline and 0.4 against diesel fuel. The sample survey conducted confirms not only the practical drawbacks of NGVs — mainly the lack of an adequate refueling network — but also a profound lack of information and knowledge about NGVs characteristics. The overall indication for future policy is that economic incentives alone may not be sufficient. An environmental policy aimed at promoting ‘more sustainable’ individual choices (NGVs, in this case) must both consider the institutional framework, and promote the initial spread of appropriate understanding and awareness able to prime the endogenous adoption of ‘greener’ behaviors.

Low-Power Wearable ECG Monitoring System for Multiple-Patient Remote Monitoring

Many devices and solutions for remote electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring have been proposed in the literature. These solutions typically have a large marginal cost per added sensor and are not seamlessly integrated with other smart home solutions. Here, we propose an ECG remote monitoring system that is dedicated to non-technical users in need of long-term health monitoring in residential environments and is integrated in a broader Internet-of-Things (IoT) infrastructure. Our prototype consists of a complete vertical solution with a series of advantages with respect to the state of the art, considering both the prototypes with integrated front end and prototypes realized with off-the-shelf components: 1) ECG prototype sensors with record-low energy per effective number of quantized levels; 2) an architecture providing low marginal cost per added sensor/user; and 3) the possibility of seamless integration with other smart home systems through a single IoT infrastructure.

Internet-of-things infrastructure as a platform for distributed measurement applications

The keystone of many applications associated to the vision of the Internet of Things is a distributed measurement and data acquisition system. Its design represents a major challenge, because it must enable concurrent measurement of different signals, with heterogeneous sensors and communication protocols. It must also be secure and scalable (in the sense of low marginal cost of adding new features and sensors). We propose the architecture of such a system and demonstrate two different use cases: a distributed system for electric power metering, and a wearable ECG monitoring system for multiple patients. We show that our proposed solution is flexible in terms of measured quantities, and can easily adapt to different data rates. In addition, it allows us to reach record performance in terms of energy consumption per effective number of quantization levels, as we demonstrate in the case of ECG sensors.

An intragrid implementation embedded in an Internet of Things platform

We present the design and implementation of an Intragrid - the portion of the smart grid on the premises of a single or a small group of customers - built on an Internet of Things platform. Such implementation minimizes the need for additional infrastructure, enables integration with smart home applications, ensure secure and differentiated access to data. In this paper we describe the architecture of the Internet of Things platform and the specific intragrid implementation.

Design and Implementation of a Wireless In-Ovo EEG/EMG Recorder

The developmental origins of sleep and brain activity rhythms in higher vertebrate animals (birds and mammals) are currently unknown. In order to create an experimental system in which these could be better elucidated, we designed, built and tested a system for recording EEG and EMG signals in-ovo from chicken embryos incubated for 16-21 days. This system can remain attached to the individual subject through the process of hatching and continue to be worn post-natally. Electrode wires surgically implanted on the head of the embryo are connected to a battery-operated ultraportable transmitter which can either be attached to the eggshell or worn on the back. The transmitter processes up to 6 channels of data with a maximum sampling frequency of 500 Hz and a resolution of 12 bits. The radio link uses a carrier frequency of 4 MHz, and has a maximum transfer rate of 500 kbit/s; receiving antennas compatible with both in-egg recordings and post-natal recordings from freely-moving birds were produced. A receiver connected with one USB port of a PC transmits the data for digital storage. This system is based on discrete, off-the-shelf components, can provide a few days of continuous operation with a single lithium coin battery, and has a noise floor level of 0.35 μV. The transmitter dimensions are 16 × 13 × 1.5 mm and the weight without the battery is 0.7 g. The microprocessor allows flexible operation modes not usually made available in other small multichannel acquisition systems implemented by means of ad hoc mixed signal chips.

Derailment Detection and Data Collection in Freight Trains, Based on a Wireless Sensor Network

We report the development of a network of wireless ultralow-power sensors to be deployed on freight railway cars, with the main purpose of detecting derailment events and alerting the engineer in the cab of the leading locomotive. Because no power bus is available on freight cars, we plan to rely on energy scavenging from vibrations; therefore, minimization of the power consumption has been one of our main priorities. We have, therefore, focused on ultralow-power hardware and strived to reduce the time intervals during which it is in active mode, achieving an average power consumption of ~0.5 mW with an active cycle of ~20 ms every 2 s. We discuss the overall concept that we propose, including the self-initialization protocol and the communication strategy that we have developed, and present the results of measurements on a prototype network that we have implemented.

Variability-aware design of 55 nA current reference with 1.4% standard deviation and 290 nW power consumption

In this paper we present the design of a 0.18 μm CMOS current reference, which is very robust with respect to process variations (1.4% relative standard deviation measured over 23 samples) and with low power consumption of 290 nW. This result was obtained with devices that have low intrinsic sensitivity to process variability, such as diffusion resistors in a nanopower “classic” BJT-based bandgap topology. At the cost of a larger die area, we obtain a significant reduction of dispersion with respect to the best results available in the literature, with a low power consumption.

Noise and reliability in simulated thin metal films

Abstract Many macroscopic aspects of electromigration damage in thin metal films have been investigated by means of Monte Carlo simulations based on simplified physical model. The employed model, can be described as a middle-scale model, in which the physical system is modeled with a high level of abstraction, without a detailed atomic physical model of the system. Among the many effects of the electromigration phenomenon, the simulator has been used to investigate several statistical properties of electromigration failure and the noise behaviour. Notwithstanding this simplicity, it is able to generate results in good agreement with many experimental observations: the lognormal distribution of failures, dependence of the mean time to failure from stress current and film geometry, Black exponent, noise statistics. Furthermore, this simulations confirmed a significant correlation between electromigration noise in the initial phase of stress and time to failure which has been suggested by a few experimentalists. This correlation can be usefully exploited as an early indication of the onset of electromigration damage on a per-sample basis.

Design and development of a wireless infrared EEG recorder for chicken embryos

A major unanswered question in the field of sleep studies concerns the developmental emergence of cycles of sleep and waking during embryonic life. One means for gaining valuable information about the development of this aspect of global brain function is to relate brain electrical activity recorded with electroencephalography (EEG) signals to brain metabolic activity, collected by means of Positron Emission Tomography (PET). A telemetric system for recording chicken embryo EEG signals that is electromagnetically compatible with a PET scanner has been developed for this purpose. An infrared data link has been used in order to avoid electromagnetic interference. The system is composed of a small, low-power IR transmitter which sends sampled data to a receiver that is connected to a PC for signal processing and data storage. The transmitter collects EEG/EMG data from six channels, with a sampling frequency of 200 Hz and an accuracy of 12 bits. The transmission range is up to approximately 30 cm, compatible with the required application. The total size of the transmitter is 21 mm × 16 mm, excluding the battery.