Revistas
Revista:
ELECTRONICS
ISSN:
2079-9292
Año:
2022
Vol.:
11
N°:
4
Págs.:
570
In this paper, we propose the design of a low-power wireless sensor network architecture that enables robust communications inside offshore wind turbines. This research work is in the scope of the WATEREYE EU Project, where we have designed a corrosion monitoring solution to work unattended. The architecture is composed of several fixed sensor nodes, one mobile sensor node, several anchors and the WATEREYE Computer (WEC). Our approach is based on Impulse Radio Ultra wideband (IR-UWB) technology offering reliable and low-power communications in these harsh environments. On top of that, we propose a double star network using two UWB channels for the following purposes: one network for communications to send the sensor data and another one for ranging estimations to calculate the indoor positioning of the mobile sensor node. The power strategies applied to our system, at Hardware (HW) and Firmware (FW) levels, are described in detail. Furthermore, we present power consumption measurements obtaining the power profiles and the autonomy of the most important components of the proposed architecture supplied by battery. On the other hand, we describe the methodology to analyze the range, reliability and continuity of the two UWB links providing the packet loss and gaps as a function of distance. The proposed communications system has been validated in three different scenarios considering two of them very hostile environments. Furthermore, one of the scenarios is a real offshore wind turbine.
Revista:
SENSORS
ISSN:
1424-8220
Año:
2022
Vol.:
22
N°:
21
Págs.:
8451 - *
The conventional way of studying corrosion in marine environments is by installing corrosion coupons. Instead, this paper presents an experimental field study using an unattended corrosion sensor developed on the basis of ultrasound (US) technology to assess the thickness loss caused by general atmospheric corrosion on land close to the sea (coastal region). The system described here uses FPGA, low-power microcontroller, analog front-end devices in the sensor node, and a Beaglebone black wireless board for posting data to a server. The overall system is small, operates at low power, and was deployed at Gran Canaria to detect the thickness loss of an S355 steel sample and consequently estimate the corrosion rate. This experiment aims to demonstrate the system's viability in marine environments and its potential to monitor corrosion in offshore wind turbines. In a day, the system takes four sets of measurements in 6 hour intervals, and each set consists of 5 consecutive measurements. Over the course of 5 months, the proposed experiment allowed for us to continuously monitor the corrosion rate in an equivalent corrosion process to an average thickness loss rate of 0.134 mm/year.
Revista:
APPLIED SCIENCES
ISSN:
2076-3417
Año:
2022
Vol.:
12
N°:
2
Págs.:
808
The ultrasound technique is a well-known non-destructive and efficient testing method for on-line corrosion monitoring. Wall thickness loss rate is the major parameter that defines the corrosion process in this approach. This paper presents a smart corrosion monitoring system for offshore wind turbines based on the ultrasound pulse-echo technique. The solution is first developed as an ultrasound testbed with the aim of upgrading it into a low-cost and low-power miniaturized system to be deployed inside offshore wind turbines. This paper discusses different important stages of the presented monitoring system as design methodology, the precision of the measurements, and system performance verification. The obtained results during the testing of a variety of samples show meaningful information about the thickness loss due to corrosion. Furthermore, the developed system allows us to measure the Time-of-Flight (ToF) with high precision on steel samples of different thicknesses and on coated steel samples using the offshore standard coating NORSOK 7A.
Revista:
ELECTRONICS
ISSN:
2079-9292
Año:
2021
Vol.:
10
N°:
1
Págs.:
57
In this paper, we propose a flexible Fog Computing architecture in which the main features are that it allows us to select among two different communication links (WiFi and LoRa) on the fly and offers a low-power solution, thanks to the applied power management strategies at hardware and firmware level. The proposed Fog Computing architecture is formed by sensor nodes and an Internet of Things (IoT) gateway. In the case of LoRa, we have the choice of implementing the LoRaWAN and Application servers on the cloud or on the IoT gateway, avoiding, in this case, to send data to the Cloud. Additionally, we have presented an specific setup and methodology with the aim of measuring the sensor node's power consumption and making sure there is a fair comparison between the different alternatives among the two selected wireless communication links by varying the duty cycle, the size of the payload, and the Spreading Factor (SF). This research work is in the scope of the STARPORTS Interconnecta Project, where we have deployed two sensor nodes in the offshore platform of PLOCAN, which communicate with the IoT gateway located in the PLOCAN premises. In this case, we have used LoRa communications due to the required large distance between the IoT gateway and the nodes in the offshore platform (in the range of kilometers). This deployment demonstrates that the proposed solution operates in a real environment and that it is a low-power and robust approach since it is sending data to the IoT gateway during more than one year and it continues working.
Revista:
ELECTRONICS
ISSN:
2079-9292
Año:
2020
Vol.:
9
N°:
8
Págs.:
1238
In this paper, we analyze the performance of a positioning system based on the fusion of Ultra-Wideband (UWB) ranging estimates together with odometry and inertial data from the vehicle. For carrying out this data fusion, an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) has been used. Furthermore, a post-processing algorithm has been designed to remove the Non Line-Of-Sight (NLOS) UWB ranging estimates to further improve the accuracy of the proposed solution. This solution has been tested using both a simulated environment and a real environment. This research work is in the scope of the PRoPART European Project. The different real tests have been performed on the AstaZero proving ground using a Radio Control car (RC car) developed by RISE (Research Institutes of Sweden) as testing platform. Thus, a real time positioning solution has been achieved complying with the accuracy requirements for the PRoPART use case.
Autores:
Velez, G. (Autor de correspondencia); Cortés Vidal, A.; Nieto, M.; et al.
Revista:
JOURNAL OF REAL-TIME IMAGE PROCESSING
ISSN:
1861-8200
Año:
2015
Vol.:
10
N°:
4
Págs.:
725 - 739
Computer vision technologies can contribute in many ways to the development of smart cities. In the case of vision applications for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), they can help to increase road traffic safety, which is a major concern nowadays. The design of an embedded vision system for driver assistance is not straightforward; several requirements must be addressed such as computational performance, cost, size, power consumption or time-to-market. This paper presents a novel reconfigurable embedded vision system that meets the requirements of ADAS applications. The developed PCB board contains a System on Chip composed of a programmable logic that supports parallel processing necessary for a fast pixel-level analysis, and a microprocessor suited for serial decision making. A lane departure warning system was implemented in the case study, obtaining a better computational performance than the rest of the works found in the literature. Moreover, thanks to the reconfiguration capability of the proposed system a more flexible and extensible solution is obtained.
Revista:
MICROELECTRONICS JOURNAL
ISSN:
0026-2692
Año:
2014
Vol.:
45
N°:
10
Págs.:
1311 - 1318
This paper presents an area-efficient variable-length FFT algorithm for DVB-T2 receivers. A matrix-based approach is used to achieve a novel radix 2(8) algorithm that fulfils the DVB-T2 specifications. Several implementation techniques are proposed to apply in order to reduce the FFT core area, such as a variable datapath scaling approach, a memoryless CORDIC algorithm and an efficient FIFO implementation. The layout of the FFT processor is designed in XFAB 0.18 mu m CMOS technology. The proposed variable-length processor occupies a layout area of 6.75 mm(2). Compared with the DVB-T2 designs in the literature, the proposed FFT processor presents the most area-efficient implementation. Furthermore, it provides a good power efficiency in the lower modes.
Revista:
JOURNAL OF AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE AND SMART ENVIRONMENTS
ISSN:
1876-1364
Año:
2014
Vol.:
6
N°:
5
Págs.:
561 - 563
Revista:
ELECTRONICS LETTERS
ISSN:
0013-5194
Año:
2010
Vol.:
46
N°:
15
Págs.:
1088 - 1089
Comparison at implementation level of several pipeline-SDF radix 2(k) FFT architectures is proposed in order to obtain efficient algorithms for DVB-T2 receivers. In the analysis, the area and performance of the algorithms are compared. A variable datapath optimisation has been added to the comparison.