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The estimation of the overspeed risk before the accident is among the main goals of this paper. The proposed method uses the Energy Equivalent Speed (EES) to assess the severity of an eventual accident. However, the driver behavior evaluation should take into account the parameters related to the Driver, the Vehicle and the Environment (DVE) system. For this purpose, this paper considers a two-level strategy to predict the global risk of an event using the Dempster-Shafer Theory (DST) and the Fuzzy Theory (FT). This paper presents two methods to develop the Expert Model-based Basic Probability Assignment (EM based BPA), which is the most important task in the DST. The first one is based on the accident statistics and the second method deals with the relationship between the Fuzzy and Belief measurements. The experimental data is collected by one driver using our test vehicle and a Micro-intelligent Black Box (Micro-iBB) to collect the driving data. The sensitivity of the developed models is analysed. Our main evaluation concerns the Usage Based Insurance (UBI) applications based on the driving behavior. So, the obtained masses over the defined referential subsets in the DST are used as a score to compute the driver's insurance premium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial changes have occurred in the Information Technology (IT) sectors and with these changes, the demand for remote access to field sensor information has increased. This allows visualization, monitoring, and control through various electronic devices, such as laptops, tablets, i-Pads, PCs, and cellular phones. The smart phone is considered as a more reliable, faster and efficient device to access and monitor industrial systems and their corresponding information interfaces anywhere and anytime. This study describes the deployment of a protocol whereby industrial system information can be securely accessed by cellular phones via a Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) server. To achieve the study goals, proprietary protocol interconnectivity with non-proprietary protocols and the usage of interconnectivity services are considered in detail. They support the visualization of the SCADA system information, and the related operations through smart phones. The intelligent sensors are configured and designated to process real information via cellular phones by employing information exchange services between the proprietary protocol and non-proprietary protocols. SCADA cellular access raises the issue of security flaws. For these challenges, a cryptography-based security method is considered and deployed, and it could be considered as a part of a proprietary protocol. Subsequently, transmission flows from the smart phones through a cellular network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous devices in distributed wireless sensor arrays require a high-accuracy timing reference. Although the GPS-disciplined oscillators have been developed for decades, the hardware design still has performance limitations. In this context, we present the hardware implementation for a GPS-disciplined oscillator with an automatic adaptive drift correction algorithm, which is implemented in a low-cost, high-speed field-programmable gate array (FPGA) device. The system design and the hardware implementation are presented to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed oscillator. To verify this oscillator in real-time applications, we tested the device in multiple environments and compared it to state-of-the-art designs. The experimental results showed that our proposed device has a low cost and high performance. This device can achieve less than 80 ns and 356 ns in 1PPS signal drift in the indoor environment test and the outdoor environment test, respectively, after 24 h of working without a GPS signal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract To achieve the autonomous unpowered landing for gyroplanes, an onboard trajectory generation method is presented in this paper. As a pivotal variable in the proposed method, the Lift-to-Drag Ratio will be uniquely determined in different phases by finding the maximum for the energy margin during approaching and the energy decrease at terminal landing. Especially, autorotation constraint, the primary requirement of gyroplanes for flight stability, has been considered as a limitation factor through this procedure. Furthermore, a geometrically constrained three-dimensional trajectory profile is employed, in which a multi-circle Heading Align Cone is proposed to improve its applicability. Accordingly, a predictor–corrector algorithm is derived and described for trajectory generation with initial variance and terminal requirements. Employing the algorithm onboard, by adjusting few geometric parameters dynamically, a feasible trajectory reference that meets the specified constraints can be generated efficiently. Results from numerical calculation and closed-loop simulation under different scenarios demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel Blockchain-based indoor navigation system that combines a foot-mounted dual-inertial measurement unit (IMU) setup and a zero-velocity update (ZUPT) algorithm for secure and accurate indoor navigation in GNSS-denied environments. The system estimates the user's position and orientation by fusing the data from two IMUs using an extended Kalman filter (EKF). The ZUPT algorithm is employed to detect and correct the error introduced by sensor drift during zero-velocity intervals, thus enhancing the accuracy of the position estimate. The proposed Low SWaP-C blockchain-based decentralized architecture ensures the security and trustworthiness of the system by providing an immutable and distributed ledger to store and verify the sensor data and navigation solutions. The proposed system is suitable for various indoor navigation applications, including autonomous vehicles, robots, and human tracking. The experimental results provide clear and compelling evidence of the effectiveness of the proposed system in ensuring the integrity, privacy, and security of navigation data through the utilization of blockchain technology. The system exhibits an impressive ability to process more than 680 transactions per second within the Hyperledger-Fabric framework. Furthermore, it demonstrates exceptional accuracy and robustness, with a mean RMSE error of 1.2 m and a peak RMSE of 3.2 during a 20 min test. By eliminating the reliance on external signals or infrastructure, the system offers an innovative, practical, and secure solution for indoor navigation in environments where GNSS signals are unavailable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With modern global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals, the FFT-based parallel code search acquisition must handle the frequent sign transitions due to the data or the secondary code. There is a straightforward solution to this problem, which consists in doubling the length of the FFTs, leading to a significant increase of the complexity. The authors already proposed a method to reduce the complexity without impairing the probability of detection. In particular, this led to a 50% memory reduction for an FPGA implementation. In this paper, the authors propose another approach, namely, the splitting of a large FFT into three or five smaller FFTs, providing better performances and higher flexibility. For an FPGA implementation, compared to the previously proposed approach, at the expense of a slight increase of the logic and multiplier resources, the splitting into three and five allows, respectively, a reduction of 40% and 64% of the memory, and of 25% and 37.5% of the processing time. Moreover, with the splitting into three FFTs, the algorithm is applicable for sampling frequencies up to 24.576 MHz for L5 band signals, against 21.846 MHz with the previously proposed algorithm. The algorithm is applied here to the GPS L5 and Galileo E5a, E5b, and E1 signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Target positioning systems based on MEMS gyros and laser rangefinders (LRs) have extensive prospects due to their advantages of low cost, small size and easy realization. The target positioning accuracy is mainly determined by the LR's attitude derived by the gyros. However, the attitude error is large due to the inherent noises from isolated MEMS gyros. In this paper, both accelerometer/magnetometer and LR attitude aiding systems are introduced to aid MEMS gyros. A no-reset Federated Kalman Filter (FKF) is employed, which consists of two local Kalman Filters (KF) and a Master Filter (MF). The local KFs are designed by using the Direction Cosine Matrix (DCM)-based dynamic equations and the measurements from the two aiding systems. The KFs can estimate the attitude simultaneously to limit the attitude errors resulting from the gyros. Then, the MF fuses the redundant attitude estimates to yield globally optimal estimates. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the FKF-based system can improve the target positioning accuracy effectively and allow for good fault-tolerant capability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A generic 2048-point FFT acquisition architecture is proposed to address L1 civil signals from all four GNSS constellations. After emphasizing hardware design criteria and their resulting design limitations, software compensation approaches are compared. A detailed validation methodology, involving a successive 1000-step Monte-Carlo study, was defined to optimally configure the acquisition channel, with new metrics to establish formal signal detection. The integration thereof results in a novel, minimalistic, yet generic, acquisition channel implementation, as well as a thorough validation method. Execution time of one acquisition iteration is approximately 5 ms, in line with VHDL simulations and foreseen channel management overhead. Coarse/fine search increments and thresholds are based on extensive experimentation. A 41 dB-Hz acquisition sensitivity threshold was established to achieve >95 % detection rates for 1 ms integrations, while 15 ms non-coherent integrations are required for signal strengths down to 37 dB-Hz. These thresholds account for known implementation losses. Copyright © 2015 Institute of Navigation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]