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The increasing focus on the development of positioning techniques reflects the growing interest in applications and services based on indoor positioning. Many applications necessitate precise indoor positioning or tracking of individuals and assets, leading to rapid growth in products based on these technologies in certain market sectors. Ultrasonic systems have already proven effective in achieving the desired positioning accuracy and refresh rates. The typical signal used in ultrasonic positioning systems for estimating the range between the target and reference points is the linear chirp. Unfortunately, it can undergo shape aberration due to the effects of acoustic diffraction when the aperture exceeds a certain limit. The extent of the aberration is influenced by the shape and size of the transducer, as well as the angle at which the transducer is observed by the receiver. This aberration also affects the shape of the cross-correlation, causing it to lose its easily detectable characteristic of a single global peak, which typically corresponds to the correct lag associated with the signal’s time of arrival. In such instances, cross-correlation techniques yield results with a significantly higher error than anticipated. In fact, the correct lag no longer corresponds to the peak of the cross-correlation. In this study, an alternative technique to global peak detection is proposed, leveraging the inherent symmetry observed in the shape of the aberrated cross-correlation. The numerical simulations, performed using the academic acoustic simulation software Field II, conducted using a typical ultrasonic chirp and ultrasonic emitter, compare the classical and the proposed range techniques in a standard office room. The analysis includes the effects of acoustical reflection in the room and of the acoustic noise at different levels of power. The results demonstrate that the proposed technique enables accurate range estimation even in the presence of severe cross-correlation shape aberrations and for signal-to-noise ratio levels common in office and room environments, even in presence of typical reflections. This allows the use of emitting transducers with a much larger aperture than that allowed by the classical cross-correlation technique. Consequently, it becomes possible to have greater acoustic power available, leading to improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).

There is an increasing interest about indoor positioning, which is an emerging technology with a wide range of applications [...]

Measuring the distance between two points has multiple uses. Position can be geometrically calculated from multiple measurements of the distance between reference points and moving sensors. Distance measurement can be done by measuring the time of flight of an ultrasonic signal traveling from an emitter to receiving sensors. However, this requires close synchronization between the emitter and the sensors. This synchronization is usually done using a radio or optical channel, which requires additional hardware and power to operate. On the other hand, for many applications of great interest, low-cost, small, and lightweight sensors with very small batteries are required. Here, an innovative technique to measure the distance between emitter and receiver by using ultrasonic signals in air is proposed. In fact, the amount of the signal attenuation in air depends on the frequency content of the signal itself. The attenuation level that the signal undergoes at different frequencies provides information on the distance between emitter and receiver without the need for any synchronization between them. A mathematical relationship here proposed allows for estimating the distance between emitter and receiver starting from the measurement of the frequency dependent attenuation along the traveled path. The level of attenuation in the air is measured online along the operation of the proposed technique. The simulations showed that the range accuracy increases with the decrease of the ultrasonic transducer diameter. In particular, with a diameter of 0.5 mm, an error of less than ± 2.7 cm (average value 1.1 cm) is reached along two plane sections of the typical room of the office considered (4 × 4 × 3 m3).

Extending the lifetime of power light-emitting diodes (LEDs) is achievable if proper control methods are implemented to reduce the side effects of an excessive junction temperature, TJ. The accuracy of state-of-the-art LED junction temperature monitoring techniques is negatively affected by several factors, such as the use of external sensors, calibration procedures, devices aging, and technological diversity among samples with the same part number. Here, a novel method is proposed, indeed based on the well-known technique consisting in tracking the LED forward voltage drop when a fixed forward current is imposed but exploiting the voltage variation with respect to room temperature. This method, which limits the effects of sample heterogeneity, is applied to a set of ten commercial devices. The method led to an effective reduction of the measurement error, which was below 1 °C.

Increasing efforts toward the development of positioning techniques testify the growing interest for indoor position-based applications and services. Many applications require accurate indoor positioning or tracking of people and assets, and some market sectors are starting a rapid growth of products based on these technologies. Ultrasonic systems have already been demonstrating their effectiveness and to possess the desired positioning accuracy and refresh rates. In this work, it is shown that a typical signal used in ultrasonic positioning systems to estimate the range between the target and reference points—namely, the linear chirp—due to the effects of acoustic diffraction, in some cases, undergoes a shape aberration, depending on the shape and size of the transducer and on the angle under which the transducer is seen by the receiver. In the presence of such signal shape aberrations, even one of the most robust ranging techniques, which is based on cross-correlation, provides results affected by a much greater error than expected. Numerical simulations are carried out for a typical ultrasonic chirp, ultrasonic emitter, and range technique based on cross-correlation and for a typical office room, obtained using the academic acoustic simulation software Field II. Spatial distributions of the ranging error are provided, clearly showing the favorable low error regions. The work demonstrates that particular attention must be paid to the design of the acoustic section of the ultrasonic positioning systems, considering both the shape and size of the ultrasonic emitters and the shape of the acoustic signal used.

In a few years, the world will be populated by billions of connected devices that will be placed in our homes, cities, vehicles, and industries. Devices with limited resources will interact with the surrounding environment and users. Many of these devices will be based on machine learning models to decode meaning and behavior behind sensors’ data, to implement accurate predictions and make decisions. The bottleneck will be the high level of connected things that could congest the network. Hence, the need to incorporate intelligence on end devices using machine learning algorithms. Deploying machine learning on such edge devices improves the network congestion by allowing computations to be performed close to the data sources. The aim of this work is to provide a review of the main techniques that guarantee the execution of machine learning models on hardware with low performances in the Internet of Things paradigm, paving the way to the Internet of Conscious Things. In this work, a detailed review on models, architecture, and requirements on solutions that implement edge machine learning on Internet of Things devices is presented, with the main goal to define the state of the art and envisioning development requirements. Furthermore, an example of edge machine learning implementation on a microcontroller will be provided, commonly regarded as the machine learning “Hello World”.

The growing interest for indoor position-based applications and services, as well as ubiquitous computing and location aware information, have led to increasing efforts toward the development of positioning techniques. Many applications require accurate positioning or tracking of people and assets inside buildings, and some market sectors are waiting for such technologies for starting a fast growth. Ultrasonic systems have already been shown to possess the desired positioning accuracy and refresh rate. However, they still require accurate synchronization between ultrasound emitters and receivers to work properly. Usually, synchronization is carried out through radio frequency (RF) signals, adding system complexity and raising the cost. In this work, this limit is overcome by introducing a novel self-synchronizing indoor positioning technique. Ultrasonic signals travel from emitters placed at fixed reference positions to any number of mobile devices (MD). The travelled distance is computed from the time of flight (TOF), which requires in turn synchronism between emitter and receiver. It is shown that this synchronism can be indirectly estimated from the time difference of arrival (TDOA) of the ultrasonic signals. The obtained positioning information is private, in the sense that the positioning infrastructure is not aware of the number or identity of the MDs that use it. Computer simulations and experimental results obtained in a typical office room are provided.