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In this article, a comprehensive review is presented of recent technological advancements utilizing electromagnetic sensors in the microwave range for detecting human vital signs and lung water levels. With the main objective of improving detection accuracy and system robustness, numerous advancements in front-end architecture, detection techniques, and system-level integration have been reported. The benefits of non-contact vital sign detection have garnered significant interest across a range of applications, including healthcare monitoring and search and rescue operations. Moreover, some integrated circuits and portable systems have lately been shown off. A comparative examination of various system architectures, baseband signal processing methods, system-level integration strategies, and possible applications are included in this article. Going forward, researchers will continue to focus on integrating radar chips to achieve compact form factors and employ advanced signal processing methods to further enhance detection accuracy.

In this article, a comprehensive review is presented of recent technological advancements utilizing electromagnetic sensors in the microwave range for detecting human vital signs and lung water levels. With the main objective of improving detection accuracy and system robustness, numerous advancements in front-end architecture, detection techniques, and system-level integration have been reported. The benefits of non-contact vital sign detection have garnered significant interest across a range of applications, including healthcare monitoring and search and rescue operations. Moreover, some integrated circuits and portable systems have lately been shown off. A comparative examination of various system architectures, baseband signal processing methods, system-level integration strategies, and possible applications are included in this article. Going forward, researchers will continue to focus on integrating radar chips to achieve compact form factors and employ advanced signal processing methods to further enhance detection accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless communications play an important role in ensuring ease of access to shared electronic health records (EHR) across health service providers which is essential and significant for prompt patients' care, especially in cases of emergency medical conditions. With the need to support anytime, anywhere access to, potentially bandwidth hungry, medical records, electronic healthcare applications will continue to benefit from advanced wireless network technologies such as 5G and beyond. With sharing, it is crucial to provide patients with security and privacy guarantees, and allow them to certain control of access to their data. Existing solutions mostly assume that patients are available to authorize requests to access their EHR, which is impractical as the patient may be unconscious. This paper proposes a secure and privacy protecting protocol whereby the patient can pre-delegate the authorization for the access of his/her EHR. Our patient(user)-centric proposal combines Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) concepts and model with Secure Multi-party Computation (SMPC) and Threshold Cryptography (TC) to enable secure identity and authorization verification. A block cipher encryption sharing approach is adopted for the threshold SMPC which extends the AES-GCM symmetric encryption model into a full-fledged cryptographic platform. Two mechanisms are implemented for the block cipher encryption, namely XOR and Cascade, and experiments are conducted to compare them. We conclude that the XOR mechanism can scale for larger thresholds, while Cascade performed better for a lower threshold (≤ 3). This paper also performs a threat analysis of the protocol and approach, and validates its correctness and complexity. We conclude that the approach can achieve the security and privacy protection of the patient's personal EHR, as well as the autonomy of the patient to control the authorization for the access and sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing number of next-generation applications offers a relevant opportunity for healthcare services, generating an urgent need for architectures for systems integration. Moreover, the huge amount of stored information related to events can be explored by adopting a process-oriented perspective. This paper discusses an Ambient Assisted Living healthcare architecture to manage hospital home-care services. The proposed solution relies on adopting an event manager to integrate sources ranging from personal devices to web-based applications. Data are processed on a federated cloud platform offering computing infrastructure and storage resources to improve scientific research. In a second step, a business process analysis of telehealth and telemedicine applications is considered. An initial study explored the business process flow to capture the main sequences of tasks, activities, events. This step paves the way for the integration of process mining techniques to compliance monitoring in an AAL architecture framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing global water shortage issue, the development of water desalination and wastewater recycling technology is particularly urgent. Capacitive deionization (CDI), as an emerging approach for water desalination and ion separation, has received extensive attention due to its high ion selectivity, high water recovery, and low energy consumption. To promote the further application of CDI technology, it is necessary to understand the latest research progress and application prospects. Here, considering electric double layers (EDLs) and two typical models, we conduct an in-depth discussion on the ion adsorption mechanism of CDI technology. Furthermore, we provide a comprehensive overview of recent advances in CDI technology optimization research, including optimization of cell architecture, electrode material design, and operating mode exploration. In addition, we summarize the development of CDI in past decades in novel application fields other than seawater desalination, mainly including ionic pollutant removal, recovery of resource-based substances such as lithium and nutrients, and development of coupling systems between CDI and other technologies. We then highlight the most serious challenges faced in the process of large-scale application of CDI. In the conclusion and outlook section, we focus on summarizing the overall development prospects of CDI technology, and we discuss the points that require special attention in future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current mobile communications could not satisfy the explosive data requirement of users. This paper reviews the frontier technology of software definition networks (SDN) of 5G and 6G, including system architecture, resource management, mobility management, interference management, challenges, and open issues. First of all, the system architectures of 5G and 6G mobile networks are introduced based on SDN technologies. Then typical SDN-5G/6G application scenarios and key issues are discussed. We also focus on mobility management approaches in mobile networks. Besides, three types of mobility management mechanism in software defined 5G/6G are described and compared. We then summarize the current interference management techniques in wireless cellular networks. Next, we provide a brief survey of interference management method in SDN-5G/6G. Additionally, considering the challenges, we discuss mm-Wave spectrum, un-availability of popular channel model, massive MIMO, low latency and QoE, energy efficiency, scalability, mobility and routing, inter operability, standardization and security for software defined 5G/6G networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The civil aviation sector plays an increasingly significant role in transportation sustainability in the environmental, economic, and social dimensions. Driven by the concerns of sustainability in the aviation sector, more electrified aircraft propulsion technologies have emerged and form a very promising approach to future sustainable and decarbonized aviation. This review paper aims to provide a comprehensive and broad-scope survey of the recent progress and development trends in sustainable aviation electrification. Firstly, the architectures of electrified aircraft propulsion are presented with a detailed analysis of the benefits, challenges, and studies/applications to date. Then, the challenges and technical barriers of electrified aircraft propulsion control system design are discussed, followed by a summary of the control methods frequently used in aircraft propulsion systems. Next, the mainstream energy management strategies are investigated and further utilized to minimize the block fuel burn, emissions, and economic cost. Finally, an overview of the development trends of aviation electrification is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of microgrid, smart grid, and virtual power plant (VPP) is being developed to resolve the challenges of climate change in the 21st century, to ensure the use of renewable energy in the electrical grid. For the increasing demand for electricity, raising public consciousness about reducing carbon emission, the microgrid is established which is transformed into a virtual power plant (VPP) or a smart grid with the blessing of modern communication systems, intelligence technology, and smart devices. So, to keep these systems up-to-date and to ensure security, it is important to know the details about the uses and benefits of these systems in the developed world and also to improve control methods and automation, it is important to achieve the present essence of such systems. This paper is focused to contribute to this flourishing area of energy sustainability covering microgrid, smart grid, and virtual power plant by compiling and recapping their recent advancements, technical requirements, control problems, and solutions. The paper is mainly intended to address the role of control strategies applied to the microgrid, smart grid, and virtual power plant towards future energy generation, distribution, management, and security.

A machine learning (ML) design framework is proposed for adaptively adjusting clock frequency based on propagation delay of individual instructions. A random forest model is trained to classify propagation delays in real time, utilizing current operation type, current operands, and computation history as ML features. The trained model is implemented in Verilog as an additional pipeline stage within TigerMIPS processor. The modified system is experimentally tested at the gate level in 45 nm CMOS technology, exhibiting simultaneously a speedup of 70 percent and an energy reduction of 30 percent with coarse-grained ML classification as compared with the baseline TigerMIPS. A speedup of 89 percent is demonstrated with finer granularities with a simultaneous 15.5 percent reduction in energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the OpenFlexure Microscope software stack which provides computer control of our open source motorised microscope. Our diverse community of users needs both graphical and script-based interfaces. We split the control code into client and server applications interfaced via a web API conforming to the W3C Web of Things standard. A graphical interface is viewed either in a web browser or in our cross-platform Electron application, and gives basic interactive control including common operations such as Z stack acquisition and tiled scanning. Automated control is possible from Python and Matlab, or any language that supports HTTP requests. Network control makes the software stack more robust, allows multiple microscopes to be controlled by one computer, and facilitates sharing of equipment. Graphical and script-based clients can run simultaneously, making it easier to monitor ongoing experiments. We have included an extension mechanism to add functionality, for example controlling additional hardware components or adding automation routines. Using a Web of Things approach has resulted in a user-friendly and extremely versatile software control solution for the OpenFlexure Microscope, and we believe this approach could be generalized in the future to make automated experiments involving several instruments much easier to implement.

Federated learning is a branch of machine learning where a shared model is created in a decentralized and privacy-preserving fashion, but existing approaches using blockchain are limited by tailored models. We consider the possibility to extend a set of supported models by introducing the oracle service and exploring the usability of blockchain-based architecture. The investigated architecture combines an oracle service with a Hyperledger Fabric chaincode. We compared two logistic regression implementations in Go language—a pure chaincode and an oracle service—at various data (2–32 k instances) and network (3–13 peers) sizes. Experiments were run to assess the performance of blockchain-based model inference using 2D synthetic and EEG eye state datasets for a supervised machine learning detection task. The benchmarking results showed that the impact on performance is acceptable with the median overhead of oracle service reaching 2–4%, depending on the dimensionality of the dataset. The overhead tends to diminish at large dataset sizes with the runtime depending on the network size linearly, where additional peers increased the runtime by 6.3 and 6.6 s for 2D and EEG datasets, respectively. Demonstrated negligible difference between implementations justifies the flexible choice of model in the blockchain-based federated learning and other machine learning applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2020 began with grand ideas about building future higher education. Thereafter universities have been through a constant swirl of uncertainties and confusions as they respond to a novel suite of radically reconfigured fundamentals and prospects. This essay charts this journey in order to document 2020 experiences and to clarify evolving circumstances. We present our personal situations as the basis for articulating perspectives. We discuss shifts with higher education systems, education reconfigurations, research developments, the mobility of students, and faculty members. Finally, we explore the need and opportunity to design future higher education. Engaging with transformed fundamentals provides a means, we propose, to design a new, global hybrid higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2020 began with grand ideas about building future higher education. Thereafter universities have been through a constant swirl of uncertainties and confusions as they respond to a novel suite of radically reconfigured fundamentals and prospects. This essay charts this journey in order to document 2020 experiences, and to clarify evolving circumstances. We present our personal situations as the basis for articulating perspectives. We discuss shifts with higher education systems, education reconfigurations, research developments, the mobility of students, and faculty members. Finally, we explore the need and opportunity to design future higher education. Engaging with transformed fundamentals provides a means, we propose, to design a new, global hybrid higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featured Application: Mission management for cooperative autonomous robotics. Almost every research project that focuses on the cooperation of autonomous robots for underwater operations designs their own architectures. As a result, most of these architectures are tightly coupled with the available robots/vehicles for their respective developments, and therefore the mission plan and management is done using an ad-hoc solution. Typically, this solution is tightly coupled to just one underwater autonomous vehicle (AUV), or a restricted set of them selected for the specific project. However, as the use of AUVs for underwater operations increases, there is the need to identify some commonalities and weaknesses of these architectures, specifically in relation to mission planning and management. In this paper, we review a selected number of architectures and frameworks that in one way or another make use of different approaches to mission planning and management. Most of the selected works were developed for underwater operations. Still, we have included some other architectures and frameworks from other domains that can be of interest for the survey. The explored works have been assessed using selected features related to mission planning and management, considering that underwater operations are performed in an uncertain and unreliable environment, and where unexpected events are not strange. Furthermore, we have identified and highlighted some potential challenges for the design and implementation of mission managers. This provides a reference point for the development of a mission manager component to be integrated in architectures for cooperative robotics in underwater operations, and it can serve for the same purposes in other domains of application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photovoltaic water pumping systems (PVWPS) are a promising solution to improve domestic water access in low-income rural areas. It is challenging, however, to make them more affordable for the local communities. We develop here a comparative methodology to assess relevant features of both widely employed PVWPS architecture with water tank storage, and hardly used PVWPS architecture with a battery bank instead of tank storage. The quantitative comparison is carried out through techno-economic optimization, with the goal of minimizing the life cycle cost of PVWPS with constraints on the satisfaction of the water demand of local inhabitants and on the groundwater resource sustainability. It is aimed to support decision-makers in selecting most appropriate storage for domestic water supply projects. We applied the methodology in the rural village of Gogma, Burkina Faso. Results indicate that the life-cycle cost of an optimized PVWPS with batteries is $24.1k while it is $31.1k if a tank is used instead. Moreover, reduced impact on groundwater resources and greater modularity to adapt to evolving water demand is noted if using batteries. However, as batteries must be replaced regularly and recycled adequately, PVWPS’ financial accessibility could increase only if sustainable and efficient operation, maintenance, and recycling facilities for batteries were present or developed locally.

Almost every research project that focuses on the cooperation of autonomous robots for underwater operations designs their own architectures. As a result, most of these architectures are tightly coupled with the available robots/vehicles for their respective developments, and therefore the mission plan and management is done using an ad-hoc solution. Typically, this solution is tightly coupled to just one underwater autonomous vehicle (AUV), or a restricted set of them selected for the specific project. However, as the use of AUVs for underwater operations increases, there is the need to identify some commonalities and weaknesses of these architectures, specifically in relation to mission planning and management. In this paper, we review a selected number of architectures and frameworks that in one way or another make use of different approaches to mission planning and management. Most of the selected works were developed for underwater operations. Still, we have included some other architectures and frameworks from other domains that can be of interest for the survey. The explored works have been assessed using selected features related to mission planning and management, considering that underwater operations are performed in an uncertain and unreliable environment, and where unexpected events are not strange. Furthermore, we have identified and highlighted some potential challenges for the design and implementation of mission managers. This provides a reference point for the development of a mission manager component to be integrated in architectures for cooperative robotics in underwater operations, and it can serve for the same purposes in other domains of application.

Estimating nutrient content in plants is a crucial task in the application of precision farming. This work will be more challenging if it is conducted nondestructively based on plant images captured in the field due to the variation of lighting conditions. This paper proposes a computational intelligence image processing to analyze nitrogen status in wheat plants. We developed an ensemble of deep learning multilayer perceptron-using committee machines for color normalization and image segmentation. This paper also focuses on building a genetic-algorithm-based global optimization to fine tune the color normalization and nitrogen estimation results. We discovered that the proposed method can successfully normalize plant images by reducing color variabilities compared to other color normalization techniques. Furthermore, this algorithm is able to enhance the nitrogen estimation results compared to other non-global optimization methods as well as the most renowned SPAD meter based nitrogen measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, architectural software systems are increasingly important because they can determine the success of the entire system. In this article we intend to rigorously analyze the most common types of systems architectures and present a personal opinion about the specifics of the university architecture. After analyzing monolithic architectures, SOA architecture and those of the micro- based services, we present specific issues and specific criteria for the university software systems. Each type of architecture is rundown and analyzed according to specific academic challenges. During the analysis, we took into account the factors that determine the success of each architecture and also the common causes of failure. At the end of the article, we objectively decide which architecture is best suited to be implemented in the university area.

Modern robots often use more than one processing unit to solve the requirements in robotics. Robots are frequently designed in a modular manner to fulfill the possibility to be extended for future tasks. The use of multiple processing units leads to a distributed system within one single robot. Therefore, the system architecture is even more important than in single-computer robots. The presented concept of a modular and distributed system architecture was designed for robotic systems. The architecture is based on the Operator–Controller Module (OCM). This article describes the adaption of the distributed OCM for mobile robots considering the requirements on such robots, including, for example, real-time and safety constraints. The presented architecture splits the system hierarchically into a three-layer structure of controllers and operators. The controllers interact directly with all sensors and actuators within the system. For that reason, hard real-time constraints need to comply. The reflective operator, however, processes the information of the controllers, which can be done by model-based principles using state machines. The cognitive operator is used to optimize the system. The article also shows the exemplary design of the DAEbot, a self-developed robot, and discusses the experience of applying these concepts on this robot.

This paper describes the results of research in the area of remote patient monitoring. We present an innovative data acquisition module, detailing its architecture as well as design decision undertaken during our work. The module is implemented as a mobile application executed on top of the Android OS. The modular and open architecture of the application and the unified measurement processing it exemplifies facilitate easy integration with new medical devices. The proposed installation and pairing process simplifies the configuration of the mobile application, which is important in this type of system. Our solution is already undergoing pilot evaluations and has been successfully applied by medical practitioners in the treatment of patients with cardiovascular diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent years, the continuous interest in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has led to the appearance of new modeling methods and simulation environments for WSN applications. A broad variety of different simulation tools have been designed to explore and validateWSN systems before actual implementation and real-world deployment. These tools address different design aspects and offer various simulation abstractions to represent and model real-world behavior. In this article, we present a comprehensive comparative study of mainstream open-source simulation tools for WSNs. Two benchmark applications are designed to evaluate the frameworks with respect to the simulation runtime performance, network throughput, communication medium modeling, packet reception rate, network latency, and power consumption estimation accuracy. Such metrics are also evaluated against measurements on physical prototypes. Our experiments show that the tools produce equivalent results from a functional point of view and capacity to model communication phenomena, while the ability to model details of the execution platform significantly impacts the runtime simulation performance and the power estimation accuracy. The benchmark applications are also made available in the public domain for further studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

R&D projects are complex systems composed by process architecture, organization architecture and product architecture. Firstly, we analyze the features, categories and causes of complexity in R&D projects, and argue that the design structure matrix (DSM) is a quantitative tool to analyze complexity effectively. Further, this paper summarizes the progress in modeling and optimization for complex R&D projects based on DSM and elaborates it in the following frame: from modeling iteration and overlapping in process architecture to sequencing optimization and simulation of process DSM; from measuring dependencies between teams in organization architecture to identifying clustering criterion of organization DSM; from estimating dependencies between components in product architecture to modularity design in product DSM, as well as the evolution and development of DSM clustering algorithm; from modeling and application in single domain DSM extending to multi-domain matrix (MDM). Finally, this paper proposes an integrated analysis frame that is exploring complexity of system architecture, measuring dependencies between elements in DSM and optimizing/clustering of DSM. Directions of future research in this field are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the design and the architecture of symbiote coprocessor unit (SCU)—a programmable streaming coprocessor for a heterogeneous reconfigurable logic-assisted data stream management systems (DSMSs) such as symbiote. The SCU is intended for streaming applications with real-time event and data processing that have stricter deadlines, high-bandwidth, and high-accuracy requirements. To meet these requirements, the SCU exploits unique characteristics of DSMSs, such as single-pass tuple processing, windowed operators, and inherent data level parallelism, using a single-instruction multiple-data very large instruction word (SIMD-VLIW) microarchitecture and a novel inverted distributed register file. In order to better explain the instruction set, design, and functionality of the various units in the SCU, this paper also provides a brief overview of SymQL—a procedural query language that we developed to describe the queries that can be executed on the SCU. Finally, this paper presents the performance of SCU using four queries that represent common data stream processing use-cases, one of them being similar to a query found in the Linear Road Benchmark. Using these queries on SCU simulation, we show that the SCU outperforms a software-only DSMS running on an AMD Opteron 2350 quad-core processor by 1.5–42 times. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The operation of smart grids is based on different energy management and control systems. Despite their variety, all of them offer similar functionalities to achieve a stable, reliable, sustainable and economic supply of energy. Similarity offers advantages for the construction of systems that are not well reflected in current system architectures. This work introduces foundations for specifications and development of fractal architectures that are based on self-similarity. We aim to apply those principles on two smart grid use cases: virtual power plants and optimal power flow control applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, architectural software systems are increasingly important because they can determine the success of the entire system. In this article we intend to rigorously analyze the most common types of systems architectures and present a personal opinion about the specifics of the university architecture. After analyzing monolithic architectures, SOA architecture and those of the micro- based services, we present specific issues and specific criteria for the university software systems. Each type of architecture is rundown and analyzed according to specific academic challenges. During the analysis, we took into account the factors that determine the success of each architecture and also the common causes of failure. At the end of the article, we objectively decide which architecture is best suited to be implemented in the university area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increase in the average age of the world's population over the coming decades will impact several aspects of our lives. In particular, it will increase the demand and challenges of delivering care and assistance to elderly or fragile people. This article describes an ambient assisted living system, called Bridge (behaviour drift compensation for autonomous and independent living), that's based on a set of home services that include a wireless sensor-actuator network for detection of inhabitants' behaviors and a rich, flexible communication system between the inhabitants and a social environment aimed at reassuring both inhabitants and their families. All Bridge solutions have been derived from real needs with the help of a social mediator and tested by users in their living environments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]