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In this paper, we propose a new sensor for the detection and analysis of dusts (seen as powders and fibers) in indoor environments, especially designed for applications in the field of Cultural Heritage or in other contexts where the presence of dust requires special care (surgery, clean rooms, etc.). The presented system relies on image processing techniques (enhancement, noise reduction, segmentation, metrics analysis) and it allows obtaining both qualitative and quantitative information on the accumulation of dust. This information aims to identify the geometric and topological features of the elements of the deposit. The curators can use this information in order to design suitable prevention and maintenance actions for objects and environments. The sensor consists of simple and relatively cheap tools, based on a high-resolution image acquisition system, a preprocessing software to improve the captured image and an analysis algorithm for the feature extraction and the classification of the elements of the dust deposit. We carried out some tests in order to validate the system operation. These tests were performed within the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Museums, showing the good performance of the proposed sensor in terms of execution time and classification accuracy.

This article describes a new instrument for power quality (PQ) measurements based on the Raspberry-Pi. This is the latest step of a long study started by the Electric and Electronic Measurements Laboratory of “Roma Tre” University 12 years ago. During this time, the Laboratory developed and refined instrumentation for high accuracy power quality measurements. Through its own architecture, the new instrument allows the use of the Raspberry instead of a personal computer (PC). The data acquired and locally processed are then sent to a remote server where they can be shown to users. Imagines of the system and of the data prove the activity of the system.

The aim of this work is to propose a metrological system for the definition of the Extra Virgin Olive Oil Quality based on Panel Test. The information was obtained by a Kohonen neural network that simulates the biological perception mechanisms. This approach allowed to get a two-dimensional mapping of the flavors based on non-linear model. The predominant flavors are not evenly distribute on the map but they are located in specific zone. It is also possible to identify a separation between negative and positive attributes that defines a “quality direction” from low grade to high quality Extra Virgin Olive Oils. Moreover, the overlaps of different flavors on the same neuron of the map suggest possible correlations between them. This is an important starting point to identify the minimum number of independent attributes in order to optimize the Panel Test questionnaire.

A distributed web-based system for temporal and spatial power quality analysis has been realized and tested. Connecting by internet local instruments able to perform high accuracy measurements in real time, the Power Quality information, locally measured, can be sent to a remote central server which aim is to plot them and stored the data for future analysis. The remote instruments have been realized, tested and placed in two Italian cities, Palermo and Rome, where actually work while the server works in Rome. The web application allows to select the single instrument and to show its stored PQ information.

""The problem of the electrical energy price, evaluated considering its quality, has been analyzed in this article. The electrical energy quality is directly defined by the customers as an output of a complex procedure which uses as inputs both the power quality technical parameters and the human experience. The procedure shows as the accuracy in the quality definition is strongly related with the accuracy of the sensors used for the power quality measurements, especially regarding their synchronization. An analysis of the synchronization of the sensors placed on a spread territory is also made. A solution for a centralized control of the sensors time course is also suggested."" It has been taken into account the problem of the price of the electrical energy considering its quality. This last is defined by the customers after a complex procedures which considers as inputs both the technical parameters and the human experience. In Following this procedure the final accuracy in the quality definition is strongly related with the accuracy of the sensors used for the power quality measurements especially regarding their synchronization which becomes particularly problematic considering their distribution on spread territory. Moreover we suggest the solutions for a centralized control of their time course.

Starting from a previous work, a new Data Acquisition USB Device has been designed, developed, realized and characterized to be used in Power Quality and Smart Grid applications. The system simultaneously manages 8 data acquisition channels to allow voltages and currents monitoring on tri-phases lines. It can get external both certified time and voltage references to warranty certified measurements, but it also use internal references for non certified ones. The USB card is in PCI form factor and can be placed inside a common PC slot or in external shielded housing. FTDI Virtual ComPort drivers yield to a flexible multiplatform device, without requiring any advanced programming skill. The proposed device has been tested with custom software written in C# and VB6 languages, moreover it has been characterized applying the most common ADC performing test to verify its behavior.

This paper proposes an FPGA based device. implementing a signal generator for power quality analysis. The device simulates the behavior of an ADC connected to the power grid. It’s main goal is to make it easy to have real-time tests on algorithms implemented on embedded hardware.

An instrument based on FPGA to determine in few. periods the fundamental frequency of a electrical grid signal has. been realized. A classic algorithm as Curve Fitting Algorithm has. been analyzed and modified to reduce its numerical complexity.. This paper shows how the floating point software algorithm has. been implemented on hardware architecture in fixed point. representation, controlling the accuracy.

As a direct consequence of the increasing demand. of energy and the need to decrease pollution in order to cope. with global warming, political, industrial and scientific interests. have combined to understand the way ICT technologies can. help to review all phases of energetic cycle, from generation. (through renewable sources), to accumulation and. transportation, until distribution. The union between ICT and. energy is usually identified as “Smart Grid”, to emphasize an. expectation change in what will be the Power Grid of the. incoming future. The aim of this study is to give some ideas. about the experimentation of new techniques of energy. acquisition through renewable sources (solar, chp, wind, etc.).. These techniques would guarantee more accessible prices for. production, improving performances, the overcome of those. constraints that did not allow the exploitation of potential. energy capacity of renewable sources. This grid will be made of. devices forming a control cycle that will check the station of. energy generation as much as the behaviour of single. consumers.

A Data Acquisition USB Device has been. designed, developed, realized and characterized to be used in. Power Quality monitoring activities. The system. simultaneously manage 8 data acquisition channels to allow. acquisition on tri-phases plus neutral lines working at 499. samples per 50 Hz period. It can get external certified time and. voltage references to warranty certified measurements. The. system is directly powered by USB interface and use a. multiplatform FTDI Virtual ComPort drivers to yield a simpleto-. use and scalable device able to send and receive data over. High Speed RS232 virtual interfaces, without requiring any. advanced programming skill. The virtual serial communication. makes data acquisition software portable over many platforms,. regardless development environment and programming. language. The proposed device has been tested with custom. software written in C# and VB6, than in LabView and MatLab. environment, moreover it has been characterized applying the. most common ADC performing test to verify its behaviour.

A Data Acquisition USB Device has been realized to be used in Power Quality monitoring activities. The adopted solution allows to perform 8 channel simultaneous data acquisition with external certified time and voltage references, working at 499 samples per 50 Hz period. The self-powered USB interface combined to multiplatform FTDI Virtual ComPort drivers yields a simple-to-use and scalable device; it can be driven simply sending and receiving data over High Speed RS232 virtual interfaces, without requiring any advanced programming skill. The virtual serial communication makes data acquisition software portable over many platforms, regardless development environment and programming language. The proposed device has been tested with custom software written in C# and VB6, than in LabView and MatLab environment.

Power quality is an important subject to correctly dimension protection devices and back up power systems for next generation of telecommunication network. In this paper it is presented an overview of some power quality data obtained using integrated instruments put inside Chloride's UPS, widely distributed in the world and active for quite a few years, allow statistical evaluations to derive some important convictions about the power quality situation, which are the electrical energy parameters particularly important for the design of new generation tIc apparatuses. The article is focused on the Italian situation and in detail analyzes the mains failures for each Italian region.

The need to deploy distributed power quality monitoring systems requires the development of circuits able to yield an accurate time reference that is easy to disseminate on specific monitoring sites. In this paper, the design and initial realization of a time reference continuously traceable to a Cs133 atomic standard is proposed. Such reference is based on the locking of the Cesium-derived L1 GPS satellites carrier and would simply require visibility of one GPS satellite in order to be operative. In particular, attention is focused on the hybrid design and realization of the carrier tracking section, with particular emphasis on its fundamental building blocks, such as the voltage controlled oscillator, mixers, and power dividers. The design procedure for the different blocks and some prototypes are discussed and preliminary measurements showing their functionality are presented.

This work shows an example of power quality (PQ) data of four important telecommunication sites placed in Rome, Italy. The data are collected, elaborated and analyzed by four self made instruments developed for this purpose and inserted in four automatic telecommunication exchanges kindly at our disposal by TELECOM, the most important Italian telecommunication company. The analysis shows the active and reactive power consumption and, for one site, the harmonic distortion.

A possibility to obtain a new time reference constantly locked to the Caesium-derived GPS satellites carriers was investigated by means of a new GPS receiver architecture able to lock the two GPS carriers and mix them to obtain a reference frequency with an accuracy close to the GPS one. This is very important in Perceived Power Quality distributed measurements systems where the exact knowledge of the events on the geographic compass is strongly joined to the capability to associate them an accurate time. A simulation of the carrier tracking loop has been performed. It shows how choosing appropriately the frequency of the low-pass filter of Costas loop, a modified PLL typically used in GPS system, it is possible to recover carriers in presence of high noise to signal ratio too. The front-end of the system able to select GPS frequencies, which is the first block of the entire system, was also realized.

Artwork counterfeiting is a wide problem in the art market, both for private subject and museums. For this reason, it is important introducing innovative authentication solutions, based on state-of-the-art technologies. In particular, in this paper, the proposed solution is based on a mobile architecture, starting from the consideration that nowadays mobile phones include quality photo and video cameras, access to wireless networks and the internet, GPS assistance and other innovative systems. The proposed solution uses smartphones as simple, robust and efficient sensor for artworks authentication. When we buy an artwork object, the seller issues a certificate of authenticity, which contains specific details about the artwork itself. Unscrupulous sellers can duplicate the classic certificates of authenticity, and then use them to “authenticate” non-genuine works of art. In this way, the buyer will have a copy of an original certificate to attest that the “not original artwork” is an original one. A solution for this problem would be to insert a system that links together the certificate and the related specific artwork. To do this it is necessary, for a single artwork, to find unique, unrepeatable, and unchangeable characteristics. In this article we propose an innovative and not-invasive method for the authentication of artworks based on random intrinsic object characteristics. This approach is based on biometry paradigm (analogue fingerprinting). The paper present a stand-alone solution, and an internet-based one, necessary for granting security verification also in case of problem with the used RFID tag. The proposed method uses an RFID Tag and a 2D barcode, in conjunction with an Internet-based Authentication Archive.

This paper illustrates the use of object oriented programming (OOP) techniques for the design of neural networks (NNs) for short-term load forecasting. A load forecasting model has been developed using a multilayer perceptron NN with an appropriately modified backpropagation learning algorithm. The model produces a simultaneous forecast of the load in the 24 hours of the forecast day concerned. The technique has been tested on data provided by the Italian Power Company ENEL and the promising results obtained through the application of OOPNN-based approach show the effectiveness of this new approach.

The paper illustrates a part of the research activity conducted by the authors in the field of electric short term load forecasting (STLF) based on artificial neural network (ANN) architectures. Previous experiences with basic ANN architectures have shown that, even though these architectures provide results comparable with those obtained by human operators for most normal days, they evidence some accuracy deficiencies when applied to "anomalous" load conditions occurring during holidays and long weekends. For these periods a specific procedure based upon a combined (unsupervised/supervised) approach has been proposed. The unsupervised stage provides a preventive classification of the historical load data by means of a Kohonen's self-organizing map (SOM). The supervised stage, performing the proper forecasting activity, is obtained by using a multi-layer perceptron with a backpropagation learning algorithm similar to the ones mentioned above. The unconventional use of information deriving from the classification stage permits the proposed procedure to obtain a relevant enhancement of the forecast accuracy for anomalous load situations.

In the introduction the author underlines the meaning of a high accuracy echo-graphic apparatus. After a summary of the maximum likelihood estimation method the software structure of an algorithm that, in recursive way, allows parameter estimation is summarized and its efficiency evaluation as a fit function of echoes is given. Experimental results of the behavior of settled algorithms implemented on a serial computer, are described. The structure of the algorithm implementation on an available parallel computing platform, briefly described, is discussed. Time operation and possible application to echo-graphic systems is also discussed.

The problem of useful echoes identification in an Ultra Sound (U.S.) signal is faced. The used approach consists in the time re-arrangement of a paths matrix built utilizing the electro-acoustic equivalence. Some acoustic parameter identification of slabs encountered by U.S. wave has been demonstrated been possible, in particular cases. The precise time positioning of identified useful echoes has been obtained applying an improved Maximum Likelihood Estimator (M.L.E.). The great computational load of the method has been faced by a parallel computational structure measurement. Experimental on software performances are presented too.