A novel technique is proposed for measuring the distributed strain and temperature in a fiber with a very high resolution. This technique makes use of the jagged appearance of Rayleigh backscatter traces from a single-mode fiber measured by using a coherent OTDR with a precisely frequency-controlled light source. Our preliminary experiment indicated the possibility of measuring temperature with a resolution of better than 0.01 and a spatial resolution of one meter. This temperature resolution is two orders of magnitude better than that provided by Brillouin-based distributed sensors.

Sensors have very scarce resources in terms of memory, energy and computational capacities. Wireless sensor network is composed of a large number of such sensor nodes densely deployed in inhospitable physical environments. Energy efficient information dissemination throughout such a network is still a challenge. Though dissemination of information with minimum energy consumption is a key concern in wireless sensor networks, it often introduces additional delay. In this work, we first propose an energy and delay efficient multi-hop routing scheme called C2E2S (Cluster and Chain based Energy*Delay Efficient Routing Scheme) for wireless sensor networks. This scheme is a combination of cluster-based and chain-based approaches and the way to form clusters and chains in this work is center-based approach. To reduce a large number of communication overheads due to this approach, we propose a modified-center-based approach called passive-BS-based approach. Next, we propose (1) an energy and delay aware routing algorithm for sensors within each k-hop cluster, and (2) an Energy-efficient chain construction algorithm for cluster heads. To evaluate the appropriateness of our approach, we analyze the evaluated performance against existing protocols in terms of communication overhead, the number of communication rounds (network lifetime), total amount of energy dissipated in the system over time, network delay and Energy*Delay metric using SENSE simulator. The simulation results show that C2E2S consumes less energy, balances the energy and delay metrics, and extends the network lifetime as compared to other approaches.

In this paper, we propose a new localization scheme for wireless sensor networks consisting of a huge number of sensor nodes equipped with simple wireless communication devices such as wireless LAN and Bluetooth. The proposed scheme is based on the Point-In-Triangle (PIT) test proposed by He et al. The scheme is actually implemented by using Bluetooth devices of Class 2 standard, and the performance of the scheme is evaluated in an actual environment. The result of experiments indicates that the proposed scheme could realize a localization with an error of less than 2 m.

This paper presents fingerprint image enhancement and rotation schemes that improve the identification accuracy with the pixel-parallel processing of pixels. In the schemes, the range of the fingerprint sensor is adjusted to the finger state, the captured image is retouched to obtain the suitable image for identification, and the image is rotated to the correct angle on the pixel array. Sensor and pixel circuits that provide these operations were devised and a test chip was fabricated using 0.25-µm CMOS and the sensor process. It was confirmed in 150,000 identification tests that the schemes reduce the false rejection rate to 6.17% from 30.59%, when the false acceptance rate is 0.1%.

We developed a CMOS watchdog sensor that simulates the changes in quality of perishables such as farm and marine products. The sensor can imitate a chemical reaction that causes the changes in the quality of perishables, with a wide range of activation energy from 0.1 eV to 0.7 eV. Attached to perishable goods, the sensor simulates the deterioration of the goods caused by surrounding temperatures. By reading the output of the sensor, consumers can determine whether the goods are fresh or not. This sensor consists of subthreshold CMOS circuits with a low-power consumption of 5 µW or less.

This letter analyzes the performance of statistical cooperative diversity based on space-time block codes (STBC) (Statistical STBC cooperative diversity) considering the effects of quantization and observation noise. Binary quantization is used. The bit error rate (BER) and average mutual information of the statistical STBC cooperative diversity with Alamouti's STBC and two active nodes are derived in the presence of general observation noise. It is shown that the performance of the statistical STBC cooperative diversity depends on the effects of observation noise and the number of cooperating nodes largely. It is also shown how much the communication between sensor nodes or feedback from the fusion center improves the performance of STBC cooperative diversity.

We propose a new receiving method for an information-providing system that uses LED-based traffic lights as the transmitter. We analyzed the improvements obtained when 2-dimentional image sensor replaced the conventional single-element photodiode. First, we discuss the maximum receiver's field of view (FOV) when using the 2-dimentional image sensor at a particular focal length. We analyzed the best vertical inclination for both lanes and quantified the improvements in terms of the enhancement of received signal-noise ratio (SNR) when different numbers of pixels were applied. Our results indicate that using more pixels increases the received SNR and the service area becomes wider compared to the conventional single-element system. Consequently, receivable information within the service area also increased. We also found that the optimum number of pixels to accomplish a reliable communication system is 5050 because performance degradation occured with a larger number of pixels.

Wireless sensor networks present a promising opportunity for realizing many practical applications. Tracking is one of the important applications of these networks. Many approaches have been proposed in the literature to deal with the tracking problem. Recently, a particular type of tracking problem called on-site tracking has been introduced [15],[16]. On-site tracking has been characterized as the tracking in which the sink is eventually required to be present in the vicinity of the target, possibly to perform further actions. In this paper, first we propose two efficient on-site tracking algorithms. Then, we derive theoretical upper bounds for the tracking time and the number of messages generated by the sensor nodes during the tracking for our algorithms. Finally, we present a simulation study that we conducted to evaluate the performance of our algorithms. The results show that our algorithms are efficient as compared to the other existing methods that can solve the on-site tracking problem. In particular, the path adaptive nature of the sink in our algorithms allows the network to conserve the energy and the sink to reduce the tracking time.

A network for the detection of an approaching object with simple-shape recognition is proposed based on lower animal vision. The locust can detect an approaching object through a simple process in the descending contralateral movement detector (DCMD) in the locust brain, by which the approach velocity and direction of the object is determined. The frog can recognize simple shapes through a simple process in the tectum and thalamus in the frog brain. The proposed network is constructed of simple analog complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuits. The integrated circuit of the proposed network is fabricated with the 1.2 µm CMOS process. Measured results for the proposed circuit indicate that the approach velocity and direction of an object can be detected by the output current of the analog circuit based on the DCMD response. The shape of moving objects having simple shapes, such as circles, squares, triangles and rectangles, was recognized using the proposed frog-visual-system-based circuit.

Clustering is an effective self-organization approach in wireless sensor networks. LEACH--a representative distributed clustering scheme has been considered an effective model to offer energy-efficient communication for sensor networks. However, its randomness may result in faster death of some nodes i.e. shorten system life. In this letter, we first analyze the reasons why the uncertainty in LEACH degrades system life, and then present a distributed clustering algorithm based on an adaptive backoff strategy. Simulation experiments illustrate that our algorithm is able to significantly prolong system life compared with LEACH.

A new wide-dynamic-range CMOS image sensor with pixel-level analog-to-digital (A/D) converters is proposed. The pulse-counters in the sensor are arranged outside the pixel area in order to reduce pixel size, which is a key requirement for making high-definition cameras. A new scheme called variable threshold operation is also presented as a suitable readout operation method for the sensor. Experimental measurements on a prototype sensor show that the prototype can obtain linear output response proportional to illumination by applying the new readout operation.

Incorporating sensor nodes with data aggregation capability to transmit less data flow in wireless sensor networks could reduce the total energy consumption. This calls for the efficient and effective data-centric routing algorithm to facilitate this advantage. In the first part of this paper, we model the data-centric routing problem by rigorous mixed integer and linear mathematical formulation, where the objective function is to minimize the total transmission cost subject to multicast tree constraints. With the advancement of sensor network technology, sensor nodes with configurable transmission radius capability could further reduce energy consumption. The second part of this paper considers the transmission radius assignment of each sensor node and the data-centric routing assignment jointly. The objective function is to minimize the total power consumption together with consideration of construction of a data aggregation tree and sensor node transmission radius assignment. The solution approach is based on Lagrangean relaxation in conjunction with the novel optimization-based heuristics. From the computational experiments, it is shown that the proposed algorithms calculate better solution than other existing heuristics with improvement ratio up to 169% and 59% with respect to fixed transmission radius and configurable transmission radius for network with 300 random generated nodes.

The gamma correction for the CMOS image sensors are implemented by the method of piecewise linear approximation through a look-up table. In this paper, we propose a quantitative criterion to select the piece linear segment with the same output interval for the reduction of the error between the value of piece linear approximation and gamma correction. After the gamma correction is implemented, the average error occurred by implementing color interpolation in each segment is a basis for the optimum selecting of the piece linear segment of the gamma correction for the CMOS image sensors.

Because of the large scale of wireless sensor networks, the configuration needs to be done autonomously. In this paper, we present Scalable Data Collection (SDC) protocol, a tree-based protocol for collecting data over multi-hop, wireless sensor networks. The design of the protocol aims to satisfy the requirements of sensor networks that every sensor transmits sensed data to a sink node periodically or spontaneously. The sink nodes construct the tree by broadcasting a solicit packet to discover the child nodes. The sensor receiving this packet decides on an appropriate parent to which it will attach, it then broadcasts the same packet to discover its child nodes. Through this process, the tree is created autonomously without any flooding of the routing packets. SDC avoids periodic updating of routing information but the tree need to be reconstructed upon node failures or adding of new nodes. The states required on each sensor are constant and independent of network size, therefore SDC scales better than the existing protocols. Moreover, each sensor can make forwarding decisions regardless of the knowledge on geographical information. We evaluated the performance of SDC by using the ns-2 simulator and comparing with Directed Diffusion, DSR, AODV, and OLSR. The simulation results demonstrate that SDC achieves much higher delivery ratio, shorter delay, as well as high scalability in various scenarios.

Recent advances in 77-GHz MMIC module design techniques for automotive radar applications are reviewed in this paper. The target of R&D activities is moving from high performance to low cost, mass production, high-yield manufacturing and testing. To meet the stringent requirements, millimeter-wave module design techniques have made significant progress especially in packaging, bonding, and making interface with other modules. In addition, millimeter-wave semiconductor devices and MMICs have made remarkable improvements for low cost and mass production. In this paper, the topics focusing on millimeter-wave semiconductor devices and 77-GHz MMICs are reviewed first. Then the recent R&D results on 77-GHz MMIC module design techniques are introduced, showing the technical trend of packaging, bonding, and making interface with other modules for millimeter-wave, highly-integrated, low-cost MMIC modules. Finally, the existing and future module design issues for automotive radar applications are discussed.

We show that distributed source coding of multi-view images in camera sensor networks (CSNs) using adaptive modules can come close to the Slepian-Wolf bound. In a systematic scenario with limited node abilities, work by Slepian and Wolf suggest that it is possible to encode statistically dependent signals in a distributed manner to the same rate as with a system where the signals are jointly encoded. We considered three nodes (PN, CN and CNs), which are statistically depended. Different distributed architecture solutions are proposed based on a parent node and child node framework. A PN sends the whole image whereas a CNs/CN only partially, using an adaptive coding based on adaptive module-operation at a rate close to theoretical bound - H(CNs|PN)/H(CN|PN,CNs). CNs sends sub-sampled image and encodes the rest of image, however CN encodes all image. In other words, the proposed scheme allows independent encoding and jointly decoding of views. Experimental results show performance close to the information-theoretic limit. Furthermore, good performance of the proposed architecture with adaptive scheme shows significant improvement over previous work.

An eddy-current type proximity sensor is a non-contact type sensing device to detect the approach of a conductor by increase of equivalent AC resistance of excitation coil due to eddy current loss in the conductor. In this paper, electromagnetic characteristics of the actual proximity sensor are calculated by FEM and the validity of numerical analysis results are studied. Furthermore, two models that has modified magnetic circuit geometry based on the actual sensor are designed and calculated as numerical experiments. Calculated results are shown as enhanced sensing index or electromagnetic characteristics of the modified sensor. In conclusions, knowledge about the magnetic circuit geometry of the sensor is applied for the enhancement of sensing property.

A compensation method of the array element pattern is proposed to measure EM field distribution on an observation plane located several wavelengths away from electronic devices in a short time. Numerical and experimental data of the 3 and 5 element collinear dipole array sensors are presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.

A wireless sensor network is comprised of a large number of battery-limited sensor nodes communicating with unreliable radio links. The nodes are deployed in an ad hoc fashion and a reverse multicast tree is formed in the target domain. The sink node disseminates a query and collects responses from the sensors over pre-established links. Survivability in wireless sensor networks reflects the ability of the network to continue to detect events in the case of individual node failures. We present a sender initiated path switching algorithm that enables the immediate sender to change the packet's route dynamically when its parent on the reverse path is down. The overall effect of path switching on the survivability is analyzed as a measure of reliable event delivery. Using independent battery capacities, an analytical model of a multihop network is derived. The model is used to predict the maximum network lifetime in terms of total transmitted messages; which is in turn used to verify the correctness of our simulations. The results have revealed that dynamic path switching has a better performance than static multipath routing and salvaging schemes. It has also been shown that the proposed approach enhances reliability up to 30% in some topologies.

In this paper, we propose a hardware architecture of real-time JPEG encoder for 1.4 mega pixels CMOS image sensor SoC which can be applied to mobile communication devices. The proposed architecture has an efficient interface scheme with CMOS image sensor and other peripherals for real-time encoding. The JPEG encoder supports the base-line JPEG mode, and processes motion images of which resolution is up to 1280960 (CCIR601 YCrCb 4:2:2,15 fps) by real-time processing. The JPEG encoder supports 8 types of resolution, and can serve the 4 levels of image quality through quantization matrix. The proposed JPEG encoder can transfer encoded motion pictures and raw image data from CMOS image sensor to external device through USB 2.0 and a compressed still image is stored at external pseudo SRAM through SRAM interface. And proposed core can communicate parameters of encoding type with other host by I2C. The proposed architecture was implemented with VHDL and verified for the functions with Synopsys and Modelsim. The encoder proposed in this paper was fabricated in process of 0.18 µ of Hynix semiconductor Inc.